***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – The Wind 

 

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Sure I have been around the block, around the block of life, but also around the block of seeing stuff that is sometimes better left unremembered if not creating some vague sense of unease about my fellow man. Yeah, I am a detective, no, not the kind that snoops looking into bedroom windows or stand outside the door of illicit hotel rooms listening for that sound, the sound, coming from within that meant a big payday for me in some divorce case (and no, not like some shamuses, I didn’t linger to hear the thrashing and grunts, no need on groan and I knew the silky sheets were being messed up).  And not the kind that chases down some missing person who wants to stay missing, missing from some overbearing husband or wife. Although I have done my share of those cases, more than my share.

What I do is try to come in, paid by private parties to do so, and find out why somebody is embezzling the company, why the books don’t match up, why some guy committed a felony of some sort against my client, and sometimes why somebody got killed, got murdered doing something. Yeah, the cops, the public cops do okay most of the time if the whole thing is laid out for them like a guy shoots another guy and runs to the stationhouse to turn himself in pronto. That is they solve if they are not busy cadging coffee and crullers, shaking down the owner, or giving some poor sap who just blew into town the third degree for half the crimes committed over the past six years. For the more complicated stuff. the stuff that doesn’t make sense, they fumble the ball and let it die in some cold file. Me, I go at it tooth and nail. Go at it like in the Galton case, a case of murder straight out.

It did not start out that way. It started out as a case of trying to find who in the company, the Galton Company, was leaking information, sensitive information, about some formulas the company was developing to make heat-resistant shields for aircraft. Like a lot of industries the competition to grab the first patent or copyright to anything like that was worth millions, millions in government business or private later when things were regulated. So old man Galton, or rather his right hand man Jenness, called me in to see what was happening right under their noses.   

Now when information, important information, gets leaked it is either a disgruntled, slighted employee nursing some grudge or a guy who is deep in hock, probably over some dame and her wanting habits, and would sell out his own mother to get out from under. Especially if a wanting habits dame is involved. So the first place I looked was through the employee records. Nothing. Then I nosed around the place, it wasn’t large, maybe a couple of hundred employees, to see who knew about anybody who had been spending big dough, or complaining about not enough dough, or grousing about his honey. Pay dirt.   

 

Or almost pay dirt. One of the engineers, a young guy from Cal Tech, was always fretting about the wanting habits of his girlfriend, some wannabe starlet that he had picked up in some gin mill on Hollywood Boulevard and had gone nuts  over like some guys will, although not always in Hollywood. But here is the hell of it before I could nail this guy down somebody shot him in a back alley behind the Hi-Lo Club over in El Segundo, shot him dead with two right where it hurts the most. The girlfriend did not know anything, the cops did their usual ho-hum felony robbery theory and let it slide. Me I had to double back on the thing. Something, didn’t make sense. A guy, a normal guy, with dough in his pocket when searched, got scratched for no reason just when I am honing in on him.

 

And that is where the whole thing came together. Seems that Jenness, that right hand man of Galton’s, was nursing both a grudge against old man Galton for not letting him take over day to day operations of the plants and had a secret honey, unknown to his wife secret, over in Malibu who was churning up expenses faster than he could steal the secrets. The engineer ran into the couple one day at the Santa Monica Pier and put two and two together. He became expendable, very expendable since the woman Jenness was with was not his wife whom he had met at Christmas party one year. They hung Jenness, hung him high up in the Q a while back. Watch out for those strange Pacific winds if you are ever out this way, and remember what happened to poor Jenness when you are here, okay.

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

… it had been quite  a day as she viewed, viewed in awe since she was of an age, eighteen, when the wonders of the world could awe her, awe her small world North Adamsville existence, as the million twilight lights, maybe billion lights, of New York City came into view from the railing of ship she was standing on. It had been a struggle, a titanic struggle, to get her mother, her sainted small existence Irish Catholic mother, to let her take her first trip away from home alone. First trip of any sort except that time they drove up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire back in 1939 but at eighteen and adventurous that did not count. And she was not really alone on this trip either since one of the conditions for going was that she go with a girlfriend. In this case, Lottie, or as her mother called her, that Riley girl, who was standing awestruck right beside her just then.

And so here they were coming into the New York port after spending most of the day getting there from Rose Wharf in Boston having gone through majestic Cape Cod Canal on the way, awestruck then too. As they prepared to dock she, nor Lottie either, could not believe that so many skyscrapers, topped off by the Empire State Building, could exist in so an small area. The Boston skyline looked like some boondock outpost in comparison. They would investigate all of that after they settled into the Hotel Bellevue and freshened for the beginning of their three day stay.

They, naturally, fully expected to see all the sights, the Automat, Times Square, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, go up that Empire State Building in person, and do all that any tourist was supposed to do. But what drove them to this city, what made her cross swords with her mother, what drove her to pressure Lottie into coming along in the face of mother onslaught, and face the prospect of seasickness was to be able to go to one of the clubs, one of the billion clubs like Minton’s, the Kit-Kat , or the Hi-Top and hear real guys, Benny, Duke, Chick, Tommy, Jimmy, Frank, Jesus, maybe Frank,  whoever was in town play or sing to swing, blessed sainted swing and nothing else, for keeps. And she, they, were not disappointed as they leaped in one night from small town girls to swaying swing aficionados. And they were not dancing alone or girl to girl either but you can figure that out…                 

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…she was just as patriotic as any other of the young women of Olde Saco, no question. The USO was sponsoring a series of Friday night dances at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach for the servicemen stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Station and other military posts. So when the call for young women to act as hostesses went out in that town from the USO in Portland she volunteered. It was the least she could do to show her support for those, like her brothers, who were oversea fighting the night-takers, fighting those who wanted to make the Jacques and Jeans of the world, of their French-Canadian-etched world, sit down and take it, take it quietly.

That first Friday night she dressed herself in her best dress (from her high school graduation party), and fixed herself up to look very nice indeed (ever younger brother, Jean-Paul, did a double-take and he, that funny age of thirteen, barely recognized her existence) and left the house escorted by two other female patriotic friends.

Now the idea of the dance, from the distaff side, her side, was to mingle and dance with as many young soldiers and sailors as possible without letting any one young man monopolize her time. This was not a pick-up situation, or at least it was not supposed to be and she respected the idea of mingling and dancing with one and all. Frankly she, and her two friends, while they were always talking about men, well, about prospects and sex mostly, had very little actual experience, had not dated much in high school so they were not prepared for the mad rush every guy in the ballroom would make their way. And then she spied him (or he spied her depending on whose story you wanted to believe fifty years later), him all dressed in his Marine blues, all beautiful and manly. He, or she (again depending on who you wanted to believe later), walked toward her, they talked a bit and then what would become “their song” came on and they headed to the dance floor. That night she, they, mingled and danced with others per the protocol of the evening but that was the last time either would do so. No more going away alone after the dance ended … 

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin – The Two Knives

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

You know not all cops are on the level, in fact most of them aren’t, aren’t on the level, and maybe don’t know what being on the level entails. Oh yeah, there is a good cop every once in a while, a guy not on the take one way or another, a guy who is okay with working for coffee and crullers, a guy like Detective Danny Shea down in the Los Angeles Police Department, a guy I have worked with on a few cases. But even Danny gets squirrely ever once in a while like the time he threatened to have me locked up as a material witness in the Galton case when I refused to tell what I knew, knew confidentially, in that grisly murder case. See I should know about cops and their easy on the take ways since I run up against them as an operative for the International Operations Organization and have to pay a courtesy call on them occasionally. But that coffee and cakes part is right, they work for peanuts and so maybe they don’t feel too bad about shaving the law in the interests of their pocketbooks. And just maybe they are around crime so much it rubs off, gets easy to blur the distinctions between law and the jungle. Here’s a case in point from one I worked on the sides, the official cops get all the credit for busting one their own but it was a close thing, and a murder to boot. 

Detective Johnny Ladd and Sergeant Billy Brooks had been partners for a few years, had cracked a couple of big cases and so were moving up the line in the San Pedro Police Department. Both were on the take to Marty Sheen’s criminal operation but that doesn’t enter into this story, not the “on the take part” but Marty’s part. This was strictly an independent operation on Billy Brooks’ part. It seems that he had met some dame, Lana Wadsworth, a divorcee over at the Kit Kat Club across from the 6^th Precinct Station and the favored hang-out for off-duty cops. Well he went for her and she went for him and they talked of marriage. One night she told him about her ex-husband, a rich guy, and how she didn’t want a penny from him. Things just didn’t work a while back out and she wanted it left that way. But like I say the guy was loaded, had no relatives, known relatives anyway except Lana, and that got Billy thinking, thinking about easy street, about getting away from the coffee and cakes life, finally. 

Of course a cop, a police officer has access to all kinds of information: finger prints, criminal records, evidence room materials, and the like. So Billy grabbed some opium from the evidence room and has one of hi stoolies goes over to this Wadsworth guy’s house in El Segundo and plants the dope in the house, in Wadsworth’s study, after having given one of the servants some cock and bull story about inspecting something. Then a few days, maybe a week later, he planted an anonymous tip to his fellow officers that this Wadsworth character was selling high-grade dope to the Hollywood crowd. Then Billy went all out by saying, through one of his confidential sources, that this Wadsworth operation was protected by some high-powered weaponry in the house. Naturally the cops, including Billy who asked personally to be in on the bust,  working under  some “eminent danger” theory went in like gang-busters. Wadsworth never knew what hit him as Billy fired point blank at the man. Billy later said that Wadsworth threatened him with a gun, a gun that later proved to have been placed in his hand by Billy.  

After the dust had settled and after some civilians wanted to know what the hell happened when one of the leading citizens in El Segundo was shot down like a dog the Police Commissioner was forced to conduct an investigation. The long and short of it was that Detective Ladd was assigned to do the investigation. Billy figured he was in clear, was all set to grab the dough, especially when Wadsworth’s will had been left as it was when Lana and he were married. She was to get all the dough. Thing was though that Ladd saw early on that this thing stank to high heaven. Even then, even after he figured out that Billy had set the whole thing up, had done it for the big payoff he was willing to cover him if he would just leave town and stay out, go east someplace. Billy offered him a cut of the proceeds and he almost went for it, had in fact agreed to it when a higher up in the department learned of Billy’s role in the caper through that stoolie who set the whole thing up. Then Detective Ladd was forced to turn Billy in, did it with a certain relish roughing Billy up before he brought him in.  Yeah, so the next time somebody, some rube tells you the cops are on the level tell them the little story I just related to you, okay?   

***Out In The 1960s Psychedelic Night- The Byrds-Fifth Dimension - A CD Review

CD Review

Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own

Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound

Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone


Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.

Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.

Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though

That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.

**Song To While Away The Class Struggle By-Bruce Springsteen’s “Brothers Under The Bridge- With A Story From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to “burn” and download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped in my tracks, the one highlighted in the title to this entry Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a great depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me this assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A couple of weeks ago, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from a story that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round it into shape. The format of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for language). I have reconstructed that story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said. This is Jeff and Zeb’s story as told by Jeff, probably one of the only stories that have ever driven home to me the hellishness of war and what it does to men’s souls.

For the record Jeffrey James Adams served in Vietnam from mid-1969 to-early 1970 and Zebulon Samuel Johnston from mid-1969 to late 1971. Zebulon Johnston’s name appears in no rededicated wall down in Washington but just maybe it should. Read below why. Josh Breslin
**********
This conversation took place one afternoon (date, unknown) in late October, 1977 under a massive concrete overpass along U.S. Interstate 5 just south of Inglewood near Los Angeles, California.


“Ya, Zeb was quite a guy in his time, a guy you could depend on, a guy you could count on, if you know what I mean. Who did you say you worked for, mister? Oh, ya, The East Bay Eye. I still miss the bastard, miss him for leaving me here without a guy I could count on, and will until I leave this good green earth and that ain’t no lie, no sir. A real brother, unlike my own brother who sometimes was a brother to me and sometimes just a same last name.

Zeb and I went back, went back to basic training in the Army down at Fort Gordon in Georgia. Jesus just remembering that hellhole place and that hellhole time and that hellhole way the good citizens outside in Augusta treated us the couple of times we had weekend passes just like the blacks just because I was a Yankee and old Zeb was from broken down Appalachia, some dink town called Hazard, a coal dust town from what he said about it. A town he always said was full of history and written up in song and in the books. But I had never heard of it, and truth, never have heard of it since so I think that was old Zeb just being old Zeb. Just so you know when you write this story his real name was Zebulon Samuel Johnston, named after his father, his pa-pa he said, simple as that. And don’t call him a Johnson, either. He was a Johnston, born and bred, he said.


But the big thing about how we hit it off right from the start was that first day when we got off that olive drab bus and hit the barracks and Jeb was bunked across from me and I had to show him how to tie his boots. See, he never had proper shoes from the way he told it and the way he tried to tie those boots before the boot camp sergeant snapped his neck back for him I can believe that and maybe that was the way things were down in broken down Hazard. All I know is that all through basic training, through rough woods stuff, Zeb paid me back, paid me back big time, for my minute kindness. See he knew more about the woods, and how to survive in them, and little tricks about how to use this and that to get stuff done than a city boy, a big time Boston city boy, Yankee to the core, and corner boy smart not woods smart could ever know.

So he kept me on, as he said, as his mascot. And anytime he needed some fancy way to get out of something he would yell for me, and then he would be my mascot. Tight we were right from basic. Same tight, and you'd better be tight, or get our asses kicked when we took Advanced Infantry Training down at Fort McClellan down in Alabama where the civilians put Yankees and hillbillies below blacks in the pecking order they had established, or so it seemed every time we had town leave.

And then shipped out to ‘Nam. Ya, ‘Nam hellhole of all hellholes and I know, know for certain I never would have made it out alive if not for Zeb. See one time after we had a few days off from the line we hit Saigon and jesus, the place looked just like home, or somebody’s home if that home was Vegas or one of those glitter town, action night or day. I couldn’t leave the place, or want to. Zeb could take it or leave it so he went back first. Well one day, yes, day time he pulled me out of some brothel, some sweet Eurasian girl specialty house just in time to keep me from being locked up for about six months in Long Binh for being, well, a few days over my leave time.

But I am getting a little sidetracked and confused because that is not really the time he saved my young white ass. No that was when we were out in the boonies, out in the Central Highlands, near Pleiku just doing a routine patrol, keeping as far away from the enemy as we could and as close to this little river, a crick Zeb called it, but really a creek, a little low during the dry season. From out of nowhere we start taking fire from “Charlie,” or maybe NVA regulars because the field of fire was pretty concentrated like these guys had done it together for a while. In any case the fire was getting heavy and so I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was heading. Next thing I know I am in the creek, water all around and muddy, big muddy, and I can’t get out, no way. I take a round in the shoulder; see that scar there, ya, that’s Purple Heart territory. I guess the hit made me crazy, crazy not with pain as with fear, animal fear, and that ain’t no lie. I could smell it and it wasn’t pretty.

I started crying out, started crying out like crazy “Zeb, don’t leave me here to die alone so far from home, please Zeb.” And you know I don’t have to say anything more about it because as you can see Jeb did not leave me in any 'Nam. Ya, he got the Bronze Star for that, and a Purple Heart to boot for his own wounds carrying me to the medivac area although I must have passed out because I don’t remember much after the screaming and that fear smell. My war was over, and I lost a little contact with Jeb as guys will do when they get split up in wartime.

Back in the real world and out, maybe 1972, I was doing okay, a little of this and that, nothing big and nothing that couldn’t be shoved aside like air if I wanted to take off. Then about a year later I heard through a mutual friend that Jeb had made it back to “the real world” after another tour of duty in ‘Nam and was out in Los Angeles. What that friend didn’t tell me, or didn’t know, was that second tour took the stuffing out of Zeb and he had started doing some girl. You know what that is right? Cocaine. Ya, drugs to ease the pain and erase the horror. And once girl couldn’t shake the dreams and the pain then boy, plenty of boy took you out of this world. Boy, since you didn’t know what girl was, is nothing but horse, heroin, sweet dreams, for a while heroin.

Ya, Jeb was in a bad way out there in L.A. living on the streets, knocking off drug stores and I don’t what else is what he told me later when he was sober a couple of times. Somehow our mutual friend gave Zeb my number and one night, one hellish stormy night up in Maine where I was staying working at a small shipyard, I got a phone call from Zeb saying, “Jeff, don’t leave me out here alone to die, please Jeff.” And you know I don’t have to say anything more because I did not leave Jeb to die alone in any L.A. Jesus, no, not a good old country no shoes boy like Zeb in L.A. They would eat him alive.

So, a few days, maybe a week later, we met in a Mission Of God house or some such place over on Wiltshire, not the good part, and I got him fixed up there for a while. He was shaky, very shaky. Then, after a few months, he decided that he had to get out of that mission house and live on the streets. Well not exactly the streets but in a place like this, near the railroad tracks, in case he wanted to head home he said, just a hobo jungle really. So I stayed with him naturally. Somehow he got some boy from god knows where and he went off to the races again. He wouldn’t even consider getting help or leaving the jungle. He said he felt at home under bridges, and along railroad tracks.

Well, somehow one day, I wasn’t around that day I was down at the pier looking for a couple of days work to tide us over, he got a hold of some badass smack , some poison left-over stuff and started dancing on the tracks from what some ‘bo who was there said later. You know as well as I do you can’t dance on any railroad track and not draw a wrong number. They say he tried to get off the track but he wasn’t fast enough.

Ya, Zeb was quite a guy in his time, a guy you could depend on if you know what I mean. I still miss the bastard and will until I leave this good green earth and that ain’t no lie, no sir. Poor Jeb lived on sweet dreams and train smoke and I guess I will for a while. Maybe do a little of this and that again. But not right now, okay.

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

 

… she had not really been interested in boys, men, not that she was like that, like some daughter of Sappho (whom she had read about in a book on Greek mythology she liked from the North Adamsville branch of the library), no, but she didn’t understand them, understand their wants. Besides helping out at home by working behind the notions and sundries counter at Doc’s Drugstore after school, doing that math/english/history/science homework, putting the younger brothers and sisters to bed, and a dozen other things since her two older brothers were overseas now left her no time, no time at all, to understand boys, men, or their wants. Until he came in, until her soul-mate came in, came in all gaggling, kind of bashful, kind of awkward, new in town, but there was something about him, oh, just something, she couldn’t  put in words, some cool breeze that trailed behind him. Came in and put his nickel (looked like maybe his last nickel too) in Doc’s newly installed jukebox across from the soda fountain counter and headed with a sheepish grin toward her notions and sundries counter while in the background his selection came on, her favorite song….