Hanky Panky Takes A Hit
Private dicks see a 50 percent drop in business, say cheats are getting cheaper. Boston Herald:
The hanky-panky business could use its own stimulus package, say frustrated Massachusetts private eyes who have seen infidelity cases plummet in a sour economy.
Professional snoops say they suspect some would-be philanderers may be too cheap to cheat, while indignant spouses are forced to swallow their pride rather than push confrontations that could lead to an expensive divorce.
With every household penny accounted for and corporations reining in travel spending, small wonder “When a depressed economy hits, infidelity goes down,” said Phil White, executive director of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts.
At his own firm, American Associates of Brockton, White said calls to tail suspected adulterers are off as much as 50 percent from this time last year.
“There’s a phrase, ‘It’s cheaper to keep her,’ ” the veteran gumshoe said. “Perhaps they’re giving their marriage a second bite at the apple.”
John DiNatale, of the family-run DiNatale Detective Agency in Allston, said the economy has been bleeding the life out of lust for the past nine months. His high-end clientele was once willing to pay big in the past to bust betrayal, and DiNatale explained he used to make a killing tailing “people where daddy has a girlfriend and the girlfriend is living in a condo that daddy bought.”
But now, he says, “I’ll see a guy and a woman jump into a guy’s pickup truck and go parking.”
It’s not that cheaters have gone completely cold turkey.
“They just can’t afford the no-tell motel anymore,” White said. “We followed a couple into a movie theater in Brockton the other day. They were all over each other like a new suit of clothes.”
Turns out the better angels of our nature are bottom-line operators. Here’s the whole sordid tale, read it and weep, sweetheart. By the way, I’d like to thank the private investigators of America for maintaining the highest standards of Dashiell Hammett dialogue even under economic stress.* Maybe it’s just that talk is cheap. Meanwhile, in other economic dalliance news, something you already know if you did, marrying a co-worker carries a risk of sudden double-income loss.
Over on Morrissey Boulevard, at the Boring Broadsheet, more on the social tollbooth: Elder abuse is up as economic woes stress family caregivers and programs are cut back. Also, churches are battling to save financial souls.
* I could preach a sermon like the Globe, but I’m not exactly up on my Corinthians, doll face. We’ll go out with some advice and observations for tough times from the man himself:
“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter”
“Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.”
“It’s sometimes better to pretend I don’t hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.”
“She seems to be having a pretty good time despite her worrying. That’s Lily.”
“The roof might fall in; anything could happen.”
“You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain’t one.”
“Thanks for the information about what we call business.”
Extra credit for the extra clever. Think you know what one plus one is? Here’s a Sam Spade word problem on the economics of love, crime and consequences. It’s new math, but the story’s as old as the pyramids, kid. Carry the dame and multiply your bad luck:
“Listen. This isn’t a damned bit of good. You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once more and then we’ll give it up. Listen. When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I’m a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it’s not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I’ve no reason in God’s world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you’d have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That’s five of them. The sixth would be that, since I’ve got something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t decide to shoot a hole in me some day. Seventh, I don’t even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that’s enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.” … “But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won’t. I’ve been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I’ll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I’d be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I’ll be sorry as hell – I’ll have some rotten nights – but that’ll pass. Listen.” He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. “If that doesn’t mean anything to you forget it and we’ll make it this: I won’t because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it — and because – God damn you – you’ve counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.” … Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: “I won’t play the sap for you.”
Do the math, ducks. Show your work.
Topics: literary, men, money, sex, women
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:58 am on Monday, February 9, 2009
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February 9th, 2009 at 8:42 am
It was quiet in my house when I logged on to read this. Quiet, like any empty house, on an empty street, or an empty life for that matter. Quiet, except for the low hum of the machines as they went about their business, and the tinny tick of a cheap clock on the wall, marking off the minutes of my life that I’d never get back. An investment I’d never see a return on.
My eyes were adjusting to the small type as I took another jolt of strong black coffee to keep ‘em opened. Then I read this. Damn, but Jules is good. He’s a wordsmith, who can clack the keys faster than a Chicago typewriter spits out lead, and with the same effect. Solid, hard hitting and deadly. It’s no wonder the old broads at the Globe cluck the way they do. He’s the type of fellow they’ll never own, and can only imagine in their black and white fantasies.
But this, this article. It was like nothing I’d read before. At least not in a long while. Not since that night in Boston. The one where I first laid eyes on Mary. I was at a Southie bar, nursing a glass of whiskey while a cold rain pattered about on the widows. I like rain. It cleans the streets, washing away the dirty secrets of a dirty city and hiding the smell of daily life on the poor side of town.
I heard the door swing open, and I cast my eyes up to the mirror over the bar, and there she was. She was framed in the door, like some movie star, her curves backlit by the pulsing flashes of a neon sign, and looking for all the world like a lost puppy. A cold, wet puuppy.
Her eyes shifted about the room and came to rest on me, a feeling that gave me the willies and made me shift my right hand slowly up to the 45 resting warm and solid on my left side. I flicked the safety off. Just in case.
“You must be Charlie”, she softly said. “I need to ask you about Jules”.
JULES! I hadn’t thought of that name since Cairo, and the last time I saw him he was furiously pounding out a story and hoping to make the hotel bar before last call. Damn, I thought. Why now. Why me. Why here?
I poured myself another shot, and one for her and led her over to a table in the back. I like the back, especially facing the door. You never know what’s gonna walk through. Like tonight. I knew she needed help. No one of her class goes out in the rain alone, looking through run down Southie bars unless there’s trouble. With a capital T, and an E at the end. Something big was a foot, and if Jules was involved, it was going to be good.
I took another sip of whiskey, settled back, and looked deep into her eyes as she began to tell her tale…….
February 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Dashiell Hammett is my favorite communist.