Some Like It Hot-Buttered (11 page)

“Speaking of which, when can I have my theatre back?” I asked. “I saw a bunch of your storm troopers retreating from the place. I assume you haven’t found anything else on the premises I need to know about.”

O’Donnell’s eyelids fluttered at the term “storm troopers, ” but he kept it to himself. “As a matter of fact, we didn’t,” he said. “We’re pulling out of here. You can have your theatre back tonight.”

He stood up to leave, and a thought occurred to me. “What about his wife? Did Amy Ansella have a prescription for clonidine?”

Sergeant O’Donnell’s face closed, and he said what cops always say when you’ve hit on something they wanted to take credit for themselves. “This is an ongoing investigation, ” he said. “No comment.”

12

FRIDAY
Horse Feathers
(1932)
and
Bootylicious
(today)

"You think I just have extra wheels for this thing lying around the store waiting for you?” Bobo Kaminsky, the largest bicycle store owner in Central New Jersey (and no, that doesn’t mean he owns the largest bicycle shop), stared down on me with what was supposed to look like disdain but instead resembled bemusement.

“Come on, Bobo, it’s a twenty-six-inch wheel and you’ve got hundreds of them. Who’s a better customer for you than I am? I need the wheel by tonight so I can ride home from the theatre after the show.”

“You could take a cab.” But he was already looking through his stock in the back room where we were arguing, trying to match the right width to the frame I’d dragged in from Sharon’s car. Sharon, cursing slightly under her breath, had demurred at the idea of seeing Bobo, and driven away almost before I’d managed to get both feet and one wheel onto the sidewalk.

“A cab. Very nice, the owner of Midland Cyclery telling me to take a cab.” I was sure he’d find what I needed. Bobo was annoyed because his solution to every problem I’ve ever brought into his place is that I should upgrade to a four-thousand-dollar bicycle. Bobo is among those who believe that I made millions off of Hollywood and am being obstinate about spending my fortune.

He scanned a rack of wheels, then turned and walked to the other side of the room to scan another. “So what’s with this guy who croaked at your place?” he asked in his usual delicate tone. “I hear you can’t trust the popcorn.”

“You can trust the popcorn,” I bristled. “Whoever did it brought the poison with them. Come on, Bobo, move it. It’s already one o’clock, and I’ve got to get the place ready to open by seven.”

“You come in here asking a favor and now it’s ‘move it, Bobo’? Why don’t you go out to Sports Authority or Sears and ask
them
to move it with the wheel on this twenty-year-old bike?” Bobo’s glasses, hung on a chain around his neck, were making a clicking sound as he moved from rack to rack.

“Because they wouldn’t have it,” I recited.

“You’re damn right they wouldn’t have it,” he agreed, then looked at the rack and checked a stock number. “Ah! Here we go!”

He pulled out a wheel, tire already on, and beckoned to me. “Give me the frame,” Bobo said. I handed it over, and he carefully maneuvered the wheel into the fork and locked it in. “Perfect. Am I good or am I good?”

“It’s a bicycle wheel, Bobo. You didn’t cure erectile dysfunction.”

He waved a large hand. “Been done,” he said.

Once again mobile, my next stop was 91 Guilden Street, where Anthony shared an apartment with three other Rutgers students. It was about as typical as college apartments get: not much in the way of cleanliness, furnished in early garage sale, and plastered with posters, in this case Hitch-cock’s
Vertigo
(a highly overrated movie in which Kim Novak is scared to death by a nun), Scorsese’s
Raging Bull
(what the heck was he raging about?), and, for a welcome change of pace, Jessica Simpson in a very small bikini. Probably a shot from
The Dukes of Hazzard
(no comment).

The kid who’d answered my knock was about six foot three and weighed almost as much as a box of Cocoa Puffs. He had a mountain of curly brown hair, frizzier than mine, and looked very much like a used Q-tip. He introduced himself as Danton, and I introduced myself as me. I had no idea whether Danton was a first or last name, but figured that was his business.

We sat at the kitchen table, and from where I sat I could see a ceiling fan in the living room. From each blade was what I thought at first might have been mosquito strips or fly paper, but which turned out to be pieces of yellow crime-scene tape. College hasn’t changed much.

“Anthony hasn’t been here since Wednesday, Mr. Freed,” he said. “I told the police. Of course, we’re in and out to classes and whatever, but I haven’t seen him, and the other guys said they haven’t, either.”

“There are two other roommates?” I asked.

“Yeah. Me, Anthony, Lyle, and Dolores.”

I must have looked surprised. “Dolores?”

Danton grinned. “She’s just a friend.”

“Any sign that he’s been here? Extra laundry piling up, cereal bowls in the sink, that sort of thing?”

He looked around the room at the debris that cluttered every square inch and the dishes piled up on every flat surface. Danton smiled, and looked me square in the eye. “Not that I’ve noticed,” he said.

“How about his classes? Would anybody notice if he didn’t show up for class for two days?”

“His profs, maybe. Some of them are big lectures, two, three hundred people, and they wouldn’t know if one kid was there or not. But he’s got a thesis advisor who also teaches his directing course. If he checked in with anybody, it’d be Dr. Bender.”

I made a note of Bender’s name, and asked if I could see Anthony’s room.

Danton gestured toward a door with paint peeling off. “Be his guest.”

Suffice it to say that Anthony’s bedroom was everything you’d think it would be if you’d ever held a sixty-second conversation with Anthony. The bookshelves were lined with tomes such as
The Films of Quentin Tarantino
,
M. Night Shyamalan: The Man and the Myth
,
Martin Scorsese’s Cinema
, and, unexpectedly,
John Ford’s West.
The walls had more movie posters, including ones for
Taxi Driver
and
Mean Streets
, but the bed, thankfully, was not done up with a John Woo comforter.

The contents of the drawers and closets had been deposited on the floor, but it was hard to say whether the work had been done by the police or was simply a product of the typical college student’s high regard for housekeeping. Clothing, mostly jeans and T-shirts, was available for the grabbing from pretty much any area of the room. I chose not to think about Anthony’s underwear, which is a policy of mine.

Alas, there was no clue, no piece of evidence, no neon sign reading “Break Glass to Exonerate Anthony” in the room. But it had been worth looking.

Danton gave me directions to Dr. Bender’s office. I thanked him for his help, and within ten minutes was carrying my bike up the stairs (fool me once, shame on you . . . ) of Murray Hall, a very old brick building on the Rutgers quad.

The good doctor’s office was on the second floor, thank goodness, and he was in when I knocked. I brought the bike in with me, which made the room a tight fit, but doable.

Bender was about ten years older than I am, with a gray ponytail that showed how anti-Establishment he was and a beard that showed what he had eaten for lunch. Looked for all the world like a piece of turkey salad.

He shook my hand. “So you’re the man trying to keep comedy alive in Central Jersey,” he said in a hearty voice that had probably seen formal training. The man could have narrated audiobooks by Faulkner or Hemingway. “Anthony talks about you incessantly.” I love academics.

“He’s a nice kid,” I told Bender. “That’s why I’m so concerned about him.”

He nodded with what Woody Allen once described as “heaviosity.” “Yes,” Bender said, “it’s very distressing that Anthony is implicated in this piracy business.”

“You haven’t seen him since Tuesday?” I asked.

“In class Tuesday, yes,” Bender replied. “From what I understand, no one has seen him. I’m quite worried. He’s been acting strangely lately, secretive. He should have checked in on his thesis yesterday, and it’s extremely uncharacteristic of him to miss a meeting. He’s completely immersed in his research.”

“You haven’t heard from him at all?”

He shook his head. “As I told the police, there’s been no contact with me since Tuesday morning. He was in class at ten a.m., and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Well, if you do, would you be so kind as to let me know?” I handed him a Comedy Tonight business card.

“Certainly,” Bender said. “Whatever I can do to help, but I doubt he’ll contact me first. Surely he’ll call his parents, or his employer.” He eyed me carefully.

“I hope so,” I said. “But knowing Anthony, he may be more concerned about his thesis than his own safety.” I stood to leave. “By the way, what
is
the topic of Anthony’s thesis? ” I hoisted my transportation over my shoulder, to better facilitate leaving without knocking over piles of papers.

“A classic film by Vittorio De Sica,” Bender said.

“Not . . .”

“Yes.
The Bicycle Thief
.”

It figured.

Since I’d have to assume Anthony’s duties as well as my own for tonight’s—and all foreseeable nights’—show, I got back to the theatre around four. I’d called Sophie’s cell phone, and although her parents were divided on whether it was a good idea, she would be back at work tonight, which meant I didn’t have to do
everything
for everyone. I got the distinct impression that Sophie had acted aggressively obnoxious enough to ensure that her parents would want her out of the house as much as possible. That’s my Sophie.

I unlocked the theatre door and went in without turning on the marquee lights just yet. There was a good deal of preparation to be done, especially since the theatre hadn’t been open in days.

First, I vacuumed the rug in the lobby. I didn’t want the carpet to smell musty, so I sprinkled some cleaning powder over it and then sucked it up again. It made me feel like I was running one of those vacuum cleaner demonstrations you see in Red Skelton comedies from the 1950s, where a bag of dirt is thrown on the rug and then nothing works right. Luckily for me, Red was nowhere to be seen, and the vacuum worked just fine.

I stocked the snack bar with candy, but didn’t start the popcorn machine yet. It was too early, and you want the smell to be fresh when people arrive. I’m not much for popcorn myself, but I do like the smell. And people buy more when it doesn’t smell like foam rubber with butter on it.

We use a real old-fashioned popcorn popper, not content to work with the pre-popped stuff that comes in enormous bags. If you’re going to re-create the real theatre experience pre-megaplex, you have to do it right. Within a budget.

It was well after five when it occurred to me that since this was the first night of the show, the film itself would still have to be spliced to the trailers we were showing (complete with vintage drive-in movie plugs for the snack bar and the number of minutes until showtime, but decidedly
without
the annoying TV commercials blown up to full-screen size for projection in a theatre that modern movie houses have adopted). Anthony usually did that, then threaded the first reel up on the projector. I knew how to do it, in theory, but he was a magician. I went up early to the projection booth, assuming it would take me a while to remember the procedure and get everything ready in time.

I unlocked the door to the booth (you can’t be too careful; since the movies are only rented, not owned by the theatre, they’re our most valuable assets—not that my precautions had apparently deterred the movie pirates) and turned on the lights. I stood there for a long time, staring ahead with what must have been a really puzzled expression on my face.

The projector was threaded with the first reel of the Marx Brothers’ 1932 classic
Horse Feathers
, which had been spliced to our pre-show reel of trailers. Everything was perfectly set up for my flick of one switch to set the show in motion. It had been done expertly, and the rest of the reels were threaded in order and ready to roll.

Anthony was in the house.

13

After a thorough search of the premises, beginning with the basement and moving up through the lobby, the office, the auditorium, the closets, and even the balcony, I convinced myself that Anthony was no longer in the theatre, although I had to concede to myself (since I was the only one in the conversation) that there were plenty of places to hide, and a one-man search of the building left open the possibility of his moving from hiding place to hiding place without a huge amount of effort.

Still, the effect of that threaded projector was just a little spooky.

By the time Sophie arrived at six, I had gotten the place into a semblance of order and replaced last week’s two-sheets with this week’s in the outside displays and the lobby. Sophie began by getting the snack bar together (which meant moving everything I thought I had gotten in order, but hey, she ran it on a daily basis), all the while looking at me from under hooded lids, silently accusing me of messing with her stuff. Some people are so territorial.

Suddenly, it occurred to me to take a shot. “You haven’t heard from Anthony, have you?” I asked Sophie.

“Anthony?” Either she was trying to remember who Anthony was, or she thought my question was idiotic. I was betting on the latter, but with the “well,
duh
” inflection Sophie puts on every sentence, sometimes it’s hard to know.

“Yeah, Anthony. Tall, thin? Used to run the projector until he vanished?”

“I
know
who Anthony is. I just can’t imagine why you’d think I heard from him, Elliot.”

That wasn’t much of a surprise; the three-year difference in their ages is a wider gap than it would be for someone as ancient as, say, me.