by C. S. Poe
“There isn’t a lot I can do for you,” Greta said. She took a sip of beer. “Officially through the museum, at least. We have strict policies in place, especially for information. I can’t even guarantee we’d have what you’re looking for, on top of having to wait and paying the research fees.”
I nodded.
“And the guided tours, while they are quite good, they’re ninety minutes and cover the entire Behind the Screen exhibit. Our educators likely won’t know the nitty-gritty.”
“But you do?”
Greta broke her pretzel into a few pieces. “I have an MFA in film studies and worked as a television producer for twenty years. I know some things.”
I smiled. I liked her.
“Hopefully I know what you’re on the hunt to learn.”
“Have you ever heard of, while Dickson was employed for Edison, some attack on his life?”
“Oh no.” Greta frowned and shook her head. “Never. Granted… the past gets a bit hinky around the birth of the Kinetoscope.”
“How so?” I took a long, refreshing drink.
“Scholars to this day debate how much involvement Edison had with the physical construction of the camera and viewer. He patented it, sure, but he and Dickson parted ways in ’95 with a rather strained relationship. Documents have been conveniently lost, changed, opinions have soured personal accounts…. It’s hard to get a concise view of this period in film history.”
“But one thing for certain is that Dickson was the primary inventor,” I said.
“Without a doubt,” she agreed. “Cinema history was made with Dickson.”
“What was the reason for his leaving the company and Black Maria?” I asked around a bite of pretzel. It was still warm, and the spicy mustard dip…. I almost made an orgasmic sound but managed to stifle it.
Greta held up a finger as she made good headway on her beer. “This is a moment I find particularly fascinating. William Edward Gilmore was appointed general manager of the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1894, and by most accounts, was a tough businessman. By then, Dickson had begun moonlighting for the Latham brothers. They owned a Kinetoscope parlor in New York City and were instrumental in pioneering one of the first machines to project footage for an audience. Such parlors wouldn’t need half a dozen Edison machines at start-up, and instead could create a business with a single unit.”
“Cost-effective,” I said.
“Very much so,” she agreed. “And although most of their work was engineered by Eugène Lauste, Dickson did help. Edison’s manager became suspicious of Dickson and, in April of 1895, orchestrated his exit from the company.”
“What put Gilmore on Dickson’s scent?” I asked.
“That I can’t be certain of,” Greta answered. “Some suggest Dickson was overly confident—that Edison would sooner toss out the general manager than the man who’d put the Kinetoscope on the map—but such was not the case.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” I stated.
She nodded. “It’s a story perfect for a movie, don’t you think?”
“Which some screenwriter would inevitably destroy by inserting made-up drama or a romantic side plot that never existed,” I replied.
Greta laughed, deep and hearty. “Don’t I know it.”
We ate in a companionable silence for a few moments.
“I was told a story,” I finally said. “It’s hearsay at least three times over.”
“Those are always fun.”
“The Kinetoscope I’m currently in possession of is a working original. The owner is the one who supplied me with these reels,” I said as I patted the paper bag at my side. “He says he purchased it all from the son of a man claiming to be one of Dickson’s original assistants on the Kinetoscope.”
Greta raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” I replied to her suspicious expression. “He couldn’t supply any proof of the claim—but the story he was told was that there was a betrayal from within the circle, and it had put Dickson in danger. So long as the Kinetoscope and movies were kept hidden, Dickson would be safe.”
“That sounds like the unnecessary addition by the screenwriter,” Greta stated.
“Could be,” I said. “But maybe the danger was Gilmore?”
“Gilmore didn’t try to kill Dickson,” she said. “He just had him fired. What was this ‘assistant’s’ name?”
“Tom.”
“Just Tom?”
“That’s all I was told.”
“I’ll admit, I don’t know the names of every man involved,” Greta finished. “Maybe there was a Tom. Maybe.” She perked up a bit, grabbed her purse, and began to rummage about. “I actually know who to ask. If there ever was a Tom or a threat against Dickson, this man would have the story.”
I grabbed my magnifying glass from my bag, took the business card she offered a moment later, and brought it close to read. “Dr. Bill Freidman.”
“He teaches—”
“At NYU,” I said, glancing at Greta. “I had him for Film History, and Theory and Criticism my junior year.” I looked at the card again. “I can’t believe he’s still teaching.”
“Oh yes. He now brings his history class to the museum once a year.”
“Guess I missed that fieldtrip,” I said, stuffing the card into my messenger bag. “But thanks. I don’t think it’d have ever occurred to me to ask him. We, uh—we butted heads a bit when I was in college.”
“He can be rather strict with students,” she agreed.
“And I was a smart-ass know-it-all, so you can imagine.”
Greta laughed and wiped her hands on a napkin. “So. Are we going to take a look?” She nodded at the paper bag.
“At the still frames?”
“Better than nothing.” She leaned forward. “I’ve got to know what footage it is. Perhaps it’s additional reels from the Leonard-Cushing fight, since you somehow got your hands on round six.”
That was a probability. I dug into my messenger bag to take out the cloth gloves. “I only have one pair,” I said, waving them. “It’s best to avoid touching—”
“You don’t think I’m prepared?” She clucked her tongue and retrieved a similar pair from her purse.
I smiled and offered her one of the two cans from the bag. I put on my gloves, shimmied the lid free from my container, and carefully held up the film strip. “Single perforations puts this before 1894,” I said. “This movie is definitely earlier than the catalog available to the public.”
“Test footage?” Greta asked as she worked the lid from her can.
“Yeah. But this is after they discarded cylinder experiments. Which would make it around 1891?” I held the roll of still frames upward, letting the flashing light of a nearby television backlight it. I narrowed my eyes and brought the still-pliable film closer. “I think this is Dickson.”
“What? Really?”
“I’m not crazy about the fantastic mustaches men had back then, but he’s a handsome guy. This is Dickson. I’m certain. Wasn’t 1891 when they held a public demonstration?”
“For the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, if I’m not mistaken,” Greta replied. “But that would make it the Dickson Greeting, and that’s not possible.”
“Why?” I lowered the film briefly.
“Only a three-second fragment exists today. The New York Sun described the entire reel as a man who bowed, smiled, waved his hands, and removed his hat. But if I recall, only the bit of Dickson holding his hat has survived.”
I raised the strip again and gently unspooled it. “This is the Dickson Greeting,” I insisted in a low tone. “He’s doing everything you’ve just described.”
“That needs to be brought to the attention of the National Film Registry. It’s without a doubt historically significant.”
I looked at Greta as she gently unspooled a bit of her film and studied it. I sifted toward the end of my own footage. The fact that I had in my hands another piece of history thought lost to time was inc
redible. But like the boxing match, I was suspecting there was more hidden toward the end. And sure enough, there was a bump where two pieces had been haphazardly spliced together.
The second piece of film was perforated on both sides, which put it several years after the original Dickson Greeting movie. And that was brilliant, because now I had a working timeline. Whoever had been tacking the mysterious murder footage to the end of the reels likely did so between 1894, when the team had perfected the 35mm film used in the machines, and 1895, when Dickson left the company.
“This one is awfully hard to make out,” Greta murmured. She was doing the same as me, holding the still frames up to the light of the television. “Looks like a young boy—almost like he’s conducting music or something. You know that hand motion?”
“That doesn’t sound familiar,” I said, distracted.
“I’m sure there’s plenty Dickson’s team did that we’ll never know about.”
I brought my magnifying glass up to the film. It seemed to be the same outdoor setting—the Flatiron site—but in daylight. The figures were much easier to make out. One man stood before the camera, pointing up and behind. He must have been referencing the magic lantern used on site. I took a leap and made the educated guess that the team had been testing recording at night and wanted to use the city lights, like the magic lantern, for exposing the film. When he looked directly at the camera in another frame, I realized he was the murderer. Muttonchops with the gut.
I fed more footage through my hand, approaching the end of the reel, when two additional men finally stepped into the frame. The minute details of the individuals were impossible to make out, but the angle of the hat worn on one suggested Dickson himself. The second might have actually been the man who died hours later in the nighttime scene.
So if I understood these two scenes correctly, I had four characters involved in the murder: Heise, who was the cameraman of the crew, Dickson himself, the killer—Muttonchops—and the unknown victim.
I leaned to the side and took my phone out of my pocket. They wouldn’t be the greatest photos, not by a long shot, but I had one half-baked idea on how I could go about trying to identify the killer with no information to work with except his face. I let the phone’s camera focus on the tiny frame, magnified it, and snapped a few pictures of Muttonchops.
Greta swore to herself.
“What is it?” I asked, beginning to carefully wind the film up.
“It’s a club in the boy’s hand, not a baton. You’ve got three movies that are said not to exist.”
I finished with my film and set it in the bag, then reached out when she offered me the reel. “I’m not familiar with the footage,” I said.
“Newark Athlete. It’s the oldest film in the Registry,” she continued. “Only existed as stills that were reanimated.”
“Like Fred Ott’s Sneeze,” I mumbled.
Greta made a sound of agreement.
I reached the now-expected bump of the old single perforation merged with newer, double-perforated film. I put the magnifying glass to the stills. It was shot at the Black Maria in Jersey, for sure. There was Muttonchops again. He was standing before the camera, making exaggerated movements.
More testing, I’d bet.
In the background of the scene was a damn Kinetoscope. Something—no, someone, was crouched in front of it, but I couldn’t be sure what they were doing.
I started moving through the stills a bit faster, and persistence of vision nearly made the past come to life in my hands. I stopped when another object entered the frame and viewed it under magnification. That was Victim. He got into Muttonchops’s face. Maybe they were arguing?
Some of the stills were black and destroyed with age and poor exposure, but right at the end, Dickson appeared, like he was trying to break up a potential fight. So whatever the conflict had been in regards to, it was undoubtedly the fuel that fed the fire for murder.
What the hell happened between this group of talented men?
Had it been so awful that murder was the only recourse?
And how did it all tie in to Dickson then and the person who’d shot up the Emporium now?
“THIS IS a Brooklyn Bridge–bound 6 train. The next stop is Astor Place.”
I held on to the overhead railing with one hand and kept a grip on my cane with the other. I stared at the floor, avoiding the overblown lights of the subway car. Incoming riders moved around me to find places to sit or stand.
After our lunch and discussion of celluloid corruption and crime, I’d left Greta Harris and headed back to the city. I was overwhelmed with questions, but at least I had a consistent cast of faces to work with on my quest for answers. And putting names to the unknowns—Muttonchops, Victim, and that man who’d been fiddling with the Kinetoscope in the background of the last movie—was of the upmost importance. Knowing who all of the film assistants were, being able to correctly assign their roles in the unfolding story, that was where I hoped I’d discover a clue to today’s tribulations.
Not that I was basing this hope on any particular piece of evidence, just the stories from a foul-mouthed old man and an assailant with a penchant for candy who’d been ready to kill me for the rest of the movies I now had in my possession. But what I did know was that if I could untangle this historical web of contradictions, betrayal, and human ingenuity, I would close the case on a century-old murder and perhaps even alter the course of cinema history. And in so doing both of those things, might also be able to handcuff the person who killed Casey Robert.
Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
Maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor to use at the moment….
“This is Astor Place,” the automated system announced.
I put the cane in front of me and moved toward the doors. Someone to my left stepped aside. As the train slowed at the station, and pillars and people passed by the window in a blur, another passenger moved to stand beside me at the door. He leaned in close, surpassing those three inches of New Yorker personal space. I hated people like that. I wanted to get off the train too, guy, but there wasn’t much I could do before we’d even parked in the station.
The brakes screeched, and I shifted my weight to move with the motion of the halting train. The doors opened, and I took a step forward before the creep to my right shoved hard into my shoulder. My foot caught in the gap between the train and platform, causing me to flail and crash to the ground.
“Fuck!” My sunglasses flew off and I tried to break my fall, but I was too late and only managed to slam my face into the tacky, filthy cement floor and scrape up the heels of my hands.
After a moment of feeling around, I reached out, snagged my glasses, and put them on with shaking hands. I looked around the dimly lit platform for who’d tripped me, then zoned in on a teenage brat picking up my messenger bag. I made eye contact with him.
I knew him.
He’d been the one I’d asked regarding the brownstone with a red door.
“You!” I exclaimed.
He immediately took off toward the turnstile exits.
“H-hey! You little shit!” I grabbed my cane, scrambled to my feet, and chased after him. “Stop! Fuck—thief!” I screamed, hoping like hell a Good Samaritan would jump into his path and… no one was stopping him! Are you kidding me?
“I said stop!” I shouted one more time.
The guy reached the exit, skidded to a halt, then jumped the nearest turnstile. I got there a few seconds later but was blocked as passengers were swiping cards to enter the platform. I swore and slammed my bruised hands into the bar of the emergency exit door, alarm wailing as I ran out. I didn’t recognize the back of the kid’s head so much as I recognized my bag being flung around in the crowd as he continued to outrun me. I’d learned my lesson about keeping all of my necessities in the bag, and so had kept my phone and keys in my jeans. But the goddamn Kinetoscope footage was safely tucked inside!
The teen was slowed by the afternoon foot traff
ic on the stairs, and I took the only chance I had. I lunged forward, using my cane to knock between his knees and trip the little shithead. As he fell, I surged toward him. I grabbed the back of the thin hoodie he was wearing, but as quickly as I thought I had him, he yanked his arms free of the clothing, took the bag again, and raced up the stairs.
“You asshole!” I tripped my way up to ground level after him.
But outside the Downtown 6, I stood bruised, out of breath, and empty-handed.
Chapter Thirteen
“SEBBY! WHAT the hell’s with all the police activity at the Emporium?” Beth paused and gave me a long, critical look from head to toe. “What the fuck happened to you?” she corrected.
I stood in the doorway of Good Books, holding my disassembled cane and a bag from a nearby drugstore in one hand, and the hoodie of my thief in the other, like it was the head of my slayed enemy. The shop stereo was tuned to some shitty radio station playing a slew of cringe-worthy local advertisements.
“Are there customers in here?” I asked.
Beth turned and peered down the aisles from where she stood at the register. “A few down in the travel section. Why?”
I walked toward her. “I need your help.” I set my things on the counter, dug into the plastic bag, and held up a bottle of concealer. “I don’t know how to put this on.”
Beth eyed the makeup with a glimmer of distain. “Do I look like the sort of old broad who wears concealer? I worked for these age spots.”
“Just help me,” I protested. “My face is bruised and I want to cover it.”
She snatched the bottle. “This is about half a dozen shades too dark for your complexion, Sebby.”
“What?”
“And to cover a bruise, you’ll need more than—” She shook her head when she paused to stare at the makeup again. “A $4.99 bottle of CVS brand liquid concealer. Good grief.” She took the plastic bag and looked inside. “Is that the only one you bought?” Beth removed a box of condoms and tin of cinnamon mints. She held them both up and gave me the hairy eyeball. “Really?”
