Laurel and Hardy Murders (4 page)

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

According to the postcard O. J. mailed me, the meeting would begin at 7:30
P.M.
Wednesday. That evening, I turned off Broadway and took my time strolling east on 44th. It was ten minutes before eight, but I wasn’t worried about being late.

Halfway down the block, I entered the sedate building that housed The Lambs and nodded to the doorkeeper. It was a balmy evening in May, so I hung my coat in the foyer before proceeding into the still-bustling dining room.

It was a warm, festive place, festooned with brass plaques, pewter drinking cups, and oil paintings of former Shepherds of the club, as well as pictures, letters, and similar memorabilia of members, past and present. The dark wood paneling resembled the interior of an Austrian tavern. I never tired of wandering through the restaurant and adjacent bar/game room, reading framed theatrical programs, picking out the faces of character actors, comedians, singers, and dancers of my youth in the fading photographs. At the rear of the bar and beyond it was an immense curved seat capable of holding quite a few people. A great number of caricatures of various Lambs celebrities were suspended above it; the artists were all popular cartoonists of days gone by.

It was here that the Sons executive committee convened.

“RACK ’EM!”

Our own popular cartoonist, Al Kilgore, the satanically bearded co-founder and Grand Sheik of the Sons of the Desert, brandished his pool cue like a weapon and repeated his stentorian suggestion. His powerful voice overrode somebody’s single-fingered piano rendition of Laurel and Hardy’s whimsical motto theme, “The Cuckoo Song,” and also drowned out Phil Faxon’s whiskey-tenor caroling of “Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.” The mirror behind the bar trembled with the force of Kilgore’s outburst.

The other delegate-at-large, Toby Sanders, a professional clown, took off the jacket of his mocha leisure suit, draped it over a chair, and started assembling the billiard balls in the triangle. Kilgore positioned himself at the other end of the table for the break. They made an interesting contrast: Kilgore, tall, robust, forceful; Toby, diminutive and diffident.

Across the room, our ex-president, Tye Morrow, head of an important Manhattan tour-guide agency, entered, removed a gold cigarette case from his pocket and took a weed and fitted it into an elegant holder. He nodded hello to Phil Faxon, one of our more impecunious members, and automatically bought him a drink.

At a small round bar table next to where Phil was sitting, O. J. quietly but determinedly disagreed with our treasurer, Natie, over an expenditure incurred by the vice-president, Hal Fawkes. Our ex-treasurer, Barry Richmond, hung over the back of the chair of his successor and kibitzed the argument.

Natie Barrows, a short and stocky actor, has wiry hair and too many teeth which are always displayed in a nervous grin. He’s one of those people who wants to be liked even if he disagrees to the point of calling you names. That night, he had on a tweed jacket (a begrudging concession to Lambs’ dress code), but beneath it was his standard mufti, an orange T-shirt on which was emblazoned a picture, I swear, of Mary Tyler Moore, Natie’s
belle dame sans merci.

O. J. was waiting for Hal Fawkes and Dutchy Hovis to arrive before getting under way. Hal, our VP, was actually in the lobby, but he was making his usual series of last-minute phone calls. Dutchy, when he came at all, was invariably late.

It was five after eight, thirty-five minutes later than announced, and the meeting had not yet begun. Right on time for the executive committee.

The smoky atmosphere was already starting to tenderize my head for the inevitable dull headache I would walk out with. I carried my Bushmills/rocks and Beck’s chaser to the right end seat of the circular table. It was the best place for me, because I wouldn’t bump anyone with my writing arm when I took minutes. (It wasn’t my job, but the recording secretary—or, to use his official title, The Moving Finger—was a phantom. He never showed. O. J. should have replaced him, but I think I mentioned our chief officer is too benign to kick people in the pants, so we dragged the dead weight of the delinquent’s name along on our letterhead, and I filled in temporarily. O. J. said he was going to nominate me for the post the next time we had an election.) I was just about to sit and take out my notebook when a bellow from the part of the room where the pool tables stood drew my attention.

“What the holy hell’re you
doing
?” Al Kilgore demanded, momentarily stopping all activity in the bar. Heads turned. Necks craned.

I walked over to see what was happening. Al and his pool partner, Toby, had been playing, but now a pair of newcomers had joined to make it a team competition. One of the two was our tardy member, Dutchy Hovis, a big, floppy, secretive ex-pugilist with high forehead, nose squashed from too many prizefights, and loose, smiling lips. Dutchy made a pretense of being jolly-fellow-slap-on-the-back, but it was a technique for holding the rest of us off at arm’s-length from the inner man, whoever that was.

The other new pool player was short, fat, semibald. At that moment, he sprawled across the pool table with his cue-stick in hand. When he saw me, he popped up for a second and waved jauntily.

“Hey, boy, how’s your ass?” he asked in a voice as rock-shattering as Kilgore’s.

Frank Butler was evidently very much inebriated.

I asked Toby what Kilgore was sore about.

“These two just came in and challenged us to a partnership game of 8-Ball.”

“So?”

“So,” Kilgore snapped, “I drew this cat as a partner.” He jerked his finger at Butler. “I mean, what the hell is
this
?”

The
this
to which he referred was the fact that Butler was aiming his shot directly at the 8-ball. Since both sides still had several other numbers to sink, it was the wrong target; if it dropped into a pocket prematurely, the game would be immediately forfeit for the Butler/Kilgore side.

“Butler,” I murmured, “just what the hell
are
you trying to do?”

“Oh, boy, don’t you see the strategy?” Butler asked, aggrieved. “Look at that now!” He pointed to a 4-ball far on the other side of the black 8. “That’s their next target. Now there’s no way I can drop our side’s ball this shot, so all I’m gonna do is maybe nudge the 8-ball a little closer to the side pocket and make their turn that much tougher.” He spread his hands wide and grinned at the ingenious logic, the pure poetry of his decision.

“I don’t
believe
this bugger!” Kilgore groaned. “I mean, what
is
this?”

I suggested to Butler that if he misjudged, he’d put the 8-ball in the pocket and lose the game for him and his partner.

“Haw!” he snorted, hunching over the table for his shot. “You gotta trust the Old Man!” He drew back the tip of the cue-stick and almost flopped onto the cloth. I caught him and planted his feet on the wooden flooring so he wouldn’t topple. Butler brushed me away and warmed up again.

“Don’t do it!” Kilgore pleaded. Toby laughed at his opponent’s plight.

Butler took the shot. The stick hit the white ball; it shot forward, clipping the 8-ball as it went. The black ball wobbled laterally, ambling in the direction of the side pocket. It reached the lip of the hole, teetered, righted itself—

“
See?
” the old curmudgeon crowed. “
You gotta know how to apply English!
”

—and plopped into the pocket.

Kilgore knocked the flat of his palm against his forehead while Dutchy Hovis cackled with delight.

“I don’t
believe
that cat!” Kilgore repeated, over and over again.

Toby, who was twice as shy as O. J., murmured under his breath that Butler’s play was the stupidest pool decision he’d ever seen in his life.

“That’s because he’s sloshed,” Dutchy Hovis said, leaning over Toby’s shoulder. “Normally, the Old Man’s pretty sharp.”

“Try telling that to Al,” I said.

Curiously, Butler didn’t seem particularly abashed about the outcome of his pool tactics. He even agreed to pay the whole bet himself.

“You better,” Al grumbled. “You expect me to pay for that piece of stuff?” Our Grand Sheik was understandably perturbed, and his language was a bit more blunt than I’m bothering to report.

The forfeit was to buy the others a round at the bar. Al asked for a beer, but Dutchy, opportunist that he was, ordered a Glenfiddich Scotch, the most expensive sold at The Lambs. I helped Butler over to the bar since he was still shaky on his legs. Toby started racking the balls for a new game, and Kilgore protested that he wasn’t having Butler as a partner again.

Just then, O. J. stood up and cleared his throat. “All right, gentlemen, everyone’s here. Meeting time.”

“Oh, Christ,
already
?” Hal Fawkes blurted out. “I gotta make a phone call.”

“You’ve made at least thirty,” Natie argued. “C’mon, we’ll
never
get finished!”

Hal shook his grizzled head. “Can’t wait. Be right back.” He headed for the phones again, nearly tripping en route.

The rest of us started to take our places at the big semicircular seat, setting drinks on the enormous round tabletop. Tye Morrow brought over a huge platter of crackers and cheese spread and placed it in the center so everyone could help himself. Kilgore put his cue-stick away a little reluctantly. Barry Richmond asked me if I minded his sitting next to me, and I swiveled my legs out long enough for His Excellency to squeeze in. (The title went with his self-bestowed position of President of Montmartre. Barry is tall, gangly, and wears glasses with a built-in snigger; he looks like an older Tony Perkins from
Psycho,
and Kilgore frequently calls him “Norman” after the disturbed motel keeper in that film.)

Eight of us occupied the great arc of the large seat. To my left, next to Barry, sat Phil Faxon, a character actor who was one of the damnedest vocal mimics I’d ever heard. Thin, sandy-haired, with weak eyes (and no spectacles), Faxon could imitate accurately anyone from Herbert Hoover to Charles Laughton, but only with his voice, not his body. If radio were only still an important dramatic medium, he’d be rich, but as it was, he earned what income he did from an occasional voice-over for a TV commercial, or a narration for an army training movie.

O. J. sat to his left, his mild blue eyes scanning the company, fingers tapping the neatly inscribed memorandum book he used for running meetings. Too well-mannered to hurry the start of proceedings, he displayed his impatience to those who knew him well enough by the involuntary tapping. But his face gave away nothing.

Next to O. J. was Natie Barrows, our treasurer. Though he still had an automatic grin on his face, Natie was busily and anxiously wiping off a wayward gob of cheese from Mary Tyler Moore’s nose on his sweatshirt. To Natie’s left, Al Kilgore watched the loving ministration with undisguised astonishment. Beside Al sat Toby Sanders, dwarfed by his neighbor, and on the far end opposite me, Frank Butler perched, bald spot neatly concealed by his carefully combed hair fringe. He puffed away at one of his odd-looking, peculiarly aromatic stogies.

There was no room left for Dutchy or Tye, so they pushed wooden curved-back chairs to the end of the table, including one for Hal, if he ever decided to return.

At that particular moment, waiting for O. J. to begin the meeting, few of us had Wayne Poe in mind, I’m sure. Even with hindsight, it probably never has occurred to most of the SOTD executive committee that the murder of Wayne Poe was first conceived and plotted during that very meeting.

I
F THERE IS EVER
a normal committee meeting, the order of business will be as follows: 1. The president will call the meeting to order (beer, Scotch, etc.). 2. The treasurer will apologize. 3. Heads of standing committees will proffer excuses for their inefficiency. 4. Old business will be dragged out, dusted off and lovingly tabled for a future meeting. 5. New business must be tabled as soon as possible, in order that it may be brought up at a future meeting as old business. 6. The president shall then inform members of the committee that while they were at the bar and/or pool tables, the meeting ended. 7. At the discretion of the president—a concept which will be theoretically, though laughingly granted—the above order of business may be hopelessly screwed up.

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

O. J. began with new business, backtracked into old, forgot to ask for committee and treasurer reports entirely, and didn’t let me read the minutes or talk about the Two Tars convention plans.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “Frank Butler came all the way from Philadelphia to tell us about the joint meeting.”

Everyone listened respectfully, with the possible exception of Al Kilgore.

“We gotta forget about a September bash,” Butler stated. “No convention facilities available. But we can grab the Village Inn in Valley Forge right after July 4th.” He waved down the gabble of protest. “Yeah, yeah, I know! But our board says we can slap the whole shindig together, program, eats, and booze, and all you birds gotta do is find a way to come. Charter a bus.”

Natie interrupted. “That’s hardly four weeks after our own banquet, we can’t rent a bus, the treasury’ll be flat busted!” He always fought losing battles on overextension of club funds. It helped account for the upset stomachs and the perennial tense smile Natie had, caused by his pathetic desire to be liked, and his self-annoyance at the trait. In our committee debates, he was usually ignored unless he threw a temper tantrum.

The great transportation debate continued. Dutchy suggested five dollars be added on to the cost of every banquet ticket to help pay for the bus.

Phil grumbled, “I can’t afford it as it is
now
.”

O. J. mentioned that the tickets were already printed.

“So run off a new batch,” Dutchy said. He was always willing to volunteer more work for other people.

At that point, there was much arguing and Dutchy’s proposal was worried to shreds. Natie tried to get a word in, but O. J. didn’t notice the treasurer’s politely upraised hand with everyone else arguing at once. Natie’s face grew redder and redder. At last, he slammed the big Sons checkbook on the table and screamed for the others to shut up.