John Malloy (6) (the Blackmailed Beauty) Clara Withers

+*John Malloy-Private Dick"+ (6)
       The Blackmailed Beauty
                  (Clara Withers)

I was ankling across the concrete floor of the underground parking lot, beneath the three-story building in downtown L.A. The ugly box of a building houses my apartment on the second floor, and my office on the third.

I spy my 1940 Hudson convertible coupe, parked  against the south wall, as I listened to my wingtips echoing off the cement walls like an echo chamber. I approach my polished, canary-yellow sedan, decked out with black running boards, and open the door, sliding my keister onto the plush, brown bench seat and fished out my keys.

I paid almost eight hundred clams for this honey in '41. I bought it off a little old used car dealer, who swore he only used it on Sundays to drive his sweet old granny to church and back, and only for a short time.

It sounded good to me, so I laid out the moola and had it towed home, on account of it needing a new carborater.

As I cranked her over, listening to the big six come to life, I took inventory of the last twenty-four hours since the lovely Lana slinked into my office yesterday, in a sprayed-on red dress.

 Lana had been schmoozing the light-in-the-loafers movie director, George Kukor, for a bit part in his upcoming movie, Adam's Rib. She had been invited to his ritzy cocktail party, so she went in order to get next to Kukor.

 Then the Hollywood pimp to the stars, Scotty Bowers, told her that she could earn a hundred clams by snuggling under the blankets with Katharine Hepburn. I kid you not!

She was desperate for rent money, so she took him up on the offer.

Then this sleazebag of a dirty vice cop, who was there to get the dirt on just  anybody he could, followed this Bowers character and Lana to Hepburn's house. He took pictures of Lana and Hepburn getting busy by the pool.

The upshot is, the dirty vise cop is blackmailing Lana fo a third of a million dollar inheritance she's about to come into.

My life was pretty simple before Lana waltzed into my life, but that's the gumshoe racket. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I pulled my heap up the ramp and got blinded by the afternoon sun, directly  ahead.  I shield my peepers with the back of my paw, and drove down the busy street, heading toward Bill Withers' house in Burbank.

My big plan was to grill his wife, so I could get an angle on how best to get to the crooked slob, and get him off Lana's shapely behind.

In Burbank, I cruised my three-speed chariot down West Oak Street, and hung a left on Lomita. Half a block down the residential track-home neighborhood, I spied the right number on a squat, flat topped, green G.I. special, like they cranked out by the thousands to accommodate all the soldiers, coming back from the war.

I parked in front of the house, knowing Bill Withers was on the job, rousting somebody. I strolled up the sidewalk, and rapped on the tacky brown door. After knocking for a few seconds, the door squeaked open.

 Standing in front of me was a frumpy, very fat, middle-aged nightmare of a woman in curlers. She was sporting a food-stained faded green sack dress, with red daisies, printed all over it. It had a V neck, exposing some sagging cleavage, I would rather not have witnessed.  

 She was learing at me like I was the buffet special at the local low-rent eatery. "What can I do for you, handsome?" she gushed like a horny teenager. She fluttered her heavily-mascaraed and puffy eyeballs at me, trying her best to look girlishly alluring.

Sometimes...it just don't pay to get outta  bed!