An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

With A New Introduction By Sam Lowell

[Every guy who dig the gold of film noir and reviewed the material and it was mostly guys in the old days cut his eye-teeth on the film noir detective-guys like Philo Vance, Phil Larkin, Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Jeff Culver, and Jack Dunne. Including one Allan Jackson, who out of respect for a fallen comrade used the moniker Peter Paul Markin for many years although I am not sure what he is using now, maybe Mitt Romney or Madame La Rue, who knows. Allan, formerly the head honcho at this publication and in the interest of transparency an old high school friend of mine, got the big boot, got “retired” a while back partially with my help. Others have written to eternity on this basically “inside the Beltway-type” stuff about his demise, and about where he landed after falling down here so I don’t need to repeat that material here. Except the son of bitch is trying to resurrect himself by stealth or by sucking up to current site manager and his replacement Greg Green or both by portraying himself, partially through me I admit, as the indispensable guy to introduce encore presentations of various series produced under his leadership. (I will admit that Allan sweated, perspired bullets editing, cajoling and squeezing every last writerly effort out of those series, especially the hallmark The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series.)

I guess Greg has only himself to blame for the Allan creep. (I will take my share as well insisting that Allan was the only one who could do justice to the rock and roll series and dragging him back from exile out who knows wherever he was, Utah with Mitt Romney, San Francisco with his old honey Madame La Rue helping run her high -end whorehouse or slumming with Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley our old high school friend now the doyen of the drag queens in that same town. I will address my part in the publication shake-up below as the decisive vote for his ouster below in passing.) Greg, maybe insecure in his new position  anointed by only that single decisive vote of no confidence in Allan and saddled with an Editorial Board which Allan would never have put up with but which we insisted on to guard against a return of one-person, one-man rule, had the bright idea that to appeal to the younger crowd that the writers here should abandon their serious pursuits like in-depth political, cultural and social analysis via books, art, cinema and music and go full bore reviewing cinematic comic book character-derived films, video games and tech gadgetry. Christ, for a guy who spent many years as the chief over at American Film Gazette what the hell was he thinking. I won’t even mention that the thing was a total bust since the kids don’t give a fuck about “high- brow,” middle brow,” any brow reviews from a literate publication. They don’t read this kind of stuff however you doll it up and get their tastes from social media-end of story.  

What is not the end of the story although almost sank this publication was the real demographic that reads this material-the so-called baby-boomer generation and what Allan specifically called the Generation of ’68 to ground the audience he was gearing things to rebelled at comic book cinema, video games and tech garbage. Aided by the writers, young and old, who had to write the swill and who threatened murder and mayhem if that continued. So Greg did a “dixie,” did an about face and decided to revive some of Allan’s series from the archives which he thought were pretty good to retain the base. His first attempt at the rock and roll series was to get Frank Jackman to do the introductions. Frank is a good reporter, a crack journalist but knew nothing about the inner workings of that series. I got fed up and after hearing that Allan was back East, back in Maine, after being abandoned by Mitt Romney, getting tired of whorehouse management or when doyen Timmy tired of him take your pick I contacted him with an olive branch to come back to do the encore introductions. He did a bang- up job and while Greg stated that he was worried about Allan hanging around he consented to let him do the very popular Sam and Ralph Stories about a couple of lifelong friends who met via the anti-Vietnam War struggles and have kept the faith all these years. He is at work on that series now.             

Here is where the Allan creep plays out. Greg at my suggestion (I am right now doing my turn as the rotating chair of the Ed Board) has decided to renew, to do an encore presentation on film noir private detectives which a number of readers have asked for in the wake of these other encore presentations. Alan approached Greg telling him that he, Allan, was the only one who could do justice to the encore introductions. WTF. I am the guy who put film noir private detection on the map, wrote the still definitive volume on film noir The Life and Times of Film Noir: 1940-1960. Yes, WTF. After I settled down, after I mentioned to Greg that Allan might know maybe that Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that was probably the real extent of his knowledge whatever he tried to con Greg with. So that battle won I am here to introduce the various sketches which several writers have worked on over the years. Enough for now though except to say that Zack James’ take on real-life private detection is kind of interesting although not my cup of tea.  Once we get rolling I will expand on that idea.]    

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By Zack James

Fred Sims’ tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus, private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor. Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.                 

The story about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s when he was first starting out in the business, first had gotten himself the office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days. Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves, guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for little risk, so they, the suckers, think.

Well the long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malones couldn’t cover fast enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got out.

Arthur though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life worthless. Chester was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who was behind it.  I told him that would be a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the matter.

Here’s where everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman, Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course, aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about Chester’s operations since he had been gone.

It turned out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts. So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do. Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People are strange, right.