Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  “Good luck. You know Phil Hogan.”

  “Yeah, about Phil,” Kenny said. “Do you think, I mean, being serious for a second, is there any chance Phil did it?”

  “Don’t think so,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Hogan had twists and turns to him that made him unknowable. But I wasn’t going to voice my concerns. Not yet. “Yeah, they hated each other. But, Phil? No, I don’t see it. And, Kenny, if you’d seen what Horace looked like. God-awful.”

  “I agree,” Kenny said. “Phil’s a varmint, but we’re good. He loves pulling my chain. It don’t bother me. Just yank his harder. It’ll be fine.”

  “Anyway, you’ll be seeing a lot more of him. Why don’t you come by tomorrow afternoon, and we both can talk more? It looks like we won’t open again until Monday.”

  “Kaywood won’t need me. It’s so darn slow around here.”

  We walked through the lobby together, and I headed to my car with the copy of Jaws cemented to the palm of my hand.

  It was past five o’clock when I got back to the Yorktowne. Officer Slocum was still on watch, but most of the police cars were gone. Someone had fetched him a burger, and he was working on it. I was eager to talk with Spence, but I couldn’t locate his car, an old Buick Electra.

  Slocum let me enter the theater lobby, where I noticed Riggs, who seemed to be brooding about something. When he saw me, he perked up.

  “Greenlight on making those calls,” he said.

  A good sign, I thought.

  Detective Dupree drove up. He and Riggs stood apart from me and talked in the lobby for a few minutes. Then Dupree left in a hurry. I figured things were breaking fast.

  Riggs looked preoccupied, turning over something in his mind. As curious as I was to know more, I knew it wasn’t my place to ask questions.

  I suggested that I might head off home.

  “Sure, but how about stopping by here tomorrow morning, around eleven?” Riggs said.

  “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  It had already been a long day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I entered Mrs. Roe’s kitchen to the smell of something freshly baked.

  “Hello, Nate. I saw what happened. It’s all over the news. Simply horrible!”

  “It was awful, Mrs. Roe.”

  “I’ve made some Yorkshire gingerbread for you. Let’s have us some, shall we?” She cut two slices.

  “This is so good,” I said, taking a large bite.

  “For he on honey-dew hath fed,” she said, quoting a line of poetry from somewhere I assumed. “It’s lovely, this, if I don’t say so myself. And best when warm and sticky-like.”

  She put water in a kettle for tea, not bothering to ask whether I wanted a cup.

  Shifting to a serious tone, she said, “I received a call from a detective. A pleasant fellow. Riggs, I believe he said his name was. We chatted a good while. His mother was English. And from near my hometown at that if you can believe it.”

  She must have sensed the extra gravity of Riggs calling her because she added,

  “Don’t worry, dear. I vouched for you. Just past midnight when you got home last night, was it not?”

  I remembered again my selfish thoughts earlier in the day about Mrs. Roe and felt another rush of shame.

  “Something near that.” A little fudging couldn’t hurt. I’d come home closer to twelve-thirty. I tried to seem casual about the time. Mrs. Roe gave me a slight conspiratorial look. I hoped she didn’t think I needed her help.

  She fixed the tea as I filled her in on everything. She loved hearing it, all of it. And now that I was more in the clear, I enjoyed telling it.

  “Robbery, yes,” she said. “This is the most logical conclusion. Yet, too grisly? Do watch out for that Mr. Hogan.”

  “He’s a wild card, but I hope he didn’t do it. We need him with Jaws starting in two weeks. I mean it.”

  “A fitting prelude, I dare say,” Mrs. Roe said, shaking her head.

  I turned in early. I hadn’t any idea who killed Bullock, but at least I felt better about my own well-being. This caused my thoughts to turn toward the coming of Jaws. That poster, it packed a raw, perfect punch. The title, everything, as a good a poster as I had seen. From what I knew about the movie, it would live up to the hype.

  I reflected on my special link to the ocean. My mom had come from a long line of female divers from the Island of Jeju, off the southern tip of South Korea. These women were famous for being able to stay under the water for many minutes and to withstand the cold as they searched for abalone snails and conch. They knew how to work among the jellyfish and sharks.

  I had the lanky build of my dad, but in some hidden ways I was a lot more like my mom. Growing up in Hickory, I had a few weeks of lifesaving training at the local YMCA. Part of the training involved swimming underwater laps as many times as you could in groups of about five or six boys. It was a small-sized pool, but I swam four laps before I stopped.

  After the second lap the others had given up, which I’d only realized when muffled shouts filtered through the water. It occurred to me only then that I was doing something unusual. I was feeling the strain, but something gave me that second wind, and I had kept going for two more laps. When I came up for air, I saw the cheering faces of the other scouts.

  “How many lungs do you have, Burton?” the instructor had said. I could have gone further.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When I arrived at the theater the next day, I saw Riggs leaning against his car and removing the remaining peel of a bruised banana.

  “We’re through, Mr. Burton.” He pushed the last bit of the banana to the side of his mouth and sent the peel sailing into a nearby trash can.

  So we could have opened after all. Yet, I was relieved because we needed the extra day. And, anyway, Sundays were slow. If I understood the overall economics of the business, the theater company might come out ahead, since payroll expenses would be less. I figured we’d be in a holding pattern until Jaws arrived.

  Riggs continued, “We’re making progress. I can share with you that Bullock died around two in the morning.” He let this information hang in the air.

  I couldn’t think of what to say, but this was good news for me.

  “Puts you in the clear,” Riggs added.

  “Like to assume I don’t come across as a killer,” I said, trying to make light of it.

  “No, you don’t. And you didn’t. Talked with Hillary Roe. She confirmed what you told me. Lovely lady.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  I hoped Riggs might tell me more, and I said, “I saw Detective Dupree hustling off yesterday.” But my indirect probing yielded nothing, and I pressed in a different direction. “Did you get into the projection booth?” In the back of my mind, I still wondered about Hogan. Would we need to be on our guard?

  Riggs hesitated and said, “We did.” What did he find? I wanted to ask but thought better of it. And Riggs didn’t elaborate. What did Hogan want no one to see?

  “It’s about time that I examined that room too.”

  Riggs looked at me, puzzled.

  “I’m the manager of this place now,” I said.

  “Really?” He didn’t seem to believe me.

  “Sure am. Just met with the district manager.”

  “But—”

  “Take it up with him,” I said, laughing. “It’s the truth.”

  He fished out the keys I’d given him the previous day and gave them to me.

  “You’ve got the keys now. Got to run,” he said. “Oh, when you go up there, you’ll find we forced the lock on the second door. I’ll be in touch.”

  Riggs stopped, one hand resting on the exit door, and said,

  “Another thing. Been meaning to follow up on this. What about Mr. Reeves? How did he and Mr. Bullock get along?”

  Was Spence a suspect?

  “They got along well, overall,” I said, but I was recalling the most recent time Bullock had mistreated Spence, a few d
ays before. I had been helping Spence clean the aisles in theater two. Bullock had stuck his dumb mug of a face in through an exit door and had said in a disrespectful way, “Spence, now you make sure you fix that urinal, hear? I don’t want to come in tomorrow and see it broken. Don’t make me have to bring in no plumber.”

  Spence had stopped his sweeping, and after straightening his back, had said, “We won’t need a plumber, Mr. Bullock. I can get us a washer to fix it.”

  Spence had smiled in my direction. I guessed he sensed what I was feeling. Then, he had got back to sweeping. I had been offended for him and wanted to tell Bullock off. Spence, a thousand times the man Bullock was, deserved more respect. But Spence had been calm about it, like it didn’t matter.

  “Overall?” Riggs asked.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “Mr. Bullock didn’t always treat Spence with respect. It happened a lot.”

  “He wasn’t bothered by it?”

  “Spence got along well with Horace, even though he had reason not to. It bothered me, not Spence. Honestly, Spence doesn’t let stupid stuff get under his skin.”

  Spence had seen so much, been through so much—what was another slight from someone like Bullock? He understood things more than reacted to them. And, as he put it to me once, “There be times when its best to keep your tongue still.”

  “I’m running late. Need to go.”

  “Just one more thing, Detective Riggs. Do you realize Spence was a Buffalo Soldier?” I said, curious what effect this information would have. Would Riggs know who the Buffalo Soldiers were?

  “A Buffalo Soldier? How old is he?” Riggs said, losing his smooth, unflappable manner.

  “At least eighty. And get this. He fought in the Battle of Carrizal in 1916, down in Mexico.”

  “1916?”

  “That’s right. In Chihuahua. He told me he joined the regiment at fifteen by faking his age.”

  Although Spence claimed to be past eighty, he didn’t look it. He had the limber way of a man closer to forty. His gait was slow but efficient.

  “Incredible,” Riggs said.

  “Take a look at his Buick. He repainted it black with gold trim, the colors of the 10th Cavalry.”

  “I noticed those silver buffalos on both fenders.”

  “Yep, he put those on too. And, come to think of it, one thing he said about his time as a Buffalo Soldier maybe helps explain why Horace never bothered him.”

  Riggs had been so intent on leaving, but all this new information about Spence caught his interest. He glanced at his watch and said,

  “Tell me. Quick.”

  “Being a Buffalo Soldier was a huge achievement for a Black man. But you still had to suffer all kinds of indignities from many of the white soldiers, especially when there was no fighting going on. One time, his regiment was ordered by an officer to stand away from the wind, so that the other soldiers wouldn’t have to smell them. But Spence said the men in the regiment took these slights in stride. You know why?”

  “They had no choice?” Riggs said.

  “Because they had come through in battle. As Spence told me, ‘We were always there when they needed us.’”

  “Interesting,” Riggs said, as he seemed to imagine what it must have been like.

  I said, “It really was a special honor to be a Buffalo Soldier for these guys, making it much easier to take those slights.”

  “I can understand. And I want to learn more about Mr. Reeves. And I will. I promise you,” Riggs said. He stared again at his watch. “But, damn it, I need to go.”

  I was getting to like Riggs. As he drove away, I wondered why he had ended up being a detective instead of a lawyer. He’d never gotten around to telling me. Investigating murders did seem more interesting than legal work, in as much as I knew about each career.

  Riggs was talking with someone on his police radio. I again sensed the case was moving fast.

  Chapter Sixteen

  If my first official act as manager had been to hire Kenny, my second was to check out Hogan’s projection booth, so long off-limits to anyone but Hogan himself. I opened the entrance door, left unlocked by Riggs, and peered upward as I turned on the stairwell light. The flight of stairs was long and narrow, not reversing midway at a landing like the stairs leading to the booth for theater two. It felt eerie, as if the stairs led to another dimension. The door at the top filled the whole space, almost like an attic door, adding to this otherworldly sense. A sign on the door read “PRIVATE” in blood-red letters. Strangely, even though I was looking up, it seemed I was looking down.

  “Creepy,” I said aloud, as I headed up the stairs, closing the door behind me and hoping that Hogan wouldn’t decide to show up right then. As manager now, I had every right to enter the room, but I felt like an intruder. Did the union rules gave him dominion? I’d look into that later.

  The entrance door swung inward, and I felt for a light switch. Two shaded lamps at either end of the booth came to life, producing a warm, honey-yellow light, directed away from projector windows that overlooked the theater itself. The room smelled of stale cigarettes from an unemptied ashtray. Something else too. A hint of Hogan’s cologne. I recalled what I’d detected in Bullock’s office. Was it the same smell? It was hard to tell. And, anyway, Hogan liked to change his cologne.

  Hogan kept the room clean and orderly, so different from Kenny’s messy, chaotic style. No stray slices of film or food wrappers lay about, and the splicing table was free of clutter. The film canisters for The French Connection II were neatly placed under the table.

  Lining the back wall were three framed posters, each well placed. I had seen far-off glimpses of them through the projector window, but now I saw them up close. One looked like an original of A Rebel without a Cause, with James Dean standing, one leg crossed over the other, cigarette in hand.

  The second I’d never heard of, Crime in the Streets. A young man, dressed like a thug, embraced a girl. Just above them, a phrase read: “How can you tell them to be good when their girlfriends like them better when they’re bad!”

  The third poster was smaller and had the title Billy Budd. Two sailors, their upper torsos exposed, fought on the deck of a boat. One had a knife. The main caption read: “The men, the mutiny, the might!”

  Along the far wall was a couch with Western-style upholstery. I moved over to it and noticed a stack of magazines on a side table. On top was a copy of Time magazine, the issue that Billy Gossett had been reading several days before. Next were two muscle-building magazines, one called Flex, featuring a young Austrian muscle builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger. The second magazine was Tomorrow’s Man, geared toward “The World’s Finest Young Physiques.” It also had the same man on the cover, an even younger version of him, probably taken when he was a teen. I could see the appeal of this guy.

  Tiger Beat was the last one. I’d seen this issue in drugstores. Teen idol, David Cassidy, from the Partridge Family TV show was on the cover. I recalled the provocative, controversial almost nude photo of Cassidy on the cover of Rolling Stone a few years back.

  I was reminded of something that had happened a few weeks earlier. A high school kid had applied for an usher position. He was a close replica of Cassidy, his long hair parted down the middle exactly as Cassidy’s. We went over his application while sitting on one of the lobby benches. When Hogan entered the theater, his head whipped in the kid’s direction like it might spin right off and I’d have to catch it. We didn’t hire him because he couldn’t provide a reference, which had miffed Hogan.

  Poor Hogan. He must have had a splintered, painful upbringing. How could it lead to anything but heartache?

  And Hogan hated Bullock. He had to. Was he capable of snapping? Killing? I hoped not, but this was more than I knew.

  I heard the door open at the bottom of the stairs. My heart pounded against my chest like it might break through. Was it Hogan? The idea that Hogan had killed Bullock took sudden hold as
if it were a certainty. I looked around for something to defend myself with. I reached for a film canister and got ready to use it as a weapon.

  “Phil, are you up there?” It was Kenny. I put the canister down. I felt foolish. My pulse returned closer to normal.

  “It’s me. I’ll be right down,” I said in a loud voice. I didn’t want Kenny coming up. I placed the magazines back in the same order I’d found them and hurried to the top of the stairwell.

  “Phil up there too?” Kenny said, his distinctive frame filling the stair entrance.

  “No. You scared the crap out of me. Thought you might be him. He lets no one up here,” I cut the lights and made my way down the stairs. “He doesn’t even know I’m the new manager. Heck, he might have killed me.”

  “Serious?”

  “No, but I’m sure glad it was you not him. Come on, let’s move. He might show up for real.”

  I closed and locked the door. How would Hogan react when he noticed the second door’s broken lock?

  Kenny asked with exaggerated timidity, “Are you the manager or him? Mind if I check out the other booth?”

  “Shut up. It’s open. And it’s all yours. I’m going to clear Bullock’s junk out of the manager’s office.”

  Hogan’s Thunderbird entered the parking lot just as Kenny left the lobby. A shiver went through me. That was cutting it close.

  Hogan entered the lobby, and the rush of summer air funneled in the scent of his latest cologne, yet another new kind. A silver fertility symbol, new as well, hung on a thick chain around his neck.

  I said, “Hi, Phil. Awful about Horace.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Hogan said, with little conviction.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” I said.

  “Listen, I ain’t going to pretend I’m sorry about it.”

  “You and everybody else. But it was gruesome.”