Groucho Marx, Private Eye

by Ron Goulart

  Branner flicked his cigarette butt in the direction of the Cadillac’s fender. “Good-bye, Julius.” He turned and went walking away.

  Groucho sighed out a breath and started the car. “I don’t think,” he observed, “that Bayside is going to be a very good market for that gross of welcome mats I’ve been trying to unload.”

  * * *

  While Groucho was visiting the jailhouse, I dropped in at the Bayside Diner where I was going to meet one of my few friends on the Bayside police force. For some reason several seagulls were congregated out in front of the narrow little seafront restaurant.

  “Not casting any bird parts today, fellas,” I told them as I approached the door. “Sorry.”

  Giving out annoyed squawks they went scattering away into the gray morning.

  Enery McBride was on duty behind the counter. “What do you think?” he asked, turning away from the grill and spreading his arms wide.

  “About what? New apron?”

  “No, Frank,” he said. “My weight, I mean.”

  Tilting my head, I scrutinized the big husky actor. “Am I obliged to say you look thinner?”

  “No, fatter,” answered Enery. “I’m in the running for a good part in Mr. Woo’s Murder Cruise over at Paragon.”

  “Hey, congratulations. But why do you have to put on weight?”

  “I’m being considered for the part of Mr. Woo’s new chauffeur.” He returned his attention to the flapjacks that were sizzling on the grill. “It’s going to be a great dramatic challenge. I not only get to roll my eyes, but I’ll be delivering classic lines like, ‘I thinks dis ol’ house got hants in it, Mr. Woo.’ Plus, my favorite of all time, “‘Feets do your stuff.’”

  “Still sounds like a step up from ‘Carry your bags, sir?’” I sat on a stool after glancing around the small diner. Nobody else at the counter and only one of the booths was occupied, by two blondes drinking coffee and reading the Hollywood trade papers. The cop I was here to meet hadn’t arrived yet. “When’ll you know for sure?”

  “Going in for the final interview the day after tomorrow.”

  “What’s the name of your character?”

  “He doesn’t have a name, only a nickname.”

  “Which is?”

  “Slow Motion.”

  “That’s worthy of Ben Jonson.”

  Enery tossed the flapjacks onto a plate. “Describes my personality aptly, yeah,” he agreed. “Although I’m more partial to nicknames with an ironic twist, like Snowflake or Sunshine.”

  “When you’re at Paragon, you might ask to try out for the job of Brian Montaine’s replacement in The Legend of King Arthur.”

  “Right, that’s a great idea. I can suggest they revise their script so it’s more like The Emperor Jones.” He poured corn syrup over the hotcakes. “You meeting somebody?”

  “Ira Lefcowitz.”

  “Cop,” he said. “Getting back in the detective trade, Frank?”

  “Me and Groucho, yeah.”

  He frowned. “Are you looking into Montaine’s death?”

  “Nope, no.” I stirred two spoons of sugar into my coffee. “Is there anything there to look into?”

  He shrugged. “Lady friend of mine works for one of the studio physicians at Paragon.” He settled into the chair he kept behind the counter and started in on his breakfast. “Only thing is, she told me that Brian Montaine just had a complete physical exam not more than three four weeks ago. Wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his heart then.”

  “So what killed him?”

  “Maybe his habits.”

  “Which ones?”

  Enery pushed the flat of his thumb against his nostril and made a sniffing noise. “That one maybe.”

  “I hadn’t heard that about Montaine.”

  Enery smiled. “When you’re a star, they got publicity people who circulate all sorts of bullshit about you. But they got other publicity people who make damn sure certain kinds of truth never get out. Well, hell, you already know that.”

  I drank some of my coffee. “What we’re looking into is this mess Frances London just got herself into.”

  “Latest mess in a long series of messes,” he said, chewing. “She’s got a real knack for getting in trouble. Used to be a pretty good actress though.” He glanced over my shoulder as the door opened.

  Detective Lefcowitz came in out of the morning, carrying a paper shopping bag. “Morning, one and all. How’s the cinema career going, Enery?”

  “My rise is about to turn meteoric, Detective.”

  When he said Detective, the two girls sat up straighter and then both slid over closer to the wall of their booth.

  Nodding at Lefcowitz’s bag, I mentioned, “Looks like you brought me a lot of information, Ira.”

  He was a middle-size man in his late thirties. “Actually, Frank, since I’m doing a favor for you, a big favor I might add,” he said, “I’d like you to do a favor for me in return. C’mon, we’ll grab a booth and I’ll explain.”

  Six

  As Groucho, in his slouching way, was climbing on foot up through a quiet residential district at the lower edge of the Hollywood hills, he became aware that out on the afternoon street a dusty green Pontiac was moving along parallel to him.

  Slowing, he stopped and squinted in the direction of the automobile. It stopped, too.

  The window on the passenger side started to roll down and he prepared to fling himself behind the protective trunk of a palm tree about five feet uphill from him. After his encounter with Sergeant Branner, he was a little concerned about his continued well-being.

  “Yoo hoo,” called someone inside the green car, “yoo hoo.”

  “You’re in the wrong place,” he said, pointing back toward where he’d parked his Cadillac. “The yodeling auditions are back that way.”

  A plump gray-haired woman in a print dress worked her way out of the car, a box camera clutched in both hands. “Mr. Marx,” she asked, approaching him in a very tentative way, “would you mind if I took a picture with you?”

  Groucho leaped over the flower beds that trimmed the slanting sidewalk and perched on the curb. “Certainly not. What picture shall we take?” he inquired. “I’ve always been partial to September Morn, but you can pick whatever masterpiece you want. They tell me that the Mona Lisa is much more valuable, even though the dame in that one is fully clothed.” He consulted his gold wristwatch. “Ah, but the Mona Lisa is all the way over in Paris and I simply have too many chores today to allow us to pop over there and swipe it. I’m afraid we’ll have to steal a picture from one of the local—”

  “What I meant, Mr. Marx, is would it be all right if my husband snapped a picture of the two of us.”

  “Didn’t he get enough good ones when he caught us together in the Roosevelt Hotel the other night?” He jumped from the curb to the street. “Myself, I just adored the one of your doing the fan dance atop the room service table. It was, I must tell you, the very first time I’d ever seen anyone do a fan dance with an electric fan and it really and truly—”

  “Get back into the car, Myra,” suggested her husband from the driver’s seat. “These movie stars are all alike.”

  Groucho went loping around the perplexed woman to peer into the car. “You’re absolutely correct, sir. You can’t possibly guess how many times a day I’m mistaken for Shirley Temple. The correct answer is twenty-six, but don’t let on I slipped it to you.” He reached in and shook hands with the plump middle-aged man. “You and Tugboat Annie here have brought a little ray of sunshine into a shut-in’s life, but I must be going.”

  “But what about the photo, Mr. Marx?” asked the woman as he started to walk away.

  Groucho halted, spun around. “Okay, kiddo,” he said. “Get your hubby out here to snap it before the lunacy commission arrives to throw the net over the lot of us.”

  “I knew you were a nice man after all, Mr. Marx,” she said.

  “Under the circumstances,” he told her, “I’ll overlook
that insult.”

  * * *

  There wasn’t anything in the way of a sea view from the Sea-view Court Apartments. A dozen cream-colored stucco cottages with red tile roofs framed a neatly kept courtyard that had a fountain at its center and a half dozen thriving orange trees dotting its green lawn.

  Groucho paused at the fountain to gaze at the imitation marble cherub who topped it and held a spouting dolphin in an uneasy embrace.

  “I wonder when Harry Cohn posed for that?” he asked himself before continuing on his way.

  As he walked up the redbrick steps to the door of apartment 11, he noticed that the lace curtains masking the living room window swayed and flickered.

  He tapped on the glass panel of the curtained door with his knuckles.

  Nothing happened.

  Groucho knocked once more.

  He was certain that he was still being observed from within.

  “Miss Wakeman,” he said, leaning close to the door, “I’m trying to help Frances London.”

  Very faintly a woman’s voice asked, “Who are you?”

  “Groucho Marx.”

  “Oh, c’mon, be serious. Besides, Groucho Marx has a big moustache.”

  “Greasepaint,” he informed the door. He removed the cigar from his mouth and sang a few lines of “Hail, Freedonia.” “If that doesn’t convince, my dear, I’m prepared to show you my telltale birthmark. That, however, will require a certain amount of public nudity.”

  After about twenty seconds the door opened a few inches and Dr. Benninger’s former nurse looked out, carefully, at Groucho. “Okay, I guess you are who you say you are.”

  “The last time the government meat inspectors were by the house, they conceded the same thing.” The door opened a little farther and he eased into Alice Wakeman’s living room.

  She was a tall young woman, thin, about thirty, wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a faded UCLA sweatshirt. “Ever since I heard that Dr. Benninger had been killed,” she told him, “I’ve felt very uneasy.”

  The room was furnished in department store Swedish modern. “Why?” he asked as he sat in a white armchair.

  She seated herself on the blond wood chair opposite him. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Marx?”

  “Not especially. Tell me why you’re scared.”

  “Frances didn’t have anything to do with killing him, no matter what the police claim,” she answered. “That means whoever did it might also be interested in hurting me.”

  “Who would they be and why harm you?”

  She sighed out a slow breath. “I’m not sure anyone will,” she explained. “Because I really don’t know all that much about what the doctor was up to. I just can’t be certain that they know that.”

  “You knew enough to quit, though?”

  “Between what Frances told me,” she went on, “and what I’d figured out for myself, I decided it was time to get out of his office.”

  “What did she tell you, Alice?”

  “Don’t you know about that?”

  “The matron cut off our conversation before Frances got to the details,” he replied. “She said you’d be able to fill me in.”

  “What bothered Frances were the times they went to the Coconut Grove and were joined by Jack Cortez and his girlfriend.”

  Groucho straightened in his chair. “Cortez is the Chicago hood who came West to work for that labor racketeer Willie Bioff.”

  “That’s him,” she confirmed. “But now he’s high up in Joe Tartaglia’s outfit.”

  He rested his cigar in a black ashtray. “Tartaglia is supposed to be the goon who controls the drug trade in Greater LA.”

  “I don’t know exactly what was going on, but Dr. Benninger had some kind of dealings with Tartaglia’s people.”

  “That means he was involved in the narcotics business.”

  “As I say, I quit before I learned too many of the details.”

  “You don’t know if the doctor was selling drugs or just using them?”

  “What I suspect, Mr. Marx, is that Jack Cortez was providing drugs for Dr. Benninger to sell to some of his rich patients.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Groucho frowned. “This opens up all sorts of interesting new motives for killing the fellow.”

  “It does,” the nurse agreed, “and a lover’s quarrel sure as hell isn’t one of them.”

  Seven

  I picked up Jane at her boss Rod Tommerlin’s self-consciously modern glass-and-redwood house on Palm Lane at a few minutes after one-thirty that afternoon. When I parked at the curb, my car radio was playing Chick Webb’s “A-Tisket A-Tasket” and I sat there for about a half minute singing along with Ella Fitzgerald.

  The cartoonist’s Japanese gardener was trimming the chest-high hedge that paralleled the long, wide driveway. “Very funny,” he called to me as I went trotting up the flagstone path toward the house.

  Slowing, I inquired, “Which?”

  “Your Groucho show last week.”

  I nodded, grinning, and yelled back, “Wait’ll you hear tonight’s broadcast.”

  The front door opened and Jane, a green cardigan over her left arm, stepped out into the afternoon. “I believe,” she said, “there’s an ordinance against outdoor advertising in this part of Bayside.” She came walking toward me.

  “I was merely responding to one of my many fans.”

  “Shouting at the top of your voice constitutes disturbing the peace.” She kissed me on the cheek.

  I hugged her. “I’m starting to wonder if I really want to cohabit with a woman who frowns on my publicizing my dramatic works.”

  “Better make up your mind quick, since we’re supposed to meet Mr. Farris at a possible house over on Mattilda Road in about twenty minutes.” She took my hand and we walked over to my Plymouth coupé.

  “Mattilda Road? Do we want to live in a place that’s on a street with a godawful name like that?”

  “If the rent is right, sure we do.”

  I held the door open for her and she slid into the passenger seat. I realized that I still liked to watch her long slim legs while she did that.

  “Cad,” I told myself as I circled the car and climbed in behind the steering wheel.

  “How’s that?”

  “Just reminding myself how far I’ve sunk since my Boy Scout days.” I started the car.

  Jane leaned back. “While I think of it,” she said, “I’ve got to attend a funeral tomorrow.”

  “Oh, whose?”

  “Brain Montaine.”

  I guided my car into Tommerlin’s driveway, backed out, and turned around. “I didn’t realize you knew him.”

  “I don’t exactly, but his wife and I were sort of friends. She telephoned this morning to ask me to show up and, even though I’m not especially fond of funerals, I agreed.”

  “Wasn’t Montaine divorced?”

  “They’re only separated,” answered Jane. “Dianne Sayler and I went to art school together and were chums back then.”

  “She’s an artist?”

  “Yes, and a pretty successful one. She does illustrations for slick magazines like Collier’s,” she told me. “Every once in a while, when she was still living with Montaine, Dianne’d call and we’d meet for lunch at some extremely fashionable bistro on or near Rodeo Drive. She’s not a bad person, although she tends to complain a heck of a lot about most everything.”

  “Do you want me to tag along?”

  “Nope, I’ll solo on this.” She shook her head. “Besides you’re going to be doubly busy now that you and Groucho have hung out your shingle again.”

  I tugged at my earlobe. “Am I sensing a snide tone creeping into your voice, my dear?”

  Smiling, she spread her hands wide. “Hey, I’m all for your helping Frances London,” Jane assured me. “She hasn’t had an especially happy life and right now she needs all the help she can get. Besides, I know that you and Groucho are very effective at this sort of thing.”

  I turned r
ight on Westwind Road. “I’m beginning to think she probably is innocent.”

  “What did Detective Lefcowitz tell you this morning?”

  I sighed. “Well, unfortunately, the first thing Ira told me is that he wants to be a writer.”

  “A radio writer, you mean?”

  “No, a pulp magazine writer. He discovered Black Mask and Dime Detective couple years back,” I said. “What he’s done is turn out a story—a very long story—about a Hollywood private eye.”

  “A private eye like J. Hawkshaw Transom.”

  “Not exactly, no. This is a very tough, deadly serious operative christened Slug Farrell.”

  Jane grinned. “That’s a nifty name. Yes, I think I could place my faith in a man named Slug. It suggests strength and dependability and isn’t a wishy-washy name like, oh, say, Frank.”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to read through a twenty-five-thousand-word Slug Farrell yarn entitled Dames Love Diamonds and critique the damn thing.”

  “Do you absolutely have to?”

  “Pretty sure I do if I want to continue to have this particular cop’s cooperation.”

  She asked, “So what about the murder of this plastic surgeon?”

  “Well, there are several things that make me think that Frances London couldn’t have had anything to do with the killing of Dr. Benninger.” I spotted Mattilda Road coming up on my right. “What number?”

  “Eleven-forty.”

  “Then we want to turn left.”

  Jane said, “What things?”

  “For one, the doctor was shot in the back of the head at very close range,” I replied, tapping the back of my head with a forefinger. “That was done while the guy was facedown on his living room carpet.”

  “What’s the police theory? That she knocked him down somehow and then sat on his back while she shot him?”

  “They simply say she did it, especially our favorite cop, Sergeant Branner,” I said. “But, after getting a look at the photos of the scene and reading over the autopsy report, I’d guess this was more in the line of an execution.”

  “You mean as in a gangster killing?”