[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

Awww, banana oil!

  “I’ll knock a homer for you, Johnny,” professed the Bambino, the big lug.

  “So I take it Ruth’s scored the homer?”

  Mr. Benchley forsook me for the crowd staring at the radio, and then turned to shout: “Three! He’s hit three homers so far!”

  Well, I had to admit, the man does everything in a big way.

  Even the flamboyant arrival of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, followed by Irving Berlin, did not draw anybody’s attention. Broadway’s Royal Couple seemed momentarily put out, until they got the gist of all the excitement and joined in.

  Irving, who usually entered a room talking nonstop to no one and everyone, was actually stunned silent. I gave him a few moments to readjust to the tempo of the room, before bringing him over to meet Chaim. It was fortunate that Chaim spoke Russian, as did Irving, whose family had escaped Jewish persecution when they emigrated from Temun, Russia, in ’88. But both soon lapsed into English after a few minutes, and I was glad to see that my friend would help the Katzenelenbogens find a home and work. I left them discussing immediate action—a room at the Gonk for a couple of days for him and his sister, and an introduction to a friend of Irving’s who might be able to hire Chaim as a diamond cutter and provide Dvoyra, an expert pattern maker, a place in one of the design workrooms in the Garment District. It is good to have generous and resourceful friends.

  As the chaos of the sports-loving fiends peaked and then mellowed at the end of the final inning of game four, with a ten-to-five win for New York, I took a highball and the 1917 Erasmus Hall High School yearbook to the bathroom, which was crowded with less-sports-minded folk. The bathtub was occupied, as was the toilet seat, so I squeezed into the linen closet (from which I’d long ago removed the shelves and installed a bar for hanging clothing). Closing the door and pulling the light cord, I sank down to the floor to peruse the book’s pages. It was quite cozy, as a matter of fact; lots of clothing had fallen to the floor, giving me a comfortable cushion to lean on. Getting up and out might prove difficult, but for now, it was my only retreat from the madness.

  I hadn’t got very far when there was a knock on the door. Mr. Benchley peered down at me. “So sorry to disturb, Mrs. Parker, in your new quarters, but I have sheaves of telephone messages I forgot to give you,” he said, handing me half-a-dozen slips, “among which is one from Sergeant Joe.”

  I crawled out of my cozy cloister to telephone Joe, who told me there was no longer a Finders Detective Agency, as the one-man operation had closed down shop after somebody plugged Harry Finders, private dick, in his office this very morning. Joe wanted to know what our interest was in the murdered gumshoe, and why we were asking about a guy with a rapsheet named “Lee Pigeon.”

  “If it’s connected to the spiritualists’ murders, and you got information you’re holding back about the crimes, better give it to Detective Morgan. I can try to protect you from the murderer by not letting it get leaked out to the press that you were at the scenes of both crimes, but God help me, I cannot protect you from Detective Morgan if you get on the wrong side of him.”

  I wondered if there was a right side. “Joe, what do you know about a man named ‘Luther Pendragon’ lives up at the Dakota apartments?”

  “Come clean, Mrs. Parker,” said Joe with an impatient tone. “That’s the name you asked me about before: ‘Pendragon.’ Why don’t you tell me what I should know about him?”

  “Shit, Joe, I was asking you!”

  “C’mon, spill the beans, kid.”

  Chaim told us about the strange doings at the Pendragon apartment. “I’m told he is a warlock.”

  “A what!” exclaimed Joe, “a werewolf?”

  “No, Joe, a warlock, a male witch.”

  There was a long silence, and then Joe said in a whisper, “Don’t let anybody hear you talking that way, Mrs. Parker.” Another long silence, but this time he returned with, “You say he lives at the Dakota? That’s where one of your fortuneteller friends was killed. You know, there’s a guy been arrested a couple years back—devil-worshiper—led a bunch of crazies dancing naked in Central Park a couple years back.”

  “Arrested for indecent exposure, I suppose.”

  “No, for failing to get a permit. But the name wasn’t ‘Pendragon,’ though. It was something else. Lived at the Dakota.”

  “Big man, dark, handlebar moustache from last century?”

  “Yep, that’s the rounder—Arthur Merlin! That’s the name. How’s he fit into the murders?”

  “Don’t know that he does, Joe. Just another crazy neighbor of Ada Leopold’s. Oh, yeah, Joe, did you find out anything about Madame Olenska’s will? Where, or to whom, her estate goes?”

  “Won’t know until tomorrow. Attorney’s out of town till then.”

  Of course, I thought, I knew that when I sent Caroline on a wild goose chase to the attorney’s office this afternoon. “Does Detective Morgan suspect anybody else of the murders?”

  “Can’t tell you that. Benny Booth is the likely one. We looked into his past, you know, and there is some suspicion that he may have had something to do with the death of his wife’s first husband.”

  “You can’t suspect his wife, Bette, of complicity?”

  “Who the hell knows? The first husband was rich—family money—and they, the family, didn’t much approve of the marriage. Cut him off financially, and his father threatened to disinherit him. Still, he had a trust fund set up years before that was enormous, and came to him on his twenty-third birthday, just a few weeks before his death. Bette inherited it all, and there was nothing his family could do about it.”

  “But if Benny was involved, money wasn’t a motive. He’s got oodles of his own.”

  I weighed the idea of telling Joe that Madame Olenska had been blackmailing Benny, and he had arrived at the Washington Square house hours earlier than Caroline Mead said he had, to drop off a payoff of ten thousand dollars to silence a supposed witness to the murder of Bette’s first husband, Johnny. But I thought that that information might just make things even worse for the couple. And I wondered if, as no money was ever found in the house, it might be seen that he never intended to pay the blackmail, and decided silencing Madame permanently was the better course of action. And yet, why would Benny tell us he was being blackmailed in the first place? It gave him motive, where before, there wasn’t motive. And, it opened a Pandora’s Box of viperous suspicion to be cast over the death of his best friend, Bette’s first husband.

  Was I sure Caroline was lying? You bet. Did she herself have motive to kill Madame? Just because I didn’t like Caroline Mead, it didn’t mean she killed Madame Olenska. Just because she’d disturbed the private rooms of her benefactress didn’t mean she hadn’t every right to do so if she already knew that the will left her everything. She was the Madame’s ward, and as close to a daughter as the Madame had ever known. If she stood to inherit money from Madame’s estate, it gave her motive, yes, but Madame had given her a home, an education, love, and extravagances she’d never known before. Disagreeable people are often troubled and grieving souls. Was Caroline grieving—or greedy?

  And even though she had nothing but disdain for the Katzenelenbogens, it didn’t mean she hadn’t some good reason that we didn’t know about to dislike them.

  Perhaps Caroline mistook the time Benny Booth returned to the house on the night of the séance. Maybe she read the clock incorrectly—glanced fleetingly at it—she was woken from sleep, after all—read 2:00 A.M. instead of 12:10 A.M. as Benny claimed was the time of his return to Madame’s house.

  Perhaps neither of them was lying.

  No one, not even the Brents, had a rock-solid alibi for the time of Madame’s murder—not the Booths, Caroline, Lord Wildly, the Katzenelenbogens, or Rabindranath.

  Now there was this Pendragon character. Where did he fit in? He was obviously the same big brute that Mr. Benchley and I had watched savagely tear the key from around Miss Ada’s neck. Was it possible that he was her ki
ller? Had he strangled her, heard the return of Chaim Katzenelenbogen, and escaped before discovery, only to return when he thought all was clear and it was safe to come back to fetch the key? Would this man have killed the little woman for the key? Seems a bit extreme. And where did he fit in with Madame Olenska? Had he killed her, too? But why?

  As Joe spoke about Benny Booth, my mind flashed back to the photo I’d found in Madame Olenska’s album, the one taken on the front stoop with the dogs: two men posed alongside the sisters. I reached for the carpetbag that I used to transport the yearbook, and there was the photograph. I studied it closely, trying to see if there was any resemblance to Pendragon in the face and countenance of one of her male companions. There was something about the dark eyes, and, although the photo was at least thirty years old, if this was the man I was thinking of, well, he’d added a good forty pounds to his already big frame. Add a handlebar moustache, lengthen the hair, add muttonchops and top hat, and it very well might be our man! I believed I was indeed looking at a young Pendragon.

  That didn’t mean the man killed anybody. Why, my imagination was leading me to all sorts of crazy speculation. Until an hour ago I was pretty sure the Katzenelenbogens were unsavory characters somehow involved in the crimes!

  I decided not to say anything more to Joe from fear that I might unwittingly throw suspicion on the Booths, Caroline Mead, Lord Wildly, Rabindranath, or the Katzenelenbogens. I tossed down the handful of message notes on my desk while speaking with Joe, and while listening to his lecture, sorted through them. There was only one that caught my attention and couldn’t wait a minute longer for a return call.

  The operator at the Waldorf put me right through to his room, and after three rings, answered by his man, Godfrey, the dulcet tones of Lord Tristan Wildly poured through the receiver.

  “I say, Dorothy, we’ve got a date, tonight, have we not?”

  “Oh, Lord! I mean, oh, Lord Wildly, of course we do. Secret society, I remember!”

  “Dinner first, Dorothy? We have plenty of time; don’t have to be there until around midnight. That’s when the Black Hood Society meets at Pendragon’s apartment at the Dakota.”

  “Did I hear you correctly?”

  “I do hope so. Dinner before the—”

  “You said ‘Pendragon’s’!”

  “Yes, my dear Dorothy, I did—”

  “Tristan, has Bette heard anything from Benny?”

  “That’s very odd, you know? Last night Bette invited me to breakfast this morning in her rooms, but she wasn’t in. Called her, left messages at the desk, but she’s not gotten back to me as yet.”

  “How soon can you get here?”

  The wall clock read six o’clock. In a few hours, at midnight, we would enter the world of Pendragon, and there was work to do.

  Chaim

  Dvoyra— Chaim’s sister bears a striking resemblance to Trotsky

  Chaim’s wife, Rachel

  Chaim’s daughter, Anya

  Chapter Eleven

  It was easy for Mr. Benchley to recruit the assistance of all four Marx Brothers with the promise of an adventurous evening. There was, after all, anarchy in their hearts, so they happily stepped up to the challenge of creating more mischief. And, Mr. Benchley is not a man one could easily refuse: He is the Pied Piper of fun, so all the little rats will follow.

  And then there was Aleck, sure to gum up the works if he had any say in the matter. But he didn’t have a show to review tonight, and he promised to be good if he could only tag along. Whether he kept that promise remained to be seen, of course, for Aleck could turn on a dime. But with a vow to “walk softly and carry a big stick,” to use Teddy Roosevelt’s phrase, while raising his knob-headed walking stick as reminder of his past usefulness, Mr. Benchley acquiesced.

  “Just stay in the corner,” warned Mr. Benchley, to which Aleck replied, “Yass, Massa Bobby.”

  We planned our strategy for the evening while catching a fast meal in the Algonquin’s Oak Room, where we were joined by Lord Wildly, who, although he appeared to enjoy his dinner, proclaimed it a slap-up meal. I suppose that was a good review, but I can’t rightly say for sure.

  Chaim told us that the brutish, hulking fellow that had entered the room where Miss Ada lay dead, soon after Dvoyra had fled in bellowing screams, was in fact Luther Pendragon. In her hysterical cries for help, Dvoyra had bumped into Pendragon in the hall, and he’d led her into his own apartment, and then he went to investigate. That’s when Mr. Benchley and I spied him. Later, Pendragon offered Dvoyra and Chaim work as domestics in his household.

  At first, Pendragon’s offer of employment and protection from being implicated in the murders of Madame O and Miss Ada by their very association with the sisters was a godsend to the Katzenelenbogens. Not that the police ever really suspected them, but Chaim and Dvoyra didn’t know that the police were pursuing Benny Booth as the prime suspect in the case. The fact that they were foreigners, Jewish, escaped from their homeland, and carrying false papers struck terror in their hearts that they’d be deported.

  But, something was very wrong in the Pendragon household. At first the excitement about the imminent arrival of a guest from Germany, via the train from Boston due in this very night, had set the household spinning. Pendragon set the staff to preparations for a ceremonial event. There was much work to do, as there would be overnight guests. Menus were planned, including what one of the maids described as “delectables,” such as breaded deep-fried newt bellies and pulverized baby antelope meatballs. Special brews were set upon the stoves, sending off noxious fumes about the place. Chaim and Dvoyra accepted the strange delicacies as common American fare, but that was only the beginning.

  While dusting Pendragon’s study, where she was ordered not to disturb anything on his desk, Dvoyra accidentally knocked over a glass containing the dregs of the previous night’s wine onto some papers. Frantically, she did her best to wipe the desk before the stain set, but there was no way to remove the wine stains from the paper. The liquid had not marred anything of importance, she thought, after moving things clear of the spill, just the edge of a notepad with words scribbled on it. The name “Percival” jumped out at her. She had once known a man with that unusual name. Scribbled down were the date and time of Percival Peckinpah’s arrival from Boston. So this was the name of the honored guest for whom peculiar preparations for a party were being planned. A live goat was delivered and then given a bath in the big sunken tub; then there was the arrival of gallons of pig blood from the butcher shop, but the cook had no intention of making bloodwurst. And when hundreds of black candles were placed in dozens of candelabras, the siblings began to wonder.

  Chaim had looked through from the drawing room into Pendragon’s study yesterday, and watched as his new employer handled an elaborately carved dagger and a book containing grotesque illuminations that he had recovered from a small, ancient-looking chest that was unlocked by a key—the same key worn by Miss Ada. Now it was taken from around Pendragon's neck to unlock these treasures. The chest looked familiar, too; it was similar to one he had seen in Madame’s bedroom, when she’d beckoned him in to open a window stuck shut from humidity. And Chaim would never forget the key. As a jeweler, he knew quality when he saw it hanging on a gold chain from Ada Leopold’s neck, and he couldn’t help but state his admiration for the magnificent craftsmanship of goldsmithing and the quality and cut of the gemstones that were set in it. He knew it was a very old and valuable piece, and she had said, yes, it was special; she was safeguarding the ancient relic from those who would use it to conjure evil. At the time, Chaim hadn’t understood how a key could be used to bring about evil. But, now, Pendragon was in possession of Madame’s chest and Miss Ada’s key, and it made him wonder the more.

  Later in the evening, when his employer left the apartment for a time and the staff were tucked away in their beds, Chaim entered the study, and his fears that he and his sister were in the employ of a dabbler in the black arts were confirmed. From al
l he knew of ancient and pagan European ritual, this was the house of a black magician.

  “I feel funny, like my hair stand up!” he told me and Mr. Benchley.

  “Ah, you mean to say, you could feel your hair stand on end.”

  “Or, someone is treading on your grave,” I suggested.

  “I know something not right: Goat is live, not dead.”

  “Yes, that would set off my alarms!”

  The look of confusion on Chaim’s face prompted me to say, “What I mean is, it makes one feel uneasy.”

  “That is it. I feel uneasy. I talk with Dvoyra and we make plan to leave next night—that is tonight. On train we go to Chicago, where there is big city.”

  This morning, Chaim had been sent on an errand and upon his return was barred from the building with no explanation other than the concierge’s comment that he had been dismissed at Mr. Pendragon’s orders.

  Could someone have seen him snooping in the private study? Still, Chaim wondered if Caroline had tracked them down and told Pendragon that they were thieves dismissed by Madame and Miss Ada, or worse, murderers! Over the past few hours, Chaim had begun to wonder whether it had been Pendragon who had murdered Miss Ada and Madame Olenska. In the man’s possession were two precious items belonging to the women, and being turned out on the street made Chaim all the more suspicious of the man’s motives. Remembering Miss Ada’s comment about keeping the key from those who would use it for evil ends confirmed his fear that Pendragon was her murderer.

  Having worked for Miss Ada, he knew all the various ways to get in and out of the building used by residents’ domestics. But still, when he rang the bell of the apartment, he was told by the maid that Dvoyra had been dismissed also, and after his small, battered valise containing his few, pitiful belongings and papers was thrown into his arms, and the maid threatened to call the police to have him removed if he didn’t leave, the door was slammed shut in his face.