Testimony of Barron “Broadway Barry” Minsky
(Taken in the presence of Inspector Osamu Levene of the Spontoon Islands Constabulary, Mick and Maura Charlton, Mr. Bernie Wister and Cheebles)

I know you from the old days, Mr. Mick Charlton the Thin Guy, getting your private eyeful at Mississippi Guidon’s Five Hundred Club or Fine Time Maurice Woodstein’s speak. For a transcontinental op, you’re a more than somewhat honest joe, and one always ready to pass on a few potatoes to help a chap keep his bookmaker warm. Plus you never stick your beezer into business that is none of your own.

You ask what leads a fine selection of Broadway’s brightest denizens to the balmy Pacific parts here of the Spontooneries. Fine, this is an honest and forthright way to elicit some easy information, and more than somewhat preferable to the methods of Officer Brannigan of the Broadway Squad.

It happened sometime ago, that I was at Mindy’s restaurant, a spot you will recall is much resorted to by the Broadway element, topping off a small repast (cheese blintzes and sour cream being a favorite choice among the notably choosy) with a nice hunk of Mindy’s famous cheesecake. This cheesecake of Mindy’s is well known throughout Manhattan Island and parts beyond as the perfect end to a pleasing meal at that establishment. It happens that I get it with fresh coffee which is black and hot and in all aspects the ideal cup of Java.

In come a few guys that I know of yore: Howie the Hulk and Good Time Larry Lemberg. The latter runs a speakeasy nearby and is the purported brains of the team, a weaselly citizen with a pointed beezer and one of those little mustaches. He is dragging along the so-called reformed gambler High Musterson and a doll. This doll is a member of Mississippi Guidon’s girl chorus, one of the short and cute variety which are nice if you like them like that. I do like that type more than somewhat. This one was a redheaded doll, which is always nice although they can be tempermental even when bottle-bred redheads, name of Miss Muriel Murgatroyd. I am hearing on the grapevine that this is not the name that her old Pappy and mother called her, which is Sheyna Maydele Morgenstern, but such are the arcane ways of the show business and a doll has got to make her own way in this world. What is interesting here is that this Miss Muriel is reputed to be the doting doll of Heinie Schmitz in Harlem, not such a guy as will take kindly to anybody dancing more than once and a half with a doll that he thinks well of and a guy that it is more than somewhat ill-advised to double-cross. So how comes she to be hanging around High Musterson and on Good Time Larry? High Musterson is now got his own ever-loving wife, the former Miss Sarah Bran of the Save-a-Soul Mission, and seldom appears at Mindy’s unless in his Mission uniform. This is more than somewhat puzzling, and it’s funny but I think of you the contented op and all those mysterious cases you used to solve.

High Musterson and Good Time Larry take seats to either side of me, while Howie the Hulk keeps his eye on the entrance of Mindy’s. His hand was in his pocket where he probably had a John Roscoe. Miss Muriel Murgatroyd also took a seat.

“You’re just the type of guy we need to see,” begins Musterson. “Good Time Larry has been making time with Miss Muriel here, which might bring them joy except for the fact that Heinie Schmitz thinks that she is his doll. However, they are very much in love, which as we know is a grand thing except when Shotgun Johnson is waiting for Good Time Larry on the second-floor front of the building across the way with some nice little sawed-offs, and are under orders from Heine not to miss.”

“This,” I reply slowly. “is not a good thing. Other citizens might find themselves caught without intention in the firing area.”

“And I would be killed off,” snaps Good Time Larry.

“This would also be likely,” I reply to him. “Probably somebody would miss you, too.”

“Please help us,” puts in the doll, “we got to get out of New York or we will not live to see tomorrow!” Miss Muriel commences in to weeping and does a complete and professional job of it. As a guy who cannot stand to witness a little doll weeping, I see that I have to bring in the heavy cavalry part of my brain. Now it happens that I have a close acquaintance who has spent some little time in the bootleg business, and this acquaintance maintains a seaplane in a special boathouse out at Great Neck, Long Island. This pal is Subrosa Al Rose, and he owes me a favor for services rendered. I tell this to the doll Miss Muriel, ignoring the glare of Good Time Larry. 

“Good,” says High Musterson, “my good works are completed and I can return to the side of my ever-loving wife Sarah. Good luck to you all!” He then lams it out of Mindy’s. I look at Miss Muriel, and then at the icy gazes of Good Time Larry Lemberg and Howie the Hulk. Then I know that I cannot step out of this now, and will have to escort this trio past the waiting snipers of Heinie Schmitz and out to Great Neck, Long Island.

** ** **
It is a few hours later, and the taxicab borrowed from Sunshine Taxi Service is feeling the trip over to Brooklyn and Queens and out to Subrosa Al’s joint in Great Neck. The Boing seaplane is there and all gassed up and waiting, but the problem is that none of the party can pilot one of these sky-flivvers. It happens that Miss Muriel knows that I know how to fly, on account of being in the Signal Corps and the Lafayette Escadrille during the Great War. This is not a fact that I usually like to have nosed around and about. It turns out that Miss Muriel is being pals with Sunny Slutsky AKA Carmelita Pepita the Bolivian Bombshell, a doll who performs at Mississippi Guidon’s club and who was once near and dear to my heart. It was into her shell-likes that I poured the secrets of a lifetime.

From this point on, my life is not my own but the property of Good Time Larry Lemberg & Company. I work out a flight path headed for the West Coast and beyond, as they are talking more than somewhat about the allure of one of those Pacific Ocean tropical paradises outside the reach of Heinie Schmitz.

I do not say that I doubt that such a place exists.

** ** **