Torment

  TORMENT

  THE CLASSIC HANK JANSON

  The first original Hank Janson book appeared in 1946, and the last in 1971. However, the classic era on which we are focusing in the Telos reissue series lasted from 1946 to 1953. The following is a checklist of those books, which were subdivided into five main series and a number of “specials”. The titles so far reissued by Telos are indicated by way of an asterisk.

  PRE-SERIES BOOKS

  When Dames Get Tough (1946)

  Scarred Faces (1947)

  SERIES ONE

  1)This Woman Is Death (1948)

  2) Lady, Mind That Corpse (1948)

  3) Gun Moll For Hire (1948)

  4) No Regrets For Clara (194)

  5) Smart Girls Don’t Talk (1949)

  6) Lilies For My Lovely (1949)

  7) Blonde On The Spot (1949)

  8) Honey, Take My Gun (1949)

  9) Sweetheart, Here’s Your Grave (1949)

  10) Gunsmoke In Her Eyes (1949)

  11) Angel, Shoot To Kill (1949)

  12) Slay-Ride For Cutie (1949)

  SERIES TWO

  13) Sister, Don’t Hate Me (1949)

  14) Some Look Better Dead (1950)

  15) Sweetie, Hold Me Tight (1950)

  16) Torment For Trixie (1950)

  17) Don’t Dare Me, Sugar (1950)

  18)The Lady Has A Scar (1950)

  19)The Jane With The Green Eyes (1950)

  20) Lola Brought Her Wreath (1950)

  21) Lady, Toll The Bell (1950)

  22)The Bride Wore Weeds (1950)

  23) Don’t Mourn Me Toots (1951)

  24) This Dame Dies Soon (1951)

  SERIES THREE

  25) Baby, Don’t Dare Squeal (1951)

  26) Death Wore A Petticoat (1951)

  27) Hotsy, You’ll Be Chilled (1951)

  28) It’s Always Eve That Weeps (1951)

  29) Frails Can Be So Tough (1951)

  30) Milady Took The Rap (1951)

  31) Women Hate Till Death (1951) *

  32) Broads Don’t Scare Easy (1951)

  33) Skirts Bring Me Sorrow (1951)

  34) Sadie Don’t Cry Now (1952)

  35) The Filly Wore A Rod (1952)

  36) Kill Her If You Can (1952)

  SERIES FOUR

  37) Murder (1952)

  38) Conflict (1952)

  39) Tension (1952)

  40) Whiplash (1952)

  41) Accused (1952)

  42) Killer (1952)

  43) Suspense (1952)

  44) Pursuit (1953)

  45) Vengeance (1953)

  46) Torment (1953) *

  47) Amok (1953)

  48) Corruption (1953)

  SERIES 5

  49) Silken Menace (1953)

  50) Nyloned Avenger (1953)

  SPECIALS

  Auctioned (1952)

  Persian Pride (1952)

  Desert Fury (1953)

  One Man In His Time (1953)

  Unseen Assassin (1953)

  Deadly Mission (1953)

  TORMENT

  Hank Janson

  This edition first published in England in 2003, 2013 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, LL19 9SH

  www.telos.co.uk

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: feedback@telos.co.uk

  This edition © 2003, 2013 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Introduction © 2003 Steve Holland.

  Novel by Stephen D Frances

  Cover by Reginald Heade

  With thanks to Steve Holland

  www.hankjanson.co.uk

  Silhouette device by Philip Mendoza

  Cover design by David J Howe

  The Hank Janson name, logo and silhouette device are registered trademarks of Telos Publishing Ltd

  First published in England by New Fiction Press, April 1953

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Telos edition dedicated to Jennifer Janson, with regards from her “Uncle Hank”

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The appeal of the Hank Janson books to a modern readership lies not only in the quality of the storytelling, which is as powerfully compelling today as it was when they were first published, but also in the fascinating insight they afford into the attitudes, customs, modes of expression and, significantly, morals of the 1940s and 1950s.

  We have therefore endeavoured to make Torment, and all our other Hank Janson reissues, as faithful to the original edition as possible. Unlike some other publishers who, when reissuing vintage fiction, have been known to make editorial changes to remove aspects that might offend present-day sensibilities, we have left the original narrative absolutely intact. So if, in the original edition, Hank made, say, a casually sexist remark about women – as he does on occasion in Torment – then that is what you will read in the Telos edition as well.

  That’s just the kinda guy Hank was.

  Which brings us to a point about language. The original editions of these classic Hank Janson titles made quite frequent use of phonetic “Americanisms” such as “kinda”, “gotta”, “wanna” and so on. Again, we have left these unchanged in the Telos reissues, to give readers as genuine as possible a taste of what it was like to read these books when they first came out, even though such devices have since become sorta out of fashion.

  The only way in which we have amended the original text has been to correct obvious lapses in spelling, grammar and punctuation – we have, for instance, added question marks in the not-infrequent cases where they were omitted from the ends of questions in the original – and to remedy clear typesetting errors.

  Lastly, we should mention that we have made every effort to trace and acquire relevant copyrights in the various elements that make up this book. If anyone has any further information that they could provide in this regard, however, we would be very grateful to receive it.

  INTRODUCTION

  Torment was the forty-sixth novel to appear under the Hank Janson byline, originally published in the spring of 1953. Since his novel debut in 1948 (leaving aside the two novellas in 1946), Janson had sold five million copies of his books, making him Britain’s fastest selling crime writer1 .

  To split hairs, “writer” is technically wrong — it’s a minor semantic distinction of which Janson’s creator, Stephen Frances, was aware, and by which he was amused. Frances was a two-finger typist whose skills in that direction never improved in forty years. His correspondence was littered with corrections, scribbled inserts and postscripts, made worse after Frances purchased a faulty electric typewriter that the manufacturers could not fix and would not allow him to return. His letters were a perfect example of how he allowed words simply to pour out, getting his thoughts down on paper as quickly as he could and only later going back to worry about making them grammatically correct.

  When Frances began producing the Hank Janson novels in 1948 he was faced with a problem: he had limited capital with which to establish himself as a publisher after the collapse of his former venture, Pendulum Publications. A deal with Gaywood Distributors meant that once the books were published, he could sell the whole print run, but he was still involved in the time-consuming business of arranging covers, finding paper, getting his books printed, paying bills and a t
housand and one other chores. It was taking him three weeks to poke out a novel on a typewriter.

  The solution was called an Emidicta, a dictation/transcription machine that recorded onto wax cylinders, later replaced with an updated model that recorded onto magnetic paper discs. Locked away in his flat in London, Frances could dictate a novel in a week, taking the fifty or so discs he’d produced to a secretarial agency to have them transcribed. As each chapter appeared, he would make minor corrections, and a printer-ready manuscript could be produced in half the time it took for him to type.

  Frances had discovered the quiet seaside village of Rosas during a holiday in Spain and decided to move there in 1951. Even during visits to see how the building work on his flat was progressing, Frances needed to keep dictating. With the blinds closed against the hot morning sun, he lay back in his room at the Mar y Sol hotel and told, quickly and passionately, his latest story of lust and murder, rewinding the Emidicta occasionally to check the recording.

  On one occasion, the dialogue heard through the walls by a neighbour sounded suspicious and Frances was interrupted by two Civil Guards who kicked open the hotel door and levelled their sub-machine guns at him, expecting to find a foreign spy and a two-way radio …

  In the heat of dictation, Frances was Hank Janson. And, conversely, Hank Janson was Frances poured out on the page, Janson’s character sharing Frances’s passions and obsessions. No wonder he felt hurt when, in 1954, he heard his alter ego declared to be obscene in an open court.

  At the time when Frances was writing Torment in 1953, he had recently been in court. Facing the Borough Magistrates at Darwen, Frances had tried to defend his novel The Jane With Green Eyes, agreeing that the book was outspoken, but arguing that that did not necessarily make it obscene. The argument held little sway, and he was found guilty on two count of writing obscene books2 .

  The Janson novels were aimed not at a sophisticated audience but at the widest audience possible. The books were not sexually explicit and Frances addressed that fact using Janson as a mouthpiece on more than one occasion, notably in Torment for Trixy and here in Torment. In Torment for Trixy, Janson addresses a meeting that has been called following the publication of a “dirty” book, telling the audience that the words on the printed page are not in themselves obscene, just made obscene by the interpretation put on them by dirty-minded readers; in Torment, Betty Scott has a notion, based on reading his novels, that Janson expects sex as a reward for his help, and Hank is forced to admit: “Either you don’t read good or I don’t write good.”

  Whether he admitted it in court or not, Frances knew his writing was sexually charged — he’d interrupt his dictation with asides to his secretary, “Have you got hot pants yet, sweetie?”— and Hank becomes involved easily and often with women. Frances made his alter ego a “sucker for dames,” especially cute-looking dames. The ideal Janson “cute dame” has a beauty of the kind found in Greek sculpture; she is small, slim, well dressed, with an emphasis on low-cut tops that reveal the smooth white tops of breasts. Cleavage is a mysterious dark passage leading to untold promise and pleasure.

  Women are often Janson’s downfall. They tie him in knots, as you’ll discover in his relationship with Betty Scott in Torment. Janson is trapped between desire and a personal moral code that makes him protect the underdog and never take advantage of the vulnerable; throughout the Janson saga, Hank rejects sex more often than he accepts it. Sometimes, his frustration leads to aggressive outbursts that might be considered sexual blackmail; at other times, Frances makes light of Hank’s frustrations and relationships. Hank growls bitterly that he is having the usual kind of trouble — “Women trouble.” A friendly doorman nods his head understandingly: “I’m a married man myself.”3

  Elsewhere in the narrative, Hank is disgusted at the sight of photographs: “For two people alone in the world on their own that could have been something really special. But an intensely personal thing publicised in that blatant ugly fashion turned my guts over.” Read Torment and make up your own mind whether you think it plays to the sexual immaturity of Janson’s supposed audience, or is a deliberately written cocktail of conflicting emotions that lifts the character of Hank Janson out of the ordinary.

  Frances himself was raised in a matriarchal family, his early life dominated by his mother and maternal grandmother. The Janson books feature a steady parade of strong women and, in a series where obsession is often the dominant emotion, even the “cute dames” that become victims have power.

  The line between Hank Janson and Stephen Frances was constantly blurred, Janson reflecting his author’s concerns far more openly than would normally be expected in what was, after all, cheap, pulp entertainment; Janson was still classed as “gangster” fiction, a strange British sub-genre of the crime thriller, which grew up at a time when American imports were all but impossible to get hold of. Where American audiences were reading Jim Thomson and Gil Brewer and others of that hardboiled ilk, British gangsters had developed out of a mixture of pre-WW2 American pulps, Carroll John Daly, W R Burnett and James M Cain, via British exponents of American hardboiled yarns, James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney. Most British gangster fiction has been forgotten, but Stephen Frances and Hank Janson have rightly endured in the memories of his readers, and novels like Torment show why.

  Steve Holland

  February 2003

  CHAPTER ONE

  A city like Chicago is a big place where you can lose yourself with ease. Yet it’s a small place too, because a guy who gets around as much as a reporter always finds himself bumping up against guys he knows or used to know.

  So bumping into Billy Newman wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  He was standing at the bar when I first walked in. But it wasn’t his broad shoulders that attracted my attention. It was the dame beside him; a cute little number with wide blue eyes and fair hair. I moved up to the counter right alongside her, ordered clearly so the dame would hear my voice. “Make it a rye.”

  That was when Billy saw me.

  He kinda brushed the cute little number to one side, took me by the shoulder, turned me around and pumped my hand up and down. “Hank! Well! Whad’ya know? Haven’t set eyes on you in years. Say, fella, this is a real pleasure.”

  “Holy smoke, Billy,” I said. “Where you been keeping yourself?” I hadn’t seen him in three years. The last time had been in a small West Coast town.

  “You’re looking swell, real swell,” he said with satisfaction, running his eyes over me.

  “You’re looking pretty good yourself,” I told him. He was too! Smartly dressed and looking kinda well-fed. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been shabby, hungry-looking and worried about his future. His future being the problem of next week’s eating.

  “Whad’ya doing now, Hank? Still writing?”

  “I do a little reporting,” I told him modestly. “I’m managing to hold down a job.”

  His chest swelled just a little. “I’m doing fine,” he said with satisfaction. “Real fine.”

  My eyes flicked to the cute little number between us. He caught on immediately. “Sorry,” he apologised. “Should have introduced you before. This is Lucy. Lucy, meet Hank. A real fine guy.”

  “Hiya, Lucy,” I said, and took her hand; cool slim fingers without a wedding ring. I looked into her eyes and they were a transparent blue like the Mediterranean. So transparent I could look deeper and deeper into them, crystal clear transparency that made me breathless, engulfed me, tempted me to allow myself to sink deeper and deeper. I’m a sucker for dames – cute looking dames. I let myself sink.

  “Okay, okay, break it up,” chuckled Billy warningly. “You wanna watch out for this guy, Lucy. He’s a wolf.”

  Slowly she withdrew her fingers from mine, switched her eyes from me to Billy. The numbness seeped out of me and I could breathe again. I grinned sheepishly. “What’s the matter, Billy? Scared of a little competition?”

  A secretive smile tugged at her lips and she
smiled at Billy, inviting him to answer me. He grinned broadly. “You’re way out of date, Hank. I’m married now. Married to the sweetest little girl you’ve ever met. Lucy’s just my business associate.”

  I looked at Lucy. Then I looked back at him. If Lucy was merely his business associate, his wife must surely be some dame.

  He musta guessed the idea half-forming at the back of my mind. He said seriously: “It’s on the up and up, Hank. We really are business partners. I’ve been a proud father for eighteen months. That’s the only reason my wife isn’t on tour with us.”

  “Still in show business then?” I asked. The last time I’d seen Billy, he’d been touring the third-rate variety theatres with a fourth-rate conjuring act, getting few bookings at that.

  His eyes widened. “Haven’t you heard? We’re playing the Casino.”

  I thought he was ribbing me. The Chicago Casino is by no means a third-rate variety theatre. It’s expensive and has a reputation for quality. Then once again I noticed his tailor-made clothes, his prosperous appearance and his air of satisfaction. “You’ve made good then?” I said.

  There was almost a fatherly air about the way he put his arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “We’ve made good,” he said, and there was pride in his voice.

  “It’s a double act?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We work under the name Los Guitanos. Making quite a name for ourselves, too.”

  Part of my work involved knowing everything, skimming through newspapers from all parts of the States. The name Los Guitanos seemed vaguely familiar. “I’ve heard of you,” I hazarded. “Something about memory.”