***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night-Barbara Stanwyck and Sterling Hayden’s Crime Of Passion

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sal Mario was there, there at Sammy Snyder’s Bar over on Wiltshire , the bar where the regular L.A. cops, the regular drinking cops anyway, came after a big case to blow off steam, to have a few quick ones before heading home to the ball and chain, the kids ,the second mortgage and Benny the dog’s latest vet story (and big bill), or to pick up a stray dame or two for company if it was a weekend night, when Bill Doyle came in after he sent her over. Yes, Bill, every inch a cop, an L.A. cop, had sent his wife over, sent her over for the big one, the step- off for the big one. He looked like he would shoot the first person who spoke to him, who offered to buy him a drink, or maybe just looked at him the wrong way. And at six- two and two hundred and twenty pounds of pure man, pure tough cop man he could enforce that, enforce  it like he had been doing on the force for over ten years, and before that going back to when he a kid on the block, a block on the L.A. mean streets. Then he sat down at the lonely bar a couple of seats away from Sal’s stool and ordered a couple of quick double scotches, downed them quickly and ordered two more. After that second pair he started to turn around and look at his environment, look at the sights he had seen on many previous occasions when he had been here with her. Then he spotted Sal, Sal the police beat reporter he had known off and on for a few years and called him over.  Sal had seen too many guys around too many bars  to not know that Bill had something he wanted to spill, to get off his chest, and so he obliged Bill and here, off the record, is the gist of what Sergeant Bill Doyle had to say.             

He and the Captain (Captain Tom Allen) had been up in Frisco on the Dana case, the case of a woman who had put three slugs square in the chest of her ever-loving husband and fled to Frisco town with her lover. Sal remembered the case, and remembered that Bill had worked like a dog to find her, and the lover, and bring her to justice and got all kinds of kudos from the department for bringing her back alive. (He also remembered that she successfully pled a crime of passion, the jury bought the argument, the murder two argument, and she therefore did not walk to the big step-off.). It was on that case, and through a tip from a newspaper reporter, that he met his wife, Kathy. She had been the reporter, they had danced around each for a while on that case, then they went out for drinks after the capture of the Dana woman, and they struck it off right away. Bill muttered to Sal some stuff about the stars and soul- mates and stuff like that. Guy smitten stuff that he had heard for a thousand years, stuff that he had said himself at least a half dozen times about a few of his relationships. She went with him to the airport to see him off and they left things like that, well, kind of like that. He couldn’t get her off his mind, and apparently she couldn’t get him off her mind either and so a few days after he got back from Frisco he called her up out of the blue, asked her to come down to L.A. and that was that. They were married a couple of days later. Sal thought to himself that something was awry the minute that he heard that introduction. He had been married three times himself (now single and looking hence his perch at Sammy’s) and knew, knew for a certified fact, that while a man, and maybe a woman too for that matter, could have a slight dalliance, a fling, a couple of hot sweaty L.A. nights based on some star-crossed minute love attachment but getting married on the fly like that, well, well that was not written in the stars.     

 It started out written in the stars though the way Bill described that first blush of married life but soon a perky, energetic, upscale, striving woman like Kathy felt hemmed in by the stultifying life of the wife of a 1950s rank and file cop. Hemmed in by the ladies’ card game socials, hemmed in by the exchange of the latest recipes, felt hemmed in by the talk of the latest off- the- rack dresses bought on layaway with a cop’s pay, hemmed in by the nine to five do the job, retire and play golf existence.   It might be alright for Emmy, Sue, Alice, Fay and the rest of the cop wives but not for one Kathy Doyle (nee Riley, and proud of her feisty Irish heritage). And so she, since she really did love Bill, loved his big brawny big lug ways, loved his, well, pillow talk ways, if anybody was asking, started scheming, scheming her way (Bill’s way) to the top of the heap, to the soft get out of the streets cop life in Central with the big boys who gave the orders and took no chances.

Stop number one was to clear the way for Bill, get the competition out of the way, and so she went after Captain Tom, and as was the nature of things his ever-loving wife. She succeeded in poisoning the partners so much that one night in the squad room they came to blows (and almost to guns). Yes, that Kathy appeared to be able stir up as much trouble as her pretty little brain could muster. That part was easy, that beating down Tom part. They shipped him out to some Central Avenue detail harassing the Mex population. The tougher part was to get to the Inspector, Tony, and his sweet desk job at Central shipping guys out to hot spots and danger while smoking a cigarette and having bottom of the desk shots of whiskey. This Tony was good-looking guy (Sal knew him from the old neighborhood over near the La Brea tar pits and he had the ladies following him even then) and smart, street smart, dame smart (sorry) and so when Kathy took straight aim at him he played the cards that were dealt to him. And that is where Kathy overplayed her hand. Her strategy of bedding him, getting her hooks into him, getting them in good and deep, and then maybe blackmailing him off of the force would have worked on a stup like Bill maybe but Tony had been down this road before and so he took his pleasure, took what he could get of pillows and sweaty nights, and thought nothing of it. He didn’t think that Bill had the brains that god gave geese and he made it plain that he wasn’t moving Bill off the streets, or of moving anywhere that would do the Doyles any good.                

Now sometimes when a dame (sorry woman) overplays her hand she just walks away but between love, treachery and desire, the headstrong Kathy could not believe that Tony would play his hand that way. That bothered her, bothered her to perdition, and so she had another plan. Well maybe not so much a plan as a knot in her stomach and brain. Tony must fall, must fall so Bill could live. So she got herself a gun (easily picked up on the mean streets of L.A. where the Wild West had not totally receded into the Hollywood Hills). She made the trek to Tony’s house out in Westwood by the university, confronted him one more time, and then put a quick and thoughtless 38 slug right through his head. Then she coolly walked out the door, got into her car, and went home to bed. Simple, done.  

Nah, not simple. The murder of a cop, even a desk-bound cop, calls for vengeance, vengeance to the high heavens and so Bill Doyle, a good leg man in a homicide case, was put through his paces, worked the details out, and it came out Kathy and only Kathy. She planned on that, maybe, not that the finger would point to her right away but that when the shoe dropped Bill would protect her, protect his woman, would shield her from the cold cruel world. Sal thought as Bill finished up that Kathy had certainly overplayed her hand, had forgotten what Bill had told her one night after some sweaty exertions under the sheets, that he was all cop, straight up cop. And that was why he was sitting in Sammy’s sucking up regret scotches and telling his story to Sal. Sal nodded that he understood Bill’s pain. After a parting scotch Bill got up, shook Sal’s hand, and headed to the door. As he was about to open the door he shouted out to Sal, “Maybe if she plays her cards right she can do like the Dana woman did, plead crime of passion, and maybe, just maybe, a jury will buy it. If so I will have many sleepless nights waiting for her to get out, if not and they give her the big step- off well that’s just the way the deal went down.”