BITS & PIECES

Openers:  The cluster of stores on Bryant  Avenue, in the 9th Precinct, runs a full block.  The nieghnborhood is quiet, respectable, middle-class.  The small jewelry shop; on the corner is separated from the dry cleaner's by an alley.

Nobody noticed exactly when the gray station wagon entered the alleyway that morning; nor was there a warning of anything unusual before the fusillade of shots rang out.  The shots lasted about half a minute.  Then the station wagon tore out to the street, turned with a squeal of tires, and roared east, heading for the suburbs.  After that, when it seemed safe, the shopkeepers spilled out to the sidewalks, windows popped open, and people stuck their heads out and asked what had happened.  And then the phone calls began to pour into headquarters.

The results were swift, and many.  At 10:01 A.A. on police band Number 2, a city-wide alarm was broadcast for a gray station wagon with two men, armed and known to be dangerous.  On another frequency, Signal Two-Nine went out -- homicide, the 4000 block on Bryant.  The flash brought a radio car to the scene of the crime within three minutes, and a pair of unifomed officers jumped out to guard the premises.

Two-Nine alerted a num,ber of other personnel. Lieutenant Decker and his Homicide Squad rolled.  Police Commissioner Sturm broke off a conference with a social service supervisor and ordered his limosine.  Loeutenant Seward, commander of the 9th Precinct, brought a couple of detectives with him.  With the D.A. tied up in court, one of his assistants drove out to cover the call.  Art Handler, of the photographic unit, packed up his gear, the Medical eXaminer tried to remember where he's left that brown bag of his, and an ambulance raced out from the North Hospital garage.  And finally, radio, TV, and newspaper reporters converged on Bryand Avenue like vulture sighting a meal.

-- "B  as in Bullets" by Lawrence Treat (first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1965; reprinted in the Mystery Witers of America 1978 Anthology, Cop Cade, edited by John Ball)

The victim was Arthur Rennick, the owner of the small jewelry and watch repair shop.  Rennick's wife, who lived with him in an apartment above the store, had been out marketing when the roberry had taken place.  The inside of the shop was a mess, with broken glass strewn throughout the place.  Rennick had been shot once through the chest, a small revolver lay by his side.  Eleven bullet shells were recovered at the scene, indicating that the robbers had two automatics.  Two bullets had been fired from Rennick's revolver.

The case seemed pretty clear-cut.  A patrol car had spotted the fleeing station wagon, chased it, and captured the two men who had been tried to flee from the car.  Three trays of jewelry were recovered from the car.  The suspects, who had been brought in for interrogation, denied everything.

But Jub Freeman, the Director of the Police Laboratory, had some questions.  Because this was a small city, Jub ran the police labortory practically single-handed, which meant that he had to be an expert on all types of evidence -- ballistics, fingerprints, blood typing, photography, moulage work, chemistry, physics, and spectography.  Lieutenant Decker also had some questions.  The suspects where captured on Emerson about an hour after the crime, only a couple of miles away from Bryant Avenue, which made their getaway somewhat suspect.  Examining the victim's clothers and the fatal bullet, Jub detemined that Rennick had been shot at close range with his own gun.  Could suicide have been possible?  When Jub started tracing the likely paths of the bullets fired, he found that most of them had been fired up in the air.  Something was not adding up...

Lawrence Treat (born Lawrence Arthur Goldstone; the name was legally changed in 1940; 1903-1998) is considered the father of the police procedural novel, creating the form with his 1945 novel V as in Victim, featuring veteran police office Mitch Taylor.  Lieutenant (later Commander) Bill Decker was introduced in 1948's F as in Flight.  Mitch Taylor was removed from the NYPD after being caught up in a graft scandal in Big Shot (1951); although Taylor made occasional appearances in the series afterwards, his role was primarily taken by Jub Freeman, who first appeared in H as in Hunted (1946).  Taylor and Decker were featured in a series of 39 short stories running in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1964 through 1981; one of these stories ("H as in Homicide," March 1964) won an Edgar Award.  Treat also received an Edgar for editing 1976's Mystery Writer's Handbook, as well as a special Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1987 for "Wake Me When I'm Dead," a television episode on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Treat's earlier series character was criminologist Carl Wayward, who appeared inthe first four books pubished under the Treat name.  In the 80s and 90s Treat published a number of "solve-them yourself picture puzzle crimes":  the Crime and Puzzlement series, You're the Detective!, The Clue Armchair Detective, You're the Jury, and the Get a Clue series.

Treat was also one of the founding members of the Mystery Writers of America and served at various times as president and director.  Treat's use of the alphabet as a title gimmick was copied by Sur Gafton in her Kinsey Milhone novels.

Treat's pioneering of the police procedural led to a cottage industry that included Dragnet the George Gideon series by "J. J. Marric," Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, and many others.  Treat's formula was copied by ex-policeman Maurice Proctor, who pioneered the police procedural novel in England, beginning in 1951.

Incoming:

• Erle Stanley Gardner, The Blonde in Lower Six, a collection of four short novels, featuring Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook; The Exploits of the Patent Leather Kid, a collection of short stories about an elegant masked crook who is a terror to the underworld in the gang-ridden era of the Depression; Pay Dirt and Other Whispering Sands Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert, featuring nine stories from Argosy (1931-1933) about Bob Zane, a middle-aged prospector (and stand-in for the author) in the contemporary West; and The Case of the Irate Witness, a collection of four novelettes, including the title story which fetures Perry Mason.
• "Deborah Lewis" (Charles L. Grant), Kirkwood Fires.  One of four paperback original "Gothic" novels Grant published in the late Seventies.  "The fires glowed menacingly in the blackness of the distant woods, and the drumming that came windborne to Val's ears brought an unmistakable message of imminent death.  This time Val knew it would be her death, that in any moment whoever had locked her in her room would return to take her...,out there.  Wad she goning mad?  No -- this nightmare was no madness.  It was as real as every incident of treachery and horror that had taken place in the few weeks of her new teaching post at Kirkwood School.  Two students had unexpectedly died.  And then everybody had...changed."  Grant (1942-2006) was one of my favorite writers, and it's satisfying to know that this hard-to-get novel is once again available.
• Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin,  Six books in the long-running Danny Dunn series of juvenile science fiction adventures:  Danny Dunn and the Automated House, Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray, Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine, Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine, Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy, and Danny Dunn on a Desert Island.   I can't help it; I find this series about Danny and his chums, Irene Miller and Joe Pearson, and Professor Euclid Bullfinch absolutely charming.  There were fifteen books in the series.  Abrashkin died shortly after the fifth book was published, but Williams insisted that his name be listed as c-author on all remaining books in the series

Old Me Better:  Keb' Mo' and the California Feetwarmers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJa1B89Z3bk

Randall and Hopkins (Deceased):  Here's the first episode of a great British private eye show that originally on September 21, 1969.  Slightly seedy and morally ambiguous private detective Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt) teams up with his now-dead cynical partner Mary Hopkirk (Kenneth Cope), who has been murdered after being run down by a car.  As a ghosr, Hopkirk can only be seen by Randall.  Hopkirk's widow Jeannie (Annette Andre) works as a secretary at Randall and Hopkirk.  Also featured in this pilot episode are Frank Windsor, Delores Mantez, Harry Locke, Ronald Lacey, Ann Sharp, Anthony Sagar, Harold Innocent (whose role belies the actor's name), James Donnelly, Tom Chatto, Makki Marseilles, Dave Carter, and Harry Fielder.

Randall and Hopkins (Deceased) ran for 26 episodes.  When the show ran in the United States, it was retitled My Partner the Ghost.  The series was remade in 2000, with Bob Mortimer as Randall, Vic Reeves as Hopkirk (Reeves and Mortimer are partners in a popular sketch comedy act in Britain), Emilia Fox (Silent Witness) as Jeannie, and with Tom Baker (Dr. Who) added to the cast as a spirit mentor.

The entire original series is available online.  Enjoy this premiere episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDA6c0smJFE

Prague Astronomical Clock:  Installed in 1410 and attached to Prague's Old Town Hall, it is the third oldest surviving astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still in operation.  An astronomical clock is one with special mechanisms and dials to display such information as the relative positions of the sun, moon, and zodiacal contellations, as well as major planets.  These clocks usually represent the solar system using the geocentric model.  The oldest known astronomical clock is the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek device which dates back to the second century B.C.; it was discovered and retrieved from a shipwreck found off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in 1901.  Song Dynasty horologist and astronomer Su Song (1020-1101) created a water-driven astological clock in the 11th century.  Muslim astonomers created a number of astrological closks in the 14th century,   English cleric Richard of Wallingford and Italian physician Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio both created impressive astrological clocks in the mid-14th century -- Dondi's clock had 107 moving parts, showing the positions of the sun, moon, and five planets, as well as religious feast days.

The Prague clock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock#/media/File:Astronomical_Clock_(8341899828).jpg) 

has three main parts:  the astronomical dial (which shows the sun and the moon and various astronomical details); various Catholic saints are depicted either side of the clock, with "The Walk of the Apostles" -- an hourly showing of moving Apostles and other religious figiures (including a skeleton representing Death, striking the time); and the calendar dials, depicting the months. The clock has evolved over the centuries.  The oldest part of the clock was created by clockmaker Mikulas of Kadan and mathematician Jan Sindel; the calendar dial and the Gothic symbols were added some 80 years later.  The wooden statues were added in the first half of the 17th century, and the figures of the apostles were added late in the 18th century.  The clock has stopped working, and has been repaired, many times over the years.  It suffered heavy damage in May 1945 when the Nazis shelled thre area in an attempt to stop the Prague Uprising. but the machinery was repaired and the clock started working again in 1948.  The clock was renovated in 2005 and the statues were covered with a net to keep pigeons away.  The final renovation was in 2018 when an electric clock mechanism that had been there since 1948 was replaced with an orignal mechanism from the 1880s.

There is some controversy about the 2018 restoration.  Painter Stanislav Jercik may have changed the appearance of figures that had been painted more than a century before, substituting faces with those of friends and reklatives, "possibly as a joke."  (To date, nothing has been done about that situation.)  Nonetheless, for over six centuries the Prague clock has remained a symbol of artistic beauty and scientific genius that the entire world can take pride in.

Jorogumo:  In Japanese mythlogy the Joromugo is a spider-creture that can shapeshift into a beautiful woman, often ensnaring men to feed to her children.  Sometimes she spins a web to frag unsuspecting males to their doom.  In another ersionj, the jorokumo controls a small army of fire-breathing spiders.  Jorogumo often lurk in and around waterfalls, where they can trap unsuspecting men.  

Jorogumo have been used in recent works of fiction.  Keri Arthur's Darkness Unmasked feature a jorogamo in modern-day Melborne, who kills female musicians and takes o their likeness to feed and mate with men; the dead musicans end up being dinner for her young.  Seanan McQuire's Magic for Nothing has a jorogump as part of a traveling carnival, ferasting on locals.  In The Fervor by Alma Katsu, a jorogumo takes the shape of a ghostly woman in a Japanese Interment Camp in Idaho where the prisoners are falling mysteriously ill.

As Halloween approaches, it may be wise to avoid both beautiful women and spiders.  One half of that admonishment will be pretty easy for me -- when I see a spider, I reach for the nearest flamethrower.  Hate 'em. hate 'em, hate 'em.

Ha!:  A book just fell on my head and I can only blame my shelf.

Today:  It's Columbus Day, but because some people consider Christopher to be right bastard, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cofj4WciRc

it's also Indigenous People Day.  I think I know which one I'll celebrate.

Today is also Curious Events Day, a time to pnnder the unexplaonables in this world, such as where do missing socks go, and why people open their mouth when applying mascara, as well as other, more well-known, ponderables such as The Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, the Kennedy Assassination, Bigfoot, Slenderman, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and their accompanying aliens, crop circles, and the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earheart, and Judge Crater.

If all of this is just too much for you, today is also International Beer and Pizza Day (a.k.a. every day in my house).  Whoot!

Happy Birthday, Aimee Semple McPherson!:  Born this day in 1890, the founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.  She had some baggage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZS5aN6s_2c

Florida Man:

•  Florida Man Melvin Alain Cintron, 37, was caught on camera lighting his girlfriend's Jaguar XE sedan on fire  in North Miami.  Because this is Florida, his girlfriend is also his cousin.  His girlfriend/cousin originally told officers that the car caught fire as she was driving it home because she was afraid of what Cintron would do if she told the truth.  Family valuies.
• Florida Man Jessie Smith, 47, armed with a machete, stole a Komatsu excavator values at $350,000 after cutting through a chainlink fence and hotwiring the vehicle.  Smith smashed through several building and fences, knocking over telephone poles, before crashing the excavator into the side of a Walmart in Gainesville.  Totl property damage is estimated to be over $2,000,000.
• There are perils to online dating.  Just ask a certain 35-year-old Florida Man from Orlando -- but you can't but police have not teleased his name.  The would-be Romeo used a dating app to hook up with Florida Woman 24-year-old Brionna Eaddy.  The pair drove to a nearby park, which was closed, so they then drove to a nearby apartment building, while Eaddy kept sending and receiving messages on her phone.  when they got to the apartment building, they were approached by two men, one of whom was carrying a gun.  The Orlando man was ordered to lie down on the ground while Eaddy and the two men got into his 2013 Mazda CX9 and drove off.  Eaddy evidently forgot that the dating app had photogrtaphs of her, and she was soon arrested.  Police have not released details about her two accomplices.
• Florida Woman and hospital patient Marquissa Allen, 25, of Miami, wearing only a blue hospital gown and hospital-issued socks stole an ambulance and drove off.  Because the ambulance was equipped with GPS, police were soon able to track her.  Allen tried to run off when police found her but was soon arrested.  According to the hospitl, Allen was not being held at the hospital and had been free to leave at any time.

Good News:

•  Largest dam removal in history begins restoring salmon and a California tribal way of life       https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/salmon-run-to-return-on-klamath-river-in-california-as-dam-removal-begins/
• A hero surfer resues a stranded deer in the ocean     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/hero-surfer-rescues-stranded-deer-in-ocean-photographer-captures-moment/
• Scientists are 3-D printing stem cells that can be implanted as brain tissue      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/scientists-are-3d-printing-stem-cells-that-can-be-implanted-as-brain-tissue/
• Researchers invent way to turn harmful mine waste into healthy soil      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/researchers-invent-way-to-turn-harmful-mine-waste-into-healthy-soil/\
• Starbucks workers raise more that $40,000 for barista whose car was burglarized     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/starbucks-workers-raise-over-40k-for-beloved-barista-after-her-car-was-burglarized/
• Scientists discover a small strand of RNA to be the jey to fighting cancer with one's immune system      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/scientists-discover-a-small-strand-of-rna-to-be-key-to-fighting-cancer-with-our-immune-system/

Today's October Poem:

Field of Skulls

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,

and if you're predisposed to dark -- let's say

the window you've picked up is a black

postage stamp you spend hours at,

sleepless, drinkng gin after the I Love

Lucy reruns have gone off -- stare

like your eyes have force, and behind

any night's taut scrim will come the forms

you expect pressing from the other side,

For you:  a field of skulls, angled jaws

and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.

They're plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals

roam your very block, and even history lists

monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe

who stalk the earth's orb, plus minor baby-eaters

unidentified, probably in your very midst.  Perhaps

that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet -- that's him

rustling in the azaleas.  You caress the thought,

for ot proves there's no better spot for you

than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing

 the bad news piped steady from your head.  the night

is black.  You stare and furious stare

confident there are no gods out there.  In this way,

you're blind to your own eyes intricate machine

and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all

your remembered loves.  If the skulls are there --

let's say they do press toward you

against night's scrim -- could they not stare

with slack-jawed envy at the fine flesh

that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,

at the force your hands hold?

-- Mary Karr