“You’ve read my mind,” I said, “about the cognac. Is it the real stuff or rotgut with motor oil added for color?”
“It’s the real thing, my dear!”
“Bless you.”
Oh crap, I thought; tonight was the opening of George Gershwin’s new show, Song of the Flame. As Aleck poured all around, and I broke into the box of chocolates, I began to tell the men of the events of the day, of which they had already been briefed by both Mr. Benchley and Cousin Joe. They chuckled and Aleck was exceptionally jolly at the knowledge that all the assassins were dead or locked away.
“Joe told me that the man they caught wasn’t saying a word.”
“You mean, the man I caught, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma petite enfant, the man you caught.”
“He’s not who he claims to be,” I said. “The real Pinchus Seymour Pinkelton, or Pinny as he called himself, is someone the police have yet to identify. The real-deal drove off in his Duesenberg several weeks ago for his lodge in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He hasn’t been seen since. Aleck, Frank, I don’t want to go to the opening tonight. I’m spent, and can review the show next week.”
“You and Benchley and Edna, too, are lazy creatures indeed.”
“Mr. Benchley’s not going with you?”
“All right, get some rest. Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve and we have that charity affair.”
After the men left, I called room service for a steak and the usual accompanying side dishes. Jimmy the bellboy arrived to take Woodrow Wilson on his evening constitutional. I’d just settled down with a second cognac when Mr. Benchley arrived. He hadn’t eaten yet, so I called room service to double the dinner order.
The food revived my spirits and the cognac relaxed my worn-out muscles. Mr. Benchley and I sat around listening to the Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing All Alone, and their new hit, The Charleston, on the radio broadcast.
We were chatting playfully about our friends when Marion Anderson’s new recording, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, began to play. Our mood mellowed as we listened.
Mr. Benchley asked if he had left his cigarette lighter in the apartment sometime during the past few days. I looked through my purse before remembering that I indeed had the lighter; I’d lit my cigarette with it but failed to return it, as moments later we found the dead body of Father Michael Murphy.
“I think it’s in my coat pocket,” I said, heading for the closet to check the pockets of my new Persian lamb coat. “I’ve got it; squirreled away for the winter,” I said, pulling out the lighter along with a handkerchief and a crumpled piece of paper. It was the envelope addressed to Father Michael from Father Timothy Morgan of Grosse Pointe. The correspondence, or whatever the envelope had held, was missing.
I walked back in from the bedroom and tossed the lighter to my friend.
“I’d forgotten about this, Fred,” I said, looking at the postmark and then handing him the envelope. “Father Timothy left New York a few days after this letter was sent from Grosse Pointe.”
“What does it mean, do you think?”
“There’s only one way to find out what was in the envelope. We’ve got to call Timothy Morgan and ask him,” said Mr. Benchley.
I called down to the desk and asked the operator to get me on the line with St. Thomas of Aquinas Seminary College outside Grosse Pointe, Michigan. It would take some time, she told me, as all the lines were busy, but she would ring up as soon as she connected.
An hour later, still with no luck reaching Michigan, Mr. Benchley and I broke out a new deck of cards for a game or ten of rummy, while Ben Bernie crooned Sweet Georgia Brown.
By eleven o’clock, Mr. Benchley was asleep on the sofa, Woodrow Wilson tucked under his arm, the two snoring and whistling in rhythm with Bessie Smith’s rendition of W.C. Handy’s Careless Love Blues.
I was about to turn off the radio and go to bed when the telephone rang. It was the hotel operator calling to say all the circuits were busy and she had still not reached the party I’d requested. “Try again in the morning,” I told her.
“Nodded off . . .,” said Mr. Benchley.
“No kidding.”
Woodrow Wilson leaped off his chest and came to sit before me with a smile of anticipation on his face.
“No, we are not going out, little man. It’s time for bed.” I looked over at my friend, who’d risen off the sofa, handed him his hat, kissed him on the cheek, shut the door behind him, and went to bed.
New Year’s Eve morning 1925 dawned clear and crisp, I am told. I rarely see that time of day unless I am returning from a very late evening.
Woodrow Wilson woke me at ten o’clock, anxious for some action. The poor little critter had been housebound these past few days, with me gallivanting around town discovering dead bodies, chasing assassins, spending my spare time at the police station, and generally running amuck and making a fool of myself in oversized trousers.
“All right, all right,” I whined, dragging myself out of bed. And I literally was dragging, as it felt like every bone and joint in my body would snap into fragments if I moved too quickly. I caught my profile in my wardrobe mirror, and was awed by the color and size of the bruise on my left buttock. Another lovely blue circle, reminiscent of, and about the size of, Lake George, had spread across my upper-left thigh. At least the right side of me was unmarred, I thought, as I went about my morning toilet. I quickly drew on hose and threw on an old woolen dress and my coat, slipped into a pair of soft old shoes, put on a cloche and a little lipstick, and grabbed Woodrow Wilson’s leash.
He led me into the elevator, then out into the lobby, where I ordered coffee and sweet rolls to be sent up to my rooms.
As I walked toward the doors, I glanced over to my left, to the small room that once was an old office, but now, according to the small, tasteful sign above its entrance, was the new Washington’s Shoe Parlor. Peeking in, I glimpsed Washington Douglas, his arm recently freed of its cast, shining the shoes of one of his first patrons.
Thanks to Frank Case, Washington now was an equal partner in the hotel’s new business. For a nominal monthly fee, he had use of the space, and all of the hotel’s business. Every night, shoes were left outside the rooms by residents for shining.
Thanks to Aleck, FPA, and Mr. Benchley, Washington had three brand-new leather chairs with footrests in the shop. Edna, Jane, and the rest of the gang chipped in and sent a special delivery from Santa of toys, clothing, candy, and a goose with all the fixings to the Douglas’s apartment a couple of days before Christmas. Heywood and FPA began their own little advertising campaign for the shoeshine shop with regular mentions in their columns of who met whom, who said this funny thing or that, while getting a shine. Little Lincoln and his siblings would return to school after the holidays sporting new winter coats, leggings, boots, gloves, scarves, and caps. Today, he was helping his father set up supplies on the shelves.
I was happy.
Joseph, the Gonk’s daytime doorman, patted Woodrow, and then addressed me:
“Mrs. Parker,” he began, “my mother thanks you for the handkerchiefs you sent her at Christmas.” It is always smart to have a few extra presents on hand at the holidays.
“How is she feeling, Joseph? Any better?”
“Oh, much, thank you. The doctor says she’ll be fine and up and around in a couple of weeks.” She’d had her appendix removed.
“That’s good to hear, Joseph,” I said, and was about to follow Woodrow’s lead when a car drove up, and Joseph opened the passenger door. “Oh, and Mrs. Parker?” he added after the passenger got out and he’d closed the door after him, “I was wondering . . .”
I waited as he opened the entry door to the lobby, expecting a request for hard-to-get tickets to a show for him and his fiancée, Sarah. Instead, when he arrived at my side, he asked, “Remember you and Mr. Benchley and Mr. Woollcott, too, wanted me to be on the lookout for ‘any unsavory characters,’ as Mr. Woollcott put it—any strange-looking man han
ging around?”
“I remember, Joseph, and eliminating Messieurs Ross and Broun from our luncheon club, have you noticed anyone unusual?”
“Well, there’s been this car,” he said, and smiled as he spoke with admiration, “this beauty of a motor, a touring car it is, a buttery, cream-colored one, with shiny, wire-spoked wheels and grand headlamps and chrome you can see your face in—sixty-five hundred dollars of pure—”
He ended his reverie abruptly and came back to earth. “A Duesenberg, you know?”
“You should be an automobile salesman, Joseph.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, I think I saw that car out front, once,” I said, recalling the one parked in front of the Gonk a few weeks ago when I had looked out onto the street from my window. Of course, I’d seen lots of pretty Doozies around town. Swope has a gorgeous green one. So do the Fitzgeralds, but theirs is red. And now that I recall, that scoundrel Pinny has a white—no!—a buttery-cream-colored Duesenberg!
“Strange thing is, the car always pulls up a few feet from the canopy, and just sits there for five or ten minutes. Nobody gets out and nobody gets in. The other day, I went over to speak to the chauffeur, but the car pulled away from the curb as soon as I approached, and this morning—”
“You saw the car today?”
“An hour ago. It drove past a couple of times—three times.”
“Call the police, Joseph,” I said, dragging my unrelieved pup back into the lobby. I handed the leash and two-bits to Jimmy, asked him to walk Woodrow, and followed Joseph to the desk, where he informed Frank Case, the hotel manager, of my request to telephone the police.
Frank Case called the station, asking Joe Woollcott to send a plainclothes detective around through the Algonquin’s delivery entrance at Mrs. Parker’s request. Ten minutes later, the detective sat down across from me at a table in the Oak Room, right off the lobby. I sipped coffee as I told the detective about the Duesenberg, its connection with the man arrested yesterday who was suspected of murder, and the planned assassination of Darrow and Hays. The car, I suggested, is probably the same automobile belonging to a missing man from Michigan, Pinchus Seymour Pinkleton, whose identity the assassin had assumed.
The detective told me it would be best if I remained at the hotel, and if I had to go out, to be accompanied by friends. I didn’t like the idea of being a prisoner in my own home.
“Well, Mrs. Parker, if the auto was here this morning, it means whoever is driving it is looking for someone here. Or waiting for a chance to do something. I’ll have a few plainclothes officers sent over to watch the building.”
Woodrow returned, a kick to his step, and we went back up to my rooms, where I telephoned Mr. Benchley at his apartment and told him about the automobile. He’d stop up to escort me down to luncheon in an hour, and, “by the way, did you get a call through to Father Timothy in Michigan?”
I told him I would ask the operator to try the call again, after which, to keep my mind off unsettling thoughts, I spent the next hour knocking off a review for The Bookman.
The telephone call went through when we were just about to disband the luncheon, during which Groucho embellished wildly on the crimes of the day before, and I corrected with the truth. Mr. Benchley followed me to the telephone to listen in.
It quickly became clear that Father Timothy Morgan would not be able to come to the telephone, let alone receive a message from us, because he had been found dead five days ago, the victim of an accident, a deadly accident.
“He was found dead in his car, crashed down a ravine,” said Father Matthew Pasco, who had taken our call.
“Oh, my God! When did this happen?”
“As I said, last week. Were you a friend of Timothy’s?”
“We met him when he came to New York.”
“He was distraught over the news of his godfather’s death. When he read about it last week, he was inconsolable.”
“Last week?”
“Yes, there was a letter of condolences from Father John’s bishop informing Timothy of his death.”
“Are you saying he just found out about Father John’s murder, a couple of days before he crashed his car?”
“That’s correct. Murder, was it, did you say?”
“But, when Father Timothy came to New York to—”
“New York, did you say? As I told Father Michael at St. Agatha’s in New York, when he telephoned the other day, I believe Timothy’s distress may have contributed to his accident because he took the news rather hard.”
I fell silent while trying to tie the threads together, prompting him into polite smalltalk:
“Were you very close to Timothy when—”
“We met only a few weeks ago.”
There was hesitation on the other end, and a couple of aborted phrases.
“Father Pasco, I met Timothy Morgan a little over a month ago in New York City, during his stay at St. Agatha’s with Father Michael Murphy.”
“Well, that is impossible, my dear. Father Tim has been here, and has not made any trips to New York. Now I don’t know what this is all about, and it is a very sad time for us, here—”
“I am so sorry, Father, but please bear with me for another minute. Was Father Timothy visited by his godfather last month?”
“He was.”
“And could you please tell me if you sensed anything unusual about the visit?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know why you’re asking these things. Unless you have some kind of official standing—”
“I understand, Father Pasco. You will be receiving a call from the New York City Police Department very shortly.”
I turned to a puzzled Mr. Benchley when I rang off: “Father Timothy is dead, but he’s not the man we knew as Father Tim. The real Timothy Morgan hadn’t left Grosse Pointe, and certainly hasn’t been in New York recently.”
FPA had lingered in the lobby to chat with an old friend after leaving the dining room. I asked him up to my room for a drink and a talk with me and Mr. Benchley. When we were settled in, Mr. Benchley took the floor.
“Here’s what we have, Frank,” said Mr. Benchley, starting from the beginning: “Father John is killed. Dottie sees the Wild-Haired Man fleeing the scene. Soon afterwards, Dottie is shot at and I chase the Wild-Haired Man, but before I can grab him, he gets hit by a car.”
“Wait,” said Frank, “let me write this down.” He fetched a pencil and a notebook from his pocket.
“All right, then,” said Mr. Benchley, “we can surmise that Father John knew something, and we can assume he could identify the Klansmen who set the darktown fire. But I don’t think that witnessing that fire and knowing who set it was the real reason for his flight from Tennessee.”
I cut in: “You mean he found out that the Klan had bigger fish to fry?”
“Yes, I do believe so, even if you did carelessly choose a rather distasteful analogy, considering.”
“Oh, dear!” I said, contritely. I hate clichés, and that one just fell out of my mouth. “I didn’t mean—”
Mr. Benchley laughed, “No, of course you didn’t, my dear girl. Now, we don’t know if he told everything to his godson, the real Father Tim, but I believe he knew about the assassination plot to kill Darrow. And that’s why the intrigue—”
“Yes,” I said, “There had to be something really big going down for someone to bother with impersonating Father John’s godson for nearly a month.”
“The fact that Father John came to New York, went to the University Club, where the assassin was staying, is too much of a coincidence for him not to have known an assassination plot was in the works,” said Frank.
“Precisely. And that is the motive for murder number one. Now, yesterday morning a letter arrives for Father Michael from Father John’s godson, Timothy, postmarked Grosse Pointe the day before Tim crashes his car. Father Mike has just returned home from visiting a sick deacon at the hospital and finds the letter among the ma
il. It makes no sense to him, as the man he believes to be Father Timothy has been living with him for a month.”
“But it’s only speculation as to what he learned when he opened the envelope and read the letter from the real Father Tim,” I said.
“It must have been confusing and then became disturbing, after he telephoned Father Pasco in Grosse Pointe, so he called Mrs. Parker, and you know the rest of the story. I doubt we’ll ever know everything that was written in that letter,” said Mr. Benchley. “But, the imposter Timothy had already left for the train back to Michigan—or so everybody was supposed to think. The imposter knew the real Father Tim had been killed, and he had to get out of there—or make it appear he had left town. He probably suspected that Father Michael knew something funny was going on. Perhaps he tripped himself up in simple conversation with the older priest. Whatever transpired, he had to get rid of Father Michael to protect himself and keep the plan on track.”
“Murder number two,” said Frank.
“Father Michael’s call to the Michigan Seminary College confirmed that he had harbored a criminal this past month.”
“Then I am kidnapped, foiling the first plan to nab and kill the lawyers. I connect the voices of two seemingly different men, and discover a co-conspirator, the fake Pinchus Seymour Pinkleton,” I said.
“The real Timothy Morgan must have been about to give it all away, after he heard about the murder of his godfather,” said Frank. “That’s why they wacked him; made it look like an accident. Murder number three.”
“There are lots of people involved in this,” I said. “Somebody gave the order to take out the real Father Tim. I’ll bet our imposter is still in town, still part of the plan to kill the lawyers.”
“I believe you are right, Mrs. Parker.”
I shivered.
Could it be the fake Timothy Morgan is driving around in a sleek new Duesenberg? I wondered.
Frank piped in: “I don’t know what’s going on except there’s a priest-killer and a lawyer-killer, too. And then there’re arsonists on the run. I thought it was one of them arsonists stabbed the old priest on Thanksgiving?”
[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil Page 19
