“I’m not giving it to the university. I’m giving it to you. Do with it what you like, but if you donate it, as I’m sure you will, by all means get a receipt. The tax deduction will defray some of the cost of your construction project. You went a roundabout way of earning it, but you freed me from a grotesque state of affairs, and cleared the reputations of two great women. I know Andrea would have wanted you to have it.”
He stammered his thanks. Rankin accompanied them outside to their car, and when Valentino had secured the boxes with care in the trunk and shut the lid, the archivist and the tycoon clasped hands. Rankin stood with one hand raised until the curve of the driveway swept his image from the rearview mirror.
“Congratulations, Val,” Harriet said. “I’m sure you’ll watch it again as soon as you can get to a projector. It’s the next best thing to a private conversation with her.”
“It’s better.” He turned into the street. “Silence lasts longer.”
12
ON TUESDAY, THE day after the prisoner was released, the Los Angeles County Prosecutor called a press conference to announce that his office had dropped all charges against Matthew Rankin except one misdemeanor count of discharging a firearm inside the Beverly Hills city limits, with a recommendation to the judge to sentence him to time served. (Later that day, this charge, too, was dropped.) Questions were directed to the commissioner of the Beverly Hills Police Department, who directed them in turn to his chief of detectives, who adjusted his tinted glasses and displayed all the symptoms of acid reflux. The un-photogenic Lieutenant Ray Padilla was not present.
On Wednesday, a van marked with the three convergent triangles of a vehicle containing hazardous material arrived at the UCLA Film Preservation Department laboratory, and a two-man crew assisted technicians in transferring two reels of silver nitrate film packed in boxes from the van to ventilated archival cabinets inside the building. (Kyle Broadhead alternately referred to the two teams dressed in hooded hazmat suits and shiny black neoprene gloves as “Morlocks” and “Oompa-loompas.”) How Not to Dress had moved into its permanent home.
On Thursday, Dwight Spink red-tagged the grand staircase in the lobby of The Oracle for failure to meet safety regulations requiring a space of no more than three and one-half inches between the turned mahogany ballustrades in the banister railing. The inspector explained that children were inclined to get their heads stuck. Leo Kalishnikov suggested installing brass rods between the ballustrades at an additional cost of $2,500, not counting labor.
Later that same day, Spink approved the change but cited evidence of vermin activity on the premises that violated the health laws. Valentino got the inspector on the phone.
“They’re mice, not rats,” he said. “Rats don’t hang around a place when there’s no food. I learned that much growing up on a farm in Indiana.”
“I suggest the construction workers have been less than thorough cleaning up after themselves at the end of their lunch breaks. Hire an exterminator, Mr. Valentino.”
Valentino tracked down Kalishnikov at an excavation for a basement in Glendale, where the owner of a Mercedes dealership was planning to build his house around a home theater twice as big as Matthew Rankin’s in Beverly Hills. The theater designer wore an oilcloth cape and a yellow hard hat with a plume and stood in pirate boots up to his ankles in greasy clay. He took in the latest news with a shake of his head.
“Spink smells blood in the water,” he said. “The only way you’re going to get him off your back is to ask him his price and pay it.”
“You mean bribe him?”
“I would not use the word in his presence.” Kalishnikov slipped back into his accent. “His kind is cautious. He hopes by turning the screws to cause you to bring up the subject of emolument. That way he cannot be accused of initiating the negotiations.”
“What if I report him to the county?”
“For what, fulfilling his official responsibilities? Every matter he has brought up is legitimate. Most inspectors overlook minor things such as rodents, of which there is a healthy colony residing in the basement of City Hall. The building code is as long as the Bible and just as contradictory: One cannot conform to half the regulations without violating the other half. Spink has a zealot’s own knowledge of county scripture.”
“Well, I won’t pay him off. I’ve had all to do with blackmail I care to.”
“I applaud your integrity. I hope your pockets are deep enough to support it.” He rolled up the blueprint he’d been studying. “Bite the bullet and pay the two bucks. Otherwise the Oracle will take as long to put up as the Great Pyramid, and you’ll be buried in debt underneath it.”
Returning to his office, Valentino had Ruth put through a call to an exterminator, who calculated square footage and gave him an estimate of eight hundred dollars for the job.
“They’re mice, not escaped tigers. How much can it cost to set out a few traps?”
“It isn’t a Tom and Jerry cartoon, mister. I have to get a permit from the city, and then the building has to be evacuated and tented before I can start spraying.”
“How long does that take?”
“Oh, I can do it in an afternoon.”
“That’s not so bad. I was afraid I’d have to stop construction for a couple of days.”
“Well, that’s the actual spraying. The place will need three days to air out before anyone can go back in.”
Valentino groaned and told him to go ahead. When he hung up, Broadhead was standing in the doorway. “Rats in the revue?”
“Just one.” Valentino told him what Kalishnikov had said.
“He’s right,” Broadhead said. “Pay the two dollars.”
“Not if it were two dollars. It’s because people knuckle under to corruption that it flourishes. If I did, I’d never be able to look at the place again without thinking of that civil-service Uriah Heep.”
“Well, it’s your Chapter Eleven. I just dropped by to ask if you were thinking of serving roast pig or something like that tonight.”
“Dinner’s the farthest thing from my thoughts. Why?”
“Fanta and I are driving up the coast. We’re staying the weekend in a bed-and-breakfast.”
“Don’t you have a class to teach tomorrow?”
“I’m sure I do, but if I showed up after all this time I’d just confuse my T.A. and the students.” He made a gurgling noise through his unlit pipe. “I’m going to pop the question.”
“What happened to your case of cold feet?”
“Fanta’s are warm enough for both of us. I’m still too old for her, but I figure marriage to her will kill me off while she’s still young enough to shop for a second husband closer to her age.”
“Kyle, you’re an incurable romantic.”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t. What do you think Elaine would say?”
“I think she’d be happy you found someone to look after you. You know, this is the end of eggplant margaritas at midnight.”
“That’s okay, I was starting to get on my own nerves. That’s what happens when you live alone. On a completely unrelated subject, how are you and Harriet getting along?”
“She sat with me through How Not to Dress.”
“It’s love, then. I screened it this morning.” He grasped the doorknob. “Remember what I said about living alone. It’s an unnatural state.”
Alone that night in Broadhead’s house, Valentino called Harriet and told her about his day.
“I was going to tell you about mine,” she said when he’d finished. “Suddenly, trying to trace the only tooth in a homeless man’s decomposing head to the dentist who filled it doesn’t seem so bad. You aren’t going to pay the little jerk, are you?”
He smiled at the living room wall. “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who didn’t try to persuade me to.”
“You wouldn’t be who I thought you were if you did.”
“I hope you still feel that way when I finish falling from the to
p of the zoning tree, hitting every branch on the way down.”
“There’s another way,” she said. “Turn him in.”
“Kalishnikov says he’s too slippery. It’d be my word against his.”
“Not if you had evidence.”
He laughed shortly. “Now you think I’m a detective. I’m going back to calling myself a lowly archivist.”
“You can find something on him. You found Greed.”
“I’m beginning to think they’ll put that on my headstone. I’m not even sure Kalishnikov is right about Spink. Maybe he’s just an overachiever.”
“If that’s true, he should lose interest soon. Spending all that time at one site can’t be a wise investment of taxpayers’ money.”
“I knew talking to you would cheer me up,” he said. “Listen, Mom and Dad left me in charge of the house this weekend. Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll roast a pig.”
“I’m not sure what that means, but I can’t. I’m working a double shift. How about tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night I’m in Tijuana, trying to talk a retired director of Mexican movies out of his life’s work.”
“You and I are starting to sound like the typical professional couple.”
“If you call tracing teeth and bullfighting films typical.”
“Welcome to Hollywood.”
Irving Thalberg shifts in his seat, unwraps a small white pill from tinfoil, and places it under his tongue. Frances Marion, veteran scenarist that she is, has never seen the slender, delicate-appearing head of production display so much agitation.
“Are you all right?” She whispers, but not low enough to prevent a woman seated in the row in front of them from turning and shushing her. Every seat in the theater is occupied; unaware of the sneak preview scheduled to follow the comedy short. San Bernadino moviegoers have nevertheless provided a capacity crowd to see the main feature, The Kiss, Garbo’s last silent—evidence of unprecedented loyalty to the star in this talkie-dominated year of 1930. An audible gasp of pleasurable anticipation has greeted the title card for Anna Christie, accompanied by the legendary name. But Thalberg seems unmollified.
He ignores the interruption. “If you must know, I’m as nervous as a schoolgirl. Gilbert’s fall has the entire industry on edge.”
Marion’s own unease is twofold. Audiences reacted with universal disapproval to John Gilbert’s voice heard for the first time in Redemption. His career is in shambles, and MGM has lost one of the most bankable stars in its stable. Everything depends on how well—or ill—a speaking Garbo goes over. This, together with rumors of Thalberg’s fragile health, has Marion concerned for the studio’s future should the genius behind its success expire, possibly in this very theater. The first full year of the Great Depression does not smile upon unemployed screenwriters.
“We’ve been living on borrowed time for three years,” Marion reminds her employer. “She couldn’t go on making silents forever.”
“I’m not so sure. There isn’t a thing predictable about that impossible creature.”
The woman shushes them again. Garbo has entered, fifteen minutes into the first reel.
She leans against the door frame in a shabby waterfront bar, demonstrably exhausted, dressed in glamorous dowd in a cloche hat and a simple dark jacket over a low-cut blouse with wilted ruffles and a skirt reaching to mid-calf, plain shoes with two-inch heels on her feet, which some iconoclasts have described as large. As she slumps to a table hauling a plain suitcase, the auditorium is eerily silent—before a talking picture. Even silent films have always been accompanied by a musical score to match the mood. Not so much as a cough or a nervous giggle breaks the tension.
Thalberg leans close to Marion. “Garbo is holding them in the palm of her hand.”
“She hasn’t opened her mouth yet.”
Seated with her suitcase beside her on the floor, she makes eye contact with the waiter for the first time. Her lips part. The air quivers. Marion is quivering too.
“Gimme a visky,” says Garbo in that queer husky voice; no coach has interceded to dilute the heavy Scandinavian accent. “Chincher ale on the side.” As the waiter heads off, she turns her head his way. “And don’t be stingy, ba-bee.”
The stillness following this first line makes the one that preceded it seem absolutely rowdy. Thalberg reaches over and grips Marion’s wrist tightly. He has never before made physical contact with her.
And then the audience is on its feet, pounding its palms together in an artillery battery. One talented individual puts two fingers in his mouth and blasts an ear-splitting whistle. Moments elapse, and several onscreen lines are drowned out, before the viewers resume their seats, thirsty as drunkards for the next beautiful foghorn note from that celebrated breast.
“By God!” Thalberg isn’t whispering now. “By God, Frances! We’re saved!”
The woman in front of them turns her full face on them, stiff with indignation. “Please! Garbo’s talking!”
Valentino’s alarm clock rang. He came to consciousness, completely disoriented. He’d brought a DVD of Anna Christie home to Broadhead’s house from the office and watched it on the professor’s television before going to bed. He had no idea where he’d gotten the details of his dream; Hollywood lore stopped when Irving Thalberg had told Frances Marion, who’d adapted the scenario from Eugene O’Neill’s play about a Swedish prostitute, that Garbo had held her audience in the palm of her hand. The rest of the story was based on rave reviews and box-office totals. Encouraged by the success of her first talking feature, Garbo might have gone on making movies with her name above the title until she’d died at age 82, had she not retired in her thirty-sixth year into a life of relentless seclusion.
He roused himself sufficiently to flick the switch on the alarm and fall back onto his pillow, only to stir again when the ringing continued; it was the telephone on the nightstand. He fumbled the receiver off its cradle and muttered something into the mouthpiece.
It was Harriet. “Turn on CNN, quick.”
“What?”
She repeated it. “Call me back.” The connection broke.
He stumbled out into the living room, turned on the set, and surfed to the proper channel. The female anchor was talking about Iraq. He had to wait three minutes until the scroll at the bottom brought him fully awake.
He didn’t call Harriet back right away. Instead he dialed Matthew Rankin’s unlisted number in Beverly Hills.
13
RANKIN HIMSELF ANSWERED on the third ring. Valentino realized suddenly how late it was and that the housekeeper had probably gone to bed. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I’m just sitting here in my study, combing the Net for an estimate of how much my employees are cheating me out of. I think the experience of last week has snarled my sleeping rhythms for good.”
“The Swedish Military Archives have gone public with the theft. It’s on the news channel.”
“I imagine that took courage on their part. I wish some of our own institutions were as forthcoming.”
“I’m afraid there’s more. You know how the press is when it smells two breaking stories that appear to be related. Someone leaked to them the content of Roger Akers’ phony Garbo letter.”
A short silence slammed. “Who?”
“A source with the Beverly Hills Police Department who asked not to be identified.” It didn’t have to be Ray Padilla. Harriet had said keeping secrets wasn’t law enforcement’s strong suit; but it was only the one percent of uncertainty that kept Valentino from sharing his suspicions with the tycoon. “They’ve got just enough of the facts to reach the same conclusion you did at the beginning. They think the letter’s real, and they’re reporting it as if it’s among the material missing from Sweden. As they see it, Garbo and Andrea were having a lesbian affair and that’s what Akers was using to squeeze you.”
“The hyenas! I’ll sue them right off the air.”
“You’d just be throwing gasoline on the fire. When t
hey find out Akers was in Stockholm, they’ll treat it as confirmation, along with any strenuous action on your part to squash the story. I’m surprised you haven’t heard from them before this.”
“My number’s unlisted.”
“If I were you I’d change it, or discontinue the service. Telephone operators aren’t paid much, and the media have money to burn.”
The silence this time was longer. When Rankin spoke again his tone was level. “I’ll take your advice. Thank you for the warning. I’ll triple my security. If you need to contact me, call Clifford Adams.”
“There’s one other way to handle it,” Valentino said. “I doubt you’d like it, but it may be more effective.”
“I’m listening.”
“Call a press conference. Tell them the letter was forged and how it was done. They’ll swarm around you like bees for a couple of days, but when the authorities back you up they’ll find something else to boost ratings. In the meantime you’ll have set the record straight about Andrea and Garbo.”
“It will come out anyway, without my having to expose myself to the swarm.”
“It will take longer, maybe long enough for the rumor to grow legs of its own. Forgive me for presuming, Mr. Rankin, but I know how things work in this town, and I think you’ve been too busy insulating yourself from the outside world to understand. Without a host to feed on, a fifteen-second sound bite dies after a few days, but whenever a story lasts long enough to grow sidebars, travel the talk-show circuit, and get argued about at dinner parties, it can hang around as long as Paul Bunyan. The stigma may linger forever.”
“I disagree. A lie cannot live, and I can’t bear to wallow in the muck for even fifteen seconds.” Rankin thanked him again and excused himself to wake up his lawyer.
It was as bad as Valentino had predicted.
Throughout the weekend, every time he looked at a TV screen or passed a newsstand, Greta Garbo’s bewitching face gazed out at him. News libraries throughout the country were ransacked for decades-old studio glamour shots, telephoto candids, and pictures she’d posed for in the very early years before she began refusing to give interviews altogether. Oddly—or perhaps predictably—very few showed her in the fullness of her later years, despite the comparative availability of snapshots taken with her consent by her small circle of intimates; those that displayed her in gray hair and wrinkles were almost invariably blurred and grainy, showing a frumpily dressed matron in concealing hats, suffocating scarves, and the ubiquitous sunglasses adopted by generations of actresses eager to show the world they were as unapproachable as Garbo. These last never strayed beyond the width of a column, or glimmered longer than a few seconds over the shoulders of broadcast anchors. It was as Camille and Mata Hari and Ninotchka and Anna Karenina and the Swedish Sphinx of twentysomething that she filled pages and screens and the covers of magazines. It wasn’t so much that the camera had fallen in love with her all over again as that it had never abandoned its infatuation.
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