It Happened One Knife

by JEFFREY COHEN

  “I’d like to say just a few quick words, and then we’ll ask some people who knew Mr. Lillis for a long time to come up and express their thoughts,” I started. “I only knew them in person for a short while, but Harry Lillis and Les Townes were my lifelong friends. Harry brought me joy when almost no one else could lift me out of a dark mood. He surprised me over and over, even when I’d seen him in the same film a hundred times. Les reached out from that screen and pulled me along with him, wherever he decided to go. And it was always a wonderful ride.”

  I looked up into the balcony, because I figured that was about as close to heaven as Comedy Tonight could simulate. “Harry, if you’re up there, I want to say thank you. I will never be able to pay the debt I owe; I’ll never be able to make you even one-tenth as happy as you’ve made me in my life. I’m sorry about that.”

  And then I took a deep breath, and carefully considered what I was about to do. “And I’m sorry, too, that you murdered your partner Les Townes and tried to cover it up as your own death.”

  There was a loud murmur that swept through the crowd, and I saw a lot of the attendees talking to each other and looking confused. Leo, seated dead center in the audience, went, “Pah!” Nobody else does that like Leo. He sounded delighted, for some reason. The TV reporters, especially, seemed confused: I saw one of them start to read over her notes to see if she’d missed something.

  “Come on, Harry,” I continued. “I know you couldn’t resist coming to your own funeral.”

  It was at that moment that I first considered how exposed I was in the middle of an empty stage (except for the dead man in the casket, who probably wouldn’t be much help). A rifle shot would make mincemeat out of me pretty easily, and with absolutely no warning.

  Maybe this hadn’t been the best possible plan.

  “I saw the videotape, Harry,” I went on, talking to the ceiling. “You sent it to me so I would see it. And you re-created the examination scene from Cracked Ice. You couldn’t resist directing again, even with a static camcorder placed on a dresser.

  “It was just like that scene, Harry. You fell to the floor out of that wheelchair you were using—for what, to make it seem less likely you could hurt someone?—and you waited for Mr. Townes to drop out of the frame. You always knew where the camera was and what it could see, didn’t you, Harry? And you lit the scene beautifully—no light near the camera, raised up, where it would end up illuminating the floor. You didn’t want us to see what was going on there, and you made sure we couldn’t. You were a better director than anyone gave you credit for.

  “When Mr. Townes leaned over you, you strangled him. You broke his neck. And then you put on his vest, the one he wore as the barber in the sketch. And you made sure your back was to the camera. You had lit the room so the window wouldn’t show your reflection, just the glow from the lamp you’d placed next to it. You spoke a few words in Les Townes’s voice. We’d forgotten what a good mimic you are, Harry. You did Townes’s voice before, in Peace and Quiet, and now you’ve proved it really was you on that soundtrack.”

  The spotlight jerked violently to my right, off me and onto the auditorium wall. The TV camera crews started to shift their lights upward, and backward. And from the balcony, where I’d been pointing my comments, came back a voice.

  “Thank you, Elliot. Knowing that I’ve gained your admiration will more than make up for not winning an Oscar. ” It was Harry Lillis’s voice, and the murmur in the audience intensified into a dull roar. Sharon looked up and gasped.

  Marion Borello turned white, and fell back in her seat.

  It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the change from a bright light to darkness. But when they did, I could see what had caused the ruckus.

  Harry Lillis was standing in the balcony, next to the spotlight Anthony had been shining on me. He was still wearing the bushy white moustache I’d seen him wearing when he entered.

  And he was holding a very efficient-looking knife to Anthony’s throat.

  42

  “I’D really appreciate it if you’d let me walk out of this theatre,” Lillis said. “If you try to stop me, I might have to cut this young man’s throat, and he seems like a nice enough kid.”

  Anthony, who had come out of the projection booth to work the spotlight, looked so terrified that he probably wasn’t even thinking about how to work this into a screenplay. “Let him go,” he gurgled. “Please.”

  To say that pandemonium broke out would be an understatement. People in the audience, seeing what was going on in the balcony, screamed, stood, and, in some cases, ran for the exits. Assuming you can call what the AARP crowd at the service was doing “running.” Apparently they believed that the eighty-year-old man in the cheap seats was going to kill everyone there in his rampage of terror.

  Reporters tried to decide whether to cover the unfolding events, or grab their cell phones to call in for further instructions. It was going about fifty-fifty at the moment.

  I was concerned only about Anthony. If Lillis slit his throat, Michael Pagliarulo would probably kill me, and I wouldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to think about what Carla would do.

  Joan Rivers looked up into the balcony and I could clearly make out her lips saying, “It’s Lillis.”

  The best thing was to keep him talking. Maybe I could convince him there was no hope of escape, with all these witnesses. “I don’t understand it, Harry,” I said. “Why would you kill your partner, and your closest friend?”

  Lillis sounded amazed that I’d even ask the question. “He killed Vivian,” he said. “Les set that fire and killed her because he knew she was still in love with me.”

  “No, he didn’t, Harry. The fire was an accident. The arson guys confirmed it. And Les was in the studio when it started.”

  Lillis started backing Anthony up toward the stairs that would take them out of the balcony and down into the lobby. Anthony made a small squeaking sound that indicated he was very frightened, and I certainly could sympathize.

  “Didn’t you see the records? Les signed out of the studio before the fire. And he was seen taking his best stuff out of the house before the fire started. Didn’t you see any of that?” Lillis was disgusted with my lack of investigative skill. “It’s on the Internet.”

  “It’s on the Internet because you put it there,” I said. “I checked with a friend who understands web hosting, Harry. He did a little research. You owned all the sites that purported to show evidence against Les Townes. Walter Lee said you showed a special interest in Photoshop, to create the fake documents, and they were very good. The studio memo you created, the sign-out sheet you falsified? Excellent. You planted the stuff there because you knew I’d be looking. The records showed you only started the sites a few weeks ago, and contributed to a few existing ones around the same time.”

  The back auditorium doors were open now, since a number of audience members had bolted the theatre and left them that way. I looked out from the stage, which was where I had the best vantage point of the theatre and Lillis, and saw a few of the older people trying to hurry toward the exit doors with walkers and canes. I wanted to tell them there was no danger, but that would only piss Lillis off, and might actually create some danger.

  What worried me was that I couldn’t see Jonathan or Sophie.

  Lillis had moved Anthony into position almost at the stairs to the lobby. If I couldn’t stop his movement, I’d have to get out into the lobby to track him. “The thing I don’t understand is, why now, Harry?” I asked. “You’ve thought that Townes killed Vivian for fifty years. You were wrong, but it was what you thought. So why did you wait so long to get your revenge?”

  Lillis stopped walking, and slightly relaxed his grip on Anthony’s throat. “Because I’m a coward,” he said, his face drooping in shame. “Because I was afraid I’d get caught, and have to spend the rest of my life in jail. Well, now I’m dying, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Now I could get justice for Viv and I’ll be just as dead in s
ix months, lethal injection or no.”

  “But you tried back then, didn’t you? You called the cops with a tip that Townes was taking his belongings out of the house.”

  “I thought they’d follow up on that,” Lillis said. “But the studio had the cops in their back pocket. They did nothing. ”

  “It’s not true, Harry,” I told him. “They investigated. But there was nothing to find. So now, when I provided you with the means, you decided to do something. You accepted the invitation to Comedy Tonight because you wanted the publicity. Did you send a copy of the ad to Townes so he’d know to come that night?”

  Lillis nodded. If it hadn’t been for the lethal weapon in his hand, he’d look like a bent, broken old man. “I couldn’t get Les to show up in the same room with me. I told him I had an idea for a comeback movie and he wouldn’t even call back, would you believe it? And I couldn’t be sure he’d come here that night—he never let me know; he just showed up. So I couldn’t do it then. Somebody would see. But this way, it worked. We got all chummy again, and when I asked him to come do one of the old bits with me, he couldn’t resist.”

  His face changed into a pleading mask of pathos as he acted out the part: “Oh please, Les, come on. I don’t have any friends here. Let’s show them what we can do.” Lillis’s voice changed back to an angry one. “He loved it. Thought he was doing a real charity for his poor old friend.”

  My voice was getting hoarse from yelling up into the balcony. “But there never was that first rehearsal, the one you told me about on the phone. That’s why Townes was asking all the same questions on the videotape that you said he’d asked before. And the wheelchair?” I asked. “Was that just to make us think you were too helpless to commit the crime when the moment came?”

  Lillis didn’t mind showing off how brilliant he’d been. “Who’d suspect a poor little old man in a wheelchair, right? You have to admit, that played pretty well.”

  After the initial exodus, nobody in the audience had moved. The true-life drama was too riveting, and some of them were simply caught up in the performance Lillis was giving in the balcony.

  “It did, I admit it,” I told him. “You had me fooled until I did some checking. There wasn’t anything wrong with your hip. You’d never fallen in the common room. You hired your own ambulance, and even the orderly was an actor. And you left a pair of dentures with your name in them at the scene of the fire, and took Les Townes’s. You wore your spares, didn’t you? Every step was planned and thought through. You were putting on a show the whole time, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Lillis said, the steel back in his voice. “And now it’s over. Thanks for the help, Elliot.” And he pushed Anthony, eyes wide and terrified, into the darkened passage that led to the lobby stairs.

  Muffled after they disappeared from view, I heard, “Mr. Freed!”

  I jumped from the stage into the main aisle and ran for the back doors to the auditorium. I was aware of Sharon and Dad standing up, possibly to follow me, but I didn’t have time to wait. I made it to the lobby as quickly as I think humanly possible. I was milliseconds ahead of the TV crews and the newspaper reporters.

  But it just got worse when I made it there. Standing at the bottom of the balcony stairs, holding that goddamn shotgun, was Wilson Townes. And he had the gun pointed at Jonathan, who for his part looked uncomfortable, but not terribly upset. He fidgeted, sitting on the third step, staring at Wilson. When I burst into the lobby, Wilson did not turn and level the gun at me.

  “Stop running,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot him, and not in the ass.”

  This wasn’t part of my plan. I hadn’t intended for any of the staff to get involved at all. This was supposed to be between Lillis and me, and while I was relatively sure Wilson would be in the area, I had pictured it as a one-on-one kind of competition. It wasn’t turning out that way.

  “I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” I said.

  “Good,” Wilson replied. “Then you won’t get in the way while we leave.”

  “How’d he talk you into showing up tonight?” I asked Wilson.

  He shrugged, accepting the inevitable. “You listen to what your father says,” he said.

  “So Harry Lillis really is your father?”

  “That’s right,” Wilson said. “He was having an affair with my mother while she was married to my father. My other father. You know.”

  “The man you helped him kill,” I said. “You helped Lillis drag your father out to the gazebo, you splashed kerosene all over him, and for all I know, you lit the match. Was he still alive when you put him there and incinerated him?”

  Wilson’s eyes showed anger, but he never got a chance to answer. Harry Lillis appeared at the top of the stairs with Anthony in front of him.

  Behind me, at the doors to the auditorium, were Sharon and Dad. I looked around the lobby, and saw Wilson holding the gun on Jonathan; up the stairs, Lillis had the knife to Anthony’s throat. I repressed the question that was burning through my brain.

  “It would be really good if nobody did anything stupid,” Lillis said. “Nobody wants these poor kids to get hurt.”

  Finally, at the top of the stairs, I saw the salvation I’d been waiting for. But I was crushed when Lillis spoke, because it became obvious he’d seen it, too.

  “Those cops behind me had better stay where they are,” he said. “Did you have them hiding in the projection booth? Very smart, Elliot.”

  “Not as smart as you, Harry,” I said. “You fooled everybody. I was crushed when I heard you were dead. Distraught. If you’re sure you’re dying of cancer, why bother to make that tape and send it to me? You could have just gotten away scot-free. You had to know I’d figure it out.”

  Lillis smiled, and it was a cold, stomach-clenching smile. “I wasn’t sure, but I thought there was a chance,” he said.

  From behind him, I heard Barry Dutton’s voice. “Mr. Lillis, just put down the knife. Tell Mr. Townes to put down the gun. You don’t want to have any more deaths on your head.”

  “Is that the best you can do?” Lillis mocked him. “Appeal to the conscience of a man who killed his partner and videotaped it?”

  There was movement to my left, but I couldn’t identify it. Keep him talking. “The tape, Harry. The tape. Why incriminate yourself?”

  “Why shouldn’t I get credit for bringing Vivian justice? ” he asked. “If I could get Les to admit to killing her on tape, why not leave that behind?”

  “But he didn’t admit to it,” Dutton said.

  “He killed her!” Lillis was weeping, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the knife. “He was a murderer, and I showed him justice!”

  He was too far gone. There was no point in reiterating that Vivian Reynolds had died in an accidental fire; Lillis refused to believe that. I started walking, very slowly, toward the steps, to get a better look at Lillis’s face. “It was more than that,” I guessed. “You couldn’t stand being anonymous. You couldn’t deal with the fact that nobody knew who you were anymore. You were going to get Lillis and Townes back in the headlines.”

  Lillis’s eyes narrowed.

  “You could’ve left it alone. You could’ve committed the crime and then faded into oblivion.” I was almost at the foot of the stairs. “But you kept improvising. You wouldn’t stick to the script. You should be thousands of miles from here, but you stuck around, sending Godzilla here”—that would be Wilson—“to threaten me and destroy my property. Because you didn’t really want people to think Townes had killed you. You wanted them to know exactly who’d had the last laugh.”

  “You’re smarter than you look, Elliot,” Lillis said. “But then, you’d almost have to be.”

  Barry Dutton loomed up behind Lillis, his weapon drawn, and put the barrel to Lillis’s head. “Drop the knife, Mr. Lillis,” he said. Behind him, Officer Patel was already in position.

  Lillis dropped the knife, and Anthony dropped to the floor, breathing hard. I didn’t see any blood, so I assumed Lillis
hadn’t cut him. Anthony must have been petrified.

  And then Harry Lillis, the man who’d made me laugh countless times, said very calmly to Wilson Townes, “Shoot the boy.”

  It took Wilson a moment to react, and in that moment, I realized there wasn’t enough time for Dutton or Patel to train their weapons on Wilson. I also knew that there wasn’t any chance at all that I could overpower Wilson. I’m wiry, and he was enormous and muscular. No match. Wilson aimed at Jonathan, who wasn’t looking up.

  During that moment, however, I was monumentally glad that I’d repressed the question I wanted to ask moments before. Because if I’d asked Lillis where Sophie was, he would have wondered that himself.

  Having crawled out from behind the snack bar, where she must have dropped to the ground when Wilson appeared, Sophie grabbed one of the heavy posts we use to hold up the velvet rope when we cordon off the balcony. With an expression of pure focused fury, she hefted it like a baseball bat and clocked Wilson across the back of the head. I couldn’t have lifted it that high. Wilson dropped like a stone, and the shotgun fired into the floor.

  “That’s brand-new carpet, you bastard,” I said to the unconscious Wilson.

  Sophie’s face had a look of such uncontrolled anger that it was a miracle steam wasn’t rising from her nostrils. “Don’t you dare hurt my boyfriend!” she told Wilson, although it was a decent bet he couldn’t hear her.

  “Your . . .” I began. Sophie dropped the post, ran to Jonathan, and hugged him. She started to sob. He looked positively thrilled.

  “We’re going to have to have a talk,” I told them.

  Patel began placing cuffs on Lillis, who looked crestfallen at Wilson’s failure. “You just can’t get good help these days,” he said, his voice sounding very far away.

  “Is he really your son?” I asked.

  Lillis shook his head. “Viv never cheated on Les. But I told him he was, and he believed me.”

  “And Wilson helped you kill his father.”