He took a while before answering. “You understand I can’t verify any of this. It was just something I heard around the station house.”
“I understand.”
“Well,” Newman said, “whoever saw the husband said that he was carrying things out of the house. Awards, pictures in frames, things like that. As if he was leaving.”
“Or cleaning out the things he didn’t want to lose in the fire,” I said.
“Yeah,” Newman agreed. “Like that. Allegedly.”
“Did Townes report anything like that—awards, photos, posters—lost in the fire afterward?”
“That I don’t know,” Newman told me. “You’d have to check the insurance records, if they still exist.”
“It doesn’t seem to add up,” I said, half to Newman, half to myself. “There appears to be all this evidence that the fire might have been set deliberately, and that Townes would be a great suspect, but no one ever followed up.”
“Hey, I was just a cop,” Newman said. “I wasn’t a detective and I wasn’t the primary.”
“I’m not blaming you, Sergeant,” I told him. “I just find it strange.”
“In those days? The studios could have covered up World War Two if they wanted to.”
I thanked Newman and called the Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood to ask Harry Lillis for Townes’s phone number. After a few minutes of complaining (“What, I’m not enough of a celebrity for you now?”), he gave me a number in Queens, New York, about an hour’s drive from where I was sitting.
I walked out into the lobby and looked around. Rarely had such a hive of inactivity been recorded in modern life: Sophie was still reading, Jonathan standing around. Carla must have gone up to the booth on inside the theatre. There was hardly a sound from inside the auditorium, other than that of the movie itself. I walked to the snack bar.
“Hey, Sophie,” I began, “how’d you like to give me a ride?”
She looked up from her book and rolled her eyes in time-honored teenager fashion. “Typical male,” she said. “Need, need, need.”
11
AFTER Staten Island, Queens is probably the least understood borough of New York City. Everyone knows Manhattan—they see it on TV every New Year’s Eve. They think they understand Brooklyn, because they’ve seen lots of World War II movies where one of the “earthy” characters is named “Brooklyn,” and there are reruns of Welcome Back, Kotter on TV every once in a while. They’ve heard of the Bronx, because Yankee Stadium is there. But Queens? Since the World’s Fair moved on in 1965, not many people outside the tristate area have given it much thought. Except when they watch King of Queens, which was shot in Culver City, California.
The fact is, Queens encompasses a lot of space, and runs the gamut. There are parts of it that constitute the most suburban areas within New York City limits, and the directions Les Townes had given me on the phone indicated he lived in one of them. Sophie, hands clenched tightly at ten and two on the wheel, her two-month-old driver’s license no doubt burning a hole in her pocket, watched the road intently as I navigated through the streets. So far, we seemed to be doing all right. Everything was right where the paper in my hands said it would be.
“Why don’t you drive yourself?” Sophie asked me through clenched teeth. “Why are you always making women drive you around?”
“First of all, I do drive; I just don’t own a car,” I answered. “And I don’t only get women to drive me; sometimes men drive me, instead.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t believe in destroying our environment strictly for our own convenience,” I told her. I figured the political conviction in my voice would impress her.
“So how is me driving you better than you driving you?”
“I’m still working on that.”
We rode in silence for a few minutes, other than my reading out directions when appropriate. Sophie hadn’t blinked since the Queens Midtown Tunnel. The obvious lightning bolt finally hit me in the head. “This is your first time driving in New York, isn’t it?” I asked her.
Her silence told me I was right.
“Do you want to pull over and let me drive?” I asked.
Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “So you think the little lady can’t handle it, is that it, Elliot? You think the big, strong man has to step in and save the day every time . . .”
Women (or in Sophie’s case, girls) were making less sense than usual to me lately. But instead of saying “shut up and drive,” like I wanted to, I said, “I think this is it.” Because I thought it was.
Sophie pulled her car (a year-old Prius her parents had bought her) over in front of a respectable, if not wildly impressive, brick detached row house that had been expanded in the back. Not the kind of home where you’d expect to find a legend, but hey, Louis Armstrong lived in a house like that in Queens for decades after he became a star— until he died, after which living there would have been impractical.
It was Les Townes in that house, a guy I’d spent my twenties trying to be as cool as. Never at a loss for the right thing to say to a lady. Never unable to smile his way into your heart. Always able to hit the high notes without breaking a sweat. Nothing ever bothered him.
At the screening Friday night, I hadn’t been prepared to meet Townes the way I was when Dad drove me to Englewood to meet Lillis. And he’d gotten the best of me in every conversation we’d had so far, because I didn’t know how to react to him. I had no sense of what the man was like offscreen.
I got out of the car, but Sophie demurred, saying she’d prefer not to “be introduced as your chauffeur,” and stayed in the car. As I walked up the steps, she put iPod buds into her ears. I guess car stereo is for the Male Establishment.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t met Les Townes just a few nights before, but now, I was barging in on him to ask whether he’d murdered his wife fifty years earlier. It’s not a social situation in which I’m particularly well practiced, nor comfortable. I didn’t want Townes to have killed Vivian Reynolds; I wanted him to be smooth and dashing and swilling a martini with a carnation in his lapel. That probably wasn’t going to happen, though. I stood there for a moment, gathering my thoughts.
Sophie lowered the power window on the passenger’s side and yelled up at me, “If you push that button, a bell will ring.” I gave her a look that emphasized my position as a Patriarch of Society and turned away from her. For a moment, I felt like I should check under my arms or try to smell my own breath.
There wasn’t anything else to do, so I rang the doorbell.
I heard a good deal of clatter behind the door, and two voices—both male—speaking to each other loudly, but not in anger. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. After a few moments, the door opened, and standing in front of me was a large man.
Okay, a very large man. A man whose build might bring other men (like, say, me) to their knees if it decided to do so. He was tall, and probably would have been thin, but he’d clearly been spending the past twenty years working out on very serious exercise equipment. This effect was emphasized by the tight gray T-shirt that advertised said brand of very serious exercise equipment. In case I’d missed the point.
But around the eyes and the forehead, especially, there was something eerily familiar: he had a face very reminiscent of his mother. Vivian Reynolds. I did some quick math, and realized that despite being constructed something like the Space Needle, the Hulk would have to be in his early fifties. Which meant he could still kill me, but there was a chance I could run faster than he could.
I must have stood staring at the structure in front of me for some time, because it looked at me and said, “What?”
Startled out of my heightened state of intimidation, I answered with surprising lucidity, although my voice seemed a full tone higher than usual. “Does Les Townes live here?” I asked.
The Sears Tower turned and called into the house, “Dad! There’s some dude here to see you!”
From inside, I heard
Townes’s voice ask, “Is that Elliot Freed?”
“How the hell should I know?” Mr. Kong answered.
“There’s this new thing just invented,” Townes called back, his voice getting louder as he approached the front door. “It’s called ‘asking.’ You could try that. Besides, he called and said he was coming.”
“I never saw him before,” said the ogre.
“That’s because you couldn’t be bothered to go to the theatre Friday night,” his father answered.
Townes’s large son turned back toward me and asked, “You Elliot Freed?”
I had little to gain by lying, so I admitted it. By now, Les Townes had made it into the front hallway and was peering around his son’s superstructure to identify me.
“Mr. Freed,” he said. “Back to ask for a return performance so soon.”
“You were a big enough hit, Mr. Townes,” I said. Might as well butter up the subject before you go in for the kill. Especially when there’s a guy standing between you who could tear you in half by looking at you the right way.
Like Lillis, Townes’s the face was older, wrinkled, with less hair on top, but you didn’t have to squint to see Les Townes in there. He’d been a handsome man, reportedly a ladies’ man until he got married, but after Vivian’s death . . . there’d been no talk of another woman after that. Ever.
“Come in,” Townes said, and the Colossus of Rhodes moved to one side so I could enter the room. It was less a living room than a sitting room, where a few overstuffed chairs and one sofa were framed by bookshelves and a fire-place on one side. It was a considerably grander room than I had thought when standing on the outside looking in. I complimented Townes on his home. His son eyed me from his high perch, and didn’t seem impressed. The old Freed charm wasn’t working on anybody these days.
Maybe there was no “old Freed charm.” I’d have to give that some thought.
Townes nodded in the direction of the giant redwood and said, “This is my son, Wilson.”
I said hello to Wilson, which was similar to saying hello to the Great Wall of China, but then, the Wall might have given a more animated reply. I’m not sure what it was about me that was annoying the comedian’s offspring, but Wilson sure didn’t care for me being around.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Freed?” Townes asked.
“The first thing you can do is call me Elliot,” I told him, and Townes smiled and nodded. “But I’m also here because since the show Friday night, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about your career, and some of them I couldn’t answer.”
Townes feigned looking surprised. “Even you?” he asked. “From the way you were talking to the crowd the other night, I thought you knew more about us than we did.” He gestured that I should sit in one of the easy chairs, and I did. Townes walked slowly to the other, and Wilson loomed in the archway to the dining room. He did not sit.
“I’m a pretty enthusiastic fan,” I said, “but I’ve only read what’s been printed. You were the guy who did it.”
“One of the guys,” Townes replied with diplomacy.
“Granted, but you were there. I wasn’t.”
“You should be happy you weren’t. Then you’d be as old as me. So, okay,” Townes said, “what do your customers want to know?”
I spent about twenty minutes drinking decaffeinated coffee (what’s the point?) and making up questions that nobody had asked me, but that I found interesting: How did they film the Cracked Ice sequence in which it appears that everyone is talking backward? (By filming it forward and projecting it in reverse.) Why was the billing Lillis and Townes, and not Townes and Lillis? (They flipped a coin.) How had the team met? (Townes was playing piano at a whorehouse Lillis visited.)
“I hear there’s a possibility you two might be planning a comeback,” I said to Townes.
He looked puzzled; he squinted at me as if my image required focus. “A comeback?” he asked.
“Yes.” I persevered despite all indicators. “Mr. Lillis mentioned something about a script involving two older men who rob a bank . . .”
Townes’s lip curled with resignation and exasperation. “Mr. Lillis,” he said. “Mr. Lillis is delusional, and thinks two ridiculously old men could be a hit at the box office. He wanted me to come to the nursing home where he’s living and rehearse. Can you imagine? He has an idea, not even a script, and he wants an eighty-year-old man to come up and rehearse. We didn’t improvise; we had scripts and we stuck to them. Except when Harry had something to add. Mr. Lillis. ” Townes waved a hand in dismissal. I got off the subject.
“What about your titles? Who came up with those?” I knew, but it was an easy question, and we went on for a few more minutes.
Having warmed up my subject, I felt it was possible now to enter into less neutral territory. “How did you meet Vivian Reynolds?” I asked Townes.
At the mention of his mother’s name, Wilson tensed visibly, but Townes, the consummate professional, showed no reaction. “I met Viv through Harry, actually,” he said. “Harry knew her from a party at Jack Benny’s house, and I knew he’d gone out with Viv a couple of times. But he said he wasn’t interested. He also said he thought she’d be good for the picture we were making.”
“Bargain Basement?” I asked, and Townes nodded.
“We needed a girl who looked good, but who could also keep up with Harry’s patter,” he explained. “In Hollywood, you couldn’t walk to the telephone without tripping over a girl who looked good, but the other part was difficult.” His eyes got a little glassy. “Viv was the best I’d ever seen.”
“And you fell in love with her,” I pressed on.
“I married her,” Townes said, his voice upping the ante. “I had a son with her.” He nodded toward Wilson. “I worked with her, I lived with her, and I buried her when she died.”
My ears must have pricked up when he opened that door for me. “The fire in your house,” I said. “Were you at the studio when you found out?”
Townes’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” was all he said.
“It started in the kitchen?”
“What am I, the fire commissioner? It was fifty years ago.” Townes seemed amazed that I’d broach the subject.
“I’m just trying to understand,” I tried to soothe him. “There were rumors . . .” Maybe that wasn’t the most soothing thing I could say.
Townes never looked upset; he merely glanced over at his son and said, “Wilson, go load the shotgun.” Comedians. Always playing the moment.
Wilson, deadpan, left the room.
“Mr. Townes, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” I told him.
“No offense taken, Elliot. But Wilson gets sensitive about his mother. Never really knew her. If he hadn’t been at his grandmother’s house that day, I wouldn’t have him, either. So do me a favor, now, and go home, okay?” Townes stood.
I had just started asking the questions I’d come here to ask, and thought there might still be a way to repair the interview. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t we just talk a few more minutes?”
“It only takes Wilson a minute or so to load that shotgun, Elliot. I don’t think we have very long.”
I stood.
“You weren’t kidding?” I asked Townes. He shook his head very slowly and deliberately: No.
“Go home. Don’t worry about offending me, and don’t ask me about Viv anymore. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, is it?”
I heard Wilson coming from somewhere inside the house. His impact tremors would put a T. rex to shame. I started for the door.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Townes.”
“Go, Elliot.”
I hit the door as Wilson appeared in the archway. He was, indeed, carrying a shotgun.
Panic will make you do a lot of funny things. I barreled out of Townes’s house like John Belushi leaving the dean’s office in Animal House, yelling, “Sophie! Start the car!” I ran down the steps to the street, hearing Wilson’s woolly mammoth footsteps behind m
e. At street level, still not seeing the parking lights come on, I ducked my head to see inside the car as I ran.
Sophie still had the iPod buds in her ears, and hadn’t heard me. Her head bopped in rhythm to the music.
At full speed, it’s hard to look behind you, but I felt it was necessary. And I was right.
Wilson stood at the first landing, about six feet above my level, and he aimed the shotgun right in my direction. He looked serious.
But I had reached the passenger door to Sophie’s car, and grabbed for the handle.
Which was locked, naturally.
I started to bang on the window with both fists. “Sophie! ” I screamed. “Open the door!”
She noticed me in the window, looked annoyed, and hit a button on her side of the car. I heard the door lock click, or maybe that was the shotgun’s pump being worked. I couldn’t tell.
I wrenched the door open as fast as I could, and as I dove into the car, I heard the blast from the shotgun. Something whizzed past me; a lot of somethings. I couldn’t tell where they were headed. Then I saw a number of tiny holes appear on the inside of the car door as I pulled it shut.
“What are you doing to my car?” Sophie asked.
“Start the car!” I yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Sophie began going through all the steps new drivers go through. She checked her mirrors, released the parking break, made sure the transmission was in park before turning the key . . .
I checked the side mirror in front of me, saw it had been blown to bits by the last blast, and I didn’t want to wait for the next one. “Drive!” I yelled.
Sophie started the car and drove. I think we might have nicked the fender on the car in front of us, but we kept going. I never heard another blast from the shotgun, but I didn’t exhale until we were at least three blocks away.
At that point, I finally relaxed enough to reach back and get the shoulder harness. I pulled it around me, and was somewhat surprised when the hand that snapped it into place came back with blood on two fingers.
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