Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Look, I'll talk to you. But you can't use my name."

They sat on the deck of Rune's houseboat that night, drinking Michelob Light. The skinny young man continued, "I mean, my mother thinks I was in a car crash. If she ever found out…"

Warren Hathaway was the witness whose name she'd found in Sam Healy's notebook. He'd been in the Velvet Venus Theater when the first bomb blew. Rune had called him and asked if she could interview him.

"I'm the only person in the world who got blown up my first time in a porno theater…" Then he caught her amused look. "Well, okay, maybe not my first. But I don't go all that often."

Hathaway was about five six, early thirties, pudgy. He had bandages on his neck and his arm was taped. He spoke loudly too-just like Rune after she'd witnessed the bombing-and she guessed the explosion in the Velvet Venus had temporarily deafened him. "How did you find me?"

"The policeman who interviewed you? Detective Healy? I got your name from him."

The camera was set up. Hathaway looked at it uneasily. "You can mask my face out, can't you? So nobody'll recognize me?"

"Sure. Don't worry."

She started the camera. "Just tell me what you remember."

"Okay, I was doing an audit at a publishing company on Forty-seventh. I'm an accountant and financial advisor. And, what happened was I had a couple hours off and I walked to Eighth Avenue to this deli I'd seen. They had great-looking fruit cups-they seemed nice and fresh, you know, lots of watermelon-and there was this theater right in front of me and I thought, Hell, why not?" He took a sip of the beer. "So I walked in."

"What was your impression?"

"Filthy, first of all. It smelled like, you know, urine and disinfectant. And there were these tough-looking guys. They were… well, black mostly, and they looked me over like I was, I don't know, dessert. So I hurried down to a seat. There were about ten people in the whole place is all and some of them were asleep. I sat down. The picture was awful. It wasn't a movie at all but this videotape. You could hardly see anything it was so fuzzy. After a while I decided to leave. I stood up. There was a big flash and this incredible roar and the next thing I know I'm in the hospital and I can't hear."

"How long were you in the theater?"

"Total? Maybe a half hour."

"Did you get much of a look at the other people in there?"

"Sure. I was looking around. You know, to make sure I didn't get mugged. There were some folks there. Some dockworker sorts. And transvestites-you know, prostitutes." He looked away from both Rune and the camera.

Rune nodded sympathetically and it crossed her mind that Warren Hathaway might know more about transves-tite prostitutes than he wanted to admit.

"Did you maybe see somebody in a red windbreaker?"

Hathaway thought for a moment. "Well, there was somebody in a red jacket, I think. And a hat."

"With a wide brim?"

"Yeah. It looked funny. He moved kind of slow. I got the impression he was older."

Older? Rune wondered. She asked, "He was leaving the theater?"

"Maybe. I couldn't swear to it."

"Any idea how old?"

"Sorry. Couldn't say."

"Could you describe him at all?"

Hathaway shook his head. "Sorry. I wasn't paying attention. What're you exactly, a newspaper reporter?"

"I'm doing a film about that girl who was killed in the second bombing. Shelly Lowe."

A motorboat went past and they both watched it.

Hathaway asked, "But she wasn't in a movie theater, was she?"

"No, it was in a studio that made adult films."

"It's terrible what people do to make a point, isn't it? That they feel lives are less important than politics or a statement…"

His voice faded and Hathaway smiled, then said, "I get too serious. My mother tells me all the time I get too serious. I should loosen up. Imagine your mother telling you that."

"Mine sure doesn't."

He looked at the camera. "So you're going to be a film maker?" Squinted in curiosity. "You have any idea what the average ROI is in that industry?"

"ROI?"

"Return on investment."

Accountants might have been as bad as cops when it came to initials. Rune said, "I sort of do the creative part and leave the money stuff to other people."

"What's the market for a film like yours?"

And she told him about the independent circuit and art film houses and public TV and the new but growing cable TV market.

"And it wouldn't be a large investment," Hathaway considered, "for films like this. You can probably control costs pretty easily. Indirect overhead would probably be pretty low. I mean, look at fixed assets. Virtually nonexistent in your case. You can lease equipment, wouldn't have to amortize much, only the more expensive items… If you were smart, the net-net could be great." Hathaway gazed off into the evening sky, seeing a huge balance sheet in the stars. "If you've got a success you're looking at pretty much pure profit."

They finished their beers and Rune got up to get more. She shut the camera off. He said, "I wasn't much help, was I?"

An older man in a red windbreaker…

"No, you were real helpful," Rune said.

As she returned with the beers she felt his eyes on her. And she knew the Question was coming. She didn't know exactly what form it would take but, as a single woman in New York, she'd have bet a thousand dollars that Hathaway was about to ask her the Question.

He took a sip of beer and asked, "So. Hey. You want to get a pizza or something?"

The Pizza version of the Question. A pretty common one.

"I'm really beat tonight…"

Which was one of the classic Answers. But she added, "I really am exhausted. But how 'bout a rain check?"

He smiled a little bashfully, which she liked. "Got it. You, uh, going with anybody?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "I have absolutely no idea."

He stood up, shook her hand like the gentleman his mother had probably always instructed him to be. He said, "I'm going to check out some numbers about documentary films." He considered something and smiled. "You know, even if it's a flop, hell, you've got a great tax write-off."

"I'm not much help, I'm afraid," Nicole D'Orleans said to Rune the next morning.

"Somebody wearing a red windbreaker or jacket. Anybody at all. Wearing a hat. Like a cowboy hat maybe. Hanging around the set. Maybe a fan of Shelly's or something. Maybe somebody she knew."

Nicole shook her head.

"He attacked me at my loft, just after I first interviewed Shelly. Then I saw him just after Shelly was killed, outside Lame Duck. And I talked to a witness in the first bombing. He thinks he saw him leaving the theater just before the bomb went off. He could be young or old. You have any idea?"

"Sorry. I-"

The front buzzer rang and Nicole went to answer the door.

She returned with Tommy Savorne, Shelly's former boyfriend.

The first thing Rune noticed was a belt buckle in the shape of Texas.

She thought of Sam Healy.

Who still hadn't called.

No, don't think about him now.

Tommy absently polished the buckle with his thumb. The metal tongue went right through Dallas.

"Hey." He smiled. He squinted, meaning: Sorry, I've forgotten your name.

She stuck her hand out and as they shook she said, "Rune."

"Right, sure. How's your film coming?"

"Slow, but moving along."

Then he said to Nicole, "You're looking pretty good today."

There was silence for a moment.

Odd woman out. Rune stood up.

"I better be going. I'm late for work."

"Naw, stay, stay," Tommy said. "I only stopped by for a minute. I wanted to ask Nicole something. But maybe you're interested too, Rune. Want a job?"

"I better not take on another one. I'm not doing too well with the one I've got," Rune said.

"Like, doing what?" Nicole asked Tommy.

"I'm doing a tape on how to make vegetarian appetizers. I need a chef."

Rune shook her head. "Unless they come in a boil-pouch you're talking to the wrong person."

"I don't know," Nicole said. "Would I have to, you know, talk?"

"Not on camera. All you've got to do is mix up stuff. Garlic and avocado and sprouts and peanut butter… Well, not all together. I mean, they're great recipes. Come on, honey. It'll be a snap. It's for one of my infomercials."

She said, "You're sure I wouldn't have to, like, memorize dialogue?"

Tommy said, "Naw, it's all voice-over. You just make the food, then we record the vocal track after. Do as many takes as you want."

Nicole looked at Rune. "You're sure you don't want to?"

Tommy said to her, "I really could use two." "Full plate right at the moment." Nicole asked, "And I'd get paid?"

"Oh, sure. We aren't talking union. But the client'll cough up a hundred bucks an hour for talent. Should be about three hours tops, with the prep time and any reshoots."

"What about my fingernails?" She held them up-an inch-long and glossy burnt-umber.

"Come on," he chided, grinning. "You're looking for excuses."

"Go for it, Nicole," Rune encouraged.

A smile spread across her glossy lips. "A movie with my clothes on… My mother's been after me for years to try that." She shoved her hand, with its lethal nails, toward Tommy.

"Deal," she said, and they shook as if they'd just signed a million-dollar contract.

"Tomorrow night?" he said. "And the next day?"

"Well, sure. As long as it's at night. I'm shooting in the day. Where's your studio?"

"I don't rent studios. It's all location. We can do it right here. You've got a great kitchen." He looked at Rune. "Come on, can't we talk you into it?"

"Some other time."

"All right… See you then," he said to Nicole and kissed her on the cheek. He waved to Rune and let himself out.

Rune said, "He's cute. He's available. He cooks. That's a combination you can't beat."

But Nicole was looking off.

Rune said, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

She hesitated. Then said, "This job. The one Tommy's doing?"

"Yeah?"

"I hope it works out. I hope I don't blow it."

"You'll do fine."

"I'd give anything to get out of the business."

"I thought you liked it."

Nicole walked to the couch and sat down. "Did you watchCurrent Events last night? That TV program? There were these women protesting porn theaters, picketing some of the theaters. They said some terrible things. My name was on the marquee. I mean, they didn't say anything about me specifically but you could see my name. And this lady is like, all this porn makes women get raped and children get molested. And this other woman goes, They've set back the women's movement twenty years.' Yada, yada, yada… I felt so guilty."

Suddenly she was crying.

Rune debated for a second or two. Her hand slipped to the trigger of the video camera. The lens was pointed directly at Nicole.

Looking off, Nicole said, "I don't mean to do anything bad. I don't want to hurt people. But, I mean, people came to see me and got killed in that theater. And maybe after one of my films some guy goes out and picks up a hooker and gets AIDS. That's terrible."

She looked at Rune, and the tears were coming steadily now. "These movies, the thing is, it's all I can do. I make love good. But I'm such a failure at anything else. I've tried. It doesn't work… It's such a hard feeling, to hate the one thing you're good at."

Rune touched Nicole's arm, but she did so carefully. She wanted to make sure her own hand didn't slip into the field of view of the whirring Sony.

The owner of the theater on Forty-seventh Street between Broadway and Eighth was a fifty-two-year-old Indian immigrant from Bombay who had come to this country twelve years earlier.

He and his wife and children had worked hard at the small businesses he'd owned-first a newsstand, then a fast-food stand, then a shoe store in Queens. He'd made a bad investment, an electronics store in Brooklyn, and had lost most of the family nest egg. A year ago a friend had told him about a movie theater that was for sale. After some introductions and cumbersome negotiations and paying amazing sums to an attorney and an accountant, he'd bought out the lease and acquired the fixtures and what the lawyer called the theater's "goodwill," an asset he was completely unable to comprehend.

The diminutive man became the owner of the Pink Pussycat-an eight-hundred-seat movie theater in Times Square. Although at one time the theater used typical industry-standard 35mm dual projectors, all the movies were presently shown via a video projector, which was never quite in focus and gave the actors and actresses auras like fuzzy rainbows.

He had experimented with pricing, finding that the most he could charge during the day was $2.99, although after ten p.m. the price went up to $4.99. Since the theater, which was open twenty-four hours, doubled as an impromptu hotel for the homeless, he found that men were willing to cough up the extra two dollars so they could sleep to the earthy lullaby ofSex Kittens or Lust at First Bite.

There were no tickets. Patrons paid their money, refused the offered penny change and were clicked through a turnstile. They walked into the theater proper past a soda machine that had stopped working in 1978.

There was some cruising, despite warning signs about illegality and AIDS, but liaisons were discreet and the transvestites and the mostly black and Hispanic female hookers, who picked up twenty bucks for their halfhearted services, would usually take their clients up to the balcony, where even the vice cops didn't like to go.

Despite the unpleasant conditions the theater did make money. Rent was the highest expense. The owner and his wife (and an occasional cousin from the huge inventory of relatives overseas) took turns in the box office, thus keeping salary expenses down. And because of the video system they didn't need a union projectionist.

The owner also bypassed the largest expenses of movie theaters. Under the copyright laws he was supposed to pay license fees for each theatrical showing of a film-yes, even porn. This, however, he didn't do. He would buy three VHS cassettes for $14.95 each from an adult bookstore on Eighth Avenue, show the films for one week, then return them. The owner of the store, who happened to be a Pakistani immigrant, gave him a five-dollar credit for each film and then resold them for the full $14.95.

This was, of course, a violation of federal law, both civil and criminal, but neither the FBI nor the producers of the films had much inclination to go after a small business like his.

When the man considered the type of films that his theater showed, he was not particularly proud, but he wasn't much ashamed either. TheKama Sutra, after all, had been written in his native country. And personally he was no stranger to sex; he'd come from a family of twelve children and he and his wife had seven. No, his major embarrassment about the business was the low profit margin of the theater. He would have been much happier if his return on investment had been five or six percent higher.

Today the owner was sitting in the ticket booth, smoking and thinking of the lamb kurma that his wife would be making in their Queens apartment for dinner. He heard angry words coming from the theater. That was one thing that scared him-his patrons. There were a lot of crack smokers, a lot of men working on their third or fourth Foster's. These were big men and could have broken his neck before they even thought about it. He called the cops occasionally but he'd gotten their message: Unless somebody had a knife or a gun the police didn't want to be bothered.

Now, when the dispute didn't seem to be vanishing, he rummaged under the ticket booth and found a foot-long pipe, capped at both ends and filled with BBs. A homemade cudgel. He walked into the theater.

The blonde on the screen was saying something about there being one kind of love she hadn't tried and would the actor please accommodate her. He seemed agreeable but no one could tell exactly what he was saying to the woman. The voices from the front row were louder. "The fuck you think you're doing? S'mine, man." "Fuck that shit. I lef it here."

"An' fuck that! Wha' you mean, you lef it, man? You sitting three seats over, maybe four, man. I seen it."

The owner said, "You must be quiet. What is it? I call police, you don't sit down."

There were two of them, both black. One was homeless, wearing layers of tattered clothes, matted with dirt. The other was in a brown deliveryman's uniform. He was holding a paper-wrapped box, about the size of a shoe box. They looked at the Indian-they both towered over him-and pled their cases as if he were a judge.

The homeless man said, "He be stealing mah package. I lef it, I wenta take a leak, and-"

"Fuck, man. He din't leave no box. I seen some guy come in, watcha movie for ten minutes and leave. It was there when he left, man. I seen it. He left it and it's mine. That's the law."

The homeless man grabbed for the box, a shoe box.

The deliveryman's long arms kept it out of reach. "Get the fuck outa here."

The owner said, "Somebody leave it? He'll be back. Give it to me. Who was it left it?"

The deliveryman said, "How'm I supposed to know who the fuck he was? Some white guy. I found it. S'what the law say, man. I find it, I get to keep it."

The owner reached out. "No, no. Give it to me."

The homeless man said, "I said I lef it. Give it-"

They were in that pose, all three sets of arms extended and gesturing angrily, when the fourteen ounces of C-3 plastic explosive inside the box detonated. Exploding outward at a speed of almost three thousand miles an hour, the bomb instantly turned the men into fragments weighing no more than several pounds. The theater screen vanished, the first four rows of seats shredded into splinters and shrapnel, the floor rocked with a thud that was felt a mile away.

Mixed with the roar of the explosion was the whistle of wood and metal splinters firing through the air as fast as bullets.

Then, almost as quickly, silence returned, accompanied by darkness filled with smoke.

No lightbulbs remained in the theater. But from the ceiling came a tiny green light, swinging back and forth. It was an indicator light on the videotape player, a large black box dangling from a thick wire where the projection booth had been. It blinked out and a second light, a yellow one, flickered on, indicating thatCaught from Behind, Part III had finished, and HighSchool Cheerleaders was now playing.