Vic Perrin

In the 1800s, Larry Delong wanders the West "riding shotgun" as a stagecoach guard, while searching for a ruthless killer, Dan Marady. Delong is so intent on his mission to find and kill Marady that he is lured from his post into a trap by an old-timer bearing Marady's good-luck piece, a Berringer pocket gun. After being captured by Marady's gang and left to die in the hills, Delong frees himself and retrieves his horse and gun, as well as the pocket gun that the old-timer dropped in the scuffle. As it is too late to stop the gang from attacking his stagecoach, Delong tries to warn the citizens in the nearby town of Deep Water that, while the sheriff and his posse are out investigating the stagecoach attack, the gang plans to rob their casino. To his surprise, Delong finds the townspeople, who have been his neighbors and friends, hostile toward him and soon learns that his fellow guard, Bob Purdee, was killed in the attack. Moreover, a young child and his mother riding the coach recognized the old-timer among the attackers as the man who rode off with Delong and from this the townspeople have concluded that Delong is part of the gang. Except for Delong's girl friend, Orissa Flynn, and Doc Winkler, no one believes in his innocence, not even Delong's ten-year-old admirer Johnny, who shoots him with a slingshot. Fearing that he has been sent by Marady to discourage the posse from pursuing them, the townspeople take Delong's horse, preventing him from riding out to warn the sheriff. The town's unrelenting suspicions finally cause Delong to take refuge in a cantina owned by the German immigrant, Fritz. When the chief deputy, Tub Murphy, returns to town with his assistant, Ross Hughes, the citizens clamor for Delong's arrest, but, reluctant to take charge or disbelieve Delong's story, Tub urges the citizens to wait for the sheriff. He does ask Delong to come, unofficially, to the sheriff's office, but Delong refuses, as he wants to remain free to fight Marady. Although no one is brave enough to confront Delong, who is an excellent marksman, the townspeople keep a vigil around the cantina, and many of Delong's innocent actions, such as reloading his gun, are interpreted by the crowd as intentionally harmful. Later, Winkler, seeing a lynch mob forming, tries to convince the townsmen that Marady has used the same strategy described by Delong in previous robberies and urges them to keep watch on the bank and casino, but the people remain stubbornly single-minded. When Orissa goes to the cantina to warn Delong that the crowd is getting meaner, Delong refuses to make an escape, explaining that he wants revenge on Marady, who killed his sister and nephew during a stagecoach attack three years before. Col. Flynn, who is Orissa's father and owner of the casino, orders Orissa out and asks Delong to give himself up. Delong persuades Orissa to leave with the colonel, but explains that it would be suicide for him to leave the safety of the cantina. Having worked up a collective courage, the townsmen try to flush out Delong and begin shooting. Delong refrains from returning fire, except to shoot out a candle flame that exposes his movements to the people outside. Marady and some of his gang ride into town, and Marady, judging that the townspeople's distraction with Delong will work to their advantage, enters the casino unobtrusively to await reinforcements, while his henchman Pinto mingles with the crowd. Then, Ben, a brash young man, tries to single-handedly drag Delong out, and Delong is forced to shoot back, but is careful to disarm him without doing serious harm. During the encounter, Delong spots Pinto in the crowd. Realizing that Marady is near, Delong escapes through the attic, leaving the crowd to discover his absence, and works his way to the casino, where a robbery is now in progress. Before entering, Delong cuts the cinch straps on the saddles of Marady's men, then shoots out the lights in the casino, and a gunfight ensues. The townspeople hear the shots and arrive in time to collect the escaping outlaws, who fall off their horses when they try to mount. In the darkened casino, Marady and Delong continue to fight. As he has been counting Delong's shots, Marady boldly approaches Delong after hearing six shots fired. Delong, however, still has Marady's good-luck pocket gun and with it, kills Marady. Outside, the crowd thanks Delong, but Pinto is with them, having so far escaped notice. When young Johnny sees Pinto taking aim at Delong, he uses his slingshot to hit the outlaw in the face with a rock, which gives Delong time to shoot in self-defense.

On Saturday April 9, 1954, Miller Starkey, a small-time hood who works for West Coast mob second-in-command Max Edward Troy, is palling with Troy in a field when he sees hitman Chester Davitt appear over a nearby hill, sawed-off shotgun in hand. Starkey turns but is pushed by Troy and is promptly shot by Davitt. Sgt. Joe Friday, working out of the LAPD's Intelligence Division, gets information on the killing from forensic scientist Ray Pinker as Pinker briefs division chief James Hamilton and other officers. Hamilton suspects Troy and several of his close associates, such as Lee Reinhardt, Wesley Cannon, and Davitt, and after a meeting with chief of police W. H. Parker the detectives arrest Troy and his associates and a low floor of the Crown Regent Hotel is appropriated by the police to allow mass-interrogation. Davitt cannot be found but his wife Belle is brought in and angrilly calls out Friday and company, to no avail. Friday and his partner Frank Smith interrogate Max Troy, but after four hours they get nothing out of him. As he is taken to jail they get word that an eyewitness has been found. It is a museum curator named Jesse Quinn, who positively identifies Chester Davitt as being near the field at the time of the crime. Friday and Smith check out The Red Spot Grille, a restaurant secretly owned by Troy, and find nothing. They then decide to infiltrate a policewoman, Grace Downing, into the bar with a primitive wire to record conversation between Troy and his pals. After 36 hours habeus corpus kicks in and despite the reluctance of Deputy DA Adolph Alexander, Troy and his pals are released. Friday and Smith, however, get information from Roy Cleaver, an informant and jazz musician; he tells them that Starkey was seen weeks before his death sporting heavy bandaging from a beating. When Friday and Smith question Starkey's widow, she tearfully confirms this and gives Friday a copy of her husband's work book, a collection of gambling debtors. Friday and Smith question 22 of the names in the book but get no information until they question theatrical agent Fabian Gerard, who explains that he paid back a gambling debt but was confronted by other mob enforcers claiming he didn't; when he showed them proof they left him alone. Now the two officers figure out why Starkey was killed - he'd been pocketing debts he'd been collecting. They learn more from one of Grace Downing's recordings - Troy tells the bartender to take a package in his car's glove box and dispose of it; the bartender loaned the car to his nephew for a fishing trip and it won't be back until Wednesday, and he'll get rid of whatever this package is then. The police, however, find and arrest Chester Davitt, and a grand jury is summoned to investigate Troy and his pals. Friday goes to get Jesse Quinn, but Quinn suddenly gets cold feet about testifying; he is supoendaed but tells the grand jury nothing substantial. The jury members question Friday in their investigation, and in the end the jury votes not to indict Troy. Captain Hamilton angrilly orders Friday and Smith to tail Troy day and night, and they do, constantly searching him wherever he goes. It goes too far when they tail him to a gin game and several toughs attack Friday and Smith; the two policemen win the ensuing brawl but get a mild reprimand from Hamilton for it. More pressing is a call from Grace Downing that she found something from the bartender's car at The Red Spot, but that Troy may be on to her. Friday and Smith arrive at the bar and escort her safely out, then she takes them to the back alley where they find a box of shotgun shells - with four missing. Eventually a wiretap is installed at The Red Spot, and one of Troy's pals, Wesley Cannon, gets a call from Cleveland, and informs the bartender that Chester Davitt has been killed to keep him quiet - permanently - about the Starkey murder. Friday and Smith reluctantly confront Belle Davitt with the resulting tape, and she tearfully changes her tune, showing the officers the toolbox where Troy and Chester sawed off the shotgun barrel, and she reveals that the gun was thrown into Echo Park Lake. With a signed affidavit from Belle Davitt and the resulting evidence, DA Alexander has enough to convict Troy, but Troy pulls the ultimate fast one that ensures he'll never be arrested.

An aging actress refuses to admit she is too old to play the ingénue role anymore. Playwright Stanley Krown has a terrific new play. It's got a great part for reigning Broadway star Beatrice Page, and a young actress named Sally Carver will do just about anything to get the ingénue lead. The problem is that Beatrice doesn't want the great role written for her. She wants the ingénue role, something she could have played wonderfully -- when she was twenty years younger. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>