[Celebrity Murder Case 03] - The Tallulah Bankhead Murder Case

by George Baxt

  “I find Santayana more comforting. Nietzsche come, Nietzsche go.” She studied Tallulah in profile. “You’re still very beautiful, Tallulah.”

  “Oh really, dahling? Marcus Blechman says he has to spend a day in bed after a session of airbrushing my photographs I don’t feel very beautiful these days, dahling. It’s all too depressing. This epidemic of suicides. Nance Liston, Michael Darnoff, now the Hagles Who’s next?”

  “I suppose it’s time for me to make another stab at suicide … oops … no pun intended.”

  “Oh, Dottie, please don’t. You’re such a bungler at suicide. You have no discipline.”

  “What will you do if your show is canceled? They can cancel, can’t they?”

  “Yes, the bloody bastards, they can,” admitted Tallulah ruefully “Some act-of-God clause in my contract that can have various interpretations, all in their favor And then there’s the morality clause, and Christ could they do me in with that one!” They burst into laughter. “So Tallulah’s being a good girl, or as good a girl as Tallulah can ever be or else shell be at the mercy of one of those.” She pointed to a pile of scripts on a desk.

  “Well, aren’t you the lucky one getting all those plays submitted to you?”

  “Lucky!” cried Tallulah with a snort. “One of them is one of those dreary boulevard comedies in which both the setting and the heroine are laid in Paris. Then there’s one set in San Francisco at the turn of the century where they want me to play a Chinese mail-order bride!”

  “Special delivery?” inquired Mrs, Parker, “or returned for insufficient postage?”

  “Returned for insufficient interest, dahling. Get this. My entrance line sticks in the brain like a plunged dagger.” She was on her feet, shuffling about the room, hands clasped, head lowered to one side, a picture of obsequiousness. “‘Oh honorable Hung Low … or something like that … I am Moo Goo Gai Pan, fifth daughter of third cousin of eighth aunt in the honorable house of Anna May Wong.’” She sighed. “And in this day and age too.” She reached for the pile of scripts, took one from the top, and turned to the title page “Oh God, yes, there’s this one. An adaptation from the Hungarian of Melchior Lazlas.”

  “Who’s Melchior Lazlas?”

  “I think it’s a state of mind.” She flung the script aside. “My character’s named Fritzi Mitzi, believe it or not, and I’m a duchess masquerading as a B girl in a nightclub and the Grand Duke Hymie—or is it Irving?—out slumming with his valet, played by Edward Everett Horton, comes in, takes one look at me, and goes berserk.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  Patsy Kelly came bursting into the room and in a tear-stained voice screeched, “I just read for some rotten play about Hollywood and you know what the sons of bitches said to me, ‘You’re not the type, Miss Kelly, we need someone funnier.’ Funnier! Oh my God, me, Patsy Kelly, a Hollywood fixture for twenty years, and these two schmucks in swaddling clothes tell me I’m not the type. How are you, Dottie?” She grabbed the scotch Tallulah had poured for her. “Can somebody tell me what I need?”

  “A blood transfusion,” suggested Tallulah.

  Patsy took a swig of her drink, wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her dress, stared at the two women, and asked, “Well, what are you two so glum about?”

  Tallulah gravely intoned her favorite lines from Psalm 7, Verse I. “‘Oh Lord My God in thee do I take refuge, save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.’”

  “Nice title there,” said Mrs. Parker. “‘All my pursuers.’”

  “Dottie,” said Tallulah in a voice that demanded attention. “I’m going to fight them. Next Sunday I’m going to do one of your monologues.”

  “It’s not the gift, it’s the thought that counts,” commented Mrs. Parker. “No, Tallulah, no no no. I know you adore treading where angels fear, and you’re an angel for offering to be my angel, but don’t tilt at windmills. At any rate, don’t tilt at this set of windmills.”

  “But I can’t stand this feeling of helplessness!” exploded Tallulah. “I can’t use you, I can’t use Julie Garfield, I can’t help Abner Walsh …”

  “Well, if you’re so goddamned anxious to help somebody,” screeched Patsy, “help loyal faithful trustworthy dead broke me!”

  “What I love about you, Patsy dahling, is that when you have absolutely nothing to say, you go right ahead and say it.”

  It was as though Abner Walsh couldn’t remember ever not living in Greenwich Village. He had migrated there from a small mid- western town, discovering it by instinct and knowing he was at home the minute he set foot on Christopher Street. Now thirty- five years later he was in a bigger, much more expensively furnished apartment in the more exclusive area of the Village on West Tenth Street off Fifth Avenue. He sat on the floor of his living room with his legs crisscrossed, strumming a guitar and staring at Lewis Drefuss, who was standing by the fireplace staring into a glass of wine as though uncovering hidden secrets there. Abner shook Lewis from his reverie. “Bankhead can’t do anything?”

  “She tried. Believe me, how she tried. Now she’s under fire herself”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh, she knows it’s a setup just to keep her in line. But it could be harmful They could pull the show out from under her.

  Just this morning she tried to sneak in a monologue by Dorothy Parker. It was as though an earthquake shook Rockefeller Center.”

  Abner set the guitar aside and stretched out his legs. “One miserable schmuck like Lester Miroff names names and careers are shattered. Lives are shattered. Oh shit”—he rubbed his eyes—I’m so tired. I’m so damn tired. I don’t have anybody to talk to anymore.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “You’re a good boy, but you be careful. Forget you know me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous?”

  “You listen to me, kid. Better safe than sorry, if you’ll forgive a cliché. Your bosses find out you’ve been pushing me the way Tallulah’s been trying to use old friends in trouble, and you’ll be feeling the axe. Believe me, kid, there’s no profit in being a martyr. Even Nanette’s walked out on me.” He sighed and shook his head from side to side. “To think I left a wonderful woman for Nanette Walsh. Oh well, she was a great lay while she lasted But she sculpts better.”

  “Abner, have you thought of going out on tour? You know, like colleges and universities?”

  “Are you nuts?” With an effort, Abner was getting to his feet. “You read what happened when Paul Draper and Larry Adler tried a tour? Picket lines, threats, cancellation on top of cancellation. Not me, kid, I’ve still got footprints on my back from where people have been walking all over me. As of now, kid, Abner Walsh is officially retired.”

  “Come on, Abner?”

  “The hell with it. I’ve had it. I’m fed up. I need to get laid. I wish I had the guts to murder Lester Miroff. Oh yes I do. I really wish I had the guts. Can you imagine that? Talk about fate’s fickle finger. Me, the big star, the big box-office draw, blacklisted, unemployable. But Lester. The stool pigeon, the informer, the little fucker whose talent you could fit in a nutshell and still have room for a sofa, he gets a new TV show! Jesus, is there no justice anymore in this world?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  At the chic “21” Club on West Fifty-second Street, Detective Jacob Singer was flirting blatantly with Tallulah Bankhead. Tallulah was cooing and gurgling like a girl guide in heat, and Mrs. Parker sipped her Jack Rose while dwelling on a memory of meeting the elegant Lacey Van Weber back in 1926 in this very same room.

  “Dahling,” Tallulah asked Mrs. Parker, “are we boring you?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “Oh do be kind, Dottie. Detective Singer is such a marvelous salve for my bruised life.”

  “You two just keep on flirting with each other. I’m just the comic relief.” Singer smiled. Mrs. Parker commented on two midgets at the next table whom she assumed were sharing some small talk. “Actually, watchi
ng you two batting your eyelashes at each other and trading sweet nothings that are sweet but nothing, reminds me of that afternoon in Venice some twenty or more years ago … don’t you remember, Tallulah, you were well along in years even then.” Tallulah’s eyelids fell to half-mast as Mrs. Parker turned to the detective. “There was a bunch of us at a table at Harry’s Bar. We were just sitting around, killing time and reputations, swapping shaggy Dog stories. Tallulah was flirting with Ernest Hemingway, and she soon got bored with that, which wasn’t hard to do, and then she zeroed in on Scott Fitzgerald, but he was already on his way to his favorite spot under the table, so Tallulah chose to favor a film director with the most enchanting name.”

  “What film director with what enchanting name? You don’t mean Ernst Lubitsch, for chrissakes. There was nothing enchanting about him unless you found the odor of stale cigar smoke intoxicating.”

  “No, dear, the man’s name was Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast.” She smiled and asked Jacob Singer, “Isn’t the name heaven?”

  “It’s a mouthful,” commented Singer.

  “The name was heaven,” said Tallulah while lighting a Craven A, “he wasn’t. Married some film star of the silents, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Eleanor Boardman. I saw them recently. She’s still gorgeous.”

  “Probably because she’s not blacklisted.”

  “Oh dear, Jacob,” said Mrs. Parker, “Tallulah’s going to get morose on us. Just when I was having such a good time wallowing in tired memories and the embarrassing behavior of my dinner companions, and goddamn it I forgot the point I was trying to make. Oh yes. Venice. Tallulah. Flirtation. The fourth man she flirted with, a correspondent for some news syndicate. He asked her to go to bed with him and she slapped his face.”

  “That’s right!” bellowed Tallulah “I remember! I told him I never fuck when I flirt. Ooom Wah Hah Hah Hah Hah …” The raucous laughter petered out. She had recognized someone across the room making a hurried departure.

  Jacob Singer commented on the strange expression on Tallulah’s face. “You see someone you hate?”

  “No, I saw someone I adore.”

  “Who?” asked Mrs Parker, her curiosity piqued. There were so few people that Tallulah adored. She called everybody “dahling” because she could rarely remember anyone’s name.

  “Abner Walsh.”

  “Abner?” Mrs. Parker stared at Tallulah with disbelief. “Abner didn’t say hello to us? Well, maybe he didn’t see us.”

  “He saw us,” said Tallulah. “And there was a perfectly dreadful expression on his face.”

  THREE

  Martha Walsh, Abner’s first wife, was surprised when he phoned and asked if he might visit her. When he had left her for the elegant Nanette, a successful sculptor whose work was coveted by museums and collectors, she didn’t fight the divorce or make impossible financial demands despite the advice of friends and her lawyer. She was still very much in love with him, and it would be alien to Martha to hurt anyone she loved. Even now, sitting across from him at the kitchen table in her basement flat on West Fiftieth Street in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, she ached to feel his arms around her once again, to press her lips eagerly to his, to make love and then phone for a pizza. He hadn’t wanted a drink so she brewed tea. She had baked that morning, but he was only toying with the almond cake. He looked old, drawn, drained, wretched, but not in Martha’s eyes.

  “If you don’t like the cake, I can get you something else. A sandwich? I’ve got onion rolls.”

  “Nothing, Martha I’ve got no appetite these days.” He couldn’t mask his despair. “I didn’t intend to visit all this operatic tragedy on you, Martha. But I don’t know how to cope any longer. There’s no way for me to fight the blacklist.”

  “Why can’t Harvey do something?” Harvey Eilers was Abners lawyer, who specialized in theatrical luminaries. As his star had ascended, he was as adept at dropping friends as he was at dropping names Once when he broke his leg, Abner assumed he’d dropped a very heavy name on it. “I thought the law was supposed to protect people, not condemn them.”

  “Harvey suggests I go to Europe, to England. A lot of others have fled there. Lionel Standee’s in Italy with a gang of others. Some are in Mexico. How do you think ‘Blue Tail Fly’ would sound in Italian?”

  She tried to smile, but the effort was as weak as the tea in her cup. “Abner, are you broke?”

  “Oh no no. I’m okay. Don’t you worry about the payments.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about myself.”

  “I forget. You rarely did.” He looked across the table at her and he could still see the bright, fresh-faced girl who had captivated him over thirty years ago.

  “How could those people do it? How could friends betray friends? I wonder if some day I’d be desperate enough to dishonor myself.”

  “Oh Christ, Martha, who knows what people can do when they’ve been pushed against the wall? Eddie Dmytryk went to jail with the Hollywood Ten and what does he do when he gets out? He recants, beats his chest, crying mea culpa so he can maybe go back to work again.” He rested his hands on the table. “I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. If I did, I wouldn’t just hate myself in the morning, I’d hate myself forever.”

  “What does your wife say?”

  “She said goodbye.”

  “I’m sorry.” A pause. “Are you?”

  Abner laughed. “You still know where to plunge the knife.”

  “I’d like to plunge it into Lester Miroff and Barry Wren and—”

  “Martha. If you outlive me, and you probably will, I want you to make me a promise. Cremate me and throw my ashes in Lester Miroff’s face.”

  Lewis Drefuss phoned Tallulah to break their dinner date. He apologized, explaining an overload of work Tallulah was surprisingly understanding about the rejection. After returning the phone to the cradle, she stared at Estelle and Patsy, who were at the card table playing gin rummy. She sat back in her chair and thought about her assets. Windows, her home in Bedford Village, a short drive from the city, was worth a great deal of money. She had solid investments, and her father had left her and her sister Eugenia a surprisingly healthy amount of money. The autobiography was due in September, and her publisher predicted landslide sales Magazines were already bidding for the serialization rights. Aloud she said, “I suppose I could always take out a tour of Private Lives.”

  “Why?” asked Estelle as she laid her ten cards on the table. “Forgive me, oh Lord, for I have ginned.”

  “Shit,” said Patsy eloquently as she began counting her penalties. “My mother used to beat up on my father for doing that. Hell, she was always beating up on the old man.”

  “Really?” said Estelle, her beautiful eyes wide with astonishment. “Why didn’t he leave her?”

  “He couldn’t borrow the carfare.”

  The phone rang. Tallulah answered it. It was her agent relaying a proposition. As she listened, Tallulah’s grip tightened on the phone. Blood began boiling in her veins. And then words erupted from her mouth like hot lava pouring down from a volcano, spilling over the phone, across the room, inundating Estelle and Patsy, devastating everything in its path. In his office, her agent had dropped his phone and;rushed to open a window. “Me do a show with Barry Wren? Why, that son of a bitch would betray his country for the right price! Don’t you keep reminding me he’s been cleared! He’ll never get Tallulah’s seal of approval! Of course I’d love to do a musical, but not with that contaminated barrel of offal.” She paused to light a cigarette and then said into the phone, “How’s your mother?” A minute later she was pacing the room, hands clasped behind her back, muttering dark thoughts.

  “Now, Tallulah, you mustn’t be too harsh on your agent. He works very hard for you and he’s sincere.” Estelle snapped each card as she dealt a fresh hand.

  “His sincerity is about as heartfelt as that of a French maître d’.” She picked up the script of her next radio show from the desk and began flipping pages. Then
she threw the script on the floor and stomped on it.

  “Tallulah!” screeched Patsy. “The neighbors!”

  “Screw my neighbors. There are two things in this world I can easily do without, cancer and neighbors! Oh my God, why am I so uneasy? Why do I feel as though heavy heavy hangs over my head?” The phone interrupted her. “Goddamn it, how I hate that phone!” She attacked the instrument and snarled into it, “What?” She listened to Dorothy Parker’s soft, sad voice. “Oh, no. Oh my God, no. How? Where?” She listened, “Well,” she said through a dry laugh, “if you have to go, it’s a lovely way to go. Let me know when they decide on the services.” Estelle and Patsy were waiting. Tallulah hung up and covered her face with her hands. “Julie Garfield’s dead.”

  “Hell, oh hell,” said Patsy. “He’s so young.”

  “Julie who?” asked Estelle.

  “John Garfield, damn it!” shouted Tallulah.

  “Oh my heavens,” twittered Estelle as she adjusted her scarlet wig. “He was so sexy.”

  Tallulah roared with laughter. “Well, dahlings, he died fucking! He had a heart attack in his girlfriend’s bed!”

  The television networks early that evening paid brief, heartwarming tributes to the late John Garfield, tactfully omitting the truth surrounding his sudden death. Choreographer Barry Wren watched one of the tributes in his living room, and then suddenly dropped the glass of wine from which he’d been sipping and bolted for the bathroom, where he stood over the sink with the dry heaves. Lester Miroff was in a sleazy bar on West Forty-third Street off Seventh Avenue having a bourbon with a beer chaser, for the first time in months, he had the decency to feel some remorse.

  In another part of the city, an expensive apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, the celebrated young film and theater director Theodore Valudni was shutting the door behind him and placing his overnight case on the floor He could hear the television set in the living room. “Honey,” he called out, “I’m home.” There was no response.

  He entered the living room. His wife Beth was watching a kaleidoscope of scenes from John Garfield movies Her eyes were red, though tearless. She had acted with Garfield in their early days on Broadway with the Group Theater. Ted Valudni had been an actor then too, not a very good one. But with the help of his friends in the Group, he’d found his true vocation as a gifted director. In the past ten years, he’d notched up an enviable string of film and theater triumphs. “What’s that about Julie?” His voice was dry and parched.