—Mel Brooks
Some Like It Hot
(1959)
and
What a Drag!
(today)
I no longer lived in a world that made sense, and for a guy like me, that can be a problem. I tried to sort out everything that was going on, but it still ended up a jumble, and I continued to be powerless and frustrated. I hate that.
First, I had to call Michael Pagliarulo and give him the good news/bad news treatment: your son is home and safe but, oh yeah, did I mention he’s under arrest? Just what every dad wants to hear. Would Anthony have thought to call? You only get one phone call—Anthony’s would probably be to his film editor.
Then, I managed to get Sophie back into some semblance of usefulness (although the running black eye makeup made her look a little like a slim, timid Alice Cooper), and get through the final showing of
Too Many Kids
, which was a blessing in that it
was
the final showing of
Too Many Kids
.
I rode home that night. I know I did, because I woke up in my own bed in my town house the next day. I don’t remember a thing about the ride, nor going to bed, nor anything else I did after leaving Comedy Tonight. It was a blur of confused thoughts. Confused thoughts are rarely clear and sharp, you know.
The next morning, I honestly couldn’t think of anything to do. I tried to call Carla, because I knew she was worried, but her phone wasn’t answered. She’d probably completed her exams and gone home.
I even tried calling Marcy Resnick, because I couldn’t call Sharon and wouldn’t call Leslie, but Marcy wasn’t taking my phone calls these days, either. Some guys have a knack with women. Next time I meet one, I’ll ask him for advice.
It occurred to me then that I didn’t know if Anthony was still in custody, so I called Dutton in Midland Heights, but he was out of his office, so I left a voice mail. There was no point in calling O’Donnell. Even if he was in his office, he probably wouldn’t have talked to me. I had been right—since she was only sixteen, O’Donnell couldn’t question Sophie without her parents’ consent. (He was probably just trying to scare her.) But Anthony, three years older, was an adult in the eyes of the law.
A really repetitive, thought-free task was just what I needed to clear my head. So I went into the living room and continued checking Vincent Ansella’s vast comedy collection against the list Amy had given me. I spent three hours that way, and made some progress, but not a tremendous amount. Mostly, sitting on the floor, I succeeded in getting my legs to fall asleep. Ansella had been incredibly thorough, and had apparently spent all his retirement money on DVDs. Just as well.
Since I still had no shelves, but acres of floor space, I began organizing the discs in one area and the tapes in another. When I eventually got shelves, the two formats might not fit in the same space anyway, so it made sense to separate them now. Once I separated them, I could begin organizing by groups and classifications: all Bob Hopes in one section, all Red Skeltons in another, Cary Grants cross-referenced by Katharine Hepburn, who also had to be paired with Spencer Tracy. It became more elaborate as time went on, but it was a system that eventually would make sense to me, since I had invented it.
Each time I took a title out of the box, I crossed it off the list. And each time I started a classification by artist or series (the Pink Panthers were missing, but Blake Edwards was otherwise well represented, and I had
A Shot in the Dark
in my own collection, anyway), I would search for others that would be compatible, to complete the series and make sure all the titles were there. The Monty Pythons alone—both film and television work was represented— took the better part of an hour.
But all the while, I was concentrating on the murder and the film piracy. I couldn’t let go of them, and I couldn’t solve anything, either. Every answer led to another question, and each question simply turned in a circle and led to nothing.
“What did you do?”
Okay, let’s start with that. What did Anthony mean by that question? Clearly, he thought that something I’d done had led to his source of funding being cut off, shutting down production of his dream project. Why would he think it was my fault? Because it had happened soon after he made his one mistake: reaching out to me on the phone.
So. Did that make sense? Could my talking to him have led to the end of his film? I couldn’t know why his funding was cut off unless I knew the source of the money. Where had Anthony gotten two hundred thousand dollars to make
Killin’ Time
?
Maybe I was approaching this from the wrong end. If contact with me
did
cause the money to dry up, what did that tell me about the source of the funding? Did it tell me
anything
? How could the people (or person) with the money know Anthony had spoken to me? Was my phone tapped?
His Girl Friday
(1940) DVD, Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Dir: Howard Hawks, Scr: Charles Lederer.
I filed the disc away (cross-referenced with
The Front Page
(1931 and 1974), but not with its latest incarnation,
Switching Channels
(1988)—aside from a dozen or so exceptions, Ansella had not been a huge collector of post-1985 comedy—and considered. Maybe my suspicion of Leslie Levant was unwarranted, and I was a bad person. If I was to assume that the rescinding of Anthony’s funding was a result of his phone call to me, and that the person/people responsible for his money were behind the pirated DVDs— which seemed logical, as that amount of money could have easily been generated through the stash I’d seen in the basement of Comedy Tonight—then did the mysterious threading of the projector have anything to do with the pirated movies?
It was, as Zero Mostel had often noted, a problem that “would cross a rabbi’s eyes.” And then he would chant some strange syllables that were meant to indicate he was an observant Jew. But what did Zero Mostel have to do with the popcorn box recently impaled on my kitchen counter, you might ask?
Good question.
The Frisco Kid
(1979), DVD, Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, Dir: Robert Aldrich, Scr: Michael Elias, Frank Shaw.
Now, here was a dilemma. Where do you put a movie about a Polish rabbi in 1850 going cross-country to get to San Francisco in the company of a bank robber? It’s Gene Wilder, so it might go with
The World’s Greatest Lover
and
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother
, but some Gene Wilder is cross-referenced with Mel Brooks, as in
The Producers
,
Blazing Saddles
, and . . .
And . . .
I checked the box, and, incredulous, referenced the list Amy Ansella had handed me. Vincent had categorized the films much in the same way I was doing (which was eerie in itself), but his list seemed to be incomplete. Because he’d shelved the videos in the categories he’d listed, and Amy had simply taken them off the shelves and put them in boxes, the cartons I was unpacking generally had a theme to them; some link between the films that made it logical to display them together. It was still necessary, though, to check each title off the list and look for doubles, and, in some cases, Vincent’s filing system and mine didn’t mesh.
That was true of this box. In it were Gene Wilder films, from
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
to
Haunted Honeymoon
(and even some appearances on
Will & Grace
) coupled (inevitably) with Mel Brooks movies. Once again, Vincent was the ultimate completist: he had everything in Mel’s canon, from appearances on
The Muppet Show
to
The Critic
, an animated short film that won Brooks his first Academy Award. There were the classics, and the duds, both
Life Stinks
and
The Twelve Chairs
. There was the remake of
To Be or Not to Be
, which probably drove Ansella insane when he tried to cross-reference Mel Brooks with Jack Benny
and
Ernst Lubitsch.
But that wasn’t what bothered me. Ansella
should
have all those titles. It was the sort of thing that had made me salivate over the collection to begin with. But the weird part was that the collection
wasn’t
complete, and it wasn’t complete because it omitted a film that even the most casual fan would have.
Vincent Ansella’s comedy collection didn’t include
Young Frankenstein
. His favorite movie.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
But, of course, that’s when the phone rang. I stood slowly, having been on my haunches for a while, and still stunned by what I’d discovered. So the phone rang a number of times (I turn off the machine when I’m home) before I answered.
“Were you in another area code?” Chief Barry Dutton asked.
“Sorry. I was . . . something odd . . .”
“You’ve been something odd since I met you,” he said, but then his voice became more serious. “I just wanted you to know, Elliot, that something’s happened.”
I shook myself awake. “Something with Anthony? Chief, is he okay?”
“It’s not something with Anthony,” Dutton said. “He was sent home last night. O’Donnell hasn’t charged him yet. But that could change. It’s something else.”
I waited. “What?”
“Amy Ansella just shot Joe Dunbar in his garage.”
I was so stunned, I didn’t ask what part of the body a ‘garage’ was. I hesitated. “Is he . . .”
“No,” Dutton answered before I could finish the question. “He’s alive. His wife hit Amy over the head with a vase just as she fired. It grazed Dunbar in the neck, but he’ll be okay.”
“Which hospital?”
“I don’t think I want to tell you.”
“Chief, if he can talk, or even communicate, he can confirm a lot of stuff.”
“Yes. To
us
. You are not a law enforcement officer. Stay home. I’ll call you from the hospital.” Dutton had called me, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that like asking me to show up?
“I need to see him, Chief.”
“Not yet.” Dutton sounded stern. “The man’s been through enough for one day, Elliot. Let him recuperate.”
“You don’t understand, Chief. I think I’ve got this thing figured out.”
“How’s that?” He sounded amazed. I inspire that kind of confidence.
“I promise I’ll tell you when I see you.
Now
can I come to the hospital?”
42
I still couldn’t call Sharon for a ride, although that routine was starting to get old, and while it was possible to ride the bike to John F. Kennedy Hospital in Edison, it would take time. I didn’t want to use up a lot of time.
Moe, however, was not as forthcoming as usual. “I just don’t have a loaner for you today, Elliot,” he told me before I could even get the question out of my mouth. “Nothing I’ve got in the shop runs, and the body work isn’t done yet, so I can’t give you those to test-drive. Take a bus.”
“I don’t have time for a bus, Moe. Come on, there’s got to be something.”
“There isn’t. Maybe this is a lesson for you.” If Moe was the type to chew on unlit cigars, the picture would have been perfect, but in fact, he’s a germophobe and a recovering nicotine addict. You can’t always figure people. “If you had your own car, you wouldn’t run into this kind of problem.”
“Impersonating my ex-wife won’t do it for you, Moe. Frankly, you don’t have the legs for it.” I looked around the lot, hoping there was a vehicle of some sort that I could talk him into loaning me. “How about the Nissan?” I pointed.
Moe shook his head. “Transmission.”
“So it slips a little.”
“It doesn’t have one.”
“Oh.”
I couldn’t see the entire lot from where we were standing, so I moved out into the center of the lot, and Moe followed reluctantly. I watched his eyes carefully. Sooner or later, he would slip. There was something he didn’t want me to notice, and if I waited long enough, he would sneak a guilty glance in its direction.
Aha!
It was a silver Lexus with an obvious dent in its passenger side rear fender. A long scrape that looked like it had come in contact with a road divider, or . . .
Hey, wait a minute!
“Moe,” I said, trying to control my breathing. “When did that Lexus with the dent come in?”
“Oh no, Elliot, forget it. You’re not getting the Lexus.”
I spoke slowly. “Answer the question. When was it brought in?”
He thought. “Yesterday, I think. The owner actually wanted me to give him a loaner, can you imagine? What am I, a Lexus dealer?”
“Yeah, imagine. You wouldn’t happen to have the owner’s name, would you?”
I think the look in my eye might have spooked Moe a little. “Not to give to you, Elliot. No chance.”
“It’s important, Moe.” I’d have shown him the stitches in my leg, but only as a last resort. Even
I
didn’t want to look at them.
It took another ten minutes of convincing, and I did actually pull up my pants leg to show the scar to Moe, which is what put him over the top. Moe would do anything to avoid having to look at my leg.
“Let’s check the work order,” he said, and we walked to the office. Moe checked the order number against the number on the key hanging on a hook over his desk, and pulled out the paperwork on the Lexus. He handed me the work order, which had the owner’s name and address printed very neatly on top, in Moe’s own hand.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked him.
“You don’t have a cell phone, either?” Moe rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
“Do you know what those things do to your brain?”
“
Man
, you’re cheap.” He pointed to the phone. “Out of the area, you call collect.”
“Oh, and under the circumstances, I think the owner of the Lexus owes me a ride, don’t you?” He grumbled, but threw me the key.
“Gas it up,” he said, and walked out.
I picked up the phone and called Sharon.
43
By the time I drove the Lexus up to JFK, O’Donnell and Dutton were already in Joe Dunbar’s hospital room. On my way into the room, I saw Christie Dunbar in the hallway, sitting between two uniformed officers on orange plastic molded chairs. She looked up at me, gestured vaguely with her hands, opened her mouth, and didn’t say anything. I took her hand for a moment, closed my eyes, and then let it go. I couldn’t say anything, either.