Justified v. Jack Ryan; Show v. Tell

 

In 2016 the Missus and I had a crisis of media overload not to mention a serious case of post-election despair. The Hallmark Channel became part refuge, part detox. Seriously, as much as cozy mysteries are derided, when you’ve had more than your fair-share of reality, a nice/nonviolent cozy can be balm for the over-thinkers’ soul.

We went from cynical-overload to looking forward to new episodes of Garage Sale Mysteries and Murder She Baked and Mystery Woman movies. Soothing plots, above average acting, and a low/no misery index—what’s not to love? But for every Mystery Woman, there is a Hailey Dean. 

*Caveat, I haven’t read Nancy Grace’s Hailey Dean Mystery books, nor do I intend to*

I can’t say how much of the unfortunate writing in the Hailey Dean series is original to Nancy Grace’s novels and how much “credit” goes to screen writers Jonathan Greene and Michelle Ricci. Yet every episode the Hailey Dean Mysteries involves someone (a character we’re supposed to like) telling someone else, (usually a character we’re not supposed to like) how smart, experienced, and/or dedicated Hailey Dean is—every episode. Apropos of nothing, we hear that she was a star prosecutor who won all of her cases or how she graduated at the top of her class or how the ONLY case she has never solved was the murder of her fiance. The constant validation of character bonafides reads like a mash note to a stunningly insecure protagonist. 

Or like a new author too famous for beta readers or editors

However, Hailey Dean has no lock on the ego-stroking. Unlike a lot of dudes my age, (Gen-X) I came late to the Amazon Prime series Jack Ryan. I only just started the first season a couple of weeks ago. But, having read Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, I have a little more experience with the prose. Still, I held out hope that the folks at Prime might eschew some of Clancy’s more heavy-handed writing. 

There are some good and necessary updates. 

A government employee with a $300 Park Avenue haircut.

Gone is Clancy’s suave, subject-matter ubermensch Jack Ryan. Larry Ferguson (et al) renders an unsteady Ryan still finding his way after a derailed military career and an aborted private-sector gig. He is still the clear-eyed-do-right man on a mission. He just rides a bicycle to work and wears skinny-pants.

I’m gonna need to see your CV to tell you this story…

Sadly, the screen writers don’t trust the viewers any more than Clancy trusted his readers. Both spoon-feed how great Ryan is to us. In the Hunt, it’s an Admiral telling a ship captain all about Ryan’s heroic recovery from a helicopter accident and writing his the series, it’s Sandrine Arnaud, a French intelligence officer working a joint task force with the CIA. 

*Obviously, spoilers*

In Captain Sandrine Arnaud, Ferguson & Co. craft a smart, demonstrably tough, intelligence officer who happens to be a woman, only to employ her as a tell-device. See, after an episode of Jack fighting off two (2) armed terrorists—while wounded—the scripters (and director) really wanted us to know that Jack is a tough guy. To wit they have Sandrine tell Jack, (us) that he’s only acting like a sheep but actually he is a wolf. 

$300 for a haircut, are you #%&! kidding?

Yep. Sandrine is a strong, experienced, complex character with demonstrated introspection and national-self-awareness. Aaaaaaand her longest bit of dialogue is squandered on stroking the main-character’s…ego. 

Pro-tip: if the book/show/movie is named after the main character, there isn’t a great need to prop the character up—just let them loose and we will see (read) it in action. 

Who does it right?

When we meet Police Chief Jim Hopper, he has just gotten out of bed to immediately open a can of beer and light off a cigarette. At the crack of dawn. Also, he scarcely acknowledges the woman he left in the bed and seems relieved when she leaves sans conversation. 

This sets our expectations for the chief and they are low.

It's a yes-or-no question, kid. Do you have a light?

When other characters Joyce and her ex-husband, Lonnie mention Hopper it is with disdain that reinforces the low-first-impression he has made. But then writing magic happens as Matt and Ross Duffer proceed to unwrap Hopper like a Christmas present. Over the successive four seasons we see that Hopper was married, had a child, and was a detective in the big city. He was a do-right man. And then his child died of cancer.

Murray U.B. Bauman, the “U.B.” stands for “undercover badass”

But like, deep undercover...

Murray Bauman is a former journalist, private investigator, and government watchdog. He’s also mentally brilliant if physically average. Yet he aspires to more. A disciple of martial arts, he carries a copy of Black Belt magazine on his plane trip to Alaska. But we never really trust Murray’s shopping-center karate, especially after he divulges that he’s been repeatedly beaten in sparring matches with a teenage boy. 

Then he’s drugged and kidnapped. He quickly learns one of his only friends is in a gulag and another is set to be sold to Russian security forces. In that moment, Murray’s best karate surges out in a torrent of righteous defense.

Yet his best karate is still inside.

But perhaps the best example of character, demonstrated in action, is Marshal Raylan Givens. Elmore Leonard crafted Givens for his novel, Pronto. And as is the requirement for any Leonard protag, there isn’t an ounce of fat on Givens. Not an ounce of exposition, either.

“You and your hat are famous…”

In the latest iteration, Justified: City Primeval we see Givens just as everyone else sees him. A fish out of water, he is too “hillbilly” for Florida where we meet him. He is certainly too hillbilly for Detroit where the local police treat him like a joke. 

But Givens has talents that no one speaks of. On a hunch, a Detroit judge requests Givens investigate an assassination attempt resulting in the death of the judge’s car. That is immediately after the same judge jails Givens for contempt of court. 

Still, no one tells us (or each other) how strong/smart/fast/do-right Givens is. 

Justified: City Primeval writers, (like Givens’ creator, the late-great Elmore Leonard) trusts us (viewers and readers) to see for ourselves. When Bryl, a Detroit alpha-cop readies a battering ram to knock down a door and show Givens’ “how we do things in Detroit,” Givens turns the door knob and pushes the door open. When Bryls later kills an Albanian gangster, Givens manages to bring his man in, alive and unharmed.

But it is in the dynamic between Givens and the big-bad where Elmore Leonard’s throwback lawman shines. Both Givens and Mansell know how their game of cops and killers will be resolved. Even as both make moves to avoid it. 

Mansell instigates a beat-down with the intention of charging Givens with assault or, at least, having him removed from a hate-crime-turned murder case. After seeing how the easily the marshal was provoked, Carolyn Wilder, Mansell's defense attorney sees Givens as a simple tool to use against her murderous client. Yet as simple as Givens presents, there is great depth under his placid surface.

Givens ultimately proves them both wrong. Even as he out-manuevers the killer with the intent of a live arrest, a fair trial, and a righteous verdict, the marshal must contend with uncooperative partners, wild cards, (the defense attorney Wilder, Albanian gangsters, et al) and outrageous luck. Neither infallable nor a pawn, Givens does what he does—stand up and do-right when everything else fails.

“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.” Augustine of Hippo 

The bottom line is if you write actively, your readers won't need a program, notes, or a narrator. Just like the truth, set the characters loose and let them show the reader who they are in action. Everything else is false and a waste of words that the reader is likely to skip over anyway.

Obviously, I don't own any of the images used here. All are used for instructional/educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

It's Money that Matters—The Counterfeit Game

 

In 1938, as the United States slowly began to emerge from the Great Depression, Emerich Juettner, a junk dealer by trade, passed his first counterfeit bill. With a family to feed and no steady income, the widowed Juettner passed 12, $1 and $5 notes for consumer goods around Manhattan. He would do so for ten years. 

The most counterfeited document in history

The United States paper currency, (aka the greenback) is estimated to be the most counterfeited currency ever circulated. But counterfeiting goes back much further than the United States. The first use of coinage in the west dates to 600BC, in Lydia, (current day Anatolia/Turkey). Almost immediately men began counterfeiting the coins by clipping the silver edges off of coins to melt down and mint new coins. 

Even in Saturday-morning cartoons the money is funny…

Another method of counterfeiting involved taking the clipped edges and using the gold or silver to plate base metal (lead). The process would continue for centuries after inception. In fact if you are of a certain age, (means “old”) you’ll remember Underdog as his alter-ego, Shoeshine boy, biting the coin flipped to him by a customer. He bit the coin to verify it was real.

Don’t try this at home

Aside form being filthy, modern coins will damage your teeth. Or, you know, so I’ve been told. There’s also the fact that most modern coins contain no precious metals. The currency is backed by the confidence in the issuing nation. It’s why the dollar is so highly regarded. The U.S. has never defaulted on a loan nor has it ever debased/devalued the currency. 

It’s money that matters

By the 13th century, China had introduced paper money. Two important features that would be continued for centuries:

• control of the paper
• warnings against counterfeiting

Only paper from a specific tree was used to produce Chinese currency. The forests where those trees grew were heavily patrol to prevent anyone from poaching timber to make their own paper. We’ll address this more shortly.

Secondly the Chinese treasury cautioned—on the currency—that counterfeiting was punishable by death. This warning, in one wording or another, would remain a common practice around the world as more cultures adopted paper money. In fact, as the American Colonies issued paper money, Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklyn included the statement “to counterfeit is death” on every note. 

Why the big deal? It’s just paper, right?

First, your neighborhood grocer buys oranges by the case. Based on volume, we’ll say he pays a nickel per orange. He sells the oranges (again, hypothetically) for a dime. AWESOME, HE JUST MADE 100% PROFIT or a full nickel return on his nickel investment.  Except he didn’t. When you counter in the rent for his store, lights, payroll, and a whole bunch of other things, he made about 2¢ on that orange. But if some moron buys that orange with a dime made in someone’s basement, the grocer lost 10¢ (5¢ for the orange, 3¢ lost revenue to make the rent, etc. and the 2¢ profit). And all of that is saying the bad guy didn’t pay for that orange with a fake quarter, in which case the grocer lost all of that above as well as 15¢ worth of genuine currency given in change. Most businesses exist on tight margins. A large enough loss and the business will fold.

Secondly, currency is a nation’s lifeblood. Certain nations have established histories of manipulating their currencies, (China, Saudi, et al). Other nations are prone to intense economic pressures that devalue their currencies through inflation or external manipulation, (prior to admission to the EU, Greece was just such a country). What that means is that day-to-day, you could not buy the same amount of bread with the Greek Drachma as you now can with the Euro, (common currency across the European Union). As a kid in Texas, I remember trips to Mexico border towns in the 1980s where local merchants didn’t even accept Pesos. They wanted dollars.

That is the reason why counterfeiters have traditionally (prior to the 20th century) been executed. They were not just criminals ripping off merchants and citizenry. They were often committing treason against their home nations or if counterfeiting in another nation, they were considered agent provocateurs, sewing conflict by devaluing the currency. 

But if you already got the money for the paper and the press…?

In previous writing, I’ve stated that counterfeiters are freaks. I stand by that assessment. The average stickup kid, car thief, or sneak thief does so to satisfy a need, either economic or pharmaceutical. Bank robbers, burglars, and arsonists tend to have some sexual disfunction thrown in to the psychological mix but different story, different time.

Counterfeiters are typically above average in intelligence, unlike the average born-to-lose hood. They are highly skilled, unlike the average knucklehead pulling a liquor store robbery. They are almost never violent, instead relying on the quality of their product and the easy (real) money made from their product to protect them. They seldom have a criminal history.

Bank robbers usually have graduated from sticking up gas stations or liquor stores. Stickup guys usually move up from muggings. In the drug game, the lookout becomes the pass-off, becomes the runner, becomes the drug cook. Usually there is a prison stint in there somewhere and that’s the real school for criminals. 

Frank Bourassa is considered the most successful (based on volume) counterfeiter in history. He printed $250mm. Bourassa had previously owned a factory producing car parts but he said the stress began to impact his health. From the sale of his factory, he bought a $100,000 color press, $40,000 in custom paper, (no, you can’t do this with heavy bond from Office Depot) and a rented workspace with no questions asked. 

In short, Bourassa had options. So why did he do it? In an interview, Bourassa said while he still owned his factory, (working 20 hours a day and suffering all the effects of a high-stress life) he sat a traffic light and wondered what it was all for. Of course, he realized it was for money. That was when he decided to make his own. Literally.

The payoff

In 1948, ten years after he passed his first $1 bill, Emerich Juettner decided to exit the counterfeiting game. He moved his press to the curb for heavy trash collection. A heavy snow covered everything over and the workshop debris was never cleared. Once the spring came, snow thawed to water which destroyed the boxes he had everything packed in and kids found some of Juettner’s $1s. 

Juettner faced a life sentence but due to his age, (71) he was sentenced to 1 year and 1 day and a $1 fine. Juettner lived his remaining years in crime-free anonymity, dying at 78. Still, the U.S. Secret Service (enforcement arm of the U.S. Treasury) attributesd the explosion of 20th century counterfeiting to publicity surrounding the Juettner case.

The company you keep

Frank Bourassa was burned by his fifth customer who had an undercover cop in his ranks and didn’t even know it. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police busted Frank with $1mm in counterfeit cash. He faced multiple 20-year sentences if extradited from Canada to the U.S. for trial. Ultimately, he made a deal by which he would walk free if he turned over the remaining $250mm in counterfeit bills he had stashed away.

Bourassa now has a consulting firm helping companies defeat counterfeiters.

About the best, (only?) crime novel to profile counterfeiting is retired Secret Service agent, Gerald Petievich’s  To Live and Die in L.A.. However, the William Friedkin film is superior to the book in just about every way.

The photo at the top, To Live and Die in L.A. movie poster, is the property of MGM/UA pictures. It is used here for educational/instructional purposes as covered under the Fair Use Doctrine.

Writing Law and Order and Hypocrisy

 

In 1920, just over a hundred years ago, the United States instituted the 18th Amendment, a national law prohibiting the production, transport, and/or sale of intoxicating liquors—booze. Across the country men and women could no longer buy or even make wine, beer, or spirits of any kind. Historic breweries and distilleries were shuttered overnight.

And then people decided the law was stupid and they wanted a drink. Other people, decided that was an excellent idea and they would take the risk to a) smuggle in foreign alcohol or b) make booze. Others decided to sell illicit inebriants in backrooms, basements, and parlors. Turning a buck in the process was a bonus.

Net effect: La Cosa Nostra, or the Sicilian mob when from neighborhood street gangs with nickel-and-dime rackets to multi-million-dollar syndicates just as quickly.

Truth is stranger—and crueler than fiction

If all you know about Prohibition and the war on illicit booze is the mythology promulgated by movies like Brian De Palma's The Untouchables you only know the barest scratch on the much broader surface of America's war on booze. And like the so-called war on drugs, there is a deeper history on the hypocrisy at the root of our judicial system. Hint: a lot is based in race/ethnicity.

For 13 years men and women were arrested, thrown in jail, and their lives ruined. Many were deported never to again have a chance at the bright promise of this country. But only certain men and women.

Baseball great Ty Cobb spoke of being served the finest whiskey while a guest at the White House…during Prohibition. Joseph Kennedy purportedly built his first fortune trading in smuggled Scotch and laundered his money through the nascent movie industry, (making his second fortune) and the stock market (third fortune) before he was appointed Chairman of the SEC. 

"When I sell whiskey they call it bootlegging. When it's served from a silver tray in a mansion on Lakeshore Drive it's called hospitality." -Al Capone

Guess which one—Cobb, Kennedy, or Capone—is the big bad.

 While the rich enjoyed their cocktails, saloons, social clubs, and gin joints were raided. Working men and women trying to feed their families went to prison or were gunned down in the street. Sure, powerful gangsters were sent to prison (Al Capone) and killed (Arnold Rothstein).

 

But the rich people—the people who paid Rothstein and Kennedy and Capone—only saw the police when they got a speeding ticket or hired them to rough up labor activists. When Prohibition ended in 1933 the wealthy restocked their liquor cabinets. Movies, radio programs, and stage acts celebrated resumption of the party, but an entire swath of people lived the remainder of their lives with criminal convictions limiting the work they could get, where they could live, and what kind of lives they could have.

 

Fast forward several decades to the excesses of the 1980s—and common-sense response responses

 

As women and ethnic minorities became police commanders and mayors they decided to do police and public-safety stuff...like police commanders and mayors are supposed to. At the time prostitution and associated drug use repesented a substantial plank in a raging public health crisis. 

 

In Houston, South Main, Airline Drive, and Telephone Road were the "hot spots." Prostitutes plied their trade at all hours, often as school children walked around them. Home owners swept up used needles and condomes from their curbs and allyways. Business owners faced retaliation from pimps for reporting prostitutes to police. 

 

Establishment, (white-male) commanders/administrators had been arresting prostitutes for decades. Occasionally, they cracked down on pimps and even busted open businesses fronting for prostitution...yet prostitution continued. Begging the question of why some were busted while others were ignored.

 

You can’t stop crime ignoring economic, gender, and racial biases

 

New mayors and police chiefs, new commanders and administrators—from outside of the old-boy network—undertook to clean up the streets. All it required was bucking hundreds of years of look-the-other-way policing and some politically-risky tactics. Which was always supposed to be the point of the police.

They decided to clearn up ALL the streets

 

They began by arresting the johns. And, as old-establishment commanders and administrators feared, there were cops and politicians and other "somebodies" rounded up in those stings. Many pled down to misdemeanors, paid a fine, and walked away quietly. Others lost careers and marriages. But quickly enough, the word got out and the johns began to shy away.

Then the new commanders/admins went after the hourly-rental motel owners, the weekly-rental apartments, and massage parlors. This was new for Houston. No one messes with businesses, not the white-owned, (or white-connected) businesses, anyway. 

Those changes took longer. There were court cases. There were appeals. But over several years, the sleeze pits cleaned up, sold-out, or were shutdown as public nuisances. When the venues went, when the johns went, so did the street-walkers.

 

I tied this up in a neat blow but the truth is that there were multi-point approaches. In addition to law and code enforcement, there was community outreach and social-assistance programs to give the people, (often forced into prostitution) a means to get off the street. Drug courts were established to redirect addicts from jail (which often fed them right back to the street) into treatment. In addition to rehab there was job and life-skills training.

 

These days Airline, Telephone, and South Main are completely different than the 80s and 90s. As noted in the link above, there is still prostitution in Houston to be sure. What is gone is the tight organization wholesale trading in girls and boys.

These days "illegal immigration" is the big-bad threat—but not the employers

 

So, now we have Abbott and DeSantis. Two ambitious men with plans to end "illegal" immigration—by further victimizing powerless people. But they won't go after the real the real cause of "illegal" immigration.

 

Because the people coming to the states—contrary to what the rabid bigots will tell you—are not here to suck off the system or rob or steal. They come for jobs. They come for a measure of security and a chance to make a better life.

 

Exploitation—a Texas tradition

 

In the 1950s, during the earliest days of immigration control, Texas fought for a carve-out to protect farms and ranches. With that carve-out farmers and ranchers were insured wholesale access to cheap, vulnerable labor. If Abbott and DeSantis were serious about ending "illegal" immigration, they would go after the businesses that exploit the people. But then restaurants—fast food, fine dining, buffet joints—would be out of business. Agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hell, the entire chamber of commerce would be ruined.

Abbott and Desantis aren’t the only bad guys here. They’re simply the most vocal while capitalizing on the heartbreak. We are part of this cycle. We complain about migrants taking “our jobs” but during COVID farms around the country tried to hire local people, American citizens, to harvest crops. Few, if any, responded.

It's hard work. The pay is minimum-wage or less. Farm-and-ranch labor is notoriously dangerous and underregulated. The bottom line is simple: Americans will not do that work for those wages.

Americans are starting to re-think what work they will do and the wages they expect for their efforts

Prior to COVID, waitstaff and other service-industry workers struggled to survive. No one can afford an apartment anywhere in the nation on minimum wage. Forget paying the rent and buying groceries/paying for transportation. Since COVID, service personnel have been slow to return to the workplace. Many have sought education or new training for new jobs. All agree that the money is not equal to the exploitation. 

"Behind every great fortune, a crime." -Honore de Balzac

To date, 21 states have decriminalized the recreational use of marijuana. Boomers can hop on their Harley's and tool down to any of the thousands of dispenseries popping up all over the country to get their leaf, edible, or oil. 

States have seen the tax revenue plug budget gaps. Staunch opponents like John Boehner are now making MILLIONS from legal weed. Growers and dispensery owners alike are become wealthy. The overwhelming majority are white.

Meanwhile there are (approximately) 40,000 people in prison for possession, smuggling, or selling marijuana. Many more are out but cannot get the job or the house or even the apartment due to convictions. The overwhelming majority are black and brown and poor.

This is why I write crime

 

Law and order is really more about power and access. Both are the trappings of wealth and privilege. Seldom is it really about "serve and protect".

 

Ultimately we are the hinge upon which right and wrong, good and evil, rotate. We are the difference between equal justice under law or historic hypocrisy. 

Do you have to write directly about injustice? No, of course not. I do urge you against ignoring your power to tell the truth when you tell your story. Remember your privilege when you watch/listen/read the news. Mostly, remember your opportunity to change the narrative by writing honestly.

The photo at the top, "Weeds" promotional poster is the property of Showtime Network. The "Untouchables" movie poster is the property of Paramount PIctures. Both are used here for instructional/educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.