S01/E23: THE DIRTY WORD

A man whose face is not shown steps out of his car near the home of magazine publisher Arthur Sinclair where a party is taking place consisting mostly of society’s elitists. The man is holding a gun and sneaks up to the house taking position behind some bushes.

Arthur Sinclair, sipping from a glass of wine, walks out onto the patio alongside Sammy Hayes, an unethical and sleazy private detective that Sinclair has hired for a sinister plan he has devised. (A plan not made clear at this point). Sammy Hayes argues with Sinclair, saying he’s worried about losing his license. Sinclair reminds Hayes that he’s never worried about that before—an indication of previous dirty deeds the P.I. had performed—and that he’s being paid well. Sinclair insists that Hayes will stick to the plan and tells him to go back inside to join the other guests. As Hayes walks away, the man with the gun hiding in the bushes shoots Sinclair dead, drops the gun, and runs away. Hayes starts to chase after the shooter, but stops and picks up the gun, which he recognizes as his own! (Hayes never realized that his gun was missing? And how did the shooter get a hold of it?)


All party-goers inside the house rush out onto the patio after hearing gunshots. (Seriously? If you hear gunshots outside on a patio, would you run out there?) The guests stand over Sinclair’s body on the ground and then see Hayes holding a gun. Their assumption is obvious from the expression on their faces. Hayes hollers back at them. “I didn’t do it!”

Regardless, Sammy Hayes is arrested and held for the murder of Arthur Sinclair. At Lt. Jacoby’s office, Peter Gunn is pouring himself and Jacoby a cup of coffee. Jacoby wonders why Sam Hayes, who should have used his one phone call allowed to call a lawyer, had instead used it to call Peter Gunn. Jacoby doesn’t hold back in expressing his hatred for the man and how he’d wanted to have Hayes’ P.I. license revoked long ago. Jacoby also wonders why Gunn would bother to help out a man like that and Gunn says that he owes Hayes a favor. (For what reason is never made clear in this episode).



Gunn meets with Sam Hayes who is all hyper and sweating while pacing around his jail cell yelling how he didn’t kill Sinclair. (The performance is a bit overdramatic.) Gunn wants to know what Hayes was doing at that party of high society people. Hayes says he was a guest, but Gunn isn’t buying it. Still in a state of panic, Hayes admits that he was at the party for other reasons, but that he can’t say why, only that he didn’t kill Sinclair and begs Gunn to clear his name. Gunn says he’ll look into it, but doesn’t buy that Hayes is clean.



Peter Gunn arrives at the posh Sinclair home where the party is still going on. He rings the doorbell and the door is answered by an eccentric named Waldo who is heavily into astrology. When Gunn introduces himself and says he’s there to see Mrs. Sinclair, the first words out of Waldo’s mouth are, “Leo, obviously.” Waldo continues rambling about various astrological connections of the sun, planet, and stars until Gunn manages to shrug him off. Gunn then meets with Arthur Sinclair’s attorney, Paul Denner. Denner is aware of Gunn’s earlier phone call to Louise Sinclair and he leads Gunn to see her. Gunn looks around at the many guests in the room and mentions how they seem to be unphased by the recent murder of the homeowner. A star-struck Gunn then spots and recognizes famous composer and musician Abel Kinard sitting at a piano, now elderly and who appears to be suffering from a severe case of spaced-out dementia. Gunn takes a moment to walk over to Kinard to let him know he’s a huge fan of his music.





Gunn then walks into a study where an intoxicated Louise Sinclair, speaking with a southern accent, was expecting him. Mrs. Sinclair is drinking wine and sobbing. Gunn asks if she thinks Sammy Hayes killed her husband. All she can say is that Arthur Sinclair was a fine man. She repeats it several times and then starts to fall over, but Gunn holds her up. She then tells Gunn it may be best if he visits her another time and she leaves the room.



Gunn heads over to a diner where he plays a jazz song on the juke box and then takes a seat at the bar. A drunkard and former musician named Fuzzy Crane arrives apologizing for being late. He sets down his trumpet case and sits beside Gunn, who already has three shot glasses filled with booze and ready for Fuzzy. Under each glass there’s a bill for this man who appears to be a regular informant for Gunn. As Fuzzy drinks the shots and places the bills in his pocket, Gunn asks questions. He asks about Abel Kinard. (It seems odd that Gunn investigating a murder would first wonder about a senile old man he’d seen at the Sinclair home). Fuzzy explains that after Kinard’s musical career was over he’d “flipped” into a sanitarium. He says that Arthur Sinclair stood by Kinard after he’d flipped and bailed him out of the sanitarium. But that it was mostly about Sinclair wanting to be accompanied by “big names.” As Fuzzy gets ready to leave, Gunn picks up the horn case and notices how light it weighs. He opens it only to find some raggedy old clothes inside. When Gunn asks what happened to the horn, Fuzzy replies that he’d hocked it at a pawn shop. Gunn gives Fuzzy more cash and tells him to get his horn back.




Back at Lt. Jacoby’s office, Jacoby tells Gunn to stop wasting his time looking into a bunch of weird people at the Sinclair home, insisting that Sammy Hayes is guilty because his own gun was the murder weapon. Jacoby then gets a phone call that Hayes grabbed a guard’s gun and escaped; that he’s “holed up” on the top floor. They race up the stairs where cops are surrounding a locked room and Jacoby yells through the door for Hayes to give himself up, only to have a gunshot blast through the door missing everyone. Inside the room Hayes yells once again that he didn’t kill Sinclair and he’s not going to be jailed for it. Hayes opens a window and starts to step out to escape from the building. After Jacoby shoots at the doorknob and kicks the door open, Hayes slips from the window and falls to his death.





Back in Jacoby’s office, Jacoby and Gunn discuss potential repercussions for the police department after a prisoner dies while in custody. Gunn wonders if Jacoby still thinks Hayes killed Sinclair. Jacoby says he’s “still in the dark” about that. Gunn asks where Sinclair’s lawyer, Paul Denner, and Waldo the astrologer were during the murder. Jacoby says they weren’t in the house and were having dinner together somewhere else. Gunn replies how “nice and cozy” it is for them to have an alibi for each other. Gunn isn’t going to stop investigating even though Sammy Hayes is now dead. He tells Jacoby, “I started it; might as well finish it.”

Gunn arrives at Sammy Hayes Private Investigations office and finds it ransacked. He is then attacked from behind and gets hit in the back of the head with a gun. Gunn is knocked down to the floor temporarily incapacitated and ends up under a table. After shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he starts to sit up and by sheer coincidence finds an envelope pinned to the table’s inner frame. (Surely what the intruder who’d attacked Gunn had been looking for). The envelope reads: “File on Bernie Lutz.” Gunn detaches the envelope from the pin, opens it, and begins reading papers.



Gunn arrives at Waldo’s apartment and rings the door buzzer. Waldo opens the door appearing pleasantly surprised, shouting, “Leo, how delightful!” But before he could continue Gunn pushed him against the wall and manhandles him by his night robe lapels. Gunn tells Waldo that he was the intruder 20 minutes ago in Hayes’ office trying to bounce a gun off his skull. Gunn pulls out the paperwork he’d found and shows it to Waldo, saying this is what he was looking for; a file proving that Waldo is actually Bernie Lutz, a hoodlum in hiding with warrants for his arrest. Gunn then starts to choke Waldo’s (Lutz’s) neck to force a confession out of him. (A confession that viewers don’t get to hear).



Gunn arrives back at the Sinclair home where he finds Mrs. Sinclair’s luggage all packed up. Gunn asks Louise Sinclair, still boozing it up with wine, if she thinks she can run far enough away to outrun the memory of Arthur Sinclair. Gunn says he knows all about the dirty money received from Sinclair’s scandalous magazine. Paul Denner walks into the room pointing a revolver at Gunn and says that Louise Sinclair had no part of it. Gunn tells Denner that it’s too late; that Waldo has already filled him in on Denner’s horoscope. Louise is surprised to see Denner with a gun and sits on a sofa chair wondering what in the world is going on. Paul Denner tells Gunn that they all benefited from Sinclair’s “dirty dollar.” He informs Gunn that Sinclair knew he was being investigated by authorities for corrupt activities and to protect himself he was going to place the magazine in Mrs. Sinclair’s name and let her “face the scandal.” Paul Denner refused to allow that to happen, so he shot and killed Arthur Sinclair with Sammy Hayes’ gun. He was also fed up with the way Sinclair had been treating Louise for so many years. Gunn tells Denner that he’d killed Sinclair because he’s in love with Louise Sinclair. Mrs. Sinclair, however, apparently doesn’t feel the same way for Denner. She gets up from her seat and tells Denner that she loved Arthur Sinclair and then slaps Denner several times in the face. Denner is shocked by Louise’s reaction. Feeling completely dejected he hands Gunn the revolver.



QUOTES:

At the Sinclair home when Gunn is first approached by astrological signs enthusiast, Waldo…

Waldo: “Leo, obviously. Yes, Leo...You are aware of your adverse days?”

Gunn: “This may be one.”

 

NOTES:

Sammy Hayes had been locked up in jail on suspicion of murder for at least a day or two and then died when he fell to his death from a top floor window. Why didn’t Waldo search Hayes’ office much sooner? He instead waited until after Hayes’ death when, coincidentally, Peter Gunn had also gone to check Hayes’ office and was attacked from behind by Waldo.

The role of Paul Denner was played by Simon Scott, who was Chief Barney Metcalf on The Mod Squad from 1968 to 1972.


DECEASED: Magazine publisher and tycoon Arthur Sinclair is shot by his attorney, Paul Denner. Private investigator Sammy Hayes falls to his death from window near top of police station building when he slipped trying to escape.

Total Gunn Kills: 0 - Series Total: 7


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NEXT BLOG: S01/E24: "THE UGLY FRAME"

 

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