She was only five rows away. And she knew she hadn’t seen me yet. That meant I was in a very contained space, and Leslie was more confident. She stopped walking up the stairs.
She’d seen me. Or thought she had. It was still very dark up there.
“Stand up, Elliot. I know where you are now.”
Yeah, let me give you a better target.
“We’re done, Elliot. You can’t get away. Just stand up.”
I couldn’t figure out a way to crawl silently, or I would have tried for the opposite aisle. And the pain in my leg was starting to become noticeable. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get up and let her blast away, but my alternatives were narrowing rather noticeably.
Leslie realized then that with the dim lights that are always on in the auditorium (except when the place is shut down), and a little altitude, she would be able to see where I was. So she walked to the middle of the row, maybe ten feet from where I lay, and stood up on the arms of a seat in the center. She balanced herself, and looked around.
But before she could adjust her eyes to the light, I heard exactly what I had hoped not to hear. From beneath us, either in the lobby or the auditorium—it was hard to tell— came Sophie’s voice. “Elliot?” she called. “Are you here?”
I couldn’t see Leslie, but I could hear her triumphant smile in her voice. “Trentino! That’s game!” she said, a line from Duck Soup. “Do you want to stand up, or shall I go and take a hostage?”
Shit. I couldn’t let Sophie become a casualty of my meddling with things that weren’t my business. For one thing, her parents would never forgive me. And I’d never forgive myself.
I stood up, painfully on the right leg. The wound wasn’t bad, but it was enough to notice. The problem was, I knew it was nothing in comparison to what I was about to feel, and after that, I’d feel nothing.
I’d been right about the frosty smile on Leslie’s face. It was exactly as I’d pictured it, but in this light, and with her towering over me like that, it was even more frightening. She kept the gun leveled at my head, and hopped down off the arms of the seat onto the floor of the balcony.
And then she just kept going.
The floor gave way under her, reminding me why I didn’t allow customers into the balcony to begin with. She plummeted, gun and all, through the hole her impact had created, and disappeared from view entirely.
I hustled down the steps as best as I could (walking especially gingerly now, as I didn’t want to join her, and after all had been shot in the leg) to the spot where Leslie had vanished. A sizable hole had opened up in the floor of the balcony just in front of row GG, seat 17, and when I looked down through it, I could see Leslie, on her back amid a pile of plaster, rotted wood, carpet, and candy wrappers from 1962, the gun knocked out of her hand. I was pretty sure she was breathing, but she was bleeding from a number of body parts, including her head, and her eyes were open, staring, and not seeing a whole heck of a lot.
“Now, that’s comedy,” I said.
48
"She’ll be well enough to stand trial,” Chief Barry Dutton said. “Former Officer Levant suffered a severe concussion, a broken leg, a few cracked ribs, and cuts and bruises. She was lucky.”
“She was lucky?” I asked. “I was lucky. Two more seconds, and she would have shot me. Again.”
My right leg now had eight stitches in it, just to prove it could take more than my left (they’re so competitive). The burning sensation was more of an annoyance, but the pain had subsided entirely. I could have lived without getting shot, but if this was the extent of the damage, I’d certainly tolerate it and consider myself fortunate.
“I had Officer Patel on his way,” Dutton said, a little defensively. “He would have gotten there in another minute or two. I knew something was wrong by the way you spoke to me on the phone.”
“You mean putting you on speaker phone?”
“No, I mean you were being polite.”
I asked about Joe Dunbar, and Dutton said he was recovering nicely and would be out of the hospital in another day or so. Christie hadn’t left his side, and gave every stranger who passed the hospital room door “the evil eye.” She was a mother lion and Dunbar was, apparently, her cub.
Amy Ansella was being charged with attempted murder and a few lesser charges, though she still complained that none of it was her fault, and had snagged some local reporter into covering “her side” of the story. The poor guy probably thought he had a chance with Amy once she got out of jail. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t be disappointed for quite some time.
There would, naturally, be no charges filed against Marcy Resnick, since having a minority sexual orientation was not illegal in New Jersey. As long as you call it a “civil union.”
Patel knocked on Dutton’s door, then entered when the chief waved him in. “Report from Sergeant O’Donnell, Chief,” he said, and placed the sheaf of papers on Dutton’s desk. Patel got a nod from Dutton, and left.
“Does that have anything about Anthony in it?” I asked.
Dutton scanned the top sheet of the papers over his reading glasses, and nodded. “The Feds gave him immunity for his testimony,” he said. “I doubt they’ll be able to use much of what the kid says, though. He lives in another star system.”
“It’s Planet Film, Chief,” I told him. “Many are called, few are chosen.”
I stood up to leave, and caught something out of the corner of my eye. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Chief,” I said, “do you ride a bicycle?”
Dutton, still reading the report, looked up at me over the half-glasses. “No.”
He seemed a little disconcerted when I walked around his desk and reached behind a file cabinet to pull out the object I’d spied there: the front wheel of a bicycle. “You know, this looks strangely like one of mine that was stolen from right in front of this building,” I said.
“How can you tell? Does it have special markings on it, or something?” Dutton said, but there was a hint of a grin trying to peek out of his face.
I sat back down, stunned. “It was you,” I said. “You took the wheel off my bicycle that day. Why would you do that?”
Dutton frowned. “You have no proof that I . . .”
“You wanted me to go home with Leslie Levant,” I said. “You were behind that whole thing. That whole speech about how ‘officers are freer to talk.’ You were setting us up. Why?”
“Close the door,” Dutton said, and I did.
Dutton pointed a finger and said, “If one word—one word—of what is said in this room is ever repeated to me by anyone, I’ll deny it. Then, I’ll have you arrested. For something. Whatever the worst crime on my desk is that day. Are we clear?”
Appropriately impressed, I nodded.
“You’re right. I wanted you to get to know Officer Levant better,” Dutton told me. “I didn’t expect you to get to know her that well, but I wanted to be able to have a little different view of her than you get by being her boss.”
“I didn’t get to know her as well as you seem to think, Chief, but I don’t understand why you wanted me, of all people, to provide that look.”
“Because I suspected something was up with her. Like I told you, her spending was far exceeding her income, and I knew her income. Then this piracy thing shows up and she’s the one who’s finding all the information, and giving others the credit. It all seems to point at a kid who didn’t even have a record of jaywalking. It didn’t add up.”
“You couldn’t find out what you needed to know on your own, so you recruited a civilian?” I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or flattered.
“You were one of the first people we investigated,” Dutton said. “I knew your background.”
“What background? I don’t have a background.”
“I read your book,” Dutton said. “You’ve spent some time around cops. And a friend of mine said you could handle it.”
“You have friends?” I had no idea what he was talki
ng about.
“The first day we met, I took a look at your book,” Dutton told me. “I noticed a name in your acknowledgments, thanking a certain cop for being especially helpful in the research.”
Oh, sure. “Meg Vidal.”
Dutton nodded. “Meg and I have known each other for a long time,” he said. “I called her up and asked her about you.
“Meg said you were very good; you had instincts. She said while you were doing your ride-alongs to research your book, she almost suggested you take the entrance exam to the police academy. Then she decided you were too impulsive, and you take everything too personally, so you wouldn’t have made a good cop.”
“She was right. After seeing what she dealt with on one case, I never wanted to go back again.” I couldn’t believe Meg had told Dutton all this; they must have been very close, because Meg doesn’t open up to just anybody.
“She also said you thought I was a good cop, but an administrator who might not know how to work a case anymore. ”
My face must have been glowing red, because Dutton was grinning his best Yaphet Kotto grin. “I didn’t say that last part,” I told him.
“I asked her if she thought I could rely on you a little bit, and she said yes.”
“Is that standard procedure around here? Dupe the civilian?”
Dutton frowned. “You’ll recall, this is a small department, and I don’t have many detectives. And all I expected was that you might be able to tell me, much later on, a few things about Officer Levant’s lifestyle, not about a crime. I never anticipated there being any danger to you, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
“You figured I could find out, even without knowing that I was trying to, whether Leslie’s upscale purchases were due to her terrific savings plan or something else,” I said, thinking out loud. “You figured someone who knew about the movie business might notice things that would tie her to video piracy, and so you stole my bicycle wheel.”
“I just wanted her to drive you home that night, that’s all.”
“Well,” I said, standing up, “she did.”
“I’m sorry,” Dutton told me, and I think he meant it.
“So am I,” I said.
49
“He saw us kiss,” Sharon said.
It was a lovely warm day in late May, and we were sitting at an outdoor table at C’est Moi!, having a bleu cheese burger and fries (Sharon) and a Caesar salad with low-fat dressing (not Sharon). My fork stopped halfway to my mouth, and I looked at her, my eyes sending question marks out at regular intervals.
“Gregory. He came to the theatre that day because he saw my car outside on his way home, and he walked in just when we . . . kissed that time. That’s what made him so crazy.”
“I think what made him crazy was spending all that time inhaling gases meant to knock people out,” I said. “After a while, it has to do something to your brain.”
“Don’t be mean.”
I flashed a look at her. “Don’t expect me to be diplomatic about Gregory,” I said.
“I don’t.” She took a sip of iced tea, and then a deep breath. “We’re separating.”
This time my fork actually hit the salad bowl and stayed there. “You and Gregory?”
Sharon nodded. “Yes. He’s moved out of the house.”
Wow. After fantasizing about such a thing out of sheer spite for all this time, it was weird to have it really happen. I sat quiet for a long moment. “Because of me?” I asked her.
“Elliot, he tried to kill you with his car. I can’t live with a man who would do a thing like that. To anybody.”
"Still ...”
“It’s not about you; everything isn’t about you, Elliot. It’s about the fact that Gregory was upset with me, and didn’t talk to me about it. Instead, he tried to run you down with his car and then told me he’d scraped it against a concrete barrier.”
“Well, that last part was true,” I said. “After he scraped it against me, he hit the barrier.”
“You’re missing the point, and you’re missing it on purpose. ”
“Either way,” I told her. “When our marriage broke up, I tried to blame it on Gregory. I thought that without him, we would have stayed together. Now I know that’s not true, that if you had been happy with me, Gregory wouldn’t have happened. I don’t want your separation to happen because Gregory was jealous of me. Because maybe your marriage has problems that would have been there if neither of those things had happened. If it’s about me, you should stay together.”
Sharon pushed her plate away with half a burger and a healthy number of fries on it, which I believed meant that the food automatically became community property. But I didn’t reach for her plate.
“That’s very mature of you, Elliot. And it’s true, Gregory and I have problems that would be there whether all this had happened, or not. We’re going to go to a couples therapist and try to work them out.”
“What does this separation mean for us?” I asked.
“I’m still married,” she said, and I exhibited even more maturity in not remarking that she and I were still married when the Gregory thing began. I was just oozing maturity today. “You and I can go back to seeing each other for lunch when we want. It was stupid of me to stop being friends with you because Gregory didn’t like it.”
“And beyond that? Beyond being friends?”
“You said it yourself, Elliot. We had problems before Gregory. We’d have the same problems if we got together again. Right now, I’m committed to trying to make my current marriage work. Until that’s resolved one way or the other, you and I are going to be friends, and that’s all. I hope that’s enough for you.”
“It’s not enough, but I can certainly live with it,” I said.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and smiled sadly, something I’ve never seen anyone else do successfully. “You’re really growing up, aren’t you,” Sharon said.
“Yes,” I answered. “Someday, I might be a real live boy.”
50
“This is going to take more than Spackle,” Dad said.
We were eating lunch in the auditorium at Comedy Tonight, sitting beneath the hole in the balcony, which gave one the uncanny feeling that he should see stars if he looked up long enough. Most of the debris had been cleared away, some of it bagged by the dogged Officer Patel himself, and the rest was just a dustpan—okay, a Dumpster—away from being forever out of my life.
Obviously, the theatre was not going to be open for business tonight, or the next night, or in all probability for ten or fifteen nights to come. I’d personally called Leo and told him not to show up until further notice. The lobby was a mess of what had once been our snack bar, although the glass had also been removed. There were bullet holes in various walls, some of which I’d already plastered once. There was blood on areas of carpet.
In short, this was not something that your average cleaning lady could handle in an afternoon.
“What do you think we need to do?” I asked my father.
He stood up and looked at the hole from another angle. “That balcony wasn’t much to begin with. If you were going to do it right, you’d probably need to remove the whole thing and replace it, but that could take months.”
“And cost a year’s receipts,” I added.
“Yeah. So let’s examine our alternatives. You can just fix the hole, keep the balcony closed for the time being, and concentrate on the snack bar. You can fix the snack bar and the balcony to the point that you’d be able to send people up there on nights when it’s crowded . . .”
“Which would be twice since I opened the place, both times after a crime was committed on the premises . . .”
“Any way you look at it,” Dad said, “this is more than we can do ourselves. You’re going to have to call in carpenters, and maybe get a structural analysis of the balcony done to see if it can be saved.”
“If? I’ve been climbing up those steps every night to get to the projection booth. What do you mean,
if?”
“I mean, you’ve been really lucky.”
“If this is what lucky feels like, I don’t want to buck the odds. Call some of your contractor friends.”
Dad nodded. I checked my watch, and walked out of the auditorium and into my office. I had to field some phone calls responding to my ad for more theatre help, which seemed a little . . . superfluous, considering that the only help the theatre needed at the moment was in not falling down.
Even when it hadn’t been clear if I’d ever see Anthony again, I hadn’t advertised for a replacement—maybe I was being sentimental. Maybe I was being cheap. Maybe I just thought that after it was all said and done, Anthony would be back trying to thread up films that probably hadn’t been unspooled in twenty years.
But after a woman with a gun had fallen through the ceiling practically on their daughter’s head, Sophie’s parents had refused to allow her back into Comedy Tonight. So I placed an ad in the Press-Tribune for a replacement, despite the fact that the theatre would be closed until the repairs could be made. After all, I’d already paid for ads in the Press-Tribune for a week, and I couldn’t advertise a movie. Might as well put the money to use.
Anthony had agreed to come back when we reopened, which was a huge relief, since only he and I (and Bender and Leslie, but they would be tied up for a while) knew how to keep the projector from blowing up on any given evening, and I wasn’t that sure about myself. I promised him that if he could get a rough cut together, the first film on our return would be a one-night-only showing of Killin’ Time. It wasn’t a comedy, but there was no guarantee an invited audience would be able to tell that, and it was only one night. Anthony was editing fiercely, trying to make a deadline that I couldn’t set yet. But I made him promise he’d bring Carla to the premiere. The kid shouldn’t give up on something good, even if he doesn’t see it himself.
Things changed a few days later, when Sophie showed up at the theatre to collect her last paycheck, and her parents were with her.
“I hope you know what you put her through,” Ilsa Beringer told me. “The poor girl is traumatized.”
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