Fast One

Introduction by

Max Décharné

Paul Cain's Fast One first appeared in the US in 1933, and then in a British edition in 1936. As debut novels go it's remarkable, but anyone holding their breath for the follow-up would have most likely been chewing their nails off in frustration - over seventy years later and there's still no sign of one. Impossible to summarise, Fast One is a lean, stripped-to-the-bone tale full of people who drink with both hands and throw money around like they print it fresh every morning just for kicks.

Hardly a household name in his heyday (or these days, come to think of it), the author seems to have led a life almost as shrouded in obscurity as that of some medieval scholar: quite an achievement, given that he lived mostly in LA at a time when it was dominating the world's media and had himself worked on many Hollywood movies.

So who was Paul Cain?

Well, his name wasn't really Cain; or Paul for that matter. Some people knew him as Peter Ruric, others as George Ruric. He seems to have arrived in the world as George Carrol Sims in Iowa in May 1902, but much of what he did between that date and his death in Los Angeles in 1966 is a matter of speculation.

Aged twenty three, the man who was later to become Paul Cain showed up in the heart of the Hollywood dream factory, calling himself George Ruric and working as a production assistant on Josef von Sternberg's 1925 silent film The Salvation Hunters, which features one Olaf Hytten as a character named simply 'The Brute'. Despite the picture's mixed audience reaction - memorably summed up in Richard Griffith and Arthur Meyer's phrase as 'even our lives are not so drab as this, and if they are we don't want to know about it' - the following year von Sternberg gave the public A Woman of the Sea, produced by Charlie Chaplin, with George Ruric listed as one of three assistant directors.

After this promising start in Tinseltown, the trail then goes cold, until the elusive Mr Sims emerges in the March 1932 issue of Black Mask magazine using the name Paul Cain, with a short story called Fast One. Black Mask was then under the command of its most famous editor, Joseph T Shaw. It had begun publishing in 1920, and was by this time already justly famous as the home of pioneering crime genre giants such as Dashiell Hammett and Carroll John Daly. Having broken through into the absolute top-drawer of monthly crime fiction writing, Paul Cain followed up by publishing a new story in each issue for the next six months - Lead Party (April 1932), Black (May 1932), Velvet (June 1932), Parlour Trick (July 1932), The Heat (August 1932) and The Dark (September 1932). Five stories from among these first seven - Fast One, Lead Party, Velvet, The Heat, The Dark - were joined together in 1933 to form Cain's only novel, which was published by Doubleday of New York under the title Fast One. Advance copies carried the following cover blurb:

You've read

THE MALTESE FALCON

GREEN ICE

LITTLE CAESAR

IRON MAN

hard, fast stories all, but now comes the hardest, toughest, swiftest novel of them all

FAST ONE

Two hours of sheer terror, written with a clipped violence, hypnotic in its power.

The author is

PAUL CAIN

These copies also came with a printed recommendation from another writer who was about to make his own entry into the field of crime fiction with a story in the December 1933 edition of Black Mask - a former oil executive and ex-public schoolboy named Raymond Chandler. In a phrase which has become the most famous comment about Cain's writing, Chandler called the novel 'some kind of high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner' and said that its ending was 'as murderous and at the same time poignant as anything in that manner that has ever been written.' It would be a further six years before his own debut novel, The Big Sleep, would make him internationally famous, but it's clear that even at the very start of his career Chandler's critical sense was right on the money.

Fast One must have been sold to the movies even before publication, because a film adaptation appeared the same year as the novel. However, the resulting effort, released under the title Gambling Ship, seems to have been put through the Hollywood mincer and emerged as an altogether different beast. Produced by Paramount, the film had the benefit of someone who became a major Hollywood name, but is not normally associated with hard-bitten tough-guy roles. Indeed, Cary Grant, who played Ace Corbin (the character based on Fast One's Gerry Kells), was more famously occupied that year trading wisecracks with Mae West in two of her biggest successes, I'm No Angel and She Done Him Wrong. Cain received a credit on the picture (as Peter Ruric) for providing the original story, but that seems to have been the extent of his involvement: the adaptation was by Claude Binyon, while Max Marcin and Seton I Miller wrote the screenplay. Two different people wound up with a director's credit, but it doesn't seem to have helped very much, and trade bible Variety called the finished result 'a fair flicker . . . but in toto it's a familiar formula of mob vs mob.'

For a while, Cain's crime writing career continued in the same high-profile fashion. Between the end of 1932 and 1936 he had a further ten stories published in Black Mask, plus the odd appearance in Star Detective Magazine and Detective Fiction Weekly, but after 1936 he seems to have abandoned fiction for good, partly because Joseph T Shaw was no longer editing Black Mask, but possibly also because his Hollywood scriptwriting career may have been proving more lucrative. For example, in 1934 he co-wrote the script for Edgar G Ulmer's classic Universal chiller The Black Cat - a defiantly over-the-top exercise in sustained menace starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. That same year he also co-scripted another film for Universal, The Affairs of a Gentleman, adapted from a play by Edith and Edward Ellis.

Still based in Hollywood, in 1937 he somehow became involved in the British film Jericho, a Paul Robeson vehicle partly shot in Cairo which also starred future Dad's Army stalwart John Laurie. Cain as Peter Ruric received co-writing credit with Robert N Lee (the scriptwriter of mob classic Little Caesar) for this unlikely tale of a US army deserter who flees across Africa having joined up with a native tribe.

1939 found him back in more familiar crime territory, co-writing the original story for a Lucille Ball film called Twelve Crowded Hours, and then in 1941 he adapted a hit Broadway murder mystery by Ayn Rand for the Paramount picture The Night of January 16th. 1942 brought what is often regarded as the most successful of the crime films in which he was involved, Grand Central Murder, an MGM picture starring Van Heflin which was adapted from a novel by Sue McVeigh about a killing in New York's famous railway terminal. Cain then moved from bodies in the booking office to classics of 19th century French literature with 1944's Guy de Maupassant adaptation, Madame Fifi, for producer Val Lewton, and then in 1948 came what appears to be his last film credit, the sentimental Wallace Beery star vehicle Almost a Gentleman.

After this Peter Ruric bows out of the Hollywood limelight, but Paul Cain had recently enjoyed something of a post-war resurrection when a collection of some of his old Black Mask stories was issued in book form under the title Seven Slayers in 1946. These were: Black (May 1932), Parlour Trick (July 1932), Red 71 (December 1932), One, Two, Three (May 1933), Murder In Blue (June 1933), Pigeon Blood (November 1933) and Pineapple (March 1936). It wasn't a follow-up novel to Fast One, but it was Cain's only other book, and as a collection of short, sharp hardboiled vignettes it has few equals.

George Carroll Sims died in Hollywood in 1966, having apparently worked in television for a while, and also written about food for Gourmet magazine. Fast One, his finest achievement, has until now been out of print for quite some time, and yet its status among crime connoisseurs has only increased with the years, and in September 2002 at Christies in New York an advance copy of the US first edition sold for $2,868, more than three times the estimate, while copies of the 1987 No Exit edition have reached $100 a throw on eBay.

As for the story itself, like Jack Carter in Ted Lewis's Jack's Return Home (aka Get Carter), or William Holden and his buddies in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Gerry Kells in Fast One is someone who's been pushed too far and will not take no for an answer, even if the consequences might prove dangerous.

A few days ago - yesterday - all I wanted was to be let alone... I wasn't. I was getting along fine - quietly - legitimately - and Rose and you and all the rest of these ------ ------- gave me action. He stood up. Alright - I'm beginning to like it.

That's the basic motor for whatever plot the novel has, although mostly it seems propelled more by the logic of dreams or nightmares. Throw in Kells' alcoholic girlfriend Granquist - 'Do you want a glass or a funnel?' - some corrupt politicians, a few double-crossing racketeers and a brace of out-of-town trigger men and you have a full-blown recipe for trouble.

You're after an uplifting story with a moral attached? Go somewhere else. The only possible lesson to be drawn here is that maybe standing next to a sharp operator is a dangerous place to be and that sometimes it pays to take your winnings and catch the Super Chief back east a day early.

More than that, it's mostly useless to say.

If there's a better hardboiled novel than Fast One out there, I'm still looking for it.

Max Décharné

Berlin, May 2004

Chapter One

KELLS walked north on Spring. At Fifth he turned west, walked two blocks, turned into a small cigar store. He nodded to the squat bald man behind the counter and went on through the ground-glass-paneled door into a large and bare back room.

The man sitting at a wide desk stood up, said, Hello heartily, went to another door and opened it, said: Walk right in.

Kells went into a very small room, partitioned off from the other by ground-glass-paneled walls. He sat down on a worn davenport against one wall, leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and looked at Jack Rose.

Rose sat behind a round green-topped table, his elbows on the table, his long chin propped upon one hand. He was a dark, almost too handsome young man who had started life as Jake Rosencrancz, of Brooklyn and Queens. He said: Did you ever hear the story about the three bears?

Kells nodded. He sat regarding Rose gravely and nodded his head slowly up and down.

Rose was smiling. I thought you’d have heard that one. He moved the fingers of one hand down to his ear and pulled violently at the lobe. Now you tell one. Tell me the one about why you’ve got such a load on Kiosque in the fourth race.

Kells smiled faintly, dreamily. He said: You don’t think I’d have an inside that you’d overlooked, do you, Jakie? He got up, stretched extravagantly and walked across the room to inspect a large map of Los Angeles County on the far wall.

Rose didn’t change his position, he sat staring vacantly at the davenport. I can throw it to Bolero.

Kells strolled back, stood beside the table. He looked at a small watch on the inside of his left wrist, said: You might get a wire to the track, Jakie, but you couldn’t reach your Eastern connections in time. He smiled with gentle irony. Anyway, you’ve got the smartest book on the Coast – the smartest book west of the Mississippi, by God! You wouldn’t want to take any chances with that big Beverly Hills clientele, would you?

He turned and walked back to the davenport, sank wearily down and again folded his hands over his stomach. What’s it all about? I pick two juicy winners in a row and you squawk. What the hell do you care how many I pick? – the Syndicate’s out, not you.

He slid sideways on the davenport until his head reached the armrest, pulled one long leg up to plant his foot on the seat and sprawled the other across the floor. He intently regarded a noisily spinning electric fan on a shelf in one corner. You didn’t get me out in this heat to talk about horses.

Rose wore a lightweight black felt hat. He pushed it back over his high bronzed forehead, took a cigaret out of a thin case on the table and lighted it. He said: I’m going to reopen the Joanna D. – Doc Haardt and I are going to run it together – his boat, my bankroll.

Kells said: Uh huh. He stared steadily at the electric fan, without movement or change of expression.

Rose cleared his throat, went on: The Joanna used to be the only gambling barge on the Coast, but Fay moved in with the Eaglet, and then Max Hesse promoted a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht and took the play away from both of them. Rose paused to remove a fleck of cigaret paper from his lower lip. About three months ago, Fay and Doc got together and chased Hesse. According to the story, one of the players left a box of candy on the Monte Carlo – that’s Hesse’s boat – and along about two in the morning it exploded. No one was hurt much, but it threw an awful scare into the customers and something was said about it being a bigger and better box next time, so Hesse took a powder up the coast. But maybe you’ve heard all this before.

Kells looked at the fan, smiled slowly. He said: Well – I heard it a little differently.

You would. Rose mashed his cigaret out, went on: Everything was okay for a couple weeks. The Joanna and Fay’s boat were anchored about four miles apart, and their launches were running to the same wharf; but they both had men at the gangways frisking everyone who went aboard – that wasn’t so good for business. Then somebody got past the protection on the Joanna and left another ticker. It damn near blew her in two; they beached, finally got into dry dock.

Kells said: Uh huh.

Tonight she goes out. Rose took another cigaret from the thin case and rolled it gently between his hand and the green baize of the table.

Kells said: What am I supposed to do about it?

Rose pulled the loose tobacco out of one end of the cigaret, licked the paper. Have you got a match?

Kells shook his head slowly.

Rose said: Tell Fay to lay off.

Kells laughed – a long, high-pitched, sarcastic laugh.

Ask him to lay off.

Run your own errands, Jakie, Kells swung up to sit, facing Rose. For a young fella that’s supposed to be bright, he said, you have some pretty dumb ideas.

You’re a friend of Fay’s.

Sure, Kells nodded elaborately. Sure, I’m everybody’s friend. I’m the guy they write the pal songs about. He stood up. Is that all, Jakie?

Rose said: Come on out to the Joanna tonight.

Kells grinned. Cut it out. You know damn well I’d never buck a house. I’m not a gambler, anyway – I’m a playboy. Stop by the hotel sometime and look at my cups.

I mean come and look the layout over. Rose stood up and smiled carefully. I’ve put in five new wheels and –

I’ve seen a wheel, Kells said. Make mine strawberry. He turned, started toward the door.

Rose said: I’ll give you a five-percent cut.

Kells stopped, turned slowly, and came back to the table. Cut on what?

The whole take, from now on.

What for?

Showing three or four times a week … Restoring confidence.

Kells was watching him steadily. Whose confidence, in what?

Aw, nuts. Let’s stop this god-damned foolishness and do some business. Rose sat down, found a paper of matches and lighted his limp cigaret. You’re supposed to be a good friend of Fay’s. Whether you are or not is none of my business. The point is that everyone thinks you are, and if you show on the boat once in a while it will look like everything is under control, like Fay and I have made a deal; see?

Kells nodded. Why don’t you make a deal?

I’ve been trying to reach Fay for a week. Rose tugged at the lobe of his ear. Hell! This coast is big enough for all of us; but he won’t see it. He’s sore. He thinks everybody’s trying to frame him.

Everybody probably is. Kells put one hand on the table and leaned over to smile down at Rose. Now I’ll tell you one, Jakie. You’d like to have me on the Joanna because I look like the highest-powered protection at this end of the country. You’d like to carry that eighteen-carat reputation of mine around with you so you could wave it and scare all the bad little boys away.

Rose said: All right, all right.

The phone on the table buzzed. Rose picked up the receiver, said Yes three times into the mouthpiece, then All right, dear, hung up.

Kells went on: Listen, Jakie. I don’t want any part of it. I always got along pretty well by myself, and I’ll keep on getting along pretty well by myself. Anyway, I wouldn’t show in a deal with Doc Haardt if he was sleeping with the mayor – I hate his guts, and I’d pine away if I didn’t think he hated mine.

Rose made a meaningless gesture.

Kells had straightened up. He was examining the nail of his index-finger. I came out here a few months ago with two grand and I’ve given it a pretty good ride. I’ve got a nice little joint at the Ambassador, with a built-in bar; I’ve got a swell bunch of telephone numbers and several thousand friends in the bank. It’s a lot more fun guessing the name of a pony than guessing what the name of the next stranger I’m supposed to have shot will be. I’m having a lot of fun. I don’t want any part of anything.

Rose stood up. Okay.

Kells said: So long, Jakie. He turned and went through the door, out through the large room, through the cigar store to the street. He walked up to Seventh and got into a cab. When they passed the big clock on the Dyas corner it was twenty