Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 01 - Frames

by Loren D. Estleman

  Erich von Stroheim greeted him, a ghastly figure separated in shreds and tatters from what remained of The Oracle’s linen screen, hanging like silk stockings from the rail at the top of the stage. He wore a cutaway coat with tails, a stiff shirtboard, and a black-rimmed monocle attached by a ribbon to his lapel: the butler in Sunset Boulevard, reduced by devotion and circumstances from Norma Desmond’s first director (and first husband).

  “You are a handy fellow with the ladies, Herr Valentino,” he said. “But how are you at saving mein Kindling? I see no progress.”

  Valentino blinked. He was wide awake now, he knew it; yet he was facing a ghost. He’d made the mad leap from harmless obsessive to full-blown psychotic with no stops along the way. Best to humor the vision; and by reflection himself.

  “I’ve taken steps,” he said. “Reel two’s in process of transference to safety stock. I had to screen reel one to be sure we had what we thought.”

  “But you allow yourself to be distracted. Die Frauen—Ja, they provide comfort in times of trouble and help to propagate the species—but also they distract us from the business at hand. You must focus. This is a metaphor, ja? And yet it was so important to art—mein art—that the world embraced it as a model to emulate. Emulate, this is the right word, ja?”

  “Ja,” Valentino said. “I mean yes. But you’re overlooking an important issue. You’re dead. You’ve been dead for forty-eight years. I have a hard time accepting advice from a corpse.”

  “And yet who else has such wisdom of experience?” No humor showed on that stern face, separated as it was into disconnected pieces, an eye here, half a nose there, the mouth twitching out of line with the other features, like a reflection in a shattered mirror. “Seek the dead for your counsel, Herr Valentino. They have all the answers.”

  And then he was alone.

  The ribbons of torn fabric hung blank from the frame, stirring slightly in the current of air coming through broken slates on the roof and places where joints failed to join.

  “‘Seek the dead for your counsel,’” Valentino muttered. “Can’t you spooks talk any plainer than that?”

  For reply, The Oracle groaned on its foundation.

  CHAPTER

  11

  “YOU NEED TO have new cards made.” Kyle Broadhead ran a pipe cleaner through the barrel of his pipe. “You’ve got detective on the brain.”

  The professor looked as much like an unmade bed as ever, but the linen appeared fresh. He’d regenerated himself completely from the exhausted wreck of yesterday morning. Valentino wished he could say the same for himself. He’d had a rocky night after his phantom encounter; needing rest and yet reluctant to lapse into unconsciousness for fear of inviting the apparition back. He’d fallen asleep finally without dreaming, but any resemblance he bore to a fully functioning human being came from the jumbo Starbucks cup perched on the corner of Broadhead’s desk.

  “I don’t see any other approach,” Valentino said. “Clifford won’t back off from her ultimatum. We have to crack the case to save Greed.”

  “And what can you bring to it that the entire Los Angeles Police Department can’t?”

  “Passion and determination. It’s just routine for them, apart from the snazzy trappings. Without a weeping widow or some other cause celebre to fan the fire, the press will lose interest, and failing that there’s no pressure to solve it. But you and I and film history will never recover from the loss.”

  “Who’s responsible for this sleuthing bug, you or Henry Anklemire?”

  “I admit he’s the one who brought it up, but he was thinking of the publicity. All I’m interested in is preservation.”

  Broadhead ran thick fingers through his rumpled hair. “I wish you’d run all this past me before involving Fanta. The police are treating it as a homicide, after all. You’re perilously close to child endangerment.”

  “She’s past the age of consent. And anyone with a personal interest in keeping the case unsolved would be too feeble by now to put up much of a threat. If it’s murder, chances are the murderer is dead. You’re going to have to come up with a better reason than that to let the matter drop.”

  “How about getting in the real detectives’ way, bollixing up their investigation, and ensuring the worst possible scenario?”

  “It’s just old records, Kyle. Public property. It’s not like we’re scaring off eyewitnesses.”

  “Well, you know where I stand. Saving a film and solving a murder is a pip of a double feature to try to pull off. You’re a scholar, not Sherlock Holmes. While you’re galumphing about sniffing for clues, some illiterate housemaid in Pasadena could be snipping up The Wind to start a fire in the hearth.”

  “It isn’t fall yet. I think we can wait till New Year’s to worry about that, when the thermometer drops below seventy.”

  “That isn’t the point and you know it.”

  Valentino gulped coffee. “I’m not as far out of my element as you think. In our work we need many of the same skills as a professional investigator: interviewing people, combing through dusty files, playing hunches, making connections. A scrap of celluloid can wriggle itself into a much smaller hole than a murderer.”

  “And a country deacon can run for pope. But he isn’t likely to get very far with the college of cardinals.” He rammed the pipe cleaner through one last time. The inside of the barrel must have been as clean as a dairy by then.

  “This is getting us nowhere. Did you talk to Coppola about speaking at commencement?”

  “This morning. He’s going to be shooting in Germany then, but he agreed to a satellite feed. It took some persuading. I had to remind him who got James Wong Howe to see him when he was setting up American Zoetrope. Our president’s making arrangements to bring giant TV screens into the auditorium, like you see at Rolling Stones concerts. And he’s greenlighted Greed. It still won’t be finished in two days and counting. I couldn’t get him to commit enough techies to set up an assembly line on one project. There’s a lot of inventory, and each item is someone’s foster child.”

  Kindling, Valentino thought. He took another hit from his cup. “I wouldn’t be too hard on him. He’s not a film person.”

  “Most people aren’t, and I include the industry. It’s all about the Deal; but then it always was. Otherwise every scrap of footage ever shot in this town and on location would be safe on shelves, and I’d be teaching freshman English to troglodytes. God only knows what you’d be doing, a dreamer like you.”

  “Tour guide at the Hollywood Wax Museum,” he said. “Which reminds me. I’m showing Harriet Johansen through the lab in half an hour.”

  Broadhead’s smile was sly. “Anklemire suggested Sergeant Clifford.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait. “Clifford suggested Ms. Johansen. A gathering of nerds, as it were. Join us? I never saw a skinflint you couldn’t charm out of his checkbook.”

  “Not this time. This time I’d just be in the way. You’ve got Cupid in your corner.”

  “I’ve had just about enough of that. This isn’t junior high.”

  “Don’t be offended when I say I don’t care if you ever find the love of your life. She’s attracted to you: Clifford saw it, Fanta saw it, and so did I. You’d be a blind fool not to use it to buy time.”

  “That’s cold-blooded.”

  “No more so than butting into an official investigation. It’s all about saving Greed.”

  “I’m thinking of taping that to my bathroom mirror. I ran into Johansen in the theater last night.” He told him what she’d said about the skeleton.

  “I could have told you it wasn’t the one Bill Castle used. He kept it hanging in his study among all the other knickknacks from his pictures. Forrest J. Ackerman, the publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland, bought it from his estate. He dresses it in a tuxedo at Halloween.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” Valentino said. “No danger of you picking up that habit.” He watched Broadhead put away his pipe and drop the cleaner int
o his wastebasket. The basket was empty otherwise. His was the least cluttered environment Valentino had ever seen, inside and outside academia. His house was the same way; he could clean it with a leaf blower. No telling how many valuable posters, playbills, and props from movie sets he’d given away or dumped. The movies themselves were all he cared about.

  “What were you doing at the theater, hanging curtains or playing Bulldog Drummond?”

  “No. I was trying to measure the full extent of what I’m getting myself into.”

  “I’ll get you Leo Kalishnikov’s number,” Broadhead said. “He designs high-end home theaters for movie stars and industrialists with the cash to spend. Nothing on your scale as yet, but he has a real affection for the old barns, and he uses better material than Loew’s or Paramount.”

  “Can I afford him?”

  “That feature’s gone into general release. But you’re going to have a nice piece of change coming when you sell Greed to the university.”

  “I’m not doing this for profit. I’m donating it.”

  “Don’t be a sentimental blockhead. If this august institution can shell out a hundred thousand to put Francis Ford Coppola on closed-circuit from Berlin, it can pay you fifty for the distribution rights. That’s just a little over a grand a reel. It’s worth much more, but you can assuage your bruised conscience by offering it at a discount. Take the money and run. But stop when you get to your office. I can’t carry the weight of this program on my shoulders.”

  “Is that a confession or a compliment?”

  “It’s a statement of fact.” Broadhead rocked back and forth in his swivel. “So what’s the condition of your investment? I wasn’t concentrating so much on the building as on its contents when I visited.”

  “I think it’s structurally sound. Better than I am,” he added, on a sudden impulse. He’d intended to remain silent on more disturbing recent occurrences.

  “I thought you looked frazzled. I put it down to White Elephant Syndrome. I had it myself thirty years ago, when I signed my mortgage agreement. I expect to lose it when I make the final payment next month.”

  He decided to make a clean breast of things. Who could you tell you thought you were going crazy, if not your best friend?

  “The good news is the Oracle isn’t haunted by the ghost of Max Fink. The bad news is Erich von Stroheim’s moved in.” He described his dream of two nights before and the hallucination in the theater last night.

  “The uniform he was wearing the first time,” Broadhead said when he’d finished. “Was it the one he wore in Foolish Wives or The Merry Widow?”

  “Foolish Wives. I always thought he looked like a Shriner in Widow.” He wondered where this was heading. The other asked the oddest questions at the oddest times.

  “The old screwball loved to play dress-up. He claimed to have been a member of the imperial court. I don’t think he ever forgave his father for being a Jewish hatmaker in Vienna. He tacked the von onto his name when he emigrated.”

  “I forgot to ask him about that.” Valentino waited.

  “The butler’s livery last night was an encouraging sign. He’s getting less formal around you. That means he doesn’t feel he has to make as big an impression.”

  “Are you humoring me?”

  “No. Remember, it’s your delusion, not his. If you’re getting more comfortable with him, maybe it means you’re coming to terms with your decision to buy the Oracle.”

  “I didn’t know you had psychiatric training.”

  “Where we live, formal training would be redundant. It’s in the air. Half of Southern California spends half its time on the other half’s couch. We could apply for a degree on the basis of simple osmosis.”

  “Am I nuts?”

  Broadhead chuckled. “By local standards you don’t even qualify for eccentric. If I shared the details of all the recurring dreams I had in that six-by-eight cell on the Yugoslavian Riviera, I’d be weaving baskets in Camarillo.”

  “But I wasn’t asleep the second time. There’s a name for people who see and hear impossible things when they’re wide awake: lunatics.”

  “How do you know you weren’t asleep?”

  “Because only horses sleep standing up.”

  “Did you ever sleepwalk when you were a boy?”

  “Never.”

  “You probably had one of those revoltingly happy childhoods one hears so much about these days. Let’s take inventory of what’s happened to you in the last forty-eight hours.” He tapped his desk, one finger at a time. “You hurled yourself without warning into a lifetime of debt, made the discovery of your career, found a corpse in your basement, and committed yourself to race the largest and best-equipped police force in the state to the solution to that mystery. What else? Oh, right. You fell in love.”

  “I did not—”

  “Okay, began an infatuation. You have to meet me halfway if we’re going to cure your condition. Any one of those events is potentially life-changing and cause for stress. If you weren’t experiencing some form of disturbance, I’d diagnose you as catatonic.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “Val, have you ever known me to just say anything?”

  “‘Seek the dead for your counsel.’ What do you think that meant?”

  “Sounds like good advice. Isn’t that what we do all the time on this hallowed ground?”

  Ruth buzzed him on his intercom to announce that a Miss Johannesburg was there to see Valentino.

  “I wish she weren’t too vain to wear a hearing aid,” Broadhead said.

  “I think it’s misogyny. Yesterday she called Fanta Fresca.” Valentino stood. “So you think last night was just my subconscious trying to steer me in the right direction?”

  “Well, there’s another explanation.”

  “What?”

  “You see dead people.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  OUTSIDE THE SHAPELESS smock, Harriet Johansen had a trim waist and handsome upper-body development in a knitted top and pressed blue jeans, her slim ankles on display above two-tone leather flats. Valentino thought it was a shame her work required her to cover up and wear a mask.

  The air around Ruth’s desk simmered; she regarded every attractive female below the age of fifty as a threat to her position.

  Ms. Johansen, who was either impervious to the vibrations or unaware of them, smiled in relief when she saw him, wearing a lightweight sport coat over an open-necked shirt and slacks. “I had second thoughts on the way over,” she said. “I wondered if I should have dressed for the lab.”

  “I didn’t invite you here to put you to work.” He shook her cool hand. Ruth’s computer mouse clattered like a tommy gun.

  They took the stairs. In the echoing well, the criminalist asked if something was wrong with his assistant.

  “Ruth,” he said after a brief confusion. “She doesn’t answer to that title. She’s the last secretary on the Coast. She’s also a walking overloaded circuit. You never know when she’s going to short out.”

  “I know a lieutenant who’s the same way. He should have been chief of detectives years ago, but he always figures out a way to cheese off the brass around promotion time. It’s going to be a lot more quiet downtown when he retires.”

  “It’d take a charge of dynamite to retire Ruth. She laid the rails that brought the first carload of movie people to this town.”

  Yesterday’s smog was yesterday’s smog. Once outside, she fished a trim pair of sunglasses out of a woven-leather purse and put them on. He said, “You’ll have to fight off the paparazzi if you wear those off campus. You look like Meg Ryan’s daughter.”

  “Kid sister. But thank you.” She slid them down Lolita-style, watching him. “You don’t look that much like him.”

  “Like who?”

  “You know who. I was engaged to a negative cutter at Sony. We went to Toronto once, to take in the film festival. They were screening some early Rudolph Valentino shorts they
found in Canada, from before The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I thought he looked like a cross-dressing woman. Was he gay?”

  “There’s been debate. After he put on that beauty mark in Monsieur Beaucaire, he spent the rest of his life trying to prove he wasn’t a pink powder puff.” He hesitated; should he brag? “I had a small hand in bringing those early two-reelers to the surface. An anonymous bidder bought them in a lot at Pola Negri’s estate auction. I finally tracked him down in Ontario.”

  “Why didn’t you bring them back to UCLA?”

  “The Canadian government filed an injunction against the U.S. State Department, declaring them national treasures that couldn’t be removed from the country. They’d still be in storage while the bureaucrats battled it out, but I had a friend in Montreal who offered to donate some rare Alaskan gold rush documentary footage to the Smithsonian. The State Department backed off. It was a sweetheart deal: The documentary stuff had greater historical value, and now anyone who wants to make the trip can enjoy both.”

  “Your friend just decided to donate?”

  “Well, we discussed it.”

  “Doesn’t sound like such a small hand to me.”

  “It was, though. Preserving and restoring film is as much a team effort as making one. What you’re about to see is only part of the process.” He glanced at her. “You’re the first person who’s heard of Rudolph Valentino who didn’t think I look like him.”

  “You’re the first person who thought I looked like Meg Ryan’s daughter.”

  They entered the preservation building, where a red bulb in a steel cage was flashing above the door to the laboratory.

  “We can’t go in now,” he said. “It’s crunch time on a major project, and a stray hair or a speck of dust could ruin a morning’s work. But we can watch the show.”

  He led the way to the thick window that looked into the room. The technicians were in full battle dress, masks and safety glasses and shiny black gloves, smocks to their knees, paper slippers covering their shoes. They were washing forceps and scissors in the stainless steel developing sinks, adjusting the thermostat on the storage cabinet, turning the crank on the mammoth copy camera. Light flooded the room evenly and everything looked as clean as in an incubator.