—

At home, I stashed the gun in my underwear drawer. Then I logged onto Quelman House. The site featured An Open Letter from a Special Guest. Mimicking the gossipy style of Abner’s PRINTIT!.com, it read:

Well, Quelman lovers, your cinematic ordeals are over. Prince Corno and Lady Beluga are going to stay a peninsula apart.… And what former Internet bigwig is maintaining the integrity of the world’s favorite fantasy trilogies? I don’t have to print it here.…

There was a coda:

And stay tuned. This particular cool cat will soon announce his acquisition of one of the world’s most lusted-after films. That won’t be a day anyone cries.…

Abner, of course, had written his own tribute. Typically, he had also taken very premature credit for finding the film.

Annoyed, I e-mailed him a vague account of my hotel encounter. Then I told him the address where I was headed, ending with a cursory: Might get info there. Then I cashed his check.

—

I accompanied Dena on the Jitney, the elegant bus line to the Hamptons from Manhattan. On the way, they served complimentary Perrier in plastic cups and gave out copies of the Wall Street Journal, a paper I had never read. When I got tired of trying to fold its oversized pages, looking for film reviews, I crumpled it beneath my seat.

I thought that maybe Dena hadn’t merely wanted to help me or to receive my help. After what happened to her father, maybe she could use my protection, too. Even though she seemed parental, she was in fact the younger one.

Was I up to it? As I looked out the window at the Long Island Expressway, I thought of Martin Ritt’s abandoned film from the early eighties. It starred Sally Field and Matthew Broderick in a May-December romance. It was resurrected as No Small Affair starring Demi Moore and Jon Cryer.

There was a limo waiting for us at the East Hampton bus stop. With a hidden driver, it took us through secluded lanes and protective hedges behind which lived the likes of Steven Spielberg and P. Diddy. And Howie Romaine.

In person, Romaine was as tall as he’d seemed on TV. He’d gained a belly and lost some hair since his early retirement, though. His handshake was very weak, as if, now so rich, he no longer needed to make an effort of any kind.

“It’s nice to meet a cousin of Dena’s,” he said, clearly not giving a damn one way or the other. I was just a slacker relation and of no use to him.

Dena thought that, by introducing me as her family, it would eliminate any uncomfortable questions. But Howie, who literally yawned a second after our handshake, was not about to ask any.

I glanced around his massive living room, decorated in conventional leather and plaids. Four Emmy Awards were placed in plain view on a mantel. Dozens of framed photos of his old sitcom cast adorned the walls. There were copies of his recent best seller, Fatherhood Is No Joke, the cover of which showed him dandling a baby, lovingly. But only one small shot of his wife and child sat, nearly hidden, on a desk.

“I loved your show,” I lied, to win him over.

Howie’s eyes brightened, and his whole demeanor changed. He stood up straighter and patted my shoulder and spoke louder. “Thanks, thanks. It was just a little, you know, bagatelle. But it made a lot of people happy. Or at least that’s what people say. To me, it was just … a romp, you know? But we need romps, that’s what people tell me. So thanks, thanks.”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging, and wincing from his volume.

“Now I’m a family man, though,” he went on, unbidden, “and that’s how I like it. I don’t miss doing the show for a minute. I think people like you miss it a lot more than me!”

He laughed, deafeningly, waiting for confirmation. I only nodded, with a fake smile, not wanting to give him too much. I’d seen his show once, I thought, on a TV in an airport lounge.

“Howie’s very interested in talking to you about The Way the Clown Cried,” Dena jumped in.

“The Day,” I said to my cousin.

“Oh, sure, sure,” Howie went on, my big pal now. “I’ve done some research. I called Jerry Lewis about it, but he hasn’t called back. It’s a sore spot with him. I’m working on it …” he groped for my name.

“Roy.”

“I’m working on it, Roy. Did you know that Jerry came to our set one day? All kinds of people did. But these days, I just see my wife, my kid, and the grocery delivery guy. And that’s the way I like it.”

Howie gave the impression of a man who had already risen to the heights of his life. To his shock, he now found himself, at a relatively young age, still alive and bored to death.

As he spoke, I noticed that he had slipped a hand around Dena’s waist and kept it there. She allowed it, clearly uncomfortable. Maybe this was another reason she’d asked me to come: to give Howie something else to think about.

“We’ll talk,” he said to me. “You’ll be here, right? That’s right, Dena said so. There’s plenty of room in the guest house.” My one mild compliment had clearly made him desperate to continue our relationship. He added, with strained excitement that couldn’t hide his terrible disappointment, “Right now, though, I have to take my little cutie to the park.”

On the last remark, he gave Dena an especially tight squeeze. It took me a second to realize that he had meant his son, whose name he didn’t mention.

“I love the slide!” he said shrilly, as he left the room. “That’s all I need now! The slide and the swing! That’s a full day!”

—

Howie lasted exactly twenty minutes at the park before he brought his son back for Dena to mind. Then he disappeared into his den to make phone calls to buy more things.

Dena showed exceptional kindness and patience with the boy, who was four. He had been named Elliot, after Howie’s neurotic sidekick character on Romaine World.

“Where’s his mother?” I asked, as Dena helped Elliot color in an enormous, toy-clogged playroom.

“I think today is feet. Or maybe it’s fingers, I’m not sure.” When I wrinkled my brow in confusion, she explained, “Luna’s getting them done.”

“Oh.”

“Elliot’s a nice boy, and he seems to have his father’s ability to notice small things. Just yesterday we talked for twenty minutes about how to pull on socks. He’s very methodical.”

In fact, the boy was coloring very consistently and deliberately. By displaying these qualities, he seemed to take after Dena more than his comical father. Maybe that made sense, given who was really raising him.

She looked up at me then, answering a question I hadn’t asked. “I was prelaw. But I never finished my degree.”

I perked up at this. Her aimlessness made Dena more a candidate for our community than ever. Maybe all she needed was an area of expertise. Could she discover one by deciphering her father’s death?

I was about to find out.

“That’s my father’s things,” she said, hearing the doorbell ring. “This could be the answer we’re looking for.”

IF HIS BELONGINGS WERE ANY CLUE TO TED SAVITCH’S LIFE, IT WAS ONE lived on the go.

In the boxes and envelopes were bills from utilities in different states. Receipts of purchases from New York to Denver to Palo Alto. Paycheck stubs from jobs that ranged from bookkeeper to cashier to movie theater manager.

Dena’s father favored undershirts and pleated pants. He read copiously, whether it was history or classic fiction or movie star biographies. He took pills for his heart. His last-known address seemed to have been in Bar Harbor, Maine.

There were a few blurred and torn photographs. They were all of a little girl, taken from a distance, in public places. Dena’s eyes filled with tears when she saw these.

“Look. That’s me as a kid,” she said. “He must have taken them secretly. Then I guess he ran away again.”

As was her wont, Dena willed herself to stop crying and brushed the tears away. Then she carried on with the business at hand. She turned one picture over. On the back, her father had written Dena’s name with various phone numbers, crossing out each one as they changed over the years. It was how the police had found her, I figured.

“He kept track of me,” she said, quietly.