Dad Man Talking - Winter Noir

Dad Man Talking is on hiatus this week for the winter holidays. In its place we’re running an excerpt from a little known seasonal story by cult detective novelist Rex Handler. As fans of the crime genre know, Handler was born and lived in the Northeast and was a true suburbanite, taking the hard-boiled, Crime Noir style of such luminaries as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and transplanting it to the East Coast bedroom communities of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Those who knew Handler say that his fictional detective, Jake Mardo, was really a stand-in for the author who saw himself as a tough guy that just happened to have three kids to support along with a mortgage on a Dutch Colonial.

Note: This recently discovered story was rejected by publishers at the time as being too dark for the holiday season. Like millions of us who live on the East Coast, it is widely believed that Handler suffered at this time of year from seasonal mood swings which became even more acute around the holidays. Readers may recognize elements of Handler’s winter moodiness in the following excerpt.


'Tis the Season To Sleep My Lovely

By Rex Handler

I was sitting in my office watching an ant crawl across my desk like a lost man looking for something he couldn’t seem to find. The little bastard didn’t know where he was, but he knew he didn’t belong outside the house this time of year without a sturdy coat, a flashlight and a hand full of anti-depressants. To tell you the truth, I knew what this poor sap was going through – this ant and I we were just a couple of chumps trying to outlast the winter. It was 4:30 on a December afternoon and already it was as dark on the streets as the wrinkled skin under a nun’s wimple.

Through a smudge in the window of my office behind the garage I could see Mrs. Minervini next door hanging her Christmas lights and happily whistling carols through a hole in her dime store dentures. Although I’m usually filled with the milk of human kindness at other times of the year, right at the moment I could have gone outside and wiped the smile off that old dame’s face with a snow shovel. Sometimes I get like this in the winter. Sometimes I also dance in my underwear to Ethel Merman singing Everything’s Coming Up Roses, but this dark day in December wasn’t that sometime.

The phone rang and it woke me from the nap I had started to drift into as I fixated on my new pal crawling up the side of an empty carton of egg foo young. I had been doing a lot of sleeping lately and when I wasn’t doing that I was thinking about sleeping and when I wasn’t doing that I was eating my way through Chinese takeout containers, cold pizza and boxes of cookies. On top of always being tired this time of year, I was so hungry that if the little elves on the side of the cookie box had been flesh and blood I would have eaten them too.

I picked up the phone from somewhere inside of my nodding head. “Maaaadoooo …” I yawned into the receiver.

“Mr. Mardo?” A voice purred. It was a woman at the other and of the line and the sound of her voice alone could have made a monk rip off his sack cloth and break a 25 year vow of silence. I might have done the same if I my sex drive hadn’t already hitched a ride south for the winter.

“Yeah, this is Mardo…” I said, seeing if I could get to any of the leftover egg foo young in the carton before the ant got there.

“Mr. Mardo, I have a problem and I was told by some very reliable people that you were a man who could handle a problem like mine.”

“Well, well, well,” I thought, “a job.” This could be good if it wasn’t for the fact that my spirits were sagging lower than Mrs Minervini’s upper plate. I felt like working right now about as much as I felt like smearing my body with bacon grease and waltzing with a grizzly bear. Come to think of it, at the moment waltzing with a grizzly bear would have been preferable to having to show up for a job. Then I thought of my kids. That was the problem with kids; they demanded the finer things in life, things like food, clothing and shelter.

“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking,” I said in my best happy Tom, matinee idol voice. I didn’t fool her for a minute. From the way she replied I knew that this dame could see right through me.

“You sound sad, Mr. Mardo, Is something wrong?”

“Nothing that a few weeks of intensive daylight therapy and a month or so on a shrink’s couch couldn’t cure,” I shot back. “And you still haven’t told me your name.”

“My name is Missy Horne, and I‘m offering a two hundred dollar a day retainer and a five thousand dollar bonus when you solve my problem. Do you think that might put a smile back on your face?”

Probably not,” I had to admit. “Look, you sound like a nice dame and I don’t want to hurt your feelings but why don’t you call me back in April, say about the time we switch the clocks back from daylight savings. I’ll probably be feeling a lot better then, and I’ll be happy to take any money you want to give me.”

“I don’t think this can wait, Mr. Mardo. You’ll need to let me know right now whether you can take the job or not …”

This was the problem with winter - you had to find a way to fool the fools and keep making your daily bread even though the prince of darkness and the iceman were out there trying to kill you. I listened to Missy Horne breathing at the other end of the line while I watched the ant dig into the egg foo young. The little schnook could have it for all I cared. What I needed right now wasn’t at the bottom of an egg foo young carton anyway.

“Well, Mr. Mardo …?”

I could tell that Missy Horne was the impatient sort, and sooner or later I knew I’d have to say yes to the job. Out on the streets the fat man in the red suit was ringing his bell. Throughout the land, little children had stars in their eyes, and Mrs Minervini next store was about to flip a switch that was going to electrocute hundreds of innocent lights bulbs. Guys like me we pay a price at this time of year. It’s a price those happy saps who believe in Santa and Hanukah Harry never have to pay. It’s the cost of living through winter, my friend, and it’s a debt you pay off with the big sleep.


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Dad Man Talking will be back with a brand new blog posting sometime between Christmas and New Years (if we’re not too tired or depressed to write it). Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night.