The proverbial deck stacked against them (for in their experience any interest by police could only result in arrest), Chaim realized he hadn’t much time to fetch his sister and get out of town before they were targeted as murderers. Their plan to leave tonight, on the night train, was set, but where was Dvoyra? Why had she not been waiting for him down in the courtyard earlier in the day when he’d returned from his errands? He asked the gatekeeper, and was told he’d not seen anyone such as he had described. Poor Dvoyra! Chaim was out of his mind with worry. On the chance that she had gone to see Caroline, the only other person she knew well enough to go to for help, Chaim rode the subway down to the village with the gun that had belonged to his father tucked between his clothes in his valise.
This is what had led up to Mr. Benchley’s and my encounter with Chaim and his shaking gun at the Washington Square house. Now, everything had changed in their favor in the course of just a few hours, and poor Dvoyra hadn’t yet learned of the happy new developments.
By seven-thirty, we were parked on 72nd Street in good sight of the Dakota’s courtyard gate.
Stuck in a parked taxi cab with the Marx Brothers is a trial of endurance. I deserve a medal. Throw in Aleck, Mr. Benchley, and Chaim Katzenelenbogen, who desperately, but exhaustedly, tried to follow the fractured and farcical conversation, rife with double entendre and insider jokes, and Lord Wildly, whose colloquial British euphemisms confused matters more, and you’ve got a recipe for murder:
“Caroline hate Dvoyra. She call her names.”
“All dressed up like a dog’s dinner, is Caroline,” noted Lord Wildly.
“You say Caroline good woman?”
I hopped in: “He’s saying—what does that mean, anyway?”
“Fine clothes, low breeding.”
I turned to Chaim: “Pretty face, mean heart.”
Groucho said: “That sister thinks she’s the bee’s knees, but don’t you fret, everything’s gonna be hunky-dory.”
Harpo said: “Irving’s an ace, on the level, and with him behind you, soon you’ll be home free.”
“Home?” The look on Chaim’s face was one of utter panic. I hurriedly attempted to teach a lesson in American colloquialisms. Key words: sister—not said in reference to Dvoyra but to any woman, in this case Caroline; bee’s knees is something special, but in her case, not; and hunky-dory means “all right.” As for an ace, you like to have plenty when playing poker, so an ace is good. Being on the level means “honest,” and home free does not mean deportation paid for by Uncle Sam, but “safe.”
I pleaded with Mr. Benchley to interpret Lord Wildly’s gentle but encouraging scolding, delivered as he tapped Chaim’s hand: “Old fruit, your nose is out of joint—now, don’t get your knickers in a twist!”
“I’m having too much fun watching you scramble about, my dear,” said Mr. Benchley.
Lord Wildly said, “Be a good mucker, Bobby. Chaim looks about to throw a wobbler!”
I told everybody to be quiet.
It was bad enough I had to sit on Groucho’s lap, the lecher, but moving onto Harpo’s proved even riskier, and it was of little comfort that Mr. Benchley offered to massage my feet, one of which was pressed up alongside his face (my shoes had dropped somewhere on the floor). But when Aleck rolled up the window against a draft, I thought I’d choke to death from the cigar smoke Groucho was puffing in my direction. I deserve the Medal of Honor.
Fight fire with fire, I always say. I asked for a light.
“That! That man there!” blurted out Chaim Katzenelenbogen, making Mr. Benchley snap shut his lighter to drag the fag out from between my teeth.
“What fresh hell!”
The Ukrainian pointed out the window at the man dressed in a black cape and broad-brimmed hat who’d exited from the gates of the Dakota apartments. And he was coming our way.
As bidden, the cabbie pulled out from the parking space on 72nd Street just off Central Park to circle the block, and as he did so, we were able to get a good look at the man named Luther Pendragon.
“Looks like Aleck,” said Zeppo, the “straight man” of the Brothers’ act.
“Spitting image,” said Groucho, “but for the handlebar moustache and a girth belying fewer cream pies.”
“Same arrogant, self-aggrandizing, pompous gait,” agreed Chico.
Before Aleck could retort, Chaim Katzenelenbogen said: “He go for maybe hour to restaurant down street each night.”
“Hands off cocks, on with socks!” ordered Wildly.
“What did you just say?”
“He means, ‘Let’s get crackin,’” interpreted Mr. Benchley, and we tumbled, ungracefully, out of the cab.
After handing the cabbie a dollar bill and asking that he wait for further orders, Mr. Benchley led the way to the Olcott Apartments flanking the Dakota’s west façade.
“The apartment of our victim is on the second floor, and only the maid is in tonight,” he said, referring to the recently redecorated pied-à-terre of a big-name Broadway producer’s mistress. He’d footed the bill of the love nest at great expense, after making a miserly settlement on the divorce of his wife of twenty years. No one had anything against the mogul’s moll, of course—all’s fair in love, and all that tripe—but everyone who knew the injured wife and adored her thought she’d been done wrong in more ways than just alienated affection. The insult on top of the injury was that he’d parked his bit of fluff in a building next-door to his wife’s. And now we were about to play a game that Mr. Benchley had perfected during his days as a student at Harvard. Made me wish I had gone to college. This was going to be fun!
After taking the elevator up to the fifth floor of the Olcott, Mr. Benchley lined up his troops before the front door of the flat. “Mrs. Parker, Aleck, Mr. K, and Lord Wildly, you all keep out of sight. Groucho! Harpo! Chico! Zeppo! Go fetch!”
We hid around the wall in the hallway to listen as the Brothers rang the doorbell.
The maid answered the bell. “We’re here for the davenport,” said Chico.
The flustered maid stood by uneasily as Chico whipped out a crumpled square of paper from his pocket and flashed it in her direction. He slapped the paper and then pressed the wrinkles out with his hands. “Got the order right-a here,” he said with his put-on Italian accent.
In less than a minute the foursome exited the apartment lugging a magnificent, butter-cream-colored watered-silk-upholstered sofa, trimmed with extravagantly lush bullion fringe.
Mr. Benchley and Chaim moved in to help. “My back wants to know,” said Groucho, “couldn’t we have taken a chair, Bob, or a side table maybe?”
“Next time, Marx; now let’s get this monster down the stairs. It’s not going to fit in the elevator.”
Down five flights of stairs they went, as Aleck, Lord Wildly, and I rode down on the lift. We met them in the lobby. They were cursing one another down the final flight, Mr. Benchley shouting orders to “lift and turn right, no? Perhaps a bit more to the left, and you should be able make the turn.”
Once out the stairwell door, the men dropped the sofa down in the middle of the marble-floored lobby, and together they plopped down to rest.
The doorman looked on in disbelief as Groucho shouted orders at him: “Footman! Fetch my bootlegger. I mean, fetch my bootmaker. Never mind him, fetch my bookmaker, and when you’re done with them, play fetch with the dog!”
The doorman kept giving them the fisheye. Never letting a challenge go unanswered, Harpo and Groucho offered him a seat on their laps.
“Let’s get this show on the road, boys,” said Mr. Benchley, and the four jumped up, and on the count of three lifted the sofa like a casket, whistling the Death March in a procession out the lobby doors to the street.
Chaim Katzenelenbogen took the lead as we marched past the main gate of the Dakota at the corner of 72nd Street, and then continued on along the imposing gothic façade facing Central Park West to the Dakota’s 73rd Street service entrance, the “funeral door.” They wr
estled the huge davenport up three flights of stairs to the apartment of the producer’s longsuffering and dutiful ex-wife.
The maid answered the bell. “We brought-a the davenport,” announced Chico, Italian again, leading the march into the room.
‘”But, but . . . ” said the maid, as the men barreled past her.
“No need to thank us; just point the way,” said Groucho, moving through the foyer toward the living room. “That’s the one we’re replacing,” he said, as the men placed the sofa down to move the old one out of the way. Moments later, the men came out through the doorway and into the hall carrying a smaller, worn-out-looking specimen.
Up one flight of stairs and along a hallway to the apartment of Luther Pendragon.
The maid answered the bell. “We brought-a the davenport,” said Chico.
As if expecting us, the maid pointed toward a reception room.
“Good,” said Chico, “I see you been ’specting us.”
They placed the sofa down in the middle of the room. “Are these the two oriental carpets?” asked Chico.
The maid looked blankly at the Brothers and shrugged her shoulders.
“You two, get-a with it! Start rolling, we don’t have all-a day!”
Zeppo and Harpo rolled up the magnificent red-and-blue Persian carpet while Groucho attended to the smaller nine-by-twelve rug. “Here, lady,” said Chico to the maid, “you gotta sign-a the slip!”
He whipped out the paper from his pocket once again and flashed it in front of the maid, slapping it and making it impossible to read, as it waved dizzyingly before her eyes. Then, patting his coat pockets, then his trouser pockets, and looking under his hat, he turned to the boys to ask, “Anybody-a gotta pencil?”
Three brothers patted pockets, checked under hats, and shook their heads: “No,” they said in unison.
The maid left the room to fetch a pencil. The coast cleared, Chaim entered the apartment and disappeared toward the servant’s quarters.
“’S’all right, I’ll sign it back at the shop!” shouted Chico to the maid as she reentered with the pencil. The men marched out through the door, toting rugs over their shoulders. “You can tip us next time,” he told the maid as she closed the door behind them.
“So now, what’ll we do with these rugs?” mumbled Groucho.
“We bring them downstairs,” said Mr. Benchley, a supervisor in evening suit. “They’ll go nicely with the lady’s new sofa.”
Down a flight and a knock on the door of the poor divorcée’s apartment.
The maid answered the bell. Within a couple minutes, the beautiful and costly oriental carpets were laid down to replace the old, and then out came the boys into the hall carrying the worn-out rugs.
“You know,” said Groucho, “I think we could be at this all night, if we’re not careful.”
“It feels good to do a good deed,” said Harpo.
“Speak for your own back!” said Groucho.
“I feel like Robin Hood!” said Chico. “Now, what’ll we do with these old rugs?”
“Incinerator,” suggested Zeppo.
“Not so fast. These are not too bad,” said Chico. “Upstairs we go!”
The maid answered the bell. “We’ve-a brought-a the rugs,” announced Chico, his accent thickening and more Sicilian than ever, as the boys filed into the Pendragon apartment, and laid the sorry specimens down before the divorcée’s old sofa.
“Wait-a minoot! Something’s not-a right,” said Chico, hand on hip, as he surveyed the sorry-looking vignette of carpet and sofa. “Oh, I know what-a it is. The drapes! They all wrong for this room.”
Groucho had had enough: “I’ll send the interior decorator over in the morning, Pasquale.”
“That’s-a all right,” said Chico, before turning to the maid. “You gotta sign. Got that pencil, now?”
The maid took a pencil out of her apron pocket. Chico whipped out the square of paper and jotted down his own signature, then handed her back the pencil. “Wait-a minoot! Where’s-a the tip?”
The maid left the room, giving Chaim Katzenelenbogen the chance to exit the apartment. The maid returned with the tip.
“Twenty-five-a cents!” said Chico, with joyful gusto. “Oh, boy-o-boy, we pay-a the rent, now, boys!”
Lord Wildly was rather favorably impressed by our evening’s work. “I say, you Americans have created a new-and-improved variety of the old, worn-out scavenger hunt game,” he said with a big grin. “We’re on the razzle, what!”
It was Chaim I was concerned about. The poor fellow was beside himself. Upon his exit from the apartment there were tears in his eyes as he turned to look at us beseechingly: “Dvoyra’s things still in room! She not go without picture Mama and Papa!” he said, pulling out from his jacket the old tintype from the last century of a couple on their wedding day. “I find valise and clothes push under bed!”
“That’s hard cheese,” said Lord Wildly. “Could she have gone directly to the train station?”
“She at train station? Wait for me, you think?”
“We’ll soon find out,” said Mr. Benchley.
Chaim’s discovery of Dvoyra’s belongings still in the apartment, but hidden from view, was not a good sign. If she’d been let go, why hadn’t she taken her things? Why had they been hidden away? Why no message from her to her brother left with the concierge, if not the household staff? Things were not “kosher” in the Pendragon household, that was for certain. Suddenly, finding the missing Dvoyra trumped the goal of snagging the spiritualists’ murderer.
“We’ll see you all later,” said Harpo, after a short conference on the stairs where plans were made for action later in the evening.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find your sister,” Aleck said to the distraught Chaim. “I’m sure she’s all right.”
I wasn’t so sure.
We broke up into several cabs: Zeppo made a date at a downtown theatre with the wardrobe mistress of a play by Aeschylus, just closed, to pick up a bunch of black robes used by the Greek chorus, before joining Groucho, Harpo, and Chico at their theatre to make the eight-thirty curtain of their show. They’d be cutting it close. Mr. Benchley, Aleck, Lord Wildly, Chaim, and I took a cab to Penn Station, hoping to find Dvoyra at the platform of the eight-fifty-two train leaving for Chicago.
But Dvoyra was nowhere to be found, and after a thorough inspection of the train’s compartments, and an announcement directing her to the information booth that offered no success, we left with a downhearted Chaim Katzenelenbogen in tow.
Chaim was beside himself. Where was his sister?
I told Chaim there was no reason to be alarmed, although Dvoyra had not gotten on the train. Perhaps she had gone to stay with a friend?
“We have no friend. Madame Annabelle our only friend.”
“Rabindranath?”
“Ah, yes, Rabindranath! He good man. Perhaps . . . ?”
“We cannot telephone him as he hasn’t a telephone.”
“I go to see if Dvoyra stay with Rabindranath.”
That decided, we put Chaim into a cab. Aleck slipped a couple of dollar bills into Chaim’s hand for the fare to and from the Village, and instructed the driver to return him to Tony Soma’s speakeasy.
We checked a train schedule. The next train from Boston on the New Haven Line arriving at Grand Central Terminal, on which Percival Peckinpah was a passenger, was due in at eleven-twenty-six P.M. According to Chaim, Pendragon would send a car to bring Peckinpah directly to the apartment in time to don his ceremonial robes and officiate over the ritual service. As discussed during our rushed dinner, FPA, Heywood, and Ross would entertain the illustrious visitor for the remainder of the evening, making certain he failed to arrive at his intended destination. In other words, they were going to take him for a ride.
We had three hours to kill, and a trip to Tony Soma’s for orange blossoms served in white coffee cups would help the time fly by.
By this time of the evening, most of Broadway’s royalty
had had their fill at the watering hole and were off performing their various roles in plays along the Great White Way. Now remained businessmen, socialites, and the intelligentsia to fill the bentwood chairs at red-checker-clothed tables and the bar stools. After midnight, a new wave of illustrious patrons would storm into the speakeasy for late-night refreshment and Tony’s convivial atmosphere. This was a friendly spot, as were the clientele, and to get through the entrance, Tony had to know you. Big Tim at the door never let any hoi polloi or rough characters get through to the inner sanctum. And if you wanted a drink at Tony’s, Mister, you’d better take off your hat, or Mrs. Soma, herself, would see you out the door, suggesting another speakeasy down the block that had no such requirement. And many others there were! Why, according to Mr. Benchley, one night out on the town, he and his friend Mac hit thirty-eight speaks on one block of 52nd Street alone!
At around ten o’clock, Chaim Katzenelenbogen entered the inner sanctum of Tony’s accompanied by the graceful Rabindranath Tagore. All eyes turned to watch the Indian yogi’s striking figure, dressed in immaculate white linens, glide toward our table. A flustered little Chaim trailed behind, like an overwrought bridesmaid who’d dropped the bridal train. The poor dear looked spent.
Aleck had never before seen the likes of such a man as Rabindranath, and although it was the custom of New Yorkers to pay homage to the famous critic and wit (and for Aleck to fully expect his public’s attention), something very odd occurred. Aleck had risen from his throne with great agility and was about to offer his pudgy hand to the Indian, but suddenly withdrew it. Long, graceful fingers steepled in a gesture of prayer as Rabindranath bowed his head in greeting. A gentle smile was bestowed on the critic. Aleck nodded back, and without a word having passed between them, Aleck became enslaved to the man’s mesmerizing charm.
Chaim Katzenelenbogen, a compact little mass of frayed nerves, began to uncoil as he took in the gathering of friends who had come to his rescue and would help him find his sister, Dvoyra. I patted his hand for reassurance, and after a flutter, he fell still.
Then, to my amazement, as a waiter rushed over to our table with the subservient air normally due to the King of England, and pulled the chair out for the swami to sit, Rabindranath said, “I’ll have a side car, thank you.”
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 21