“I was there in the jailhouse, in Brooklyn, thinking about sitting next to my dad’s body. Somewhere in my mind I knew that I should have called somebody, done something. But I couldn’t leave his side. My father was dead. The world was going on outside and if I left I would be abandoning him, the only person in the world that mattered to me — except my mother... who hasn’t made it here today.
“Then the police came and they took me into custody.”
Violet started crying again. France lowered his head.
“I owe my father everything. Even when he was on his back, weak as a baby, delirious from the heart disease that the doctors never saw — he was the man I turned to for strength. Good-bye, dad. I will never willingly leave you.”
They took a limo to the graveyard and threw clods of dirt onto the lowered coffin. Cornelius wondered if his mother had seen the notices or if someone from her family had seen them and passed the information on. The day was bright and the air cold. He had on a brown sports jacket and black trousers, clothes that had belonged to his father. He was shivering but did not register the cold.
He missed his mother as much as he did his father.
But even then The Plan was hatching in his mind.
When the burial was over the small group walked back to the limousine. An unfamiliar white man was waiting there. He wore olive work pants and a plaid shirt. He was middle-aged and obviously feeling awkward. When the mourners got to the car he approached them.
Up close Cornelius could see that the man was brawny and broad. He had a bulging stomach and thick brown-and-gray hair.
“Cornelius,” Violet said, “this is my husband, John.”
A smile came immediately to Cornelius’s lips. His shoulders and spirits both rose.
What a wonderful good-bye gift, he wrote to Posterity years later. My father not only had a woman who loved him but he stole her away from a big strong Irishman.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Breen.”
“O’Connel,” Violet said. “That’s my married name.”
Cornelius’s smile turned into a grin. “You have an exceptional wife, sir,” he said. “She made my father’s last days tolerable.”
Cornelius’s friendliness put the dour man further off balance. He nodded, mumbling his thanks, then shaking the teenager’s hand.
“Sorry for your loss,” he said.
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
The limo dropped Cornelius and France off at the Arbuckle. There was a handwritten note on the front door saying that it would be closed in deference to the death of the projectionist.
France took Cornelius to the office behind the tiny concession stand. There he kept supplies for popcorn sales and the accounting ledgers.
“Sit,” France Bickman said, “sit, sit, sit.”
Cornelius experienced an unexpected feeling of calm. Years later he understood this peacefulness as an easement into freedom.
France sat down on the other side of the walnut dining table used as the desk for the tiny office. There were debit and credit ledgers, silent film catalogs and piles of letters from theater fans stacked up on both ends. France sat back taking Cornelius in with faded gray eyes. Bickman had never looked his age. There were few wrinkles on his spare face and he moved easily without stiffness, hesitations, or trouble bending over to pluck pennies from the floor. He’d always looked younger than Herman.
“I’ve known you my whole life, Mr. Bickman.”
“France,” the ticket-taker replied.
Bickman brought out a bottle and two plastic glasses from a wooden cabinet behind him. It was Wild Turkey, about halfway filled. He poured them both shots and Cornelius drank his down. The whiskey clutched at his throat but he kept it from coming up, then he held out his glass for more.
France obliged.
“Your father was a wonderful man, CC.”
The boy nodded and chugged down the second drink.
While he was refilling the glass France said, “He wasn’t only my friend and mentor... he also saved my ass.”
“How’s that, Mr., um, France?”
“My three girls turned college-age while my wife was dying. Matilda’s cancer ate up our savings. When she was gone I had to come to work here because I didn’t have enough money to keep up the payments on the loans for tuition. That’s when I got the bright idea to skim money off of the ticket sales to help keep me from going down the toilet. I didn’t know that part of the checks and balances that the original owners put in place was that the projectionist would count heads every night. It wasn’t an exact number but close enough for your dad to tell that I was guilty as hell.
“One night after closing Herman told me he knew I was a thief. He had my butt in a sling; could have sent me and my daughters to hell. But after I explained my predicament he said that he would do the same thing if he had a child that needed to be looked after.”
“So he let you get away with it?” Cornelius felt a tingling numbness in his lips as he spoke.
“For all these years. I was over fifty thousand dollars in debt for my wife’s medical bills and college was two hundred thousand — more. But what I didn’t tell Herman was that, after he let me go, for every dollar I took I set one aside for him.”
“You did?” Cornelius said, sipping his whiskey. “Did you ever tell him?”
“When he and your mother broke up I told him. He accepted it because he wanted you to have a good start in the world after he was gone.”
“So how much is it, Mr. Bickman?” Cornelius heard himself ask. The whiskey had split him into two distinct people: the one who said things and the other who listened. France swiveled around in his chair and pulled out a small brown leather suitcase that he set on the table between them. He slid the case across the table and gestured for Cornelius to open it up.
There were neat stacks of used bills inside. Mostly tens and twenties in small packs held together by knotted string.
“One hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars,” France said. “All of it in three cases like this one. The other two are in the closet there behind you. There’s a false door back there. Nobody knows about it but me.”
Cornelius’s mind went to the dead man in the closet above them. He wondered if every building in New York held as many hidden crimes as did the Arbuckle.
“And it’s all mine?” he asked.
“Yes sir. You bet. This is my debt to your father. He risked his own freedom for my daughters’ lives. The least I can do is pay it back a little.”
“That must have been what he meant by my gift,” CC heard himself say. “He said that after he was gone he was going to give me something to help me on my way.”
France Bickman nodded.
After they finished the bottle France left. Cornelius told him he’d lock up before going home, but the boy didn’t leave the Arbuckle that night.
He walked down the center aisle of the theater looking at the worn leather seats and threadbare carpeting. The nylon screen had been sewn in half a dozen places and was in serious need of a cleaning. The light fixtures above the projection room hadn’t been dusted in a dozen years.
Cornelius went to the projection room and queued up a Buster Keaton film that the theater owned, The General. Then he went down to the front row to watch. He hadn’t sat in the auditorium since before Herman’s intestinal operation. When the film was over he played a compilation of Buster Keaton shorts.
Sometime in the middle of the night Cornelius awoke from a dream about somebody crying. He was sprawled out there on the carpet in front of the wide, bright, blank screen.