The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 1)

Raymond Chandler Backfire

Although Raymond Chandler’s Hollywood career was frustrating, he was involved with important movies: Double Indemnity (with Billy Wilder), Strangers on a Train (with Alfred Hitchcock), and The Blue Dahlia, made from his original screenplay. Sometime in 1946 or 1947, Chandler wrote this screen story on speculation but no one was interested in hiring him to develop it into a screenplay. Published only as a collector’s edition (Santa Barbara: Santa Teresa Press, 1984), “Backfire” is an example of the first step in the filmscript process, the “original story” that precedes the “treatment” in which blot and characters are developed before going on to the actual screenplay. As Robert B. Parker noted in his introduction to the edition in which this story appeared, George is an example of the Chandler attitude: “... a vision of chivalric possibility, of hope, maybe only the nostalgia, that honor and courage in the defense of goodness is sufficient to endure.”

George comes home from the wars (I’m as sick of this as you are, I’m just spiralling) to find, say, his wife has been killed in an auto accident on a dark road in a fog at night, at a bad turn. He has no suspicions of foul play. (The cops had, but they didn’t get anywhere, so clammed up.) George finds the small town drear and too full of memories now, and he moves on.

He remembers Edna, his wife, always talked of her childhood in Poonville, Oregon. George says that’s as good as any. He goes on there and gets a job and rooming is tight, so he is introduced by Mary, a girl friend of Edna’s, to Joe, a nice guy, also out of service, and they room together. They become pals. George has asked Mary not to tell anybody who he was or anything about his being married to Edna. He doesn’t want talk or sympathy. He wants a new life in a new town, but it kind of helps his loneliness to think that Edna was a kid along these streets, and drank Cokes and ate ice cream in this drugstore, and went to this Bijou movie house, and waggled a little red and green flag over on the high school football field.

George is a nice guy, not simple, not bitter. Just lonely. Joe is a nice guy too, but his eyes are a little bitter and his mind is not so clean after the war. But the boys get on fine.

Joe finds out somehow who George is. And Joe is the boy who was stationed in Edna’s town in the war and went off the track with her and killed her because she wanted too much of his life.

Joe thinks George came there to get him, that this friendly act is just an act. Joe thinks he is in love with Mary. George is, but doesn’t know it yet. Mary is in love with Joe, who gets the women that way.

Little things begin to happen to George. Look funny. Almost got hurt that time. Then he does get hurt. Just misses being killed. Doesn’t know it himself, but another guy puts him wise. “Somebody did that on purpose, George.” George wonders, talks to Joe, Who the hell would want to hurt him? Joe thinks this is more act, kind of third degree. It’s beginning to get him. He ought to move on. But Mary has dough and she can be had. Better marry her first and then move on.

But George is doing all right with Mary too. Joe knows damn well that he either gets them quick or not at all. George is a distance runner.

Then George gets a letter from a friend back home. “I guess you’re all over Edna’s death by now, George. And you’ve made nice friends and met a nice girl. Maybe I ought to go on keeping my mouth shut, but I don’t like the way Edna got killed. Never did. I was talking to Beattie Lewis the other night, the cop who investigated it. Beattie never liked it either. He never liked the guy that was playing around with Edna while you were away, even if he was a soldier from the camp. The trouble is, Beattie says, this guy, Joe Westerman, wasn’t even in town that night. He had leave in New York. But Beattie sure would have liked to been able to convince somebody this needed a little more work. Only the chief just couldn’t give him the time.”

Joe Westerman. That’s the guy George is rooming with. In Poonville. Why in Poonville, of all the thousand small towns in the U.S.A. he could go to?

George asks him. Joe looks surprised. “My first camp,” he says. “I had a pretty swell time here too. Only I didn’t use all of my opportunities. Guy hates to think he didn’t do that. Matter of fact, why are you here, George?”

“My wife was born here.” “Wife? Never knew you had one.” “She’s dead. Auto accident.” He lights a cigarette and blows smoke idly. “That is, they said it was an accident. But I just had a letter — oh, well, let’s forget it, Joe. Guess I’ll take a shower.”

He does. Joe goes through his clothes. He doesn’t find the letter. George sees him do it. Joe does not see George.

George goes to see Mary. Tells her he’s going back home. There’s something he wants to look into. “Would it make any difference to you whether I came back here, Mary?” Mary just looks at him. “Or will you be all right with Joe?” Mary flares up a bit. Then she busts out crying, “I–I guess I’m in love with Joe,” she says. “I’m sorry, George. I guess that’s how it is.”

George says fine. “Always provided he’s the right kind of guy for you.” “Do you think I wouldn’t know?” George: “I know somebody who didn’t.”

He leaves. Mary is not sore, but she is hurt. George starts to pack, tells Joe. Joe offers to drive him to the station. Fine. They just miss the train. Fine. Make it at the junction easy. Fine. Out in the country George says: “Stop a minute, Joe. Here’s the letter you didn’t find.”

Joe reads it. “Yeah,” he admits. “Edna and I were pals. I got to know her because she came from here and I was in camp here. Kind of a bond. After she was killed I wanted to come back. Kind of funny. We both came here for the same reason, you and I.”

“But that isn’t why you thought I came here, is it, Joe?” “Huh?” “Well, I have to make that train. Better get moving.” Joe doesn’t move. George tells him why he is going home. “But you see, Joe, I’m really doing it for your sake. Mary’s in love with you. I’ve got to know.” Joe: “Know what?” “I’ve got to know whether Edna’s death was an accident — like the ones I had here. On account of Mary I’ve got to know. She’s in love with you, Joe.”

Joe: “And if it wasn’t an accident?” George: “Then I have to find out where you were that night. If it’s not too late to find out. How about driving on? Or would you rather pull that gun?”

Joe pulls the gun he has been holding in his pocket. “No bullets in it, Joe. I took them out.” Joe smiles. “I reloaded it, sucker. Think I’d overlook that?” “There’s something else I ought to tell you, Joe.” “Save it, get under this wheel and drive.”

They drive. They come to a bridge over the river. It’s a swift river. Joe makes George stop. Get out. Down the bank with you. They go down the bank. Joe lectures on murder. “Saps kill twice the same way. Not me. By the time they find you, bud — and this is your car, remember?”

They go down to the edge of the river. Deep, fast, dark. “Stand on the bank, George. I don’t like to do this, but a guy has to. Lucky you were leaving town tonight. Helps. So long, pal.”

Joe lifts the gun and fires. There is an unnaturally heavy explosion. Well, who said what kind of gun it was.

Darkness. Something goes into the river. Steps. There is a digging sound off. A car starts and fades off into the night.

A man gets on a train. A car is left in a garage.

They miss Joe around town after a while. Mary is silent. They miss George, too. Mary knows where he went, but she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t know where Joe went. They find George’s car. And a guy took a ticket for New York. What did he look like? Looked like a guy with a suitcase looks. They go to Joe’s room. Clothes not packed. Went standing up. George left nothing. Oh well, these ex-soldiers. They don’t stay put.

Mary packs a suitcase herself. Her old man is bothered, but Mary’s always known how to take care of herself.

Beattie Lewis is in the squad room, bored as hell. No business. A man wants to see him. The door opens. George walks in.

They bust Joe’s alibi. They look up the coroner’s report. The autopsy. Edna was thrown from the car, hit side of head against rock, neck broken, death instantaneous. George says: “How about the hyoid bone?” “Nothing.” “You mean, you didn’t look at it?” The coroner admits that. Cause of death obvious. George says: “Sure, blood, crushed skull, broken neck, all you wanted. But all that could be faked. How far was she thrown?” “Too damn far,” Beattie says, “for my taste. And too clear. And the way the car was broke up she ought to of been trapped in it. But they happen all kinds of ways. You never know. I had one lying on the roof of a sedan once, dead as a pickled herring.” “I’d like to know about the hyoid bone,” George says. “Either that or a bruise on her chin.” “Little late for that, son,” the coroner says. “It might mean my own neck,” George says. “You see, I killed the guy who did it.”

They pinch George and then they get the doc that did the autopsy. “No signs of strangulation,” he say s. “No bruises on chin.” He looks over his notes. “Only one thing you could even notice apart from the main injury. The woman was wearing an anklet and the anklet lock made a bruise on her leg. That could happen all sorts of ways.” Beattie shakes his head. “Boy, am I dumb. That tells the whole story. Look, this guy knocks the woman out with a sandbag on the side of her head. Then he winds something strong but soft around her ankles and swings her the way an adagio dancer swings his partner. Then he slams her into the rock. Maybe twice. Let’s see, did this guy ever—”

So they find out he did, before the war. He was in a cheap act with a girl and he swung her by the ankles shoulder high.

They find foe down river. His head is in bad shape. Pieces of steel have torn off half his face and a lot of his throat and chest. Or maybe it was fishes.

Mary goes to see George in jail. “George, why did you run away? Why didn’t you just tell your story?”

George: “Because what I did was murder — unless I could prove self-defense — unless I could prove that Joe had tried to kill me before. I could only prove that by proving a motive. The motive was that he killed Edna. So I had to prove he killed Edna. And I had to have time to do that, so I had to put him in the river. After all, it was his own idea. Suppose I said he held a gun on me and fired and the gun killed him. That’s just me talking. Even if I got off, I was cooked with you. This way I’ve got what they call a cumulative defense.”

They take George back to Poonville and the county attorney gets to work on him. Mary’s father wants to get him a big city lawyer. George says any old lawyer will suit him. Some nice old guy with a beard. All the defense he needs is a map. The map is in George’s head. Find the place where Joe was killed. Walk nineteen steps away from the river and turn sharp right and walk seven more and dig. “You’ll find a busted gun buried in an oilskin shaving kit bag.”

They find it. The gun is all blown to hell, except for the barrel, which is in fine shape, except that a piece of lead has been hammered down it with a punch.

The least the guy was asking for who fired that gun was a tin hand. But Joe was smart. He collected one hundred percent.

P.S. Something tells me George collected the girl, but I could be wrong.