The Garden of Allah is at the intersection of Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevard and spreads across three-plus acres. Back around the time of the Great War it was the private estate of Alla Nazimova. By the end of the 1920s Nazimova was no longer a high-paid movie star and she sold the property to some people who converted her mansion into a hotel and built a couple of dozen bungalows around it. There’s a swimming pool that’s supposedly shaped like the Black Sea, a lot of trees and shrubbery and a good deal of red tile and cream-colored stucco. Nazimova herself still has a suite, rent free, in the main building.
On that particular bright, clear autumn afternoon Groucho was slouching along a flagstone path that led to the bungalow he sought. From behind a chest-high hedge came a hissing sound.
Groucho slowed, frowning in the direction of the noise. “Charlie, is that you skulking in the underbrush?”
Charles Butterworth rose up, wobbling some, until his head was completely visible above the hedge top. The actor beckoned Groucho to come closer. “Groucho, dear fellow, I wonder if you could lend me a hand?”
“Plenty of black coffee is what you need,” advised Groucho, stepping closer.
“Quite possibly, Groucho, but at the moment I need some help with Bob here.”
Groucho went up on tiptoe to peer over the hedge. “Jesus, Charlie, is he dead?”
Sprawled face-up in a bright red wheelbarrow was Robert Benchley. He was wearing a pair of polka dot swimming trunks and a very large yellow terrycloth robe. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, and his arms hung limply over the sides of the barrow.
“Dead?” Butterworth blinked, glancing down at his friend. “I don’t think so, Groucho. I certainly hope not. I’d feel foolish if it turned out I’ve been pushing a dead man around in this damn thing. What I’m trying to do is get him back to his bungalow—but the task has proved too formidable.”
“I’m not dead, I’m only sleeping,” announced Benchley, taking hold of both sides of the wheelbarrow, opening his eyes and attempting to sit up.
That effort caused the barrow to teeter, sway and then topple over to the right. Benchley was dumped out onto a patch of pale green grass. He remained there, apparently asleep again.
Groucho found a break in the hedge, pushed through and trotted over to the fallen actor. “Bob, sleeping on grass is the major cause of hoof and mouth disease. Especially if you happen to be sleeping with a cow.” He took hold of Benchley under the armpits. “Come, my lad, let’s be up and doing.”
“He usually holds his liquor better than this,” remarked Butterworth, watching as Groucho succeeded in tugging Benchley up into a sitting position.
Benchley brought up a plump hand and brushed at his moustache. “Groucho, you knew me when I was alive, didn’t you?”
“We were chums on the sidewalks of New York,” Groucho reminded as he struggled to get the pudgy actor to his feet. “Whose robe is that, by the way?”
“Am I wearing a robe?”
“Okay, you’re upright,” announced Groucho, letting go of him and stepping back.
Benchley teetered, stumbled and started to fall forward. “I have the vague recollection that I was an author of some distinction,” said Benchley while Groucho was catching him and pushing him back to a vertical position. “Is that true or merely the vague delusion of a doddering old coot?”
“You were my boyhood idol, Bob, and we all ranked you right up there with Pearl Buck, Albert Payson Terhune and Richard Harding Davis.” Groucho eased around until he was standing on the author-actor’s right-hand side, then he put an arm around him. “And, although Woollcott never agreed, I thought you were funnier than all three of them put together. And I’ll never forget the night we did put all three of them together and Terhune made such a hullabaloo because he was in the middle again.” He turned toward Butterworth. “Is he still living in the same bungalow?”
“He was this morning, Groucho.”
“I awoke one fine day to discover I’d metamorphosed into an actor,” said Benchley, his legs buckling some.
“I’ve had a similar experience,” said Groucho. “Only I used to be a boy tenor.”
“I recall that,” said Benchley, rubbing again at his moustache. “You were known as the Bobby Breen of our set. Which made it rather hard going for Bobby Breen whenever he dropped in for a visit.”
“I’ll see you home, Bob.”
“Weren’t we on some sort of mission, Charlie?” the writer asked his friend. “I remember it was something risky, so I had to fortify myself with strong drink.”
“It had to do with Nazimova, as I recall, Bob.”
“That’s right. Lately I’ve been getting Natasha Rambova mixed up with Alla Nazimova in my mind,” explained Benchley. “One of them lives hereabouts and we decided if we dropped in and took a look at her, that’d settle it once and for all.”
“It’s Nazimova,” said Groucho. “Now let’s get you home.”
“You’re certain it’s not Rambova?”
“Certain. In fact, it’s one of the few things I’m sure about in this vale of uncertainty.”
Benchley considered that information for a few seconds. “Very well, I’ll return to my lair and begin a series of short naps,” he said, nodding his head. “But, if it’s all the same with you, Julius, I’d rather ride in the wheelbarrow.”
* * *
At about the same time that Groucho was helping Benchley climb back aboard the wheelbarrow, I was also in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard. After parking my yellow coupe on a side street, I walked along the Strip until I came to the emerald green awning marking the entryway to the Club Tortuga.
There was a tall, thick man in a plaid sport coat and tan slacks leaning against the imitation adobe bricks just to the right of the maroon-colored padded door. “Closed until nightfall, sport,” he informed me as I approached the doorway to the nightclub.
“I understand Shel Leverson is here this afternoon,” I said. “I’d like to see him.”
“Why?”
“It has to do with Peg McMorrow.”
“Who’re you?”
“Frank Denby.” I answered. “I’m pretty sure Vince Salermo has mentioned me to Leverson.”
He nodded and said, “Wait.” He turned toward the door, started to reach for the handle. Then he thought of something, smiled ruefully and walked over to me. “Just in case,” he said and proceeded to frisk me.
Finding no weapons, he returned to the padded door, opened it a few inches and called, “Av, come here a minute, huh?”
A thin, pale man, wearing a double-breasted gray suit appeared in the opening. He and the thickset man had a brief conversation in murmurs I couldn’t catch.
The thin man went away and the door slowly closed. “Be a few minutes,” the big man told me.
Five minutes later the door opened again and Av, the thin one, made a come-on-in motion at me. “It’s okay, Denby,” he said in a reedy nasal voice. “He’ll see you.”
Soon as I stepped into the chill, shadowy foyer, I heard music and the sound of tap-dancing. A small band of five or six pieces was playing a swing version of “The Lady in Red.”
A drawling voice suddenly requested, loudly, “Kill the music, Sid.”
Everybody but the bass player quit immediately. He went on for another few bars before stopping.
My guide said, “We have to cross the dining room and the show area to get to Mr. Leverson’s office.”
“Fine.” I followed him into the large domed room.
There were no tablecloths on the dozens of small round tables and the spindly-legged chairs had been upended and piled atop them. At the center of the room a small oval area was harshly illuminated by a single white spotlight. Six girls in a variety of rehearsal clothes were lounging in a half circle, watching a small, frizzy-haired man in white ducks and a candy-striped shirt.
He signaled the piano player, a fat man in an overcoat who sat at a white upright on the small elevated bandstand. “Sid, just you on this. Give me the chorus again, if you would.”
Sid rested his cigar in an ashtray on top of the piano, ran his tongue over his upper front teeth and went into “The Lady in Red.”
The choreographer began a series of energetic dance steps, ending by slapping himself on the buttocks with both open palms. “Is that clear?” he asked the six pretty dancers.
“He’s better than they are,” commented Av, “which isn’t saying a hell of a lot.”
We wended our way through a scattering of tables. At a blank white door, he knocked three times. Then he opened the door and told me, “Go on in.”
I crossed the threshold, said “Oops,” and nearly stumbled in avoiding the body stretched out a few feet inside the doorway.
Standing beside the large clawfooted mahogany desk was a slim, vaguely handsome man I recognized as Shel Leverson. He was wincing, massaging his right fist. “I lost my temper,” he explained, indicating the unconscious thug stretched out on the ivory-colored carpeting. “Now, what can I do for you, Denby?”