Dear Roy,

Love your work. I’ve got Clown. Let’s meet.

I CAUGHT MY BREATH. I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANT.

My mystery correspondent was referring to The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis’s famous uncompleted film. It was a departure for Lewis, a serious drama based on a true story about a circus clown used by the Nazis to escort children into the gas chambers. Directing and starring, Lewis had shot the film in Sweden in 1972 with a cast that also included one of Ingmar Bergman’s leading ladies, Harriet Andersson.

The film was reportedly plagued by money problems and creative angst. In the end, Lewis never officially finished or released it. As the years went by, he refused to even discuss it publicly. Though rough cuts have apparently been screened for various colleagues and insiders—and the entire script featured on a guerrilla Web site—it had never been seen by any real critic or film historian, let alone the general public.

Next to The Magnificent Ambersons, it was the most notorious and elusive “get” in the trivial world.

My hands nearly shaking, I proceeded to answer the e-mail. I wrote back what I thought was a cool and cryptic reply, not betraying my almost head-bending need.

Dear Ted 6569:

If you mean what you say … [I originally wrote a hip “let’s get it on,” then a belligerent “let’s rumble,” then a wimpy] why not?

The reply was almost instantaneous. A meeting was arranged in two days at a flophouse hostel that called itself a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. He left a room number but no last name.

As I got offline, I reflected on the writer’s probably temporary and definitely impoverished address. If he really had the film, I couldn’t arrive empty-handed and come away with it. If he didn’t have the film, I could be rolled the minute I walked in. Only the first possibility gave me pause.

Forget working for Abner, this was the kind of job I’d been waiting for. But with Abner’s case solved, my access to cash would be over. No amount of typesetting or, for that matter, loaf hawking, would make it up. Now I had more than my mother to support: I again had my trivial habit, and it gnawed at me like the need for a needle.

My only option didn’t make me particularly proud: stall Abner, keep collecting his checks for my own secret purposes, and run the risk of Stanley Lager attacking him once more, maybe fatally.

How much did I dislike Abner? How much did I love—or at least, feel obligated—to my mother? How much did I want to see The Day the Clown Cried? As a movie detective’s life got more complex, so did his moral quandaries.

To my surprise, Abner made the first move.

“I never went to Cali,” he said, on a scratchy, inadequately charged cell phone. “Let’s take a meeting.”

—

The meeting wasn’t with Abner alone.

I showed up at the plush apartment he now shared with Taylor Weinrod, which was their “New York base,” as opposed to “our L.A. pad.” Immediately, I saw a leather jacket and a suede vest slung on a coat-rack in the vestibule. As I proceeded into the living room, I heard low, satiny murmurs coming from within.

They were the voices of two men, obviously the studio suits Abner had mentioned. The moniker was misapplied today: trying to look bohemian for their East Coast trip, the executives had donned pressed jeans and Polo shirts. One wore sandals on his pedicured feet, the other had expensive lace-up sneakers. Abner sat opposite them, still intentionally or helplessly, looking big and ragged by comparison.

“Milano,” he said, but didn’t rise.

The men glanced up and smiled, politely, but neither shook my hand. I caught a glimpse of myself in a gold-framed mirror. In my wrinkled On the Waterfront T-shirt and cargo pants, I realized I must look like Abner’s homeless and deranged friend. The two could enjoy the bohemian style of a kooky writer they had hired; his revolting pals were something else again.

“Take a seat,” Abner went on. “I was just telling Sandy and Toby about my little, uh, situation.”

I sat, uneasily. The lack of welcome filled me with dread, and I suddenly recalled that George Cukor had replaced Robert Mulligan as the director of Rich and Famous; it was the old director’s last film.

Abner was gesturing to a sheet of paper on a glass table between them. I made out the threatening e-mail he had shown me.

“And if that isn’t bad enough,” he was telling them, “take a look at this …”

Again, Abner started to undress.

My eyes rolling, unhappily, I checked out the view from his and Taylor’s Riverside Drive penthouse. As I watched boats chugging up the Hudson, I heard the uncomfortable sighs of his bosses as they were exposed to his flesh. Then, picking up sounds of a shirt being pulled back on, I returned my gaze.

“Check this out, too.”

Abner had placed a few photographs on the table. They were hastily snapped shots of the bullet-grazed diner window.

“Milano here took these, as part of his investigation.” Abner gave me a quick glance that warned me not to contradict. “I got his name from a friend who’d had a nasty divorce.” Then he spoke to his two guests in a mano-a-mano undertone. “And I wouldn’t have hired someone like him if things weren’t this far gone. If the threats continue, I’ll have no choice but to charge him to the studio.”

The two execs checked out the pictures and then me, with equal distaste.

“You got anything to add before I rest my case?” Abner asked me, and his cold stare told me I did not.

Ticked off at being treated like disreputable help—and lied about, to boot—I shook my head very, very slowly.

“Good.” Abner turned back to his friends. “Now I don’t mean to pressure you, but if you want me to make the deadline for my first draft, somebody’s got to pull the trigger about the love story … in a manner of speaking.” He chuckled, but I could sense he was nervous.

The two execs looked thoughtfully at each other. Then one leaned in close to Abner, and his sweet cologne wafted into my nose.

“Can we speak in private?” he asked, discreetly.

“Sure,” Abner answered. Then, without hesitation, he told me, “There are grapes in the kitchen.”

—

I sat in Abner and Taylor’s immaculate kitchen, looking at a mounted set of knives, debating whether to carve my initials into their fancy, Fifties-style Formica table. I had no more moral qualms. I would lie to Abner outright, tell him I had no idea who was threatening him, then mount a lengthy investigation and bleed his walrus body white. If he got killed in the meantime, that was life. I might be able to help my mother and get to see The Day the Clown Cried.

I heard muffled talk from the next room, then people standing up, and a back or two being slapped. Leather and suede were pulled and zipped. The front door opened and closed. Then Abner hissed out, “Yesss!”

In a second, he was spread across the kitchen doorway.

“Well,” he said, smiling broadly, his face a shocking shade of pink. “Looks like that’s the end of the story. The love story, I mean.”

Whistling, he marched forward, his short arms swinging, like a merry squire in an operetta. He placed his fingers into a bowl of grapes and broke off an entire stem. Then he tried to fit them all into his mouth at one time.

A second later, they were stomped on the floor, and I wasn’t making wine.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I screamed.

“What do you mean?” he asked, stunned, looking down at his flattened snack. “Saving the project. It worked perfectly. They’d rather eighty-six the love story than incite the whole fan base, let alone pay for my protection. I played them, like a—what do you call it?—a fancy violin.”

Grumbling at the mess, Abner stooped to retrieve the fruit but didn’t, to my surprise, put it back in his mouth.

“Then you mean—” I was stammering now. “That’s it?”

“Look, we scratched each other’s backs. You got a check. And I got a final spur to get the L.A. boys to cave. It’s just lucky I went shopping for bread that day, right?”