Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders

by Ron Goulart

  “You’re better trained for that sort of thing,” I said. “Look, the New York City police are probably going to be coming to talk to you. Why not talk to me first and, maybe, save yourself some trouble?”

  “How? By talking to two morons instead of one?”

  “Groucho happens to be a friend of the cop investigating the Manheim killing,” I told him. “He might be able to put in a good word for you.” I had no idea if that was possible, but I was hoping it sounded plausible.

  After a few seconds, Len said, “Okay, all right. Let go of me, Denby, and we can talk.”

  Watchful, I relaxed my hold on him and stepped back. “You had an argument with Manheim, in front of witnesses,” I reminded. “You were on the Super Chief when somebody attacked him and his bodyguard. Furthermore, you were in the New York area when Manheim was murdered at the Coronet.”

  “Sure, and I was in Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot.” Folding his arms, Len leaned back against the theater wall just to the left of the big yellow and red poster.

  “Motive and opportunity,” I said. “You had both.”

  “You know, both you and your Marx Brothers partner are saps,” he observed. “Otherwise you’d have found out that it wasn’t me who tried to kill Manheim on the train. It was a … well, hell, you’re supposed to be detectives. You find out.”

  I stepped closer to him. “It was a what?”

  The young dancer gave a lazy shrug. “That mysterious dark figure Groucho saw was a woman.”

  “Oh, so? Groucho said the figure was wearing pants, a jacket, and—”

  “Didn’t you ever see a dame wear pants and dress like a guy? Hell, go to a Marlene Dietrich movie sometime.”

  I asked, “How do you know it was a woman?”

  He sighed and I could smell the couple of whiskeys he’d had earlier. “I saw her.”

  “You saw her? Then why in the hell didn’t you tell somebody?”

  He grinned. “At the time I had no idea what had happened,” he explained. “I was walking along a corridor on the damn train. This figure came running toward me, shined a flashlight in my face, and shoved me out of the way. Then she ran on out of the car.”

  “But you saw her?”

  “Not to identify, not a face,” he said. “But I felt her as she pushed by and, believe me, it was a woman.”

  “Any idea who?”

  He shrugged again. “Not really, no.”

  “And why didn’t you say anything afterwards, when you found out what had happened?”

  He laughed now. “Don’t be a jerk,” he said. “Anybody who was trying to kill Manheim, that was okay with me. I’m glad she finally succeeded. He was a miserable son of a bitch and if somebody’d knocked him off earlier, my sister would still be alive.”

  I said, “That’s an interesting yarn, Cowan. If it’s true then—”

  “It’s true,” he assured me. “Although I might forget it all if I was hauled into court to testify.”

  “Any stories about last Tuesday night, when Manheim was murdered?”

  “If I need to, I can come up with an alibi for the whole evening,” he said. “And you don’t have to take my word at all, Denby. Just ask your friend May Sankowitz.”

  “You were with May?”

  He nodded, grinning. “Took her to dinner,” he said, “then spent the whole night with her. Ask.”

  I said, “If I have to.”

  “Come and see our show sometime, and bring that cute wife of yours,” he invited, giving me a mock salute. He went walking off.

  There were four uniformed World’s Fair cops beside the fountain now. Their outfits were similar to those of highway patrolmen. A thickset blonde officer was on one knee beside the sprawled body of Dr. Dowling. Gingerly, he extracted the dead man’s wallet from the breast pocket of his soggy suit coat.

  It dripped water as he opened it. After a moment he handed it to a dark-haired officer standing at the fountain edge. “His driver’s license says he’s Philip Dowling, an MD from out in Los Angeles, California,” he said.

  After glancing at the wallet, the dark-haired cop looked around at the growing gathering of curious fairgoers. “Anybody know this man?”

  Peggy nudged Groucho, whispering, “Aren’t you going to speak up?”

  “They already have his name and address, my dear,” he answered quietly. “And if I get tangled up in the law’s delay, The Mikado will go on without a Lord High Executioner.”

  “Doesn’t your civic duty come before show business?”

  “You ask me that, a young lady who ran away from home to go into show business herself?”

  “Okay, don’t get involved,” said Peggy. “Still I feel that—”

  “I saw the guy tumble into the fountain,” volunteered one of the sailors in the crowd.

  The dark cop asked, “Did you see who attacked him?”

  “He was by himself when I spotted the guy,” answered the sailor. “He came weaving along, staggering some. Then he stumbled and fell over into the fountain with a big splash.”

  Another sailor added, “We were about to go in and yank him out when one of your boys came along and told us to stand back.”

  The patrolman asked them, “Did you notice where he was coming from?”

  They shook their heads, but a plump woman in a flowered dress said, “I saw him a little while ago over that way.” She pointed. “Over there, where that row of saloons and cocktail bars is. I think he was coming out of one of them and he was staggering. I assumed he’d had a few too many.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “No, Officer,” answered the woman. “He was entirely alone.”

  Groucho eased back from the crowd, gesturing to Peggy to come along. “Before we head for the wicked stage,” he said, “let’s frequent yonder saloons.”

  “For a drink?”

  “Nope. For information.”

  Thirty

  The office of the Bascom Music Pavilion was painted eggshell white and had a mural all across one windowless wall. The mural depicted, in a style that mixed elements of Diego Rivera, Rockwell Kent, and Rube Goldberg, the high points in the history of the Bascom organization. From the clues the bright-colored painting provided, I deduced that Bascom had spent most of the century manufacturing musical instruments and employing a lot of very muscular guys who were fond of showing up for work without their shirts.

  I reflected on the possible history of the company while I sat on the edge of the oaken desk in the unoccupied office and waited for my call to Manhattan to go through.

  When I’d returned to the pavilion, ahead of Groucho, the backstage doorman who let me in told me that my wife wanted me to get in touch with her.

  After about five minutes on the phone, I was able to reach her. “How’d the meeting with the network go?” I asked.

  “It was postponed, Frank. But that’s not why I—”

  “Postponed—how come?”

  “That doesn’t happen to be one of the pieces of information anybody bothered to convey to me, dear,” answered Jane. “All I know is that it’s rescheduled for tomorrow at two-thirty. Now, as to the reason I telephoned you out there at—”

  “You mean this isn’t a simple romantic gesture? Something along the lines of ‘I had to hear your voice, my darling.’”

  “That, too, sweetie pie. But O’Hearn telephoned and gave me some information for you.”

  “Where the devil’s he been?”

  “Ailing apparently and visiting a clinic,” Jane said. “I thought you’d want to hear what he dug up. Oh, by the way, how did The Mikado go?”

  “Postponed, until later today.”

  She gave me an account of what Tim O’Hearn had told her.

  Groucho looked from his makeup mirror to me and back to the mirror again. “Even though this is an informal rehearsal we’re staging for the myriad of my devoted fans who are pouring into this temple of the lively arts,” he said, “I feel obliged to daub on my greasepa
int moustache and eyebrows. Otherwise they might mistake me for Ronald Colman and demand their money back.”

  “Soon as your performance is finished, we’ve got to talk over the whole case again,” I told him from the rickety chair near the table. “There sure as hell have been some new developments.” We’d already talked about what had been happening, including Dr. Dowling’s murder and Len Cowan’s telling me it was a woman who tried to kill Manheim on the train east. I’d also recapped what O’Hearn had passed along about Sanantonio’s attempting to woo Dian again and the fact that Willa Jerome had still been carrying a torch for the gangster.

  “All very interesting developments, yes. Particularly the probable sex of the probable killer,” said Groucho. “And it occurs to me that that’s the kind of sex I often have, probable.”

  I nodded, asking, “Is Peggy Kurtin still hereabouts anywhere?”

  “She and her accompanying lout will return in a few moments to watch me render The Mikado. Why do you ask, Rollo?”

  “She ought to be able to get us a copy of Willa Jerome’s itinerary here at the fair today,” I replied.

  “Yes, we must, among other things, pay that lady a visit of condolence.”

  Someone tapped on the dressing room door. “We’ll be starting in five minutes, Mr. Marx.”

  After examining his makeup one more time, Groucho stood up and away from the mirror. “If I’m the hit I expect to be in The Mikado, just think of all the other Gilbert and Sullivan works there are to do.”

  The standing ovation he received at the conclusion of the informal rehearsal of The Mikado prompted Groucho to offer the enthusiastic World’s Fair audience an encore. That consisted of a rendition of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” accompanied on his guitar, plus a medley of favorites from earlier Marx Brothers movies. For an encore to the encore Groucho did some of his eccentric dancing and then, for reasons he could not later explain, he sat on the edge of the stage to sing “Mexicali Rose” and “Birmingham Jail.”

  By the time he was back in his dressing room, taking off his greasepaint, it was a few minutes after seven o’clock. And by the time he finished giving a mass interview to five reporters and a World’s Fair publicist, it was past seven-thirty.

  “Forgive me, Rollo,” he apologized when we were alone. “Sometimes my doggoned career gets in the way of my sleuthing.”

  I said, “According to the list Peggy turned up for me, Willa Jerome will be having her final press conference at the British Pavilion, public cordially invited, at eight-thirty. So we’ve got time to catch up with her and pay a social call.”

  “While I was waiting backstage between entrances,” Groucho said, turning his chair so that he was facing me and leaning both his elbows back on the makeup table, “I thought quite a lot about this whole case.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

  “Here’s what I’ve concluded,” said Groucho. “See if our speculations match, Rollo.” Rising, he commenced pacing the small dressing room. “All right, it starts in Los Angeles. Nick Sanantonio, famed mobster, gambler, and ladies’ man, decides he wants to rekindle his onceblooming romance with Dian Bowers—once known as sweet and innocent Nancy Washburn.”

  “You’re assuming she was sweet and innocent, Groucho. But for all we know she was two-timing Washburn long before she ever met Sanantonio.”

  “True,” he conceded. “I’m a notoriously bad judge of women. I once dated Typhoid Mary and thought she was in perfect health. But back to the matter at hand.” He located a cigar in the pocket of his blazer. “Sanantonio tells our Dian that he wants back in the ball game. She’s not too charmed by the idea and tries to discourage the goniff. He, however, persists. A man with a reputation for getting exactly what he wants, Sanantonio makes it known that he’s going to make considerable trouble unless he gets Dian back.” Groucho unwrapped the cigar. “He’ll make trouble for her and for her budding career. He’ll start a scandal by announcing that he’s been her lover. The fact that she’s been a gangster’s tootsie will not only sabotage her as a potential movie star, but it’ll probably wipe out the chances of Saint Joan at the box office. Dian will be out of work and Manheim stands to lose several million bucks. The public won’t buy a woman who’s been sleeping around with thugs as Joan of Arc.”

  “And thus Sanantonio would’ve caused a disaster for Manheim.”

  “Which gave him his motive for having Sanantonio removed from the scene,” picked up Groucho. “To cover his tracks he rigs up the killing to look like a typical, everyday gangland rubout.”

  “He fooled the police, and probably Dian Bowers,” I said. “But Salermo didn’t buy it and, it seems certain, neither did Willa Jerome.”

  “It’s my conclusion that Willa killed Manheim because he murdered her lover,” said Groucho. “Even though the lad had abandoned her, she was planning to win him back. His being dead spoiled that scheme and left her thinking of revenge.” He paused, lit his cigar, and exhaled smoke. “The necktie, my boy.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “It only occurred to me while I was in the wings earlier, but you recounted to me a remark that Willa made aboard the Super Chief,” said Groucho. “She commented on the gaudy red tie Arneson was wearing. Yet—”

  “That’s right, when she saw him at the Mexican joint and later on the train, he was wearing that tropical number,” I realized. “He didn’t change ties until much later.”

  “And she wouldn’t have seen the red tie unless she’d encountered him in the vicinity of Manheim’s bedroom and happened to notice the tie after she’d knocked him out and shined her flashlight on him.”

  “Not courtroom evidence,” I mentioned, “but convincing nonetheless, Groucho.”

  He took a thoughtful puff on his cigar. “We still don’t know how Willa found out that Manheim was behind the murder of her lover, though.”

  “For now, we just have to assume that she did,” I said. “She, with or without the help of Emily Collinson, her secretary, worked out a way to kill Manheim on the train. When that didn’t work, she tried again in New York.”

  “We know she was backstage at the Coronet during the dress rehearsal of Make Mine Murder. So she would have seen the dummy corpse being set to fall out on the stage—and her dramatic flair inspired her to consider doing the same thing to Manheim if she had the chance.”

  “And she had the chance the next night when she trailed him to the theater and overheard his fracas with Washburn.”

  Rubbing his hands together, Groucho said, “I think we’ve got a plausible scenario here, my boy.”

  I said, “It seems likely that Dr. Dowling noticed something while he was traveling with Willa and Emily in his usual drunken stupor. He started to remember details and phoned you and, when Willa got wind of it, she took care of him, too.”

  Groucho said, “The only little flaw in this is that we have to figure out a way to persuade Willa to confess. Because what we have thus far is an interesting story, but—”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Mr. Marx, are you still in there?”

  Groucho started for the door. “They’re probably going to charge me for keeping my light burning.”

  The doorman was out there with a note in a pale blue envelope. “This was left for you about a half hour ago by a delivery boy, sir.”

  Groucho accepted the note and shut the door. “Could be a declaration of undying love from Gypsy Rose Lee,” he speculated, opening it. “But, no, it’s a hasty note from Emily Collinson.”

  “Saying?”

  Groucho cleared his throat. “‘Mr. Marx: You have to help me. I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake. I should have spoken about the terrible things Willa was doing long before this. Now it may be too late, but I’m hoping you can help me. I’m afraid she’s going to kill me next, the way she did poor Phil Dowling. I’m hiding in the shut-down Haunted House Arcade. Come in the back entrance. I know you and Mr. Denby have experience with murderers and, please, you must come and hel
p me get away safely. Emily Collinson.’”

  “A damsel in distress,” I said.

  “So we’re led to believe.” He put the letter back in its envelope, stuck the envelope in his jacket pocket. “We’d best ride to the rescue.”

  Thirty-one

  Night had fallen on the World’s Fair and all across the dark sky there were scrawls of bright-colored light, geysers of illuminated water, and splashes of gold, crimson, and electric blue. Music, noise, and laughter were thick.

  Groucho and I left much of that behind when we turned off onto a side lane that ran from the picnic grounds toward Liberty Lake. The Haunted House Arcade sat darkly next to a boarded-up shooting gallery. It had been built to look like the sort of haunted Victorian mansion you’d see in a Universal horror movie. Like a few of the other 1939 concessions, it hadn’t thrived. Shut down, it sat awaiting an optimistic new tenant who’d revise, renovate, or change it completely.

  There were only a few overhead streetlights down this way and the thick shadows seemed to muffle the noise of the fairgrounds we’d left behind.

  “That reminds me,” said Groucho as we neared the haunted house, “Bela Lugosi didn’t send me a Christmas card last year. I wonder if he’s miffed at us because Harpo tried to drive a stake through his heart at that party in Malibu.”

  “Some vampires do carry grudges.”

  “Ain’t it the truth?” said Groucho. “And zombies can be even worse. I dated a girl in New Orleans once who … Ah, but, Rollo, we’re at the back door to this gloomy establishment.”

  I took hold of the brass doorknob in the ornately carved oaken door and turned. With a spectral creak the door swung open inward.

  Groucho clicked on the small pocket flashlight he’d brought along. “I’ve got to cease packing this in my guitar case,” he decided. “It’s starting to smell too much like a pastrami sandwich. Although, I suppose, that’s not all bad.”

  Shutting the creaking door behind us, we moved quietly along the shadowy hallway. Artificial cobwebs festooned the wrought-iron wall lamps and the crystal chandeliers and shrouded the claw-footed chairs that were lined up along the dark-paneled walls.