Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  “Nate, let’s come in, shall we? Join me for a cup of tea?” she said in her British accent, still strong although she had arrived from England with her husband in the early 1950s.

  “You bet I would.”

  Her slender, bent shape was in partial shadow, but I could make out the outline of her smile. An angle of kitchen light gave a sparkle to her kindly eyes.

  “Why the long face?” she asked, as she held the door open for me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, not expecting my sour mood to be so obvious.

  Byron, her old Lab, wheezed out a greeting and dragged his arthritic body across the linoleum in my direction. Keats, her Siamese, roused himself from his cat bed and offered me a bored look.

  I put the book I was carrying down on the kitchen table. It was The Last of the Mohicans. Mrs. Roe had encouraged me to try it a few days before.

  “How do you like it?” Mrs. Roe asked as she moved over to the stove, a kettle of water already heating. A rerun of a Columbo episode played on the small black-and-white TV she kept on her counter. She turned down the sound.

  “I very much like it. It’s just that, you know, I read so slowly. I like Hawkeye.”

  She seemed about to say something and reconsidered. Instead, she said, “Yes, yes, Hawkeye is a man’s man, I dare say.”

  “He’s good with that long rifle.”

  “Rather,” she agreed with a laugh.

  Several months back Mrs. Roe had suffered a mild heart attack, and her face had the pallor of someone with a weak heart. But with this laugh, color spread across both cheeks. She had such a good-natured face, although she thought herself ugly, claiming to have a long nose. She joked that she looked like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. It looked long if you only focused on it, but it fit her face so well it didn’t seem so long after all. And she had an irrepressible good spirit, which, along with the trusting affection Byron gave me, fully defused the lingering effects of my drive through the Duke Forest.

  I told her about the shark movie we’d be getting.

  “I’m not terribly fond of sharks,” she said with a frown, as she poured steaming water into a teapot.

  “Me neither. But I want a good movie. This one will be great.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, my late sister lost her sweetheart at sea near Malaysia during the early part of the war, a frightful thing. From sharks, we found out later from one survivor. I shan’t go into it. She never married.”

  “I’m sorry that happened, Mrs. Roe.”

  “My husband was lucky. He had a year of university training in chemistry before the war started. So, instead of combat they sent him to a research unit. Farnborough, it was. As fate would have it, one of his projects involved creating a shark repellent sailors could use if they found themselves ‘in the drink.’ The trick was to find something those beasts would dislike but wouldn’t hurt the men if they swallowed it. Peter’s team worked like Trojans but never mastered it.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I had not known this about her late husband.

  “It was a pity, but they used a similar concoction for something else. They coated it on mines used to target Jerry U-boats. Otherwise, the meddlesome sharks would bump into the devices, setting them off prematurely.”

  Mrs. Roe put milk in two cups and filled each with tea. I added sugar to mine and stirred it with a teaspoon.

  “Must have been heady times,” I said.

  “Yes, goodness knows.” Her face clouded over, and the pallor returned.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “Bless ’em all, the long and the short and the tall. A dreadful war for soldier or sailor. As if the Jerrys and the Japs weren’t enough, our men, and women, mind you, had to contend with those horrid creatures too. And that is that about that.”

  We were silent for a while. I tried to imagine being tossed into shark-infested waters, thanking the fates I’d come along at a different time and circumstances.

  The Columbo episode ended as usual with someone arrested and taken away by the police and as Detective Columbo, wearing his disheveled trademark raincoat, looked on. The first credit appeared, the name of the director causing me a double-take. It was “Steven Spielberg.” Did he cut his directorial teeth with TV dramas, I wondered?

  I took my cup and said, “Tell you what, Mrs. Roe. You look tired. I’ll take Byron out for a last round. I’ll bring the tea out with me.”

  “I am feeling rather old and tired. I’m sure I do look a bit pale around the gills.”

  “You turn in, Mrs. Roe. I’ll clean up.”

  “Thank you so much, Nate. To bed, to bed, sleepyhead. Good night, then.”

  She did seem paler than usual. She left her tea untouched.

  Chapter Seven

  Around ten the next morning I came into work to do the weekly inventory. As I approached the theater from the main road, I saw an ambulance backed up near the entrance. Three police cars with lights flashing blocked access to the building and parking lot. Someone must have been hurt. Who was it and why next to the theater? Several clusters of onlookers stood close to a perimeter marked by yellow police tape.

  I parked across the street and approached one of the police officers guarding the taped-off area. He wore mirrored sunglasses and a stiff, broad-brimmed hat, reminding me of the prison guard played by Morgan Woodward in Cool Hand Luke. The thought disturbed me. His name tag read, “Roy Slocum,” which somehow added to the effect.

  “Officer, what’s going on? I’m the assistant manager here.”

  He didn’t seem to believe me because he hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t wearing my jacket and tie and must have looked too young for a manager. But why would I lie about this?

  “Someone found a dead body by the side of your building.”

  “What?”

  The air was already thick with muggy heat, but an icy current swept through me. I looked over to where three men stood near the thick juniper bushes to the left of the entrance, about thirty yards from where we stood. Who was it? My thoughts shifted up several gears.

  Slocum didn’t offer more information.

  I heard a camera shutter click as one of the men in a khaki suit and tie took photos. I couldn’t see the body. The two other men, in darker suits and ties, probably detectives, were standing clear of the photographer. One was a stocky, light-skinned Black man and the other, a taller white man, wearing a latex glove on one hand. This second man also appeared older and more in charge, directing the action. He moved over to the juniper bushes and held up a branch. The photographer took several more shots.

  I also noticed Bullock’s Cordoba, still in its parking space. Bullock. It had to be. My mind raced. Bullock rarely came in this early. He hated doing the inventory. That was one of my jobs. The deposit. Robbery. What I’d often feared would happen. Or wait, was it the guy to whom he owed money? Something like this was where things had been heading.

  “I think I know who it is,” I blurted out. “Horace Bullock, my manager.”

  I regretted speculating openly. How could I know? I sensed Slocum inspecting me through the reflecting lenses, past the silver, distorted images of myself.

  I added, “What I mean is that his car is still here. That’s unusual for a Saturday morning. I’m just wondering whether someone tried to rob us last night. He did the deposit.”

  “You’re right. They’ve ID’d him. The name’s Bullock.”

  “This is terrible,” I said, under my breath, my suspicions now becoming real.

  “So he was the manager of this place?” Slocum said, showing his first sign of curiosity.

  “Yes, yes sir.”

  The detective moved another branch, and I could just make out a patch of green polyester, the color of the suit Bullock had been wearing. I felt a wave of sympathy for him. Bullock lived a reckless life and had so many failings as a human being. He disgusted me, to tell the truth. But I wouldn’t wish this on him.

  I also realized that it could have be
en me if I had made the deposit, as I might easily have done.

  “The detectives will want to talk with you,” Slocum said. I didn’t like his tone.

  An unfamiliar, terrifying sensation hit me. Might I be suspected of doing this? My heart slammed against my chest and kept pulsating. Mrs. Roe would back me up. I had been with her. But would I need to explain the time I was in the Duke Forest area? How long had that been? Twenty minutes? But it had taken me close to thirty minutes to make it home. I could have done it during that time. Not likely. This was a crazy idea, I tried to convince myself. My pulse eased to a pace closer to normal.

  The detective kept the branch lifted and reached down to pick something off the ground. He gave it to the other man to place in a plastic bag. I couldn’t tell what it was. He let the branch fall and took out a small notepad from his jacket pocket and wrote in it. He looked over the area and waved to the ambulance crew, the signal to collect the body.

  Seeing the medics lift Bullock’s body chilled and transfixed me. I’d expected it to be limp, but it was rigid and bent. He’d been dead for a while, I concluded, since around midnight, the usual time to make the deposit.

  A dried, broad collar of blood stained the front of Bullock’s shirt and suit. It came from his throat, cut from one side to the other. I retched at the sight. I was familiar with death, having endured both my mom and dad passing away. I’d seen a boy drowned at Lake Mickie, the memory of his pale blue, lifeless frame stretched out on the dock still vivid. But I’d never seen a murdered body, much less one butchered this way.

  The paramedics placed Bullock’s body on a stretcher and covered it with a sheet, lumpy because of the twisted way his body had stiffened. Soon, the ambulance headed away with a sobering lack of urgency. Horace Bullock was gone from this world.

  “Like I said, stick around,” Slocum said. “What’s your name again?”

  “Nate Burton. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I guess it wasn’t this guy’s job to make friends, but why did he have to be so unfriendly—as if I were a certain suspect? Again, I wondered whether I’d have to clarify where I had gone after I left the theater the previous night.

  When would we be opening the theater? I didn’t want to handle a busy Saturday managing on my own, not after this grisly murder. I needed to call Dan Drucker, the district manager.

  When would they question me? How about Phil Hogan? They would learn about the hatred between him and Bullock. They would be talking with both of us soon. As bad as I felt for Bullock, I found myself more focused on figuring out what had happened and why. I wanted to watch the police do their jobs.

  “Who found him?” I asked.

  “The Black guy next to the mower,” Slocum said, matter-of-fact.

  It was Spence Reeves, standing off to the side, but within the taped-off area. He was the elderly man who did part-time cleaning and groundskeeping for us. He usually came in early on Saturday mornings to mow the grass and had probably discovered the body while mowing. The sun flared above and behind him. With his Stetson hat he was fond of wearing and the dignified way he carried himself, he reminded me of John Wayne in The Searchers, outlined by the sun. His right arm held his sickle, his favorite tool for trimming the grass. For a brief second the sharpened edge of the blade caught the sun.

  Chapter Eight

  Spence stared straight at me. We exchanged nods. The older detective moved to where Spence stood, pulled off his glove, stuffed it in a pocket, and shook Spence’s hand. Slocum made his way over to them both and directed their attention to me. The detective then headed toward me, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his forehead as he walked.

  “Detective Bernie Riggs,” he said, with a richer, slower drawl than I had expected, as he extended his right hand to shake mine. His arm muscles pressed against the seams of his jacket. I tried to return the strength of his grip, which seemed to flow from his shoulders. His large brown eyes dominated his square-jawed face, suggesting a quick intelligence as he gave me a confident once-over.

  “Nate Burton,” I said.

  “Officer Slocum tells me you help run this place. Sorry about your manager. A good friend?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Something made me feel I was under oath.

  “Not too torn up about it, I see,” Riggs said. His blunt guess stunned me.

  “We weren’t buddies,” I admitted. And it was true. I was shocked more than upset. Suddenly, Detective Riggs reminded me of the assassin played by Robert Shaw, the one who came close to killing Bond at the end of From Russia with Love. But I shook off the fleeting association.

  He said, “We need to figure out what happened here. Got some questions for you. Can we talk?”

  “Of course.” I had a whirl of thoughts, and I wanted to help if I could.

  “You were working last night?” Riggs asked.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “When did you last see Mr. Bullock?” Riggs said, with a no-nonsense shift in tone. A weird paranoia arose in me. It shot up my spine like a foreign substance.

  “I got off work around eleven-fifteen, after the first movie, Rollerball, ended. Mr. Bullock let me go early and told me he’d make the deposit. That’s when I last saw him.” I had stuttered out some of the words. Why did I do that?

  He scribbled in his notebook.

  “Deposit? He would have had a deposit bag?”

  “Yes, two. One for tickets and the other for concessions. Did you find any bags?”

  Riggs hesitated, looking mildly annoyed. He was the one asking questions, his expression seemed to say.

  Ignoring my question, he said, “Who else would’ve still been around after you left? I’m trying to get a full picture.”

  “Spence Reeves, the man you were just talking with, and Phil Hogan, he’s our projectionist.” I didn’t wish trouble on anyone, but the more people I listed, the better for everyone I guessed. And, anyway, what was there to hide? Spence, I knew wouldn’t have done it. Hogan? Well, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Yes, Mr. Reeves has been very helpful. Found Mr. Bullock’s body, in fact, and called us. He mentioned Mr. Hogan as well, who I understand should come in soon. When would Mr. Bullock have left to make the deposit?”

  “Probably around eleven-thirty, after the second movie let out,” I said, realizing that this was exactly a period during which I had no alibi. Bad luck for me, but I told myself to calm down. They’d have to catch the real person who did it.

  “Mr. Reeves and Mr. Hogan would have left by then too?”

  “Phil Hogan would have taken off after shutting down the projector in the main theater, about the same time Mr. Bullock did. Mr. Reeves would still be cleaning the theater, which likely took another half hour, no more than an hour.”

  Riggs continued to press, “Who, besides you, knew the procedure for making the deposit?”

  He didn’t ask these questions rapidly, but he didn’t waste time either. He kept the relaxed drawl, each question following on the next as if he would be taking one sure step after another to figure it out. I had the image of someone needing to strip a wall covered with stained wallpaper and achieve clarity by doing so, piece by piece.

  “Mr. Reeves and Mr. Hogan, and our cashier, Samantha Hicks.”

  I paused, now controlling my initial alarm and giving him time to write the names.

  I said, “But we’re careful about this. It’s often a lot of cash. We always leave the theater with the bags hidden in something. At least I do. Don’t like doing the deposit, to be honest. I feel defenseless. Someone might be out there watching me.”

  “A bullseye. I can see what you mean,” Riggs said, surveying the entrance area. “I don’t recall this place being robbed before.”

  “It’s not leaving the theater that gets me most worried,” I said, trying to make it clear I wanted to cooperate.

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s making the bank deposit at the mall. The place is empty at that time of night. That’s where I thought we
’d get robbed if it ever happened. Not here.”

  “I understand,” Riggs said. “We’ve had trouble there before. Spent a long evening staking it out from the roof two summers ago.” He took out his handkerchief to wipe again the sweat spotting his forehead.

  “Mr. Burton,” Riggs said. “Did you go directly home after leaving the theater last night?”

  “Yes, well, pretty much,” I said, jolted by his return focus on me. Already perspiring, now my upper lip and forehead seemed connected to a garden hose. Again, I had answered more quickly, less calmly than I wanted to. Had Riggs tricked me, not wanting me ready for the question? His eyes narrowed. Damn, he was gauging my reaction, and I hadn’t handled it well.

  “Pretty much?”

  “I felt like taking a long way home.” This sounded inadequate. I wiped a forearm over my upper lip.

  “A long way?”

  “I guess I wanted time to think.”

  Riggs paused for a moment, a corner of his mouth turning upward. He didn’t seem convinced. But how could I tell him what I had done and why?

  “So, when did you get home? Can you give me an exact time?”

  “Close to twelve-thirty,” I said. “I remember it was just when a radio interview was ending.”

  “Someone back you up on this?” he asked, now raising an eyebrow as if in accusation. Again, I wiped my upper lip.

  “I was with Mrs. Roe, Hillary Roe. I rent a room in her house, near the YMCA, downtown. We had a cup of tea together last night when I got home. She’ll remember this. I can give you her number.”

  Calm down, I scolded myself. Wait, what if Mrs. Roe had a heart attack? The thought scared me—then shamed me. I should be damned to hell, straight to hell, to first think of myself.

  “That would be helpful. Can we get out of this sun? You look like you’ve sprung a few leaks.”

  “Definitely,” I said, pulling the keys from my pocket and heading toward the entrance. Riggs seemed to regret his accusatory shift, his tone of voice changing back to its earlier, more friendly one. Maybe he sensed my sincerity. And that extra half hour—how could I have pulled off a gruesome killing? Also, did I look like, sound like, a brutal killer? He was just doing his job.