I’m Jack Hammer: This is My Story
The name’s Jack Hammer. Ace reporter and a retired private eye. And I’m currently the top dog here at NewzHammer. I’m the Big Chief of this ten cent rag, the Editor. My whole career, I’ve made my living crawling the sewers and lifting the dirty carpets, looking for truths nobody wanted to see. It’s been a hard life, but a good one. Now, the clock is ticking faster than it used to, and I fear my time is running short.
Now, some bum has ransacked my office and lifted a dozen of my Memoirs from the safe. These files are what I base the short, Pulp-Noir stories of my past life on. These files tell the real story, from the shadows to the light. Now some two-bit crook has my case history. It’s a job for a new kind of detective. Maybe you?
The only clue I have right now, came from a punk kid who witnessed the crime, from the burger joint across the street. He didn’t want to talk and tried to dummy up. I had to smack him around a little. Finally he broke and cried “Look Pops! They’re on the menu! Sometimes they come double, with cheese!” So if you’re on the case with me, that is our first clue. Sit down, have a drink. I’ll fill you in on my background, it might help us along the way.
Chapter 1: The Wrong Side of the Tracks
It started on the wrong side of the tracks. Times were lean, more bean than bacon. My old man worked hard, but that’s always been a gyp. When I was nine, Pap took a shot at some easy money, running booze for a lowlife greaseball. He missed, and that got him a five-year stretch in the slam.
Ma was a good woman. With my help, she was gonna make it, and we’d be meeting Pap when they finally tossed him out. But things got worse. Mom took to the bottle. And I took to work, delivering papers in the morning and scrubbing down the local butcher shop at night.
Three years went by. We were making it, but just barely. Ma had sunk pretty low, schlepping drinks at the local bar, which helped feed her habit with all the free booze she could pilfer. Then came that cold, gray day in December, just before Christmas, I think. But hell, what did Christmas mean to a kid like me? The news came that some screw hit the old man with a stray bullet during a prison riot. Pap was dead. Mom took it hard. Three months later, she took one drink too many. Now she was dead too. At just barely thirteen, I was on my own.
Chapter 2: The Streets are Tough
Once they figured out I was alone, Children’s Welfare started poking around. They wanted to put me in a boys’ home, but I wasn’t having any of that. They came and told me to “pack my bags.” I packed them, slipped out the window, and shimmied down the fire escape. The streets were now my home.
The streets are tough. Don’t ever let anyone tell you people land there by choice. It’s always, always a case of bum luck. But that’s where I met an old bookie named Claude Bronson. Claude ran his own numbers racket. He was big and mean, nobody to mess with. You could just smell it. But he had a touch of humanity left in him—you could see it in his eyes. He took pity on me and set me up running numbers for him. For two years, I made good bank. But the Bunco Squad got wind of us, and the run was over. I spent the next three years in reform school.
Chapter 3: The Young Man and the Private Eye
Reform school ain’t no cakewalk. Those days I’d rather just forget. But I did get my GED on the inside and I learned every crooked trick in the book—what you could pull off and what would hang you up. I was also given the grand privilege of making six cents an hour in the metal stamp shop the ‘school’ contracted us out to, so at least I left with a few bucks in my pocket. At 18, I was released to the city mission.
The mission wasn’t bad—a comfy cot and three squares a day. Two days in and I’m on the job hunt, looking for anything. Cutting down an alley, I came across two thugs beating the hell out of some joker. They saw me and headed the other way. I wasn’t getting involved; none of my business. The guy laid there in the alley, out cold. I thought about rolling him, but as I approached, I could see he was hurt bad. Guess I wasn’t so hard-hearted after all. He started to come to and motioned me to help him up. He guided me as I kept him on his feet a half-block to his car. He climbed in the passenger side and told me, “Drive.” I don’t really know why, but I complied. That was the first time I’d ever driven a car, and I took to the road like a duck to water. The guy had a lot of goose eggs and bruises, but his biggest problem was he’d managed to break his left foot in the scuffle. His clutch foot. He wouldn’t be driving for a while.
I fired up the ’39 Ford, and he groaned, “Hospital.” I knew what a clutch was, but using it was new. After grinding a few pounds of gears, the guy gave me a verbal rundown of how things work. And off we went. Like I said… like a duck to water. He led me turn by turn to the hospital. The ride took about 15 minutes, but it was just a moment to me. I was having the time of my life. The old ’39 was beat and ugly, but it drove like a dream. On the way, I learned the guy’s name was Frank Vance. He was a Private Eye, and I had stumbled into the middle of an embezzlement case he was working on.
Chapter 4: The Real Deal
We pulled up to the emergency room, and I jumped out, grabbed a wheelchair, and helped old beat-up Frank into it. I rolled him inside, and the attendants were on him quick. In a minute, they were taking him to X-ray. I still had his keys, so I followed. I tried to give him his keys. “No,” he said. “You wait. This won’t take long. I’m going to need you.” I told him, “Look here. I’m a good Samaritan and all, but I got things to do. I’m on the hunt for a job. I haven’t had lunch, and if I’m not back at the mission by ten o’clock, they’ll lock me out and I’ll be sleeping in the street.” He threw a five-dollar bill at me and told me to go down to the cafeteria. “You’ve got a job,” he said. “You’re my new chauffeur. Just make sure you come back.” A five-dollar bill! Yeah, I’ll be back, I thought. Even if it’s only for today. Hell, I could afford a hotel room tonight.
After about an hour, I made my way back. Frank wasn’t there. Luckily, I could hear his big mouth yapping at the staff, who were trying to convince him he needed to stay for observation. But he wasn’t having any of that. He already had a cast on. It seemed it was more of a crack than a break, and he’d just need the cast and crutches for 90 days. “Get me outta here!” he said as he clambered up on his crutches. And out the door we went.
We got in the car and Frank said, “Drive.” “Where?” I asked. “Back to where we came from,” he said. And I thought, welp, my new job ended as quick as it started. I made my way back like a pro. The route was burned in my mind like a map. I landed in the exact same parking spot and switched off the key. Frank clambered out and said, “C’mon.” I climbed out and walked around the car. He was already making his way to the door of a men’s store. As I held the door open, he said, “If you don’t want people to think you’re a bum, don’t look like one.” We went inside and he bought me two full suits on his private account. That’s when I realized this was the real deal.
After two nights on Frank’s couch, over the very loud objections of his wife, Frank set me up with a room—bathroom down the hall—in an old flophouse one of his associates owned. I spent the next three months running errands, learning how to stay under cover on stakeouts, the difference between a wide-angle and a zoom lens, and all the tricks of the craft. Frank solved the embezzlement case and got the two thugs a good stretch in the joint. But not before me and Frank gave them a beatdown in return.
Chapter 5: Thirty Years Later
That was 30 years ago. Me and Frank had a good run. We worked together for 15 years until his passing. He taught me everything I know. He was a good friend. I ran our spy business for another 10 years before I retired from it five years ago. Now I do my investigating from my editor’s desk. My story is still being written.
Some names in THE HAMMER FILES have been changed to protect the guilty. The rest is true, even if it never happened.
Yours truly, Jack Hammer.
