Stuart Kaminsky: Show Business is Murder

Correction: it was the real murder of a man I’d known and liked.

Because Mendy wasn’t a suicide. This I knew. He’d been wholly alive, not a thought of death in his head. He’d reveled in the discovery that there were people like us out there, people who wanted to hear his stories and relive his Hollywood glory days. People to whom the blacklist was an outrage and he a hero for enduring it.

Next question: How did you get cyanide-because that was the poison that smelled like bitter almonds-into someone’s coffee? Had Mendy put his cup down somewhere, just long enough for the killer to slip in the poison? Was it liquid or solid? Mrs. Christie’s Sparkling Cyanide made it sound liquid, which would be easier to administer-but wouldn’t it make the coffee taste bad?

The biggest question of all was why. Why was someone following Mendy? Why would anyone want him dead?

I went over to one of the cops and told him what I’d seen. The response I got was less than satisfactory.

How did I know it was Mendy he was following? How did I know he was following anybody at all? Couldn’t he have just been annoyed that Patrick bumped into him?

It wasn’t just that the police weren’t listening, I realized after a few minutes. They weren’t listening because of who we were. One cop kept looking at Patrick as if viewing a giant cockroach, and his partner asked me several times just how old Birch was. I had a sudden realization that in the eyes of the law, I was taking advantage of a minor.

I wound up the conversation quickly, leaving the theater dejected because of Mendy’s passing, but also frustrated that the police were going to call it suicide.

But what could I do about it?

Birch, 1972

GOING TO RATNER’swas like holding a wake for Mendy. At least, that was how Birch Tate saw it. They were eating Jewish food and talking about the old man and how much they’d liked him and how his death wasn’t suicide, and that was as close to a memorial as they were ever going to get.

Scotty and Patrick were deep in discussion about how somebody could have slipped poison into Mendy’s coffee when the guy at the counter took out a little pillbox and popped a tiny white pill into his coffee and then stirred. Funny way to take a pill, Birch thought and then realized: saccharin. People put saccharin in coffee when they wanted to lose weight or if they were diabetics or-

“That’s it,” she said, so loudly that even the man at the counter turned around. “Because you would,” she added, turning to Scotty.

“Would what?”

“Take a saccharin tablet if somebody offered it to you. Just like you’d take a joint. You wouldn’t say, no thanks, and take out your own because that would be rude. Mendy was a diabetic, remember?” Now Birch had Scotty’s attention, and Patrick’s too. “He put saccharin in his coffee the night we talked to him.”

“That is sheer brilliance,” Patrick said, and Birch blushed.

“That means the killer was in the theater,” Scotty pointed out. “Mendy always had espresso from the coffee bar.”

“Yeah, somebody walked up to him, opened his little pillbox first and offered him one and he said, sure, thanks, and didn’t think twice.”

“Which means one more thing,” Patrick said, his blue eyes alight. “The killer was somebody Mendy trusted. Or, no, maybe not trusted exactly, but not somebody he didn’t trust. Does that make sense?”

“I think so, Watson,” Scotty replied thoughtfully, her chin resting on steepled fingers.

“Why do I have to be Watson?” Patrick said, polishing off the last of his potato pierogies with onions. “What makes you think I’m not Holmes?”

“What makes you think I’m not Holmes?” Birch cut in, surprising herself at her own boldness. “I thought of the saccharin thing.”

“If you’re Holmes, then explain what Patrick just said.”

“It’s like the dog in the night-time,” Birch began.

“My God, you’re a Sherlockian!” Scotty reached over and took Birch’s powdered-sugary hand, lifted it to her lips and kissed it.

“If you mean, have I read the Canon, then I guess I am,” Birch replied, deliberately (and for the first time) using the term she’d read in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine .

“It’s love, folks,” Patrick said with a wide smile. “Birch, honey, Scotty here has been looking for you all her life. A girl who gets Sherlock. When’s the wedding?”

The warm feeling coursing through Birch like heated maple syrup wasn’t a bit dimmed by the dirty looks she received from two old ladies at the next table. Who cared what anybody thought about her and Scotty being together? Who cared whether or not some guy named Gershwin was writing songs of love for two girls-what mattered was the love itself. And this, thanks to Sherlock Holmes, she had.

“Right now, I think I’d rather come up with Mendy’s killer,” Scotty said, releasing Birch’s hand. “And I suspect we’ve all hit the same mental obstacle. If the killer is someone from Mendy’s blacklist days out to avenge an old wrong, why would Mendy take a saccharin tablet from him?”

“Exactly.” Birch leaned back in the booth with a satisfied expression on her face. “Just like the dog not barking. If Mendy didn’t recognize the guy who gave him the poison, it couldn’t have been an old enemy.”

“Unless Mendy didn’t realize the guy was an enemy.” Patrick’s voice was thoughtful and he gazed into the distance. “There were people who testified in executive session, secretly naming names and never getting the rap as informers. Poor Larry Parks, the guy married to Betty Garrett, had to do that.”

“But Mendy didn’t name names,” Birch objected. “He was a victim of the blacklist, so why would someone want to kill him?”

“You’re supposing he told us the truth,” Scotty said. She reached for a cigarette and Birch wrinkled her nose. Smoking was one of the few things about Scotty she genuinely disliked.

“What if he lied to us?” Scotty blew smoke into the air and waved out her match. “What if he did name names and somebody he named killed him out of revenge?”

“We’re back to the old problem,” Patrick said, irritation wrinkling his smooth forehead. “If Mendy ruined some guy’s life by giving him up to the Committee, why would he accept a pill from the guy?”

“Who expects somebody to poison you, for God’s sake?” Birch wasn’t sure why she’d decided to become devil’s advocate. “Maybe Mendy recognized the guy but thought bygones were bygones.”

“Not those people, honey.” Patrick shook his head and his long blond hair fell into his eyes. “Elia Kazan, to name just one, will never be forgiven for naming names. People who lived through the blacklist have long memories and there are no buried hatchets that I know about.”

“What if Mendy didn’t recognize the guy? It was a long time ago, and frankly, one old guy kind of looks like the next to me.”

“Wow.” Patrick gave a long low whistle. “Imagine. Ruining somebody’s life and then adding insult to injury by forgetting you’d ever done it. Heavy.”

“Heavy indeed,” said another, deeper, voice.

It was the man Scotty said had followed Mendy out of the theatre. Birch might never have recognized him out of context, but in Ratner’s, while they were talking of Mendy, he was in context.

“Sit,” Scotty said, moving over in the booth. “Sit and explain.”

“You can’t think he’s going to confess?”

Patrick looked at the old man and his blue eyes widened. “Are you who I think you are?”

“Paul Dixon. The former Paul Dixon. The present Paul Damrosch, not that it matters. I can’t keep a job under any name.”