September's Short Fiction and More
Hi all! This month’s issue of the Crime Cafe Magazine, includes Part Three of Just Call Her Marlo: Something Rotten.
Here’s where we last left off.
And here’s the Part Three as posted from my blog. I added this part, which wasn’t in the original draft of the screenplay, but probably needed to be added.
Here’s Part Three!
I needed a vacation. I needed a drink. I needed a bath. I needed to floss. But I also had to follow my leads as fast as I could, to keep my client alive and get the goods on Claudius. So I hotfooted out of Elsinore Heights and made tracks after Tweedledum and Tweedledummer.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turned out to be fast-moving dumdums. In fact, I realized I’d been so engaged in conversing with Claudius, I hadn’t noticed the make of their car. Fortunately, I have the kind of connections that provide in times of hardship. One of them happened to hack into all sorts of databases.
And while vetting the two men, I learned they’d lived together since high school. They jointly owned one vehicle: a Ford Gran Torino. A 70s relic, but a muscle car owned by two muscle-heads. Seemed suitable.
With that intel, I found my way to their residence, in a shabby set of apartments, where I noted the presence near their building of a Gran Torino, fire engine red with orange flames on the side. A flaming hot rod owned by two men living together? Nice optics, guys. Very tasteful.
Surveillance sucks, so I’d purchased a small, magnetized tracking device and came prepared to attach it to their car. I parked the car, but before I could manage to exit it, the two men left the apartment building and sauntered toward their vehicle. Each of them carried shotguns, which really got my attention.
I considered following them discreetly, but they confounded my assumptions by tossing the shotguns into the trunk, then returning to the building. After a brief pause, I slipped out of my car, tracking device in hand, and tried to look casual while striding toward their ride, keeping to the shadows. I’d brought my trusty Smith & Wesson revolver but hoped not to use it.
Once I reached the flame-adorned vehicle, I crouched beside the bumper and quickly slapped the magnetic device to the undercarriage. Rising quickly to full height, I pivoted and took a hurried walk away from the car. As I moved, the two men emerged again from the building. One look my way and I suddenly had a couple of stalkers trailing me as I tripped along the pavement.
“Hey! You!” I recognized the voice. Rosencrantz.
Busted!
I turned to face them. “Oh, hi! I was just taking the air.”
“Sure.” A word spoken with lack of conviction from a commoner. “Why are you following us?”
“What?” My indignation didn’t need feigning. How dare he assume I had that much interest in them. Of course, our little convo at the Hamlet mansion could have tipped my hand.
“Get real,” Rosencrantz said. “We know you work for Hamlet. So what are you doing here?”
“I’m beginning to wonder myself.” Not much of a retort, but it was all I was willing to give.
“Hey,” Guildenstern leaned toward his pal. “You don’t think she knows about … you know. The Dane.”
Rosencrantz’s face screwed into a look of disgust. “Could you do me a real big favor, big guy? Go die somewhere.” He turned back to me. “Now, answer me, sister. Why are you here?”
“Why are any of us anywhere?” Really, I wanted to know.
Guildenstern grimaced as if thought took effort. “That is a good question.”
“No, it isn’t,” Rosencrantz shot back at him. “Now shut up.”
As they bickered, I backed away. “I mean, are we all just poor players on someone else’s stage? On a river somewhere?”
Both men turned toward me. “What are you talking about?” Rosencranz nearly shouted.
“Nothing,” I said, ducking into my car, firing it up, and speeding away.
PLUS this week’s movie review!
My Review of ‘Out of the Fog’ (1941)
I saw this on TCM Noir Alley and Eddie Mueller called it a proto-noir, I believe. And yeah, that description does seem to fit. It’s not quite film noir yet, but it’s definitely getting into that territory. And it is actually kind of a film noir, but really more, it’s more like a gangster movie that’s creeping into film noir territory. I thought it was okay as a movie. I thought it was kind of slow moving in some ways and kind of corny in some ways. But I think the thing that really got me about this movie was watching John Garfield, who I normally think of as a sympathetic character, be such a mean guy. I mean, he plays this gangster who’s extorting these fishermen, and it’s really kind of revolting and you just want to kill him.
But anyway, he gets involved with Ida Lupino, and that’s the other thing that really got me about this movie, Ida Lupino playing such a dishrag. I just wanted to say, “Wake up, girl.” But then again, I could completely understand where she was coming from. She’s like, “I don’t want to live my life as a fishwife on this waterfront all the time.” And so you can kind of see all the Depression era roots in this movie. It’s based on a play called The Gentle People and the gentle people are the people in the boats who are being extorted, of course. And the whole thing is about exploitation of people in this position and how the powerful exert control over the weak and the not-so-powerful. And so for that, I mean, it’s worth watching. I mean, especially for cineates. I mean, true cineates. This one is worth watching, I suppose.
And because it really gives you a flavor for that whole historical, all that time there. The films that came out of the Depression are interesting. I mean, I could probably do a whole series on that, on the fact that there were so many really upbeat Yeah, yeah, yeah movies during the Depression to counteract all that depression. And also at the same time, you had this gangster stuff coming up and real dark stuff. So this is a really interesting movie as kind of an in-between, between that period and the solid film noir period of the forties and fifties.
As for the actors, I love them all. I love Ida Lupino, I love John Garfield. Eddie Albert was in the unenviable position of playing the normal nice guy who, of course, always looks so dull and boring compared to the bad guy, I guess. As you see in Out of the Past, for instance. Now there’s a film noir. Anyway, how did I get on that subject? I don’t know.
But it’s a good film, one that I would recommend for cineates, particularly because of the whole historical context really. And there’s a lot of history that goes into the making as far as what could and couldn’t go into this film because there were definite changes from the end of the play that had to be made because of the Hayes Code and all of that. Anyway, that’s it for me and I’ll talk to you later. Thanks.
Here’s the trailer!
I’ll give it 4 stars!
*****
Directed by Anatole Litvak
Screenplay by Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald, and Richard Macaulay (based on the play The Gentle People by Irwin Shaw)
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
*****
BONUS LINKS
“Sleep Like a Baby” by Julie Hastrup. From Shotgun Honey.
PLUS: 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE THIRTIES (1934–1943). From HiLowbrow.
MURDER AT 3 CENTS A DAY: An Annotated Crime Fiction Bibliography of the Lending Library Publishers: 1936-1967.
A MYSTERY, CRIME & NOIR NOTEBOOK by Gary Lovisi (Stark House 2023/forthcoming in November). From Sweet Freedom.
10 Best Noir Novels by Ken Bruen. From Publishers Weekly.
Review of Fat City by Leonard Gardner. Reviewed by Tony Baer on Mystery*File.
Along with a PI Episode Review of The Rockford Files.
Blood In Your Eye by Robert Patrick Wilmot. From Rough Edges.
From CrimeReads, an exclusive excerpt from The Hike, by Lucy Clarke.
Lucy was a guest on the podcast, a few years ago. Seems like only yesterday. :)
The Shady Side of the Sixties, Part One and Part Two! From Cocktails and Crime. Sounds like it’s right up my noir alley. :)
And coming in 2024 on AMC, Monsieur Spade with Clive Owen! He was awesome in Croupier! :)
And now, I think you’re ready for this! :)
What would you say to a scripted podcast version of Just Call Me Marlo? :)