Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 02 - Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “What’s so important I had to delay my unpaid vacation?” he demanded.

  Valentino held out the fax.

  “I’ve seen it. When’s the last time you changed your cartridge?”

  “It isn’t mine, it’s LAPD’s.”

  “That was my next quesiton. You’ve got a cheap pipeline. All you have to do is buy it flowers and feed it from time to time.”

  “I don’t think that’s a road you want to go down, considering the reason you’re cleaning out your desk.”

  “I thought tipping the press to what was in the letter might send Rankin over the edge, force him to make a mistake that would reopen the investigation. Maybe I need some time off at that.” Padilla upended a coffee mug full of pencils into the box, started to put down the mug, then shrugged and put it in too.

  “It’s possible I owe you an apology. I thought you had it in for everyone who was better off than you, and would frame evidence just to bring him down. Now I’m beginning to think you’re the only cop in Beverly Hills who hasn’t forgotten what justice is all about. Do you know what the fax means?”

  “It’s in English, and I can read. The cops in Stockholm arrested the guy that stole Garbo’s letters from the military archives, a replacement janitor. Congrats to them. What’s it got to do with a cold case in California?”

  “It’s warming up. All the material reported missing was recovered from the janitor’s flat. It never left Stockholm. What does that do to the theory that Roger Akers stole it and used it to falsify the letter he blackmailed Matthew Rankin with?”

  “Maybe he and the janitor were in cahoots. Maybe he borrowed them long enough to make copies and gave them back. The janitor’s end would come out of whatever he got from selling them.”

  “You ran the background on Rankin and Akers. How long were they in Stockholm on that visit?”

  “They came home after four days.” Padilla chewed on his cigarette. “Not much time to set up a heist. Akers might’ve planned it long distance before they made the trip.”

  “How was his Swedish?”

  “I didn’t ask him. He’s dead.”

  “He’d need more than you can get from a tourist’s phrase book to communicate something as sophisticated as a conspiracy to commit grand theft. If he’d studied the language formally, there’d be a transcript; if he got it from Berlitz, he’d have tapes or CDs at his place or in his car. Even if he got rid of them, there’d have to be a paper trail of some kind.”

  “Maybe the janitor speaks English. I’m always hearing how European schools are better than ours when it comes to teaching languages.”

  “Something nudged me when I found out that whoever faked the blackmail letter needed at least a working knowledge of Swedish,” Valentino said. “I wasn’t in a frame of mind to know what it was at the time. Whether or not the actual thief speaks English, Akers had to be bilingual in order to fool Rankin, who knew enough to get by. I doubt the schools over there are so good that a janitor could pull it off.”

  “Nothing in Akers’ file says he spoke or wrote any other language well enough to order in a Mexican restaurant. Rankin did all the talking when they were abroad. I’ve still got some credit with Records and Information; I can check those other things. But maybe Akers had help over there besides the janitor.”

  “He wasn’t extorting enough from Rankin to pay that many accomplices. We’ll know more when the police over there finish interrogating their suspect. Meanwhile we need to let go of the Garbo angle if we’re going to clear this up.”

  “We,” Padilla said. “A disgraced cop and a stamp collector. The dream team.”

  “Any reinforcements you can suggest are welcome.”

  The lieutenant made a face and dropped the cigarette into his wastebasket in two halves. He plucked a shred of tobacco from his lower lip and flicked it away. “There’s a little crack in your theory. If Akers wasn’t squeezing Rankin, there’s no motive for shooting Akers. We can’t blow apart Rankin’s story that Akers attacked him when he refused to go on paying him without discarding the only other reason Rankin had for killing him. It’s like one of those damn number puzzles where you can’t slide one tile where it belongs without pushing another one out of its slot.”

  “Those puzzles are designed to be solved,” Valentino said. “And Roger Akers didn’t shoot himself.”

  “We know who shot Akers. Rankin admitted it.”

  “Let’s ask him why.”

  He wanted to put his plan into operation immediately, but he remembered he had a meeting scheduled with Henry Anklemire in Information Services. Backing out wasn’t an option; Smith Oldfield was enthusiastic about the deal with MGM, and the way Valentino’s life had been going lately he needed a friend in the legal department.

  The little publicist’s office was the only one on campus less commodious than Valentino’s. His abrasive personality had banished him to a monastic cell right next door to the boiler room in the basement of the UCLA administration building. During winter cold snaps—when skateboarders in Malibu wore scarves with their Speedos—the pipes rattled like maracas and the very walls seemed to sweat. Curling photographs in cheap frames showed Anklemire shaking hands with celebrities from both sides of the earthly pale. Some of the poses were putative; the ones with Richard Simmons and Gary Coleman looked genuine, but Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger screamed Photoshop, and most of the autographs appeared to have been written by the same hand.

  Anklemire popped up from behind his painted-plywood desk to wring his visitor’s hand, mauling bone and grinning exactly as in his pictures with teeth courtesy of the university’s dental school. He was a youngish man, but wore secondhand hairpieces he obtained from contacts in studio wardrobe departments, and his shiny-slick suit fit his tubby frame like the skin on a bratwurst.

  “Garbo!” He spoke in sentence fragments and exclamation points, like the blurbs on an old-time movie poster.

  “No, Valentino.”

  “You think I forgot your name? I’m still spending the bonus I got on the mileage from that Greed deal. Murder! Skeletons! A haunted moompitcher house! Boo! My onliest regret is we couldn’t sit on it till Halloween! Sit down! Not there, that one’s busted. I keep it around in case the director of the department comes to visit. Fat chance!”

  Valentino sat in an orange plastic scoop chair that looked as if it had come from a high school, working his hand until circulation returned. The little man couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without wheezing, but a lifetime of glad-handing had put him in shape to arm wrestle Mr. T.

  “Cigar?” Back behind his desk, Anklemire shoved a box of White Owls the other’s way. Valentino had visited many offices, but no one had ever offered him a cigar before. The man lived in a time warp.

  “No, thanks. Will this take long? I’ve got an important call to make.”

  “I never chaired a meeting longer than five minutes. Words are for the rubes. Garbo!” It was the most singular case of Tourette’s Syndrome the archivist had encountered. “I vant to be alone! Ha-ha!”

  “Actually, she didn’t say—”

  “You’re an ornament of this institution.”

  The statement, and the sudden grave expression that accompanied it, set him aback. He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you know what happens to ornaments the day after Christmas.”

  “I’m on the level. Football, phooey! Endowments from old geezers that can’t fit into their old varsity jerseys, horse puckey! This town was built on moompitchers. Where’d Hugh Hefner be without boobs, I ask you?”

  “I really can’t answer that.”

  “In the crapper, that’s where! You got to go with your long suit. I was in London last year, can you pipe that? I had frequent flyer miles burning a hole in my pocket, and Israel was at war with somebody or other. I seen some punked-up teenagers bopping through Picadilly, they had on Tshirts with movie stars on ’em. You think it was Larry Oliver and that tribe? Hell, no! Marilyn, Bogie, Jimmy Dean, American what-you-call icons!
Detroit can’t compete with the Nips, and those geeks in Silicone Valley can’t get it up with even the South Koreans, but our junk culture—I’m swiping the phrase from those fossils in the English Lit Department—our junk culture has muscled its way clear into Baghdad. Those ragheads can keep their weapons of mass construction. We got Garbo!”

  “Look, I’ve only been invited to an audition. I’m not much of a public speaker. It’s highly possible they’ll pass me over for someone who’s a bigger draw. When I agreed to this meeting I thought you wanted to write up my bio, something to throw to the reporters who write for the entertainment page.”

  “Hell, I could cobble up something dynamite without taking up your time. As to the rest, I can get you a dialogue coach from Tri-Star. This guy taught Gwyneth Paltrow how to speak English. I asked you here to give me some ideas on how I can turn this canned ham into a honey-baked West Virginia.”

  Valentino rubbed his temples with his thumbs. He never came away from a meeting with Anklemire without a thumping headache, and the racket from the pipes next door wasn’t helping. “I may need that dialogue coach. Right now I’m not sure we’re speaking the same language.”

  “Look, Garbo’s dead what, fifteen, sixteen years? That’s forever in PR if you can’t come up with a hook to make it what-you-call relevant today. Greed was good, it was great; we had that murder. I got up my adrenaline when that shooting went down in Beverly Hills, and when that dyke thing broke I thought we was golden; but it’s been weeks, and I need a sure-enough Dr. Frankensteen to keep it alive till How to Dress hits Best Buy.”

  “How Not to Dress.”

  “Schlemiel, Schlemozzle.” He waggled a hand. “Give me input. How can we pump blood into this carcass, make it stand up and shout, ‘Mazoola?’ ”

  “I’ve no idea. I’m an archivist, not a publicist.”

  Anklemire studied his face, then sat back, squirming in his blown-out Naugahyde chair; the pernicious hemorrhoids that had driven him from Madison Avenue to this backwater were evident. “Well, I’ll fire up some kind of rocket. I ain’t dead yet.”

  “I wouldn’t give up hope.”

  Valentino had intended the encouragement to be rhetorical, but it was a mistake to underestimate Henry Anklemire’s powers of interpretation. He hounded Valentino with questions all the way to the exit. The man was as bad as the jackals from the press.

  21

  HE CALLED MATTHEW Rankin’s house, but was told by the housekeeper that her employer was meeting with his board of directors in San Francisco and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Ray Padilla took in the information over his cell phone and told Valentino to call him when he had an appointment.

  “I wish we were wrapping this up tonight,” Valentino said. “This waiting is murder.”

  “Murder is murder. Having second thoughts?”

  “I had those an hour ago. Right now I’m halfway between my third and my fourth.”

  “I’d never trust you with this if I were in solid with the department; there’s nothing like having a fat detective sergeant by your side and a prowl car purring at the curb for leverage. Rankin trusts you. If I try to get my foot in the door he’ll call his lawyer and I won’t be able to come within five hundred feet of him without a trunkload of probable cause.”

  “I’m not backing out on you, Lieutenant. I just needed a pep talk. I’m still hoping this whole thing turns out to be a monstrous misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t. But then I’ve got a pension going down for the third time.” The connection broke. He had the telephone etiquette of an alligator gar.

  Valentino’s cell rang while he was driving to his residential hotel. It was Leo Kalishnikov.

  “Spink resigned, did you hear?” he said by way of greeting.

  “Through the grapevine. Any more good news?”

  “Indeed, my friend. The zoning board has conferred and voted to extend you a temporary variance for the remainder of this term, to be reviewed next spring, when if there are no outstanding violations the members will consider making it permanent. Until then you are free to take up residence in the Oracle once again.”

  “What about the stairs to the projection booth?”

  “Spink withdrew the objection when he submitted his resignation. Evidently he misinterpreted the ordinance.” The Russian made a decorous noise in his throat. “Perhaps you have some insight that can shed light on this surprising turn of events. I myself have none.”

  “I didn’t really know the man. Maybe he had an epiphany of some kind.”

  “With a bus, maybe, crossing Santa Monica against the light.”

  Valentino drove half a block in silence. When Kalishnikov spoke again, his Old World manner was back in place. “I look forward to making your better acquaintance throughout this project. You have facets that do not reveal themselves in the course of casual conversation.”

  “I’m not exactly a Fabergé egg.” He thanked the designer sincerely for his efforts with the zoning board and said good-bye, relieved to have broken contact. Beneath all his preposterous pretensions, so carefully tailored to California culture, the Russian was dangerously perceptive.

  He checked out of the hotel that same day. A crew was at work in the theater; he greeted them cheerfully, raising his voice above the noise from the power tools, and borrowed a framing hammer from a carpenter to tear down the barricade from the stairs to his apartment in the projection booth. He unpacked immediately and was dialing Harriet to invite her to a house warming party for two when he remembered they were on a break. That took the shine off the evening.

  The electric generator he’d rented to power Midnite Magic’s equipment had gone back, and the one the construction workers used would leave with them at the end of the shift. He lit the Coleman lantern he used most nights and stretched out on his sofa with the shopping bag Harriet had given him on the floor beside it, sorting out Garbo’s letters in English, saving the rest for translation when he was back in Harriet’s good graces, and reading the accounts of thoughts and events going back eighty years. He didn’t bother to arrange them in order—few were dated, just as she preferred not to sign them—and so he found himself moving back and forth in time, sharing intimacies intended for friends that reflected naive youth, wordly age, temporary elation, deep despair, and a surprisingly long list of prosaic details of a life spent moment to moment, and so far outside glamour as to shout out in protest against it.

  He pictured her, pale to the point of transluscence, chain-smoking cigarettes in her apartment in Hollywood, her condominium in New York City, her hotel in Stockholm, scribbling, scribbling; pouring out her experiences unedited, and managing to break down her life hour by hour without a single salacious confession and no insight deeper than her decision to buy a hat. John Gilbert, the love affair of her life, the tragicomedy of the nascent movie colony and the crack at the point of pressure that brought down the Great Lover in pieces smaller than Humpty-Dumpty’s, was mentioned once in passing and never again. The only comments on her films involved a complaint about an unbecoming dress in A Woman of Affairs and her personal review of her performance in Anna Christie, the landmark that had made Garbo’s voice as famous as her face: “Terrible.” Valentino found himself chafing at her stubborn lack of appreciation. Garbo was wasted on Greta Garbo.

  It was far from a complete record. The letters were addressed to Vera Schmiterlöw and a handful of other Swedish friends of many years’ standing, not the fixtures in the industry that had turned a chubby peasant girl destined to marry some goatherd into a goddess for the ages, mysterious and unobtainable, and gaps in the continuity suggested letters lost or withheld for reasons of privacy. Possibly she’d saved her innermost thoughts for expression in Swedish. But that left dozens of pages that read like the diary of a not very interesting woman who’d led a life so ordinary as to suggest a blind fear of anything that might be described as unique or adventurous. She was passionate about her rug designs, the antiques she collected, the curios she bought t
o rest her eyes upon when she locked herself away from the world. She had spent the rest onscreen, and left it there when she’d turned away from the Kliegs into the pale reflected sunlight of early retirement. It should have been a sad story, as drenched in pathos as Camille’s, Anna Karenina’s, and Grusinskaya’s, signature roles that continued to burn with a silver flame in revival houses and home theaters in both hemispheres; but it was not. Camille and Karenina had died early, of wasting disease and suicide, and Grusinskaya was consigned to the living death of grief for love lost. Garbo had gone on living.

  Whoever had framed a false letter purporting to drive Garbo from the closet obviously had not known her, or taken the time to learn more from her correspondence than the slope of her l’s. She was not the type to write a love letter of any kind, or to confide to anyone—at least not in writing—the details of her amours or even her impure thoughts. She had armored herself against not only the pryers and busybodies of her time, but of all time. Of all the heroes and legends of past and present, she alone had kept her feet of clay from public view. Garbo was gold: The only substance in the universe that would not deteriorate or even surrender its glow.

  Valentino laid the last letter on his chest, closed his eyes, and slept without dreaming.

  If Greta Garbo was gold, Matthew Rankin was stainless steel. It was the housekeeper’s day off. For an octogenarian left to his own devices after a round-trip flight up the coast and a business meeting that must have been high-powered because it had required his presence, he looked as fresh and burnished as if he’d spent the time at a spa. His face was a healthy shade of bronze, his white hair was brushed and gleaming, and he was one of the very few modern men who could wear a smoking jacket and a silk scarf without looking affected or effete.