[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  As if by rote he said in a voice as colorless as his countenance, “Would you like to try our super-ethyl, leaded Blue Streak blend with a higher octane for superior performance and extended mileage than any other brand?”

  “Will it shine my shoes and curl my hair?” I asked.

  “Are you Mr. Wilson, the proprietor?” asked Mr. Benchley. He and Bunny stepped out of the car and walked around the front fender, watching intently as the fellow opened the hood to check the oil.

  “Yeah, I’m Wilson,” replied the man, nonchalantly. He was trying to hide his interest in the automobile, although his eyes and his body couldn’t lie.

  “Bunny’s a Wilson, too,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Hah?”

  “Me, too, I’m a Wilson,” said Bunny Wilson, peering over the man’s shoulder and into the mysterious maze of mechanics.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s a Wilson, too,” said Mr. Benchley, pointing to Woodrow, whose leash he had taken so that I would be free to walk over to the bakery. “No relation to Bunny, though.”

  “You named your dog, there, Wilson?”

  “His name is Woodrow Wilson.”

  “Like the president?”

  “No relation, though,” said Bunny.

  The gas station owner looked over our party clothes, the men’s shirts and ties in sorry, slept-in condition, and Tallulah’s and my now-limp dresses that we’d donned the night before. “You from the city?”

  “Heading back there, yeah.”

  “Why ain’t I surprised?”

  Bunny walked around the car, kicking tires, while Mr. Benchley checked his teeth while repositioning the sideview mirror, both men pretending they actually knew something about cars. They didn’t, of course, but it was necessary to keep up the masculine front—observing and nodding as the proprietor, Mr. Wilson, filled the water tank, washed the windscreen, and pumped the gasoline.

  Tallulah, awake and hungry, walked into the bakery with me for a sugary snack. After making our purchase of half-a-dozen donuts, we walked back out into the sun and grabbed a few bottles of Coca Cola out of the refrigerated cooler alongside the garage door, while the canine “Wilson” lapped up water dribbling out of the hose used for filling the car’s radiator. The writer “Wilson” paid the mechanic “Wilson” for his services. Family reunion over, we set off back toward the highway.

  An hour later, Mr. Benchley pulled the Mercedes into a space in front of the Algonquin, and we all eagerly got out of the car. The doorman stood poised to be handed my little overnight case by Mr. Benchley, who stood in front of the open trunk, staring down stupidly. I was about to ask my friend if he’d forgotten to throw in my little bag, for I could picture it still standing at the side of the drive, where I’d placed it, ready to be put in.

  “Everybody back in the car,” said Mr. Benchley, closing the trunk. It was an order, and not a request, because he opened the door for me and Tallulah to reenter, and then repeated the order to Bunny with an officious impatience that was out of character with the man I knew. And because his behavior was peculiar, we did as we were told. Even Tallulah’s braying objections held no power, so she refrained from escalating them with four-letter words. But that didn’t stop me:

  “Shit!” I said, “You forgot the bag!”

  “I didn’t forget it.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, as he pulled away from the curb with a jolt, turning uptown at Fifth Avenue.

  “Neither do I,” was his reply.

  “Where are you taking us?” asked Tallulah. She dabbed a bit of Shalimar under her arms, as the bath she was longing for appeared to have been delayed for further adventures.

  “To see Joe Woollcott, up at the police station.”

  “Sergeant Joe? You mean, Aleck’s cousin?” asked Bunny.

  “What did you do, ya damn fool, run a light, and you have to turn yourself in?” I said with a chuckle.

  “I didn’t do anything! I don’t know anything about it!”

  “What didn’t you do?” And what don’t you know?” I asked, getting nervous.

  “I didn’t kill anybody and I have no idea why a dead man’s body is stuffed in the trunk of this car.”

  Chapter Eight

  What can I say about Sgt. Joe Woollcott? Everything that Aleck is, Joe is not. Aleck is flamboyant; Joe is reserved. Aleck adores glitzy attire; Joe lives in NYPD blue. Aleck speaks with affected, florid audaciousness; Joe is all straight talk. Aleck is at home in a theatre; Joe prefers Yankee Stadium. The only things they have in common are their identical reflections when they look in the mirror, their great love of food, and their maternal connection: Their mothers were sisters.

  It just so happened that Sgt. Joe had been on duty Sunday morning and was just punching out to go to his home in the Bronx where his wife and five children were awaiting him for the start of their Sunday dinner of meat and potatoes when Mr. Benchley pulled up in front of the precinct house.

  “Joe,” called out Mr. Benchley from the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, getting Joe’s attention as he exited the station house. “Hypothetical question.”

  Sgt. Joe walked over to the curb, eyes running over the length of the car with lustful yearning. “Benchley? Oh, hello, Mrs. Parker, everybody . . .” he said, touching the visor of his cap. And then, with a sudden realization of why we were parked outside the police station, “Oh, no, let me say right off the bat: We don’t yet know the identity of the woman who was murdered on your train the other day.”

  “Why did he call it your train?” asked Tallulah, looking at me.

  Mr. Benchley would not be distracted from his mission with queries about a dead woman when he had a dead man on his hands: “Joe, suppose you just drove home from a weekend by the shore—”

  “No such luck. Been on duty all weekend. Nice machine you have here, Benchley . . . .”

  “Like it? It’s the new Mercedes Benz 630K Sports Touring car,” answered my friend, opening the glove compartment and removing a business card, which he handed to Joe. “Forty-four-hundred pounds of steel is this baby! Got a supercharged six-cylinder 6240-cc engine, and with a hundred-forty horsepower, by golly, it’s the fastest touring car on earth, Joe. But, as I had started to say, suppose you drove home with your friends from a weekend by the seashore, and—”

  “You took a job as a car salesman? It’s steady work, steadier than show business, that’s for sure, if you’re good at it. And you got a wife and a couple of kids to support . . . . Well,” said Joe, looking at the car longingly and pocketing the business card, “I can dream, I guess. Is that where you’ve been, the seashore? We’ve been trying to find you.”

  “That so? Well, I’m here, now. But, back to my point, Joe: Let’s just say you just drove this car back home—”

  “Too rich for me, Bobby. I sure could use a couple days by the shore, though,” said Joe, “but the old Ford will have to do until I get a promotion. I thought I’d take a drive out to Rockaway next week. The wife and kids would like—”

  “Yes, well, as I was saying, let’s say you drove home—”

  “Don’t waste the sales pitch on me, Bobby—”

  “I’m not trying to sell you—”

  “I couldn’t afford this beauty even if I was in the market for new car. Nice paint job, though.”

  “Twenty-one coats, you know.”

  “Horsepower?”

  “I told you! A hundred and forty—runs one-hundred-five miles per hour on the open road—”

  “Nice wood-finished interior.”

  “Burl wood is standard; it’s a Benz, after all.”

  “Radio’s optional, Joe,” said Tallulah. “And believe me, you have to have a radio.”

  “Radios are too distracting, cause too many accidents,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Yes, Bobby, but—” groaned Tallulah.

  “Would they throw one into the deal at the list price?”

  “I’m not trying to sell you a car, Joe,” said Mr. Benchley
. He looked on the verge of tears. “I’m trying to say that I discovered that there’s more than just Mrs. Parker’s overnight case in the trunk of this car.”

  “Okay, you’re not trying to sell me a car, sure, I get it! Smooth sales pitch. Lots of room in the trunk, huh? Well, we don’t go on any big, long trips, just day trips to Coney Island for the rides and a swim—bring along a few sandwiches, towels, and a beach umbrella,” considered Joe.

  Mr. Benchley shook his head and groaned. “What I was getting at, Joe—although I was presenting the whole account as a hypothetical, you see—” Mr. Benchley was pretty much talking to himself, now, babbling and chuckling and looking for help from the heavens as Joe was off and running somewhere else.

  “Just practicing, you mean? You seem to know what you’re talking about, all righty! Well, thanks for letting me know that you’re back in town, Benchley. I’ll call you at the dealership. Better yet, can you stop back in here tomorrow morning before work, to save time?”

  “That’s just it, Joe: I don’t think it’ll keep until morning, it’s so darn hot. And I have to return the car, see?”

  The men looked at each other, confused, as well they should be, and Bunny and Tallulah were no help at all, making jokes and laughing, so I decided to fix things: “For cryin’outloud, Joe, there’s a dead body in the trunk of this car.”

  Well, that put things straight, and ended Mr. Benchley’s hypothetical approach, although it took a bit of explaining to Joe that he had not actually given up his career as drama critic and his editorship of Life magazine in favor of selling automobiles. But, at least Mr. Benchley was not in jeopardy of being considered an accessory after the murder of the man in the trunk. For indeed, a crime of murder had been committed against the fellow, who stared up blindly from his resting place in the trunk of the car. Not only did the crack on his skull indicate foul play, but he hadn’t crawled into the car’s trunk by himself, so somebody had to have put him there. But it wasn’t so much that we had been chauffeuring around a dead man all morning—or the embarrassment the discovery of the body might have caused Mr. Benchley at the automobile dealership—after all, he always returned the loaned vehicle swept, washed, and Simonized. And it wasn’t the first time we’d discovered a dead body—we’ve been stumbling over them in all the best places over the past few years, so it was not exactly a shock that one had popped up in the trunk of the Mercedes. It was the fact that the murdered man was instantly identifiable to me.

  “I know this man,” I said, and everybody turned to look at me, mouths hanging open like hooked fish.

  “Elaborate, please,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “What do you know about this?” said Joe, frowning with pseudo-officiousness. After all, he was a police officer and no longer a potential Mercedes customer.

  “I know nothing about it whatsoever, Joe Woollcott!” I was very good at “indignant.”

  “But, you just said—”

  “He’s the man who’s been following me.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “And why has he been following you, Mrs. Parker, for your autograph?”

  “Obviously not for his health, Joe,” said Mr. Benchley, offering his hip flask all around, while we all lit up cigarettes.

  “He’s the man I saw on the train talking with our socialist friend, and then I saw him lurking a couple doors down from my hairdresser’s salon, yesterday, and—”

  “Lurking?” said Mr. Benchley, “and you didn’t tell me? Why, he might have murdered you—”

  Tallulah snorted.

  I glanced at her with a sneer. “All right, he wasn’t lurking, that’s too sinister; he was just looking in the window of a haberdasher’s shop on Madison. And he didn’t murder me, but got murdered instead, as we can see. I recognize the beret he’s clutching in his hand, and he’s wearing the same gabardine suit and tie.”

  “I don’t remember seeing him at the party last night,” said Bunny.

  “How could you?” snapped Tallulah, “When you didn’t have your tongue down the throat of that little chorine you were romancing, you had your tongue down the spout of a cognac bottle. But, I remember him.”

  Bunny didn’t make a rejoinder; he knew not to mess with Tallulah when she was irritable. We all awaited her explanation, because she took advantage of a dramatic pause to milk suspense. Finally: “I saw him when I arrived at our bungalow last night.”

  “Oh?” I said, “Arrived? Last night? You slinked in at dawn, after waking the dead with your foghorn lamentation of ‘Swanee.’”

  “All right, ‘Miss Music Critic’—you’ve no ear for music, you know that?—all right, I did get in at dawn. We were watching the sunrise over the bay after our sail.”

  “We meaning you and that adolescent—”

  “He said he was twenty-one—”

  “Me-ow!” said Bunny. “Look out, Bobby, a pussy fight!

  “Never liked pussies, Bunny, I’m a dog man,” cut in Mr. Benchley, pointing at us women, in a “confidential” aside we all could hear.

  “You certainly are a dog!” I turned on him, before turning back to Tallulah.

  “Prefer dogs, myself,” nodded Bunny, “ever since I was a boy and our pet raccoon dragged in Pickles.”

  “Every boy should have a dog,” concurred Mr. Benchley.

  “Like my friend Woodrow Wilson over there,” said Bunny, turning to look at my pup, who was napping under the auto’s chassis and out of the sun. “A kindred spirit, right down to our names. Look at him, lying there calmly, taking everything in his stride. Yes, every boy should have a dog . . . .”

  “Why, a dog teaches a boy fidelity,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Yes, he does . . . .”

  “Perseverance—”

  “Absolutely!”

  “—and to turn around three times before lying down.”

  I looked at Tallulah. “And the more I know of men,” I said to her, “the more I appreciate dogs.”

  Tallulah and I retracted our claws. We were both out of sorts from the heat, the car ride, and the ordeal of two hours of recitations by an idiot.

  “So what was it all about, Miss Bankhead? Where exactly did you see this fellow?” prodded Sgt. Joe, trying to steer us back to the object of discussion: the dead man in the trunk.

  “He was sitting on one of those benches at the edge of the little strip of woods between the house and the guest bungalows.”

  “What house? Where?” asked Joe.

  After a brief summary of our visit to the Mellons’ Long Island estate, and a recap of the musical entertainment on our way there and the oratory highlights on our way back to town, all provided for our listening pleasure by Mr. Benchley, and after my recommendation that Joe absolutely must choose the optional radio installation when purchasing a car, Joe said, “All right! I get the picture! He was alive when you saw him this morning.”

  “Yes,” said Tallulah. “He was sitting on the bench with a woman.”

  “A woman!”

  “Watching the rising dawn, I suppose?” I asked.

  “What woman? Do you know who she was?” asked Joe.

  “Couldn’t see her face, or his either, for that matter. They were locked in an . . . intimate embrace.”

  “How do you know, then, that the man you saw with the dame was this guy?”

  “Well, the light-colored suit showed up in the dark woods.”

  “So, we know he was alive at dawn,” said Joe, “and if we can find the woman, she will be able to tell us who this guy is. What else do you remember about the scene?”

  I interrupted Joe: “What was she wearing, the woman?”

  “Uhhh, let’s see . . . a dress, not an evening gown, though.”

  “So, if she was a guest, she must have changed out of her finery,” said Mr. Benchley. “That means she probably was staying the night, either in one of the other bungalows or in one of the bedrooms in the main house.”

  “Indeed,” said Tall
ulah, throwing it off, tired of the questions, hung over from too much champagne (and God knows what else she had imbibed or inhaled), needing a cool shower, and just plain cranky.

  “You must think, Lulla!” said Bunny, all altruistic and regaining his dignified sobriety. This was silly Bunny Wilson reverting to socially conscious Edmund Wilson, honorable young-man-of-letters. “What did you notice about her when you slithered back from your romantic assignation on the bay?”

  (Oh, and I forgot to add, pompous ass.)

  “Shut up, you silly virgin,” erupted Tallulah.

  “Alley cat!”

  “Well, it’s true, don’t deny it! You’re no tom cat, you ridiculous little sot! We all know you’ve been carrying around that same rubber in your pocket, never been used, same one you arrived with back in ’nineteen!”

  “Now, now, kids!” broke in Mr. Benchley, playing Father. “None of this sex-talk around the dinner table, or we’ll lock you in your rooms and draw the shades!”

  “Keep out of this, you.”

  “If you insist, Lulla,”

  “Well, that’s a lie!” said Bunny, blushing. With his already-fiery coloring he now resembled a radish: red, puckered, and with wisps of reddish hair where the roots would be.

  “It is the same rubber! And I have it from the horse’s mouth that it is so!”

  “Which horse?”

  “That horse over there,” she said, pointing at Little Me.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, “I’m a horse, huh?” I got ready for a defensive retort but couldn’t think of a thing to strike back with. It’s hard to deny the truth when you’re feeling hot and testy.

  “It is not the same one—”

  “Ohhhh! The first one disintegrated, did it? Had to be replaced? What happened, you play with it too much, rubbed it like a rabbit’s foot so you’d get lucky some night? Ain’t that why they call you ‘Bunny?’”

  “Why, you—”

  “Go ahead, say it!”

  “What the hell is going on here!” bellowed the usually soft-spoken sergeant, sounding oddly as if the Big Man—his cousin, Aleck—had suddenly appeared on the scene. And just in time, too, because Tallulah raised a fist and was about to throw a punch square into Mr. Benchley’s head when Bunny, who’d seen it coming, ducked behind the car salesman.