If he were on the lam, he wouldn’t hide where he’d be trapped. A thorough search would eventually reveal him.
So back to the elevator I ran, so exhausted from the chase that I decided, as I probably had lost the trail, to ride up in ease to the seventh floor, where the elevator indicator had marked the stop. The doors opened and the attendant paid me no mind, merely asking which floor I wanted.
I was winded from the chase, but managed to puff out, “Redhead, tall fellow; on which floor did you let him out?”
“Floor seven, Madame.”
I was no longer fooling everyone with my disguise. “Seven, then.”
The doors opened at the landing facing the dining room, where scores of men were seated for luncheon.
He could be under a table; linens draped to the floor might work temporarily until a waiter or busboy or the foot of a diner betrayed his presence.
I stood poised at the door, ignoring the mâitre d’s fierce glare, then pushed past him to stand in the middle of the room. Conversations halted, eyes burned through my costume, several men laughed and a couple applauded, as I scanned the unoccupied tables for any movement of the linens. I could go left or right through the room, but I had little time to make a decision, so I confronted the mâitre d’ and asked if the redheaded man had entered the dining room? His eyes betrayed him. They flitted to the left, and, before he could grab me—the crazy, pantless person who might harm a club member—I was off.
The police were entering the dining room from the hall as I was forging my way through waiters and busboys, repeatedly excusing myself, then knocking into a waiter, upsetting a tureen he carried and sending it crashing to the floor. The maître d’, with his captain at my heels, slid across the aisle on a sea of split-pea soup, like the Babe stealing second base.
The kitchen was a perfect avenue of escape, I realized, as I pushed through a swinging door—the wrong door as it appeared, for I collided with another waiter. We stood chest-to-chest, staring at each other for a long moment, a tray loaded with shucked oysters caught between us. The slimy crustaceans slithered down between our bodies, one nasty critter finding its way in through my shirt collar to remain there, wiggling in the waistband of my bloomers.
It appeared that I was moving in the right direction, for ahead in the distance of the huge kitchen there had been another mishap, cleanup being attended to by mop and bucket. Chefs were screaming obscenities in bilingual rants, hats were flying, pans were banging, and I ducked in time to avoid a firm left hook aimed at a dishwasher by a sous-chef.
I beeped my horn and everybody froze for a second, saw me, then ignored me to resume their fights.
Around the maze of counters and butcher-blocks, I took a slide through squashed squash and landed on my knees. Pinny was in the distance, and I had to stop him.
Dozens of plucked chickens lay on trays at hand’s reach, and I grabbed a bird and flung it like a quarterback toward the forty-yard line, but hit a rack of crystal glasses that toppled and shattered in a melodic shower.
Continuing my progress, or should I say, my trail of destruction, my jacket caught on the edge of the stove. In attempting to free myself, my elbow knocked over a vat of mashed potatoes on which I slipped, falling face-forward onto my belly. I was sliding down the aisle toward a wall. My arms flung forward to break the crash into a baker’s rack. It did stop my slide, but my hands grasped several freshly baked apple pies in the process. While I was rising from the floor the wire shelf under my grasp gave way, tumbling onto other shelves. I licked the tasty samples from my hands and the syrupy bicycle horn and pulled myself up to a standing position, only to be confronted with a hysterical pastry chef beating his chest like an angry gorilla.
There was too much commotion for me to get to the pantry, where I was sure he was hiding. I crawled over a marble, flour-powdered pastry table, and somehow avoided being clobbered by that ubiquitous murdering frying pan, now employed and aimed at my derrière by the pastry chef, as if ready to swat a troublesome fly. I made it to the floor before it made contact with my behind. But his swing was not aborted in time, for the pan hit a fifty-pound bag of flour instead. The room exploded into a blinding cloud of snow.
I entered through the door of the vast and extensively shelved pantry where canned goods, boxed fresh produce, hanging cured meats, and basins of iced shellfish enough to feed a city were stored. The ice lockers took up an entire wall.
Could it be so simple? Could he possibly have found refuge here? Perhaps behind a tall cardboard box, or the onion sacks in that corner?
A rectangle of sunlight led me to an open door where a fire escape descended to the alley.
He’s gone, I thought, out into the streets, lost to us as he hides among millions of people.
As I stared out at the cobblestone alley, the same alley where I had been literally dumped out with the trash, Mr. Benchley arrived to look over my shoulder.
“Gee, you look swell,” he said, appraising the damage: my egg-batter-dipped, apple-seasoned, dredged-through-flour self. “Looks like you’re ready for the fryer!” he said, slapping Harpo’s top hat, which he’d retrieved somewhere along the way, back atop my head.
“Are you making love to me, Mr. Benchley?” I said, snorting out the powder that clogged my nose. “Well, now’s not the time. There’s a murderer to catch.”
A police officer came running down the alley from the side street, and soon the pantry was a sea of bluecoats entering from the kitchen, strong-arming my other “Marx Brothers” and trailed by dozens of young club members who had followed the fun.
There were few of us who hadn’t been smacked by flying entrées, splashing soups, and slimy seafood. Mr. Benchley stood before me with a leaf of escarole replacing his coat handkerchief and a smudge of flour on his cheek. In spite of the fact that the assassin had gotten away, there was the residual exhilaration from the chase, and messy as it was, there had been a sophomoric joy in the craziness that I doubted had ever existed in this staid environment before.
The police cleared the room of all but me, Groucho, Jane, Edna, Mr. Benchley, and the resident manager. Two police officers remained by the order of a Big Kahuna captain who was sporting lots of edible decorations on his uniform. We were told to sit on the wooden crates, and then that officer in charge, Captain Mahoney, questioned us.
Mr. Benchley took the lead, starting with my kidnapping of the night before, meant to abduct Clarence Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays, and the dumping of my body in the trash bin. Mr. Benchley had arrived at the club in order to investigate.
“Investigate what?” asked the Captain, overwhelmed by the futile chase and the incongruous cast of characters sitting before him.
“Well, you see, it’s a long story.”
Captain Mahoney wiped traces of tomato soup from his face, pulled up a fruit crate, and sat down with a sigh. “I’m listening.”
“You know about the murders of the two priests, the first, Father John, falling into the arms of Mr. Woollcott on Thanksgiving morning, and the second, Father Michael Murphy of St. Agatha’s, bludgeoned the other day?”
“What does that have to do with you ransacking the University Club? A lot of very important people are members here, and I’ve got to arrest somebody or the Chief will—”
I jumped in: “Well, you see, the murders are related.”
“To what?”
“The conspiracy to assassinate Darrow and Hays,” I said.
“The reason Mrs. Parker flooded the kitchen with vegetable consommé and sent the carcasses of several plucked and oven-ready chickens into oblivion, was to stop the presumed assassin.”
“What were you doing here?” I asked Mr. Benchley, accusatorily.
“I said I’d follow up the clue of the stationery from the club we found in Father John’s trash. I had the photo of the priest and I showed it to several men, who recognized him. The manager remembered that a priest was looking for a man by the name of Healy. And then I ran into the fellow whom w
e’d met at Noel’s party, Pinny Somethingorother, and he invited me to his room for a drink and a—”
“And a knife in the gut! He probably planned on killing you there. He had to suspect you knew he was involved!”
“But, I had no idea! How did you know he was involved?”
“His voice. The man my abductors reported to last night told his flunkies to dump me out there. I pretended to be passed out so I couldn’t see his face. He sounded like F. Scott; you know, hoity-toity. I connected the voice to the man the minute I saw him with you. And he knew that I knew.”
“That’s enough! I’m asking the questions here!” barked the Captain. “Let me get this straight: You’re telling me that two priests were killed by this Pinny guy, and he also wants to kill the two lawyers?”
Groucho couldn’t resist: “You know what they call two dead lawyers, don’t you?”
“What!”
“A good start!”
“Quiet!”
“You know what they call two dead priests?”
“What did I just say?”
“All right, all right! He’s no fun,” Groucho said to no one in particular.
I said, “Yes, Pinny is involved in a conspiracy and in the killing of the two priests. First Father John was killed, probably because Father John knew of the plan to assassinate the lawyers, and then Father Michael got killed, because the priest eventually found out why Father John was murdered. The Wild-Haired Man, Father John’s killer, stepped out in front of a car, you see. We think there’s a widespread plot planned by the KKK. Pinny may just be a middleman, if not the assassin himself.”
“When did you come to that conclusion?” asked Mr. Benchley.
“Last night. When he scolded my abductors for the botched-up kidnapping, he said something about there being ‘more of our people at risk.’ So there must be others involved.”
“I’m asking the questions!” said Captain Mahoney.
“What was the question?”
“Aaarrrggghhh!”
The captain pulled himself together: “All right, now! Why does the Ku Klux Klan want to kill these lawyers in the first place?”
“Ahhh!” said Groucho, “now we get to the Krux of the Ku Klux Klan! Say that fast five times.”
Mr. Benchley said, “Darrow has agreed to defend one Henry Sweet, the father of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a Negro physician. Dr. Sweet had the audacity to purchase a home in a white suburb of Detroit earlier this year. When his home was stoned by gangs, his father, Henry, got his shotgun and shot into the mob, killing a man. This comes on the heels of last summer’s Scopes Trial—”
“The ‘Monkey Trial’?”
“The very one,” said Mr. Benchley.
“That was a lot of monkey business, if you ask me,” said Groucho.
“Well I’m not asking you!” hissed the Captain.
Mr. Benchley continued: “Lots of good Christians viewed Darrow’s defense strategy of picking apart William Jennings Bryan’s testimony, and his challenge against the rationale of the seven-day Genesis of the Bible in light of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as reprehensible; the death of Bryan soon after the trial’s end exacerbated that angry sentiment. And now Darrow, the emissary of the Devil himself, is to defend a Negro who shot a white man.”
“Well,” said Edna to Jane, who had been sitting quietly on a sack of potatoes next to her, “at least now we know why we’ve been running around like lunatics!”
“You need a reason?” asked Groucho.
“How did the police get here so fast?” I asked the Captain.
“I called them,” said the manager. “Brute force was needed to extricate you theatricals from the premises.”
“What? You got a club full of wimps? You had to call the police to do your dirty work?” I asked the pompous ass. I’d have liked to further tighten his already-tightened necktie, but his expensive suit covered in God-knows-what was vengeance enough for his snobbery.
“You were running amuck, causing scenes,” said the little shitter.
“And you’ve been harboring a murderer!” said I. “The important thing now is: What can we do to catch these terrible men before they kill again?”
“Nothing. You do nothing. You leave it to us, the police and the FBI. All right, I’m taking you all down to the station,” said the Captain. He turned to the manager: “Do you want to press charges on these people?”
“As Mr. Benchley is a member of our club, and considering the circumstances—”
“And the fact that you’ve got two tickets for this evening’s performance of The Cocoanuts I’ve already bribed you with . . .,” said Groucho.
“—we can forget the incident.”
“Very well,” said the Captain. “Let’s get these folks downtown to the station.”
Jane and Edna fought off the grips of the officers with their cries of objections. “How dare you manhandle me!” yelled Jane.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded Edna.
“You’re Chico and Zeppo, or somebody in between,” growled one big brute.
Mr. Benchley moved to my side, in an effort to escort me more gently to the door.
“On what charge do you arrest me?” said Edna.
“Yeah, on what charge do you arrest her?” asked an indignant Groucho.
“Impersonating a Marx Brother,” answered the Captain, sarcastically, “and in a minute, I’ll add resisting arrest to the charges.”
“But I am a Marx Brother,” insisted Groucho.
“Yeah, sure you are. And I am Marie of Romania,” said the other policeman.
“Hey,” I said, “That’s my line you’re quoting, you big oaf!”
“Look at that moustache,” he said to Groucho. “I bet I could pull it right off, it’s so phony.”
“You mean like this?” Groucho pulled off his moustache.
“My point, exactly!”
“Yours is a phony if ever I saw one,” said Groucho.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I bet I could pull it right off,” said Groucho, giving a wickedly strong tug at the policeman’s push-broom whiskers.
There was an unattractive grunt of pain from the officer, who released his hold on Groucho long enough for our friend to make a break back through the kitchen. The crash of pots and pans was signal he was causing some upset beyond the swinging doors.
“Forget about him,” ordered the Captain. “It’s these people we want, anyway. They’re part of a murder investigation.”
The door to the alley was opened, and we were about to file out into the alley where the paddy wagon awaited our transport, when I stopped short. The door to the alley had been open when I arrived in the pantry, signifying Pinny had found his means of escape. But, why hadn’t he been picked up or even seen by the police who’d already covered the exits? I didn’t know why, but I had the strongest urge to remain in the pantry. Maybe it had been a ruse, that opened door. But, where could he have hidden?
I whispered to Mr. Benchley. He nodded.
When the others had gone out through the alley doorway, I pulled down on the lever of the meat locker. The door opened to reveal a butcher-knife-wielding Pinny, who came running out at me, the blade aimed at my chest.
Mr. Benchley’s mighty tennis backhand proved useful as the frying pan he gripped made contact in an upward swing. Pinny crumpled to the floor.
Boys of the Club
Jane, Edna, and I posing with Groucho
(“and I am Marie of Romania”)
Marie of Romania
Chapter Ten
If it hadn’t been for Aleck’s cousin, Joe Woollcott (“from the normal side of the family, not the sissy side,” Joe always stressed), we’d probably have spent the night in jail. Worse still, our faces would have been plastered all over the evening papers. Fortunately, when we filed into the stationhouse the reporters who usually hung around waiting for tips were either still outside the University Club waiting to be told why the police had been called, or at another new
sworthy event, a bank robbery at one of the larger banking institutions downtown. Of course, there were enough witnesses at the club to say that the Marx Brothers had arrived seeking membership, and had given out free tickets to their new Broadway show. And wouldn’t you know, Groucho himself, having escaped from the police, gave an interview on the pink Milford granite steps of the clubhouse, alongside the manager, who smiled and offered Groucho and the Brothers honorary membership. Pumping the man’s arm in a handshake, he replied, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member.” Smiling for the cameras: “But it’s been a lot of laughs, and let’s not do it again.”
After a couple of hours of giving and signing official statements, we were allowed to leave. Edna, exhilarated and rather pleased that I had included her in my little adventure, had a car sent over to pick us all up and to deposit us wherever we needed to go. We were a rag-tag crew getting into the limo, and the consolation was that nobody other than Joe, Captain Mahoney, and a couple of officers knew our real identities.
After Woodrow Wilson had licked the remnants of whatever food had crusted on my neck, and I’d located and disposed of down the toilet the stinking oyster lodged in my underpants, I lowered myself into a hot bath. I could feel the exertions of the afternoon stiffening my body. Everything was beginning to ache; I had bruises in places I couldn’t see from my assault on the club’s kitchen. What I wanted was a warm bed and several glasses of imported cognac to ease me into sleep, but I was ravenously hungry, too, as I’d tasted nothing all day but bits of apple pie that found their own way into my mouth.
I was stepping out of the tub, with the intention of calling room service for some dinner, when there was a knock at my door.
Aleck and FPA stood there decked out in evening clothes.
“I thought for a change of pace we’d have a bit of supper at the Waldorf before the show,” said Aleck, entering and pulling out from his coat a bottle of genuine French cognac. FPA followed him in, offering a box of fine French chocolates.
[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil Page 18