Gun in Cheek (6 page)

Miss Wells also created another private detective of note, one Pennington "Penny" Wise, who appears in seven novels, foremost among them
The Man Who Fell Through the Earth
(1919). Although one of the characters in this book says that Penny Wise is not "the usual Smarty-Cat detective" and has "none of the earmarks of the Transcendental Detective of the story-books," he is and he does. Under all but the closest scrutiny he appears indistinguishable from Fleming Stone.

The
Man Who Fell Through the Earth
is concerned with a double disappearance from a locked New York office. One of the - men exited the office by means of a secret elevator; the other walked out in front of a not very reliable witness, only to vanish again during a howling blizzard outside. The second man is subsequently found alive in the icy East River, having "fallen through the earth, perhaps all the way from the Arctic." Or so he claims at first, in his delirium. What really happened is this:

"And as I took a step—I went down an open manhole into the sewer.

". . . I fell and fell—down, down,—it seemed for miles; I was whirled dizzily about—but still I fell—on and on—interminably. I felt my consciousness going—at first, abnormally acute, my senses became dulled, and I had only a sensation of falling—ever falling—through the earth!

"There my memory ceases. . . . My realization of falling only lasted until I struck the water in the sewer. That, doubtless, knocked me out for good and all—mentally, I mean. I have to thank my wonderful vitality and strong constitution for the fact that I really lived through the catastrophe. Think what it means! Hurtled through that rushing torrent of a sewer half filled with melted snow and water—flung out into the river, dashed about among the floating cakes of ice, and all with sufficient force to tear off my clothing—and yet to live through it!"

While Fleming Stone and Penny Wise were engaged in such goings-on, the hard-boiled detective as defined by Hammett and Carroll John Daly was beginning to prosper in the pages of
Black Mask
in the 1920s. Hammett's Continental Op was based on his own experiences with the Pinkerton agency and his intimate knowledge of how twentieth-century private detectives went about their business; and it was his genius that gave the American fictional investigator the one vital element he had been lacking: realism. And it was realism, or the illusion of it, that completed and cemented the mystique of the private eye.

Yet although Hammett is the acknowledged patriarch of the modern tough-detective school, in truth he must share that distinction with Daly. Daly's rough-and-tumble, somewhat sadistic shamus Race Williams first appeared in "Knights of the Open Palm" in the June 1, 1923, issue of
Black Mask
, five months before Hammett's initial Continental Op story was published. (Daly's first story, "The False Burton Combs," a hard-boiled tale about a "gentleman adventurer" who makes his living battling lawbreakers, appeared in
Black Mask
in 1922; and two weeks before Race Williams made his debut, another Daly private eye, Terry Mack, began shooting folks in a novelette called "Three Gun Terry." Also, Daly's first Race Williams novel,
The Snarl of the Beast
, was published in 1927, two years prior to the book publication of
Red Harvest
and
The Dam Curse
and to Hammett's invention of Sam Spade and
The Maltese Falcon
.)

If Hammett's work can be said to have inspired Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and other of the best practitioners of the private-eye story, then Daly's work can be said to have inspired a number of writers who produced alternative classics. It is in his footsteps and those of Race Williams that Mickey Spillane (a confessed admirer of Daly) and Mike Hammer, Richard S. Prather and Shell Scott, and dozens of other writer-detective teams have walked over the past fifty years.

Both Daly and Williams were amazingly popular during the twenties and early thirties, in particular among the readers of
Black Mask
. In a poll conducted by editor Shaw in 1930, Daly was judged the magazine's favorite writer; Erie Stanley Gardner was the runner-up, with Hammett a somewhat distant third in the voting. The reason for Williams's popularity, it may be supposed, is that he was a man of action, with no compunctions and no real vulnerabilities (not even women, whose company he eschewed in favor of his own pair of .44s). He didn't mind killing people if it was in the public interest; in fact, he rather enjoyed it. He was the classic fantasy figure of that type of individual who believes violence is best fought with violence—the Charles Bronson figure in the film version of Brian Gar-field's
Death Wish
, the kind of "hero" such a person would be himself if only he had the courage. Besides which, Williams was forever taking the reader into his confidence, talking to him in personal asides, as if the two of them were confidants.

This is Race Williams:

For once my control of myself seemed to desert me.

I tried to sleep—but I couldn't. I just lay there and planned, while Gregory smoked and watched me. But all my plans were grim and strange. There was the burning desire to strike and maim—and kill. Kill! That was it. I never felt like that before. (
The Tag Mu
rders)

I'm not much on the sex stuff, nor the lithe slenderness and gracefulness of women. Still, there was a suppleness to her body that made her seem to creep in and out of my arms without actually ever doing it. Get what I mean? The best way I can describe it is, that she clung to me like a wet sock. (
The Tag Murders
)

. . . The Flame had many admirers. Many men had loved her. Some there were who had held her in their arms. And—those men were dead—even to the last one.

I'm not saying that The Flame had anything to do with it. I'm not even trying to judge her. But there is no discounting the fact that they were dead. With me, then, although I've always denied I had any, but I guess it was just plain superstition. Ashamed of it? Of course I am. But it was there, just the same. I had an overpowering belief—almost an obsession—that to hold The Flame in my arms—that to crush that wondrous, beautiful body to me spelled death. Yes—laugh if you want. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose. That was one of mine. To love The Flame meant my death. And that's that. Foolish! Childish! Ridiculous! Sure, but truth is truth, just the same. (
Tainted Power
)

"You're Williams?" he chirped, through the side of his mouth as he spat on my new rug. I frowned slightly. I felt that we were not going to get along—decidedly, I did not get that psychological impression that here was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

"Name of Little—Paul Little." He pounded himself on the chest. "From Chi—want to know more?".

I leaned back slightly and laughed. An ordinary gunman, this. Real cheap stuff.

"Ya needn't laugh it off." Thick lips curled. "You've bluffed it out with the New York boys, maybe—but I'm a different lad again. I ain't aimin' to harm ya none, and perhaps I'll even slip ya a little change—though that part weren't my thought. But—you raise one hand . . . an' I'll cop ya through the noodle." (
The Tag Murders
)

Nearly all Daly's novels and short stories deal with bootlegging, gang warfare, crooked politics, blackmail and mayhem among the corrupt upper classes, and lunatics bent on domination of organizations, cities, and, in one instance, the world (the villain in
Murder from the East
is a Eurasian megalomaniac of Fu Manchu dimensions). Daly's one obsessive theme is the evil wrought by a lust for power. In
Tainted Power
(1931), Williams himself almost succumbs to this lust when, after wiping out a blackmail ring and coming into possession of all its documentation, he is tempted by
The Flame
, "the Girl with the Criminal Mind," to join in the foundation of a criminal empire. Williams, however, comes to his senses just in time: "Let's be charitable, even to ourselves. Maybe my brain cleared then, and I was a sane man again. Maybe it had been greed. Maybe it was only loss of blood." And he would have thrown The Flame over, too, just as Sam Spade does with Brigid O'Shaughnessy in
The Maltese Falcon
, if she hadn't managed to flee down a convenient fire escape.

With a few exceptions, there was not quite so much relentless vigilantism in other private eye novels of the thirties and forties. Most writers seemed to prefer the freewheeling, wisecracking style which evolved in the pulps, to no small degree because of a consistent misunderstanding that the wisecrack was an integral factor in the success of such writers as Hammett and Chandler, and of why those writers used the occasional flip remark in the first place. In Chandler's work especially, wisecracks helped mask Philip Marlowe's emotions; they gave him time to think and they helped him put people off their guard. They are a distinct character trait, like picking one's nose in public or drinking four quarts of whiskey a day – not a deliberate attempt on the part of the author to inject either toughness or humor.

As a result of this misunderstanding, too many private eyes became what can only be called smart-asses, an annoying convention which unhappily continues in the work of some contemporary writers. Among the first wave of thirties smart-asses was one named Tip O'Neil, who stars in James Edward Grant's
The Green Shadow
(1935).

According to a biographical sketch at the back of the book, Grant was the son of the Chief Investigator for the State Attorney of Illinois, a former prizefighter, the manager of boxers and a "toe dancer", and the author of a syndicated newspaper column out of Chicago called "It's a Racket," which "led him into a personal acquaintance with most of Chicago's boom-boom boys" and "caused such a stir in the Chicago underworld that several prominent mobsters left town."

The plot of
The Green Shadow
can more or less be summed up by quoting the jacket blurb: "The Harding Case was no pushover—even for Tip O'Neil. He could see that the minute he arrived on the scene, for the whole family was screwy from the poker-playing, Scotch-soaked, maiden-aunt Amelia down to Nancy of the round heels, the amateur tart who tried to seduce her father's own investigators while they fought to break the case. Corinne, the other daughter, was the only really normal one of the lot—and she vanished from a crowded city street in broad daylight. Leland, her lover, stacked up all right, or seemed to, till Tip O'Neil got ideas and manhandled his own private skeleton out of the closet. And Paul himself—well, any man who can sit and watch the exquisite torture of another's body and never bat an eye, then roar with laughter when the victim's legs are broken, ought to qualify as patient in a crime clinic, hands down. Tip's right bower, Lilly—and don't get the idea he was one—had it right when he said: 'The whole thing's a cockeyed maze.'"

Here is Tip O'Neil being a smart-ass:

"This is Senator Wafflepoop," I said, "here's a tip. There's a couple of New York—or New Jersey—mobbies hanging around the Senate. One fellow is about six foot and a hundred and ninety. . . . Got it?"

He said: "Yes. By the way, who is this calling?"

"Philo Vance," I confessed. "The other clown is around five-eight . . . blue eyes, black hair slicked with bear-grease and a mouth that looks like it was cut-in with a ham slicer. Got it?"

He said: "Just a minute till I get a pencil. Who is this speaking?"

"Bishop Cannon," I said. "Tell your dummies to watch the little yegg. He's wearing loose, pleated pants which probably means he's got a zipper front and one of those crotch guns. Or don't you hicks keep up with the times?"

"Who is this?" he asked again.

"Huey Long," I told him and hung up.

A second notable quality of the O'Neil/James Edward Grant combo is the fashion in which O'Neil figures his way out of the "cockeyed maze"—the old "bolt of lightning" method refined to an art:

I shrugged, we shook hands and I left. Just walking around my car to get in a passing cab sloshed a tidal wave of water into my face. As I wiped it away, the whole picture became clear and as usual when a case breaks I began to curse myself for dumbness.

Then I climbed in and went home to make my pinch. (Italics Grant's.)

And so it was with the private-detective novel until the late forties, when two completely different writers added new elements to the mystique and produced a pair of original characters. The most important of these writers was, of course, Frank Morrison "Mickey" Spillane, whose first Mike Hammer novel,
I, the Jury
, appeared in 1947. Spillane's own peculiar brand of sex, sadism, and the private eye as avenging angel and self-appointed guardian of democracy struck a responsive chord in a segment of the population already stirred up by the first of the great Communist witch-hunts in 1946. Mike Hammer is Race Williams refined, updated, libidinalized. He is the ultimate vigilante, a warped symbol of rugged individualism and law and order at the point of a gun. There are no wisecracks in Mike Hammer, no nonsense of any kind: when he has a job to do he goes out and does it – relentlessly, implacably.
 
If he was not in love with his secretary, Velda, his one weakness, he would be the perfect killing machine.