You Might As Well Die (35 page)

Benchley called down. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Midge said. “Alive. But Bertram is unconscious.”

“And soon to be under arrest,” Dorothy muttered to Benchley. Then to Midge, she called, “Stay there. We’ll send someone down to get you.”

By this time, Snath, Harpo and Woollcott had joined Dorothy and Benchley at the building’s edge.

“We’ll go down and rescue the fair damsel,” Woollcott said. “And call the authorities to scrape up the Clay.”

He and Harpo turned toward the elevators, chatting about their game.

Next to Dorothy, Snath yelled down, “Can you hear me, Clay? You’d better have a terrific lawyer. You’re going to need one before I get through with you.” He turned to her and Benchley. “You heard his confession. We all heard it. That won’t be the last scaffold he’ll ever see. The next one will have a noose hanging above it.”

He spun on his heel and followed Harpo and Woollcott, marching past Viola’s mother, still collapsed on top of Sherwood.

Sherwood writhed out from under her, managing to leave her inert body on top of the tool chest. He stood and came over to them, smoothing out his clothes as he risked a quick look down.

“I really thought it was her.” He nodded over his shoulder to Viola’s mother. He sighed, looking at the big woman’s motionless body. “I guess I should go get a few strong fellows—and a hoist—to lift her. Or at least fetch some smelling salts. Be back in a few minutes.” Sherwood left for the elevators.

When Sherwood was gone, Dorothy turned to Benchley. She still clung to his arm. She couldn’t let go. Not now.

Clay was right about one thing. It was beautiful up here, Dorothy thought. From this height, the city was peaceful. The sky was brilliant blue. The sun was golden yellow and warm on their faces.

She looked at Benchley. Without his shoes on, he wasn’t much taller than she was. They were closer to eye level now. His eyes were so happy, she wanted to drink it in. He smiled at her—that merry, carefree and tender smile. She realized to her relief that she didn’t feel pathetic or needy with Benchley. She just felt . . . happy.

Lucy Goosey’s words came back to her.
When you’re alone together some sunny day, holding hands under a picture-postcard sky . . . show him how you feel. Kiss him, damn it. Kiss him.

She lifted her face to his. His smile widened, softened. He tilted his face to hers....

“Enough!” Houdini yelled from the tool chest. “I give up. I can’t escape this damned thing.” From inside, he thumped on the wooden box angrily. “Get me out of here!”

Benchley laughed. Then so did she. And the magic vanished. They were two friends just sharing a laugh.

They parted. Dorothy let go of Benchley’s arm with a little affectionate pat. They moved to the tool chest.

“You call yourself an escape artist?” she said, loud enough for Houdini to hear. “Go back to art school.”

T
he next morning,a gray and chilly Monday, Dorothy was summoned down to the lobby desk at the Algonquin for a phone call. She didn’t yet have a telephone installed in her room. She didn’t yet have the money to pay for it.

“Hello?” she said.

A woman’s voice was on the other end. “Mrs. Parker? This is Bess Houdini. Would you please come up to the house? We’re sending the car for you.”

Dorothy was puzzled. Was Houdini all right?

“He’s fine,” Bess replied. “Between you and me, his pride is a little wounded, that’s all. And bring that painting, please.”

Fortunately, Benchley had left MacGuffin’s Brooklyn Bridge painting in her room.

Within an hour, Dorothy stood in Houdini’s disheveled attic office and library. She set the painting against a chest-high stack of books.

“How much?” Houdini grumbled from his desk. He’d had the sling on his arm replaced with a better one.

“How much?” Dorothy repeated. “How much what?”

He looked up at her, his brows furrowed. “How much do you want for it?”

“The painting, you mean?” She was amazed. “You want to buy it?”

“An investment,” he said, tight-lipped. “What’s its value?”

Cripes,
she thought. Last she could remember, Cathcart put it at a lousy twelve hundred.

Houdini seemed to take her lack of response as a bargaining tactic.

“Fine. You may have thirty for it.”

Thirty dollars?
She figured Houdini was tightfisted with his vast amount of money, but this was ridiculous. “That’s insultingly low.”

He gritted his teeth. “Is that how it is? Very well. Forty. Take it or leave it.” He slapped a checkbook as big as a ledger tablet onto his desk blotter. “Forty thousand is more than a fair price.”

Forty
thousand
? Had he hit his head too hard inside that toolbox? “Are you sure about that?”

He sat back, insulted. “Enough. I knew you were a hard woman at bottom, but you’ve pressed me to my limit. I’ll haggle no further. Fifty thousand, my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

Fifty thousand! She couldn’t believe it. She could pay back their debt to Mickey Finn, and perhaps Finn might not even send some thug to break their kneecaps, just for good measure.

“I’ll take it,” she said quickly, before Houdini changed his mind.

Angrily, he flipped open his checkbook. He snatched up a pen and dipped it in a bottle of ink.

What had made Houdini do this? Not for some fondness for her, Dorothy reasoned. He seemed to hardly stand the sight of her now. Fifty grand would be, well, grand . . . but, she needed even more money to pay their tab at Tony Soma’s.

“Just a minute,” she said.

His pen froze over the checkbook. “Yes?”

“Make it fifty thousand and five hundred,” she said. “Fifty thousand for the painting and five hundred for the bet you lost to me.”

Houdini fumed, his pen poised over the check. Had she pushed him too far? After a long moment, he started writing again. The pen scratched irritably against the paper. He scribbled his taut signature, blew on the ink, tore out the big check and handed it to her without another word. She cautiously accepted it and left behind the painting.

 

Benchley’s fork froze between his plate and his mouth. “Fifty
thousand
?”

Dorothy corrected, “Fifty thousand and
five hundred
. But that’s not the whole story.”

It was lunchtime at the Algonquin. As usual, they were gathered at the Round Table.

Dorothy explained that on her way out of Houdini’s town house, Bess Houdini stopped her on the stairs. Dorothy held the check in her hand.

“Bess told me, ‘Just to be clear, that’s for the painting, as well as your discretion.’ Then she put a finger to her lips as a sign for silence.”

The Round Tablers nodded. Benchley clucked his tongue. “That’s why Houdini was willing to pay so much. He bought the painting, but he was paying for our silence.”

“Yes,” Dorothy said, sipping her tea. “The great Houdini can’t have the world knowing he couldn’t escape from a plain wood toolbox with just a fat woman on it.”

“What about Bert Clay?” asked Frank Adams. “Incarcerated, I hope.”

“Soon,” Dorothy said. “Currently he’s in Bellevue Hospital with a broken leg and a concussion. But he’s under police guard. Even if he could get up, he couldn’t get away. And then he goes to trial. So Abraham Snath could be right—the next scaffold Clay sees may belong to the hangman.”

“And Midge?” Sherwood asked. “What will she do now?”

Dorothy frowned. “No need to worry about her. She’ll be just fine. Her blank book is a big bestseller. And I heard from that slimy limey Jasper Welsh that she’s got a sequel to be released soon. Another blank book.”

“Oh dear,” Sherwood said. “What’s it called?”

“
Untold Loss: Silence Speaks Volumes, Volume Two
,” Harold Ross answered. “By the way, Dottie, did you ever write the book review for her first book?”

Benchley answered for her. He spoke proudly. “Yes, she did. It’s only thirteen words long and it’s pure Mrs. Parker: ‘My review is just like Midge MacGuffin’s book: the less said, the better.’ ”

“Well, forget it,” Ross said glumly. “I don’t need it. Matter of fact, I won’t need the article about Ernie MacGuffin either.”

“You won’t? But it will be tremendous,” Benchley said.

Dorothy glanced at Benchley, and he smiled back playfully. The truth was, they hadn’t even started writing it. They were too busy taking part in it.

“Nah,
The New Yorker
is dead in the water, for now anyway.” Ross wiped his mouth and flung down his napkin. “Fleischmann is getting cold feet. He’s delaying the loan.”

“How about that?” Woollcott chuckled. “The yeast tycoon can’t raise the dough.”

Benchley slid back his chair. “Speaking of dough, I’d guess we’d better take that fifty thousand right over to Mickey Finn—before he comes after us again.”

Dorothy put her hand on Benchley’s arm. “Don’t worry. I already did it. I went over to Finn’s hideaway immediately after I left Houdini’s house. After calming him down and explaining why I was there, I signed the check over to him. And he was kind enough to give me the extra five hundred in cash.”

“And he bore no grudge that you didn’t pay him on time?” Woollcott asked. “Or that Houdini tripped him up in broad daylight?”

“Finn is probably still too awestruck by Houdini to hold a grudge against him,” Dorothy said. “As for not paying on time, he seemed to forget all about it once he got the check. He had another problem that was bothering him.”

“And what is that?” Woollcott said disinterestedly, scooping up a large spoonful of custard.

“Seems a red croquet ball fell out of the sky like a meteor,” she said. “It punched a hole right through the roof of his fancy white limousine.”

Woollcott froze, his mouth full of custard. “And what did you say?”

“I wished him well in figuring out who to blame and how to get it fixed,” she said. “So, how’s your croquet game going ?”

“Oh, we’ve just given it up.” Woollcott gulped down the custard hastily. “Winter will soon be upon us, and it’s too—too inhospitable to play outdoors these days. Hazardous to one’s health. No, I think Harpo and I will take up indoor pursuits—cribbage, charades, twenty questions and the like.”

Sherwood asked, “What’s that game you keep bothering us about? The one in which everyone plays detective?”

Woollcott lowered his chin theatrically and spoke deeply.
“Murder!”

Dorothy set down her cup. “I think we’ve had quite enough of that for a while.”

Adams said, “But speaking of that, I saw you talking to Detective O’Rannigan in the lobby before lunch.”

“Ah, yes, Detective Orangutan,” Benchley said. “What did he want?”

Dorothy did her best imitation of the detective, which was far from accurate. She spoke roughly, “ ‘I thought I told youse to keep your stupid mouths shut.’ ”

“And what did you say?” Benchley asked.

“I told him, ‘It would take an act of Congress to keep my mouth shut, Detective.’ ”

Dorothy went on to explain that O’Rannigan had told her that Dr. Norris was beside himself. “Norris said he should have realized that MacGuffin fell and hit the concrete, not that he was hit
with
concrete,” she said.

“Yes, why didn’t he realize that?” Sherwood asked.

“O’Rannigan said that in Dr. Norris’ defense, it had been a rainy morning, which could have washed away the telltale spatter of blood on the ground,” she said. “And Norris wasn’t there to see it anyway. There were some ‘greenhorn police officers’ on the scene, as O’Rannigan put it. Now Norris is going to have a telephone switchboard installed at the morgue at Bellevue, so that if the cops ever have questions or need a medical examiner, they can call anytime, day or night. Apparently, in his little sphere, Dr. Norris is quite the reformer.”

“He didn’t reform you, though, did he?” Benchley asked her playfully—and did she detect a little jealousy?

She shook her head. “The next time I’m at a table with Dr. Norris will be in his autopsy room, and I’ll be the one lying on it.”

As she said this, Neysa McMein came in like a whirlwind. She didn’t bother with saying her hellos. “Well, Abraham Snath should be happy. The talk around town is that the value of Ernie MacGuffin’s paintings are higher than ever, now that everyone knows his death was actually a murder.”

Dorothy felt a little sorry for Snath, but she had to laugh as well. “That news won’t make Snath happy one bit. He burned all of Ernie’s paintings.”

Neysa couldn’t help but chuckle, too. “Oh, then you’re right. He won’t be happy at all. Ernie’s paintings are skyrocketing again.”

“Just because he was murdered?” Adams scowled. “That’s abominable.”

“That’s human nature,” Woollcott said. “People love it when a terrible juicy story is involved.”

Benchley said, “Just imagine people in their living rooms, pointing to the painting above the mantel. That’s a murdered MacGuffin right there!”

“You can’t put a price on cachet,” Woollcott agreed.

“No, Aleck. You most certainly
can
put a price on cachet,” Neysa said. “I just heard all this at Cathcart’s. Houdini had been there this morning. He sold the Brooklyn Bridge painting to Cathcart for eighty grand.”

Dorothy almost spit out her tea. “Eighty?” she cried. “But I just sold it to him for fifty! Houdini made thirty grand in one day?”

Benchley shook his head. “He knows how to make elephants disappear and money reappear.”

Dorothy turned to him, a wry smile on her face. “That money could have been ours, if we had only known!”

“Don’t feel so bad,” Benchley said softly. “After all, Ernie got the worst part of the bargain, not us.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “But, oh, what we could have done with a spare thirty grand in our pockets!”