The actor left the car and walked through heavy rain to the red neon sign burning in the distance. It turned out to be an all-night diner. A young man at the counter told Savalas how to get to the nearest garage. He walked outside and pointed to a poorly-lit lane, then told him, "Walk right down there sir, and you'll come to a freeway, and you'll see a gas station about three hundred yards away."
Savalas thanked the man and set off down the dark secluded lane. He was halfway down the lane when he heard a noise behind him. The actor turned to see a black Cadillac crawling along the road with its headlights off. The driver wound his side window down and shouted in a high-pitched but well-spoken voice, "Do you want a lift?"
Savalas was obviously wary about accepting lifts from strangers in the dead of night in New York - especially from drivers snaking about with no lights - but there was something trustworthy and decent about the driver. He seemed quite sane and concerned, and the rain was heavy, so Savalas decided to accept the stranger's kind offer. He got in the vehicle and sat in the front passenger seat.
"Where do you want to go?" asked the driver.
"Er, the nearest gas station, please. You turn right at the end of this lane and it's three hundred yards down the freeway," Savalas replied.
The man didn't speak, and there was suddenly an eerieness about him which unnerved Savalas. The man never tried to make conversation at all. He just sat there and looked over the wheel and didn't even blink. He stared at the lane ahead with a grave look.
"Where are you headed yourself?" the actor asked, as he surveyed the driver's smart attire: a black tuxedo, white silk shirt and a black bowtie. His raven hair was heavily oiled and slicked back, and he had a little well-trimmed toothbrush mustache.
"To the crossroads to meet my destiny," came the curious reply.
Savalas just uttered, "Oh," and assumed the man was mentally disturbed or under the influence of drink or even narcotics. The actor was beginning to regret taking the lift from the stranger, but the journey continued without any more dialog. Even so, Savalas was only too eager to leave the uncommunicative driver when the gas station loomed through the rain-lashed windshield.
But before he left the car, Savalas felt compelled to offer the man a couple of dollars for giving him the lift. It was then that Savalas realized to his utter embarrassment that he had left his wallet at his cousin's home. Still, he was keen to pay the man at a later time, so he asked the driver for his name and address.
The man was very reluctant and strangely nervous about giving the details, but he finally told the actor that his name was Harry Agannis. He spelt out the unusual surname and gave a South Manhattan address and a phone number which Savalas scribbled down on a piece of notepaper. Agannis also offered a dollar bill to Savalas, and told him, "Please take it for your gas. Go on."
Savalas took the money and thanked Mr Agannis, then ran through the downpour to the gas station. When he reached the filling station, the actor turned to wave, but the Cadillac had gone.
Rather appropriately, Savalas had just landed a starring role in an episode of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone when, a couple of days later, he found the note with Agannis's address and phone number in the inside pocket of his jacket. He decided to telephone Agannis to say he'd be over soon to pay him.
Savalas got a busy tone the first time, so he tried again, and a woman answered, "Joan Agannis. Hello?"
The actor said, "Could I speak to Harry Agannis please?"
There was a silent pause, then in a broken, angered voice the woman said, "What? Is this some kind of sick joke? Who are you?"
Savalas was baffled, but he calmed the woman down and told her he was serious, and the woman reacted by bursting into tears. So Savalas said, "Look, have I dialled the right number for cryin' out loud? What's up?"
The woman eventually stopped sobbing and told Savalas that her husband had been dead for three years.
"That's impossible," Savalas said, and he repeated the name of the man he'd scrawled on the note.
"That's right. Harry Agannis. He's dead. What do you want?" the woman replied, and she slammed the phone down on Savalas.
Savalas was intrigued - and a little scared - but he decided to drive to the woman's address. When the woman answered the door, he explained who he was and showed Mrs Agannis his Actor's Union card, and she admitted him into her home. She showed him a framed photograph of her deceased husband. It was the same man who had given Savalas a lift. Same toothbrush mustache and black slicked-back hairstyle. The actor shuddered when he saw that photograph. Then Joan told Savalas how her husband had met his death. In February 1954 he had been returning from a high-school reunion party around 3 a.m. - dressed in a tuxedo - just as Savalas had described, when the Cadillac he was driving was involved in an horrific crash at the crossroads half a mile from the gas station where the actor had been dropped off. The Cadillac had skidded in the rain into a truck and had burst into a fireball. The truck driver had survived, and had even tried to free Mr Agannis from the burning wreckage of his car, but his legs were trapped. The trucker managed to retrieve a fire extinguisher from his crashed vehicle, and tried to use it to douse the flames from the blazing Cadillac - but the extinguisher was faulty, and failed to work. All this time, Harry Agannis screamed in agonized terror as the flames rose around him. In a state of deep shock, the trucker punched Agannis repeatedly in the face until he was unconscious. The trucker did this so the doomed driver wouldn't suffer too much. Seconds afterwards a second explosion in the Cadillac wreckage blew the trucker backwards across the road.
Up until his death in 1994, Telly Savalas was haunted by the memory of that rainy night, and he refused to travel anywhere near the area of Long Island where he believed a dead man had given him a lift.
