The Noir 9mm

It was chilly in Los Angeles, not cold, just chilly.  I was born and raised in the Mid-West so my joints don't turn to guava jelly when the temperature dips to 48 degrees.  I was walking up Fairfax about 7:30 at night when my head began to clear.  The cool air helped me put the pieces together.  It had been raining off and on all day.  I like the streets in L.A. after a light rain.  The pavement cools and brings the oil up giving the streets a silver-white shine when the street lights come on.

My day started at 2 PM when an assistant director over at Paramount, who owed me a favor, called and woke me up.  He told me he had referred me for a job and that I should be at some over-paid, self-important producer's office at 3:30.  "Over-paid and self-important producer" is there any other kind I mused?  My AD friend admonished me that this would be a big paying job and I should be prompt.  "He probably won't see you until at least 4 o'clock but he'll know if you're one minute late and he won't like it!"  Since I hadn't had a paying case in weeks and the studios paid well and their checks didn't bounce I decided to jump on this case before they offered it to the Nick Adams Agency.

As I hung up the phone my brain suddenly brought up a 24 year old memory from Navy boot camp and I could hear my Chief yelling that we had "10 minutes to shit, shower and shave".   I decided to see if I could still do it.  I couldn't.  45 minutes later I left my bungalow apartment, stepped into my almost paid for Sea-foam green Chevrolet and rolled down Western Avenue until I got to Melrose.  I took a right and passed Wilturn and Van Ness Avenues before turning up N. Bronson and parking in the front lot.  

I then presented myself to the studio policeman at the Bronson Gate.  He looked me over twice, checked the clipboard and then just like Santee Clause he checked the list twice to see if I was really cleared to see Mr. Swanky Producer.  He even called the producer's receptionist to triple check.  "OK" he says "but before you go in, we don't allow private dicks to bring heaters onto the lot."  "You'll have to leave it with me and I'll lock it in the guard house drawer until you come out".

"Relax" I tell him as I open my coat "I'm not packin' anything today".  "Yeah?" he says, "what pawn shop is it in?"  Little did he know how right he was.  If he had pinched my wallet he would he would have found a pawn ticket for the Sunset Loan company written for a blue steel .38 Smith & Wesson.  I still had 45 days to bring them the cash before they moved it from their vault to a showcase.  What he didn't know was that my Colt .32 was wrapped in a handkerchief and stuffed low into the right front pocket of my trousers. 

"Thanks" I said "I'm glad to see that you found work after Sennett stopped making those Keystone Cops flicks!"  As I slowly walked toward Producer's Row he growled back "Go shit in your hat wiseass".  Another satisfied customer.

I made my way over to the producer's office which was nothing to speak of from the outside however, on the inside, it was an art deco masterpiece.

After traversing a long and wide reception room the general secretary, Miss Lindsay, pointed me to a very art deco bench just inside the open entry arch that was facing an art deco statue of a nude woman.  I didn't like sitting there and facing her and I didn't like sitting with my back to the open entry room.  

True to his reputation the swanky producer kept me waiting for about forty-five minutes.  I heard the general secretary's phone buzz and she then announced that producer extraordinaire, Alfred Lindestrum, would see me now.  I stood up and walked the 10 paces to the office door where it immediately opened by a Mr. Cox who introduced himself as Mr. Lindestrum's personal secretary.  He ushered me over to a cosy little set-up in front of a fireplace consisting of two chairs separated by a small table which faced a coffee table with a couch behind it.  I sat in the chair closest to the fireplace and Cox took the chair next to mine.

The room was certainly as elegant as art deco could be.  I later found out that all of the furnishing were original art deco pieces from the late 1920's that had been purchased as props for films shot during the art deco period.  Before the war they were all packaged up and stored in the Studio's massive prop house until Lindestrum discovered them.  He had the studio designers and carpenter's redecorate his office turning it into an art deco paradise which cost Lindestrum next to nothing.

When Alfred Lindestrum strode into the room a few moments later I was a little disappointed.  Due to the furnishings I was expecting to meet "The Great Gatsby" but instead my client turned out to be a dowdy man in his 60's with a big mustache, a receding hairline and wearing a nice chalk-lined suit.

For the next hour and forty five minutes Lindestrum sat on the couch and entertained us with his life story, one that Cox had undoubtedly heard many times before.  He explained how hard his formative years had been and how those rough and tumble experiences turned him into the tough business man that he is today.  Several times during the discussion he mentioned how he valued honesty, integrity, respect and loyalty.  Experience taught me that whenever someone spends that much time extolling the virtues of honest, integrity, respect and loyalty it is because they possess none of those characters themselves and you can expect them to be dishonest, disrespectful and disloyal.  


After hearing about these virtues for the fifth time I interrupted Mr. Lindestrum, something that he is probably not used to, and told him that he might want to leave some time to tell me about the case he was hiring me for.  Basically it was a simple snoop job, but a snoop job that he was offering me $10 grand to take on.  His pitch was simple.  Janice Evans was his handpicked ingenue of the year.  One of his talent agents saw her at the Miss Beehive pageant in Utah, swept her up and deposited her at Lindestrum's door. From there his studio team taught her how to walk, talk, sign an autograph, put on her make-up and how to dress (and I would imagine how to undress when she was needed to do that).  Lindestrum was afraid that his investment in Miss Evans was either going to walk out of Paramount or get involved in some scandal that would kill her career and tarnish his own as well.  He explained that over the past six weeks she had frequently been late coming to the studio and some days did not come in at all.  On some of the days when she made it in on time she was a wreck.  It was obvious that she had been out drinking and was then suffering from a tremendous hangover.  Lindestrum then opened a folder and dealt out half a dozen 8 X 10 photos on the coffee table in front of me.  He placed them face down so that I could see that they had all be stamped by the MGM publicity department.  When I turned them over I found that they were all publicity photos of MGM stars out on the town at Chasen's, The Brown Derby, The Coconut Grove, Ciro's or Earl Carroll's.

On each photo Lindestrum drew a circle around one of the faces in the background with a red grease pencil.  Each of these faces belonged to Janice Evans.  There wasn't much of a way to tell who she was with but Lindestrum suspected that an executive at MGM was ordering his minions to wine and dine Janice to either to convince her to sign with MGM or to get her involved in a scandal to ruin her promising career at Paramount.  Now, Eddie Mannix, the head of production at MGM, certainly had a shady background but this seemed like a venture that was way below him.

This type of a snoop job should take about 2 days, maybe 3 to tail Evans and her paramours in order to figure out what is going on and get some good photographs as evidence.  Worst case scenario this would cost about $2,000.00.  So when a man is offering up $10K for a $2 Grand job it makes me wonder what else he is expecting for his money.  With the studio crowd they certainly want this to be kept quiet and if anything illegal is uncovered they want to be notified at least an hour before you show up at the police station to turn your evidence over to the cops.  So maybe that's a $4 Grand job. The only other thing I could think of was that he also wanted me to throw a real scare into whoever was doing this.  It almost seemed like Lindestrum was reading my mind because at this point, while my mind was pondering the offer, he reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a Colt .45 automatic pistol.

I was upset with myself that I did not notice that the weight of the pistol was pulling his suit coat down on his left side.  Lindestrum them gestured to the pistol with his head and said "If anybody gives you any trouble or if you find out who is behind this I want you to make sure they clearly understand that it would be in their best personal interest to back off".  He then told me that he had heard that my .38 was in hock and asked if I needed to borrow his .45.  I was impressed and more than a little disturbed that he knew about my revolver.  I told him I would be OK.  He then wrote me out a check for $500.00 to get me started and bid me farewell.  

I was walking out of the studio about 6:45 PM still trying to make sense of the whole situation and thinking I might be better off passing on this job when I walked through the N. Bronson gate.  I heard the guard holler "Hey Shamus".  I turned toward him in time to just get a glimpse that this was not the same guard a spoke to coming in when a sap cracked across the side of my head.

To be continued....

Smith & Wesson, Protecting Guests on Disney's Jungle Cruise Since 1955

A little Jungle Cruise Revolver Trivia.  The revolvers are nickel plated.  The lanyard was put on the revolvers after two were stolen from the boats.  They cannot fire live ammunition.  The skipper fires 2 low powered blanks to scare the attacking hippos off.  They also carry louder blanks used to signal for help as follows:

• 3 shots means the boat is experiencing a mechanical difficulty 
• 4 shots means a medical or security emergency and the boat is returning to the dock at full throttle
• 6 shots means the boat is derailed

And Now For A Work From Our Sponsor

We'll be right back to Warm Weather Handguns after this brief message:

Hello!  This is Average Joe speaking on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Made-Up Language (SPMUL). 

For many years now I have witnessed the business world heartily develop and embrace newly minted words and phrases that are designed to make the reader think that the business has actually changed an important condition.  I listened to an executive tell us how "planfull" he was in attempt to make us think that he was doing something awfully important (he wasn't).  At another meeting an executive advised us that we should be "articulating our teams" which I'm pretty sure is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  My favorite was an executive who told us we needed to be working in a more "urgical" fashion.

While I thought this syndrome was something that only afflicted corporate American I have found that it has crept into business of firearms training and journalism.  My particular beef is with those who now tell us to "press" the trigger.  For me the phrase "pull the trigger" has worked just fine for the past 55 years but it seems that the gun training and writing intellectuals have decided that we must now "press" that trigger.   Apparently, from what I can piece together, their thought was that too many people were jerking the trigger when they pulled it.  Now I don't dismiss the importance of trigger control and I certainly don't discount the prospect that too many people haven't yet acquired proper trigger skills.  But I do get my feathers ruffled at the notion that by swapping the word "pull" with the word "press" that anything has changed or improved. 

I guess I also am stuck on the notion that the word "press" is the opposite of what the shooter should be doing in order to fire the weapon.  To me the act of "pressing" something means that I am moving it away from my body.  When I press the "enter" key on my keyboard or "press the number 1 to continue this call in English" my finger is moving away from my body.  Similarly when I am executing a dumbell press I am pushing those weights away.  So in my technical point of view if I do actually press the trigger the weapon is not going to fire as I will be attempting to move the trigger in the wrong direction.

(I tried pressing the trigger but it got stiff because I used too much starch!)

Instead of telling people to "press the trigger" lets train them on the proper way to pull it!   


We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Advanced Laser Weaponry
The advent of a War always brings about new technology. Afterall, war is a very violent form of competition and out of competition comes ingenuity, innovation, and achievement. It is no surprise then that the "bar has been raised" for "State of the Art" close quarter combat technologies in the last 16 years. Two Gulf Wars have seen the enhancement of missle and bombing delivery systems but little news has trickled out about advancements in hand-held anti-personnel arms. Last week I was priviledged to attend a hush-hush training session in Southern California which gave me a strong glimpse at what the wizards of weaponry have been working on.

Advanced Laser Technology:
Because of it's precise properties Laser Beam technology has been used in everything from presentation pointers, to carpenter's levels, to advanced sighting systems for handguns, rifles, and missle systems. The thought of the Laser as a weapon has been a sci-fi staple since Flash Gordon was first issued his "Ray Gun" all the way to the light sabers used in "Star Wars". However, the fantasy is now a devastating reality.

Our instruction on the new weapons system was very basic and, quite frankly, there was not much need to over complicate matters. The military has long been looking for ways to simplify small arms training and, as seen in the Manual of Arms below, this has been achieved with astounding success:

Now I fully understand the necessity of keeping things simple, but I do balk at the moniker of "Astro Blaster" which the military has bestowed upon this new weapon. I just feel that this has "dumbed down" the training concept a little too far. Although, with the military's penchant for acronyms "ASTRO" actually might stand for some long-winded military title like "Advanced Systems To Reduce Opposition"...or something along those lines. After going over the printed manual, a brief indoctrination was given by one of the instructors and then it was off to the combat range to begin the training. The instruction session was hardly necessary as this is an instinctive point and shoot weapon with no safeties or other external controls with which to contend. My youngest daughter accompanied me on this trip and she had absolutely no problem with the "Astro Blaster" in terms of operation or recoil.




It would be appropriate at this point to discuss what I liked and disliked about this weapon. The Blaster's exterior components are made of polymer, which I normally do not like, however the polymer construction has certainly made this a light-weight weapon. Unfortunately the Blaster is rather bulky so the light-weight does not translate into making this a good weapon for concealled carry. This is definately a service pistol and quite frankly, that is what is was designed to be. The lack of recoil makes follow-up shots very easy and the fixed sights seemed to be fairly well regulated. Unfortunately the puny sights were difficult to immediately read and this made accurate first shots very difficult. Most of the people involved in the training session opted to used a modified point-shooting style, see where the first shot (or blast) hit and then compensate on their follow-up shot for windage and elevation. Due to the red laser beam it is easy to see where the first shot landed and, as a plus, the white circle at the rear of the Blaster indicates when it senses that you have scored a direct hit by flashing a short red strobe. While there is a lot to like about the Blaster I must point out that the trigger is horrible. It is very spongy and therefore may cause the shooter to jerk the trigger finger causing the muzzle to be pulled down and to the right. This is probably a factor caused by the fact that this weapon is so new that the makers were not sure how to contruct the trigger or firing mechanism. After, the trigger on the Blaster is not cocking and dropping a hammer or otherwise propelling a firing pin forward. When pressed the trigger actually completes an electrical circuit which generates the laser blast.

Overall the Blaster has great potential, but could stand further refinement in terms of sighting and the trigger. As I said earlier, my daughter had no problems with it...although I smoked her in competition.