***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin – Out In The Slumming Mean Streets

 

 

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story.  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Yeah, you know all the names of the streets, Hollywood and Vine, Sunset Boulevard, Mullholland Drive, and twenty others, streets where the American dream, celluloid version was to come true for sweet sixteens from Omaha, Cincinnati, and, hell, Greenwood down in Mississippi too. Guys, hulks too from Toledo, Scranton and Biloxi. Every color, every sex, every religion, including those without,  getting hopes high after landing at the bus station that if they sat at just the right drugstore soda fountain they would be “discovered.” Problem, was, is, that the dream was fit to size for only a small number of those hordes who bussed in from Lansing, Yonker, and Portland (east or west take your pick). And that is where the knight in shining armor, the old wind-mill chaser, the old Los Angeles fixture private eye, Michael Philip Marlin, came in, came in to try and save one such weary traveler cold before the lights went out.    

Just in case you don’t know, private cops, more so than the public ones, depend on information from lots of places, have favors done for them from lots of people, with or without information. That is what caused our Marlin to be out in the mean streets of Hollywood one night in 1940. Seems that a guy, a guy, Mike Davis, who ran the Dee-Drop Inn Diner over on Noon Street in the fair city of angels had done Marlin a few good turns and so he asked Marlin to look into a cold case, a case of a young women, Milly Jones, from back home down in the Delta who, stardust in her eyes, wound up face down in a forsaken ravine with about seven slashes across her body. Not a pretty sight.  (A cold case for the public police is one where they are clueless to solve and dump it before it even has time to get looked at, most cases as it turned out.)

So Marlin asked around and got nowhere, got nowhere from the cops, from anybody who knew the girl, Nada. Nada, until he accidently witnessed a drug drop just off of Noon Street where a young women, Terry Blake, appeared to have been set up by somebody because when she went to pick up the package half of the Hollywood Precinct came out of the woodwork. On a hunch Marlin swooped her up before she took the package. A good hunch too because she was just a pigeon in the play. Naturally when dope is involved, and not just dope, the fingers of Tripper Lamb had to be all over the deal. Tripper used his Club Capri over on Sunset Boulevard as a front for all his illegal operations; drugs, women, booze, numbers, and a special service for whatever Hollywood big-shot wanted, anything.

And that anything is how Terry almost got set-up for a five to ten count. Terry fresh off the buses from down in Greenwood, Mississippi needed a job and a place. Now she was good- looking and so one of Tripper’s gang who kept an eye out for such talent swooped in on her with talk of meeting Hollywood stars, parties, maybe even a part in a movie. Terry said, well, that was what she was here for and so started her career as a “hostess” in Tripper’s club. And to show her appreciation Tripper asked her, pretty please asked her to do this little, little favor of picking up that bag of dope. The set-up part though was Tripper feeling some heat from the cops who were feeling the heat from the tax-paying citizens of Los Angeles using Terry to pay off old debts to the cops by giving them an easy collar and plenty of ink about busting that damn dope ring stuff that had half the town nervous about the next shoot-out.

Terry, once Marlin found out what the hell had come down, was mad as hell. And Marlin sensing a roll in the hay if he helped out gathered in Terry’s anger. Gathered it too because no way, no way in hell was Tripper Lamb going to let some hick from wherever she was from bust up his operations and had one of his gunsels, Big Nig, assigned to shut her up, shut her up permanently, and he almost did except Marlin coming up the street and noticing a car that did not belong on the edges of Noon Street got the drop on the big guy (and he really was big, black, about six -five and two- fifty).

After that it was strictly war between one Michael Philip Marlin and one Tripper Lamb. Naturally Tripper came up short. Marlin didn’t get that couple of rolls in the hay with Terry before he put her back on the bus to Greenwood but that was the breaks. Put her on that bus though to get her far away from the means streets where she could not survive.