Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 01 - Frames

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Kym Trujillo told me he has his good days and his bad. I thought I was lucky to catch him on one of the good ones. It never occurred to me they’d be better than mine.”

  “So let’s catch him on one of the bad ones,” Broadhead said. “You said he’s at his best in the morning?”

  “That’s what Kym said. Should we pay a call on him this afternoon?”

  Fanta broke in. “You really suspect this guy of killing Spinoza?”

  “There’s no real reason to,” Valentino said. “We don’t have a motive. But there’s no law against hoarding a classic film, and homicide’s the only thing he’d have to be shifty about after all these years. There’s no statute of limitations, and his room is a lot more comfortable than a prison cell.”

  “Not to bum you out, but Pegler was more than twice Spinoza’s age in fifty-six, an old man—”

  “Middle-aged, mathematically speaking,” Broadhead said. “He’s lived almost as long since.”

  “—a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, with no legs. I’m the jury. Convince me he cracked his projectionist over the head and walled him up in the basement. How’d he get down all those stairs?”

  Broadhead nodded. “You’re good. Forget what I said about a second major.”

  Gloom settled over the booth. Their waitress, sensing the mood, left their check and drifted away without a word.

  Valentino perked up. “We’ll ask Pegler. Or maybe you should, a proper cross-examination. It could be extra credit toward your degree.”

  “At the risk of talking you out of it, shouldn’t we put this in Sergeant Clifford’s hands?”

  Broadhead and Valentino exchanged guilty glances. The professor cleared his throat. “We’re avoiding the police right now.” He told her about his bait-and-switch.

  “You’re just a naughty old man, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Middle-aged.”

  “I’ll call Kym.” Valentino took out his cell.

  “Time enough for that later,” Broadhead said. “We have a stop to make first.”

  “Where?”

  “The wardrobe department at Universal. I know someone there. This was a less informal town in Pegler’s day. You need to dress appropriately.”

  “Why don’t I just swing by my place and put on a tie?”

  “No offense, but styles have changed, and not for the better. First impressions count.”

  “This is my second visit.”

  “Well, you know what they say about Alzheimer’s: You meet new people every day.”

  “That’s incredibly insensitive. What about you and Fanta? You’re not exactly dressed for an audience with royalty.”

  “We don’t want to overcostume the thing. Too much period detail can drag down a production. Ask von Stroheim about that next time you see him.”

  “What are you up to?”

  Broadhead shoved the bill his way. “Just pay that. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Hold still, Professor.” Fanta wet a corner of a napkin in her glass and reached across to wipe the smudge of ash off the side of Broadhead’s nose. “That’s been making me non compos mentis for like an hour.”

  It had been bothering Valentino too, ever since his friend had scratched his nose with the paper clip he’d used to clean his pipe, but he hadn’t the courage to say or do anything about it. He braced for a curmudgeonly outburst. Instead, Broadhead looked sheepish and got up without a word to retrieve his hat and trench coat.

  IV

  RED CARPET

  CHAPTER

  20

  AT THE GATE to Universal City, the guard, a youngster good-looking enough to have a resume and head shots in his locker, spoke Kyle Broadhead’s name into his telephone, waited through what seemed to be a series of connections, spoke again, listened, and wrote out passes for all three of them. Then he activated a motor that whirred and clunked like the gate mechanism in a prison film. Valentino drove through the opening.

  “Cool,” said Fanta, when they passed a group of extras in French Foreign Legion uniforms. “You think we’ll get to see the shark?”

  Broadhead said, “That’s in Florida.”

  “Don’t tell me you never took the tour,” said Valentino.

  “I said I’m a Hollywood brat. If I lived in San Antonio I’d never have gotten to visit the Alamo.”

  Security was tight; the industry was convinced it was a top terrorist target. They were stopped by guards twice and asked to show their passes and driver’s licenses. The parking attendant checked them out again and smacked a pink sticker with the day’s date to the windshield. They found a space far down from the Hummers and Testarossas, next to a spotless Mercedes with the features and options still glued to a window.

  “A writer,” Broadhead said. “Poor slob.”

  Rain was still falling, one of those all-day mists that are as rare in Southern California as natural redheads. “There’s luck.”

  Broadhead’s companions looked to him for explanation. He offered none.

  At the door to the wardrobe department they handed their credentials to a square-shouldered man in a blue suit with a corkscrew wire coming out of his ear. He asked them each for a date of birth, compared it to the license, and handed it back. He thanked them politely and muttered into his fist. A buzzer sounded. He pushed the door open and held it. The visitors passed through.

  Fanta said, “I hope that’s the last of it. I’m wearing granny panties.”

  They were in a hangarlike room that appeared to be a combination clothing warehouse and garment district sweatshop, only one with superior working conditions. Aisles of bare floor wandered between racks of costumes on casters, and hundreds, possibly thousands more suits, dresses, cloaks, leotards, and menageries of animal prints hung from tubes that circled the walls in stacks to the ceiling; as Valentino and Fanta followed Broadhead, the center row glided under its own power to the accompaniment of a humming motor, rotating its selection of textiles nearly halfway around the enormous room before it stopped and a woman on a catwalk removed a sequined evening gown on its hanger, folded it over one arm, and descended a flight of stairs to the floor. Bolts of fabric covered tables as large as full-size beds for cutters armed with shears, and tailors and seamstresses sat at columns of whirring sewing machines, feeding yards of silk, wool, and man-made materials to the bobbins. In spite of an elaborate ventilation system of ceiling fans and built-in air filters, the great room smelled of sizing, starch, and model airplane glue.

  “Awesome,” Fanta said.

  Valentino, who had visited before, could supply no better word to describe it.

  “This is the largest unit in the plant,” Broadhead said, “or it was anyway before they added a computer-generated special effects department, which is about as interesting to watch at work as a microwave oven. They go through more than eight hundred thousand yards of cloth here each year. Theoretically, that would clothe the population of La Jolla.”

  “The population of La Jolla can afford its own clothes,” Fanta pointed out.

  “Barstow, then. That’s the core of the reference library there. A good portion of it is chronically overdue on the shelves in the designers’ offices.”

  Under the catwalk that circled the room one story high, sturdy steel shelves arranged in stacks perpendicular to the walls supported rank after rank of books, some as small as change purses and crusted with gilding, many as large as world atlases. Some were very old and still wore the rings that had been used to chain them to medieval reading desks. There were nearly as many volumes in the room as there were articles of clothing.

  “It’s an unholy mess right now,” said a new voice. “We’re in the middle of switching from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress. I spent all day yesterday looking for the last century of the Roman Empire. Hello, Kyle, you look like James Thurber.” A silver-haired woman in glasses with round heavy black rims abandoned a paper pattern spread out on a cutting table to come forward and grasp the professor’s hand. She wore
a smock from neck to heels, stained with a rainbow spectrum of dyes.

  Broadhead, in his trenchcoat and bucket hat, chuckled malevolently. “I see you’re still wearing Edith Head’s prescription.”

  “Just the glasses. Don’t spread it around, but they were a prop. Windowpane lenses.” She tapped hers, which were as thick as shuffleboard shuttles and no windowpanes. “What’s so urgent I had to postpone Sandy Bullock?”

  “I love her,” Fanta said.

  “You never had to fit her.” She slid down her glasses and surveyed the young woman head to foot. “Size four.”

  “Two.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “How much?”

  “You’d lose,” Broadhead told Fanta. “Meet Sister Agnes, the finest wardrobe mistress in the business. She put Buster Keaton’s hat on Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon. The rest is Hollywood history.” He introduced Fanta and Valentino.

  “That was at Metro.” The woman didn’t shake hands. “And I’m a costume technician. Wardrobe mistresses went out with blackface.”

  “Right on, sister,” said Fanta.

  “Are you a nun?” asked Valentino.

  “I’m Presbyterian. I took my vows at Our Lady of Perpetual Alteration.”

  “She got the monicker when she slapped Mickey Rourke across the knuckles with a tape measure,” Broadhead said. “That’s when they asked her to leave Metro.”

  “They asked me back after Rourke crashed and burned, but I’d just finished reorganizing this rattrap.” Pointedly she checked the watch she had pinned to a lapel.

  Broadhead told the others to take the tour. “I’m going to tell Sister Agnes what we want.”

  “Maybe then you’ll tell us,” Valentino said.

  Fanta tugged at his sleeve. “Let’s browse. This is like being locked up in a toy shop.”

  They walked away, leaving the professor and the ersatz nun conversing in low tones.

  “What’s he up to now?” Valentino asked.

  “If it’s no worse than a misdemeanor, he’s heading in the right direction. Wicked! Check it out.”

  While she admired a spaghetti-strap dress with a label sewn inside reading J. ROBERTS/ERIN BROCKOVICH, he wandered toward a triptych mirror mounted on a carpeted platform, where a former member of the ensemble cast of a hit sitcom whose name he couldn’t remember was being fitted for yet another incarnation of a Jane Austen classic.

  The actor fussed with his breeches. “Man, these are tight. How do you, um…?”

  “Peel them down and squat, both functions.” The young man kneeling at his feet took a pin from his mouth and transfixed a loose seam. “Picture Mr. Darcy doing that in Technicolor.”

  Valentino rapped a knuckle on a Trojan breastplate on a torso form and got the hollow thump of papier-mâché. A mannequin dressed for evening told him Al Pacino was even shorter than he’d thought, and the uniform of a four-star general smelled heavily of marijuana. He managed to try on a greasy Stetson with Gary Cooper’s name stenciled on the sweatband before a small woman with a thimble on one thumb snatched it off his head and returned it to its place on a shelf lined with heads made of Styrofoam.

  “Go to Grauman’s and try your feet in his prints,” she said. “This is a place of work.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What did you do, wander away from the group?”

  “I’m an archivist, not a tourist.”

  “Is your name Gary Cooper?”

  “No. It’s Valentino.”

  She charged off, speaking in rapid Polish.

  After that his interest waned. It was just a warehouse after all. He was circling the room aimlessly, trying to stay out of the way of thundering racks on wheels and personnel darting about with hat pins and giant shears, when Broadhead caught his eye and waved him over to where he and Sister Agnes were standing. Fanta was nowhere in sight.

  As Valentino approached, a handsome black woman dressed in a smock similar to the costume technician’s unloaded a pile of clothing onto Agnes’ cutting table. The woman in charge scooped a military shako off the top of the pile and stuck it on his head.

  It was two sizes too large. When he raised it to clear his vision, she was holding a matching tunic up in front of him, pressing the shoulders against his at arm’s length to judge the effect. “It needs to be let out a little at the waist,” she said. “They wore corsets then. Unless…?” She lifted penciled brows above her glasses.

  “No corset,” Broadhead said. “Anyway, he looks like he’s in a marching band.”

  She threw the tunic next to the pile and snatched away the shako as he was taking it off. They were hard on hats there, and even harder on humans.

  Broadhead said, “No uniforms. That’s just a little too on the money. The old guy’s senile, not stupid. What else have you got?”

  Valentino said, “Just what—”

  Fanta glided up to the table, shoulders bare above a lace bodice and lifting pounds of skirts and petticoats clear of the floor. She was beaming. “Michelle Pfeiffer and I wear the same size.” She turned a malicious glance on Sister Agnes. “Two.”

  A young man came hurrying up behind her with a tape measure draped around his neck, looking nervous.

  Sister Agnes fixed him with a cold stare. “That dress is on loan from Columbia. Is this how you impress pretty girls when I’m not around?”

  “Uh, that isn’t an issue,” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry. She was so excited, and I saw you talking to her a few minutes ago, so I thought she was a VIP.”

  “You’ll be DOA in Human Resources if you don’t get it off her and back on the rack in five minutes. Unless you want to pay for it out of your salary.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He put a hand on Fanta’s shoulder to steer her away.

  “I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble,” she said.

  Valentino turned to Broadhead to intervene. The look on the professor’s face startled him. All the muscles had gone slack, as if he’d suffered a seizure.

  Broadhead said, “You look stunning.”

  Fanta eyed him closely, suspicion stamped on every feature. “You mean like something a Victorian threw up all over a wedding cake.”

  “No. Really beautiful. You should look like that more often. What I mean is, it wouldn’t kill you to put on a dress now and then.”

  Sister Agnes cleared her throat loudly. Every sewing machine in the room stopped whirring. “Can we do this? I’m expecting a plague of Baldwins at six.”

  Fanta went away with the young man to change, stopping once to glance back at Broadhead. The sewing machines started back up.

  “Sorry for the distraction.” Broadhead pointed with unnecessary violence at the next item of apparel on the pile. He seemed to be skewering an invisible adversary. “Let’s see that one.”

  It was a black swallowtail coat, intended to be worn with a shirt board and a low-cut formal vest. Those items and a pair of gray striped trousers lay next on the stack.

  Broadhead vetoed the coat as Sister Agnes was trying it on Valentino. “Too late in the day. What happened between them took place twenty-five years before Sunset Boulevard.”

  At last the archivist realized what was going through his friend’s mind. “This is harebrained,” he said. “If I had any idea this is what you were hatching, I’d never have let you drag me down here.”

  “If I had any idea you would, I’d have told you what I was hatching. What the devil’s this, another comic-opera uniform? Universal must be planning a full-scale adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore.” He pawed down through the pile.

  “It won’t work.”

  “Someone is forced to say that in every screwball comedy, and of course it always does. Is this Harris tweed?” He held up a brown herringbone Norfolk jacket.

  “Ray Milland wore it in Bulldog Drummond Escapes,” Sister Agnes said. “I wouldn’t keep it on more than a couple of hours. It’s been in mothballs so long it’s probably toxic to the skin.”

  “A couple of hours should
be more than enough.” Broadhead held it up against Valentino. “Perfect, and that’s as much praise as your physical charms will ever receive from me. Milland cut quite a figure in his day.”

  “I won’t wear it.”

  “It’d be a crime not to, a fit like this. Von Stroheim couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be a proper English country gentleman or Frederick the Great. Since walking shoes are more comfortable than jackboots, Brittania ruled. Try it on.”

  “No. It’s a numbskull notion. What’s more, it’s sick. I didn’t get into this profession to take advantage of an old man’s illness no matter what he’s done. And we don’t know if he’s done anything wrong.”

  “Of course not. If we did, you wouldn’t have to play dress-up at all. Where’s the changing room?”

  “I’m not parading across L.A. in August dressed like I’m riding to hounds!”

  “Why do you think I was happy it’s raining?” He turned to Sister Agnes. “A yellow slicker would be peachy. One of those big loose ones like firemen wear.”

  She jerked her chin at the black woman, who went toward the stairs to the upper racks.

  “Great. Now I’ll look like a school bus.”

  “This isn’t about you, or how you’ll look to strangers,” Broadhead said. “It’s about Greed.”

  Fanta, back in her tank top and cargo pants and transparent plastic raincoat, returned while they were arguing, listened for a minute, and said, “You know you’re going to do it, so why don’t you save your voice? You’ll need it to carry off the accent.”

  “You approve?” he said. “Of course you do, what was I thinking? You’re our resident expert on civil disobedience. How do you keep your grades in ethics courses from dragging down your average?”

  “I passed with a term paper on conscience. Mine’s clear. I’m not the one who’s haunted.”

  “I’m not haunted.”