Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

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This one is for Thomas L. Dunne of St. Martin's Press, with thanks for his continuing faith in "Nameless."

Acknowledgements

Preface

It's a Lousy World

Death of a Nobody

One of Those Cases

Sin Island

Private Eye Blues

The Pulp Connection

Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?

Dead Man's Slough

Who's Calling?

Booktaker

"It's a Lousy World." Copyright © 1968 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
as "Sometimes There Is Justice." Revised version copyright © 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"Death of a Nobody." Copyright® 1970 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
. Revised version copyright © 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"One of Those Cases." Copyright © 1972 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
as "The Assignment." Revised version copyright © 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"Sin Island." Copyright © 1972 by Renown Publications, Inc. First published in
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
as "Majorcan Assignment." Revised version copyright
^19,
1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"Private Eye Blues." Copyright © 1975 by H.S.D. Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
.

"The Pulp Connection." Copyright © 1978 by Bill Pronzini. First published in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
as "The Private Eye Who Collected Pulps."

"Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" Copyright © 1979 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
. Expanded version copyright © 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"Dead Man's Slough." Copyright © 1980 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
.

"Who's Calling?" Copyright © 1982, 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

"Booktaker." Copyright © 1982, 1983 by Bill Pronzini.

W
hy doesn't he have a name?

This is the first question readers of the "Nameless Detective" series always ask. Well, I always answer, he's not really nameless; he has a name, just like everybody else, but I don't say what it is. Why not? they ask. Trying to capitalize on Hammett's Continental Op? I tell them no. Trying to establish a hook, a gimmick, to get people to read the stuff? they ask. I tell them no. At which point some of them become annoyed enough to demand: Then why doesn't the damn detective have a name?

It amazes me that anybody should be bothered by this. It seems to me I've made "Nameless" real enough, with enough unique and interesting character traits to set him apart from any other fictional detective. What's in a name, after all?

Anyhow, the damn detective doesn't have a name because when I began the series in 1968 I couldn't think of one that suited him. Big, sort of sloppy Italian guy who guzzles beer, smokes too much and collects pulp magazines. What name fits a character like that? Sam Spadini? Philip Marlozzi?

He stayed nameless through half a dozen stories.

Then, in 1970, I decided to do a novel. Better give him a name now, I thought. Mike Martello? Lew Archerone? With half the book completed and the character still unnamed, it occurred to me somewhat belatedly (I'm not always quick on the uptake) that I was also a big, sort of sloppy Italian guy who smoked too much, guzzled beer and collected pulp magazines. I was writing about myself, was what I was doing. Me at the age of fifty or so; me as a private eye instead of a professional writer.

All of the character's beliefs, hang-ups, prejudices, perceptions were pretty much mine. Whatever he did in a given situation, however he reacted, was more or less what I would do and how I would react. Which also explained, psychologically, why I had never been able to think of a suitable name for him. He was me; I was him. And I had no desire, conscious or unconscious, to rename myself.

Not too many other people figured this out until, in a 1978 collaboration between "Nameless" and Collin Wilcox's Lieutenant Frank Hastings (
Twospot
), he was publicly and for novelistic reasons given a first name: Bill. Aha! folks said then. The damn detective has the same first name as the writer; ergo, he must have the same last name, too. Right?

Right. But he has remained officially "Nameless" in subsequent entries in the series and will continue to remain so in future entries. For one very good reason.

Bill Pronzini may be an okay name for a writer, but it's a lousy name for a private eye.

The ten stories in this collection were all written for magazine publication - the first eight for U.S. mystery digests, the last two on commission for the Japanese slick magazine
Shosetsu Shincho
. They span the full length of "Nameless's" career, from his first recorded case in 1968 ("It's a Lousy World") to the present; and I think they reflect the changes and growth in the character and in my own style and plotting technique. (I've revised all of the early ones, to rid them of some youthful mistakes, but conceptually they're the same stories that appeared in the magazines.)

It should probably be noted that the opening segments of two of the stories, "One of Those Cases" and "Private Eye Blues," were later revised and expanded into the opening chapters of two novels in the series,
Undercurrent
and
Blowback
, respectively. A number of other published "Nameless" stories and novelettes, not included here, became the basis for such novels as
The Snatch, Blowback, Labyrinth
and
Scattershot
. Some folks don't seem to like this practice. I fail to understand the objection. Expanding one's own published short stories into novels, or splicing two or three together into a novel, has been a common practice among writers for a long time; no less a personage than Raymond Chandler made a habit of "cannibalizing" his early
Black Mask
stories for his Philip Marlowe novels, and nobody gets upset about that. If doing it makes a good idea better, or creates a good new idea through combination - why not?

It should also be noted here that the story "Private Eye Blues" was written for a different reason than the others. When it was published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
in 1975, and later reprinted in
Best Detective Stories of the Year
1976, edited by Edward D. Hoch, it carried a slightly different ending than the one which appears in these pages. A full explanation is included in an afterword to the story.

One final comment:

None of these stories (and none of the "Nameless" novels) are intended as pastiches of Hammett or Chandler or Ross Macdonald or anyone else. They follow a tradition, yes, and contain certain conventions that are consciously exploited (nobody loves the old-fashioned private eye story more than I do), but "Nameless" is not Spade or Marlowe or Archer or any other detective. His vision of the world and of the detecting business is his own.

Nor were these stories written with any pretensions to "literary merit" or "genre importance"; their only purpose is to entertain. I can only hope that when you've finished reading them, you feel that "Nameless" and I have succeeded in that purpose.

BILL PRONZINI

San Francisco, California

June 1982

C
olly Babcock was shot to death on the night of September 9, in an alley between Twenty-ninth and Valley streets in the Glen Park District of San Francisco. Two police officers, cruising, spotted him coming out the rear door of Budget Liquors there, carrying a metal box. Colly ran when he saw them. The officers gave chase, calling out for him to halt, but he just kept running; one of the cops fired a warning shot, and when Colly didn't heed it the officer pulled up and fired again. He was aiming low, trying for the legs, but in the half-light of the alley it was a blind shot. The bullet hit Colly in the small of the back and killed him instantly.

I read about it the following morning over coffee and undercooked eggs in a cafeteria on Taylor Street, a block and a half from my office. The story was on an inside page, concise and dispassionate; they teach that kind of objective writing in the journalism classes. Just the cold facts. A man dies, but he's nothing more than a statistic, a name in black type, a faceless nonentity to be considered and then forgotten along with your breakfast coffee.

Unless you knew him.

Unless he was your friend.

Very carefully I folded the newspaper and put it into my coat
pocket. Then I stood from the table, went out to the street. The
wind was up, blowing in off the Bay; rubble swirled and eddied
in the Tenderloin gutters. The air smelled of salt and dark rain
and human pollution.

I walked into the face of the wind, toward my office.

"How's the job, Colly?"

"Oh, fine, just fine."

"No problems?"

"No, none at all."

"Stick with it, Colly."

"Sure. I'm a new man."

"Straight all the way?"

"Straight all the way."

Inside the lobby of my building, I found an out-of-order sign
taped to the closed elevator doors. Yeah, that figured. I went
around to the stairs, up to the second floor and along the
hallway to my office.