***The Live And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin –The Be-Bop Daddy Case   

From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman-with kudos to Dashiell Hammett   

One day Michael Philip Marlin, Marlin to everybody except his late sainted mother and one forlorn ex-wife, a red- head so it figured, was sitting in his office on Post Street, the San Francisco Post Street for those interested in geography with their crime stories, thinking that you know if you have been around the business, this private eye business long enough like he had you will have seen it all, heard it all, maybe even done it all. All the low-life, jack-roll, hipster, dispster, dopester, grafter, midnight sifter stuff that you hear about or read about comes tramping at your door. Tramping at your door for you to figure out and try to stop the bleeding.

Yeah he  thought it definitely doesn’t pay, really doesn’t pay to have a very high opinion of your fellow man or woman, not if you want to avoid lots of fists and  lots of gunfire, gunfire mostly directed at you, the avenging angel. And Marlin thought as well, as Jimmy Jones came traipsing through the door of his office to give him the latest low-down, if he hadn’t seen, heard, done it all the guys, the other gumshoes, he worked, including rookie Jimmy Jones, with at the International Operations offices could fill in the rest. They had told him stuff, the nitty-gritty, in the locker room, the shape-up room where they got their assignments, or across the street at the Lady Luck Lounge after the dust of a case settled. The one that Marlin wanted to talk about, the story he wanted to tell you know though, that one was his, and also proof positive that the human mind is capable of anything, for good or evil.   

 

Naturally it started out as a missing person case, like a great many cases his operation got since the organization has international connections to pull from. That stuff about every case being a primo murder thing which the organization, the International Operatives Agency, had to solve from scratch when the public cops drop the ball was so much eyewash. An exceptional case, really, but bread and butter were the high-end missing persons’ cases, cases where somebody with dough wanted somebody found, somebody important enough to find and not some deadbeat insurance salesman whose wife wanted him back for the kids’ sake after he blew town with some office pool blonde with the come hither look. Sure murder came into it, came into this be-bop daddy fly-paper case that Marlin told me about and I am going to tell you about too. But not all cases wound up that way. 

The missing person in this case, the Sarah Parker case, was the wayward daughter of a prominent San Francisco family who had made their dough way back in the day. Back in the 19^th century when anything went, anything at all, more than today even since the “law” was pretty thin on the ground and everybody but a few old Puritans liked it that way, liked it that way just fine. The Parker crowd, that generation or two back, got their kale building the railroads west and the kindred hadn’t had to work since but just while away their time sitting around clipping coupons and waiting for some other first family’s son to come a-courting their womenfolk.

This Sarah, young and wild like a lot of teenagers who came up with a silver spoon in their mouths, wanted none of that. She had a decided taste for the low-life, for hanging around the Embarcadero, hanging with hard guys, corner boys with shivs, hipsters, dopers of all kinds, like some women like. She had led a merry life herself, doing a little sister, drinking Prohibition gin, doing an odd street trick or two to supply her habit, and her hard guy, Moose Malone, with dough when the Parker trust closed down on her, was drained dry, and her man could not see his way to working honest labor and so she wound up doing stuff to guys in back alleys for pocket change, for him. Some women are like that too, like to front for their men. Not just slum girls and fallen ones either. Marlin for one could not figure that out, especially for the silver spoon set but that was the case. And the Parker dough talked.

This guy big Moose Malone, Sarah’s be-bop daddy from what people who knew said she called him, her pimp if you wanted to call a thing by its right name (although the organization in its periodic reports to the family called it the less edgy “sporting life,” making it seem like they were part of the racing set, or something) was the toughest of the tough.  They had lived together as “man and wife” just off Bay Street at one time. That was the last address Marlin had before the trail got cold. From there they had split for parts unknown. The parts unknown part was when Thomas Parker IV called on the organization’s full services, was willing to use all our international connections. But here is where the rich, maybe others too, are funny.  He didn’t want the organization to get her to return as much as to know she was alright. That she was whoring for some low-life and had a sizable cocaine habit and could be in some whorehouse, or worse, didn’t bother him as much as that she was okay. So Marlin was in shape-up that day and drew the revved up case after Parker made his wishes known. While Parker got billed (and paid for) the full package the funny thing was while Moose and Sarah had left town (headed first to New York then Chicago where Moose had connections) Marlin eventually found them in a flat over on low-rent Mission Street.         

As Marlin thought about that last statement he told me that maybe he shouldn’t say he found them but that Bugsy Burke and his twist, Polly, found them. That pair had found out that Sarah’s people were looking for her and figured to cash in on the fact that they knew Moose and knew that Sarah was with Moose. Except Bugsy a long time grifter known to some of our operatives figured to cash in on a ransom trick using Polly as a fake Sarah when pay-off time came. Since Marlin was sent out as the pay-off guy and had a photo of the real Sarah he scotched that scam pretty quickly. This Polly for one thing was busty and hippy whereas Sarah was thin and wispy. He also put the heat on Bugsy (and Polly too) and got the Moose’s address.   

 

But see guys like the Moose don’t like to be found, found by private or public cops and so whoever figured he was such a guy was headed for a very short life. And so it was for one Edward “Bugsy” Burke when Moose cornered him in his apartment one dark night. After that Marlin eventually got the Moose, cornered him in a railroad yard and he died in a hail of bullets. Nothing unusual there, at least for getting bad guys off the streets of Frisco town. But here is where the figuring about human nature comes in. It came out that Sarah, between the dope, the booze, the street tricks (she had caught VD), and being belted around by the Moose when they fought, which according to neighbors was a lot, was tired of the low-life. Although not tired enough to go back to the Mayfair swells’ life. So what she did was commit suicide when they found her dead on the floor of that Mission Street apartment. But not just any ordinary suicide, you know, gas oven, jumping off a bridge, shooting herself but by a long slow process of eating small amounts of strychnine over a few weeks. And then either Bugsy, the Moose, or maybe Polly, who knows since one Thomas Parker IV wanted the thing hushed up, hushed up tight  and what a Mayfair swell  wants a Mayfair swell get in Frisco town, allegedly make her eat more of the poison  than her previous amounts and she passed on over in that low-rent love-nest. Go figure.