The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  “Yeah! We ain’t had no princesses in here. Not even that Margaret, and they say she likes a good night out.”

  “Probably likes to keep her clothes on,” Shirley said.

  “That’s not what I’d heard,” the old geezer said. “Anyway, the dressing room is down the corridor and round the corner to the left.”

  “Thanks,” Shirley said.

  We set off down the corridor.

  “Hey,” the old geezer called after us. He pointed at me. “Who’s he?” he said.

  “My pimp,” Shirley said. “But don’t worry – he’s gay.”

  Shirley shot me a sly grin. We looked back to make sure the old geezer had retreated into his cubby hole.

  Then we turned right – away from the dressing room and towards the club.

  Chapter 13

  “When the old geezer asked for my name, I thought my heart was going to stop,” Shirley said.

  We’d made it into the club. We’d bought drinks from the bar. We were sitting on a curving red banquette at a quiet table in an alcove at the back of the room. There was a lamp with a gold-covered shade on the table. It cast a pale yellow light and made our faces look ghostly.

  At the far end of the room, there was a small stage lit by a couple of spotlights. A four-piece band was cranking its way through some old-time favourites. They started on Chattanooga Choo Choo. It sounded like it was stuck in the sidings.

  I said: “I had to think fast when the old geezer brandished his clipboard with the list.”

  “How did you manage to read the names on it? From our side, all the writing was upside down.”

  “I learnt to read upside-down writing when I had to sub on the stone.”

  “Sounds like some weird sacrificial rite,” Shirley said.

  “It’s what journalists do when they’re making last-minute changes to a newspaper page which is set in metal type. The type is held in a frame called a chase. The printer – he’s known as a stoneman – stands on one side of a metal-topped table called a stone. He’s looking at the page the right way up. But the journalist has to stand on the other side and read it all upside down. So that’s how I was able to read Clarice at the bottom of the list. I noticed he hadn’t ticked off her name yet.”

  “If she’s a regular here, the old geezer might know her by sight.”

  “He’d just told you he didn’t even notice the girls these days.”

  “But suppose the real Clarice turns up?”

  “She’s the last act on – at two in the morning. If she’s a regular, she’ll come in at the last minute. The old geezer was astonished you were so early. We’ve got a couple of hours leeway – probably all we need.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Let’s enjoy ourselves while we’re here,” I said.

  We hoisted our drinks – gin and tonic for me, a margarita cocktail for Shirley – and clinked glasses.

  I sat back and looked around the place. A girl with long blonde hair and a slim figure stepped out from behind the bar. She wore a slinky black dress and leopard skin stilettos. She carried a tray with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. She tottered across the room. Sashayed between the little round tables. An old bloke at the bar lost interest in his whisky and turned around to ogle her.

  Most of the tables were taken by couples. If you had an innocent turn of mind, you might have thought they were ageing uncles taking their young nieces for a night out. The men looked like they had too much fat, too much money, and too much time on their hands. The girls – bleached blonde hair, low-cut black dress, seamed stockings – looked like they’d come off a production line.

  The men had whisky noses, bloodshot eyes, and hands that roamed around too much. The girls had pouty lips with smiles so cold they could’ve been beamed in from outer space. Of course, not all the men were the same. Not all the girls either. But they weren’t entirely different. I was willing to bet the men all had the same thing on their mind. And the girls had the same fears.

  It wasn’t going to be easy for Shirley and me to fit in here.

  Shirley had been looking around the place, too.

  She said: “Ants have more fun than this.”

  “Yes. They do more work, too.”

  We fell silent. Read each other’s thoughts and reached for our drinks.

  The band’s Chattanooga Choo Choo reached the end of the line. The house lights dimmed. A spotlight cast a pool of harsh white light on the stage. The band played a few chords which could have been Happy Days Are Here Again. Or possibly something I’d not heard before. It definitely wasn’t the Hallelujah Chorus.

  A stocky man bounced onto the stage. He had the build of a guy who sweats weights in a gym. He had wide shoulders and fleshy hips. He had a face which looked as though it had been set in a permanent grin since he was three. There was a wide mouth, shining eyes, bubbly cheeks. He had a full head of thick black hair which covered his ears and reached the nape of his neck. He wore a shiny suit in radioactive blue and black and white co-respondent’s shoes. So this was Billy Dean.

  Dean bounded up to the microphone centre stage and said: “After that welcome I feel like I’ve just taken a cold shower. Mind you, after I’ve seen some of those strippers backstage, I need one. I share a dressing room with one of the girls. She asked me to help her take off her push-up bra. I thought this will be good. It was a frigging disappointment. It was like opening a packet of crisps. The thing was half empty.”

  Someone at the back of the room tittered.

  I whispered: “This is going to be grim.”

  Shirley nodded.

  Dean gripped the mic stand and ploughed on. “But, really, she’s a nice girl. Eve her name is. Like the one who was naked in the Garden of Eden with Adam. I mean, can you believe that Adam? Alone in a garden with a gorgeous nude girl and all he wants is an apple. Personally, I’d have gone for Eve’s pair. But, seriously, if there’s a girl in the audience who has to dress half-naked to get a man’s attention, here’s my advice: don’t. Be sophisticated. The rest of you girls see me after the show.”

  Dean kept it up for twenty minutes. (I’m sure he’d find some smutty innuendo in that.) A few punters clapped, I expect out of sympathy. Dean didn’t seem to care. He bounced off the stage as full of himself as he had been at the start of his act.

  I shifted sideways on the banquette. “I’m going to speak to Dean while he’s still on a high from his performance.”

  Shirley glanced anxiously at me. “Take care,” she said.

  “Don’t talk to strange men while I’m gone,” I said.

  I headed across the room towards the door at the side of the stage.

  The band started on the old Conway Twitty number It’s Only Make Believe, which gave me some cover. I looked like a guy just trying to get out of the room before they reached the chorus.

  The door had a sign which read: Private. Staff Only.

  I ignored that, opened the door, and slipped through.

  I found myself in a room lit by a couple of those red light bulbs photographers use in their darkrooms when they’re developing pictures. To my left, some steps led up on to the stage. Ahead the room opened into an area behind the stage.

  In the middle of the room a naked woman was crawling around on her hands and knees. She had curly blonde hair, large breasts which sagged towards the floor, and a mole on her left buttock. (I’m talking about a skin blemish not an underground mammal. I imagine there are limits even in a place like the Golden Kiss.)

  She looked up as I stepped through the door and said: “I’ve lost one of my nipple tassels. It’s come off.”

  I said: “Isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?”

  She said: “Ha, bloody, ha. That’s all I need – another frigging joker in the show.”

  “If you ask me, you’ve already got one too many.”

  “You can say that again. Anyway, aren’t you going to help me look for the tassel?”

  “Too busy I’m afraid.”
/>
  She gave me a big fat saucy wink “What about meeting up after the show instead?”

  “I’m already with a girl.”

  “I don’t mind waiting in the queue.”

  I pointed under a chair. “Is that the tassel?”

  The woman grinned: “You’re right. I’d never have spotted that.”

  I left her scrabbling under the chair and headed round the back of the stage.

  I found Billy Dean’s dressing room along a small corridor. At the far end of the corridor there was a door with a green Emergency Exit sign above it.

  I knocked once on Dean’s dressing room door and walked in. Dean was sitting in a broken-down armchair. Stuffing burst from a split in one of the arms. The springs sagged at the side. The cover was faded and grey with dirt.

  But the chair didn’t look as bad as Dean. Out of the spotlight, the bounce had faded. His face was red and blotchy. He was slumped in the chair with his belly hanging over his trouser belt. He’d taken off his jacket, unfastened his tie, and loosened his collar. His trouser buttons were undone.

  He was holding a tumbler half full with a colourless liquid. Could have been gin. Might have been vodka. Certainly wasn’t water. He was on the point of raising the glass to his lips as I came through the door.

  He gave me a warm welcome. “Who the frigging hell are you?”

  I said: “I was in the audience for your act and thought I’d come round for an autograph.”

  Dean’s eyes became less truculent. He shuffled in the chair to sit up straighter. His free hand rummaged south and fumbled with his trouser buttons.

  I said: “I’d never heard that one about the actress and the bishop before.”

  “Which one was that?” Dean said as he looked around for somewhere to park his glass.

  “The one where the bishop says, ‘I can’t wait for the second coming’ and the actress says ‘I’d be satisfied with the first one’.”

  Dean put his glass on the dressing table next to his sticks of make-up.

  “Yeah! That’s a good one. I don’t remember telling that one tonight.”

  “I’m a big fan of your act. I may have heard it another time. Say, tell me, where do you get these gags? Does your agent help you think them up?”

  “Nah! Old Danny Bernstein’s got about as many laughs in him as a hearse load of pallbearers. Besides, he’s dead now.”

  “Murdered, I hear. Any idea who killed him?”

  “Could have been hundreds of people. Thousands even. Old Danny knew how to rub up people the wrong way.”

  “Including you?”

  “Nah! I knew he was an old bastard, but he was an old bastard who got me work. Made me money.”

  “I suppose the police interviewed you. Did they ask for an alibi?”

  “Nah! But I’d have told them I was back at my place in bed. I’d had a skin-full the night before. Not a good audience.”

  I winked a little innuendo. “In bed alone, I suppose.”

  Dean reached for his glass and lowered the tide line with a big gulp. “Nah! I’d had a bit of luck as I was leaving that night. Ran into Gertie the Gobbler. She only does late shows when most of the punters have quit, on account of she’s got an arse the size of the Isle of Wight. And not as pretty. Anyway, as I say, I’d had a skin-full and was in no mood to be choosy, so I invited her back to my place for a cocktail. Get my drift?”

  “She was with you all night?”

  “Couldn’t say. I passed out on the floor when we got back to my place. Last thing I saw, she’d raided my fridge and was gobbling the last of an old roast chicken. I’d had it in there for a couple of weeks. She’d gone when I woke up in the morning. Food poisoning probably. Anyway, didn’t you say something about an autograph?”

  I started to pat myself down in the way people do when they think they’ve missed something.

  “I seem to have forgotten my autograph book.” I produced my reporter’s notebook. Flipped it open to a blank page.

  “Perhaps you could sign here,” I said. I took out my pen and handed it to Dean.

  He stood up, shuffled over to the dressing table. He rested the book on the table and focused on the page.

  Dean sat down on the stool beside the dressing table and pulled the notebook towards him. His mind was preoccupied with what he was going to write. It was time to ask the loaded question.

  I said: “I suppose Terry and Tommy will be sorry about Bernstein’s death.”

  “Who?” Dean said. His mind was elsewhere. He’d started to write some convoluted dedication.

  “Terry and Tommy Hardmann. They did a lot of business with Bernstein, I hear.”

  Dean finished writing and handed the notebook and pen back to me. His mind wasn’t elsewhere now. His eyes focused on me hard. He’d started to wonder who I was. Whether I really was a fan. There wouldn’t be many of them. Possibly any of them.

  He said: “You don’t want to hear too much about Terry and Tommy Hardmann. They’re not the kind who like people hearing about their business.”

  We fell silent. My mind raced. I couldn’t decide whether to push it. But perhaps it was best to leave Dean thinking I was a fan. If he knew I was a journalist, he’d clam up and tell me nothing. If he worked it out later, he could tell the Hardmanns. I could do without them on my tail. So I decided to leave a false trail behind me.

  I looked at what Dean had written in my notebook. I couldn’t read it properly. But I said: “I’ll treasure this. Wait ‘til I show it to my colleagues in the accounts department at the Water Board.”

  Dean grinned. “They’ll be dripping with jealousy.”

  I nodded.

  Dean had relaxed. “Dripping… Water Board… Get it?”

  I forced a laugh. “Hilarious,” I lied. “I’ll remember our meeting for a long time.”

  At least that bit was true.

  I headed back front-of-house feeling irritated by my meeting with Dean.

  I hadn’t learnt as much as I’d hoped. But, at least, I now knew he’d had no credible alibi for the time of Bernstein’s murder. But none of them did. Dean hadn’t provided any new information about the Hardmanns either. I wasn’t narrowing the field. I was as far as ever from nailing the true killer. So Sidney would have to sweat it out in the cop shop’s cells for a little longer.

  I stepped back through the door into the club. The band was playing something from Oklahoma. Or it may have been Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I get them mixed up. It sounded like the band had the same problem.

  I hustled between the tables back to the alcove.

  Came to a sudden stop. Gawped at the table. Swallowed nervously. Approached cautiously.

  Shirley had been joined by two men.

  One had a bruiser’s face with deep-set eyes and a pencil moustache above thin lips. He had slicked-back hair. He wore a double-breasted dinner jacket with a red carnation in his button hole. He looked like the kind of man who enjoyed nothing more than pulling the wings off butterflies.

  The other one looked exactly the same. I mean like they’d been cast from the same mould. Like they were identical twins.

  There was a large ice bucket with a bottle of champagne on the table. It hadn’t been there when I’d left.

  Shirley’s eyes flashed a warning as I stepped up to the table.

  But I was already on red alert.

  As I approached, the one I’d spied first, rose from the banquette and extended his hand. “I’m Terry Hardmann,” he said.

  The other one got up and stuck out his arm. “I’m Tommy Hardmann.”

  “We saw this little lady sitting all alone, so we guessed we ought to extend some old-fashioned hospitality,” Terry said.

  “We bought a bottle of champagne for her,” Tommy said.

  “I told you I don’t want your champagne,” Shirley said. “It makes me fart like a jackaroo who’s had a double helping of bean stew.”

  Terry smiled at that. And Tommy smiled in exactly the same way.

&n
bsp; I smiled in a different way. The way that says thanks for the drink but don’t try anything.

  “We’re leaving now,” I said.

  “Well, that might be a little difficult,” Terry said.

  “If you look over towards the door, you’ll see two large gentlemen. They wouldn’t like you to leave just yet,” Tommy said.

  I clocked them straight away. They were a pair of bouncers. They looked like gorillas in dinner jackets. They radiated trouble.

  Terry said: “You see, Old Jim, our stage door keeper, told us Clarice, one of our strippers, checked in early for her act. Except she wasn’t Clarice.”

  Tommy said: “And she had a man with her - a gay pimp, Old Jim said. But Ditzy Dora said she saw a man with the same description backstage while she was hunting for her missing tassel.”

  “So we thought we’d better investigate,” Terry said.

  “And now we have a proposition to put to you – all civilised like, over a glass of champagne,” Tommy said.

  I forced a confident smile and said: “That’s very kind of you. Perhaps another time.”

  Terry’s eyes opened in a cold stare. “We insist you hear us out.”

  “It’s quite simple,” Tommy said. “As the little Missy here came in as a stripper, we thought everyone ought to have the chance to see her perform as one.”

  “So she’s going on as the next act,” Terry said.

  “In your dreams, bozo,” Shirley said.

  “Oh, I think you’ll want to give a good show,” Tommy said.

  Terry’s tongue flicked lizard-like across his lips. “Because if we enjoy it – if we see everything we want and I do mean everything – we won’t kill your boyfriend.”

  Shirley gasped and looked at me. Her eyes had filled with terror. I held her gaze. Tried to make her feel strong. I shifted my gaze slowly to the ice bucket with the champagne, then slowly back to her. I gave the tiniest of nods.

  Shirley had composed herself. She knew what was going to happen next. She was ready.

  Terry said: “You’re a lucky man to have a girl like this.”

  Tommy said: “And in a few minutes everyone here is going to see how lucky.”