The Girls With The Gun-Simple Eyes-With Robert Mitchum And Jane Greer’s Out Of The Past And The Big Steal In Mind

By Zack James

Duke Halliday was a piece of work. Yeah, the Duke was one of the last of the big burly no holds barred, no apologies given or taken, tilt a little at windmills if there was some kind of dame involved, take a punch or give one (hell he had been something like a contender when a kid in the days which fisticuffs was a way out of shantytown), take a slug, give a few back private detective. I am not sure whether the Duke ever read a book, even crime detective novels by the likes of Phil Morris, Deke Slade, Ray Chandler and Dash Hammett but he fit the mold. Would have provided a very nice model in his younger days for a late 1940s P.I. There has been much cyber-ink wasted, and I use that word with full intention, by Lance Lawrence (aided and abetted of late by columnist Leslie Dumont and new-comer self-styled legend slayer Will Bradley) trying to get a has-been California private eye named Lew Archer into the coveted P.I. Hall of Fame down in San Marcos. Wasted time and ink because this Lew guy fell down on the basics of his time, the basics for even being considered if you thought about the matter and that is wrestling one way or another with some femme while tackling whatever dim-witted case he was attempting to solve. 

It at first was a little heart-rendering to see Lance and his acolytes try to  work their literary magic for Lew but it became a joke the more I read about his trajectory from a guy with a ton of promise right after World War II solving the well-known Galton kidnap case and the Hartman serial murder splash on top of a few lesser cases. Somewhere along the way Lew lost it, lost that spunk that got him through those first cases (using by the way the classic taking a punch, taking a slug, taking a dame, taking a few shots from the bottom desk drawer bottle) and wound up doing hellish repo and keyhole peeping work for some angel of mercy female private detective in San Francisco who lifted him out of the wino piss-filled gutter (a dumpster according to Lance).

All that noise bothered me for a guy who was a drunk (and maybe hit the bong pipe when he was in the dough) and who knows what happened to him after that San Fran P.I. had to let him go once he started drinking again. Then I started thinking about the Duke, about a guy who I don’t know if he even would want to be called a gumshoe but who made the bad guys squeal when it was their time. See I had grown up on tales of Duke’s exploits from my brother Alex, a brother a decade older than I am. For Alex Duke’s resume was not what do they call it today, fake news and alternative facts, but the real deal. Alex, Alex James, yes, that Alex James, the well-known Boston lawyer who has gotten more bad guys out of more jams than anybody from the old neighborhood would have thought possible. Alex was the Duke’s lawyer during the latter part of his career and a very big reason why the Duke lived to a ripe old age jailhouse free was through Alex’s exertions on his behalf.

Those latter days though after Jane had run out on the Duke were a time when Alex and the Duke would become drinking buddies and many a night they would close Jimmy Jack’s down on the waterfront in Boston. They would swap lies and other truths and thereafter any time I would see Alex when I was in town for some conference or something, usually not to visit family since I was estranged from most of them back then we would have our own Jimmy Jack’s outings and he would come up with some tale before the night was over about Duke, about Duke before he pushed up good green earth. The one worthy of remembrance is the Duke on-going saga with his dear Lady Jane just to show Lance and his crowd what it was like when real private detectives, or guys who acted like real private detectives roamed the great American West night.                    

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Duke Halliday had a funny feeling that he had seen her before, had seen her maybe one time when he was in Acapulco over by the ocean on other side of Mexico when Whit Sterling, yes, the legendary Reno gangster who made guys like Bugsy Siegel cry their fill and head to sweet water Vegas had sent him on a wild goose chase to find a dame who had beaten him for some serious kale and left no forwarding address. Dear Lady Jane. (By the way let’s be clear just like Duke was with Alex on the first telling at Jimmy Jacks’ it had nothing to do with amounts, hell, it was 40K, something Whit could turn in an hour without working up a sweat but with some twist, dame, woman running off making a fool of him.) It couldn’t be her though, could it, for that was a few years before and she was supposed to be dead, as he was. Couldn’t be her popping out of nowhere from where he was now landing in Vera Cruz on the eastern side of this benighted sweat-filled dusty road bracero country. (Not that it mattered anymore what with Whit safely in the RIP box but he had avoided Acapulco like the plague ever after just in case Carlos, his enforcer might be lurching anywhere looking for that big large he and his dear Lady Jane had run off with before splitting up to cover their tracks.)  

Yeah this ghost of dear Lady Jane had come up on his from behind speaking some low-slung Spanish, gringo halting Spanish not loving tongue trill that even the sweaty braceros could sing-song, to a bracero that he had pushed aside, pushed aside hard and she had made her apologies for the whole gringo race to that besotted bracero and then levelled off and told Duke what was what in proper schoolteacher or something English. Those the days, the after World War II days when braceros were a dime a dozen to cull the crops in American fields and were being sent back south of the border when Johnny yellow-haired farm boy fresh from the Pacific Wars came back to dig the good green earth. Those too the days when any gringo could use any bracero for a doormat without apologies and without some dingbat telling the guy with the doormat eyes what was wrong with violating the brotherhood of man screed. Except this good-looking missionary dame or something who really did looking unnaturally like Jane who did not have a missionary bone in her body.   

Missionary or not she had not gotten half way through her schoolmarm berating an errant student when he had had that funny feeling that while her hair was darker (the result of some man-made, maybe woman made secret formula to hide greys and other untoward colors), she was a little more shapely and had a couple of small crow’s feet showing around the eyes she was the spitting imagine of Jane, yeah, Jane who had tried to kill him, kill him good as they were heading to Baja California and the good life. Left him on the side of the road after having just crashed through a police blockade and with two big slugs in his almost heart leaving him for dead and for taking the fall, the big step-off fall if it came to that.     

That funny feeling maybe not so funny because when he had seen Jane the last time she had already broken his spirit so badly that it would have taken emergency surgery, maybe more to put the broken pieces together. The story flashed through his now fevered brain almost as quickly as it happened. In those days he had been a pretty successful private eye, a shamus, and a pretty good one with a partner who maybe wasn’t so good but who covered his back, mostly. Yeah Duke had been known for taking no prisoners when he got on a case. Left no untidy pieces and was as anybody could tell from a quick look at him that he was built for heavy lifting, could handle himself in a tight corner, and could give and take a few swift punches. (Already mentioned that coming out of shantytown in Davenport he fought his way up the middleweight ranks and could have been a contender except “Uncle” called, Uncle drafted him and would not take no for an answer when the shit hit the fan at Pearl in 1941. After he got out he was too old, too wise, too freaking tired to go up against the ropes of younger, hungrier kids looking to mar him up to boost their own careers.) That bulk and rep is what brought him to Whit Sterling’s attention (via Carlos the enforcer who had seen him fight in Fresno).

Yeah, Whit who really did make the likes of Bugsy, Dark Carlos and Jimmy Swags cry their fill. In the days when he, Carlos, Ikie Dwight and Young Billie, his youngest brother and a stone-cold killer did their own work and didn’t hire out to some bracero gabacho private detective. Didn’t bring in a guy like the Duke or maybe even a guy like Phil Marlowe who broke the Sternwood case one afternoon clipping Whit’s old friend and Southern California stakeholder, read crime boss Eddie Mars’s wing and bedding the two wild sisters respectively one afternoon and had time for a late lunch and a nap. Yeah, bringing in guys like Marlowe and the Duke who learned how to do private detection after picking up errant matchbooks from the ground to light unfiltered cigarettes in the days when that was mandatory for shamuses along with the other attributes previously mentioned with “How to become a private detective in ten easy lesson” just fill out the form and sent the dough along, GI Bill payments accepted. Somebody had told Whit that once he ran the show in Reno he didn’t have to do the leg-breaking and knee-cap shooting himself. (Young Billy never learned that truth and was serving a dime for attempted murder up in the Q where he would have been somebody’s “girlfriend” without Whit’s connections.) But now Whit was a well-respected “businessman” and so guys like the Duke, smooth operators in their own rights were brought in as hired guns.          

Whit though had as most guys, guys including big-time mobsters a woman problem, had it bad for a piece of fluff named Jane. Nothing but a work of art femme fatale and noting but big trouble from the first day she came out of some ditch in some Podunk (actually the wrong side of the tracks in Grand Rapids out in the Michigan or someplace like that) looking, always looking for the next best thing since she was about fifteen with that come hither look of hers and that was that the guys fell right in line. No heavy lifting for that gal, none. She had for kicks, for no known reason except that she could do it, that is the way she had explained it to the Duke when he caught up with her in some low-slung cantina in dusty back road  Acapulco where the touristas never go, skipped out on Whit with a chunk of dough, about forty thou, not much today, not much then maybe either but being a big-time mobster meant no sweet pussy was going to do a dance of death on him. Not if he expected to stay on top of the totem pole. Whit sent roughed up and ready Duke to find her, bring her back if possible, bring back that fucking forty thou though even if he had to waste her. (The retainer Whit offered after a period of, well, financial difficulties and some bottom of the office desk drawer bottle trouble sealed the deal, Whit knew his way in that sense.) That waste her, waste the hot-headed and wild child Jane being perhaps necessary since she carried a very un-ladylike .32 and had used it on some long- ago lover whom she shot dead as a doornail, and walked. Walked when the jury believed that she had been raped by that guy. (Duke retailed to Alex the story that Whit mentioned to him from Jane that the guy had died with a smile on his face even after he realized that she had killed him for kicks, just because she could do it like some avenging angel. Closer to home Jane had clipped Whit too when she was in the process of her escape. (Whit was bandaged around the left shoulder the first time the Duke, he with Ikie Dwight along for the ride met.)

The trail to dear Lady Jane naturally led south to warm sunny cheap living Mexico. Duke had had no problem finding her, as if she had left a long trail of bread crumbs to lead him to her. Once he got a look at her, no, smelled that jasmine something scent she was wearing and which he could smell/feel a block before she entered the café where an informant told him she hung out he was a goner. And she after seeing those broad middleweight heavy-lifting shoulders, that clefted chin, those arms and hands that looked like they could handle just about anything-except a woman’s gun took dead aim at her new protector. They hit the sheets that first night, she almost raping him before they got to the bed, and they ran around for a while in Mexico before heading north until Whit got nervous and hired another private eye to ferret them out. In that confrontation Jane killed that trailing shamus after he knocked Duke out. Now the Duke could that Jane was a stone-cold killer and he wondered as he headed out of town and some safe haven if she had lured that foolish gumshoe with some come hither look, lots of promises about this and that like she did with the Duke  and if he, the unlucky shamus had a smile on his face too when he faced his maker. Needless to say, Duke was not going to take the fall for her, not on murder one, not the big step off in some California prison grey concrete room with no windows. As far as Alex knew a rough and tumble guy like the Duke rolled with the punches, took the bad with the good but he never mentioned that he was hung up on that Jane and would wake up in the night calling her name but Alex only found out later a third party who lived in the Duke’s rooming house toward the end mentioned his occasionally weird (according to that now anonymous third party) desperate calls, sometimes in broken loveless Spanish.    

Duke figuring it was his hard luck that he had picked a gun simple gal dropped out of sight, went underground really but he didn’t figure that Whit might have hard feelings about Duke taking his money, and his woman too. But Whit was built that way and one of his minions, they previously mentioned Carlos with Ikie Dwight in tow, found the Duke doing short order cook duty in a dinky café diner outside of Pacifica. The once famous Johnny’s Diner falling on hard times once U.S. 5 made the Pacific Coast Highway a drag with all those lights for a fast-moving, get there or else post-war crowd a perfect place to hide in open view dishing out yesterday’s stew, fat-laden hamburgers and dishwater coffee that would make Hayes-Bickford’s seem like God himself had brewed the beans. The joint now catered to the local bracero crowd pulling up weeds and onions in Gilroy and so Carlos, Spanish Johnny Carlos blended in. Nabbed Carlos brought the Duke in to see Whit, and Jane. Yeah, Whit was a piece of work as well hunting for Jane bringing her in and keeping her a prisoner of love (not her story to Duke when they had a moment telling him that Whit had raped her although Duke a little bit wiser now thought about that poor bastard who fell down to meet his maker with a smile on his face discounted the story). But bringing oil and water together was not good this time as Duke and Jane linked up again to do in Whit (both agreeing for their own reasons that Whit had to be done in, Carlos and Ikie Dwight too, or else neither life was worth a penny. The Duke, as usual and as proof positive that some guys never learn wound up doing the heavy-lifting taking Whit’s boys out one-two with a few nasty gashes to himself in the process. Here is the “never learn” part Jane placed two neat slugs into Whit’s heart as they were leaving. Never even looked back.         

As they headed out of Reno in Whit’s automobile for freedom in the Baja they ran into that police roadblock which they ran and Duke sensing he was in for a rough tumble if he ever crossed Jane decided that he would turn himself in. Needless to say, Kathie did not like that idea and placed two neat slugs in what she though was Duke’s heart. While she was driving to crash the barricade to boot. The commotion though caused Jane to lose focus and caused the car to crash about a mile down the road from the blockade. Duke jumped out trying to get the hell away. Jane lay with her head over the steering wheel, maybe dead, maybe alive. That was the last he saw of her, the last time he had been in trouble over a woman who left him in the lurch, although he had his regular ration of relationship not understanding troubles with women after her, including Anne, after he squared himself with the coppers on the Whit killing and the Jane private eye frame-up beefs.      

Now that he looked at her a second time Duke could see that although she looked very much like dear Lady Jane, and giving a few pounds and years gone by this was not her, although she did have for a moment in that altercation over the hermano, the bracero, that gun simple look in her eyes that he had come to fear but it may have just been coincidence. As for her, as for this Spanish-speaking missionary savior schoolmarm  Joan, not from the wrong side of the tracks by any means but from proper Boise up in the Idahos she too had some sneaking feeling that she had met Duke before, had met him up in Reno one night when she was feeling frisky after a few drinks, after winning a few bucks at the gaming tables and feeling like she wanted a man that night had picked a guy with broad shoulders, big hands that knew where to be put them with a willing woman, and the ability to fend off any guy whom she didn’t want to deal with once she gave him her best come hither look. He who called himself Jeff then had the look that he had been built strictly for one-night stands which was fine by her that night as they hit the sheets without even knowing last names, also that night okay with her. A second look at this guy though said behind those sleepy blue eyes and that granite chin was long-time serious affairs not one-night stands. That gunplay or some other unknown evil might cross her path because of him.

Whatever elegance this Joan had gathered up in Boise didn’t mean a thing down in sunny Mexico, in cutthroat Vera Cruz with the cacti smothering the place once you got pass the city limits and in Mestizo lands where they look after they act once a sullen gringo, gringa comes   through town, unescorted. No question though she was in a predicament and those broad shoulders might keep prying eyes off her. The story she would later tell the Duke, her predicament was just then trying to get a couple of thou back from the last guy who threw her over for some cheap laughing eyes Spanish whore who probably would give him a sexually transmitted disease. Duke rolled his eyes as if to say no way was he getting involved in some two-bit escapade. He knew though that she knew those big shoulders, those hands and those fighter eyes of his would come in handy in case she ran into trouble with Jim, Jim Fiske if that was his real name. He had a feeling of déjà vu just like with Jane sensing even before step one that this was trouble with a capital T but what she looked like she was ready to give to keep him in tow required a think.

Ah, the hell with it he had not been with a woman, Anne he was keeping in some virginal state to avoid some small Paseo Robles scandals, for a while. Duke with a new vision in mind looked her up and down and licked his chops and she took note that he ate her up, a conquest and she wasn’t even wearing her jasmine something scent that was guaranteed to get from a guy for a while whatever she wanted from sex to heavy-lifting. Their dance in a dance began. He asked her if she wanted a drink, she accepted, and they went into Senor somebody’s seedy saw-dust filled and bar girl-whore filled cantina. They drank for a few hours, talked the talk and headed to her place (he didn’t have a place, to her room in the Santa Fe Hotel, a place where the Duke would go everything he was in Vere Cruz thereafter, since he was just off the boat after pushing that helpless bracero around) and hit the sheets just the way they both figured when they compared notes the next morning. Here is the funny part, the part that would glue them together for the duration. Joan had a photograph of that last guy she had tangled with, the guy who had run out on her on her bedroom table face down.

When Duke turned the frame over and saw one Jim Fiske, real name or supposed real name for in the end it did not matter to anybody anywhere Johnny Brooks so let’s stick with Fiske he flipped out. Pulled out his revolver and carefully aimed it at Joan. She in turn turned around and pulled out her own gun. A draw. That was when upon inquiry Duke found out that simple schoolmarm wrong profession and gullible, although that gun smartened her up fast Joan and this Fiske had been lovers. Fiske was the guy who had taken a powder on her. More importantly to Duke, the reason he had taken quick-step dead aim at his new lover, this Fiske had waylaid him when he worked for a Wells Fargo branch office in Bay City  carrying monies safely around California (no more freaking short order cook nonsense hiding from Whit, Carlos or that fanatic Ikie Dwight who put up the best fight when the deal went down with Jane or as a grease monkey in Paseo Robles after Johnny’s Diner in hellhole Pacifica closed) and taken some quarter of a million in cash from the bags strapped to his wrists with handcuffs. The Duke was pissed off for many reasons, but this Fiske’s scheme was set up so tight it was like taking candy from a baby. And the Duke was the baby.

Then Joan told her two-bit lover’s story complete with Jim con met while he was on the run. Met him in Tucson out near some desert trading post as he, and she, was heading south. He allegedly on business and she taking a summer vacation trip south to get the schoolmarm bleached out of her. Comparing notes they decided to work together, after another run under the sheets to seal the deal, seal the deal by request from Joan on this one (Duke was not sure that he cared for her sexual aggression in bed like being on top then or later but she had little tricks that he liked that usually only whorehouse whores knew).     

They gathered information that Fiske had hit the highway for Mexico City a couple of days before the Duke-Joan meet-up where he probably would try to convert the cash he had stolen from Duke which any way one looked at it was hot as a pistol since one did not usually act so foolishly as to rob a Wells Fargo armored truck or its employees. They rented a car and headed west stopping along the way to give a description of the dapper Fiske who had the look of a solid gringo and not some stinking bracero. They had some trouble in a small town, really just a trading post and a cantina, over cashing a check. That is where Duke started buckling a little once Joan took out her little snub-nosed gun and forced the proprietor to cash the check. Duke just stood there with his jaw hanging until she told him to wise up and that they had better vamoose.       

Having been given a description of Jim’s car from that scared witless bartender in his sleepy little siesta cantina they hit a little town and noticed a car fitting Jim’s description being worked on by some grease monkey with more ideas than brains. They waited around for Jim to show to pick up the car and a couple of hours later he did show up. With a look of surprise on his face at seeing Joan he sized Duke up and figured that at best in a mix he would get the worst of it and so he “cut” them in on the robbery dough still not knowing that Duke was the guy whom he had robbed. They travelled together uneasily until they hit the outskirts of Mexico City where they went up a private road and entered a big hacienda where Senor Blanco was waiting for Jim to deliver the hot money to fence. Jim took a cool one hundred thou in the transfer and was glad to get it. Duke then figured he was a goner, could never work security again. When the trio got outside though before Jim could say some words to Joan that maybe they should move on together without Duke Joan coolly put two slugs between his eyes. He fell like a tree. Joan just as coolly went over to the fallen Jim and swooped up the dough. Coolly asked Duke if he was up for the road ahead. Not sure just then that he had not played out this scene already he walked toward her and took the gun out of her hand. She didn’t resist since now she knew she those broad shoulders, big hands and silly schoolboy sense about sex working for her. Then took her arm as they walked out into the sunset but the look on his face said he would spend many sleepless nights watching over his shoulder for the other shoe to fall. Jesus, these gun simple women would kill him yet.   

And so goes the legend….