Chapter 29 - Where the Truth Lies

IT HAD NOT BEEN HARD for him to get the suite he wanted. The Versailles was still one of the fanciest of the hotels along the beach, but now, well into the 1970s, its era had passed. The beach had become “the Catskills with Cubans and melanoma.” The joke went, “Take all that’s lovely in Bermuda out of Bermuda and you have Miami.” Lenny Bruce said Miami was where neon went to die.

They’d thought it was odd, him wanting a two-bedroom suite when he’d arrived alone. Maybe he was planning to have company later that evening. He certainly had never lacked for it in the past.

He didn’t go into either bedroom at first. After the bellman had left, he had stood in the middle of the living room. The TV was different, a color model. All of the furniture was new. Well, after all, it had been nearly fifteen years. But the floor plan was still the same. Right in that spot. That was where the truth had come out. And that had been the end of everything.

That was why the girl had had to die.

She had stayed the night—a night that for her would never end—here in the living room, on its convertible couch. Imagine that: a Castro in Miami. (Joke.)

The boys had retired to their respective bedrooms, either of which could be reached by a door on either side of the living room or its own door in the hall. There was a lot to sleep off. It had not been a good evening.

How had the end begun?

He picked up the phone and dialed room service. “Hello, room service? I’m holding a service here in my room and I don’t have enough to make up a minyan. What? A minyan. It’s a Jewish prayer service, we’re doing a Kaddish tonight. I’m in Shul Twenty-Five-Oh-One, oh-two, oh-three, oh-by-the-way, what’s your name, sweetheart? ‘Robertson,’ yeah, no wonder you don’t understand me. Listen, I need three able-bodied men to fill out my minyan, but if you can find me three able-bodied women, the hell with the minyan, we can have us a party. Joke. Forget it, listen, this is Lanny Morris in 2501. Yes, that Lanny Morris. Well, I’m a big fan of yours too. No, I really mean that. Mr. Collins? Saw him quite recently, as it happens. He was looking really good, but then again, when does he not I should say, huuuh? Now look, can you send up three filet mignons done rare, rare, and rare, with béarnaise sauce, the usual stuff on the side. Great, and look, I don’t want you to take this the whole entirely way other, but you have a very sweet attendant down there, very lovely young lady, and she’s just terrific, you know who I mean? That’s her, could you do a favor for a tired entertainer and make sure she’s who brings the order up? Even if you have to pull her off some other room. For the Lanny-Man, okay? No, we got all the booze we need here but, say, have her bring up three bottles of Moët on ice, okay? She can wheel it all into 2502, that’s the living room. Thanks, sweetheart.”

He hung up the phone. That’s how it had begun. Vince was no longer with him now, which was a blessed relief. But it was kind of unnatural staying in three empty rooms like this. He thought of having a word with Reuben, who had his own smaller room down the hall, but then he remembered Reuben wasn’t on this trip either. So he sat in the dark.

Room service had become woefully understaffed at the Versailles. It wasn’t until almost an hour later that he awoke to a knocking at the living room door.

“Who is it?”

“Room service,” said a lilting female voice.

Still dozy, he opened the door.

She noticed the dark. “Oh, can you turn on a light?”

He fumbled around the room for a switch. Turning it on, he went back to sit on the couch.

The young woman was at most five feet tall, very slender. Her Versailles outfit fit her as if she were Lucille Ball farcically donning a bellman’s uniform for comic effect. She had rolled up her sleeves and cuffs and looked adorable. Her hair was long and gleaming black, her eyes brown. She was not Maureen O’Flaherty.

“Three steaks with the trimmings. You want me to set up the table?”

He indicated that that would be very nice, even though he had no intention of eating a single bite. It was all for old times’ sake.

She busied herself, dressing a circular dining table by windows that overlooked the ocean, except that at night, of course, the ocean couldn’t be seen. She took out a folded tablecloth and flapped it into place, then started transferring covered dishes from the Sterno-heated box within the room-service cart.

“Are you Japanese or Chinese?” he asked.

“Korean.” She smiled. “The kitchen told me you’re a famous person. Why are you famous?”

“Beats me,” he replied. “What’s your name?”

“Mei Ling. Chinese name, but I’m Korean. Your name?”

“Lanny Morris. Jewish name, but I’m a nebbish. Joke. How long have you been in this country, Mei Ling?”

“One year, ten months. You ordered three bottles of champagne and they gave me three ice buckets, because we didn’t know if it’s one for each room or—You want me to open one now or do you want to wait until company comes?”

He smiled. “You can open all three, Mei Ling. You have a check for me to sign?”

She handed a billfold to him. “I do. Maybe I should get you to autograph something else too, because the kitchen said it would be worth something. You know, when you die.”

He was overtaken by laughter.

“Don’t forget a tip for Mei Ling,” she instructed him.

He alternated between adding an extravagant sum to the check and glancing at her face. “You know what, Mei Ling? You don’t look Korean.”

She checked the tip he’d left her and was very satisfied. “I’m Vietnamese, originally from the North, but who wants to get into that? The guests don’t, and I sure as hell don’t. I do a lot better with tips as Madame Butterfly than I would as Trinh Le Truong. Pour you some champagne now?”

He nodded that that would be all right. She took a champagne goblet from the cart and filled it to the brim. He asked if she’d like a glass herself, but she explained that she was on duty. He smiled as she handed him the goblet. She was definitely not Maureen O’Flaherty.

At the door, she said, “Listen, could I get that autograph from you? They won’t let me keep the one on the check.”

He nodded and went over to an end table. There was a notepad and Versailles pen there. He scribbled, “Thanks for servicing me (JOKE)… Lanny Morris.”

She looked at it with curiosity and tucked it into a pocket. “Are you really famous, Mr. Morris?”

“In my day. Before your time, I guess.”

She explained they’d had no TV, and American movies had been banned where she grew up. “What did you do, Mr. Morris?”

He thought. “I made Vince Collins’ life very difficult.”

She didn’t understand, but her policy was not to linger in the room of a solitary gentleman one second longer than was necessary. She wished him a good evening.

He went over to a shelf by the bar, took down a water tumbler, and tossed the contents of his champagne goblet into it. Then he took the first champagne bottle out of its nest of ice cubes and filled the tumbler to the brim. And drank the entire tumbler down.

He took his glass toward the room he’d slept in that night and headed for its bathroom. He turned on the single tap in the combination tub and shower. Water started spraying from the showerhead and he flipped the mechanism that diverted it to the tub, setting the water to “hot.”

While the tub was filling, he went to the desk in his bedroom and took out a sheet of Versailles stationery. Sipping now and then from his tumbler of champagne, he wrote a few lines so no one would misunderstand. For moral support, he placed a small bottle of pills before him on the desk while he was writing.

When he was done, he fetched the three champagne buckets from the living room and carried them into the bathroom, neatly setting them alongside the tub.

He then shed his clothes, turned off the water, and tested its temperature. Damn. It was scalding hot and he didn’t want to wait. Then he had a stroke of genius. He took the champagne bottles out of their respective ice buckets and dumped the ice into the tub. Then he nestled himself down into this cocktail of hot water on the rocks. There was poetry in it. Poetry that he was lying in a tub of water and ice.

He didn’t think he had the courage to kill himself, not just yet. But his plan, his clever plan, was to drink enough champagne, perhaps all three bottles, and to accompany the champagne with ample medication, so that eventually “ending things” would become a very acceptable, even a nice, idea. He thought he just might be able to manage that. He knew for certain he could no longer manage anything else. So the choice really wasn’t his.

He opened the bottle of pills and took one, downing it with a fresh tumbler of champagne. Things were so much better already.

* * *

Based on the contents of his note, his conversation with Ms. Truong, and my conversations with the Miami police investigators, this is my best effort at reconstructing his last evening.

A call came in early that afternoon to the Beverly Hills office of Irv Fleischmann, Lanny Morris’ business manager, from the operations chief at the Versailles in Miami.

Fleischmann took in the news. A maid had come to clean the hotel room. She almost passed out when she discovered the body floating in the cool water.

Fleischmann turned to the man who was seated comfortably across the desk, wearing tennis shorts. Fleischmann told him as gently as he could that Vince Collins was dead. He’d died of a drug overdose while lying in a tub at their old suite at the Versailles. There’d been a note, signed by Vince. There was no question but that it was suicide.

Lanny buried his face in his hands and sobbed for almost five minutes. Irv Fleischmann wasn’t a hugging person, and he felt Lanny wouldn’t have wanted that. He instead tried to be useful. He went out to his secretary’s desk, told her the news, calmed her down, said he would be taking no phone calls. Mr. Morris would release a statement later that afternoon, but he would not be talking to any press, at least not for the moment.

He phoned Reuben at Lanny’s home and told him to bring a change of clothing, including a dark suit and tie, over to the office. Lanny had been dressed for tennis. Reuben himself was almost as upset as Lanny, but he said he would come over with Dominic and his limousine, in case Lanny needed it. Irv thanked Reuben, took a box of Kleenex off his secretary’s desk, returned to his office, and closed the door behind him.

Lanny was doing better. He shook his head. “God, Irving. Why now? If now, why not fifteen years ago?”

Irving had no idea what to say to this bewildering statement. He knew that often people said strange things under such circumstances. He offered, “Maybe he went off his rocker. The fellow from the hotel said he told room service his name was Lanny Morris. Even signed an autograph that way. Maybe he just went crazy.”

Lanny shook his head. “No. That’s not it, Irv.” Lanny took a cigarette from a circular holder on Irv’s desk and lit it. “He just hated being Vince Collins.”