by Ron Goulart
Gathering up the horn, he carefully inserted it in the waist of his rumpled trousers. “We really are going to have to do something about old Eli Kurtzman and his merry men,” he said aloud, heading back for the Hollywood Bowl stage. “And soon.”
* * *
The concert was a success. In fact, when Groucho, Harpo and Chico took their final bows, they got a standing ovation from the enthusiastic crowd. Groucho was of the opinion that this had less to do with their combined talents than with the fact that, according to him, the Hemorrhoid Sufferers of America had booked a large block of seats for the show and reached the point by the finale where they couldn’t bear to sit down any longer.
He mentioned that fact to the reporters who were waiting for him outside his dressing room, but it failed to divert them.
“Who tried to shoot you, Groucho?”
“We suspect sibling rivalry,” he said, his back against the door. “Right now the prime suspects are the Ritz Brothers, the Boswell Sisters and the Dionne Quintuplets.”
“C’mon, be serious,” suggested a newsman from the Herald Examiner.
“I’m glad you mentioned that,” said Groucho, taking out a fresh cigar. “This is as good a time as any to announce that I’ve been asked to star opposite Norma Shearer in King Lear. We intend to flip a nickel—which Louis B. Mayer has kindly agreed to loan us at a very small interest rate—to decide who’ll be Lear and who’ll be the Fool. I think I’d make a dandy King Lear because I already have the beard. Later on, if you’re all really nice to me, I might even show you that beard. And now, gentlemen of the press, it’s—”
“This crazed assassin,” put in a reporter from the Hollywood News. “Was he after you or after Harpo? According to eyewitnesses, you were wearing that Harpo disguise when the killer made his try for you.”
“Fellows, you know that I delight in cooperating with the papers,” said Groucho patiently. “Why, only last week I gave Louella Parsons a complete rundown of my bowel movements for the month of July. I don’t see how I can be any more open and forthcoming than that. So you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I have absolutely no idea who the fellow with the rifle was nor why he was Marx hunting here at the Bowl. Official Marx Brothers season, by the way, doesn’t open for another week. So, when they catch this lad, he’s going to face having his license lifted.”
“Was it an irate husband?” asked a heavyset reporter that Groucho didn’t recognize.
“I assure you that my husband is completely satisfied with me.” Groucho reached behind himself and got hold of the doorknob.
The L.A. Times man told him, “If you’re covering up something, Groucho, we’re eventually going to find out. Why not tell us the truth now and save yourself a lot of trouble?”
“How come you haven’t found out why my paperboy keeps tossing the Times in the fishpond instead of up on the porch most days?”
“Boys, that’s enough questions for Mr. Marx right now.” Two uniformed deputies from the sheriff’s office were standing there among the scatter of reporters.
“What can you tell us about the shooting incident?” asked the Times man.
“The sheriff will have a statement later on.” One of the deputies, a large, wide, tanned young man, nodded at Groucho. “If you’ll step into your dressing room, sir, we’d like to have a few words with you.”
“Let’s see you be funny with these boys,” said the Herald Examiner reporter disdainfully.
“If you want to see that, you’ll have to buy a ticket.” Groucho, his cigar still unlit, wiggled his way into the dressing room.
* * *
Toward the end of Groucho’s nearly half-hour detailed interview with the deputies, a tall, thin man in an overcoat and gray fedora slipped into the room. “Don’t let me bother you,” he said, smiling thinly.
“What’s your interest in this, Branner?” asked the tanned deputy.
“Ties in with something we’re interested in over in Bayside maybe.” He took a crumpled pack of Camels out of his coat pocket and shook a bent cigarette into his hand. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked, lighting the cigarette.
“Should I know who this fellow is?” inquired Groucho. “Or is he just somebody they sent over because they ran out of smudge pots?”
“You’re an extremely witty man, Marx,” said Sergeant Branner. “I’m Branner, Bayside police. Maybe your partner, Denby, mentioned me to you.”
“He did, but I didn’t recognize you without your bunch of bananas.”
Branner blew out smoke and grinned lopsidedly at the two men from the Sheriff’s Department. “What did I tell you? A very funny man, he is.”
When the deputies left, Branner remained leaning against the wall and smoking.
“Am I wrong,” asked Groucho, “or don’t you have any jurisdiction in this part of L.A.?”
Branner spread his thin hands wide. “I only dropped by to give you some advice, Marx,” he said.
“We already get our advice from Dale Carnegie.” Groucho had gotten out of the Harpo getup while he was being questioned by the sheriff’s deputies. He was wearing his own clothes again. “So if you’ll toddle along, Sergeant, I’ll change my venue.”
“This is all I have to pass along to you,” said the Bayside cop patiently. “There are people out there who simply don’t like you. The reason for that dislike is simple—you insist on poking your nose into something that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you.”
“Were you the lad with the rifle, Branner?”
The sergeant chuckled. “You’d be on a slab now, Marx, if I’d shot at you,” he assured him. “Forget this whole business. Stick to the movies.”
“Everybody who had anything to do with Peg McMorrow’s death,” said Groucho evenly, “is going to come tumbling down, Branner. You really ought to think about finding a nice safe place to hide.”
The lean policeman dropped his cigarette butt on the floor, ground it out with his heel. “And you, Marx, better start thinking about burial plots.” He left.
Groucho turned and looked at himself in the mirror. “Boy, I sure hope you weren’t bluffing,” he said to himself.
Forty
A few minutes before the fire started the bloodhound quieted down.
Perhaps he’d decided, as I was on the verge of doing, that things were pretty near hopeless.
“Kill us?” I asked Babs McLaughlin. “All of us?”
“Aren’t you hearing what I’m saying, shithead?” she inquired, leaning against the ropes that bound her to the chair. “The situation was starting to look okay for me—until you two jerks stumbled in. I think I could’ve eventually persuaded the old fart to simply trust me. Then it would’ve been easy. He’d send me to Mexico for a few weeks.” She shook her head, scowling at me. “After that I would’ve come staggering out of a convenient patch of jungle one day and claimed I’d been kidnapped from Ensenada and had been suffering from amnesia until just that minute. Would’ve worked.”
Jane said, “We’ve been operating on the assumption, Mrs. McLaughlin, that you’d been murdered up here—probably by Tom Kerry. That’s why we—”
“Came snooping around up here with a goddamn bloodhound. Jesus, how corny can you get?”
“Since, if I’m interpreting this correctly,” I said, “you think we’re all about to be executed—suppose you tell us exactly what went on three weekends ago?”
“What good’ll that do?”
“Not much, but I’d like to know who did what before I shuffle off.”
She sighed and gave me another scowl. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about me,” she began, “but I’m sort of restless.”
“We’ve heard,” said Jane.
“My husband calls me an unfaithful slut, but I think that’s a bit harsh. Restless is a better term and—well, if you’ve ever spent any time with Benton, you’ll understand how very easy it is to get restless when you live with a man like that.”
“Who did you come to the Shado
w Lodge with?” I asked Babs.
“With the old fart.”
“Eli Kurtzman?”
“That old fart, yes. I find that guys his age can be extremely grateful—in a financial way—for relatively small favors.”
I was pushing my arms against the ropes as we talked, trying to loosen them. “Where does Tom Kerry fit in?”
“Tom’s an old beau of mine, but that pretty much ended months ago,” she said. “Do you have to fidget like that?”
“I’m bound for glory, ma’am. I might as well fidget while I can,” I told her. “On top of which, I’m attempting to loosen these ropes.”
“Fat chance you’ll have of that,” she said. “So Tom showed up with that pesty Peg McMorrow, but he kept ditching her and sneaking visits with me whenever Kurtzman was off somewhere. When you shack up with old Eli, you have to leave him plenty of time to go phone the studio and the bankers and the New York office.” She shook her head. “At first I told Tom to just simply leave me alone. But then—”
“Peg got some pictures of one of your arguments,” I put in. “That’s why she’s dead.”
Babs frowned. “They did kill her, then? Eli told me she was trying to blackmail him and—well, he made some nasty threats, but I wasn’t sure what they eventually did to her. She was a mean-minded little bitch, but…” She shook her head again. “Anyway, I let Tom persuade me to spend a couple of hours with him. In this very cabin, actually. It belongs to some friend of his who’s in Europe, but he wasn’t staying here with Peg McMorrow. No, they had a cabin over at the lodge and this hole he saved for me. Well, Eli found out about it and came busting in. Him and that gorilla who works for him. Jack Gardella. I think—probably—that originally Eli was only intending to have Gardella beat Tom up a little.”
“Rough up his major star?” I asked. “That’s not smart business.”
“Have I mentioned that Eli can be—much like my damned husband—extremely jealous,” Babs said. “Tom was a jerk in many ways and when Eli and his boy came storming into the bedroom here, he made the mistake of taunting the old fart. You know, telling him that I had to turn to him for any real sex and so on. That set Eli off and…” She paused, closing her eyes. “Eli had a gun, a thirty-two revolver, I think. He pulled it out and, before Gardella could grab his arm, he shot Tom. Twice—” She lowered her head, pointing at her chest with her chin. “Two times in the chest. I got blood all over me.”
“That’s a shame,” said Jane. “But since you were probably naked, at least it didn’t soil your good clothes.”
“Hey, asshole, quit razzing me. Christ, I’ve been holed up in this crappy rat trap of a cabin for weeks now,” she said. “With four of Eli’s toadies looking after me and making damn sure that I don’t get away or blab to anybody about what went on.”
“Have you talked to Kurtzman since the killing?” I asked her.
“Twice, yes,” Babs replied. “He’s been saying he just wants to keep me out of sight until he arranges everything. They’re going to move Tom’s body soon now and then plant stories that he had some kind of breakdown and has dropped out of sight. Eli figures people forget movie stars pretty quickly.”
“You and Gardella are the only actual witnesses to his killing Kerry,” I pointed out. “I imagine he trusts Gardella, but why would he trust you?”
“He doesn’t anymore,” she complained. “Thanks to you.”
“What,” asked Jane, “do we have to do with your problem, Mrs. McLaughlin?”
“The last time Eli was here, nearly a week ago, we had a fairly friendly talk,” she said, anger in her voice. “I’d pretty near convinced the old fart that I wasn’t going to tell anybody about what’d happened and, unlike dear Peggy, I’d never try to blackmail him.”
“Peggy couldn’t really prove anything had happened up here,” I said.
“Peggy may’ve thought that it was the other way around, too. That Tom had killed me in a jealous rage,” she said. “But it didn’t matter. She knew Eli and I were up here, she knew I’d been with Tom. When I was reported missing, she must’ve figured she had a chance to blackmail herself into better parts and more dough. If she had talked to reporters—well, it would’ve meant trouble for Kurtzman and Monarch. He’s a powerful son of a bitch, but he can’t bribe the whole damned press in California, especially when you’re talking about a box office star like Tom. It was simpler to kill her and cover it up.”
“And that’s what you think is going to happen now?” I asked in a small voice. “They’re going to knock us all off and rig it to look like an accident?”
“It’s what I know is going to happen,” she said. “While you were being hauled over here from the other side of the lake, I heard the other two talking. They’d contacted Eli as soon as they found out you were up here. He apparently told them that it was too dangerous to let me live, now that so many people were in on this. So we’re all three on the way out.” She shook her head again. “I wouldn’t bet that your pal Groucho Marx is going to reach a ripe old age either.”
Jane was looking toward the door that led to the kitchen. “Dorgan is whimpering again,” she said. “But it’s different than before. He’s upset about something new.”
“Where are these four goons?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen any of them since you two were delivered here.”
Jane said, “They knocked me out, too, Frank. But I came to earlier than you did.”
I was sniffing, tilting my head slightly forward. “I smell something.”
“Jesus,” said Babs, starting to struggle against her bonds. “It’s smoke.”
“They’re going to burn the cabin,” said Jane.
In the silence you could hear the flames start to crackle around the outside of the wooden house.
Forty-one
A man answered the phone. “Yeah?”
Very politely, Groucho requested, “I’d like to speak to Marliss Reggal, please.”
“Listen, buddy, it’s almost midnight and if you think—”
“Tell her this is Groucho Marx.” He was sitting at the desk in his den, a homemade pastrami sandwich resting on a plate near the phone. “My brother Zeppo is her agent and—”
“How the hell do I know you’re really Groucho Marx? Anybody can claim—”
“Well, I have a strawberry birthmark on my backside,” Groucho told him. “And a cute little scar right across here. Right now I’m wearing a tatty blue bathrobe, smoking a King Edward cigar and planning to eat a pastrami on Russian rye. Does that answer the description you have?”
After a few seconds the man who’d answered the starlet’s phone grunted. “Maybe you are him,” he conceded. “Hold your horses and I’ll get Marliss.”
Groucho was able to take two slow bites of the sandwich before a young woman with a slight southern accent came on the phone. “Yes, Mr. Marx? I’m terribly sorry if my cousin was rude to you,” she apologized. “He’s very protective.”
“Think nothing of it, my child. Everybody is rude to me,” he assured her. “I wanted to ask you about your afternoon over at the Monarch cinema factory.”
“Why, that’s very nice of you to take an interest in my career, simply because your brother happens to be—”
“I am deeply interested, Marliss,” he said. “But right now I’m curious as to whom exactly you chatted with whilst there.”
She inhaled sharply. “Oh, does this have something to do with your being shot? I heard about that on the radio only a few—”
“This is just a routine series of questions,” he told her, borrowing a line he’d heard recently in a Pat O’Brien cops and robbers movie. “Can you remember anybody you might’ve told that I was substituting for Harpo at the Hollywood Bowl tonight?”
“Well, there was the girl—I think her first name is Georgine—who helped me put on makeup for the test,” answered the young actress. “And later on, after they’d shot the scene I had to do, one of the important executives came in to the sound st
age to congratulate me.”
“And that was?”
“Somebody told me afterward that it was Jack Gardella. He’s a big man at Monarch and—”
“He’d heard about what you’d told Georgine and wanted details?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly, Mr. Marx,” she said. “You don’t think that Mr. Gardella could’ve had anything to do with—”
“No, certainly not. As I said, this is just a routine thing the police asked me to do, Marliss.”
“Everybody said the test came out very well, Mr. Marx,” she said. “So if you and your brothers ever do manage to make a comeback in the movies, why, keep me in mind, huh?”
“I will, my dear,” he promised. “And if you see me selling apples on a street corner, don’t hesitate to come over and buy one.”
He cradled the receiver and glanced up at the beamed ceiling of his den. “That confirms my suspicions about the Monarch mob,” he said.
He got up, prowled around the room.
Back at the desk, he started to reach for the phone again. “I ought to call Frank up at that sylvan bordello he and Jane are visiting and inform him of this evening’s exciting and thrill-packed events,” he said. Then he shook his head. “Nope, they’re probably deep in the arms of Morpheus. And why Frank lets that lout get in bed with the two of them is beyond me.”
