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

by George Baxt

  He conceded to himself that Sholom had made some important admissions to her, but he was not about to tell her that. He said, “Thank you, Tallulah. Now I have to hang up. I’ve got somebody with me.”

  “Of course, Jacob,” said Tallulah coldly, and hung up. “The lout!”

  “Does that mark finis to Detective Singer?” piped Estelle as she shuffled the cards.

  “The man’s a boor. I can’t understand what Dottie Parker sees in him. Well, Dottie was never exactly celebrated for her taste in men. The first husband was a sot and the one she’s married to now is better in the kitchen than he is in bed, and as for her affairs, God, what she put up with!”

  Patsy returned brandishing a newspaper and screeching, “Guess what actor’s dead at sixty-nine!”

  “Dahling, I knew a lot of actors who were dead at sixty-nine.” The phone rang. “You answer it, Patsy. If it’s Jacob Singer, tell him I died and I’m being cremated in the morning. Omit flowers.”

  Patsy held the phone out to Tallulah. “It’s Lillian Hellman.”

  Tallulah’s expression changed. It was glacial. Her voice was basso profundo. “Lillian who?”

  “Aw, come on now, Tallu, stop doing a number on me!”

  Estelle interjected, “She did write the greatest hit of your career, Tallulah. Surely even you can’t carry a grudge this long.”

  Tallulah took the phone and said in a monotone, “Hello, Lillie, how nice to hear from you after all these years what do you want?”

  Lillian Hellman was in the Elysee lobby speaking into a house phone. She was tempted to slam the phone down, having a temper as notoriously vicious as Bankhead’s But she was a woman in desperate trouble and she needed the actress. “I’m sorry to pop in on you from out of the blue like this, after all these years, but it’s important I talk to you I sounded out Dottie Parker first before planning the invasion and it was she who suggested I come directly to you at the hotel Would you let me buy you a drink?”

  Tallulah mulled the offer for a moment. “I’d invite you up, but we can’t talk privately—I have friends here.”

  “Well, we could always take a powder, Tallu,” screeched Patsy. “Come on, Estelle, let’s go to a bar and attack sailors.”

  Tallulah said into the phone, “We can have a drink in the Monkey Bar. Go in and get a table and I’ll be down in a few moments.” The Monkey Bar was just off the lobby. Hellman went in, found a secluded booth, and ordered a scotch on the rocks.

  Tallulah changed her dress and shoes, redid her makeup, and swallowed a sedative. Estelle had come into the room as Tallulah popped the pills.

  “Tallulah, I thought you swore off those things!”

  “Dahling, I use these in times of stress. How do I look?”

  “Better then she will.”

  “Estelle, dahling, you should have been a diplomat.”

  “I am, Tallulah, that’s why we remain friends.”

  Tallulah swept into the Monkey Bar tossing hello’s in all directions, the greetings striking bartender and waiters as she paused dramatically in the doorway. When she was sure she was the cynosure of everyone in the room, she acknowledged Hellman, whom she had of course spotted when she first entered, and joined her in the booth.

  “Well, Lillie, it’s been a long long time. How’s Dash?”

  “Not good.” Dashiell Hammett and Hellman had been enduring a stormy relationship for close to two decades. “Jail wrecked him. His health’s never been too good to begin with.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Waiter! A very dry gin martini, straight up, and leave out the garbage. I’m sorry he had to go to jail.”

  “For Dash, there was no choice. He certainly had no intention of ever being a cooperative witness. In his spot, would you?”

  “I’d name Lassie, Flicka, and Thunderhead, son of Flicka. I gather you’ve heard they’re thinking of training their guns on me?”

  “Little do they know what they’re letting themselves in for, if they do.” They both laughed but not enthusiastically. “You’re looking wonderfully fit, Tallulah.”

  “So do you, dahling.” Hellman looked awful. “A bit drawn, of course.” Tallulah kindly refrained from adding, “And quartered.”

  Hellman leaned forward. “Tallulah, I’m having a bad time. I’m desperate.”

  “You must be, dahling, if you’re coming to me. After all those bricks we hurled at each other during Foxes. Are you broke?”

  “I’m hurting, but I’m not asking for money. Dash has cost me a small fortune. He’s been living off me for years, and what the hell, that’s what an affair is all about, they tell me.”

  “Never trust them who tell, dahling, they’re free with words and little else. How come the committee hasn’t been after you? I mean really, dahling, you lean so far to the left you make the Tower of Pisa look upright.”

  “They’re getting to me. They do it in sections. Let’s hit some big guns today, and then fill the next couple of months with the little guys who mean nothing. The sort of names the newspapers bury on the back pages. But when they can get a Julie Garfield, a Freddie March …”

  “And Tallulah, if they dare.”

  “You’d be very big box office for them. Very big. Calling it disgraceful is being kind. I can’t think of an adjective awful enough to describe what’s going on. Look, I won’t waste any more time . . She waited while the waiter served the martini. After he left, she continued. “Would you take Little Foxes out on tour?”

  “Revive it now?”

  “Why not? I’ve spoken to Kermit Bloomgarten”—a respected Broadway producer who had mounted other Hellman plays— “and he’ll go for it if you do it.”

  “Oh, dahling, to go back to it again after all these years. I mean really, Lillie, what more could I do with the part? Looking back, it seems as though I played it for a hundred years.”

  “There’s a whole new generation out there across the country who’ve never seen you.”

  Tallulah said, “Yes, there’s that to consider, isn’t there? What a treat it would be for them.”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  “Now listen, Lillie, you know I can’t be sledgehammered into anything. I mean really, dahling, if we’re burying the hatchet, why don’t we bury it over a new play? Write something new for me. We could stand Broadway on its ear?”

  Hellman leaned back. “I haven’t got a new play in me. Not right now. Maybe later. After this mess is over and done with. Tallulah, when they call me, I shall certainly not cooperate. Supposing they put me in jail?”

  “They wouldn’t dare!”

  “That’s what Dash thought when they nailed him.”

  “Lillie, I know you need one, but I can’t give you an answer just yet. I’m involved in too much. I’m still committed to my radio show for another month, and then there’s this damn mess with Lester Miroff’s murder and Christ, why don’t I find myself a convent somewhere and take a long rest. I suppose if I did, those nuns would be hopping over the walls in trios.”

  “Dottie’s told me about you and this detective.”

  “Don’t believe a word of it!”

  “You mean already poor Dottie’s behind the times?”

  “I’m sure she’ll find it preferable to being behind the eight ball.”

  “Poor Lester Miroff. He knew not what he did, the sad bastard. He wasn’t really all that bad a guy, you know.”

  Tallulah was almost touched by this rare display of empathy on Hellman’s part. She said, “It’s amazing, Lillie, how death improves people.”

  “Dottie says you received a death threat.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told her” said Tallulah, seething. “I suppose now it’s all over town But really, dahling, one receives death threats so infrequently, I suppose I couldn’t resist phoning her this morning. I heard you’re just back from Mexico. How was it?”

  “Tallulah, it was so quiet, you could hear a peon drop.”

  Tallulah told the waiter to put the drinks on
her house bill while Hellman demurred, insisting it was she who had asked Tallulah. “Nonsense, dahling, I’ve owed you a drink for years. Now, Lillie, don’t look so solemn. Your life doesn’t hang by my positive response. Don’t let me think that, Lillie, I’m carrying enough guilt as it is.” Hellman reassured her.

  After they parted, Tallulah rang her suite and told Patsy she was going for a walk. She needed air. She needed to think. She left the hotel and headed north to Central Park.

  She wasn’t aware she was being followed.

  NINE

  As far as Jacob Singer was concerned, Mitchell Zang had only one thing going for him, the ugly scar on his left cheek. He had diarrhea of the mouth, which was fine by Singer, who preferred too much talk to no talk at all. After thirty minutes of Zang, Singer was fairly positive Zang wasn’t Leo Walsh, but he was a likely candidate for nomination as a murder suspect. Zang hated Lester Miroff, he hated this one and that one who were somehow involved in the blacklist, whether accusers or victims. He particularly hated Barry Wren for leading Nance Liston to her destruction, though it was also pretty unfair of Nance to die intestate. Now Zang really had to look for work.

  “What about yesterday afternoon?” asked Singer, tapping his pencil lightly on the desk.

  “What about it?”

  Singer reminded him of the probable time during which Lester Miroff was murdered at the Everhard.

  “Say listen, I don’t go to no places like that there. No way, man, no way I’m strictly a pussy man. I mean them guys can do what they like, y’know? Live and let live. I’m very big with tolerance, that was Nance’s influence y’know? I don’t call niggers niggers anymore or kikes kikes. I mean I wouldn’t want one of them to marry my sister—”

  Singer interrupted sharply. “Between about half past two and half past four, where were you yesterday?”

  Zang screwed up his face and looked at the ceiling. Singer was almost sorry he was causing Zang to tax his brain. “Half past two and half past four? I guess I was making the rounds, y’know, visiting agents, casting directors, oh yeah, I dropped into Walgreens, y’know, the one on Broadway and Forty-fourth, the actor’s hangout, y’know, we trade tips there. There was nothing doing, so I think I went home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “I’m still living in Nance’s place down on Saint Mark’s.” He gave him the address. Singer already had his phone number and the number where he could be reached at the Actor’s Service.

  “Can you tell me the names of some people who would remember seeing you between those hours?”

  The face screwed up again in agony, convincing Singer that here was the original who couldn’t chew gum and cross a street at the same time. This cretin was what Nance Liston had found attractive. Well, what the hell, somebody once married Mussolini. Zang’s lips moved and some names erupted from his mouth. Singer wrote them down. They were unfamiliar to him. The detritus of Broadway hopefuls, the walking wounded, the ones who lived on hopes and fantasies and by waiting on table or clerking in supermarkets or selling their bodies. The percentage who achieved anything was close to zero, but they continued making rounds, taking lessons, acting, singing, dancing, fencing, but never enrolling in a class that taught reality. It probably didn’t exist. “What?” he asked sharply.

  “I mean isn’t this enough, already? I got an audition for a monster in Bats.”

  “What’s Bats?”

  “A musical version of Dracula. It’s for a summer tour, I think starring Leo Gorcey, I’m not sure.”

  Singer released him with the usual admonition not to leave town. Zang fitted the beret over his head, which made him look like the nipple on a baby’s bottle. Zang wasn’t gone twenty seconds when all hell broke loose. “Jake!” shouted the desk sergeant, “Delaney’s found a stiff!”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Detective Oscar Delaney, only recently promoted, found Oliver Sholom and lost his lunch. When he phoned the precinct, he could barely speak. When he started to describe the condition of the body, he suffered dry heaves.

  “Is it Sholom or isn’t it?” shouted Singer when he appropriated the phone from the sergeant.

  “Who can tell?” gasped Delaney. “Christ, Jake, it’s cranberry jelly.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Delaney hung up and leaned against the wall He noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye and reached for his gun.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Herbert Sholom.

  Delaney sized up the little man and decided the gun wasn’t necessary. “Who are you?”

  “I own this building. This apartment is mine, too. My nephew lives here Where is he? I was in the hall to empty the garbage and saw his door open and heard you talking on the phone. What’s cranberry jelly?”

  Delaney had a sadistic streak. “On the floor in the kitchen.”

  The little man went to the kitchen. Delaney stared at the yarmulke on his head, the measuring tape draped around his neck, the shabby, not terribly clean clothes, the slow shuffle, bent over as though he had only recently relinquished the weight of the world back to Atlas. He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. He said “Oy vay” or something that sounded like it and turned away in revulsion.

  “Is that your nephew?” asked Delaney, figuring the uncle might make an identification from the clothes the body was wearing. But the old man said nothing. His hands covered his face, his shoulders shook, and the sobs emerging from the depths of his being were heartrending. Delaney went to the old man and solicitously started to lead him to a chair. The old man shook him away.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Delaney.

  “Sorry for what?” asked Herbert Sholom, wiping his eyes with a cloth swatch he pulled from a trouser pocket.

  “I mean … your nephew? Is that your nephew?”

  “It must be. He lives here. He’s been home all day. So it must be Oliver. That’s his sweater he’s wearing, I recognize the pants, I sewed them up myself. Those are my stitches along the seams, very fine stitches, such stitches you’ll see nowhere else.” He sighed. “The rotten bastard. Somebody should have killed him a long time ago and maybe spared all the agony he caused.”

  “Excuse me, but if you feel that way about him, why were you crying?”

  “He’s a relative.” The man’s hands were outstretched, palms upward. “For a relative you cry. It’s expected!’”

  Tallulah Bankhead visiting the Central Park Zoo deserved consideration as a television special. She was wearing her dark glasses and swinging her handbag like a schoolgirl whose books were tied by a strap In the other hand she held the inevitable Craven A, and whether she was recognized or not, she had a smile for everyone. She had no idea why these sudden high spirits after a dispiriting day with Oliver Sholom, Jacob Singer on the phone, and Lillian Hellman at the Monkey Bar. She knew she’d never do the tour for Hellman, not out of malice but out of her occasionally sound theatrical judgment. There was nothing more she could bring to the part of Regina Ciddons. Perhaps if she had gotten the movie, but no. Sam Goldwyn, who produced it, didn’t think she was movie box office, and probably Hellman agreed They were in the midst of their celebrated vendetta then. Hellman must have had a hand in kayoing her. When cajoled into seeing the finished film by Estelle Win- wood, Tallulah begrudgingly admitted that Bette Davis’s interpretation of Regina was an interesting one, despite her mannerisms and despite the play being “opened out” with a series of extraneous scenes that only served to prolong the waits between drama. Tallulah had even ventured out to the Flatbush Theater in Brooklyn one Saturday afternoon to see and admire Ruth Chatterton in the play, Chatterton touring what was known as the Subway Circuit, where tired Broadway hits went to die.

  Tallulah had sworn years ago she would never become one of those actors who toured eternally in their one celebrated vehicle, never venturing into anything else, never going for the stretch the way she had tried and succeeded superbly in The Skin of Our Teeth and then later tried and failed dismally in The
Eagle Has Two Heads. But that’s what acting was all about, she had learned from her British peers in the seven or eight years she had spent in the London theater during the 1920s; try anything, but at least try it. It’s why the London audiences adored her, though most of her vehicles there were potboilers, save for Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted, which failed despite its brilliant American reputation.

  She had to do something else. Maybe Gabriel Darnoff would come through with something, perhaps this unknown quantity, Joseph Savage, and oh God I told Patsy to call him and have him up for a drink at six. It was almost that now. Well, she was Tallulah, he certainly wouldn’t expect her to be punctual She was standing in front of the elephants. “Hello, dahlings. You brutes.” She felt whimsical. “Don’t you remember me, dahlings? Me Jane?”

  She turned around, intending to get back to the hotel, and was confronted by a maniac. He was a weird-looking man of about thirty or thereabouts clutching a manila envelope in one hand that obviously contained a script With the other he was waving his fist in Tallulah’s face. His skin was cratered with pockmarks, and his thinning hair hung down below his ears like tired strings of wisteria His nose was running and there was spittle bubbling in the corners of his mouth

  “You didn’t read it! I know you didn’t read it! I only left it for you this morning, so I know you didn’t read it so soon. I know it! You’re rude and thoughtless like all them other bigshots. You enjoy walking over downtrodden war veterans like me. Korea I fought in Korea! I fought to make the world safe for you, Tallulah Bankhead Don’t deny it! You’re Tallulah Bankhead! I followed you from the hotel and now I’m going to kill you!”

  Tallulah didn’t cry out, she didn’t back away, she didn’t try to run. She was too paralyzed with fear either to move or to notice the heavyset man who came up behind the playwright and swiftly locked him in a stranglehold.

  “Don’t be afraid, Miss Bankhead. There’ll be a patrol car along in a few minutes.”

  Tallulah found her voice, which she had sorely missed. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted! Who is this maniac? And who are you, dahling, thank you so much for coming to my rescue, don’t you think you’ve got too tight a hold on him, dahling, his skin’s turning blue, his tongue’s hanging out, and his eyes are beginning to pop.” She was able to read the name on the envelope, recognizing Patsy’s childish scrawl. David Carney. “Oh my God, the play. The aging actress play.” The heavyset man relaxed his grip a bit when he felt Carney beginning to slump. “Dahling, I think he needs artificial respiration.”