Some Like It Hot-Buttered
Page 21
“Indeed.” Bender stroked his beard as if it were a pet. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t heard from Anthony at all, or I’d have called the police. But I’m intrigued, Mr. Freed.” That made him look and sound even more like a Bond villain. “Where do you believe Anthony might be?”
I told him I’d spoken to two of Anthony’s friends, and they had each confirmed he was trying to film a low-budget (by Hollywood standards) Western. I asked Bender if he’d read the script, and he said Anthony wouldn’t let him see it before it was “perfect,” so I gave him a brief summary of what Anthony might have un-ironically called “the plot.” I included a few key sequences, and described the settings almost verbatim from Anthony’s script.
“And this information leads you to believe . . . what?” he asked, still stroking. A white cat for his lap would have cemented the Ernst Stavro Blofeld image. And, of course, he would have to shave his head.
“Think about it, Professor. Anthony is a film . . . student.” (“Geek” seemed a little harsh.) “He’s very familiar with past films and the way they were shot. He knows a good deal of film history, as I’m sure you’ve taught him most of it yourself. ” (In reality, Bender had probably distracted Anthony with pretense and opinion masquerading as fact, but sometimes you have to blow a little smoke.)
Bender nodded. “Of course. We want our students to have a solid background in the classics. We have separate tracks of study in cinema history, cinema appreciation, cinema criticism . . .”
I interrupted the recruitment pitch. “So given all that, and given that Anthony is dedicated to the idea of cinema tradition” (now he had me saying “cinema”), “if he were to try to deconstruct the classic Western, where would you expect a film student to go?”
The light seemed to go on over his head. “Ah. Monument Valley. John Ford’s idea of God’s movie set.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t you think, though, that Ford overused the location? After a while, Monument Valley became something of a cliché. Why, even the Warner Brothers animation series with the Road Runner made fun of . . .”
“Professor.”
He caught himself. “Of course. My apologies. We were talking about Anthony.”
“Yes, we were.” I stood up. The cramped office didn’t offer much in the way of pacing room, but it did give you a lot to look at: movie scripts (with titles written in marker on the spines) ranging from The Magnificent Ambersons to The Devil Toupee, which I was hoping was some student’s idea of a horror spoof; a dust-encrusted fake Oscar statuette with the words “Prof. Bender” inscribed on it; a 16-mm. projector, DVD recorder, and all-in-one TV/VCR/DVD combo; an autographed picture of Ingmar Bergman (the inscription was in Swedish); a stack of term papers to be graded. It looked like the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had gotten hold of a piece of bad whitefish and thrown up all over this tiny room. “You’re Anthony’s faculty advisor.”
“I am,” he agreed. If he were any more solemn, he could have been presiding over a war crimes tribunal.
“In his absence, I could use some advice,” I said. “Let’s assess the situation: a student accused of a crime that could get him serious jail time, who could be a suspect in a murder, leaves the state before he can be questioned. He suddenly has a lot more money than anyone thought he did. His closest friends and relatives, even his parents, haven’t heard from him. Then he calls me—of all people—out of the blue and it appears for all the world that he’s making a low-budget Western in Utah. I feel some responsibility for the young man, since I’m his employer, and I’ve been asking around about his involvement. I promised the local law enforcement that I’d keep them informed on anything I found out, but I’m worried that they might not have Anthony’s best interests in mind, and I’ll just be handing him over for arrest and an appearance in kangaroo court. On the other hand, if I don’t turn him in, I could be making things worse for him, and I’ll certainly be making things worse for myself, possibly to the point of an obstruction of justice charge. So I’ll leave it to you, Professor: what do you think I should do?”
Bender made quite a show of thinking it over, with his best Arlo-Guthrie-as-Sigmund-Freud manner. I began to worry that his beard might actually dissolve under his fingers.
“I don’t think there’s any question, Mr. Freed,” he said after an eternity or two. “You must turn the boy in.”
39
Lisa Ansella Rabinowitz lived in Red Bank, New Jersey, a town that had become the sad-eyed puppy of the Jersey Shore. It was just so cute. In New Jersey, we don’t go to the beach; we go Down the Shore. And until recently, Down the Shore has meant the kind of carnival ride saltwater taffy mixture of excitement and cheapness that a good coastline experience should be. But now, with real estate values skyrocketing, Down the Shore has become a more aggressively upscale experience, with muffin shops; liquor stores that specialize in fine wines, not cheap beer; and bistros where pizzerias used to be. In short, Down the Shore had gotten to be so enjoyable, it was no longer any fun.
Like in Red Bank.
It had taken me a bus ride to Woodbridge, a train from there, and a ten-minute walk from the train station to arrive at Lisa’s door, so I wasn’t taken in by all the cuteness. Having fewer friends to drive me places was becoming a serious drag on my scheduling. I could only prevail upon Moe in emergencies, and really long trips.
At the moment, though, Lisa was providing me with an iced coffee in a large glass, and her younger daughter Ashley (Ashley Rabinowitz?) was watching me with great curiosity, so it was hard to be too gruff. Not that I wasn’t trying.
“When I married Mark, you know, being Jewish and everything, I thought my mother would disown me and kill my husband,” Lisa said. “Mama’s not at all religious, but I’m afraid she is a little anti-Semitic.” Apparently, telling tales about her grandmother wasn’t considered too upsetting for Ashley’s four-year-old ears. When I was a kid, my mother would shoo me out of the room if there were so much as a slur on my grandmother’s matzo ball recipe, so times have apparently changed in the child-rearing arena. “But Vince calmed her down,” Lisa went on. “He was the glue that held the family together.” She misted up a little, but bit her lip and managed not to sob.
We were sitting at the dining room table in Lisa’s very nice, yet not intimidatingly neat home, where everything was freshly painted and toys were left all over the floor. It was an amiable contrast, and it worked. I asked Lisa if she knew of any trouble in Vincent and Amy’s marriage, in language I thought was discreet. Ashley stared directly at me and completely ignored anything her mother did. Clearly, I was fascinating.
You may notice that I did not go directly to Sergeant O’Donnell or Chief Dutton to rat out Anthony. That is mostly because, in addition to my own problems with a vanishing backbone, I had decided that Bender was a pompous ass, and therefore I was under no obligation to heed his advice. He already had me using words like “heed.” You can’t trust a man like that.
“I did get the impression there was something going on in the marriage,” Lisa said. “Well . . . hell, I knew something was going on. Especially the past few months. Vince just wasn’t the same guy, and when I saw him with Amy, he was . . .”
“Angry?” I asked. Ashley’s eyes widened and she swiveled to look at her mother. But Lisa smiled and shook her head, and Ashley’s attention was immediately back on my face.
“Sad,” Lisa said. “Other people probably would have said he was angry, but I knew him better. He was sad. And that was so not Vincent. My brother could be a lot of things, Mr. Freed, and not all of them were wonderful, but he wasn’t ever sad, not until those last few months. It worried me to see that.”
“Do you think . . .” I hesitated, and put a hand up to indicate confidentiality. Lisa leaned over to hear me as I whispered. “I’m sorry, Lisa, it’s none of my business, but some of the questions I have to ask are a little . . . adult. Should we be talking that way in front of your daughter?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
Lisa shook her head. “No need to be sorry. I’m glad you couldn’t tell, because it means her lip-reading is getting better. But if she had spoken when you came in, you would have been able to tell. Don’t let it concern you. She’s not really listening to you; she’s just practicing.”
It concerned me a little, but I decided Ashley’s mother would know best. “Well, I was going to ask whether you think your brother was having an affair.”
I thought Lisa would be shocked, but instead, I got explosive laughter. She made a sound like HIE! and rocked back and forth on her chair for a moment. Even Ashley turned abruptly to look at her mother.
“Vincent? An affair? You’ve got to be kidding me, Mr. Freed. Vincent absolutely worshipped his wife. He wouldn’t even have considered something with another woman.”
Egotistic idiot that I am, I decided to defend my position. “Well, Amy said the night Vincent . . . the night it happened, they had been fighting, and Vincent told her he was having an affair with a woman in his office.”
“And you believed her.” It wasn’t an accusation; it was a statement of fact. Lisa expected that.
“I had no reason not to,” I said. It wasn’t much, but it was true.
“Oh, I don’t blame you, Mr. Freed. Amy can make a man believe pretty much anything she wants him to. It’s chemical, I think. She’s the kind of girl who can play a man and make it look like there’s no effort involved. Natural. I’ll bet she gave you a gift or something, too, right? One of Vince’s videos that you really wanted?”
I mumbled, “Yeah, or the whole collection,” so softly and with such a lack of lip movement that Ashley put her hand under my chin, pulling up, to get a better view. Lisa asked what I had said, and I admitted to the sale of the collection. Her eyes didn’t widen, but she also didn’t blink for a good few seconds.
“Wow,” she said finally. “She must have really wanted to convince you.”
“Convince me of what?” I asked. “Why would she care what I thought?”
Lisa stood up and put her hands on Ashley’s shoulders. She drew her daughter’s attention, then signed something very quickly. Ashley signed back, but Lisa shook her head “no,” and Ashley, with a quick look over her shoulder at me, slunk out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa said, “but I didn’t want to risk her understanding any of what we’re going to say now. I’m not sure I’ll be able to control my language.”
I nodded. “I don’t understand this. Why would Amy make up a story about Vincent?”
“My sister-in-law is the one who was being unfaithful,” Lisa said plainly. “The bitch was having an affair.”
“Amy was having an affair? Did Vincent know?”
“How do you think I found out? Vincent told me. She’d admitted it to him. It was driving him crazy.”
“How long was it going on? When did your brother tell you this?”
Lisa sat back down. “Oh, man. When was it . . . six months ago, eight maybe? I think it was last fall, early in the fall. I don’t remember exactly.”
“So he was walking around with this for eight months?”
“That’s what made him sad, Mr. Freed. That’s why he was having such a hard time with . . . you know, everything.”
“Do you know who she was having the affair with?”
“I don’t know. Vincent either didn’t know, or he was so . . . embarrassed, he wouldn’t tell me. Can you believe that? Embarrassed? Like it was his fault his wife was a lying bitch who could make a man do whatever she wanted. But she couldn’t get him to do what she wanted. Not in the end, she couldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Lisa’s face was cold, thinking about Amy. “She told him about the affair for a purpose, and it was just to hurt him. That coldhearted . . . well, you know . . . didn’t just want to cheat on him—she wanted him to know he wasn’t enough for her. But she never told him who she was seeing. And when she saw that he was going to pretend everything was all right and go on living his life, she saw she couldn’t hurt him enough. So I think she killed him.”
Something occurred to me. “Forgive me, Lisa, but the night Vincent died, he was seen at the movies with another woman. Are you sure he couldn’t have been cheating on his wife?”
She put down her cup. “Mr. Freed, you never met Vince when he was alive. I’m here to tell you, he was the most devoted husband on this planet. I don’t think he was capable of cheating on his wife, even if she deserved it. As long as he had the old comedy movies to hide away in, he’d sooner live a life in hell with her, knowing she was making a fool of him, than do something he considered wrong.”
It was going to be a long train-and-bus ride back. But at least the scenery would be cute.
40
The theatre was about a third full that night, which under the circumstances wasn’t bad. It’s hard to go wrong with family movies, since there are usually only one or two out at a time, and parents are hungry for something to take their kids to see. It made me wish I’d held the feature over another week, but it was too late for that now.
Maybe I hadn’t been paying enough attention to my business lately.
It was Thursday night, and the last evening for these two films. I loved Help! almost as much as A Hard Day’s Night, but six viewings in six days was getting to be enough, especially since Rubber Soul had better songs. And the family movie Too Many Kids, with its predictable waiting-for-the-bathroom jokes and budding teen romances, had worn out its welcome for me somewhere around the middle of the second screening. People were bringing their children, though, and we do appreciate that in the theatre business. Adults don’t buy nearly as much Buncha Crunch.
I’d had to thread up the projector myself, leading me to believe that I had in some way offended the Projector Elves.
Where I’d felt only a few days ago that I knew nothing about either the situation with the pirated DVDs or Ansella’s murder, now it seemed like information was bombarding me from all sides, and none of it was adding up. I knew where Anthony was, but not what to do about it. I knew that someone had been trying to make it seem that Anthony was still nearby, but who, why, and how were all unanswered questions. I knew that one, if not both, of the Ansellas was believed to be having an affair. And I knew that Vincent Ansella had excellent taste in comedy videos, but was still, unfortunately, dead.
I also knew calling Dutton and telling him my suspicions about Anthony’s location (I didn’t trust O’Donnell enough to impart the information to him) was the right thing to do, but it didn’t help much. After I got off the phone with the chief, I knew I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror. Lucky for me, I’d already shaved today.
Finally, I knew I had a sinus headache that would kill a normal man, and there’s never been a medication on this planet that reduces the pressure, no matter what the ads on TV say.
Leo was in his usual seat, near the center of the theatre, and would no doubt leave after Help!, a film he saw as only marginally a comedy. “Are you getting a real comedy for tomorrow?” he’d asked on his way in tonight.
“Yes, Leo, I promise,” I’d told him. “No rock and roll at all.”
“Better not be,” he’d answered. “You don’t want to drive away my business.”
“Yeah. You could go to one of the other all-comedy theatres in this area.” Leo had given me a look that indicated I might want to switch to decaf, and started to take his business inside the auditorium. I’d stopped him.
“I’m sorry, Leo,” I’d told him. “It’s been a rough few weeks.”
“You don’t know rough,” he’d answered with great compassion. “This one time in Bulga
ria, we almost had to throw our cargo overboard to right the boat. We were in a storm that had come out of nowhere . . .” I’d stopped paying attention, and had made a mental note never to apologize to Leo again.
Instead, I’d reached into my pocket and pulled out a photograph of Christie Dunbar that I’d printed out from her website. I passed it to Leo, who’d looked at it, then looked back at me.
“So?”
“So, is that the woman you saw with Vincent Ansella the night he died?”
Leo’s eyes had practically crossed. “Are you kidding?” he’d asked. “I told you that was the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. This one’s a babe!” He wouldn’t leave until I agreed to let him keep the picture. I don’t like to think about what he wanted to do with it.
If the truth shall set you free, innuendos, assumptions, and apologies will give you a sinus headache.
The rest of the audience was comprised of parents and children. None of the glittering hoi polloi who had graced the old barn on the night of our “reopening” had become regular customers, and on a Thursday night, you were lucky to get drop-ins. The weekend is where you make your money.
I had just done a reel change and was walking downstairs to the lobby, replacing the velvet rope to indicate the balcony was closed. Sophie looked more bored than usual, since not much ticket or snack business was being done an hour and ten minutes into our first film. Maybe a straggler or two would come in just to see Too Many Kids, but it was a little early for them, anyway. The movie was advertised for almost an hour from now.
When I was foolish enough to enter her orbit, Sophie looked at me, cracked some gum in her mouth (I’ve talked to her about that), and said, “When are we going to get a real movie here?”
“These looked real enough when I threaded them up,” I said.
“This is just Hollywood’s attempt to keep us all quiet and happy,” she moaned. “It’s not a depiction of the real human condition, like Final Destination.”