The Case That Will Never Die- Old-Time California Private Eye Lew Archer Vs. Time And Memory

Sam Lowell

Maybe it is the crazy times we live what with being bombarded by madness in places high and low these days. I fully expected that a recent piece I did trying to revive the sagging (very sagging at this point) fortunes of almost famous 1950s California private detective Lew Archer would go nowhere, would as I stated in the headline to the piece finally go to ground. What I was, and I guess I still am, trying to do was finally get Lew into the Private Investigators Hall of Fame (a place where guys from his era like Sam Spade, Marlowe, Phil Larkin, Mark Lynch and Mack Devane dwell and have for a long time down in Santa  Marcos where the Hall is located). After many years I through a guy named Ted Nolan who claimed to be, and in fact after investigation turned out to be, a grandson of Lew’s first and only wife Susan who divorced him after a couple of very lonely years while he was making a name for himself with the famous Galton, Hartman and what is commonly called the grim Ivory Grin case. Despite that failed marriage she and Lew communicated for a while after she remarried and had kids and then grandkids whom she would regale stories about her famous ex-husband private detective. Ted got the bug from her and pushed forward with attempting recently to get enough information together to see if he couldn’t get Lew into the Hall.

Ted’s spirits soared when he saw my article asking that very same question. Ted contacted me and astonished me as well with information about Lew having by the Hall nominating committee rules a third chance to make the Hall after the previous two ignominious rejections years ago. Moreover, Ted had a story built up about Lew’s personal life that might sway a nominating committee today to put his name forward. Then his spirits took a nosedive when I told him I would not sign on to what was essentially a bullshit story that would have had a hard time making the cut on the Hallmark Channel cutting room floor. You know the sexually abused childhood, the sullen teen years when he started the armed robbery spree that would almost catch him a nickel in some state prison, his drinking and drug problems which lasted almost a lifetime and had him end up face down in a tidal pool along the rugged California coast. Other stuff too to add ballast to this story line that even in the age of identity politics and crazes would have a hard time flying. All that noise against the hard fact that Lew really was born at the wrong time, became a detective when things were different. When male P.I.s and it was almost all male in those days were expected to solve the average cold case the public coppers gave up on to go have their coffee and crullers while bedding every women, young old, married or single in sight. My own investigations showed that Lew had a sexual impotency problem and with few early case exceptions, passed on the silky sheets. That would seem to have sunk Lew’s chances except both Ted (sometimes he signed himself Tim and Tom but we will use Ted here) and I decided that we would patch work his “fake bio” and see what flew. 

That join effort was placed in this publication (and in a few on-line private detection and mystery publications) and that was that. This is where things got squirrely. Leslie Dumont, an ardent feminist, and Will Bradley an ardent something both had read my article and wanted to at least figure out-in print-in cyber ink- where Lew fell down and maybe this would give him a boost in today’s more sympathetic milieu. The key was which case caused Lew to flounder, to lose his nerve and to wind his way down to Bunker Hill street wino bum pulled out of a pissant dumpster by the legendary Shelly Devine (the first women inducted into the Hall) for repo and keyhole work and then when he fell down again to “go-fer” work and then that anonymous tidal pool face down grave.  

      

Leslie started the whole thing by saying that from her take on the cases he solved early and wound up twisted with some twist (her word learned from reading too many period private detective novels). Then he ran aground it seems with the Dreen case, a case that got solved but not to his or anybody else’s satisfaction. This Dreen woman, a looker, and a jealous bitch to be honest (“bitch” my term) snared Lew into looking for her missing daughter, Una, although she used a stage name of Bella something (that something because Leslie could not remember her stage name and it doesn’t matter since in Hollywood and its environs monikers are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper). This Dreen dame figured the daughter had gone down in the deep briny since she was last seen on a raft with another Hollywood star, male. Which might have been alright in Tinseltown but in the squares circle a no-no since she was married, very married to a Navy flier who had seen serious action in the Pacific War wars and had sent her a note that he was flying home from Pearl (Pearl Harbor an attack by the Japanese forever etched in infamy by one FDR-POTUS at the time) to be with her. Somehow the message got the time screwed up and he, the flyer boy, showed up just as this Una and that unidentified male star were going at it, were having sex in what they thought was the QT.

The long and short of it was that this missing Una became the subject of that flier boy’s desperate searches and as expected he did find her washed up in some tidal basin (ironically Lew would wind up in that same condition further up the California coastline some twenty years later). Then Lew started to put two and two together, sensing something was wrong, totally wrong with the whole scene. What had happened was that fly boy sent the message, but somebody changed the time frame and so Una and that playboy toy were caught by him while naked as jaybirds. The irate fly-boy, Johnny something, but again let’s not get caught up on names since they changed as frequently as shirts and dresses in La La land dive-bombed the scene sending that brave movie star scurrying like a rat for shore and this Una the subject of such horrible torture by airplane she went down to the sea three times and only came up twice. (Think about some crazed husband with a F-something aircraft under him dive-bombing her causing her air passages to seize up according to the coroner and you can understand the case for torture, torture most foul) The mystery, and according to the notes Leslie said she saw from the police investigation at the time, was who had purposefully changed that message so Jack fly-boy would see his wife with another man-and savagely act on it. That gets us back to the Dreen woman. Seems her and this Johnny boy were lovers before Una got her claws into him so in a jealous rage she saw her chance, changed the telegram and sent her own daughter to the deep so she could have her Johnny Cakes. Here is the real deal though Lew never turned this Dreen dame in mainly to let Johnny warrior brother off the hook, and never took her under the silky sheets either even though she was nothing but a man-trap and she owed Lew big time. Leslie’s idea, she no prude but also aware that a third wave feminist frame would not fit back in 1946 was that he was thereafter guilt-ridden by what he had let go by acting as a stooge for both Dreen and Johnny boy and was never the same again either as a private detective or as a “lady’s man” (her term, not a compliment).    

A good case for the beginning of Lew’s downfall and I was ready to concede the point and move on until young Will Bradley who has made something of a reputation around here as a legend-slayer meaning bustling up guys like cheapjack Robin Hood when he started rolling in coin after committing wanton highway robbery on whoever had jack and dared to travel the roads around God forsaken Sherwood Forest, the strictly press agent, a guy named Don Marco who got it from his ravaged daughter who was attending boarding school at some nunnery made-up Casanova lover boy story and above all and germane to this discussion busting a big crack in the fake news legend of so-called private detective Larry Lawrence (aka Sherlock Holmes) who turned out to just another junkie bong pipe cretin and never ever had a change of making the Hall under any conditions. More likely to be in Dartmoor Prison if he didn’t have half of Scotland Yard on “the take” and the other half looking the other way.

Young Will was fascinated by the possibility even at this far remove and with some of his later cases in deep cold file, so deep event he public coppers had given up, that he could dig up enough material to buttress the current argument that Lew should have a ticket to the Hall based on the few cases where Lew banged it out of the ball park. Then Will ran into the hard reality of Lew’s post- cold case solved crimes, the “something happened” and the booze, drugs and mental breakdowns with which we are all too familiar. Will thereafter went from seriously trying to rehabilitate for P.I. history like the guys in Russia tried with some of the guys Uncle Joe Stalin hung out to dry to finding out why he fell down so fast and easily. Will rejected Leslie’s Dreen case out of hand since except maybe for his press agent’s publicity  machine toying with this Dreen flame was off limits, was not a good choice, and my sexual impotency theory as not complete and has posited Lew’s bungling of the femme chances in what he, Will, has called the Bohemian case since it involved artists. To give a short preview of Will’s take Lew let four very big chances get by him on the femme front and then didn’t even solve the case before half of San Marcos, the Bohemia of the tale got shot up.

Let’s face it the Dreen case may have led to Lew’s eventual downfall,  I will admit that much, but Lew crumbled, went to dust on this case, and worse than not solving the case (the public coppers had to carry off some virginal Abigail who went over the edge thinking her boyfriend, fiancé I guess was going under the sheets with some ex-lover) but somewhere in the heat of battle lost his ticket to ride, big time. Funny, from the inevitable police report statement he gave the San Marcos coppers who wouldn’t let him go without a statement he was just getting ready to drop in on an old war (World War II remember) war buddy who had been attached to his unit as a combat artist. A good one making the young heroes even more heroic than they actually were which was scared out of their pajamas. That wartime attachment is important because that became the reason that this buddy, Waldo Samson, yes, the great colorist whose work you can see in half the museums in America these days, was in San Marcos back then, back right after the war (WWII in case you forgot), before all the disaffected rebels, the hipsters, the junkies, the fast car addicts, the be-bop jazz guys, the be-bop poets talking about those angel hipsters endlessly, craven homosexuals (then, now gay and not craven), drag queens and Cinderella’s court headed to North Beach and new times. Was the West Coast version of the Village in New York, the Left Bank in Paris, Dink’s Point in Wells, Maine.                      

The town as expected had its fair share of drunks, artistic failures on the low, junkies of six drug combinations, max daddy fixer men, whores beating down artists’ door to get that Henri Matisse voluptuous bed weary stark naked, nude okay. And that is where our tale begins really because Lew never found his war buddy Waldo (don’t ask about how many times Lew when he was in his prime in the Pacific had to carry the drunken sot Waldo from half the whorehouses on Okinawa). What he did find was that Waldo was up to his old tricks grabbing whatever dame came his way and after having his way with her, after she played the flute anyway dumped her for the next best thing. The problem this time, the problem with Mara, was that she didn’t know how to quit, fatally kept after Waldo even when he moved on to the next best thing which turned out to be a big Western money dough deal with that virginal Abigail previously mentioned who would in the end be carted off by the San Marcos coppers. This loose Abigail whose father along with a guy named General Sternwood who had already gone to his big sleep invented the La Brea tar pits, no the oil and Waldo no slouch could smell big money. Another little problem was this Mara was married, not very married but married to that La Brea tar pits money despite their age differences. So like in the Dreen case this sets up as variant of the mother-daughter sexual rivalry business that has driven half the cases in the files.  

The real problem was that Waldo left that stark naked nude painting on a very visible easel (this at a time when he was doing color up the ass and so kind of forgetful about art school class nudes in charcoal which were then, as now, a drug on the market except maybe by some Leonardo). Lew saw it and both leered at it hopelessly (that Will guess based on finding out later at one point Lew had an extensive hard-core pornographic library in the office desk drawer just above the Johnny Walker Red whiskey kept for all occasions) and figured it was some old-time thing Waldo had painted. Worse, worst of all was that, Lydia, this clueless Waldo’s sister saw Lew let’s call in polite society looking at the nude and got the idea he was a trespassing pervert and not an old brother friend. Lew didn’t even try to get to first base with this very available Lydia even though after she found out who he was she gave him those meaningful looks that, well, meant something, Strike number one. Of course, nobody can find, or in the end will find Waldo except dead, very dead up in some off-the-cuff mountain retreat. Reason: that new girlfriend Abigail had a hate relationship with her dear step-mother over, yes, over Waldo since she was age-appropriate Waldo’s ex-lover. Abigail was so pissed off at Waldo she took a run at Lew, figured an old war buddy would put paid to that affair between “Mom” and her boy Waldo. Lew passed, passed out of some “code” that not even Philo Vance would have been able to figure out when it came to hard-boiled detectives and femmes. Strike two.

Might as well get strike three over with since you know as well as I do that for her own reasons, mostly sexual and frisky, but also to keep Lew the hound off her scent this Mara went after Lew. Here is the decisive strike four thought, I assume they have four strikes in cricket, this Waldo, short of cash, always short of cash decided that he would broker a sale of a famous painting by Corot which some broken down art gallery owner had clipped from Abigail’s old La Brea tar pits father and a West Coast mobster before Bugsy Seigel sucked up all the air who was desperate for the damn thing even if he was clueless about art. That artwork would cost Waldo and the art dealer their lives which may have not been much but when Lew in a high investigation mood checked out various mobster alibis he turned down the sparkling Spanish loving tongue eyes of the mobster’s maid when she practically tripped him into her bed. Leslie, Will, Ted, and I know we have a very steep hill to climb for Lew when we have Phil Larkin on another case for General Sternwood another La Brea tar pits tycoon over some two-bit hustler’s blackmail scheme over his two daughters bedded each one separately on the same afternoon and had time for a late lunch and a nap. Ouch!