Gun in Cheek (34 page)

"Public decency" organizations, outraged over such moral turpitude, waged an all-out battle against the Spicys that eventually proved victorious. Pressured by these groups, the US Postal Service first required Culture Publications to tone down the sexual content of their magazines, in order to avoid a revocation of their second-class mailing privileges, and then, when this failed to satisfy the guardians of American morals, forced Culture to abolish the entire Spicy line not long after America's entry into World War II. Culture Publications, however, was nothing if not resourceful; by adopting a new series title, "Speed," and abandoning all sexual content beyond mild innuendo, they were able to re-obtain second-class mailing privileges and to perpetuate their detective, Western, and adventure books until the early fifties.

Dan Turner was easily the most popular Spicy/Speed series character, as evidenced by the success of his own magazine and the fact that he and
Hollywood Detective
were the last of Culture's stable to become extinct. Turner's appeal to readers seems to have been predicated on two factors: the wildly improbable but at the same time comfortably predictable plots Bellem concocted; and Bellem's breezy, sexy, colloquial style. Many of the Dan Turner stories deal with some aspect of Hollywood filmmaking and are populated with fast women, Bogart-style tough guys, and plenty of false glitter. (Bellem's evocation of the Hollywood milieu of the period lacks the true color and insights of the work of Raymond Chandler, Steve Fisher, and other writers who made southern California their stock-in-trade.) Corpses turn up in great quantities, most of them leaking "arterial ketchup"; there are gun battles, fistfights, and car chases galore. Bellem's prose, which may or may not have been intentionally humorous, is unlike that of any other writer in or out of the pulps, past or present. As Perelman indicated in his essay, the Bellem style can't be described; it has to be experienced.

To begin with, here is Dan Turner on various Spicy ladies:

I tackled her, tripped her. She went down. I mashed her with my weight. She squirmed, moaned feebly. Then she pulled an unexpected stunt. She wrapped her arms around my neck; glued her crimson kisser to my lips. She fed me an osculation that sent seven thousand volts of electricity past my tonsils. ("Design for Dying")

Of all the tamales who've come up from south of the Rio Grande, Carmen was tops in talent, looks and that quality they call yoomph. ("Coffin Frame")

This yellow-haired wren was maybe a couple of years younger than the one with the russet coiffure, but she was just as pretty. Her plump figure was something to knock your optic out, particularly since she was garnished in a gossamer negligee that didn't leave much to the imagination. From my spot on the floor I could pipe her shapely shafts, the lilting symmetry of her thighs under the diaphanous chiffon that draped them.

Farther up, her attributes were equally thrilling.

Her hips had just the proper amount of lyric flare and her breasts reminded me of ten nights in a Turkish harem. But when I finally glued the glimpse on her piquant pan, all I saw was a cargo of misery and woe. There were tears brimming on her azure peepers, and tremulous grief twisted her kisser. ("Forgery's Foil")

The feminine "attribute" in which Bellem and Dan Turner seemed most interested was the bosom.

She swayed toward me, a sob swelling her perky pretty-pretties. ("Killer's Harvest")

And the curves above were lush white melons nestling in mesh cups of a formfitting bandeau. ("Forgery's Foil")

It [a red satin dress] clung to her slender curves like sprayed varnish; emphasized the lilt of her hips and the perky arrogance of her firm little tiddlywinks. ("Killer's Keepsake")

I sneaked a downward gander at the low-slashed decolletage of her red evening gown where it dipped into the tempting valley between her creamy bonbons. ("Killer's Harvest")

Her breastworks were firm and full and erect; [they] possessed a voluptuous maturity that left me gasping like a gaffed shark. ("Bullet from Nowhere")

The swim suit's brassiere top had cupped the niftiest set of plumply domed whatchacallems this side of a castaway's dream. ("Killer's Keepsake")

One may infer from all this that Turner, if not Bellem, was a card-carrying male chauvinist. He also had a tendency toward sadism in that he was forever smacking "frills" and "janes" around and on occasion shooting them if he felt they deserved it. And lie was more or less inadvertently responsible for the deaths of hundreds of others: no sooner would he finish making love to this or that beauteous frill than she would turn up quite messily dead.

The typical Turner scenario begins with Dan encountering a perky set of tiddly-winks, in or out of distress, with or without a rod in evidence. He then seduces or almost seduces her, after which somebody either takes a shot at him or the woman and/ or knocks him over the head. Of course, "takes a shot at him" and "knocks him over the head" are far too pallid descriptive phrases for Bellem and Turner. These actions are described with such color and flare, and recurring frequency, and inventive variation, that they have become the Bellem trademark.

First, the roscoe:

And then, from the doorway, a gun barked:

"Chow-chow!" and I went drifting to dreamland. ("Design for Dying") The rod sneezed: Chow! Ka-Chow! and pushed two pills through Reggie's left thigh. ("Murder Has Four Letters")

Against a backdrop of darkness the heater sneezed: Ka-Chowp! Chowp! Chowp! and sent three sparking ribbons of orange flame burning into the pillow. ("Come Die for Me")

From the window behind her, a roscoe poked under the drawn blind. It went: "Blooey—BlooeyBlooey!" ("Murder on the Sound Stage")

From the window that opened onto the roof-top sun deck a roscoe sneezed: Ka-Chow! Chowpfl and a red-hot hornet creased its stinger across my dome; bashed me to dreamland. ("Lake of the Left-Hand Moon")

From the front doorway of the wigwam a roscoe stuttered: Ka-chow! Chow! Chow! and a red-hot slug maced me across the back of the cranium, knockedme into the middle of nowhere. ("Killer's Keepsake")

"Ker-choob!" a cannon sneezed through the woodwork, sent a spurt of flame and lead and wooden splinters stabbing at the spot where I would normally have been standing. ("Killer's Keepsake")

Then Dave Donaldson's service cannon said: "Kerblam! Her-biam!" across my shoulder. ("Death Dubbed In")

Tension jerked me around; but even as I made the move a rod barked: Ka-pow! from the doorway of the apartment stash and the ozone alongside my left ear was split by the passage of a pellet. Half an inch closer and the slug would have nicked a notch out of my favorite brain. ("Death's Blind Date")

From a bedroom a roscoe said: "Whr-r-rang!" and a lead pill split the ozone past my noggin. ("Dark Star of Death")

My roscoe sneezed: Ka-chee! and flashed a lethal lump at the slithering snake. ("Focus on Death")

Then we have the blunt instrument or the blunt fist:

"Now," she drew a bead on my tripes. "We'll see if you handcuff me."

"Ixnay!" I caterwauled. "You can't—"

She raised the roscoe, slapped me on the side of the noggin. For a wren who didn't look hefty, she packed a terrific wallop. I staggered, felt my knees turning to jelly. She maced me another swat that put me down for the count with bells jangling in my think-tank. ("Gun from Gotham")

The Murphy bozo intercepted me. "Lay off her, Sherlock. This is none of your affair." Then he festooned an uppercut smack on my chinstrap. . . – It rocked my conk so far back I could count the rafters overhead. They merged into a jumble as my glimmers went cockeyed. Then Max corked me again.

All my fuses short-circuited and I became useless.

When I woke up, I thought I was drowning. Some dope had fetched a big red fire-bucket full of water onto the stage and was engaged in the maniacal pastime of dunking my profile like a cruller. I strangled, choked, sputtered, and snapped to my senses just as I was going down for the third time. "Hey, what the gloobsch is the idea?" ("Diamonds of Death")

The typical scenario continues with Turner finding a corpse of one variety or another. These corpses are not merely dead; they are invariably deader than (or as defunct as) "a pork chop," "a stuffed mongoose," "fried oysters," "French fried potatoes," "George Washington's cherry tree," "year before last," "silent pictures," "a Confederate dollar," "the Petrified Forest," "Hitler's conscience," "ten cents worth of canceled postage," "an iced codfish," or "six buckets of fish bait." When the corpse is one of the beautiful women Turner has seduced, he (being a sentimentalist) sometimes feels like "tossing his biscuits" or "flinging his pancakes"; but of course he is too tough to let anything like that happen. Or to shed a tear for the dear departed. Instead he gets on the telephone to his cop pal, Dave Donaldson, to report the crime like any good citizen.

When Dave came on the line, I said, "Turner squalling. There's been a knock-off at Ellen Ban-croft's wikiup." I gave him the address. "The victim was a Metromount ham named Joe Dunn, and kindly flag yourself out here with a meat-wagon as fast as Whozit will let you."

Donaldson's explosive voice rattled the receiver. "The hell you yodel! Who cooled the guy?" ("Widow by Proxy")

"Dan Turner squalling," I yeeped. "Flag your diapers to Sylvia Hempstead's igloo. There's been a croaking." ("Come Die for Me")

"Zarah Trenwick just got blasted to hellangone in her tepee at the Gayboy. Drag your underwear over here—and bring a meat-wagon." ("Killer's Harvest")

Sometimes, depending on the case, Turner waits for Donald-son's arrival; on other occasions, he rushes off "hellity-blip" or "hellity-larrup" or "lickety-boop" or "buckety-gallop" on his own, to confront this or that character.

The instant my peepers focused on [the] fantastic wordage I leaped away from the desk as if it had suddenly sprouted a nest of cobras. "You crazy dim-wit!" I yeeped. "Do you realize you've dumped me in the grease up to my dimple?"

"Why, I—wh-what do you mean?"

"I mean these!" I screamed, brandishing the letters ferninst his abashed mush. [sic] ("Murder Has Four Letters")

At some point hereabouts, Turner is certain to be bitten by a hunch in one fashion or another: "A hunch crawled up my slacks and nipped me under the hip pocket," or "A hunch needled me like a hornet on the asterisk," or "An idea spanked me in the chops." If Donaldson is present at the time, the two of them are likely to head straight for the "stash" of the "bump-off artist."

"Hell's hinges and hot buttered popcorn, goose this chariot!" I bleated in his ear. ("Come Die With Me!")

If Turner is alone in his pursuit, he'll wait until arrival at the murderer's "wikiup" before he starts to talk tough.

"A while ago you mentioned my hardboiled rep. You said I'm considered a dangerous hombre to monkey with. Okay, you're right. Now will you come along willingly or do I bunt you over the crumpet till your sneezer leaks buttermilk?" ("Murder Has Four Letters")

This is where Turner usually reveals the nature of his hunch; that is, how he arrived at the identity of the guilty party. The revelation is always in italics, lest the reader skip right over it to a bare whatchacallem or a sneezing roscoe.

". . . It hooked up with something Velma said in my stash when she first gandered the bauble. At the time, I thought she was exclaiming that's a rock. Instead her words were the excited start of the phrase that's-a Rocco's ring!" ("Killer's Clue")

Either before or after the explanations, the murderer is removed from the scene in one of three ways: more or less docilely by the police or Turner himself; feet first, having pulled a rod and having had his or her tripes punctured by a pill from Dave Donaldson's service .38 or Turner's own gat; or in irons, after having put up a terrific struggle in hand-to-hand combat with Turner.