…funny, not comic laugh funny, not joke on the
street funny, but maybe just plain old ordinary human nature funny, the
strangest kind, how lust for revenge, hell, let’s call it by its right name,
bloodlust for revenge, will twist a man or woman up inside so much they, well,
they will not hesitate at the crime of crimes, murder. Take Ben Sheppard,
successful California real estate developer, whose family had been in
California since practically before those stinking bracero conquistador Aztec
days and he had the land grants to prove it. He had been successful beyond his
wildest dreams as he hit the post-war (post- World War II to not confuse anyone
on which war) California real estate god gold rush before most people could
even identify that august state on a map (and given three chanced to boot).
Yes, he was selling dream, California-blessed fading
orange sun-sized dream of cozy little sea-side inlet bungalows and other prime
new world a-borning valley housing tracts to those eager G.I.s back from the
Pacific war and then welded to the California coast that they had noticed when
they embarked on those leaky troop transports headed on to ancient island
battlefields. To those who had prospered, war prospered, in the great
okie/arkie dust bowl migration and eager to shake the dust off, the sod off,
and the from hunger off with some little California modern to replace the
trailer park digs. And Ben could look forward to selling, once they settled
down from the boom-boom pacific coast highway chicken runs and the late night
abandoned sex in their hot rods, those very sons and daughters of that eastern
migration.(Ben, realistic to the core when it came to real estate, if not in
other matters, knew that he would never
capture the serious white trash market, the guys and their mamas who were
burning up the highways and scaring the bejesus out of honest citizens on their
boom-boom-boom Harleys and Indians. He would leave that market to the stinking
braceros. ) So Ben Sheppard, well
respected, well- connected Ben Sheppard was on easy street.
Oh sure he had had some problems like we all do. A
wife, a wife who came from good old Spanish land grant family, and knew senor
this and senora that, going back to Cortez and Balboa, who had run off one
night with his gabacho stinking building
site foreman, some low mex bato loco as it turned out when he tried to
trace them later. Run off in one of his
brand new Hudson coupes, she waving some silky mex-colored scarf
trailing in the wind as she, half- drunk as usual, kissed him off as he
watched them in the driveway of his hacienda, yelling “Adios, gusano, adios,”
leaving him with his young daughter. His private detectives never did find her
(or him) although he had them search the whole west coast and right down into
fellaheen Mexico.
Of course, as one would expect as that daughter,
Vivian, came of age, he had his problems
with her, her and the boys, those hot rod boys who were thrilling all the young
coast girls with their dare-devil antics, their golden boy good-looks and their
,ah, bedroom eyes. One incident at a LaJolla road house had cost him plenty to
hush up, hush up about her age (under age for drinking) , hush up about what
she was caught doing in some tar paper back lot joy shack and with whom, and
hush up those guys involved too. She certainly had some of her mother’s spitfire
whorish ways in her, for a while anyway, until he sent her away to school in
the east. And until Jeff (played by Robert Young), his main dream house and
dream California architect, caught her fancy when she came back from the east
cured of her wildness. And so things stood until the war came, and Jeff was off
to the Pacific.
After Jeff got back from the Pacific wars they were
to be married. Ben, who had treated Jeff
like a son and had pushed hard for his projects before the banks and other
interested parties, was the happiest he had been had been since that whorish
wife left him. Then the very night before the wedding, Jeff, Jeff drunk as a skunk
had taken one of Ben’s Hudson coupes, and taken his Vivian for a coast ride, a
fatal, fatal to Vivian, high speed coast ride. Jeff had murdered, there was no
other word for it in his mind, none, his only daughter. The cops said accident,
everybody else just said it was tragic and moved on. Even Jeff was eaten up by
what he done, eaten up to the core and consumed himself in work. But when a man
murders, and the more Ben thought about it the more that word really was the
only word for it, a man, a father if he was really a father must avenge that
death, and avenge it anyway he could. And that is when he began to hatch his
nefarious plots.
Meanwhile Jeff, starting to have the fog lift a
little from his traumatic involvement in Vivian’s dead, began to have a very
odd string of bad luck. A favored horse came up lame and had to be put away. A
favorite dog died under mysterious circumstances, a favored rose bush too.
Things, very strange things kept happening and as they did those around him
began to sense that Jeff’s wheels were coming off. When his house (a very Frank
Lloyd Wright-ish house) nettled atop an inlet rock cove burned to the ground he
almost went over the edge. And those around him looked twice when he approached
them.
But see not all Jeff’s luck was bad, not by any
means, because during this time a niece house guest of a neighbor, Ellen
(played by Betty Drake), came his way, they fell for each other big, and
she, a trained CPA (Certified Public
Accountant, no other meaning for those in steeped in cyberspace lingo) while
not cooing with Jeff, stood by her man, big time as well, and helped to find
out why Jeff was having some very bad days against all the laws of probability,
luck- wise that is. Needless to say no CPA (remember what that means) would
fall for a murderer so she/he/they began to unravel the details that led up to
those pieces of bad luck. Guess who they zeroed in on. Yes, Ben. And guess what
Ben found out to his misfortunate. Well I will leave that to your viewing. But
here is a hint. Vivian had a little more of her mother’s laughing brown eyes
whore still left in her that old Ben realized. Still that revenge thing, that bloodlust
revenge thing, well it was pretty strong. And has been part of the human condition
for a while.
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