Film at 11

By H.H. Fuller

Advance praise for FILM AT 11

"Bart Lane and his fiance, Elisabeth are a charming New England update of Nick and Nora Charles. While Bart films a rash of suicides, Elisabeth plans their wedding, copes with 'the relatives' and sees a therapist to keep sane. Fuller's light-hearted lunacy leaves me eager for another in the series."-Kate Mattes, Kate's Mystery Books

"H.H. Fuller's FILM AT 11 is a page-turning thriller set among Boston landmarks, and on a remote island. Cameraman Bart Lane and poet Elisabeth Hemphill's appetite for food and each other has not diminished one bit since Fuller's rollicking prequel, IT'S A WRAP."-Al Gowan, author, FORT MOMMA, ZAMORA'S TATTOO, and SANTIAGO RAG

Reader Praise for Fuller's IT'S A WRAP

"A tale of love, filmmaking and culture from the mean streets of Boston to the sunrises on the New England seaboard. A suspense-filled story with the best elements of a crime novel a la Jim Thompson, and qualities of Graham Greene. Fuller grabs you by the heart to join in the fun, with camera, ladle, or knife in hand."-Clint P Schneider, Austin, Texas

"A must read for anyone interested in how films are made. It's a witty, post-modern version of the Raymond Chandler style."-Don Kendall, Newton Massachusetts

"Fast-paced and fun, yet the threat of murder and mayhem is always with you. The characters are likeable, the romance is romantic, and the food scenes are delicious! I can't wait for the sequel to come out."-Julia Humphreys, Martha's Vineyard

"I couldn't put it down. Cheeky, funny, romantic, flagrantly improbable and cunningly real."-John Marshall, documentary filmmaker, A KALAHARI FAMILY

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 9, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595777662

H.H. Fuller

H. H. Fuller's years as a cameraman have yielded awards, major credits, and the experience that takes IT'S A WRAP behind he scenes where movies are really made. His work and training as a cook enhance the culinary dimension of his fiction. After growing up in New York, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, he now lives with his family in New England where he continues his search for the perfect seaside bistro.

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All Rights Reserved © 2004 by H.H.Fuller

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

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www.iuniverse.com

Any resemblance to actual people and events is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

ISBN: 978-0-5957-7766-2 (ebook)

ISBN: 0-595-32979-9

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

In memoriam

Carolyn deChadenedes.MacLeish, an inspiring mother

in-law and

Paul McLaughlin, whose recipe for Caesar Salad will

always be with me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express thanks to John DelVecchio for encouraging me past the first draft, and to Al Gowan and Martha MacLeish Fuller for their tireless editorial work.

I also want to send my heartfelt gratitude to the many readers of It’s a Wrap who insisted on a sequel.

CHAPTER 1

Flanagan didn’t like it at all. The chalk outline on the street was going to be too big. It was okay for Goliath, but neither the Patriots nor, God save us, the Celtics had reported anyone missing. As for the Sox—there might not be anyone in Boston who cared any more this season.

Looey Flanagan was a homicide cop on the shit list. This meant that he got sent out to investigate suicides; give ‘em a rubber stamp. Speaking of rubber stamps, that was a hell of a flattened citizen.

Bart Lane lowered the video camera. He had been there for the whole thing. Channel Eight had sent him out to cover a gas leak and instead, he had seen a life end—through the lens, with the camera running. He looked around at the crowd that was beginning to gather. Boys in droopy oversized shorts that looked like a grasp at a bucolic childhood that never was or the leavings of a fleeing father. All of them wearing their baseball caps backwards. Too many catchers, thought Bart. He looked up to where new steel-and-glass-shelled buildings challenged old pilastered Italianate office blocks for a piece of the sky. He wished that he were there with an old view camera and one piece of film, taking one perfect picture of something that hadn’t just snuffed out its own life.

He was the vacation replacement cameraman; like Flanagan, at the bottom of his particular heap, but in the heap—an improvement on his usual situation. He put the camera back up to his eye and recorded the stocky, sweating detective donning rubber gloves and picking up a braceleted wrist. This one had AIDS. Be very careful, everybody. There was a halt to the buzz of the crowd, and many took a step back, as if that would save them. Reaching into the rear pocket of the victim’s exploded polyester slacks, Flanagan fished out the wallet and checked the money compartment. Doesn’t look like anyone robbed him.

Who was he, Lieutenant? asked the uniform beginning to work crowd control.

I always feel like a mugger when I do this, said Flanagan, picking some cards out of the wallet with his gloved fingers. Robert Fledermann, he read. What the hell, it says here that he was five foot four, one hundred and twenty-six pounds. A little guy.

He sure made a big splash, said the uniform.

Flanagan turned to Bart, who had taken the camera down from his shoulder. What are you doing here?

I was loading the truck for another assignment, and the news crew dispatcher ran out and sent me here. Bart shrugged, partially to work a kink out of his right shoulder, and used his free hand to smooth his mop of dishwater-brown hair.

How in Hell did the Channel, he interrupted himself to look again at Bart’s camera, Eight news crew dispatcher find out about this?

Somebody called to report a gas leak in this intersection. You’ll have to call him, I guess. He turned away from the detective to have a final look around the scene.

Bart should have been glad to be bringing back a well-covered story like this to the station, but he had learned that things were never that simple at Channel Eight. Until very recently, he had been unemployed and alone, now he was neither. Someone had phoned in a gas leak in the middle of Downtown Boston; some flashing lights and talking heads, maybe an evacuation. There hadn’t been a gas leak, there had been a soul attempting to end some kind of torture by flying off a roof and leaving an outsized mark in a cleared intersection as a final statement.

Why, he asked himself as he loaded his gear into the station’s van, did he think about getting married to Elisabeth Hemphill at a time like this? Nothing could be farther from this death than the life they were beginning to share.

Yes, him. Married. He had been on his knees when he proposed; he had also been naked. Elisabeth hadn’t been seated demurely on a sofa in her parents’ parlor; she had been lying on her back, sweaty and sated, on her grandparents’ bed. The way that the late afternoon sun lit her tumble of chestnut-brown tresses would have been enough to leave him speechless. He had tried to phrase his proposal in an original way, and only succeeded in sounding dysfunctional. Elisabeth had finally stopped staring at the ceiling, rolled her head to regard him with both of her blue eyes, and said, "Are you trying to avoid saying something meaningful?"

I’m—um—wondering—um. Would he blow it again, demonstrating how he managed to still be available as his fortieth birthday loomed?

Say something. There may be no original way to say it. Just go for it. She wasn’t that much younger than he was and not afraid to try a little coaching.

Will you marry me?

Yesss! shouted Elisabeth.

Excuse me, said the suddenly abashed Bart. Was that yes, you’ll marry me or just yes, you just hit one to where I wasn’t?

Yes, I’ll marry you! She pulled him back onto the bed.

My God, he had said between kisses and somewhat in shock, I’m going to get married.

"We’re going to get married. Me, too." She settled in alongside him, and they both stared at the ceiling.

He picked an uncrushed orchid blossom off the sheet and tucked it over her ear. Have you ever done this before? He thought that maybe he should have researched weddings more before undertaking one, but he had put a lot of planning into popping the question. He smiled at the successful outcome of his orchid sneaking (and buying) scheme.

Of course not, I mean no. She gathered more orchids off the bed and elevated them like a host, slowly releasing them.

What do we do now? he asked, as if ravishing this beautiful woman on a bed of orchids wasn’t enough for one day.

Well, Bartholomew, since we’re on an island, we can’t just run off and drive to Vegas or even Newport and hunt down a justice of the peace. She sat up and swept her long hair back over her shoulder, keeping that single, chosen orchid over her right ear. I should probably tell my parents. You want to call yours?

Bart looked around until he had located his castoff purple briefs. As he tried to figure out which way was not inside-out, Elisabeth draped a towel around her hips, and looking like one of Gaugin’s more interesting creations, headed out of the room saying, Let’s find a calendar and see what we’re talking about here.

Damn, thought Bart. Is this where we learn about original sin and start putting on clothes? Out loud, he called, A calendar?

We might want to get some of our ducks in a row and have some idea about a date before we talk to my mother. She’s never married off a daughter before. You want September, June, or something in between?

Ducks in a row? You sound like you’ve been hanging out with some of my clients.

Oh, she said, returning to the room to watch Bart finish applying his briefs to his tennis-player’s body. "That reminds me. That guy from the TV station, Brendan Schwartz, called. He seemed surprised to find me here and sounded very interested in having you call him back."

Bart had called him back, from the exquisite summer house on Squidneck Island, where he had begun to feel that he might just stay for a very long while. Bart, Brendan enthused after the Channel Eight switchboard patched the call through, what are you doing down there?

Getting married. Brendan had an ability to catch Bart off balance.

Right now?

No, Bart replied, not today, not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of my life.

Well, I see you got your sense of humor back. Me, I’m just trying to round up a few of the usual suspects. I mean, you want a job?

Me, with zero seniority? A job at Channel Eight?

Well, there’s an opening for a vacation replacement cameraman. Something like two bills a day, four days a week, and not every week.

How’d you get that? For me, I mean.

"Well, I’m on the committee that negotiates the contract with Local 65, and they were trying to beef up their ranks, so I threw ‘em a couple of our electronic graphics people that they could call still photographers, so that they wouldn’t try to get the other still photographers classified as field cameramen. I also got ‘em to think that my waiving your thirty-day requirement was doing them a favor. Of course, Nick Rodini was on the union side. He seems to remember that you saved his life."

He’s a great guy, Bart replied, but I seem to remember that I almost got him killed. Two questions, Brendan. Could I get back to you on that? And when would I start?

Yes to the first, and lots of our camera guys have ski condos and like to hunt, so we’re talking September or so. There’s not that much call for a vacation replacement right now.

Bart hung up and regarded the watching Elisabeth. He hoped that his body—six feet, one hundred and eighty pounds, topped with a shaggy mop of dishwater-colored hair—was some fraction as interesting to Elisabeth as hers was to him.

Well, said Elisabeth, running a slow finger through his chest hair as she heard the mixed news, see what happens when you finally decide to do something? That’s great!

You’re happy about me getting a job and getting pulled away from all this? Bart started to look around to see where the rest of his clothes had landed.

Going out to work at the TV station every day and coming home most nights isn’t at all like getting shipped off to hell and gone in the company of who knows whom, the poet said breathily to his chest hair. Also, I have a job during the academic year that I may have neglected to mention. I teach writing at night school.

So, when you wanna get married? September’s kind of soon. How about June?

Where, in June? My mother will do her best to take over. She’ll want to have it in Marin County. She might settle for a Boston slash Wellesley thing, friends of the grandparents and from when they lived here.

"My family would be impressed with either, not that that is what we’re trying to do here. What do you want, Ms. Hemphill?"

"What do I really want?" She turned her eyes on his and began to lick her fingers.

"No, after that. What do you really want for a wedding?"

Well, I want everybody I love...

Yes...

And everybody in my family, most of whom are included in Category A.

Sounds nearly traditional, Bart prompted.

And everybody you love—we’re probably still in Category A, here.

Uh huh..

And your whole family.

Whom I mostly love. And.

I want a gang of bridesmaids in simple, flowing gowns that won’t cost too much and will be reusable, you know, something they’ll want to wear again. He could tell that she had given this some thought.

Recyclable bridesmaids’ dresses? You’re starting to lose it.

And, she said, pausing to wipe the tears from her eyes, I’d like to have it here, on the island.

Here, on this ferryboat island? Bart’s sense of humor was becoming aroused. I love it! Let’s do it!

Bart flashed back to the suicide he’d just witnessed. Was the victim, Fleder-mann, in public relations, using his exit for a last grab at the brass ring? Hell, was he the victim or the perp? Boston Gas hadn’t been there with their gas-sniffing trucks, just some TV guys, cops, and eventually some EMTs in the ambulance. An earlier Bart would have pondered whether or not to turn in the tape, but now he knew he would. This run-and-gun type of news shooting meant that he had no crew, no favorite soundman Nick, a stocky presence who barely had to duck to work under Bart’s lens with his microphone; there was nobody to talk to about this on the long ride back to the station. He drove without inspiration, up onto the Central Artery, wishing for a Nick-inspired coffee break and getting honked at by impatient Boston drivers, because he was either slow, in their way, or just not very much fun.

It all came down to making a left turn off Route One, the Auto Mile, between acres of Chevys and Dodges, wheeling past Channel Eight’s impressive front entrance to the lot in back and carrying the camera rig and tape in through the back way. He wished he could have found an airsickness bag in the truck to deliver the tape to Brendan in. No such luck.

So what do you have here, Bart? Brendan Schwartz pulled his hands out of the pockets of his khakis, pushed his glasses up his nose, and took the proffered cassette.

Death and destruction.

You’re kidding, Brendan spoke with an unaccustomed quietness.

About the destruction part, only, I’m afraid. Bart described the scene.

Brendan set the tape down on his desk and stepped away, looking for something to wipe his hands on. Well, the news department asked for it, I suppose I should hand it over. Do you think maybe they’ll forget about sending you out for a gas leak?

It’s their cassette, Brendan. They never forget a cassette.

That’s my line, Bart. I hope it makes the cutting room floor and not ‘film at eleven’. He snapped out of his announcer imitation. Do you—er—need someone to talk this out with?

Dammit, would that guy have launched himself off the building if I hadn’t been there?

You were nowhere near him when he made the jump. Even if you were a Samaritan or some other type of counselor, you wouldn’t have had good odds of talking him out of it. I’m not very good with this either. I can make some calls. Doctor Bob.

I’m certainly not going to do anything like that. Besides, thought Bart, Doctor Bob was internal medicine. Just a wrong-way commute through a Boston rush hour in Elisabeth’s car. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I need someone. Bart started to leave, but stopped in the doorway.

What’s the matter? Brendan asked.

The detective wanted to know what I was doing there. I told him I went where the dispatcher sent me. Who phoned it in?

Brendan stared at the floor and then at Bart. Unless we have some recorded voices, and I don’t think we do, we’ll never know.

It’s kind of hard to imagine that this jumper did the whole thing alone. Bart shook his head slowly. I get the feeling that he had a lot of encouragement and even help.

Maybe even a helpful, encouraging push?

CHAPTER 2

Hi, Mom, Elisabeth said over the kitchen phone in her summer house on Squidneck Island as she made the call that would change everyone’s life.

Are you all right, dear? Is everything copacetic? Helen Hemphill was well into the happy hour out in Marin County, otherwise her questioning would have been more aggressive.

Elisabeth’s answers would have been in kind, too. She had a towel draped around her hips and an orchid tucked over one ear, and was ready for any-thing-at least her mother. I’ll cut right to the chase, Mom. We’re getting married. I have been proposed to within the hour and I have accepted. She raised both of her eyebrows at Bart who had the creeping feeling that something could still go horribly wrong.

Who is the rest of this ‘we’ you refer to, dear? Is he safe? I mean you’re not going to catch your death.. .I mean something dangerous from this person, are you? Helen might have been aware of AIDS before Elisabeth, as her timeless flip and its chestnut color were maintained by a succession of gay hair technicians in the Bay Area, whose personal losses and deaths had brought the plague home to her in a very direct way. After much deliberation, she had shipped her daughter a gross of Trojan large, lubricated prophylactics with the reservoir tips. With much less agonizing, her daughter had sent a thank you note. ‘Dear Mother, Thank you for the thoughtful gift. I’m certain that I’ll be deeply touched,’ she wrote, reminding her mother, yet again, that if you pull a poet’s chain you had better hang on for the ride. Elisabeth had distributed the booty between two bedside stands, end tables in two living rooms and the first aid kit in the glove compartment of her faithful, feisty Saab 99, Don Brouhaha.

Actually, his resume includes a number of fairly recent, unrejected blood donations. Bart started to walk away and Elisabeth reached out and pulled him back by the waistband of his briefs.

Well, who is he? What does he do besides lie on an uncomfortable couch with needles in his arm and all those insufferably cheerful volunteers running around, first inflicting pain, then, second-rate cookies in those little cellophane packs? I don’t know which is worse.

He’s taller than I am, at least without my really high heels, she added to herself.

That’s nice for you, and not always the case, I might add.

He’s a Williams man.

That never hurts.

And I met him because he was trying to get away from some people who were trying to kill him and I saved his life.

Helen’s deep breath made an eloquent statement over the wires from the opposite coast. These people who are trying to kill this.. .what is his name?

Bart Lane, from Ohio.

I don’t know about Ohio, it was part of Helen’s charm that she could make such pronouncements without appearing stupid, or even shallow, but what about these people trying to kill him? That can add pressure to a relationship that might just have its plate full without that extra load.

Well, they wouldn’t exactly go away.

"Those people never do."

But it all ended when the main bad hat died horribly.

So it’s over and you’re going to marry this.

Bart. Bartholomew Harrison Lane, to be exact.

.and nobody’s currently trying to kill him?

Right. He’s almost back to living in Boston, walking down city streets, and doing all of those things that it’s so easy to take for granted.

.and you’re quite certain that this one is interested in you?

Elisabeth felt an angry flush rising out of her chest. Well, he’s not gay and he’s not trying to get somewhere in grandfather’s law firm.

"What does he do, actually?"

He’s a documentary filmmaker, but he does other things, too, like shooting feature films. He also cooks like a dream.

When are you going to do this? Helen struggled to