Parlor Pink Private Detective Sherlock Holmes’ “Murder By Decree” Screed-Once Again-With The Teen Queens 1950s Song Hit “Eddie, My Love” In Mind     

By Will Bradley

I have developed something a reputation around this publication (and others like Truth ) for busting up, busting up soundly all kinds of overblown if not false historical reputations what would now be called nothing but alternative fact press agent gibberish. I had originally been called to the task by the reaction of one fellow writer here the venerable Seth Garth, well-known for years as the king of all things detective who was offended that I would blow smoke number one pass the curled head, padlock hat and hashish-piped Sherlock Holmes who worked the docks (more later on this) so-called sleuthing against nefarious bad guys and as we shall see in this muck those who would foul up the works against Queen and Empire.  And other off-the-wall bullshit presumably done while high as a kite on his “dear friend” Doc Watson (once again for those wo don’t remember not the late Doc of mountain music fame) while some journalist-flak named Coyne, Coll, or whatever name he used depending on the publication addressed touting his small palaver work as, get this, an amateur parlor pink detective around the time of Queen Victoria.

I had enough sense gained from speaking to fellow writer and friend of Seth’s, Sam Lowell the famed film noir critic that I had better not go right after this old blowhard on the Holmes stuff right off but work my way up the food chain busting past overblown reputations to see what he would say, if anything once I pulled the hammer down on the Holmes-Watson operation and their quite unusual relationship which shocked the landlady at their digs on Baker Street to a heart-attack when she opened the door to find both men naked, so-called modelling themselves doing their “arts” But more on that later when I review the storyline of this film Murder by Decree and put a final put paid to that stinking moribund reputation.  

As acute readers well know, for my rookie effort (which drew some praise from the usually no praise editor), I blew the legend of one Robin Hood, you may not remember the name now since I did my “hatchet job”, that way back when who somehow had such good press agent, a guy named Nottingham I believe, that he went centuries looking like some friend of the poor and downtrodden. Of course, that was when he was sleeping under the stars eating tree bark. Once his boy Ricard the Lion-Hearted hit English shores and gave him some acreage he, under the name Robin Lockhart, became the worse rack-renter in England , had a few guys, guys who swore to follow him to the ends of the earth for a little medieval justice named John Little and Friar Tuck put on the thumbscrews just because they whined about the high taxes. With money and powerful friends on and around the throne he did awful sexually lustful things to the king’s underage female ward, Mary. I chopped this bum of the month down in about a week like so much Sherwood Forest forage. Now at the sound of his name women and children seek refuse from the cold in the arms of strong men or go screaming in the night. Easy work.

Of course, on the Lockhart case I had plenty of archival and manorial material to work with, including his payments for services rendered to that Nottingham press flak to prove that this bastard was from nowhere, was all hot air stuff. Later guys and gals were tougher strangely since the fine arts of press coverage vastly improved with the invention and workings of the printing press that would take anything you could ink on it. Despite that I gave Queen Elizabeth I a bloody nose over that nonsense about her being a virgin after reading some stuff from the Bodleian Library from her main lady-in-waiting who kept a diary and kept the back door to milady’s boudoir ready at all times for half of the in-house court to discretely come by, and not always men either.    

Lesser guys, guys with names surrounded by romance like Don Juan and Casanova proved to be much harder especially in the case of the former who may very well have been nothing but the wild unmet longings of some well-bred Spanish girls imprisoned by their families in convents. Casanova we know more about since he left plenty of love letters, diary entries and “broken hearts” except, and I granted him a few exploits for a short period when he was around Venice before they threw him in that silly so-called prison, most of the press stuff was written by his patron, one of the later generation of the Borgias who were trying to break out of their own  reputation for evil profligration.             

         

Before the Holmes bust up (and Watson let’s not forget Watson and if I do assume he is in the picture) my biggest “coup” was exposing a guy named Errol Flynn who worked under the name   

Captain Blood, who according to a well-respected writer of the times named Marlowe who actually did press work under another name while he was writing his plays, started out as a pirate, and then went into the King’s service allegedly to expand the Empire and fight off assorted bad guys at sea and make the whole world a British lake. Well that happened as we well know, still know a little and certainly had our noses dug in it in Sherlock’s time, but what is not well-known is all that swashbuckling bullshit was just that. Blood, and blood is the right name, was a kingpin in the Middle Passage trade, the slavery trade transporting Africans to the bloody sugar cane fields of the West Indies. The only sword he drew was when some shackled black man or women mumbled too loud. I have no proof but I believe the intellectual model for the English painter Turner’s chilling Slave Ship was directed at Blood’s horrible conduct.           

I believe I have demonstrated my “street cred” on this legend-busting business. Take it or leave it. The Holmes case drove me, continues to drive me crazy, since I have made nothing but a small dent in that blowhard’s “rep.” I have tackled the problem from several different angles and will try yet again to break this down, especially since this case involved state interests which he should have blown the whistle on, and didn’t (probably saving old Watson a heart attack since it involved the royal family, Prince Albert, named Eddy). Let’s see.

Strangely the storyline here of dear Eddy (Queen Victoria’s son and heir presumptive) and his well-known indiscretions with whatever lady, high-born or low attracted his attention, has the same moral and plea behind it as a popular song from the 1950s Eddie, My Love by the Teen Queens. Eddie come back and do the right thing. In the song the young woman, let’s call her Betty which is what Bart Webber called her when he did an analysis of the lyrics as part of a classical age of rock and roll series. Some good-looking Eddie from nowhere drifted into town on his high-end motorcycle, saw Betty, pretty and ready Betty I assume, walking on the street or at some soda fountain and charged forward. Bingo, they get along, for the times unstated but go “all the way.” Then Eddie, claiming he has a job in New Jersey somewhere, although it is not always Jersey for this caper, says he has to get dough to live, for them to live and he will be back come fall. And as you may have guessed way back at the start of this paragraph, Eddie is long gone and has not written to Betty for months-and it was not because he did not have the price of a postage stamp. Pine away Betty and take care of the little one as best you can when you go to “Aunt Emma’s for that nine month visit which means you are not coming back to town soon.

Forward to our Eddy, our philandering Eddy, as already noted, who got attracted to some serving girl at one of the family estates. Wined, dined, fake married her (since he was already married to some cousin-age arranged woman) bedded her and abandoned her. Not though without the obligatory child produced which made things very complicated in the crazy quilt line of succession that had been dead weight on England forever. Enter the cabal, the parliamentary leadership with Queen and Empire in mind. The child, and if necessary the mother must go under the sword. This after all is an affair of state. It is hard to believe that these guys could run a green grocery much less a far-fling empire, but they put together some of weirdest plans to achieve their goals, including trying to lay off the murders of innocents who got in the way, or who knew where mother and child were, or could be forced to tell on some Jack the Ripper wannabe.

Enter Sherlock who eventually sees the whole Jack the Ripper thing as a smoke screen for more nefarious conduct up in the ruling elite where he is not without friends or knowledge about the peculiarities of that elite. The blast is that while they, the cabal, had the mother locked up tight and on whatever passed for downers in those days so she couldn’t continue to blab about her affair with the ungallant Prince, and about their love child he was on the trail after the few false leads. It took Holmes’ energies to figure the whole mess out, with a little help from Watson when he found the mother, found out what was up and then the why of the ruling elite’s crushing desire to find the child and put her, the child, mother, whoever got in the way down. Never happened since for once Sherlock played the gallant.

More disconcerting though and not gallant is when Holmes confronted the cabal and basically balked at turning the big guys over in what in the film would have been the Queen’s and Empire’s mercies, not well known for mercy when it came to her own bastard Albert and his women. Why, and that is finally where I can wind up on this bum of the month Holmes who has haunted my dreams more than somewhat. A lot of what got my ire, got Seth Garth’s countervailing ire up was the proposition that I presented in a series of films that we both reviewed. My main contention, my main contention now as well, was that Holmes and Watson were part of the “Homintern” W.H. Auden’s shorthand name coined in the 1930s for those who were of male same sex persuasion, homosexuals in those days among gentile society, fags and Nancy boys further down the social chain where I lived.

Following Auden, who kept serious tabs on this segment of society, I found compelling evidence (this well before the shocked landlady found them buck naked on some drugged escapade at Baker Street) that they were using their so-called investigative powers to run a male whorehouse among other things featuring the dregs of sailor, wharf, and river life. Were running under cover of night every illegal operation known to man from white slavery to liquor. That made a certain sense since neither man was otherwise gainfully employable yet wanted to keep up the lifestyle of that crummy elite that lived and died for Queen and Empire when the deal went down.

Most troubling though, the thing that should put the punk Holmes (and the viciously punk Watson who had the audacity to proclaim for the foolish prince out loud and in public) in the shades was going back to my original take on these high-end English. Then I started putting two and two together. Started looking at the real connections between the edgy Holmes and the cabal. As it turned out, and I should kick my own ass for not realizing this early on, they all went to Cambridge or Oxford, places like that notorious as breeding grounds for the “love that dare not speak its name.” The interconnectedness between the members bonded them together into some sort of sordid brotherhood not permitting them to “drop the dime” on each other-ever. No wonder nobody fell for all the murders, the death of the mother and Eddy succeeded to the throne and that was that. If this doesn’t put a big dent in the Holmes mythology nothing else could. And I say shame.   

The Once And Future King-The Short Happy Life Of Joseph Robinette Biden-Last Seen Panhandling On The National Mall-He Could Have Been A Contender

By Frank Jackman

[This short piece about the rise and fall of one Sleepy Joe Biden, ex-VPOTUS, over the last short period since his announcement to run for POTUS was started prior to the news that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and a fellow POSTUS contender had gone under the laser in Nevada. This is no reflection on his candidacy nor than of the current front-runner Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as the three main contenders of the Democratic nomination. It still remains a not so tongue-in-cheek did at Sleepy Joe’s belief that he could run a presidential campaign that did not run out of gas almost before it got started. FJ]        

No question Seth Garth and Sam Lowell two of my oldest co-workers here at this publication and going back even farther to our high school days as 1960s corner boys in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in the Acre section of North Adamsville love to talk politics. No, love to spin some kind of web out of the political happenings of the day would be more like it. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely when I think about it now, in the old days, in those holding up the bricks in front of Tonio’s days they could have given a “rat’s ass” about politics, even parody. It was a guy like the late Peter Markin, always called the Scribe, and me who were incessantly talking politics to the point where the other guys, including Seth and Sam, would point daggers our way when the conversation drifted from girls, cars and girls to that subject.

Things change in life, usually out of some wake-up call event, and shift the axis another way. That happened with Seth and Sam in a very dramatic way that I am privy to so can disclose here-the Vietnam War of the 1960s, of their robbed youths. They, as was I, were dragged into that conflagration as patriotic as the next citizen, believed plenty of what the government said was going on and did what they considered their duty. Considered their duty until they got home starting crying to the high heavens about the insanity of that war, maybe all wars which meant that they had to go smack dab up against politics. Politics which for the most part they, we, have followed and acted on around specific issues like the struggle for peace, the struggle against the endless wars of the past couple of decades and the long wave on-going struggle against the bloat of the war economy on society and the individual.   

So you can see we mostly have dealt with issues rather than the hurly-burly of electoral politics, you know, getting people elected POSTUS, stuff like that. That was until this past election cycle or really the result of the last election cycle with the election to POSTUS of one Donald Trump. That opened many eyes, theirs and mine included, that we were dealing with a new kind of beast, a new “how low can you go” in that kind of politics. And that they, we, needed to do something  about it-pronto, or as pronto as the next election in 2020 would allow seeing that we were, are, essentially stuck with the bastard until then (the current noise about impeachment notwithstanding since the Republican Senate will not vote to convict and throw the bum out so “noise”).       

At the beginning of the year a number of us, Seth, Sam and me included, not just war veterans although the others were veterans of many social and political struggles all sat down and discussed who to support, if anybody for POSTUS in opposition to the monster in office (who has actually gotten more monstrous since then if you can believe that). We dickered back and forth given the growing number of Democratic candidates who had the fire in the belly necessary to even bother thinking about running came out of the woodwork. Most of us centered our choice on the valiant refugee from the 2016 election process Senator Bernard Sanders from Vermont and fresh-faced and new Jane on the block Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts. That is enough to be said about that political process because as the headline here notes this is about one Joseph Robinette Biden, former VPOTUS under Barack Obama.

And that will be the point, the main political point and the cause for much laughter and joking between Seth and Sam spilling over to me, Bart Webber, Jack Callahan, Frankie Riley, Chrissie McNamara and others in the room at the time. Joe Biden figured nowhere on anybody’s radar although there was plenty of speculation that he would be the front-runner if he ever decided to get into the race by the social media and   corporate media pundit class. Seth made everybody laugh especially at what has now turned out to be something of a prophetic pronouncement. Seth told everybody that the day Joe announced, if he did so, would be his best day, his high point and so it has turned out as he wobbles around sulking through the Trump Ukraine debacle that will come down on his head one way or another. (Strangely for once not of his own doing but Trump’s crazed notions about how to bring a domestic political opponent low via foreign powers.) 

Yeah, we all had a good laugh on that one at the time although for a while, for much of the summer actually, we could not figure out why he was still considered the front-runner since he could hardly utter a word without putting his foot in his mouth. Not the kind of person you want to send against a professional foot-in-mouther like Trump. We heard all kinds of fast talk about Sleepy Joe’s ability to beat Trump, to make him cry uncle under the weight of Joe’s brilliant career and his presidential campaign efforts. All baloney, all who gives a rat’s ass as we used to say in the old days when some yawn moment came.

So where is Sleepy Joe now, where is he staying tonight now that his over-loaded chariot has busted and he has tapped out in his $2800 packaged checks from guys like Comcast, the lovely bilking credit card companies that made Delaware, Sleepy Joe’s old constituency a safe haven for rough usurious interest rates and a billion others whom he glad-handed over the years. So things never change though a couple of months in and he is already like yesterday’s new. Except lots older and so now to make his dough he had to hang around the National Mall panhandling the millions of tourists who don’t remember that he was the VPOTUS to the second black president (by general admission around our circles Bill Clinton was the first by din of having a few black friends on and off the Vineyard  and playing some kind of mean sax was the first but that is just around our way).   

Hell, somebody said after the saw Sleepy Joe and heard his spiel about needing the dough to pay bills, buy a cup of joe, grab a hot dog, whatever line he was using at the time said he sounded better and more coherent than he ever did on the stump. Somebody said he raised around $2800 one day just working those crowds. Tough way to finish a political career but that is hard-ball politics up in the rarefied air of fire in the belly presidential politics. Enough said.    

Accept No Substitutes-Private Eyes Have Got The Public Coppers Beaten Six Ways To Sunday-So Why Is Ace Crime Novelist Lem Kane Doing A Police Procedural-“Hotel NewYorker” (2019)

By Rav Wilson

I am mad as hell this morning ever since I heard that I was assigned to review what is now Lem Kane’s 19^th crime novel Hotel New Yorker. What I am mad as hell about has a source in that Lem has switched up on me, has made me look foolish for having given a pretty good review of his The Cup Runneth Over (which by the way was his 18^th published crime novel since he had had the habit of numbering the series from the start) based on what looked like an interesting extension of the private detective genre into the 21^st century. In this century producing story lines which rely more on guile, paper trails and archival interventions than the two-fisted hit or shoot first and let God sort it out later that created the professional hard-boiled P.I. genre back in the day. Back when the international revolt against parlor pink teapot shamuses took root.  

Back in the days when Lillian Hellman, she already notorious for dealing with subjects like lesbianism, S&M, and underground foot fetish cults, literarily took Dashiett Hammett in hand and forced him to redden up and pile the corpses high in the pages of his Continental Op series instead of doing the normal nine to five leg and quite legwork that passed for hard-boiled crime detection when it was gathered at weekly women’s clubs meetings. Made him, made Hammett’s previously stiff, backwater repo man and keyhole peeper working out on a rundown seen better days office building Sam Spade man up a bit, lose lavender man, yes, gay man, Joel Cairo as a partner and take on ladies’ man Miles Archer. In response, pushed the editors at Black Mask into forcing Ray Chandler to throw some bang-bang lead, maybe a little machine gun fire for effect, around toughing up his previously cream puff P.I. Philip Marlowe who was mainly seen escorting the vivacious daughters of LA’s elite to various charity events and keeping their blackmail gambling and drug gaffs down a bit. Yeah, and Louella Parsons begging Phil Larkin to let more fists fly per page in his popular Private Eye Malcolm Dowry series (allowing her out of work actor son Bill, a former Golden Gloves boy, to grab some work as Malcolm’s bodyguard when Hollywood decided to put the P.I. on film).

But central to that concept, central to going hard-boiled to fit the times and the tired reading public was, is that the main characters be private actors, be private investigators who clean up the cold file messes left by the public coppers after they fiddle with the case for a couple of days then go back to the coffee and crullers. (Not that the private eyes could not have previously been public coppers who couldn’t take the gaff, who couldn’t take gambling impresario Eddie Mars’ weekly white envelopes, could look the other way when the booze was being run up the coast, or the underage girls either, or like Phil Marlowe saw the D.A.s office as your average cesspool of corruption and favoritism and bailed out, or was fired take your pick.)

That was what was interesting about the joint venture between P.I. John David Nicolas and his investigative partner/lover criminologist Doctor Alexis Newcome. The putting of two heads together unfettered by governmental rules, bureaucracies and staid traditions like the coffee and crullers grab every rookie copper was expected to start out doing day one to solve some crimes and avoid the cluttered deep freeze cold file chest. That seemingly ordinary skill set would as we shall see when we get to the bones of the Hotel New Yorker case would have saved a few innocent people, a few guilty also come to think of it. (Interestingly John David first got hooked on crime detection after picking up a soggy matchbook on the ground one day walking home when he was in high school to see if he could use the matches to light his cigarette and saw an advertisement for learning the private detection trade in ten easy lessons just fill out the form and mail in ten bucks and you were on your way. John David of course never did succumb to such a silly “come on” trick but went to Nick Charles’ Advanced Private Detection Academy in San Francisco becoming the school’s most famous graduate. Doc Alexis, grind, went the straight academic route up to and including a doctorate in criminology from Stanford.)  

Now that bastard Kane has gone and given us a freaking police procedural starring some Dorothy minus Toto from Kansas transplanted to New York City to teach the city slickers real crime detection named Ellie and Rogue her super street wise Afro-American sidekick who moved a shorter distance from Hoboken to the city and who is not quite sure what to make of a prairie-bred woman, both young and already detective sergeants if you can believe that. Who, in what is probably one of the great unheard of moves in the annals of public copper cases, actually stay on the case past the three day maximum usual for NYPD investigations before they head to the freezer. Jesus.    

In that Cup Runneth Over review I invoked the holy of holies’ name, the master hard-boiled private detective aficionado at this publication Seth Garth who was spoon-fed on the genre on Saturday afternoon matinee double-headers at the local cinema when he was a kid. Seth is so much the P.I. junkie he can tell you the difference in dialogue and plotline, between book and film, sometimes dramatic, on every film he saw as a kid. He has set the gold standard for crime novels for many years and has had many devotees including me as young as I am having only seen or read those ancient texts second or third hand. Moreover Seth had reviewed the first 17 of Lem’s crime novels, mostly favorable even if he still held to the older hard-boiled premises set by Hellman, Dick Sales at Black Mask and Louella Parsons. And that is exactly the point. Everybody bows down, and rightly so, to guys like Dashiell Hammett after he got the blood lust up, Ray Chandler when he added murder to Phil Marlowe’s squiring the young ladies around, Kenny Millar in his good days before he turned rotten and got his ass kicked out of the profession from letting Lew Archer take a few falls for him when Lew was on the downside of his career, Chester DeFord in his Dudley Smythe series, Phil Larkin for a while until he got wrapped up in women troubles that his fictional P.I. Dowry stirred clear of, and Link Soros who turned the whole private detection genre into something worth reading (and later viewing on the screen) after an all-out assault on the gentile Dame May Whitty noise that had previously existed complete with tea cups and parlor pink plots (and no guns or fists).

Those guys, and Dame Whitty would have been clueless unto the grave about the matter if she even knew what the matter was beyond the larder, worked off the simple premise that where there is crime, rampart crime like developed in the big cities of America in the early part of the 20^th century you were going to need tough and ready guys to fight these monsters, these guys who were deep into liquor, selling women, illegal drugs, gambling you name it. Dame May would have run for the hills if she had had to face a guy like say Eddie Mars who ran everything on the West Coast before the big boys from the East decided to take in some sun along with the profits. Eddie was tough alright, but he snapped like a twig when Phil Marlowe got the jump on him and let him have the RIP rap. Along with that simple premise there was the idea that if there was crime afloat then the public coppers were knee deep “on the take” or looked the other way and so nobody in their right minds including some old biddies looking for lost grandsons even bothered checking in with these bums. Got their bulky checkbooks out for the so much a day and expenses private eyes. That is what Lem Kane (who as those who read the previous review by me know I went to grad school  with in the 1990s before he hit pay dirt with his crime novels) is overthrowing just to suck up to some by-the-numbers throw little scraps of evidence along the way police procedural which John David and Alexis would have wrapped up in day.  

Let’s go by the numbers here with Ellie and Rogue. Naturally against all good instinct Lem has too many moving parts going on in the plotline I suppose to fill out the book to his normal private detective production  so he throws in every possible social and criminal gaff around. Tough work although I know personally he had been given a huge advance from Random to do this little threadbare effort. (Yes, jealousy is abound here as with others who went to grad school with Lem, who showed us none of the crime novel promise he has exhibited and is in danger of losing with this throwback to Dame May Whitty stuff).

Naturally as well this Kane-etched storyline is not going to be some average fall down junkie found in a dumpster and forget about it gag or somebody whose kid got caught in a drive-by and is asking questions. Here from minute one we are in upscale New York which Dorothy from Kansas doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about or she would have backed off early in trying to frame some Mr. Big. A guy named Simon, yes, that Simon from Simon Real Estate who bought up all of the Westside Highway and is still counting the dough he has made on that boondoggle. This Simon is also known far and wide (meaning of course the Hamptons) as a man about town, always has the most gorgeous looking young women hanging off every arm. (Keep this thought in mind for later since those women play a role, maybe a small role, maybe big in what finally comes down to us.)   

Somebody got murdered in Mr. Big’s penthouse (let’s call him Mr. Big since if I recall correctly Lem always called his high-end characters that in classes) in the exclusive Hotel New Yorker of the title (if you have to ask for the nightly room rate or what you get for your dough, the amenities move on you can’t afford the joint or will smell the place up ). The murdered person was no stumblebum, some junkie stealing the silverware,  like usually happens in these situations but Mr Big’s trusted bodyguard whom he let use the place for some romance with a dame, a hooker as it turns out, a hooker associated with the same escort service Mr. Big would us on occasion to have a doll wrapped around his arms. So the public coppers, our Ellie and Rogue have to do some additional head scratching to figure out why a body guard for Mr. Big fell down, took the gaff  in Mr. Big’s bedroom after having sex with some woman unknown. And why that woman left no trace, or little of her presence and why.      

Ellie and Rogue take the easy road out trying to put a big frame around the notorious Mr. Big but get nowhere fast since he, so they assume, is totally connected and can walk away from this rap without any heavy lifting. And he does for a while having a high-priced law firm (if you have to ask their rates move on you had better get a public defender or  something) and Mr Big friendly judge  on his side leaving them with plenty of egg on their faces and no real leads as to who killed some rent-a-cop who got his job through some graft with, Nick Dolan, Nick who after leaving the New York public coppers landed on his feet with his own agency which got him some inside play with a gal in Mr Big’s office and he wound up as head of Mr. Big’s security operations.

Then the inevitable strange and usually unrelated chain of events throws things this way and that for the next few hundred pages of fluff. Through modern technology and its endless lists of hard information Ellie and Rogue find that the woman involved, or the woman they think was with robo-cop was a young hooker, oh, excuse me young escort who answered Robo’s pleas for companionship. They also somewhat weirdly find once they put the NSA tag on her that she, a college student at NYU, is being Internet “stalked” by a party, or parties unknown. Before long they find her very dead one sunny afternoon in her apartment mutilated. Oh yeah find that she had a roommate (follow the bouncing ball from here on in, okay) who also was hacked up but who survived, was taken to the hospital then walked away one late night. How is Lem going to glue all this together and make the average avid crime detection reader by into his grift. (By the way I agree with those like Lem, who uses modern technology extensively here although not so much when John David and Alexis were on the case in earlier novels, and Lank Revere who think that private eyes have to buy into the new technology, charge it up to expenses if they have too padding charges for that material just like the gas mileage in the old days).  

 As the bodies pile up Ms. Ellie and Mr. Rogue rather than like good public coppers put the thing in deepest cold file storage figuring that the world had one less bent whore to worry about with the death of Robo-cop’s young hooker companion on the night he fell down or who the other whore was who slipped into the night they keep going. Keep going rather than the “real world: solution, tried and true, and let’s say let this dead young woman’s anguished parents hire a private eye per day and expenses continue on. Continuing on though they get thrown into yet another gruesome murder scene (involving torture, meaning somebody, some party or parties unknown are looking for more than kicks but information, hard information and are ready to go medieval to get the damn stuff) of another young professional-type woman making coffee and cakes money on the side using her sex to ward away the evil bill collectors. Once they start to see some not obvious connections connect the unknown trail gets shorter.  

Then things start to tie in, start to congeal around the doings of our previously left alone very connected Mr. Big. Ellie and Rogue, mainly Ellie here finally see Mr. Big had some connections, used okay, the services of the escort service that Robo-cop had used, that this young professional women and part-time sex worker worked for. Throw in a previously independent Soho artist working her own coffee and cakes angles for her art using her body to keep afloat until the big breakthrough who was connected with that Robo-cop’s whore and here is the beauty of the police procedural spoon-feeding Casanova another young whore who was actually the Robo-cop’s “date” and who had witnessed some conversation between the murderer and the victim. Who just happened to be the NYU roommate who blew town when the heat was on, went underground anyway. Very curious.

I mentioned before that most of these police procedurals have to bring in every possible contemporary social and political idea and issue that will fit. Have to bring in the average coffee and cruller cops if for no other reason than to show how superior the lead characters, young up and coming detective sergeants no less, are against the run of the mill rummies who make up the force but also some ex-cops who may or may not have been corrupt. Enter Nick, finally, you remember Nick, the guy who did a hard twenty on the publics before landing on easy street with Mr. Big, as the fall guy, or at least one of the fall guys. Did his twenty on the force then landed on his feet working for Mr. Big as his chief of security. Had hired Robo-cop out of sunny Taliban-infested Afghanistan and kept him moving up the ranks to guard Mr. Big.

Here is where everything gets squirrely and that is exactly the right word. Nick, and for that matter Mr. Big, Simon okay, have a secret, have a secret that set off this weird train of events (in Lem’s mind anyway). Solid ex-cop Nick who still cuts a tough guy figure with the publics who he came up with, and our man about town Mr. Big are shacking up, are lovers, are gay lovers and Robo-cop found out about the affair. Here is where John David and Alexis would have had this case cleaned up, the final bill sent and have time for lunch. Mr. Big had a very big reputation as a “swinger,” as an eligible bachelor. Ellie and Rogue had busted the code, had the skinny on the sex worker angle early on. They could have asked more than one of the escorts who escorted Mr. Big around town whether they played footsie. One gal, one candid gal, Lena, said while Mr. Simon was a perfect gentleman he had made no play and that had hurt her feelings since she had her reputation to think about. There was also plenty in the social media about Mr. Big maybe being a “switch-hitter.” It all came out in the end by only after the bodies piled sky high.    

In 2019 big deal you say, about Nick and Mr. Big being lovers, especially in New York City and you would be right since crime detection, hard-boiled crime detection has recognized gayness, good guys and bad, at least since Sam Spade sniffed Joel Cairo’s lavender calling card in The Maltese Falcon and Allan Ladd’s Johnny Bad salacious killer looks at a couple of guys in a bar in This Gun For Hire (while tossing off Veronica Lake). So why an indiscreet moment even for a tough ex-copper with his boss would set off this flurry of sheer madness seems distinctly odd. As it turned out the whole thing got connected, got glued together if you think about it,  by this older hooker. Tanya, who moved into that doomed NYU student’s apartment being the one with Robo-cop and an active witness, not the co-ed. The young professional real estate broker and part-time hooker and the Soho artist hooker were part of a big mix-up about who was supposed to be at Mr. Big’s apartment the night the bodyguard fell down. Oops!

The side story, the inevitable side story to fill out the pages maybe written into the contract , is this judge met earlier who was supposed to be covering for Mr. Big who in turn could help him on his way up the judicial ladder had been, intergenerational sex aside, the “lover” of that NYU student’s roommate back down in Baltimore before the judge headed north for the bright lights. Dimmed, dimmed by a son who knew the old man was bonking the hooker in the days when she was a babysitter for him and in New York went crazy when it looked like the old times were coming back. To protect his mother, some Tammy Wynette “stand by your man”- type this kid figured murder the hometown hooker, and on the fly the NYU student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and who was the only really innocent part in the whole show. Like I said too many moving parts, even for a private detective.              

A Magical Moment In The World Of Art-The Recent “Discovery” Of 26 Painting Presumed Destroyed In The Nazi” Night Of The Long Knives Destruction Of ‘Degenerate Art’ ” Of Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel Shakes The Rafters

By Laura Perkins

The reader may pardon me for having “gone dark” for the past few months and thus having avoided getting immersed in my fellow writer (and sometimes art mentor) Sam Lowell’s on-going battle, shadow boxing really, about the fate of the masterpieces that were stolen in the heist of the century (20^th) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston some thirty years ago. Sam’s main beef, no, point, no, admiration, having been nothing but a charter member corner boy in his desperately poor youth so always on the lookout for the easy score and always just a little East of Eden on the legality question, was how easy the heist had been. Certainly to his eyes and ears with plenty of inside help and he didn’t mean the silly rent-a-cops who were supposed to protect the crown jewels but probably some well-positioned curators and volunteer tour guides. You know the cubby hole knowledge of some exotic artist for which some well-placed curators have written a seamless 66 page essay on as part of some exhibition and the suburban matrons who thrill to jabber their six-sentence knowledge of say, well, Rembrandt since we are rightly commemorating his 350^th birthday of later rating. Or as likely among those “volunteer” art students from the Museum School and Mass Art who facing the prospect of garret life for the next few decades decided to find a benefactor like the old artists, like Rembrandt if I am not mistaken did in the courts and chanceries of Europe back in the day. If the reader will recall at least one curator, a Holbein the Younger expert and a couple of art students (not sure from which school) left the staff shortly after the theft never to be heard from again after a light FBI grilling. But enough of this for Sam and I have gone on endlessly about the insiders as well as the simply although beautiful plan as it was laid out.          

More importantly than who qualified as prime suspects for the job on the inside for the actual thefts though, the thirty-year question really, was how the various agencies investigating the whereabouts of the stuff have come up mainly with egg on their faces. Sam, even today has a certain amount of glee when he describes the lightweight work done by the FBI and Boston Police  to recover the masterpieces even with the so-called big rewards available (although really chump change compared to the value of the art today at half a billion maybe more today so you know that missing curator and those so-called art students are not giving up squat, Sam’s word, not playing ball with the law, also Sam’s, else find themselves in stir. What a laugh.)    

Frankly, Sam, and through Sam, me have had a few so-called theories about the fate of the works, where they are, who had them and who has them now. It did not take old Seth Garth long to figure out where such stuff would be in the Greater Boston area once He and Sam put their heads together. So it was no surprise, made perfect sense to me to have known that the works had been stored in the Edward McCormick Bathhouse, or really the shed where they keep the tools and trucks,  over on Carson Beach for years so Whitey Bulger, complete with pink wig and paper bag beer could eye them at his pleasure while he was on the run. The key link was one guy, a career criminal mostly but with a François Villon poetic heart, who claimed to be the President of Rock and Roll, Myles Connors, who did the detail work (and also did as far as we know some very good preservation work to keep the “Big 13” from the elements coming off of Dorchester Bay.

Probably had things worked out Whitey’s way the artworks would still be over in the bathhouse, still be a one-man museum exhibition. But all of that art for art’s sake that a painter named James McNeil Abbot Whistler laid on an unsuspecting world went in the trash barrel because once Whitey needed dough for his defense in a fistful of murder and mayhem charges he sold all the good stuff, sold everything I believe except those hazy sketches nobody would really want today except museum curators desperate to fill up their artist retrospectives with enough material to not leave any empty spaces. Sold the lot minus the loss-leaders to a guy, I think his name is Tom Steyers, something like that, a hedge fund guy who has some social consciousness,  who has the good stuff locked up somewhere in order to peep at them on occasion but mainly to leave his kids with some start-up dough if they too wanted to be socially conscious billionaires. The second-rate stuff for all I know may still be in the bathhouse garage but don’t quote me on that.  

Frankly though, especially now that Whitey has taken the fall, has gone to sleep with the fishes, that is all old news, speculation and macho guy talk like Sam and Seth get into when they need some hot air time and not worthy of my time. Not worthy of my time as an acknowledged and proud amateur art critic. Not against the part I played in helping to put together the clues that would get 26 works, no, masterworks by the famous Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel which everybody though the Nazis had destroyed when they went on a rampage against “degenerate art,” decided to burn everything in sight that blighted their vision of an Aryan Garden of Eden back in the 1930s when they thought they had a thousand year Reich in front of them. I played a minor role in the investigation and research but I played a part recognized by those inside the art cabal, even by my usual nemesis Clarence Dewar, professional art critic for Art Today. Believe me that kudo says plenty.

A little background, my background into the case is in order to set the scene. Back when I was a college student, back in the 1960s, at Rochester I was always mesmerized by a painting that hung near the statue of the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass simple entitled Steel #6 by Raybolt Drexel. The amazing thing, no, the two amazing things about this painting, were, one, that it was one of only three known Drexels to have survived the Nazi onslaught in the 1930s when these scum were burning everything in sight by guys like Max Beckmann, George Groz, Milos Drebs and Raybolt Drexel as “degenerate art,” as against the cult of the superman Aryan race noise that soon enough, well, maybe not soon enough, got bloodied by some guys from America and Russia who didn’t like their drift of a thousand years of darkness. The other, number two, was that this painting was an almost classically pure example of one of the “new wave” trends in early 20^th century art, abstract impressionism, which Drexel did a huge amount to pioneer before they, and you know who the “they” is and if you don’t think Nazi scum, grabbed him and did something vile to him which even today we don’t know exactly what it was and where he was buried except  somewhere in Poland on the way to the concentration camps.             

I was at Rochester for four years before heading to the “real world” but I would bet that I looked that that painting a hundred times, at least. The funny thing is that it always struck me in different ways when I saw it in various lights, times of days, and my own personal moods. That is what abstract impressionism was about, that is what we know Drexel was trying to do with his paintings in a world moving toward various forms of expressionism and then pure abstraction (which usually today leaves me hollow). That is what he detailed in the few writings he was able to sneak out of Germany before they grabbed him. Here’s the play on Steel #6; numerous layers (one curator, an abstract impressionist expect so I will go with her judgement, estimated at least twenty) of white in all its variations covering most of the 48” by 72” canvass frame. Then in the lower left corner maybe 12” by 18” a piece of steel. Or something that looks like steel in all its admixtures of straight-up gray, blue-gray, black-gray, green-gray, charcoal-gray, lemon-etched gray and so on. The amazing point though, the look at it one hundred plus times point during four years at Rochester point, was the essence of the piece, that is the best way I can say it, if not exactly explain it, took one from the original iron ore to the finished product in one fell swoop. Incredible, magnificent, amazing.          

Back to the main story though. Not all the details of how these glorious 26 paintings survived are known even though we pressed the issue as far as we could, talked to everybody in Germany (mostly though second-hand conversations since the generation who would have known the facts straight up had passed on or had been killed during the war) who had any information about the transit, including army officers and lower-level government officials. For, example, some tank commander’s son, his father after the war proud to say he had saved some great art whatever he did in the war heading with his division west along the transit route, would tell us how the “shipment,” cloaked as an “ironic” steel shipment for the front stopped in the Ruhr Valley on the way and that the old man had ordered four trusted NCO guards to insure its safety. Many such examples.

In the great scheme though, what had originally saved the Drexels from the faggot fires of Nuremburg and Berlin was that after Drexel was grabbed what appears to have happened is that some half- committed Nazi named Klein who had a love of art (as we have seen plenty of autocrats and cravens who would blow up the world still keep some art work in their bunkers with them so don’t be so surprised by that love business) decided that the good German name of Drexel could not produce “degenerate art.” Meaning as well as other things that a non-Jewish German could not produce such art although that did not stop Herr Klein from having his SS boys grab Drexel for the rails to Poland while taking the 26 (it may have been 29 there is speculation 3 pieces got lost or destroyed on the way west) masterworks.  The “other things” being that it would be quite a stretch to see the simple designs of Drexel’s work on the same plane as say Max Beckmann who really did try to rub noses in his productions.

The three previously known to survive Drexels had been brought to America by George Groz who consigned them to the New World Gallery in New York City where Allan Austin, a rich Rochester alum saw Steel#6 and decided to purchase it for Spring Hall as a fitting  tribute to economic progress which fit in with the mission of the college). Once the European war started this half-Nazi, apparently still half-Nazi if his rise to general meant anything decided to take the artworks west with him while the Nazi tide was rising. West to Paris where he was stationed apparently through most of the war. When things started to go south for Germany after the heroic Soviet struggle at Stalingrad this Klein made plans to get the paintings to America. Some Germans, including high level German officers like Klein when they began to see the writing on the wall were going to save their asses as best they could when the Americans came knocking at the doors. Unlike guys like Martin Blatner and Max Steiner who went down in the bunkers to fall down with the 1000-year Reich. Through some byzantine network, the “tunnel” I have heard it called, got the stuff out of Europe and into the mansion of Amos Drexel in Pennsylvania-without him or his staff being aware of what would wind up in the basement as an ordinary shipment of industrial goods. This wealthy industrialist had some family relationship with Raybolt’s and thus a perfect set-up for a delivery drop.             

The story stops there for a while for the simple reason that Herr Klein never made it out via the OSS “tunnel” which maybe tells you how bad a character he was, how dirty his hands were what with the death of Drexel and who knows how many before he hit Paris and grabbed every Resistance fighter he could get his hands on, hung then on lampposts up and down the Seine as cautionary tales. Although I found no listing for him in the Nuremburg tribunals, even in the secondary lists since the Dulles boys were grabbing whoever did not stink to high heaven in order to begin in earnest the fight against the emerging Soviet power in Europe he must have been put to sleep.

The story from my ends begins a few years ago when I read an article in a scholarly journal which referenced how methodical the Nazis were before they went on the run, say 1944 when even Max Steiner know the game was up and decided to hit the bunker early. For example, for our present example, some low-level clerk or something was in charge of, made a list of all the “degenerate art” which went to the pyres in their crazy lust to rid the world of most 20^th century art. That made me curious about the fate of the other art works of Drexel which never made it to American shores. Through various connections I was able to get the list of destroyed art. I could not stop my heart from serious fluttering when I saw that nothing of Drexel’s was officially listed as consigned to the flames. That would eventually, again due to that great German skill of organizing everything into workable systems, open up the trail of who last had access to the Drexel work and then to Herr Klein’s role. (It was well known that Klein had had Drexel in his clutches in the 1930s before he “disappeared “ attested to by half a dozen SS scum who were only too glad to speak of their role of cleansing Germany of modern filth.)

The hardest part turned out to be in Pennsylvania, although not in the way one would think. Working with a senior curator from the Met, the gal who claimed that Steel#6 had twenty layers of white on canvass before anything else was done to the surface and a Drexel expert, we worked our way to pay dirt. Along the way interviewing some relatives of an art dealer in Paris who had worked with Herr Klein to get the works out of the country before all hell broke loose I had been given information that the clandestine works had been sent to something called the Drexel Institute which would have made sense, but which subsequent to 1970 I think changed to the more generic Drexel University. We spent untold weeks checking out possible lead there, nada, nothing. Then somebody told us about the Drexel mansion about ten miles outside of Philadelphia. A few weeks work there going through many crated boxes and crates looking for something that would have disclosed the item had come through Paris as least we found the secured iron box filled with the treasures, none on frames but after many years still in good shape (that estimation from the Met curator who also helped with the question of authentication).

A book is being written about this extraordinary find, a book which I will be involved with having published by Art Press, so I have limited myself to the shell of the way the items were finally discovered which were actually worthy of a detective novel. What intrigued me, what frankly freaked me out was that the Steel#6 up in Rochester was the end-piece of a series of six paintings on the same general theme of birth and growth. So in Steel#1-5 you will see the same attention to massive layering as in #6 although fewer layers but as you put the framed works in a row (Drexel noted in pencil that this is the way they should be collectively hung on the back of #1) you start with a very small gray object and work your way up to what I have previously described in viewing Steel#6. Amazing, beautiful and perhaps the definitive work expressing what abstract impressionism was all about when it flowered alongside Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and pure abstraction.          

What Did His Father-In Law Say To Her Mother-In-Law-Nothing, Absolutely Nothing- Death To “In-Law” Jokes-Now!

By Steve Lucas, special guest commentary

I am sick unto death of “in-law” jokes, period. Moreover, sick unto death of being the butt of every “in-law” joke that has hit the Lucas-Levine family ever since my son Mark married Marie Levine some twenty-years ago under some very strange circumstances as even I must admit. But to have to every few years, as now, even in retirement, withstand the siege of the Levine devourer machine come family reunion time is beyond the pale, is something I might very well do something about this time. Maybe think something really devious up to ruffle some feathers. Especially, to keep that braggart-roaster Jerry, Jerry Levine, father to dear sweet Marie, and father-in-law to my son Mark even if it was a close thing, the becoming a father-in-law part off kilter.          

    

Let me tell the tale and even the most jaded taste, even the most “live and let live” aficionados will cry to the high heavens with me for vengeance. You might as well know at the beginning that Steve Lucas is not my real name, or at least you should not assume that it is because back about twenty years ago when Mark and Marie sprang the big news that they wanted to get married I was working, well, for the government in a very sensitive capacity. (I will not disclose which agency I worked for since I have something like a non-disclosure agreement with the agency involved some members of whom would be very happy to cut my throat for even mentioning the alphabet soup agency I actually worked for which was so hush-hush in those days only about ten, eleven people know the whole story, or what they think is the whole story.)

Everybody, my son, Jerry Levine, a couple of rogue associates who went free-lancing on their own when they saw a big payday coming up and no desire to share, sided with the bad guys and have yet to be heard from again, assumed it was the CIA and I did nothing to dissuade them from that “front.” The truth is that after the fiasco in Afghanistan, after CIA agents high and low fled like a gaggle of geese when they done supplying the mujahedeen against the Soviets and then dropped out to leave these cock-eyed Arabs or whatever they are to their own devises they have been nothing but jerkoffs and bunglers who I wouldn’t trust to go to the post office to mail a letter if there are any around anymore. They are like the Marines whose last great expedition was in Inchon in Korea around 1950 and they have been living off their respective high points ever since. The alphabet soup “deep state” although we never used that term of art agency I worked for would have had your average CIA operation done before noon with time for a nap before lunch.              

         

Since everything, all the important parts, about that caper has been exposed, been written about by I think Tom Clancy, has been made into a movie starring a guy named Mike Douglas I can fill in some of the information about what I was doing when my Mark laid that bombshell about getting married on me . That while I was on what I will call the Hotel Olga case, although it was not about any hotel (hotels were sites for various aspects of the caper however) but about some rogue ex-Soviet KGB agents grabbing a top of the line (then) Soviet submarine and preparing to sell to the highest bidder, either a state actor whose interests would not coincide with United States interests or a non-state actor who wanted to have the capacity to get, what did Johnny Rocco, the famous gangster out of 1930s Chicago call it, oh yeah, “more,” more dough and power with no heavy lifting.    

The reader does not need to know why I was in Moscow at the time, okay, although that same reader can guess that I was arranging a deal with the Russian guys, agents of the oil oligarchs as it turned out and that as part of the deal agreement was reached that it would be consummated in four days, a Sunday  (not my timetable, theirs, so I couldn’t tip my hand that I needed more time due to “personal” reasons). There is your international intrigue opener but see this mixed in with my having to be in Chicago, yeah, Johnny Rocco’s wide-open Chi town for a party that I was throwing for the young betrothed and to meet the future in-laws, or better fete them officially since I would actually meet them a day or two earlier.  

That “earlier” would set off a train of events which, as I said before I have not lived down to this day. My Mark would be considered a “catch” in today’s meat market, young, good-looking, a lawyer with great prospects and raised by a mother, my ex-wife Donna, who did a good job when I was “working” whatever caper the agency had me running around the world to do. This Marie, a doll, was also a great catch but here is where things broke down and continue to break down on the subject unto this day.  The father, this Jerry Levine, a doctor if you could call it that, a so-called cosmetic surgeon, you know giving well-heeled men and women a tuck here a pull there with no heavy lifting and no particular reason for doing it (except to hear Jerry tell it even today in his own retirement you would think his was the greatest service to build self-esteem since Freud, and cheaper). This guy, a Jewish guy, had about every phobia known to mankind, maybe more, fear of flying, heights, claustrophobia, small spaces, big spaces, guns, or any sense of adventure beyond the usual Saturday country club bullshit that has been going on at least since John O’Hara exposed the whole thing many years ago in an endless series of novels about the vacuous lives of that set. But Jerry had also worked himself up into this fetish for giving his daughter, his Marie, a big wedding, a big sent off and that is how I got bushwhacked, yes, bushwhacked is exactly right into showing up in Chi town when I really needed to be in Paris that weekend to close the deal with the third party I was acting as the middle man for the oligarchs for.     

I might as well tell you since you will find out anyway, or maybe know already if you read the Clancy book or saw the movie, that I was in such deep cover with such a crooked trail of exploits, some even true, known by a bunch of domestic intelligence agencies that during the entire Hotel Olga caper, start to finish, the “feds” were on my ass. (Again, although I have no non-disclosure agreement with this agency everybody assumed it was the FBI, and I let it go as that. Although the FBI probably hasn’t done anything except hassle some has-been Reds since J. Edgar catch John Dellinger with his pants down in some whorehouse in Kansas City and never got over it.) Wouldn’t you know that the “feds” crashed the little pre-wedding reception I had set up in the exclusive Hotel Lennox for Mark and Marie. I was too deep into the case, was too close to wrapping up a serious threat to our national security to let them get to me. So, with their guns drawn, I threw Jerry in front of me to make my escape (and I hear their leader Special Agent Pride is still scratching his head over how I was able to flee, unarmed, with a civilian stiff against his coterie of fifteen gunslingers. Keep scratching.)       

That little silly hostage incident I guess you could call it that meant nothing to me (or history when the deal went down) is really the start of the in-law hassles, the insults. See I had to take Jerry to Paris with me, despite his fear of flying, to see this guy, this hard-ass international gangster, Pierre, not his real name but what the hell, who wanted that freaking submarine to run his dope, his women, his hot cargo, and his guns without hassles via the high tech gadgetry that would be almost undetectable. Like Johnny Rocco Pierre was a “more” guy. A “more” guy with a funny twist though although I had dealt with Pierre several times before on big dope deals and money transfers when Uncle Sam needed some plausible deniability since he was a “fairy,” light on his feet, you know, a homosexual, a gay guy I guess you would call him today. He made a big play for Jerry and I encouraged it although I couldn’t really see good-looking Pierre with an overweight anxious high-end Revlon salesman. In any case nothing big came of it since Jerry was as hetero as you could get but the diversion helped since I got access to Pierre’s computer codes and his money laundering operations.           

A lot of stuff in the spook, spy business and it is usually good for business, good for cover is to have a lot of bullshit out there about how you did this, didn’t do that and so Jerry turned out to be a free ad for me when I had him, fear of heights and all, free-float with me off the tallest building in Chi town. Had him hanging around with “feds” giving them all kinds of wrong information that I had been feeding him all along. And whatever else he is throwing out to his “public” unto this day when my name and how we “met” comes up. Naturally I cleaned up the Pierre case, wrapped it up solo (it is pure bull that Jerry was “with me every step of the way” as he tells the story not in my hearing in capturing Pierre, grabbing some serious dough, 170 mil not bad, and bonking that freaking high-tech submarine to the briny deep and saving a the world from another million stone cold junkies, grifters, sifters, and midnight drifters). Naturally too around the family hearth with the old ladies and gents bored silly and looking for some goose Jerry can pull out the heart-rendering story of how he saved the wedding of Mark and his daughter Marie from a stumblebum derelict like me. A mere in-law. Enough said.   

All The Junkies Were Valiant-Crying Out For Repentance And God Save Us Sinners-The Junkies Have Always Been With Us-The Fixer Man Too- Let Me Count The Ways

By Fritz Taylor

I have calmed down a little, come off my high horse a little about the subject of a piece I did a couple of articles back. The article supposedly about famed crime novel (and friend of young Rav Wilson who has caught on at this publication recently) Lem Kane’s switch over to police procedurals from the previous slam bang of private detection he had built his solid no non-sense but also take no prisoners reputation on but really about the hard reality of what the public coppers in places like Fort Point Estates down in Fulton County Georgia did, or did  not do about crime and criminals. Fort Point Estates being not some arbitrary example but the place where me and my kin going back a couple of generations grew up and lived. A place where northerners like Seth Garth and Ralph Morris who grew up in the same kind of places maybe more properly call “the projects.” Not the fucking pretty picture by-the numbers- squeeze a clue a page out police procedural where the coppers actually don’t grab every freebie coffee and cruller not nailed down if you can believe that but follow the leads to their logical conclusions providing some closure to the case, and maybe to some desperate redemption seeking family. And not the pretty boy and girl television bull either where in something like forty-two minutes they are calling whatever the case is “a wrap.”

The reality. The Fort Point Estates reality was basically nothing but the public coppers from top to bottom as I found out much too late in the case of Captain Dorian who ran the police substation on site before he wound up being run into the state pen not for the high crimes he let get by, let his men get by with but for stealing some city materials like copper tubing and selling the stuff on the black market except maybe hold their grubby little hands out for whatever pocket change they can scoop up from the fixer man, grifters, and pimps. In the priority of things copper the fixer man was king, followed by the pimps and then the grifters with their ten-percent dreams and discount prices.  

I mentioned in the previous two pieces in what appears seems to be a short series brewing that the public coppers worked hand in hand with the local owner of the only variety store, the only place in the area to get provisions especially if like lots of residents including my family at times you had no automobile to get to other places. That guy, Jimmy Bob Carter (and his wife always called Lady Vivian but I am not sure why) not only sold milk and bread but ran the local “book,” ran the whores out of his upstairs space and was the fixer man for the junkies and hopeless who needed a little something for the head, a little something to get through the day, days really. (As far as I know the stuff was mainly opiums, morphines, maybe cocaine although that seemed a stretch for the time since a lot of the fathers in the Estates had been veterans from World War II and had grievous injuries for which they had been doped up with say morphine before they had been discharged ready or not and needed a little something besides corn liquor to clear their heads, to ease the fucking pain.) In any case sitting there with hands at the ready and not accepting cheapjack crap like free coffee and crullers were the local public coppers who freely placed their bets in the “book” left right out on the open counter,  grabbed a whore or two and fled upstairs and looked the other way when Jimmy Bob did up his bindles, eight balls, and grams.        

Those remembrances, seemingly forgotten memories from a time when I, and all the kids I grew up with down there, learned way too early about the hard side of life how some stuff comes up to the surface. Like the time I was standing at Carter’s Variety, at Jimmy Bob’s front really for all the overpriced provisions he actually had in the store, trying to decide on what kind of cheapjack candy I wanted when a couple of coppers came in straight from their patrol car, in uniform picked up Jimmy Bob’s “book” and put down their bets and nobody said nothing. Or the time that Captain Dorian grabbed Jimmy Bob’s lead whore, Lula, and ran her up the stairs to do what of course then I didn’t know but it wasn’t to pray to the Lord like the Captain did on Sunday morning with his wife and five children at 7^th Street Baptist. Here’s a last example, a couple of coppers sitting in their squad car when a couple of known local junkies (they were notorious even among us kids who didn’t know squat about drugs or the seamy side of life for going “on the nod” at the little beach front about fifty yards down from Carter’s) walked into Jimmy Bob’s  looking like hell and coming out like they had just found Jesus (and maybe they had). Got “well” in any case.

Once you start dredging though who knows. I have had plenty of reasons not to trust, and at times to hate the public coppers no matter how nice and pretty they make them appear to be on cop television shows (although usually not on the daily news where they get the old see-saw). As mentioned in the last piece I had almost forgotten about the most notorious case that came out of the Fort Point Estates no good copper racket, the case of Tara Lee Parker. The murder most foul of Tara Lee Parker, which was never solved, maybe they never wanted solved. Tara Lee had been a classmate of my oldest brother, Lester, so he knew more about what happened than I did as a twelve-year old boy hardly up to date on sex and sexual depravity and sheer craziness. Tara Lee was maybe sixteen when she dropped out of school, according to Lester who had her in some of his classes.

I guess Tara Lee, was never much of a student, was known to the older crowd as a girl who liked to walk on the wild side, who ran away from home who knows how many times. Got a reputation for all kinds of depraved doings but that stuff I learned later for the word around the Estates when her name came up was slut, whore, pig and cocksucker, stuff like that. Eventually she got into Jimmy Bob’s stable, his good time girls, his girls who would go to the “game room” which is what he called his upstairs operation to do whatever. It was well-known to be frequently by richer guys from the Cherokee Hills section of town, the old money cotton and textile mills money that kept that section afloat. You would see cars, American cars, expensive American cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns, definitely not Estate cars like a Nash Rambler, in front of Carter’s Variety day and night. And young stuff like Tara Lee was there to service their needs.                

Now I didn’t know, still don’t, know all the arrangements that Jimmy Bob had had with his clients, but I guess for an extra price guys could take their whores elsewhere to do what they were going to do. That turned to be the downfall for one Tara Lee Parker. One morning some early morning fisherman found her body against a sullen tree truck along the swollen Dam River cut up bad I heard, cut up in a very sexually depraved way when I understood such things better later. The last guy seen with her was Gary Lyons, the son of the major mill operator in town in those days who employed a number of Estate fathers in his works for cheap pay, who had a serious reputation as a wild boy with the women.   

Here is where I will rant, here is where even over fifty years later I cry out for some closure for Tara Lee Parker. The coppers, Captain Dorian in the lead knew that she had a few off-kilter clients, including Gary, from the Cherokee Hills. Knew she had been out with some guy from there that night of her death because she had taken off with him in a Lincoln, the Lyons favorite car. Did they ever do anything to check Gary out, to check where he had been, who he had been with. Do anything but close down the investigation after about two days. No, and I would hear from a shaken Lester once he heard what had happened to Tara Lee that some two-bit copper said that more than two days was too much time to spent on the murder of a bent whore, that she was doomed anyway so forget about it. Yeah, run that remark on cop television shows why don’t you.

On top of the indecent way that the public coppers handled the case which is worth its own rant I have been informed by a reliable source that Gary Lyons, who would take over the family mill operations before sending them off-shore to Mexico and living the life of some kind of playboy passed away a couple of years ago. According to my source among the effects found in his mansion when they cleared things out was a pair of very old, very soiled women’ underwear with the initials TLP on them, other pairs as well in various conditions and apparently from later times. Too late for some serious justice but at least my brother Lester who really was broken up about her horrible death now has an idea of what happened and who did the foul deed.   

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