***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – Leave It To The Professionals 

 

 

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

Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories to the journalist who uncovered the relationship , Joshua Lawrence Breslin, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.        

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Dick and Dora Francis were strictly amateurs, very strictly amateurs, if there is such a degree of such term, in hard-nosed, rough-edged, seen-it-all professional private investigator Michael Philip Marlin’s eyes. Yes, they were in way over their heads by the time Marlin stepped in to try to unravel what they had knotted up and tied six foul ways to Sunday and then trace the cold leads to figure out what the hell happened, and who did it. The “what the hell happened” being an unsolved murder, maybe. The jury, no, not the court-room kind, but those who knew what went down, and those civic-minded aficionados who follow such things is still out that one. The only thing for sure was that Dick and Dora didn’t do it, and of course Marlin, otherwise everybody else had reason, had the chance, and the desire to do the deed.

To keep you from suspense the suspected deed was the killing of Charles Wyatt. Yes, that Wyatt who invented half the stuff that goes into airplanes and make them passenger- friendly, and who made and lost fortunes in doing so. Lately the former and thus his calling card had once again become welcome in high society where such things mattered if he cared to present himself to such company. Certainly his society-clawing wife and man-hungry (man-hungry if the man came with three names or a “the fourth” after it) fetching but air-headed daughters cared too if he was indifferent to such status. Therefore entered the high- society Francis duo to muddy the waters so that even a highly regarded private operate, a true professional if rather gruff and steely-eyed on the job, cried “uncle” at the end.
 

Marlin and Dick Francis had gone back a long way, back to the time when he had been a Detective Sergeant on the robbery detail for the Los Angeles Police Department and Marlin was just getting kicked off , or left, the force depending on whose story you wanted to believe. Kicked off if you believe that story about him not being on the take to local hood Marty Breen back in the 1930s and thus a loose cannon for that man’s criminal operations such as illegal booze, dope, women and gambling which depended on plenty of police co-operation and so he put the squeeze on one of his “on the take” higher-ups to ditch the troublesome Marlin. Left if you believe, and you should, that Marlin had decided that if he was going to face fists, slugs, and every other hazard known to public police work that he was not going to do so on a cop’s pay.

Marlin had thereafter set himself up as a private- eye and every once in a while he would wind up working in tandem with Dick on some tough case that the department was ready to put in cold storage. Dick in his turn had left the force, walking away without a regret or with regard for that pension that every cop craved as his reward for the dirty work he had performed in his career. The reason for that “no regret” was that Dick had landed one Dora Sweeney, heiress to the Sweeney lumber fortune which had started up in Oregon a couple of generations before and wound up  in her  generation in California. Dick, after investigating a robbery at Dora’s home, her high- style home in Bel Air had become friendly with the available and willowy owner. The robbery had never been solved, the jewels and bonds stolen slipped down some chain out of the country and shut the case down but as Dora said to whoever in her set would listen “she liked the cut of his jibe” and that was that. He left the force to “suffer” the tough life of the rich. And that was how Dick and Dora lammed onto (and fouled up) the Wyatt case.     

Dora had been boarding school friends at the toney Miss Prescott’s Finishing School with Elizabeth Wyatt (no Betty or Liz stuff strictly Elizabeth here, one of those quirks of the dizzy heiresses of the rich, the unmarried, husband-seeking daughters), Charles Wyatt’s oldest daughter and had kept in touch over the years especially the years before Dora’s marriage. When Charles Wyatt went missing, or had fled the home scene, or had been murdered, or any number of other possibilities once he disappeared without leaving word, or a trance Elizabeth frantically called Dora to see if she and Dick could find some information out her father’s fate, find it out on the quiet. Especially that “on the quiet” part since the current Wyatt fortune was at stake, and Wyatt Industries was just then in a precarious position in the markets and such news made public might tip things the wrong way. (And tip the family lifestyle, especially being able to hang with the country club set with its horde of eligible young men).       

The reason that Elizabeth beseeched Dick and Dora had also had been because in their little rarified Bel-Air circle Dick and Dora had developed a reputation for solving some society “crimes,” you know, which servant ran off with a set of the family china, or how did the chauffer, and with whom, crash the Smith’s automobile at two in the morning, or other little squabbles like that. Kid’s stuff really, even though Dick had once been a pro, playing detective stuff to do while they were waiting to have children to take up their spare time. Dick and Dora agreed, agreed too that the important thing was to keep the thing hushed up, and hushed up big time. No sense in letting the riffraff in on the family problems.

Of course while you are trying to hush things up, and not offend anybody by being so crass as to ask pointed questions of one’s social set, you are going wind up with dust. For example there had been a rumor well before Wyatt’s disappearance, a persistent rumor, that Wyatt was having an affair with his young comely blonde secretary, Gladys Pitts. They had been seen together at odd working hours hanging around Spider Greb’s Club Deluxe over in Malibu, and at other watering holes. Gladys had also not been seen for a couple of weeks since around the time of Wyatt’s vanishing act, although she had cashed a check at her bank drawn on Wyatt’s account a couple of days before Dick and Dora were handed the case by Elizabeth. Naturally nobody wanted to upset his long-suffering, unknowing wife, Liz (not Elizabeth, just Liz, in that more democratic although still social-climbing generation) and so no question was directed that way and none answered, period.         

So the weeks passed and Dick and Dora were spinning their wheels, trying with might and main to not get to Charles’ whereabouts, or what might have happened to him despite the mounting evidence that he had either fled the country for some purpose known only to himself, alone or in company, or somebody had done him harm. The evidence pointed a little toward the former since Wyatt had previously done such actions when he was either in financial distress, personal or corporate, had to be alone to work on some gizmo, or was just fed up with his family and their murderous social-climbing ways. That last part was not excluded however when another sizable check was drawn from Wyatt’s account the day after he was last seen. Drawn to “cash” at an outlining Bank of America branch in Ocean City. The Francis’ were at an impasse and that is when Dick cried “uncle” and called in his old pal Marlin.

Marlin, to his credit, agreed to work the case but with no promises and with the right to walk away if he got stonewalled by the society crowd. But even Marlin could not work miracles, except one. He found Gladys out in Fresno in about two days just by looking up her employment application information at Wyatt Industries, finding she had come from Fresno the year before and had given Fresno contact telephone number at that locale. Marlin laughed at that “error” by Dick who must have left all his sleuthing instincts back at the department. What he found out from a quick telephone call was that Gladys had quit Wyatt a few days before his disappearance and gone back to her husband the next day, all subsequently verified (also in about two days).

As for the idea of an affair with Wyatt when Marlin questioned her on that subject she mockingly laughed at the idea since Charles Wyatt was a drunk, crazy, and single-mindedly obsessive about his work. That drinking (by him she just sat and waited for instructions) was why they had spent time at the Club Deluxe and other watering holes. Overtime that Gladys bitterly complained he never paid her before she left. She was clueless as to his whereabouts and to any motive he might have for disappearing although she speculated on a bender. As for Charles Wyatt the family had put out  a reward out for information about his whereabouts and the Francis’ were pursuing whatever leads there were but Marlin has by then walked away from the now stone-cold case muttering under his breathe “leave this stuff to the professionals.” Yeah, that’s right.