Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

Keep ’Em Laughing, Chick! by S. S. Rafferty[10]

Chick the comic, alias Chick the Dick, falls in love, which with Chick’s affinity for crime leads to murder, and if Chick himself isn’t up to his neck as a suspect, Chick’s chick is... Deal ’em, Chick!...

Every time I open this big generous heart of mine, someone moves into it and opens up a Welfare Department. Take Jeepers Jordan, for instance. (If you got a look at Jeepers, you’d take her somewhere for 3,000 years, and keep it a secret.) For two weeks I’m Mr. Terrific, and then she drops the bomb on me.

“You’re a big buddy of Billy Tibbs, aren’t you, Chick darling? Does he have anything to do with soap operas?” she purrs.

She didn’t have to push one more well-formed syllable out of that kitten mouth. I know the bit. Tibbs is a TV network producer, right? And what aspiring young actress wouldn’t like to be on a soap? That is not a multiple-choice question, obviously.

Does Chick Kelly fly into a rage? Do I feel wounded? No. El Dopo calls Tibbs and gets her a part on “River of Life.” As they say in Brooklyn, I shoulda stood in bed. But once she is on the show, that is precisely what I can’t do. Now Jeepers insists that I watch “River of Life” every weekday afternoon at two P.M. I’m an ex-comic who runs his own bistro all night and never gets up until sex or seven, or at least until night life has come to a halt. So, slave of love that I am, I’m conscious in the wee hours of the post meridian, staring at the tube.

I decided to watch the show at the club, because I thought I could get some of the office work done at the same time. That was a mistake, because I had forgotten about Mrs. Mangerton. Nellie Mangerton is herself a mistake. She is a widow, a crony of my partner’s wife, and what I loosely call my secretary. She comes in for a few hours a day and types up customers’ statements and miscellaneous letters, and complains about anything that ever took place after 1910.

Mrs. Mangerton thinks my prices and the cocktail waitresses’ skirts are too high and her salary and the lighting too low. Nothing pleases her. I buy her a new electronic calculator and she moans that it doesn’t produce a tape for rechecking her figures. I buy her a spanking new electric typewriter, the latest model, and she groans that “you need to be an electronics engineer just to change the ribbon.” When I start watching “River of Life,” she joins in with the critique. She’s appalled by the plots of soap operas. In a way I agree with her.

We watched several segments and I couldn’t believe what they get away with on these shows. Murder, bigamy, drug addiction, wife and husband stealing, and I swear every woman has had at least one illegitimate baby. That’s some programing, when you consider that most tots are up from their naps or home from nursery school in the afternoon. I figure the network censors sleep all day to be ready with their blue pencils for evening prime-time adult shows. But in comparison to the other soaps on the afternoon roster, “River of Life” was tame.

I settle down after a few weeks and find myself getting hooked on the trials and tribulations of the Martin family. Now Jeepers is a good 24 years old, but with her hair tousled and wearing a baggy sweater she can pass for a teenager. She plays the cousin of young Timmy Martin. She has come to live in Loganburg with the Martins because her own family has been run over by a freight train. Her real family lived in Florida.

I’ve heard of actors starting to live their roles, but soap-opera people are ridiculous. Jeepers starts walking around my club dressed like she was going to a high-school pep rally and mooning about poor Mums’ and Dads’ horrible death. I’m afraid the Liquor Commission will lift my license for serving minors.

But in a way I can understand the actor’s role-identification. Hell, you play a part every day. Not the same lines, as you would in a play, but an on-going part like life itself. After a while I can see where you’d end up confused as to who you are. But Mrs. Mangerton doesn’t waver. She keeps telling me, “Wait and see. The niece will end up pregnant yet.”

By the middle of the third week I’ve got the secret of writing soaps. Always keep five subplots going at the same time and resolve the major one each Friday, building up the next in line for the following week.

On this particular Friday I know young Timmy Martin is going to beat a marijuana rap that has worried the family for four days. We all know he’s got to beat it because he is one of the show’s regulars. They can’t have the kid in the slammer and still sell soap.

I’m watching the tube at two P.M. and my prediction is turning out fine. Jeepers’ part is getting bigger all the time, and I am wondering just how friendly my babycakes is with Billy Tibbs. Such are the problems of show biz.

Suddenly I know something is wrong, because at a point where Jeepers says, “I think that’s Timmy now,” the camera pans to an empty doorway and just sits there for one long empty minute. Then another camera picks up Pop Martin, who is obviously departing from the script and faking it with ad libs.

I’ve seen actors throw some very good cover for another cast member who has blown his lines, but this guy is fantastic. Jeepers is doing all right too, and between them they got through to the end of the segment.

I didn’t think any more about it, and switched over to a channel where they have cartoons playing. Cartoons have straight truth in them, if you look for it.

Half an hour later I got the phone call. Jeepers was slightly hysterical and under suspicion of murder. Hush, baby. Rush, Kelly.

They shoot the show live in a refurbished theater on upper First Avenue. All I got from Jeepers was that there was a murder, so I guessed it had to be of Timmy Martin. If you ever met a stage brat, you’d know why. I was wrong. It turned out to be the show’s writer-producer, Walter Powers.

Getting onto the scene of a crime without a badge can be tougher than getting a bank loan without collateral. The blue boy on the front door looked like an old pro at plowing away snow jobs, so I passed him up and hit the side door on 74th Street. The younger cop stationed there swallowed my story when I flashed my AGVA membership card and did five minutes of baloney schtick, then let me in.

Although I came in from the side of the building, I was actually at the back of the operation. Since the show was shot without an audience, the entire floor area was working space, with individual sets parked along the walls. I recognized the Martin living room, the malt shop, Doc Danner’s office. Good old Loganburg, U.S.A. I also recognized a burly guy with a shiny domed head talking with a group of people at the far end of the floor. It was Lieutenant Donald (Bullethead) Jaffee of Homicide, who rates me just below Genghis Khan on his Least Favorite People list.

I know if Jaffee or one of his goons spots me, it will be sidewalk time, so I slip around the back of the sets and head for an iron-grill stairway that leads up a brick wall to a balcony with a half dozen doors opening onto it. I’ve been in enough theaters to know they had to be dressing rooms. Since I didn’t see Jeepers in the small crowd around the lieutenant, I was hoping she was hibernating up here.

I opened the first door and found the room empty. So was the second. On the third try I lucked in. Jeepers was sitting at a dressing table talking to a gray-haired lady (Ann Harding-Fay Bainter-Spring Byington-Take Your Pick Stage-Mother Type). She turned out to be Ginny Owens, Old Ma Martin on the show.

Jeepers is really pouring on the emotion, but the Owens dame is giving her a run for the Emmy. I am dividing by seven to find out which part is actress, which part is for real. Between them I finally found out that Walter Powers, the show’s writer-producer, had been stabbed to death in his office downstairs, either before or during the afternoon show.

“I thought Billy Tibbs was the producer?” I asked them.

“He’s the executive producer, Mr. Kelly. Walt did all the work on ‘River of Life.’ In fact, he owned a piece of the show.”

“Make it ‘Chick,’ Ginny. What happened?”

I let Ginny give me the details because she was making ten percent more sense than her stage niece.

The reason the kid, Timmy Martin (his real name, Tippy Grant), missed his camera cue during the show was because it was he who discovered the body. When he was walking onto the set, he noticed smoke coming from under Powers’ office door, and opened it to find the writer slumped over his desk with a letter opener in his back and a fire blazing in the wastepaper basket.

“So what are you getting excited about, Jeep? You were on camera when Powers got it. You and Pop Martin,” I said, smiling.

“Cal McKittrick,” Ginny told me.

“Okay, McKittrick. I need a program.”

“Not according to that lieutenant.” Jeepers is still pouring it on. “You see, Chick, the opening six minutes of the segment was a tape intercut. It was an introspective, double-image shot, and Walt went for tape to make it easier. Everyone was just wandering around the set at the time the police say he was killed.”

“So anyone could have done it, says dear old Bullethead Jaffee, huh? You didn’t give him a statement, did you?”

“No, he’s talking to the rest of the cast downstairs. Will I have to, Chick?”

“From now on you go into pantomime. You’re mute. I’d suggest the same to you, Ginny, but be your own guide.”

I must remember to close doors behind me — at least I’d have some warning when anybody walks in. In this case I didn’t, and Jaffee nailed me.

“Good God Almighty,” he roars at my back. “Have you been here all the time, Kelly?”

Well, maybe he didn’t nail me. Maybe he dealt me a solid hole card. If by “all this time” he meant before the murder, I had him. If he checked with the cops on the door, he would bounce me out. So I lied, which I do not find difficult, and at times find enjoyable.

“I was visiting Miss Jordan before the show and must have fallen asleep up here. You know, like Goldilocks.”

That got him. The hackles went up on his neck. “Get downstairs with the rest of them!” he shouted.

I was hoping he would leave first, because I had eyes for a pay phone on the wall, and a dime ready to call Ted Summers, my lawyer, but I wasn’t that lucky. Jaffee herded us out like Lassie.

One of his minions, a guy named Coogan, was taking statements, while another played stenographer, and the rest of his merry men dragged crime-lab paraphernalia in and out. I slumped against a green cinderblock wall near a doorway that was getting a lot of official traffic. I assumed it was Powers’, the dead writer’s, office, because a smell of wet charred paper reeked out of it. One of the crime-lab boys was saying, “It couldn’t have been any more than six or seven pages, Lieutenant. There isn’t that much ash. I wish the hell they let it bum out instead of ruining everything with a fire extinguisher.”

“It was a natural reaction, Jim. Can you get anything out of that mess?”

“Snap answer, no, but we’ll give it a try, Lieutenant. Might have to send it to the Bureau in D.C.”

“Don’t, if you can help it. Who needs them? One thing is sure. Whoever gave it to him burned that stuff to cover up. Letters, maybe,” Jaffee said.

“Beats me. You getting anything out there with the cast?”

“It’s an Ipswich clam bed.”

When I heard Jaffee turn, I edged away from the door and mingled with the cast. I spotted Billy Tibbs talking with the woman who plays the Martins’ chowderhead neighbor. He introduced her as Mavis Clark. She nodded to me and wandered away.

“How did you get in here, Chick? This would be a good place to stay away from.”

I looked him straight in the eye, owing to Jeeper’s expanded part. “Because I’m in love.”

Billy’s no dope. He picked it up. “She’s got talent, babe. That’s all I care about.”

“Sure, Billy.”

“Look, Chick, don’t complicate matters. I have enough problems. I decided to up the ratings a couple of weeks ago, and the niece role came up. We were going to change a lot of things, but now — well.”

“What’s with this Walt Powers? Any enemies?”

“I thought you ran a night club?”

“I told you I’ve got a personal interest. I think I’m going to get tossed out of here if a certain patrolman comes in from the 74th Street door and sees me lined up with the suspects, so give me what you can fast.”

Billy Tibbs tilted his head in disbelief. “How do I know, Chick? Lord, a writer is a natural-born enemy of actors. So are producers. Walt happened to be both.”

“Yeah, congrats. I hear you’re the executive producer. I underestimated your clout.”

“Clout, hell. I got shoved into this job when I started to lose Nielsen numbers, and it’s been going downhill ever since, because Powers wouldn’t change the format. You wouldn’t believe how old-fashioned that bird was. Our major competitor, ‘End of the Rainbow,’ had an abortion and a bank robbery in one week, while we had Ma Martin handing out advice on raising children.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Soap watchers want gossip and they want it juicy. Over on ‘A Second Life’ they now have a dope-taking brain surgeon involved in a love triangle that would make D. H. Lawrence blush.”

“What was Powers going to change?”

“Damned if I know, Chick. He told me this morning he had the new script worked out, but he didn’t show it to me.”

“Think that’s what the fire was about?”

“You know, I hadn’t thought about that...” Then one of the Homicide goons called his name, and he went over to the center of the floor. Jaffee was really duking it up. He was now sitting at a table with the steno guy next to him, playing Twenty Questions with whoever sat opposite him.

I wanted to get into Powers’ office unnoticed, but the lab crew was still working in it, although there were fewer of them now. I decided to haunt the doorway, just in case.

“When do you think I can get in there to clean up?” an old guy in a gray work uniform asks me. “I don’t want to be here all night. I got to go clear to Brooklyn.”

“The way cops work, Pop, you should be able to get in there in a week or so.”

“With that stink of burned paper? Thought you was a dick, s’why I asked.”

“Bad casting, Pop. Don’t you want a future in show biz?”

“You must be one of them sloppy actors. Messin’ up the dressin’ rooms, powder on the floor, tissue everywhere. Bunch of pigs.”

“No, I’m a friend of Mr. Tibbs.” His eyes went up in O’s. “Tell me, Pop—”

“Kraft. Sigmund Kraft, studio maintenance.”

He said it as if to imply that he was a cut above actors, and if you consider job stability, he was. “Tell me, Sig, you look like you know your way around. You got any ideas on this?”

“Well, if it was that new lady, Miss Jordan, with a knife in her, I’d say it was Tippy Grant or his pain-in-the-neck mother. They sure were mad when the Jordan girl’s part was getting bigger all the time.”

“You like Miss Jordan?”

He winked at me. “Don’t let them baggy clothes of hers fool you, brother. She’s full growed.”

“Do tell.” Everywhere there’s competition. “But how about people who might not have liked Powers?”

“All of ’em. Every one of ’em had complaints about their lines or their parts. Fightin’ all the time. You see that popinjay over there by the stairs?” He pointed to a silver-haired matinee-idol type. “That’s Wyler Groves. He’s the doctor on the show. Used to be very big years ago on Broadway, and thinks he owns the place. He’s the worst with the tissues.”

“Yeah, he’s the tissue type, Sig.”

Sigmund tells me that if he can’t clean up the office, he might as well start in the dressing rooms, and I wished him good luck with the powder and theatrical debris and all.

I take another peek into Powers’ office, and only one lab man is left. Now I’ve got to handicap some odds, some long, some short. If the lab man winds up his work, it’s 20 to 1 he’ll call in Jaffee. It’s 10 to 3 Jaffee will put a department seal on the door, and 7 to 5 he’ll just get a uniformed bull to play statue in the doorway. If he were just to walk out and leave the room unguarded, you could go 100 to 1 easy. Getting Jaffee was 20 to 1 because Bullethead was still busy playing Torquemada at his table. The hell with the odds, I just walked in.

“Hi,” I said to him. He was a young fellow, maybe 25, with mod eyeglasses that made him look like a pilot, or maybe a blowup of a bug.

“You’re not allowed in here until the lieutenant clears it.”

I turn my eyes in a 180° sweep and go to work with the memory. I can keep him talking for maybe three minutes, so, eyes, do your stuff. I give him a humble act about never having been on the scene of a crime and how exciting his end of the business must be. He isn’t biting, but he isn’t giving me the heave-ho, either. My best bet to remember the place is to scan the room’s perimeter, then its center.

SCAN ONE, full sweep. To left of door is a small table, brown wood. Contains cigarette box, lighter, copy of Broadcast Magazine. (Stop. Do not record wall hangings — superfluous.) Left wall has leather couch flanked by two end tables with lamps, far one not lit. End wall has large chart showing segment schedules (too detailed to record). Right wall has bank of six file cabinets.

SCAN TWO, center of room. Two studio chairs in front of green-metal desk. Desk relatively clean. Piles of scripts to the left side of desk, pile of blank pre-carboned paper (the kind Mrs. Mangerton won’t use) to the right. Typewriter on roller stand, same model as Mrs. M’s. Charred wastebasket next to desk. Doorway wall to right bare. In doorway, irate man with prominent bald head bellowing, “Damn it, what are you doing in here?”

“Just seeing how efficient you fellows can be, Lieutenant.” I was going to give him the line about never having been at a murder scene before, but stopped. He would have made it five or six murder scenes, if you counted the girl who was once found dead at my pad.

“Don’t think you suckered me with that pitch upstairs, Kelly. You may have buffaloed your way in after we arrived, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t here earlier, left, then came back. You’re in and you’re gonna stay in, funny boy.”

“Glad to be aboard, Lieutenant. How many times a day do they empty the wastepaper baskets around here?” I didn’t ask Sigmund because I might or might not have gotten a straight answer. From Jaffee I was getting no answer. He ignored the question.

“You’re here because of that blonde kid, and you know it. Talk about robbing cradles!”

“As we say around here, Lieutenant, she’s full growed. You see, it’s the deceptiveness of the thespian art form—”

“Shut up and get out there with the rest of them. I ought to lock you up for interfering with an investigation. Did he touch anything at all, Al?”

Al said no with a headshake.

“Aren’t you supposed to put up signs saying Out — Crime Scene, Lieutenant?”

“You know the sign I’d like to put on you. Did you know Walt Powers?”

“Never met him,” I said.

“You know, your girl friend was very chummy with him. Had lunch with him today.”

“Along with being full growed, she’s friendly and frequently hungry.”

“Couldn’t have been a little sore about it, could you, Kelly?”

“With my win-loss record, you learn to cry a lot. When the brat discovered the fire, was it blazing or just smoking?”

That did it. Out I went to the mob on the set where Jaffee tells us we can all beat it on our own recognizance, not to leave the city, et cetera. That was a strange move, and I was wondering what he had going.

I grabbed Jeepers and hustled her out the 74th Street door and walked fast toward York Avenue. I didn’t quite hear what the young cop on the door said, something like “You wise son-of-a-something.” I kept moving down the block and hit it lucky with a cab. When we were in, I asked the driver if he liked pictures of Benjamin Franklin, and he said yes, so I told him to gun it down York and then head south.

“What’s the hurry, Chick?” my pseudo-Tammy asks.

“I want to jump the tail, Miss Luncheon, U.S.A. Head for the Waldorf, driver, Park Avenue side.” I gave Jeepers three C-notes.

“What’s this for and why the Waldorf? Are we having an early dinner?”

“No, luv, you just changed your address. It’s the Waldorf because it has four exits and I plan to use one. You go to the desk and ask for Ron Dugan, and if he’s not there, see Dave Hirsch. They’re with Security. Tell him to give you a room, backdated two weeks, and give him the money. Go to the room and sit tight.”

When we turned onto Park from 49th Street, I told the driver not to hit the doorman lineup of cabs, just to drop us in the double lane. His orders were to whip into 50th Street and wait by the hotel garage entrance. We were in the revolving doors in seconds, and I sent Jeepers up the stairs to the main lobby. I ducked down the steps to the lower shopping mall and hopped it to the Towers garage entryway. My hackie was waiting and we zinged east again.

I was sure I had ducked the tail, but the Waldorf ploy served two purposes. It saved Jeepers from answering any embarrassing questions about residence, and it set me free. Jaffee said I was in, but at the moment, I was out, bubby, way out, and winging it.

I left the cab at Third and 83rd Street and walked a block east to a cozy German restaurant that caters to the Herrenvolk of Yorkville. The innkeeper is a shortish bald man named Otto, who makes a specialty of bad memory, good food, and small back rooms.

First I hit the phone, called my joint, and got Barry Kantrowitz on the line. Barry is my ex-agent, present partner, and a worry-wart par excellence.

“What’s going with you, Chick?” he says, telling me the cops have been in looking for me and Jeepers.

“Ignore them. You never heard of us. Barry, is Christy Balek still a big agent in soaps?”

“From what I hear you couldn’t book a birddog without her. What a specialty — and I had to handle comics.”

“Remorse will get you nowhere. Can you dig up her phone number, her home number?”

“No agent in his right mind gives out his home number.”

I told him to get it quick and call me back, and he did about two vodkas later. Christy Blake is an anomaly in show business. Number one, she is a lady, and then the degree from Radcliffe adds to the confusion. She also has the benefit of independence, because her grandpop worked hard on Wall Street and spelled her name right in his last will and testament.

“Chick Kelly?” she said after the maid called her to the phone.

“You make it sound like I’m calling from a hole in Forest Lawn. How are you, Christy? How would you like some of that German chow you love so much?”

She is as quick a study as any actor she handles. “Are you mixed up in that Powers mess?”

Now here I have to put on a diplomatic hat. Never tell a woman that you need her help to help another woman. Lionesses, pantheresses, and the two-legged breed of the female species will kill to protect a man, but when it comes to helping other broads, forget it. The ironic part of it is that women understand it, expect it, and respect it.

“No, but I think Billy Tibbs might have to take some heat,” I said. “Do you book anyone on ‘River of Life’?”

“Cal McKittrick, Ginny Owens, and Wyler Groves.”

“The anti-trust boys will be investigating you. Why don’t you jump in a cab and have dinner with me? I’m in a place that has the best Eisbein mit Sauerkraut you’ll ever taste.”

“I don’t know if I want to taste it.”

“Are you kidding? My friend Otto would be offended. It’s the favorite dish of Westphalia. You may not believe it, Christy, but there is a stained-glass window in a Westphalian church that shows the disciples at the Last Supper eating Eisbein. Now that’s a reconsideration, isn’t it?”

She laughed, so I knew she was following the lure. “And if you’re a real good girl I’ll have Otto serve some Erbenpuree.”

“Chick, you’re making this up.”

“Would a simple jester lie?”

“What’s the address, you nut?”

I gave it to her and reeled her in.

She had cold Swartzkatz and I stuck with the vodka.

“This is delicious, Chick,” she said, savoring the pickled pork and yellow split peas. “I’m afraid I’ll have a cardiac arrest if I eat all this.”

“Otto has a pickup service deal with Lenox Hill Hospital, so chow down. What can you tell me about ‘River of Life’?”

“Really, Chick, I only know what my clients tell me. Wyler Groves called me a couple of days ago complaining about possible changes in the show. That’s one of Wyler’s problems. He always thinks he’s a better scriptwriter. He wanted me to talk to Walt Powers about taking a new direction in the script. He’s Dr. Danner, you know. He wanted to expand it into a medical-center locale.”

“Which would mean goodbye Martin Family players.”

“Maybe goodbye everyone in the long run.”

“Was Powers buying Wyler’s ideas?”

“I doubt it. He was too vain for that. But you can bet he was making some dramatic changes. The show has become a drag.”

“Christy, somehow I can’t see an actor committing murder over a part.”

“Mr. Kelly, your naivete is busting out all over. When he was reviewing plays, Alex Woollcott used to say that if he was found dead with a knife in his chest, three hundred and sixty actors would immediately be suspect. Maybe Tippy Grant and this new girl, Jabbers something, could get other work, but not the rest of them. Why, Cal, Wyler, and Ginny have been on ‘River of Life’ for fifteen years. That’s good work, but deadly typecasting. Do you know, I can’t get them any on-camera commercials because the ad agencies say they are too heavily identified with the characters they play on the show? Cal and Ginny are Mother and Father Martin, Wyler is Dr. Danner. If they were killed off in the script, they might as well retire.”

“That’s some theory, Christy, but it’s got a big flaw. If Powers was knocked off, wouldn’t that be the end of the show, anyway?”

“Actors are emotional children, Chick. If they can’t have it, no one can have it. It’s even worse with soap-opera people. It’s about the steadiest work around, but for the life of me I can’t see why an actor would want to be part of one. It’s not like the movies or Broadway. There you have a locked-in role — the same lines, same mood and personality. But on a soap you’re a continuing character with different things coming at you every day. It’s like living two lives at once. Lord, as if one wasn’t enough. But don’t get hung up on just actors. Your pal Billy Tibbs has a lot to gain.”

“Tibbs?”

“Well, you said on the phone he might have to take some heat. I thought you meant that with Powers gone, so was ‘River of Life,’ which was a thorn on his path to a vice-presidency.”

“I’m listening, babe, but I don’t dig it.”

“Charles Xavier Kelly, for a comic you certainly are dense at times. Putting Tibbs on that show was like putting an albatross around his neck. Powers had control and the contract. If he continued the old-fashioned slop, and the show sank, Tibbs would sink with it. The networks always need a scapegoat. Tibbs is really hyped on game shows, anyway.”

“You know, you’re smarter than a few cops I know. Tell me, how good is Cal McKittrick — Pop Martin?”

“Good? Hmmm.” She sipped some wine. “What do you mean by ‘good’?”

“Well, he put on one beauty of a performance when the kid missed his cue while he was off finding the body. Is he that sharp at improvisation?”

“If you asked Cal to improvise a tree, he’d have to study one for three days. No, I don’t think he’s the Actor’s Studio type.”

“Okay, now for dear old Ma Martin. Ginny Owens isn’t that old, is she? She’s a very handsome woman.”

“She’d love you for that, Chick. But then, she’d love you anyway, because you’re pretty. That’s her problem.”

“I’m beautiful, not merely pretty. Haven’t you read my notices?”

“Beautiful I reserve for the champagne types. Did you know she was once Mrs. Walter Powers?”

“Ho boy, the plot sickens. Who divorced who?”

“Whom. She did the suing, but she was too entrenched in the part for Walt to drop her.”

“You sure have done a lot of thinking about this, Christy.”

“Well, the evening papers quoted some lieutenant as saying the murder could only have been committed by someone in the theater at the time, and that he suspects a member of the cast.”

It also told me why Jaffee was so free about letting us go. He plants that line with the press, then sees who jumps.

I turned down Christy’s invitation to a bash over at the Dakota and put her in a cab after dinner.

It was almost nine o’clock, and I decided to check in with Jeepers at the Waldorf. That, however, turned out to be impossible, because she had never checked in at the Waldorf. I went from the hotel operator to the desk clerk and finally to Ron Dugan in Security. No Miss Jordan. So I had picked a hotel with four entrances and she turned one of them into an exit. Why?

Since the cops had already given the club a toss looking for me, I figured it was safe to go in the back way through the kitchen. When I walked into the office, I was surprised to find Mrs. Mangerton there. She was typing away on an old manual typewriter that must have been used by Richard Harding Davis.

“I brought it from home, so there’s no charge,” she tells me.

“What are you going to do with the calculator, turn it in for an abacus?”

She doesn’t answer and goes on clickety-clicking with the machine. Then I spot the note on my desk: Call Steve Kozak. The typewriter lady tells me “an hour ago.”

Steve is a good friend. He has another title: Sergeant, Vice Squad, New York Police Department. He’s the kind of guy who lets friendship interfere with his work, thank God.

“What’s going on this Walt Powers job?” I ask him when he gets on the line. Normally Steve is a great comeback artist, but this time his voice is dead-serious.

“Chick, you got big trouble. They picked up your girl friend.”

“I could have predicted that, because she didn’t follow orders. Jaffee can’t do much. She didn’t leave the city, did she?”

“Chick, they’re holding her for Murder One.”

“For Powers? That’s nuts. She—”

“Not just for Powers, Chick. For a guy named Sigmund Kraft over in Brooklyn.”

Mrs. Mangerton’s clicking made hearing difficult, so I told her to quit for the day and had Steve repeat what he had just said. It came back just like the original, word for word.

Jaffee’s strategy had been to turn everyone loose and then hit them one by one on their home turfs. When one of his goons is climbing the stairs of Kraft’s Bensonhurst roominghouse, who is descending but the lady in my life? The bull escorts Jeepers back to Kraft’s room and they find him very dead with a knife in his back. Just to round out the scenario, Steve tells me that they also found a wastepaper basket in which paper had been burned.

“It’s still nuts. Jeepers wouldn’t kill anyone — at least, not over a part.”

“Oh, you’re onto that angle.”

“What angle?”

“Jaffee’s motive theory. A guy named Tibbs told Jaffee that Powers was working on a new format for the show and that meant someone was going to get killed off in the script.”

“From what I hear, McKittrick, Groves, and Owens had more to lose.”

“Maybe, but they weren’t at a Bensonhurst roominghouse this evening.”

“Who says? Jeepers could have come after the killing.”

“That’s her story. She claims Kraft approached her at the studio and told her he had something important for her, and gave her his address. When she got there, she found him dead, and decided to fade.”

“What could a maintenance guy, a sweeper, have that was so important?”

“A carbon copy of Powers’ script revision, maybe. Jaffee figures it this way: Powers finished his rewrite, but he dumps the carbons. Tibbs says he always worked that way because the original would be so blue-penciled after rewrites that the carbon would be useless. The only reason there is a carbon is because the network uses pre-carboned sheets. You know, the original and the copy bound together with a carbon in the middle.”

“Yeah, I have them here.”

“Do you want the rest, Chick? You sound awful.”

“I feel awful. Shoot.”

“Okay. So Powers decides to give your girl friend the ax, and he takes her to lunch to hand her the bad news. While Powers is out, Kraft empties the wastebasket, sees the carbons, and decides to make some points with Jeepers by telling her about her impending doom. So he saves them.

“When Powers and the girl get back from lunch, she takes advantage of the first part of the show being on tape, goes into Powers’ office, stabs him, then bums what she thinks is the only copy of the script. Then old Sigmund sees a chance for blackmail instead of points-making, and he lays it on her. When she goes to his place to pay off, she just repeats the afternoon’s performance.”

“Blackmail — she wouldn’t—”

“She had three one-hundred-buck bills on her, but I guess it wasn’t enough.”

“You know, you said ‘theory,’ and that’s all it is, Steve.”

“Would you believe the lab reports show that the papers burned in Kraft’s wastebasket were the carbons of the papers burned in Powers’ office?”

“No prints on the knives?”

“Nope.”

“How about alibis for McKittrick, Groves, and Owens?”

“They all say that they were at their apartments, but with no corroborating witnesses.”

“I thought Jaffee had us all tailed?”

“What do you think he has working for him, an army? He was going to pick ’em off one by one later this evening. Chick, it looks open and shut for Jeepers. Man, does she mean that much to you? You may have to face it in the end, pal.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Steve’s parting words were that Jaffee had a warrant out for me as accessory.

I called Ted Summers at home, gave him the fill-in, and he said he’d see what he could do. Bail for Jeepers was definitely out, he thought.

I switched over to the house phone and told Nibs, the night barman, to bring back lotsa vodka.

I’m on the think like never before. I’ve had people double-deal me. I have made wrong bets on humans and been hurt. But I can’t sell short on the Jeep. I start doing a reconstruct inside my head. It’s my mental viewing room, where I sometimes look at the day’s rushes. I see the set, the cast, Powers’ office. All pieces and bits that won’t edit into a story line. It won’t because they have cast the wrong girl as heavy. Or have they? If only she had told me about Kraft, I could have bought him off.

Then two things hit me at once. Kraft said he had something to show her. But when did he say it? Before or after Powers’ murder? The second idea is dangerous, because if Jeepers did it, it would hang her. I decided to play it that she was innocent and that I could prove it.

On Mrs. Mangerton’s desk is a little card file with the names and phone numbers of all our dealers in office supplies. I let the fingers do the walking and after a ten-minute phone conversation with a very polite guy, I felt I had half the battle won.

I called Ted Summers back and gave him the plan. At first he said Jaffee would never agree to getting everyone back to the studio, but he doesn’t know Bullethead like I do. Jaffee would fill Shea Stadium with live goldfish to turn me in for a couple of years. Ted called back and was surprised the lieutenant had agreed. I wasn’t.

I got to the studio after midnight on purpose. Everyone else involved was on the set. Ginny Owens must have been hauled out of bed, because her hair was a mess. Wyler Groves looked his usual spiffy self, and I think Cal McKittrick was a little snockered. Billy Tibbs just looked worried. I didn’t like seeing Jeepers with cuffs on her.

“Take those off first,” I said to Jaffee, “or it’s no go.”

“You’ve got ten minutes, funny boy, before you get a pair, yourself, so let’s have this big secret of yours.”

Ted Summers looked at me and nodded a “don’t fight it” message, so I dove into my act.

In a way it was like a Sunday Broadway performance. The kind show-biz people put on for their own. It’s an all-professional audience, so you have to be good.

“Boys and girls, we have a fairy tale going here, and Uncle Chick is going to bring some reality to it. First I want to compliment you all on your performances. One of you should get a double-headed Emmy for faking innocence.”

“Get on with it, Kelly,” Jaffee heckled.

“Sure. Scene One. Jeepers goes to lunch with Walt Powers. What did you talk about, babe?”

“Well, mostly how well I was doing. I guess he liked my looks.”

“Okay, when did Kraft tell you he had something interesting to tell you?”

“Right after I got back from lunch.”

“That was before the murder. Can you think of any reason he would want you to come out to his place in Brooklyn?”

“To give me this information? I don’t know, Chick,” she said, giving me that baby-face pout.

“Remind me to give you a lecture on taking candy and rides from strangers. But let’s say he had good news for you, like you were going to be very important in the new format, and he decides to make a little hay with the news.

“But when Powers takes the long count, and Kraft has the carbon to the script that spells out who is going to get the ax on the show, he tries a blackmail scheme on that person and gets it in the back. Now, both the original and the carbon copy are destroyed, so it’s eenie-meenie-miney-mo, and Jeepers gets tapped because she follows up on the invitation that Kraft probably forgot.

“So far, folks, we haven’t solved anything, because we don’t know what Powers wrote. But we will.”

That grabbed them, even Jaffee.

“Kelly, if you’ve been withholding evidence, so help me—”

“You have the evidence, Jaffee, not me. Roll it in, Ted.”

Summers wheels in Powers’ typewriter and its stand. I held my breath and gave it a quick look. Was my memory right? It is, because Powers’ machine is the same model as Mrs. Mangerton’s new one.

“How many old flicks have you seen where a typewriter gave a killer away? A broken letter or a letter out of alignment — stuff like that. Now, I have a little old lady who works in my office, and she’s always complaining about modern things. But there is something to be said for advanced technology after all. On an old-style model the ribbon keeps reversing itself and works until the ink is too light. Just a few hours ago I had a conversation with a courteous typewriter dealer who confirmed something. This electric model, in its mania for conspicuous consumption, has the tape going through the machine only once. I know, because I get bills for changing my ribbon every month. In fact, it isn’t even a ribbon; it’s a strip of carbonized tape, and it records everything typed on it. Case closed, Jaffee.”

Sure I sweated bullets of five different calibers while the police technicians unloaded the ribbon and read it like a ticker tape. Whether the cops could make it stick with Ginny Owens was debatable, but for the moment she was bankrupt in the freedom department. It seems old Walt finally paid her off. In the new format she was destined to be killed on the show, and her death would serve as a bridge to a medical locale.

Ginny did not like being a bridge to her own oblivion. She was shaky enough when Jaffee’s boys led her out, so he might get a confession out of her. At least Bullethead had a working motive more solid than the gossamer stuff he had tried on Jeepers.

“You know, it could have been me, Chick darling,” the Jeep coos later at my pad.

I didn’t answer her, the same way I didn’t answer Steve Kozak. Barry Kantrowitz always says that “Life is like the Queen of Sheba. She comes to test you with hard questions.”

But I’m a comic, not a philosopher, so I mixed her another mimosa and tossed her a gag line. Somehow it’s okay if you always keep ’em laughing, folks.