Bill Pronzini: Hoodwink

I studied the extortion letter again, but it didn’t tell me anything more than it had the first time. So much for research. I put the letter and manuscript back into the envelope, pulled the phone and my address file over in front of me, and called Ben Chadwick down in Hollywood.

Chadwick, like me, was a private investigator. Unlike me, he specialized in work for the major film companies-investigating property-room and backlot thefts, insurance claims against the studios, missing actors or actors’ relatives, things like that. I had met him a few years ago on a routine case, and he had looked me up once when he was in San Francisco; we were friendly enough for me to ask a favor and him to do it if he was free.

He was in, free, and willing. When I explained the situation, he said that offhand he couldn’t remember any sort of scandal connected with Evil by Gaslight or even anything memorable from behind-the-scenes. Sounded like a nut thing to him, he said, but he’d see what he could come up with by the first of next week.

After we’d rung off, I picked up the convention brochure Dancer had given me. They had quite a program mapped out for the three-day con. There were two panel discussions on Friday, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday morning; there were cocktail parties on Friday evening and Saturday evening, a banquet Saturday night, and a Sunday luncheon; and there was a pulp art show, a screening of the old Shadow film serial with Victor Jory and another of The Maltese Falcon, and a special auction of more than fifty rare and valuable pulps.

The first of Friday’s panels was called “Weird Tales and the Shudder Pulps” and would be chaired by Ivan Wade, whose specialty during the late thirties and throughout the forties had been some of the grisliest horror fiction ever set down on paper. He was also something of an authority on occult themes and stage magic, the brochure said. Bert Praxas would head the second panel that day, about “The Super Heroes,” a topic on which he was well qualified. He had written some 130 full-length novels between 1939 and 1951 about a crimefighter called The Spectre, one of the era’s rivals to The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Operator #5.

Saturday’s panels were “The Western and Adventure Pulps,” chaired by Jim Bohannon, one of the most prolific writers in each of those categories; and “The Pulp Editor Versus the Pulp Writer,” headed by Frank Colodny. The final, Sunday morning, panel was the one that most interested me: “The Hard-boiled Private Eyes,” with co-chairpersons Russ Dancer, Waldo Ramsey, and Cybil Wade, Ivan’s wife. Dancer’s qualifications were obvious, as were Ramsey’s-I recognized his name as a semiregular contributor to Midnight Detective, one of Colodny’s Action House pulps, and others such as Black Mask and New Detective, he had also become a successful suspense novelist in recent years. But I didn’t know what Cybil Wade was doing there until I read her list of credits and discovered, with some amazement, that she was Samuel Leatherman.

If I had been asked to name the best writer of pulp private-eye fiction after Hammett and Chandler, I would have said Samuel Leatherman without having to think twice. The Leatherman stories, all of which featured a tough, uncompromising detective named Max Ruffe, had run in Black Mask, Dime Detective, and occasionally Midnight Detective throughout the forties. They were lyrical studies in violence, poetic in the same way Hammett and Chandler were poetic, with more characterization and insight than any five average pulp stories. But they were male stories from beginning to end; the style was masculine, the appeal was masculine, even the insights were masculine. The fact that they had been written by a woman was more than a little remarkable. And it made me want to meet Cybil Wade even more than any of the others-to find out what sort of woman she was and also to find out why she had never taken Max Ruffe into book-length novels, why she had let him die along with Dancer’s Rex Hannigan and so many others.

I could feel myself getting excited about the next three days, the prospect of talking with half a dozen old pulp writers-a feeling that may or may not have been childish for somebody my age, but what the hell. As Dancer had said, I was into pulps and had been for more than thirty years. I had more than six thousand of them, nearly all mystery and detective issues, in my Pacific Heights flat, and I read them with a great deal of pleasure. Psychologically, in fact, they were the reason why I had become, first, a cop and later, a private detective. Emulation: you grow up worshipping a certain kind of hero and if you can, you want to become the same sort of hero yourself. Life-imitating-art in its purest form. So here I was, living out some, if not all, of my youthful fantasies. Erika Coates, a woman I had almost married nine years ago, had been the first to point out to me that I was trying to be a pulp private eye-in an age when the hero was no longer fashionable, in a city that already had Sam Spade. She thought it was unhealthy and counterproductive, and maybe she was right.

But trying to be a pulp private eye made me happy, — reading pulps and talking to old pulp writers made me happy. And wasn’t being happy what life was all about?

Damn right it is, Mr. Marlowe.

Let’s go meet some pulp writers, Mr. Spade.

The Continental was an old Victorian hotel not far from Union Square, in the heart of the city. It had been built around 1890, at no small expense, which meant that it had a pillared and frescoed and English tile-floored lobby, and ornamental Queen Anne fireplaces in every room. Although it was too small to compete with the St. Francis, the Fairmont, and the other fancy hotels, it catered to the same type of well-to-do clientele. More or less, anyway. In recent years the management had been forced to relax its standards somewhat, as a result of increased operating costs, and to allow people and events in its hallowed halls which might not otherwise have measured up. If you had suggested twenty years ago that a pulp magazine convention be held there, they would have thrown you out on your ear.

I got there a few minutes before eight, all spruced up and chewing a Clorets mint to conceal the pepperoni pizza I had had for supper, and took one of the mirror-walled elevators up to the fif teenth floor. Suite M was at the southern end; there was a table to one side of the entrance with a banner hanging from it that read: Western Pulp Con - Private Reception. A balding, fortyish guy in a turtleneck sweater and sports jacket was sitting behind the table, making notations on a mimeographed list. When I told him my name, he smiled broadly, letting me see an uneven set of dentures, and pumped my hand as if the two words were a hot tip on an Italian horse.

“Pleasure,” he said. “Pleasure. I’m Lloyd Underwood, convention chairman. From Hayward.”

“How are you, Mr. Underwood?”

“Call me Lloyd. Glad you could come. I’ve heard about you-before Russ Dancer mentioned you’d be coming, I mean. Spotted your name in the papers a few times. Like to see your collection one of these days. Got any good duplicates for trade?”

“Well…”

“Let me know if you need any pre — I930 Black Masks. I’m selling off part of my collection. I’ve got two from ‘27 and one from ‘24 with a Hammett story, — all three near mint, white pages, no cover defects. I’ll give you a complete list later.”

“Uh, sure …”

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk,” Underwood said. “Come early tomorrow if you can. Registration starts at noon, but I’ll be setting up at ten-thirty and the huckster room will be open then.