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

by George Baxt

“Skipping town could be interpreted as an admission of guilt.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  Pershing was the soul of patience. “You pay me for advice and I’m advising you. Don’t leave town. Don’t even think of it. I could drop in for a drink around six-thirty or so if you like? I prefer reasoning this face to face.”

  Ted pouted. “Well, yes, that would be nice. Do you mind stopping in at Gristede’s and picking me up some lamb chops, a container of milk, a container of orange juice, a loaf of rye bread, a couple of cans of Bumble Bee white-meat tuna, and a box of Ebinger’s chocolate-covered whole-wheat doughnuts …”

  As Pershing listened, he stared out the window, his cheeks puffed out and his head shaking, not from palsy but from disbelief. Why, he wondered, why hadn’t he listened to his father and gone into animal husbandry?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In his office at the precinct, Jacob Singer reread the autopsy report on Barry Wren. The murderer should have waited and let fate do the job for him. Wren had an advanced cancer of the colon. According to the coroner, the best he could have hoped for was another year, give or take a month, so in being murdered last night, he really wasn’t missing much. Oliver Delaney had been assigned to round up the usual suspects and Gabriel Darnoff was the first to be announced. Singer knew his play was a bomb, Dorothy Parker having read him The New York Times review with great relish: “His earlier plays were written with lightning. Last night’s offering has to be the work of a limp strand of spaghetti.”

  “I don’t have an alibi,” said Darnoff, blunt and to the point and winning Singers admiration.

  “In my book, Mr. Darnoff, that scores points for you. No karfuffling around, no looking at the fly specks on the ceiling, no hostility—you didn’t even bring your lawyer.”

  “He’s a bore.”

  “You weren’t at the theater last night?”

  “No. Wasn’t I lucky?”

  “The audience wasn’t.”

  “Score points for you.”

  “Dorothy Parker read me the notices.”

  “She read them to me, too.”

  Singer smiled. “So what are you going to tell me?”

  “I left the theater when the curtain went up, and in between the curtain coming down, when I returned, I walked miles and miles and miles. I walked the length and breadth of New York City. I didn’t drop into a bar for a drink or sit on a bench in the park and I was somewhere near Barry Wren’s house at some point and I don’t remember murdering him. Anyway, I read how he was killed and if I had done it, I can assure you I would have been drenched with bath water because I’m a very sloppy person and my clothes would have been very damp when I returned to the theater.”

  “The murderer could have stripped off his clothes before the murder and then put them back on after the job was done.”

  “Gee, I wish I had an alibi.”

  “Me too. I don’t think playwrights should be murderers. They have so much other tsurris to put up with.”

  “You’ve met my mother.”

  “How’s she bearing up?”

  “Pop’s suicide was a blow, but she’s strong peasant stock. She’ll remarry.”

  “You were very close to your father.”

  “I worshiped him.”

  “He was a brilliant actor. I’ll never forget his Lear.”

  “That isn’t why I worshiped him.” Singer looked at the playwright and realized he was fighting tears. Singer didn’t hurry him. “It’s funny, Mr. Singer, I can put emotions down on paper, but when it comes to verbalizing them, I’m tongue-tied. I can’t explain my feelings for my father. I can only say that he was never not supportive, that he never allowed me to accept defeat, that he taught me to be kind to my fellow man and to very bad actors who have to be fired out of town. He taught me not to throw sticks at dogs and to view those less fortunate, such as theater critics and those who denounce their friends to save their own skins, with a philosophical There but for the Grace of God go I.” He never let me wallow in self-pity, and he wanted his epitaph to read, ‘I hope I’m not too early.’” He sat back in his chair and applied a match to a cigarillo. “I’ll never forgive the robbers who stole him from me. So that’s all I’ve got to tell you. I could have phoned it in.”

  “I learn more looking at you while you’re talking. Tell me, Mr. Darnoff, were you ever an actor?”

  Five minutes later, Gabriel Darnoff was replaced by Joseph Savage, who kept lacing his fingers together and then unlacing them. Singer said to him, “There were an awful lot of people out taking long walks last night.”

  “I have no reason to lie to you, Mr Singer. That’s exactly what I was doing. I had a lot of thinking to do, and I think best on my feet. You see, a very nice lady handed me some hope yesterday.” He told him about the commission from Tallulah to write a play.

  Singer said, “That is a very nice thing for a very nice lady to do. In fact, it’s a thumb in the eye to the committee. You know they’re out to nail her.”

  “Everybody knows “ He laughed.

  “So she hires a blacklisted writer to write her a play. Did you come up with an idea?”

  “Yes, thank God. Please don’t ask me to tell you what it is. I consider it bad luck to discuss a work in progress.”

  “It’s also bad luck to get murdered in a bathtub. I don’t suppose at some point you were in the vicinity of Wren’s town house.”

  “I’m sorry to say I was.”

  “About what time?”

  “I don’t know I’m sorry this isn’t London. I might have heard Big Ben chime.”

  Singer hoped he’d write better jokes for Tallulah.

  “I did take the Fifth Avenue bus home, if that’s any help.”

  “You’re the one who needs the help, Mr. Savage. I suppose you can’t remember what time that was either.”

  “Well, it was latish.”

  “How latish?”

  “Maybe after ten or so.”

  “Do you remember what number bus you took?”

  “I live in the Village, so it would have to be one of the two buses that go down to Eighth Street.”

  “Do you suppose somebody might remember seeing you on the bus?”

  “I doubt it. I’m always well behaved in public.”

  Joseph Savage gladly gave way to David Carney. “Been behaving yourself, David?” asked Singer, watching Carney sitting and rubbing the palms of his hands back and forth on his thighs.

  “I’ve been behaving as usual. A murder here, a murder there.”

  “Who’d you murder last night?”

  “I don’t have to tell you, you know that. I murdered Barry Wren.”

  “How did you murder him?”

  “It’s in the papers. Don’t you read the papers? That was a very nice picture of you in the Mirror. You look like John Wayne. Who was that big black lady with you?”

  “My mistress David, I want you to tell me how you murdered Barry Wren.”

  “You’re sure it won’t bore you?”

  “Not at all. I’ve read Evelyn Waugh and survived.”

  “I think Waugh is hell.”

  “This is a police station, David, not the New School. Tell me how you murdered Barry Wren.”

  Carney was beginning to get agitated. “I drowned him, for God’s sake.”

  “How did you drown him?”

  “With my hands, how else?”

  “You don’t have to shout.”

  “You don’t have to be so dense!”

  Singer held up his hands. “Truce, David, truce.”

  “Indeed. Truce or consequences.”

  “You mustn’t threaten me, David.”

  “I don’t threaten, I act.”

  Bingo, thought Singer. He doesn’t threaten, he acts. “So you didn’t make those phone threats to Lester Miroff and Miss Bankhead?”

  “Her! I’d like to wring her neck. I’d like to tie her to a post and shoot arrows into her! She’s a mean, rotten, despicable liar.”
He examined a fingernail “She’s tragic. She’s afraid to grow old. That’s why she won’t do my play, which I’m sure she never read. Old actresses don’t like to do plays about old actresses.”

  “So why write them?”

  Carney drew himself up haughtily. “An artist must follow the dictates of his muse. Anyway, I’m no longer writing plays.”

  “What are you doing instead?”

  “I’m murdering people, you nitwit, doesn’t anything sink in?”

  “Don’t be abusive, David.”

  “You better watch your step, mister You don’t want to get on my list.”

  “Who’s next on your list, David?”

  With hands on hips he said, “That’s for me to know and you to find out!”

  “Pretty please?”

  “Pretty please my ass!”

  After Carney left, Oscar Delaney, who’d overheard it all, came into the office with an indescribable expression on his face and asked Singer, “You are letting that nutcase loose? You aren’t putting him in a straitjacket and throwing him in a cell at Bellevue and conveniently losing the key?”

  Singer was sitting with his head in his hands, weary. “Oscar, there’s no way I can put him away legally. We could have held him yesterday when he had at Bankhead in the zoo, but he never touched her. There were witnesses. And fiddle-dee-dee, I’m too tired to think about it. Oscar?”

  “What?”

  “Why did they name you Oscar?”

  “There was an actor named Oscar Apfel my mother admired and—”

  “That’s enough, Oscar. Who’s waiting?”

  “Last night’s star attraction in a return appearance by popular demand I wish he’d buy himself a new beret.”

  Mitchell Zang came bouncing into the room. “Gee, I’ve had some great news?”

  “I wish I did,” said Singer.

  “I’m starring on a Kraft Theater in a couple of weeks. Terrific script. And what a supporting cast. John Newland, John Baragrey, John Fiedler—”

  That’s an awful lot of Johns.”

  “—and Reba Tassell.”

  “What an anticlimax. Okay, Zang, you know why you’re here. Where were you last night?”

  “Right here! You saw me yourself!”

  “That was in the wee hours. Where were you before you exercised your fists on Mrs. Walsh?”

  “Like what time?”

  “Like about when Barry Wren was playing bathing beauty.”

  “What time was that?”

  Mitchell Zang was big and easily twenty years younger than Singer, but the detective knew he could deck the son of a bitch with one well-aimed and well-timed blow. He resisted the temptation, but he promised himself that someday, in the very near future, he would find a reason to let Mitchell Zang provoke him.

  “It was sometime between nine and ten.”

  “I was having a drink at the Circus Bar.”

  Too quick, thought Singer .He said, “That’s an actor’s hangout on West Forty-fifth, right?”

  “Just off Eighth, before the Imperial Theater.”

  And long after the Renaissance. “Witnesses?”

  “Well, gee, I don’t know. It was so crowded.”

  Jacob fixed him with a devastating look. “Mitchell, the Circus Bar does not come to life until after eleven o’clock, when working actors and footsore gypsies who can afford the price of a beer converge there. So don’t give me any of your bullshit. Be honest with me and I’ll believe you’re starring on a TV show.”

  The interview lasted another fifteen minutes. Zang might be an idiot, but he was a genius at double-talk. He had no alibi was what it all boiled down to. Singer threatened him with deportation.

  “But I’m a citizen!” protested Zang.

  “I’ll find the loophole.”

  Zang left, mentally wrecked. Ted Valudni entered with Armbruster Pershing. Oliver Delaney had to bring in another chair. After the other two were seated, he thought that if Singer tried to squeeze a fourth into the office, he’d have to use KY. Valudni wore a Trilby hat and a long trailing scarf around his neck that partially concealed the lower part of his face.

  “We meet at last, Mr. Valudni,” said Singer. “I trust you’re over the flu you’ve been pleading the past two times you’ve been asked to make an appearance.”

  “I will not be victimized! I will not tolerate police brutality! You know I’m endangering my life by appearing here! This is my attorney, Armbruster Pershing. Tell him, Armbruster.”

  “What do you want me to tell him?”

  “Why do I pay you!”

  “Gentlemen,” said Singer, “peace. You were with Mr. Valudni, Mr Pershing, when I sent the officer to pick him up?”

  “Yes, wasn’t that convenient?”

  Singer was surprised that he had such an honest face, it was so rare in lawyers.

  “Why haven’t I been given police protection?”

  Singer loathed Valudni. He even hated himself for having liked some of Valudni’s pictures. What was worse, he hated himself for having paid to see them.

  “Mr. Valudni,” said Singer with exaggerated patience, “if everybody in this city who thought they needed protection were given protection, the city would go broke before the weekend. I appreciate your bravery in coming here. Where were you last night between nine and ten?”

  “I was at home cowering with fear.”

  “Why? You saw a mouse?”

  “Three friends of mine were murdered—”

  “How’d you know about the third then?”

  “I didn’t! Well, you know what I mean!”

  “No, I don’t, tell me.”

  “Well, these murders have me petrified. I’m not a brave man, I can’t afford to be one.”

  “I know. I read your testimony.”

  Valudni was deflated. Pershing said to Singer, “My client feels threatened and I’m sure you understand why he does. These murders have a pattern in which he could fit and that’s why he’s afraid to leave his house.”

  “He’d be safer in public. Barry Wren had locks and bolts and a fat lot of good it did him. Mr. Valudni, you got a back door?”

  “Of course I have a back door, for deliveries, for people you wouldn’t admit through your front door.”

  “And you were a communist?”

  “You’re harassing me! Armbruster, do I have to put up with this?”

  Pershing said, “Tell the man what you did, and then I think he’ll let you go home.”

  “Why must he harp on things like my back door!”

  “I’m sitting right here, Valudni, you don’t have to keep referring to me in the third person! You’re not on the back lot at Twentieth directing Marlon Brando!”

  Valudni asked gently, “What about my back door?”

  “It can be easily jimmied and broken into and you could be murdered in your living room, and the way you’ve got yourself barricaded in, nobody would know you’re dead until some neighbor smelled your decay. Was anyone with you last night?”

  “No, I was alone. But I never left the apartment. I can prove it! Ask the night staff! The doorman.”

  “How many doormen are there?”

  “How many do we need? There’s just one door.”

  “So there’s just one doorman. Does he have eyes in the back of his head?”

  “I never look at the back of his head.”

  “He’d have to have eyes there to see what’s going on if he’s helping somebody in or out of a cab, wouldn’t he? You could slip past him then, couldn’t you?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You could go out your back door and down the service elevator and out through the alley that leads to the next street.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told you. I stayed at home, frightened Well, I did watch a movie I did when I was an actor a long time ago with—”

  “Oh, cut the horseshit, Valudni. You had every reason to murder those three guys. Each one of
them put you in the hot seat, if I have to say so myself, it’s justifiable homicide. Now come on, Valudni, confess.” Pershing wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare. “If you confess, I can go have dinner with Tallulah Bankhead instead of being here with you, which I wish I wasn’t.” He said to Pershing, “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “So I bid you good night, gentlemen,” he said while glaring at Valudni, “and I use the term gentlemen advisedly.”

  Tallulah Bankhead was examining the numbers on Nanette Walsh’s carriage house. The recording of her Sunday program had gone smoothly, which was a blessing, and she was free sooner than she had expected. She thought the carriage house adorable. So this is where a sculptor sculpts, and also gets a sock in the face from a part-time lover. Chacun et cetera. She walked to the door and put her hand on the knocker.

  Here I am, dahling, Tallulah Bankhead as Caesar about to cross the Rubicon.

  FOURTEEN

  She could hear the sound of the knocker resounding from within while inside her head her private phonograph was playing the Quaalude in C-sharp Minor. She had downed enough tranquilizers that day to drug a football squad. She attacked the knocker again. Nanette Walsh had agreed to see her at six and it was six and Tallulah was punctual, which called for a historical plaque to be affixed to the building. From the corner of her right eye she could see a subtle movement at the window and then the corner of a drape falling back into place. Tallulah knocked again. Come on, dahling, stop trying for an effect, this isn’t opportunity, it’s Tallulah.

  The door opened. The handsome woman with badly disguised bruises on her face smiled without opening her mouth. “Well, Tallulah, we meet again.”

  Tallulah pushed the door aside and swept past Nanette into the impressively oversized room. “We’ve met before, dahling? You’ll have to forgive me, my memory’s a sieve. When did we meet?”

  Nanette shut the door and shot its bolt into place. I suppose bolts are now the fashion, thought Tallulah, thanks to some nuts. “With Abner at some parties, a long time ago.”

  “Dahling, in my life a long time ago is this morning.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Not too soon. A very dry vodka martini with lots of rocks.”

  “Lemon peel? Olive? Onions?”

  “No fruit, dahling. Too much acid” Nanette went to the bar and Tallulah gave the room her own special brand of microscopic examination. Her house in Bedford Village, decorated by an aspiring young man who worshiped at her throne, Tallulah described as being decorated in early acolyte. Nanette’s studio she would describe as decorated in passé Bohemia It was the sort of Greenwich Village decor Tallulah would have admired in 1920, when she was still young and impressionable. Velvet drapes hung from a balcony and lacked only Douglas Fairbanks Senior swooping down, brandishing a saber and flashing his grand-piano teeth while laughing with devil-may-care insouciance, a memory courtesy of his film The Black Pirate. There was much agonizing in the subjects of the paintings hung scatter fashion on the walls. Kathe Kollwitz-type women and children with their mouths open, presumably caught in mid-howl, and she suspected at least one of them might be an authentic Kollwitz, a legacy from Abner Walsh. Kollwitz would have been his taste.