"The Price of a Dime" by Norbert Davis (first published in Black Mask, April 1934; reprinted in Pulp Fiction: The Crimefighters, edited by Otto Penzler, 2006 -- which was included, in a slightly revised form, in Penzler's The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, 2007; and in Davis's collection The Price of a Dime, 2021).
Davis (1909-1949) earned a law degree from Stanford University in 1934 but never bothered to take the bar exam; he had begun selling short stories to Black Mask two years earlier and to Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories tow years before that; by the time he had graduated from law school he had already published eighteen stories in the pulps. A typical Davis story was full of action and with a dose of humor. Reportedly, Black Mask editor Joseph Shaw did not appreciate humor in his magazine and only purchased five of Norbert's stories for the ;periodical. Still, it seems that Davis could not help injecting a bit of whimsy into "The Price of a Dime," even if only a throwaway bit with the protagonist's ditzy secretary.
"The Price of a dime is the second of two stories Davis wrote about LA private investigator Ben Shaley, a man so down on his luck that he vowed to take on only clients who paid in advance. That vow evaporated when he met Bennie Peterson's sister (we never do learn her bname0. a sincere and kindly woman who had raised Benny and could think no wrong of him. Shaley knew Bennie and knew him for what he was -- a shyster and a rat and a small-time crook. But Shaley felt bad for the sister and listened to her story. Bennie it seems was in trouble, a big-time movie producer was threatening to throw Bennie in jail just because of a dime, and Bennie told his sister that the only person who could help him out of this mess was Ben Shaley.
According to what Ben told his sister, he had just received a dime tip from his job as a bellboy at the Grover Hotel and was a walking down a hotel corridor in a good mood, flipping the dime in the air and catching it, when he missed and dropped the dime on the floor. as he bent to pick it up, this big time movie producer came out of a room and said he going to have Benny arrested. But Bennie couldn't have done anything wrong, she told Shaley, "Bennie's a good boy. Our folks died when we were young and I raised him, and I know." Since then, Benny has been hiding out, afraid, in a cheap hotel under a false name. Bennie told her that if Shaley went to the producer and explained to him that Bennie was his friend and they could get together on the matter and fix it all up. Bennie told her that Shaley would understand.
Shaley understood all right. It was an old game. Drop a dime in the floor and, while supposedly picking it up, take a peek through a keyhole to see if there was anything interesting on the other side if the door. Bennie mist have seen something worthwhile -- something worth blackmailing the movie producer over. Shaley decides he will go talk to Bennie and get him to drop the scheme. Before he can do that, Shaley finds out that there has been a murder at the Grover Hotel. A Chicago gun moll named Big Cee had gotten in trouble with the gangster back home and came to LA to hide out. and some of the gangsters had evidently found her. Shaley spent a little bit of time checking out this story before he went over to talk to Bennie, only to find Bennie murdered.
What was so important that Bennie had to be killed? And how had the murderer found where Bennie was hiding? And was there any connection between Bennie's murder and the killing of Big Cee? And was there a connection between a big movie producer and the Chicago mob? the answers to some of these questions are not what one might think.
Pulp stories are often derided because of their purple prose, but the best of the pulp writers use minimal language to help propel their tales at a fast pace. Sometimes a few words can speak volumes, as when Shaley discovers Bennie's body"
"He had been stabbed several times in his thin chest. The bed was messy."
A brief tale, scapeled down to the essentials.
The American Magazine
Davis may best be remembered for the thoroughly entertaining Doan and Carstairs mysteries, The Mouse in the Mountain and Sally's in the Alley (both 1943), where Doan nis a private eye and Carstairs is a huge Great Dane). After those novels were published, Davis moved from the pulps to the slicks, selling to The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, and The American Magazine. Davis's other series detectives were Max Latin. "Bail Bond" Dodd, Jim Daniels, Doctor Flame, Jeffrey Scott, Benjamin Martin, Tom Band, and John Collins. Davis dies at age 40, apparently by suicide after a diagnosis of cancer.
I've been a fan of Norbert Davis's work for years. I've even purchased a couple of Steeger Press's pulp volumes with his stories in them. It's sad to learn that cancer caused another death of a good writer.
ReplyDelete