It Happened One Knife (13 page)

“It was an interesting fact; we’d spent the night talking about interesting facts,” Lillis answered. “I don’t know. I wanted you to know the kind of guy Les really is. An amazing comedian, a decent singer, a real professional . . .”

“And a cold-blooded killer,” I suggested.

“Well . . . yeah.”

“How do you know he killed Vivian Reynolds?” I asked Lillis.

“I know because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be when the fire started,” he answered. “Come on. Take me for a walk outside, and I’ll tell you the whole story.” He pointed toward the wheelchair, which sat folded in a corner next to the bed. I pulled it out and got it into shape, then rolled it to the bedside. Lillis managed to get himself into it without needing me to hold him up, but clearly it wasn’t easy.

“What are they doing for that hip?” I asked him as I secured the footrests and took off the brake.

“Physical therapy,” he said with a curt tone. “Pull this, push that, and how come it’s not better yet?”

I pushed Lillis out the door, which he made sure was locked behind him, and through the corridors toward the main entrance of the Booth Actors’ Home. Seeing the residents, all of whom were show people of some sort, talking and laughing made me think about how deep down in the DNA entertaining must be. These people hadn’t worked in decades, in many cases, and yet they still knew how to make others feel good.

“They do much in the way of shows around here, Harry?” I asked Lillis as we reached the front door.

“Yeah, they bring people in, you know, a guy with an accordion or something equally torturous,” he said. “Sometimes the
alte kakkers
here do something themselves. You’d think it was the Ziegfeld Follies, the way they’re rehearsing. ”

“You ever do anything?” I asked.

Lillis gave me a look to indicate that I’d taken leave of what few senses I had left. “I haven’t worked for free since I was seven years old,” he said. “And even then, it was only because my father couldn’t afford me.”

“Don’t you think the laughter would do you good?”

“I think an enema would do me good. Laughter is a financial commodity.” Okay, there went
that
topic of conversation.

Luckily, it was a warm October day, so we could stroll the grounds (well,
I
could stroll, and Lillis rode) with no worries. I took Lillis around the back of the main building, where there was a path, a field situated so that the surrounding streets were not visible, and a gazebo, with some benches nearby. I parked him near one of the benches, and sat down.

“That’s as much as you’re gonna walk?” Lillis asked. “For a young man, you’re in diabolical condition.”

“I’m in fine condition,” I protested. “I stopped because I wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk about what?” he asked, and I started to worry.

“You said you’d tell me the whole story. About Les Townes and Vivian Reynolds. About the fire. About why you think he killed her.”

“I know what I said,” Lillis shot back, annoyed. “I’m not here for dementia, you know. I’m here because I don’t get around as well as I used to. Too many pratfalls.”

I did my best to focus his attention on my face. “So, tell,” I said.

Lillis’s face changed. That’s the only way I can describe it. He was thinking hard, remembering, and remembering something that wasn’t pleasant, so his eyebrows dropped, his mouth flattened out, and his eyes took on a faraway quality indicating that he was looking at me, but seeing something else entirely.

“I remember it was a Monday,” he began. “I don’t know why I remember that, but I’m sure of it. We had a pretty tight shooting schedule, and both Les and I had to be on the set almost all the time. I was directing, but we were both in almost every scene. I take it you’re familiar with the movie.”

I nodded. “
Step This Way
,” I said, and without thinking, added, “Not your best.”

If Lillis was insulted, he didn’t show it. “No kidding,” he said. “Try making a movie when your partner is worried about his wife cheating on him for half the filming, and mourning her death for the rest.”

I shook my head to get my senses back. “Townes thought Vivian Reynolds was cheating on him?” I asked.

“Worse than that,” he answered. “He thought she was cheating on him with me.”

“Was she?” So another year goes by that I don’t win the Mr. Tact Award.

Lillis’s eyes focused back on me again, and this time, he
was
offended. “No!” he emphasized. “Once Les married her, she was off-limits, and that was it.”

“But you were still in love with her, weren’t you?”

“I knew how it was. Les wanted to marry her, and I didn’t. She made the right choice.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I know.”

I tried to watch his eyes, but they weren’t telling me much. “Why didn’t you tell him you weren’t sleeping with his wife?”

“I did!” Lillis shouted. “But why would he believe me? If I
were
shtupping her, would I
tell
him?”

“Okay, so what happened that day?” I could dig for gossip, or investigate a really old crime. Doing both was too tiring.

“Well, we were getting ready to shoot this scene in a dancing school. I screw up all the dances because I want to show up Les, and Les is the teacher, so he does them right, just to annoy me. It wasn’t one of the big set pieces, but it would have played pretty well.” Lillis was still tinkering with the movie, more than a half century since he’d had a hand in scripting it.

“I don’t remember that scene in the movie,” I said, my face radiating innocence.

“That’s because it isn’t there,” Lillis said. “We never shot it. I spent the morning with the cameraman working out the moves, he lit it, and when we were ready to shoot, Les wasn’t on the lot.”

“He knew he was in the scene, right?” Sometimes you ask a question just to see how the other person will react. Of
course
Townes knew he was in the scene.

“Of
course
he knew he was in the scene,” Lillis said, disgusted. “That was the weird part. Les was
never
late for a shoot. I was the one they usually had to go searching for.”

“How did you find him?” I asked.

“We didn’t,” Lillis said. “I got the sign-in sheet and saw that he’d signed out at one thirty, just when we were supposed to be shooting. The next time I heard from him, it was when he was at the morgue, identifying Viv’s body.” Lillis’s eyes misted over, but he ignored them.

“He was going to kill his wife and he signed out?” I asked. “Why leave a trail?”

“He couldn’t get out of the studio if he didn’t sign out,” Lillis said. “They used to check.”

“And you’ve been walking around with this for fifty years? Why didn’t you tell the cops?”

“And break up the act?”

I thought he was kidding, but Lillis’s face was dead serious. “You didn’t report the murder of a woman you loved because you didn’t want to break up your partnership?” I asked him. “What kind of a man are you?”

He looked at me, now dry-eyed. “A comedian,” he said. “Don’t you know? We’re the coldest people on earth.”

“Did you ask him about it? What makes you think he killed her?”

“I don’t think it; I
know
it. I know it because he told me he did it. Said he’d strangled her and then set the house on fire to cover it up.”

He wouldn’t talk anymore about the fire or Vivian Reynolds after that, so I wheeled him back to his room, helped him out of the chair and onto his bed, and said good-bye to Harry Lillis.

On the way out of the Booth Actors’ Home, I passed the room where we’d first met, and where a group of the residents were playing cards and others were watching
General Hospital
with varying degrees of interest.

One of the card players was Marion Borello. I ventured in and sat directly behind her as she played. She didn’t appear to notice me when I walked in, as she was staring rather intently at her cards.

The other three players, all men, stared at each other, but Marion never took her gaze off her own hand. Based on the way I’d seen her staring at Harry Lillis during the
Cracked Ice
event, I could confidently say concentration wasn’t a problem for Marion.

“Go ahead,” one of the men said. “Bet’s to you, Marion.”

“Don’t rush me,” she said testily. “You don’t have anywhere you need to be.”

That drew a light chuckle from the other men, and one or two residents within earshot.

Marion let the moment build. I assumed she’d had her mind made up long before the bet came to her, but was using the pause to create doubt in her opponents’ minds. Finally, she said, “I’ll see you and raise you five,” and moved some chips delicately onto the pile.

I didn’t move a facial muscle (or any other), but I’d been looking over her shoulder, and Marion Borello had a hand that stunk worse than
Love Happy
(1949), the Marx Brothers’ last movie.

“Five?” another of the men asked. “Isn’t the limit . . . ?”

“You want to talk limits, or you want to play cards?” Marion asked, eyes wide with innocence.

They grumbled and the argument continued for a minute or two, but the three men all eventually decided the pot was too rich for them, and threw in their cards. Marion took the chips and pulled them to her, not gloating but letting them see her stack them ever so carefully.

Finally, the three men walked away, and as I was about to get her attention, Marion, without turning around to look at me, said, “Mr. Freed. Thank you for not giving my bluff away.”

I walked around to sit next to her. “My pleasure. But weren’t you concerned that someone would call it?”

She waved a hand. “They’re old-fashioned. Think a girl can’t play poker. I beat them three times a week, and they still think I don’t understand the game.”

“You’re a smart woman, Mrs. Borello.”

“Marion, and I’m not as smart as they’re dumb. But you’re not here to talk about poker, are you, Mr. Freed?”

“Elliot, like I told you the other night. No, Marion, I was here to see Harry Lillis.”

Her eyes grew concerned. “Is Harry all right?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s fine. How do you know him? Back at Comedy Tonight, he said you were ‘a dame from way back,’ but I don’t know what that means.”

Marion smiled and cocked her head to the right. “I worked with Harry and Les on a couple of their pictures,” she said. “I used to be a script girl, what they’d call ‘continuity’ today. Started out as an actress, but I wasn’t any good. I knew some people, so I got the job working the script. Worked at the studio for twenty-five years, which is why they let me in here.” She pointed around to indicate the Booth Actors’ Home. “Harry and Les were a couple of the good ones, who didn’t care if you were on the crew. They’d talk to anybody. You know, a lot of the stars wouldn’t even look at you if you weren’t another actor or a studio big shot.”

She started stacking the chips, and I joined in. “Marion, Harry told me something that . . . well, it really disturbed me, and I was wondering if you knew . . .”

Marion looked up, directly into my eyes, with a jerk of her head. “He told you about Vivian?” she asked.

I decided not to lead her. “What about Vivian?”

“That Les set the fire that killed her.” Matter-of-fact. But her eyes had a little something behind them . . . Fear?

“Yes,” I said. “He told me that.”

Marion looked away. “Did he tell you why?”

“He told me what he thinks, but it sounds a little far-fetched to me.”

She continued to look away. “What did he say?”

“That Les thought Vivian was having an affair with Harry, and he killed her out of jealousy.”

Vivian’s lips disappeared into her mouth, and she shook her head. “No. That wasn’t it.” She seemed to compose herself, and then turned her head toward me again. She looked me straight in the eye. “Les killed her because she wouldn’t give him a divorce.”

“He wanted a divorce because he thought she was sleeping with Harry?”

She shook her head again. “No. He wanted a divorce because he was in love with me.”

16

MARION’S
story reverberated through my head as I drove the Sonata—with no radiator trouble—back to Moe’s. She said she’d been hopelessly in love with Les Townes for a year before anything happened between them, and when it did, it consumed them. To the point that Les had revealed the truth to Vivian Reynolds, and asked for a divorce, which she refused.

Marion said Les had become livid, and for a week before Vivian’s death, during the filming of
Step This Way
, he had been almost useless in front of the camera. “If anyone but Harry had been directing, they would have reported him to the studio,” she said. Then came the day they were to shoot the dancing scene, and when Harry Lillis called for the cast, Les Townes had been nowhere in sight. She said he’d never discussed his plans with her, and that she was shocked when Vivian died in the fire.

But Marion said that when she confronted him, Les had admitted to the crime, and contrary to what he’d expected, that turned Marion away from him. Marion couldn’t bear to turn in the man she loved, but she asked off
Step This Way
, and said that until the Comedy Tonight screening of
Cracked Ice
, she hadn’t seen Les Townes again.

She had followed his career, though. And after
Step This Way
, she knew they’d made four more films to complete their contract, but never made a great comedy or a box office hit again. As soon as the contract was complete, the two parted ways, and only occasionally met at charity events or Hollywood parties.

It was a lot to think about in a Hyundai.

TUESDAY
nights at Comedy Tonight are not what you’d call huge events most of the time. People don’t tend to venture out on a weeknight to see a movie that they might or might not have already memorized, and could very easily watch in the comfort of their own homes, on a large-screen, high-definition, plasma TV with a sound system that was probably clearer and louder than the one I had in the theatre. In fact, sometimes I wondered why I didn’t just go door-to-door with an armful of DVDs and offer to show them to people in their houses. I’d probably make just as much money.