Gun in Cheek

by Bill Pronzini

  The second reason Naked Villainy is worthy of mention is the presence of such dazzling passages as:

  A fuzzy voice I'd recognize in three feet of water drifted up to me. "Lieutenant, this is Tuffy. I got a hot one for you on the radio. . . . Some dame. Somebody cracked her skull with a thundermug."

  "What?"

  "That's what I said. A thundermug. One of them things they have under the bed where there ain't no bathroom. One of them crocks with handles on both sides."

  "What will they think of next!"

  It was then I saw coagulated blood on the left temple and clotted matter that had seeped from the bullet hole into the coverlet.

  I knew the man was dead.

  Hope flared in her dark eyes as she grabbed the rope I had tossed to her drowning brain.

  Then I felt damp fresh air hit the back of my neck and I knew somebody had opened the door. Before I could see who it was, somebody stuck a red-hot poker in my ear and all my brains ran out of the hole. My bones turned into macaroni and I sank down into a gooey mass of tomato sauce that looked like blood. Then somebody began rubbing the end of my nose with sandpaper and there was a big balloon of pain tied to my ear.

  The one unforgettable exchange in the book is when Wick trades some banter with a frowzy blond B-girl in a bar. In front of the blond are five empty martini glasses, each with an olive in it, and in her eyes, as the song says, is that old come-hither stare.

  I looked back at the glasses. "Five will make you dizzy."

  She stared at me. Then her red mouth gashed open and she said, "The price is right, but my name is Daisy."

  Of all the publishers doing originals in the early fifties, the one with the most impressive list of alternatives would have to be Ace and its line of Double Novels. These glorious post-pulp pulp mysteries (and Westerns and science fiction) came two to a package, back to back and bound so that the half you weren't reading was upside down: "turn this book over for a second complete novel." Carl G. Hodges was one of their writers; so were such stalwarts as Michael Avallone, Frank Diamond, Chester Warwick, Russ Winterbotham ("J. Harvey Bond"), Mel Colton, Bob McKnight, Louis Trimble, and James Hadley Chase.

  But Ace's single greatest achievement was the publication in 1953 of a novel entitled Decoy, by a writer—actually, a collaborative team of two writers—known as Michael Morgan. To read one page of this fascinating work is to marvel at the talents of its creators, C. E. "Teet" Cane and Dean M. Dorn. For they were truly blessed with genius.

  According to the biographical sketch on the jacket of Nine More Lives (Random House, 1947), the only other full-length mystery novel by Michael Morgan, Teet and Dean were a pair of Hollywood movie flacks who began collaborating on pulp stories after the war. (At least two Michael Morgan novelettes were published in Dime Detective and one in Mammoth Detective; they, like Nine More Lives, are almost but not quite as bad as Decoy.) Teet did the writing and Dean served as a leg man (?) and gimmick creator. Dean's gimmicks are pretty wonderful, but Teet's writing is what lifts Decoy below the ranks of all the others. The man was a poet laureate of the absurd.

  The plot of Decoy is both complicated and farcical and does not lend itself well to simple summary. It has to do with an unofficial Lonely-Hearts Club/gigolo/blackmail racket in Hollywood operated by a villainess called the Duchess; but another gang from the East Coast, led by a mysterious "Mr. Upstairs" who goes by the name of King Lazarr, is trying to muscle in on her crowd. In the middle of this mob warfare is one Bill Ryan, hero and narrator (of Nine More Lives and the Morgan pulp stories, too), who is a Hollywood stuntman. He is also a dumb cluck, by his own testimony on at least a dozen occasions throughout the book.

  Also involved are several hard-boiled types colorfully named Joe Salka, Belmont Spur, Franklin Carter, Geoffrey Dare, Russell Orth, and Mr. Yegg and Mr. Thug. Plus several soft-boiled and sexy ladies called Linda Douglas, Sally Willow, ma Andrews, and Judith Monroe.

  There is quite a bit of exciting action, most of it choreographed by Dean so Bill Ryan can use his stuntman's wiles to escape the jaws of death—once by doing a neat one-and-a-half gainer out a fourth-floor hotel window into a swimming pool full of guests (and, lucky for him, full of water too). There are quite a few interesting murders as well, including one in which a minor baddie is impaled on the spine of a giant, and very well-endowed, cactus.

  To give you an idea of the complexity of the plot, here is a passage of dialogue spoken to Bill Ryan, operating under the alias of Reynolds at the time, by the Duchess, who sounds more like Duke Wayne, or perhaps Edward G. Robinson in KeyLargo:

  "I didn't find Out your name just today, Reynolds. I knew it last Friday when you busted into the picture, claimin' you was a friend of Russell Orth's, wantin' a setup with the Andrews dame. I could of cooked your act that day. I said let you have plenty of rope. I wondered how come you said you was a friend of a guy who was already croaked. Russ was one of my pets, brother. I know about your playin' games through the Traxton halls so's you could make contact in the men's room with Salka and Spur. Right after that you tied onto Frank's tail an' followed him outside the hotel. You never came back, an' early this ayem, another of my best boys was found on the lawn—dead as a poop. Today you show up here with that dreamy-eyed blond, Judith Monroe, actin' like you was a real gee-gee. That give you an idea of what I know?"

  As may be seen from the above, Teet had a positive passion for euphemism, hyperbole, and the innovative simile, all of which combine to create brilliant deadpan farce. None of the commonplace for Teet, not even where basic English is concerned. Slang and pseudoslang were among his most effective tools.

  Men aren't men in Decoy; they're chaps, ginks, bozos, cookies, Joes, characters, and didos. Women aren't women; they're dames, babes, skirts, tamales, dolls, floozies, chippies, and trollops. Crooks aren't crooks; they're yeggs, thugs, mugs, Jugs, lunks, punks, hulks, scums, gigs, palookas, plug-uglies, rats, buzzards, birds, baboons, monkeys, apes, and apemen. Guns aren't guns; they're rods, heaters, six-shooters (or six-shoters), cannons, and gats. People don't walk or run; they ankle, loll, amble, stretch strides, or get on the speed track. Nor do they speak much; they burp, wheeze, dribble, chirp, crackle, croak, crisp, hulk, syrup, gruff, grunt, and gurgle.

  Now then, the Pronzini bozo burped, let's get on the speed track and open the novel to page 1.

  And we find that Teet wastes no time letting the reader know he is a writer to be reckoned with. Witness the very first sentence:

  The way she looked at me sent a craving through my body for a tall cold drink.

  Ah. And a few sentences later:

  Her face was rounded with beauty and had two features which demanded complete attention. Of these, her eyes were most absorbing; they were two wide pools of darkness which exuded warmth. Then her lips; they rose from her face with the vivid freshness of lovely, sparkling champagne bubbles.

  One of Teet's strong points, as the foregoing demonstrates, is description—particularly of babes. Here are a few more examples (including the single greatest sentence ever to spring from Teet's nimble brain).

  When she moved, [her] muscles stood up individually and made a speech. Her hair was still tousled and the disarray snapped at my eager fingertips.

  She wore low-heeled Oxfords, the kind made for walking, and the backs of firm-swelling calves of her legs told me she might be a chorus girl who'd turned somebody's moll.

  Her graceful legs, swelling gradually upward to the bottom of her white swim Suit, were as appealing as they'd been, sheathed in sheer hose, straddling the window of Carter's bedroom the night before.

  Just as I was wondering how I could pull ma Out of this itchy situation, a Mountie came riding to our rescue. It was a female Mountie, and she was a flaming torch on top of a lithe body which swooped down on us like a kootch dancer in a waterfront dive.

  Ina syruped, "Hello, Sally." The redhead laid an eye on me and started rubbing it over my bulk as though she was sizing up a rib-roast.

  I
sat beside her in the Traxton's Parisian Room and let the edges of my eyes siphon up the pleasure of her tall, slender figure in a blue evening gown which made a low-bridged criss-cross right above where the meat on a chicken is the whitest.

  Teet's greatest sentence, of course, is the last one quoted. It may even be the single greatest bad line in the history of crime fiction. Certainly none quoted elsewhere in these pages is more ingenious, lyrical, delightful, and absurd.

  Ankling right along, we discover that Teet was also adept at describing chaps, especially cop chaps:

  The cops weren't long in arriving. They descended on the corridor like a blustering winter wind off the Nebraska plains. The character who apexed their flying wedge was a hunk of tough meat.

  And that other of his strong points include dialogue.

  "Suck back that crack, copper. That kid's strictly top of the heap, and I knew it the minute I laid eyes on her shaking down Carter's room. . ."

  "Don't tell me you carry a heater in your girdle, madam!"

  And compelling introspection.

  I wanted to see the murderer of that beautiful creature seated in the gas chamber. I wanted it so bad my saliva glands throbbed.

  And emotional reaction.

  "What are you afraid of, Linda?"

  "Afraid?" She sucked the word clear down to her short ribs.

  And action sequences.

  The blast of the iron fist caught me high on the jaw, and my guardian angel must have been astride my shoulder, because, surprisingly, my jaw bone didn't crack. I went streaking out through the darkness on the wings of pain. A tidal wave rolled up from Wilshire, a hundred yards away, and engulfed me. My jaw bounced off the back of my skull and I wallowed in the softness of a cloud. I groped around for my brain and after a couple of years it came back from San Francisco and said "Get up!"

  And cryptic messages and reactions thereto.

  Ryan:

  The giant cactus at nine sharp. Come up path from Inn, whistling Yankee Doodle. Keep hands on top of head. Remember, you'd better be on the level.

  Spur

  It was a little melodramatic, but that was fine with me. . .

  And (this is where Teet really shines) the masterful one-liner. Silence settled like a hen squatting on her eggs. He laughed once in the direction of his right ear.

  My head flew off and hit the ceiling.

  Her cheeks had a case of the flushes.

  His eyes popped out of his pink-cake face and danced in the air.

  Below his hat were enough eyebrows to stuff a pillow.

  Lips seemed to be Teet's specialty, though.

  His lip did a nip-up at the left end.

  He puffed out his lips and they made a blooping sound.

  Her lips wore smugness like a slipper.

  There was interest licking his lips.

  His lower lip hauled in its droop.

  Unfortunately, some of Teet's one-liners don't quite make it. Following are a few examples of what might be termed "Huh?" sentences.

  He ran his eyes over my silence. My burn was going to boil soon.

  She laid a hand on my arm and I knew I really had

  her in the palm of my hand because her face was contorted.

  Judith just didn't look like a hot urge having its fling.

  He put his vocalizing on arrested motion

  A choking pig couldn't have done better and I patted my inspiration on the head for the effect it had.

  She went up in a puff of smoke, and a startling truth dribbled out of her explosion.

  Reality cut me down six notches.

  The fire from my ears, my eyes, and my throat con

  gregated into a lump and shoved off the top of my head.

  The realization of what all this meant exploded

  inside my head and shot me from the mouth of a cannon.

  As evidenced by the foregoing, Bill Ryan (and some of the other didos and dolls) has a difficult time keeping himself together, what with his head flying off, his stomach dropping out, his brain going off to San Francisco for a couple of years, and his whole self being shot out of a cannon. But he manages somehow and is more or less whole when the moment of the exciting final chase arrives.

  And it is exciting, make no mistake about that. In fact, it starts out as a literal cliff-hanger. By using his stuntman's wiles, Ryan escapes from a car sent hurtling over a precipice by Mr. Yegg, after which he hangs by his fingertips for a short while (about half a page) before the old S. W. come through again and he's able to scramble to safety.

  But that's not all; not by any means. Next we have a car chase, which commences when Ryan commandeers a police car (with the police still in it). He's driving at 100 mph, right on the tails of the apemen, when they throw Out a "spare wheel" directly into his path, causing a spin-out and allowing the palookas to escape. Ah, but not for long. Ryan and the coppers are soon back on the road and bearing down on a private airstrip where a small plane is about to take off.

  Ryan notes the plane as soon as he wheels the police go-buggy inside the airstrip grounds—and notes, too, through the open cabin door, that it not only contains Mr. Upstairs, the mysterious King Lazarr, but Ryan's own lady love, Judith Monroe. Then the door closes and the plane begins to taxi down therunway. How can Ryahn stop it in time?

  In a flash of inspiration, he realizes the answer: He'll have to use his Stuntman's Wiles!

  So he rockets the rattle (police car, that is) onto the runway, opens the driver's door, leaps out onto the tail of the plane, grabs the rudder, and rides the tail into the ground "like a cowboy bulldozing [sic] a steer."

  Bravo, Dean!

  Bravo, Teet!

  Bravo, Decoy!

  Between 1955 and 1970, dozens of writers wrote hundreds of private-eye, spy, and other mystery originals for Ace, Monarch, Lion, Zenith, Pyramid, Avon, Gold Medal, Popular Library, and Dell. But none of them turned out more shlock than a West Coast wordsmith named Lynton Wright Brent. If Brent's output had been confined to the mystery field, he would have to be considered one of its alternative giants; unfortunately, most of his fiction was in the Western, soft-core porn, and not-so-softcore porn categories. (Another of his talents was a positive genius for titles. One Brent novel, a Western/porn hybrid published in 1965, carries the magnificent title of Lust Gallops into the Desert. Others of note include Passionate Peril at Fort Tomahawk, The Sex Demon of Jangal, and Lavender Love Rumble.)

  Brent did write a trio of mysteries in 1969 for Powell Books, an ambitious but sadly inept southern California publishing concern that went out of business in 1970. One is called Death of a Detective and features the adventures of "that great news scooper, Sam 'Stark-Mad' Stark" who gained his nickname by "poking his nose into the danger zone!" The danger zone he pokes it into here is a lot of interesting twaddle about a just-released ex-con who has vowed to kill Stark for sending him to the slammer, assorted good and bad cops, assorted good and bad crooks with sobriquets like Nutsie and Scrapsy, a girl named Mala (" 'H'm—Mala! Sounds like an Eskimo's daughter."'), and Stark's enamorata, a fiesty little number called Trixie.

  "What are you thinking about?" she asked bluntly.

  "Us."

  "Oh my, brother Stark! So—so soon?"

  "I've got a trigger heart," he drawled. "It reacts at the drop of a hat."

  Stark straightened up, looking as though he had just won a prize. "So! Here we have Hammond's girl friend! Now, that's a feature story!"

  "Leave it lay, you beast!" Trixie growled. "If you print anything about my college roommate I'll—I'll find a way to castrate you. From your job, I mean."

  "Wish I was a farmer . . . with nothing to fret about but horses, chickens, and cows."

  Sam Stark grinned and grunted, simultaneously. Then he replied, "You'd be bored stiff. After one week of that kind of life you'd be . . wishing to hell you were back in the big city where the action is."

  "Really? You think it would be that bad?"

  "Worse. Who but a farmer wants
to listen to a cow announcing with a low and moanful moo that it's time to milk her?"

  The standout among Brent's Powell mysteries, though, is One Man Crime, which stars Justin Strong, an ex-matinee idol and crooner who has been reduced to doing sports promotion for the roller derby because of a scandal involving murder. As he reflects on page 2: