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

by George Baxt

  “He needs psychiatric treatment,”

  “Well, after all, dahling, if he did serve in Korea, he’s probably suffering shellshock or brainwashing or gonorrhea or whatever it is they get in those absurd places even missionaries never heard of.” Dawn suddenly spread a rosy glow in her brain. “Are you a detective, dahling?”

  The man smiled. “Adam Todd. Jake Singer put me on your tail.”

  “Oh, dahling, surely you can rephrase that. Oh, do relax your grip. Why, the poor boy’s crying.” Todd cased his hold a bit, and Carney could feel air returning to his lungs. Tallulah saw the patrol car approaching and wished that the small crowd that had gathered would disperse. She hoped she wouldn’t be asked to give a statement or an autograph, as she now was really awfully late for her appointment with Joseph Savage, and oh God, another playwright who would probably in time be out for her blood. She had this strange effect on playwrights.

  “Oh, do stop crying, Mr. Carney, it’s unbecoming. It’s your own fault you’re one of Todd’s chosen people.” She asked the detective, “Dahling, you’re not by any chance a relative of Mike Todd’s, are you? He’s been wanting me to play Catherine of Russia in some dreadful pageant he’s trying to put together, but I’ve already done her on film in A Royal Scandal, which was a disaster, dahling, though I thought I was quite good in it and then Mae West’s already done the empress for Mike and that also nose-dived. And here’s the patrol car. Oh, isn’t the driver dahling, dahling, he looks like John Hodiak. We were in Lifeboat. Hodiak, that is, dahling, not the driver. Now, dahling, I have to rush, I have a playwright waiting at my hotel …”

  “Oh my God!” cried David Carney.

  “Dahling, I’m so sorry. I mean I haven’t read a thing this other playwright’s written, but then, dahling, if you’re not prepared to endure the pain, you should find another profession. Have you ever tried composing greeting cards?”

  David Carney was exhausted. He was led docilely to the patrol car and deposited in the backseat. “I say, Adam Todd. Couldn’t those dahlings give us a lift back to the hotel? I mean I assume you’ll be continuing on my tail, what a vulgar expression, and …”

  With siren shrieking, Tallulah Bankhead was borne to the Hotel Elysee by two of New York’s finest, while David Carney decided it was time for another complete breakdown. It was easier than writing a play.

  Joseph Savage was thirty-one years old, attractive, intelligent, talented, blacklisted, and having a perfectly lovely time waiting for Tallulah Bankhead to return from her walk. Patsy Kelly was flying high. She’d had a phone call from the celebrated director John Murray Anderson, inquiring if she was available for a possible revue he might be doing.

  “I knew the wheel’d spin back to me!” she bellowed as she added more scotch to her half-filled glass. “Me in a John Murray Anderson revue!”

  “Now Patsy, dear”—there was caution in Estelle Winwood’s voice—”he said a possible revue he might be doing. Patsy, you shouldn’t drink on an empty promise.”

  “Now don’t you go throwing cold water on it, Estelle! I’m going to see my name in lights!” She screeched “lights.”

  “You’ll see your name in lights, Patsy, when you change it to ‘Exit.’”

  “You’re just jealous because you’ve got no offers from nobody!”

  “Patsy, don’t you think you’d be happier remaining in obscurity?”

  “Have another drink, Joe,” cried Patsy to Savage, “you look thirsty.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I don’t drink very much.”

  “There’s no such thing as drinking very much.” Patsy executed a time step, interrupted by Tallulah’s entrance.

  “God, what an experience I’ve just been through! Attacked by that David Carney maniac in the Central Park Zoo, rescued by a brick shithouse assigned to my tail by Singer but the drive back here in the patrol car was absolutely marvelous. Is this Mr. Savage? Do forgive me, John—”

  “Joseph,” said Savage.

  “Of course, dahling, you most certainly know your own name.” She had flung handbag and gloves and anything else flingable helter skelter as Patsy followed in her wake retrieving them. “Estelle, I need a very large vodka martini immediately …”

  “No gin?” chirruped Estelle as she went to the bar.

  “No, dahling, gin works too fast and there’s the evening still ahead of me.” She plopped onto the sofa next to Savage. “Why must being a celebrity be so exhausting?” She flung her arms wide and then turned to Savage with one of her more brilliant smiles “Dottie Parker thinks the world of you. Have I seen anything of yours? Oh ha-ha-ha! Forgive me, dahling, that sounded so forward, I meant of course anything of yours you’ve written.”

  “My most successful film was The Ladies Are Waiting.”

  Tallulah was scratching her head. “Did I see that?”

  “I did,” said Estelle as she gave Tallulah the martini. “It was absolutely charming. Terribly funny, Tallulah, he writes marvelous dialogue.”

  “Oh well, then, that’s marvelous, dahling. Really, Joseph, there are so few writers today who can do truly superb dialogue. Of course there’s Noel, though he gets a bit tired now and then, and in films there’s Joe Mankiewicz, even if he did slander me in All About Eve, and in television there’s absolutely nobody. Tell me, Joseph, have you something in mind for me? I’m perfectly willing to commission a play.” She leaned over and patted his hand. “I’m sure you could use the money, dahling.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “I wanted to meet you. I’ve admired you for a long time.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me your mother held you in her arms when you saw Foxes.”

  “No, it was Something Gay.”

  “Oh God, that one. Have a drink, your glass is empty.”

  “No, I’ve really had enough.”

  “There’s no such thing.” Patsy took his glass and went to the bar. “Now, dahling, do you have something in mind for me?”

  He told her his idea in a few brief, well-spoken sentences. He knew how to tell and sell a story, with the emphasis on the character he had in mind for her. She liked the idea immediately and said so. “Patsy, bring me my checkbook.” Savage said a silent prayer of thanks.

  Estelle said, “Oh dear, off with my head. I forgot to tell you, Tallulah.” Tallulah waited “Your detective friend is going to drop in on you. There’s been another murder.”

  Tallulah jumped to her feet and stormed. “How the hell can you forget another murder!”

  “Oh, do don’t shout at me, Tallulah. You know it jars my nerves. And I hate murder and murderers and the police make me edgy. Why don’t you ever contemplate an affair with someone calm and serene like a clergyman?”

  “Estelle! Who got murdered?”

  “That guy you visited today,” screeched Patsy, “that Oliver guy.” She put the checkbook on the end table next to the sofa and handed a pen to Tallulah.

  “Oliver Sholom was murdered?” Tallulah was aghast. She heard a sharp intake of breath and it took her a few minutes to realize it had come from Joseph Savage. She looked at the pen, went to the end table, hastily scribbled a check, tore it out of the book, and handed it to Savage. She was startled to realize his face was chalk white. Joseph Savage, the blacklisted playwright now freshly in from left field. A friend of Dottie’s and blacklisted. She wondered … He folded the check and put it in his inside jacket pocket without looking at the sum written there. It was a generous five hundred dollars. “You look shocked, Joseph, did you know Oliver?”

  “Yes, he directed my play.” He spoke softly. “Miss Bankhead, he’s also the reason I’m blacklisted. It’s knowledge easily available.”

  “You knew Lester Miroff?”

  “I met him once. Whatever you’re thinking. Miss Bankhead, I didn’t. But I wish I had “ He stood up. “Thanks for the job. I’ll do my very best for you.”

  Tallulah mustered a smile as she took the ha
nd he held out to her. “I’m sure you will, dahling Oh, do I have your phone number in case I need to contact you?”

  He took a card from his wallet and gave it to her. “This is the best place to get me. I work here.”

  Tallulah glanced at the card and commented, “Movie memorabilia. How fascinating.”

  “It’s a hobby and thank God it’s now a living. Goodbye. Goodbye, ladies.” After he left, Tallulah walked to the window, deep in thought, anxious for Singers arrival. Seven words were echoing inside her head, over and over and over.

  I didn’t, but I wish I bad.

  TEN

  “Lewis Drefuss is on his way up,” announced Patsy. Tallulah stirred and walked away from the window. There was a lot of high kicking going on in her mind, and the choreography was much too slapdash for Tallulah’s taste. Victims and backstabbers were jockeying for position in the center spotlight, but there was stiff competition from Lester Miroff and Oliver Sholom. Making their way down a grand staircase which would have won Florenz Ziegfeld’s approval were Gabriel Darnoff, Joe Savage, David Carney, Barry Wren, Mitchell Zang, and a few others who were either longshots or time wasters. The trouble was, Tallulah wasn’t quite sure whom to eliminate. And there was that troublesome character waiting in the wings, the one with no face. If only she could create the face. There was something else nibbling away at the back of her mind. Something that had happened, something she heard, something somebody did, something that was all wrong and out of character, something that to a professional detective might have been a dead giveaway. Oh, the hell with it. The professionals were always slipping up—why the hell couldn’t she?

  “Tallulah,” said Estelle while cheating at solitaire, “you’re talking to yourself again.”

  Tallulah was mixing a martini. “Dahling, it’s the only time I get intelligent answers.”

  Patsy opened the door for Lewis Drefuss. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, Tallulah, but there are some changes in this Sunday’s show and I thought you ought to have them.”

  “I’m always delighted to see you, dahling. But be warned that at any moment Jacob Singer will be arriving and I have the feeling this place will be under siege. What changes?”

  “Meredith thinks it would be fun if you did a duet with Ethel Merman.”

  “Me and Merman? I’ll be down for the count by the second note. That’s like pitting a piccolo-against a Wurlitzer. What song’s he chosen?”

  “‘Bye Bye Blackbird.’”

  “I’d prefer ‘Bye Bye Blacklist.’ And what other choice goodies do you have for me?” They sat next to each other on the sofa. She put on her spectacles while he riffled through the script. Tallulah’s mind wandered away on its own after just a few seconds and Lewis wasn’t aware he had lost her attention. She nodded every time he paused, second nature to her onstage, when she tired of a long run and thanks to her superb training always knew when to jump in on cue. Helen Hayes had once told her she did a whole act of a play preparing the menu for a party she was planning for her children without hearing the other actors or mistiming any of her own lines. She was thoroughly astonished when the curtain came down and she heard bravos coming from out front. She thought the matinee ladies were approving the menu she had finally decided on.

  “You’ve heard Oliver Sholom was murdered?”

  “I what, dahling?” Lewis repeated the sentence. “Oh yes, dahling, Singer told me. How’d you find out?”

  “It was on the news.”

  “It seems I missed meeting the same fate by just a few moments.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was there, dahling. I was with Sholom. I was trying to be a detective.” And by golly Singer had begrudgingly admitted she got Sholom to spill a few important beans in his hysteria, but she didn’t tell that to Lewis. She was saving it to throw in Singer’s face in case it became necessary.

  Estelle piped up, “Tallulah has a death wish, Lewis, didn’t you know that?”

  “Oh shut up and cheat, Estelle.”

  “I will not shut up. Tallulah’s got this strange streak of masochism in her, she loves to suffer. That’s why she makes so many poor choices. Now take John Emery …”

  Tallulah had crossed a leg over the other and was swinging it, a sure sign of an impending blowup to those who knew her well. “You take John Emery, dahling.” Had the words struck anyone, they would have been lethal. She said to Lewis, “He was my one short trip down the aisle.”

  Estelle choo-choo’d onward, unfazed. “We all told her; if you must get mixed up with an actor, then have an affair and be done with it. But no, Tallulah decides to marry this person of a small but not unpleasant talent, confer on him co-starring billing with little hope of challenging the Lunts.”

  “What Lunts?”

  “It didn’t work, of course, because talent alone does not suffice. One must have magic, that elusive quality that so few in the theater possess Now Tallulah has magic, but magic needs to be fortified, especially in the theatre. To really ascend to Olympian heights, magic must be wedded to magic as Lynn and Alfred have done, but no, not our girl here sitting and waving her leg at me and stop that, Tallulah, it’s making me dizzy!”

  “That’s not what’s making you dizzy, dahling.”

  Estelle directed her mouth back to Lewis. Patsy was reading a paperback although little was sinking in. “Our girl here weds herself to a profile. Now that’s one thing John Emery has on Alfred Lunt, John has a profile.”

  “I thought he was gorgeous,” Tallulah told Lewis.

  “You think Victor McLaglen’s gorgeous,” snapped Patsy.

  Tallulah’s eyes narrowed briefly into slits but she said nothing. Regardless of what Patsy said, it usually lost something in the translation. There were times when Tallulah wished Patsy’s conversation was complemented by subtitles.

  Estelle continued, “ But one soon tires of a profile and so Mr. Emery was sent packing.”

  “He’s doing damn well in pictures, dahling.”

  “Well, of course he is, dear. That’s where profiles belong.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, can I help it if I’m a sucker for a gorgeous side view?” She said to Lewis, “I was just a babe in his arms when John Barrymore tried to rape me in his room at the Algonquin. I had to kick him in the crotch to make my escape. Poor darling, he was a genius, you know. A true genius. But the poor darling rarely bathed. Soap and water were anathema to him. How those wives put up with it I’ll never know.”

  “More masochists,” stated Estelle flatly while stealing a forbidden peek at a hidden card. “People with death wishes should form a society like Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  Tallulah decided to ignore her friend and said to Lewis, “Anyway, dahling, there I was in that poor bastard’s grubby little apartment and I ended up throwing him into a temper tantrum the likes of which you’ve never seen. I mean really, dahling, I’ve created some beauts of my own, but Mr. Sholom certainly put me to shame. Still, it was no reason to put him to death.” She was on her feet and pacing. “Come to think of it, why the hell was he murdered?”

  On cue, Jacob Singer knocked heavily on the door.

  “I’m sure that’s not opportunity. Patsy, let old ‘Heavy heavy hangs over my head’ make his entrance.” To Lewis she said, “Stick around, dahling. I find the sight of you comforting. By the way, don’t you ever find me sexy?”

  Lewis’s chin dropped, while Tallulah flung her arms wide in a theatrical gesture frequently copied by others but rarely with the Bankhead effect. “Dahling Jacob, what kept you?” He never had a chance to answer. He was trapped in the center of a Bankhead offensive, a speck in the eye of a hurricane. “Dahling, I expected you to enter like some ferocious insurgent wielding a machete, but here you are all freshly shaved and scrubbed and is that the scent of Yardley I detect? No, it must be something else, some formula reserved for the exclusive use of brilliant lawmen.” Over her shoulder to Lewis, who had finally closed his mouth, she said, “Jacob is a genius and
much too modest. Jacob, I’m sure one day you’ll write your book and stagger all of us. The way Lewis Lawes did with his Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing. You’ve heard of Lawes, haven’t you, Lewis dahling?” Lewis hadn’t. “He was the warden at Sing Sing. I did a Sunday-night performance there once, dahling, and they didn’t want me to leave!”

  “Was it that bad?” squawked Patsy.

  “Patsy,” the voice threatening, “pour drinks. Now what was I saying …”

  “Everything,” said Singer.

  “Now, Jacob, if you’re going to be unpleasant and surly and this is Lewis Drefuss without whom my program would be a disaster I can’t be sure if you’ve met before or if either of you cares and what are you drinking dahlings tell Patsy so Jacob I don’t especially expect you to purr like a pussycat but I also don’t…”

  Singer had his hands up to try to stem the flow of traffic from the Bankhead mouth.

  “Dahling, this is hardly the time for exercising—”

  “Ho, lady, ho!”

  “Ho indeed, dahling, and why?” She gasped. “Don’t tell me there’s been another murder!”

  “There are always murders, Tallulah. So far none of them connect with this case.” He said to Lewis, “I assume you know what case I’m referring to. Lewis said he did while Patsy interrupted and asked for their drink orders. Once that was out of the way, Tallulah told Singer to sit down and she then phoned room service for hors d’oeuvres. During the ensuing conversation she managed to go to her bedroom and change into a Balenciaga hostess gown without missing a word or a cue.