Authors: William Hjortsberg
The door behind me opened and the receptionist said: “Mr. Wagner will see you right away.”
I said thanks and went in. The inner office was half the size of the cubbyhole outside. The pictures on the walls seemed newer, but the smiles were just as faded. A cigarette-scarred wooden desk took up most of the floor space. Behind it, a young man in shirtsleeves was shaving with an electric razor. “Five minutes,” he said, holding up his hand, palm outward so I could count his fingers.
I sat my attaché case on the worn green rug and stared at the kid as he finished shaving. He had curly, rust-colored hair and freckles. Beneath his horn-rimmed glasses, he couldn’t have been much more than twenty-four or twenty-five.
“Mr. Wagner?” I asked when he switched off the razor.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Warren Wagner?”
“That’s right.”
“Surely you’re not the same man who was Johnny Favorite’s agent?”
“You’re thinking about Dad. I’m Warren junior.”
“Then it’s your father I’d like to speak to.”
“You’re out of luck. He’s been dead four years.”
“I see.”
“What’s this all about?” Warren Jr. leaned back in his leatherette chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
“Jonathan Liebling is named a beneficiary in a policy owned by one of our customers. This office was given as his address.”
Warren Wagner, Jr. started to laugh.
“There’s not a great deal of money involved,” I said. “The gesture of an old fan, perhaps. Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Favorite?”
The kid was laughing like crazy now. “That’s terrific,” he snorted. “Really terrific. Johnny Favorite, the missing heir.”
“Quite frankly, I fail to see the humor in all this.”
“Yeah? Well, lemme draw you a picture. Johnny Favorite is flat on his back in a nut hatch upstate. He’s been a turnip for nearly twenty years.”
“Say, that’s a wonderful joke. Know any other good ones?”
“You don’t understand,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes. “Johnny Favorite was Dad’s big score. He sank every penny he had in the world into buying his contract from Spider Simpson. Then, just as he was riding high, Favorite got drafted. There were movie deals and everything in the works. The army sends a million-dollar property to North Africa and three months later ships home a sack of potatoes.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Damn right it’s too bad. Too bad for my pop. He never got over it. For years he thought Favorite might someday get well, make a big comeback, and land him on Easy Street. Poor sucker.”
I stood up. “Can you give me the name and address of the hospital where Favorite is a patient?”
“Ask my secretary. She must have it tucked away someplace.”
I thanked him for his time and left. In the outer office I went through the motions of having the receptionist locate and write down the address of the Emma Dodd Harvest Memorial Clinic.
“You ever been up to Poughkeepsie?” I asked, tucking the folded slip of paper into my shirt pocket. “It’s a lovely town.”
“Are you kidding? I never even been to the Bronx.”
“Not even to the zoo?”
“The zoo? What do I need with a zoo?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Try one on for size some time. Might be a good fit.”
My last shot of her as I went out the door was an open red mouth round as a hula hoop framing a shapeless wad of gum atop her pink tongue.
NINE
There were two bars on the ground floor of the Brill Building, facing Broadway on either side of the entrance. One was Jack Dempsey’s, watering hole for the prizefight crowd. The other, the Turf, on the corner of 49th, was a hangout for musicians and songwriters. Its facade of blue mirrors made it seem as cool and inviting as a grotto in Capri.
Inside, it was just another gin mill. I made a circuit of the bar and found the very man I had in mind, Kenny Pomeroy, an accompanist and arranger since before I was born. “Whaddya say, Kenny,” I whispered as I climbed on an adjacent stool.
“Well, well, Harry Angel, the famous shamus. Long time no see, pardner.”
“It’s been a while. Your glass looks empty, Kenny. Sit still and I’ll buy you a refill.” I signaled the bartender and ordered a Manhattan and another round for Kenny.
“Skoal, kiddo,” he said, lifting his glass when the drinks were set in front of us. Kenny Pomeroy was a bald fat man with a lightbulb nose and a set of chins stacked one on top of the other like replacement parts. His mode of dress ran to hound’s-tooth jackets and star sapphire pinkie rings. The only place I’d ever seen him outside of a rehearsal hall was at the bar in the Turf.
We jawed for a bit about old times before Kenny asked: “So what brings you to this end of the street? The pursuit of evildoers?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m working on a job you might be able to help me with.”
“Anytime, anyplace.”
“What can you tell me about Johnny Favorite?”
“Johnny Favorite? Talk about Memory Lane.”
“Did you know him?”
“Nah. Caught his act a few times before the war. Last time was at the Starlight Lounge in Trenton, if I remember it right.”
“Haven’t seen him around anyplace, say in the last fifteen years or so?”
“Are you kidding? He’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Not exactly. He’s in a hospital upstate.”
“Well, if he’s inna hospital, how am I supposed to see him around?”
“He’s been in and out,” I said. “Listen, take a look at this.” I slid the photo of the Spider Simpson orchestra out of the manila envelope and passed it to him. “Which one of those guys is Simpson? It doesn’t say on the picture.”
“Simpson’s the drummer.”
“What’s he doing now? Still leading a band?”
“Nah. Drummers never make good front men.” Kenny sipped his drink and looked thoughtful, furrowing a brow that ran without interruption onto the top of his head. “Last I heard he was doing studio work out on the Coast. You might try calling Nathan Fishbine in the Capitol Building.”
I made a note of the name and asked Kenny if he knew any of the sidemen.
“I worked a gig in Atlantic City with the trombone player once years ago.” Kenny pointed a pudgy finger at the photo. “This guy, Red Diffendorf. He’s blowing corn with Lawrence Welk now.”
“What about any of the others? Know where I can find them?”
“Well, I recognize a lot of the names. They’re still in the business, but I can’t tell you who with. You’d have to ask around the street, or call the union.”
“How about a Negro piano player named Edison Sweet?”
“Toots? He’s the greatest. Got a left hand like Art Tatum. Very tasty. You won’t have to look far for him. He’s been playing uptown at the Red Rooster on 138th Street for the last five years.”
“Kenny, you’re a fund of useful information. How about some lunch?”
“Never touch the stuff. But I wouldn’t say no to one more seven-and-seven.”
I ordered us both another drink and a cheeseburger with fries for myself and while waiting I found a pay phone and called Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. I said I was a freelance journalist working on assignment for
Look
and I wanted to interview the surviving members of the Spider Simpson orchestra.
They connected me with the girl in charge of membership records. I gift-wrapped it by promising to plug the union in my article and gave her the names of the band members on the photo, together with the instruments they played.
I held the line for ten minutes while she looked it up. Of the original fifteen musicians four were deceased and six had been dropped from the union membership rolls. She gave me the addresses and telephone numbers of the others. Diffendorf, the trombonist with Lawrence Welk, lived in Hollywood. Spider Simpson also had a place in the L.A. area, over in the Valley in Studio City. The others were here in town.
There was an alto player named Vernon Hyde in the “Tonight” show house band, address c/o NBC Studios; and two hornmen, Ben Hogarth, trumpet, with an address on Lexington Avenue, and another trombone, Carl Walinski, who lived in Brooklyn.
I got it all down in my notebook, thanked the girl from the bottom of my heart, and called the local numbers without success. The hornmen weren’t home, and the best I could do with the switchboard at NBC was leave my office number.
I was beginning to feel like the sucker in a snipe hunt. The guy who waits all night in the woods holding the empty sack. There was less than one chance in a million that any of Johnny Favorite’s former bandmates had run across him since he went away to war. These were the only odds in town, and I was stuck with them.
Back at the bar, I ate my sandwich and nibbled a few wilted french fries. “It’s a great life, ain’t it, Harry,” Kenny Pomeroy said, rattling the ice in his empty glass.
“The best and only.”
“Some poor stiffs’ve got to work for their living.”
I scooped my change off the bar. “Don’t drum me out of the club if I start working for mine.”
“You ain’t leaving, are you Harry?”
“Got to do it, old friend, much as I’d like to stay and poison my liver with you.”
“Next thing I know, you’ll be punching a timeclock. You know where to find me, should you have further need of my expertise.”
“Thanks, Kenny.” I pulled on my overcoat. “Does the name Edward Kelley mean anything to you?”
Kenny corrugated his Vista-Dome forehead in concentration. “There was a Horace Kelly back in K.C.,” he said. “About the time Pretty Boy Floyd bumped off those G-men at Union Station. Horace played piano at the Reno Club on 12th and Cherry. Made a little book on the side. This any relation of his?”
“I hope not,” I said. “See you around.”
“Make that a promise and I’ll frame it.”
TEN
I rode the Seventh Avenue IRT one stop to Times Square to save shoe leather and let myself into the office as the phone was ringing. I grabbed it mid-ring. It was Vernon Hyde, Spider Simpson’s sax player.
“Very good of you to call,” I said, unreeling the
Look
assignment line. He swallowed it all, and I suggested we get together for a drink at his convenience.
“I’m at the studio now,” he said. “We start rehearsal in twenty minutes. I won’t be free until four-thirty.”
“That would be fine with me. If you can spare a half-hour, why don’t we get together then. What street is your studio on?”
“On 45th Street. The Hudson Theater.”
“Okay. The Hickory House is only a couple blocks away. How about meeting me at quarter to five?”
“Sounds boss. I’ll have my axe along so you won’t have any trouble spotting me.”
“A man with an axe stands out in a crowd,” I said.
“No, man, no, you don’t get it. An axe is like an instrument, you dig?”
I dug and said so, and we both hung up. After struggling out of my overcoat, I sat down behind the desk and took a look at the photos and clippings I’d been lugging around. I arranged them on the blotter like a museum exhibit and stared at Johnny Favorite’s smarmy smile until I could no longer stomach it. Where do you search for a guy who was never there to begin with?
The Winchell column was as brittle with age as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I reread the item about the end of Favorite’s engagement and dialed Walt Rigler’s number over at the
Times
.
” ‘lo, Walt,” I said, “it’s me again. I need to know some stuff about Ethan Krusemark.”
“The big-shot shipowner?”
“The very same. I’d like whatever you’ve got on him plus his address. I’m especially interested in his daughter’s broken engagement to Johnny Favorite back in the early forties.”
“Johnny Favorite again. He seems to be the man of the hour.”
“He’s the star of the show. Can you help me out?”
“I’ll check with the Woman’s Department,” he said. “They cover society and all its dirty doings. Call you back in a couple minutes.”
“My blessings be upon you.” I dropped the receiver back in the cradle. It was ten minutes shy of two o’clock. I got out my notebook and placed a couple long-distance calls to L.A. There was no answer at Diffendorf’s number in Hollywood, but when I tried Spider Simpson I connected with the maid. She was Mexican, and although my Spanish was no better than her English, I managed to leave my name and office number along with the general impression that it was a matter of importance.
I hung up and the phone rang again before I lifted my hand. It was Walt Rigler. “Here’s the poop,” he said. “Krusemark’s very top-drawer now; charity balls, Social Register, all that sort of thing. Has an office in the Chrysler Building. His residence is Number Two, Sutton Place; phone number’s in the book. You got that?”
I said it was all down in black and white, and he went on. “Okay. Krusemark wasn’t always so upper-crust. He worked as a merchant seaman in the early twenties, and it’s rumored he made his first money smuggling bootleg hootch. He was never convicted of anything, so his record’s clean even if his nose isn’t. He started putting his own fleet together during the Depression, all Panama registry, of course.
“He first made it big building concrete hulls for the war effort. There were accusations that his firm used inferior construction material, and many of his Liberty Ships broke apart when the weather got rough, but he was cleared by a congressional investigation and nothing more was said about it.”
“What about his daughter?” I asked.
“Margaret Krusemark; born 1922; father and mother divorced in 1926. The mother committed suicide later that same year. She met Favorite at a college prom. He was singing with the band. Their engagement was the society scandal of 1941. Seems that he was the one who broke things off, though no one knows why any more. The girl was generally regarded as something of a crackpot, so maybe that was the reason.”
“What sort of crackpot?”
“The kind with visions. She used to tell fortunes at parties. Went every place with a pack of tarot cards in her purse. People drought it was cute for a while, but it got too rich for their blue blood when she started casting spells in public.”
“Is this on the level?”
“Absolutely. She was known as the ‘Witch of Wellesley.’ It was quite the gag among young Ivy League nabobs.”