***Out in the 1950s Crime Noir Night –Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye -The Book

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Book Review

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler’s crime novel, 1953

Recently I did a review of the Robert Altman film adaptation of this Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe crime novel of the same name where I mentioned that you would be hard pressed to understand the film character without some background about Chandler, and about Marlowe. That applies here as well. Like I said in another review he, along with Brother Dashiell Hammett turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the day, back before the 1930s when they made a splash on the scene, on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys.

[Hammett, the author of The Thin Man, and creator of The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade, maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Sam, who come to think of it like Marlowe, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, women wearing that damn perfume that stops a man, even a hard-boiled detective man cold, although not an assortment of Hollywood women but one, one dame who had him all twisted up, almost, up north in Frisco town.]

In Chandler’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe Marlowe’s environment much in the way a detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. Marlowe was able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped him from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. He also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over Marlowe’s eyes. Or noticing a frayed collar or a misshapen dress that indicated that a guy or gal was on cheap street and just maybe not on the level, maybe scratching like crazy for his or her coffee and cakes.

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, Hollywood starlet wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap jack offices in rundown buildings on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down on your fragile head. (That spill your guts thing, by the way a trait that our Marlowe seems organically incapable of doing, except when it suited his purposes. No cop or gangster could force anything out of him, and they tried, believe me they tried. ) He had come from them, from the cops, from the D.A.s office in the old days, had worked with them on plenty of cases but generally he tried to treat them like one might a snake not quite sure whether it is poisonous or not.

At the same time Chandler was a master of setting the details of the space Marlowe had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). He had a fix on the museum-like quality of the big houses, the places like General Sternwood’s in The Big Sleep or Mrs. Murdock’s in The High Windowreflecting old wealth California. And he has a razor sharp sense of the arrivisite, the new blood all splash and glitter, all high-ceiling bungalow, swimming pools, and landscaped gardens.

But where Chandler made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, the mansions of old time Los Angeles Bunker Hill turned to rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny-ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary in Marlowe’s mouth. Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War II in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night. The rise of the corner boys hanging, just hanging, around blasted storefronts, a few breaking off into the cranked up hot rod hell’s highway night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun while taking over the vast crime markets. The wannabe starlets ready to settle for less than stardom for the right price. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. And above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended old Marlowe’s code of honor.

And of course over a series of books Chandler expanded the Marlowe character, expanded his range of emotions, detailed his growing world-weariness, his growing wariness, his small compromises with that code of honor that he had honed back in the 1930s. Yes, Marlowe the loner, the avenging angel , the righter of wrongs, maybe little wrongs but wrongs in this wicked old world. The guy who sometimes had to dig deep in his office desk drawer to grab a shot or six of whiskey to help him think things through. Marlowe the guy of a thousand punches, the guy of a hundred knocks on the head, the guy who had taken a more than one slug for the cause, the guy who was every insurance company’s nightmare and a guy who could have used some serious Obamacare health insurance no questions asked . Yah, Marlowe.

And now this book. Yah, too that Terry Lennox was a piece of work alright, a guy from Yonkers or some place near New York City so he had to be tough, street smarts tough. Yah, who also knew all the angels, good and bad liking the bad if he was to call a preference, knew all the angles, and knew how to cut corners on both, knew those corners more than one way too as Marlowe found out, found out. later. And still liked the guy, or at least wished him no harm. Marlowe had met him in a bar, Shorty’s, the original Shorty’s over off Wiltshire to set your geography straight, down the street from his apartment building. Shorty’s the bar that he had make famous, or infamous as the case may be, in the Baxter case, the bizarre one where an old time king hell fixer took a fall after a guy got shot by another guy right in the place over a decade before, just before the war in Europe got up a head of steam. Shorty, now a prosperous owner of several watering holes, including the Club Arriba over on Central Avenue, once he knew whose palms to grease and who to seek “protection” from, liked Marlowe’s presence as a crowd-drawer and for the favor his drinks were on the house. Marlowe, in the chips or not, never turned down a drink, scotch especially, from friend or foe so the place was his regular hang-out

It had been a slow Monday late afternoon when Terry walked in, sat down beside Marlowe, and ordered a scotch bright, scotch, high-end scotch in his case, with a kick of rum, a drink that the guys who had come back from overseas brought back with them. More importantly that was Marlowe’s drink of choice at that moment. He off-handedly commented on the similar tastes and Terry told him about how he had acquired the taste in London during the war. And so they talked, talked about the drink, talked about the late war, talked about the craziness of Los Angeles lately although Marlowe could tell Terry was neither native nor had he gone native, talked about the big migration after the war that had stretched the place to the limit and they were still coming, and about this and that, guy stuff, manly guy stuff.

Every few days, maybe every week or so, they would run into each other, Terry always parking his ride, his Jaguar, right out in front helter-skelter depending on how heavily he had been drinking, and discuss stuff, guy stuff, mostly. Terry doing the talking, fast-talking with a little edge, with a little larceny, wise-guy, angle-cutting edge to it, and Marlowe served as the listening post and eventually he would have Terry over to his place after the bar closed for a nightcap, many nights to sleep it off on Marlowe’s couch as well. A lot of what Terry would talk about was how tough it was being married to money, big money, married to the Wyatt fortune, or part of it, the Laura Wyatt part of it. That was old California money, old meaning built by grabbing water rights back in the 1920s, getting in on the ground floor of the oil boom around the LaBrea fields and whatever else old Leslie Wyatt could grab that was not tied down. A real bastard Marlowe had heard but a real lamb to his kids, especially Laura who early on was wild, wild as plenty of money would go. Terry could take the money part, take it easily with both hands out having grown up poor, dirt poor in Yonkers before the war. But the way they, Laura, the old man, and their Mayfair swell friends made him feel like cheap street left ashes in his mouth. That was one angle he had not figured out he told Marlowe one drunken night, not yet.

Worse this Laura was nothing but a tramp picking up every fly-by-night guy she took a momentary fancy too, bringing him home, or rather to her “guest house” where she might be holed up for a few days before coming up for air. Hell, he would say that he really should have had no kick since had met her at one of her Malibu parties which he crashed with a friend and he had spent his own few days in that guest house. A few days later they were married, a lark for her and easy street for him but it still bothered him, bothered him that she was so open like only the rich could be with her minute affairs. And so Terry, Terry the trophy war hero (he had been a “premature anti-fascist” fighting in the Spanish Civil War in an International Brigade unit although more for the three squares and some dough than any political allegiance and later as a volunteer commando with the British when Europe heated up, and where he was was severely wounded on a secret mission) began to fall off the leash.

Terry the reclamation project too (Laura made it clear she was taking a poor kid from the streets and giving him dough, a car and some manners, public manners anyway), began to lead his own life, began to play around, play around with a loose woman or two who was dissatisfied with her husband or who just liked to play around in that insular little world of 1950s Malibu, Malibu before all the riff-raff and hang- ten surfers came through. Thereafter he began to drink heavily (and grab a few lines of off-hand cocaine if it was laying around), began to drink himself into a stupor to ease the pain, the pain of his youthful wants, his war wounds, and his social wounds. After a while, after a few months of talk, couches, and drunks Marlowe considered Terry a friend, a rare distinction for a lone- wolf private detective. And Terry considered Marlowe a friend too.

So it was no big deal when Terry came up to Marlowe’s apartment one midnight several months after they met, drunk, frazzled, a little shaky and asked Marlowe to drive him to Mexico, Tijuana just over the border, to think things out, undisclosed things. Terry wanted no questions asked and once Marlowe accepted that condition, actually had thought nothing of it except the trip down south was unusual previously it had been places north of L.A. to see some woman or to drive him home, he bought the ticket and gave him that ride. A fateful ride that would cost Marlowe a few days in the slammer for aiding a felon after the fact since what Terry was thinking things out about was the brutal murder of his wife, Laura. Once the coppers tied Marlowe to Terry’s disappearance, and it wasn’t hard because Marlowe had not tried to hide his tracks, they gave it to Marlowe strong, gave him the full-press third-degree like they like to do anytime they get a private dick in their clutches. Especially Marlowe who had twisted their noses on the Sternwood (the time he rounded up Eddie Mars, the big gangster, and put a big bow around his neck) and the Trepper (where he exposed a murderous crooked cop) cases, made them look foolish, a few years before.

Then just as quickly as Marlowe was sprung from jail without an explanation. No, that is not right, there was no more case since Terry had saved everybody a lot of trouble and committed suicide, leaving an incriminating note. So long Terry, end of story. No, no again, Marlowe was not buying the whole set-up both because he did not believe that Terry could have brutally murdered his wife no matter how much he hated her tramp ways and her snobbery and that high-end life they led and because Terry just didn’t seem the suicide type, didn’t appear that distraught when he left him off at the border. Marlowe figured that he could not have stayed in his profession very long if he was not able to take the measure of a man, could not size him, could not have a grip on what made him tick, and didn’t. No, with all his sorrows, all his hurts, all his baggage from his youth Terry was made of tougher stuff.

But there was nothing Marlowe could do about checking further having been warned off the case by Laura’s father who wanted the thing closed, closed tight, so he could maintain his privacy, keep the case off the front page so that his country club set would have nothing to titter about. Told all this by Wyatt’s lawyer, naturally. And since old man drew a lot of water downtown he was prepared to make life tough for one Philip Marlowe. Warned off too by a couple of Terry’s old friends and war buddies, Mendy and Randy, whom Terry had worked for before he hit pay- dirt with Laura and who were also then very prominent mobsters with connections back East. Not heeding such warnings from hard guys, guys who had cut their teeth in the cutthroat black markets of wartime Europe, were in on the ground floor when the fight over who, or who would not, run Vegas, and who would think nothing of sending some, what did Mendy call him, oh yeah, a two-bit gumshoe, down some secluded ravine was not good for business. And then there were the cops, the cops responding to pressure from downtown, their own dislike for Marlowe and his profession, and their own sense of power who said in no uncertain terms the case was shut, shut tight. So although Terry’s fate gnawed at him he backed off, backed off for a while, although not because some high-priced lawyer, some two-bit soft guy Vegas hoods, or some on- the- take cops said to but because he was broke and needed to make some dough, needed to make office and room rent.

With Terry still in the back of his mind Marlowe grabbed his next case, the Waits case, the case of a famous abusive drunken pot-boiler historical novel writer, Roger Waits. Everybody, even Marlowe, had heard of Waits of course, the sword and busted bodice novel guy whose books you would see at the check-out counters at supermarkets and who sex-hungry housewives read to while away those lonely hours out in suburbia, out in Levittown. He had gone missing for a week or more and his wife, Eileen was desperately trying to find him and bring him back to their oceanfront Malibu home. Here is where Terry, or rather Marlowe’s stand-up shut- up guy defense of Terry, got him the job since Mrs. Waits had read about Marlowe in the newspapers and decided he was the man to find her errant husband. Marlowe finally seeing some dough, easy dough, on the horizon and the back of his landlords’ heads took the case and in a short time was able to find old Roger holed up trying to dry out (again) in a sanatorium. Marlowe brought him home to his ever-loving wife and that was that. End of story.

No, again no, Roger had taken a liking to Marlowe, wanted to hire him to protect him against his demons, real and imagined, but Marlowe said no deal. He was not a baby-sitter, or manservant, which is what was required. What might have changed his mind , if anything, though was this Eileen Waits, Roger’s trophy wife, whose slim figure, faraway blue eyes, wistful expression, and slight whiff of perfume, gardenia something, had him thinking about silky sheets and sultry bedroom afternoons. But that was not to be, although not for his lack of trying, giving very definite signals. What happened to forestall that possibility was not that not long after he had gotten Roger home, dried out for a while, he started drinking again, and started to be haunted by his demons. One day Roger in some drunken rage, or drunken stupor, shot himself, committed suicide. Marlowe wasn’t buying that one either since Waits, whatever his writer’s block, whatever feelings he had that he was washed up, a has been, was not a suicide guy. Marlowe now had to dig into this one if for no other reason than surrounded by two suicides in short order he had to get out from under the tag of a guy to not be around if you cared about your health, or your life.

Things were a mess until Marlowe stepped back and put a couple things together. First off the Waits knew the Wyatts, travelled in some of the same circles out in Malibu, having been to some of the same charity events and the like. That came out by accident when the cops were investigating Roger’s suicide. Without too much trouble he also found out that Laura Wyatt had numbered Roger Waits as one of her trophies. And that set up everything else once Roger’s houseboy gave Marlowe enough information about Mrs. Waits and her strange nocturnal habits, her vague longing for some soldier boy first love long gone that she had married before Roger habits. Not so long gone though since that soldier boy was one Terry Lennox (although they had been married with him using a different name in London during the war).

Eileen Waits enraged that the tramp Laura had taken her first man, long thought to be dead in after some secret raid in Norway, that he had become nothing but a degenerate kept pet by Laura and had also taken her second man and flouted that fact making no attempt to conceal the affair or their guest house love-making murdered both of them. Although no jury would had convicted her even if the D.A. decided to try the case. A beautiful, disturbed (and wealthy) widow was not the kind of murder case that would sail in celebrity-conscious Los Angeles. And that case would not be tried because Laura’s father, that couple of Vegas-connected hoods, and the on-the-take cops had closed the case previously, closed it up tight. And that is the end of the story.

Well not quite. Something still did not add up, especially the role of those two hoods, war buddies or not, going way out of their way to shut the case down, to warn Marlowe off. So he again stepped back and what he figured out was that no way, no way on this good green earth did Terry Lennox die in Mexico. The whole thing was fixed, fixed by Terry and the boys. And the way Marlowe found that out was simple, simplicity itself, Lennox, disguised as a Mexican, showed up at his door one day and flaunted that hard fact in Marlowe’s face. Then he walked away. And Marlowe for his own reasons, for an old friendship gone awry, let him. Yeah, that Terry Lennox was a piece of work. End of story.