by Ron Goulart
Someone made a gasping sound on his immediate left and he became aware that a plump woman in a flamboyantly flowered dress was walking along, sideways, next to him.
His eyebrows climbed. “Have you sprung a leak, madam?”
She gasped again. “You’re,” she began, pausing to inhale, “you’re one of the Marx Brothers, aren’t you?”
Groucho halted, scowled, removed the dead cigar from his lips and pointed at her with it. “No, my good woman, I’m actually all of the Ritz Brothers,” he replied. “And let me tell you, it’s a thankless task. Bad enough being Al and Jimmy, but being Harry as well takes all my spare time and you can’t imagine how far behind I’m getting with my quilting.” Reinstating the cigar, he resumed his slouching walk.
After taking another deep breath, the woman caught up with him and tugged a red-covered autograph album out of her black patent leather purse. “Well, I just know you’re connected to the Marx Brothers in some way and so—”
“I’m connected with them in the worst way possible,” he admitted, taking the album from between her pudgy fingers and opening it. “To Alice from John Gilbert,” he read. “You’ve been at this nefarious pastime for a good many years, eh, Alice?”
“Since I was a girl.”
“That is a long time.” He accepted the stubby pencil she handed him and, after licking the tip, scribbled on a blank page. “Now, as pleasant as this interlude has been, Alice, I really must be going.” He returned the book, kept the pencil and went loping off.
She brought the page up close to her eyes and read what Groucho had inscribed there. “Say,” she called after him, “you signed this Hoot Gibson.”
“You’re extremely lucky,” he returned over his shoulder. “Some days I don’t even give a Hoot.”
He turned onto the side street he’d been seeking, broke into a slow trot, went up the imitation marble steps and into the West Hollywood Athletic Club.
* * *
The tanned, blond young woman in the white shorts and white sweatshirt was shaking her head at Groucho. “You can’t, really, go in there dressed like that, Mr. Marx.”
“I know, it’s awfully gauche of me,” admitted Groucho, reaching again for the door of the Men’s Steam Room. “But, alas, my only presentable tuxedo is away at the cleaner’s. The cleaner himself, if you must know, is away down South in Dixie and as for his wife—”
“No, I mean, you’ve got your clothes on.”
“We’ll soon remedy that.” Handing her his cigar butt, he started to slip out of his coat.
“You’re supposed to undress in the locker room.”
He narrowed his left eye and looked her up and down. “This is the darnedest proposition I’ve had in many a moon, my dear, but okay. Where’s your locker room?”
“Not my locker room. The men’s locker room, Mr. Marx.”
“No, nope. Taking off my clothes in front of a bunch of fat men isn’t my idea of fun,” he informed her, putting his coat back on and taking the cigar. “Let’s review the situation, shall we? You’ve already informed me that Abe Bockman, the famed talent agent and footpad, is within this very steam room getting parboiled even as we speak. Am I right thus far?”
“Yes, but—”
“I, on the other hand, am extremely eager to have a conversation with Abe.”
“I heard your career was on the skids, but you still should be able to get a better agent than Abe Bockman.”
“We can carry on this witty badinage all morning, child,” he explained, “but eventually I’m going in there.”
She gave a helpless sigh, turned around and went walking along the pale green hall toward her reception desk. “You’re impossible,” she said.
“My doctor assures me it’s only a temporary condition,” he told her through cupped hands.
He entered the steam room. Squinting into the thick white mist that started to engulf him, Groucho called out, “Abe?”
There was no response.
“Abe Bockman, I’ve got an important message from Sam Goldwyn.”
“Over here,” came a voice to his left. “Is it about the—”
“Welcome back from San Francisco.” Groucho sat himself down on the bench next to the tall, lean agent.
“Well now, Groucho, I wasn’t exactly up in Frisco, you know,” Bockman said. He was wearing a yellow towel around his waist.
“I found that out, yes. And then I trailed you here. You see, mad silly creature that I am, I got the foolish notion you were trying to avoid me.”
“I was trying to avoid everybody. Had to do with a little domestic problem. I decided to lie low for a couple days.”
“What about your client—what about Peg?”
Bockman shook his head sadly. “A tragedy. But then show business is filled with— Ow!”
Groucho had taken hold of his upper arm, hard. “Abe, she didn’t kill herself.”
The agent pulled free of Groucho’s grasp, went inching along the damp bench away from him. He stopped a few feet off, resting his palms on his sharp knees. “Maybe she didn’t,” he acknowledged.
Groucho, after using his pocket handkerchief to wipe his perspiring face, moved over beside him. “Then, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I swear.”
“She was a nice kid. Somebody killed her and—”
“Maybe she wasn’t as nice as you think.”
“Meaning what?”
“She changed quite a lot since you used to know her, Groucho. There are people she’d been hanging out with that—”
“What people? Who?”
Bockman glanced around at the thick mist. “Well, you know, I heard she was friendly with guys who work for Vince Salermo.”
“The goniff who runs local gambling?”
“Right, him.”
“Is Salermo involved in what happened to her?”
“I don’t know and I wouldn’t want to try to find out,” the agent said quietly. “You don’t annoy guys like Salermo, Groucho.”
“I’m very good at annoying people,” said Groucho evenly. “Especially when I’m already annoyed one hell of a lot myself.”
Bockman said, “Hey, Groucho, listen. This whole town is built on rumors and gossip and out-and-out bullshit. Hell, probably Peg never even knew Salermo or any of his bunch.”
Groucho wiped at his forehead again. “There was a girl Peg used to room with. Skinny blond tap-dancer who was in a couple of Busby Berkeley’s Warner madrigals. She still around?”
“She called herself Sally St. Clair.”
“That’s the one. She was Peg’s best friend,” he said. “I’d like to talk to her.”
“She got pregnant, went down to Mexico for a quick abortion, quit show business,” recited the agent. “Last time I heard, which was maybe five, six months ago, she was working in the big Marcus Department Store in downtown L.A.”
Off in a mist-shrouded corner of the steam room someone coughed loudly several times.
The agent got up abruptly, nearly losing his towel. “Well, I’ve been in the smokehouse long enough for one day,” he announced. “Nice running into you again, Julius. Too bad about poor Peggy. Give my regards to your brothers, especially Zeppo. Even though he keeps trying to steal all my best clients.”
Bockman readjusted his towel and walked off into the mist.
Groucho sat for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the cigar and looking up toward where the ceiling ought to be.
Rising, he wiped his face once again. Then he walked carefully over to the corner.
The man who had coughed was large and hairy, wearing a red terrycloth robe. He seemingly hadn’t sweated at all and his thick, dark hair was neatly combed. Groucho had never seen him before.
“You really should do something about that nagging cough,” he suggested.
“And you, Mr. Marx, should get out of here before you wilt.”
Nodding, Groucho headed for the doorway.
Six
The fog had nearly
burned away when I got to the Times building down on West First in the heart of L.A.
I managed to get up to the floor I wanted without encountering anyone I’d worked with during my days on the police beat.
The small office I was visiting had DORA DAYTON, LOVELORN EDITOR lettered on the door in chipped gilt. I tapped three times on the frosted glass.
“Yeah?” came a sharp female voice.
“Me, May.”
“C’mon in, Frank.”
May Sankowitz was a small, slim woman up in her late forties. About five feet tall and a hundred pounds, her short-cropped hair had turned to red since last we’d met. She was seated behind an impressively cluttered wooden desk with her unshod feet up on it and her checkered skirt two or so inches above her knees.
A very tan, handsome and vacant young man, decked out in movie cowboy togs, was sitting on the edge of the desk with his back to her. He was concentrating on constructing a handmade cigarette with the tobacco from his sack of Bull Durham and a Zigzag paper. “Well, doggone it, May, I just can’t not get the hang of rolling my own.”
“Sometimes, Slim, I regret the advent of the talkies,” she told him as she nudged him gently off the desk with the palms of both small hands. “Do your homework elsewhere, sweet.”
“Dagnab it, we’re going on location with Vigilantes of Vacaville day after tomorrow, hon,” he complained as he went shuffling across the small office. “I just got to learn to roll my own with deftness and artistry by then.” As he settled onto a folding chair, he touched the brim of his Stetson and grinned at me. “Howdy, pard.”
“You’d never guess Slim was born in Youngstown, Ohio, would you, Frank?”
“Nope, I’d have thought Wisconsin.”
“No need to fret over my accent, folks,” said Slim, tearing a fresh cigarette paper out of the book. “I ain’t got a speaking part in this here-now movie anyhow.”
May swung her legs off the desk and sat up straight. She nodded at the cowboy actor. “You sure you don’t want to go outside and lasso something, dear?”
“Nope.”
She smiled at me across her Underwood typewriter. “Can I help it? I just happen to like tall, dumb men.”
“Looks like you’ve hit paydirt this time.” I settled into the chair that faced her desk.
“Shucks, I don’t mind,” Slim told me, “a little good-natured joshing.”
“Fine.” To May I said, “How’s the lovelorn business?”
“You know what they say about the course of true love. Consequently, dear Dora is still pulling in sacks of forlorn mail daily—shit, hourly.”
I asked, “You been able to dig up anything on the Peg McMorrow business for me?”
She rested one hand on a thin manila folder that sat atop a pile of other folders and sheets of copy. “Firstly, Frank, there isn’t much in our morgue file on the girl,” she said. “And, after some discreet inquiries amongst my colleagues, I haven’t found out a whole hell of a lot about her recent suicide. Or should I say alleged suicide?”
“Probably alleged, May.”
“I quizzed Al Levine, who covered her death for us,” she continued. “He claims it was a routine suicide. See how blasé we get in this racket? Cute little kid bumps herself off and we call it routine.”
“Al didn’t notice anything unusual?”
“Listen, Frank, a Nazi submarine could’ve been parked on that starlet’s front lawn and Al might not’ve noticed it. His version of what happens in a case like this is pretty much whatever the local cops tell him.”
I nodded, having known Al Levine when I was with the paper. “What about pictures?”
“Well, there’s a funny thing.”
“How so?”
“The law didn’t allow any picture taking.”
“Who’d the Times send out?”
“Larry Shell. I asked him if he’d spotted anything.” May touched at the left side of her forehead and then her temples. “Larry did get a quick look at the body before they covered it up. He says the gal had bruises on her head and possible lacerations.”
“From somebody hitting her?”
May shrugged. “Sure, possibly. Or maybe the kid fell out of her little coupe while she was still alive and banged her head on the garage floor.”
“Maybe,” I conceded.
Slim, who’d been intent on building a passable cigarette, looked up. “I can tell you something interesting about that poor little filly,” he offered.
“You knew Peg?”
“Heck yes, in a casual way,” replied the cowboy. “She had a pretty good part in The Deputy Sheriff of Devil’s Doorknob over at Republic last summer and we chatted on a couple occasions. Nice kid she was, friendly.”
Running her fingers through her bright red hair, May inquired, “Is that the sum and substance of your anecdote, dear?”
“Heck, honey, I ain’t even got to the anecdote yet,” he told her. “Hold your britches on and let me warm up to it, will you? Anyhow, about two weeks back I stopped in, pretty late at night, for a nightcap at the Blue Albatross out near Malibu.”
“And?” persisted May.
“Wellsir, who should I spot hunkered down in a shadowy booth off in a far corner but Peg McMorrow,” he continued in his patient drawling way. “Odd thing is—she was with Jack Gardella.”
I frowned. “You sure, Slim? Gardella’s the top troubleshooter over at Monarch Pictures. Important guy in Hollywood.”
“Heck, I knew Gardella back when he was a strikebreaker in the late 1920s,” Slim told me. “He was a mean and ornery son of a bitch then, if you’ll pardon my lingo, and being chief goon at the biggest studio hereabouts and working for Eli Kurtzman sure ain’t mellowed him none.”
I nodded at May. “What would Peg be doing with him?”
“Maybe it was just a romantic fling.”
“Sure, and maybe they were working on revisions of the Magna Carta, but I doubt that, too.”
Leaning, she reached across the desk to touch my hand. “Look out for Gardella,” she warned. “Tell you what—I’ll see what I can find out about this angle. Lay off of him until you hear from me. You don’t want to make him mad.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said. “Could be I do.”
She gave a negative shake of her head, gathered up the thin folder and handed it to me. “This is all the background stuff we have on Peg. Mostly it’s the usual budding starlet crap, nightclubs and cheesecake. You can borrow it if you want.”
“Thanks, May.” I accepted the folder, tucking it under my arm and standing.
“What’s the name of this new radio show you’re working on?” she asked as I moved toward the door.
“Groucho Marx, Master Detective,” I answered.
“Sounds funny.”
“Yeah, funny,” I said and left.
Seven
The fat man in the rumpled sharkskin suit dropped his big shopping bag as Groucho emerged from the elevator on the third floor of the vast Marcus Department Store.
“I know who you are,” he exclaimed, clasping his plump hands together and producing a chuckling sort of sound inside himself someplace.
Groucho rushed up to him, taking long bent-knee steps, and clutched the fat man’s upper left arm. “Then, praise the Lord, you’re the very person I’m seeking,” he confided. “I’ve been suffering from a nasty bout of amnesia for days now and, myself, have absolutely no idea who I am.” He let go of the perplexed shopper’s arm, took a step back and drew a fresh cigar out of his breast pocket. “You can’t imagine, Mr. Hoffenstein, how serious a handicap amnesia can be to a—”
“My name isn’t Hoffenstein,” he put in. “I’m Edwin Silbersack.”
Groucho gave a sad shake of his head. “Ah, then this is far worse than I supposed. Not only don’t I remember who I am—gad, I don’t even remember who you are.”
“But you’ve never seen me before in your life.”
“There now, Silbersack, no need to humor me. I’m
sure we spent many happy childhood days together on the old plantation back—”
“I’m from Cleveland.”
“Right you are, Cleveland is not noted for a high incidence of plantations.” Groucho put the new cigar between his teeth. “Well, Edwin, this little strange interlude has cheered me up no end. And now, as it must to all men, I have to be up and doing.” Taking hold of the fat man’s right hand, he shook it vigorously.
“Well, nice to have met you, Mr. Marx.”
Groucho had gone a few steps, but he halted, turned back and scowled. “What did you just call me?”
“Mr. Marx. You’re Groucho Marx.”
He dropped both hands to his sides and sighed profoundly. “Really? Darn,” he said. “I was hoping I’d turn out to be Randolph Scott or, at the very least, Tom Mix. Somebody who’d look good on a horse. Because I got this horse as a present on my last birthday and the poor creature has just been standing around in the parlor, shifting from hoof to hoof, waiting for somebody to mount him.” He sighed once more and then moved on.
“You can’t smoke within the store, sir.” A very slim and sleek floorwalker, wearing striped trousers, morning coat and white carnation, placed himself directly in Groucho’s path.
“What gave you the idea, my good man, that I was intending to smoke?”
“That big fat cigar you’ve got dangling from—” The floorwalker recognized him then. “Oh, forgive me, Mr. Marx. I didn’t immediately realize it was you. I mean, since you don’t have a moustache in real life, I—”
“What’s that you say?” Groucho brought up his free hand and patted at the clean-shaven skin immediately under his nose. “This is outrageous. I was in possession of a fine bushy moustache when I entered this shabby flea market and unless restitution is made I intend to sue. Well, possibly if prostitution is made, I’d settle for that.”
The floorwalker giggled. “You’re a very witty fellow, Mr. Marx.”
