It’s almost too
much fun.
Alright, really quick in case you aren’t familiar with the
show: Columbo was a series of TV
movies that ran from 1969 to 2003. Columbo was described by Peter Falk, the
actor who played him, as such: “What if there was a guy who was just like
everybody else in all ways except one – he happened to be the world’s greatest
detective?”
The only other thing to know is that you solve these bad
boys backwards. It’s not about who the murderer is, it’s about the clue that
catches him. Your job is to figure out the mistake that’s going to send him to
jail, and you have to pay attention to everything.
Champagne corks, pencil types, light switches, scuff marks, the fingerprints of
non-murderers, any detail could be the one that sinks the killer.
This episode begins with stock footage of an L.A. stadium,
and the murderer himself, Robert Culp arriving at a football game. He’s tall, handsome,
and totally going to kill somebody so do not fall in love with him. This is his
second of four Columbo appearances, tying him with Patrick McGoohan for most
episodes as guest star. (I can’t remember which of them killed the most people
in total, but it was probably McGoohan. He could get really kill-happy
sometimes.) He’s playing Paul Hanlon, manager of the Los Angeles Rockets.
Hanlon makes his way up through the backstage production of
a televised game and to his private box. He’s wearing a burgundy leisure suit,
a striped shirt, and a horseshoe moustache that’s just like: “What’s on your
face, man?”
When he gets where he’s going, he’s mildly annoyed to notice
that a page who looks just like Kylo Ren is in there. He tells the kid that
there aren’t going to be any guests, and the kid suggests that maybe Mr. Wagner
will be coming with some friends.
“You’re new to the organization,” Hanlon chuckles in a wry
but not unfriendly way. “Eric Wagner owns the team, but football isn’t his
game.”
He tips the kid an obscene amount of money and tells him to
go knock himself out talking to Darth Vader’s helmet or whatever it is he does
with his free time. As long as there’s plenty of ice and tomato juice in the
fridge, Hanlon can take care of himself.
His actual words are: “You scoot now!”
It’s a little bit freaky, because the air around him is
swirling with menace, and has been since he appeared. This is clearly a very
dangerous man who tips big, drinks tomato juice and says “scoot” unironically.
Once Kylo has gone to banish the light, Hanlon checks the
time on the most 70’s looking clock the decade had to offer. It’s like this
enormous fake antique that’s desk-sized, but only if your desk is massive, and
it has two golden naked people worshipping something that looks like a coffee
urn? It’s a lot of clock, is what I’m saying.
Speaking of tacky 70’s decadence, we’re about to get a
heaping spoonful of it thanks to team owner Eric Wagner! Hanlon rings him up,
and we’re have a tracking shot of his mansion’s master suite, complete with
black silk sheets and a bed made out of golden Buddhas. Eric, I’m guessing,
bought that clock in the skybox. There’s a camisole strewn over one of the
Buddhas, a single high heel on the floor next to empty cognac glasses, and
empty cognac bottles on top of the faux Moroccan dresser. The top drawer of
that dresser has the phone in it, muffling the ring.
But the sound is just enough to wake Eric, who reaches out
from under a tangle of black silk and answers groggily. And wouldn’t you know?
Eric Wagner, playboy owner of the Rockets, is none other than noted hologram
Dean Stockwell! Hanlon tells him to dunk himself in some coffee, hit the pool,
and wake his rich decadent ass up – they have to be on a plane to Montreal at
6:30 to talk about buying a hockey team.
Suspend disbelief, people from Montreal.
Eric doesn’t really care. He doesn’t want another sports
franchise, and hockey is “for penguins.” He wants to put the money into something
constructive. Like narcotics, I’m guessing.
Hanlon gets a little angry and demands that Eric get up and
get to the pool, he says it’s because he wants Eric alert so that he can sign
Canadian legal documents, but it’s for something far more nefarious and
murdery. Eric gets angry right back and tells Hanlon that if he doesn’t watch
his tone, he’ll find himself in the unemployment line.
“My son, this isn’t for me, I just work here.” Hanlon
replies, “This is for your dad. Biggest sports empire in the world, remember?
It’s all he ever dreamed of.”
It’s all Hanlon ever dreamed of, too.
Eric agrees to get himself together in time for the flight,
then half-heartedly hangs up and throws the sheets back over his head.
Meanwhile, Hanlon has another alibi establishing phone call
to make. This time on the fancy red Batman phone that gives him a direct line
to the locker room. He demands to speak to Coach Rizzo, played by gravel-voice
character actor James Gregory. Apparently, there’s been some tension between
him and the coach, and he would like Rizzo to come up at half time to get
yelled at. (And confirm a timeline of his whereabouts, but he doesn’t mention
that.)
During this conversation, Hanlon puts Rizzo on speaker phone
so that he can start taking his clothes off. He’s changing into the uniform of concession
worker so that he can leave the stadium incognito. But the important thing is
that he’s doing it in front of the audience.
I don’t know if Columbo should catch him, I mean, maybe he
should just go free and keep walking around… because of many valid points that
I don’t have time to make, excuse you, I am recapping a show right now.
The argument with Rizzo gets pretty heated, and that’s all
for the best because it’s not likely to be something that slips Rizzo’s mind
should the police ask him about it. A call right before kick-off, full of rancor
and network TV approved non-swearing? Yes, the suspect was involved in that, is
it important?
Hanlon checks the time on his hideous clock – which turns
out to have three rotating golden balls that chime the hour because why not –
and looks over his masterful disguise of a white suit, sneakers, sunglasses,
and a paper hat. He puts on his popcorn tray with grim determination, and slips
on a pair of crisp white gloves.
During the singing of the national anthem, he makes his way
out of the vendor’s entrance and steals a Ding-a-Ling Ice Cream truck. (What I
like about recapping TV is that you get to write sentences you never ever would
elsewhere.) He seriously looks like the shiftiest ice cream man of all time.
Nobody would buy ice cream from him, everyone would think he had ones of those
trucks that sold drugs and guns and was always “out” of whatever flavour you
asked for.
But the good news – in terms of a morally reprehensible plan
to commit murder – is that people in the food service industry wear gloves.
Nobody will think it’s weird that the ice cream man has gloves on. It’s kind of
brilliant, but also horrible. Murder is bad. It’s important to remember that.
Murder. Is. Bad.
Once he’s on the road in the hot truck full of cold treats,
he loses the paper hat because concession workers wear those, but truck drivers
don’t. (He’s really thought a lot about this!) He switches on a red portable
radio and listens to the game, knowing that he needs to keep abreast of every
play and quirk for his alibi to hold water. And to seal the deal on his next
phone call.
It’s Sunday and there’s a football game.
The roads are eerily quiet.
Hanlon stops at a street side payphone, in a neighbourhood
near to Eric’s house. He gets his portable radio ready and dials the number,
but hears a busy signal. Ugh. Other people are the hardest thing to control
when you’ve planned a meticulous and horrible crime. Eric, it turns out, is in
his pool and on the phone complaining about his juice order being delayed. Whether
or not it’s actual juice is anyone’s
guess cuz it was the 70’s, man.
Also, Eric is wearing double-stacked aviators and a tiki
necklace while a cigarette hangs out of his mouth. Behold:
Nobody can stay on the phone forever, even though in this
case it might save a life because Hanlon has a schedule to keep and too long a
delay would render his alibi useless. He tries his call again, and this time it
goes through. Good news for him, bad news for Eric. Hanlon turns the radio up
nice and loud just in case any cars should pass by. The last thing he wants is
any ambient noise to give away his location.
Eric is sunning on his water slide when he answers, because
he’s an obnoxious man-child. He sarcastically asks if Hanlon was worried he’d
gone back to sleep, and don’t act like that wasn’t a possibility Eric because
we all saw you climb back under the blankets. Anyway, the ostensible reason for
the call is to see if Eric wants to carpool to the airport. Eric scoffs as
Hanlon apologies for being snippy earlier, but it’s clear that he’s got a
petulance driven attitude that would put even the most loyal employees on edge.
He’s the kind of young billionaire who fires people for telling him bad news.
One of those Roman Emperor types. And while I wouldn’t recommend being best
friends with the guy, murdering him is probably a little bit over the line.
Anyway, Eric notices the volume of the game.
“Where are you now, playing right tackle?”
“Ah, I’m in the box. Guess I’ve got the radio a little
loud.”
So turn it down to make it less conspicuous, like a regular
person would do? But no, he can’t risk the sound of bird calls or any
unexpected cars. And anyway, the important thing is that Eric is in the pool.
Eric replies that he’s next to the pool, which is close enough. Hanlon gets
pretty edgy all of a sudden and commands him to swim, which is kind of weird
for a phone call about travel arrangements. But it’s pretty clear that swimming
is part of Eric’s hang-over routine, as is (possibly alcoholic) juice, smoking,
and whining. Eric tells Hanlon to get off his case and hangs up on him.
He gets back in the ice cream truck, seething with
resentment as he drives off while a local child yells at him to stop because
she wants ice cream. This is a swanky neighbourhood, so I guess they don’t get
a lot of ominous vehicles, but most kids from the block know how to tell the
ice cream truck from the “ice cream” truck.
The kid doesn’t actually see
Hanlon or his easily described and notable facial hair. Seriously, though.
Maybe shave the old soup strainer a week before the murder, tell everyone it’s
just for a change, then grow it back once the police sketch phase of the
investigation is over? That is a moustache that stands out in a crowd.
Meanwhile, Eric slides into the pool – sunglasses, cigarette
and all – to start his swim. The glasses fall off and the cigarette is drowned.
He looks kind of annoyed, like he wasn’t expecting the water to have an effect
on his accessories.
The ice cream truck winds through the hillside roads,
beneath the shadows of tree branches, slow and ominous and accompanied by
creepy music. It stops at the end of the long driveway to Eric’s mansion, and
Hanlon gets out. He goes to the back of the truck and pulls out an enormous
block of ice.
Ice, fans of perfect murder puzzles will know, is a great
murder weapon because the evidence melts.
Eric is swimming laps when he pops his head up to see
Hanlon, standing on the pool steps, waiting for him to surface.
“Paul? What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like a—“
Hanlon hits him as hard as he can with the ice, knocking him
unconscious and leaving him to float face down in the pool. He’ll drown, and
that’s all the coroner will be able to prove. Hanlon throws the ice into the
water next to the body and starts back towards the truck.
But he notices something he hadn’t thought of. His own wet
footprints.
Can’t have those spoiling things. He pulls his shoes off and
tosses them aside, so that he can go grab the garden hose without making any
more tracks. A few by the pool are easily taken care of, but any more would be
a big problem. Except it’s early afternoon on a super sunny day, and the water
footprints are fairly faint and the pool side is that baking kind of tile, so
they’d probably dry up pretty fast…
Paul Hanlon doesn’t have time for probablies! He blasts the
side of the pool around the ladder with the hose. Boom. No more footprints.
Nothing at all can prove he was there and not at the game.
He checks the time on his watch and takes one last look at
Eric.
The deed is done and cannot be undone. Figurative owls scream
and equally figurative crickets cry.
Hanlon heads back to the stadium.
His nerves are finally starting to show as he listens to the
game and checks his watch as he drives. He also helps himself to a stolen
chocopop, because he’s already committed a major crime, why not celebrate with a petty
theft? He’s only human.
It’s ten after three, according to the hideous clock in the
manager’s box back at the stadium. And it’s halftime. Coach Rizzo, a
disgruntled pile of wrinkles, storms up the stairs and into the box. But Hanlon
doesn’t appear to be there.
Odd. He was so insistent Rizzo come up at halftime. Where
could he be?
Did he not make it back in time from his murder?
Turns out, he did! He saunters out of the bathroom, looking
a little like he maybe shouldn’t have had so much nacho cheese. We know it’s because he just changed out
of a disguise and into his manager clothes, but to the less suspicious eye,
there’s actually nothing odd about him about needing the bathroom. Especially since
he’s known known for chugging tomato juice during the first quarter.
And Hanlon gets right to the conversation. Rizzo hasn’t been
answering the field phone. Rizzo admits he gave orders to leave it off the
hook. Thanks for having reliable bad habits, Rizzo. Really helps tighten the
web of lies. The team is only down by three points, which isn’t a dire
situation at all, so Hanlon decides to tell Rizzo that he’ll stop trying to
backseat coach. Everyone has their own jobs to do, he’s sorry about being such
a jerk before. Thanks for your participation in the alibi, go away now bye.
Hanlon is satisfied, too. More than satisfied, actually; he
finds himself invigorated by his success. He smiles a half-crazed smile. This
whole flawless murder thing has been quite the rush.
And that’s the crime! Somewhere in there, and included in
the recap, was a clue that will undo Paul Hanlon. Can you guess what it was?
Don’t worry if you can’t, Columbo will tell you all about it at the end.
Speaking of the Lieutenant, it’s time for him to make his grand
entrance.
It’s pretty easy to side with a charismatic murderer when
they’re the only character in the story. But it’s pretty tough to stay on their
side once Columbo shows up.
Like Hanlon, Columbo has been listening to the football game
on the radio. He’s caught up in a dramatic play, sitting in his car at the
crime scene, when a sergeant comes over and tells him the coroner needs his
permission to move the body. The sergeant is apologetic as Columbo grumbles
about how inconsiderate it is for suspicious deaths to happen on Sunday
afternoons.
In fact, everyone on the scene is kind of bummed that the
weekend is over early. Between the sergeant and the coroner, we learn that the
body was found by the delivery boy from the liquor store. So… not actual juice. The delivery boy went
to the nearest neighbor for help, and the neighbor called the police in a panic
because there was blood in the water. From the blow to the head, which the
coroner assumes is because Wagner hit his head on the side of the pool after he
slipped or something. Then, obviously, he fell unconscious and drowned.
That’s a fair early assessment. Nobody would look at this
thing and think the victim was probably bludgeoned by a piece of ice as part of
a staged crime.
Still, Columbo is not totally satisfied with writing it off
as an accidental death just so everybody can get back to their hammocks and
lemonade. (Even though he keeps sneaking listens to the game on a portable
radio belonging to one of his assisting detectives.)
The coroner is adamant that it was a diving accident,
especially given the water on the decking around the board. Columbo wants to
know how the coroner can tell the accident happened on the diving board, since
there’s water by the steps too. You remember, the water from the garden hose to
hide the footprints.
With one ear on the game, the Lieutenant asks if an autopsy
will be done, and the coroner tells him that it’s routine for these kinds of
accidents. The coroner is not happy with Columbo further wrecking up this
Sunday by not letting anybody declare an accidental death. He takes the body
and heads out.
Columbo asks for more details, and he learns that there were
no servants in the house, which is kind of weird for a mansion of that size.
While he takes a closer look at the pool area, he sends the sergeant to go
fetch the assisting detective.
If you’ve never seen Peter Falk before, he’s got a glass
eye. This is incorporated into Columbo’s character by giving him a little
trouble with depth perception, though it mostly comes up whenever he’s trying
to parallel park behind a murderer’s car. Today, it means that he takes one
step too many on the pool stairs and sticks his right shoe straight in the
water.
He lifts his foot and uses the wall to steady himself, and
remembers that the area around the steps is wet. Something clicks in his brain.
He takes a quick sniff of the water on the tiles, and then drinks a small scoop
of pool water. It apparently does not gross him out to drink water that just
had a dead guy in it, because he’s a professional. It might make squeamish
audience members go: “Oh, ew! Don’t drink corpse water!” But it helps the
Lieutenant discover that the water on the tile was not chlorinated, while the
water in the pool was.
The detective makes his way over, and Columbo calls out if
he knows if there was a gardener working at the house or not. The detective,
Clemens (he’s not in other episodes, but they were always trying on the sly to
give Columbo a partner even though the audience never reacted well to the
idea), says that Eric let all the servants go for a few days while his wife
would be out of town. Eric had a big party last night, and it looked like a
clear case of the mice playing in the absence of a cat. Surely Columbo has read
about wild Eric Wagner.
“You mean that
Eric – ? The one whose father used to own the football – ? That’s who this
was?!”
Columbo is the best at learning surprising facts. He didn’t
even finish complete thoughts, because we as an audience have already learned
the basic rundown of Eric’s life, so there’s no need for any exposition about
it. It’s a great, really natural feeling moment.
Clemens, on the other hand, tells us what we already know:
Eric still owned the football team, even though it’s being managed by Paul
Hanlon. Every football fan in Los Angeles knows the name of Paul Hanlon.
Anyway, can we let everybody go and call this thing an accident?
No, Clemens, it was obviously a murder. Do you see nothing
suspicious about the owner of a football team dying on a Sunday afternoon
during a game where his team was playing? What kind of terrible instincts do
you have? How did you even make detective?
He’s told that he can release the delivery boy and neighbor
as soon as he takes full statements from them, and then Columbo wants the whole
team out here. Prints, pictures, everything. This ain’t no accident. Clemens is
in charge of crime scene documentation.
“Yes, sir. But where are you going, sir?” Clemens asks,
flustered.
“To the football game.”
The stadium elevator opens to show us Columbo’s wet shoe and
rolled up pant leg. He squishes his way up to the skybox and knocks a few times.
Inside, Hanlon knocks back a strong drink.He’s looking like his adrenaline has crashed. When Columbo lets himself in, he snaps at him that this is a private box.
Inside, Hanlon knocks back a strong drink.He’s looking like his adrenaline has crashed. When Columbo lets himself in, he snaps at him that this is a private box.
Columbo apologizes for the intrusion, introduces himself,
and explains that his department is unable to locate Mrs. Wagner, so he’s here
to inform Hanlon of Eric’s death.
“According to what I’ve read, sir, you were practically one
of the family.”
Hanlon tries to look grief-stricken and surprised, but he
accepts the news of an accidental death way too quickly. Usually, people are
like: “No, Eric’s fine, I just spoke to him on the phone.” There is a need for
confirmation, not just sad acceptance of a fatal accident. Columbo usually sets
his sights on who the murderer is when their reaction to death is off. He has
great guilt radar.
Of course, Hanlon does mention the phone call, since it’s
part of his amazing alibi system. What’s he supposed to do? Not gloat? Be real,
this murder is unsolvable, he has to gloat. In fact, he’s going to
throw in that he made not one but two phone calls to Eric, from this very
skybox, and that he had scheduled them for a 6:30 flight to Montreal. Would a
murderer pay for a plane ticket nobody was going to use? That’s just throwing
money away! You know, during that second phone call, Eric said he was alone and
by the pool, and he was a demon of a swimmer… it just doesn’t make sense…
“Well, there was a bump on his head and the coroner said
something about a diving board,” Columbo rattles off, “anyway, we’re trying to
find his wife. There were no servants in the house.”
“There weren’t?!” Hanlon balks theatrically. (Dude, come on,
try to act more innocent.)
Also, Hanlon suddenly remembers, Shirley Wagner is in
Acapulco for a charity thing. Columbo thanks him, and promises he won’t bother
Shirley with any questions just yet – nor will he bother Hanlon with them. Of
course, this prompts Hanlon to ask what sorts of questions need to be asked.
During this convo, Hanlon is putting his jacket on in front
of a double mirror in the washroom. The director of this episode, Jeremy Kagan,
has been very keen to show us Hanlon with mirrors. There’s a shot where he’s
driving the ice cream truck, there’s a shot of him reflected in windows when he
arrives at Eric’s house, and now this. It immediately hints at a couple of
things. One is that Hanlon is a bit of a narcissist, another is that he’s got
at least two-faces – the somewhat demanding and rough general manger who barks
at coaches, and the cold reptilian murderer. Now, we’re introduced to a third
reflection and the notion of Hanlon as a surrogate father to Eric, a wealthy
and aimless boy left alone with a massive fortune and a sports legacy to maintain.
Columbo says that he’ll have to contact the pool service,
and wonders if Hanlon happens to know if they were scheduled to work at Eric’s
house that day. To Hanlon’s knowledge, no pool services work on Sundays, what
does that have to do with anything? Columbo mentions the hose water and sinks
the first battleship of the episode. When Hanlon hears that the police have
discovered the excess water to be unchlorinated, he switches off the game and
freezes, just for a second.
“So, Eric’s death was an accident. There must be some simple
explanation.”
Hey, quick question, if your like-a-son business partner
died suddenly and something didn’t add up about the accident, would you tell
the police to let it go? Or would you want the closure of a full investigation?
Because, you know, most people pick the
second one, Paul! Act innocent, you’re blowing this!
Columbo has a new direction for his investigation, thanks
for being such a big help, Mr. Hanlon!
Satisfied that he’s got all he can for now, he heads down to
the locker room to find Coach Rizzo.
Rizzo is concerned and surprised when he sees the
Lieutenant’s badge, and even more concerned and surprised when he learns that
Eric Wagner is dead.
“Eric – Huh?” He shakes his head.
“Yeah. In the pool by his house.” Columbo nods gravely.
“Oh… what? Oh, no. Oh, the poor boy.” Rizzo wanders away
from the conversation and sits on a nearby bench. It kind of makes you want to
send Hanlon down there to see what getting unexpected bad news looks like.
It’s the “huh” that does it, in case you’re going to murder
somebody on an episode of Columbo one
day. Surprise always has a lot of confusion in it.
Columbo says he wanted to tell Rizzo before he saw it in the papers because he’d heard that the coach had been good friends with Eric’s father. Rizzo says that he was, and that Eric was kind of a tragic figure in his eyes. The old man had wanted him to be a quarterback, and Eric just wasn’t built for it. So the poor kid ended up as what Rizzo calls “a half-baked, would-be swinger type.”
Was there anything to all that? Rizzo says not really. It
was mostly the kind of sowing of wild oats you see in most young men, a lot of
it was exaggerated both by Eric himself and the papers. Hey, Columbo, why are
you asking about that? The coach thought that this was an accident?
Columbo explains that he’s from homicide and all unexpected
deaths of a person outside of a doctor’s care have to go through his
department. It’s routine. (Sure. It’s the thing he routinely tells people so that
they don’t get upset about it being a murder.) Rizzo accepts this, and Columbo
adds that he would’ve asked Paul Hanlon these questions, but Mr. Hanlon is busy
and kind of excitable.
Rizzo says Hanlon has been acting weird all day. First he
calls him on the field phone to give him a hard time about the plays he’s been
picking, makes a big deal out of Rizzo going up at halftime; so Rizzo goes up
and what happens? Nothing. Hanlon says everything has been going great the
first half, carry on.
“Gee, I didn’t think we did so well the first half,” Columbo
shakes his head.
Rizzo gives him a look like: “Thanks for your support.”
The Lieutenant takes this opportunity to get a little bit of
an overview on Hanlon from a relatively neutral party. We learn that Hanlon
hasn’t been general manager too long, but he started with the Rockets as their
PR man. A couple of years ago, when Eric inherited the team, he didn’t know
what the hell he was doing, so he asked Hanlon to help. Columbo asks if it was
just a matter of using the boy king to step into the corridors of power (except
he’s Columbo so he doesn’t phrase it anything like that), and Rizzo says it
didn’t look that way to him. Hanlon, according to the coach that kind of hates
him, is one of the sharpest and shrewdest general managers in all of football.
He was also Eric’s best friend. In fact, Rizzo can’t think
of anybody who would want to see Eric dead, so Columbo is probably wasting his
time. I mean, was Eric Wagner the best person ever? No. But murder isn’t ever a
real solution that people really pick, not really.
Now it’s time for Columbo to flash a look, and his says: “I
really wish that were true.”
Next up, we meet Walter Cunnell, played by Dean Jagger.
Walter was Eric’s attorney, and before that he was Eric’s father’s attorney and
best friend for forty years. Walter has come to Eric’s house to find it filling
up with tacky floral tributes as a young woman at a desk tries to coral various
outpourings of sympathy on the telephone. The young woman apologies for the chaos
and explains that she’s “new in the office.” You see Miss Babcock left and all
of this other stuff and blah blah blah.
Walter stops her. What office? What the hell is she talking
about?
Behind them, a rather large wreath is brought in by a
delivery boy with some help from a rumpled plainclothes officer of the LAPD.
The girl at the desk explains that she works for Paul
Hanlon, then notices Columbo hanging around. She tells him he can go, and he
explains that he was just helping carry stuff to be nice. He’s not a delivery
man, he’s with the police. The phone starts ringing again, distracting the girl
and giving Walter and Columbo time to have a nice chat.
“Sir, you don’t mind if I ask you a personal question do
you?” Columbo asks.
“No.”
“What’d you pay for those shoes?”
Columbo trashed his best pair when he stepped in the pool,
and he is now on the lookout for replacements. This becomes one of the show’s
most enduring running gags, with the budget-minded Columbo always on the make
for a good quality this-or-that at a reasonable price. It’s TV history,
starting here and now before our very eyes!
Walter says his shoes cost sixty dollars, and Columbo asks
him if he knows where somebody might get a similar pair for, oh, seventeen
bucks? (Just for fun, adjusting for inflation, a pair of shoes costing
seventeen dollars in 1972 would cost around ninety dollars today. So what
Columbo is saying is that he’d like to keep things under the hundred dollar
mark.)
Hanlon appears, abuzz with planning how to spend his murder
inheritance. I would suggest a not-burgundy not-leisure suit. But his
excitement at Eric’s mysterious death is toned down when he notices Walter in
the room.
Okay, so a couple of important things happen at the same
time here. In the background, the new secretary gets another phone call and
picks up. When she picks up, Columbo hears a weird buzzing noise, kind of
between a dial tone and static, coming from the nearby sound-system. In the
foreground, Walter is demanding to know what the deal with Shirley is – her
husband is dead, she should be at home. On top of that, he heard about this
accident on the news because Hanlon
didn’t call him to inform him of Eric’s death.
It’s pretty obvious that Hanlon hates Walter, and Walter
hates him back.
On the phone is a Miss Rokocyz, who would like to talk to
Hanlon. The secretary tells him, and he flips out that he told her he wasn’t
taking any calls, there’s no time today, he’s far too busy. He’ll talk to Miss
Rokocyz tomorrow. Huh. It’s almost
like he didn’t want to speak to this woman on this particular phone and in
front of the homicide detective. Weird.
The secretary hangs up the phone, and right away another one
comes through. As it rings, the stereo makes the weird noise again. Columbo
very much notices this.
The call is for him, this time. He says he hopes that’s
alright, he left the number with the station in case anything came up. This is
a frequent tactic of his. He arranges to be called with important news in front
of the murderer as part of his campaign to psychologically exhaust them and
force them to confess. He also tries to make them feel super paranoid so that
they’ll make mistakes that give him extra evidence.
Columbo, on the phone:
“Didn’t find anything, huh? And the autopsy? Alright. Thank
you very much.”
Hanlon smiles, very briefly, filling in a form for the
secretary as he overhears this part. Ice cream man gloves, block of ice,
there’s not a shred of evidence. Perfect. He tells Columbo that he’s got to do
some stuff at the funeral parlor, and if the police need him for anything else,
he’ll be back at his apartment in a couple of hours. He goes breezing towards
the door with the bouncing step of a man who just got away with murder, when
Columbo calls after him:
“Sir? You don’t mind if I get a second crew in here tomorrow
morning? Kind of recheck everything?”
Hanlon knows there’s no evidence, though. His paranoia
levels are much lower than those of the Lieutenant’s usual foes.
“Do whatever you want!” Hanlon calls out, opening the double
doors and strolling into the California sunshine.
Damn. That was less productive than it normally is. But!
Walter hasn’t heard about this investigation into Eric’s death! He only heard
it was an accidental drowning, and now he’s deeply concerned. Like a normal person is
when they hear something might have been a murder, Paul.
Walter asks what it’s all about, and Columbo tells him it’s
all just part of a routine murder investigation.
“Murder?” Walter mumbles to himself, as Columbo heads out
the same doors Hanlon did.
Time for some stock footage of a plane landing! That means
something is happening at the airport!
In the 1970’s, airport parking fees and regulations were not
like they are today, because the Lieutenant just pulls up to the curb outside
arrivals, parks his beat-up silver Peugeot, and heads in. Maybe it’s because of
his LAPD sticker, you ask? He parks right behind a limousine we’re led to
believe is Hanlon’s car, so it’s like everybody could just park in available
parking spots back then. Crazy.
There’s a cute little moment where Columbo tries to go in
the out door, but he quickly corrects himself and soon enough is hanging around
the airport phone booths, looking in the airport phone book, like ya do.
Naturally, Hanlon is inside one of the phone booths, and
naturally he’s a little surprised to see the Lieutenant there. He hangs up in a
hurry and sticks his head out of the booth.
“Columbo! What are you doing? Did you follow me?!”
“Well, sir, it just seemed like a funny place to make a
funeral arrangement.”
Next we see, Hanlon is storming down the hallway of the
airport – they also used to let people just, like, walk around in the airport –
while Columbo keeps up with him and mentions that it was surprising Hanlon
should make a phone call right after he made that big deal back at the house
about not having time for phone calls. He says he was calling off the meeting
in Montreal. He’d forgotten to do that earlier, he doesn’t know why.
This time, Columbo takes my job away from me and tries to
coach the murderer into being more convincingly innocent. He suggests that
maybe Hanlon is upset about Eric dying, and that’s why he’s forgetting to do
stuff. Hanlon is all: “I never forget to do stuff, I’m always one hundred
percent on the ball, I’m shrewd and sharp.”
In fact, he’s so on the ball he chartered a private plane to
bring Shirley Wagner home, and that’s who he’s at the airport to meet. But he
wanted it to be a secret, out of consideration for Shirley; he didn’t want her
being coddled by Walter’s “bleeding-heart sympathy” and he certainly didn’t
want the newspaper people coming after her.
There’s more fun with mirrors as the three faces of Paul
Hanlon are revisited thanks to a particularly shiny escalator. But this time,
Columbo has a reflection of his own. Is there a chance that there are two
versions of our hero? A scruffy bumbler who lucks his way into success, and a
calculating investigator who serves justice?
As they head for the tarmac, Hanlon tells Columbo that
though Eric was “like a kid brother” to him, he couldn’t straighten him out.
The Wagner marriage was, and he’s not clear here since he communicates it using
hand gestures, either an open marriage or totally on the skids. Shirley has
known about Eric’s wild parties and side action for about a year, and even though
– according to Hanlon – she was way out of his league, she couldn’t bring
herself to file for divorce.
Columbo asks if Shirley is Eric’s sole heir.
“What the hell is this?” Hanlon demands, “Why follow me?”
It’s just because of the way little things are adding up and
happening so fast, Columbo shrugs. Like that autopsy report. The one he just
got on the phone, the one Hanlon weirdly forgot to ask him about.
“It must’ve slipped your mind.” Columbo suggests, once again
subtly hinting how to better fake grief.
“No, it didn’t slip my mind,” Hanlon grumbles, “There was
nothing to ask about. Because there was nothing new. Was there?”
“No sir.”
“Lieutenant, you’re going to find that this was an
accidental death. And god forbid if it was anything else, then it was one of
those crazy hippie girls he was mixed up with.” Hanlon says this like he’s
giving instructions. Not a good strategy.
Let’s sink another battleship!
Columbo reports that he looked in to those “crazy hippie
girls” from the party, and none of them stayed the night or were there the next
day. The police have been looking into other possibilities, and one of them is
a Ding-a-Ling ice cream truck that was seen in the neighbourhood around the
time of the murder.
Time for a little help from Mrs. Columbo.
Mrs. Columbo, for infrequent viewers or newcomers, is never
seen on screen. She and Columbo have been married since forever, and there’s a
lot of theories about her that we’re not going to go into today. But, Peter
Falk always said that he thought a lot of the times the stuff Columbo was
attributing to her had nothing to do with her, he was just using the idea of
her to seem less connected to his thought process. To try and put the killers
at ease and catch them off guard.
This time around, Mrs. Columbo has been pissed off at the
ice cream trucks in their neighbourhood. “Why does the ice cream man have to
come just before lunch, just before dinner, ruin the child’s appetite?” Columbo
muses on her behalf. And she’s right. But 2:30 isn’t 11:45, so he called the Ding-a-Ling
ice cream people, and it turns out they don’t even have a route near Eric’s
house.
Hanlon looks a little uneasy for some reason.
“So that’s a – what I call a loose end, so I gotta tie it
up.” Columbo shrugs cheerfully.
I’d say that one was a direct hit.
The Lieutant also mentions that he’s going to have to find
some way to verify that Hanlon was in his box during the murder. Columbo was
hoping that Coach Rizzo might be able to confirm this alibi, but it turns out
he didn’t speak to Hanlon on the field phone for that whole “awful first half.”
And then Hanlon wasn’t even angry that his team was sucking up the field.
Well, Columbo, there were two, count ‘em two, phone calls to
Eric legitimately made from that box. Why, you could even hear the game in the
background if they’d been recorded somehow. Hanlon’s fine. There is no way to
tie him to any kind of suspicious ice cream truck or mysterious unchlorinated
water! Go ahead and try!
According to Columbo, the telephone company can’t confirm
that. Cell towers weren’t a thing yet, call history was a few years off, there
was a very brief window of time where this alibi was possible.
Shirley Wagner shows up, very upset, wearing one black
leather glove like she’s Michael Jackson, and a heavy autumn coat even though
she just flew from Acapulco to Los Angeles in September. (I mean, I understand
she just lost her husband, but she seems weird.) She cries all over Hanlon’s
leisure suit and pulls on his lapels, and then apologizes for being upset.
Columbo decides that it’s a fine time to take a break from
cat-and-mouse.
Later that night, under cover of darkness, a black-clad
figure in a bandit hat sneaks around the perimeter of the murder pool at Eric’s
house. He’s got a flashlight and everything. He breaks in the backdoor using a
credit card, crashes through some classic early 70’s
what-the-hell-is-that-supposed-to-be decor, and heads straight for the telephones on
the desk.
He’s here to remove the bugs he put on the phones. Also
here, however, is a police officer and Lt. Columbo. The officer apprehends the
shadowy figure, who we learn is licensed private investigator Ralph Dobbs. And
he shouldn’t feel bad about getting nabbed like this, Columbo tells him,
because it was the kind of thing that can happen to anybody.
You see, all of this has to do with that crazy dial tone
static Columbo noticed on the stereo whenever the phone was picked up at the
Wagner house. Dobbs, some time ago, installed listening devices on all the
phones in the house, and they were causing something called frequency leakage
that was interfering with other nearby electrical systems. The same kind of
idea as when you turn on the microwave and lose your wifi.
Dobbs doesn’t want to say who hired him, but Columbo has a
pretty good idea of who knew a lab crew was coming in the next day, and who might
want Eric Wagner spied on: Paul Hanlon.
(But wait, Columbo! Hanlon wasn’t the only person in the
room when you announced your next search!)
At first, Dobbs is reluctant to reveal his client’s
identity, so Columbo reminds him that he can be charged with illegal
wiretapping and lose his license, and things get a little tenser. It looks like
Dobbs is about to acquiesce and tell us what we want to know, when…
Scene change! Who likes basketball?
Not me! But that’s probably just because I don’t know the
rules or understand what’s happening. Paul Hanlon, on the other hand, seems to
know a good deal about the game and is planning to expand his
basketball-related involvement starting with a press conference.
On the court, a friendly game is happening between some professional players, who lose control of the ball and send it rolling right to Columbo. Columbo picks it up like it’s from an alien world and returns it to the players, then heads over to where Hanlon is talking to a new player and a bunch of reporters.
Columbo asks one of the guys on the bleachers where he got his shoes, and Hanlon is called aside for a phone call without noticing the Lieutenant is there.
On the court, a friendly game is happening between some professional players, who lose control of the ball and send it rolling right to Columbo. Columbo picks it up like it’s from an alien world and returns it to the players, then heads over to where Hanlon is talking to a new player and a bunch of reporters.
Columbo asks one of the guys on the bleachers where he got his shoes, and Hanlon is called aside for a phone call without noticing the Lieutenant is there.
This whole “being investigated for a flawless murder” deal
is really getting to him, because he explodes like a volcano when he learns
that the police arrived at his office that morning with a search warrant. He
demands to have his lawyers meet him at the – he spots Columbo and says to
never mind about the lawyers. Dude, you should have had lawyers all over this
yesterday, don’t be so hubristic. Call them back and get some lawyers.
Columbo, for his part, begins with an apology. “I made a
mistake last night.”
“I think you made a few!” Hanlon snaps.
Hanlon! Shut up! Your personality is wrecking all that hard
work your brain did!
Dobbs, it turns out, was not working for Hanlon at all. (Gasp!) After finding the bugs last
night, Columbo had Hanlon’s office searched because he thought he had something
to do with it, and they found that his office had been bugged as well and by
the same man. Was the skybox bugged? Funnily enough, no!
Anyway, Columbo thought that Hanlon might like to meet the
man who was recording his conversations for the past two weeks. Hanlon says of
course he would, and I think we all have a pretty fair suspicion of who this
man is going to turn out to be.
Walter.
He’s waiting, along with some uniformed officers, when
Columbo and Hanlon arrive at the Wagner house. The exteriors in this episode
are so great. In fact, all of the location filming has been wonderful at giving
off that sense of a warm, sunny weekend right at the end of summer. There have
been bright blue skies, healthy green trees, sun-baked tiles, evening light at
the airport. It’s surprisingly evocative.
So, out in this beautiful weather, Walter apologizes for
hiring Dobbs and tells Columbo that he’s going to provide the police with total
disclosure of everything Dobbs was asked to do and all of the information received
from the investigation. Walter’s a good person, ultimately. Hanlon, we know, is
not. He declares that he is going to sue the pants off that old man for
invasion of privacy.
Columbo tells them they might want to cool the argument,
since Shirley is waiting inside for them and they’re all going to listen to the
tapes. Hanlon is irate, because gentle delicate Shirley is supposed to be left
out of all of this – is she his motive? He has
said some awfully nice things about her, despite her general strangeness…
Oh! Just one more thing! Before they go in, Columbo pulls Hanlon
aside and reminds him about the thing they were discussing yesterday, about the
Ding-a-Ling ice cream truck. When he called them the other day, they told him
all of the areas they serviced: Westwood, Hollywood, Downton L.A., and so on.
At the time, of course, what stood out was that they weren’t in Eric’s
neighbourhood. But, then Columbo got to thinking, and Downtown L.A. would
include the concession at the stadium, wouldn’t it? And that makes it even more
important to establish that Hanlon was inside
the stadium at the time of the crime.
Hanlon laughs. Yeah, that’s important. Let’s go inside and
listen to those taped phone calls! Maybe they’ll help do just that, who knows?
As the tape of Hanlon’s first call plays, Shirley watches
the machine with a numb expression. There’s a part where Eric mentions that
Hanlon introduced him to “a chick” who had been at the party, and Walter
demands that the tape be stopped. “This was the very thing I was trying to
prove! Paul was egging Eric on! He was just trying to make trouble between the
two of you!”
Shirley says that they’ve been listening to the tape for
three hours, and that reference was the first suggestion of anything improper.
Walter desperately explains that the reason he hired Dobbs was to show her and
Eric how Hanlon had been manipulating them.
Hanlon, of course, is ready for this. He claims that the “chick”
was a new maid from an employment agency, and if Eric went and did crazy things
with her, then that was hardly anybody’s fault but Eric’s. Shirley buys it.
Literally nobody else in the room does, but there’re more tapes to listen to,
so we don’t spend any more time on it.
Next up is the last phone call of Eric Wagner’s life. The
one where Hanlon screams at him to get in the damn pool so he can be ready for
Montreal. Everybody listens to that one, and at the end, instead of saying
something like: “Oh my, god. I was the one who told him to swim, if I hadn’t
wanted him to be refreshed… maybe he wouldn’t have…” Hanlon choses to be more
like: “And does everyone have a log of when that call was made? Maybe it was at
2:29, making it impossible for me to have killed Eric at around 2:30 since I
was still in the stadium a literal minute before his death?”
Dobbs has that log. Columbo is annoyed. He knows that Hanlon
did it, he almost knows how. He’s just missing a concrete motive, and he has to
break this alibi. But how?
Meanwhile, Shirley calls Walter contemptable for being
jealous of Hanlon’s influence and hiring a detective. Walter, looking every bit
a hurt old guard dog, tries again to explain that he had the tapes made because
he was worried about Hanlon wrecking up everybody’s lives. Hanlon sucks, can’t
Shirley see that?
Walter is unaware that a handsome man can distort reality
just as effectively as any film noir black widow. Poor Walter. He’s a good guy.
Shirley banishes everyone from the house, except for Hanlon,
whose hand she grabs like it’s a security blanket. Columbo stops on the way
out, and gently tells her that there’s still a lot of investigating the
department is obligated to do, and she tells him to GTFO.
The investigation has hit a wall.
But Columbo is so close. So
close.
Three days go by, and when next we see the Lieutenant, he’s
holed up in his favourite seaside restaurant, the one with the most affordable
chili in Los Angeles. Columbo loves chili like he loves justice and cigars. In
fact, in some parts of Asia, spirits of justice are known for their love of spicy
food and fragrant incense. They also appear shorter than the average human when
appearing in mortal form, and drive murderers insane by never letting them
relax. Probably a coincidence.
Hey, Dobbs is here! What’s up, Dobbs?
Oh. It turns out that Columbo is still low-key blackmailing
him by refusing to give him his P.I. license back. And also that Columbo has
been listening to Eric Wagner’s final phone call literally hundreds of times,
trying to find some kind of crack. What kind of a general manager, Columbo
wonders aloud, makes a telephone call right when they call pass interference
against his own team on the two yard line?
“Maybe he made the phone call from someplace else, you ever
think of that?” Dobbs says, “Someplace where there was a radio broadcasting.”
Dobbs, you genius cockroach! That’s it!
But Columbo can’t do anything with that information right
now, and he needs to ask Dobbs how he managed to get the bugging equipment in
Hanlon’s office. Dobbs hedges, since hedging on giving the cops his sources is
the crux of his character, but not only has his license not yet been returned,
neither has his listening equipment. And that stuff is worth six hundred bucks.
It would be a shame if the police department held onto to it for a really,
really, really long time.
“Alright. I put a girl in Hanlon’s office.”
The girl was one Eve Babcock, who worked as a secretary for
about three days before Hanlon fired her. Of course, three days was long enough
to plant the bugs. Dobbs uses her for little things every now and then, since
she likes the change from her usual line of work.
And it turns out that Eve Babcock is being played by Valerie
“Rhoda Morgenstern” Harper!
That evening, Eve is getting ready for her next date, in a
rather elegant apartment, when Columbo rings her doorbell. There is some
confusion, as Eve thinks that Columbo is her next client and tells him she’s “been
expecting him.” And Columbo doesn’t, at first, realize the mix up.
Valerie Harper reminds me of Madeline Khan in Blazing Saddles a bit here, and it’s
interesting to note that this predates that film by a couple of years. (But
since it’s all making fun of Marlene Dietrich anyway, it doesn’t really mean
much.)
She decides that they’ll go to the Luau for drinks, and then
to Chasen’s for dinner, and Columbo is like: “I hadn’t planned on dinner…”
Homicide detectives, apparently, don’t see a lot of the
Holly Golightly types.
The penny drops for Columbo when Eve says that she wishes
Harry would’ve told her she didn’t have to plan a whole evening. He blushes
like a fiend. Columbo is very easily embarrassed when matters of the bedroom
come up – there’s a much later episode, from the late 80’s I think, where the
murderer is a sex therapist and he spends half the time clearing his throat and
averting his gaze. It’s really endearing.
So, Eve’s actual client turns up, and Columbo chooses this
moment to introduce himself as a lieutenant with the police department.
With the client gone, Eve sits right down at the phone and
announces she’s calling her attorney.
“Instead of calling your attorney, why don’t you put this
appointment book someplace where I can’t see it? Because I’m not here to hurt
you.”
He’s just here to ask a few questions about Paul Hanlon,
because he’s investigating the death of Eric Wagner. He doesn’t care about the
phone tapping thing, that’s not what’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is
why Miss Babcock was fired after only three days. She’s beautiful (he actually
says: “You’d be an ornament in any office” which seriously used to be a
compliment) and she seems smart. Also, Paul Hanlon seems like the kind of guy
who would keep a bad typist around for at
least a week if she was as good looking as Rhoda, come on. Is it possible
that Hanlon caught her planting the bugs and, for some reason, bought her off?
Maybe so she wouldn’t tell everybody that Hanlon knew about the bugs and was
using them to set up his alibi?
Eve doesn’t like where this is going, and starts to protest
Columbo’s gall. As she gets more emotional, her slight European accent thickens,
and our illustrious investigator figures out that Eve Babcock is Hungarian. He
tells her to calm down, he’s leaving. And then he remembers to ask her just one
more thing: Is there any chance she also goes by the name Rokocyz? And that she
phoned the Wagner house yesterday and then got a return phone call from an
airport payphone? Aha! Got you, Rhoda! Bam!
Anyway, that’s all. An officer will be by tomorrow to get
your statement and everything. Have a nice dinner.
For most of the next day, Columbo spends his time thinking.
He hangs out at the
stadium, checks out where the ice cream trucks parks, does his best to retrace
every stray thought Hanlon must’ve had while he was planning this thing.
It’s obvious that Hanlon killed Eric, but there’s not enough
to charge him. He starts rummaging around in the little details.
He goes to the travel agent to see if Hanlon actually booked
a flight to Montreal.
The snobbish travel agent, who for some reason is dressed
like Captain Von Trapp, says it’ll take a moment for him to go through his
files. Meanwhile, Columbo hangs around the desk of one of the younger
employees, cuz the kid has switched on the radio to listen to the football
game.
Columbo lets out his woes a little bit about how this case
has pretty much ruined football forever for him, and how frustrated he is. The
kid half listens, nodding along and throwing out a few platitudes.
By the way, this whole travel agency is decorated like the
board of Austrian tourism held it at gunpoint at told it to be more jolly.
There are beer steins and the Von Trapp costumes, and a big giant cuckoo clock
on the wall. And when that cuckoo pops out to chirp, it sings right into the
Lieutenant’s brain.
That’s it.
He’s got it.
With the game going, he knows exactly where Hanlon will be.
He lets himself into the skybox with a large leather bag of equipment and a
smile on his face. The radio is on nice and loud, and Hanlon is enjoying a
cigarette and a glass of beer. I guess he switched from tomato juice because
vegetables can’t really burn foul deeds off of your conscience like day
drinking can.
Hanlon is bored and done and kind of hates Columbo now. He
gets agitated at all the little distractions thrown out during the conversation,
and that’s exactly what Columbo wants, because it means he turns the radio down,
but not quite off.
Down, but not quite off.
Just like he did last Sunday when he was first informed
about Eric’s death. In fact, Columbo kind of does that same thing whenever Mrs.
Columbo tries to talk to him when he’s got the game on; he turns it down just
enough to pretend he’s listening, but loud enough that he can still keep track
if something crazy happens. It’s normal. What was surprising was when Hanlon
heard about the hose water on the decking and switched the radio right off.
Hanlon angrily picks up a pair of binoculars and tries to
ignore his impending downfall.
You can’t hide behind binoculars. Justice is here.
As for Miss Rokocyz, or Miss Babcock? Columbo explains that
he met her last night and knows that she was who Hanlon phoned from the
airport. And he did that so their conversation wouldn’t be recorded by the bugs
he knew were in the Wagner house. Of
course, there’s no way Eve won’t spill every bean she’s got once she knows
murder charges are on the table.
At the notion of murder charges, Hanlon switches the radio
right off.
“Oh! Look! You did it again!” Columbo throws his hands up, “I
guess you just can’t help that.”
Hanlon tries to keep cool and, god help him, he holds up
those binoculars like they’re going to save him from what’s coming. But no.
They just magnify objects in the distance, Paul. Put them down.
Columbo asks if it’s okay if they listen to part of
yesterday’s game. Because, just “by coincidence” it’s around the same time it
was last week when Hanlon made that second call to Eric.
He puts the tape on, and explains that he’s been listening
and listening to it trying to hear any ambient noises to give away that Hanlon
had been in a different location. Maybe a fire truck or some birds or
something.
“But you didn’t hear anything,” Hanlon says, “because I made
the call right here, from that phone.”
But maybe, Columbo suggests, everyone has been thinking
about this ambient noise thing backwards. What if there was a sound that was
supposed to be in the room with Hanlon, something that was definitely in the
skybox, that couldn’t be heard on the tape?
“Like what?” Hanlon asks.
The final back and forth between Eric and Hanlon plays,
second for second, at exactly the same time it had the Sunday before.
And part way through the recorded conversation, a there is a
sound inside the skybox that is nowhere to be found on the tape.
You remember that hideous golden naked people clock? It
chimes on the hour and on the half-hour. And at 2:30, it goes bong, bong, bong.
Chiming away Paul Hanlon’s undoing.
Ambient noise. Its presence is as vital as its absence.
Hanlon is stunned as Columbo shuts off the recorder and
rewinds the tape.
And that’s the end of the episode! I’m not positive that
there’s enough here to secure a conviction, but you never know!
Good job, Columbo!
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