***Out In The Film Noir Night- With The Film Adaptation Of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

My boss, Steve Sullivan, P.I. (which for those who have never needed such services stands for private investigator, what the snide of the world call gumshoes, private dicks, shamuses, peepers and worse, yah, those who have never needed those kinds of services can be snide but Steve for my money, as you will find out if you follow me while I give you the skinny on one such caper of his, is one of the best, one of the best in Frisco town, one of the best in the Golden state, one of the best around anywhere) had been in a fits and starts mood for the previous  several months ever since he sent her over, the Wonderly dame I called her since that was the name that she gave when she knocked on our door and introduced herself, over to the big step-off  for the murder of  his partner P.I, (and my late boss too) Mike Andrews.

See he got so caught up in her web, Wonderly ‘s web okay, wanted, wanted more than I had ever seen him want to, to get caught up so much in her web that he left a few professional distance things behind and fell for her, fell for a client, a woman about as bad as a man can and still stay standing. So, yes, the past few months had been hell around the office, or even around the building he had such a grouch on. He had even stopped calling me Angel, his pet name for me his personal secretary and office manager and he had always called me Angel for the five years I have worked for him so you know he had it bad. It was worse after the jury found murder one, premeditated murder with malice and everything else they could think of, and she thus faced the big step- off even if she was a woman, a beautiful woman if an evil woman I will give that. 

He kept muttering about how he could have played it differently, could have kept his mouth shut, muttering about what was Mike Andrews to him anyway except a chiseling two-bit partner whom he had to pick up after more times than he could count, about how they, he and the Wonderly dame, could have gone off to sunny Mexico and forgotten the past, stuff like that, if she had been straight with him, straight with him for one minute, for ten seconds, not normal Steve Sullivan talk or soft stuff if you knew him. And it got so I couldn’t mention her name around him, couldn’t mention from minute one, no, ten seconds, after she stepped into our office my woman’s intuition said  that she was nothing but a tramp and man-trap ( I already granted that she was beautiful so I won’t say that again) or else he might have done me in, sent me to the great beyond  and she might then have some friendly company for the big step-off. 

Hey, I was there through most of it, helped around the edges while it was going on (mainly as a gofer and as a confidante to her as per Steve’s request, although she was organically  incapacity of  such confidences), tidied up some of the pieces after the fall (mainly holding his hand when he got depressed about her treatment by him) , and what I didn’t know about I got filled in by from my boyfriend who worked in the D.A.s office, and by the transcripts of the trial that Steve had me transcribe for her appeal (unbeknownst to her or the DAs office he paid for them himself through a third party. Keep that hush, please) so let me go through the paces here and you won’t be so in the dark about why Steve has been a mope about some fallen dame and why if you need such services as he provides he’s still your man.                

About a year ago, yes, it was a year ago because the Germans had just run through France on the way to the Atlantic coast and I cried to think what would become of Paris now that the heathen Huns were there and it would never be the same as when Steve, Mike and I went there on a case, a big case, she came through the door and stood, stood proud as a peacock, asking for Mr. Andrews because she needed some detective help on a private matter. She gave the air of being a Mayfair swell, and she looked it, long, tall, slender figure as is the fashion these days (I was jealous of that figure, no question, but that did not distort my opinion of her really), a pillbox hat atop a well- coiffed head of long brown hair, blue eyes, and a dress not off the rack and a mink also not off the rack. And topped off by some delicious come hither gardenia perfume that cost some guy plenty, and probably got him very little for his generosity. So, yes, she had a certain look and a certain swagger like she was doing us a favor by showing up here. But as I told her that Mr. Andrews was not in but that Mr. Sullivan was I had a sense that something was wrong. No Mayfair swells needing some discrete detective work done showed up in our crumb-bum building , the Trimble Building, filled with repo men, dishonest insurances salesmen and failed doctors and dentists working on the shy, they had layers of help downtown, down on Market, to fill the bill. I thought for just a minute that she had probably looked up P.I.s in the telephone book and Mike’s name came up first. (Later after it was all over I wasn’t that far off on that surmise.) Also after looking a little closer at that fur, it hadn’t been cared for very well, hadn’t been put in storage when it should have been, and so that raised my suspicions a little, but I am only the hired help and so I showed her into Steve’s office.                

The minute she walked through the door I could see he was gone over her just like that, that gardenia perfume whiff, or that sexy swagger, or something in her air threw him off. But Steve is a guy who to someone like Miss Wonderly (by the way, if you read about the case a while back and you are wondering why I am still calling her Wonderly like I said before that is the name she gave us. Of course after her arrest it came out that her name was really O’Shea, Brigette O’Shea, so when I say Wonderly that is who I mean, okay) plays his cards very close to the vest in front of others, especially other women, and so if you had observed the scene from the window’s edge you would not have known that in that instant he was going to take the case no matter how crazy her story and that he was going to be sharing a pillow or two with her. She might have sensed that too and pitched her story accordingly. In any case after I sensed the mood of the room, that I was an unnecessary third party , I left to do some typing.

And what a story she told, a story that would have made a novelist lick his chops or a Hollywood re-write man drool, and told, before she was done, about six different ways. She played the old lost- younger- sister- unknowingly- needing- protection- from- an- older- sister- because- some- dead-beat guy- looking- to- live on- easy- street batted his eyes at her, at her and her dough. This guy, this Thursby guy, was a tough hombre, a guy so suspicious and worried about the other shoe falling on his schemes that he put newspaper around his bed so nobody would sneak up on him we found out later, and so Miss Wonderly needed some heavy help to even the score up and get the younger sister out of a jam, and back to some okie Podunk town and far away from big city grifters. So the lay was that someone, as it turned out fatefully for him, Mike, who came in while Steve and the Wonderly dame were doing their little tango, and being nothing but a skirt-chaser offered himself up as the heavy work guy to save the fair damsel. As you know if you read the papers then, or read about the trial, or just heard recently that Miss Wonderly’s appeal was turned down and she was on count-down, that Mike took three slugs from a rooty-toot-toot 44 face-down the night he was supposed to muscle Thursby into laying off that so-called younger sister. (Wonderly had a sister, a sister working some Hong Kong high-end whorehouse who hadn’t seen her sister in years, and didn’t want to.)  This Thursby was killed that same night by other parties unknown at the time but Mike took the face-down fall strictly on Miss Wonderly’s account. Poor Mike.            

This is where Steve really started to show his stuff though. Like I said Mike was a drain on the operation. ( I know that was true from the money end he was always cadging petty cash stuff for this and that ,mainly his women and their wanting habits. ) Moreover Steve had to pick up too many pieces and so, frankly, they did not get along toward the end. But this is where Steve was a pro. He figured that come hell or high water he had to avenge Mike’s death (little did he know, or suspect, then the source) if only for purely defensive purposes, for the good of the profession. So he turned into a bulldog to find out why wonderful Wonderly had hired them, what was her real game.

And so he put the squeeze on her not the way you or I would with a few generous slaps and maybe a couple of twists but by seducing her, by getting her on those pillows that he had in his eyes the first minute he saw her come through his door. She tumbled to him for her own reasons, and maybe too because, unlike some of the clowns she had worked with, or even Mike, rest his soul, Steve looked like he could, and could in fact, take a punch or slug for her, and because while Steve is not handsome, Hollywood handsome, he has a certain something, something primordial , that women (including me although he never gave me a tumble even at the beginning when I was all flirty eyes with him , and with Mike too) are drawn too. Steve’s problem was that he got to like the pillow talk even when things got dicey with her. But that was later, later when everything came apart. That first tumble night though she told him what was what, or part of what was what. (Steve complained to me then, and like I said even after he had sent her over, that if she just came out straight with her story, instead of in small half-truth pieces they could have worked something out. Yah, she had him hooked, hooked as bad as a woman can get her hooks into a man.) 

It seemed that Miss Wonderly had been working in a run-of- the- mill Hong Kong whorehouse (not the one her sister worked in) and ran into a john,Thursby, who had a connection to some valuable jade jewelry that would fetch a pretty penny on the open market because of its rarity, and once she got her claws into him, he decided to cut her in for part of his share. The problem was that many parties, or at least one other serious party, had a line on the goods and was ready to move heaven and earth to get there first. Thursby got there first, although not directly. Since he was known around as a hard guy and a guy who liked jewels he had a confederate bring the goods stateside on a tramp steamer. That was why one and all, including a guy she called only Mister Big (who turned out to be a British national named Sydney Greenfield , or maybe Greenstreet) were now hard-faced in Frisco town. Since Thursby was dead, probably, no, surely, at the hands of Mister Big, and she had the information about the whereabouts of the jewels she needed help, and needed Steve to be her partner and they could run off to sunny Mexico with the vast profits once the material was sold. He bought that story, and bought into the partnership until it started to fall apart almost at once.                       

See the Wonderly dame was not totally on the level on that story since she had been an operative of Mister Big’s in Hong Kong and she had set Thrusby up for a fall when they hit Frisco. Nice work on her part , from a purely professional angle, although strictly speaking she couldn’t be held for the Thursby murder and the D.A. never pressed the issue. So Wonderly figured that if she wanted to stay alive or at least to get her fingers on some dough she needed to parlay with Mister Big and try to sell him the jewels and be done with it. That is where Steve’s brawn came in. He was the intermediary for all these negotiations and took a few hits on the head before they, Mister Big and his confederates, saw reason. And things would have worked out for Wonderly and Steve if she hadn’t overplayed her hand.

See through a police pal on the homicide squad Steve found out that the gun that shot Mike to pieces was a 38, a woman’s gun really, and when Wonderly got tired of negotiating she pulled out that caliber gun on Mister Big to force the dough issue. Wrong move, totally wrong move. So Steve, wised up, wised up to the fact that only his Brigette could have shot Mike. Then he got on his high-horse, disarmed the lot, and called the police. Well not exactly called the police on all parties, just Mister Big and his confederates for starters. He still wasn’t sure on the dame, not sure if he could send her over. He begged her to tell him she had done the deed to Mike, had set him up for the big face down and shot him dead, but she refused to plead. Somehow she expected Steve to love her no matter what, why or where. He almost bit, almost got intoxicated by that perfume and pillow talk dream he had been fogged in by like some foolish schoolboy. He weighted the balance though, thought it could have his name on those bullets that warm Frisco night and it didn’t add up to anything healthy for him. He would always have to look over his shoulder when she was in the room, worse when she was not. She had to fall, and she did fall, fall to the stuff of dreams.

And Steve hadn’t been right since. Until this morning, this morning when Miss Sarah Miles came into the front office needing some private detective work done. And this Miss Miles made that Wonderly dame look like some cheap street whore. Steve had his door slightly ajar when she walked in so he could hear our conversation, and more importantly, see her. He called out, “See her in, Angel, see her in”…