But I had to make it to the cutout first. The Lexus, and whoever the psychopath was driving it, seemed intent on beating me into a bloody pulp before I reached the safe haven. The driver made his most severe swerve yet, a violent and unexpected turn that could have knocked me off the bike and into the middle of the road, where he might easily have run me over and created an “accident.”
That is, he could have done so, if I hadn’t been trying to anticipate his movements. I knew he didn’t want me getting to the bridge, so he’d want to make his move soon. And at the first hint of a move in my direction, I hit the brakes and moved to the right as far as I could. I knew I couldn’t stop, but I could throw off the driver’s sense of my speed, and that might be enough. I hoped.
As it turned out, it was almost enough. He wasn’t able to broadside me, but the back fender of the Lexus just nicked my left ankle as I swerved right. The concrete barrier was only about twenty feet away, so I ignored the pain and didn’t look to see if there was blood. I kept moving to the right, as if I were planning to turn onto River Road and go toward Piscataway.
The Lexus, whose driver was apparently disappointed he hadn’t succeeded in killing me, also veered to the right, braking just when I picked up my speed again. I was riding downhill and I shifted hard to keep pedaling and gathering speed. It was fortunate that I knew the road so well, having ridden it almost every night for the better part of a year.
I pulled up on the curb and made it behind the concrete barrier just as the Lexus lunged right, banging its passenger-side rear fender on the edge of the barrier and then, apparently rocked by the impact (and with a nice-sized dent in that fender), drove off.
I stopped and ducked behind the concrete, just in case the driver had a weapon he wanted to wield. Apparently he didn’t, and after a few seconds, the Lexus was nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t gotten a good look at its rear license plate, other than to see that it started with the letter L.
Now that I had the luxury of time, I noticed the pain in my left ankle. I looked down, and saw the scrape wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but there was blood, and I might need a few stitches. But I’d go home and ice it first, because a) I didn’t feel like riding the bike to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and b) I had no idea what would happen to the bike if I rode to the emergency room. A cab might be the way to go, if I decided I needed the treatment.
I got back on the bike and rode slowly across the bridge and to my front door. Sitting on the steps in front of my house was Leslie Levant, in jeans and a T-shirt. She stood as I rode up, and didn’t notice anything odd until I got off the bike and started to limp to the sidewalk.
“What happened to you?” she said, grabbing for my shoulder and taking the bike’s handlebars from my hands.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe I cut myself shaving,” I said.
“That’s where I would cut myself shaving,” she said.
“Well, it’s a long story,” I told her, and let her help me up the stairs. I pulled out my keys and opened the so-green-you-wouldn’t-believe-it door.
“I have all night,” she said.
26
“I was coming to apologize,” Leslie said.
We were lounging in my living “area,” having just returned from the scenic emergency room at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, where I’d received six stitches on my left ankle, a tetanus shot, an elaborate bandage I intended to replace with a large Band-Aid the next morning, and a prescription for antibiotics in case the Lexus’ rear fender was carrying an infection. My ankle stung a little, but other than that, I was fine. Leslie had cleaned up the blood from the entrance hall floor (there wasn’t much), but I’d have to clean the bike more thoroughly tomorrow. Or later that day, if you wanted to be technical about it.
“Apologize? For what?” I asked. I didn’t remember her doing anything worth apologizing for, unless it was the look she gave me when she saw my expression at the mention of a tetanus shot. I don’t like needles. So sue me.
“The way I acted when your ex-wife was at the theatre today,” she said. Leslie was used to being up this late (or early: see previous mention of desire to be technical), as she’d been on the overnight shift for a while now. But even though I worked late most nights, I was starting to fade. A growing boy like me is generally in bed by one a.m., and it was currently closing in on four. “I turned tail and ran as soon as there was competition.”
“Yeah, but it’s such a nice tail,” I said. She scowled, so I quickly added, “Besides, Sharon isn’t competition. She’s married to someone else. That’s all over with now.”
“Sure it is.”
I gave her my best innocent expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, I saw the way you look at her, and I don’t think anything’s over yet.” Leslie lay back on the sofa, which for a less fit woman would have meant she could never get up again. I was sitting on a folding chair that belonged in a park, blocking someone’s view of Fourth of July fireworks. “I think you have unresolved issues about her, and you need to get through them before you can move on.”
This conversation was heading in a direction I hadn’t seen coming when she offered to apologize, and I can’t say I was crazy about it. “This is sounding very much like a kiss-off speech,” I told her. “You could at least save that for a time when I’m not coming home from the hospital.”
Leslie stood up, which I considered a superhuman effort all by itself. She started to pace, and didn’t make eye contact. No, this wasn’t going to be one of our more enjoyable encounters.
“I don’t have a problem with the way things are now,” she said, talking more to herself than to me, from the way her voice sounded. “But I think we need to slow it down a bit.”
“Slow it down? We’ve gone out twice and kissed a couple of times in almost three weeks. How much slower can we go?”
“You’re dangerous,” Leslie said softly. “You’re on the rebound and you want to re-create the life you had with your wife. I’m not your wife.”
“At the moment, you’re not even my friend,” I said. “You’re a woman I’m getting to know, and I think you’re overreacting. I’m not proposing anytime soon. For one thing, it would kill my alimony.”
She didn’t laugh. She didn’t react at all. She just shook her head, said, “I’m going home, Elliot. I don’t think we should see each other for a while,” and left.
All in all, this was not one of my better nights.
I slept until one in the afternoon, and in the shower, took stock of my life. There’s little else to do in the shower, since I really don’t like to sing without a band, and there’s no room for a band in my bathroom. Not even a combo.
I was a divorced man in his late thirties, living alone in a rental I didn’t really call home, operating a business that didn’t have a chance to survive, pining after a woman who had chosen to leave me for a guy who spends most of his day with unconscious people, and brooding over another woman I’d met less than a month before, and who had just dumped me, before I even knew what I was being dumped from. I didn’t own my own home, my own car, or a stick of grown-up furniture, and my closest confidant was my father. It was a good thing a band wouldn’t fit in the room, because all I’d be able to play would be the blues. And that goes so badly with soap and water.
Clearly, the only thing left to do was investigate a murder.
27
FRIDAY
Help! (1965)
and Too Many Kids (today)
It took me a few days of phone calling and cajoling to set up more interviews with everyone I wanted to question. The people I’d talked to before at least understood why I was calling, even if they weren’t all that thrilled about seeing me again. Others, confronted with a call from the owner of the local comedy theatre, were somewhat confused by a request to discuss the death of Vincent Ansella, and since I couldn’t explain it to myself any better than I could to them, sometimes persistence was more c
onvincing than logic.
Joe Dunbar’s wife Christie, for example, was reluctant to grant an interview. I first contacted her via e-mail through her small business website. She took a while to get back to me, and didn’t want to meet when I suggested it. But when I laid it on pretty thick about how Vincent Ansella had spent his last few moments enjoying himself at my theatre (even if his choice of refreshment was unfortunate), she relented, but said she wasn’t going to tell her husband about the interview, so I should meet her at her office.
This turned out to be in an industrial park in Iselin, and Moe wasn’t happy about loaning me a 2003 VW Beetle (brakes) to get there, but there I was. It was the least-descript building I’d ever seen, and I was once a government employee for a couple of months. The sign on the office door read "MediTek.”
In her normal (non-funereal) clothing, Christie was brassy indeed. Her curly blond hair, almost platinum, orbited her head without really seeming to touch it. Her makeup was more reminiscent of Emmett Kelly than Sophia Loren, and her laugh reminded me of the horn on a 1977 AMC Pacer. I liked her immediately.
“Why didn’t you want Joe to know we were talking?” I asked her. “I’ve spoken with him already.”
“Ahh,” (this might be the place to mention that “ahh” preceded everything Christie said, and I will omit it from now on) “he’s been so upset since Vince . . . ya know, that I didn’t want to tell him. Why bring it up again?” She adjusted one of her many bracelets.
“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Mr. Ansella?” I asked. No use beating around the bush with Christie; she was a straight-ahead kind of girl.
“I can’t think of a soul. Vince Ansella was the sweetest, funniest, most joyful man I’ve ever known. Who’d want to bump off a guy like that?” She started to play with a plaque on her desk that read “World’s Best Boss.”
Obviously, I didn’t know who’d want to “bump off ” Ansella, so I didn’t offer an answer. Instead, I shifted gears. “How did you meet your husband?” I’d put in another call to Meg Vidal to get tips on questioning people, and she said I should get them to talk about themselves. After a ten-minute lecture on letting the police do their job.
“Would you believe it? Vince’s sister Lisa set us up. I think she was worried Vince would never get married if he kept hanging around with Joe. Maybe she thought they were queer, you know?” She laughed, which sounded like PAH! “They weren’t. I’ve known some queer guys, and they’re the nicest people on the planet, but Vince and Joe? Straight as a couple of arrows, believe you me. Anyway, she knew I wasn’t Vince’s type, so she figured she’d see if Joe was game. And he was.”
I figured we’d established a rapport, so I moved into waters I thought might be a little choppier. “How do you get along with Amy Ansella?” I asked.
Christie’s mouth, in a perpetual smile, drooped a little, but she was trying not to be obvious. “We weren’t best buddies, but we got along,” she said.
“I don’t think you did,” I said quietly.
She grinned a little, wickedly. “You’re a smart fella, Elliot. But Amy . . . well, Amy is all about Amy, isn’t she? And when someone’s like that, and she takes on a guy like Vince, who just wanted you to be happy, she finds herself the perfect husband. He’ll do whatever you want him to do.”
“And you didn’t approve?”
Christie waved a hand. “What’s to approve? I’m not his mother. But it did drive a little wedge between Joe and Vince, toward the end. I don’t know why, but it did.”
“Christie,” I began, not knowing how to phrase it less obviously, “you didn’t happen to go to the movie with Vince the night he . . . the night it happened, did you?”
She looked at me as if I’d suggested that she plant a few magic beans and go kill a giant. “Me? No! Why the hell would I go see a movie alone with Vince Ansella?”
“So where were you that night?”
It was the only time I saw her actively evading a question. “I was . . . out.”
“Out? Just out?”
Christie tried to snarl, but it just came out as a different kind of grin. “Yeah. You never been out before, Elliot?” She couldn’t sustain it, and the grin reverted to her usual one.
I had one last question. “Why do you think Amy called Joe a murderer at Vince’s funeral?” I asked.
Christie didn’t hesitate. “Because she couldn’t accuse herself.”
I told Amy Ansella I wanted to come back because I was interested in buying part of her husband’s comedy library, and to a certain extent, that was true. I certainly would have to take a few of the more rare items, like Flickers, off her hands, just to ensure that they didn’t end up on eBay, being sold to people who thought they were buying pornography or art house cinema.
I rode the bike rather than take the bus; it wasn’t too far, and that way, I could set my own schedule. I needed to be back at the theatre in time to set up for the Friday night “crowd,” which tonight would probably consist mostly of parents and children, since a family comedy was the contemporary draw for the week. The tainted popcorn incident had not produced the boost in ticket sales that the murder did, but crowds were still a bit above average.
Amy was not dressed in black when I arrived this time. I don’t want to give the impression that I generally lust after recent widows, or that I do an inordinate amount of lusting overall. But Amy was a remarkably attractive woman in an indefinable way: she didn’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model or the girl next door with a naughty side, but she commanded attention.
She ushered me into the living room, and I immediately noticed that a number of the video titles were missing from their shelves. I breathed a sigh of relief that my favorites were still there.
“I see I’m not the first to inquire,” I said as I assessed the collection. It had been haphazardly picked apart, with one title from a series missing and others randomly replaced on racks. The sight of it probably would have driven Vincent Ansella crazy.
“I gave some of them away,” Amy said in a small voice. “I gave my sister-in-law some for her kids, you know, The Pink Panther and stuff like that.”
It was true: the titles that were missing, as far as I could tell, were movies that parents would feel comfortable showing their children. For example, the Laurel and Hardy section was missing only March of the Wooden Soldiers, and the animated section was practically gone, with only things like Fritz the Cat and Cool World remaining (Ansella really was a completist!).
“I’m sorry I can’t make you an offer for the whole collection,” I said. “I’d love to keep them together, but the theatre isn’t making me enough of an income for that.”
“I’d be happy to get rid of them,” Amy said, looking me straight in the eye. “I don’t want the reminders, and Vincent’s insurance left me with enough money so that I don’t have to worry about the value. Make me an offer.”
Stunned, I did. I was even more stunned when she accepted it.
“I didn’t think you liked me all that well the last time we met, Amy,” I said after I’d written her an amazingly small check.
“I liked you just fine,” she said, giving me the same reassuring attention I’m sure she would any man. Amy Ansella knew how she looked, and knew the effect it would have on men. But it seemed to have become reflexive, to the point that sometimes, I wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “I wasn’t crazy about some of the questions you were asking.”
“Because I mentioned Marcy Resnick?” Meg had said to prod in the sensitive areas, too.
Amy’s face wasn’t as attractive when I said that. She again mentioned a word that rhymes with Ipswitch, and said, “Yes, because you mentioned her.” Nothing more than that.
“But I’m okay now that it’s all about the collection?” I asked. Well, getting on her bad side hadn’t helped much.
“You’re fine, Elliot,” she said, again almost by rote. “When can you come to take them away?”
“How’s Monday?” I
asked. “Comedy Tonight will be open during the day all weekend, but on Monday I can borrow my father’s truck.” Saying it out loud made me realize just how much sentences like that will take you back to high school. Maybe not owning a motor vehicle was a problem, after all.
Amy agreed on Monday as the moving day for her husband’s enormous video collection, and I thanked her and said good-bye. She walked out to see me off, and just as I was adjusting my helmet, I figured it was worth one last shot.
“Why didn’t you tell the police you were at the theatre the night your husband died?” I asked.
“Oh, Elliot,” Amy said, disappointed. “And you were being so nice.” She turned and walked back into the house.
28
I hadn’t intended to schedule a talk with Marcy Resnick so soon after seeing Amy, but it was the only way Marcy’s schedule worked out. Naturally, I didn’t tell her I’d just come from seeing Vincent Ansella’s widow, and there was no reason to bring it up. Best I didn’t mention that Amy had called her names.
Marcy came to Comedy Tonight from her office, since I had to set up for the evening’s showing (I was getting used to Anthony not being there, although I checked every night to see if the gremlins had threaded up the projector— tonight they hadn’t), so I treated her to the Elliot Freed version of dinner: a sandwich from Tastee Sub Shop of Edison and a soda from the theatre’s fountain. Never let it be said that I’m a cheapskate. At least, never let it be said to my face.
There was hardly enough room for us to both sit in my office, so I pulled two chairs up to the table we have next to the snack bar for popcorn salt, napkins, and straws. What it lacked in elegance it made up for in dreariness.
Some Like It Hot-Buttered Page 15