Pulp Adventures #34: City of the Dead

By Bold Venture Press

Audrey Parente, editor
NEW PULP SUPER-NOVELLA
"City of the Dead" | William M. Hope — Thurl the Gaelg is targeted as a city’s next sacrifice!
CLASSIC PULP FICTION
"Death Do Us Part" | William Decatur — Fogarty could be trusted with $40,000 cash ... but could he be trusted with the shapely blonde?
"Kill Me Again" | Robert Leslie Bellem — Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, returned from a weekend getaway, only to learn he was late for his own funeral!
CLASSIC PULP COMICS
"Killer In Clay" | Robert Leslie Bellem and Adolphe Barreaux
Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, in illustrated super-action!
NEW PULP FICTION
"In a Sentimental Mood" | Logan Robichaud — Two FBI agents sing the blues over a “person of interest” ...
"Comrade" | Adam Beau McFarlane — These guys brought new meaning to “wargames”!
"On the Ego Identity of a Butterfly" | Patti Boeckman & Sharla Wilkins — A wing and a prayer ...
"Athena D" | Charles Burgess — Politics and espionage make deadly bedfellows!
"Straight Ahead Into Darkness" | Ron Reikki — An EMT doesn’t know how to respond to tragedy ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463687260

Bold Venture Press

Bold Venture Press publishes quality reprints of classic pulp fiction, and exciting new fiction in the realms of mystery, science fiction and horror. Our flagship title is Pulp Adventures, a quarterly magazine showcasing classic reprints and new stories, spanning the diverse world of pulp fiction.Bold Venture releases three new titles each month. We are proud to present author C.J. Henderson's hard-boiled Jack Hagee, Private Eye series -- and to feature the never-before-published fourth novel in the series. Bold Venture Press released "Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures" by Johnston McCulley, under license from Zorro Productions.Bold Venture Press is open to submissions from new authors, or people interesting in compiling anthologies of stories from the classic pulp magazines.

Book preview

Pulp Adventures #34

Audrey Parente, editor

Bold Venture Press

Pulp Adventures TM & © 2020 Bold Venture Press. All Rights Reserved.

Published quarterly. The stories in this publication are works of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Rich Harvey, Publisher

Audrey Parente, Editor

Cover

Albert Fisher, Front Page Detective January 1941

In a Sentimental Mood © 2020 Logan Robichaud. All rights reserved.

Comrade © 2020 Adam Beau McFarlane. All rights reserved.

On the Ego Identity of a Butterfly © 2020 Patti Boeckman. All rights reserved.

City of the Dead © 2020 William M. Hope. All rights reserved.

Athena D © 2020 Charles Burgess. All rights reserved.

Straight Ahead Into Darkness © 2020 Ron Riekki. All rights reserved.

Editorial

by Rich Harvey

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective has always been a challenge for pulp fans and intellectuals alike. Does the series epitomize the genre of hardboiled detectives, founded in the 1920s by the Black Mask authors, with purple narrative? Or does the series actually lampoon the genre and its tropes, which were becoming cliché even before World War II commenced?

The inimitable Robert Leslie Bellem penned numerous stories about the smart-alec private eye, often in a single magazine. Bellem filled the pages of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. (Later, the title was shortened to just Hollywood Detective). He supplied bales of fiction, much of it focused on Turner and his high-profile clientele.

In the latter half of the 1940s, he also penned Dan Turner comic book featurettes. By this time, pulp publishers suspected comic books were siphoning off younger readers.

***

Turner is a private gumshoe based in Los Angeles. He collaborates and clashes (often in the same story) with his friend Lieutenant Dave Donaldson. The hapless police lieutenant often finds himself pulled in opposing directions when Turner ankles across town, interrogating people with his fists, and putting the move on any skirt too slow to avoid his clutches. Fortunately, Turner is on the side of law and order, though it’s difficult to imagine his demeanor being any more abrasive as a criminal.

Turner smokes like a chimney and guzzles Vat 69, an alcoholic substance originating from Scotland. It’s now manufactured by Diageo, a beer-brewer in England. The only known 21st century sightings occur at pulp fiction conventions, for obvious reasons.

When Dave Donaldson is rendered unconscious by a cowardly blow: I uncorked a fifth of Vat 69 on my bed-table, tasted it to be sure it was full strength, took another helping to wash down the first, and finally dribbled a cautious trickle into Donaldson’s flaccid kisser. (Kill Me Again, page 40)

The series hallmark — aside from the outlandish plot twists — is Turner’s otherworldly language. Turner speaks in so many metaphors, even the protagonists of Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange would be left scratching their heads.

The blonde muffin emitted a muted squawk; then she swooned in my arms. And even as she folded, somebody rapped on my closed portal. (Kill Me Again, page 38.)

If you find yourself making instant translations, take a break from reading Dan Turner stories and seek help. Better yet, get to work penning new Dan Turner fiction. I’ve attempting it a few times, and the result can be heart-breaking.

Therein lies the reason I referred to the author as inimitable. That word gets tossed around as casually as unique and ultimate — but it is appropriate.

Who could possibly imitate Bellem’s surreal and satirical prose?

Reporter and pulp historian John Wooley successfully mimicks Bellem’s style. John assembled numerous collections of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective stories. He’s written extensively about the author, and written new stories and scripts featuring the character. John’s adaptation of Homicide Highball became the basis of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective (1990), a movie starring Marc Singer, the Beastmaster himself, as the tough private dick.

The film retains the proper time period, and is a largely accurate adaptation, but much of the colorful vernacular (modified from Bellem’s prose) was eventually toned down to accommodate movie-goers.

Then again, perhaps the studio moguls had a point. One character in Blackmail (a Republic Pictures 1947 film ), nearly suffers a nervous breakdown listening to the private eye explain the plot twists in glorious Bellem-like dialogue. Royal K. Cole’s screenplay was adapted from Stock Shot (Hollywood Detective, June 1944). William Marshall delivers the tough dialogue with Turner’s trademark indifference.

***

While penning some New Pulp Fiction, I attempted a crossover story between Dan Turner and another popular (public domain) character. An authentic story would demand first-person narrative. I couldn’t stay in the mind-frame required to approximate Turner’s metaphoric voice. I attempted to follow in his typewriter’s footsteps and said, The bleep with it. The yarn went on the fiction back-burner.

Robert Leslie Bellem earned the inimitable title. Even disguised under the William Decatur pseudonym for Death Do Us Part (page 12), his style shines through like a supernova. Bellem’s authorial voice is unique, the ultimate in pulp action and parody.

In a Sentimental Mood

by Logan Robichaud

Special Agent Beard hangs his left arm out of the sedan’s window, a Lucky Strike between his middle and pointer fingers. In the back seat are two briefcases, three Bankers Boxes, and a crate containing the complete works of spy novelist Isaac A. Massinger.

The sky is darkening, and people getting off of work are walking into the diner whose window-sign reads Whites Only.

Beard wipes his forehead sweat with the sleeve of his cuffed shirt before taking a drag. The radio is playing jazz, so he has that to smile about.

He moves his right pointer, middle, and ring finger on the armrest of the car, recalling the buttons on the top of his own trumpet.

Out of the diner walks Special Agent Greene, a paper bag and two paper cups in his hands. Beard turns the radio down as Greene steps off the curb and plops into the passenger’s seat. Soup’s on! Greene announces.

Ring-ding-ding!

Greene takes out a burger wrapped in butcher paper. The number three, he says. Basically, your basic burger, hold the veggies, add chili, cheddar, and chopped onions.

Ya know, onions are vegetables, Beard replies.

That may be, but I’d say the bad they do for your breath outweighs the good they do for your diet.

Beard smiles and says, Regardless, much obliged. After several years of these food runs, Greene has learned Beard’s likes and dislikes: not tomatoes but onions, not mustard but mayonnaise, not fried chicken but fried steak.

And for me, Greene says, A club sandwich, extra bacon. Mind if I — ? Greene asks, gesturing toward the radio. Beard gives him the go ahead, and Greene twists the dial through several stations before settling on an old folk song. He buries his face into one of his sandwich halves, lip sweat falling onto the bread. A Yankee unaccustomed to heat, Greene has drenched his navy blue suspenders; he refuses to roll down his sleeves, release his shirttail, or loosen his tie, even in the lone company of his partner. He cares not for this job, but appearance is a completely different matter.

His father, classics professor Rupert Greene, would not so much as remove a cufflink as he sat on young Agent Greene’s bed and read to him the tales of the Greeks, the stanzas of the Romantics, and, although he was a staunch atheist, the prose of Scripture. Agent Greene and his older brother chose different paths than their father, however; law enforcement and armed forces respectively. When he first joined the FBI, closer to Beard’s age, Greene thought himself akin to the great men of fore: Moses, Odysseus, Odin. As the years have passed, however, he has reconciled his place among his true peers: the unnamed, the impotent, the failures.

Beard whistles, but not the scratchy melody on the radio; he weaves between it, over it. He drinks from the coffee in his right hand, gripping the half-eaten burger so tightly in his left that it creates a cast of his thumb.

I thought Blacks sang, Beard. Where’s that golden voice I know you possess?

He turns his eyes but not his head toward Greene, My Mama has a beautiful voice, but my father — well, I got my voice from him is why I ain’t singing. The white bastard couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, even mouthed the words in church.

Greene, covering his mouth, says My father has a fantastic voice. Countertenor. He rethinks his having said this, as Beard’s own father is gone, and it seems unsavory to brag of his own living patriarch. So, what do you do while your mother plays the piano, if not sing?

Beard, without pause, replies, I dance, or else I sit down beside her and play along.

I thought you were a trumpet player.

Was. The tense of that statement stings, but he continues, But we’s musical people.

Greene chuckles and nods. Beard turns up his Southerness when he’s with his partner because, aside from it making him seem unassuming to suspects, it amuses Greene to no end.

As they near the potential threat, Beard flips through their depthless notes on Isaac A. Massinger. Greene removes his flask from his pocket. He has been told to

cut down on liquor after a recent hospital visit, so he has switched from whiskey to vodka, the most recent in a life full of compromises.

Agents Beard and Greene are employees of the FBI’s CMRU, Critical Media Response Unit, a sub-department overseen by both the Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism divisions. Despite Joesph McCarthy’s backing, the Agents have autonomy like children of divorce; no one is sure whose responsibility the CMRU falls to, so they’re generally allowed to fall through the cracks, Greene drinking away his failure to secure a real FBI job, Beard loitering in jazz bars where no one’s ever worth the price of his beer. They’ve put away a number of low-level, propaganda pedaling communists in their days as a duo, but this is different. Both parents of the CMRU have made clear how critical the interrogation of Isaac A. Massinger is to the security of the United States of America.

Massinger’s fanbase is small but passionate, many of them residing within D.C. CIA agents are known to walk around with mass-market Massinger paperbacks within their jacket pockets, and some of the department’s agents have even appropriated the nicknames of the oft-nicknamed characters: Bartleby, Juice, Rico Z., I.C.E. Several Agents have even attempted to mail or call the author, but he remained untrackable until Beard and Greene were given the task. What the CIA agents admire most about Massinger is his devotion to veracity; each paragraph brims with abbreviated agencies, countries, states, names, so much so that Greene calls the books A.S.S., Alphabet Soup Shit.

There is a group of anti-Massinger agents, however, who believe that his work is destructive to the democratic psyche. Massinger’s books are not centered on gritty American heroes with scar-faced Russian adversaries. His books take on multiple perspectives, following characters on both sides of the political spectrum. The works are neither pro-Democracy nor pro-Communism, and the U.S. government feels they must do something about this. All the worse, they’re well-written. There’s plenty of pulp circulating the communist underground, but Massinger’s complex characters, vivid imagery, and riveting plots make him all the more dangerous. In the months preceding this interrogation, Beard has happily devoured these books, none of which Greene has been able to slog through.

Usually, Agents Beard and Greene would bust into whatever tenement their suspect found himself in and cuff him on the spot, but they can’t risk Massinger slithering out of their grasp.

No one knows much about Massinger. Local law enforcement has nothing on him. There aren’t any communist groups in the area, to their knowledge; this far south, they’ve all been ran out of town or scared underground. The Agents have conducted stake outs, but from what they’ve gathered, he’s a recluse. He only leaves his domicile to shop at the local grocery store, where he always pays in cash. Sometimes, Beard and Greene observed him going into restaurants, but he always takes his food to-go.

At first, Greene theorized that maybe these paper bags were not food but actually some sort of communist paraphernalia: pamphlets, important documents, the drugs that must fuel these criminals. They followed this theory for several weeks, conducting separate stake outs on the burger joints and delis he frequents, but one day they saw Massinger open up the bag on the street only to reveal a grilled cheese whose deliciousness just could not wait until he got home.

Massinger’s publisher, Heffer House, pumps out detective stories, thrillers, fantasies, romance, science fiction, and Massinger seems to be just another attempt to see what sticks. It could spook Massinger if he caught wind someone’s looking for him. What’s more, his continuing publication is a spigot of evidence they don’t want to cut off.

The CMRU work isn’t like homicide; there’s no first forty-eight or some witness waiting to crack the whole thing. The nation’s most elite team of investigators is only brought in when the other guys just won’t do. On TV, police work is fast-paced, action-packed, easily-condensed into a 22-minute show. Agents Beard and Greene may spend months on a dead end, conduct door-to-doors for days, chew on a pencil for a year. They carry guns, but they’re rarely used. Beard carries a .38 Special like most other agents, but Greene carries a Luger. The pistol is foreign, out-of-production, but it holds value for Greene; it was found on his brother’s body, belly up in a trench somewhere in Germany.

Sitting in the car outside Massinger’s apartment, Beard finishes off his coffee. Greene is grinding his teeth. Today, this interview, is their last chance. Greene steps out of the car. It’s raining, but he has neither umbrella nor slicker. Beard, after retrieving his coat from the backseat, follows.

They knock, and they wait. The apartment door finally opens, and in its frame stands a man in rumpled slacks, a once-white collared shirt, and his socks. His glasses are wire, and one of the temple-arms is bent.

His hairline is high, but his beard is full.

Greene asks, Isaac Massinger?

Yes. he responds, maintaining eye-contact with Greene.

My name is Agent Greene, and this here is Agent Beard.

Beard smiles and nods.

We’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Greene continues. Would you mind if we came in and spoke with you for a few minutes?

Massinger motions them in.

Beard can hear a kettle building to a whistle.

The author says, I’m sorry it took me a moment to get to the door, Agent Greene. I was putting on some tea. He takes a seat in an easy chair. The Agents sit on a sofa with depressed cushions. Would you like some, Agent Greene?

No thank you.

How about you, Agent Beard?

Beard notices that Massinger’s eyes are hazel, something you can’t tell through binoculars. He declines. When Massinger leaves the room to pour his tea, Beard takes out his notebook. On these sorts of cases, Greene leads the interview while Beard takes notes. The FBI was early in hiring negros because they realized suspects were unlikely to feel threatened by them; to suspects, Beard falls into the background like a lackee. In reality, he completed basic-training with a note of exceptional scholarship and marksmanship.

Unlike Greene, Beard had no law-enforcement aspirations. He studied music with a criminology minor to appease his father. Officer Beard worried his son would end up just giving piano lessons like his Mama. But Agent Beard had talent. He knew it, and his parents knew it, and the admissions office knew it — they gave him a full-ride to one the best jazz programs in the country. Playing music was fun, but jazz — divine. The croon of subversive harmonies, the off-beat-rightness of syncopation. And improvisation. He never knew what would come forth from his horn’s bell, but something beautiful always emerged. He lifted his horn and the universe spoke. That was, until his father died.

Officer Beard died of a ravenous cancer that arrived just as he was approaching the age of fifty. After the funeral, Beard returned to college to finish his degree and decide how he was to support his Mama, and, not a month later, the FBI recruited him. They explained to him how they were founding a new unit of the bureau tasked with critical media, works whose content posed a threat to national security, and that they were searching across the country for bright young people with both criminology knowledge and an artistic bent; he was exactly what they needed.

When Massinger returns, he is loudly sipping his tea. Beard wonders if the tea is burning Massinger’s mouth, but he keeps the thought to himself. The room is a normal living room, if a bit dingy. The walls are blank. All the furniture looks second-hand, and every surface is covered with loose sheets of paper, notepads, napkins, pens, pencils, markers.

So, Greene starts, Why do you think we’re here, Mr. Massinger?

Massinger chuckles, scratches at his eyebrow. I don’t know. A parking ticket, maybe? I don’t have a car, but I’m not a criminal either, so this all really beats me.

I imagine it’s hard to keep a car in the city anyhow, Beard throws in. All the maintenance, parking, all that junk.

Yeah, Massinger says, giving Beard a quizzical look.

Myself, I prefer convertibles, Greene says, running his hands through his short hair.

Massinger says, I don’t get out much, and anywhere I go is within walking distance.

How about your books? Beard asks with his head at a slight tilt. Heffer House is in New York. You never head out there to do press or talk with them or ... ?

Massinger smiles and lowers his head. So that’s what this is about: my work? I thought this might happen at some point.

That what would happen? Greene asks.

Two guys from the powers that be come a’knockin’ on my door.

And why would we do that Mr. Massinger? Greene asks, trying to keep his tone light, his jaw loose, his fists unclenched.

Because I pose a threat to your way of thinking.

Greene says, "Mr. Massinger, the FBI would never waste its resources on a threat to something as ephemeral as a ‘way of thinking.’ We are here in regard to national