Laurel and Hardy Murders (9 page)

The waiters began to pour the coffee. O. J. rose and rapped his water glass with a spoon. Though the banquet was by no means formal, our president had on a modern-cut tuxedo with tartan cummerbund and a ruffled-front-and-cuffs white shirt.

“Would Marty Kondak and Barry Richmond please come to the dais?” O. J. asked. It took a minute for them to get there—Barry had to be hunted down upstairs where he was doing some last-minute thing with a spotlight. When they both mounted the dais, Al Kilgore and Jack Black rose and joined them.

At O. J.’s request, everyone stood up and held their various libations aloft.

“The toast to Mae Busch and Charley Hall,” O. J. announced, “will be delivered by His Honor Barry Richmond.”

“Not Hizzoner,” Barry protested, “My Excellency!”

“Barry,” O. J. pleaded, “do the toast.”

“Eh bien,” Barry said, raising his glass of Coke. “A Charles et Mae, deux drôles magnifiques!” He took a sip, then added, “That’s what you call a French toast.”

A hearty groan, and the cry of “Hear, hear!” signified the general drinking of the pledge.

O. J. leaned in to the microphone. “The toast to Fin will be given by Marty Kondak.”

A slim, tall man in navy-blue nautical jacket stepped forward. He had a pencil-thin mustache and wore glasses. This was the uncrowned “Poet Lariat” of the parent tent, Marty Kondak, whose specialty was toasts in rhyme. Drawing a piece of notepaper from his pocket, he found the appropriate bit of poesy and sang a paean to Jimmy Finlayson to the tune of “M-O-T-H-E-R.”

“F is for the frowns he always gave them,

I is for the icy stare he had.

N is for the nasty tricks he played them,

For he was good at being very bad.

L is for the leers that—A—were awful.

Y is for the yelling and the yowls

As he duped the boys with schemes unlawful

And squints and sneers and sniggers, sniffs and scowls.

S-O-N, you know what kind I’m meaning,

A finer heavy there has never been! You see the way my final rhyme is leaning:

Here’s to our Jimmy—F-I-N—TO FIN!”

“Hear, Hear!” the company proclaimed, once more raising glasses high.

Al Kilgore delivered Babe’s toast. “Once, Jack McCabe asked Stan how come he always seemed to watch Babe whenever looking at one of their films. Stan’s answer was simple—‘He really is a funny, funny fellow.’ Well, here’s to Babe, a man who could make
Stan
laugh!”

“
Hear, hear
!”

“Last but certainly not least,” said O. J., “the toast to Stan will be given by our special guest of honor, Mr. Jack Black.”

If we hadn’t already been standing, we would have all gotten up then. The applause rang out loud and long.

Black shook his head as O. J. invited him to step up to the microphone. He stayed where he was. “Pardon me if I avoid that electric crutch. When Billy and I started out, there was no such thing on a stage as a mike. We had to know how to project straight to the last row of the house. It’s practically a lost art.” He sipped his drink and continued. “A toast to Stan, yes...a privilege. A solemn duty. Comedy is a great art. I have devoted my life to it. My religion has no hymns, only laughter. If top bananas are the high priests of my church, then Stan Laurel was a goddamned cardinal!”

“HEAR, HEAR!”

Everyone cheered. O. J. patted the old trouper on the back.

After we were seated, Al Kilgore read telegrams from friends and absentee members, then O. J. got up and announced the date of the Philadelphia-New York joint convention, which was to be held less than one month later.

“Considering the brevity of time to prepare,” O. J. said, “we’d like to find out if anyone contemplates going.”

There was a good show of hands. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Frank Butler all evening, but I was sure he meant to attend.

“Wonder where the old buzzard is,” I said to Hilary.

“Who knows? Maybe his Packard died in the swamps of New Jersey.”

Butler didn’t show until the dais portion of the banquet was nearly over. By then, Dangerfield had done a few, too few, hilarious minutes, and Chuck performed a pantomime based on the idea that Bob Cummings’s eternal youthfulness might be the result of fantastically intricate prosthetic devices. Bob and Ray did their classic interview with the cranberry grower and the chat with the Komodo Dragon authority. Then Ray reached down and accepted the plaque which Mel Fawkes had nearly broken as he tripped carrying it to the dais. As prior recipients of the Sons comedy achievement award, the team had agreed to present the current one to Jack Black.

The old man made a few gracious remarks on behalf of himself and the absent Billy White. When he was done, Natie mounted the dais and began calling off numbers for the annual auction. Just then, I saw a large figure in a white suit enter at the back of the room. It was Frank Butler. He was carrying a big package wrapped in brown paper, treating it delicately.

“Who ever told him he should wear white?” Hilary said. “He looks like a pregnant light bulb.”

Butler saw us and approached. “Hey, boy, how the hell you doin’?” He pumped my hand in his free mitt, started to reach over to Hilary, thought better of it and yanked his hand back.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked. “The meal’s already over.”

“It’s all right, I ate on the road. Hadda chase all over Philly to find exactly what I wanted.”

He patted the package.

“What’s inside?”

“Shh.” Butler shook his head. “You’ll see.” Chuckling, he waddled off in the direction of the head table.

D
URING THE BREAK WHILE
they were rearranging the seats for the platform show, Hilary told me she was enjoying herself and wanted to join the Sons of the Desert.

I ignored the statement. “Hilary,” I said, “you’ve
got
to see the club’s library. They’ve got a limited edition of Percy Mackaye’s
Hamlet
.”

That was enough to divert her. It was a book she’d been vainly trying to acquire for the better part of a decade. I took her to the trophy room/library in the recess beyond the bar. When she saw the huge boxed Bond Wheelwright tome, she gasped, delighted.

“I didn’t know it would be so
big
! May I look at it, hold it?” A little girl anxious to play with someone else’s toys.

I waved to Hal, who was running around passing out bar chits to guests. “Is it all right to handle the books, Hal?”

“As long as you don’t get ’em dirty and put ’em back.” He zoomed off on another errand, narrowly avoiding a belly-whop when his toe snagged the cord of an electric wire.

“That,” said Hilary, “is the clumsiest man I ever met.”

I agreed.

For the next few minutes, Hilary occupied herself caressing the rare book. I wasn’t so sure I should have distracted her. I knew damn well it’d be worse for me, the longer I delayed telling her she couldn’t join the Sons.

“
Take your seats. The show’s about to start
.”

The tables were pushed aside, and the chairs, arranged in neat rows, commanded both stage and the screen behind the dais. Ushers drafted from the general membership passed out programs.

There were nine items listed on the itinerary, starting with a “magic lantern show” and a “surprise” by Hal Fawkes and continuing through the skit, Wayne Poe, a singer, a magician, Sandy Sable’s comedy act, and, next to last, Al Kilgore doing a couple of music-hall songs in honor of Stan’s early days on the London variety circuit. The final thing, as always, was to be a Laurel and Hardy film, this time, as O. J. had told us,
The Hoose-Gow.

I took a seat on the aisle and saved the next place for Hilary, who was not quite finished admiring The Lambs’ library. She missed the opening greetings of the master of ceremonies, Phil Faxon.

I was interested to see that O. J. had found an innocuous way to give Phil something to do.

The lights went out and the “magic lantern show” began. It consisted of slides and film clips that introduced the boys and the guests of the evening. Excerpts from “The Tonight Show” spotlighted Rodney Dangerfield and Bob and Ray, and there were brief excerpts from
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
and
Gone With the Wind
in honor of Chuck McCann and Butterfly McQueen.

“The next thing you will see,” Hal’s voice said over the microphone, “is the only remaining footage of
The Knifethrower
starring our own Mae Busch.”

There was an appreciative murmur from the members who knew their film history.

“
The Knifethrower
,” Hal explained, “is generally considered a lost comedy, one of the first that Mae appeared in for the Famous-Kennett Studios. To the best of my knowledge, this incomplete segment is all that still exists of what was probably a two-reeler. The music you’ll hear was put on magnetically when the original was transferred to more permanent stock.”

The screen flickered to life. It was hard to make out the image. Mae, looking as white as Carl Dreyer’s vampire, sauntered out onto the platform of a carnival stage wearing spangly briefs, the costume of a showgirl. A tall man with a long bristly mustache stood glowering at her, knives in hand.

“In the missing opening reel,” Hal said, “the knifethrower sees his wife, played by Mae, fooling around with Elmer Parrott, the comedy star of the flick.”

Mae wiggled her way to the bull’s-eye target, evidently oblivious to the fact that her mate contemplated murder.

CUT TO
: shot of Elmer Parrott, his goggle-eyes wider than ever, as Mae’s maid whispered in his ear. I gathered she was telling him the awful truth.

CUT TO
: the carnival sideshow. The crowd watched eagerly as a small boy walked onstage and stood beside the knifethrower. The child took the knives and held them while the showman limbered up. Mae laughed at the ridiculous spectacle when he bent his bandy legs.

CLOSE-UP
: the knifethrower glowered straight into the camera.

CUT TO
: Elmer Parrott hopping onto his bicycle to hurry to the carnival. The front wheel fell off.

The knifethrower selected a dagger from the boy, aimed it—

“Now watch this,” Hal said. “He actually throws the knife. The camera doesn’t cut away!”

It was a medium shot, enough to contain Mae and the back of the male actor. Z-z-zip—the knife whizzed across the intervening space to imbed itself forcefully in the target scant inches from Mae’s head.

CLOSE-UP
: Startled expression on Mae’s face.

And back to Elmer Parrott, riding a giddily tilted bike on the back wheel only. Needless to say, he arrived in time to save his beloved—only to see her make up with hubby at the fade out.

There was a round of applause when the tantalizing fragment ended and an even heartier burst of clapping greeted the final film, an early copy of a TV kinescope of Black and White’s classic routine, Robin O’Hood (the Irish pub
lazzi
).

The lights came up. Del James, the pianist we always paid to play at meetings, struck up “The Cuckoo Song” and the show’s first live act began. It was Hal Fawkes “lip-syncing” Barbra Streisand singing “People.” He’d covered his Brillo-pad hair with a hideous orange wig and wore a balloon of material meant to be interpreted as a dress. I knew that was the idea because of the immense twin protrusions at top. During the routine, he dropped one, and it turned out to be a cantaloupe.

It wasn’t my brand of humor and I would have gone to the john, but I didn’t want to miss any of the skit.

The playlet was excellent, funny and meaningful all at once. Jack Black’s cameo as Fin/God was delightful, but that wasn’t the only merit. The underlying serious theme of the skit was that Adam and Eve were basically simple people innocently duped into eating the apple. Thus the choice of Laurel and Hardy for the Biblical roles.

Wayne Poe was next. A good opportunity to go to the men’s room. I excused myself and walked up the aisle, idly scanning the crowd to find Frank Butler. He was nowhere to be seen.

Now I probably have told the details of the next few minutes to the police at least a dozen times, which is understandable since I own a private investigator’s license, and they know it. But the fact is I saw very little—a pair of feet behind a stall in the john; Phil Faxon waiting near the back entrance of the kitchen (converted to an entryway) to go on and announce the next act; O. J. by the dais talking to Chuck McCann, but keeping one eye on Poe in hopes he’d do well enough to prove O. J. right in putting him on the show.

But Poe didn’t have a chance. Several of the people who couldn’t stand him heckled his lousy material, most of which, as Natie’d guessed, had been used the year before. When I emerged from the men’s room, a lot of people were talking, paying no attention to Poe, and the laughs were few.

“Now I’d like to tell you about the farmer who shaved his chickens so they’d lay more eggs, but the idea was crazy because they all got sunstroke. Which only goes to prove that a henny shaved is a henny burned.”

The audience groaned.

“Or there was the man who hated seagulls and used to throw rocks at them. He left no tern unstoned.”

Louder groans.

“And how about the strict schoolteacher who left no stern untoned?”

Hisses.

“Don’t forget the lousy Scottish cook who left no scone unburned.”

Somebody yelled, “GIVE ’IM THE HOOK!”

“Who was that?” Poe asked, smiling his poisonous grin. “How about standing up?”

Jimmy O’Hara, too dumb to know not to challenge Poe on his own ground, rose to his feet. Jimmy was a loud-mouth kid who just passed the age requirement for joining the Sons. Noisy, but harmless. His friends tried to make him take his seat, but he stood there, grinning.

“Hey, Mr. Poe, your mother ever have any kids?” he called.

“Yeah, kid. I used to have sort of a Siamese Twin, looked just like you. We were separated at an early age: exactly eight days.”

It took a fraction of a second for the implication to sink in. There was a general shocked intake of breath, and a little laughter. The kid stood there, vacuous, until a friend whispered in his ear. Then Jimmy blushed beet-red and sat down fast.