Lew Archer - who, why and where. Continued.

Guns	Office	Office help
.38 special, .32 and .38 automatics; no shoulder holster nowadays and rarely uses a gun.	84111/2 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood; two-room office on second floor of two-story building (office next to Miss Ditmar's model agency). Furnishings: armchair and sagging green imitation-leather sofa in waiting room; inner office sparesly furnished, with mug shots and subject's framed license on walls.	No secretary, but does have an answering service.

Car	Code	Fees
Have owned several Ford convertibles over the years.	'We are all guilty. We have to learn to live with it.' Highly ethical but not squemish; regularly turns down bribes (including one of a million dollars). Will take any case as long as it is 'not illegal and makes sense'. Years on the analyst's couch have deepened his insights.	Started out at $50 a day plus expenses; has been at $100 a day since the sixties.

Known associates	Background	M.O.
Morris Cramm, night legman for a Los Angeles gossip columnist; Peter Colton, chief criminal investigator, Los Angeles County District Attorney's office; Bert Graves, Santa Teresa D.A.'s office; Willie Mackey, private detective, San Francisco; Glenn Scott, retired Hollywood private detective; Arnie & Phyllis Walters, married private detectives and partners in the "Walters Agency" in Reno, Nevada.	Subject was born in 'working-class tract' in Long Beach. Stated that he attended grade school in Oakland in 1920, which would place his birth at at least 1914. He probably grew up in Long Beach, and there is some evidence that his parents died or divorced. A juvenile delinquent as a teenager, he reformed and joined the Long Beach police force in 1935 (according to the earliest version), working his way up to detective sergeant before he was fired for reasons that are not clear but relate to corruption. Served in World War II in intelligence. After the war, opened up Hollywood office and married his former wife, Sue, an ash blonde. She divorced him because she didn't like the company he was keeping. Subject tends to cloud his past; for example, he said in 1950 that he had done divorce work in L.A. for ten years; on two other occasions stated that he was fired from the Long Beach force in 1945 and 1953, respectively; in 1958 he was heard to state his age flatly as 'forty'. At any rate, he is now (1976) close to sixty, a lonely though not unsociable man. Secret passion is not justice, but mercy. 'But justice is what keeps happening to people'.	Used to do standard 'peeping'- divorce work, adultery, blackmail - but nowadays specializes in family murders with an Oedipal twist. In younger days, used more rough stuff but now avoids violence and has better (i.e. richer) class of clientele (prefers old money); carries license photostat, various phony business cards, and old special deputy's badge; has a contact mike for eavesdropping, which he never uses; waiting room bugged and has two-way glass in the door. Usual techniques: psychology (orthodox Freudian), sympathy, and probing questions. )Actually uses contact mike in "The Barbarous Coast."/KEL
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These facts were compiled by Richard R. Lingeman in the article How to tell Spade from Marlowe from Archer in the anthology Murder Ink, perpetrated by Dilys Winn. Workman Publishing Company 1977.