BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A SHAMUS?

by Melodie Johnson Howe

The big three auto makers flew in on separate corporate Lear jets to ask for a bailout, and then in a theatre of the absurd moment returned to DC in their battery operated Volts, Bolts, or Watts and asked for even more money. Of course the CEOs of AIG and CitiBank weren’t even dragged up in front of the senate committee to be spanked and eat dirt while asking for their money. They just got it. And they didn’t have to take a dollar a year salary like the supposedly chagrined auto execs. I suspect this may be a class issue. In DC the guys who manipulate money and make loans that nobody can afford to pay off are looked on as the business elite, the upper class of the movers and shakers. The people Congress can wheel and deal with and feel they haven’t stepped down into the gutter. So you ask, “What does this have to do with writing mysteries or short stories?”

I was musing about what happens to the lowly private detective, the shamus, when the economy turns south. These men and women mostly depend on wealthy clients for their livelihood. When rich New Yorkers have stopped spending two hundred and fifty dollars on a bottle wine, settling for a fifteen dollar California Merlot instead, and are no longer ordering sixty-five dollar Mac & Cheese at their upscale restaurant—can unemployment be far behind for the P.I? What husband is going to hire a shamus to follow his wife because he thinks she’s having affair? If he’s loosing his money that’s the last thing he’s going to spend it on. Let her shack up with the pool man. It would be cheaper for him in the long run.

Wealthy women can no longer afford a personal shopper. I hear they’re being let go at a very fast rate. So are the dog walkers. Or are the dog walkers and the personal shoppers are one and the same? I’ll have to look into that. Why would one of these women hire a PI to follow her lover who she thinks is betraying her with a wealthier woman who can still afford a personal shopper? How embarrassing would that be?

Let’s say a once rich woman picks up a coin on the door step of her expensive favorite spa. She thinks she’s discovered a valuable Chinese coin that might keep her in facials for a few more months. Later she discovers she only found a subway token. When reality sinks in that she may have to take the subway because her chauffeur has been fired she’s not going to hire a detective to find out if her husband is hiding money in the Caiman Islands. Of course the detective could work on spec. If the money is discovered he takes a cut.

But what sleuth worth is his salt is going to trust a woman in last year’s designer outfit? Especially when the designer is now out of business. I’ve read that without their personal shoppers some of the nouveau poor are now learning how to mix their old designer outfits. They try on last year’s Prada jacket with the Vera Wang pants from two seasons ago and study themselves in the mirror while their dogs pee on the antique Persian rug.

Ross Macdonald has showed us in his novels to look to the past, to find the truth in the present. So I did just that. I looked to detectives-of-old that lived and worked in the times leading up to and through the depression to see how they earned a living.

In the depression years, Nick Charles (The Thin Man) had retired from sleuthing to marry wealthy Nora. Nora’s family money was mercifully untouched by the collapse of Wall Street. So Nick Charles didn’t need to get paid. And trouble always found him not the other way around. For the amount of booze that he and Nora drank I’m surprised they did as well as they did.

Nero Wolfe practiced his profession through the thirties. If I remember correctly he demanded a very high price for his sleuthing abilities. Of course he had a very high overhead what with the brownstone, Archie, those prissy orchids, and his beer. But for the most part he had an array of wealthy people in desperate need of his services parading through his office. No soup lines for Nick Charles or Nero Wolfe. Even Ellery Queen seemed to live quite comfortably. Of course he lived with his father who had a paying job in law enforcement. I always thought it a little strange for a grown man to be living with his daddy, but it obviously paid off for Ellery in the depression years.

Philo Vance got some of his referrals from Markham, the New York DA. Still, he lived very high on the hog. And again there were enough wealthy people murdering each other during the depression to keep him busy. As I write this I don’t remember (I could be wrong) Vance ever getting paid for his brilliant detecting. Maybe, like Nora Charles, he had family money.

Sam Spade was in search of The Bird during the depression. But Sam along with his partner Archer were the kind of guys that would take on some of the less seemly cases just to scrape by.

Yet, I know that those who have once been very wealthy will still be trying to claw their way back into their penthouses and 15,000 square foot homes. And in all that clawing and conniving a P.I. will be needed. Because not all those men in the depression era jumped out of those windows on their own. You know some had to be pushed.