A Night at the Operation

by JEFFREY COHEN

  “I wasn’t there, Elliot,” Lennon said. “I had already left. There’s no way I could know.”

  “Speculate.”

  “That’s a joke, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re always joking.”

  “And you’ve been lying, Lennon. You know who killed Chapman, because you were there.”

  “I wasn’t . . .”

  “Maybe not when it happened, but you saw the mood of the house. You knew who was mad. You had a sense of it, and when you left, you know who followed you into that office.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I pressed my luck. “And the sad part is, whoever did it, when confronted with all this, will say it was you. They’ll say Gwen went into the room after you left and Russell was already dead. And it’ll be your word against theirs. Who do you think the police will believe?”

  “It won’t happen!” Lennon shouted. “I wasn’t there!”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s true,” I told him. “It just has to be believable.”

  “Lillian wouldn’t . . .”

  And that was enough. There was a tremendous silence in the room for a long moment.

  “It was Lillian?” I asked.

  Lennon nodded, and that wasn’t enough. I had to get him to say it.

  “Why?”

  “The inheritance,” Lennon said. “She suspected Mr. Chapman was changing his will, and she couldn’t let that happen.”

  “And she was too late. But why would she let you in on it?”

  “She was . . . is . . . the investor for my device. She knows it will make her millions.”

  “Not anymore. Now, she’ll be in jail.”

  Lennon waved a hand of dismissal at me. “The police don’t know any of this.”

  “I know,” I suggested.

  “It’ll be my word against yours,” Lennon countered. “And you’re already known as something of a nuisance to the police. I doubt your word will count for much.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, standing up. “But yours will.” I put my mouth inside the parka and said, “He’s all yours, Kowalski.” Then I looked at Lennon and told him, “I’m wearing a wire.”

  He was still staring at me in amazement when they led him away for booking.

  38

  “And two hard-boiled eggs.”

  “Honk!”

  “Make that three hard-boiled eggs.”

  —GROUCHO AND HARPO MARX, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, (1935)

  FRIDAY

  A Night at the Opera (1935) and Diva Dan (this week)

  “WE still don’t know for sure who killed Russell Chapman,” I said.

  Detective Kowalski stood in the lobby of Comedy Tonight, watching Sophie set up the snack bar, and shook his head. “We have a pretty good idea,” he said.

  The plasterer, a remarkably tall, thin fellow named Ralph, was standing on the third rung of a ladder I had a difficult time believing he needed, smoothing out a section of the wall where the electrical fire had scorched the previous plaster. His job would be to make the whole thing look seamless, and then a painter my father had hired, whose name was Milt, would paint the entire lobby to ensure that it all looked uniform.

  My run-down theatre was going to start to look very nice, if I could figure out how I would pay all these contractors. I hadn’t told them that, yet. Somehow it seemed the wrong time.

  “What you’ve got is Lennon Dickinson’s statement that Lillian Chapman was next into the room,” I told Kowalski. “You don’t have anyone in the room when it happened.”

  Kowalski gave me one of his patented “that’s why we’re the cops and you’re not” sighs. “There are two possibilities,” he said, and held up a finger—no, not that finger. “One: Lillian did exactly what Dickinson says she did, and we’ll find out whether that’s her blood on the rug once the DNA comes back in a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” I said.

  “This isn’t CSI,” Kowalski said.

  “What’s two?”

  “Dickinson’s lying, and he did it.”

  I sat down on the second step to the balcony. “He has no motive.”

  “Fit of rage when Chapman turned his gadget down.”

  “Lennon doesn’t have fits of rage,” I told him. “He has fits of bland. By the way, thanks a million for not telling me you guys had been to Chapman’s place and questioned him before he died, or that his lawyer had informed both daughters, who would have been on their way to the house.”

  Kowalski’s face took on a horrified expression. “My lord, Mr. Freed! Did I not inform you of every detail in a police investigation that you had no business knowing about?”

  “After all I’ve done for you,” I said.

  Jonathan came out of the auditorium carrying the broom and dustpan and a garbage bag. He disposed of all of them and walked over to Sophie, which appeared to be his most pressing task these days. It was enough to make you believe in the power of love, and who needs that?

  “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.” Kowalski stood over me, to better accentuate his superiority, I suppose. I didn’t much care.

  “I assumed you were here to experience the genius of the Marx Brothers on the big screen,” I said.

  “It’s an interesting world you live in, isn’t it?” Kowalski asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I need to know whether you’re serious about pressing charges against Lillian and Wally Mayer.”

  I waved a hand. “What, for locking me in a room and holding me against my will while they tried to lure my ex-wife there so they could maybe kill her?” I asked. “That little thing?”

  “You were in a luxurious office for thirty-five minutes by yourself,” he corrected me. “Stealing an important piece of evidence.”

  “Did I not show you said piece of evidence as soon as I was released from my imprisonment there?”

  “I’m saying, is it really necessary for us to put the taxpayers of East Brunswick through the expense of an investigation and a trial over thirty-five minutes during which you were not harmed in any way?” Kowalski glanced again toward the snack bar; at first I thought he had a twisted thing for Sophie, but then I realized he was ogling the chocolate-covered peanuts. I could sympathize with that.

  “That’s your way of looking at it,” I told him. “What about the psychological damage I sustained?”

  “You were like this before they locked you up,” he pointed out.

  “I’d think you would want to add charges to Lillian’s sheet,” I suggested.

  “If we could use them. Fact is, the prosecutor doesn’t think he can make your charges stick.”

  Sharon walked in from the street, removing her scarf and carrying a small paper shopping bag from the card store. Suddenly, my interest in continuing this conversation waned.

  “If I drop the charges, will you go away?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Kowalski said. “Can I get something from the snack bar first?”

  “As long as you pay cash. We don’t give out freebies just because you’re a cop.”

  He scowled and headed for the snack bar. I got up and walked toward Sharon. We met by the office door. “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” I told her.

  “You know I never miss A Night at the Opera,” she said. “Besides, I had to come and check on your head wound.” She looked, nodded, and then reached into the bag and pulled out a small box wrapped in blue paper. “Happy anniversary.”

  For the first time since we were married, it had slipped my mind. “Oh, man,” I said. “You remembered.” I opened the office door so we could have a little more privacy. Sharon walked in, and I followed her.

  “And you didn’t, I’m guessing,” she said.

  “Ye of little faith.” I thanked all that is good that I had remembered this anniversary over a week ago. “What’s my present?”

  “Open it and find out.”

  She sat down at the desk to watch me. I started to carefully remove the cellophane tape holding the small box toget
her. I didn’t say anything too precious, because I saw Kowalski leaving, and didn’t want to deter him with an opportunity to make fun of me.

  “Oh, tear it, for goodness sake,” Sharon said.

  So I did. There was a small white box inside with no markings on it. I dropped the wrappings on the desk and opened the box.

  Inside was a plastic license plate, the kind kids put on bicycles. It was the same nondescript colors as the ones that adorn New Jersey cars. And printed where the license would be was, simply, dad.

  I started to well up. “Wow,” I said.

  Sharon’s lower lip turned down. “You’re disappointed,” she said.

  I looked up at her and she could see how it had moved me. “No,” I told her. “I think it’s the best present anyone’s ever given me.” And she stood up and I hugged her for a very long time until she made me stop.

  “Now, where’s mine?” she asked, crossing her arms on her chest, daring me to prove that I hadn’t forgotten.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “If you’re going to Tiffany’s, you’ll need your coat,” she called after me as I left the office.

  I ran up the balcony stairs two at a time and was knocking on the door to the projection booth before I could catch my breath. It’s hell not being in your twenties.

  Anthony was splicing trailers onto the front of Opera, since this would be the first showing of the Marx Brothers film this week. He turned around and saw me walk in. “What’s up, Mr. Freed?” he asked. I noticed Carla, Anthony’s girlfriend, in a corner of the booth, reading a magazine.

  “Anthony, you remember that VHS tape I gave you last week?” I was gasping for breath. I should consider installing an elliptical trainer in the town house. Lord knows I needed to fill up space there with something.

  “The wedding video?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Please tell me you got a chance to . . .”

  Anthony smiled, and reached into his backpack. “I have the discs,” he said. “And they’re very high quality. The part where you break the glass with your foot was especially moving.”

  “You watched it?” There are some things you don’t want your staff to see, especially when your staff is a smirking teenager.

  “Had to. I was making corrections for color and focus when I could. It’ll look better than it ever has before, I promise you. But I couldn’t do anything about the way you dance.” Anthony has a sadistic streak that doesn’t show up often, but it is real and active.

  “I thought it was beautiful,” Carla said, without looking up from her magazine.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I told him.

  “No problem,” Anthony said.

  I took the two discs, which Anthony had put in professional cases, and put one in the drawer of the projector console (a table that holds the projector up). Then I stuck the other, Sharon’s copy, under my arm, and bolted for the door.

  I made it down the stairs in record time, and was saying, “I’m sorry it isn’t wrapped as beautifully as—” Then I reached the office door. And I stopped short.

  Inside the office, Sharon was still seated in the desk chair, looking straight out into the runway to the lobby. But now standing next to her in the tiny office was Gwen Chapman.

  And she was holding a scalpel to Sharon’s throat.

  39

  “I don’t really think she needs such a close shave, Gwen,” I said. They tell you to open with a joke.

  Sharon’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything; she knew what I was trying to do, even if she didn’t agree with it.

  “Shut the door,” Gwen Chapman said.

  I closed the door. “Can you tell me what the problem is?” I asked, doing my best to sound like an understanding psychiatrist.

  “The problem is this woman you married!” Gwen spat out, exasperated. How could I not know that? “It’s her fault Lillian is in jail!”

  “I didn’t . . .” Sharon attempted, but Gwen raised the scalpel again. “She followed me here,” Sharon said, quietly, to me.

  “It’s actually my fault, Gwen,” I told her. “I set Lillian up. Was I wrong?”

  “Wrong! Of course you were wrong!” Gwen was playing with a deck from which the sevens and tens had been removed. “And I’m going to kill the woman you love in front of you.”

  “Where’d you get the scalpel?” I asked. Maybe I could distract her.

  “At a medical supply store, can you believe it?” Gwen said. “You don’t have to show identification, or anything. You just hand them your debit card.”

  “Disgusting,” I said. “May I see it?” I held out my hand.

  Gwen’s face darkened faster than the sky before a summer thunderstorm. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Mr. Freed,” she said. “I’m going to slit this woman’s throat right in front of you, and I thought it would be appropriate to do it with a scalpel, a little operation on the doctor.”

  “Are you going to kill me, too?” I asked. “Because I’ll tell the police.” Gwen didn’t answer.

  Sharon’s hands appeared to be lashed to the arms of the desk chair with surgical tape (Gwen was taking this “operation” theme way too far), but I could move. Still, the office wasn’t large enough, strangely, for me to just leap forward and grab the blade out of Gwen’s hand; I’d thought of that. In such a tight space, though, any quick movement would require me to lean backward first to create momentum, and by that point, it would be too late.

  Sharon would be dead.

  I backed up against the door, in the hope that I could somehow gain speed in a lunge, but Gwen was already moving the blade toward Sharon’s neck, and a tiny spot of blood showed on her throat. Sharon inhaled deeply, gasping for breath. She looked terrified.

  But mostly, she looked angry at Gwen. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Sharon growled. “You pushed that shopping cart at me with the cinder blocks in it, and you threw the brick that hit Elliot.”

  “Of course it was me,” Gwen said. “Although I am sorry about that, Mr. Freed; I was aiming the brick at her, and I simply missed.” Her face hardened again. “My sister and her worthless husband knew—Wally was driving the car, even—but they were useless. They left it all up to me, as usual.”

  “They left it up to you to kill your father, too, didn’t they?” I said. The Lillian scenario had been too easy; I’d wanted it to be Lillian who did the killing, so I believed it when it was offered.

  “Oh, they wanted it, trust me,” Gwen said. “But they couldn’t do it themselves. No, it was always me who did the dirty work.”

  “But Lillian got arrested and charged with the murder,” I said, thinking out loud. “Why wouldn’t she rat you out then?”

  “She’ll get off, and she knows it,” Gwen said. “She can afford the best criminal lawyer in the world. And I promised if she keeps quiet, I’d end the affair I was having with her husband.”

  “It was you with him at the hotel in Newark.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded her head, acknowledging what I’d suggested, even while she pointed out what an idiot I was for not figuring it out sooner.

  “My family is more screwed up than you can possibly imagine,” Gwen said.

  “You know,” I said, deciding to take a more aggressive attitude, “I’ve had it with you and your family.”

  Gwen stopped, startled by my tone. “What the hell are you talking about, you’re tired of us? This woman . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, she ruined your life. I should have figured it. You were the one who said your father wouldn’t invest without a prototype, and that’s what the pTYpe on that stupid gadget of Lennon’s meant.”

  “Don’t you call it . . .” Gwen began.

  “I’m talking!” I figured crazy responds to crazy and Gwen was major crazy. “You were behind the whole connection between Lennon and your father to begin with, weren’t you? You looked into Lennon’s big blue eyes, and you wanted him to have whatever he wanted, no matter how impractical it was. So y
ou went to work on your father, and he agreed to meet this brilliant inventor. But he saw the clamp was too clumsy, too badly designed, to be marketable, and he turned Lennon down. And you got so mad you went in there and cut your own father’s throat, probably with the blade on the clamp. Right? Right?”

  Gwen looked so stunned that I considered diving for the scalpel, but I just couldn’t force myself to do it—one miscalculation, and Sharon would be dead.

  Then there was a knock on the door.

  Before Gwen could say anything, the hand behind my back turned the knob and I swung the office door out into the lobby. A guy in a dark blue uniform stood there, and I had a momentary sigh of relief; the police were here.

  But, no. “Registered letter,” he said, holding out an envelope.

  “Don’t let him in,” Gwen ordered.

  And that’s when it came to me.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Do I have to sign?”

  “Yes,” the mailman said. “It’s standard.”

  Now, Gwen would have to kill two more of us if she thought she was going to get away with this gambit. I’d have to keep the postal guy in the office, though, because she had seemed perfectly willing to slice Sharon’s throat in front of me.

  The guy walked in, but closed the door behind him, and that was a problem. It was already crowded in the office. He wormed his way past me to the desk, and held out a pen. “Sign, please?”

  “Just a second. Let me get my pen.”

  He held his out. “I have one.”

  “I know,” I said airily. I noticed Gwen had lowered her hand, keeping the scalpel out of sight, but she must have had it close by, and had covered Sharon’s wrists, bound to the chair, with her scarf. Sharon couldn’t use the wheels of the chair to escape. There just wasn’t enough room in the office to maneuver.

  I leaned over the postal guy and reached for a jar of pens I keep on the desk. I made a show of trying out different ones, trying to find just the right writing implement.