Homicide Hunch by Robert Leslie Bellem

Book Details

Dan Turner was a hard-boiled gumshoe who worked the mean streets and back lots of the film studios of Hollywood, encountering murderers, blackmailers, greedy producers, seductive starlets, desperate has-beens and immoral grifters. Turner was always ready with his “roscoe” to save some “dame” or “frail” from becoming “dead as a smoked herring” or “as dead as vaudeville.”

Homicide Hunch (1943) – It was a screwball situation. Here was Dan, sitting at home and minding his own business, when the knock came at his front door. A short time later he was in a lavish apartment a few miles away, where he had been convoyed at the point of a gun, and a beautiful cutie he had never seen before was calling him “Dan, darling” and implying that they were old sweeties!

Feature Snatch (1943) – The idea was new—and was tops! Whoever thought of stealing a million dollar production before it was released? And behind it was the ransom angle, and there was blackmail, too. Sometimes a detective likes to get his teeth into a case like that. It’s like matching your wits with a genius.

Careless Corpse (1946) – That bogus postman brought Dan Turner a splendid solid whack with a blackjack and it was a highly special delivery—thereby involving the ace movietown hawkshaw with low killery and high finance and dangerous bafflement!

Death Ends the Scene (1948) – That washed-up movie-director was going to knock himself off in order to give his no-good bride a double-indemnity payoff—and, Dan Turner, trying to do a couple of good deeds, found himself facing a murder rap with some very hard gunsels making it tough!

Robert Leslie Bellem (1902-1968), the creator of legendary Hollywood private detective Dan Turner, was the definition of prolific, producing some 3000 short stories over a thirty year career. While his friends knew him as Leslie, his publishers were afraid he would be perceived as being female, and so he used his first name Robert to publish under. Not that it was likely that a woman would have written the Dan Turner stories. . .

Files:

1. RLBellem-HomicideHunch.epub

Excerpt: Homicide Hunch

I WAS slightly plastered that evening or I might not have fallen for the gag. But the Scotch had lulled my suspicious nature; so I answered right away when somebody knocked on the front door of my apartment stash and said: “Telegram for Dan Turner.” The instant I opened the portal I realized I’d made a bad mistake. Instead of a messenger boy, my visitor was a swarthy creep named Pedro Romelo—a tall, lanky Latin who played minor villain roles in Cosmotone horse operas and carried his villainy around with him in private life.

He had a narrow, mulish puss with black sideburns running down past his ears to emphasize the glitter in his slitted glims, and he affected a costume that belonged only on a studio set—velvet pants flaring at the cuffs, high heeled boots, a Spanish jacket over a pink silk shirt open at the throat to show how hairy his chest was. As soon as I tabbed him, I knew I was in for trouble in copious quantities. He and I had crossed swords in the past, and he bore little love for me. In fact, what he bore for me at the moment was a pearl-handled .28 automatic.

He grinned as he thrust the roscoe against my favorite vest. “Want a hole in your tweeds, snoop?”

“No, thanks. The noise might disturb the neighbors.” I glued the measuring glimpse on him; I wondered how much chance I had of swatting his rod aside and planting a set of fives on his sneery panorama. I concluded he was too close to me for that kind of risk. I didn’t have enough room to swing.

He seemed to guess my thoughts. “Make a move for your shoulder holster and I let you have it,” he warned me.

“You needn’t bother, bub. What cooks?”

“Wait and see. I got a taxi waiting. Let’s go for a ride. If you whistle copper even once, you’ll be minus a kidney. Savvy?”

I said: “Yeah. So I won’t whistle copper.”

He reached under my coat, frisked me for the .32 I always tote in an armpit rig. Then he pocketed both heaters, mine and his own; kept his mitt on the little .28 so its muzzle made a bulge in my direction through the cloth. “Get going.”

WE WENT down to his Yellow and it ferried us out to the Tower Arms on Sunset. Presently Romelo prodded me into a lavish layout on the seventh floor; closed the door after us. I set fire to a gasper; took a hinge around the joint.

The blue carpet must have cost a peck of kopecks, its thick pile seething up around your ankles when you walked on it. All the furniture was modernistic: glass-and-chromium tables, blue drapes, metal-and-leather chairs. A screwy floor lamp cast indirect light against the ceiling and the glow bounced back down around a blue leather divan. When I piped this divan, I widened my peepers and choked: “What the—?”

There was a blonde quail stretched out on the glossy cushions, trussed hand and hoof with knotted ropes. Her piquant pan would have been gorgeous even without its heavy makeup.

It wasn’t her she-male beauty that floored me, though. It was the way she greeted me. “Dan, d-darling!” she moaned.

I gave vent to strangled noises, because I wasn’t her Dan darling. As a matter of fact I’d never seen her before in my life—and I’ve got an address book as wide as your wrist. Evidently I’d been overlooking a bet somewhere.

Then, while I was struggling to cope with this screwball situation, the Romelo rodent maced me over the head with his cannon.

Excerpt From: Robert Leslie Bellem. “Homicide Hunch.”

Reviews

The Paperback Warrior reviewed the story Death Ends the Scene. You can find it HERE.
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