It Happened One Knife

by JEFFREY COHEN

  The two kids running the theatre (it was Anthony’s night off) had looked at me strangely when I came in, probably because of the dazed expression on my face. Sophie no doubt attributed it to my unfortunate membership in the male gender, while Jonathan was more likely to look into my stunned face and wonder if a very warped mirror had been placed before him, as I wore his usual expression, give or take twenty years. Okay, give. They’d both given me a wide berth, and I was glad to be spending time upstairs, changing reels and not communicating with other humans.

  When I looked down into the auditorium, I could see Leo Munson sitting by himself in one row, and a collection of various lonely types scattered about. People came to the movies on dates, to sit next to each other and not have to talk. The ones who talked at the movies were usually already married, and either arguing or explaining the film to each other, most of the time incorrectly. You could see a lot about relationships from the window of the projection booth.

  I sat back down, a little too hard, forgetting the tenderness in my nether region. The pain pills Sharon had given me made me sleepy, so I’d stopped taking them. The pain wasn’t that bad, anyway, as long as I didn’t drop myself indiscriminately on a hard metal folding chair. I made a mental note not to do that again.

  Marion Borello had said pretty much the same thing as Lillis, but her perspective was different—she’d been in love with Les Townes. Harry had been in love with Vivian Reynolds. Hadn’t there been an easier way to resolve it than burning down the house?

  It didn’t make sense that Lillis wouldn’t tell anyone about Townes’s confession. He’d loved Vivian Reynolds, too; was his professional partnership with Townes so important to him that he’d overlook her murder? Was Lillis that cold-blooded?

  Or was he so tenderhearted that he couldn’t look into his best friend’s eyes and turn him in to the police? I’d seen Lillis both ferocious and merciless in his assessments and also sentimental and soft when dealing with people he liked. Which one was the real Harry?

  Maybe staying alone in the projection room wasn’t such a great idea, after all.

  It didn’t much matter, because I wasn’t alone for long. Just after a reel change, the door to the booth opened, and Jonathan walked in. He’d been in the booth once or twice before, but he continued to stare at all the equipment like a truly devout Catholic in the same room with the Shroud of Turin.

  “Mr. Freed?” As they had with Anthony, my attempts to get Jonathan to call me Elliot had failed miserably. I was his first boss, and everybody knew you called your boss “Mr.” He was probably disappointed I didn’t call him “Goodwin,” but I’m used to disappointing people, so I didn’t let it bother me.

  “What’s up, Jonathan?”

  “Um . . . do you need anything, Mr. Freed?”

  “Not really. Why do you ask?”

  He still wasn’t making eye contact. “Well, the crowd isn’t very large tonight, and I don’t really have anything to do . . .” Jonathan never finishes his sentences; he just sort of lets them run their course.

  “Do you want to go home early?”

  Jonathan appeared shocked—for him. He still didn’t look at me, but his mouth dropped open. “No!” he said, and I gestured for him to lower his voice. “Why would I want to do that?”

  I found myself on the defensive. “Well, the way you were asking, I thought that’s what you meant.”

  “No. I just wanted to see if you felt like trading Monty Python lines.”

  The kid scares me sometimes. I know he’s a fellow comedy fanatic, but he doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not sixteen anymore.

  “Not just now. I’m thinking, okay?” I figured that would do it, but Jonathan just nodded, and continued to look around the hot, cramped room. “Something else I can do for you?”

  “How about Kids in the Hall?” he tried.

  I shook my head. “Not tonight. Thanks, Jon.”

  “It’s Jonathan.”

  “Mine’s Elliot, but you insist on calling me Mr. Freed,” I pointed out.

  “You’re my boss.” Go argue with him.

  I’d have to be blunt. “I’d sort of like to be alone for a while, Jonathan. You don’t mind, do you?” I gestured toward the door with my head.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said, and headed to the booth door. He reached to open it, then turned back, nodding his head. “Oh. Sophie said to tell you that a package came addressed to you.”

  So what? We got candy shipments, catalogues, all sorts of packages every day. Sophie knew that. “Was there a reason she thought I should know?” I asked Jonathan.

  “Um, I think she said it was ticking.”

  Even with the buckshot holes in my butt, I made it to the door in record time.

  17

  THE box was as nondescript as you’d expect a box containing a bomb to be: wrapped in brown paper, addressed with a computer label, no return address. Sophie said it had been brought by a messenger she didn’t recognize, not by UPS or our normal mail carrier.

  And she was right: it was ticking.

  Loudly.

  I called 911 and got the Midland Heights Police Department. When I told the dispatcher the “nature of my emergency, ” she seemed to hit the Mute button on her phone, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that she might very well have been laughing at me. But when she came back to the call, she was all business, asking the address and promising to have someone at the theatre “very soon.”

  I hung up the phone and stared at Sophie, who no longer looked like a radical feminist, but rather like a scared, skinny teenager, and at Jonathan, who looked like . . . Jonathan.

  “Get out of the theatre,” I told them.

  Neither of them moved.

  “What do you mean, get out?” Sophie said.

  “I don’t have time to argue with you, Sophie. I don’t know if that package is a bomb or a very loud wristwatch, but I’m going to err on the side of caution and think bomb. So get outside and stay outside until I tell you it’s okay to come back in. You too, Jon.”

  “Jonathan.”

  “Out!” I shouted, and they reached for their jackets, hanging on hooks behind the snack bar. Sophie looked sheepish, and Jonathan looked confused. I heard the siren in the distance as they reached the door.

  Sophie stopped and turned. “What about the audience?” she asked.

  I’d forgotten they were there. “I’ll handle them,” I told her. “Go. And stay gone. Go across the street and get some coffee or something.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” she said. “It’s a societal attempt to get women . . .”

  “Get out!” I screamed, and she went.

  I took the package to my office and laid it gently . . . very gently . . . on the desk. Then I rushed to the auditorium doors. There were perhaps twenty people in the audience. Should I assume that a bomb would destroy the entire building, and they would be in danger, or should I conclude that there is such a thing as bad publicity, and that yelling “Bomb!” in an extremely uncrowded theatre would be reckless, and small-business suicide?

  It was very difficult to decide, I’m ashamed to say. But I did come down on the side of safety for the audience members. I started for the stairs to the balcony, figuring I’d turn off the projector and bring up the house lights first.

  But I never made it to the stairs, since the theatre doors opened and two Midland Heights police officers walked in. I could see the red and blue flashing lights through the glass in the front doors.

  The one cop I recognized, Officer Patel, came directly toward me. “Where’s the package?” he asked.

  “My office. I was just . . .”

  “What about the audience?” Patel said, looking into the auditorium. “Why are they still there?”

  “I was just about to go upstairs and turn off the projector when you came in,” I said.

  Patel stared for a moment. “What took you so long? The call must have come in five minutes ago.”

  Sure, stick in the kni
fe while I’m down. “You want to talk about it and let the moments tick by, or do you want to get that package out of my office?” I asked. Vince Lombardi was right about that “good offense” thing.

  Patel and his partner were headed for the office, and I was halfway to the auditorium when the front doors opened again, and Barry Dutton walked in, wearing civilian clothing and a bemused expression. “Why is there still an audience in this theatre?” he asked before making it all the way inside.

  “I was just . . .” I decided to give up and walked to the auditorium doors. “Your attention, please!” I shouted. The group inside, barely a minyan at bar mitzvah services, turned toward me. “We’re having some problems with the heating system. Will everyone please wait outside until we can correct the problem?”

  This was Midland Heights, and nobody ever does anything in this town without complaining about how it inconveniences them first. “We’ll miss the movie,” one man said.

  “I’m going to turn it off in a minute. Please head for the front exits.”

  Leo Munson, the little traitor, yelled back, “Wait a second. You’re having problems with the heat, so you want us to go outside? How does that make sense?”

  “There’s a very small chance it could be dangerous,” I said. “So please, head for the exits, and we’ll let you know when you can come back in.”

  “Can we get our money back for the movie?” one woman asked. An hour and forty-five minutes into a two-hour movie, and she wants her money back.

  “We’re going to let everyone back inside in just a few minutes,” I said. “Please just wait patiently, and hold on to your ticket stubs.”

  “Why?” the first guy asked, grinning. “You afraid we’ll get lost in the enormous crowd?” Everybody’s a comedian.

  Dutton came up behind me, and very easily said, “This is Chief Barry Dutton of the Midland Heights Police Department. Please exit the theatre.” He turned and walked toward the office. The audience, as one, rose and headed for the exits.

  I went upstairs and turned up the house lights, as promised. I turned off the projector, with maybe twelve minutes of film left to unspool.

  Once I made it back downstairs, I found Dutton, Patel, and his partner, who was introduced as Officer Crawford, huddled around my desk, staring at the ticking package. At least ten minutes had gone by since Jonathan had alerted me to the problem, and there was no way of telling how long before that Sophie had told him to let me know. And here they were, staring at it.

  “Should I get out a deck of cards?” I asked. Dutton turned and gave me a look that indicated I might have overstepped some boundaries.

  “Why aren’t you outside?” he asked. Make that demanded .

  “It’s my theatre,” I said. “If it’s going to blow up, I want to see it happen.”

  Dutton grimaced. “That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.”

  “I didn’t have time to think of something smarter,” I said.

  He turned his attention back to the package. “Normally, our first priority would be to get this thing out of here and into a secure environment,” Dutton said.

  “A secure environment?” I asked. “You think it’s ticking because it hasn’t gotten enough love at home?” This is how I am when I’m petrified. I can’t help it.

  “Did you move the package since you got it?” Patel asked me.

  I nodded. “Yeah, Sophie received it at the snack bar, because I was upstairs. Then when I sent her and Jonathan outside, I brought it in here.”

  “How careful were you when you moved it?” Crawford asked.

  It was hard not to stare at him. “Not very,” I said. “I figured it might blow me to bits at any second, so I juggled it all the way there.” Other people get chills up the spine; I break out in sarcasm. But together, we can find a cure— won’t you help?

  Dutton broke the uncomfortable silence. “With all that shaking, I wonder if it’s really all that unstable,” he said. “I think it’s safe to take off the wrapping. Let’s try that first.” He and the two officers reached into their pockets and pulled out latex gloves, which they put on. Dutton began very slowly working at the cellophane tape holding the brown paper onto the box.

  It seemed to take weeks, but eventually, Dutton managed to remove the paper from the box without tearing it significantly. I produced a large zipper plastic bag from a shelf over my head and handed it to him, and he put the paper into it to keep as evidence.

  Inside the paper was a plain shoebox. New Balance. Size 14EEE. Aside from the company’s logo and markings, the box wasn’t written on; it had no ominous words in an undecipherable language, and no skull and crossbones to indicate that it shouldn’t be opened.

  But the ticking was louder.

  Dutton looked at his two officers. “Did anybody bother to call the county and ask for the bomb squad?” he asked. The officers did their best to look straight at the box, and not at their chief. “Figures,” Dutton said.

  “Do you want us to call now, Chief?” Crawford asked. Patel stared even harder at the shoebox, as if he could see inside if he just concentrated hard enough. Too many Superman comic books will do that for you.

  Dutton shook his head. “Not now. I don’t feel any resistance on the cover. I don’t think anything’s wired to it.” He gingerly moved his fingers toward the top of the box.

  “You don’t think anything’s wired to it?” I asked. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you want to be absolutely sure of before you act on it?”

  Dutton exhaled. “I seem to remember telling you to go outside, Elliot,” he said.

  “No, you asked me why I was still here. That’s different. ”

  “Please go outside, Elliot,” Dutton said.

  “That’s different. No.”

  He didn’t argue beyond that. “Then don’t question my methods. You had your chance to get out.”

  “I don’t like the way that sounds,” I told him.

  Dutton didn’t answer. He put his fingers back on the box, worked the flap out of the tab in the front (which must have taken half a minute on its own), and very, very slowly raised the top of the box, checking all the while for wires that might have been connected. There were none.

  When he lifted the top, Dutton could see into the box. He and the two uniformed officers leaned over it, and blocked my view. I held my breath.

  They let theirs out.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  Dutton leaned away from the box, and let me see inside. Sitting in the shoebox was an old-fashioned alarm clock, one with two bells on the top, set to the right time, which was currently 10:06. A Goofy cutout pointed at the numbers just to make it look more ridiculous.

  Taped to the clock was a printed note (Times New Roman) that read, “If this were a bomb, you’d be dead now.”

  At that moment, a click came from the box, and the alarm bells began to ring. I came very close to needing a change of underwear.

  Dutton reached over, hand still gloved, and turned the alarm off. He turned toward me with an expression of fatigue and annoyance.

  “I’ve begged you to stop bothering people, haven’t I, Elliot? ” he asked.

  18

  WE let the audience—or what was left of the audience, which amounted to Leo and seven others—back inside, and then Dutton berated me for a couple of hours and asked about my most recent activities in bothering people. We agreed that the clock in the shoebox was most likely sent by one or both of the Towneses. They were the only ones I’d annoyed enough to warrant this much attention, except for maybe Gregory, Sharon’s current husband, but he knew Sharon would kill him if he even tried to hurt me again. Besides, he wasn’t this witty.

  Since the NYPD was already going to harass Wilson Townes about shooting me in the butt, it didn’t seem like that much more trouble for them to question him about terroristic threats, transporting a clock across state lines, and copyright infringement. It was one thing to threaten my life and invite the wrath
of the states of New York and New Jersey, but you didn’t want the Walt Disney Company mad at you.

  “There’s no chance that Anthony would do this, is there?” Dutton asked. We sat in the projection booth while I rewound the films and Dutton, screwdriver in hand, started to take up the piece of plywood from the floor again. He had ordered a fingerprint kit from his headquarters for the alarm clock and the box in which it had been delivered, and the kit had materialized a few minutes before.

  “Send me a fake bomb because he thinks I took his movie away?” I considered. “No, that’s not Anthony’s style. He’d do something gorier. Send me a fake severed finger, or something. A fake bomb in a Goofy clock is a comedian’s threat. Anthony’s more of a Wes Craven kind of guy.”

  Dutton had gotten the plywood up, and pulled the cans of film out from under the control console. Again wearing latex gloves, he placed the cans very carefully on the floor and began dusting them for fingerprints, something I’d never actually seen done before, and still don’t entirely understand.

  I couldn’t watch for long, because the reel I was rewinding had finished, so I took it off the projector and got ready to rewind the next and last reel, in order to set it up for tomorrow’s showing. Being a theatre owner means never having to say you’re stuck for something to do.

  “You have a vacuum cleaner, don’t you?” Dutton asked me. He pointed to the dust he was accidentally spreading all over the projection booth floor. “I don’t want Anthony to know what’s been going on when he comes in tomorrow. ”

  “He won’t,” I said. “But I’ll vacuum it up, anyway.”

  Dutton finished with the first film can and started on the second. “Can I dust the reels themselves?” he wondered aloud.

  “I’d advise against it,” I answered. “I don’t know what that stuff would do to the film, and it’s Anthony’s only copy. Besides, if someone were stupid enough to handle the reels without gloves, he’d probably be stupid enough to handle the cans without gloves, too.”

  Dutton nodded, and went back to his work. “So, why do you think Les Townes would send you a fake bomb?”