The Junkyard at the End of the Universe

            On Friday I added a new pose to my yoga routine in which I lean back on the left or right hand with the corresponding foot on the floor and raise my opposite arm and leg in the air. I think I could do it in my 20s but right now I last about a second.

Since there was very little chance of rain I took a bike ride in the late afternoon. I knew that because the Waste of the Danforth festival was going on I'd have to make a detour, which meant there was no reason for me to time my trip and so I went without wearing a watch. That's one of the reasons I felt okay on the Bloor bike lane with stopping in the Annex when I saw that one of the plastic posts that line the path had fallen over and was blocking half the lane. I pulled over, leaned my velo against a pole and kicked the fallen post out everyone’s way before continuing on. There was another post that had gone down a little further along but it wasn’t very much in the way.

Two times along the bike lane a pedestrian stepped in front of me without looking and I had to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting him. The second time it was a postal worker walking to his truck near Avenue Rd.

At Broadview I went north to Mortimer and across to Greenwood before going back down to Danforth and continuing on to Warden. I rode north past St Clair, skipped the first couple of streets because they led into a community of identical new townhouses which are boring to ride around because every street looks the same. I did though turn right on Deans Drive, which skirted the top of that neighbourhood, because to the north was an industrial area consisting of rows and rows of skids. The area was flooded in several places after the recent rain.

I went back to Warden and went north one more block to Upton, which is a fully industrial street. I passed the Stock school bus company:  "A Journey in Learning". Shouldn't it be “A journey to and from learning”? It's not like one learns on the bus. I passed “Scrap My Junk Car" where I stopped to take a picture of an antique Oldsmobile  Futuramic 88, probably from 1950. Many claim it was the first muscle car. At the end of the street was The Canadian Fire Company. On top of a building near the fence was the red fuselage of what looked like a WWII era plane. An image search of the picture I took came up with a Russian single-seat WWII fighter plane called the Lavochkin La-5 but they don’t look exactly the same to me. It’s probably a Canadian plane but I don’t know what kind. The Canadian Fire Company seems to mostly serve film sets, providing safety personnel and props. I guess some action movies sometimes make big fires that need to be controlled during filming and put out when the scene is over. I think that they are all ex-firemen.

The next street north was Hymus where one auto repair company had an antique yellow Checker Marathon cab on its lawn, maybe from the 60s but they didn’t change much into the 80s.

I rode up to Comstock, crossed Warden and headed back down to Danforth Rd and took that to Danforth Avenue.

On Danforth just after Donlands I stopped to use the washroom at Starbucks. The fence for the east end of the Taste of the Danforth festival was right there next to the place where I locked my bike. Next to the Starbucks is a fruit and vegetable stand owned by a couple that looks Ethiopian. Trying to cash in on the festival, instead of the usual display of fruit outside the store, they had it set up more like a kiosk for drinks, slices of watermelon and little trays of cherries. There weren’t a lot of customers when I was there. There was a long line-up for the washroom at Starbucks though. They have three washrooms including the one for the disabled and so it didn’t take long.

I tried to take mostly alleys on my way west and so I was able to take in some of the audible flavour of the festival without getting caught up in it. At least two subway stations and a church cut off a straight laneway route to Broadview and so I had to go north sometimes one or two blocks.

As I got closer to Broadview there was a young guy with a fluorescent green backpack also taking the alleys. He was ahead of me most of the time. Once we were on the Bloor Viaduct he was riding in the middle of the bike lane without using his hands. I caught up with him and asked to pass. He acted like he’d just been caught with his pants down, grabbed his handlebars and shot ahead. I passed him around Sherbourne but when I got to Yonge I stopped because I wanted to go south and he sped past me to go west on Bloor.

I had a chicken leg for dinner and watched the first ever screen adaptation of a Mickey Spillane novel, “I, the Jury” from 1953. “I, the Jury” was also Spillane’s first novel. It was pretty complicated and hard to follow at first. Jack, an insurance investigator and buddy of Hammer’s who lost an arm during WWII saving Hammer’s life, is mysteriously murdered. Jack had thrown a party the night before and Hammer’s secretary got him the guest list. One of them was a beautiful psychiatrist named Charlotte Manning. Another was a wealthy fight promoter named Kaleki and that’s whom he goes to see first. He tells Kaleki that he’s a suspect for him even if the cops don’t think so. He grabs him and threatens him with death if he had anything to do with Jack’s murder. Just then another guest from the party, Hal Kines comes in and tries to stop Hammer but Hammer punches him and leaves

Next Hammer goes to see Charlotte Manning. Manning knew Jack because she treated Jacks wife Myrna for drug addiction. She’s very charming with Hammer and they flirt a bit. At the same time he reminds her that she’s a suspect and leaves.

Hammer goes to Hal Kines’s hotel room and begins snooping around but Kines walks in with a gun. Hammer beats him up and leaves. He goes to the hotel room of the Bellamy twins, who had also been guests at Jack’s party. Only Mary, the one with the strawberry birthmark is in the room because Ester has gone down to see Hal Kines. Mary knew Mike was coming and begins flirting with him immediately, saying, “How did you know what I wanted for Christmas?” The twins knew Jack from when he was a guard on their father's estate. He asks a few questions and then as he's about to leave Mary gives him a long, sensual kiss in hopes that he’ll stay, but he leaves. Then she laughs.

Hammer spends a lot of time going around town and asking questions about Kaleki but no one wants to talk. He goes to see his friend Manuel, who owes him a favour and is pressuring him to say something but some thugs arrive that don’t like Hammer asking questions. They beat him up and leave him lying on the floor. Hammer goes to see Charlotte Manning and she administers first aid. They discuss Kaleki and how he runs a numbers racket. They kiss for a while but then Charlotte suggests that Jack might have left Hammer a message in his place that the cops wouldn’t have noticed. Hammer goes looking for Jack's diary and finds it. Inside there is the name Eileen Vickers and a note that she’d changed her name to Mary Wright and was in bad shape and that he would ask Charlotte Manning for help. He also wanted to raid the place where Eileen worked. Hammer goes to see Eileen’s father who tells Hammer that he'd asked Jack to help Eileen because he'd known her since she’d been a baby. Hammer goes to see Eileen, who is teaching at a dance school run by Carlos and Bonita. The lessons take place in private rooms and there is the implication that the whole thing is a front for prostitution. Hammer later finds that Eileen’s boyfriend, John Hansen is really Hal Kines. Next Eileen and Hal are found murdered at Carlos and Bonita’s dance studio. Hammer asks Carlos a question in Spanish and he says “Si”. Hammer then realizes Carlos can’t even speak Spanish because he’d asked him if he was the murderer. Carlos starts suddenly talking in a Brooklyn accent and says, “Nobody wants to take rumba lessons from a guy named Charlie from Coney Island!” When Hammer goes back to his office, Charlotte is waiting for him. They leave to go for a drink and someone from a passing car shoots at them. Later Hammer is sleeping and his friend Bobo wakes him to tell him Kaleki is gunning for him. Hammer goes to see Ester Bellamy because he knows she’s a shooting champion and he thinks she might have been the one that shot at him. She says she wouldn’t have missed. Then she begins to kiss him and he knows it’s really Mary because she doesn’t have the birthmark. He leaves again and she cracks up laughing again. Next Bobo turns up dead in his Santa suit right next to the chair where the children sat on his knee.
            Hammer goes to Hal Kines’s room at Parkdale College and finds Kaleki with a gun trying to burn a document. There’s a shootout and Kaleki dies. Hammer gets put in jail. Captain Chambers lets him out and they go together to look in Kaleki’s safety deposit box where they find a treasure trove of jewels. Jack’s wife had been involved in jewel theft in addition to having been a junky when she met Jack. Pat thinks Myrna might still be part of the gang. Hammer goes to Charlotte to ask if that’s possible. While he’s there he gets a call that Myrna is in a bar going back to her old ways and so Hammer an Charlotte go to get her. They take her to Charlotte’s place where Charlotte puts her to bed and tells Hammer to leave. He goes and then Charlotte puts something in a needle that she injects into Myrna’s arm and tries to get her to say whether Jack spoke about her the night of the party. When she gets nothing she slaps her.
            Hammer calls his secretary and Velda tells him to get back to the office because it’s more than important. “More than important” is their code that he should come up the back way because there’s trouble. The same guys that had beaten Hammer up in Manuel’s place are waiting. Their leader figures that Velda gave Hammer a signal and they are ready for him. Hammer is tortured for a while until he’s unconscious. They try to drop him over the stairwell from several floors up but he begins to fight. He takes out three guys but their leader has a gun on Velda. She struggles with him long enough for hammer to reach him and he breaks the guy’s hand.

Charlotte comes to tell Hammer than Myrna is gone. Myrna is found dead from a hit and run.
            Hammer goes over what he’s learned. Kaleki had a million dollar jewelry racket, but his “playmate” Hal Kines decided he needed psychoanalysis. Charlotte hypnotized Hal, found out about the racket and wanted in. Then she wanted to be in charge. He goes to Charlotte’s place and waits for her. He’s pointing a gun when she comes in and confronts her about killing Jack. He tries to be seductive and then scared to get through his defenses. She comes to his arms but reaches for a gun behind his back. A shot goes off and she falls dead. “How could you?” she asks. “It was easy,” he says, and she dies.

I haven’t read the whole novel but based on the first few chapters this movie was pretty faithful. The actor that played Hammer, Biff Elliot was a former boxer and the fight scenes were quite authentic. He was actually from the US side of my neck of the woods as he was brought up about a half hour’s drive away in Presque Isle, Maine, though that was before I was born.
            Charlotte Manning was played by B movie actor Peggie Castle. She finished her acting career playing a dancehall hostess for three seasons on the western drama “Lawman”. She died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 45. 

            The Bellamy twins were played by Tani Guthrie and Dran Hamilton, or Tani and Dran Seitz who were actually twin sisters. They did some work on Broadway and in horror films. They changed their names a lot. They also used Phelps and some others.