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  The Murder Club

  THE MURDER CLUB

  Agata Stanford

  A JENEVACRIS PRESS PUBLICATION

  THE MURDER CLUB

  A Dorothy Parker Mystery / May 2013

  Published by

  Jenevacris Press

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2013 by Agata Stanford

  Edited by Shelley Flannery

  Typesetting & Cover Design by Eric Conover

  ISBN 978-0-9857803-2-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  www.dorothyparkermysteries.com

  For Anatole Konstantin, engineer and inventor,

  Benedetto Puccio, architect and artist,

  and Martin Greer, money manager.

  Also by Agata Stanford

  The Dorothy Parker Mysteries Series:

  The Broadway Murders

  Chasing the Devil

  Mystic Mah Jong

  Death Rides the Midnight Owl

  A Moveable Feast of Murder

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my sisters, Rosaria Konstantin and Mary Rose Greer, and my good friends, Loretta Grabowsky, Jeannette Sinibaldi, Shelley Flannery, and Eric Conover, as well as the School of Performing Arts Class of ’67 for their constant encouragement.

  Table of Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Final Chapter

  About the Author

  Who’s Who in the Cast of

  Dorothy Parker Mysteries

  The Algonquin Round Table was the famous assemblage of writers, artists, actors, musicians, newspaper and magazine reporters, columnists, and critics who met for luncheon at one P.M. most days, for a period of about ten years, starting in 1919, in the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street in Manhattan. The unwritten test for membership was wit, brilliance, and likeability. It was an informal gathering ranging from ten to fifteen regulars, although many peripheral characters who arrived for lunch only once might later claim they were part of the “Vicious Circle,” broadening the number to thirty, forty, and more. Once taken into the fold, one was expected to indulge in witty repartee and humorous observations during the meal, and then follow along to the Theatre, or a speakeasy, or Harlem for a night of jazz. Gertrude Stein dubbed the Round Tablers “The Lost Generation.” The joyous, if sardonic, reply that rose with a laugh from Dorothy Parker was, “Wheeee! We’re lost!”

  Dorothy Parker set the style and attitude for modern women of America to emulate during the 1920s and 1930s. Through her pointed poetry, cutting theatrical reviews, brilliant commentary, bittersweet short stories, and much-quoted rejoinders, Mrs. Parker was the embodiment of the soulful pathos of the “Ain't We Got Fun” generation of the Roaring Twenties.

  Robert Benchley: Writer, humorist, boulevardier, and bon vivant, editor of Vanity Fair and Life Magazine, and drama critic of The New Yorker, he may accidentally have been the very first standup comedian. His original and skewed sense of humor made him a star on Broadway, and later, in the movies. What man didn’t want to be Bob Benchley?

  Alexander Woollcott was the most famous man in America—or so he said. As drama critic for the New York Times, he was the star-maker, discovering and promoting the careers of Helen Hayes, Katherine Cornell, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and the Marx Brothers, to name but a few. Larger than life and possessing a rapier wit, he was a force to be reckoned with. When someone asked a friend of his to describe Woollcott, the answer was, “Improbable.”

  Frank Pierce Adams (FPA) was a self-proclaimed modern-day Samuel Pepys, whose newspaper column, “The Conning Tower,” was a widely read daily diary of how, where, and with whom he spent his days while gallivanting about New York City. Thanks to him, every witty retort, clever comment, and one-liner uttered by the Round Tablers at luncheon was in print the next day for millions of readers to chuckle over at the breakfast table.

  Harold Ross wrote for Stars and Stripes during the War, where he first met fellow newspapermen Woollcott and Adams. The rumpled, “clipped woodchuck” (as described by Edna Ferber) was one of the most brilliant editors of his time. His magazine, The New Yorker, which he started in 1925, has enriched the lives of everyone who has ever had a subscription. His hypochondria was legendary, and his the-world-is-out-to-get-me outlook was often comical.

  Jane Grant married Harold Ross but kept her maiden name, cut her hair shorter than her husband’s, and viewed domesticity with disdain. A society columnist for the New York Times, Jane was the very chic model of modernity during the 1920s. Having worked hard for women’s suffrage, Jane continued in her cause while serving meals and emptying ashtrays during all-night sessions of the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club.

  Heywood Broun began his career at numerous newspapers throughout the country before landing a spot on the World. Sportswriter and Harlem Renaissance jazz fiend, he was to become the social conscience of America during the 1920s and beyond through his column, “It Seems to Me . . . .” His insight and commentary made him a champion of the labor movement, as did his fight for justice during and after the seven years of the Sacco and Vanzetti trials and execution.

  Edmund “Bunny” Wilson: Writer, editor, and critic of American literature, he first came to work at Vanity Fair after Mrs. Parker pulled his short story out from under the slush-pile and found it interesting.

  Robert E. Sherwood came to work on the editorial staff at Vanity Fair alongside Parker and Benchley. The six-foot-six Sherwood was often tormented by the dwarfs performing—whatever it was they did—at the Hippodrome on his way to and from work at the magazine’s 44th Street offices, but that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the twentieth-century Theatre’s greatest playwrights.

  Marc Connelly began his career as a reporter but found his true calling as a playwright. Short and bald, he co-authored his first hit play with the tall and pompadoured George S. Kaufman.

  Edna Ferber racked up Pulitzer Prizes by writing bestselling potboilers set against America’s sweeping vistas, most notably, So Big, Showboat, Cimarron, and Giant. She, too, collaborated with George S. on several successful Broadway shows. A spinster, she was a formidable personality and wit and a much-coveted member of the Algonquin Round Table.

  John Barrymore was a member of the Royal Family of the American Stage, which included John Drew and Ethel and Lionel Barrymore. John Barrymore was famous not only for his stage portrayals, but for his majestic profile, which was captured in all its splendor on celluloid.

  The Marx Brothers: First there were five, then there were four, then there were three Marx Brothers— awww, heck, if you don’t know who these crazy, zany men are, it’s time to hit the video store or tune into Turner Classic Movies!

  Also mentioned: Neysa McMein, artist and illustrator, whose studio door was open all hours of the day and night for anyone who wished to pay a call; Grace Moore, Broadway and opera star, and later a movie star; Broadway and radio star Fanny Brice—think Streisand in Funny Girl; Noel Coward, English star and playwright who took America by storm with his classy comedies and bright musical offerings; Condé Nast, publisher of numerous magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden; Florenz Zeigfeld—of “Follies” fame—big-time producer of the extravaganza stage revue; The Lunts, husband-and-wife stars of the London and Broadway stages, individually known as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne; Tallulah Bankhead—irreverent, though beautiful, southern-born actress with the foghorn drawl, who later made a successful transition from the stage to film—the life of any party, she often perked up the waning festivities performing cartwheels sans bloomers; Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jascha Heifetz—famous for “God Bless America” and hundreds more hit songs; composer of Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess and many more great works; and the violin virtuoso, respectively.

  THE

  MURDER CLUB

  Chapter One

  October 11, 1929

  They were known as “The Murder Club.” Six authors in search of the perfect murder plot for the new mystery novels they were writing. Never could they have dreamed of what would befall them starting this day, the eleventh of October, in the year of our Lord, nineteen-hundred-twenty-nine.

  Who would want to see them dead?

  On this glorious autumn afternoon a bunch of us went to see Gino Di Cenzo to wish him luck on the opening of his new place. The speakeasy’s new location is on the parlor floor of a Midtown brownstone, and it was smart of Gino to reopen his establishment two doors down from the police station. Having police protection is highly desirable. So what if the cops drank free? For cops the juice flowed free at any one of the other half-dozen speaks on the block, and most of the Boys in Blue knew Gino Di Cenzo from the days before the country dried up as the proprietor of Di Cenzo’s Italian Restaurant aro
und the corner on the avenue.

  Since the hypocrites voted the country dry while guzzling down the imported stuff in the backrooms of Capitol Hill, new businesses have been created—the manufacturing of rotgut, rum-running, bootlegging—along with the mobsters who run these operations. The pretense is wearing thin; nobody cares anymore. The courts have been so overrun with arrests that there is no room on the dockets to deal with real crime, so now everyone turns a blind eye, except, occasionally, the gung-ho Fed with a quota to fill.

  After the tragedy that closed Gino’s business almost two years ago, his excellent food had been missed by the men in the Department as well as the neighborhood folks. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can make a sauce like Gino. And as for his saltimbocca, there is no contender. But Gino just couldn’t bear the tragic loss of his wife and teenage son in the fire that took their lives as they slept in the rooms above the restaurant. It happened on the very night Gino was standing vigil over the hospital deathbed of his mother, Mama Santina (as she was known in the neighborhood), the matriarch whose recipes were the afternoon daydreams of many a New Yorker. Gino lost his family and business in one horrific night.

  So the cops were sympathetic, of course, and positively understanding after Gino woke up one morning last winter on the second anniversary of the passing of his beloved family. As he told it, he’d dreamed a vision of Santa Lucia winging down toward him, her robes aflutter against the dark void from whence she’d flown, forcing open his eyes and yelling in an oddly familiar voice, “Get outta-da-bed, you lazy-good-f’nuttin’!”

  The fact that the shout was oddly reminiscent of Mama Santina on the Sunday mornings of his youth, rallying him to mass, may have been disconcerting but was nevertheless an instant eye-opener. It wasn’t Sunday, but he had to do something, and all he ever knew how to do was cook.

  A restaurant was a big enterprise to start up again, but he figured he could at least cook for a few of his old customers in the apartment he was renting for twenty bucks a month. It was his cousin, Salvatore, newly arrived from Naples and eager to harvest off the streets of New York the reported gold therein, who convinced Gino to sell the wine and the gin he was distilling in the garage of an abandoned house in Brooklyn, sponsored by the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, whose gas lines he had cleverly diverted to supply the power for the production of the spirits.

  When Gino opened his doors last week, it was only natural for Sgt. Joe Woollcott and his cronies at the precinct to stop in, and for Joe to tell his cousin, the famous New York drama critic, Alexander Woollcott, the news of the grand-reopening of Di Cenzo’s, instructing Aleck to pass the news on to all his famous friends. That’s why, the afternoon after the doors were officially, if clandestinely, opened to the public, along with Aleck’s pressing desire for a crispy-creamy cannoli—or three—a bunch of us walked over the few blocks after lunching at the Algonquin to welcome the long-missed Italian back to the neighborhood. We toasted his success, and to the future absence of federal agents from his establishment.

  We settled in at a table and the waiter took our orders: an orange juice for me—“imported”—and a “can of beans” for Mr. Benchley, Aleck, and Frank Pierce Adams. Harold Ross and Jane Grant ordered “kit-and-caboodles.” I asked for a “domestic” bowl of water for Woodrow.

  We were enjoying our various cocktails in coffee cups when the lights flickered. We all knew what that meant, and our suspicions were confirmed when we heard feet treading heavily on the floor above, followed by the Running of the Bulls through Pamplona on the stairs. By the time there sounded the determined banging on the door we had already drained our cups of alcoholic beverages. Decoy pots of coffee had been delivered to the half-dozen occupied tables and the dumbwaiter bar stocked with hard imported spirits sent down into a trap in the basement below.

  “Gino Di Cenzo,” prefaced a little woman who walked over from a table toward the proprietor, “I arrest you for violations of the Volstead Act—”

  A burly fellow swung an axe through the entry door, and then eyed, threateningly, the big water tank behind the bar.

  Woodrow, who had been snoozing under the table, perked up and positioned himself in a spread-legged defensive stance. He bared his teeth and growled.

  “Stop!” cried Gino as the man lifted his axe. “It’s just a fish tank! See the catfish?” He broke away from the federal agent to intercept the man. “Taste it yourself, God help you.” He opened the top and ladled out a coffee cup full of water from the big tank behind the “soda-counter.”

  “Careful—don’t gag.”

  “Shit!” shrieked the agent, spitting out the water, even more determined to smash the tank.

  “Of course there’s shit in it,” I said. “Fish have to go to the bathroom somewhere!”

  “Unsanitary,” said Mr. Benchley. “I never drink water or swim in a pool on account of that very reason.”

  The arresting agent pulled off her wig, revealing a tweed-skirted fellow teetering in high heels who grabbed Gino from behind the bar. He shook his head at the axe-wielding brute standing twice his size to stave off the destruction, and then ordered the other agents to search the premises. In a few minutes they returned from the kitchen with a bottle of Marsala.

  “Bought before the Act went into effect,” explained Gino. “Sacramental wine!”

  “This ain’t a church!”

  “To Sicilians, Marsala is sacramental wine!” piped in Aleck.

  “For cooking, for cryin’outloud!” said Gino.

  “What’s going on?” bellowed a baritone voice entering from the hallway and announcing the arrival of New York City Police Captain Michael Delaney.

  “Oh, crap, Morton,” yelled the captain after a quick assessment. “Whadda you want to bother Di Cenzo for? Sit down, you sonovabitch, and your posse, too, and have a plate of spaghets. Gino! Bring out the spaghets and a couple loaves of bread—garlic bread, okay? You! Put that goddamn axe down before you break sumpthin’.”

  When Morton objected to the policeman’s interference, the captain smiled wide, and in a comradely fashion slapped him on the back, unbalancing the high-heeled Morton and sending him face-first into Aleck’s plate of Italian cheesecake. With a look of disgruntled resignation, Aleck offered the federal agent a fork.

  “Well, if it isn’t the famous Alexander Woollcott and his band of merry men!” laughed Delaney. “And ladies.” He nodded as he helped Morgan up to a standing position.

  “Tell your men to take a load off, Morton, and wipe that cream off your face. It’s disconcertin’, ’f you know what I mean.”

  Mr. Benchley handed the agent his dinner napkin.

  “Coffee?” offered Jane Grant, raising the pot.

  “Chic outfit, Mr. Morton,” I said, stirring the pot. “But you gave yourself away when you didn’t shave your legs.”

  Morton considered the situation hopeless—he would get little cooperation from the police in making an arrest. Nowadays, nobody cared to prosecute the little guys; they were after the big crooks. So he huffed and puffed in defeat, tore out the itchy breast padding, and called off his dogs. His three government stooges took a table near the kitchen and ordered lasagna.

  Harold Ross looked at the discombobulated Morgan, pulled up a chair from a vacant table, and said, “Have a seat.”

  Frank Pierce Adams offered, “Have a nickel cigar.”

  “Finish your dessert,” ordered Jane, placing the plate of mashed cheesecake in front of him and hovering over the little man like a mother over a child’s dish of uneaten vegetables.

  “He really should try the cannoli,” said Ross to Jane, who, after assessing the disparity between the corpulent Woollcott and the morbidly skeletal Morton, pilfered a pastry from off Aleck’s vast array of treats.

  “I don’t know why I bother,” said the scrawny agent. “I make ten arrests a day, and none of them hold up in court, if they even get before a judge, which ain’t often.”

  “Well, Billy,” said Captain Delaney, addressing Morton as if he were an old friend, which he was, the two men having fought side by side during the Spanish War, “it’s a pointless task, a waste of departmental resources. We’ve got bigger fish to fry these days, what with sopping up blood after Frankie Yale, and there’s Luciano, the sonovabitch, and his friend, Meyer Lansky, the turd, and the Black Hands, the White Hands, and the Red Bolshies bombing everything. . . .”