Archive | April, 2012

The Fast Life of Johnny Exeter Junior: A Hollywood Russell Caper

5 Apr

April 5, 2012

Some of you will recognize this. Originally written in 2007, this was the first print appearance of hard-boiled shamus Hollywood Russell. There is a new Hollywood Russell caper currently being serialized, verrrry slooowly, over on the Flash Cast during the fabulous and amazing New York Minute segment. He’ll be popping up here too before long so enjoy the inaugural Hollywood Russell Caper.

from 2007

Johnny Exeter Jr. lived fast and died young. He was the apple of his father’s eye, but the apple was rotten.

My name is Russell. Hollywood they call me. Hollywood Russell. I hear things. And this is a story of wrecked cars, wrecked marriages, and wrecked lives.

From a young age, it was clear that Johnny Exeter Jr. was trouble. By age 13 Sr. had had enough. More than enough. It was off to the military academy for the kid. It was 1915 and Sr. was angling to get the kid a commission. But like a bad penny, the kid was back- and so were his hell-raising ways.

Sr. pulled some strings and got the kid into Stanford when he was old enough, but they cut the strings soon enough and tossed Jr. out. Allegations of booze and fast women were only the printable rumors.

Records show that Sr. shelled out a lot of dough covering the kid’s bad habits. The small checks were simple- $274 to pay for a wrecked car. The big ones not so simple- $25,000 to send pregnant girlfriend Flossie Windsor to France for a couple of years.

By 1926 Jr. was engaged and it was Daddy buying the ring. And the house, and the honeymoon. In Sr.’s mind, little Johnny Jr. could do no wrong, and his marriage to Helen Audubon was just the thing. Never mind the little matter of the Windsor woman and her little Exeter Junior Jr. cooling her heels in France.

By 1928 Johnny Exeter Jr. had a house in New Haven, a wife, and a blackmailer.

A tiger can’t change his spots, and Jr. was a tiger when it came to women. This is where Tony Sponetti entered the picture.

Sponetti was a cheap hood I’d rolled up a few years before for some petty larceny. Now he was back and the skell had an eye on the Exeter cash. On a trip to Atlantic City while his wife was home, Sponetti noticed that Exeter Jr. was making time with Michelle Lander, a dancer in a small speakeasy off the Boardwalk.

Michelle Lander was a sexy platinum blonde with an eye for money and a body to get it. Exeter was no easy mark- he was the easiest. He hooked himself. Soon Sponetti was getting $500 a week, from daddy Sr.’s account, to keep his trap shut. It was sweet.

Sr. spared no expense when it came to his son. First the wedding expenses, then the Sponetti dough, then the quickie Reno divorce.

By 1929 Helen Audubon, a woman who looked the other way, and often, finally had enough and Jr. dropped her without even a thank you. That put Sponetti on ice, especially when Jr. did the legal ring-a-ding and remarried. But not to Michelle Lander. That honey pot had been left in Atlantic City to attract the local bees.

From here the Exeter Jr. story falls into the usual mess a man with limited morals and unlimited cash makes for himself. Married and divorced three more times by 1935, in debt and bailed out a dozen more, Exeter Jr. was finally making a go of a small gin mill when Sponetti came back.

Sponetti had stewed since he lost the cash from the Lander deal, and now he had a way of making some more. Johnny Jr. was into him for a ton of dough from the dog races and Sponetti was calling in his marker.

But daddy wasn’t going to save him this time. It was 1936 and the balance in the bank account was low enough to notice and Sr. told little Johnny that enough was enough.

Gathering his courage and acting like a man for the first time in his life, he stood up to Tony Sponetti.

And Sponetti shot him dead.

No moral here, no lesson to be learned. Just another story I picked up in the hills of Hollywood.

I’m Hollywood Russell and that was the singular tale of Johnny Exeter Jr.

 ——-

If you liked this please also check out The Case of The Philandering Executive, a Mitch Baleen Mystery.

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My Memories of Pinocchio

4 Apr

April 4, 2012

Once upon a time there was an old man named Geppetto. And you might expect that he lived in the woods since it seemed like everyone lived in the woods back in fairytale times and you never read any fairy tales that take place in the ghetto, but you’d be wrong. Geppetto lived in a small cottage in Bavaria. In fact, Bavaria was so rural and picturesque that many years later Hammer Studios would film The Revenge of Frankenstein there. But that was in the future.

Geppetto was a wood-carver. A very poor wood-carver, that is. How do I know? He had lost three fingers from his left hand and one from his right. The guy had no knife skills. But what do you expect? They had no Boy Scouts back then, and it would be many years later until the got an organization even close- the Hitler Youth. Anyway, when it came to carving he sucked. No matter what he tried to carve- a flute, a toy, a small replica of Jesus- it invariably came out looking like a stick. Even snakes, who already sort of look like sticks anyway came out looking like gnarly sticks.

He was a poor craftsman, thus he had no money, thus he was unmarried, and thus he was very lonely. Oh, it had not always been that way. Back in his youth he was a popular rapper called G-Petto and had all kinds of stank on his hang low but his record label stole all his money. All he had to show for his once-thriving rap career were his big gold chains, which unfortunately were not gold but carved out of wood. And yes, they looked like sticks.

One night, as he sat on a stool and tried to whittle a wooden bowl out of a leafy fern, it occurred to him that since no one would talk to him anyway, maybe he should carve a puppet to be his friend.

As you might have realized by now, all the solitude had driven Geppetto a little cuckoo.

So he set out to do his very best work and carve a wooden boy. At this point I will say that I am making no judgments but if I were I could really have some fun with an old man wanting a little boy to play with. Seriously, if I were the type of person to make judgments I’d be making some serious pedophile jokes right now. But I am not that kind of person. However, if you are that kind of person, please click on the link and leave me a comment.

He carved the hell out of an old piece of firewood and soon- and do not even try to guess- he had carved a puppet boy. And since Geppetto was a pretty lousy craftsman it looked less like a boy than some sort of Lovcraftian horror, with tentacles and big nose. He named it Cthulhu and tossed the eldritch horror into the sea.

The next day he tried again and Pinocchio was born.

Every day Geppetto would feed Pinocchio and dress Pinocchio and play games with Pinocchio and pretty soon he was spotted by some local townsfolk and the police were called, because back then there were some pretty strict ideas about what a consenting adult and his puppet could or could not do in the privacy of their own home.

Since this a fairytale and we have gone a long time without a fairy, this is where the Blue Fairy enters the picture. She saw Geppetto’s grief and loneliness and turned Pinocchio in to a real boy. I am not sure that was a good idea. Now he had to deal with puberty because Geppetto had very specifically made Pinocchio look about 13 years old.
Hmmm.

If you know anything about fairy tales you will have realized that fairies are never helpful. If the Blue Fairy was so powerful why didn’t she start up his rap career again? Seriously, does Geppetto strike you as the right guy to raise a child?

Anyway he was not and pretty soon Pinocchio was smoking and drinking and hanging out with the wrong crowd, just like a typical kid. And he never did listen to Geppetto, who came to regret ever carving the kid in the first place.

The moral of the story? Those of you who expected me to make some off-color jokes about how Pinocchio’s nose grew severely underestimated me.

Can you stand more?
Read My Memories of Cinderella here.

Read My Memories of Snow White here.

Read My Memories of The Boy Who Cried Wolf here.

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