Laurel and Hardy Murders by Marvin Kaye

chair; beyond him, Butterfly McQueen—who hadn’t aged much since Gone With the Wind —picked at the salad she’d ordered instead of the prime ribs she, a vegetarian, could not eat. Every so often, she glanced up, smiling shyly, at some question or remark made by Grand Sheik Al Kilgore, seated on the extreme right of the banquet’s head table.
    The waiters began to pour the coffee. O. J. rose and rapped his water glass with a spoon. Though the banquet was by no means formal, our president had on a modern-cut tuxedo with tartan cummerbund and a ruffled-front-and-cuffs white shirt.
    “Would Marty Kondak and Barry Richmond please come to the dais?” O. J. asked. It took a minute for them to get there—Barry had to be hunted down upstairs where he was doing some last-minute thing with a spotlight. When they both mounted the dais, Al Kilgore and Jack Black rose and joined them.
    At O. J.’s request, everyone stood up and held their various libations aloft.
    “The toast to Mae Busch and Charley Hall,” O. J. announced, “will be delivered by His Honor Barry Richmond.”
    “Not Hizzoner,” Barry protested, “My Excellency!”
    “Barry,” O. J. pleaded, “do the toast.”
    “Eh bien,” Barry said, raising his glass of Coke. “A Charles et Mae, deux drôles magnifiques!” He took a sip, then added, “That’s what you call a French toast.”
    A hearty groan, and the cry of “Hear, hear!” signified the general drinking of the pledge.
    O. J. leaned in to the microphone. “The toast to Fin will be given by Marty Kondak.”
    A slim, tall man in navy-blue nautical jacket stepped forward. He had a pencil-thin mustache and wore glasses. This was the uncrowned “Poet Lariat” of the parent tent, Marty Kondak, whose specialty was toasts in rhyme. Drawing a piece of notepaper from his pocket, he found the appropriate bit of poesy and sang a paean to Jimmy Finlayson to the tune of “M-O-T-H-E-R.”
    “F is for the frowns he always gave them,
    I is for the icy stare he had.
    N is for the nasty tricks he played them,
    For he was good at being very bad.
    L is for the leers that—A—were awful.
    Y is for the yelling and the yowls
    As he duped the boys with schemes unlawful
    And squints and sneers and sniggers, sniffs and scowls.
    S-O-N, you know what kind I’m meaning,
    A finer heavy there has never been! You see the way my final rhyme is leaning:
    Here’s to our Jimmy—F-I-N—TO FIN!”
    “Hear, Hear!” the company proclaimed, once more raising glasses high.
    Al Kilgore delivered Babe’s toast. “Once, Jack McCabe asked Stan how come he always seemed to watch Babe whenever looking at one of their films. Stan’s answer was simple—‘He really is a funny, funny fellow.’ Well, here’s to Babe, a man who could make Stan laugh!”
    “ Hear, hear !”
    “Last but certainly not least,” said O. J., “the toast to Stan will be given by our special guest of honor, Mr. Jack Black.”
    If we hadn’t already been standing, we would have all gotten up then. The applause rang out loud and long.
    Black shook his head as O. J. invited him to step up to the microphone. He stayed where he was. “Pardon me if I avoid that electric crutch. When Billy and I started out, there was no such thing on a stage as a mike. We had to know how to project straight to the last row of the house. It’s practically a lost art.” He sipped his drink and continued. “A toast to Stan, yes...a privilege. A solemn duty. Comedy is a great art. I have devoted my life to it. My religion has no hymns, only laughter. If top bananas are the high priests of my church, then Stan Laurel was a goddamned cardinal!”
    “HEAR, HEAR!”
    Everyone cheered. O. J. patted the old trouper on the back.
    After we were seated, Al Kilgore read telegrams from friends and absentee members, then O. J. got up and announced the date of the Philadelphia-New York joint convention, which was to be held less than one month later.
    “Considering the brevity of