Vitina

           Sunday was another hot day and since there was little possibility of rain I took my bike ride and finished exploring all of the streets south of St Clair between Warden and Pharmacy.

            My next-door neighbour, Benji told me that the landlord is going on vacation and that he’ll be taking out the garbage while he’s away. I asked him if he’s going to get a discount on his rent for his labours but he said, “I don’t want to put any pressure on him”.  I told him that I would ask for $60 off my rent for every month I was doing the job.

            The first story begins with a stag party. A stripper named Sherri Gay arrives who pins the groom, Al down and gives him a long kiss while the future brother in law, Jason takes a Polaroid. Al wants the picture back but Sherri puts it down her bra. After everyone leaves Sherri tells Al that he will have to pay to get the photo back and tells him to come and see her later with the money. Al calls Mike Hammer and asks him to get the Polaroid back but when he goes to her apartment he finds Sherri dead. He doesn’t suspect the groom because he finds the picture with her, which he would have taken with him. He finds out that Jason took the picture and goes to see him. He finds out that both the Jason and his wife Doris had different reasons for not wanting the wedding to take place and he has them both arrested. He calls Al to tell him but the number is disconnected. He realizes that when Al first called Mike it must have been from Sherri’s apartment and Al had to be the killer.

            Sherri Gay was played by Joan Tabor who did a lot of TV acting in the late 50s and early 60s.

            Doris was played by K.T. Stevens who was the daughter of Sam Wood, who directed Goodbye Mr. Chips and two Marx Brothers films.

            The second story has Hammer on vacation in Belgium and visiting the 1956 Brussels World Fair. He goes to register at the US Consulate and an elderly widow named Mrs. Putnam, also from the States, overhears that he’s a private investigator. She says she wants to hire him and he turns her down but agrees to meet her at her hotel, which is also his. She tells him that her sister married a Polish teacher before the war and were both put in a concentration camp where she had a daughter named Derna. Since then she’s been trying to track the girl down and six months ago heard from a woman named Maurina who says she was with the Mrs. Putnam’s sister when she died and has been raising the girl, who is now 14 and called Anna. A man named Roland came to see Mrs. Putnam and asked for $5000 to cover all the money they’d spent raising Derna and she is now suspicious. She will gladly pay if the girl is really her niece but wants to be sure. Mike does some checking with the police and then goes to see Maurina, who is a dancer at a show at the fair. He tells her that he found out that Anna really is her sister and was born in Brussels but she says that the real Anna died as a baby during the flu epidemic and since Anna was already registered with the government she just raised baby Derna as Anna. She says she can prove it and tells him to wait there but comes back with the cops and tells them Hammer is harassing her. He escapes and goes to where Anna lives. Anna believes she is Derna and wants to go and live with her aunt in America, although it was only a few months ago that she learned that she is the woman’s niece. Anna goes to put on a dress that she will wear to meet her aunt the next day and while she is in her room, Roland arrives to confront Hammer. Anna overhears their argument and runs out. There ensues an interesting fight because Roland is an expert in Belgian savate and so he does a lot of jumping and kicking to knock Hammer around until Hammer wraps a sheet around his legs and gets the advantage. Anna goes to the fair and confronts Maurina, who admits that she lied that she was Derna. She’d just wanted her to have a better life. Mrs. Putnam agrees to take care of her anyway.

             It’s pretty implausible that a 14 year old in Belgium would want to go and live with a stranger in the United States when she has a loving sister in Belgium but she seems happy to go.

Maurina was played by Vitina Marcus who was a guest star on a lot of 60s science fiction TV shows like Lost in Space, Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Although she was half Sicilian and half Hungarian she was cast as in western shows like Gunsmoke as an indigenous American. She retired from acting in the late 60s and is now a real estate broker.

Anna was played by Cindy Carol who later starred in Gidget Goes to Rome. She’s retired now but sometimes works as a substitute teacher in Bainbridge Island, Washington.