Screaming girls (and guys)

Our Women are Becoming Alcoholics

Another Job for Homicide

C. K. M. Scanlon

Thrilling Detective , July, 1946

   

Gary Hammond tackles a clueless murder puzzle!

GARY HAMMOND of Homicide did not act or look like a first grade detective, but he was one of the best men on the New York Police Force. He was slender and dark and looked and dressed like a fairly successful young business man. He was polite to old ladies, kind to children, and tough on crooks.

Now he stood near the door of the living room of a Park Avenue apartment and watched the Homicide Squad at work. The police photographer had finished making angle shots of the corpse sprawled out on the oriental rug. Dr. Doyle, from the Medical Examiner's office, was tapping one foot impatiently as he waited for the chalk outline of the body to be made.

“He would die on a rug like this,” muttered the man with chalk. “It's like trying to make marks on seaweed or something.”

“Hurry up,” said Dr. Doyle impatiently. “I haven't got all day.” He glanced over at Hammond. “Who was he anyway?” he asked.

“Lowell Malden,” Hammond said. “Sportsman, man about town, and now he is just as dead as any other mackerel.”

Somebody likes the Beatles

BALDY AND THE STRIP-TEASE MURDER

By JACK KOFOED

Popular Detective , August 1946
   
When it comes to being killed, a girl like Choo Choo deserves the best!

MISTER BALDY SIMMONS is not in the habit of visiting burlesque theaters, because the jokes are at least thirty years old and the chorus girls sometimes even older. However, there is a strip-tease character named Choo Choo Wallace, whose figure makes even the Venus de Milo look like an old bag.
It is unfair to Mr. Simmons to say he goes to the Bijou just because of Choo Choo's figure, though thousands of other people do exactly this.
Miss Wallace is the daughter of a fellow Baldy is acquainted with from 'way back when Rum Row is better known than the Stork Club. He is Light Fingers Wallace, one of the best liquor dealers of his time. Light Fingers, however, has the misfortune to spend all his money hiring lawyers to keep him out of the sneezer during prohibition days, so when Choo Choo gets into the dough, she has to keep pappy as well as herself.
Choo Choo is not too cheerful about this situation, because she finds it necessary to spend plenty of potatoes on such things as diamonds, sables, and a Park Avenue penthouse. To make it more complicated, Light Fingers is unhappy if he is unable to bet a sizable wad on the horses and he is one of the worst pickers in the entire world. This combination keeps the Wallace bankroll in a tired and frazzled condition.
As a matter of fact, just this very afternoon Choo Choo calls Baldy and speaks in this manner: “It is up to you to sell a bill of goods to the old goat I am unfortunate enough to have for a pater. He loses more dough on the horses than Nick the Greek is able to win at dice, and I am getting sick and tired of paying off bookmakers. Unless he stops playing the ponies, I cut him off my payroll and let him break his heart by going to work.”

Models For Murder by W.T. Ballard

Private Detective Stories, August, 1945

What grim motive was behind the terroristic frightening of those beautiful New York models, and behind the murder that accompanied it? I, Austin Gardner, had two dangerous reasons for wanting to find out . . . .

JIMMY WABASH said; “I'm telling you, Austin, this gal is something. You can take your million-buck models and throw them all together and you ain't got nothing that can touch her.”

I regarded him with amusement. He was a funny little guy with red hair and the sharpest- pointed nose I've ever seen. A photographer, and a good one, he preferred to freelance rather than take a job, although he could have commanded an excellent salary.

“I like to take pictures of what I want, the way I want to take them,” he told me once, and I believed him.

“Take it easy, Jimmy,” I said, winking at Henry Graylord, my agency manager. “You'll blow a fuse. To hear you tell it, this tomato is super-extra. I'd almost think you were gone on her if I didn't know that you regard women as strictly from hunger.”

He grinned, the red climbing up his pinched cheeks until it reached his oversized ears and colored them. “I wouldn't know about that.” He'd lowered his voice. “You see, the way I feel about this Mary . . . all I want to do is sit and look at her, like you would look at a statue or something.”

Somebody posted this on Tumblr. I thought it was awesome.