Jack Lord's Art

            On Sunday morning I translated the last new verse of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Pour des haricots”:

Oh today’s dish is not a pie, again it’s crap

always a la carte, while the chief of defence staff

gets reservations for the three star menu

and there is more than enough in general

            I cleaned the living room half of the bookshelf that straddles the line between the two sides of my apartment. I did a quick wash of the floor underneath it as well but not with oil soap because there was so much crud that it would have been a waste. Next time I’ll clean there with wood soap and also scrape up some drops of plaster or paint that are on the floor near the baseboard.

            I had a slice of pizza with chipotle sauce and a sliver of berry pie with yogourt for lunch.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and took a bike ride up Brock to Dundas, across to Gladstone, south to Queen and then home.

            It had been comfortably cool in my place and so when I went out I wore my Blundies instead of sandals. It turned out to be quite warm outside and so I could have worn sandals after all.

<            I had three slices of pizza and a beer for dinner while watching an episode of the Untouchables.

            In this story a newspaper journalist named Jake Lingle is killed in a mob hit and the people of Chicago is in an uproar. The feds need to find out whether it was the north side’s Birch or the south side’s Viale gangs that called for the killing. It was probably the Viale brothers because Jake’s most recent article had blamed them for a recent attack. A reward of $25,000 is put up for information leading to the capture of Lingle’s killer. A former private investigator and liquor runner named Hagen contacts the feds because he wants the reward. He tells Ness that he can provide him with the means to track down Lingle’s killer by busting certain liquor operations that he can tell him about. Ness leaves his card. We learn that Jake Lingle had been a broker between the mobs and the cops and that he made a good living selling protection. But he started only working for the highest bidder and left the other side out.
            Hagen goes to Birch and offers him a liquor running deal. While they are becoming friends Birch reveals some information about a big still outside of town. Hagen passes the information on to Ness and asks him to find another source for the tip to keep him from getting knocked off. Ness tells them that one of Birch’s men recently overdosed in prison and so he’ll release false information to the papers that the guy talked before he died. The feds raid the still and find out from one of the men they arrest the name of the man that supplied the gun to Lingle’s killer. Hagen gets closer to Birch and passes on another tip to Ness. Ness is about to raid the place but it doesn’t smell right. His instinct saves Hagen’s life because it turns out that Birch had fed Hagen false information to test if he was working for the feds. Because Birch thinks his man Zuta was wrong about Hagen he tells him to leave town. Hagen tells Ness that Zuta ordered the hit on Lingle and he’s running scared. If he catches and squeezes him he’ll talk. Birch finally agrees to the deal Hagen offers him of running a convoy of liquor trucks from Canada to Kansas City. But Hagen double crosses him and tells Ness about it. Hagen catches up with Lingle’s killer and Birch just happens to show up. Hagen kills Birch in self-defence and collects the reward for capturing Lingle’s killer.

            Hagen was played very smoothly by Jack Lord, who later became the star of Hawaii Five-0. Lord is also an artist and two of his paintings are in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His paintings are skilful but not particularly creative.

            There really was a reporter named Jake Lingle who was knocked off by a hit man named Brothers. Lingle had been secretly involved with Capone’s racketeering endeavours.