Make Believe

spent long hours talking about it. Sol made an interesting observation before he died. The so-called-patriots don’t murder; they torment, they deprive folks of income and reputation. Their cruel and unusual punishment is slow and deliberate. Desmond Peake, a leader in America First, got me to believe this, too. For all their absurdity and their misguided patriotism, his group believes in redemption, admittedly after coercion and appropriate public humiliation.”

“Max was a Commie,” Ethan seethed.

“No, he wasn’t. And you know it, Ethan. When you said that one night, it made me wonder. You pride yourself on logic, precision, all the orderly trimmings you’ve manufactured for living your own life. Everything in its place. Regimented truth. So that remark made no sense. You knew better, though you’d like others to believe Max courted his own death.”

“So how did I do it?” Cocky, he threw back his head.

“Just a minute. This is my script now, my storyboard. You’re a man who prides himself on control, but that wasn’t always the case. A drinker, a wife-beater, you reformed yourself, true, something that must have taken inordinate discipline. Severe, authoritative-a life lived with rigidity. Why? I wondered. Why so keen a transformation? Because, I suppose, you burned with a deep-seated anger, a desire for vengeance.”

Tony made a blubbering noise, and for a second we all stared at him.

I went on. “It was clear the other night when you and Tony fell apart at Ava’s house-you resent Frank and his success. It should be your success. Tony told us your comment about Adam and Ava-how they don’t deserve what they’ve worked for. I listened to a man who is craven, bitter, seething. And thus dangerous.”

“Your scenario is missing some elements.” He gave out a false laugh. “Missing pieces.”

“Circumstantial? You bet, Ethan. So far. But you resented your own failure. That’s your word: failure. It burned you, ate you up. Ava and Frank, success, money, cynosures whose lives are documented in the magazines. Hollywood, the land of dreams and money and fame-it all eluded you. So close…but gone. Fame, power, money-they eluded you. And with Frank now disappearing from both your lives, you despaired. Hence the business of heading back to New Jersey. That’s admitting failure, no? Back to staring faces, folks who’d point and remember the boy who left to meet his dreams.”

Tony started to say something but stopped when Ethan shot him a look.

“To you, Max was the instrument of that failure. Tony’s career was over. But yours never started. That script you gave Max-the one you’ve mocked and played down and cavalierly dismissed-it was the touchstone of your failure. In Max’s journal today I found his summary of your final conversation, a description of how you fell apart, weeping, a little drunk then, when Max told you it was worthless. You blamed him, irrationally-then Hollywood, then, bizarrely, Frank. Three lines stayed with me. ‘I have to do it for Lenny. He won’t like it if I’m a failure.’ Awful words. Max told you to get out and what did you say. ‘I’ll be back, Max.’ An innocent enough threat, idle, but one you took seriously. You did go back.”

“Crazy lady.” Tony was sweating.

“You believed in the puerile script you peddled, sadly. It was your ticket to your name in lights. After Max’s rejection, you played it down-mocked it with Lorena. But inside you seethed. Max squelched your most important dream. You were left with a penny-ante job and a life on the fringe of Frank’s glory.”

A whine, high and thin. “I make money in real estate…”

“Then Lenny died, the catastrophic event in all your lives, and you accused Alice of murder. That became your mantra. Alice the black widow. You let Tony believe she’d taken all the fortune Lenny bragged about, but you, the numbers man who probably laundered cash for his brother, knew there was little left after the government stepped in. But it served your purpose to let Tony believe and whine and spout his nonsense. Because, frankly, at that moment you made a decision: you stopped drinking and like the Iago character you sometimes quote, you plotted revenge. Or maybe it solidified when Alice married Max-the ultimate indignity. Max, the man who single-handedly killed your dream of fame and fortune. It all comes together, no?”

Ethan opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“You also decided to make Tony your unwitting dupe. The genial comic, plodding, a little funny, the social drinker, a soft-hearted soul though not so dumb as everyone thinks he is-he became your tool. You whispered murder in his ear. Words like betrayal, dishonor, family. And Tony fell apart, losing himself, gaining weight, losing jobs, a binge drinker. I don’t think you thought he’d get so out of control, and it might have scared you-this dissolution so quickly. So you coddled him, sheltering him at the Paradise where he could get plastered and not bother a soul. Except maybe Liz, who still cared for the young man she remembered fondly.”

Tony started to say something, but stopped.

“You decided on revenge. Kill Max, and somehow blame Alice who got away with murder one time but perhaps not a second. Leave the pistol on the hall table so that Alice, returning, might pick it up, thinking Max had been careless with his gun. A possibility. Relying on chance. Alice feared guns, and, unfortunately for you, gingerly picked it up with index finger and thumb so that the cops immediately had doubts about her as suspect. She was still, of course, a possible killer. Chance.”

“Alice did…” His voice trailed off.

“No, that plan failed. Lenny is gone, the brother revered and loved. A decision by you to avenge-cool, calm, collected. A deliberate man, waiting, waiting. Timing. Always timing, you said. And that night at the Paradise the stars came together. Alice is out of the house. You watched her having a drink and leaving for the movie with Lorena and me. Max, nursing his wounded jaw, at home alone.” I looked at Frank who was entranced by my voice, barely blinking. “It was a crime of opportunity.”

“Preposterous,” Ethan growled again.

I shook my head. “You left the bar, headed down the street to Max’s, a short drive, rang the bell, followed him back to his workroom on some pretext, and when Max sat down, you shot him in the head.”

Silence at the table, Tony breathing hard. Frank’s hand, I noticed, rested on Tony’s shoulder.

Ethan’s voice was thick with venom. “Ask Tony. Ask Harry the bartender. I never left. When you all stopped back for a nightcap, I was there, watching over a drunken Tony, our usual night at Paradise.”

“Not so,” I said, checking off one more point in my head. “One thing bothered me later that night. You spend a lot of time stopping Tony from drinking. I’d seen that before at Ava’s. Yes, that night Tony was morose, having lost his comedy spot. But you let him drink. You seemed to encourage it. All right, let Tony drown his sorrows this one night. You knew Tony would drink until he passed out, which he sometimes did, slumped there in the booth until closing when it was time to drive him back to Liz’s. That bothered me.”

“Ask Harry.”

“I don’t have to ask Harry anything. I talked to Sophie Barnes today. She recalled Tony slouching in the booth, crumpled in a corner, snoring. And you’d disappeared. She considered you’d gone into the kitchen or backroom, which you probably did. But she recalled that she glanced back as she stormed out-some fifteen or so minutes after she’d first looked-and only Tony was still in the booth.”

“You’re right. I run a bar. I was in back.”

“At one point Liz Grable came looking for Tony, walking in and spotting him drunk and passed out. She backed out, headed home. She’d had it with both of you. She told me this afternoon that Tony was by himself.”

“I told you…”

“But I pushed her and she remembered that your car wasn’t in the parking lot in its usual spot. She knew it because Tony doesn’t drive and relies on you-you always brought him home. On the nights when she met Tony there your car was in its usual spot, right of the back door. Well, that night it was gone. But she paid it no mind. After all, you weren’t inside with Tony. She wasn’t surprised to see Tony by himself. Disgusted with him, she went home.”

“I was…” He clammed up.

“Something else. When Larry Calhoun was handing you the papers for the sale at the Ambassador, he sniped that he’d chosen not to hand them over at the Paradise to a drunk. I wondered, by chance, if he’d stopped in that night and you weren’t there. Desmond Peake is putting in a call to him and…”

He held up a hand. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. “You got it all figured out, right?”

“Yes, I do. You slipped out and murdered Max. You could accomplish the deed in less than a half hour. Considerably less, in fact. It was a question of timing, Ethan. You’re right on the money. Timing in Hollywood is