Alan Ladd lights his cigarette. The smoke rises up in a lazy curl, lending a softness to his already soft and extremely handsome features.

“You understand?” he asks in that deep voice I’ve heard countless times nailing dozens of bad guys in dozens of movies. “Do I make myself clear or do I have to write it out for you?”

“I hear you,” I answer. “You want me to stand up for the little guy, the poor folks, the middle class families—those who’ll get run out of Cambridge once the developers get their way.”

“Yeah, just like I stood up for the homesteaders in ‘Shane’ when the wealthy cattle men wanted to push them out of the valley. If you don’t take a stand, I’ll come back to talk with you,” he threatens with that disarming softness that always presaged iron fists flashing or six-shooters firing. “And I don’t think you’ll enjoy that, Paul Steven,” he adds with a knowing nod. “You hear me, son?”

I’m sixty-seven years old and Alan Ladd calls me “son!”

“Yessir,” I answer, slightly cowed but inwardly rejoicing that Alan Ladd would take time out from his spiritual journey, wherever that might have taken him, to channel himself into my head and threaten me. Me!

Alan Ladd is threatening me!

“And don’t forget it!” he thinly smiles, looking up from under the brim of the black Stetson perched on the back of his head. That’s the way Alan liked to wear his hats. The way he looked best. And always that famous blond pompadour would rise in a handsome wave before disappearing into the darkness of the hat. “Otherwise I’ll have to express my displeasure like I did to Edward G. Robinson in ‘Hell Over Frisco Bay.’ Though, to be fair, I had the advantage then of a physical body and physical fists.”

Forget the fact that ‘Hell On Frisco Bay’ was filmed years after ‘Shane’, or that by then Alan Ladd had lost his matinee idol looks to the ravages of time and whiskey. Forget the fact I’m just a little guy in Cambridge, a writer with a small blog and a big mouth, trying to be the good guy who stands up for what’s right; attempting with my writer’s voice to battle 21st Century forces of unlimited wealth, unchecked greed, uncaring governments, and developers who believe their desires and insatiable hunger for profits should supersede the rights and well-being of others.

And forget the fact that Alan Ladd, whom I’ve idolized since he first outdrew Jack Palance in ‘Shane’ back in 1953, has been dead for fifty years.

Forget all that and concentrate on the fact Alan Ladd is turning on the heat in his softest, most threatening ‘Whispering Smith’ manner and focusing it on me.

In a voice that comes out of his throat, Alan Ladd advises me to, “Stand up and speak straight. If you think those mugs from A Better Cambridge are talking through their hats, then say so.”

“It’s not that simple,” I protest. “I’m sure some of them actually believe they’re trying to create a better city by fighting for increased density.”

“Sure they are” he says softly, “but at what cost? If their goal were a better Cambridge, like their name says, they’d be angrily demanding the very master plan they keep pooh-poohing. They’d be demanding the city look at its traffic mess, its rate of accelerated development and then plan for what’s coming. They’d be fighting the courthouse, not cheering it on.

“That’s how you make a better Cambridge!” he concludes emphatically.

I feel the need to defend these adversaries. “They say they want to alleviate the housing crisis,” I explain, but Alan Ladd waves it off in a swirl of cigarette smoke; he’d heard that line before.

“Good try,” he quips. “But their goal is to make hay while the sun shines, Paul Steven, to get as much development approved while the city sleeps and before your Cambridge Residents Alliance starts blowing its trumpet too loudly to be ignored.”

“But some of them must mean well,” I argue, hoping to avoid being pushed into a confrontational stance by the one man I idolized since my youth because he never backed down from a fight.

“Look, they never mention the word ‘affordable,’” he continues, flicking his cigarette ash and giving me a sidelong glance, “It’s the ‘housing’ crisis to these guys, not the ‘affordable housing’ crisis. Big difference! They never saw a developer they didn’t like or a development they couldn’t support.”

“But what can we do?” I ask him. “Where are we headed?”

Grimly, Alan Ladd turns to me, murmuring under his breath as he straps on his six-guns, “For a showdown!”

TO BE CONTINUED.