A Night at the Operation (35 page)

Gwen Chapman began to sob. “You don’t understand,” she wailed. “That woman . . . that woman . . .”

“That woman is the mother of my child,” I said.

Meg started cuffing Gwen, and reciting her Miranda warning. Gwen was weeping and shaking her head.

I was leaning against the door, but couldn’t turn around. “Can anybody reach the doorknob?” I asked.

But the point was moot. Suddenly, the world was horizontal, as the door flew open, and I fell backward. I felt Arnstein and Moe fall on top of me. Others flew in various directions, and the air was suddenly much, much cooler.

I was lying on the floor in the lobby, and looking up into the face of Chief Barry Dutton.

“And two hard-boiled eggs,” I said.

Somewhere in the office, I heard Leo belch loudly.

“Make that three hard-boiled eggs.”

 

 

 

 

“I
was coming to tell you that I’d called on your friend Konigsberg,” Meg said. “That, and I wanted to see the Marx Brothers.”

The few of us who remained from the Horror of the Tiny Room sat on the floor just in front of the snack bar. Mom and Dad, of course, were in chairs I’d brought out, and Gwen was not there to celebrate. Dutton had called two uniformed cops to give her a lift to her new digs in county lockup.

“I’d forgotten about him,” I told her. “How’d he react?”

“When I told him that I was a member of the Camden Police Department, and I’d heard he was blackmailing a woman in Midland Heights, he folded like a Japanese fan. Gave me the pictures he’d taken and the disk he’d stored them on. I watched him delete them from his hard drive. He won’t bother Grace Mancuso anymore.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Meg,” I said.

“Literally,” Sharon piped up.

“I was trying—” Gregory began.

“Shut up, Gregory,” my mother told him. I gave her a hug.

“I’m just glad you were here,” Sharon continued to Meg.

“I was happy to—” Gregory began.

“Shut up, Gregory,” Mom said. I gave her a hug.

Moe had taken his car keys, and Bobo had been paid for the studded bicycle tires, and then both had left. Leo was inside the auditorium, watching Groucho and Chico argue over a contract and declare there is no Sanity Clause.

“It’s my job,” Meg told Sharon. “Besides, you guys are friends.” She actually leaned over and ruffled my hair. “ ‘Draw your weapon.’ Honestly.”

The workmen had all quit for the night when the theatre opened, and had packed up and left. The heat was back on and functioning, there was wet plaster on one of the walls (luckily, high enough that no one could put a hand into it), and wet paint elsewhere, with signs indicating what not to touch. The urinals in the men’s room were once again in working order. The electricity would probably stay on through the whole show tonight.

It was a miracle the place was still standing.

“It’s funny,” I said, to no one in particular. “I’ve always thought of myself as kind of—well, not a loner—but the kind of guy who didn’t have many friends. But I’ve got to say, tonight in that office, I certainly didn’t feel lonely. Maybe I need to rethink my self-image.”

Sharon smiled at me. “People like you, Elliot,” she said. “You just don’t understand why.”

I didn’t answer. I took a look around the lobby. Sophie and Jonathan sat behind the snack bar, which at the moment had no customers. She had her copy of some ACT book or another out on the counter, but wasn’t reading it. Jonathan, wearing his finest
Simpsons Movie
T-shirt, looked into her eyes and probably wasn’t hearing a word she said.

Meg, hand on her hip, was in a discussion with Sharon about what fools men are, which we are. Mom and Dad, like the king and queen, sat higher than everyone else, and beamed at their charges. Gregory lay on the carpet like a snake, minus the slithering.

Chief Dutton stood to one side, apart from the rest, as if he were trying to understand exactly how a group like this could have been assembled, and why. He had a bemused smile on his face. I wished I had champagne to give them all.

And the postman was standing just outside the door to my office, holding a clipboard and a pen.

Oh, yeah!

I got up and walked over to him. “I never did sign for that letter, did I?” I said. “Sorry about that, but I was trying to save a woman’s life.”

“Uh-huh. Sign here.” Some people are flappable, and others, not so much. You couldn’t flap this guy with a cattle prod.

I signed for the letter, gave him a twenty-dollar tip, and watched him leave. I suppose I should have asked his name, but odds are he didn’t have one.

Walking back toward the group, I’d only taken a few steps before I stopped dead in my tracks. It took a few moments, but Sharon noticed the look on my face.

“Are you okay, Elliot?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. If I’d been thinking straight, I might have pointed out that she’s the doctor, and should have been able to tell
me
if I was okay. But again, I wasn’t thinking straight.

The name on the return address on the envelope of the registered letter was “Angie Hogencamp, Attorney-at-Law.”

She’d said that those who were mentioned in Russell Chapman’s will would be notified by certified mail within a day or two.

It was now within a day or two.

Sharon stood up and walked to me. “What is it?”

I tore open the envelope carefully, and extracted the letter inside, which was remarkably unassuming, and only one page long. It took less than a minute to read, but I’d be absorbing its information for a very, very long time.

“Russell Chapman left me a million dollars in his will,” I said.

Dutton straightened up. Meg’s mouth fell open. Dad stood slowly—his knees aren’t what they used to be, either—and Mom just broke into a satisfied grin, as if to say,
It’s about time
.

I was pretty sure Gregory was going to throw up.

“What?”
Sharon took the letter out of my hands and read it. “He left you a hundred thousand dollars a year for ten years, specifically to run Comedy Tonight,” she said.

“I know,” I told her.

“Why?” Dad asked. But he was grinning. I saw Dutton approaching. Sophie and Jonathan probably hadn’t heard what Sharon and I had said; they were engrossed in conversation.

“It’s in a letter he sent me,” I told him. “But I didn’t realize it. The day he died, Chapman came here and saw
Sullivan’s Travels
. He said it changed his life, and that what I was doing was a service to the community. But I guess he’d seen just how small the crowd was, and he knew I’d have trouble keeping the theatre going for long. This is his way of helping.”

“What does this mean?” Dad asked.

“It means you can tell Milt to use the good paint when he shows up tomorrow.”

Sharon’s arms were around me, but I barely felt them. It takes a lot to stun me that much. I remember Dad taking the letter out of my hand and bringing it to Mom so she could read it.

Anthony and Carla came down the stairs, taking a break after a reel change, probably around the time Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle were singing “Alone.” They were both wearing expectant grins. Not Allan and Kitty.

“So?” Anthony said.

My mind was elsewhere. “So what?” I asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Sharon said. It’s an old joke between us. Don’t trouble yourself.

“So,” Carla picked up for her boyfriend, “how did the doctor like her present?”

I stood and stared at them for a moment. “Her present!” I said suddenly. Jonathan looked at me and pointed at the auditorium doors, telling me to keep my voice down. “I forgot.”

“You
forgot
?” Carla asked. What could be more important than an anniversary gift, even if you’re not married anymore?

“Yeah,” Sharon said. “What about my present? You can afford something really good now.”

My head started to clear. “I’ll tell you what,” I said to Anthony. “Can you work late tonight?”

It was significant that he looked at Carla first, and she nodded. “Sure,” Anthony said.

“Then I’ll talk to you during the second movie.”

Anthony nodded, shrugged at Carla, and took her hand. They headed back upstairs. No rest for the projectionist.

Dutton, suddenly, was standing in front of me. “The letter from Chapman,” he said. “May I see it?”

“My mother has it,” I told him. “And it’s not from Chapman, but from his attorney.”

“No,” Dutton corrected me. “The one you got from him, that he wrote before he died.”

I gave him my best innocent look. “Why, Chief,” I said, “you know I gave that to Detective Kowalski.”

“You made a copy,” Dutton answered. “May I see it?”

My head tilted a bit. Something was odd. “Sure. It’s in the office. Why?”

“It’s what I was coming to tell you,” Dutton said as we started to walk to the office. “We think we know who Chapman’s ‘inside man’ was at the morgue when he faked his suicide. It seems that today a registered letter also arrived for an assistant ME named Irwin S. Taubman, Jr., better known as Doc. He got a million dollars, too. And must have known it was coming, because two days ago he got on a plane for the Cayman Islands.”

“I’ll bet it’s going to be a long vacation,” I said.

“Chapman’s lawyer says his estate clearly accounts for forty-seven million dollars, including the million to you and the million to Doc, and a little more here and there to charities Chapman supported.”

“What about his daughters?” Sharon asked.

“He left them twenty thousand dollars apiece,” Dutton said, and the amusement in his voice was more than even he could conceal.

 

 

LATER
that night, after the audience (such as it was) left and the theatre was cleaned up, Sophie and Jonathan went home. They were the last remaining from the Great Office Pileup, as Dutton and Meg had gone out to catch up over dinner, and Mom and Dad had decided to go home, although they threatened to call me in the morning with baby names. Mom probably would have gone out and bought a crib that night, but Jewish superstition doesn’t allow for any baby accoutrements to be set up until the child is present and breathing.

Nobody could remember when Gregory left. We were just happy to revel in his absence.

Sharon and I took our seats in the center of the auditorium, and I waved up to the projection booth. The lights went out, and the screen came to life.

And there we were, our younger selves looking nervously at each other. She wore a white gown with a large bow in the back that made her look like the best present a man could possibly receive. I wore a blue pinstriped suit with lapels that were now no longer in fashion, and eleven pounds less than I wear today.

The “us” on the screen gave each other a tense glance, then exhaled, and walked outside to a lovely lawn, set up with rows of chairs on either side. My college roommate, a guy named Dave, played “Here Comes the Sun” on an acoustic guitar until we reached the altar, which was really a spot on the grass we’d designated. Four of our tallest friends (okay, Sharon’s tallest friends) held up a prayer shawl over our heads, to serve as a
chuppah
, or a roof. You need that.

Sharon leaned over in her theatre seat. Row K, seat 18. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

“You’re welcome. But it’s just a DVD.”

“I didn’t mean the DVD,” she said.

 

 

If the things you wanted to happen did not happen, think
instead of the things you did not want to happen that did
not happen.

—CONFUCIUS

 

 

THE Wrong Box
(1966) and
Dead Tired
(this week)

 

SOPHIE
told me to take the night off.

Taking her position as manager seriously, Sophie decided that I looked tired, and should relax for an evening. And she was right.

The repairs had, naturally, blossomed into more repairs, and were just now being completed. In addition to a new paint job for the entire theatre, except the auditorium, we now had completely new plumbing fixtures in the ladies’ room, a new electrical service, three newly plastered walls, new wallpaper, and a new neon sign that read REFRESHMENTS over the snack bar.

Russell Chapman’s money was being put to good use, even though I hadn’t actually received it yet.

We were showing
The Wrong Box
, a brilliant black comedy very loosely adapted from a Robert Louis Stevenson short story by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, fresh off
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
. But I could catch it another night. Black comedy being the crowd-pleaser it is, we could expect a relatively small crowd for the classic, and
Dead Tired
, the touching story of a vampire with insomnia, probably wasn’t going to help. Sophie, having received her acceptance to Princeton University two days before, had taken the previous night off, so she decided it was my turn tonight. No doubt the staff would have a celebration after the showings, and I was better off not knowing what direction that might take.

So now, having had a sumptuous dinner of takeout Chinese food, Sharon and I were on the new sofa in my living room, ostensibly watching
His Girl Friday
(in a remake of
The Front Page
that makes you wonder why they ever did this with two men) on the flat-screen. But in reality, she was fast asleep, head on my lap, and snoring. Her growing belly rose and fell with each gorillalike emanation from her throat. I couldn’t hear the movie’s dialogue, but then, I pretty much have it memorized, anyway.

I’d been in touch once or twice with Angie Hogencamp. She assured me that the will Russell Chapman had left would be upheld, although it was being challenged by Wally and Lillian Mayer. Susan said their case was flimsy at best, what with Lillian standing by idly while her intensely crazy sister murdered their father, and then staying silent about it, but the money for Comedy Tonight would be delayed while the courts decided. She made a reference to Charles Dickens’s
Bleak House
, which I had to look up on
SparkNotes.com
. It meant the case could take a long time to resolve.