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Ah, Damon Runyon and his "Broadway" short stories. I have heard that, perhaps entirely by accident, a single past tense is embedded in one of the many stories, but I have never found it.
"It is coming on spring in Newark, New Jersey, and one nice afternoon I am standing on Broad Street with a guy from Cleveland, Ohio, by the name of The Humming Bird, speaking of this and that, and one thing and another, when along comes a very tasty-looking young doll."
I absolutely can't imagine those stories of the guys and dolls of Depression era Broadway, doing the best they can, in the past tense. It would rob half the humour.
Lawrence Sanders wrote almost all his work in the past tense, but for his half-dozen novellas about a scruffy Wall-street 'tec, (Timothy's Game, The Timothy Files) which are well worth reading) he used present tense, and very effectively.
Normally I don't like it much, but when it's done well, as in those two cases, It's the goods.
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