[Celebrity Murder Case 01] - The Dorothy Parker Murder Case

by George Baxt

  Old sport.

  She uncrossed her legs and stared out the window. The streets were crowded. It was almost seven o’clock. Overhead an El train roared by. The driver was about to turn off Sixth into West Fifty-seventh. She hated riding under El trains. She always feared there’d be a slip-up and one would come plunging down into the street. They left Sixth Avenue and she breathed easier.

  Old sport.

  She hated the sound of the El. She could hear the Ninth Avenue El from her studio, and for some reason, the sound of it filled her with melancholy. All sounds of movement filled her with melancholy, reminding her that she wasn’t moving often enough or fast enough. Dorothy Parker was in a state of stasis and needed to be prodded into action. She must go home and write the copy she had promised to deliver to Harold Ross the following morning. “We’re here, lady.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.” She rummaged in the purse and gave him the fare and a good tip. He thanked her. She said, “My pleasure, old sport.” There it goes again. Old sport.

  Vera DeLee lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. At least she thought it was a ceiling. Her eyes weren’t quite focused. Her mind didn’t feel much in focus either. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue tasted as though it were covered with rust. Someone was bending over her, staring into her face. Vera wet her lips and said, “What do you want?”

  “Feeling better. Miss DeLee?”

  The voice was familiar. She’d heard it before. It was a highfalutin voice. Phony as a three-dollar bill.

  “Miss DeLee?”

  “Wha’?”

  “Feeling better?”

  “Am I sick?”

  “You passed out.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “The doctor’s office.”

  The doctor’s office. Now she could put a name to the voice. Nurse Gallagher. Nurse Cora Gallagher. Dr. Bliss’s Cora. Dr. Blissful Bela Horathy’s nurse Cora Gallagher, “Why’d I pass out?”

  “Hypertension.”

  “Did he fuck me?”

  “Not in the office, dear. Never in the office.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “It’s almost two hours. It’s after seven o’clock.”

  “Oh, shit. I gotta call Polly. Help me up.” Nurse Gallagher got her into a sitting position. “My feet feel like rubber. My head’s spinning. My mouth feels like it’s been filled with ashes. What did he do to me?”

  “What he always does.”

  “I’ve never reacted like this before.” She was frightened. “You don’t remember me reacting like this before, do you?”

  “It’s not uncommon, after a while.”

  “What do you mean, after a while?”

  “Well, dear, you’ve been receiving these injections for quite a long time. After a while, the body system builds up a resistance. The dosage has to be increased. Sometimes the body overreacts, and you pass out. There are some who pass away,” she added cheerfully. “That’s better in the long run.”

  Vera’s eyes were beginning to focus. Nurse Gallagher had a big red face with a big red nose and two big brown eyes. There was a mole on the left side of her chin, just like Gloria Swanson’s, and there the resemblance to Gloria Swanson ended. She had frizzy yellow hair and big hips and looked big enough to win a wrestling championship if the opportunity ever presented itself to a woman. And there was her highfalutin voice.

  “Where’s Dr. Horathy?”

  “The doctor’s with another patient.”

  “After seven o’clock?”

  “He takes special late appointments. You know that. You’ve been special. You’ve been late.”

  “Where’s my purse? I have to pay him.”

  “It’s over here on the table. Shall I help myself?”

  “Yeah. Help yourself. Only don’t help yourself too much. I know what I got and I know what I owe.”

  “You can trust me, dear,” she said, clipping each word, as she helped herself to the doctor’s fee.

  “I gotta use the phone. Was Polly trying to find me?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I gotta tell Polly where I am. Help me to the phone.”

  “Please. ”

  “Please.” She was helped to the phone. She gave Central Polly Adler’s private number. “Hello, Gloria. It’s me. Vera. Tell Polly. Well, interrupt her fuckin’ bridge game!”

  Polly scowled and excused herself from the table. Into the phone she growled, “Where the hell you been?”

  “I’m at Horathy’s. I don’t feel good.”

  “I thought he was supposed to make you feel better.”

  “I don’t feel good. I can’t work tonight.”

  “There’s a party on at Liveright’s at midnight. He asked for you special.”

  “Please, Polly. Be my friend. I don’t feel good.”

  Polly had a warm spot in her heart for Vera DeLee, who was the illegitimate daughter of a laundress and a Catholic priest. “I’m your friend, Vera darling. Go home. Will you get home okay? Is that snotty nurse still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell her to help you to a taxi and maybe I’ll help her get laid one of these days.”

  “Sure.” After hanging up on Polly, she relayed her message to nurse Gallagher. Gallagher slapped Vera’s face.

  “I don’t need any help from any whores. Now here’s your hat and your purse and get out of here.”

  “The least you can do is point me to the door.”

  The reception room was empty. Vera was alone. She fumbled in her purse for her compact. She examined her face in the mirror and groaned. While replacing the mirror in the purse, the door to Dr. Horathy’s office opened and a man emerged, shutting the door behind him. He didn’t notice Vera immediately. He was massaging his temples with his fingers. Then he lowered his hands, shook his head, and from under his arm took his hat which he elaborately went about bringing back into shape. Vera smiled.

  “Hello, big boy. Don’t you recognize me? I’m one of Polly’s girls. Vera. Vera DeLee. We met a couple of weeks ago. Imagine us both using Dr. Bliss. Small world, ain’t it?”

  Jacob Singer’s office in his precinct headquarters on West Fifty-fourth Street was a little bigger than a jail cell. Its solitary window overlooked a back alley and hadn’t been washed in five years, the length of Singer’s tenure. There! was a desk with a phone and an office intercom. Behind the desk was a swivel chair, now occupied by Singer reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. With difficulty. His lips moved as he read and he squinted. The print was very small. It was a special reprint edition where the paper was shoddy, the binding inadequate and the print was squeezed together to conserve space. It was the only kind of edition that agreed with his limited budget. Albeit a bachelor without the responsibilities of a wife, children and mortgage, Singer kept a very charming one-bedroom apartment on Lexington Avenue near Grand Central Station and put the rest of his money into wine, food and the clothes on his back. Occasionally, he would press a button on the intercom and ask impatiently, “They find the stiff yet?” The answer was still in the negative. Singer referred to his wall clock. It was almost eight o’clock. It was finally dark outside. The summer was coming to an end, and not a day too soon for Singer. He was a cold weather man. In cold you can always I manage to stay warm. But in warm, you can’t always manage to keep cool. Like his office. It was stifling. Even with the fan going on top of the filing cabinet, it was equatorial. ] True, he kept the window closed, but that was to avoid the 1 stench of garbage and dead animals in the alley two floors below. He was thirsty. He was hungry. He was growing more impatient by the minute. The intercom buzzed, and be selected a button and pressed.

  “What?”

  “A stiff has been found in an empty lot in Canarsie, lot located at the corner of Remsen Avenue and Avenue M.”

  “It’s about time.”

  “It is a woman. White. She has been strangled.”

  “C
ome on, Cassidy, stop the comic strip stuff. I want my dinner.”

  “There was a purse but no identification in the purse.” The two thousand dollars was safely locked away in a tin box in the bottom right-hand drawer of Singer’s desk. Its fate would be decided at a more advantageous time.

  “Take her to the morgue.”

  “Brooklyn’s claiming her,” Cassidy protested. He sounded strangely uneasy.

  “Fuck them!” yelled Singer. “They know she’s ours! Finders keepers! You bring her uptown where she belongs and move fast on the ident. Get her prints and get them to Immigration and fast.” He clicked off, simmering. He pressed another button.

  “Sherman.”

  “Sherm, what’s with Immigration? They got anything on Mercury?”

  “For Chrissakes, Jake, it’s after eight. They’re shut.”

  “Ahhh, you can never get anything done around this fucking place. They finally found the stiff. They’re bringing her in. Stay with it. I’m going over to the chink’s for some chop suey.” He leaned back in his chair. He blinked his eyes. He thought about Mrs. Parker. He wondered did he dare. He had her phone number in his little black book. He looked it up and gave it to Central. Her phone rang once, twice, a third time. He was about to hang up.

  “Hello?” She sounded anxious.

  “It’s Jacob Singer. Am I interrupting you at anything?”

  “Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you called.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad.” He took a deep breath and then plunged. “Mrs. Parker, if you have not had your dinner yet, there’s a nice little Chinese joint on Eighth Avenue just a couple of blocks from your place and they know me so we can get booze and . .

  “I know the place. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes. If you get there first, order me a bourbon sour, easy on the sugar.” She hung up. He exhaled.

  Mrs. Parker smiled at Neysa McMein. “That was Jacobi Singer. He’s a detective.”

  Neysa’s eyes narrowed. “What have you been up to?

  “Nothing illegal.” She moved to the dressing table where she began repairing her face.

  “Are you going out?”

  “Yes. He’s invited me to a Chinese dinner.”

  Neysa was not usually inquisitive. She was one of the, brighter lights of the Algonquin’s Round Table because she neither obtruded nor attempted to compete. Unlike the novelist Edna Ferber, who tended to bulldoze her opinions into a discussion, Neysa chose to sit back and wait for the occasional lull in the conversation and then dip her intelligence in. She was one of the two women Mrs. Parker either admired or confided in (Sara Murphy in France being the other), and it was she who had located the tiny studio Mrs. Parker now occupied. Her own apartment across the hall was many times larger and held as many as over a hundred guests at the parties she and her husband, John Baragwanath, frequently hosted. She was an excellent artist, successful and respected by her peers. Her marriage was a comfortable one, not terribly passionate as far as Mrs. Parker could discern, and her husband was sufficiently intelligent to remain in the background, which territory he had all to himself. “I’m not being a scold, Dottie, but five minutes ago you said you were too tired to eat when I invited you to dinner.”

  “I only intend to nibble. I have to see Mr. Singer. He’s being very helpful with a project of mine.”

  “Is he attractive?”

  “He’s a detective.”

  “Is he an attractive detective?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’d say he is.”

  “Wouldn’t you say he is?”

  Mrs. Parker left the dressing table and faced her friend. “Neysa, must we carry on the kind of clipped conversation we find so deplorable in the plays of Miss Rachel Crothers?”

  “How are your wrists?”

  “They feel fine. Have you seen my handbag? Oh, there it is.”

  “What about the copy you promised Ross?”

  “I’ll write it when I get home. Are you feeling abandoned?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve got an illustration to do for Harper’s. I was just hanging around to keep you from attempting anything foolish again.”

  “Oh, no fear of that. It’s out of my system. Come on.” She held the door open for Neysa, who preceded her out. She switched off the lights, locked the door and then crossed to the elevator. Neysa stood in the doorway to her apartment.

  “Have a good time.”

  “I’ll try.” The elevator arrived, and she said good evening to Martin the night operator as she stepped in. She was humming “One Alone” or at least she hoped she was humming “One Alone” because she didn’t have much of an ear for music.

  “It’s nice to hear you humming again, Mrs. Parker,” said Martin.

  “Haven’t I been humming?”

  “Not since you got back from Europe.”

  “There was nothing much to hum about when I got back from Europe.”

  “Ain’t it awful about Rudolph Valentino?”

  “Nothing much to hum about there either.”

  When they arrived at the lobby, Martin asked, “Do you need a cab?”

  “No thanks, Martin, my date’s waiting for me just a couple of blocks away.” As she hurried out of the building she thought, my date. That makes two dates in one evening. My cup runneth over.

  Old sport.

  The Fan Tan Gardens on Eighth Avenue was not only a short and convenient walk from Mrs. Parker’s apartment house, it was a bargain hunter’s paradise. A combination dinner could be had for a dollar; the servings were generous and the food above passable. There was also a four-piece orchestra, the Fortune Cookies, consisting of piano, drums, bass fiddle and banjo.

  “The banjo player is cross-eyed,” observed Mrs. Parker. Singer squinted into the semidarkness and corroborated her observation. “Do you suppose it’s good luck to spot a cross-eyed Chinese banjo player? You know, like finding a four-leaf clover or rubbing a hunchback’s hump?”

  “Do I make you nervous?” Mrs. Parker was fussing with the velvet bracelets which were beginning to fray at the edges. So were Mrs. Parker’s nerves. Detective Singer was quite astute.

  “You don’t make me nervous. I make me nervous.”

  “You haven’t tasted your drink. The hooch is hot off a sampan.”

  She sipped her bourbon sour. “Nice. It’s sour. Not too much sugar.”

  “I ordered us two specials. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Oh, it’s just fine. I’m not fussy. I don’t eat much. It’s too hot to eat much anyway.” Her conversation was underlined by the hum of the overhead ceiling fans and the buzzing of a fly impatient to share their dinner. The Fortune Cookies were trying to get together on a weird interpretation of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” which Mrs. Parker thought was “Rule Britannia.”

  “Ilona Mercury’s body was found an hour ago. No identity’s been made yet, but that’ll be taken care of by tomorrow morning.” The food arrived, and it looked and smelled appetizing. Singer dug in immediately like a dues-paying trencherman. Mrs. Parker examined every item on the plate as though looking for a counterfeit gem in a diadem. “She should be in the morgue by now. They’ll do an autopsy tomorrow.” Mrs. Parker gently placed her fork down and sipped her sour. She no longer had a trace of an appetite. What little she had possessed now rested alongside Ilona Mercury in the New York City morgue. She knew she had to tell him about her encounter with Lacey Van Weber, but she dreaded the possible scolding with which he might reward her. Seeing she wasn’t eating, he asked, “Would you prefer to order something else?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just that I’m really not hungry. When you phoned, I was having a cup of tea and a biscuit with my friend Neysa McMein. I’m sure you can handle my plate, too.”

  “I can. Would you like another drink?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  He signaled the waiter for a fresh round and then asked Mrs. Parker, “What’s bothering you?” He was thinking she had decided she’d made a mistake in accepting his offer for
dinner.

  She decided to come clean. “I’ve done something today you’re absolutely going to disapprove of.”

  “Who’d you murder?”

  “Nothing that colorful. I had drinks with Lacey Van Weber.”

  Singer didn’t bat an eyelash. “What did you get out of him?”

  “Not much. He’s a very cool character.” It took her less than fifteen minutes to unwind the litany that took her from bearding Horace Liveright in his office to Van Weber hailing her a cab. In the course of this, Singer demolished his serving of food and was now digging into Mrs. Parker’s dinner. A third round of drinks was ordered, and the Fortune Cookies had thrown down the gauntlet to Victor Herbert by demolishing “Stout-Hearted Men.”

  “I think you handled him okay.”

  Mrs. Parker beamed. Now she was hungry but didn’t dare tell him. He was pouring himself a cup of tea while trying desperately not to suck his teeth. He didn’t want her to think him uncouth and a lout. He swished the tea around in his mouth, but it dislodged nothing. “So Liveright gets you to Van Weber and Judge Crater gets thrown in as a bonus.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange, people holding meetings at midnight?”

  “Mrs. Parker, don’t be naive. I know you travel in a fast crowd. You know what them midnight meetings mean.”

  Mrs. Parker was annoyed. She drew herself up and folded her arms. “You don’t find many instructors in fast crowds. I don’t know what these midnight meetings mean.” Pause. “Well? What are they?”