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Imponderable: Hoquiam Washington (Classic Repost)

13 Apr

April 13, 2012

The Imponderable is on a brief break but don’t worry, new ones are already lined up and ready to go.

Consider yourself warned.

From June 24, 2011

Is that the world’s worst knock knock joke?

*knock knock*
“Who’s there?”
“Me.”
“Me wh- hey, wait a minute, what are you doing carrying a dead weasel?”
“It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten.”
smashes resident in the face with weas- er, marten
“Maybe it’s a mink.”

But that’s not the Imponderable. And neither is “what the heck is a marten?” (A marten is in the same family as minks and weasels, and those are all just ferrets to me.) The Imponderable comes from the following article which reports the same story from a very different point of view.

Why does the writer of the article think that the salient point of the story is that a man mistook a marten for a mink? And bonus points if you realized that the headline got it wrong- he mistook a mink for a marten.

The AP article doesn’t mention motive, which anyone reading that article must be dying to know. Wouldn’t you want to know why a man hit another man with a dead animal? The first article gave the motive, that they were dating the same woman. The second only hinted at a motive, that he was looking for his girlfriend. Believe it or not, the New York Post had the better reporting.

The AP article must not find that angle interesting. It devoted more space to the identification of the animal, its scientific family, and its habitat.

Why does the Associated Press find it more interesting and important that a man misidentified a mink than the assault?

The question is Imponderable.

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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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