CHASING
THE
DEVIL
CHASING
THE
DEVIL
Agata Stanford
A JENEVACRIS PRESS PUBLICATION
CHASING THE DEVIL
A Dorothy Parker Mystery / November 2010
Published by
Jenevacris Press
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2010 by Agata Stanford
Edited by Shelley Flannery
Typesetting & cover design by Eric Conover
ISBN 978-0-9827542-3-8
Printed in the United States of America
www.dorothyparkermysteries.com
for Mary Rose
Acknowledgments
Some writers say that their profession is a lonely one. But I’ve been lucky to have the companionship of an assemblage of fascinating real-life characters with me at all times, including the emotional support and encouragement of my family and friends, the artistic skills of Eric Conover, without whose design talents my books would not look nearly so good, and the editing expertise of Shelley Flannery, copyeditor and historian, who shows me the errors of my ways.
Table of Contents
Cast of Characters
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
The Final Chapter
Poetic License
About the Author
Who’s Who in the Cast of
Dorothy Parker Mysteries
The Algonquin Round Table was the famous assemblage of writers, artists, actors, musicians, newspaper and magazine reporters, columnists, and critics who met for luncheon at 1:00 P.M. most days, for a period of about ten years, starting in 1919, in the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street in Manhattan. The unwritten test for membership was wit, brilliance, and likeability. It was an informal gathering ranging from ten to fifteen regulars, although many peripheral characters who arrived for lunch only once might later claim they were part of the “Vicious Circle,” broadening the number to thirty, forty, and more. Once taken into the fold, one was expected to indulge in witty repartee and humorous observations during the meal, and then follow along to the Theatre, or a speakeasy, or Harlem for a night of jazz. Gertrude Stein dubbed the Round Tablers “The Lost Generation.” The joyous, if sardonic, reply that rose with a laugh from Dorothy Parker was, “Wheeee! We’re lost!”
Dorothy Parker set the style and attitude for modern women of America to emulate during the 1920s and 1930s. Through her pointed poetry, cutting theatrical reviews, brilliant commentary, bittersweet short stories, and much-quoted rejoinders, Mrs. Parker was the embodiment of the soulful pathos of the “Ain't We Got Fun” generation of the Roaring Twenties.
Robert Benchley: Writer, humorist, boulevardier, and bon vivant, editor of Vanity Fair and Life Magazine, and drama critic of The New Yorker, he may accidentally have been the very first standup comedian. His original and skewed sense of humor made him a star on Broadway, and later, in the movies. What man didn’t want to be Bob Benchley?
Alexander Woollcott was the most famous man in America—or so he said. As drama critic for the New York Times, he was the star-maker, discovering and promoting the careers of Helen Hayes, Katherine Cornell, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and the Marx Brothers, to name but a few. Larger than life and possessing a rapier wit, he was a force to be reckoned with. When someone asked a friend of his to describe Woollcott, the answer was, “Improbable.”
Frank Pierce Adams (FPA) was a self-proclaimed modern-day Samuel Pepys, whose newspaper column, “The Conning Tower,” was a widely read daily diary of how, where, and with whom he spent his days while gallivanting about New York City. Thanks to him, every witty retort, clever comment, and one-liner uttered by the Round Tablers at luncheon was in print the next day for millions of readers to chuckle over at the breakfast table.
Harold Ross wrote for Stars and Stripes during the War, where he first met fellow newspapermen Woollcott and Adams. The rumpled, “clipped woodchuck” (as described by Edna Ferber) was one of the most brilliant editors of his time. His magazine, The New Yorker, which he started in 1925, has enriched the lives of everyone who has ever had a subscription. His hypochondria was legendary, and his the-world-is-out-to-get-me outlook was often comical.
Jane Grant married Harold Ross but kept her maiden name, cut her hair shorter than her husband’s, and viewed domesticity with disdain. A society columnist for the New York Times, Jane was the very chic model of modernity during the 1920s. Having worked hard for women’s suffrage, Jane continued in her cause while serving meals and emptying ashtrays during all-night sessions of the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club.
Heywood Broun began his career at numerous newspapers throughout the country before landing a spot on the World. Sportswriter and Harlem Renaissance jazz fiend, he was to become the social conscience of America during the 1920s and beyond through his column, “As I See It.” His insight and commentary made him a champion of the labor movement, as did his fight for justice during and after the seven years of the Sacco and Vanzetti trials and execution.
Edmund “Bunny” Wilson: Writer, editor, and critic of American literature, he first came to work at Vanity Fair after Mrs. Parker pulled his short story out from under the slush-pile and found it interesting.
Robert E. Sherwood came to work on the editorial staff at Vanity Fair alongside Parker and Benchley. The six-foot-six Sherwood was often tormented by the dwarfs performing—whatever it was they did—at the Hippodrome on his way to and from work at the magazine’s 44th Street offices, but that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the twentieth-century Theatre’s greatest playwrights.
Marc Connelly began his career as a reporter but found his true calling as a playwright. Short and bald, he co-authored his first hit play with the tall and pompadoured George S. Kaufman.
Edna Ferber racked up Pulitzer Prizes by writing bestselling potboilers set against America’s sweeping vistas, most notably, So Big, Showboat, Cimarron, and Giant. She, too, collaborated with George S. on several successful Broadway shows. A spinster, she was a formidable personality and wit and a much-coveted member of the Algonquin Round Table.
John Barrymore was a member of the Royal Family of the American Stage, which included John Drew and Ethel and Lionel Barrymore. John Barrymore was famous not only for his stage portrayals, but for his majestic profile, which was captured in all its splendor on celluloid.
The Marx Brothers: First there were five, then there were four, then there were three Marx Brothers— awww, heck, if you don’t know who these crazy, zany men are, it’s time to hit the video store or tune into Turner Classic Movies!
Also mentioned: Neysa McMein, artist and illustrator, whose studio door was open all hours of the day and night for anyone who wished to pay a call; Grace Moore, Broadway and opera star, and later a movie star; Broadway and radio star Fanny Brice—think Streisand in Funny Girl; Noel Coward, English star and playwright who took America by storm with his classy comedies and bright musical offerings; Condé Nast, publisher of numerous magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden; Florenz Zeigfeld—of “Follies�
�� fame—big-time producer of the extravaganza stage revue; The Lunts, husband-and-wife stars of the London and Broadway stages, individually known as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne; Tallulah Bankhead—irreverent, though beautiful, southern-born actress with the foghorn drawl, who later made a successful transition from the stage to film—the life of any party, she often perked up the waning festivities performing cartwheels sans bloomers; Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jascha Heifetz—famous for “God Bless America” and hundreds more hit songs; composer of Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess and many more great works; and the violin virtuoso, respectively.
CHASING
THE
DEVIL
Chapter One
“I’mfreezzenmabalsov, frkrissake!” spat out Ross. “’Sfknkoloutere,” he continued, a scowl furrowing his brow. The bristle-brush head was jammed tightly inside a brown woolen stocking cap. As his bulbous nose and hooded eyes retreated into his upturned collar, he looked not unlike a critter receding into the underbrush.
“Your language is simply atrocious, Ross,” said his wife, Jane Grant. “Children can hear you.”
We stood among the masses of New Yorkers lining the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue near Herald Square in the icy morning sunshine. It was Thanksgiving Day, and all New York had come to watch the spectacle.
For weeks, Herbert Straus, president of R.H. Macy’s department store on Herald Square and 34th Street, had been advertising in all the dailies the “promise of a surprise New York will never forget.” Four hundred employees of the store, mostly immigrants missing the Christmas holiday celebrations of their homelands, asked Straus if he would sponsor a special event marking the beginning of the Christmas season. Given the go-ahead, they devised floats depicting their national customs, hired bands, acquired animals from the Central Park Zoo, and appealed to Broadway celebrities to march in the parade along with hundreds of clowns and circus acts. And bringing up the rear, a float carrying Santa Claus.
The R.H. Macy’s Christmas Parade started uptown on 145th Street and Convent Avenue, made its way across 110th Street at Central Park’s northernmost border, and marched down Broadway to Seventh Avenue, culminating at the department store. Thousands of families turned out, and the fanfare and laughter and excitement of the children warmed even the chilliest of hearts, except, perhaps, that of my friend Harold Ross, who hated crowds and lived in constant fear of contracting the germ that would kill him.
And here they were, runny-nosed little monsters in abundance, bundled-up in hats with earflaps, leggings, woolen coats, and mittens, and lifted upon the shoulders of fathers to better see the floats and zoo animals, the marching bands, and the big balloons.
The Felix the Cat balloon loomed huge in the distance, tethered to walkers along the parade route. Squeals of laughter floated up like bubbles in the air with the youngsters’ delight at seeing their cartoon hero in giant form. The black rubber cat, as tall as the buildings along the parade corridor, moved with the cumbersome drag of a sloth; the band’s horn section pounded out “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” with an insistent drumbeat and the repeated prodding crash of cymbals.
“What fun!” I said to Woodrow Wilson, my Boston terrier, whom I had dressed in his new red-plush coat to fend off the cold from his short-haired little black-and-white body. He shivered in my arms, so I nuzzled him closer against the fur of my collar as I stood perched upon a footstool. At my diminutive stature, the extra six inches raised us up just high enough to peek between the bobbing heads of average spectators.
“Crakinzak!” mumbled Ross, who stood between me and Jane, bobbing from one foot to the other, more in a show of impatience than in any effort to ward off the cold.
I turned in the direction of an exasperated “hurrumph” to face a gaping-mouthed fellow, a child hoisted upon his shoulder. His expression of distaste at Ross’s rather colorful, if not terribly original, exclamations, prompted me to say, “Do forgive his unfortunate choice of words. He cannot help himself. It is a medical condition.”
“Tourettes?” he asked, lifting his scarf to meet his fedora against the chill wind from off the Hudson.
“Oh, no, thank you, I’ve quit,” I replied.
“Sonovbitch, can’feelmetos!, ’M goin’ ’ome.”
“Too bad his lips aren’t frozen,” I said to Jane.
“You can’t go home,” said Jane. “We’re going to Edna’s. Go stand in that doorway, out of the wind, and try to behave yourself.” Jane turned her pretty face toward me. “What are you laughing about, Dottie?”
“Your husband,” I said, shaking my head.
“You mean my petulant six-year-old!”
She threw a mean glance toward the man huddled in the doorway, watching as he unscrewed the cap of a flask, a cigarette dangling from his chapped lips. Ross could be easily mistaken for a Skid-Row-bum-come-uptown.
Our friend, writer Edna Ferber, upon first meeting Ross at a fancy dinner party several years ago, mistook the sullen fellow as a vagrant brought home by the hostess as a practical joke on her well-shod dinner guests. That hostess was my good friend, Jane Grant, society and women’s columnist at the New York Times, suffragette, and fierce opponent of housekeeping, marriage, and childbearing. The “vagrant” was my friend Harold Ross, newspaper reporter, Round Table member, and now publisher of a new magazine, The New Yorker, which debuted this past February of 1925.
When Jane married Harold (who was best described by Edna Ferber as “a clipped woodchuck” because of his bristly head of hair, overbite, and beady eyes), she retained her maiden name and violently cut off her hair, combing what was left into a dashing “man’s cut.” The effect was delightful, as Jane attained a modern, sleek look, which was accentuated by an exceptionally fine, slim figure and smashing wardrobe. As much as I liked Ross, who was a notorious paranoid hypochondriac, I wondered how long this marriage would last. Jane was beginning to view all the troubles through the ages that sat upon the soft shoulders of her sex as having been Ross’s fault. Where Jane usually viewed the world as a glass half full, Ross’s world was a vessel that had been drained dry by all those who were out to get him.
“I thought you said Aleck was going to meet us on this corner,” I said, a shiver warbling my voice. “What’s the holdup, I wonder?”
“He had to go uptown this morning,” said Jane. “He’s probably stuck in traffic.”
“Ah, there’re the boys,” I said, when the band broke into the intro of “Yes, We Have No Bananas!,” calling our attention up the street where Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, and Groucho, dressed in costumes as the Four Musketeers, waved to the crowd while skipping and frolicking down Broadway. Their new Broadway show, The Cocoanuts, was set to open in a couple of weeks.
The Marx Brothers had become quite famous this past year, thanks to Alexander Woollcott, who discovered them when he reviewed their show, I’ll Say She Is, last season. Aleck was the only first-string critic of a major newspaper to see the show when it opened, as all of the other newspaper reviewers believed the Brothers’ show to be just another Vaudeville act unworthy of their papers’ reviews. The opening night of the play Aleck was set to review that fateful evening was canceled, so, already dressed in evening clothes and his famous opera cape and scarf, he decided to make an evening of it anyway by seeing the show that no one else wanted to review. Alexander Woollcott’s reputation was that of a star maker: Helen Hayes; Katherine Cornell; the husband-and-wife acting team, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, are only a few of his many discoveries. In his review of the Brothers’ show he raved about the hilarity and inventiveness of the four comedians, and literally overnight I’ll Say She Is became the hottest ticket on Broadway.
As the boys continued their antics toward the newly expanded Macy’s department store, I turned at the sound of the Devil himself. Aleck stood beside me, and for once, thanks to my stepstool, we stood eye-to-eye.
“You have on very high heels or very short stilts, Dottie, dear.”
I smiled at the pudgy, tri
ple-chinned, bespectacled face of the man I loved so dearly. “Such élan,” I thought, as I looked him over. His wavy brown hair was covered by a wide-brimmed, black felt hat; a long, red cashmere scarf circled his lower two chins, and an oversized otter-lined black greatcoat tented his impressive body. As he leaned on his favorite ivory-headed walking stick, I thought that only Alexander Woollcott could carry off so flamboyant a costume that teetered just at the edge of where Style met the Ridiculous. But, of course, Aleck was flamboyant, he was stylish, and he was, at times, ridiculous.
“You’re late, missed most of the parade. What have you been up to?”
“Had to do a favor for a friend.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’d you have to bail out of jail? Your bootlegger?”
“That’d be the day!” he chuckled. “No, my dear Dorothy, my friend is actually the fellow one calls when one needs bailing. Now, tell me why, Dottie, dearest, why do they call this a Christmas Parade, that’s what I want to know?”
“Because of Santa Claus, I suppose.”
“But today is Thanksgiving Day. Christmas is a month away.”
“How the hell do I know why it’s called the Christmas Parade!”
“I’ll have to send a wire to Straus and tell him he needs to change the name of the parade if he plans on doing it again next year. Christmas is Christmas and Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving, don’t you agree?” said Aleck, as if there could be no argument.
“Shit, yes! The man’s an ass, what can I say?”
The man in the fedora caught my eye. The child on his shoulder giggled.
“You’re almost as bad as Ross over there, Dottie,” chided Jane.
“Well, I’ve been badly influenced. I keep bad company. Perhaps I should go stand in the doorway corner with him,” I said, stepping down from my stool. My feet were freezing and my kid-leather gloves were of little use against the cold. I lifted the silver fox collar of my coat to better shield my face, and buried my nose in Woodrow Wilson’s warm body. “I could use a drink to warm up,” I said. “Maybe I will join Ross. He’s got the hooch.”
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