Some Like It Hot-Buttered (3 page)

Dutton nodded, and said, “Take him. But tell the ME to take a look right away. I want to be able to tell Mr. Ansella’s next of kin what happened to him for sure.”

The EMT popped a stick of gum into his mouth and walked away, giving Dutton a mock salute. I hoped it was sugary gum. Anyone who thinks Rob Schneider is funnier than Gene Wilder deserves tooth decay.

Officer Patel walked over carrying a sealed plastic bag. “I’ve got his personal effects, Chief,” he said. “Wallet, cell phone, keys, a couple of ATM receipts. No prescriptions that would indicate a medical condition; nothing special.”

Dutton nodded. “Bag some of the popcorn,” he told Patel. “It was the last thing he ate. Maybe got some stuck in his throat or something; the ME might want to see if it matches what he finds.” Patel took another plastic bag from his pocket and walked back to row S.

Dutton looked at me, then at the area where Mr. Ansella had been seated. He turned to me and asked, “Do you sell cheddar popcorn?”

It took me a moment to realize he was serious. “No,” I told him. “We pop our own. It’s butter or nothing.”

Dutton took another look at the scene as the ambulance personnel prepared to roll Ansella’s body up the aisle. Sophie looked absolutely horrified, and Anthony, fascinated. With Dutton’s approval, I told them they could go home, that I’d close up. I don’t think it took an entire second before Sophie was out the door. She was only a few moments behind Mr. Ansella’s body.

Patel gave row S one last examination, taking the rest of the popcorn box with him in another plastic bag as an afterthought.

Dutton looked up at the balcony. “Was there anybody up there?” he asked.

“No. The balcony is a little shaky, and I don’t keep it open. Besides, we didn’t have what you’d call an overflow crowd tonight,” I told him. Dutton took that in, and then stuck out his hand and smiled.

“Sorry again for the trouble,” he said. “Good night, Mr. Freed.” He turned toward Levant. “Officer.” Patel walked up the aisle behind Dutton, checking at the door to make sure they hadn’t overlooked a Junior Mints box that might be evidence in Ansella’s heart attack. They hadn’t, so he exited, too.

Levant watched as I got the broom from the lobby and swept up what was left of the popcorn.

“This bothers you,” she said. “You put on a good show, but it bothers you.”

“Of course it bothers me. I bought the theatre because I wanted people to have a good time. I wasn’t prepared for one of them to have his
last
time here. How many people have a heart attack while watching Cloris Leachman?”

Levant raised her left eyebrow. “It’s not your fault the man died.”

“I know, Officer Levant—”

“It’s Leslie.”

“I know it’s not my fault, Leslie. I’d just prefer the guy died of natural causes somewhere else.”

She nodded, and turned to walk up the aisle. “I have to go file my report, Mr. Freed.”

“Elliot. And thanks. Sorry we didn’t get to meet under less morbid circumstances.”

“I’m sure we’ll meet again, Elliot,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was watching Chief Dutton,” she said, as if that explained things.

I nodded, but I’m sure I looked puzzled.

“He saw something,” Levant said. “I’m willing to bet you that was no heart attack tonight.”

2

I went up to the projection booth, rewound the films, and then finished cleaning up the theatre quickly; I admit, it was a little spooky being there by myself. I turned out the light on the marquee, which I should have done an hour before, and locked the front door when I left. I’d come in early tomorrow to clean up behind the snack bar.

My bike was chained up to a strong water pipe in the alley next to the theatre. I carried the front wheel, which I keep in the office of the theatre, and attached it once I unlocked the bicycle. I checked my watch before I got on; it was twelve fifteen in the morning.

I’m probably the only New Jerseyan left who doesn’t drive a car. It’s not that I don’t see the utility of it—I have a driver’s license, and make sure I keep it current—but I don’t own a car, and I don’t want one. They cost a lot of money, they break down often, they have to be parked on a regular basis, and they pollute what’s left of our air. Everybody talks about doing something to help the environment; I’m doing what I can. Mostly.

There were few cars on Route 27 going south this time of night, but I stuck to the sidewalk on the Albany Street Bridge into New Brunswick. I guess a bike lane is too much to ask for in a state where people hop into their cars to go from one room to another. Besides, the bridge is too narrow as it is, so adding a space for bikes would make it impossible for people to drive the Hummers they so desperately need in case New Jersey is attacked by the Visigoths.

It was cool but not cold out, and I was glad I had my
Split Personality
crew jacket on, although I don’t like to be reminded of the experience that went into making that movie. Not that I was actually involved. I sold the book to the producers, the producers hired the writers, the writers changed the characters, the plot, and the title, and then the producers put in a credit that the resulting abomination was “based on the novel
Woman at Risk
by Elliot Freed.” Which I suppose it was. It says so on IMDb. It also said so on the check, and I cashed it.

I’d spent two years of my life writing that book, and before that, another two years researching it: talks with private investigators, police detectives, victim rights advocates, psychologists, and prosecutors. Hollywood turned it into what they like to call an “erotic thriller,” which meant that the main character was naked a good deal of the time for very little reason. I have nothing against naked women (damn it!), and as I said, I had—as my grandfather used to say—“no kicks coming.” I had indeed cashed the check.

Once I had gone through the novel-to-film process one time, I was not anxious to do so again, and didn’t feel like I had another book in me, anyway. Despite the movie, sales of the first book hadn’t exactly set Oprah’s heart aflame, and publishers were resisting the temptation to break down my door with offers of a fat advance on the next one. Which was just as well, since I didn’t have a burning desire to sit myself down and start typing ten hours a day again.

Also, the movie deal had provided me with something I’d never had before: money. Enough of it that I didn’t have to work very hard for quite some time. Enough that I could evaluate exactly what it was I wanted to do with the time I have remaining on this planet. And writing more novels that people didn’t want to read wasn’t it. Unfortunately, it was a lot easier to determine what I
didn’t
want than what I did.

I’ve always loved the movies. Well, not including the
Split Personality
experience, but I was trying hard to block that out.

Specifically, I’d always loved comedies. The Marx Brothers. Mel Brooks. Billy Wilder.
Gene
Wilder. Laurel and Hardy. Buster Keaton. Woody Allen, before he decided he was Ingmar Bergman. Did I happen to mention the Marx Brothers?

But I couldn’t
do
anything for the movies. Not after seeing how the writers on
Split Personality
were treated. (I’d say they were treated like shit, but in Los Angeles, with all the colonics they’re into out there, they treat shit a lot better than screenwriters.) So that was out.

Since I’d never had the dream of being a director or an actor, and I was as adept at technical skills as I was at seducing women, working in the film business from the creative side was beyond my reach. And the business side of virtually anything had never interested me. Add to this the fact that almost
any
job in the movie business would have required a move three thousand miles west, and it seemed smarter to take my Hollywood-based windfall, invest wisely (as soon as I hired someone to invest it for me), and live a life of modest means off those investments and whatever commercial writing work I could get. After all, my ex-wife was actually paying
me
alimony (that would teach her to go to medical school!), and I had inherited my parents’ house in Midland Heights, mortgage free, when they moved to an “active adult community” in Manalapan. They’d saved enough to give me the house and still put a down payment on the condo they bought. You’d think this would teach me something about the value of savings. At least, you’d think that if you didn’t know me very well.

But I had gotten restless in the four-bedroom, two-bath Victorian with the wraparound porch. If Sharon and I had stayed married and had children, it would have been a perfect place to live. But we hadn’t, and I didn’t even have a dog to use the fenced-in backyard. It seemed greedy to deprive some lovely family of their dream house, so I put the place on the market, insisted the broker sell it to people who had at least two children, and rented myself a town house on the Raritan River in New Brunswick.

It seems that some ambitious real estate developers had noticed that New Brunswick, a city in decline in the 1970s and ’80s, was turning into a hub for theatre, restaurants, and health care. Figuring people would now want to live here, they built a good number of luxury condominiums right on the river to cater to the postgraduate crowd from Rutgers University, as well as the professors and support staff who work there. Unfortunately, the people who bought the condos, like the person from whom I was renting, soon discovered that New Brunswick school funding hadn’t improved much since the 1970s and ’80s, the city still had the same crime as any urban center, and whaddaya know, even with theatres, it wasn’t Broadway. So they moved out and rented to people like me, who didn’t care and liked the city just the way it was. Living in New Brunswick, an unattached single person like myself can walk to the train that goes into Manhattan, eat well without cooking, and admire a view of an extremely muddy and smelly river outside his window whenever the mood strikes.

The money from the sale of the house and the book left me with quite a bank account (since my parents refused to take the half of the proceeds I offered), and renting meant the lack of a large mortgage payment every month. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before I inquired about the availability of the Rialto, the lone, long-abandoned movie theatre in Midland Heights.

In typical cagey fashion, I invited the real estate agent, Virginia Squeo, out to lunch, letting her believe I might be interested in looking for a new home in town (nobody in New Jersey, especially real estate dealers, believes that you
want
to rent). I figured I could casually ask about the Rialto, just as a passing whim of a guy at loose ends. Ginny surveyed her salad and my steak sandwich, decided I was getting the better of the deal, and gave me a list of houses in the area that might interest me. But she’d known me a few years, and she saw the cursory glances I gave the photos she was showing me.

“You don’t want a house,” she said, eyeing me. “Why did you call me?”

“I’m interested in you as a person,” I said.

“No, really.”

There was no point in trying a deception; I’m just no good at it, or I’m out of practice. “What’s the deal on the Rialto?” I asked. “I saw your name on the sign out front.”

Ginny’s eyes lit up like a pinball machine when you’ve knocked the ball all the way around the glass and into the “triple bonus” hole.
“The Rialto?”
she asked. “You’re interested in the
Rialto
?” Heads turned three tables away. Ginny was already counting the bonus money she’d probably win in the office pool for lining up a sucker on the least-sellable property on the board.

I maintained my level of cool, which was equivalent to that of the average jalapeño pepper. “Just in passing,” I tried to croon, but sounding much more earnest than I should have. “I just thought about owning a movie house, and it seemed like fun.”

“Fun?” She snorted. “You think owning a single-screen movie theatre in this era of multiplexes would be fun? Elliot! You’d lose your shirt in six months.”

“Maybe.” I nodded. “But right now, I have some money, and if the place is in some kind of working order, maybe I could make something out of it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and if I don’t take the chance while I have this windfall, I’ll never really know, will I?”

I spent the next two hours talking the Realtor into selling me a property she was desperate to get off her hands. We negotiated on price, and I did better than you’d expect, since the owners of the building had been listing it for years, and I was the first person to express an interest in buying it outright. I held out for some reductions and some renovations, and got them. And a few months later at the closing, I paid cash. I owned the Rialto, from its leaky roof to its mouse-infested basement.

Once over the Albany Street Bridge tonight, it was mostly downhill toward my condo. The streets in this section of town, with few businesses open at this time on a weeknight, were relatively empty, and it didn’t take me long to get where I was going. Entering the development, you’d have thought you were in a tiny suburban town, the Epcot Center of New Jersey. Each townhouse sported its own young tree in front, brick facing, and brightly painted door. The idea that only a block to the east there was a bustling city of forty-nine thousand people was downright surreal.

I carried the bike up the front steps, all six of them, and unlocked my very green front door. Inside, there was no sound, which is what I’m used to, and I locked up again behind me, because this is New Jersey, and that’s what you do.

I left the bike in the foyer and walked into the kitchen for a quick snack before going to bed. Strangely, Mr. Ansella’s premature departure from this earth had not blunted my appetite. Luckily, I bike a lot, or I’d have trouble getting through that eye-catching door.

The message light on the kitchen-wall phone was blinking, which is unusual. Most people know they can find me at the theatre during the day, and anyone who doesn’t know me is usually put off by my voice-mail message, which says, “I’m not in. If I don’t know you, don’t leave a message, because I won’t call you back. It’s nothing personal.” So, after a night in which I had to deal with a corpse in row S, I was more than a little shaky as I reached for the playback button.