***Out In The Noir Night - The Stuff Of Dream, Part One

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

 

I remember I was at a party once, maybe a year or so ago, a party of political people, well maybe not so much political people although the event was being held to raise money for a political cause as aware of what was going on in the world. Oh, maybe I better say literary people and be done with the description. In any case the crowd was always up for some arch conversation about any subject that might hit the floor. That night a guy, a well-known local writer, was bemoaning the fact that “they don’t make detectives, private detectives in books, movies and such like they used to.” Of course he meant going back to the classic age of the detective, the hard-boiled detectives one read about in old magazines like Black Mask, blood and guts guys with a finely-defined code of honor and enough savvy to get into, or out of, a jam without winding up face down in some arroyo somewhere.

Sure he was talking about guys like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Spade in the book world, and guys like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum in the celluloid world. He was particularly fascinated by Hammett’s Sam Spade from the book (and film) The Maltese Falcon and the combination of honor, greed, chasing after windmills, toughness under pressure and about six other attributes that made Spade the epitome of the old-time private detective. He then regaled us with about a half hours’ worth of how he would play a variation on the story line in that classic.

See, he said in the book you get the story strictly from Sam’s side -the seeker after some kind of rough justice in this wicked old world. He thought that it might be interesting to look at it from Brigit’s side, the femme fatale foil for Sam. And maybe mix it up little with a look from lavender Joel’s, the Fat Man’s her something erstwhile crony. Maybe the cops, one of the cops, Sergeant Bond, friendly to Sam anyway, since the cops were, as usual in the genre, clueless until Sam wrapped up the case with a bow for them. That writer then began to chirp in about how you could look at it from Miles Archer’s point too but I chimed in that that idea would require too many moving parts, would take the guts out of the thing, take that code thing Sam had and tear it all to hell. He backed off a little after that but in later conversation tried to spin the idea giving more details about how he would shake things up for the modern audience.  Here is his spin on the story as best I remember:            

… she, let’s see what name should she use on this caper, oh, maybe Mae Kiley, she hadn’t used that one in a while and nobody, no cops, were looking for her under that name, had it all figured out even before the secretary, Gladys the name that she had called herself when she answered the office telephone so Mae could set up an appointment, gave her professional glad tidings, offer of a seat, and “wait a minute I’ll see if they are in” spiel as she entered the foyer to the office.  Gladys by the way as Mae observed the scene and made mental notes, all blonde, busty and polished was obviously somebody in the office’s good- time girl or mistress, maybe both since she did not appear to have ever worn her fingers to a frazzle over some lousy steno pool typewriter. Gladys after making an appearance of checking over the intercom, opened the door to their office and made introductions. (Mae also made a mental note to compare notes with Gladys once she figured out whose honey she was in order to find out what made him tick. She figured a matter of professional courtesy one girl trying to make it in a wicked old world to another doing the best they could feeling that Gladys would oblige her once she knew Mae’s score.)Made introductions in the office of a couple of gumshoes, shamuses, private dicks, Marty Ash and Steve Shaw, that she fully intended to have run interference for her on her road to easy street, her golden egg road. When she saw the pair she knew she had made the right decision-like shooting fish in a barrel.  

Getting back to business though Mae had two thoughts as she sat down in an offered chair, a chipped chair that needed some repair and so had seen better days. Looking around at the not busy desks, the dusty file cabinets and the empty hat-rack told her automatically-cheap street. She knew she was in the right precinct for her proposition. One thought was maybe superficial, maybe a bit a catty, since it would not be the first or even close to the first time in her shorty twenty-two year old life that she used a guy and then tossed him over when the next best thing came along, but she could hardly suppress a certain smirk smile about it once she surveyed the terrain, these guys would be easy, would be putty in her hands once she laid her story out for them. The other, the real driving force behind her returning to Frisco just ahead of the law and of some vague cartel looking for the same thing she was looking for, was that no way, no way in hell was she going back to that Hong Kong whorehouse world (and before that a couple of years trick walking these very lonely and unsavory Frisco streets for nickels and dimes really). So they had to fall for her plan, or else.

Yah, Mae had prepped herself well about how she was in dire, but she would make clear with a sigh not desperate, need of help, a little manly protection, keeping it vague but alluring, to retrieve an item, a valuable item, from a tough customer, Fritz Lager, a former lover who she, putting on her best all frilly, silly and defenseless manner, was afraid to confront alone. Just a couple of minutes work, no rough stuff if they were smart, and then home for supper or whatever (silently she thought maybe a rendezvous with that blonde out front although she still couldn’t figure which guy was bonking her). Keep the story breezy and simple, but above all vague enough to seem harmless but alluring enough for them, or one of them, to take a chance. And throw in enough dough, say a couple of hundred bucks, maybe three, to set the trap. No more than three though because just then she was a little light and needed to keep some aside for the room rent. Wickedly she entertained thoughts of some kind of barter, you know for services rendered, saving some dough but she was right then trying to play the virginal damsel in distress so she thought better of it. Maybe later when she had the hooks in, had gotten under one of these guys’ skin. Hah, by then they would be slipping her dough. 

As Mae surveyed the two gumshoes sitting kind of forlorn and from hunger she almost licked her lips knowing that she had selected just the right pair (as they were busy licking their lips over her making her think that maybe that blonde number out front was just trimming and had a walking daddy somewhere else who was keeping her out of trouble, and his hair, with this pair while he dealt with his wife or some other girlfriend). She would tell them a cover story about how she had just plucked their names out of the San Francisco telephone book and they, or rather the secretary had answered the phone and made the appointment for her (she wondered again now that she saw the set-up a little closer which one that tramp was sleeping with, probably from the ring on his finger the very married-looking Ash).

Mae smiled to herself when she thought about the previous two days preparations making sure of her marks, checking out the low- rent office building filled with failed dentists, repo men, magic elixir pushers, chiropractors, and other grafters all with big- lettered signs on their doors advertising their essential services and not much traffic at their doors. Cheap Street, a couple of hundred dollars, not three would work magic. Moreover these two guys had bungled a couple of cases according to the newspapers and were not on good term with the coppers as a result. One headline had read that Marty had held out on the cops when some married dame in hock to Eddie Mars, the big-time ship casino owner out in the bay, had conned him into letting her go after she took old Eddie face down with a couple of slugs in him after he tried to shake down her husband. Funny too after the dame had offered to pay back Eddie in trade but he was lovesick over some silver-haired wife who had taken off for parts unknown and so no go). Another story had Steve almost losing his license when he slammed some rogue cop down and tried to bring him in when the cop shot his ex-wife and the Department was furious since it still took care of its own, still hushed up that stuff, and no two-bit shamus was going to ruin that deal. Yah, forlorn and from hunger.

Mae wasn’t going to leave it strictly to from hunger though, not with men. She had learned a trick or two about men when she had done a trick or two out on these very streets over around Post. Or maybe she just always knew about men from that first time when Timmy Shea conned her out of her virginity telling her she was still a good Catholic schoolgirl virgin until she had done it ten times, ten times with him. Little did he know he would not have had to ask the second time as she was ready to go whatever number of times he wanted once she got that first awkward one under her belt and knew she had to do it more to get looser down there and to get better at it . But she liked that he gave she a present, some bauble, after each tryst so maybe she had a little whore in her even back then. It wasn’t that she hated men, no, she liked her sex, liked it a lot going back to Timmy days, especially after that tenth time when she wasn’t sore afterward, but she hated the idea of being thought a brainless whore. And after this caper she would prove it.

Just then she remembered something that she had learned from Mr. Fats (that is what everybody including his boyfriend called him) owner of that damn Hong Kong whorehouse she slaved in-“every man, woman and child is a whore, it is just the way you carry yourself that makes a difference.” And so this day she put a little extra lilac perfume behind her ear just before she entered the outer office (that would be enough, more than enough for Ash as he was already licking his chops a second time, Shaw looked like he would need more coaxing , just a little more.) Of course Mr. Fats and his appetites, his desires and his vices would play out here in Frisco as well since she knew that once she parted company with him and his cronies getting out of Hong Kong just in time that they would appear in this old town before long. She could practically hear the Fat Man’s horrible laugh, practically smell Joey the Turk’s own lilac perfume in the room, practically hear the Fat Man’s young daughter, Rhonda, carping about something and ominously practically smell the gunpowder from Wino’s, the hired gun, doings from the Fat Man. With that in mind she figured that she had better close the deal now.

So she presented her story, kept it vague and alluring about a box, a box that had some sentimental as well as real value, that her ex-lover, that Fritz Lager mentioned previously, had taken from her in Hong Kong, had set sail on a tramp steamer for Macao, and whom she had traced back to the states. When she found him over on Mission Street he said he wanted some dough for his troubles, some serious dough which she did not have on her but which she agreed to pay the next night, that night at 8 o’clock, at a neutral spot in front of the Empire Hotel on Post Street. Ash, now Marty to her, lust in his eyes, and expecting maybe a little more reward that money for playing the gallant, put up both hands to volunteer. The whole thing seemed easy, and those two one hundred dollar bills talked, although Steve seemed less convinced than Marty. Had arched his right eyebrow when he quizzed Mae about why she needed some armed protection for a simple exchange. Mae told the story of how Fritz had played the gallant for her in some mix-up with some Chinese merchants (failing to tell just then that the merchants were opium-dealers wondering, wondering out loud what had happened to a shipment that they had entrusted to her) and they had become lovers before some ill-defined falling out. This was the stopper-it seems that Fritz always slept in rooms with about six or seven mirrors so that he could see anybody coming in the room. Nice guy thought Steve (hence that raised eyebrow) but the rent was due on the office and so in for a dime, in for a dollar. He would question her more later, as she gave him a wicked smile to seal the deal. Still Shaw, now Steve to her, a little more cautious, a little more cautious around a woman whose story was full of holes, and who was showing just a little too much silk stocking than was necessary to make her point, gladly seconded his partner’s bravado. And that money, that money was just enough, to put icing on the cake at a time when the landlord had been dunning the boys for a few months back rent. Good luck Marty he chuckled.

And that night at that fateful meeting with her old lover, with Fritz, all hell broke loose and now it would be necessary for Steve to change the signs on the doors and windows to Steve Shaw, Private Investigator, poor Marty had gone down in a blaze of gunfire, poor Marty had cashed his check. The way his old friend Sergeant Bond of the Frisco Police Department told the story when Sam showed up upon request that there had been a shoot-out where Marty had been gunned down in the back alley of the Tremont Hotel, a hotel known to ask few questions of its guests and expect fewer answers, nobody saw, heard, felt anything. Nada. Sergeant Bond whom Steve had worked with in the D.A’s. Office when he first started in the detection business and before he came to realize that if he was going to get shot at, was going to take it on the chin, was going to get knee-deep in other people’s troubles then he was better off hanging out his own shingle and take his chances that way, told him that Fritz had probably killed Marty in the ambush and that Fritz had been killed by a party, or parties, unknown.

 

 

 

All of this sounded plausible when Bond ran it by him but here is where it get dangerous to trust a dame, maybe any dame if it came right down to it but certainly a dame who had you tied up in knots, had that perfume, had her hooks into you, into you bad and you were not thinking straight, were ready to run off with her and her dream some place even if you had to constantly watch your back just in case some next best thing guy came along and you might find yourself face down in Rio or Buenos Aires sucking up dust with a couple of rounds in you. Yeah that was the way it was with Steve, the way he was built once he got his hind legs up.

So yes, Marty got caught in an ambush, that part will forever fit, along with his widow who spent about six minutes grieving over poor Marty before she started her wanting habit, started her dance to get her hooks into Steve. He dusted her off though, knew she was more poisonous than Mae and probably harder to get rid of so he figured he would take his chances with Mae and that golden goose she was after. Where it got screwy though is that the guy that Steve thought was Fritz (on Mae’s say so) was another guy named Sammy Sloan, a local gunsel who had been tied in with Eddie Mars, had been Eddie’s bodyguard when Eddie was the king of the rackets before he got gunned down one night over a busted drug deal (and to prove there was no honor among thieves Sammy was conveniently elsewhere when some contract hit-man put two between sweet boy Eddie’s eyes. Nice crowd, nice crowd all around. He immediately recognized Sammy by his anchor and cross tattoo (an old Frisco gang symbol of a gang long since gone to sleep in the deep or to break up rocks at the Q) when he went to the morgue to identify Marty.

Mae, or whatever her name was, had pulled a fast one somehow. With this new factor in play Steve decided that he would clam up on Bond.  Bond repeatedly asked Steve if he knew anything about the case Marty was working on, why he was down in the skid row section of town and Steve blew him off with a nod, saying that he would take care of what he had to take care of in his own way. The good sergeant turned red and warned Steve that this was police business, murder, murder one, and to keep that in mind. Steve just shut the door behind him as he left police headquarters looking for answers. Looking for why Mae had made a patsy out of him, whatever he felt about Marty, about the norms of the profession.    

Here’s what got to Steve, got him by the scruff of the neck, Bond never mentioned anything about a woman being at the scene, had told the whole tale as guys going after each other. In the aftermath of whatever happened Mae had seemingly flown the coop, had walked away with no more thought about what happened, about what she had set in motion than a dog.  Had walked with no explanation and no alibi. Jesus.  All Steve knew was that she had killed this Sammy Sloan, there was no other explanation for his death, had set up Marty somehow for her own purposes. He was getting a sneaking thought in his brain that she might have done poor Marty in (all mixed up as usual with that fragrance and those long legs that would drive any man crazy). Marty was not much of a detective, not much beyond some repo work once the regular guys had given up the case as lost and keyhole peeping (and maybe a little graft on the side either in trade or low-rent blackmail) but he was not skirt-crazy enough to go into guns blazing that he knew were going to be facing his way. So Steve was going to need some serious explanations from Mae, and not some perfume schoolgirl frail all a flutter hiking her silk stockings beyond maidenly modesty, although he had a powerful thirst for her, knew it from the first minute she had come into the office and tipped her head that way woman have that he was going to go through hell with her, knew in the end that he was as skirt-crazy as the next guy.    

Funny Marty and he had not made much money, mostly Marty’s peepings (although not the graft which he did not find out about until he cleaned out Marty’s desk) and repo work and his own missing persons stuff, and what they did make was too often spent on wine, women, and song (Mae had been wrong Marty had not been very married but very divorced, twice, and right that he was boffing Gladys, among others). They however had worked separate sides of the street though as they shared differences in women (Marty a sucker for busty blondes and willowy brunettes like Mae who had Marty licking his chops before she had sat down in the office that fateful afternoon and Sam just liked them willowy whatever color their hair) and hang-out spots. He off to the cigarette and marijuana smoke-filled be-bop jazz clubs that dotted the downtown area blowing out high notes to the bay and the currents and Marty spent his time hanging around the strip joints loaded with those busty numbers in North Beach looking for fast company and no questions or commitments.

They had not been particularly friendly terms throughout their stormy partnership especially after Marty, they, let the ball drop on that Claremont case, the big construction pay-off case, and a couple of cops got caught up in the crossfire and wounded, severely wounded and a police and a public works commissioner both got lots of egg on their faces. But, like a lot of things in life, you can’t let something like your partner being gunned down like a dog in some back alley just roll off your back (according to the police reports which he had confidentially received from Bond Marty took two to the heart and never knew what hit him, a professional job, very professional and so he now had it figured out for certain that she played with the rough boys and was not a wilting violet). Bad, bad for the profession, bad all the way around. Even repo guys will make a stand, will try to push you around if they think you are a creampuff, think you will fold up with a small push.

Mae would later find that she had miscalculated, had thought that Steve would have folded once the play got rough, would have dismissed his partner’s death as part of the game, more importantly she had counted on her sex to get her by even on a murder rap. And so Steve, despite his feelings about Marty, put his snooping nose to the grindstone and found out a ton of stuff, and in the process got dinged up a little. Hell got dinged up a lot just to try to keep that frosty dame from perdition.  

She, all fresh flowers smells, long legs and show (a show and smell that had dazzled him more than a little as we have noted before but we will let that pass as he is the hero here and as victor gets to write the history of this little nefarious episode his way even if it was her show), showed up in his office a couple of days later filled to the brim with excuses. She confessed to having really been Fritz ‘s lover all right, except not ex-lover. Well not ex-lover in the way that normal people would think of it. She had blasted old Fritz rooty-toot-toot one night in Hong Kong when he was drunk. Hell Fritz had not even make it to Frisco with this dame, what hell was she going to put him through, but he was still all ears. She nonchalantly told Steve that she had not wasted Fritz for being mean to her, or after giving her one too many once over slaps, guys didn’t do that to her, no way, not and live, but just to get his stash-the two kilos of pure heroin he was holding for Mr. Fats. Now things started to make sense not that malarkey about some rough-hewn lover. Steve found himself figuring out the profits on two kilos once it was stamped on and hit the streets and while he was getting wised up a little he still saw himself on some sunny beach with her sipping martinis and laughing about how they got away without a trace.    

Fritz has been a drug runner, what they call a “mule,” for the old boy working the Golden Triangle just as it was becoming the center of the international heroin trade. Mr. Fats had him keep the stuff in his place just in case the coppers, the paid-off coppers got uppity and decided to go retail, go retail and come looking for the stash. The guy that got killed in that back alley (Sammy as Steve well knew by then) of the Tremont Hotel was not Fritz of course but a guy that she had met one night who wanted to help her after wanting to help himself to her. That night she threw some lead his way to throw the cops off her trail figuring they would (with Sam’s help in setting the story up) see everything as just some gunplay between guys. Poor Sammy, poor anyway trying to help her since Steve knew that she just did not want to split the dope dough with a small-time gunsel who nobody would miss anyway. Nice dame Steve was playing with, dynamite might have been safer.

She, of course, had wanted out, wanted out of that sister whore life in the high-end brothels of Hong Kong bad, wanted out of Asia bad, wanted back to Frisco bad. So she shot Fritz, fled with the suit-cased golden brick, grabbed the fastest tramp steamer she could find and would up in Frisco just as planned. Well as she planned. Of course she knew Mr. Fats might object to such a course, might not think much of the plan, and he didn’t. He followed her to Frisco once he knew he had been swindled and knew where she was heading. He sent an, uh, emissary to retrieve his goods, by any means necessary. It was the emissary, Joe the Turk, Joey Lilac she called him for his sissy appearance and perfume stronger than hers as well as his taste in, well, boys, a rough customer despite, or maybe because of the name, that she was to meet at the hotel who she said killed Marty after figuring out she was not alone. And in the wake of the melee she off-handedly shot Joe when she met him later at Fisherman’s Wharf and he conveniently dropped into the deep blue bay. She smirked when she told Steve that she shot him good and dead. And that was that, or so she thought which is why she was now telling Steve her story and beseeching him for his help (drawing her stockings ever higher and walking over and sitting on Steve’s desk almost in his face.

So not quite everything was done, Mr. Fats was in town once again a few days after finding out about Joe Lilac’s demise by hands unknown, although he suspected he knew who did the deed. And that hard fact was why she had come up from underground and was sitting in Steve Shaw’s office all no-holds-barred- gardenia-smelling wearing a very short skirt. She thus “confessed” to Steve a little of her dilemma. He didn’t buy it at first but don’t forget those legs and that scent, and that first day’s licking of the chops, and don’t forget she worked on him hard, real hard so he decided to play out the hand. She made it easier for him, hell, made him ready to jump through hoops when she locked the office inner office door and came over and sat on his lap. You figure out the rest since it takes no detective to figure what happened behind those closed doors once she got his attention.

After they finished their lap business (come on, you figured it out, didn’t you) when she had sealed the deal the best way she knew how they worked on a new plan. Steve was to be the emissary to Mr. Fats where he would make a deal that the big man would agree to. Steve balked at first, a little. Then she went into her frilly manner act which Steve actually liked, some sense of his manhood and his acting the gallant for a damsel in distress. Mae was frightened of Mr. Fats more than ever after the Fritz and Joe net losses (Fritz, Mr. Fats number one drug runner and former bodyguard, and Joe his lure into that netherworld of perverted sex that dare not speak its name which in his dealing with the Chinese drug-dealers proved very valuable).

Steve needed to pull the deal off with Mr Fats the best way he could and get her money and they would forthwith go off some sunny place and be happy. Later, after the smoke had cleared, it came to light she had a one-way ticket to Rio in her pocketbook as she spoke. Although she never would get to use it.

See, Steve had set the deal to take place in the lobby of the American West Hotel but she had crossed him up by being there, under cover, near the hotel lobby where they were to meet. Before Steve got there she spied Mr. Fats heading out of the elevator and she blasted him to the next world and grabbed the money before he got there. Steve seeing cops and commotion in the hotel lobby backed off and returned to his office where he was finally ready to deal with her his way. When she entered the office all low-cut dress and that damn perfume now with both the Fat Man’s money and that golden brick in her possession she tried, gun drawn, to waste him. She missed. He clipped her with his own rod, clipped her back onto her seat. Mae tried one last come hither trick on him moving her slip up her thigh but to no avail. If he could have trusted her for one minute, one non- come hither minute, he might have taken another tumble. She begged him to reconsider, promised him the moon, told him about all those golden dreams they could share in Rio, promised to show him a few tricks she had learned in the trade that would curl his toes. He almost weakened then. They went back and forth as she confronted him with her murder of Marty which she called and accident, a mistake since he had gotten between Sammy and her.  

But no, finally no. Steve spent several useless minutes trying to explain that he had to avenge his partner’s death whatever he thought of him, would always be looking over his shoulder with her, would have nothing to hold over her once he stepped off in her direction, and of course that little matter of that off-hand shot of recent memory his way had to be taken into account. He then called the coppers, let Sergeant Bond take her in as a favor for past friend ships who after he and his partner arrived at the office took Mae and the brick into custody. She now awaits the big step-off. The very big step-off unless she can convince some all-male jury that she was a victim of circumstances. And if they let her wear that gardenia scent they just might. The money, the dirty Mr. Fats money,  Steve kept, kept as payment, for Marty, for justice, hell for himself. Ah, the stuff of dreams.