Kennedy is not just a user of alcohol, but an admitted abuser, a serious drunk. In one of his many appearances in the pages of Black Mask, “Bad News” (March 1934), he imbibes so much liquor that he is barely able to function as either a news hawk or a human being. Nevertheless, Kennedy has a wry wit and an unparalleled “nose for news,” and his adventures in tandem with Police Captain MacBride of fictitious Richmond City are unfailingly exciting and entertaining pulp fare. The first Black Mask appearance of the popular duo was in “Raw Law” (September 1928), the first of five installments in a series billed as “The Crimes of Richmond City.” Thirty-six other tales featuring Kennedy and MacBride in major and minor roles followed over the next eight years, culminating with “Deep Bed” in the August 1936 issue. “Backwash” (May 1932) is a novelette concerned with the kidnapping of a governor-elect; it showcases MacBride as typically tough and professional, Kennedy as typically haphazard and sodden, and their relationship as typically adversarial.
Nebel began selling regularly to the pulps when he was in his teens, using his own name as well as such pseudonyms as Eric Lewis and Grimes Hill; detective fiction and northern adventure stories (he once worked in Canada’s north woods) were his primary interests. The Kennedy and MacBride stories were one of the two prominent series he created for Joseph T. Shaw during Shaw’s ten-year editorial reign at Black Mask. The other starred “Tough Dick” Donahue, an operative for the Inter-State Detective Agency who was not above using illegal methods to achieve his goals. Donahue appeared in fifteen stories between 1930 and 1935, a half-dozen of which were collected in Six Deadly Dames (1950). Nebel’s third major series was published in Dime Detective from 1931 to 1937. This one concerned another hard-bitten private eye, Cardigan, whose escapades were chronicled in forty-three novelettes, six of which were gathered in book form under the title The Adventures of Cardigan (1988).
In the early 1930s, Nebel wrote his only three novels: two suspense tales, Sleepers East (1933) and Fifty Roads to Town (1936), and a bibulous mainstream story of Depression-era New York City, But Not the End (1934). In 1937, he abandoned both novels and the pulps to concentrate on stories for Collier’s, Liberty, and other slick magazines, a career in fiction at which he was successful for more than twenty years. His last few stories marked a belated return to the mystery field, being published in such genre periodicals as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
B. P.
Backwash
(1932)
Kennedy, leaning on the bar with his left elbow and with his chin propped on his left hand, laid his right palm on the top of the siphon, pressed down with the heel of his hand and fizzed seltzer hard into a glass of rye. Rye and seltzer geysered, splashed down on a newspaper George the barman was reading.
George looked up. “Well!” he growled.
“My error,” Kennedy said, absently. He raised a hand to his lips to camouflage the disorders of indigestion, then stirred his drink with a glass swizzle stick.
“You’re drunk,” George said indignantly, patting the despoiled newspaper with a towel.
Kennedy raised his drink. “I say with Dryden, ‘Bacchus ever fair and young.’ This bootleg is the fairest in color and the youngest in age I’ve ever guzzled.”
“What are you talking about? That there liquor is a month old.”
Kennedy’s eyes drooped; he opened them with an effort. “What the hell is that radio mumbling about?”
“Dunno.” George turned and gave one of the dials a twist. “Police alarms,” he said.
“Is there no escape from monotony?”
“Shut up a minute,” George growled.
A blunt voice was broadcasting:
“Richmond City Police Headquarters. Attention all cars. All cars attention. Governor-elect Cortland Wayne left his home on Westover Boulevard at seven o’clock this evening. He was driving a black Cadillac coupe; license number six — B as in bottom — four — six; license number six — B as in bottom — forty-six. A black Cadillac coupé. He was to speak at the Foursquare Club at thirty minutes past seven o’clock. He did not arrive there. He is not home. It is now eleven-fifteen o’clock. Foul play is indicated. Stop and investigate any black Cadillac coupe. Report. Again: Attention all cars. All cars attention. Governor-elect Cortland Wayne...”
Kennedy stood back on his heels, blinking.
George said: “Cripes, did you hear that?”
Kennedy weaved. “Where’s my coat?”
“Over on that hook.”
Kennedy wheeled, lost his balance, regained it and lunged towards a wall rack. He unhooked his topcoat, got his right arm into the left sleeve, dropped his hat. George bounded around the bar and straightened him out. Kennedy stepped on his hat. George picked it up and slapped it, battered as it was, on Kennedy’s head. Kennedy smashed into the door, got it open and barged out.
Before the door had stopped swinging, it whipped open violently. Kennedy ran headlong into the bar, drained his drink, turned and sloped out again. He hove on to the sidewalk, overran the curb, regained the sidewalk and broke into something between a skip and a hobble. A block farther on he reached a main drag, stood swaying breathless on the corner. He put fingers in his mouth and whistled. A taxi’s brakes screeched.
Corinne Wayne was a tall woman of thirty. Her hair was russet and full of unexpected gleams and shimmers. Her eyes were large, luminous, her mouth full and exquisite. She had pale satiny skin touched with a faint glow of damask on the cheeks. Her throat was columnar. At college she had been adjudged the most beautiful girl in her graduating class.
MacBride, appearing in the drawing-room doorway, ducked his spare-boned head.
Corinne, rising from a tapestry wing-chair, said: “I’m so glad you came, Captain.”
She extended a hand whose wrist was encircled by a bracelet of hammered silver links. MacBride, carrying his derby in his left hand, crossed the room and took her hand with his right.
“I came right over,” he said.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and she held a crumpled damp handkerchief in her left hand. She put the handkerchief to her lips, gestured wearily to a divan, sat down in the wing-chair. MacBride unbuttoned his dark blue Chesterfield, dropped to the divan and held his derby on one knee. His blue suit was neatly pressed, his black shoes shone, his shaven face was ruddy from the cold.
He said: “Cort left here at seven, huhn?”
“Yes.”
“Sharp?”
She nodded. “He left at seven. It was Mason’s night off, so Cort drove the coupe himself.”
“He wasn’t nervous, was he?”
“No. He was in the best of spirits.”
“When did they call from the Foursquare Club?”
“At eight. I told them he’d left. I began to worry. I called them again at nine and he hadn’t arrived. I spoke with Carl Davenport. He told me not to worry. Then they started telephoning a lot of places — where they thought he might have gone. I did also. We didn’t want to notify the police and start a hullaballoo until we were sure. At eleven I couldn’t stand it any longer. I called Carl Davenport. He hadn’t been successful. I told him I was going to report. What do you suppose has happened?”
MacBride said: “We’ve got all the patrol cars on the lookout. I’ve ordered out special squads and all the flyers from every precinct. We’ve notified the authorities in surrounding towns.”