Or any of the other “hard boiled detectives” from film noir decided that they’d had enough of the dames, the beatings, the shootings, and all the rest, and decided to hang up the trenchcoat and fedora for the last time, what would he do for a living? I realize that today he’d no doubt take a job as a security consultant or something similar, but back in the 1940’s or 1950’s what would he have done? And what would he do today, if he didn’t want to be a security consultant? Any guesses?
bartender?
Spade? Spade would never quit.
Because when a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. When one of your organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around, bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere.
Spade would just let Effie support him. And she’d be happy to do it.
Yeah, but eventually you wake up one morning, look at your dead partner’s picture and realize you never even really knew the guy. Never had any idea of what his favorite color was, or what the name of his dog was when he was a kid. You start to wonder if it was the right thing to do, spending your life, beating your head against a wall that doesn’t even know you’re there.
Isn’t that what insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result, but never getting anything other than a beautiful dame who walks into your life, wrecks everything, and then leaves you in the morning without saying goodbye or even paying you. Sooner or later you get tired of looking at that same old face in the mirror, and you want something new.
But what is it? What do you do with your life? What do you do when all you’ve ever known is a gun and a bottle of whiskey in the drawer for more years than you care to think about? You can put those thoughts out of your mind for awhile, but sooner or later they come back. And eventually, they never go away. Even the whiskey won’t stop them.
Don’t make me tell you about Flitcraft.
So tell me about “Flitcraft” since a “google” search turns up nothing but horses, baseball players, some family in the Carolinas, and 2,760 worthless pieces of information. If you know something, talk!
He could also take the job of James Burke as a hotel dick.
He would go down to the local pawn shop purchase an old Royal typwriter and start pounding out stories that he remembered from his days as a shamus. He would populate them with characters called the Continental Op, Spade, Archer, Ned Beaumont or even a wacky married couple made up of an ex-cop and a socialite.
He might join the army at the age of 48 during WWII as private and later teach writing at a Marxist institute in New York.
He might even make some money from the stories. He might even prostitute his skills by turning out stories for the movies. He might even meet a lady writer/socialite that thought he was good looking and drank almost as much as he did.
Nah…it would never happen.
Go down to the second paragraph.
Oooops, sorry, sam. Primary source is always the best.