[Celebrity Murder Case 07] - The Marlene Dietrich Muder Case

by George Baxt

  “Poor Morton. I was so positive we’d get the name of who supplied the pill out of him. He looked like the type who frightened easily.”

  “Not movie extras. They’re a tough bunch.”

  They heard sirens. “They made good time. We have to pick up Marlene and Anna May in half an hour and it’s going to take that long to get to Marlene’s place. Hello there, Irving, top of the morning to you.”

  The coroner threw him a filthy look. “I suppose this one’s been poisoned too.” He had performed the autopsy on Mai Mai Chu a few hours earlier and confirmed the poison was strychnine.

  “No, Irving, this was a straightforward plunge of a carving knife into a back, leaving the stiff very stiff.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “You might recognize him if you saw a movie called Common Clay.”

  The coroner, a movie buff, moved Morton’s head for a better look at his face. “Oh, of course! He’s the extra who said, ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’ ” Villon’s jaw dropped.

  TEN

  “STABBED IN THE back!” Anna May Wong was genuinely shocked.

  “That’s nothing new in this town,” commented Marlene cynically. “So it was he who poisoned the champagne. Damn, just when I was going to cast suspicion on Gregory Ivanov.” She caught Villon’s questioning look and explained what she had learned from Brunhilde Messer. “He does card tricks. Very clever with his hands, very nimble fingers. But alas, he’s in the clear.”

  Villon said, “Brunhilde Messer.” He screwed up his face, prodding his memory. “Opera. Tall broad. Built like a wrestler.”

  Marlene elaborated on Brunhilde’s visit and Adolph Hitler’s bizarre offer, saving the best of her information for last.

  Anna May said seriously, “If you became the queen of the German film industry, you could make them write good parts for me.”

  “Oh Anna May, how desperate you sound. Would you want me to betray my principles and accept Hitler’s ridiculous offer?” She was enchanted by the way Mallory’s lips moved as he read one of the newspapers. She sighed. “My countrymen will follow him like sheep. He offers them hope and a future and they are desperate for both. The country is sinking under a cruel recession. Bread is ten dollars a loaf! Can you imagine that? Bread! Thank God my mother and sister have me to send them enough money to survive. How the others manage I do not know.” Her hands were clasped together as she shook her head from side to side. Then she laughed, a laugh tinged with bitterness and irony. “How the hell did I manage when I lived there? But together, Rudy and I were able to earn enough to live better than most. How often you have told me I’m too cynical, Anna May. But Germany breeds cynicism. Germany lost the war and now Hitler promises to lead them to financial recovery. He promises those poor humiliated people that soon they will raise their heads again with pride and take their rightful place again as a powerful nation. Who knows? Who am I to condemn him? I’m here in the United States. I make money. I live better than I deserve. And for crying out loud, why am I bemoaning the lot of Germany when right here in my adopted country there’s a frightening depression and armies of homeless roaming the country, living in Hoovervilles of shacks with newspapers for blankets when they sleep. Men selling apples on the street, banks failing, and what the hell am I carrying on about? Anybody want a drink? We’re not leaving for Mai Mai’s just yet. I have lots more to tell you. Brunhilde Messer was a geyser of information.” She paused. “Geyser, or geezer?”

  “Geyser,” said Villon, thinking she ought to know, having been erupting for the past couple of minutes.

  Nobody wanted a drink. Marlene lit a cigarette and sat on a straight-backed chair next to an end table and an ashtray stolen from the Brown Derby restaurant. “My friends, all of our suspects are liars.”

  Mallory folded his newspaper and placed it aside while hearing Villon saying, “Aw, Marlene, you don’t really think that?”

  “Oh, all right, all right, Herb, don’t be such a smart aleck. Brunhilde knew them all in Berlin, where they all knew each other. And their center of gravity was Hitler. Monte Trevor was there trying to weasel his way into the film industry. The Ivanovs were with the Russian Embassy before being transferred here. Raymond Souvir was brought to Berlin by Brunhilde to test for a movie she’s planning to produce and direct. Tensha was there and is possibly one of Hitler’s financiers. Stands to reason for a munitions maker. Hitler wants power and you need an army to wrest power for yourself.”

  “Mai Mai’s prediction.” Anna May’s voice was ghostly. “The second world war.”

  Marlene felt a chill. “I wonder if Nostradamus had any Chinese blood in him?”

  “Nostra Who?” asked Jim Mallory.

  “Nostradamus lived hundreds of years ago. He was a seer and he made some pretty knockout predictions for the future.” Villon’s hands were in his pants pockets as he slowly paced the room. “What about Dong See? Wasn’t he in Berlin too?”

  “Apparently not then. It seems he’d been in a terrible automobile accident in Italy and was so severely injured that he had to be sequestered in a Swiss clinic for six months.”

  Anna May said, “You’d never guess from the way he looked last night. Anyway, they say Swiss doctors and surgeons can work miracles. I’ve heard there’s a new clinic that has perfected a serum that prolongs life. How do the Swiss find the time when they’re so preoccupied with chocolate and cheese?”

  “Did Miss Messer mention di Frasso?” asked Villon.

  “No, but Dorothy is a butterfly. She flits from capital to capital as the whim strikes her. Last March she was on a safari in Africa. Before that she was found at an archaeological dig in Egypt. She also collects important people like other women collect charms for a bracelet.” She did a scathing impersonation of di Frasso. “‘I just adoooorre Benny Mussolini. He makes the trains run on time.’” She crushed her cigarette in an ashtray. “She’s a charmer, I have to hand her that.”

  Villon was now sitting and contemplating the view from the picture window. Marlene’s daughter and the chauffeur were on the lawn throwing a beach ball back and forth. “Mai Mai Chu was in Berlin too?”

  “Ach Gott.” Marlene slapped her forehead. “How could I forget this? She was not only there, but she read Hitler’s chart!”

  “Some girls have all the luck,” said Villon. “I hope she kept a copy of that one.” He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Dietrich.

  “I was thinking about what Hazel’s missing. She’s so busy doing the New Year’s Day party circuit. From Marie Dressier to the Wesley Ruggles and then on to Ramon Novarro, even though she’s heard Metro may not be renewing his contract.”

  “Ramon is so sweet, poor darling. Bilingual, bi-sexual, and now by-passed.” She winked at Mallory and hoped he wouldn’t faint. He had a very silly expression on his face, which reminded her of the comedian Stan Laurel, whom she considered funnier than Chaplin. “Well, my friends, what are we waiting for? There’s nothing we can do here, and I say we get going downtown to Mai Mai’s place.” She was on her feet, and Mallory admired her slacks and jacket. Women wearing pants, what’s the world coming to? “Well Herb, this is turning into quite a case, isn’t it. Mai Mai murdered last night, the waiter murdered in his kitchen early this morning, and we have ten hours ahead of us for further interesting developments. Shouldn’t we go in one car?”

  Villon agreed. The ladies would travel with him and Mallory. Dietrich spoke on the intercom, advising Maria’s nurse that she and her guests were leaving. Since her chauffeur would be free, she suggested an excursion to the Venice Beach amusement park. It was Maria’s favorite place. It was the nurse’s too. She especially loved the Tunnel of Love and especially with the chauffeur’s arms around her.

  “Maria’s nurse thinks she’s kidding me,” said Marlene as she led the way out of the house. “She thinks I don’t know she sneaks out to the chauffeur’s room above the garage when the household is supposed to be asleep.”

  “Why not?” asked Ann
a May, who long ago had drawn a protective veil around her own private life. “As the title used to say in silent pictures, ‘Youth calls to youth.’ ”

  “In this case,” said Marlene, “youth howls to youth.” She added mournfully, “Ah, to be in the first flush of youth again.” She laughed, “Although I was never all that innocent. How about you, Jim Mallory? Are you still a virgin?” His knees began to wobble. He held tight to the rear car door he was holding open for the ladies. Marlene patted his cheek and then settled back on the seat.

  Anna May said to her as she sat, “Must you torture him?”

  “Don’t be silly, he loves it.” Mallory was at the wheel of the car. Villon was speaking into the car radio, telling the precinct they were leaving Dietrich’s house and heading south to Mai Mai’s loft. The dispatcher gave him a message from Hazel demanding he join her later at one of the parties. The coroner left word that the knife that had sent Morton Duncan to his unjust reward had gone clean through his heart, causing instant death. Charmed, I’m sure, thought Villon. What a world. What a life. What a death.

  Marlene spoke suddenly. “It can’t be Hitler.”

  “You’ve lost me,” said Anna May. “It can’t be Hitler what?”

  “Just because all the suspects were in Berlin and know Hitler doesn’t mean he’s in any way the reason why Mai Mai was murdered. It has to be something deeper, something more malignant. An abscess that needs to be lanced.” She had their attention while cautioning Mallory to keep his hands firmly on the wheel and his eyes on the road ahead of them. New Year’s Day meant New Year’s Day drunks, and at the wheel of a car drunks could be lethal. “Why should anyone fear Mai Mai because she had seen them in Berlin at the same time? They were there legitimately to all intents and purposes. One for a screen test, another looking for a wedge in the film industry, two of them were gainfully employed in their country’s embassy; and Tensha makes no bones about how he earns his money, and Hitler has a professional eye for finding financial backing. So what if Mai Mai did recognize them en masse? But…”—and now her voice darkened—”if Mai Mai knew there was something else involving these people, possibly also involving Hitler, something more awful than the rise of a would-be dictator, something, for want of a better expression, earth-shattering.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” said Villon.

  “It has to be reasonable. Why else murder Mai Mai? It’s in the horoscopes. It has to be. Their gathering at my party was a tragic coincidence. Mai Mai was a last-minute inspiration on Anna May’s part, so the plot to kill Mai Mai didn’t exist until one of the seven phoned her to … wait a minute, wait a minute! The plot to kill Mai Mai very much existed. She’d been marked for murder for months. But finding out she’d be at my party was for them a blessing in disguise, they could try eliminating her that night. And what better setting? A crowded ballroom, an orchestra, lots of noise, a cacophony of voices and a strychnine pill that had been kept in reserve if other means of killing her were not propitious. Oh, poor Anna May, I’m upsetting you.”

  “No. It’s not what you’re saying. That’s logic. But murder is insanity. I’ve read about it, I’ve played killers, but it has never come this close to me. You read about a murder in the papers, and reading about murder has its own fascination. Then you shrug it off and turn to the funnies. But now I realize people are reading about Mai Mai then shrugging her off and turning to the funnies. Now I know how terrible murder really is. Mai Mai was a real person, warm, loving, always laughing. But so were all the other victims we’ve read about. But one has to be cold about it, doesn’t one, Herb? You can’t sentimentalize murder because there’s the killer to apprehend, and if you go soft then the mind grows lazy and logic evanesces.”

  “Herb will catch the son of a bitch,” Marlene assured Anna May, not also realizing she was assuring Villon, who frequently had his doubts about nailing a murderer. “And Jim Mallory will be invaluable to Herb, as he has already proven to be, and watch out for that bastard coming up on your left!” Jim swerved in time to avoid a collision. “Well! We came within a hair of making headlines tomorrow!”

  “You’d get top billing,” said Anna May sullenly.

  “Oh, Anna May.” Marlene did not fear death; she frequently contemplated her own mortality. It was Maria she worried about. What would become of her? She doesn’t know about Rudy’s mistress. If Marlene died, would Rudy marry the woman? Would she and Maria like each other? Would she be the right person to raise Maria? Marlene groaned and Anna May shot her a look but didn’t question her. Am I the right person to raise Maria? She has a nurse and a maid, and there are butlers and a chauffeur and there are bodyguards, and I am at the studio sometimes as long as twelve hours a day when I’m filming, and I’m away on trips and I can’t always take her with me. Oh, what the hell, how many children in the world wish they could trade places with Maria, so there.

  Marlene’s thoughts sidetracked to the actors she’d hired to be Father Time and the New Year’s Baby. How pathetic their distress to realize they’d passed out and never got to do their act. Father Time wouldn’t take the money the butler pressed on him, and the butler had to fetch Marlene, who held the actor by his arms, insisting he take the money. The poor bastard. Washed up. Washed out. No hope for him. Maybe she could find a way to wangle him onto Paramount’s talent roster. All the studios maintained a company of stock players contracted at a minimal weekly salary to be on tap to do bits and walk-ons. Metro had several silent favorites who had fallen on hard times on stock contracts. Aileen Pringle, May McAvoy, Marie Prevost, to name three. How often at a screening had Marlene heard a buzz from the audience when a former favorite flashed by and was recognized. Maybe a few years from now that would be her. Like hell, not Marlene. Marlene is a survivor.

  “That’s the building on the northwest comer. The one with the grocery store on the ground floor.” The streets were almost deserted. This was the commercial area that abutted Chinatown, where they would find hustle and bustle if they were in search of it. But in this neighborhood on a holiday afternoon, all was quiescent. Villon knew that behind some of the façades there were illegal factories paying coolie wages to illegal immigrants. There were illegal fan-tan parlors where the Chinese who were compulsive gamblers played mah-jongg and fan-tan and blackjack and rarely escaped the bondage and thrall in which the gamblers held them because of their constant indebtedness. Some traded their daughters and their sons for their freedom, some even offered wives and sisters. They defied the tongs, who frowned on the practice. The tongs were family societies who looked after each other, benevolent societies who financed business ventures for their relatives. They arranged marriages and made sure their dead were given funerals befitting a respected member. The movies libeled and slandered tongs, depicting them as gangs of cutthroats and thieves constantly warring with each other. They did on occasion feud, but differences were usually settled over a pot of tea and honey cakes.

  Jim Mallory parked at the entrance to the hallway leading to a small elevator that rose to Mai Mai’s loft. Marlene was astonished by the lack of security. “She could have been killed here!” cried Marlene. “The door is unbolted. Anyone can get in.”

  “Marlene, many eyes watched this doorway, as many eyes are watching us now. Here Mai Mai was safe. This was her fortress, secluded and impenetrable. I never told you this before, I had no reason to, but Mai Mai was a princess. Yes, she was of royal blood. Her ancestry goes back so many generations. Tragically, she is the last of her line. She had no brothers. Let me lead the way.”

  Two of the pairs of eyes watching Anna May leading the others into the building couldn’t believe what they were seeing. One spoke sofdy, “Honorable Fong Shen Un, do my miserable eyes deceive. Is that not Marlene ‘Legs’ Dietrich I see?”

  The second pair of eyes replied, “I do not deserve to look upon her. She is too far above for this humble and unworthy nobody. It would be an honor to grovel before her and have her humble me with her feet in my face. Oh Gut Tsu Donk,
how often I have dreamed of screwing her.”

  The hallway was beautifully papered with decorative designs. Anna May explained they were the work of a young muralist whose work Mai Mai had seen and admired in Hong Kong. Mai Mai had arranged to bring him to the United States, and when last heard of, Anna May said, he was laboring in a vineyard in the Napa Valley.

  “How sad,” commented Marlene.

  “Not sad at all,” countered Anna May. “He owns the vineyard.”

  The four squeezed into the elevator, which made its way slowly and laboriously to the top floor. It came to rest with an agonizing grinding of the brake. When the door opened, the four stepped into a paradise, a shrine to the zodiac, a magnificently appointed room with high ceilings and many windows draped with multicolored materials imported from the Orient. The twelve signs of the zodiac covered the walls. The furniture was lovely in its simplicity. There were sofas and easy chairs, and oversized pillows dominated the floor. At the furthest end of the room, away from the elevator, was a hallway, the entrance to which was camouflaged by a curtain of stringed bamboo beads. Anna May explained that beyond the curtain was Mai Mai’s bedroom and bath, and a kitchen.

  “This room was the center of Mai Mai’s life. Here she entertained and here she did her charts. She worked at this desk.” It was built into a wall next to a huge chart of the zodiac signs. Past the chart was a row of steel cabinets and behind their doors Herb Villon was positive they would find the copies of the charts they were seeking. From her handbag Anna May extracted a ring of keys. “These will open the cabinets. The honorable Mr. Gai Ah Veck, the leader of Mai Mai’s tong, entrusted them to me. I saw him before returning to your house, Marlene, and he was glad to learn there would be no rest until Mai Mai’s murderer is brought to justice.” She gave the keys to Villon.