Some Like It Hot-Buttered

by Cohen, Jeffrey

  When Sophie arrived, I reminded her that in Anthony’s absence, I’d be spending more time in the projection booth, and that she’d be in charge of most everything else. She seemed duly impressed, until I realized she still had the buds from her iPod in her ears, and was nodding along with the music, from Evanescence or some such band.

  I motioned to her to take the buds out, and she sighed a little, but obliged. I repeated the instructions I’d just given her and Sophie looked more annoyed than she had before, if such a thing were possible.

  “I heard you,” she said. “I’m not deaf.”

  “It’s hard to tell with those things in your ears. If I’m going to give you more responsibility, I have to know you’re listening.”

  If Sophie hadn’t already been doing her “cadaverous pale” thing, I’m sure the word “responsibility” would have made her look downright ashen. “Why would I want more responsibility?” she asked.

  “So you can learn more about the movie business.”

  She half-closed her eyes and pulled in her lips. “Oh joy, my career can begin at last.” Sophie put the buds back into her ears and began to undo the damage I’d done to “her” snack stand.

  The house was still bigger than most nights, but clearly the novelty of going to the movies at the “death theatre” was beginning to wane. I’d have to either do better advertising or kill someone to keep the box office alive. It was a tough choice.

  Our audience, I noticed, included a good number of teenagers (each of whom I’d personally asked for ID, as Phat Ho was rated R) dressed and made-up much like my lone remaining employee. When I could bear to pull myself away from William Powell and Myrna Loy (all right, so The Thin Man was a mystery; it was a comic mystery), I asked Sophie about the influx of Goth youth.

  “They’ve come to experience the death,” she said. I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

  I had just started the projectors on the second feature, a turgid sex comedy with remarkably little sex and even less comedy, when Sophie knocked on the projection booth door, and I came out.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her.

  “Can fresh popcorn go bad?” she asked.

  I could feel my eyebrows crowd together into one big eyebrow. “No,” I said. “You just popped it, right? You did it yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then, no. It can’t go bad that fast.”

  She nodded, and headed back downstairs, but I stopped her at the top of the staircase. “Why?” I said.

  “Why, what?”

  “Why did you ask about the popcorn?”

  “Oh, because it’s all white and powdery.” Sophie headed downstairs again, and I stood there for what I hope wasn’t the fifteen minutes it felt like, then ran down the stairs to the snack bar.

  Sophie was alone there, standing with the iPod buds back in her ears, bagging popcorn. Luckily, she didn’t sample any as she bagged.

  It was white and powdery. It looked like white cheddar corn. We didn’t sell white cheddar corn.

  I motioned for Sophie to take the buds out of her ears. “Did you sell any of this to anyone?” I asked.

  “Popcorn?” She clearly figured I was a complete idiot, and I was starting to feel like one.

  “This popcorn. The fresh batch. The white and powdery stuff.”

  “Oh. No, I popped it just at the end of the intermission, but I still had some left from the last batch. Nobody’s been out here since then.” She picked a piece up, and was about to put it into her mouth.

  I slapped at her hand and knocked the popcorn out. Before she could complain, I said, “Call Chief Dutton and tell him to come here right now. And don’t, under any circumstances, let anyone eat this popcorn. Understand? Don’t sell anybody any popcorn, and don’t eat any yourself. And wash your hands.”

  Chastised, Sophie nodded, and reached for the wall phone behind the snack bar to call Dutton. Just before she dialed, however, she turned to me. “Elliot?”

  I was heading to my office, but I turned back to face her. “What?”

  “Are the Milk Duds okay?”

  Dutton showed up fifteen minutes later, with Sergeant O’Donnell and a Midland Heights cop who was not (to my dismay) Leslie Levant. O’Donnell, who by dint of his county affiliation appeared to be in charge, made sure the officer bagged some of the popcorn in plastic.

  “Are you sure nobody ate this batch?” O’Donnell asked me.

  “Sophie had just finished making it, then she had to walk away from the snack bar for a minute,” I told him. “She says when she got back, the popcorn looked, and I’m quoting, ‘white and powdery.’ So she came upstairs and got me.”

  “Why’d she have to leave the snack bar?” O’Donnell said.

  “We’re down to a two-person staff these days,” I emphasized for him. “After the intermission, sometimes one of the people needs to walk away for a minute. You know.”

  “I spoke with her,” Dutton reported. “She didn’t notice anybody near the snack bar before she left or when she got back.”

  “Could whoever put the stuff on the popcorn have given it to someone in the audience already?” O’Donnell asked, looking nervously at the auditorium doors.

  “Then why put it on all the popcorn?” Dutton said. “They could just dose the box they wanted the victim to eat, like with Mr. Ansella.”

  “What do you think it means?” I asked. “Is someone trying to sabotage my business, and poor Mr. Ansella died randomly?”

  “It’s all about you, isn’t it, Freed?” O’Donnell said.

  “Well, somebody was trying to poison everybody in my theatre,” I answered. “They can’t be mad at the entire audience individually.”

  “We don’t even know it’s the same stuff on the popcorn, ” Dutton pointed out. “For all we know, it’s flour. It could just be a prank, Elliot.”

  “A prank? One man is dead, we don’t know how many others were just prevented by a matter of minutes, and you call that a prank?” My heart was pounding, my stomach was churning, and I’m sure I was in a sweat. It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten any popcorn, or I’d be really concerned.

  “Well, we can’t take any chances,” O’Donnell sighed. “We’re going to have to close down the theatre again, Freed.”

  “Close down the theatre? When?”

  “Now.”

  “It’s the middle of a showing,” I said. “People are going to want their money back.”

  Dutton grimaced. “For Phat Ho?”

  I protested, but it was hard to argue with an attempt to spread low blood pressure throughout Central New Jersey; I lost. The uniformed cop went into the auditorium on Dutton’s orders and, after I stopped the film and brought the house lights up, made an announcement asking everyone to leave the theatre, mentioning something vague about “police business.” Then he went ahead and told them not to eat any more popcorn, and the murmur that started when the projector had stopped running turned into a dull roar. People started running for the exits, and by the time I got downstairs, Dutton was surrounded by patrons demanding to know if they needed to go to the emergency room to have their stomachs pumped.

  “There’s no reason to believe that there’s anything wrong with any of the popcorn sold tonight,” he said, accurately. “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry!” exclaimed one woman, whom I recognized as a cashier at the local Shop Rite. “A man died here the other night, and now you say we could be poisoned, and you want me not to worry?”

  So much for the idea that only the information released by law enforcement officials is known to the public. Apparently, everybody in town knew Ansella’s death wasn’t a heart attack.

  “I’m going to say it again,” Dutton replied, louder now, and the crowd quieted down. “There is no reason to think there’s anything wrong with any of the popcorn sold tonight. ”

  “Then why can’t we eat the popcorn?” a guy in the crowd asked. He must have been really hungry.

  “Listen!” I sho
uted, hoping desperately to make nice with the customers. “Anyone who brings a ticket stub from tonight” (we use different color tickets for each day of the week, so I could know) “will get in free on their next visit.”

  “Sure,” said the cashier, “if I survive tonight’s visit.”

  They started filing out, after Dutton reassured them three or four more times. Bobo Kaminsky passed by me at one point, actually winked, and said, “I can trust the popcorn, huh?” I gave him a snide look, and he left, chuckling.

  Before I could blink, Bobo had been replaced by Professor Bender, who had emerged from the auditorium shaking his head. “A pity,” he said as soon as he was within earshot. “Of course, The Thin Man isn’t W.S. Van Dyke’s best.” Pompous ass. Then he added insult to insult by saying with a sly smile, “I was so enjoying the second feature as well.” In a feat as heroic as any ever witnessed in Central New Jersey, I refrained from slugging him.

  I confess I retreated to my office at that point, but frankly, nobody—besides Bender—seemed terribly upset at having missed Phat Ho. If Anthony had pirated this movie, the charge would probably be downgraded to a misdemeanor.

  Sophie came into the office at one point. “My friends want some of the popcorn with the, you know, stuff on it, but the cops say they can’t have it.”

  “Sophie, that stuff could be poison!” Although she seems bright, Sophie can sometimes act like the dimmest bulb in the package.

  She gave me a pitying look. “That’s why they want it.” Of course. As usual, I was the winner of the dim-bulb derby.

  “Well, they can’t have any,” I said. “We have to do what the police say.”

  “Yeah, and when you’re in trouble, the helpful officer is your best friend.” Sophie’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  With no idea how long we’d be closed this time, I told Sophie I’d call when she could come back to work, gave her a check for her wages up until that night, and shut the place down myself after a gaggle of O’Donnell’s investigators once again searched the place from dome to cellar with no visible results. If this kept up, I’d be able to cancel the weekly cleaning service and just let the cops do the job.

  I was getting tired of closing the theatre up on my own. Usually Anthony and/or Sophie would help get the place into some kind of shape, but with Anthony missing I didn’t like the idea of keeping Sophie late, especially with someone trying to kill my patrons. I was getting tireder still of riding my bike back to the town house at absurd hours of the morning. Despite what everyone seemed to think, I realized that all this mayhem hadn’t been directed at me personally, but I’d be damned if it didn’t feel like I was bearing the brunt of the consequences. Well, after Vincent Ansella. And Anthony, wherever he was.

  There’s nothing like fatigue when it’s combined with frustration: you’re guaranteed to be up all night, desperate for a short nap to fuel your insomnia. I was looking forward to a long evening, and unfortunately, virtually nobody plays baseball at two in the morning. Luckily, there’s the YES Network, which shows baseball games of no consequence at all times of the day and night, 365 days a year. Including Christmas.

  I arrived at the town house and put the bicycle down in the hallway, then locked my emphatically green door. If I was, indeed, going to be up all night, the least I could do for myself was cause a tremendous case of heartburn, so I decided to indulge in the one thing I was craving which was absolutely certain to keep me up until roughly sometime in February: a grilled cheese sandwich. I had bought cheese and bread the day before, in anticipation.

  Once I got to the kitchen, though, I saw something sure to make me lose sleep for a period far longer than that.

  Sitting on my kitchen counter was one of the popcorn boxes from the theatre, with the Comedy Tonight logo on the side. I knew I hadn’t left it there, and I don’t even eat popcorn, so that was strange enough.

  But that wasn’t the most disturbing part, by far: the popcorn in the box had a white, powdery substance on it, as did much of the counter. And the box was secured to the counter with one of my larger kitchen knives, which had been driven through the box and straight into the countertop by someone who was clearly very strong. Butter from the popcorn had leaked out through the hole in the bottom of the box, leaving the distinct impression that the popcorn had been bleeding.

  This time, I was pretty sure it really was all about me.

  23

  Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.

  —Mark Van Doren, quoted in The American Scholar, Summer, 1957

  I don’t mind dying;

  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

  —Woody Allen

  Dutton showed up ten minutes after I called him, despite the town house being outside his jurisdiction. He had made sure to call the New Brunswick cops, and two of them, in uniform, arrived only a few minutes after he did. For the moment, it was a local police matter, so O’Donnell hadn’t been summoned.

  I didn’t call Leslie. Think about it: you’ve been out on one dinner date and a bicycle ride with a guy, and he calls you the very first time his home is vandalized by a maniac with incredible strength and a sharp knife. Might put you off the guy. Make you think he was somehow less than macho.

  Anyway, Dutton surveyed the situation, which consisted of a box of popcorn with a knife through it, bleeding melted butter onto a Formica countertop. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Well, I decided to unwind after a rough night, and invited Jason Voorhees over for some Jiffy Pop,” I said. “What do you think happened, Chief?”

  “You found it like this?”

  “Yeah. I cleaned up the theatre a little after you left, then rode back over here. When I got in, there it was.”

  “Did you touch it?” Dutton asked. The New Brunswick cops had put on gloves to examine the . . . object, and they actually took pictures of the popcorn box, and then bagged it along with the knife, which took some doing, as the thing didn’t want to come out of the countertop.

  I gave him a “what am I, stupid?” look. “What am I, stupid? ” I asked.

  He looked heavenward for a moment. “I withdraw the question,” Dutton said.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked him.

  “Clearly, you think you know,” he answered. Dutton was insightful, and/or I was transparent.

  “I have a theory, but I can’t prove it,” I said.

  “Let me hear it,” Dutton said.

  “I think someone doesn’t want me asking questions about who killed Vincent Ansella.”

  “Nobody wants you asking questions about Vincent Ansella,” Dutton said, grinning. “I don’t want you asking questions about who killed Vincent Ansella, and strangely, it didn’t occur to me to assault a box of popcorn in your kitchen.”

  “I’ll admit, whoever it might be is taking things to extremes, but if you have another idea of what the message might be, I’d be happy to listen.” Dutton stayed silent, which I took as a very small victory.

  One of the uniforms came over to tap me on the forearm. “We can call the detectives if you want, but since there’s been no violent crime committed here . . .” he said.

  “Unless you count what’s been done to my countertop, ” I said. He looked confused for a moment, so I said, “Forget it. I’m sure he used gloves. They’re not going to find anything.” The cop nodded, and walked back to his partner.

  “You would have ended up with fingerprint dust all over your apartment, and they would have only found your prints, anyway,” Dutton agreed.

  I thought of Leslie, and hesitated. “Well . . .” But I didn’t continue the thought. Dutton gave me an odd look, but let it go.

  The cops indicated they were leaving, and I nodded to them. They carried the evidence bag with the knife and the popcorn box out to the car, and after a few minutes, the flashing red lights that were keeping my neighbors awake stopped bleeding through the front window shades. Dutton took anoth
er look at what I insisted on calling the “crime scene,” and shook his head.

  “You’re going to have to get that countertop replaced, you know.”

  “Replaced? I can’t just get it fixed?” Like an idiot, I walked over to look more closely at the gash that went all the way into the countertop, as if a closer angle would suggest a better alternative.

  Dutton shook his head. “Nah. These things come in one piece. You’re going to have to get a new one. You got homeowners?”

  “I rent.”

  “Your landlord’s problem, then, I guess,” he said. Dutton zipped up his jacket and headed for the door. “I’ve seen all I can see of this ‘message’ of yours. Did it work?”

  “Did what work?”

  “The message. Did they convince you to leave Ansella’s murder alone?”

  “Hell no, it didn’t work. Now they’ve just pissed me off.”

  Dutton sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.

  24

  Anthony Pagliarulo’s high school yearbook, provided by his father, was a very useful tool. The great thing about a traditional (that is, paper and not CD-ROM) high school yearbook is that classmates sign them, quite often with elaborate messages, and you can tell (if you’re willing to be a serious invader of privacy) who the one or two closest friends were.

  In Anthony’s case, it wasn’t difficult to gain that information—only one classmate in ten had signed the book at all, and most of those (particularly from the more attractive girls) were terse “best wishes in college” messages.

  Two classmates were more verbose: William “Tajo” Rosenblad took half a page to remind Anthony of their trips to New York City (which he referred to as native New Jerseyans north of Trenton do: “The City”; those south of Trenton are generally talking about Philadelphia) to see independent films and attend the Tribeca Film Festival (“remember when we saw DeNiro, like, across the street?”), and looked forward to seeing him “at Sundance in a couple of years.” Clearly, he and Anthony were kindred spirits.