I spent about twenty minutes drinking decaffeinated coffee (what’s the point?) and making up questions that nobody had asked me, but that I found interesting: How did they film the
Cracked Ice
sequence in which it appears that everyone is talking backward? (By filming it forward and projecting it in reverse.) Why was the billing Lillis and Townes, and not Townes and Lillis? (They flipped a coin.) How had the team met? (Townes was playing piano at a whorehouse Lillis visited.)
“I hear there’s a possibility you two might be planning a comeback,” I said to Townes.
He looked puzzled; he squinted at me as if my image required focus. “A comeback?” he asked.
“Yes.” I persevered despite all indicators. “Mr. Lillis mentioned something about a script involving two older men who rob a bank . . .”
Townes’s lip curled with resignation and exasperation. “Mr. Lillis,” he said. “Mr. Lillis is delusional, and thinks two ridiculously old men could be a hit at the box office. He wanted me to come to the nursing home where he’s living and
rehearse
. Can you imagine? He has an
idea
, not even a script, and he wants an eighty-year-old man to come up and
rehearse
. We didn’t improvise; we had scripts and we stuck to them. Except when Harry had something to add. Mr. Lillis. ” Townes waved a hand in dismissal. I got off the subject.
“What about your titles? Who came up with those?” I knew, but it was an easy question, and we went on for a few more minutes.
Having warmed up my subject, I felt it was possible now to enter into less neutral territory. “How did you meet Vivian Reynolds?” I asked Townes.
At the mention of his mother’s name, Wilson tensed visibly, but Townes, the consummate professional, showed no reaction. “I met Viv through Harry, actually,” he said. “Harry knew her from a party at Jack Benny’s house, and I knew he’d gone out with Viv a couple of times. But he said he wasn’t interested. He also said he thought she’d be good for the picture we were making.”
“
Bargain Basement
?” I asked, and Townes nodded.
“We needed a girl who looked good, but who could also keep up with Harry’s patter,” he explained. “In Hollywood, you couldn’t walk to the telephone without tripping over a girl who looked good, but the other part was difficult.” His eyes got a little glassy. “Viv was the best I’d ever seen.”
“And you fell in love with her,” I pressed on.
“I married her,” Townes said, his voice upping the ante. “I had a son with her.” He nodded toward Wilson. “I worked with her, I lived with her, and I buried her when she died.”
My ears must have pricked up when he opened that door for me. “The fire in your house,” I said. “Were you at the studio when you found out?”
Townes’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” was all he said.
“It started in the kitchen?”
“What am I, the fire commissioner? It was fifty years ago.” Townes seemed amazed that I’d broach the subject.
“I’m just trying to understand,” I tried to soothe him. “There were rumors . . .” Maybe that wasn’t the most soothing thing I could say.
Townes never looked upset; he merely glanced over at his son and said, “Wilson, go load the shotgun.” Comedians. Always playing the moment.
Wilson, deadpan, left the room.
“Mr. Townes, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” I told him.
“No offense taken, Elliot. But Wilson gets sensitive about his mother. Never really knew her. If he hadn’t been at his grandmother’s house that day, I wouldn’t have him, either. So do me a favor, now, and go home, okay?” Townes stood.
I had just started asking the questions I’d come here to ask, and thought there might still be a way to repair the interview. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t we just talk a few more minutes?”
“It only takes Wilson a minute or so to load that shotgun, Elliot. I don’t think we have very long.”
I stood.
“You weren’t kidding?” I asked Townes. He shook his head very slowly and deliberately: No.
“Go home. Don’t worry about offending me, and don’t ask me about Viv anymore. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, is it?”
I heard Wilson coming from somewhere inside the house. His impact tremors would put a T. rex to shame. I started for the door.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Townes.”
“Go, Elliot.”
I hit the door as Wilson appeared in the archway. He was, indeed, carrying a shotgun.
Panic will make you do a lot of funny things. I barreled out of Townes’s house like John Belushi leaving the dean’s office in
Animal House
, yelling, “Sophie! Start the car!” I ran down the steps to the street, hearing Wilson’s woolly mammoth footsteps behind me. At street level, still not seeing the parking lights come on, I ducked my head to see inside the car as I ran.
Sophie still had the iPod buds in her ears, and hadn’t heard me. Her head bopped in rhythm to the music.
At full speed, it’s hard to look behind you, but I felt it was necessary. And I was right.
Wilson stood at the first landing, about six feet above my level, and he aimed the shotgun right in my direction. He looked serious.
But I had reached the passenger door to Sophie’s car, and grabbed for the handle.
Which was locked, naturally.
I started to bang on the window with both fists. “Sophie! ” I screamed. “Open the door!”
She noticed me in the window, looked annoyed, and hit a button on her side of the car. I heard the door lock click, or maybe that was the shotgun’s pump being worked. I couldn’t tell.
I wrenched the door open as fast as I could, and as I dove into the car, I heard the blast from the shotgun. Something whizzed past me; a lot of somethings. I couldn’t tell where they were headed. Then I saw a number of tiny holes appear on the inside of the car door as I pulled it shut.
“What are you doing to my car?” Sophie asked.
“Start the car!” I yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Sophie began going through all the steps new drivers go through. She checked her mirrors, released the parking break, made sure the transmission was in park before turning the key . . .
I checked the side mirror in front of me, saw it had been blown to bits by the last blast, and I didn’t want to wait for the next one. “
Drive!
” I yelled.
Sophie started the car and drove. I think we might have nicked the fender on the car in front of us, but we kept going. I never heard another blast from the shotgun, but I didn’t exhale until we were at least three blocks away.
At that point, I finally relaxed enough to reach back and get the shoulder harness. I pulled it around me, and was somewhat surprised when the hand that snapped it into place came back with blood on two fingers.
“Hey,” Sophie said. “Are you getting that on my seats?”
12
“I
realize we agreed to date again,” Sharon said, “but I wasn’t planning on seeing your naked butt this soon.”
I lay facedown on what I call “the massage table,” the one with the hole in it for your face. It doesn’t stop you from talking—at least, it doesn’t stop
me
from talking— but it’s a weird sensation to be staring at the floor and having a conversation with a woman who is picking buckshot out of your ass.
“Wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, either,” I told her.
“You realize I’m required to report this,” she said. “It’s a gunshot wound.”
“You can’t fudge it? Say it was a really bad case of poison ivy or something?”
“No,” she said in a voice that left no room for argument.
“How bad is it, Doc?” I asked.
“Not so bad that you couldn’t sit through an hour’s drive back from Queens to see me, instead of going to an emergency room. Honestly, Elliot, what were you thinking?”
My face was starting to melt into that table. When I wanted to stand, would the table go with me? “I was thinking that it wasn’t bleeding very badly, and I wanted a friendly doctor to take a look at it, and not some hotshot intern on his first ER shift.” With women, flattery will get you everywhere.
“Did you really think that line was going to work?” Sharon asked. Okay, maybe not
everywhere
.
“I thought the ‘friendly doctor’ thing might,” I admitted.
“I’m a medical professional, and I’m here to tell you that if this had been bad, you could have bled to death on your way to the friendly doctor,” she said. “You probably scared poor Sophie half to death.”
“She was only worried about what her parents would think when they saw the holes in her Prius.”
“What did you tell her?” Sharon asked.
“That I’d pay for the work at Moe’s with no questions asked. Can I get up soon? All the blood is rushing to my face.”
“Not
all
of it,” she answered. “You’re almost done. You know, Moe’s going to have to report the gunshot holes in the car, too.”
“Moe’s been through it before,” I said. “You never answered my question: How bad is it back there?”
Sharon considered for a moment. “You’ll sit again,” she said.
13
MONDAY
MY
behind was sore, but not very, and Sharon gave me an antibiotic to take for a week in case any of the buckshot Wilson had peppered into my butt was rusty. She’d then contacted Barry Dutton, who’d rolled his eyes (I’m imagining) and called the NYPD to report the shooting. The sergeant who called me sounded wildly uninterested, asked a few questions, and hung up. In New York City, a shooting is worrisome, but nothing to get upset about.
Dutton came by the theatre the next day to check on me, and found me in my office, sitting on a pillow and eating a turkey sandwich. “Didn’t I specifically urge you
not
to get involved in the Hollywood murder?” he asked, scanning the room for another place to sit, which didn’t exist.
“I already have a pain in the butt, Chief,” I told him. “You didn’t have to come by just for that.”
“That’s very amusing,” Dutton said. “I’ll have to try to remember that.” He leaned on my desk, in his efforts to appear casual. “I’m concerned that you went out to ask about this Hollywood case when I advised you not to, and got yourself shot.”
“Wasn’t my plan.”
“Funny how things often work out that way, though, isn’t it?” Dutton did his best to look serious, considering how I looked leaning on a bed pillow in sweatpants that must have shown quite the bulge from the gauze my ex-wife had used on my rear. “Elliot, you’re tearing at old scars. The cops in L.A. ruled it an accidental death fifty years ago. Why can’t you?”
“Something’s not right about it, Chief. If it was such an obvious accident, why did Townes pull out a shotgun the second I started asking about it? How come he was signed out at the studio when the fire started, when he was on the schedule for filming that afternoon? Why did an eyewitness see him hauling his belongings out of the house
before
the fire started?”
Dutton rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. I seem to inspire that particular move in a lot of people. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s sick of the insinuation and reacts violently. How can I say? It was fifty years ago and three thousand miles away. Most of the people involved then are dead now. What possible good can you do after all this time?”
“Maybe I can help Vivian Reynolds rest in a little more peace. Maybe there isn’t anyone else who’ll speak for her. Isn’t that a noble enough cause?” Okay, I was reaching, but detectives love to say stuff like that, and I thought it would resonate with Dutton.
“Give me a break,” he said. “She’ll be just as dead if you find out she was murdered as she is now from an accidental fire.” I clearly have resonation problems. Perhaps I need to take myself into the shop for some fine-tuning.
“All right, so it intrigues me. I’m a classic comedy film fanatic. This is as close as I’m going to get to being involved with the movies I spend my life watching.”
“Won’t it take the fun out of the movies if you find out one of your heroes killed her?”
I hadn’t thought of that. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I stared up at Dutton for a few seconds, trying to think of something to say.
He misunderstood, and said, “I guess I can’t dissuade you. But I do hope you’ll do the rest of your interrogations on the phone, where it’s harder to shoot at a person.”
Dutton stood up, and just so I wouldn’t have to respond to the question he’d asked me before, I said, “What’s going on with the search for Anthony’s movie?”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I’d like to take another look at the projection booth, if you’ll give me the key,” Dutton said.
“I won’t give you the key, but I’ll take you up there, Chief,” I told him.
Dutton looked positively offended. “Do you think I’m going to steal something?” he asked.
“No, but I’ve seen you up there before. You like to push buttons, and you think you’re C. Francis Jenkins. I’ll stand in the corner and watch you.”
“Who the heck is C. Francis Jenkins?” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Dutton swear. He’s the only cop I’ve ever met who would say “who the heck.”
“When you can answer that question,” I said, “maybe I’ll let you go up to the projection booth by yourself.”
I got the key and led the way upstairs, despite my somewhat barky backside. Walking wasn’t that bad, but the stairs were not my best friend. Until you get shot in it, you don’t realize how much you use your butt. His amusement badly concealed, Dutton stayed behind me. I let him into the booth, and stood in the corner, as promised.
“I don’t understand what you expect to find here now,” I told Dutton. “Anthony and I have both been up here dozens of times since the film was taken, and the place was even cleaned once.”
Dutton looked up from under the control console. “Once?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I have a service that comes in once a week.”
“It’s been more than a week.”