Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night- The Twisted Sister-With Night Editor In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Tim Corcoran, Detective Timothy Corcoran to the assorted scumbags and low-lifes that he had to deal with most of the time on the Homicide Squad, really should have known better, should have known, should have DNA-etched known, that she was poison, that no good could come of what they had together. Jesus, he had the sweetest set-up, the damn sweetest set-up with a straight as an arrow pretty little brunette of a wife, Lorna, and a growing boy, Benji, all decked out in a nice ranch house with a garden. Then she, Georgia Palmer, Mrs. Paul Palmer to give her full name and to give a prime reason for why he should have known better, blonde, all blonde poison, although he had had known such poisons to come in brunette and red hair, came along and fouled everything up for him. Put him right behind the eight ball, or maybe the whole rack.

Funny, Lorna, if she had known about Georgia, known for sure since he suspected that she suspected about his affair with her well before the other shoe dropped, would have had had the whole thing scoped out for him. She would have made him see that Georgia, married, married to a rich guy, a stockbroker, that Paul Palmer that had given Georgia her full married name, was poison, was some femme fatale out of the 1940s film noir stuff Lorna was addicted to when they went to a show. Hell, their first date was at the Bijou where they saw Lana Turner and John Garfield in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice where Lana, all blonde and dressed to kill in white, led poor hobo tramp John down the garden path to perdition.Yah, Laura would have had had a cinematic doctoral dissertation field day with Tim’s sins, his easy rider adultery.

And, funny too, Tim was sure that would come back on Lorna and say that Lana was from nowhere, was scratching her way to the top anyway she could, over anybody she could and John just got in the way. Not like Georgia, not like Georgia at all who came from money, married money, and so did lots of things for kicks, kicks and just for the hell of it. He, Timothy Corcoran, a guy born on the wrong side of the tracks, way on the wrong side of the tracks, who just flat- out like the attention when Georgia gave him her best come hither come-on. He was one of her kicks, her jones she called it. Then, all kidding aside, he finally knew what it meant in a story that he had read in the library one time back in the 1930s when he just a snot-nosed kid, a story in the Saturday Evening Post by Scotty Fitzgerald, about how they, the rich, were different from you and me. Damn, Lorna, would have another field day, another doctor’s degree with that one. But what was a guy to do when a woman, a woman not his wife, had her wanting habits on, just had to get her kicks, and maybe too he was looking for something more than a future with a quiet retirement and that foolish garden.

As he thought that last thought, that last candid thought, Tim’s mind reeled back to that time a couple of years ago when it all started, all officially started anyway. Things had been slow, mercifully slow in Homicide and so he and his partner, Jake, had been assigned to help out in an investigation of a high-end sophisticated robbery spree of the swells over in the exclusive Pine Point neighborhood. That’s when she first appeared on his horizon. Georgia and her husband had been the latest victims of the spree. Nothing came of that, the stuff stolen, mostly jewelry and some expensive, very expensive, silverware and that would have been that. Then one night Georgia showed up at his local watering hole, the place where a lot of Frisco cops hung their hats after work, The Bluelight Lounge over on Market Street across from the station. She showed up all come hither looking for him. And he liked what he saw, liked it a lot.

That “chance” meeting started the madness, started the road downhill. He made up every excuse in the book, and some not in the book, to Lorna, to the captain, to Jake, to be with Georgia, to be with her if only for a few hours. The thing was taking its toll though, he looked like hell, and everybody, everybody on the force, and even some newspaper guys, and they usually don’t find out stuff until a few days after it happens, noticed that his work ethic was getting a punching-bag workout. Something had to give but it didn’t seem like there was any way out.

Then the real madness started, the part where he was hooked, hooked bad, all twisted up with nowhere to go. Nowhere except to follow that perfume scent, that expensive gardenia something, of hers all the way to the end. Tim had been a cop, a good cop for fifteen years, ten in Homicide and before Georgia got her tender hooks into him he was the “go to” guy, the last guy standing guy in the department. One night though that all went up in smoke, or it might as well have. They, he and she, decided to drive to the ocean, over the other side of the bridge toward Daly City, to take some of the sudden sultry city heat off their shoulders for a while. While there, while in a little lovers’ lane parking area they, he and she, witnessed a guy in a convertible come by, park and the guy waylaid the girl he had come into the spot with. They, he and she, froze for just that one minute one minute too long, worrying about the ramifications of what would happen if they did anything, anything to disturb their little love nest. The guy got away, got away with their blessing.

Wouldn’t you know it though Tim, Tim the “go to” guy in the recent past was assigned to the case, assigned to find that damn assaulter, that guy who attempted to murder that poor girl in the car. Tim and Georgia just left her there after seeing that she was still alive, they didn’t even call the cops to get her some help. Yah, no good could, or should, have come of their inaction.

And it didn’t, as things started to crumble right away. First, the girl, Ellen Sargent, after several days, recovered enough to identify her assailant, at least with a description since she had just picked him up at an Embarcadero, and didn’t know much about him, except he was cute. (Tim thought “real cute” when he heard that). She also said that she had noticed a car, a heap she called it, parked down the lane from her car before the lights went out on her. Then it turned out that Georgia knew the victim, knew her from the tramp high society circuit where the women get their kicks from one night stands and then rolled over the next morning with hubby, the rich hubby who foots the bills. Jesus, Tim knew Georgia had a strange way to get her kicks but he didn’t know they were all like that. To complicate matter more Georgia also knew the assailant a, friend of her husband’s, Lloyd Little, a guy from old money who had his own ways to get kicks. The more Tim found out though, the more he realized what a fool he had been, although he had no intention, none, of turning his new found information over to anybody, any coppers.

That didn’t stop him from getting his ears boxed though. See Jake had the whole thing scoped out once he knew the Georgia connection to the victim and the assailant. He gave Tim a chance, no, several chances to square himself but Tim could not see it that way. Once Jake was able to quiz Ellen about that other car and check the tire tracks left in the hard sand he was convinced Tim was implicated. Tim was going down, going down with the ship he decided to go down with. Lloyd was picked up, grilled, and started singing, singing like a bird, about that car with passengers that didn’t a damn thing while he throttled Ellen. So the whole lot of them went downtown, including one ex-cop named Tim, Timothy Corcoran to the scumbags and lowlifes he dealt with, or had dealt with.

And what happened to our crowd of criminals? Well, Lloyd got one year’s probation and a chance to see a shrink about his violent outburst. Georgia, ah, Mrs. Paul Palmer, walked, walked on an obstruction of justice charge when dear Paul pulled every connection he had to keep her out of the slammer, and that was that. Well, almost, Lorna, was still trying to decide whether her love for Tim was greater than his betrayal. And she has time, a couple of years, to make that decision. See Detective, oops, ex-Detective, Tim Corcoran is doing a deuce in the San Francisco House of Corrections on his own obstruction of justice charge. Yah, he should have known, DNA-known she was poison.