[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl Read online

  “What are you trying to say, you old bum?”

  “Now, now, my dear, I am saying nothing at all, at all.”

  “That’s better,” I replied testily. “We don’t need you to attest the virtue of monogamy.”

  Mr. Benchley uttered no retort. I’d spoken only the truth. He and Gertrude had what you’d call a “modern marriage”: They lived mostly separate lives, Mr. Benchley taking the train home to Scarsdale for Sunday dinner and to play “Papa” to his sons, and lord of his manor, before returning to his apartment at the Hotel Royalton, in Manhattan, where he lived weekdays. I was sorry that I was short-tempered with him, even if he had suggested that I was getting old and brittle with the passing years. Maybe I was.

  “I see you’re rather chummy with Mellon,” I said, trying to draw him out.

  “Harvard, Class of 1912, a Delta Upsilon fraternity brother.” He chuckled gaily at some secret knowledge, and then shook his head. “Up to no good, we were.”

  “You see, Ruth, I didn’t need to go to college like Mr. Benchley, here; I’ve learned ‘up to no good’ all on my own.”

  “Those were the days! Joe Kennedy, Johnny Reed—”

  “Ah! A bootlegger and a Red! Good company!”

  “And successful in their chosen fields!” he defended.

  I laughed. “Successful? One’s a traitor, buried at the Kremlin, and the other’s a criminal.”

  “It’s all how you look at it, I suppose . . . .”

  “Well, it doesn’t look good for you.”

  “Mellon and I perfected the game, ‘We’ve come for the davenport.’ ”

  Ah-ha! I thought, remembering only last year, when Mr. Benchley had led the Marx Brothers through the Dakota Apartments, switching out davenports from one apartment to another. They didn’t stop at sofas, however. Pricey carpets were rolled up, carried out, and delivered to a neighboring household in exchange for a shabby rug. The draperies would have been pulled down if Groucho hadn’t strained his back. A knock on a door—a maid answers—We’re here for the davenport—and the furniture is carried out while a compliant, if confused, maid looks on.

  Ruth laughed and let out an unattractive snort: “Let’s hope the beds of this Pullman are bolted down.”

  “We had a grand time . . . .”

  “Glad to know your time at college wasn’t a total waste,” I sniped.

  “Really, Dottie, you are out of sorts,” broke in Heywood, as Ruth and I took seats opposite each other in the Brouns’ compartment.

  I am rarely shamed, but Heywood could do it with a look.

  “I am a bit—off, and I’d apologize, but I’ll wait until morning if you don’t mind. That way I can do it just once.”

  “You’ve spent too much time with Ruth these past weeks.”

  “I heard that, you brute,” said Ruth, who then, with meticulous deliberation, proceeded to dramatically remove her pristine white gloves, one finger at a time, as if ready to slap one across the face of her husband in challenge for a duel. Instead she folded the pair and placed them in her purse, daintily removed the hatpin from her chapeau, and, smoothing her skirt, sat down next to her husband.

  Ruth Hale, small, frumpish, if well tailored, is a little hellcat in the arena of women’s rights, starting with the suffrage movement of the past decade. She, like my friend, Jane Grant, refused to take her husband’s name upon marrying. She hates being referred to as “Mrs. Heywood Broun.” I don’t know what the hell she expected when she married him. His reputation as a sportswriter, political journalist, columnist, and prolific author of best-selling books had made him a household name. His fame precedes him, and the little woman who trots three steps behind trying to keep up is referred to, much to her frustration, as “Heywood Broun’s wife.” Poor dear, she was a passionate crusader and worked hard to stand as tall (figuratively) as her husband. To be married to such a powerful and influential man is not enough for Ruth. She is the modern woman of our new generation: the female who not only can survive without a man, but can live and thrive without his protection, interference, or dictates. Such is Ruth’s continuous mantra, which at times can get a bit tiresome. That she is ambitious in her own right, that she is outspoken on issues both political and social, is probably what endeared her to Broun. But Heywood, competitive as he is, did not foresee a contest at home. My blunt and outspoken friend can be rendered quite contrite just to avoid an argument with his wife, and this deliberate reticence often serves to egg Ruth on even more rather than subdue her waspish tendencies. Aside from the argumentative suffragette pose she wears like impenetrable armor, and her disdain for the constraints on women imposed by men for thousands of years, I pretty much agree with her philosophy. Although the battle for the vote has been won, there is still a war going on. But, Ruth would fare better toward a victory if she used a modicum of wit and charm to grease the rusty, outdated machine of our male-dominated society. In many ways I envy the life she lives: home, children, and a husband who loves her . . . .

  I never really suffered many restrictions for being a woman, so I suppose I am not as militant in my approach on these issues as Ruth or Jane Grant. Rather, I have made the most of my petite stature and my soft-spoken voice, and these qualities have served me well. Because my demure demeanor is in stark contrast with my often-caustic words, I don’t come off as brashly outspoken, but rather as disarmingly funny.

  The secret of my success began some years ago and, giving credit where credit is due, may be attributed in part to the men in my life. My best friends are men, and I am accepted as an equal. Talent and wit make for equal rights in the gang I hang around with; whether female, Jewish, or Negro, it matters not with my Round Table friends. I manage to keep in step and, in spite of my five-foot height, on the same imposing level.

  Mr. Benchley tipped the porter and instructed him to place our valises in our respective single bedrooms down the hall. I pulled my Victrola off the cart. We’d need music, I figured, or this journey home would be reminiscent of Lincoln’s funeral train to Springfield.

  Passengers plowed slowly through the hallway, some porters toting hand-luggage on their way to drawing-rooms, compartments, and bedrooms in our car, and others toward the sleeper cars where at a substantial savings you could retire onto a curtained bunk. I had a single bedroom a few doors down from the Brouns’ compartment, but I doubted I’d ever hit the sack this night.

  I stood near the open door, hoping to catch a breeze from the hall fans, watching the parade of tired travelers: a father toting a sleeping child over his shoulder, a matron carrying a small birdcage, a group of fresh-faced Harvard boys charging noisily into the compartment next door. I recognized a young couple who’d marched with me the day of my arrest, and had themselves escaped arrest. There followed a man in a tan gabardine suit, sporting a rakish beret. He was tall enough to peer over the heads of those in front of him, and because he’d caught my eye he nodded before moving on down the car. Then there appeared a tall, wiry man with patrician features who had spoken at a rally in the park. He’d attained fame as a muckraker, exposing the conditions of coal miners and slaughterhouses, as well as a speaker for the socialist cause. Following him was an entourage of half-a-dozen men chatting fiercely with the rat-tat-tat rapidity of their native Italian. Pushing through the line was a slight, young fellow with suntanned Italian good looks and the air of an immigrant about him. It was written all over him in the cut of his suit, the old-fashioned collar, and the fact that he possessed that just-off-the-boat look—a mixture of wide-eyed wonder, an expression of easy compliance with authority, and a healthy dash of the fear that all immigrants naturally assume when they hit the shore. He pressed forward in a zigzag fashion through the line, whispering, “Scusi, scusi,” waking the old gal’s canary as he brushed the cage cover, which resulted in a series of startling chirps, and knocking off-kilter a Harvard boy’s boater.

  “Hey! You there! Watch where you’re going!” shouted the Harvard boy, with haughty condescension.

>   “Scusi, scusi,” said the Italian, his head bowing in a gesture of respect, one hand clutching his hat to his chest, the other, a small brown leather valise. There was a spark of contempt in his expression as he threw a glance at the back of the boy who’d moved on with his friends, and he caught me watching when he nearly fell in through the door to our compartment. He quickly lowered his head. “Forgif, pleez, lady,” he whispered, before passing on down the hall.

  The Harvard contingent fell into drunken song in four-part harmony, and within seconds came a ukulele accompaniment of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

  “I’m in a funk,” I said to no one and everyone. “I’ve been jailed, tailed—by G-men in dusty shoes—suspected of trying to set off bombs in the town square, and been called all sorts of names—and even though some of the names fit, it’s not nice to air someone else’s dirty laundry in public. This town stinks; it’s not only full of beans, it’s full of—”

  “Now-now, Mrs. Parker,” cut in Mr. Benchley, soothingly patting my shoulder. “Let’s not get into personalities, my dear.”

  “They would have framed me for the Boston Tea Party if they could have gotten away with it! I’ve been pushed around this town long enough! What time is it? How long before we get the hell out of here? Somebody put on that fan and open up the windows; it’s stifling in here!”

  Heywood did my bidding, but I didn’t expect a reply about our departure. We were, after all, on the Midnight Owl, leaving at twelve-oh-one A.M. A terrible time to depart; a terrible hour in the history of our nation! I was in a hurry to escape, and yet I knew there was no escaping for the two Italians awaiting execution at the Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown. Right now, more than two hundred city and state mounted police were guarding the walls of the prison against attack from protesters. Once the train’s warning whistle blew it would be midnight; the sound would be like a long-dreaded death knell. The two men would be escorted out of their prison cells for the walk to the electric chair. The first of the executions would begin at the stroke of midnight. When the switch was thrown, the lights would flicker and buzz, the smell of ozone and burnt hair and flesh and fear would permeate the air—I winced at the horrific scene playing out in my head. I cringed, not only at the thought of the terrible deaths but that their murders by the state could ever be justified.

  I touched Mr. Benchley’s arm. He, too, was in a dark mood. It was, after all, he who tried to bring to light, during these last months of appeals, through letters, affidavits, and testimony, the knowledge he possessed of the blatant prejudicial conduct of Judge Webster Thayer, who had presided over the trial, later denied the appeals, and sentenced the men to death. Thayer took every opportunity to air his bigotry. He viciously voiced his hatred of the “wops,” bending the ears of the Boston bluebloods who he thought might be of like mind in wanting to rid America of “those Red bastards,” those labor agitators who were the bane of corporate and big banking interests in the city—and in the country! He’d been shooting off his mouth these past seven years in an attempt to ingratiate himself with these pillars of the community, as if to justify his bias to any upstanding fellow he could corner at the Union Club, University Club, dinner parties, and society functions. Thayer engaged in this despicable conduct while sitting on the bench. When not busy bullying defense witnesses, he was steering witness testimony against the defendants, obstructing justice by assisting the district attorney at every turn and aiding and abetting the prosecutor’s intimidation of defense witnesses. He spread his venomous hatred at every turn. And then there was the brazen editing of court transcripts, the dismissal or distortion of the facts given in favor of the defense by expert witnesses, and the deliberate suppression from the jury of the Pinkerton reports with their sworn statements from eye-witnesses that Sacco and Vanzetti were not the men who had committed the robbery and shooting death of the paymaster’s guard. For seven years, Web Thayer could be heard publicly spouting: “Did you see what I did with those arn-y-cist bastards the other day? That will hold them for a while!”; “Those bastards down there, I’ll get them good and proper!”; and “I’ll show them and get those guys hanged, and I’d like to hang a few dozen of those radicals!”

  A burning, angry fury took hold of me when I first heard about what Thayer had been saying. Now, when there was no longer anything any of us could do to stay the executions, no action to take, no protest to voice, I felt a sinking in my stomach in fearful anticipation of the travesty about to occur in just a few minutes, when the struggle for justice of the past seven years would shudder to a bitter end with the throwing of a switch. Two good, hardworking, kindhearted family men, two Italian immigrants, were about to be put to death, about to be murdered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on circumstantial evidence because of their anarchistic beliefs, the propaganda literature they distributed, and their efforts to increase the wages of their fellow laborers.

  I was sinking into a mire of despondency. Woodrow Wilson, my Boston terrier and canine companion, reacted to my despair and the heavy, gloomy mood cast over all of us in the compartment. He whined and leapt up onto my lap to stare into my eyes with questioning concern.

  I readjusted my attitude. Although beaten (figuratively) and abused (verbally) for my protests (the feds actually suspected me and Ruth of planning to set off a bomb at the courthouse, so we were watched), I needn’t whine my discontent to my friends. We were all feeling ineffectual in not having achieved justice for Vanzetti and Sacco. Although I was brokenhearted, I would not cry! I must not cry!

  The train whistle blew, long and shrill, announcing imminent departure.

  Ruth and I clutched each other, hankies fluttering at our faces, Woodrow Wilson caught in the snare of our tangled arms; Heywood, his usually vibrant and powerful bulky figure caved in a heap of sadness, sat facing the window looking out blindly at latecomers rushing to board, lovers in parting embraces, conductors, porters, and Red Caps loading on stray luggage and passengers, all the while seeing none of the frantic activity, only the slow, terrifying death-walk taking place three miles across the river.

  Suddenly, all our attention was fixed by yells and a scuffle out on the platform, as the scene of flurried farewells transformed into a startling play of chase-and-capture as policemen converged to restrain a young man we had not seen before.

  “Viva l’anarchia!” he screamed, and the anguish in his cry sent chills through me. “Viva Vanzetti!” he continued as he fought off three big men. “Viva Sacco and Vanzetti!” he sobbed as he was tackled down, his beautiful dark features pressed to the ground as the policemen cuffed his wrists behind his back. They brought him up to his feet, and as the train whistle sounded its urgent cry once again, he threw back his curly head with a gesture of intrepid defiance and screamed out loudly over the din, “Never forget Sacco and Vanzetti!” He was punched and battered by the policemen. We watched in horror as the train jolted forward and he passed from view.

  I glimpsed Mr. Benchley, a rare morose expression creasing his handsome brow. He rose slowly to his feet, as if an additional burden pressed down upon him. He reached for his traveling case, from which he retrieved a bottle of Dewar’s. The whistle sounded again like a terrible warning. My friend, with shaking hands, filled paper cups pulled from a dispenser beside the little sink, and solemnly, respectfully, we toasted the lives and memory of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti as the Midnight Owl began its steamy, thunderous chug out of South Station.

  One cannot sustain for long a state of misery, nor dwell in the darkness of the mind’s despair without becoming morose and suicidal. Believe me; I know.

  So as the train barreled into the night, Heywood produced a pack of cards, which he shuffled violently, and from which he dealt a game for diversion from our grim thoughts. Mr. Benchley was assigned scorekeeper, and he took out his little notebook and pencil from his coat to tackle the mindless job. There followed a long and weighty silence as we feigned concentration on our hands, the quiet a rarity for so vocal a ga
ng of friends. The moronically happy plunking of ukulele music seeped through the walls. The music was just too gay to stand any longer, so I turned on the compartment’s radio, and the only broadcast that came in clearly was the Boston Evening Transcript on WBET.

  Boots and His Nighthawks were playing dance music, and after Doc Wassermann’s Orchestra played a turn, “the time at the tone” sounded twelve-thirty A.M. I got up and fetched my portable Victrola case that I’d lugged along for the trip, and in which I had stacked half-a-dozen or so records on the turntable. I’d not had the time or inclination to play the thing all the time we were in Boston, and I now realized that none of my choices would serve to lift our sullen spirits. Bessie Smith would make us cry; the Duke would make us bluer.

  I listened with one ear to the news of the day broadcast on the radio as I leafed through my record selections: St Mark’s Church had been the beneficiary of a millionaire’s will; the amateur cracksman long suspected of stealing museum masterworks throughout Europe was arrested at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; a terrorist plot foiled in Chicago earlier today points to anarchist activity; Ed Farrell’s slugging is the reason why the Braves won the last three games from the Cubs; the French Davis Cup had arrived in Boston earlier in the day; three were found dead in a cargo-hold fire aboard the HMS Victoria, including the body of a stowaway; and Charlie Chaplin agreed to pay the astronomical sum of eight-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars in a divorce settlement.

  And then, to wrap things up:

  The juice was turned off, and Vanzetti was officially pronounced dead at twelve-twenty-six-fifty-five. The orchestra will now play, “The End of a Perfect Day.”

  “Sons of bitches!” I hissed with a little cry, slamming off the radio and then looking at the forlorn friends who sat there in a motionless tableau of grief. “I’m taking Woodrow for a walk through the cars,” I said while opening the drawing-room door.