Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 98, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 588 & 589, October 1991

Any Resemblance Living or Dead by George Baxt

Lily’s voice was delightfully husky and virginally delicate as she improvised the speech from The Shop Around the Corner. She kept it brief, and when she was finished there was defiance in her face, a defiance that dared him to tell her she wasn’t any good.

Sam said, “On the nose, babe.”

She was glowing. “Really? You really liked it?”

“I’d like to see more. I’d like to see your whole repertory.”

She imitated Jimmy Durante. “I got a million of ’em — a million of ’em...”

Lila Tyler placed the bowl of piping-hot split-pea soup in front of the man and he sniffed its magnificent aroma with exaggerated passion. He said to Lila, “This soup is almost as hot and tasty as you are.”

“You say that every time you lunch here. Don’t you get tired of hearing that line over and over again? I know I do.” She put him down with a smile. It was a lovely smile and it usually won her a decent tip.

“What’s your name—” shlurp “—cutie?”

“Lila.”

“Lila—” shlurp “—what?”

“Lila Tyler.”

He sat back and enjoyed her voluptuous body. “And you came to La La Land to become a big moomie-picture star.”

“I came to Hollywood because this is the place to get started.”

“Can you—” shlurp “—act?”

“They said I could back in Dropout, New Jersey. That’s where I come from.”

“How long you—” shlurp “—been here?”

“Three months.”

He pushed the plate to one side, dabbed daintily at his mouth with his napkin, and drummed on the tabletop with his fingers. “You know who I am?”

“Everybody knows who you are. You’re Sam Glockenspiel, the agent.”

“The very powerful agent. I’m a big man in this town. Didn’t your informant tell you?”

“My informant is the hatcheck girl, and where she comes from only Julio Iglesias is powerful.”

Sam chuckled. “I like your delivery. It’s nice. It’s dry. You got an unusual voice, too — kind of like Margaret Sullavan’s. You ever hear of her?”

“Oh, yes — I’ve seen lots of her pictures on the tube. I do a great impersonation of her.”

“You do impersonations?”

She nodded. “I think I’m pretty good.”

“Let me hear Sullavan.”

“Here? Now?”

“Why not? It’s late. There’s nobody left but us and that fat couple at the other end of the room. Go ahead, audition for me. You’re lucky — I’m a hard man to get to.”

Lila looked around the room. The manager was nowhere in sight. She hoped he was in his office demolishing a late lunch and maybe one of the waitresses. She lowered her head, deep in concentration. After about twenty seconds, her head flew up, her eyes widened, she cocked her head, staring straight ahead at nothing, and she became Margaret Sullavan. “Dear friend, dear dear friend, how I loved your letter I received this morning—” The voice was delightfully husky and virginally delicate as she improvised the speech from The Shop Around the Corner. She kept it brief, and when she was finished there was defiance in her face, a defiance that dared him to tell her she wasn’t any good.

Sam said, “On the nose, babe.”

She was glowing. “Really? You really liked it?”

“I’d like to see more. I’d like to see your whole repertory.”

She imitated Jimmy Durante. “I got a million of ’em — a million of ’em.”

He extracted a card case from his inside jacket pocket and selected a card for her. “That’s my office address. What time do you quit here?”

“I finish at four. I only work three lunch shifts a week. I need the time to make the rounds.”

“That enough to eat on?”

“They feed me here.”

“What about a roof over your head?”

“I share in West Hollywood with two girls. We sometimes get along.”

“My office is around the corner on Wilshire. Come up when you’re finished here. I think I just might be able to do something for you.” He moved to leave.

“Don’t you want anything else to eat?”

“The truth is, Lila, I already had my lunch. I ate with Martin Scorsese and Michelle Pfeiffer. I’m working on a ten-million-dollar deal for them.” He was pleased to see her chin drop. “I really came here to see you, but the split-pea soup was okay, too. The first time I laid eyes on you, I had a hunch about you. See you in a couple of hours, cutie.” He patted her cheek gently, dropped a five-dollar bill on the table to cover the soup and her tip, and left.

As a bus boy swooped down on her station to clear the table, Lila pocketed the bill and hurried to confer with Juana, the hatcheck girl who was also one of her roommates.

Juana impaled her with her eyes. “You be careful, kid. I’m wise to these sharpies around here. Don’t trust any of them.”

“I know, I know. But how will I get anywhere if I don’t trust people?”

“Look, kid — if you got something, it’ll get you there, wherever there is. But in this town, there’s pussycats like you and hawks like Glockenspiel. You gotta be cautious. Like walking on eggshells.”

“I’ll be perfectly safe in his office. After all, his staff will be there.”

“What staff?”

“If he’s a big-time agent, he has to have a secretary and a receptionist and an office boy.”

“And eight pair of hands.”

“You’re such a cynic.”

“Kid, I been around this town a long time. Take it from an old campaigner, watch your step and don’t stop taking the pill...”

Sam Glockenspiel’s office on Wilshire Boulevard was modest by the usual show-business standards, but he did have a secretary who was also his receptionist, office girl, and coffee brewer. Gladys Atkins was a buxom woman in her mid-forties, twice widowed and childless, who hennaed her hair and wore dresses one size too tight for her. Sam paid her a decent salary and made her privy to his indecent schemes.

“If she’s got no talent, why are you bothering?”

“Wait till you see the body on her. You know I can’t resist them when they’re built.”

“Be nice for a change, Sam. Don’t break the kid’s heart.”

“I’m not going to break her heart — only her resistance. Now be a good girl and when I ask her to do a few shticks for you, you make like you’re watching the ninth wonder of the world.”

“Sam! You know I have a hard time keeping a straight face!”

“So keep a gay one,” he said, dialing a number. Gladys clucked her tongue and shook her head woefully as she returned to her desk in the outer office.

As she shut the door behind her, she heard him asking for Bunny Travis, casting director of a syndicated program that spotlighted amateur talent, Show Your Stuff.

“Bunny? It’s old Glockenspiel. Listen, Bunny, I don’t often call in my markers, but this is special. I got this here kid on the string. She does impersonations.”

Bunny Travis cast a heaven-help-me look at the ceiling. “Sam, not another one of those poor slobs.”

“But, Bunny, this one’s really built. I gotta make it with her. Just thinking about her keeps me awake nights.”

“What’s her name?”

Sam told him.

“Lila Tyler. Wait a minute.” He referred to his appointment book. “I can see her tomorrow around five.”

“Now just a second, Bunny, let’s not be too hasty. I need time to work with the kid. Make it a week from tomorrow at five.”

“Don’t any of these poor innocents take a shot at you?”

“Nah. I get them the appointment, right? They get their chance, right? It’s my fault they don’t get the job? I’ll love you forever for this, Bun.”

The casting director made a nasty face at the phone. “There are three deadly things in this world deserving of extermination. AIDS, mothers, and Sam Glockenspiel.”

Sam cackled and hung up. He looked at his wristwatch, made a few phonecalls to try to drum up work for some of his clients, a few of which were talented, and then settled back to await Lila Tyler.

The lamb to the slaughter, thought Gladys Atkins as Lila entered the office. But Sam sure could pick them. Hers was a body that sang on key. The face was all right, too, but in this town it was condemned by its innocence.

Gladys said briskly and efficiently, “Lila Tyler?”

Lila smiled and Gladys felt her heart breaking. Poor kid. Poor, sad, beautiful, innocent kid. “Mr. Glockenspiel is expecting me.”

“Indeed he is, dear.” Gladys crossed to Sam’s office. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” She opened the door and announced Lila. Sam came to the door, flung it wide open, and stretched out his hands to Lila.

“Lila! Lila! Lila! Come right in. You, too, Gladys — I want you to see what Lila can do.”

Gladys followed Lila into the office. Sam sat behind his desk. Gladys sat in a chair and Lila on the couch. Isn’t it marvelous, thought Gladys, how actresses instinctively make it to the couch. Lila looked at the autographed photographs that constituted Glockenspiel’s rogues gallery of clients. She recognized nobody.

“Gladys, Lila’s phenomenal.” Gladys found a small smile which took a Herculean effort. Sam said to Lila, “I told Gladys about your Sullavan and Durante. Now show us some others.”

“I’d love to.” Lila wondered where the rest of the personnel were housed while she put her purse aside, arose, and walked to an area equidistant between Sam and Gladys.

Gladys reared back as Lila, face contorted, lunged toward her. “Yes, yes, yes! Helenius bought me everything! Everything! Do you hear me, Helenius bought me this!” She slammed her hand down on the chair’s armrest. She stalked to Sam’s desk and hit it hard with her fist. “And Helenius bought me this! He bought everything! He bought me! Yes! Helenius bought me!”

“Bette Davis!” cried Sam. The name Helenius triggered it for him. Claude Rains had played Helenius opposite Bette Davis in Deception. “Go ahead, kid, do another one.”

Lila screwed up her face, scratched her head, and began wailing mercilessly. “Oh, Ollie, I didn’t mean to drop the brick on your big toe!” She puffed out her cheeks and pantomimed flipping a tie hanging from her neck. “And another fine mess you’ve gotten us into — I can’t take you anywhere!”

“Oh, Ollie, what’ll we tell our wives?”

Gladys felt her eyes crossing as Lila darted from Stan to Ollie and back again. Laurel and Hardy were favorites of hers and what was going on before her eyes was a sacrilege.

“Can I do one more?” asked Lila, now off and running and relishing having the racetrack all to herself. She narrowed her eyes, found a sexy smile, and sauntered slowly toward Sam. “So, Destwy, youw’re a fewocious cowboy, eh? Youw’re the best woper and the best wider in the West, eh, Womeo?” She sang “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have” as Gladys suppressed a shriek. When she finished, Sam and Gladys applauded.

Sam leapt nimbly from behind his desk and before Lila could dodge to safety enveloped her in a crushing bearhug. “Lila baby, you’ve got it! You’re terrific! Ain’t she a sensation, Gladys?”

Gladys said, “I didn’t think she had it in her.”

Sam said triumphantly, “I’m going to get you an audition for Show Your Stuff.”

Lila thought she would faint. Gladys steered her back to the couch and then excused herself, discreetly shutting the door behind her. Lila watched bug-eyed as Sam conversed with Bunny. “A week from tomorrow at five should be good. Wait a minute, I’ve got Lila right here. Lila, does a week from tomorrow at five fit your schedule?” He winked at Lila and she nodded her head enthusiastically. “That’s a date, Bunny. It’s written by lightning in concrete! Love ya, Bunny boy.” He slammed the phone down and rubbed his hands together greedily. “Now you listen, Lila. Between now and next week, we’re going to work together to polish up your act. You got some rough edges that need smoothing. I’d skip the Laurel and Hardy—”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“Loved it, but teams are a tough impersonation for a single performer. Do you do Mae West?”

“To a turn,” said Lila brightly.

“I thought you would! Now then, let’s work on a rehearsal schedule. It’ll have to be mostly nights — I have a business to run, after all.” He blew her a kiss. “God, but I’m proud of you!”

“Thank you. I’m so grateful.”

Lila wished he wouldn’t wink so much. It made her nervous. Maybe it was a nervous disorder.

She heard him asking, “How about we start tonight?” and she heard herself say, “No time like the present.” And then she told him she wanted to go home and change. He wrote his home address and phone number on a slip of paper and she promised to be there promptly at eight.

As Sam Glockenspiel later told the story at the Lamb’s Club, the seduction of Lila Tyler made her sound like the easiest mark in town. Lila herself couldn’t understand how she came to permit herself to be so easily seduced. Was it the champagne, the Chinese food eaten out of soggy cartons, the brandies that followed, or the fact that for some peculiar reason she found Sam Glockenspiel sexy? And in bed, he certainly wasn’t the fumbling callow youths of Dropout, New Jersey, who thought it sexy to recite baseball scores in her ear.

“I think I’m in love with Sam Glockenspiel,” Lila confided to Juana the hatcheck girl the day before her scheduled appointment with Bunny Travis.

“Well,” said Juana with a sigh, “I suppose he’s not all that bad-looking. And I’m sure he knows his way around a mattress. You haven’t told him, have you?”

“I’m too shy.”

“Thank God.”

“I want him to be the Svengali to my Trilby.”

“Who? Is that a new rock act?”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I’m not, sweetie. I just hate to see you getting hurt. You’re a babe in the woods and Glockenspiel’s a shark.”

“I can handle him, Juana, I know I can.”

“That’s what my aunt said about my uncle before he deposited her in the loony bin. Oh, never mind, kid. Good luck tomorrow.”

Lila asked eagerly, “Do you want to see some more impersonations?”

Juana paled. Her mouth went dry. Her hands trembled. She managed to say, “Not right now. I got to count up my take before the night girl takes over.” Lila smiled her enchanting smile, said, “Ciao,” and went home to bathe and scent herself before going to Sam’s place for some more “rehearsals.”

The next day, Lila and Sam arrived at Bunny Travis’s office promptly at five. Travis kept them waiting only half an hour before they were ushered into his office. Sam patted Lila’s hand and winked and Lila felt a surge of confidence. Bunny looked at the girl and wanted to cry. The poor kid.

Sam said to Lila, “Okay, darling. Do our favorite.”

Lila wrapped her arms around herself, her eyelids drooped, and she shattered the room with a wracking cough. Bunny refrained from ducking behind the desk. “Armand, Armand,” whispered Lila between coughs, “it is growing darker, Armand. Where are you? I want to kiss your lips for one last time—”

The agony continued for three minutes. Then Lila did a little time step, looked into nobody’s big blue eyes, and said in what was almost Ruby Keeler’s lifeless voice, “Oh, Jim, I didn’t know you’d be here—” followed by a horrendous chorus of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.”

Ten minutes and three more deadly impersonations (Ethel Barrymore, Judy Garland, and Edna Mae Oliver) later, Bunny Travis ushered Lila and Sam out of his office, profuse with his “Thank yous” and “I’ll be in touches.” After they left, his secretary, seeing the distress in Travis’s face, asked with alarm, “Boss, what’s wrong?”

“My God, I need oxygen!” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, in Sam’s car, Lila pleaded, “Do you really think he liked me?”

“Take it from me, babe, he’ll never be the same.”

“Oh, I feel like singing!”

“Please don’t. You have to conserve your energy. You’ve got a big future ahead of you.”

Lila didn’t hear from Sam the next day. When she phoned the office, Gladys told her Sam had had to fly to New York to settle a Broadway deal for a client.

“Did he hear from Mr. Travis, Gladys?”

“Um — Mr. Travis said the season’s fully booked, but he has you down for next year.”

“Next year?”

“Lila — I’ll have Sam call you when he gets back.”

Six weeks later, Lila began to smell a rat. She said to Juana, “I think Sam Glockenspiel is avoiding me.”

Juana said in a worldly tone of voice, “I warned you, honey.”

“I’ve been had.”

“You’re not alone, babe.”

In the weeks that followed, Lila brooded, lost weight, and almost lost her job. Glockenspiel never came to the restaurant again. When she mentioned his name to other girls she met, most of them raised an eyebrow and made an uncomplimentary comment (or one not fit to be printed in a family magazine). For a while, Lila took to her bed, weeping bitterly, inconsolable until finally one day she came to a decision that would alter the rest of her life. Even the folks back in Dropout, New Jersey, would have a shocking surprise in store for them.

One day a few months later, Gladys was surprised to hear Lila’s voice on the phone. She thought she’d heard the last of her. “I’ve got a wonderful new routine I think will excite Sam! I tried it out at the Comedy Club’s guest-comedian night,” Lila lied, “and I absolutely tore the house down. Would you please ask Sam to see me? I think I’m onto something terrific. You know, where I come from bygones are bygones. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Sam.”

Gladys was genuinely touched. Lila was a good kid and she told that to Sam. He thought for a moment. Hunting hadn’t been so good of late and Lila had been a terrific protegee. “Oh, what the hell,” he said after some brief soul-searching, “tell her to come in late tomorrow afternoon.”

Lila arrived at five the next day, warmly greeting Gladys. After Gladys ushered her into Sam’s office, Lila asked Gladys if she would mind leaving them. She said with a marked insinuation, “I’m not ready for women to see my new act.” Gladys departed gratefully.

“Lila, you’re lovelier than ever,” said Sam. “What have you got in that big totebag of yours?”

“My props,” she explained sweetly.

“Props? My, this sounds very ambitious.”

“It is. It took a long time planning.”

“Not more impersonations?”

“Oh, no, I’ve given that up, Sam darling. This is interpretations of infamous women in history.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.” She reached into the totebag and brought out a cup and saucer. She twisted a ring she wore and poured some powder into the cup, then announced proudly, “Lucrezia Borgia!”

Sam was speechless.

“Now get this one.” From the tote she took a beret which she fitted to her head, a cigar which she placed in her mouth, and a gun which made Sam nervous. She struck a familiar pose. “Get it?”

“Oh, sure — Bonnie. Bonnie and Clyde. Where’s Clyde? Ha ha!”

“I’ll skip to the big number.” Sam was grateful for her decision to lean toward brevity. He was embarrassed. He could have kicked himself with a spiked shoe for having consented to see her again. She rummaged in the totebag once again.

In the outer office, Gladys heard Sam cry, “Oh, no!” She rushed into his office just as Lila brought an axe smashing into his skull, announcing, “How about it, Sam? Lizzie Borden!”