Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

The phone rang. It was almost two o’clock. Shelly answered it and said it was for me. I picked it up, while I fished through my drawers for a stamp to mail the letter to Mrs. Levine. The caller was Warren Hoff. He had news.

The police had a suspect, a midget who had been in The Wizard of Oz. The midget’s name was Gunther Wherthman. He had been known to fight with the dead Munchkin, who was now identified as James Cash. In fact, the two little men had been arrested during the shooting of Oz in 1939 when they had a knife fight in their hotel. Wherthman had been cut by Cash, and the police had records showing that Wherthman had threatened to kill Cash. The police had also found three witnesses who had seen two midgets arguing violently before the murder outside the stage where Cash’s body was found. The witnesses all described one of the midgets as wearing a Munchkin soldier’s uniform. The other midget was described as wearing a Munchkin lollipop kid costume. Wherthman had, according to Hoff, played one of the lollipop kids in the movie. Hoff’s report was good.

“I used to be a reporter before I got into this,” he explained.

“Maybe you’ll go back to it,” I said.

“It’s too late,” he said. “Once you commit yourself to a bigger income and lifestyle you’re hooked.”

It wasn’t a problem I’d ever had to deal with.

“Then that’s it,” I sighed, thinking about the easy fifty in my pocket and slightly regretting the other fifties I might have had.

“Not quite,” said Hoff. “We want you to talk to Wherthman, find out if he’s guilty, keep trying to hold back on the publicity. If Wherthman did kill Cash on the lot and both of them were in costume, we’ll look terrible.”

“Is this your idea?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” gasped Hoff. “I think we should just drop the goddamn thing and let it ride out. M.G.M. isn’t going to fold over this. Oz has already had its run. It’s not even playing anywhere now, and I doubt if there ever will be a sequel. But Mr. Mayer says there are millions to be made from the picture, re-release and…”

“And what?”

“Television,” Hoff said sounding embarrassed. “He thinks we’ll be able to sell it to television someday.”

Not knowing what television was, I didn’t say anything, but I grunted in sympathy for Hoff. I agreed with him. I had nothing against putting in another few days’ work for the money, even if I didn’t expect anything to come of it.

“O.K. Warren,” I said, pulling out an unsharpened pencil. I bit wood away to get to the lead. “I’ll put some more time into it. I’ll try to get to Wherthman. Who are the witnesses, the ones who saw the two midgets fighting this morning?”

“One is Barney Grundly, a studio photographer,” said Hoff. He gave me Grundy’s office address on Melrose. “The other two are Victor Fleming and Clark Gable. They were coming from breakfast together. If you want to talk to Fleming, I’ll find out where he is. Your brother already talked to him and Gable. Gable’s going out of town for the weekend, but I’m sure we can track him down if you want him.”

I said thanks and told him he had done a good job, which he had. My praise didn’t mean much to him. We hung up.

I didn’t know where to look for the midget suspect Wherthman, so I called Steve Seidman at police headquarters. He told me Wherthman had been brought in for questioning, but it was a pretty sure bet they were going to hold him for the murder. As far as the L.A. police were concerned, the case was just about wrapped up and they could turn their attention back to a pair of ax murders in Griffith Park.

Shelly was still working on Walter Brennan when I put on my hat and stepped through my office door.

“I think we’ve saved it,” Shelly beamed, sweat dripping from his hair. The old man in the dental chair was having trouble focusing his eyes.

“Great,” I said. “You’re a saint.”

On the way down to try to get a word with Wherthman, I realized that Mayer had a few reasons to worry about publicity. The primary witnesses for the case against Wherthman seemed to be the studio’s top star and top director. Coming off of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind, Fleming was almost as great publicity material as Gable. A trial would be front page news for weeks. As far as M.G.M. was concerned, it would probably be better if Wherthman would just confess and plead guilty. Wherthman, however, might not care much about Metro’s publicity problems.

Wherthman hadn’t been charged or booked when I got to the station. Phil wasn’t there, which was fine with me; Seidman was, and he told me that the little suspect was just about wrapped up and ready to be put away.

“A couple of people saw Wherthman arguing with Cash, the dead midget, early this morning,” Seidman explained. “One of the witnesses got close enough to hear them talking. He heard a German accent. Wherthman’s got a German accent. The dead guy called the other guy ‘Gunther.’ We found blood on a suit in his apartment. We’re checking it now to see if it matches the dead guy.”

“He sounds all wrapped up,” I said. “Can I talk to him?”

“Why?” Seidman asked reasonably.

“I’ve been hired by his lawyer.”

“He hasn’t called a lawyer. Who’s his lawyer?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” I said seriously.

Seidman smiled and shook his head.

“Phil would have your head in a Christmas stocking if you fed him that crap.”

We looked at each other for a few minutes. Behind us, cops were scurrying around the big, dirty, wooden room, which was about twenty degrees warmer than the outside. Two were drinking coffee and had their heads close to a thin black kid. The cops’ faces were gentle and they were whispering, but whatever the hell they were whispering was scaring the hell out of the thin kid. A couple of detectives were on phones, and two guys were handcuffed together and sitting on a bench waiting. One of the guys had no shirt on, but he was wearing a tie. He looked content if not happy. The other guy slouched and tried to act as if he had nothing to do with the shirtless smiler. The sloucher had a massive bruise over his right eye.

“You can see him,” Seidman finally said. He was feeling generous. He had helped crack a murder in less than three hours. It would look good on everyone’s record, including my brother’s. Seidman’s face oozed confidence.

He led me to my brother’s office, and I walked in. The office was a small cubicle in one corner of the big squad room. The noise from the cops and robbers was barely muffled by the thin wooden walls. There was enough room inside for the battered desk, a steel file cabinet, and two chairs. On one of the chairs sat a little man whose feet didn’t touch the floor.

Wherthman wore a light grey suit and dark tie. His hair was dark and slightly mussed. He had a little black mustache and a fresh red bruise on his right cheek. I could guess who put it there. His face didn’t look young, but it was hard to tell. I guessed he was about my age.

“Mr. Wherthman, I’m Toby Peters.”

I put out my hand. He didn’t move his, and I put mine down.

“I told the other policeman that I had nothing to do with this murder,” Wherthman said. His voice was high and his accent was clear and Germanic. Not only did the cops have an assful of evidence against him, he looked like and sounded like a miniature Hitler. With war fever running high and Roosevelt running on a fear campaign to keep us out of Europe, Wherthman would be about as popular in Los Angeles as another earthquake.

“I’m not a policeman,” I said, sitting next to him so that the difference between us wouldn’t be quite so ridiculous. “I’m working for your lawyer to help you.”