Free Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders by Ron Goulart

hers.
    Groucho straightened up, assuming a fairly convincing maligned expression. “Funny stuff? I’d like to see the man who dares accuse Groucho Marx of being funny.”
    “I mean funny stuff of a hugging, pinching kind, Groucho,” Franki amplified. “Everything’ll be hunky-dory if you keep both hands in plain sight at all times. Okay?”
    He sighed. “It’s going to make it more difficult for me to guess your weight, my child,” he said. “But so be it.”
    She returned to studying the menu. “I take it you’re picking up the tab?”
    “I’ll have you know that the Marx clan is famed throughout the
South for never allowing a lady to pick up a check,” he assured her. “Of course, I think it only fair to warn you that we’re not in the South at the moment.”
    “I think I’ll have the French toast.”
    Consulting his menu, Groucho said, “I suppose we can afford that,” he decided. “I don’t see any gruel listed on the bill of fare, so I’ll have—”
    “Pardon me, Mr. Marx.” A plump middle-aged woman in a flowered dress had stopped beside their table, a small box camera held tightly in both hands.
    “Ah, I see they’ve taken to heart the note I dropped in the suggestion box on my last trip and have added gorgeous waitresses to their staff. We’ll have—”
    “No, I’m a fellow passenger,” she corrected. “May I take your picture?”
    Groucho leaned back in his chair, took a cigar from his breast pocket. “That’s going to depend, dear lady, on which picture you want to take,” he informed her as he unwrapped the cigar. “The framed Varga girl I have in a place of honor over my bedstead I’d miss a lot. However, the dying cowboy that hangs over the mantel in the living room you can swipe whenever you’re in the neighborhood. His horse is wall-eyed and—”
    “No, I meant,” she said, holding up the camera, “I want to take your picture with my Brownie.”
    He shook his head. “Alas, due to an onerous clause in my contract, I’m not allowed to be photographed with elves, gnomes, trolls, or brownies,” he explained. “However, should you care to snap an informal portrait of me and this far-from-zaftig young lady, why, shoot if you must.”
    “That’s what I had in mind, Mr. Marx,” she said, looking down at him through the camera.
    “Hands in plain sight,” reminded Franki as Groucho started to put an avuncular arm around her.

    The plump woman snapped two quick pictures, thanked him, and went back to her place a few tables away.
    After the waiter took their written breakfast orders, Groucho got to the real point of this get-together. “Forgive an old man’s curiosity, Francesca, but I’m eager for information about some of the other members of your gifted ensemble.”
    “So you did have an ulterior motive for inviting me to breakfast, huh?”
    “Yes, I did,” he confessed. “But that’s better than a posterior motive, which is what often drives my—”
    “Maggie was right.”
    “Is she one of the blondes?”
    “At the moment, yeah. She told me that you’re probably playing detective again,” said Franki. “Because of that attack on Manheim.”
    His eyebrows rose. “You lasses know about that?”
    “C’mon, Groucho, it’s all over the darn train.”
    Dropping the unlit cigar back into his pocket, he asked her, “Any ideas about who’d try to do him harm?”
    “Ask me, it’s a publicity stunt. To promote that flat-chested latest discovery of his. Joan of Arc, my fanny.”
    Groucho observed, “A somewhat drastic way to get publicity.”
    “Manheim, so I hear, is a pretty drastic guy.”
    Groucho asked, “What about the chap who heckled him in Union Station yesterday?”
    “Len Cowan?” She gave a shake of her head. “He’s just a harmless hothead. I’ve worked with Len before—a year or so ago at RKO—and he’s the kind of guy who’s always flying off the handle. But he limits himself to yelling and making scenes and doesn’t go in for