Murder Your Darlings (25 page)

What could he do? Could he trick the doorman into telling him Sanderson’s apartment number? Maybe Benchley could say he was a friend of Sanderson’s, that Sanderson had borrowed a book and he needed to get it back? Well, it was worth a try.

Benchley opened the door and entered. To be sure he had the doorman’s full attention and sympathy, he shook himself, flinging rain droplets everywhere. A few drops landed on the doorman’s jacket. The man frowned.

“Ah, good evening, good sir.” Benchley approached him. “An acquaintance of mine by the name of Knut Sanderson lives here. I don’t believe he’s at home right now. But he borrowed a book of mine. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to show me into his apartment.”

“Sorry,” the doorman said without a touch of actual sorrow. “Can’t let you in.”

Oh, forget it,
Benchley thought. He’d just have to do this the old-fashioned way. He pulled out his wallet and laid a five-dollar bill on the table.

“Well,” Benchley said awkwardly, “you don’t have to actually show me his apartment. Perhaps you could simply walk me up there and unlock the door? I’ll take it from there.”

The doorman pocketed the bill. “Sorry. Can’t leave my post.”

Benchley laid another five on the table. “In that case, could you loan me your skeleton key?”

The bill disappeared. “Sorry. Can’t do that.”

Benchley shook his head as if to clear it. The man would have to give in soon, out of sheer indebtedness.

He put down another five. His voice was impatient. “Can you at least tell me which apartment he’s in?”

“Sorry. Can’t do that either.”

Benchley exhaled sharply. “This is my last five dollars. What
can
you do for me?”

He threw down the bill. The doorman snatched it up.

“Nothing, mister. The doorman who was on shift before me accidentally went home with both the master key and the apartment directory. I couldn’t help you if you forked over a million.”

Benchley was exasperated. “Well, why didn’t you tell me that ten bucks ago?”

 

Across town, Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner huddled together under an umbrella, walking quickly and discussing their plan. Since Mickey Finn and the police and who knew who else were looking for Faulkner, he needed a new place to stay. Their goal was to move Faulkner into Alexander Woollcott’s apartment and move Woollcott into Dorothy’s apartment.

She wasn’t quite sure how to accomplish this.

“We’re at Wit’s End,” she said.

“That we are,” Faulkner agreed.

“No, that’s what I call Woollcott’s place—Wit’s End.”

The apartment building was at the very end of Fifty-second Street, overlooking the East River. They entered the building, went up the elevator and arrived before Woollcott’s door.

He answered in a red silk Oriental robe. Gold-embroidered dragons crawled up along his paunch as though scaling a mountain. His beady eyes examined them through his owllike glasses.

“Look what washed up from the rain,” his nasal voice sneered.

Before Dorothy could speak, Woollcott turned argumentative. He poked a chubby finger at Faulkner.

“What do you mean by bringing this known fugitive to my quiet quarters?”

“Fugitive? The other day, you called him an all-American hero,” she said. “This hero needs a place to stay.”

“Why darken my doorstep? Have him stay at your lovely abode, your haven for wayward boys.”

“He can’t,” she said. “The thing is, the police
are
looking for him.” She didn’t mention that Mickey Finn was looking for him, too. “Perhaps he could stay the night here.”

“I certainly don’t want him here. And even if I did, which I don’t, there’s no room. There’s hardly enough room for me.”

“That’s the other thing. I need to stay here, too.”

Woollcott rolled his eyes. “There most certainly is not enough room for three.”

“Right,” she said pleasantly. “So you could stay at my apartment at the ’Gonk.”

“Now you’re talking bald-faced balderdash.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, I lunch there every day.”

“So?”

“So, have you heard that genteel old aphorism ‘Don’t shit where you eat’?”

She shrugged. “So go shit someplace else.”

 

“Knut Sanderson,” Benchley repeated. “Does that ring a bell?”

“Beats me,” the doorman said. “I just started yesterday.”

“I’m sure that someone must have told you that hordes and fleets of policemen have been tramping through here. Which room did they go to?”

“The police? Because this guy borrowed your lousy book?”

Benchley thought a moment. He was stumped.

“The mail,” he said finally. “Have any tenants not picked up their mail in a while?”

“I dunno. Mail room’s over there. Take a peek for yourself.”

Benchley rounded the doorman’s desk and peered behind a wall of mailboxes. He scanned the cubbyholes. Four or five were packed full of mail. He looked at the names pasted above each of these compartments. On the third try, he found it. At the top of this particular pile was a copy of
American Legion Weekly
, the servicemen’s magazine that Harold Ross edited. On the mailing label was “K. Sanderson. Apt. 1027.”

Benchley thanked the doorman and took the elevator up to the tenth floor. Halfway down the hallway he found number 1027. The door was locked. How could he get in?

He knocked on the door of the adjacent apartment.

A young, affluent-looking couple answered the door. The husband had a cocktail glass in his hand.

“Hello, I’m the window inspector,” Benchley said officiously. “I’m here to check your windows.”

“At eight o’clock at night?”

“Windows never close, nor do we,” Benchley said and hurried past the couple. He went to the back bedroom and opened the window. He looked down. There was a narrow ledge about twelve inches wide. Beyond that, in the darkness far below, he could see the headlamps of cars crawling along the street. About ten feet to his left was a window to Sanderson’s apartment.

Better not think too much about this part
, he told himself.
Better to climb out there immediately. Ready, set ...
He couldn’t move.

“Can I assist you?” came the young husband’s voice.

Benchley spun around. The young man stood wide-eyed and wondering.

“Matter of fact, you can,” Benchley said. He grabbed the man’s cocktail glass and drained it. “A Manhattan. Delightful.”

Benchley turned back to the window. He stepped out onto the ledge and teetered momentarily before clutching to the wall behind him. With his back against the wall, he sidestepped to the left, inching along to the Sandman’s apartment.

It was much colder up here than on the sidewalk. The wind and rain tore at his coat and pulled his hat right off his head. Instinctively, he grabbed for it and nearly pitched forward. He flattened himself against the rain-soaked wall, his heart pounding furiously. The hat disappeared into the darkness.

What was he doing out on this slippery ledge? He had volunteered to be here. This was his idea.
We can’t let Tony Soma’s be shut down,
he had said to Dorothy. We need to do something—anything—to link the Sandman to the real killer, to get Mickey Finn off the scent. The only place to look is the Sandman’s apartment.

Dorothy had said something about exonerating Billy Faulkner. Yes, that was important, too, Benchley had replied.
But Tony’s cannot close!

Now his thoughts about Tony’s were literally up in the air. Maybe, just maybe, could they get by without Tony’s?

Then he thought better of it. So what if he fell to his death? Death was preferable, after all, if living meant going without a steady and reliable supply of liquor and good times.

The rain stung his face. It was a lot windier than he had expected. A sudden gust of wind grabbed him. It felt like it could pull him right off the ledge. The wind whipped the tails of his coat around his legs, and he felt that his feet might slip out from under him, flinging him out into the night air, only to fall into the dark street more than a hundred feet down. His fingers scrabbled at any indentation in the solid brick wall.

“Hello,” the young man cried, leaning out the window. “Do you want to get into the apartment next door? Is that why you’re out there?”

Benchley didn’t—couldn’t—answer. He was too petrified to speak.

“We have a key, you know,” the young man said.

Benchley’s clenched teeth chattered. “Well, w-why didn’t you t-t-tell me that t-t-ten floors ago?”

 

Woollcott, cloaked in his Oriental silk robe, his arms folded over his wide body, appeared as immovable as a big brass Buddha. There was no chance he would let them stay.

Dorothy stepped toward Woollcott and whispered, “What about our little secret?”

Woollcott’s eyes zeroed in on hers. “What secret?”

“You know.”

“Oh, yes,” he muttered conspiratorially. “You’re squandering your talent on poems about ponies, peonies and petty heartbreak? It’s not such a secret. The word is out.”

The insufferable windbag!

She forced herself to be calm. “No, the one about how Mayflower hoodwinked you to land that Saber fountain pen endorsement.”

He cinched his robe tighter and pointed his pinched little nose in the air. “Go ahead. Tell everyone. It’s water under the bridge to me.”

Just the day before, Woollcott had nearly thrown a tantrum when she had forced him to explain Mayflower’s gambit. Now he acted as if he didn’t care?

Finally, she made her weakest appeal of all—to his compassion.

“Have a heart,” she said. “Where’s your sense of charity? You can’t turn the poor boy out on the street.”

“I’m not turning him out on the street. If he needs a place to stay, there are many fine hotel rooms in this cosmopolitan metropolis. Now, kindly remove your Dachshund from my doorstep. Good night.”

This was impossible. She was indeed at Wit’s End, literally and figuratively.

Faulkner, apparently giving up, began his retreat. Dorothy heard cellophane crinkling in his pocket.

“Hold on,” she said to Woollcott. “Let me sweeten the deal.”

She gestured to Faulkner to hand over the wrapped box. Faulkner, not comprehending at first, finally drew the flat box from the deep pocket of his long coat. It was a box of liquor-filled chocolate cordials. She handed it to Woollcott.

His eyes widened. He panted. “Chocolate . . .
and
liquor? Where did you get these?”

Truth was, Mickey Finn had pressed it into her hands on their way out of his bootlegger’s den. She had refused the token gift at first, but Finn was insistent—it was just easier to accept it. Later, she had carelessly handed it to Faulkner to carry. How surprising that she found a use for such a gift so quickly.

“Oh, do you like them?” she said indifferently. “I have a whole crate of them back at my apartment.”

This, unfortunately for Woollcott, was not true.

But Woollcott was suddenly a one-man beehive of activity. He pirouetted away, calling over his shoulder, “Well, as you say, one must be charitable. One can’t turn a poor boy out in the street. I’ll pack my valise—just for one night, of course.”

 

Benchley slid the borrowed key into the door of the Sandman’s apartment.

After he had come back in from the ledge and into the neighbors’ apartment, he had joined them for another Manhattan or two. What nice people they were. He didn’t have the heart to confess that he was not really a window inspector. But perhaps they had figured that out.

In the course of conversation, they told him that having Sanderson next door had frightened them. When Sanderson had first moved in, he hadn’t bothered to change the locks. The nice couple still had the key that the previous neighbor had given them in case of emergency. But they were too intimidated by Sanderson to offer to return the key. So they kept it.

When the Sandman was found dead, the couple didn’t know whom to give the key to. It was a hot potato, they said. They were happy to hand it over to Benchley. They gave him one more Manhattan “for the road.”

Benchley had not yet had dinner. And he had had only beer for lunch, courtesy of Mickey Finn. So the cocktails were working their magic. He had some trouble finding the light switch, but eventually he flicked it on. One bare overhead bulb illuminated the room.

The Sandman’s large studio apartment would have been elegant, had anyone bothered to decorate the place. There were a few very expensive, very ostentatious items of furniture—a bamboo bar and stools, an oxblood leather sofa, a walnut gun cabinet. The rest was junk—a card table in the kitchen, a wooden orange crate for a makeshift shoe rack (which was filled with fancy shoes and boots) and a cast-iron bed that looked like an army cot. It was as though the Sandman had had the money and desire to buy a few items he considered valuable and either didn’t know or didn’t care to fix up the rest of the place to match.

Benchley didn’t really know what to look for. What might connect the Sandman to Mayflower? Or, what missing link might connect the Sandman to the real killer—the one who hired the Sandman . . . the one who then killed the Sandman in this very room?

Benchley wandered around the room. Old newspapers and a few wax paper sandwich wrappers littered the card table. The kitchen cabinets held nothing but cans of beans and sardines. The door of the oven, where the Sandman’s body had been found, gaped open. Benchley hurriedly turned away.

In a far corner, he saw another orange crate and went over and crouched down to inspect it. The crate was stuffed with playing cards, poker chips, some handcuffs, a blackjack, a rope, a lead pipe and other miscellaneous junk. Nothing.

Benchley scratched his head. Mickey Finn and his boys had already searched the place and found nothing. What could he hope to find?