Laurel and Hardy Murders (21 page)

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Authors: Marvin Kaye

Betterman rose. “Revenge for a friend, eh?
I
should have pals like that.”

Billy White shook his head. “I said that was mainly it. But there was another reason, young man.”

Betterman spread his hands. “So? Give with it.”

“No. You wouldn’t believe it. You’d think it was an old coot thinking out of his depth.”

Hilary squeezed his hand. “I’ll bet I can guess, Mr. White.”

He smiled at her. “I’ll bet you
can
,” he said, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Your partner was making a parting gesture to the art of comedy.”

“That’s it! That’s it!”

Betterman looked skeptical.

“Lou,” she said, “you didn’t see Black the night of the banquet. He pointedly ignored Poe. And the toast he delivered was more like a prayer to Aristophanes.”

I remembered Jack Black berating O. J. in the car for profaning the comedic tradition by putting Wayne Poe on the banquet program.

“Nobody kills for the sake of a few jokes!” Betterman protested.

“Young man!” Billy White said sharply. “You are talking to a man who has spent most of his life trying to make people laugh! My partner was the same...ninety years in the business. Just because he was retired didn’t mean he’d lost the calling. Even here among the patients he did his best to lighten other’s sorrows. My God, man, he was past ninety, I say! Why
not
kill Poe, that blot on the profession? What was there to lose?”

The old man struggled to rise. Hilary helped him by supporting most of his weight. He raised a hand in a commanding gesture.

“Let me tell you, youngster, there is nothing nobler than making one’s fellow man laugh at the misfortunes of this tragic business called life. There’s an ancient legend that a departed spirit entering the underworld must answer two questions. The first, ‘Did you find joy?’ is not important. But when they ask the second,
‘Did you bring joy
?’ the answer had best be a resounding YES or the offender will be fed to the two-headed reptiles.

“Inspector,” he wheezed, the burst of energy dissipated, “if I enter Hades tonight, I expect I’ll find my partner Jackie entertaining the whole infernal crew with dirty jokes about damnation!”

Hilary helped him sit back down in his wheelchair. He breathed shallowly for a moment, then gave us all a wink and a wicked smile.

“And I’ll bet a month’s supply of Kaopectate that right this minute Wayne Poe is trying to save his ass from the crocogators!”

I
N HOPES OF KEEPING
the corruption, featherbedding and expense-padding to a minimum, new officers will be elected periodically. The Archivist must keep accurate and up-to-date records of railroad timetables so the old slate may be retired unharmed.

—from
The Sons of the Desert Guidelines to Decorous Behaviour (by-laws)

O. J. tried to show his gratitude to Hilary by making her an honorary Daughter of the Desert, but she refused the token gesture, so he suggested she take on his firm as a client and she agreed with pleasure. It helps fill part of the financial vacuum created by the loss of the Trim-Tram account.

Hilary and I made a deal. It was my giving up either the Sons or dates with Penny Saxon and Pat Lowe. I decided to stick with the organization, partly because if I’m elected secretary next year, I’m going to try to help change the tent’s policy toward women members. Admittedly, it’s a task a little less appealing than chewing on razor blades, but I keep remembering the look on Hilary’s face when she first found out. The way I figure it, any rule that unnecessarily brings unhappiness to even one other human being ought to be dispensed with.

On the debit side of the ledger, Harry Whelan still has my room. And my job.

Hilary says she’s embarrassed, that she only hired him temporarily till he finds work. Giving him my room was an act of charity, because he was so broke he couldn’t even afford the Y.

“As soon as he gets cast in another show, or is hired for an industrial, he moves out,” she says. Only the way the theater business is, it could be forever before he lands another part, and meanwhile, I have an uncharitable suspicion that Harry is currently not pursuing his career quite so zealously as he used to...

In the interim, I’ve been commuting back and forth from Philadelphia, where I’m earning some bread attempting to put the Djinn Investigations files in some kind of order. If I succeed, I may tackle the Augean stables next.

This business with Harry really has me bugged. There’s nothing much I can do about it, though. Except maybe call Sandy Sable for a few dates. After all,
her
name was not mentioned in my pact with Hilary.

The other day, I asked Frank Butler what he thought about it all. He shrugged and puffed his twist stogie for a minute or two, then gestured with it at me.

“I’m reminded of a couple of things somebody said once, boy. Bacon, I think it was. The first goes, ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than not to have lost at all—’”

“And the second, Old Man?”

“‘All’s well that ends.
’ Now pass me the goddamned walnuts...”

IN LIEU OF ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It would ill befit the demi-callipygian spirit of the Sons of the Desert to begin with a dry set of formal acknowledgments. Instead, I propose a round of toasts:

To Exhausted Ruler Jack McCabe for permission to reprint the SOTD constitution, and for tons of data in his excellent books;

To Grand Sheik Al Kilgore; past parent tent president Dwain Smith; Al Barbour, and the other New York officers and committee members (all 812) for permission to reprint excerpts from the By-Laws; and also to Al Kilgore for a few gags;

To past president Tye Morrow for friendship and leadership;

To Dick Baldwin, for contributing gags, especially for the committee meeting sequence;

To Jim Dukas and Dick Baldwin again for working up with me the formula for the initiation ceremony;

To His Excellency Sir Barry Alan Richmond (a more complete panoply of titles appears elsewhere), for being a good sport, for gags, and for one very special, confidential favor;

To Roger Gordon, president of the Two Tars and editor of
The Intertent Journal,
for support in its pages; my apologies for providing an impossible bad evening for the Philadelphia Sons, not to mention a VP whom they’d have better sense than to elect;

To Tom Dillon, Shepherd of The Lambs, in memory of a beloved home, here resurrected anachronistically with minor architectural modifications;

To Marty Kondak, Poet Lariat of the Sons of the Desert, for the form if not the contents of certain included toasts;

To Alex Soma for bringing me a bag of hard-boiled eggs and nuts when it hurt to laugh.

But especially:

TO BEN and LUCILLE HARDY PRICE and IDA LAUREL with warm memories of gracious meetings at SOTD banquets,

and

TO MAE BUSCH and CHARLEY HALL who are eternally ever-popular,

TO FIN

TO BABE

AND to STAN, all of whom are eternally with us.

Hear, hear!

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Connie Gabbert

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