***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – The Wind 

 

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 although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

 

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

 

Sure I have been around the block, around the block of life, but also around the block of seeing stuff that is sometimes better left unremembered if not creating some vague sense of unease about my fellow man. Yeah, I am a detective, an operative if you don’t want an argument. No, not the kind that you have heard about that snoops around smashing perfectly innocent bushes looking into bedroom windows or stealthily stands outside the hallway door of illicit hotel rooms listening for that sound, the sound, coming from within that would have meant a big payday in some divorce case (and no, not like some shamuses I know, I would not have lingered to hear the thrashing and grunts, no need to hear groans since I would have known the silky sheets were being messed up).  And I am also not the kind that chases down some missing person who wants to stay missing, missing from some overbearing husband or wife looking to even some score and willing to pay three, at most day’s wages and expenses to find the tramp or deadbeat. Although in the beginning when I was just learning my trade I had done my share of those cases, more than my share.

What I do, and have done for the last twenty years or so. is to try to come in, paid well by private parties to do so, and find out why somebody is embezzling the company, why the books don’t match up, why some guy committed a felony of some sort against my client, and sometimes why somebody got killed, got murdered doing something and the client is tired of being stone-walled by the cops. Yeah, the cops, the public cops do okay most of the time if the whole thing is laid out for them like a guy shoots another guy and runs to the stationhouse to turn himself in pronto. That is they solve the case if they are not busy cadging coffee and crullers, shaking down the café owner, or giving some poor sap who just blew into town the third degree for half the crimes committed over the past six years just because he vaguely looks like some ill-gotten description of the guy who actually did it. For the more complicated stuff. the stuff that doesn’t make sense fast, they fumble the ball and let it die in some cold file. Me, I go at it tooth and nail. Go at it like in the Meyers case, a case of murder straight out.

It did not start out that way. It started out as a case of trying to find who in the company, the Meyers Company, was leaking information, sensitive information, about some formulas the company was developing to make heat-resistant shields for aircraft. Old man Meyers whatever else he was, was a master at designing and engineering all kinds of aircraft parts, was known world-wide as the prime mover of the new technology as it came on line. In short any invention done with his imprimatur was assured plenty of backing, plenty of free-spending capital from all kinds of sources. Still the airline industry was cut-throat, was filled with young guys, and young upstart companies trying to squeeze the top dog out. So Meyers and company was a prime target for those who wanted to break into the industry and those who were looking for short-cuts to the top. Like a lot of industries the competition to grab the first patent or copyright to anything like that was worth millions, millions in government business or private business later when things were regulated. So old man Meyers, or rather his right hand man Jenness, called me in to see what was happening right under their noses.   

Now, take it from me who has had a ton of experience uncovering these things, when information, important information, gets leaked it is either a disgruntled, slighted employee nursing some grudge, some private hurt or some wayward word said against him or her, or a guy who is deep in hock, probably over some dame and her wanting habits, and would sell out his own mother to get out from under. Especially if a wanting habits dame is involved. She wants a place of her own for them to meet at, maybe a car, trips, clothes or else she will spill all to the wife (there is always a wife otherwise most guys could handle the single overhead but that double expenses is a killer for all but the very rich guy) So the first place I looked was through the employee records. See who got fired, better see who got demoted or sidestepped, even better who got some disciplinary against him and that sore has festered. Nothing.

Then I nosed around the place, it wasn’t large, most high tech places aren’t depending more on brainpower than horsepower, maybe a couple of hundred employees, to see who knew about anybody who had been spending big dough, or complaining about not enough dough, or grousing about his honey. Pay dirt.   

 

Or almost pay dirt. One of the engineers, a young guy from Cal Tech, was always fretting about the wanting habits of his girlfriend, some wannabe starlet that he had picked up in some gin mill on Hollywood Boulevard and had gone nuts  over like some guys will, although not always in Hollywood. From a photograph of her she looked like she would put some tech guy through the hoops without working up a sweat. Nibble on his ear and he would spring for a condo and extras, no problem. But here is the hell of it before I could nail this guy down somebody shot him in a back alley behind the Hi-Lo Club over in El Segundo, shot him dead with two right where it hurts the most. The girlfriend did not know anything, know anything but grousing about how she always go the short end of the stick with guys, good guys or bad. The cops, sensing that this was way over their heads did their usual ho-hum felony robbery theory and let it slide. Me I had to double back on the thing. Something, didn’t make sense. A guy, a normal guy, with dough in his pocket when searched, got scratched for no reason just when I was honing in on him. Something stunk to high heaven since the Hi-Lo Club was strictly for the trade and snubbed-nosed guys. 

 

And that is where the whole thing came together for me. I sent the engineer’s photo around to a few guys who I had worked with before and one fingered a guy who had been talking to Jimmy Sams, Jimmy the Handle, a known professional hit man and all around guy to stay away from unless you could take the gaff. That guy was none other than my client’s right-hand man Jenness. Seemed that Jenness, that long time subordinate of old man Meyers, had been nursing a grudge against the old man for not letting him take over day to day operations of the plants, plants which he had been instrumental in developing into serious profit centers which the old man flitted with his foolish inventions or paid more attention to his family. Moreover Jenness had a secret honey, unknown to his wife secret, over in Malibu who was churning up expenses faster than he could steal the secrets. The engineer ran into the couple one day at the Santa Monica Pier and put two and two together. He became expendable, very expendable since the woman Jenness was with was definitely not his wife whom the engineer had met at Christmas party one year before. This honey was working both sides, grabbing dough for expenses and a little extra to keep quiet about Jenness’s very real marital status. He moreover was strung out on her so he took the gaff. They hung Jenness, hung him high up in the Q a while back. The gal who caused it all walked away and married a stockbroker from New York, and never even attended the trail.   Watch out for those strange Pacific winds if you are ever out this way, and remember what happened to poor Jenness when you are here, okay.