Murder Your Darlings (15 page)

But to these questions Benchley had no answer. He thought for a moment, and he brightened.

“Have you read the latest restaurant review of the Algonquin?” he said finally. “They say the food won’t kill you, but the customers might.”

 

The following afternoon, Dorothy sat in a plush lounge chair in the Algonquin lobby. In front of her, on the low coffee table, was a bell. It was the silver half-dome type with a button on top. When rung, it would summon a waiter. She had the urgent desire to slam the bell repeatedly. She resisted the maddening urge to kick the damn thing right off the table.

But the bell, she realized, was not at fault. It sat there innocent, squat and silent. Rather, it was the open newspaper in her lap—the
Knickerbocker
—that had raised her anger.

The cover headline blared, POLICE HUNT MISSING “DACHSHUND”! Inside, the main article described William Dachshund as a “morose, sullen, disaffected itinerant—his face half-hidden by an unkempt beard—who apparently hails from the deepest regions of the South, although this is uncertain, as Mr. Dachshund is also reputed to be a charlatan and compulsive liar.”

The article went on to say that “Dachshund is wanted desperately by the police in regard to the dastardly and cowardly murder of the
Knickerbocker
’s own esteemed drama critic and columnist, Leland Mayflower.”

The article glossed over how Faulkner had been released, even implying that he had as good as escaped. “Through an inadvertent administrative error, the suspect was temporarily given leave of police custody. That was when Mr. Dachshund, as any guilty party would, took the first opportunity to slip free and hied away immediately, disappearing into the anonymity of the city streets. But he won’t remain anonymous for long.”

The article continued, providing a detailed description of Faulkner’s physical appearance and manner of dress, and assuring readers that the public could soon rest easy thanks to the “dogged pursuit and eventual swift capture” by Detective O’Rannigan. Although this was annoying enough, what really enraged Dorothy was that Battersby (for his byline was on the article) never once mentioned that the reason why the police brought in “Dachshund” in the first place was to provide a description of the gunman. Indeed, the article included no mention of the gangster, nor the name Knut Sanderson, nor even the more sensational sobriquet of Sandman.

That this was Saturday—the day of the week that newspapers receive the least readership—was no consolation to her. Neither was the article in the
New York Times
, authoritatively penned by Alexander Woollcott, that described in detail the nearly fatal encounter that she, Benchley and “Dachshund” had had with the Sandman.

It was some time before she realized that three of the members of the Vicious Circle had dropped into the other chairs around the coffee table.

“Dottie, did you even hear me?” said Marc Connelly, sitting at her left. Directly opposite her, George Kaufman sat slumped in his chair. To her right sat Harold Ross.

Connelly and Kaufman were a successful playwriting duo. Connelly was a fast-talking showboat. He had sharp features and a round, bald head. Kaufman, his opposite, was a sly sourpuss. The mournful eyes under Kaufman’s knitted brows tended to gaze over his spectacles. Where Connelly was energetic, Kaufman was laconic. They were something like the quibbling but inseparable old married couple often depicted in the kind of conventional Broadway plays that they themselves satirized in their own plays.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Connelly repeated.

Dorothy looked quizzically at him. “Did you say something worth hearing?”

“Ross has been beating our ears about this new magazine he wants to launch,” Connelly said. “Tell her about it, Ross. Let’s see what she thinks.”

Harold Ross (everyone simply called him Ross) was the black sheep of the Round Table, or perhaps the dark horse. He didn’t speak in quick wisecracks or enlightened insights. Just the opposite. He was often slow to catch on to the joke or understand an esoteric reference. But he absorbed all they said, and he was a hell of an audience for them.

Ross had the face of a gap-toothed gargoyle and a spiky head of hair like an upturned shoeshine brush. Despite his homely appearance, he had a discerning, even wry gleam to his eye.

“Okay, here’s the idea.” Ross leaned forward on the edge of his seat, elbows on his knees, his jacket sleeves hitched up to his forearms. “I know I’m just the editor for
American Legion Weekly
. But I think—goddamn it,
I know
—there’s room for a smart, high-class magazine that covers all the goings-on in New York. It will be
by
New Yorkers and
for
New Yorkers. The hell with the old lady in Dubuque; this won’t be for her. And the hell with
Vanity Fair
and
Collier’s
and the
American Mercury
. This magazine won’t have an article about pets, or ladies’ fashions, or lawyers. It’ll have some news articles, some fiction, some poems, some cartoons. ... It won’t be snobbish or arty or high-minded, but God damm it, it’ll be smart. What do you think?”

“I’m impressed. I’m all for it. I’m sure it will be a huge success,” she said. “And I’m the Queen of Romania.”

Ross frowned; his shoulders drooped.

“See?” Connelly cackled. “Your magazine will fly when pigs do. Now, never mind that nonsense. How about a game of cribbage? We have a foursome right here. We’ll play teams.”

Connelly drew a deck of cards from his jacket pocket and dealt them. Dorothy folded up the
Knickerbocker News
and picked up her hand. Cribbage was just a warm-up for these boys, of course. The main event for them was the poker game that night.

The game flew by, and Kaufman and Connelly wound up winning. They were playing another game (with Dorothy and Ross in the lead) when Frank Case strolled by. The genteel and solicitous hotel manager said politely, “Looks like great fun.” They understood immediately what he meant: Please don’t play cards in the lobby of my hotel.

Connelly picked up the deck of cards and cribbage board. “Boy, cribbage works up a man’s thirst.”

They migrated to the usual room on the second floor. Heywood Broun was there by the door, setting up bottles of gin, scotch and beer. Alexander Woollcott sat ensconced behind the round table (not
the
Round Table). He shuffled the cards and stacked up poker chips.

Dorothy stopped in the doorway and watched what they were doing. “You boys sure know how to treat a woman,” she said. “Liquor in the front and poker in the rear.”

Within an hour, a dozen players had arrived, and more were coming. The room was soon filled with smoke, the clink of whiskey and martini glasses, the clatter of poker chips and a barrage of insults and excuses as the stakes of the game rose.

This was the less public gathering of the Round Table members and many of its ancillary members and regular guests. The weekly Saturday night poker game (or the Thanatopsis Pleasure and Inside Straight Club, as it was more formally called) had been going on for as long as the daily Round Table lunches. Longer even, as it had originated with Woollcott, Ross and Adams from their
Stars and Stripes
days covering the war in France. It was more like a party in a fraternity house than a star-studded gathering of New York’s intelligentsia.

At the poker table, Woollcott had squared off against the stage comic Harpo Marx, who was nearly unrecognizable offstage without his trademark curly wig. Next to Harpo slouched Ross, who flung his cards down. “Son of a bitch.”

Harpo looked at his hand. “Don’t you know when to call a spade a spade?”

Next to Ross sat the yeast tycoon Raoul Fleischmann, who laid down his perfect hand of cards with a sheepish grin. Seated next to him, cigar-chomping Franklin Adams threw down his useless hand. “Who do you think you are? Royal Flushmann?”

The others at the table—Connelly, Kaufman, Heywood Broun and publicist John Peter Toohey—cursed and tossed down their cards as well. Standing behind the table to observe the game were Robert Sherwood and Dorothy Parker.

“Why don’t you play a round, Mrs. Parker?” Sherwood said.

“I do play around,” she said. “And just like in poker, I always wind up losing my shirt.”

Several others—the hugely successful novelist Edna Ferber, the magazine illustrator Neysa McMein and the Broadway composer Irving Berlin—loitered about the room. They all smoked. They all drank. They all cracked jokes and cracked peanuts, letting witticisms and shells drop to the floor.

“I have a legal question,” said Robert Benchley as he emerged from the bathroom with a glass of gin and orange juice. “If an illegal drink, such as this orange blossom, makes me an outlaw, then does a legal substance, such as tea, make me an in-law?”

The door flew open and Luigi burst in. The waiter’s breathless, heavily accented voice was barely intelligible.

“The police—they are here! Dump your liquor. It’s a raid!”

Everyone jumped up and rushed to the bathroom to pour the contents of their glasses, cups and bottles down the sink or into the toilet.

 

Detective O’Rannigan strode through the door of the suite with hotel manager Frank Case in tow.

The room was empty. The chairs and poker table were deserted. A half-eaten pastrami sandwich teetered on the edge of a side table. In ashtrays, the cigarettes and cigars released ribbons of smoke that curled upward to meld with the gloom of the empty room.

O’Rannigan tipped back his tiny brown derby and scratched his big round head. “What kind of nonsense is this?”

He looked into the bathroom. More than a dozen people were crammed inside, silently, expectantly peeking out at the police detective.

“Where’s Robert Benchley?” O’Rannigan yelled. “Get out here now. You’re coming with me.”

Due to the crush of bodies, Benchley was pressed like a pancake against the far wall of the bathroom. Fortunately, he did not even have room to quake or quiver because, if he’d had the room, that was exactly what he would have done.

Chapter 19

Benchley and Dorothy sat in a small, cold, colorless room on the second floor of the dingy, crumbling stone Sixteenth Precinct Station on West Forty-seventh Street. The floor of the narrow little room was bare gray wood and speckled with stains of varying types and colors—tobacco juice certainly, urine likely, and blood possibly. They sat in hard wooden chairs and faced a battered maple table. They waited.

Some Saturday night this turned out to be,
Dorothy thought.

She should not have been there. At the Algonquin, Detective O’Rannigan had demanded only Benchley accompany him. The detective refused her request to come along. So she kicked him in the shins.

Now, despite her devotion to Mr. Benchley, she realized she may have made a mistake.

He seemed to read her thoughts. He smiled warmly. “Kicking that cop in the leg—that was the greatest act of friendship I have ever seen. Thanks for coming along.”

She almost choked up. She clasped her hand in his. All she could say was, “Forget about it.” Then she cleared the lump in her throat. “There’s no one in the world with whom I’d rather be trapped in a police interrogation room than—”

The door behind them opened with a creak.They heard a soft thump and dropped each other’s hand. Entering the room was the thin, solemn man with the natty suit and the wooden stump. Detective O’Rannigan trailed behind him like a humble caboose.

“I am Police Captain Philip Church,” the man said. His voice was as cold and flavorless as ice water. With a certain mechanical grace and precision, Captain Church sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the table. “Mr. Robert Benchley, do you know why you are here?”

“No.”

“Can you tell us why your writings were found in a notebook in the possession of Knut Sanderson, also known as the Sandman?”

Benchley swallowed. “My
writings
? How could Sanderson—”

He stopped to reconsider....
The notebook,
he thought. Leland Mayflower’s notebook. Benchley’s notes for his drama reviews were in Mayflower’s notebook.

Dorothy said, “What makes you so sure that it’s Mr. Benchley’s writing?”

Church opened a large envelope and pulled out the small black notebook. He held the book open for them to see. Benchley’s signature was written a dozen times on a single page.

Benchley looked sheepish.

“Practicing your autograph?” she said to him.

“Never know when you’ll be called upon to sign a tax form or a Magna Carta or something.”

Church said, “We found this notebook hidden on Sanderson’s person. Can you explain its presence there?”

“Well, I guess you could say that Sanderson stole the notebook from me, the night he attacked us. I was under the impression that Mr. Dachshund gave Detective Orangutan a full description of the evening’s events.” Benchley looked up at O’Rannigan, who grimaced.

“Dachshund never mentioned any notebook,” the detective muttered.

“Sanderson stole the notebook from you?” Church repeated. “And where did you get the notebook in the first place?”

O’Rannigan’s grin was a gloating one.

Benchley swallowed. “I must have picked it up from the Round Table, when the good detective here asked me to identify Mayflower’s body.”

Church’s voice remained flat. “So you took an item of police evidence from a murder scene? Is that correct?”

Benchley bit his fingernail, thinking.

Dorothy spoke quickly. “Since you have the notebook from the Sandman in your possession, that must mean you have the Sandman, too?”

Church’s level gaze shifted to her. “Yes, we have him.”

“We have him, and how,” O’Rannigan said.

“That’s marvelous,” she said. “You already know, or at least you strongly suspect, that he was the one who killed Leland Mayflower. Now all you have to do is give him your famous third degree, or what have you, and make him confess. Right?”