“Just sign for the letter,” Gwen said.
But then there was another knock on the door, and I motioned to the postal guy. He opened it before Gwen could protest.
Leo Munson stood in the doorway, and I waved him in. “Leo!” I shouted in the most jovial voice I could muster. “Come on in!”
Leo surveyed the room, and asked, “Where?”
“We’ll make room. What’s up?”
Leo squeezed his way through the door and stood next to Sharon, pressed against one of the filing cabinets. “I just wanted to see if you were still showing the Pink Panther cartoon before the movie,” he said. “I hate the Pink Panther.”
“No,” I told him. “We’ve moved on to Road Runner.”
“About time,” Leo answered. “Well, that was all . . .”
“Stick around,” I said. “I think there’s a box of Yodels in that file cabinet.” Leo has a sweets fixation, and he started the tortured process of turning around to open the drawer.
Gwen was looking even more livid than before, and it didn’t help when the door opened and Sophie and Jonathan appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on in here?” Sophie said. “People come in, and they don’t come out.”
“Sophie! Jonathan!” I sounded like a game show host. “Leo, did I tell you that Sophie is now the manager of Comedy Tonight?”
Leo turned and smiled, chocolate on his lips. “No! Come here, sweetie, let me give you a hug. Congratulations!” And the two kids started to make their way into the room.
Sharon allowed herself a sly grin. She understood that I was trying to make it difficult both for Gwen to get away with anything in front of people, but also to move her arm. Sharon nodded in my direction. I made sure Sophie didn’t close the door behind her.
“Anybody else out there?” I yelled.
“Stop that!” Gwen shouted, but she was being drowned out by the conversation in the room.
My father appeared in the doorway, with my mother by his side. “So this is where everybody went,” he said. “What’s going on? It looks crowded.”
“We’re shooting for the Guinness World Record for the most people in a broom closet,” I told him. “Come on in!”
“Could you just sign for the letter?” the postman said.
“I thought you guys always rang twice,” I told him. It didn’t seem to appease him at all, but it did shut him up.
Gwen’s face was as angry as I’ve ever seen a human look. In fact, since I’ve never actually been in the room with an annoyed cheetah, I was willing to say it was the angriest face I’d seen on any species.
She stuck out her lower lip and painfully raised her arm with the scalpel. “This has gone far enough,” she said, loudly enough to be heard.
Gwen got her arm back in place on Sharon’s throat, and a gasp went around the room. Nobody spoke.
Except my mother.
“What do you think you’re doing to my daughter-in-law?” Gloria Freed shot at Gwen. She was on my side, yet my mother’s voice still frightened me.
“I’m making her pay,” Gwen said, and tried to move the scalpel, but it was difficult to move her arm.
“Pay for what?” my mother wanted to know. “Sharon hasn’t done anything wrong, except scare us all to death.”
“She ruined my life. I’m Gwen Chapman.” She seemed to think that would cut some ice in this room, but was sadly mistaken.
“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” my mother said.
“This can’t be the best way to solve your problem.” My father. Ever the voice of reason, Arthur Freed.
From outside, I heard Sandy Arnstein’s voice. “Arthur? Is that you?”
I nodded at Dad: Yes, get more people here. “Yeah!” Dad shouted. “Come on in!”
We hit the jackpot: Arnstein appeared with Milt the painter, Ralph the plasterer, and Mr. A-OK the plumber. “What the hell is this?” Arnstein asked. “It looks like the black hole of Calcutta in there.”
“But it’s so much fun!” Sharon shouted. “Come on in!”
And that was all it took—all four men started squeezing their way in. The rest of the gathering (with the exception of Gwen, who was still trying to draw her arm back, but kept hitting it on an old projector we use for spare parts) now understood the game, and started pressing in to make room. By the time the four workmen got inside, we had created a scene around Gwen and Sharon that made The Last Supper look like an Ansel Adams photograph of Montana on an especially empty day.
Dad, edging toward Gwen, had his eye on the scalpel. But his arms were literally pressed straight down against his sides, and he’s not that strong. I began to worry about his heart.
And that’s when Gregory showed up.
He didn’t even ask any questions. He just wormed his way in and tried to make it to Sharon. He got as far as the plumber and was caught in an eddy that threatened to send him back out the door.
“Gregory!” my mother yelled. “Grab her!”
“I would,” he answered, “but she’s all the way over there.”
“Not her. Her!”
Bobo Kaminsky showed up in the door. “You didn’t pay for the snow tires, Elliot,” he said. “Hey. You having a party?”
“Yes, and there’s Yodels!” Leo shouted. Bobo, all six-feet-two in every direction of him, needed to hear no more. He was on his way, and much groaning ensued.
“Give it up, Gwen,” I said in as close to a normal voice as I could muster. “You’re not getting anywhere.”
“Yes, I am,” she insisted. “I’ll kill her if I have to carve through all of you to do it.” Major crazy.
“Elliot?” When Meg Vidal’s voice came through the door, before I could see her, I closed my eyes. Please, Meg. Be wearing your uniform.
But Meg is a detective, and only dresses in blues for cop funerals and special ceremonies. She showed up in the doorway, and stood, amazed, at the spectacle therein.
“What in god’s name . . . ?”
“Detective Vidal, a woman in here is trying to commit felony murder!” I shouted. “Draw your weapon!”
“And shoot at whom?” Meg asked. “It’s a sea of humanity in there.”
“I’ll show you,” Sharon said. “Come to me.”
“Officer, this woman killed my father! They arrested her and they let her go! And they’re framing my sister for the murder!” Gwen’s voice seemed to come out of the back wall. Leo was stretched out on the filing cabinets, actually eating a Yodel, and the mailman was sitting on the desk, chatting with the plasterer.
Meg considered her gun, but knew it was impossible to pick out a target. She sighed, and began squirming into the room.
And right behind her was Moe Baxter. “Elliot, where the hell are my car keys?”
“In here, Moe!” I yelled. “I’ve got ’em for you. Thanks for the loaner.”
Moe stood in the doorway and said, “No way.” Moe’s a germophobe. Normally, being in a small room with that many people would be his idea of hell. But then he spotted Sharon in the room, and yelled, “Sharon! I’m so glad you’re okay!” He dove into the scrum.
Still at the door, I decided to make Gwen that much more uncomfortable. I closed the door. There were groans from the crowd.
The seventeen of us, in a room built for, well, two brooms, were practically immobile. I couldn’t decide if I wanted Anthony and Carla to come down and join us, but luckily, it didn’t become an issue. Gregory stood on the little table I use for the spare equipment on the left side of the room. Sophie and Jonathan had taken up a position beneath it. I was not interested in finding out what they were doing.
Meg, in the meantime, was inching her way toward Gwen.
But Gwen was raising her scalpel hand over her head. I expected to hear Sondheim tunes and looked for the barber chair, but this time, the blade was headed downward, toward Sharon.
“You can’t kill her!” I shouted. “She’s pregnant!”
All the motion and sound in the room stopped. Even Gwen’s hand h
alted in midair.
“Elliot!” Sharon said, annoyed.
Gregory, on the table, looked positively stricken. “Pregnant?” he asked. “But we haven’t . . .” Then he glared at me. “You,” he snarled.
“A grandchild!” my mother shouted. “Finally!”
There were noises of congratulations around the room.
But Gregory was unmoved. “Oh yeah?” he spat at me. “Well, I was the one who trashed your house!”
Again, silence in the room. “What?” I asked.
“You heard me. You wouldn’t listen to me, even when I told you Sharon was missing. Dumb old Gregory being dumb again. So I took Sharon’s spare key to your house, and I went there looking for something that would remind her of how you treated her when you were married, so she’d stop idealizing you. That stupid video collection of yours—you love it more than her! So I started . . .” His voice just trailed off.
“But I thought your house was burglarized, too,” Mom said.
“I made that up,” Gregory mumbled.
“You lied to me,” Mom gasped. Of all the things about Gregory to be appalled about, she chose that one.
“Let me clue you in, dumb old Gregory—and don’t be so hard on yourself; you’re not that old. When you trashed my living room, you yanked the answering machine out of the wall, so it wasn’t flashing when I got home, and we never got Sharon’s message.” I looked at him (as best as I could through the sea of humanity). “You could have saved us all a lot of worry.”
Gregory said, “Um . . .”
In the fray, Meg had inched her way to Gwen; with that as her mission from the start, she’d made sure to keep her arms free. She grabbed Gwen’s wrist and halted any movement of the scalpel. Bobo reached over with the desk scissors and cut the surgical tape on Sharon’s wrists, and she stood up, causing ripples in the crowd.
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.”
40
“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, specif
ically 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.
A Night at the Operation Page 27