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

by George Baxt

  “Yes, Raft.”

  Singer was lost in thought for a moment. “Raft’s a real strange one. The mob uses him as an errand boy. He, by the way, is also of Hungarian extraction.”

  “Would that be a link to Horathy and Mercury?”

  “Just coincidental, I should think. Anyway, I have my doubts as to whether Ilona Mercury was Hungarian or some other nationality.”

  “A phony, just as I suspected.”

  “Probably. In Hollywood for a while she called herself Magda Moreno; God knows what or who she started out in life as. It’ll come out in the wash sooner or later. But Raft’s got a big mouth. You saw the way he hustled his way into our table last night without an invitation.”

  “I didn’t think Van Weber was too pleased by his presence.

  “Van Weber.” Singer shook his head as though trying to clear it. “I wish I could get a fix on that guy.”

  “We’ll have to wait until Dottie gets back to town tonight.”

  “She’ll be back by six. I made her promise. Just a precaution. I didn’t want her succumbing to Van Weber’s charms and spending more time there than she ought to.”

  “What about Van Weber?”

  “You mean as a potential victim?”

  “He gets around. He knows a lot of people. He hears things.”

  “You know what I think, Mr. Woollcott, I think Van Weber is definitely a victim.”

  “Ah!”

  “But not the kind of victim you’re thinking. I can’t put my finger on it. But I’ll say this, he ain’t real, you know what I mean? Like I told Mrs. Parker and like I’m sure she told you, he’s seemed to have patterned himself on somebody else’s creation. Here we have Lacey Van Weber as Jay Gatsby. Now why would he choose to pattern himself on a small-time gangster with lofty pretensions? Why not someone in the grand manner, you know what I mean?”

  “Perhaps like me,” said Woollcott with a twinkle. “Mrs. Parker told me I’m her favourite character in fiction. Do you suppose she was telling me she finds me unreal?”

  “Well, to the naked eye and the uninitiated, you might strike people as a little far out.”

  “I rather like that,” said Woollcott, his old irascible self once again. “I like being far out. I wish I was far out enough to be out of reach.” He was bristling again at the thought of his recent brush with death.

  “Well, we’ll know better about Van Weber, we hope, when Mrs. Parker gets back to town.”

  “My, my.” Woollcott was almost bouncing. “Wait until she hears what I’ve experienced. Won’t that knock her for a loop? By the way, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Neysa McMein’s having a party. Her own bathtub gin. Take it from me, it’s vintage. It’ll be a madhouse. Everyone will be there. Knowing Mrs. Parker, she’ll probably invite Van Weber. That could be helpful.”

  “Where does McMein live?”

  “Just across the hall from Mrs. Parker!” announced Woollcott in a voice that should have been accompanied by a blast of trumpets.

  “That’s also helpful. I’ll be calling on Mrs. Parker to get her report on her day in the country. Why don’t you join me? Say I make arrangements with her for eight o’clock? How’s that suit you, Mr. Woollcott?”

  “It seems to me that would suit me just fine. And by the way, Jacob, I don’t think there’s that much difference in our ages, do you? I find it awkward being addressed as Mr. Woollcott. Mrs. Parker does because with her it’s an affectation. It began when she and Benchley worked together on Vanity Fair several years ago. They addressed themselves formally then, and, as you may have noticed, continue to do so. You will find, in time, Mrs. Parker has a variety of quaint affectations, one or two of them at times mind-boggling. So if you don’t mind, Jacob, I’d like you to call me Alec. Not Alex, which I loathe, but Alec. Do you think you could manage that?”

  “I can manage it, Alec.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting.” George S. Kaufman sounded concerned.

  “Sit down,” commanded Woollcott, “and since you owe me a lunch, you can sign this check.”

  Kaufman squeezed onto the banquette next to Singer. “Now look, you two, I appreciate what you’ve been doing for me, but the attempted murder of Alec puts a different perspective on the situation. Mr. Singer, I think I should admit the truth about where Ilona was killed and get Alec off the hook.”

  “Why, Georgie Kaufman,” said Woollcott with a distinct trace of malevolence, “there does breathe a soul under that iceberg exterior. Well, it’s too late, fathead. As the priest said to the sailor, I’m in too deep. And I’m sure Jacob agrees with me that for the nonce, you keep both your counsel and your head. There’s nothing to be gained by involving you in this mess. You do agree, don’t you, Jacob?”

  “Absolutely. Just go about your business, Mr. Kaufman, and leave us to go about ours.”

  “I can’t stand having this thing on my conscience,” persisted Kaufman.

  “George, why don’t you go make love to Ferber?” suggested Woollcott.

  “I’d rather have this thing on my conscience.”

  “Exactly. I suppose you succeeded in arousing the suspicions of Harold Ross and Robert Benchley?”

  “Not at all. The minute you left the room with Mr. Singer, they forgot you had been there. We played three-handed poker. I lost thirty dollars to Benchley.”

  “Aren’t my friends wonderful?” Woollcott asked Singer, each word dipped in venom. “They’re all heart. Kaufman, will I see you and Beatrice at Neysa’s tonight?”

  “Probably. You’ve been invited?”

  “I will be the moment I phone her. Waiter! Give Mr. Kaufman the check!”

  Mrs. Parker felt as though the Pierce-Arrow’s wheels were rarely touching the asphalt. She and Van Weber might have been back in the Jenny, flying back to the city. She was grateful they weren’t. She looked at her wristwatch. They would reach west Fifty-seventh Street with time to spare before six o’clock. Van Weber was strangely silent. He kept looking into his rear-view mirror, and she wondered if it reflected anything special.

  “Nothing too special,” he said with a gentle smile when she finally asked the question. “We’re being followed.”

  “Oh, my! By anyone interesting?”

  “I can’t tell. He’s keeping a respectable distance. He followed us out from New York.”

  “Well, then,” said Mrs. Parker amiably, “I’m sure he’s glad to be getting back to the city at a reasonable hour.”

  Van Weber roared with laughter.

  The laugh is all wrong, Mrs. Parker was thinking. It’s out of character. Too loud, too boisterous. It doesn’t belong to Lacey Van Weber. She remembered how he laughed because she had memorized all his peculiar traits and movements in the brief time she had known him. Lacey’s laugh would be small and introspective, a charming chuckle. The way he chuckled in the garden when she gravely informed him his sundial was slow. She hadn’t realized he’d spoken. “Who do you suppose would want to follow us from New York and back?”

  “An adventurer?” she suggested.

  “A policeman.”

  “Oh, really? That hadn’t occurred to me.” It was a feeble rejoinder, and she knew he recognized it as such.

  “You’re being protected, Mrs. Parker. I’m not trusted. If I’m not to be trusted, why did you spend the day with me?”

  “Because I wanted to. Really, Mr. Van Weber, you can’t be as ye olde worlde as all that. We’ve been to bed together. In some parts of this country, that would mean we were practically engaged, if not socially ostracized. You are a most peculiar man, Mr. Van Weber. I am a very curious woman. You fascinate me. I want to know you better. You want me and anyone else to know so much, and no more." His eyes were glued to the road ahead of him. She hadn’t a clue as to what he might be thinking. As far as she was concerned, the devil take the hindmost. She continued chipping away at him, beginning to think this would probably be her only opportunity. She was unhappy at t
he realization she was falling in love with him. It was all wrong; it couldn’t work. It was always all wrong, and it never worked. Somebody said hell is other people. Like hell. Hell is Dorothy Parker’s lovers. Well, if so, be it, then she was determined to make capital of this one. After a brief silence, she continued. “People don’t like it when someone has something to hide. It’s a form of immorality. Looked down upon but highly provocative. What’s the secret? Who are you? Where do you come from? Have you any family? How’d you accumulate all that mammon?” Pause. “As in ‘I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles, my mammon.’”

  “I don’t like to talk about myself,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize and didn’t like. “The only life I like is the one I have now. What you see is what there is.”

  “Scott Fitzgerald would be terribly flattered and fascinated to know you’ve patterned this new life on Jay Gatsby.”

  “It does seem a bit like him, doesn’t it? But Gatsby’s a petty racketeer. Do you think I’m a petty racketeer?”

  “Mr. Van Weber, I am not naive. And I don’t think you’re petty. You’re one smart cookie. You have to be to have accumulated all this wealth.” She was about to say, If it is all your wealth, but then instinct told her to hold her mouth.

  “I’ve been lucky.”

  “Is our shadow still with us?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s back there. Persistent little cuss. We’re almost home.”

  We are, but I’m not, thought Mrs. Parker ruefully. I’m getting nowhere with this man, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what he is and what he isn’t. It sounds as if I’m thinking in circles, but I’m not. I need so badly to talk this over with Jacob Singer and Woollcott; I need their heads to help me sift and winnow and examine. Because I’m positive this man is not his own creation. And there’s still time for some idle chitchat. “Whereabouts in Britain do you come from?”

  “I was born in London.” That didn’t come easily, but here it was.

  “And then?”

  “I grew up.”

  “I think while still a young man you migrated to this country, and after a stay in New York, where nothing much happened to stimulate you financially, you headed west and settled in Los Angeles.”

  “That’s an interesting scenario.”

  “You were somehow involved with movie people and met Bela Horathy and Ilona Mercury. Did you ever meet a woman named Magda Moreno?” His jaw went slack.

  “I don’t recall a Magda Moreno.” Chalk one up for Parker. She was very pleased with herself. She was beginning to master the fine art of police interrogation. Smacking him with “Magda Moreno” did it. It proved he had lived in Los Angeles. She was convinced her scenario was right. London to New York to Los Angeles. She had to move fast. They had come over the bridge and were now on East Fifty-seventh Street heading west to her apartment house. It was ten minutes to six.

  “Did you meet Valentino there or did you know him when he and Raft were dancing for dollars?”

  “My dear, my dear,” he said with a doleful sigh. “I can see where you could be a terribly nagging wife.”

  Here it is, she thought, momentarily dejected, the kiss-off. The final fadeout. Music up and audience out. “I’m a very poor wife,” she said. “I haven’t the vaguest idea where my husband is, and if anybody tells me, I shall sink into a subterranean dejection, not even emerging to cast my shadow. I never told you about Ed, did I? But how could I? There hasn’t been time. Ed was an alcoholic. A quart a day man. Then he graduated to narcotics. Morphine mostly’ Occasionally a puff of opium, with a smart dash of cocaine every now and then. When last heard from, he was promising to commit himself to a sanatorium for a drying-out or whatever it is addicts do to sidestep a swipe from the grim reaper — I hope he makes it. He’s really a nice guy. Deadly dull, but nice.”

  They were parked in front of her building. “Thank you for a very interesting day, Mr. Van Weber.”

  “Isn’t it about time you called me Lacey and I called you Dottie?”

  “Well, quite frankly, I’ve had the sinking feeling you might not be calling me again.”

  “Tut, young woman. You must learn to have more faith in yourself. I’m used to questions and people trying to pry into my background. I was delighted to give the interview to the Graphic though I had been strongly advised not to.” By whom, wondered Mrs. Parker. “I gave the interview in order to put paid to any further inquiries about myself.”

  “You didn’t know there was tenacious old me creeping up from the backfield.”

  “A charming turn of events. You’re gracious company, I enjoy your wit, and it was marvellous making love to you.”

  “I’m so glad you said that,” she said somewhat capriciously. “I’m usually not at my best at matinees.”

  “As to our question and answer sessions”—he smiled his catnip smile, letting her know he was once again in total control of the situation—“I found them amusing. Did you learn what you wanted to know?”

  Audacious bastard, she thought as she started to get out of the car. “Lacey, old sport, I think I hit a couple of bull’s-eyes.”

  “Am I still invited to join you at Neysa McMein’s tonight?”

  “If you’re game, we’re on. The festivities usually don’t hot up until about ten. Why don’t you tap on my door about then, and then arm in arm we can go gaily skipping across the corridor into Neysa’s.”

  “I’ll see you then.” He pulled away into traffic, leaving her on the sidewalk in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  At ten minutes to six, from a phone booth in a cigar store down the street from the building housing Bela Horathy’s office, Jacob Singer phoned the doctor and, as he hoped was intercepted by Cora Gallagher. Earlier he had the desk sergeant at the precinct phone and double check on the doctor’s office hours. Two to six in the afternoons, mornings by appointment. He was sure she wouldn’t recognize his voice, having exchanged but a few sentences with him the previous day. He asked if it was possible to see the doctor within the next ten minutes, and she curtly informed him the office was closing. Would he care to make an appointment for the following day? Singer said he’d let her know and hung up. He left the cigar store, crossed the street and positioned himself in a doorway where he could watch for Cora Gallagher without arousing suspicion. After a fifteen-minute wait, Cora Gallagher came striding out of the building. Out of nurse’s uniform and in street clothes, she looked like a local housewife out for some last-minute shopping. She passed Singer without a flicker of recognition and walked purposefully toward a subway entrance at the end of the street. There, Singer caught up with her and gently held her by the elbow. Startled, she stopped walking and looked from his hand holding her elbow to his face, which favoured her with a friendly smile. He did look familiar to her, but she couldn’t place him. “What do you want?” she asked brusquely.

  “I want to talk to you. We met yesterday in your office. I was there with Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott.”

  Her face was ashen. “I remember. You’re the detective. Well, what do you want?”

  “I’d like an ice cream soda. How about you? There’s an ice cream parlour on Lexington I like.”

  “I’m late. I have to get home.”

  “You’ll get home sooner if you just give me some of your time. And if we don’t move away from this entrance, we’re in danger of being trampled to death. How’s about it? A strawberry soda with vanilla cream. Just the dish to top off a scorcher like today.”

  “You’ve got no right to bother me like this.”

  “I thought an ice cream parlour would be much more pleasant than my office in my precinct. That’s dull, dingy, hot and it smells. Be nice and maybe I’ll invite you to the policeman’s ball.”

  Bela Horathy stood under the canopy of his building. He adjusted a monocle in his right eye and gave his gray derby a dapper pat. He adjusted the walking stick that hung from his left hand and then took a harder look toward the subway entrance where he recognized his n
urse talking to a man. It was after the two went around the corner out of sight toward Lexington Avenue that he remembered the man with Cora was Detective Jacob Singer. Horathy hurried back to his office.

  Lacey Van Weber was secluded in the study of his penthouse apartment on Central Park South. He wore his favourite dressing gown designed for him by Paul Poiret of Paris. One of the windows of the study opened onto the terrace which overlooked Central Park. In his hand he held a tall glass of Scotch and water with just a small piece of ice, the perfect picture of the perfect gentleman enjoying the twilight in his perfect setting. Everything about him was perfect except his state of mind. His butler had given him a message received during his absence. He was to expect an important phone call from a very important gentleman with a particular gift for creating other important gentlemen. Van Weber sipped his drink and watched the strollers in the park. Above the hum of traffic from the streets below, he could hear the distant strains of the orchestra playing for tea dancing in the park casino. From another direction he heard the hurdy-gurdy refrains of the carousel and, from a terrace below, a woman’s seductive laugh. Behind him he heard the telephone and hurried to answer it. It was a private line, unavailable to his staff. Seated at the desk, he spoke into the phone. A voice at the other end was cordial and melodious, bespeaking good breeding and perfect manners. It asked a question, and Van Weber described his day with Mrs. Parker, leaving nothing out. He was precise and business-like, sounding as though he were delivering the minutes of the previous meeting of the board members of respectable business organization. Yes, Mrs. Parker did a great deal of prying. Yes, he sidestepped her questions with the precision of the senior half of a ballroom team. Yes, she’s quite a clever woman, and yes, she is deeply involved with Jacob Singer in matters pertaining to murder and narcotics and he did agree she could be dangerous. His face was noncommittal at the news an attempt on Woollcott’s life had failed. There was nothing in the evening paper he had purchased. He agreed that it was wiser to stay with Mrs. Parker and continue to misdirect her until the weekend and do his best to avoid any slip-ups. Jacob Singer was something else. He had no control there. He was told none was necessary on his part. When asked if he was developing a soft spot in his heart for Mrs. Parker, he refrained from shouting “Certainly not.” He said she was charming and witty and remarkably gifted in bed and being with her was no strain. He said he would be with her at Neysa McMein’s party in just a few hours and was severely cautioned to be on his guard there; that bunch played rough. He also learned Bela Horathy was a bit unhappy with his nurse, Cora Gallagher, having seen her in the company of Jacob Singer. Van Weber made no comment and waited.