Based on a True Story Read online

  “Well, he had nothing to do with it, Robert.” A production assistant suddenly ran from the other side of the room and whispered in my ear. “Oh, well, this is not good news, Robert. I’ve just been told the media has dubbed this affair ‘the Dirty Work Murders.’ Now, that doesn’t seem fair at all.”

  “We might have to pull the plug on this, Norm.” And he hung up.

  At the police station, I muscled my way through the crush of reporters to get inside. When I saw Adam Eget, he was sitting in a small interrogation room with a big smile on his face and two pies on the table before him. One of them was nearly finished.

  “Hey, Adam Eget, how are you holding up?”

  “Fine. We can leave soon. I just want to finish this second pie. The first was cherry, but I saved my favorite for last, strawberry rhubarb.” He whispered the last part as if it was a secret.

  “Why do you think we can leave after you finish eating?”

  “Because, that’s the deal. The policeman asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted to go home. And he asked if I wanted anything else, and I said, ‘Two fresh pies.’ And he said that if I signed a paper, then I could get my pies and then go home.”

  “That paper you signed, Adam Eget, that was a confession that said you killed fourteen people.”

  “But, Norm, you know I couldn’t murder a fly.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. “We’ll get you the best court-appointed attorney in the whole city.”

  Back on location, the arrest of Adam Eget had cast gloom across the set. I hadn’t told anyone about it, but word gets out in this media-soaked age. Every day, the actors would have to dodge the press on their way to work. And the questions invariably had nothing to do with the film. The media, as usual, was interested in one thing and one thing only. I decided to hold a press conference so these buzzards would finally leave us alone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” I said. “I appreciate that your city has endured a nightmare of vicious murder that began two days after we started pre-production on our movie, Dirty Work, an MGM film that will make its theatrical debut next summer. The motion picture has very good buzz about it and I would hate if this unpleasantness somehow hurt that. Of course, a film is not as important as a young person’s precious life. I understand that my personal assistant, Adam Eget, has been dragged into this unfortunate affair by signing a full confession to all of the killings. But, trust me, Adam Eget couldn’t murder a fly. He just has a sweet tooth, that’s all, and since when did loving a fresh-baked pie become a crime? Also, I would implore you not to continue to refer to these killings as ‘the Dirty Work Murders.’ I know that’s a lot to ask, so, in order to help, I have come up with a list of names for these murders that I honestly feel are much better. I will be handing the list out to you after I finish speaking, along with a Dairy Queen gift certificate for one hundred dollars. I will now take questions, and I hope some of them will be about the film.”

  None of them were.

  I finished the presser and returned to the set. We were shooting a great scene that day. It had been Fred Wolf’s idea. In the scene, Artie and I break into a mansion and hide rotting fish inside, thinking it will be unbearable for the people who live there. While we are busy hiding dead fish, the owners come home, and Artie and I hide in the next room. But the owner is there to complete a multimillion-dollar drug deal, which goes horribly wrong, leading to a shoot-out, a chainsaw murder, and finally a grenade that kills everybody. But all that activity is heard offscreen, while the camera stays on Artie and me, frozen, holding our ridiculous fish, our expressions never changing. I wanted the shot to be completely static—for Artie and me to be totally still—and I wanted the scene to last for one minute. We initially had trouble filming the scene because, after cameras were trained on our faces, Saget started saying things like “Okay, now you hear gunshots,” and “Uh-oh, a guy has a machine gun,” and “Now a guy just pulled out a chainsaw….” And on it went; it was very distracting. But the idea was that Artie and I would have one blank expression of terror for the whole scene, and it was tough to hold that with Saget blabbing on and on. I finally told Bob to just say, “Action,” and a minute later say, “Cut.” The take went well and we were happy, but it didn’t last for long. Wouldn’t you know it, moments after we finished the scene, a production assistant came up and silently handed me that day’s Toronto Star. DIRTY WORK KILLER ADMITS TO 60 MORE CRIMES IN THE TORONTO AREA. It was beginning to look like Adam Eget was more trouble than he was worth. After the day’s shooting, I went back to visit him.

  He was weeping softly and shoveling pie into his mouth.

  “Adam Eget,” I said, “I’ll get you pie if you want pie. You must stop signing things.”

  “I’m afraid, Norm. Do they have the chair up here in Canada?”

  “No, they don’t have the death penalty.”

  This news put a big smile on his face and he ate his pie faster.

  “But we’re going to get you off on this, Adam Eget, don’t worry.”

  —

  And so we toiled on the movie, but what should have been a joyous time was instead full of grief, as funny scenes were trumped by coroner’s inquests, and Dirty Work, which had been conceived as a buddy film, became the nickname of the most notorious crime in Canadian history. I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over so I could get back to the United States and as far from Adam Eget as possible. Even though I knew he was innocent, I was tired of the whole affair and, when it came down to it, with Adam Eget’s small brain, life on the inside would be the same for him as life on the outside. I just hoped none of this would hurt the movie or my career.

  Then one day something wonderful happened. Jack Warden approached me as I ate lunch. “Did you read the paper today?” he asked, beaming.

  “No, Jack, why?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you why, kid. A runaway teenager was found dead this morning in a ravine.”

  “No way! That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “Isn’t it?” said Jack. “That clears your boy Adam Eget.”

  “It sure does. And it means they won’t shut down the film.”

  Saget came running in, deliriously happy, clutching a newspaper. “They found a murdered teenage boy in a ravine this morning. Isn’t it fantastic?”

  Farley entered, dancing a jig, and bellowed, “Guess what, everybody? A monster is still on the loose and no teenager in Toronto is safe. Yahooooooo!”

  It seemed everybody was getting the good news at the same time. And that day the mood of the movie set changed for good. It’s funny how something as small as the news of a teenager being slaughtered and tossed in a ravine can be enough to lift the spirits of an entire set full of important Hollywood people.

  The next day Adam Eget was released from prison, and the press stopped using the term “the Dirty Work Murders” and instead called them “the Very Bad Guy Murders,” which was one of my original suggestions. We returned to work on the film, and from that point on it was the best summer I ever had.*

  It turned out that my worries about Bob Saget were unfounded. He did a great job directing the film, and there isn’t a performance in the whole movie that isn’t funny. When the film finally opened, the critics were split. Some hated it, while others hated its guts. But it didn’t matter to the public. On its opening weekend, Dirty Work grossed 250 million dollars.

  * * *

  * In 2006, a drifter from Baffin Island named Albert H. Codfish was arrested for “the Very Bad Guy Murders.” He made a full confession. In 2008, the city council of Toronto passed a law commanding that every ravine in the metro area be manned by police officers night and day. Since then, in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, no one has killed anyone.

  36

  TORN APART

  The duffel bag full of cash is in the trunk of the idling Challenger, and we sit by the Salton Sea, ready to go. But where can we go? Vegas is out of the question. As soon as word leaks that I took a
powder after losing a million at four different casinos, nobody on the Strip will take my action. I could always turn to online betting, but trying to collect a massive win from an offshore account is a hopeless endeavor. I’d have to get lucky twice, once to win and another to collect. So that leaves only one option: Atlantic City. The problem is that Atlantic City doesn’t take sports bets, so I’ll have to win at the tables. The other problem with Atlantic City is that it’s three thousand miles away and our time is precious. The fat man with the artificial hair has the meter running.

  We fill the Challenger with gasoline at a run-down station off Highway 111 and get the hell out of this apocalyptic wasteland. We’re driving east down Highway 8. The white Challenger is moving me toward my fate at the rate of 70 miles every hour. This will be the last of it. Win or lose, my twenty-year gambling spree will be over. It has all been such a waste. It’s not the wasted money that gets me, because money comes and goes. It’s the time. And with that realization I feel a profound sadness, as I remember all the wagers, all the adrenaline, the bad bets, the lucky wins, and all of it for nothing. I know, in this moment, that my fever has broken and that I will never again feel joy or despair at the roll of a die or the turn of a card. I will feel nothing. Now I’m free. And the profound sadness I’d felt only a moment before melts away, and the cessation of pain produces joy, so I begin to laugh, which makes Adam Eget laugh, which makes me laugh harder and him laugh harder yet, and now the Challenger is filled with hysteria. I have not been this happy since I was a little boy.

  The gamble is gone.

  The laughter goes on for a long time and only our exhaustion ends it. When long laughter ends, something serious is always said. Adam Eget says it.

  “Norm, I was thinking, we could always turn around and go back and give the fat man with the artificial hair his money back. You could cut some kind of deal with the Vegas casinos; Gabe said they do that. You could work. You could go on the road and you could pay off your debt little by little. I would go with you. I’ll help you get out of this.”

  He is right, of course. That is the smart play. The chance that I can make the one million sitting in the duffel bag into the three million I need to pay my debts and buy my ranch is remote. I consider what Adam Eget says, and a few times I nearly ask him to make a U-turn back to sanity. Then, somewhere on the road, somewhere in the darkness, I remember something. Atlantic City is where all of this began. Atlantic City is the reason Adam Eget must stay with me and not go home to where he wants to be. Of course this must end in Atlantic City. How can I lose?

  The gamble is back.

  A moment passes and I can suddenly see Atlantic City ahead in all its shabby splendor. Snow begins to fall, just as it fell nearly twenty years ago. I look at Adam Eget, and Adam Eget looks back at me for a long time. This turns out to be a huge mistake, as the white Challenger finds a patch of ice and slips from the highway and is torn apart by tree after tree. Adam Eget is thrown clear, but I am not. I see total black and then bright white light.

  37

  THE BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT

  It is as white as salt. I am walking on white sand. I can feel it between my toes, but when I look down I have no toes, or legs, or body either. So instead I have to imagine what I looked like when I had those things, and when I finally see myself I am wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and I am young. I am not walking as much as being led by my imaginary feet, and I am approaching the source of the whiteness, which is as brilliant as diamonds and as soft as wool. And in the whiteness I see figures.

  “STAY WITH ME.” I hear Adam Eget’s voice from far away.

  My aunt Barbara is there with Uncle Bert—he was the beloved town doctor who delivered babies and accepted chickens as payment. He was a saint. They are standing beside a Christmas tree, under which is the Louisville Slugger I received when I was six years old. I see my first dog, Tracker, and drool drips off his big red tongue. And there is Anna, whom I last saw when she was eighteen and I loved her and we said we would be together forever. They beckon me toward them with outstretched hands and I approach.

  “STAY WITH ME.”

  But then a thought occurs to me, one that had never occurred to me in my whole life: that there is still unfinished work back in the real world. The fact of the matter is that I hadn’t really done any work whatsoever back in the real world and now I am starting to regret it. What if one of these jokers in this white world all of a sudden asks me what I accomplished when I was alive and I have to tell him, “Nothing, I just never got around to it”? That wouldn’t sound too good. I could just make up stuff, the way I did down in the real world, but I’m scared that, here, they would know I was lying. So I decide I can’t stay. I’ll go back, do some sort of grand work, maybe back at SNL, and then return to these people and brag about my fine and finished work forevermore to all who will listen. And so I bid the dear departed adieu and turn on my imaginary heel to leave.

  “STAY WITH ME.”

  My uncle Bert smiles tenderly. “Wouldn’t you like to go with me to the deepest lake you can imagine, where we can spend the day trying to fool a trout with a bit of flying feather? Or perhaps we’ll take Tracker and try to rustle up a grouse. How does that sound, boy?”

  “STAY WITH ME.”

  Well, it sounds pretty good, all right, but that’s not what clinches it. What clinches it is Anna. I look at her and notice she is still eighteen and that I’m eighteen too. I remember our promise, so many years ago, that we would be together for all of time and our love would never die. But Anna was too gentle for the world and its cruel ways and she jumped from a bridge on her eighteenth birthday. And so I decide right there that I will stay. I will stay here and hold Anna’s hand and we will walk together into the white, white light.

  As I approach my loved ones, I say, “Hey, where’s Uncle Basil, anyway, and Aunt Ida? Why, they were the most pious people I ever knew.”

  They all fall silent, except for Tracker, who starts in with a low growl, and I remember with a start that Tracker had to be put down after he killed that infant girl. And hadn’t there been talk around town that Uncle Bert, the beloved country doctor, may have spent years injecting patients with polio and not the polio vaccine? And then I remember the house fire that took the lives of Anna’s parents a year before her suicide. That unsolved house fire. And this makes me recall that Uncle Bert never mentioned water in that deep lake of his. And that’s when I begin to hear the gnashing of teeth.

  “STAY WITH ME!”

  The whole bunch sets upon me and I scrabble backward, but it is no use. Anna is first to grab me, and she doesn’t look young anymore; she looks dead. She grabs me by the hair, and Tracker dives toward my groin with his teeth bared. I move quickly to my left to avoid the hound’s terrible bite, but I lose my footing and I’m surrounded by a circle of the damned. Some guy who is a dead ringer for Old Jack appears, and he smiles and then raises up that Louisville Slugger and brings it straight down, quickly and violently and directly at my heart.

  I open my eyes and cough deep-red blood onto the white snow. Adam Eget is directly above me, his sweat pouring onto me as he brings his entire weight down through the palms of his hands to the center of my chest.

  38

  FIRED FROM UPDATE

  “Norm, I told you this when I first spoke to you four years ago. It is imperative that you always have an exit strategy.”

  “But I don’t wanna leave, Lorne. I’m happy where I am, sitting behind a desk reading from cue cards that are placed two feet in front of my face. I like working ten minutes a week, and I don’t plan on going anywhere. Besides, I just finished shooting a film. Don’t you want a big-time movie star reading the news?”

  “Well, when you leave is not your decision, Norm.”

  “It’s not?” It had never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be my decision when I left the show. I had long ago decided that I would spend my entire career on SNL but had forgotten to inform Lorne about it. But if it wasn’t my decision
, then whose could it be?

  “Are you telling me you don’t like me, Lorne?”

  “It’s out of my hands, Norm. But I know Don wants to talk to you.”

  Don was Don Ohlmeyer, the head of all the entertainment shown on NBC. I’d never met him, but I knew he lived in Los Angeles and had an office there and brown hair.

  “Why does he want me out, Lorne?”

  “He won’t tell me. Don believes that it’s cowardly to deliver such news over the phone, so we’re flying you out to Los Angeles. The plane leaves within the hour.”

  Next thing I knew, I was sitting in the great man’s office.

  “Norm, are you aware that I am very good friends with O. J. Simpson?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I am, and I know I have been pretty hard on him on Update. I apologize for that. I guess where the blame really lies is in my institutionalized racism.”

  “Oh, no, Norm, you don’t understand. I never had a problem with the jokes. I loved them. I just noticed that about six months ago you stopped doing them. You never bring O.J. up at all anymore.”

  “Well, Don, that’s because a jury of his peers found Mr. Simpson not guilty of all the charges filed against him. He’s as innocent as you or me. If I was to mention O.J. at all on the telecast, it would be to deliver a profound and heartfelt apology for the cruel, racist remarks I made in my self-appointed role as judge, jury, and executioner.”

  “Norm, I’ve known O.J. for many years. He’s a close friend. I visited him in prison every Monday morning, and you know how I’d greet him, Norm?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “I’d give him the business about this whole double-murder thing. Lay a couple of zingers on him from your Update segment. Boy, old O.J. would see red, I’m here to tell you. And the more steamed he got, the funnier it struck me.”