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

by George Baxt

  “Does he have any family?”

  “I know he has a mother in the Bronx. I never heard him talk about anybody else. You’ll find it in his book of phone numbers in the desk over there.”

  Singer found the phone book and little else of value or interest. Singer told Delaney to try to locate the mother and break the news before she heard it from the media, Reporters and photographers were already swarming around on the sidewalk waiting to get in, which they wouldn’t until the police photographer and the others had finished their jobs. “Annabel, was he mixed up with anybody? Girlfriend, boyfriend?”

  “No sir, he freelanced, but there wasn’t much of that lately. Mr. Wren, he was one frightened dude. The locks and bolts on the front door are brand-new. And he’d caution me to make sure every window was locked tight before I left. I think he knew his name was on somebody’s list.” She shrugged. “I heard what the man told you. Murdered. Well, I had no complaints. He was always good to me.” She looked as if she expected additional questions, but Singer went instead to the telephone.

  Tallulah had demolished her usual hangover breakfast of a pint of vanilla ice cream and a jug of vichysoisse sent over from “21,” the club on West Fifty-second Street. Lewis Drefuss was with her, having arrived at the same time as the waiter from the club, and so made himself busy serving the ice cream and cold soup.

  “Really, dahling, I don’t know how Dottie does it and survives. I mean, dahling, how that woman can drink.” Lewis maintained a straight face with difficulty. “I mean I gave up counting the Jack Roses when she switched to brandy, and then stingers, my dear, stingers, I mean what’s more lethal than stingers God this vichysoisse is hitting the spot and that psychic who told me I was an Egyptian somebody once upon a time how old do you think Mabel Mercer is?”

  The phone came to Lewis’s rescue. Hand over the mouthpiece, he asked Tallulah, “Do you want to speak to Jacob Singer?”

  “Isn’t everybody an early bird this morning? As you know, I can never sleep more than a few hours but I mean here’s you at this hour and where do you get all that energy though I suppose at your age what’s the trick and I suppose the Bobbsey Twins will descend on me any moment now and do you wonder why Patsy screeches so much it must be hereditary. Good morning Jacob dahling so bright and early to what do I attribute the honor?” She listened. “Oh my God no! My God no! Drowned in his own bathtub. Stewed so to speak in his own juices. Are you sure it’s murder? I’ll bet the murderer hoped it would look like an accident. Maybe tripped in the tub, hit his head, knocked himself out, and drowned.” She let Jacob talk, briefly. “Ha-ha-ha- ha-ha! What? Oh, dahling, how clever of you to remember!” To Lewis she said, “All showbiz deaths come in threes and I predicted there’d be a third and by God here it is, how thoughtful of Barry Wren I hope the wretch is frying in hell. What, dahling? I’m talking to Lewis Drefuss. He arrived early to harass me. Actually, were going to record Sunday’s program this afternoon, so now I’m free on Sunday which is a blessing, No, dahling, I never go to church, I have it sent in, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. What?” She listened while spooning some vichysoisse. “I should think whoever held him under the water must possess a great deal of strength .” She playfully squeezed Lewis’s arm. He resisted the desire to jerk his arm away. “I suppose that eliminates any woman suspect, unless he was done in by Cheryl Crawford. What? No, I don’t want any more bodyguards. The ones I have are enough. I need more protection like Eleanor Powell needs more teeth. Yes, dahling, by all means go back to your sleuthing. I must call Dottie at once and tell her. What, dahling?” She was raptly attentive. “You’re joking! Is Zang still in the pokey? The poor bastard, I’m glad they let him go, he’s such a loser. But, Jacob, I’ve heard he has a history of abusing women. I don’t know Nanette Walsh”—she almost added “yet”—”but all my sympathy’s with her. Thanks for telling me, dahling, and oh, dahling, wait . . , wait … about what time was Barry Wren murdered?” She listened. “Well then, dahling, you’d better start checking up on alibis. Goodbye, dahling.” She handed the phone to Lewis, who placed it in the cradle and polished off the rest of the cold soup.

  After a few seconds of meditation, she said, “I suppose that converstaion with Mr. Singer sounded somewhat cold-blooded to you.”

  “I don’t think anything of the sort. It’s a shock to hear there’s been another murder and that it’s Barry Wren. I didn’t know you had bodyguards. Why should you be in danger?”

  “Didn’t you, dahling? I thought you did. I thought you gathered that yesterday when I … oh, the hell with it, it doesn’t matter. I’m in danger because I’m supposed to perhaps know something and I’ll be damned if I can remember what it is I’m supposed to know. Bit of a Chinese puzzle, isn’t it, dahling, you were too young to have seen me in one of my Paramount fiascos The Cheat in which I played the mistress of a Chinese sadist who brands me with an iron and that was Sessue Hayakawa who is Japanese which is typical of Hollywood and he and his wife were so sweet I hope they survived Hiroshima though God knows what they would have been doing in Hiroshima and Dot- tie oh God yes I must phone Dottie be a dear Lewis and tell the operator to get Dottie at her hotel shell know the number she’s dialed it often enough what time’s the runthrough before the recording and God I’ll never be able to get through that duet with Merman …”

  Three hours later while Tallulah was at the studio for the rehearsal and runthrough, Barry Wren’s murder was the lead topic on coast-to-coast newscasts. At the Golden Cinema Memorabilia Shop, while helping a customer locate the Marjorie Weaver file, Joseph Savage heard the news on the radio and felt lightheaded. He wondered if anyone had seen him near Barry Wren’s house the night before. The newscaster didn’t say what time Wren had been murdered, only that he’d been murdered last night. Maybe somebody who’d been on the Fifth Avenue bus last night would remember him. One of the part-time employees, a young woman named Lorena Duncan who was taking night classes at New York University in filmography and would two decades later be running a major Hollywood studio, asked if he felt ill.

  “What? What? Do I look ill?”

  “You’ve turned white as a ghost.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m working on? a new play.” He told her about the Bankhead job, and she was pleased at his good news and congratulated him.

  “Look, Joe, it’s not busy right now. Why don’t you go in the back and lie down on the cot for a while?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. I’m fine.” He stared at an eight-by-ten glossy of Henry Armetta he didn’t remember picking up. I’m just dandy. Last night I predicted to myself Barry Wren would be the next murder victim. I’m just dandy.

  Gabriel Darnoff was having a perfectly awful day. He didn’t know which was worse, the unanimous verdict of the newspaper critics that his new play was positively dreadful, or the news of Barry Wren’s murder. This early in the afternoon, still wearing his bathrobe, still not shaved or bathed, drinking his seventh cup of unsweetened black coffee, seated in a wing chair and puffing on a cigarillo, he was plagued by the memory of having been near Barry Wren’s house the previous night. He’d left the theater when the curtain went up and hadn’t returned until it was about to come down. Would anyone believe that all he did during those three hours was walk? Of course not. Oh, Poppa, did you have to commit suicide? Because of you I’m a murder suspect. A murder suspect.

  He paced the room. Murder suspect. Through circumstances beyond his control, a man becomes a murder suspect, and what’s more, there’s every likelihood he did the killings. Say, that’s not a bad idea. Wait a minute. Maybe it should be a woman. It might be just right for Tallulah. So what if she’s getting a bit long in the tooth, she’s still a draw and she could use a hit badly. They could all use a hit badly. Gabriel Damoff could use a hit …

  His mother was on the phone. “A black curse on all the critics! They should grow like onions with their heads in the ground But at least every cloud has a silver lining, my sweet child. Barry Wren is murdered! Such
a mitzvah! Your father must be dancing in heaven!”

  Gabriel smiled “Mama, I hope for your sake there’s a life after death, so you’ll be reunited with Poppa .”

  “Gabriel darling, if there’s a life after death, he’s remarried.”

  Mitchell Zang flung a vase and it crashed against a wall and shattered into dangerous-looking fragments. What kind of a life is this? How much longer do I go on this way? Bit parts, walk- ons, rejection upon rejection, no friends, no woman to pay my bills, and now that bedbug Wren has to go and get himself murdered. I wonder if he was killed when they were holding me at the station, or when I was with Nanette—that fucking whore, I’m not through with her. Not by a long shot. Christ, the way those cops tackled me and held my arms twisted behind my back, I could have been crippled for life, I should have broken her nose. I should have stomped on her and broken her ribs. Damn it! Why didn’t I wreck the bust of Abner Walsh she’s working on, that would have served her right. He prowled around the room searching, searching for something left to hock. The pawn shop on Broadway had a window chockablock with all of Nance Liston’s redeemables; there couldn’t possibly be anything left in the apartment. Maybe he could sell the furniture, but that could get him into a heap of trouble he didn’t need. Maybe …

  Just maybe there was a way to get Tallulah Bankhead interested in him. He’d heard she went for younger guys. She had money. She was always picking up the tab. Nance told him she was always giving money to friends Maybe I’ll call her up, he thought, tell her there’s something Nance wanted her to have and maybe I could bring it around and maybe we’ll have a drink and then maybe dinner and later a little kadiddle from which she’ll barely recover. I’ll be so sensational and then … He stopped. Does one dare take a sock at Tallulah Bankhead?

  The phone interrupted his fantasy. It was George Baxt, the agent.

  Baxt was never very good at disguising the loathing in his voice, so he was quick. “Marion Dougherty has a bit on next Wednesday’s Kraft, a longshoreman—believe it or not, it’s over five lines, two hundred and twenty-five. They’ll only need you the two days before air time. Are you free?” Is he free? The beast should be on exhibit in the Bronx Zoo or in a jar in a laboratory.

  Zang’s heart sang. Rescue was at hand. He wheedled a fifty- dollar advance from Baxt. He’d be in his office in an hour to get it.

  “You know what I’d like to serve Mitchell Zang?” Baxt told his secretary. “A poisoned prostitute.”

  David Carney looked at himself in the mirror in his bedroom. There was pride in his voice as he said to his image, “You’re aces, kid! You’re right up there with the best of them! Barry Wren! Now he’s really the big time. Oh, you can’t really sniff at Lester Miroff and Oliver Sholom, they weren’t so famous, but still … you shouldn’t be so modest, Davey.”

  “You shouldn’t be so modest,” Elsa Carney had said to him when he sold his first short story. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, when you’ve got talent? Success, money, adulation…!”

  Fine talk, he thought at the time, coming from a left-winger who promoted a philosophy of share the wealth. Well, she and Isaac certainly shared in his. Oh, to hell with them They’re always haunting me. They’re so damned pushy. Why didn’t they do something about that awful acne when I was a kid, leaving me with these ugly pockmarks? Why didn’t they get me the plastic surgery they were always talking about? The hell with them. The hell with everybody.

  Aloud to his reflection in the mirror, he inquired while rubbing his hands together in greedy expectation, “Now who shall I kill next?”

  THIRTEEN

  Armbruster Pershing was not your everyday run-of-the-mill theatrical attorney. Although he represented a fair share of show-business heavyweights, he kept his own profile as low as celebrity could permit. Saving Ted Valudni from the threat of foreclosure on his career was a matter of one phone call to Washington, D C., and then agreeing to a bargain that satisfied both parties. But here Armbruster Pershing was facing a perplexing dilemma. How, Ted Valudni asked him, how do I prevent a killer from using me as a target? Who do I call for protection? On the afternoon of Tallulah’s recording, Valudni phoned Pershing from the apartment he hadn’t ventured from in two days. Fear had immobilized him. Not only was he a possible victim, on Jacob Singer’s list he was a possible perpetrator. His defected wife Beth was no comfort whatsoever. To add insult to injury, within two days of decamping, she was already at work doing a sketch with Tallulah. After years of retirement, she sallies forth and conquers. Hell, luck was always on Beth’s side. She was lucky she’d married Ted and shared his success and wealth and position, instead of marrying the novelist she was engaged to when Ted first met her. He was one of those writers who wrote tender little tales about growing up in the Deep South with his wonderful mammy who called him “my own little chile” and his grandpa who took him fishin’ (barefoot, of course) and his Uncle Jizzum who drank sumthin’ fierce, and there were characters with names like Jenny Bess and Cora Belle and Bobby Jack and of course a dog named Yeller. The writer had a small but loyal following and was popular in remainder, but he never made a dime worth envying.

  “Beth,” Ted said to her when he tracked her down at the studio during a break, “how can you throw twenty years of marriage out the window?”

  “It’s easy.”

  “What’s happened to you?” he yelled. “When did you become so callous? My life is in danger and it means nothing to you?”

  “Is the insurance paid up?”

  “I see. It boils down to that. I never dreamt the day would come when I’d say I have no one left to turn to.”

  “Or to turn in.”

  “It’s not enough you have mortally wounded me with a stab wound, do you have to twist the hilt?”

  “Teddy, who are you kidding? Do you think I didn’t know about all your affairs?” He was staring at the telephone with loathing Even the telephone had turned on him. “Do you think I don’t know about the hidden bank accounts in Martinique and Montenegro?” She was watching Tallulah deep in conversation with Lewis Drefuss and wondering what was wrong. Now Tallulah was having one of her coughing fits, a beaut. Ethel Merman was rehearsing at the top of her lungs, her pianist wore carmuffs and an angelic smile. Beth said into the mouthpiece, “For years since you made it big in Hollywood, our marriage has been a one-sided secret controlled by you. Teddy, darling. I’m no longer a marionette I’ve seen my lawyer and he’ll be in touch with Pershing And Ted”—it was a tone of voice he recognized, the dangerous one: Plead and cajole as he might, there was no hope of appeasing her—”don’t be stingy.”

  After she hung up, she went in search of the container of coffee she had deposited on somebody’s work table. Tallulah was lighting a Craven A while coughing, and waved Beth over. “Who was that on the phone? You look as though you’ve been invited to a funeral.”

  “It was Ted.”

  “That says it all, dahling.”

  “I suppose I should be feeling sorry for him. He’s frightened.”

  “As well he should be, dahling. I’m surprised he’s still among the living, what with the rise in the mortality rate among his sort. Probably with his luck the murderer’s beginning to get bored with all this activity. Perhaps what we’ve been experiencing is a sudden outburst of hyperthyroid activity. Which reminds me, where’s my watchdog? Oh, there he is, dahling, isn’t he attractive, near the water cooler, the large man yawning.”

  Beth agreed Adam Todd was attractive. Then she was caught off guard by Tallulah’s next question

  “Beth, strictly between us girls, you know Ted better than any of us. Could he be committing these murders?”

  “But, Tallulah, he’s turned the apartment into a fortress. He hasn’t left it since the murders began.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “He could tell you anything he likes. Do you always believe it?”

  “Believe me, Tallulah, Ted is frightened He was nev
er a good actor.”

  “I know lots of actors who were never very good and then all of a sudden they give a masterful performance from out of nowhere Well, Jacob Singer says the staff haven’t seen him come or go for the past forty-eight hours. Of course there could be ways he knows of getting in or out without being detected.”

  “Why are you so positive the killer’s a man?”

  Merman was doing her vocal exercises and they heard a glass break.

  “Dahling, a very strong woman had to hold Barry Wren under water and bash Oliver Sholom’s head to pulp. I don’t know anyone right for the part, do you?”

  “Hope Emerson.”

  “Oh, God, dahling, aren’t you divine! Ha-ha-ha! Hope Emerson! Wasn’t she divine as the warden in Caged? That marvelous moment when she phones her boyfriend and says seductively”— she did a superb imitation of Emerson’s voice—“Hellooooo, Thornnnntonnn …” She ran her fingers through her thick mane of hair. “Oh, God, when are we going to get to record this bloody show? Lewis, is it me you’re signaling?”

  “Mrs. Parkers on the phone.”

  “Excuse me, Beth.” She went to Lewis and took the phone. “Dottie, dahling, don’t tell me you’re just getting up!”

  “Tallulah, dear, I’ve been thinking, you’ve got to do something about your drinking.”

  Armbruster Pershing took his fourth phone call of the day from Ted Valudni. He listened to the frantic man and then advised him, “You can’t leave town, Ted. Not without the police’s permission.”

  “Oh, screw the police!” Valudni was celebrated for his nasty temper and uncontrollable displays of anger, and now he was in pique condition. “They can’t force me to stay here! They’ve got nothing on me! I’ve got to be in Hollywood for meetings—”

  “That’s a month off.”

  “So I go early! I need to find a place to live, don’t I?”