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

by George Baxt

Barry Wren was screaming. “Will you please concentrate and get on point, goddamn it. You call yourself dancers? You’re clumsy and inept and awful and I could kill the whole damn lot of you!”

  “See what I mean?” said the dancer who thought Barry a perfect suspect.

  SEVEN

  While Jacob Singer spoke to the building superintendent and his son, Tallulah stared solemnly about the living room of Martha Walsh’s basement apartment. So neat, so tidy, with no evidence of recent tragedy. Martha had willed the contents to the Salvation Army, who would be sending a van to collect them as soon as the police permitted it. Tallulah walked to the kitchen and marveled at how Martha had made do in such shabby surroundings. There were water leakage stains on the ceiling, a windowpane was cracked, the stove and refrigerator were of an antiquity Tallulah was hard put to categorize. She looked in the refrigerator. It was empty, cleaned out, she assumed, by the janitors wife.

  “Find anything interesting?”

  Singers voice startled her. She clutched her bosom dramatically and growled at him, “Don’t ever creep up on me like that again. You almost cost me five years of my life I can ill afford… It’s really so sad, Jacob. To think she’s been living in this hovel for God knows how many years—it’s so difficult to conceive of a young girl as enchanting as Martha was when I first met her and Abner ending her years here. But then, God knows what fate has in store for us. Well, at least she’s not ending up in a pauper’s grave.”

  “Neither will you. I’m sure.” She was following him back to the living room.

  “I don’t give a damn where I end up, dahling, as long as they don’t bury me in a bad play. What’s that you’re staring at?”

  Singer held the photo of Abner, Martha, and the boy that had rested on the mantel. “Family portrait.” Tallulah took the photo and studied it

  “Handsome, weren’t they?” She fished her spectacles from her handbag for a better look. “Yes, I thought that’s what it was.”

  “What what was?” asked Singer.

  “The scar on the boy’s left cheek, I wonder if this photo was taken before or after the accident. How remote and distant the boy seems from his parents. See, he’s looking to the right, away from them, off into the distance hoping for a glimpse of … what?” She handed the picture back to Singer. “I met Abner and Martha … let me see,” she said as she returned the spectacles to her handbag, “I think it was … yes it was in thirty-three. You’ll learn, Jacob, that my memory is not the most reliable, except when I’m committing a script to memory I’m always line- perfect, dahling… . Where was I?”

  “You were back in thirty-three.”

  “Of course, dahling, I was starring on Broadway in Forsaking All Others. A disaster, but I kept it running for over one hundred performances. Not bad in those depression days, and anyway it was my own money.” She laughed. “All that gorgeous cash I earned at Paramount Pictures went into that very bad play. Actually it became a rather amusing film with Miss Crawford and Mr. Cable. But that’s useless trivia. Thirty-three, yes. Not the best of times for me or for anyone. Talk about useless trivia, Henry Fonda had a small part in the play.”

  “Let’s get back to the Walshes.”

  “Oh, dahling, I have this awful habit of derailing myself, but you’ll get used to it. You have no choice.”

  The Walshes.”

  “Yes yes yes! She sat at the dining table and lit a Craven A. “Michael Darnoff and I were discussing a revival of Pygmalion at the time, but I couldn’t quite see myself as Eliza Doolittle nor could I see Darnoff as Henry Higgins. I mean Lear, Iago, and other such classic heavyweights yes, but Shaw never. Michael was in love with me, but he was perfectly dreadful in bed, constantly upstaging me, dahling.” A small nimble of laughter. “No one attempts to upstage Tallulah and survives. Michael took me to a rent party in Greenwich Village. You do remember rent parties, don’t you, dahling?” Singer nodded. “Yes, of course you do, how silly of me. It was at this party I met Abner and Martha, my darling darling Nance Liston and … of course … Gregory and Anya Hagle. They were on a visit from Hollywood and being razzed by the others for their success. I remember being quite put out at that. I mean after all, dahling, were professionals for artistic fulfillment, true, but Christ, one does have to earn a living. But it was all rather good-natured, and there was a good-sized crowd and the Walshes. … It turned out to be their place, a mean little cold-water railroad flat on one of those obscure and quaint Village streets … Thompson, Duane, whatever … anyway, the Walshes had collected a goodly sum of admission fees and would be able to meet the rent that month.” She snapped her fingers. “The boy!”

  Singer had long ago recognized that to let her ramble on at her own pace would eventually provide a verbal nugget. He was leaning against the fireplace with his arms folded, lacking only a meerschaum pipe in his mouth to complete the portrait of a member of the landed gentry.

  “The boy was in one of the bedrooms. Martha doted on the child and wanted me to meet him. I do adore children, you know … in their place. She took me to him, although I remember making small noises about not waking him at what I assume must have been quite a late hour. It was after the theater. But she assured me he was still awake and he was. Hmmm.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I feel as though I’m on a psychiatrist’s couch.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  “Just once, dahling, but we were only necking.”

  “Let’s go back to the boy.”

  “Is this really helpful?”

  Tallulah, it’s more than I could hope for.”

  “Oh really, dahling? I mean is this what detective work is all about?”

  “You got it. Listening to people talk and talk and talk until suddenly what you’ve been hoping for is revealed just like that, from out of nowhere.”

  “Oh, how marvelous! I can’t wait to tell Estelle and Patsy.”

  “Tallulah, the boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “The Walsh boy.”

  “Oh, Leo.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘Oh, Leo.’”

  “Good heavens and so I did and by God that’s the boy’s name! Leo! Named for Leo Tolstoi! Oh, dahling, it’s so wonderful how this is all coming back to me—think of how I could have helped Sir Arthur Sullivan find his lost chord!” She was, whether Singer recognized it or not, just warming up to the task of recalling the past, and she began pacing the room. For a middle-aged woman. Singer was thinking, she had a remarkably provocative walk.

  “Well anyway, Leo was reading a book and was very polite at the interruption And you know what, by God, it was a collection of Eugene O’Neill plays. He was reading that tiresome one, come to think of it most of O’Neill is tiresome but I’ll save that for my next interview. Mourning Becomes Electra. Endless dribble lifted from a Greek classic. I remember telling the boy that Dar.noff and I were in the market for something to do together and I remember his somewhat solemnly suggesting we do The Cherry Orchard. You have heard of it, haven’t you, dahling, come to think of it I’d be a divine Arkadina I must give it some thought. I could always dredge up Raymond Massey to co-star but God, dahling, think of consorting with that face through rehearsals the out-of-town tour and eight performances a week. I wonder what Colin Keith Johnson is up to these days?”

  Tallulah, the boy.”

  “What? Oh, do don’t interrupt, Jacob, it’s difficult enough as it is, I mean all this was almost twenty years ago, I can’t remember what I did twenty minutes ago! Such a handsome little fellow he was—the boy, dahling, not Colin Keith Johnson, except for that ugly jagged scar on his left cheek. Naturally I didn’t inquire about it in front of the lad, but Martha later told me he fell off a swing or a seesaw or one of those other deadly things they provide children with in playgrounds. A really strange child he was, don’t ask me why, he was so …so old for his age, that’s it, that’s what it was, and I
don’t think he was more than about ten then. It was much later he and Martha were in the train crash out west and the poor thing was tragically crippled and disfigured and Martha was seriously injured but not as bad as the boy. It cost Abner a fortune. The hospitals The doctors. The sanitarium.”

  “I love you, Tallulah.”

  “Why, dahling, it’s so early in the day.”

  “I love you for dredging all this memory up from some hidden well, when yesterday you were completely vague about what had happened to Martha and the boy.”

  “Well, dahling, you have to give me time. People are always rushing me. I mean if you buy me a beer, dahling, dahling Jacob”—she patted his cheek and wondered why so many men missed patches of stubble when they shaved—“I’ll recite one of my favorite poems, ‘Fellatio at the Bridge’.”

  George Baxt was a relative newcomer as a theatrical agent, having opened his office with a partner, Ethel Wald, less than two years earlier. When Ethel left to marry and migrate to the West Coast, he carried on alone, waiting for the day he would have enough cash to spring himself and resume his career as a writer. As days piled upon days, he found it increasingly difficult to cope with the variety of lunatics who presented themselves at his office in the dubious disguise of actors. One such now sat in his office, Mitchell Zang, haranguing Baxt about the iniquities of the profession, the disgrace of the blacklist, and the tragic loss of his lover, Nance Liston. Mitchell Zang was not blacklisted, he was just an awful actor. Because of his friendship with Nance, Baxt went out of his way to place Zang on some TV shows as a walk-on or extra and, on one or two occasions, got him an under-five-line part. By union rules, these parts were non-commissionable, but out of friendship to Nance Liston, Baxt persevered and kept Zang eating. He was now plotting how to keep Zang out of his office in the future. True, Zang had such a usable face: “That wonderful jagged scar on his left cheek he claims was a bayonet wound,” Baxt had explained to his friend Lewis Drefuss. “I’ll lay odds he was stabbed by an angry playwright for mauling his lines.”

  Zang was shouting and Baxt wondered if his secretary was dialing the police. “For chrissakes, cool it, Mitchell!” yelled Baxt. “There are actors waiting in the outer office and you might frighten them into thinking they’re talented.”

  “Fuck ‘em.”

  “I haven’t the strength.”

  Mitchell Zang leaned forward, twisting the beret he held in his hands. “Aren’t you glad Lester Miroff was murdered?”

  “Glad? Why glad?”

  “Didn’t he deserve to die? All those fucking informers, don’t you agree they should be killed?”

  “I’m all for mercy killing, Mitchell”—especially for actors, he diplomatically refrained from adding—”but murder I do not condone, even of people I despise.”

  “You don’t think Barry Wren should be murdered? Ted Valudni?” His list of murder prospects was endless and Baxt ached to hear the sound of a police siren nearing.

  “Mitchell, murdering those people won’t bring back Nance or Abner Walsh or Michael Darnoff or Mady Christians or—oh, the hell with it, Mitchell, I’ve got work to do and I’ve got people waiting and I’ve got to go hold Nils Asthers hand at a Kraft rehearsal of Dodswortb. and why the hell do I dig up jobs for out-of-work old film stars, damn it?”

  Mitchell Zang arose slowly. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

  “Now really, Mitchell—”

  “I’ll never come see you again. Never! Never!” Zang fled the office.

  Baxt looked at the ceiling and said, “So there really is a God.” Then he dialed the Fifty-fourth Street precinct and left a message for Jacob Singer. They’d met a few months earlier when Singer was advising on police procedure for a Philco Playhouse presentation that had starred several Baxt clients, and Baxt was thinking of someday trying his typewriter at writing mysteries. Maybe Zang had just been running off at the mouth as he usually did. But today Zang’s anxiety to win approval for the idea of murdering a list of informers made Baxt decide a second opinion was in order. Singer was out and Baxt left a message. Then he shouted to his secretary, “Who’s next?”

  “James Dean!” she shouted back. Dean’s photo composite was at the top of a stack on Baxt’s desk. Baxt studied the surly face and thought, oh God, another juvenile. Who the hell needs another juvenile?

  Tallulah and Singer were having their beers in a saloon on Ninth Avenue They sat at the bar because Tallulah enjoyed bantering with bartenders. This one was named Jake and knew she was an actress but couldn’t quite place the face, so Tallulah told him she was Ethel Barrymore

  “Sure, Ethel, I’d have known you anyplace! What brings you to New York?”

  “I’ve just had my face lifted, dahling What do you think?”

  Jake made an O with his thumb and index finger. “You look great, Ethel, just great.” He went to the other end of the bar to break the news to the saloon regulars.

  “Poor Jake,” said Singer.

  “Don’t be silly, dahling. He hasn’t the vaguest idea who Ethel Barrymore is, let alone me. I’ve made him very happy. Now what have I helped you accomplish? Are you convinced Leo Walsh is the murderer?”.

  “Hell no. Who knows where he is? Like you said yesterday, he may be dead You haven’t been much in touch with either of the Walshes, but over the past years have they ever mentioned him?”,

  “Well, I can’t really answer that, dahling. So much is said to me, but I retain so little. Leo became a footnote in Abner’s life after he left Martha for Nanette, and I’ve seen next to nothing of Martha. We lunched a few times, but that was it.”

  “As of this minute, Miroff’s murderer could be anybody. He could be some nut who wandered in unseen off the street and plugged Miroff because he planned to plug the first person he saw.”

  “Dear God, do such people exist?”

  “They exist and they kill and we don’t always catch them, and don’t start a monologue on perfect crimes either.”

  “I’m not, dahling, just push that bowl of peanuts in my direction.”

  While she munched peanuts. Singer said, “X the Unknown could have killed Miroff. Some bleeding heart reads up in the newspapers and the magazines on all these poor souls destroyed by the blacklist and the informers and says to himself or to herself… yeah, it could have been a woman, you know…”

  “Oh, dahling, don’t tell me how lethal women can be. I’ve been one for years.”

  “Anyway, our X the Unknown suddenly says, I’m going to kill that bastard. How dare he do this to so many people and get away with it? So out goes anonymous nobody with blood in his or her eye and commits a murder.”

  “But why would this person threaten me?”

  “They think you know something that could lead to them.”

  “I wish I knew what the hell it was.”

  “So do I. But I know now all I have to do is let you keep on talking, and sooner or later something worthwhile will pop out.”

  Tallulah seethed with indignation. “What the hell do you mean sooner or later? I mean really, dahling, you could take every word I say and string them together and put them around your girlfriend’s neck and they’ll dazzle you—you don’t have a girlfriend, do you?” He didn’t. “Why, dahling, I’m always being quoted and misquoted and people have been known to drown in the sea of apocrypha attributed to me. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Where are you going, dahling? You’re not stiffing me with the tab, are you?”

  “I have to check in with the precinct. I’m on a case, you know.”

  “Yes, dahling, how well I know.” Jake brought her another beer “You know, Jake, you should be on television.”

  “You think so, Ethel?”

  “Yes, I most certainly do think so. My friend Robert Ripley is putting together a show and I must talk to him about you.”

  “Gee thanks, Ethel, when you need me I’ll be right here. You can always find me here.”

  “Don’t worry, dahling. Ethel will fix everything.” Singer was back. “That was
quick, dahling.”

  “An agent we both know left me a message to call him.”

  “Oh. which one, dahling? Gus Schirmer? Archer King?”

  “George Baxt.”

  “Who? Never heard of him.”

  “You met him last night at Tony’s.”

  “Oh of course. Him! George what? Never mind, dahling, phone him, and for chrissakes will somebody remove these goddamn peanuts!”

  Singer phoned Baxt. He listened attentively to what Baxt had to tell him about Mitchell Zang When Baxt asked, “Does this make me sound like a fink ratting on the idiot?”

  “Hell, no. This is important. I’ll put one of the boys on him right away and see if he’s got an alibi. Thanks. I appreciate this.” He phoned the precinct and assigned an investigator to Mitchell Zang and then returned to Tallulah and told her what he had learned from the agent.

  Tallulah groaned. “Not Mitchell Zang Oh, not him I mean the last time he took an IQ test, he owed them thirty-seven points. He was Nance’s stud. I don’t believe she was in love with him, but he was apparently serviceable and Nance, God rest her soul, had a voracious sexual appetite that required a great deal of servicing. But murder somebody? I find that awfully hard to believe. I can’t really see Mitchell Zang as a murderer.”

  “Tallulah, an actor murdered Lincoln.”

  “Dahling, I didn’t think Walter Huston was all that bad in the part.”

  Singer asked Jake for the bill while Tallulah repaired her face. She was enjoying herself immensely. She liked detective work. She enjoyed being a help to Singer, and in some way she was being a help to herself. It took her mind off the sword of Damocles hanging over her own head, the stupid threats of guilt by association tossed at her by the two agency stooges. Yes indeed, she liked this detective work and she had a silent plan to continue at it on her own. Mitchell Zang a murderer? Well, he had that sinister scar on his left cheek …

  “Jacob!” she shouted.

  “Christ, you scared the hell out of me!”

  “Mitchell Zang!”

  “Okay, okay, so if he’s innocent, my guy will check him out. It’s only a precaution, Tallulah.”