I need some clarification…was Violet killed before or after Wells? I know that hasn’t been determined, but it will help me decide some further ideas.
Hello…did we give up?
Al Bowlly was a real singer at the Rainbow Room. I’m thinking someone up there owed Mr. Strauss a favor and sent down Al on loan. Only problem is, 1936 is about the time Al’s voice started to go; Wikipedia says a wart was later found in his throat.
Mr. Strauss probably won’t be pleased with this. 
OK, so I’m in. I just posted another segment in the thread. If it’s too screwy, I apologize. My biggest exposure to hard-boiled detective fiction is Nero Wolfe on A&E and Guy Noir from “Prairie Home Companion.” These things are too much fun to pass up, though.
Did I kill the story by participating? Say it ain’t so! It’s been 40 hours and counting, guys.
Here’s a summary of the plot so far for anybody who needs it. Character names are bolded on first mention.
Sunday, July 5, 1936
Joe Maynard, private eye, receives a call from his friend Vince D’Abruzzo (Bruiser) to meet him for breakfast. Joe’s secretary,** Linda St. James**, arrives, and Bruiser calls again, to tell Joe that breakfast plans are canceled and for him and Linda to meet Bruiser at the docks. It is revealed that Bruiser has a crush on Linda, like most of the male population of Adams City.
The leave, intending to take the streetcar, but discover Joe’s wallet is empty. Then they see that Joe’s ex-wife Angie has freed Joe’s 1929 Ford Model A from impound lot and left him some cash. Joe treats Linda to breakfast.
They reach the docks, where they meet Bruiser, his bodyguard Sal Garibaldi, and Police Detective Ronald Faraday. Also present is the very dead body of one Violet Collins. She worked as a cigarette girl at the Owl Club, owned by Herman Strauss. She appears to have been shot in the face.
On her body was one of Joe’s business cards, with
LSJ daughter, 2 p.m., HMS James Thompson
JM – father?
written on the back. The James Thompson appears to be a big passenger ship, set to depart at 2 PM that day. The fact that all this is scrawled on the back of one of Joe’s business cards, with his and Linda’s initials appearing on the back, makes both of them suspects.
Linda moves to pull a ladylike pistol on the police detective, but Joe stops her and covers for her, and pushes the conversation along, pointing out that he handed out a lot cards, HMS is only for ships in the British navy, and that neither he nor Linda had ever met Violet Collins (a lie?). HMS James Thompson turns out to be a a rich British man named in full Horatio Michael Stephen James Thompson. The boat is the RMS James Thompson.
As Herman Strauss is out of town, but due to arrive that night, the four (Joe, Linda, Bruiser and Sal) speed off to the Owl Club to talk in private. When the get to the Owl Club, they meet Mickey “Mouse” Chambers, the new bouncer at the club and highly skilled in Judo.
It turns out that right after Bruiser got off the phone with Joe, his housekeeper shoved an envelope at him and fainted dead away (she lived). Inside the envelope is a letter from Dr. Simon Wells, the sort of man who makes “problems” go away for well-connected women. (Read the letter here). Bruiser had taken Violet to Dr. Wells to have just such a problem take care of, but he wasn’t the one that knocked her up – it was Strauss’ no-account son David, who is due to marry a debutante, Lily Dalton, next week.
Joe remembers that he had been hired to cover an insurance fraud case involving Dr. Benjamin Abbott, Wells’ former partner. Now Wells is missing, and they need to talk to Abbott.
They part ways and agree to meet back at the Owl Club near 8 PM, when Strauss is due back from Las Vegas. Joe and Linda leave for Wells office, and discover that they’re being followed, and not by the police. They do some evasive maneuvering, and lose the tail.
At Wells’ office, after breaking in, they discover that good doctor is as dead as the proverbial doornail. Robbery doesn’t appear to be a motive, as the doctor has a loaded wallet in suitcoat. Linda discovers a prescription pad, and when Joe shades the top sheet with a pencil, he finds a partial phone number and the address for the warehouse of Brooks Musical Instruments.
They hear someone knock on the door and call Well’s name, and then begin to open the door to the office with a key. They exit via the window, and looking back in, discover that a woman who looks exactly like Violet Collins has entered. They hightail out of the alley and back to the car.
They meet an old flame of Linda’s, H. Marvin Blenkinsop, at a diner, to request that he track down the rest of the phone number through his connections as a shift supervisor at the phone company. They cut the visit short when the Violet lookalike enters the diner, looking for her sister.
The woman introduces herself as Mrs. Rose (Henry) Wolfe, nee Collins. She is Violet’s twin sister. Joe and Linda break the bad news to her, and then interrogate her gently. Read the dialogue here.
They take Rose Wolfe back home to change into a black dress, and then take her to the morgue to identify Violet’s body. They eat dinner at Gascoigne’s, a fancy restaurant, where Joe eats free because of a case he worked for the owner.
They go to the Owl Club, where they meet Bruiser and Sal. The ladies depart for the powder room. Joe explains that the Violet-clone is really her twin sister. Mickey tells them that Strauss will see them in his office.
The girls get back from the powder room, and Linda intimates that she and Joe need to talk, now. So Joe takes her dancing and it is revealed that Rose isn’t Rose – she’s Violet! The evidence: a tattoo reading “Rose: Sisters Forever” on her left breast and a wallet covered with violets and the initials VC.
What will happen next? Who is the killer? What’s the motive? Find out with the next installment, same Bat-station, random Bat-time!
Hey, that’s a great plot summary - thanks, Miss Purl! I’ll be posting something soon, if all goes well. I was out of town for about a week and didn’t have the chance to add anything sooner.
Woo! Elendil’s Heir, you’ve made me the happiest woman on earth! I really had feared that I’d sentenced the story to an early death.
So, in reading the recent entries to the story thread, I have one question: What happened to H. Marvin Blenkinsop? He was in the club, and was outside with everybody (post #42), but he just disappeared. Did Murphy shove him in the trunk? Did Strauss nab him? Faraday toss him in the clink?
Ideas, anyone?
I have an inkling that Det. Faraday, frustrated that the Effa-Bee-Eye swooped in and took all of his other material witnesses, nabbed Blenkinsop and may be sweating him in windowless cell downtown. Your guess is as good as mine, though.
Ah, the Thirties. When the FBI were still [perceived as] untarnished crimefighters and defenders of Truth, Justice and the American Way.
Where’d ev’rybody go?
I’m working on something, Lute, but I keep falling asleep before I finish it. I’ll probably be able to post something later tonight – 11 o’clock CST.
Umm, I’m kinda new to this… I have just NOW realized This is a control thread and y’all have been posting here all along!
I’m still in. :sheepishly goes and sits in the corner to think:
:smack:
This is fun!
I would like to apologize at this point for all the similes in my post – they are unforgiveably bad. I would also like to suggest that you listen to “St. James Infirmary” by Louis Armstrong while you read, since that’s what I was listening to (repeatedly) while writing it.
Woo! That was a long one, and I didn’t get everything in there I wanted to. Maybe later, maybe not, depending on how it goes. Now it’s somebody else’s turn.
And does anyone know how to turn on straight quotes in MS Word? I really hate the way the directional ones look in the board font, and I’m not about to change the font of my posts to Times New Roman. Do I just use a font with only straight quotes or is there a way to turn off directional quotes?
Guess what Broadway Danny’s middle name is.
Moving along…
Note: Danny has the bottle out of sight in a coat pocket until he gets inside the warehouse.
Joe is using “steve” as short for “stevedore”.
Is anyone still up for this? I have something that I hope to get posted tonight or tomorrow, but I won’t if no one wants to participate anymore.
I never posted because I didn’t see the protagonist in the Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade mode. He reminds me of some novels from the 80’s of an LA detective who lived off breakfast cereal and dealt with 30’s and 40’s movie stars.
And he’s not a tough guy with an office bottle, but a guy who drinks too much. I just couldn’t get into it, and felt that I would be spoiling someone else story if I tried to.
CP
OP checking in…
It kind of dwindled on the vine, I guess. I’d almost forgotten about it. Did we write ourselves into a corner? If you’d like to post more, please do. I may pick up with it again.