Stuart Kaminsky: Show Business is Murder

KENNY KILLED THEwrong poodle, but it really didn’t matter.

You see Kenny wanted to kill Pinky of Ben Burke and His Amazing Poodles. Pinky was the star. Pinky was also getting old which was one reason Kenny didn’t feel so bad about poisoning Pinky’s food bowl. Actually, there were signs of arthritis or something in Pinky. Kenny was doing the dog, and himself, a favor. At least he would have been had Pinky eaten the food instead of Puddles. A mistake. But it was enough to cancel Ben Burke and His Amazing Poodles from the show which moved Kenny up a notch on the bill.

He still had a long way to go. Ben Burke would be replaced. That couldn’t be helped, but given Goobernick’s budget and the dwindling number of vaudeville houses and smaller audiences, the replacement would be someone cheap, a whistler, an alcoholic comic with a big tie, a juggler.

It was 1924. Movies were taking over the vaudeville houses. First the movies were an act like the seals and the dancing Bronte Sisters, but now the movies were taking over and the old acts were becoming filler for Valentino, Keaton, and Garbo.

Kenny was an optimist. Vaudeville wouldn’t die completely. People would get tired of mimes in black and white on a flat screen. There’d always be room for a few good acts like Kenny Poole the Dancing Fool. Actually, Kenny’s real name was Pemerhoven. But except for Sid Scrimberger and his Musical Seals no one Kenny knew in the business had kept their real names. Of course the Scrimberger name had been associated with seal acts for who knows how the hell many years but that didn’t really matter to anyone anymore. Besides, if things went right, the Scrimberger seals wouldn’t be belching or playing their horns or balancing their balls or clapping their fins much longer. The two of them would be dead. There had once, not long ago, been three Scrimberger seals. Old Betsy, who was temperamental and fat but the smartest of the trio, had swallowed a light bulb and died.

The problem was simple. Goobernick had told the eight acts on the traveling bill that three of them were going to have to be cut and soon. It didn’t take The Amazing Weller, the World’s Greatest Mind Reader, to figure out that it was the last three acts on the bill that would go. Even having moved up one with the death of the poodle, Kenny was still only one act up from the bottom. For him to survive, three of the top five had to meet with accidents.

They were in Chicago, the Rialto on State Street. Winter. Blizzard. Small houses. Almost not worth selling the tickets, but the show goes on, the girls stripped. Strippers didn’t belong. Burlesque was taking over. Burlesque and moving pictures. Vaudeville was talent, real talent like Kenny’s or even the dogs and seals and those cousin contortionists and people like Callahan the World’s Greatest Irish Tenor who, when sober, could hit a note Caruso would envy.

Kenny sat in the diner across from the Rialto. Cars went by. The snow was blowing at an angle. Getting heavier. Cold out there. Mug of coffee and the sinker felt good.

Kenny had bills to pay. No relatives he could turn to. If he didn’t take care of himself, who would? Nobody, that’s who. Like Bert Williams sang, “Nobody.” Kenny liked to dance to that song, self-taught, making it all up. Now Bert Williams’s songs were too slow for the audiences. Kenny was so far down the bill that by the time they got to him, the people on the other side of the lights were looking at their watches. Kenny had to dance fast, smile, do tricks like the once over with a double click. He had to use taps. Make noise. Eccentric dancing wasn’t enough anymore. Kenny could only do the one-legged rollover to his right, but nobody knew or noticed.

Kenny got older. He had to dance faster. Smile more. That was okay. What the hell, but if he were higher on the bill, he could hang on, at least through the season which was just starting. No way Kenny could work in a diner like the one he was sitting in. He’d rather die. Well, not really. But he would rather kill.

It was best if it was just animals. He hadn’t killed a human yet. Tonight would be the first time. He’d get backstage early so he’d be there when Vogel, the World’s Strongest Human, dropped dead on stage. He’d be there so when Alf the stage manager with no teeth panicked, Kenny could say, “I’m here. I can go on.”

By the way, Kenny knew that Vogel was not the World’s Strongest Human. Lots of men on the circuit and in circuses and side shows and lifting logs somewhere in the woods in Norway or wherever were probably a lot stronger than Vogel. Hell, Kenny even knew two women who were stronger than Vogel.

Helga Katz who was retired now but could still hold up a platform on which sat five girls, an anvil and a fat man in a chair smoking a cigar and pretending to read a newspaper. The other woman was Marge Corsat, who Kenny preferred not to dwell on because Marge had once punched him in the chest when she thought he was getting fresh with her. That was a long time ago. Maybe Kenny was getting a little fresh wondering what it would be like to be with a woman as big and strong as Marge.

Vogel had a gut. He didn’t deserve billing above The Dancing Fool. Vogel didn’t do anything original except maybe for bending the two-inch pipe over his head, which he did with much grunting. Kenny knew if he examined that pipe he’d find Vogel had done something to it. Besides, where did Vogel get a new two-inch pipe two shows a day? Pipe cost money. He had to be using the same piece of pipe over and over. It had probably gone soft in the middle five years ago.

Kenny checked the clock on the wall. Time to get back. He had put the rat poison in the egg salad sandwich on Vogel’s dressing table. Vogel ate an egg salad sandwich every night before he went on. Vogel had great faith in eggs. Four acts including Kenny shared the dressing room. The women had another room. The animal acts were downstairs.

Kenny had to get back to get rid of the sandwich remnants if there were any. He hoped Vogel didn’t die till he got on stage. The good thing about killing Vogel was that Kenny really didn’t like him. Nobody liked him. He was a grunter, a loner. He read books in German. The U.S. of A. had goddamn just a year ago beat the crap out of the Huns and here was one of them taking money from people like Kenny, good Americans. Vogel had probably been a Hun soldier, maybe even killed Americans. Kenny was performing a patriotic act. Maybe. At least he was helping one American named Kenny Poole.

He finished his coffee, dropped a quarter on the counter near the cash register, pulled his coat collar up, and went out on State Street. It was damn cold. He had seen worse. Buffalo, just last year. Snow up to your neck almost. Cold as an icebox. Colder. Six people in the audience. Where the hell had they come from? Buffalo. Kenny crossed the street almost slipping, avoiding the cars, hearing the elevated train rumble above him half a block away above Wells Street.

In the stage door. Old guy at the door sitting with a pipe barely looked up. Kenny didn’t want to be one of those old guys who everybody called Pop, old guys whose name no one ever remembered, who wore sweaters and sat at stage doors and went home to a small one-room walk-up to open a can of beans and maybe listen to Amos and Andy on the radio.

The dressing room was empty. The sandwich was gone. So was Vogel which meant he hadn’t died right away. Kenny put on his costume, smoothed out the wrinkles in his trousers with his palm, adjusted his tie in the mirror, checked the taps on his shoes, spit on a rag, and rubbed the toes and heels. He was ready.

The Bronte Sisters were on. He could hear their music, Together in a Corner, Juntos en el Rincon, their signature final number. Kenny clicked down the dozen metal steps from the dressing rooms and moved toward Vogel waiting to get on. Vogel was not doing his usual preparatory muscle flexing. Alf the stage manager, little Alfie who always looked as if he were about to cry, looked at Kenny and whispered,