“Okay,” I said. “Did you call 911 like I asked you to?” It had been the first sentence out of my mouth when Anthony had informed me someone had died laughing—or in this case,
not
laughing—in our theatre. Sophie nodded earnestly, just as her cell phone stopped playing music. “Good. I think everyone had better stay put until the cops get here. They’ll want to talk to us.”
“Mr. Freed?” Anthony refuses to call me “Elliot,” even though Sophie, three years his junior, does. He thinks that just because I once sold a novel to a film company, and the movie was actually made, that I now have a direct line to Quentin Tarantino and must be treated with every respect. He’s wrong. I looked at him. “Should we close his eyes or something?”
I think Sophie’s hands went to her belly at that point. Not that she actually
has
a belly, but if there were one, that’s where it would be. Sophie actually looked a little like a girl scarecrow dressed for an evening out at Dracula’s place.
I shook my head. “No. Don’t touch anything. Once the police get here . . .”
“When are they
getting
here, already?” Sophie asked. Her voice made her sound like she was about eight years old. “It’s been
hours
.”
I smiled with one side of my mouth. “It’s been nine minutes, honey. Take it easy. Do you want to go and wait in the lobby?” She nodded, and was out the door in roughly the same amount of time it takes a Pauly Shore movie to go to DVD.
Anthony and I spent a few uncomfortable moments staring at each other, then he broke the tension by staring at the ceiling, while I completed a close study of the exit sign to the left of the screen rather than look at him or our less animated guest. Normally, Anthony would be asking me about some obscure movie he’d seen in class that week, and I’d be telling him I didn’t know much about it, but let’s say we were a touch preoccupied at the moment. A dead guy staring at a blank movie screen will do that to you.
Luckily, we heard the sirens just seconds later, which gave us a clear agenda, even if we didn’t know what it would be yet. The people who handled these situations had arrived.
The EMTs got inside first, rolling a gurney and acting like it was an episode of
ER
. Clearly, we idiot civilians couldn’t be trusted to tell when someone was dead, and it would be in their purview to resurrect my guest and show us all how ignorant we had been. Even medical people spend too much time watching television, and sincerely believe they, too, can be heroes in every possible situation. I had given up that attitude two years earlier, when my wife the doctor had decided she’d prefer to be married to another doctor. And then six months later, married him.
“Stand aside,” the taller one said, despite the fact that neither Anthony nor I was standing anywhere near the stiff in row S, seat 18. The EMT and his partner rushed to the seat and blocked my view as their arms flailed and they barked orders at each other. After a few moments, the second EMT, eager for his role in the drama, looked dolefully at me.
“This man’s dead,” he said solemnly. If he’d said, “He’s dead,
Jim
,” he could have been DeForest Kelley on
Star Trek
; that’s how perfectly final his words were.
“No kidding,” I told him. “I thought he just wanted to get into tomorrow night’s show without paying a second time.”
He stared at me a moment, but was unable to react to my insubordinate behavior with anything except surprise. It was lucky for him that the police arrived at that moment. It was probably lucky for me, too, as I was feeling sorry about being so snotty, and was about to apologize.
Two uniformed Midland Heights police officers walked through the open door to the auditorium, a blond woman in her mid-thirties and a youngish man who looked to be of Indian or Pakistani descent. They nodded to the EMT, who had just pronounced the dead man dead, and the blond officer took a look at the guest of honor, who was now considerably more disheveled than he had been, but no more animated.
“What do you think?” she asked the taller EMT, who was probably the senior technician. He was about forty, and the flecks of gray at his temples gave him that look of authority that works so well in commercials for Lipitor and other cholesterol-lowering drugs.
He puffed himself up at the sight of the attractive cop. “Heart attack,” he said. “It’s just a guess, but it looks like it hit him so fast he didn’t even blink before he was dead.”
The blond officer turned to me. “Did you notice him during the film?” she asked.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I told her. “I’m Elliot Freed. I own the theatre.”
Her eyes widened a bit, and she almost smiled. “I’m sorry. It’s my first dead movie patron.”
“Mine, too.”
She nodded. “That’s Officer Patel,” she said, indicating her partner, “and I’m Officer Levant.”
Officer Patel was questioning Anthony over to one side. “I’ve never met anyone named Levant before.” I’d seen Oscar Levant in some old movies, and was wondering if she were some descendant.
“It used to be Levine, they tell me.”
My eyebrows probably rose. “You don’t look it,” I told her. I can say that because I
do
look it.
She pursed her lips, but not in a nice way. “My ex-husband, ” she said. “Given name is Baldwin.”
“I didn’t mean to react that way,” I apologized. “I’m a little shaken up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she responded. “It’s understandable. Now . . .”
“I noticed he wasn’t laughing, during
Young Frankenstein
,” I told her.
“What scene wasn’t he laughing at?” She seemed to mean it.
“The Blind Man scene,” I answered.
Levant looked surprised. “You should have called us sooner,” she said.
Really? Could I have saved his life if I’d taken the talents of Mel Brooks more seriously?
Levant smiled at my worried expression. “Calm down,” she said. “I’m kidding. You’d think the owner of a theatre that only shows comedies would have a better sense of humor.”
“I usually do, when everyone who walks in walks out after the movie is over. I’m not used to the police knowing the Mel Brooks oeuvre so well. Officer, I really didn’t notice anything unusual about . . .”
Patel, who had put on latex gloves and approached the body, was reading the driver’s license from the wallet he’d extracted from my deceased guest’s side pocket. “Mr. Vincent Ansella,” he said.
“. . . about Mr. Ansella at all, until Anthony told me something was wrong.” I gestured toward Anthony, who was seated in row R, seat 2. He looked like, well, like he’d been in the same room with a dead body too long, and he was staring at Officer Levant in a way that made me notice how well she filled out her uniform. I’d never seen Anthony look like that at anyone before. I turned toward Levant again. “Any way we can get Mr. Ansella out of here now? I think my staff is getting a little spooked.”
Levant shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Freed,” she said. “We’ll have to wait until the detectives have been through.”
I sat down. Row U, seat 1. “There have to be detectives, even when it’s, um, natural causes?”
Levant nodded. “Procedure. We’re never sure about anything until the autopsy, so then if anything looks suspicious, the detectives have seen the scene.”
“They’ve seen the scene?” I smiled at Levant with the left side of my mouth. I’m told that’s my rakish grin. Okay, so I’m not really told that, but nobody’s ever specifically told me it
isn’t
rakish.
“You’d prefer if I said they’ve surveyed the area of the myocardial infarction?” Levant responded.
I didn’t have the time (or the wit, to be honest) to retort in an amusing manner, because the rear door opened wide, and a very large African-American man who looked like Colin Powell’s stunt double walked in, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. Behind him, Sophie slipped through the half-opened door with another uniformed cop behind her. She looked even paler than usual, which, for Sophie, is saying a lot. There are polar bears with more pigment in their faces than Sophie.
Levant noticed the plainclothes guy immediately, and her face lost its playful expression. “Chief,” she said.
Okay, so he was the head of the Midland Heights Police Department. He walked up to me and put out his hand. “Barry Dutton,” he said.
“No,” I told him. “Elliot Freed. But I get that a lot.”
The chief smiled. He reminded me of someone, I thought someone from television, but I couldn’t remember who. “I’m Barry Dutton,” he said. “I’m the chief of police. Sorry for your trouble tonight.”
“More his trouble than mine,” I said, indicating the guest of honor.
Chief Dutton surveyed the scene: the man’s body was now slumped to one side in his seat, the popcorn box at a forty-five-degree angle in a hand that was only going to clamp more severely around it, his mouth wide open, his eyes the same, staring at a gigantic Teri Garr who wasn’t there. “Heart attack?” he asked Officer Levant.
“EMT says it looks like,” she answered. “Mr. Freed here says nobody noticed anything unusual during the movie, except that the man wasn’t laughing.”
“The first movie or the second?” Dutton asked.
“We’re showing
Count Bubba, Down-Home Vampire
, so I try not to be in the auditorium during the second movie,” I said. “I noticed he wasn’t laughing at the first.”
Dutton suddenly looked interested. “What movie?” he asked.
“
Young Frankenstein
,” Levant told him.
The younger EMT’s eyes narrowed, as if someone had told him something mentally taxing. “Isn’t that
old
?” he asked.
“It was followed by the new Rob Schneider,” I explained. “If you come for the classic, you can stay for the new comedy for free.” The truth is, one ticket buys you admission to both films, since we show the classic first, but it sounds better if you say something’s free. People like that. In theory.
“Now, Rob Schneider is funny,” the EMT said. “But why go to a theatre to see some old movie you can get on DVD?”
Since there was a dead man in the room, I decided against explaining the communal experience of watching a comedy among others who might laugh. Levant stifled a grin.
Dutton gave the EMT a look that said “Less Roger Ebert, more Dr. House,” then turned to me. “You noticed him not laughing during the first movie and you didn’t do anything?”
I blinked. “He’s allowed to have bad taste.”
“What about between movies? Anybody notice if he got up, talked to other people,
moved
?”
“We run a series of trailers and reminders to go out to the snack bar during the break,” I told him. “We barely raise the lights between movies, so it’s possible nobody would have noticed.”
“Why don’t you shut down in between shows?” Dutton didn’t seem suspicious so much as curious.
“Frankly, we’re not always sure we’ll be able to get the projector started again after we turn it off,” I told him honestly. “We like to keep it going.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“No, but I didn’t even sell him the ticket.”
“Who did?”
I gestured toward Sophie, who looked like a Goth deer caught in Goth headlights. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, at least in the three months I’d known her, and she seemed awfully scared. I walked to her side. “Sophie sells the tickets,” I told Dutton, and then turned to her. “You didn’t know the man, did you, Sophie?”
She shook her head a little and looked like she might cry. I had a sudden urge to adopt her, which might or might not have been met with her parents’ approval.
“Don’t worry,” Dutton told her. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“Can we move away from . . . him?” Sophie asked in a tiny voice, pointing at the audience member least likely to return for another visit.
“Of course,” Dutton said. We shuffled up the aisle toward the auditorium doors, and stopped about thirty feet from the EMTs and their patient. On the way, I saw Dutton take Officer Levant aside and say something to her quietly. Maybe he thought Sophie might be more comfortable talking to a woman, because Levant stepped between us and smiled gently at Sophie. “Did you notice if the man was alone or with somebody when he bought his ticket, Sophie? ” she asked.
Sophie shook her head a little. “I don’t really remember, but I think he was alone,” she said.
I gestured to Anthony, who had been avidly watching the EMTs put Mr. Ansella in a body bag, no doubt filing it away for use in a movie one day. Anthony’s a nice kid, but nothing has ever happened to him that he wouldn’t someday write into a script. He walked over to us with his hands in his pockets, staring at Officer Levant with an odd expression I took to be lust. She looked discouragingly at him, and I felt for the kid. Looking at the officer under different circumstances, I might have had the same expression. On Anthony, it was strangely touching in its hopelessness.
“Anthony is the usher, and he keeps an eye on the house during the show,” I told Levant and Chief Dutton. “Was Mr. Ansella sitting with anyone, Anthony?”
Anthony seemed to be considering the question, or maybe he was thinking about the incredible leap forward in special effects technology that
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy represented. All I know for sure is that he furrowed his brow. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t paying special attention to the guy, but I think I remember a woman sitting next to him during the first movie, but not the second one. Blond, I think.”
“Just sitting next to him, or with him?” Dutton asked.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention to them, and it’s really dark in here during the movie. I see most of it from the projection booth,” Anthony told her.
The taller EMT walked over to Dutton. “I think we’ve about done it, Chief. Can we take him out of here?”
“How long’s he been dead?” Dutton asked.
“I’m not the ME, but I’d say two or three hours.”