Groucho Marx, King of the Jungle

by Ron Goulart

  “Despite what Frank says, I’m perfectly fit to listen to what you boys have to say about this whole business,” she said, smiling. “I’m especially curious about the black box.”

  “Before I avail myself of Frank’s exceptional abilities as a cracksman, I think we’d best compare notes and tote up what we’ve learned thus far.”

  I grabbed my notebook off the coffee table, flipped it open. “Here’s what I got from May Sankowitz.”

  “Ah, yes, the petite Hollywood gossip who’s brighter than Hedda Hopper and cuter than Louella Parsons,” he said. “Although that isn’t really saying much, is it?”

  I filled him in on what my friend had told me. That she confirmed that Spellman had been blackmailing on the side, that Dorothy Woodrow had run up an impressive total of men friends in the past few years, and that the reason Arthur Wright Benson wanted to dump Spellman from the Ty-Gor movies was because he suspected the guy of having an affair with his latest, and much younger, wife. I tossed in the facts that Joe E. Brown had again been voted Most Lovable Movie Comedian and that Alicia Benson’s beau had absconded with AWB, Inc., funds.

  “I must say that I’m stunned that someone of my proven lovability didn’t garner that Golden Orange.” From an inside pocket of his sand-colored sports coat, Groucho withdrew a folded sheet of old hotel stationery.

  He gave us a report of what he’d found out from Randy Spellman’s agent, including the fact that Warlock had already picked a new actor to take over as Ty-Gor. Hershman was evasive about Spellman’s sideline as a blackmailer, but didn’t deny it. He knew about his client’s affair with Mrs. Benson and was sure that’s why old Benson wanted him fired, though the matter had never been mentioned directly. There was also a possibility that Randy had also made a play for Alicia Benson. The agent told Groucho he could think of a lot of people who wouldn’t miss Spellman, but didn’t care to speculate on who actually killed him.

  “You think that’s true about Randy and Benson’s daughter?”

  “My boy, keep in mind that Lew Hershman is an agent,” he reminded. “Their credo calls for them to use the truth as rarely as possible. Still, I think it safe to say that Spellman was doing more than swinging from tree to tree out at Rancho Tygoro.”

  “Which,” said Jane, “would give old Benson a stronger motive than Dorothy.”

  “It gives him a motive for trying to get Randy fired,” I said, frowning. “But not necessarily for doing away with the guy.”

  Jane pointed at the strongbox with the toe of her shoe. “Now explain that thing, Groucho.”

  “First a short preamble, kiddies.” He explained about the telephone call from Laura Dayton and told us what had happened during his visit to her mansion. “Not since I read Nick Carter Solves the Mystery of the Poisoned Chicken Soup; or, Louis B. Mayer at Bay have I been so excited,” he concluded. “I came this close to actually seeing a masked intruder.” He held his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. “By a strange coincidence, that also happens to be the length … Ah, but I shan’t discuss that in mixed company. And I’ve been discovering lately that even when I’m all by myself, I’m in mixed company.”

  Patting Jane’s hand, I stood up. “I’ll fetch my lock picks.” I headed into our bedroom.

  “It must be a great joy to be married to a chap who can crack safes, Jane.”

  “I’m hoping he can transfer that ability to opening jars of baby food when the time comes.”

  I set the small tool case down. “I first acquired these while I was working on the LA Times.”

  “What did the police think?”

  “It was a couple of Los Angeles cops who taught me how to pick locks,” I said, bending to lift up the strongbox.

  As I spread the contents out upon the coffee table, Groucho remarked, “Shucks, no doubloons.”

  The black box contained nothing but three business-size gray envelopes, none of them sealed.

  “C’mon, let’s see what’s inside ’em,” urged Jane.

  Selecting an envelope, I shook out its contents. “As might’ve been expected.”

  Five snapshot-sized photos dropped to the table, along with five negatives. Each showed couples in what the tabloids would describe as compromising positions.

  “Jack O’Banyon takes a flattering photo,” observed Groucho, tapping one of the photos. “And the young lady looks especially naked without her schoolbooks.”

  O’Banyon was a successful character actor who specialized in tough-guy parts. He was chummy with outfits like the German American Bund and ran an amateur cavalry group called the Silver Shirts. Groucho and I had had run-ins with him a couple times in the past.

  “The terrible things people do,” said Jane quietly.

  Groucho said, “The basic instincts of a lout like O’Banyon aren’t—”

  “I don’t mean sleeping with an underage girl, though that’s bad enough,” she said. “It’s taking photographs of it that seems to me even worse.”

  “This looks like somebody from Vince Salermo’s mob.” I held another photo toward Groucho.

  “Right you are, Rollo. That’s a lad named Val Gallardo, and the lady peeking out from the covers is the current wife of a state senator named Levin.”

  None of us recognized any of the participants in two of the other pictures. The fifth photo showed an actress named Rochelle Shaye in bed with a man not her husband.

  “We’ll have to find out who these other sinners are.” Groucho carefully gathered up the pictures and returned them to the envelope. “If this stuff bothers you, Jane, you—”

  “Nope, since I prompted you to take on this case, I can stand to look at what you dig up. No matter how nasty.”

  “We can assume,” I said, “that at least one of the folks in each of these pictures could have stood up to Spellman and gotten tough with him. O’Banyon sure might, and so would Gallardo.”

  “We can also assume that he was especially afraid of this bunch and wanted what he had on them hidden elsewhere than his home.”

  Jane said, “Two envelopes to go.”

  The second envelope contained three folded newspaper clippings. They’d been cut from the LA Times.

  The largest clipping, dated a few months earlier, had a headline reading, TY-GOR BOOKKEEPER SUSPECTED OF EMBEZZLING. That one also offered a headshot of a lean, youthful-looking fellow with short-cropped dark hair and a sincere necktie. The caption identified him as Doug Cahan. The two smaller cuttings were follow-ups: MISSING ACCOUNTANT SOUGHT. ABSCONDS WITH $15,000 and AUTHORITIES STILL SEEKING TY-GOR THIEF.

  “How does this Cahan guy fit in with Spellman’s extortion business?” I said after spreading the three newspaper stories out atop the table.

  Groucho picked up the largest clipping and read it over. “The missing accountant, age twenty-eight, used to work for Ira Silverlake’s accounting firm before joining the Benson outfit.”

  “And?” I inquired.

  “Ira Silverlake is a lecherous old soul who somehow managed to become a member of the Hillcrest Country Club, which, as you well know, Rollo, proudly lists the name of Groucho Marx on its roster,” he explained as he dropped the clipping. “It would be a nice idea to have a heart-to-heart chat with Ira, whom I’m certain I can locate at one of our fair city’s finer bordellos if he’s not in his office on Wilshire, and ask him about this Cahan lad.”

  “We ought to know more about this missing bookkeeper, yeah,” I agreed.

  “And more about why,” added Jane, “Spellman thought he was important enough to stow in his black box.”

  “Could be,” I said, “Spellman knew where Cahan had skipped to with the fifteen grand and was blackmailing him. Or, since the guy was Alicia Benson’s sweetheart, maybe Spellman was blackmailing her.”

  “I shall take it upon myself,” volunteered Groucho, “to track Ira Silverlake to his lair and gather more information on the elusive Cahan. And if there’s time, I may gather a few rosebuds as well.”

  “So far no pho
tos of Dorothy,” said my wife. “That might mean Spellman wasn’t especially afraid of her.”

  Inside the final gray envelope was a folded sheet of tablet paper.

  Spread out atop the table, it looked to be a very crude map.

  “Not much of a cartographer,” observed Jane. “From the lettering, I’d say it was drawn by a man.”

  The drawing consisted of a few wiggly lines, dozens of tiny triangles, a lopsided oval, the N-E-W-S arrows in the lower corner, and a shaky dotted line running from near the oval to a big X between two trees. Lettered along the arrow was “21 feet 7 inches.” A squiggly line across the top of the page was designated “back fence,” and two parallel lines running down between the clusters of triangles had “road” written between them. Near the lower end of the clumsy map, a small rectangle among the triangles was labeled “hut.”

  Taking a closer look at the map, Groucho said, “What was our mapmaker, who I assume was Spellman, trying to depict?”

  “Something he buried in the woods?” proposed Jane.

  “You think the triangles are trees?” he asked.

  “Some of them have tiny tails. That’s the way lots of people draw Christmas trees.”

  “Meaning the late Ty-Gor hid something in a Christmas tree lot in the vicinity of an oval?”

  “That oval might be a pond, which could mean the burial site is off in the woods someplace.”

  Setting down the map, Groucho leaned back in his chair. “Spellman thought this was important. Did somebody kill him because they wanted to get hold of it?” he said. “Or maybe because they didn’t want anybody else to get hold of it.”

  “Be nice if we knew what was buried at X,” I said.

  “Or who,” said Jane.

  Thirteen

  The morning was clear and sunny. Our kitchen was, therefore, bright and sun-filled. Jane, wearing a checkered smock, was sitting at the table with a stack of several-dozen fan letters in front of her.

  I was over at the sink washing our breakfast dishes.

  “‘Dear Sir, You are my favorite. Please send me an autograph,’” Jane read aloud.

  “That’s a very touching and personal message.”

  “It’s also a carbon copy.”

  “Well, now that you’ve become a celebrity, autograph hounds have added you to their list.” I thrust a plate into the drying rack.

  Jane had opened another letter. “Ah, this is more like it,” she said, waving the sheet of blue paper a few times. “‘Dear Jane, Your comic strip is very cute, and I’m betting you’re a cutie, too. If you’re ever in Youngstown, Ohio, I’d like to take you dancing.’”

  “Proves they know how to pick women in Youngstown.”

  “Come here a minute,” she requested.

  Wiping my hands on a dish towel, I crossed the linoleum to her side. “More invitations?”

  Jane pushed back in her chair, took my hand, and pressed it to her stomach. “She’s kicking again.”

  “So she is.” I could feel a faint fluttering. “Getting ready to escape, I’d say.”

  Jane put both her hands around mine. “Let me ask you a serious question.”

  “Is there a cash prize involved?”

  “I’m serious, Frank.”

  “So am I, Jane. I don’t intend to answer a bunch of questions, if there’s no money to be—”

  “Hush and listen up,” Jane requested. “Do you find me at all attractive in my present bloated condition?”

  “C’mon, Jane, you asked me this before, and you know darned well that—”

  “I know, but I’m feeling very squatty and ugly just now.”

  “You’re not. You’re as pretty as—”

  “Just pretty?”

  “Okay, gorgeous, too.”

  “You’re not just humoring me?”

  “Jane, I love you, remember? To me you are always attractive, day or night, come rain or come shine.”

  “And you wouldn’t rather be sleeping in the same bed with a slim, unpregnant woman about now?”

  “Nope.”

  She sighed, releasing my hand. “Well, then I guess I’ll quit brooding for a while.”

  Kissing her on the cheek, I said, “I must confess, though, that I’ve been dreaming about Carmen Miranda lately.”

  “That I can live with.”

  “Why don’t you forget your fan mail for—”

  The telephone rang.

  I went into the living room, picked up the phone from the end table. “Hello.”

  “What progress are you guys making?”

  “Some, Enery,” I replied. “I’m going to be seeing another old LA Times coworker this afternoon to get some more information on something that’s turned up.”

  “They haven’t been saying much new in the papers,” said Enery McBride. “It’s been a couple days now.”

  “Your friend still staying put?”

  “Sure, but this waiting to hear anything is—”

  “You might reconsider our advice.”

  “No, that’s not going to happen yet.”

  “I’ll try to get back to you late this afternoon.”

  “Did you know they’ve hired a new actor to take over the Ty-Gor part?”

  “I heard, yeah.”

  “Studio asked me to report tomorrow morning,” said our actor friend. “We’re going to shoot some of the cannibal village stuff.”

  “That’s great. It means you’re back on the payroll.”

  “Take more than that to cheer me up just now, Frank. Talk to you soon.”

  I hung up. “That was Enery.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this Fred Dumphy?”

  “Close. It’s actually Frank Denby.” I recognized the chill voice of my agent’s secretary.

  “I think Max Bickford walks to talk to you,” she said, her tone implying that why in the world a man of Max’s stature in Hollywood would lower himself to talking to me mystified her. “Please, hold on.”

  After listening to silence for close to a minute, I heard Max asking, “Frank, how are you doing, buddy?”

  “Splendidly, and yourself?”

  “I think Onita borrowed my Mercedes again.”

  “You aren’t certain?”

  “It might simply be that I parked it someplace and forgot where. But, no, I’m darned near sure she’s headed for the border with that hairdresser.”

  “Which hairdresser, Max?”

  “You know, Maurice. He’s the only hairdresser in LA who isn’t a pansy.”

  Onita Sands, an actress whom Max had thus far only been able to place in a succession of Republic Pictures serials, was not exactly faithful enough to be called his steady girlfriend. She had an unfortunate tendency to borrow one of his cars and head off with one or another of her alternative beaus.

  “I’ll pass your problem on to Mr. Anthony. Now tell me why you called me, Max.”

  “Oh, yeah. Joel Farber over at Warlock wants to see you pronto, Frank,” remembered my agent. “Get over there soon as you can, huh?”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “They’ve resumed filming the Ty-Gor movie, with that lunkhead Carl Nesbit taking over the star part,” Max said. “Joel thinks he’s going to need a few script changes.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Bye.”

  Jane asked from the kitchen, “And what did Max want?”

  “I’ve been summoned to Warlock. Not as an amateur detective but as a scriptwriter.”

  “Not another rewrite?”

  “I fear so.”

  “And which old Times buddy are you calling on?”

  “Larry Shell, the photographer,” I answered. “Going to show him those two photos with the frisky folks we can’t identify. He’s taken pictures of just about everybody in Greater Los Angeles, and I’m hoping he can identify at least some of them.”

  “What have the police been finding out about the murder?”

  “They haven’t seen fit to confi
de in me.”

  “So call that Tandofsky guy and ask him, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Later in the day, perhaps.”

  Off in the bedroom Dorgan barked, then came walking into the living room. Tail wagging, he went to the front door.

  I opened the door. “Good morning, Myra.”

  My wife’s assistant smiled and entered.

  That morning Groucho, he later told me, was up with the lark. In his part of Beverly Hills, the lark never arose before 10 A.M.

  As Groucho was striding manfully along the sun-drenched Sunset sidewalk toward his office building, a tourist couple stepped into his path.

  The husband, a lean, weather-beaten man in his forties, was carrying a box camera.

  His wife, equally lean, smiled shyly at Groucho. “Mr. Marx, we’d love to have a photograph of you in our living room.”

  “Okeydokey, the next time I’m in your living room, snap away.”

  “No, we want to take a picture now,” explained the husband. “If that’s all right with you, Mr. Marx?”

  Groucho said, “Well, I suppose I can overcome my terrible shyness just this once.” He sighed. “I was so shy in prep school that everybody called me a wallflower. And, speaking of flowers, it was even worse at college, where they called me a pansy. Where was I?”

  “Is it okay to snap a picture of you?”

  “Very well.” Groucho slipped his arm around the woman’s thin waist. “You’ll add a little glamour to the shot, dear lady. Not to mention a generous dollop of schmaltz.”

  “That’ll be swell.” The husband clicked the camera.

  Pressing his cheek to that of the somewhat-perplexed wife, Groucho suggested, “Take another one. You may want to use it on your Christmas cards this year.”

  Someone tapped Grouch on the shoulder. Without turning, he said, “One idolater at a time, if you don’t mind. Soon as—”

  “Pardon me, Mr. Marx, but Mr. Salermo kind of wants to see you right away. In a hurry, so to speak.”

  Hunching his shoulders, Groucho slowly turned. “My goodness, what a pleasant surprise.”