You Might As Well Die (5 page)

“Other than playing hooky?” Dorothy asked. Then she explained about Ernie MacGuffin, the subsequent article assignment from Harold Ross and his fledgling magazine, and their puzzlement about how to proceed.

“Everyone’s talking about MacGuffin,” Broun said. “I wish Ross was paying
me
five hundred dollars for an article. I’d spend it on one of MacGuffin’s paintings. The investment could be worth double in no time.”

“We’re not so much interested in the paintings as in the man,” Dorothy said. “Anyway, the five hundred is earmarked for our tab at Tony Soma’s, not some crummy painting of cowboys and Indians.”

“They say MacGuffin had a storehouse of real art—not just lurid illustrations for magazines,” Edna said.

“You’re no football fan,” Dorothy said. “What brings
you
here?”

Edna pointed to the man on the stage. “Him.”

“Houdini?” Benchley said. “You’re a Houdini fan?”

“Believe it or not, we’re from the same hometown—Appleton, Wisconsin,” Edna said. “I interviewed him twenty years ago, one of my first assignments as a cub reporter. I went backstage just now to say hello. Would you believe he remembered me? He said he even saved the clipping of my article in his scrapbook.”

She blushed.

Dorothy glanced at Benchley. They were both guilty of thinking the same thing. Edna Ferber was wildly successful as a popular novelist, but she was not a great beauty. If Houdini did indeed remember her, it was despite her looks, not because of them. (Edna had once appeared in a tailored suit at the Round Table. “You look almost like a man,” said Woollcott. Edna quickly replied, “So do you.”)

On the field, the marching band ended their tune with a wave of Houdini’s arms. Woollcott and Harpo were nowhere to be seen—presumably they had been chased off the field. Houdini addressed the impatient crowd of nearly thirty thousand people.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. Please direct your attention to the massive container behind me. Inside, the horse has disappeared. Evaporated. Vanished!”

The policeman stood to the side with his arms folded, in scorning disbelief.

“You don’t believe me, Officer?” Houdini said. He ran to the big box, tugging on some hidden bolts or fixtures. “See for yourself!”

Houdini stepped away as the sides of the box fell outward, landing on the stage with a loud clatter. The policeman jumped backward, almost tumbling off the stage.

The horse was gone.

The crowd exploded into thunderous cheering and applause. The noise was so loud that Dorothy had to cover her ears.

The policeman ran to the floor of the wooden box as though a trace of the horse might still be there. Then he jumped off the waist-high stage and looked under the bunting that covered its side. Apparently seeing nothing, he threw the bunting down in disgust, hoisted himself back up and stalked threateningly toward Houdini. The magician didn’t move an inch. He merely smiled.

All this time, the crowd continued to roar and applaud. Houdini raised his hands and gestured for quiet.

“If you thought that was stupendous, come see my exhibition at the Hippodrome next week!” As Houdini spoke, he began to lift the sides of the enormous wooden box, aided by the policeman. Together they reassembled it—all the while, Houdini kept up his patter about the wonders to be seen in his stage show.

Then, seemingly as an afterthought, Houdini opened up the front of the box, reached in—and led out the horse by its reins! The crowd made a collective gasp, and then again burst into thunderous applause, even louder than before. The stunned policeman took the reins and then hugged the horse around the neck. The crowd cheered even more wildly.

After many bows and waves, Houdini finally left the stage, followed by the policeman on his horse. The crowd didn’t quiet down until the magician had disappeared through one of the tunnels under the bleachers.

Dorothy leaned back in her seat and lit a cigarette. “Maybe we should recruit Houdini to make our problem disappear.”

“Problem?” Broun said. “What problem?”

Benchley spoke. “We don’t know exactly what to do. We don’t know who to talk to. Besides Neysa McMein, we can’t think of anyone who befriended MacGuffin. Even she didn’t like him much.”

“He must have had an agent or something to sell his artwork. Neysa could find out,” Broun said. “And of course he had that tall, beautiful, vapid wife.”

“MacGuffin had a beautiful wife?” Dorothy said. “Never seen her.”

“Not beautiful like a showgirl,” Edna said. “Beautiful like a statue.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Dorothy said, “now she sounds really approachable.”

Dorothy glanced at Benchley, who raised his eyebrows. The idea of interrogating a grieving widow—a beautiful statuesque widow—for a puff piece in Ross’ little hobby of a magazine seemed almost unconscionable.

But of course, they knew that was where they had to start.

“Heywood,” Dorothy said, “when does that next bottle of rum get here?”

T
he following morning, Dorothy and Benchley planned to meet bright and early across the street from Ernie MacGuffin’s house. Dorothy and Benchley knew each other too well to actually show up bright and early. It was ten o’clock before Dorothy arrived, just moments after Benchley had.

MacGuffin lived on East Fifth Street, a quiet tree-lined street near Greenwich Village, the artists’ district in lower Manhattan.

“That’s the address,” Benchley said, gazing across the street at the narrow, three-story town house. “Which apartment is it?”

“Neysa said bottom floor,” Dorothy replied. “Street level.”

But they stood a moment longer. They were in no hurry to chat with MacGuffin’s widow. Benchley puffed on his pipe, and Dorothy smoked a cigarette.

“What should we say, exactly?” Benchley asked thoughtfully. “‘Good morning, we’re here to ask you why your dead husband committed suicide’?”

“Perhaps a bit more subtlety is in order. Let’s just tell her who we are and see where it goes. Ready?”

They strolled across the empty, sun-dappled street.

“You’d think an artist would need more light,” Dorothy said as they advanced toward the building’s stoop. “I wonder why MacGuffin took a shady apartment on street level.”

“Maybe he had a fear of heights.”

Dorothy thought of the long distance between the highest span of the Brooklyn Bridge and the dark water below. “I think he got over it.”

They stood side by side on the top step as Benchley knocked on the door.

A very tall, elegant woman answered. She had luminous pale skin and long, straight, jet-black hair. The woman’s expectant, breathless smile changed to an expression of dismay. “Oh. Hello.”

Clearly, she was expecting someone else, Dorothy thought.

Dorothy and Benchley introduced themselves. Midge MacGuffin shook hands politely, delicately. She wore a silk sapphire blue dress, which seemed cheerfully out of place on an ordinary Wednesday morning in late October.

“Sorry to show up unannounced,” Dorothy said, feeling outclassed in her old maroon jersey jumper. “Were you expecting someone?”

“No, no one special,” Midge said, though she glanced up and down the street. “What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to talk to you about your husband,” Benchley said.

“And offer our condolences,” Dorothy added. “We work for
Vanity Fair
magazine. We’ve been assigned to write an article about Ernie.”

Dorothy sensed Benchley look at her in surprise. True, they worked for
Vanity Fair
. And, true, they were assigned to write this article—but by Harold Ross, not the editors of
Vanity Fair
. But Midge MacGuffin didn’t have to know that.

“We didn’t know him very well,” Benchley continued. “But we knew him well enough to write such an article with care and affection.”

While Benchley spoke, Midge busied herself with inserting a pair of pearl earrings.

“Oh,” she said, indifferent. Then she looked imploringly at Benchley. “Can I trouble you to help me with my necklace ?”

She handed Benchley a short string of pearls and turned around. Benchley, after the briefest of quizzical pauses, draped the string of pearls around her neck and clasped it easily. Dorothy was mildly surprised. Benchley was usually all thumbs with such things.

Midge faced them again, smiling, evidently pleased that her outfit was now complete. “Thank you.”

“May we come in?” Dorothy said.

A shadow of concern darkened the woman’s porcelain complexion. “Actually, now’s not a good time. Perhaps you could come back later?”

She backed away, grasping the doorknob to close the door.

“Sure,” Dorothy said. “When?”

“Whenever you please. Phone me later. I’ll be happy to set up an appointment with you.”

As the woman retreated through the door, Dorothy stepped forward. Dorothy knew the woman was bluffing them. “So we can telephone you later this afternoon, then?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Good-bye,” Midge said, closing the door, clearly anxious to end this conversation.

Dorothy grabbed the edge of the door. “Just a moment.” “Yes?” Midge almost let her impatience show.

“May we have your telephone number?”

“Of course. It’s Klondike-5-6789.” She rattled the numbers off quickly, and then closed the door on them.

They stood there a moment, staring at the closed door.

“How much do you want to bet she made up that phone number?” Dorothy asked.

“I’ll bet five, six, seven, eight, nine bucks,” Benchley replied.

They turned and strolled away.

Dorothy said, “Did you get the feeling she had something else on her mind?”

“Some
one
else, you mean?” he asked. “Not her recently departed husband, that’s for sure. Our endeavor to write an article about her husband didn’t seem to disrupt the grieving widow one tiny bit.”

“Grieving? She wasn’t wearing a scrap of black. Unless you count lacy black undergarments.”

A wide-shouldered man carrying a big bouquet of white roses marched in their direction. He didn’t waste a glance on them. He eyed the house numbers—and nearly bumped into Dorothy.

With little more than a grunt of apology, the large man hurried by them, continuing to look up at the buildings. They caught the scent of roses and dime-store cologne as he brushed by.

Dorothy and Benchley stopped in their tracks. Without a word to each other, they turned and followed the man at a distance.

Dorothy sized him up. The man wore a fitted gray plaid suit that emphasized, rather than hid, his large, muscular frame. His thick neck was as large as his head, which was topped by thinning, grizzled, dark blond hair under a gray hat. Dorothy hypothesized that he was a man who had spent the early part of his career in hard physical labor but had since worked his way up to some level of authority and prosperity.

As they expected, the man strode up to Midge MacGuffin’s door. He straightened his hat and the knot of his necktie, squared his wide shoulders and knocked loudly and confidently.

Midge, now fully primped and ready, threw open the door. Again she was breathless with expectation. But this time, her expectations were correct.

Dorothy and Benchley withdrew into the shelter of the closest doorway, out of Midge’s line of vision.

“Mr. Clay! So good to see you after all these years!”

“And it warms my heart to see you,” the man gushed. His voice was husky, choked with emotion. “But ‘Mr. Clay’? You knew me too well once to use surnames now, dear Harriet.”

Dorothy and Benchley silently mouthed the name to each other:
Harriet?

“Very well, Bertram.” Her chuckle was as gentle and melodious as a wind chime. “Please do come in.”

He stepped forward, holding out the bouquet of flowers. “Here, my dear Harriet—these are for you.”

“Oh, Bertie, my favorites. You remembered! How thoughtful of you.”

She closed the door. Dorothy and Benchley could hear only the fading sound of her lilting laugh.

Dorothy looked up at Benchley’s raised eyebrows.

“Did you notice those flowers?” she said. “White roses, not white lilies.”

“Maybe the grieving widow has an allergy to lilies?”

“Or maybe she’s not doing a lot of grieving.”

T
hat afternoon, in the quiet office of
Vanity Fair
, Dorothy stared at a blank page in her typewriter. For the tenth time, she gazed at the glossy black-and-white photos on her wooden desk. The photos showed a brand new briefcase.

She hated writing photo captions. Nothing came to mind. In frustration, she punched the typewriter keys to see what her brain would spit out.

That would not do. Clearly, the rendezvous between Midge MacGuffin and Big Shoulders Bertram was still on her mind.

She yanked out the sheet of paper, inserted a new one and typed again.

Not great, but it would suffice for now. She crumpled up the first attempt and tossed it at Benchley, who was leaning back in his chair, mouth agape, snoozing at his desk. The paper ball bounced off his forehead.

“Fred, wake up.”

He rubbed his eyes and stretched. “Whatever for?”

“We need to figure out what’s going on with Midge MacGuffin and Bertie the Mystery Man.”

“Oh, that. Wake me when you find out.” He lowered his head to his chest and closed his drooping eyes.

Dorothy was about to toss another paper ball at Benchley when the door flew open and their friend and fellow editor Robert Sherwood entered.