“The streets were dark with something more than night.” - Raymond Chandler
“But he hadn’t seen anything. It was still a toss-up. Gill Nasser — or Charlie Gay. One of the two had done for Bess Grote. One of the two had bossed the kill of Lou Rands. One of the two had finished off Barney Nasser, perhaps. He wasn’t so sure of that. Rands might have got Barney, working for a frame. It wasn’t likely that Gil had drummed out his own brother.”
Raoul Whitfield’s 1931 story “About Kid Deth” — about a smalltime Robin Hood-styled crook trying to clear himself of murder — is full of those uncertainties, unlikely likelihoods, “might haves,” and “not so sures.” Indeed, there’s as many toss-ups as there are twists and turns, bad guys and femme fatales - so any pointedness becomes besides the point after a while, and you surrender to the commotion of it all, and to your finally-admitted inability to follow the dots and all they denote.
It’s akin to watching the loose-end classic The Big Sleep and choosing — and not wrongly so — to lose yourself in the noirish ambiance and hardboiled acting and writing, regardless of any storyline snags and subplots-to-uncertainty that even a quick phone call or two from the screenwriters to Raymond Chandler couldn’t necessarily resolve. You don’t really care if the butler did it — all you’re required to do is leave all logic at the office and bask in the wonders of that cinematography and dialogue.
The summation-defying, hit-the-ground-running style of “About Kid Deth” also evokes a succinct description of another Whitfield work from his early rival Dashiell Hammett - the two pulp pioneers often referred to as the Matisse and Cezanne of modern mystery fiction. Though originally made about Whitfield’s 1930 novel Green Ice in the New York Evening Post, Hammett’s remarks could have just as easily been applicable to “About Kid Deth” when he noted that “The plot does not matter so much. What matters is ... the pages of naked action pounded into tough compactness by staccato, hammerlike writing.”
Whitfield, whose brand of edgy crime and detective stories made him an in-demand and popular contributor for editor Joe Shaw’s Black Mask magazine in the ‘30s, lets his hardboiled and pulp cultural emotion advance overtly and rhythmically in speech as Kid Deth tries to — needs to — make sense of the goings-on, continuing to try on some theories as they race through his fevered brow:
- "You’re lying, Andy - and I’m sick of lies. You squealed on me - and you framed me. I’ve never killed a guy - not until now. You know that, Andy. But you’re lying. Lou Rands shot Barney Nasser - and you know it. And you know why. But you’re still working’ with Lou - still trying to frame me. Maybe you’ve done enough - maybe not. Anyway - you’re through. To hell with you — Andy — straight to hell --"
- Kid Deth sat on the seat of the cab and swayed with the motion of it. There were several things he didn’t know - and each thing had to do with death. But there was one thing he did know - he was in a tough spot. That had to do with death, too. A hot spot on the electric chair. If Old Andy had seen, heard — and talked --
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