by George Baxt
“As opposed to what?” demanded Woollcott.
“A critic,” replied Ziegfeld.
Woollcott’s tongue lashed back, “And how’s your wife, Flo?”
“Billie’s fine. Say, you know something, it’s providence you two turning up here tonight. I’m beginning to put together next year’s Follies. Benchley and Kaufman and Lardner have already promised to contribute some sketches. Now what about Parker and Woollcott?”
“I’ll give it some thought,” said Woollcott.
“Mrs. Parker?” She could see why women found the producer attractive. He pronounced her name as though it was something special, invented solely for her use and identity.
“I’ve never written revue sketches.”
“I pay handsomely.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
There was an explosion of laughter from the dressing room. Woollcott clucked his tongue. “Such levity and poor Ilona Mercury lying dead in her coffin. Isn’t there any respect for the dead in the theatre?”
Ziegfeld shouted into the room, “Girls! A little more respect for the dead!”
“Oh, are we closing?” asked a voice pitched so high that Mrs. Parker thought, another decibel and only birds and dogs can hear it.
“Who was Miss Mercury’s replacement?” asked Mrs. Parker. “Was that the blond girl who stood at the top of the staircase?”
“That was indeed. She understudies all the girls.”
“She’s terribly beautiful.”
“Would you care to meet her?”
“Why, I’d love to meet them all.” Ziegfeld catered to her whim and introduced Mrs. Parker and Woollcott to the girls.
“And this is Charlotte Royce.” It was the blonde who had replaced Ilona Mercury. At close inspection, she seemed smaller and more fragile than she had appeared on stage. In fact, Mrs. Parker realized, it was the clever costume designs, the lighting and the decor that gave the girls their statuesque appearance.
“So tragic about poor Miss Mercury,” said Mrs. Parker.
“Yeah.”
“Did you know her?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you close friends?”
“Why d’y’ask?”
“Because we understand the other young lady who was murdered, Vera DeLee, was also a friend of Miss Mercury’s.”
“The cops send you here?” Charlotte Royce, Mrs. Parker decided, might act and sound like one, but she was nobody’s fool. From the look on Ziegfeld’s face, she could tell his mind was beginning to work along the same lines. Mrs. Parker explained about her collaboration with Woollcott. “Oh, I see,” said the girl, “literature.”
“Miss Mercury was also a friend of a friend of ours,” explained Woollcott, “which is why we’re also concerned.”
“Kaufman,” said the girl, and Mrs. Parker almost trembled.
“You know Mr. Kaufman?” she asked.
“I met him a couple of times. Ilona brought him around for drinks once. And once he took us to a couple of gin joints. Nice guy.”
Mrs. Parker decided to jump in with both feet. “You were Miss Mercury’s roommate?”
“Yeah. Now I need a replacement. I can’t carry the rent myself.” She studied Mrs. Parker from head to toe. “Any suggestions?”
Mrs. Parker sidestepped the question. “We’d like to talk to you about Ilona, if we may.”
“Not tonight. I gotta date.” It was obvious the date was with Ziegfeld.
“I’d like to call you tomorrow.”
“Sure. I’m at the Wilfred Arms. Don’t call me too early, huh?”
“About noon?”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
Mrs. Parker and Woollcott said goodbye to Ziegfeld, and when they said goodbye to Charlotte Royce, the girl finally smiled, winked her right eye and said, “So long. Abyssinia!”
Woollcott took Mrs. Parker by the arm and hurried her out of the theatre. “The Wilfred Arms. Don’t forget it,” he cautioned.
“How can I?” asked Mrs. Parker. “That’s where Vera DeLee was murdered.”
Jacob Singer was working late. Paperwork was catching up on him. There were also the Ilona Mercury and Vera DeLee autopsy reports to be read and reread until thoroughly digested and memorized. Los Angeles had wired him pages of information on Ilona Mercury and Bela Horathy. It was better than pulp fiction. There was an Alice in Wonderland quality in the file on Ilona Mercury, as though she had stepped through a looking glass into an unbelievable world of her own design that could easily have colored Lewis Carroll’s face green with envy.
The report read:
Our files on Ilona Mercury go back to 1919 when the subject first came to our attention. She was eighteen years old, known as Bessie Landau, when booked for vagrancy and indecent behavior. She was bailed out by a man named Sands who identified himself as being in the employ of the movie director, William Desmond Taylor. Taylor was murdered on the night of February 1, 1922. Assailant is still at large, unknown to us; the file on the case stays open. Suspects included movie stars Mary Miles Minter, now retired, Mabel Normand, also inactive but planning a return, Minter’s mother, Charlotte Selby, and Sands, the butler, who disappeared and is still at large. It’s rumoured Sands may have actually been Desmond Taylor’s younger brother, Dennis Deane Tanner, Deane Tanner being Desmond Taylor’s real name. In 1919, the assumption is that Mercury and Sands were lovers. In 1920, thanks to Desmond Taylor, Mercury got some bit parts in films and it seemed she might have a future. She ran with a wild crowd that included Wallace Reid, since dead of narcotics, Barbara LaMarr, deceased this year of narcotics, Olive Thomas and her husband, Jack Pickford, Mary’s younger brother. Thomas was found dead September 10, 1920, in the posh Crillon Hotel in Paris. She’d been trying to make a heroin score for herself and Pickford. It is still debatable if she was murdered or a suicide. She was thirty-two years old. She’d been a Ziegfeld girl. Pickford family was powerful enough to cover up for baby brother. We suspect he’s still on it, as is Mabel Normand, actress Alma Rubens, and a few others we don’t dare mention for fear of studio backlash. After the death of Thomas, followed by that of Wally Reid, Mercury seemed to hit a bad patch in pictures and started working as a singing hostess at the Bluebird Club in Hollywood. The place is under constant surveillance as a dope drop. When the Desmond Taylor scandal blew the town wide open, Mercury disappeared. We think she acted as a go-between peddling drugs to the stars, or helping them make a score. Desmond Taylor and Sands were suspected of being part of a dope ring here. They frequented the Bluebird Club. One story we had here was that Charlotte Selby murdered Desmond Taylor because she suspected he was trying to hook her daughter, Miles Minter. Ilona Mercury was also very friendly with a chiropractor named Hans Javor. Javor was a pusher. He tried to get close to the Nazimova-Natacha Rambova-Rudolph Valentino set, but Valentino would have none of him. Javor is also suspected of spreading the word that Valentino was in on some sexual hanky-panky with Desmond Taylor, a suspected bisexual, and Sands the butler (or brother). Javor said he was Hungarian. See further in the report on Bela Horathy.
Here the report on Ilona Mercury ended. Singer stretched and yawned. They sure know how to burn out fast out there, he thought as he crossed to the window looking out on his bleak alley. There was a cat fight going on, and the noise bothered him. He opened the window, almost keeling over backward from the stench, shouted some clearly pronounced epithets, then shut the window and returned to his desk, where he reread the report on Bela Horathy.
Now, Jake, this one is a little sketchier than the Ilona Mercury because we’re not too sure about some of our facts, and you know how far hearsay evidence will get you in a court of law. We go back to Hans Javor and 1923, when he was brought in and arraigned on charges of peddling dope. He seemed to have no papers on him that we found satisfactory, so we shipped him to Mexico as an undesirable alien. Six months later or thereabouts, a Dr. Bela Horathy hangs out his shingle in a house behind the Hollywood Hotel. In no time at all, he’s getting heavy traffic,
especially from such celebrities as Barbara LaMarr and Alma Rubens. LaMarr’s boyfriend then was a big power at the Metro studios, Paul Bern. Bern, in an attempt to rescue LaMarr from the habit, started a campaign to get rid of Horathy. Horathy at this time had a mistress, Magda Moreno, who bore a strong physical resemblance to Ilona Mercury. Our assumption is Mercury hotfooted it to Mexico to wait for the Desmond Taylor scandal to cool off, and somehow there hooked up with old buddy Hans Javor. It figures they then got back into the States, probably by way of Arizona where it’s always easier to get in illegally, renewed their drug connections and set up house as Horathy and Moreno. That is, until Bern blew the whistle on the operation about two years ago. So now Mercury is a murder victim and Horathy’s operating in your bailiwick. If Horathy is continuing heavy in drugs, be very careful. He fronts a very powerful syndicate originating in Sicily. He is not alone. They come through here by way of South America and Mexico, and we’ve found a lot of strange bodies floating off the pier at Venice. Sometimes you can’t tell the fish from the stiffs. As to your third inquiry, we have nothing on Lacey Van Weber.
Singer looked at his wristwatch. It was almost eleven-thirty. He was tempted to bring the reports to Mrs. Parker and Woollcott at Tony’s, but then decided it could wait until morning. He was hungry and thirsty. And there was that old, familiar nagging feeling in his loins. He wondered what the action might be like at Texas Guinan’s.
After they entered Tony’s restaurant and mentioned Lacey Van Weber’s name, Tony himself greeted Mrs. Parker and Woollcott as though they were presenting diplomatic credentials. He bowed and scraped them to a comfortable table away from the kitchen and promptly ordered a bottle of wine. “Just off the boat,” he confided, Mrs. Parker assuming he meant the Staten Island Ferry. “The wine is with my compliments,” said Tony effusively, and Woollcott was tempted to ask him how large was his weekly payoff to the local gendarmerie. He didn’t ask because corruption and police made him think of Jacob Singer, and Singer couldn’t possibly be corrupt. He could probably be mean and dangerous when angry, but never corrupt.
“Stop furrowing your brows,” said Mrs. Parker as Tony gave them menus. “It makes you look like an obscene teddy bear.”
“May I recommend the osso buco?” asked Tony.
“You may,” said Woollcott, “to that noisy party across the room.” He studied the menu carefully. “I think I’ve read this before.” He asked Mrs. Parker, “Some pasta to begin with?”
“Nothing messy,” she replied. “Actually, I’ll have an antipasto. I’m not very hungry.”
“Well, I am.” Woollcott ordered spaghetti followed by a veal piccata.
“I’m glad you didn’t order breaded veal cutlet.” Tony was replaced by the sommelier with the bottle of wine.
“I never eat breaded veal cutlet,” insisted Woollcott while polishing his pince-nez with an end of the tablecloth.
“Good. Breaded veal cutlet is how I’d describe the texture of Judge Crater’s skin.”
Woollcott sampled the wine. “Absolutely poisonous, but I suppose it’ll do.” The sommelier filled their glasses and departed.
Mrs. Parker sipped her wine. “You’re absolutely right, Alec. Undoubtedly made of grapes from the Medici vineyards. What did you think of Charlotte Royce?”
“I think she’s expecting a great deal from Mr. Ziegfeld.”
“I think she’s going to get it. Probably not stardom, but whatever she’s going to get from him, she’s going to get a great deal. She didn’t bat an eyelash at the mention of Mercury and DeLee.”
“I did adore the way she slipped in Kaufman. Anyway, I suppose being neighbours, the girls knew each other fairly well.”
“Oh, sure. Probably dropping in on each other every so often to borrow a cup of a new cure for a social disease.”
“Now, now. Don’t be too hard on these ladies. Theirs is not an easy life.”
“I’d swap it for mine. They don’t have to meet deadlines.” A waiter brought the antipasto and the spaghetti. Both began to eat, Mrs. Parker sparingly.
“Your Mr. Van Weber is quite right. The vongole sauce is exquisite.” Woollcott broke off a piece of Italian bread and began sopping up the sauce.
“Mr. Van Weber’s taste is exquisite.”
Woollcott paused in his sopping up to study Mrs. Parker as she tried to spear a black olive. “You’re quite taken with him, aren’t you?”
“You saw him. You saw how he behaved toward me. He’s impeccable.”
“And much too enigmatic.”
“Therein lies his fascination. Jacob Singer put his finger on something which for the life of me I cannot understand how it escaped my observation.”
“And that is?”
“His use of the expression ‘old sport.’”
Woollcott dabbed at some sauce dribbling down his chin. “Lots of people use the expression. I believe it originated in Britain. ‘Hello, old sport,’ ‘Hello, old bean,’ things like that. Fitzgerald gives it to Gatsby. Gatsby is ‘old sporting’ all over that wretched book.” He had demolished the spaghetti. He was looking around ravenously for his dish of veal. “What’s that wild gleam in your eyes?”
Mrs. Parker laughed lightly. “It’s gone right past you. So much for your deductive powers. ‘Old sport.’ Gatsby Lacey Van Weber.”
Woollcott’s mouth formed an O. “Well, I’ll be damned. That mansion out in East Cove. The setting, the performance, the dialogue, it’s all out of the book. And Singer spotted it immediately?”
“Oh, yes. He’s quite literate, our Mr. Singer. I think he’s even read Moby Dick.”
“I tried to read Moby Dick, but I had to give it up. It made me seasick. Ah, here’s my veal!” He tore into the food as though he had just emerged from a hunger strike. “Mighty fine this, absolutely lovely.”
“Jacob Singer recommended a speakeasy just a few feet from here.”
“Oh? Are you in the mood for a speakeasy?”
“I’m always in the mood for a speakeasy. I’m especially in a mood for this one.” She told him about Singer’s tip regarding Sid Curley, the informant.
“How will we know him? We just can’t ask for him.”
“He’ll go ‘sniff sniff sniff.’“ Woollcott’s look of confusion was amusing. She wondered if he ever considered acting as a second career. But then, Woollcott was always giving a performance. She had long ago decided his life was a starring vehicle created by himself, for himself, and no understudy needed because nobody else could fill the master’s shoes. She explained Curley’s erstwhile cocaine addiction now replaced by a talent for sniffing out celebrities and information the police might treasure and reward handsomely.
“I must say, this investigation is certainly bringing us in touch with a fascinating class of people.” He ran down the list concluding with a eulogy to prostitutes.
“The only difference between them and us,” said Mrs. Parker, “is that they admit they’re prostitutes.” She was repairing her face while Woollcott signalled for the bill.
“The Harlequin, did you say?”
“The Harlequin.”
“Is there a secret password, like ‘Joe sent us’ or ‘we’re friends of Abie’s’?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea. I suppose we’ll have to charm our way in.”
The orchestra in the Kit Kat Club was blasting away at the Black Bottom. The dance floor was crowded with revellers acting as though the end of the world were imminent. They danced under a huge revolving crystal ball suspended from the ceiling while waiters crossing the dance area deftly dodged between them. Florenz Ziegfeld lit a cigar and sat back in his chair, contemplating the dancers while looking like an Oriental potentate. Charlotte Royce was digging into a piece of apple pie wondering why there were always these long silences between herself and Ziegfeld. How often had she complained, “It’s always eat, drink and fuck, eat, drink and fuck. We never talk about nothing. Just eat, drink and fuck.” She pushed the plate to one side and diverted her attention
to a tall glass of undiluted Scotch. She took a long swig and then sat back smacking her lips.
“You’re going to make yourself sick,” said Ziegfeld.
“Listen, Flo, what’s with us?”
“What do you mean, what’s with us? Aren’t you having a good time?”
“Sure. Swell.” She sounded as though there’d be greater hilarity in a mass burial. “But where’s it getting us?”
“I told you, you have a spot in next year’s Follies.”
“Is that why you think I’m here?” Ziegfeld looked into her little girl’s face. She was such a sweet-looking child, but yet, a child. There was none of the sophistication of his wife, Billie Burke, or the wit of some of his former showgirls such as Ina Claire and Lilyan Tashman. He supposed some alienist could explain why he cheated on Billie with these show kids, but it was something he had long ago decided to stop examining. It was a game he played, Who Does the Boss Fuck Next? “I’d like you to talk to me sometimes. I got things to talk about.”
“Such as?”
“Lots of things. Like how come you don’t talk about Ilona Mercury?”
“I don’t talk about Ilona Mercury.”
“Why not?” She giggled. “You sure know plenty about her.”
Ziegfeld casually flicked some cigar ash into a tray. “You must learn, my little pixie, to keep your trap shut.”
“Oh, I ain’t going to talk about her.”
“Mrs. Parker will certainly be phoning you tomorrow.”
“Good. And if she asks me to, I’ll see her. I like to be with famous people who are smart. And I’ll answer all her questions.”
Ziegfeld’s face looked saturnine in the reflections from the revolving crystal ball. His eyes narrowed, and his voice was sharp and heavily underlined. “You put a button on your lips.”
“Oh, ha ha ha, I’m laughing up my sleeve. You know I’ll feed her a line of double talk. I’m real smart. And every day I get smarter. You got some real smart ones in this show. That Paulette Goddard, boy, does she know what she wants!”
“She’ll probably get it, too.”
