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

by George Baxt

  “Orgies. Hosted by Liveright.”

  Her eyes widened as she leaned forward, her interest piqued, trying hard not to salivate. “Horace Liveright holds orgies?”

  “Boy, does he hold orgies. From what we’ve learned, those orgies get so hot and heavy and involved you need a scorecard to tell one participant from another. Believe me, I dread the day the Graphic or the Daily News or the Mirror or any of them other scandal sheets get wind of it.”

  "My Horace Liveright? My publisher?”

  “He’s a pervert.”

  “I need another drink.”1

  “You sure you can handle it?”

  “Can Horace handle an orgy?” The Fortune Cookies were showing little mercy to “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” A new round of drinks was requested. Mrs. Parker; dwelled unhappily on the prospect of Lacey Van Weber as a participant in orgies.

  “You look like somebody just stole your candy.” Singer had succumbed to the necessity of a toothpick.

  “I never get invited to orgies. It’s just as well. I wouldn’t know which way to turn. What do you think of Mr. Van Weber?”

  “Haven’t met him yet.”

  “From what I’ve told you, what do you think?”

  “Suave, smooth and sophisticated. Smart. With his kind of fancy footwork, he could probably score a dozen touchdowns a game. And I don’t think he’s real.”

  “Oh, he’s real, all right. He has lovely manners.”

  “Mrs. Parker, what you saw was an excellent performance. We ain’t got nothing on this guy, and when we ain’t got nothing on a guy, I’m doubly suspicious.”

  “You’ve been investigating him.”

  “Sure, I’ve been investigating him. A long time before you got interested in him.” She couldn’t understand why she was blushing. Singer did. “We came across him long before the party where Valentino took sick. From almost the first time we got wind of him, a little over a year ago, when he began to make Walter Winchell’s column. A guy hits town from nowhere, makes a big splash, flashes a big roll of green, gives lavish parties, gets to know the mayor and the more suspect members of the municipality such as Judge Joseph Force Crater, hangs around Tex Guinan’s and Helen Morgan’s place, bends elbows with Flo Ziegfeld and at least two of the Shubert brothers, suddenly buys one of East Cove’s most notorious white elephants…

  “It sounded perfectly glorious to me. Like Versailles.”

  “Well, maybe Van Weber took a lesson in how to waste from the late Marie Antoinette. That place in East Cove had been barren, moldy, overgrown with weeds and rat-infested for over twenty years until Van Weber quietly took it over, repaired it, overhauled it and announced an open house. Oh, yeah. It’s everything they tell you it is today. It’s also got a big new dock, big enough to accommodate a gunboat if one wanted to sail in. I’ve been there.” He broke the toothpick in two and dropped it in the ashtray. Mrs. Parker now sat with her hands primly folded on the table. She was dying for an egg roll but too shy to ask. “I was there a couple of months ago. Some business involving an illegal alien." Her mouth formed a moue. “Little Italian kid we found murdered in an alley down in Little Italy. Throat slashed. Couldn’t have been more than maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. No identity, no nothing. But then like sometimes happens, we run lucky. Somebody turns in a missing persons report. A cute kid, Italian, Rosie something. We take her to the morgue, she identifies him, and then she tells us while sobbing her guts out he worked out in East Cove for Van Weber. So I went out there. Nothing. Not a clue. Not a line. Nobody knew the kid. Rosie something says his name was Angelo d’Amati. Brought in illegal. Want to know what I suspect?”

  “I’m fascinated.”

  “He was brought in with some other illegals and docked at Van Weber’s. Probably on a boat carrying bootleg hooch Maybe Angelo wasn’t meant to get off the boat. Maybe he was supposed to head back for Europe or from wherevei they originated. But I think he got hungry to stay in this country. You can guess his origins. Poverty, no indoor plumbing …”

  “How awful . .

  “With the mansion in East Cove as a yardstick, the United States looks real promising. He runs away. But they catch up with him. He knows too much. Throat slashed.”' He made an ugly gesture across his own throat. She lost her appetite again. “So far nobody’s come after Rosie. Maybe they don’t know she exists. But what I’m telling you, I got from Rosie, who naturally got it all from Angelo. In Italian, of course. Kapish? … old sport?”

  Singer had reacted with both amusement and interest when she told him Lacey Van Weber’s favourite expression seemed to be “old sport.” Her fourth bourbon sour was beginning to get results. Mrs. Parker’s face was flushed, and she felt a slight disassociation from her head.

  “You feeling all right, Mrs. Parker?”

  “Why, of course. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You look like the drinks are beginning to hit you.”

  The devil take the hindmost. “They are. Can I have an egg roll?”

  He ordered the egg roll. The Fortune Cookies attacked “Give My Regards to Broadway.” Singer urged some hot tea on Mrs. Parker. “What’s troubling you, Mrs. Parker?”

  “Lacey Van Weber. I’m such a romantic, Mr. Singer, and Mr. Van Weber cuts such a romantic figure, I hate to think of him as being anything less than top drawer.”

  “Mrs. Parker, I thought Scott Fitzgerald was a good friend of yours. You know, travels in your set, literary, wisecracks, the whole shmeer.”

  “I had dinner with Scott and Zelda in Cap d’Antibes last month. Would you like to meet them? I think they’re still abroad.”

  “Sure, I’d like to meet them. You know I’m impressed by writers. You, Woollcott, Kaufman. That’s a big deal for a guy like me. I’ve told you how hard I work to improve my mind. I try to read the classics, even when I don’t understand them, I don’t give up. I plow ahead. Nice words please me.”

  She smiled. “That’s lovely. That’s very lovely. Fitzgerald writes nice words.”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s right up there with the best. Like you and this new guy Hemingway.”

  “Thanks for the flattery. My sagging ego can use a fresh prop every now and then.”

  “What I’m getting at, Mrs. Parker, is Van Weber and him calling every guy he meets ‘old sport.’ Didn’t you read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?"

  “Twice. I told Woollcott I planned to read it a third time very soon, and he’s accused me of trying to build up an immunity.”

  “What’s Jay Gatsby’s favourite expression?”

  Her chin dropped as the egg roll was set on the table before her. “Old sport!”

  ‘You got it. Now where did Gatsby live?”

  “Out on the island. In West Egg. In a huge mansion My God. For West Egg, read East Cove. For Jay Gatsby” she paused and then stared at the detective in astonishment not knowing whether to laugh or cry—“for Jay Gatsby, read Lacey Van Weber.”

  “It’s pretty good casting, you have to admit.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Eat your egg roll.”

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” She pushed the plate to one side. Singer shrugged and proceeded to demolish the egg roll. “That was very good, Jacob Singer. That was a brilliant example of your superb detective work. Can you imagine that? Jay Gatsby. I wonder if anyone else has caught the analogy. I can’t wait to tell Woollcott. He’ll never forgive himself for not having recognized it.” She paused while thinking about something. “Mr. Van Weber, I think, intends to … um … pursue my friendship.”

  “Does that frighten you?”

  “To be perfectly frank, Mr. Singer, I find Mr. Van Weber deadly attractive. And if he doesn’t come chasing after me, I shall be bitterly disappointed.”

  “So will I,” replied Singer. Their eyes locked. Mrs. Parker was no innocent. She knew Singer was interested in her beyond a superficial acquaintance. From the time they had first met, two years earlier, during a speakeasy raid, and he overheard Mrs
. Parker referring to her escort, a wealthy septuagenarian, as “an old gloat,” Singer knew he had someone special in the paddy wagon. When she identified herself, and this was at a time when fame was first beginning to brush her skirt, Singer was overwhelmed. He was also not blind to her petite beauty, later describing her to a fellow officer as “a nice box of candy.” He interceded with the judge, explaining that in his opinion Mrs. Parker’s attacking an arresting officer with an unopened bottle of champagne was a clear case of self-defence. From that moment, Mrs. Parker declared him a friend for life. She invited him to lunch at the Algonquin, and he was promptly adopted by the Round Table. They promised to make his name as celebrated as that of another famous and feared detective, Johnny Broderick. Mrs. Parker would never forget the first time Franklin P. Adams mentioned Jacob Singer in his column, “The Conning Tower.” Singer sent a dozen roses to her and a bottle of champagne confiscated in a raid the night before to Adams.

  “It wouldn’t worry you if Van Weber and I began to see more of each other?”

  “That’s what an investigation is all about, isn’t it? When you volunteered to help today, you said it was because you and Woollcott have easier access to a certain kind of person than I do. You’ve already proven that. You’ve met Van Weber. Fast work. Now you’ve met Crater. Even better. You already know Liveright.”

  “You couldn’t possibly think he could be tied to Ilona Mercury’s murder.”

  “I will if we find out she did a guest turn at one of his orgies.”

  “If you know about these goings-on, why haven’t you raided them?”

  “In the first place, there’s been no complaints filed. And in the second place, we’ve been told to lay off.”

  “I see. Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, I know you’re so moral, so upstanding, so …”

  “Cut the eulogy, Mrs. Parker. We’re in a chink joint, not at my memorial.”

  She wished they were at the Fortune Cookies’ memorial. They were now lacerating “Roses of Picardy.”

  “Don’t those boys ever take a break?”

  “The band? Hell, no. Not coolie labour. Now, by the way, Mrs. Parker, don’t let me find you trying to get Woollcott or one of your other buddies into one of them orgies.”

  “Woollcott at an orgy? Why, that would be as fascinating as meeting a son of Gertrude Stein. On the other hand, where does Liveright get his female participants? I mean, sure he doesn’t declare open season on shopgirls in Woolworth’s.”

  “Polly Adler supplies him.” He shrugged. “What the hell, that’s why she’s in business. They get a fair share of showgirls looking to make a better score in life. There’s still them what’s dumb enough to think they got an even chance of snaring a rich lover at one of these penis parties. Oh, sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  “How can I be offended when I’m numb? Those poor girls. Those poor, poor exploited women.”

  “It’s like I said before, nobody’s made a complaint.”

  Mrs. Parker shook her head sadly. “It sounds as bad as white slavery.”

  “Lady, I could tell you plenty about that. Be glad I don’t.”

  “Will you let me know the minute the poor Mercury girl’s been officially identified. I mean, I’m rarin’ to go, if you can stand a cliché. Woollcott’s got seats for us for No Foolin’ tomorrow night. I’d like to go backstage and get friendly with any of the girls who might have been close to the Hungarian lady.”

  “Go right ahead. She’ll probably be headlines in the afternoon sheets. Complete with pictures.”

  “Then somehow I’d like to meet Mrs. Adler. I already know Texas Guinan.” She was drumming her fingers on the tabletop. “Of course, if Mr. Van Weber decides not to pursue me …”

  “My money’s on you. You’ll be hearing from him. I’ll give you another tip. For free. A couple of hundred feet from the Globe Theatre stage door, there’s a filthy little crib called the Harlequin. It’s a hole in the wall. We don’t even bother raiding it. But mostly that’s because a lot of singers hang out there.”

  “Opera or musical comedy?”

  “My kind of singers, Mrs. Parker. Informers. The kind of rats who’d steal the flowers off of their mother’s grave.! There’s one in particular you might get to know, should maybe you and Mr. Woollcott think of dropping in there for a drink tomorrow night.”

  “Mr. Van Weber recommended we have an after-theater dinner at Tony’s.”

  “Nice place. Good wop food. The booze won’t burn your lining. Very convenient to the Harlequin. You could drop in after dinner. Sid’s usually there. Sid Curley. Smalltime grifter, but a big-time snoop. He feeds Winchell stuff for his column. He feeds us plenty for a price. I don’t go in there because I’m known, I could be recognized and that could put Sid on the hot seat. You and Woollcott go in, you’re a couple of swells slumming. You’re both quick on the uptake.”

  “Of course. We’re always interested in meeting new people. How will we know Mr. Curley? I mean, we just couldn’t ask the bartender or a waiter to introduce us. That would be stupidly suspicious.”

  “Indeed. But leave the action up to Sid. If he’s there, he’ll find a way to introduce himself. You can also hear him. All the time he goes ‘sniff sniff sniff.’ He used to be on cocaine, but he’s clean now. But he can’t get out of the habit of making believe he’s sniffing it. So he goes ‘sniff sniff sniff.’ Got it?”

  “It’s written on my brain with lightning.”

  “If you get to meet him, bring the conversation around to the show you just saw and what a shame that poor showgirl got the finger. He’ll pick up on you. Eventually, if you like, you sort of subtly drop it that we’re acquainted. He’ll get the message. And then maybe he’ll give you a message.”

  Mrs. Parker sat back and sighed. “My, haven’t I had quite a day. And my, isn’t there tomorrow to look forward to.”

  “Tired?”

  “Yes. I’m tired. And good God! Listen! Don’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The silence!” The Fortune Cookies were gone.

  We got to get back to drinking straight Jack Rose,” announced Mrs. Parker to George, the headwaiter, in the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel where the members of the Round Table convened. “I’ve been drinking fancy stuff like bourbon sours, and I think they’re upsetting my system.”

  “That’s a very grave decision you’ve come to,” said Robert Benchley, who sat next to her, wondering how long it would take her to complete the process of removing her gloves which she had set into operation when she sat down five minutes before.

  “I’m a hotbed of grave decisions this morning, Mr. Benchley. We seem to be the only ones here. Woollcott’s late as usual. He’s taking me to the theatre tonight.” She returned her attention to the headwaiter. “I’ll have a Jack Rose over a piece of ice. Mr. Benchley?” He asked for a Manhattan with three cherries. George left them. “How’s Gertrude, Mr. Benchley?”

  “Oh, Gertrude’s all right, if you like Gertrude.”

  “I think your wife is just peachy.”

  “No, you don’t. You can’t stomach her.”

  “Don’t raise your voice.”

  “I never raise my voice. It’s too heavy.” She was still working on her gloves. “Peggy Hopkins got married again.

  Miss Hopkins was a celebrated showgirl, a gold digger supreme, said to be the inspiration for Anita Loos’s delightful Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

  “And who gave the bride away?”

  “Everybody.” He gently rubbed the tip of his nose. “I see you’ve been arguing with your wrists again.”

  “A slight lapse of discipline on my part. I hear you’re going to Hollywood.”

  “Yes, I need the money. Gertrude needs the money. Something about feeding the family and paying off the mortgage. I should have married you. We’d have led a very merry devil-may-care bohemian existence.”

  “But we do, Mr. Benchley, we do.”

  “I wish you’d stop falling in love
with the wrong men!”

  “Stop policing my emotions. Oh, dear, here comes Ross. Hello, Harold. I’m sorry about not delivering the copy as promised. I really began to work away at it diligently last night, but then my quill broke.” Ross took a seat opposite them wordlessly. His massive pompadour quivered as he sat, and since there wasn’t a strong wind in the Rose Room, Mrs. Parker suggested sweetly it might be the nesting ground of a family of field mice.

  “I won’t be needing your copy after all, Dottie.”

  “Oh, dear. Now I’m being punished.” A waiter brought Mrs. Parker and Benchley their drinks and promised to be quick about Ross’s gin martini.

  “I’ve got some wonderful stuff from Janet Flanner in Paris this morning.”

  “Are you telling me my contributions will no longer be eagerly awaited?” Benchley was making a production of studying the three cherries in his Manhattan. Internecine strife embarrassed him. Mrs. Parker and Ross were the perennial combatants in a never-ending battle in the arena known as The New Yorker magazine. Neither would be the victor. Mrs. Parker would soon set herself adrift from Mr. Ross’s patronage, and Mr. Ross would begrudgingly realize the lady’s gifts were not readily replaceable.

  “Your contributions will always be eagerly awaited, Dottie, although they always will not arrive.”

  Benchley sipped his drink and then inquired of neither of them in particular, “Give me a sentence with ‘testosterone.’"

  After giving the word some serious thought for a moment Mrs. Parker said with a wicked twinkle in her eye, “At lunch, the waiter tossed salads for Lily and Elsie, but Tess tossed ’er own.”

  It was while Benchley and Ross were groaning that Woollcott arrived. He was carrying the early editions of several of the afternoon newspapers. “Good afternoon, my cherubs!” He took one of Mrs. Parker’s hands and kissed it, making ugly smacking noises. “You have such a lovely hand.”

  As he lowered himself into a chair, Benchley commented, “It took her the better part of fifteen minutes to display it.”

  Mrs. Parker announced lugubriously, “We are losing Mr Benchley to the fleshpots of Hollywood.”