Some Like It Hot-Buttered (6 page)

“It couldn’t have been him,” I said.

O’Donnell nodded with great sarcasm, the unofficial State Language of New Jersey. “Let’s go ask him,” he said.

After directing Patel to stay with the cartons, O’Donnell led Levant and me upstairs. Sophie and her parents were still in the lobby, where Sophie was busying herself with washing down the frames for the Coming Soon posters, and her parents were finding the tiny spots she missed before she had a chance to check for herself.

We walked directly into the auditorium as I tried to think of ways to a) accuse Anthony of video piracy and send him to a federal penitentiary, and b) wake him. As it turned out, neither of those tactics would be necessary.

Row H was empty. So were all the other rows and seats.

Anthony was gone.

6

It had been useless to search for Anthony, I realized the next morning as I was biking back into Midland Heights from New Brunswick. He had turned off his cell phone, never gone back to the off-campus apartment he rented with three other Cinema Studies majors, hadn’t called his parents (and the police calling them had made for a truly memorable experience, I’m sure), and had no girlfriend, which wasn’t a tremendous surprise. Most women wouldn’t flock to Anthony until he had won his first Golden Globe Award.

If he were behind the pirated videos, did they have anything to do with Vincent Ansella’s murder? How did the two fit together, if at all? And how much longer did this mean Comedy Tonight would have to remain closed? (Not all my impulses are altruistic.)

Sergeant O’Donnell had again questioned Sophie and her parents, but they insisted they hadn’t seen Anthony leave the auditorium, and I believed them. The officers had followed us out of the auditorium when we left, assuming Anthony was asleep, and he’d probably gone out one of the side exits, which the cops had been using all day. Normally, those doors set off an alarm, but I’d turned off the bell at the request of the police.

See? It pays to show that fire exit announcement before every movie.

I had no idea where to start looking for Anthony, although O’Donnell had been skeptical about that the night before. I’d shown him my records, which listed Anthony’s parents as the “in case of emergency” contacts, and his address on Guilden Street in New Brunswick as his local address, but the investigator had insisted I must know of some other contact in case Anthony didn’t show up for work one night.

“Anthony hasn’t missed a day of work since I hired him,” I’d told O’Donnell. He wasn’t happy about that, either.

I rode up Edison Avenue past the Dunkin’ Donuts to Comedy Tonight. My father, Arthur Freed, stood in front of the theatre, ahead of me as always, dressed in polyester slacks, a belt, and a double-knit shirt that was less wrinkled than the tuxedo I’d worn at my wedding. I stopped the bike just at the door.

“I thought we were painting today,” I told my father. We get together once or twice a week to do repairs and continue the restoration of Comedy Tonight.

He looked puzzled. “We are.”

“You dress better for painting than I would to apply for a bank loan.”

Dad chuckled. One of his many virtues is that he thinks I’m funny, even when I’m being perfectly serious. The man hasn’t raised his voice to me once since I was fourteen, and that’s mostly attributable to the fact that even when I was doing my adolescent best to infuriate him, Arthur Freed thought I was a riot.

I unlocked the front door and let him inside. Today we were working in the auditorium, not the lobby, since I didn’t have to worry about patrons smelling paint fumes or getting ladders out of the way in time for the show. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
(But soon, and for the rest of my life?)
In fact, who knew when? Now that evidence of a second crime had been found on the premises, it was anybody’s guess when Comedy Tonight could reopen.

When my father retired from the retail paint and wallpaper business, he probably didn’t expect to spend this much time immersed in the decoration of a rapidly deteriorating movie palace. Okay, movie house. Movie fixer-upper. But he had offered to help, in his typically genial way, and I had accepted as much to hang out with Dad as to get his expertise, which was considerably more expert than my own. I had pretty much given up painting in kindergarten when they switched us from fingers to a brush.

I’d bought the Rialto slightly less than a year ago, and for six months after the transaction closed, I had prevailed upon friends, called in every marker I’d ever issued, downright blackmailed a few people, and when absolutely necessary, paid others to help renovate the place. I’d been intelligent enough to have a structural engineer come through before the closing, and while there were a few questions here or there (chiefly in the balcony), I was assured in writing that the place wasn’t likely to slide off its foundation anytime soon, and probably wouldn’t need much beyond the kind of cosmetic work you might expect in a seventy-year-old structure that hadn’t undergone much maintenance in the past decade.

There had been beams in the ceiling that needed replacing; cracked (and, in some cases, missing) plaster facades; floors that needed to be sanded, filled, and refinished; seats that flat-out needed to be replaced; and the entire lobby (except the snack bar), from carpet to art deco ceiling, had needed to be completely redone, thanks to Hurricane Floyd’s trip through the area in 1999.

My father, freshly retired practically at the moment I bought the theatre, was always there supervising, since the union workmen wouldn’t let him up on the scaffolds to do the work himself. He had spent forty years with painters, wallpaperers, carpenters, and contractors, and he had spent the same forty years owning a home that practically had to be rebuilt on the day he purchased it. My mother had complained about his constant work on the house when I was a boy, but never missed an opportunity to point out his handiwork to visitors. It was never fancy, but it showed craftsmanship and imagination. I was sure the family living there now appreciated his efforts.

Maybe that was part of what had attracted me to the Rialto. Today’s theatres look like large college dormitory rooms: they’re square, functional, and impersonal. It’s a good thing they have a screen and seats, or you’d think you’d entered the largest police interrogation room in the world.

The Rialto was built during a more creative age. Movies were being made by people who wanted to make movies, and were happy with the money that came in. Today, movies are made by people who want to make money, and are happy with the movies they make to achieve that end. There’s a difference, and it shows in the theatres as well.

The over-the-top architecture evident in the Rialto wasn’t terribly unique in its day, but in today’s world, it is nothing short of astonishing. Plaster moldings and appointments around the auditorium (a uniplex) were only part of the deal. Lighting was discreet but impeccably placed to highlight the impressive features of the room, and there was a real, huge chandelier (which I’d had to have reinforced, as we were not planning on a nightly showing of
The Phantom of the Opera
), and a cupola that held it, as well as paintings on the ceiling reminiscent of the frescoes of Rome, only less religious. Cleaning the paintings themselves had taken two whole weeks. You can’t just go up there with a huge bottle of Windex and expect that kind of thing to survive intact. I know that now.

I unlocked the utility closet and started removing the painting supplies: ladders, drop cloths, brushes, rollers, buckets, and so on. My father pitched in with the smaller items, since I gave him a stern look that said “Remember your heart” whenever he reached for a ladder or a five-gallon bucket of paint. I’d have stopped him from reaching for anything at all, but whenever I did, he gave
me
a look that said “Remember your head, because I’ll hit it with a hammer if you treat me like an old man.” Every relationship has its give-and-take.

Setting up the ten-foot ladder under a green exit sign over a side door, I assessed the room. Besides the painting, which would take weeks, if not months, to complete, there was still the matter of a new sound system (what was state-of-the-art in 1954 sounded very much like two tin cans and a string today); various patches in various walls; many,
many
new seats; and about six miles of new carpeting, of which we currently had none.

My father studied my face closely. “Stop looking at the negative,” he said. “Think about how much you’ve already done. Think about what it looked like when you bought the place.”

“How can you tell what I’m thinking?”

“What are we, strangers? I lived with you for more than twenty years; you pick stuff up.” He kneeled to stir a large bucket of paint. “But something else is bothering you. You want to tell me about it?”

“Not really.”

He gave me another look, and I told him the whole story. He knew about Vincent Ansella’s unfortunate (and apparently premeditated) demise from yesterday’s newspaper, and was upset I hadn’t told him myself. Now I explained about the discovery of myriad copies of a Rob Schneider movie, months before they would become $9.99 specials in the cutout rack. My father listened with careful attention, but still managed to get the paint ready, as well as a three-inch brush for my use at the top of the ladder.

I climbed up, a roller tray full of paint balanced in my left hand, my right tightly gripping the ladder. I’m not crazy about heights, even low ones, and since this ladder was not new, it wasn’t at the top of my confidence chart.

“So, what do you think I should do?” I asked Dad as I reached the top of the ladder and the end of the story simultaneously.

“Do? Why do you have to do anything? Aren’t the cops working on this?”

I nodded, not looking at him, but at the small gargoyle over the exit door, which was the target of my paintbrush today. “Sure, but once Anthony went MIA, they probably decided that he’s guilty, so even if he shows up today, they’re not going to look at anybody else. And with the discovery of the pirated copies coming so close to a murder in the theatre, they’re going to look for a connection as hard as they can, and find one whether it’s there or not.”

My father got to work on some baseboards. Dad is a meticulous man, and he spread newspaper on the floor where he’d be working, despite the fact that he has never spilled a drop in my presence for as long as I can remember. “So you believe this boy isn’t involved, is that it?”

“It’s not in his character. He doesn’t care enough about money, and if he did, he’d find another way to make it. Anthony isn’t the type.”

“So why do you think the cops won’t figure that out?”

“Because they’re cops, and they’re going to look for the simplest answer. I don’t blame them; they don’t know Anthony, and all the circumstantial evidence seems to point to him. What throws me is his running away; it’s not what I would have expected.” I had to reach over a bit to get the gargoyle’s nose, and I stopped talking. I have to concentrate when I’m leaning off a ladder.

My father took this as an indication that he should talk. He doesn’t know me
that
well. “You’ve known this kid what, five months? And already you think you can guess what he’ll do in any situation? Talk to his parents; I’ll bet they have something to say about it that you won’t see coming.”

I leaned back and caught my breath, the gargoyle’s nose now a lovely clean shade of white. “So you think I should ask questions? Get involved?”

“I didn’t say that. But knowing you, and knowing the way you feel about this poor man dying in your theatre, you’re
going
to get involved, so you might as well do it right.” Dad wields a paintbrush like Carlos Santana plays a guitar: there is no wasted movement, and a finger is never put in the wrong place.

“The cops will be pissed,” I said.

“Don’t underestimate the cops,” he admonished. “And don’t let your mother hear you talk like that.”

“Oh, for pete’s sake, Dad.”

“The cops will figure it out, Elliot,” he said slowly, concentrating on the impeccably straight line he was painting. “Anything you do will be strictly to make yourself feel better. Hey.” Dad stood up, holding something between two fingers. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” I started down the ladder, happy for the excuse.

“It’s evidence,” said a voice behind us. Sergeant O’Donnell was standing halfway up the aisle. “That looks very much like a drug vial, Mr. Freed.” Swell. Maybe the next time O’Donnell showed up, I could arrange to be holding a bloodstained carving knife.

My father stared at the small glass tube in his hand. “Really!” he said. “How did you know my name?”

O’Donnell walked toward Dad. “I didn’t,” O’Donnell said. “I was talking to him.” He pointed at me.

“My son,” said Dad. He finds the oddest times to exhibit fatherly pride.

“Please hand me the vial without touching it any more than you already have,” said O’Donnell, holding out his hand, which was now gloved. “I don’t want to lose any prints it might have on it.”

I walked to Dad’s side. “What do you think this has to do with anything, O’Donnell?” I asked.

“Sergeant . . .”
O’Donnell began, and then gave it up. “I don’t know anything yet,” he answered after a moment, taking the vial and putting it in a plastic bag. “It depends on what that white powder inside might be. If it’s your average recreational drug, I’d just assume someone in your audience felt the movie needed a little help.”

“Come on. Rob Schneider needing help from drugs? That’s crazy talk.”

He didn’t even smile. “But if it’s whatever was found on Vincent Ansella’s popcorn, that would be another story,” O’Donnell continued. “I’m hoping that your father’s prints aren’t the only ones on the vial.”

“I didn’t do it,” Dad said.

“Nobody thinks you did, Mr. Freed.” O’Donnell looked at me as a couple of uniformed cops entered through the auditorium doors. “You’ll stay closed until we know more,” he said. “This place continues to be a crime scene.”