Sharon’s head came up and she stared into my face to see if I meant it. She gasped. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said. She leaned over to kiss me, and we spent a few perfect minutes doing just that.
“Do you really want to see this movie tonight?” I asked her finally.
“I’ve seen it before,” she answered.
“You’ve seen lots of things before,” I told her. “I hope that doesn’t mean you won’t see them again.”
“Don’t spoil it.” And we kissed some more. Finally, Sharon broke the clinch, and managed—without help, I noticed—to stand up. “Come on,” she said.
Having planned ahead, I put my hand on the side table (needed for drinks when watching movies and baseball) and got up on my own. “But the movie,” I protested, grinning.
“I’ll tell you how it turns out.”
We had made it to the stairs when the phone rang. Sharon looked at me, and I shook my head. We started up the stairs, and then I heard Barry Dutton’s voice on the answering machine.
“Elliot. I called the theatre and they said you were at home. This is Chief Dutton. Get back to me as soon—”
I had no choice; I ran to the phone and picked it up. “What’s the matter, Chief?” I asked. “Did something happen at the theatre?”
“No,” he said, but his tone didn’t calm me down. “Something happened up at the Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood. There’s been a fire.”
“Chief . . .”
“Elliot, Harry Lillis is dead.”
24
There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last.
—JULES RENARD
SHARON looked at me with concern; I must have been as white as Wonder Bread. I put my hand over the mouthpiece—for no reason; I didn’t have to keep Dutton from hearing me—and said to her, “Harry’s dead. A fire.” She gasped, and sat down on the stairs.
“What happened, Chief?”
Dutton’s voice was deep and serious. “The Englewood PD put it on the radio about a half hour ago. I called over there, and it seems that a gazebo on the grounds behind the main building went up in flames, and there was a body in the center of it, burned beyond recognition. They counted up inside the home after the fire department got it under control, and Harry was the only resident who wasn’t accounted for.”
“How sure are they it’s him?” I asked Dutton. “Just because Harry isn’t jumping up and down and yelling, ‘Lookit me,’ doesn’t mean he’s the body in the fire, Chief. He could be out for the evening or something. Remember, he’s in a wheelchair.”
I could practically hear Dutton nod. “I know, but he’d have had to sign out, and he didn’t. The body matches his general description, and once they get everything under control and remove it to the ME’s office, there should be confirmation. I’m sorry, Elliot. They’re pretty sure it’s Harry Lillis. There were traces of clothing that matched what people saw him wearing at dinner, and like I said, he’s the only one missing. But they haven’t finished investigating the scene yet. We don’t know what they’re going to find.”
“How did the fire start, Chief?” I didn’t want to think about Lillis being dead. Distracting myself with the details was considerably easier and more therapeutic.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll ask the Englewood department to keep me informed. Tell them there’s a similar case I want to keep track of, or something.”
“Can I talk to them?” I asked.
“In what capacity, as a guy who met Lillis a few weeks ago?”
Sharon had gathered herself, walked down the stairs toward me, and put her hand on my arm. I responded by wrapping the arm around her waist. “He didn’t have any children. Could I say I’m his son, or grandson, or something?”
“Let me get this straight,” Dutton said. “You want the chief of police to advise you to lie to another police department? Of course, Elliot! And be sure to mention my name, won’t you?”
I switched gears as quickly as I could—there’d be time to consider approaching the Englewood cops soon enough.
I needed to sit down, and my kitchen phone doesn’t provide a natural place for that. “Thanks for letting me know, Chief,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’m sorry I had to be the one,” Dutton said, and we both hung up.
I let out a long breath and guided Sharon back to the stairs. She understood that I wasn’t suggesting anything more than sitting on the stairs—the only real means of support in my downstairs living space even if you count the futon. I didn’t look her in the face until we sat down, she just to my right.
She was crying.
I put my arms around her and held her close to me. I felt her tears dampen my shirt, and just pulled her closer. There was nothing sexual about the way we embraced; nothing at all suggestive in my fingers on her skin.
“It’s so crazy,” she said. “I barely met the man. I’ve seen him in a few movies, only since I met you. But now . . .” Sharon drew a hard breath, and didn’t say anything else for a while, but her head, down on my chest, continued to move just a little as she sobbed.
“I know, baby,” I said. “I know.”
SHARON went home about an hour later, and I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep.
If the Englewood firefighters were so sure it was Harry’s body in the gazebo, had they seen his wheelchair nearby? Did they have some DNA samples they could match with the remains? Were they sure Lillis wasn’t simply sitting somewhere playing the guitar? Had anyone looked?
My problems were twofold: first, I wasn’t a cop, and I didn’t have any friends in Englewood, so I couldn’t insinuate myself into the investigation and ask all the questions I had. I’d be relegated to the news coverage and whatever information I could squeeze out of Chief Dutton, which wouldn’t be much. I was a civilian. And I hated that.
Second, and more disturbing: a fire.
Exactly the way Vivian Reynolds died.
Fifty years later, a replay of the initial crime? Or simply a coincidence?
And that’s where my natural cowardice took hold: after having been warned off by Wilson Townes, did I really want to get myself involved in the exact activity I’d been warned about? Did I want to get Les Townes, suspected double murderer, and his son, who had probably doubled for King Kong in long shots, mad at me? Or more to the point, madder at me?
It didn’t make for a frame of mind that was really conducive to sleeping, so I didn’t sleep.
The next morning, having “awakened” at six, a good four hours earlier than usual (which didn’t really matter much under the circumstances), I hit the Internet again, and started taking notes and printing out anything—any slight hint—that made Vivian Reynolds’s death look like something other than a tragic accident.
There wasn’t much beyond what I’d already found. Vivian Reynolds had been a minor celebrity, and while there were countless websites devoted to similarly minor celebrities, most of what was available consisted of “tribute” sites, with pictures, appreciations, filmographies, and other means of justifying the site owner’s slavish devotion to the bit player, second (in some cases, third or fourth) banana, or one-hit wonder.
It was astonishing, even to a classic movie maniac like me, that you could find sites devoted to Dwight Frye, Margaret Dumont, J. Carroll Naish, and Zasu Pitts. For Vivian Reynolds, the material concentrated, not surprisingly, on her work with Lillis and Townes. She was rarely mentioned as an actress separate from the team.
Aside from the site I’d already accessed, .www whokilledviv.com, there was nothing specifically focusing on Reynolds’s death. But there were mentions on some sites, most simply that she’d died in a fire on November 10, 1958.
Bits and pieces did point to some oddities in her death, though. On www.fabulous50s.com, Reynolds’s demise was mentioned, but the “suspicious circumstances” attached had suggested the fire was not accidental. An article from the Los Angeles Times two days after the fire e
xpressed some skepticism over the fact that the arson squad of the LAPD had not been assigned to the case. But it didn’t elaborate on what details of the fire made it seem at all suspicious.
It wasn’t until I got to www.studiocoverups.com that I found anything at all helpful. This wiki site, devoted to virtually every conspiracy theory ever proffered in the movie business (apparently James Dean’s brake line was cut, possibly by Sal Mineo but more likely by space aliens), had only a few paragraphs on Vivian, but the fanatics who posted had managed to find a colossal plot behind her death.
Even in my current mental state, I found it hard to buy some of the claims the site (hosted by an unnamed poster) put forth—that Vivian was having an affair with Natalie Wood, for example—but others were eerily plausible, especially given the events of last night.
According to whomever was posting (backed up, it should be noted, by filed blueprints of the house in which Reynolds died), a steel plate in the wall between the kitchen, where the fire started, and the upstairs bedroom, where Vivian was found, should have contained the fire before it reached her.
In addition, there was reference made to the “official autopsy report” (which was not reproduced here) that suggested the victim “should have noticed the smoke and been alerted before the fire reached her location,” but for some reason had stayed in the bedroom. “Had she been drugged?” the site asked. “Was she dead before the fire was set?” No answers were offered, but it was fairly clear where the poster came down on the subject.
The most damning evidence, however, was in the form of an in-house studio memo, which was reproduced online. Granted, it was shown as a PDF file that assumedly represented a carbon copy of the original, but it looked authentic (which I suppose is the point if you’re trying to prove a conspiracy, true or not).
The memo, from the studio’s head of publicity Milton Kresge to H. R. Mowbrey—the studio owner himself— was dated the day after the fire, Veterans Day, 1958. It put forth the case for a studio cover-up (hence the name of the website) to keep Les Townes, and by extension the studio and the movie being filmed, clear of any suspicion in Vivian Reynolds’s death.
“It is necessary to establish that Mr. Townes was on the set at the time of the fire,” the memo read. “Toward that end, the production staff should provide the sign-out sheet without Townes’s name included. Since it is not (some of this sentence was smeared and therefore unintelligible), an alternate sheet might be provided.”
The memo, three pages long, went on to suggest that “any hint of wrongdoing in this case could be avoided” by “cooperating completely with the police investigation, and by—(more smeared copy)—the investigating officers.”
It was clear, through my talk with Sergeant Newman, that there had been no serious investigation of the fire as anything other than an accidental electrical mishap that had turned tragic. But this memo, if it were accurate, would indicate something much darker—that the studio executives in charge of Step This Way had decided to deliberately impede the police investigation, and it could be inferred, if you stretched a little, that there might have been some studio bribery of the police. Dynamite.
But what could I do with the information? I wasn’t sure that it was accurate, and I didn’t know how to verify anything I saw online. It’s easy enough to find websites confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that Elvis was seen at a Wal-Mart in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, or that eating a Big Mac every day was actually beneficial to one’s cholesterol numbers. I hadn’t worried too hard about the accuracy of things I’d found on the Internet before, mostly because it hadn’t mattered all that much before.
This mattered.
I didn’t want to call Dutton or Meg Vidal with questions about this—not just yet—so I convinced myself that I needed crime investigation advice less than Internet advice this morning. I resolved to call Ned Overberg, a computer expert I know from college, as soon as possible, but since it was seven thirty a.m., it would probably be counterproductive to do so now.
Instead, I skipped breakfast (I hadn’t eaten in the morning since I’d bought the Rialto and turned it into Comedy Tonight, mostly because I was rarely awake much before lunch) and took the bike to the theatre. I figured I could do some repairs on some of the auditorium’s shakier seats until the rest of the world was at work. This being an early riser might result in more work being done, but was that really a good thing?
Astonished, I found Dad standing at the door of the theatre when I rode up.
“How could you know I’d be here this early?” I asked him when I caught my breath.
“I saw the news about Harry Lillis last night,” he said. “I told your mother you wouldn’t sleep. Figured you’d be here early.”
I took the front wheel off the bike and chained it to the water pipe in the alley next to the theatre. “You frighten me sometimes,” I told my father.
“Then my work here is done.”
“Far from it. Come help me fix seats.”
We went inside and got some tools from the storage closet (is there a closet in which storage is not the whole idea?), then headed for the auditorium. Dad didn’t mention Lillis again until we were trying—with little success, initially— to secure a row R seat back to the cement floor. My father isn’t the man he used to be, and I never was.
“When was the last time you talked to him?” he asked, not bothering to clarify who “him” might be; I knew what he meant.
“A couple of days ago,” I said. “He said Les Townes had threatened his life, and I told him to be careful, but he didn’t want to hear about it from me.”
Anyone else would have a violent reaction to the news that Lillis’s life was threatened by his ex-partner days before he died. Not my father. Arthur Freed has the power of an internal calm. I got my metabolism from my mother.
“Did you believe him?” he asked me.
“Yes. After all that went on with Townes, I was pretty sure Les had a pretty hot temper.”
“Hold that steady,” Dad said, pointing to the bolt I was keeping still and he was tightening. “A temper doesn’t automatically make the guy a murderer.”
“How about threats?” I asked.
“Circumstantial. Yes, it means he’s thought about being violent, but the man is in his late seventies, at least.”
“You’re almost seventy,” I told my father. Because he might not know how old he was.
“Thanks for reminding me. Do you think I could drag a six-foot-tall man out to a gazebo and keep him unconscious long enough to set him on fire?”
“Maybe Townes lured Lillis out there and then knocked him out. You could hit someone with a wrench, or something. ”
Dad stood up, holding the heavy steel wrench in his hand. “Like this one?” he asked.
“It was just a thought.”
“Elliot. You’re grasping at straws. You want to believe Les Townes is a killer because then you can come riding to the rescue and solve the crime, and let Harry Lillis rest in peace. The sad truth is, he’ll rest how he’s resting, either way.” Dad shook the seat a little to see if it was solid; it was. “What’s next?” he asked.
“Next?” I thought about that. “I think next is to let the police do their job.”
“I meant with the chairs, but okay, let the cops investigate. Without your help?”
“Help?” I asked. “Ask Chief Dutton how much help I am. After he’s done laughing, he’ll be able to draw you a pie chart that proves I actually cost the taxpayers of Midland Heights money with how much help I am.”
“So what are you going to do?”
"I’m going to help Anthony get his film back. That I can do.”
25
FRIDAY
The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Boo!Ya (this week)
“ELLIOT, if I knew anything else, I . . . might or might not tell you.”
Chief Barry Dutton sat back in the swivel chair we have for Anthony in the projection booth. It took a good deal of convincing to get Barry Dutt
on to come to Comedy Tonight in order to retrieve Killin’ Time. I hadn’t seen the point, really; I thought I was just as capable of loosening four screws and removing a piece of plywood as the next man. Dutton (who apparently was the next man) saw it differently, saying he wanted to see Anthony’s face, as well as Sophie’s and Jonathan’s, when the film was returned. “Helps eliminate suspects,” he said. I thought he didn’t have enough crime to keep him busy, but kept that notion to myself.
He’d even made me wait an extra day for the “revelation, ” possibly in an effort to prove he did indeed have other crimes to solve. But first, I was pumping him for information on Harry Lillis’s death. He didn’t have much, but he did tell me that the medical examiner was working on an autopsy report, which would probably take a couple of weeks to be made public. Over my protests, he added that a couple of weeks was “actually faster than usual” in such cases, especially since Bergen County, where Lillis died, is the largest in New Jersey (by population; if you want sheer square mileage, you go to Burlington County), meaning that a good number of people died there on the average day. More than one of them did so in mysterious ways that required a county medical examiner’s attention.
“Have they determined for sure that it was Lillis?” I asked, again. I was clinging to the irrational hope that someone else—one of the other residents, perhaps—had wandered out to the gazebo at the Booth Actors’ Home and gotten caught in the fire. But Dutton just pursed his lips, trying to restrain himself. So I’d become a broken record (that’s a reference for the vinyl crowd). Fine. But nothing had been definitive yet.
“They’re sure,” Dutton said. “For goodness’ sake, Elliot, it’s been two days. Harry Lillis isn’t in his room and hasn’t been seen on the grounds. Everyone else who lives and works there is accounted for. Who do you think died in that fire? Frankenstein’s monster?”
“There aren’t many police chiefs who say ‘for goodness’ sake,’ you know.” I had to get a dig in.
It Happened One Knife Page 15