“Who else? Craig was into me for a bundle, and friendly poker is still poker. I told him he could work it off by fronting for me with Elizabeth Grundage. Since I bought the Frankenstein poster, everyone knows I’ll pay any price for rare horror memorabilia. If she found out I was interested, she might try to hold me up for a million. She was married to a gangster.”
“Did you authorize him to steal the footage if he had to?”
“Of course not! Half the fun of owning something special is showing it off. I couldn’t do that if I got it illegally. Is that what he tried to do?”
“He did more than try. Something he said to his ex-wife makes it look like he was planning to double-cross you and sell the reels himself. A thing like that might make you angry enough to kill him when you found out.”
The collector’s gleam hardened. “Are you accusing me?”
“You said you’d kill for those reels.”
“You’re in the business. Can you honestly claim you’ve never said the same thing about a film you really wanted?”
Valentino thought of the Buster Keaton comedy he had lost to Viacom. Aloud he said, “Some collectors say it and mean it.”
The magazine publisher slumped. He was barrel-chested but going soft, poised on the edge of obesity. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw House of Frankenstein in a neighborhood theater. I identified with the monster, who couldn’t help being what he was, but was persecuted by ignorant villagers because he was different. I was a fat kid on a city playground; I couldn’t defend myself from bullies, but that poor clumsy brute with spikes in his neck could and did. I found justice there in the dark. Outside, I couldn’t even smack a wasp. I still can’t.”
Valentino believed him. “Can you think of anyone who’d want that footage enough to commit murder for it?”
“Dozens. But they couldn’t know Craig had it. What about Mike Grundage?”
“The police are working that angle.” The film detective stood. “Thanks for your time. I enjoy your magazine.”
“I’m afraid you’re in the minority. The new generation isn’t interested in the old monsters. They want slashers and flesh-eating zombies and writhing entrails onscreen. No moral code, no mythic quality. Now the monsters are in the audience.”
Valentino drove back to UCLA to work. He was out of leads.
He parked underground and boarded the elevator to ground level. Two large men crowded in with him. The doors closed, the car started upward. One of the men squashed the emergency stop button. The car halted with a lurch.
A fist struck Valentino low. He emptied his lungs, groped for the safety bar. His legs were swept from under him. As he fell, a knee came up toward his face. That was the last thing he saw for a while. But he could hear.
“Bust his arms?” A wheezy, broken-windpipe voice.
“Boss said no.”
The second voice was flat and toneless. Now he smelled stale cigarette breath, felt the heat of a face bent close to his. The owner of the flat voice said, “Forget Frankenstein, Rudolph. Or take the stairs.”
The car started moving again. It stopped, the doors rumbled. Fresh air came in. Valentino heard the wheezy voice one last time. “Rudolph. That’s rich.” The doors closed.
He didn’t know how long he lay there before someone found him. It was Ruth, his secretary. “You look like Errol Flynn on Sunday morning.” She helped him to his feet. “Want to go to the medical center?”
He could see now. His nose was bleeding, but it seemed unbroken. “Just tip me into my car.”
He drove through a pounding headache. At home he vomited into the toilet, washed his face, then vomited again. He’d never been knocked out before; all those Alan Ladd movies he’d seen had said nothing about throwing up.
The doorbell had been ringing for some time before he went to answer it, holding a wet washcloth to his forehead. It was Special Delivery. He signed for it and carried the package inside. It was square, slightly smaller than a pizza box and twice as thick. He recognized Craig Hunter’s handwriting.
With unsteady hands he tore off the paper and undid the straps that secured a black metal box. There were two aluminum film cans inside. He prised one open, removed the reel, and unwound enough of the film to study it against the light. For old silver-nitrate stock it was in remarkably good condition; the storage vault must have been climate-controlled. After a minute he rewound the reel and returned it to its can.
His heart was hammering. It throbbed in his aching head, fed his brain. He had a pretty good idea who’d killed Craig.
The telephone rang. “Valentino.”
“You recuperate fast. I didn’t think you’d pick up so soon.”
He recognized the voice. “What do you want?”
“Hunter had only one friend left he could trust with what he had. That’s why he called you that night. You know what I want.”
“If I don’t come through, will you tell them to break my arms next time?”
“I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”
There was a pause, then another voice came on. “Val?”
“Lorna?” He gripped the receiver hard enough to crack it.
Lorna Hunter started to say something, but was cut off. The other voice came back. “You’ve seen enough crime pictures to know how this works. The film for the woman. No police. Midnight tonight. Here’s the address.”
Valentino fumbled for a pencil, started to write it down, then stopped. He knew the place.
The Hollywood Wax Museum was one of Valentino’s favorite haunts, a place to go and revisit the giants of his Late Show youth. At night it seemed less friendly. Its Art Deco façade gleamed like a mortuary in the smog-muted starlight.
The lock on the front door was broken. He’d thought to bring along a flashlight; once inside he poked its beam around the corridor beyond the ticket counter. Although he hadn’t been told where to go in the building, he walked past the Indiana Jones and Star Wars exhibits, past Easy Rider and James Dean and Gone with the Wind to the Chamber of Horrors.
Here a single overhead fixture burned, casting atmospheric shadows over the grotesque waxen faces of Lon Chaney, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Peter Lorre, and the Mummy. He paused between Lugosi’s Dracula and Karloff ’s Monster, but that wasn’t where the light was. He found it shining over the dungeon set from The Pit and the Pendulum.
It was a lot more convincing than J. Arthur Greenwood’s office. The stone walls were realistically moldy-looking, and the blood on the razor-sharp axe swinging above the pallet where Vincent Price lay seemed as if it were about to drip. The woman chained upside down by her ankles eight feet above the floor was the only sour note; nylon blouses and lounging slacks were not yet in fashion at time of the Inquisition. It took Valentino a second to realize that this figure was not made of wax. It was Lorna. Her eyes were wild. She whimpered through her gag.
“Melodramatic, I admit. But it seemed appropriate.”
As the newcomer spoke, he strolled forward through the shadows at the end of the corridor.
Valentino recognized the voice from the telephone. He said, “No surprises in this script. Greenwood’s too gentle, and you’re the only other person who knew Craig had the footage. Mike Grundage wouldn’t have cared. He’s got his own problems.”
Horace Lysander stopped under the light. The lawyer’s hands were in the pockets of his suit.
“Fortunately the police aren’t as logical as you,” he said. “They pile on the first good suspect. That’s what I counted on.”
Something tugged at the package under the film detective’s arm. He wheeled to face a man who might have posed for the figure of Frankenstein’s monster. “Let’s have the merch, Rudolph.” He made a small motion with a big automatic.
His toneless speech was familiar to Valentino. He gave the man the box containing the two test reels.
“What’s a high-priced attorney need with a quarter-million dollars in old film?” he asked.
; “Not a thing. I’m going to destroy it, along with anyone who would jeopardize Elizabeth Grundage’s privacy by bringing up her past associations.”
“So you hired this goon and his partner to beat Craig Hunter to death and pin it on Mike Grundage. Wouldn’t that reflect just as much light on his mother?”
“They haven’t met in years. She had higher hopes for him. Mike’s a cheap gangster like his old man Tony. Call it payback for all the crimes he’d have been convicted of but for me.”
“Why didn’t you have my arms broken in the elevator?”
“You needed them to carry the reels. That’s Earl, by the way. You weren’t properly introduced before. He and Roy used to work for Mike. Mike thinks they still do, but Mike never got them off a murder charge in open court. Isn’t that right, Roy?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
The wheezy response drew Valentino’s attention to the top of the dungeon’s false wall. A man nearly as ugly as Earl stood on a step-ladder behind it, gripping the end of the toggle that secured the chain Lorna was hanging from to the ceiling.
“Tell him to get his hand away,” Valentino said. “If she falls she’ll break her neck.”
Lysander smiled. “One less thing to break when they finish you both off and snap your arms below the elbows.”
“It won’t wash. Why would Grundage have us killed?”
“Because the police think he had Hunter killed for stiffing his sharks, and because you both decided to play Dick Tracy. I never reported those missing reels. Neither did you, or you wouldn’t have come here alone.” His smile broadened. “I’ll defend Mike at his trial. Who knows? I might even get him off.”
Earl put down the reels and stuck his gun under his coat, flexing his fingers. Valentino hit him with the flashlight.
“Roy!” barked Lysander.
Roy jerked loose the toggle.
While Earl staggered, Valentino lunged. He caught Lorna around the waist with both arms. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Earl fumbling for his gun.
“Police! Lose it!”
Earl swung on the new voice, automatic in hand. A shot rang off the walls of the corridor. He grasped his arm and fell to one knee. Sergeant Ernest Gill kept his smoking revolver trained on Earl while Officer John Redfern sprinted past, covering Roy and Lysander with an automatic as big as Earl’s.
Raising his hands, the lawyer glared at Valentino. “I said no police!”
“You’ve seen too many movies,” said the film detective.
In the screening room in his home, Valentino cradled the receiver of his telephone. “That was Elizabeth Grundage. She’s agreed to sell the Frankenstein test to UCLA for the amount Craig offered, as soon as the prosecutor’s through with it.”
Lorna, seated on the sofa, sipped from a glass of iced tea.
“As soon as it’s been transferred to safety stock. I won’t risk something this valuable to a humid police property room.” He finished threading the film through the projector. “Ready?”
“Is it going to be scary?”
“If it is, we’ll hang on to each other.” He turned off the lights and started the movie.
Director’s Cut
JUSTIN RING SAT BESIDE a table on the edge of the Olympic-size pool behind his house in Beverly Hills, but he wasn’t taking the sun. In his terry robe, sandals with socks, sail-brimmed straw hat, mirrored glasses, and full beard, he exposed almost no skin as he sipped from a glass he refilled occasionally from a pitcher of vodka and orange juice under the umbrella. As he weighed nearly three hundred pounds, none of it muscle, his visitor didn’t regret the cover-up.
“I’m Valentino,” said the newcomer, stopping before the table with his back to the sun. “Thanks for taking the time to see me, Mr. Ring.”
Ring’s watery eyes studied him above the rims of his glasses. “You look a little like the Great Lover, at that. I suppose you cultivate the resemblance.”
“Just the opposite; or I try. My hair’s too straight to hold a perm, and I can’t change my Italian ancestry. Mostly it’s an embarrassment.”
“You’re from UCLA, you said.” End of chitchat.
“I’m with the Film Preservation Department. We have a nearly complete collection of the pictures you directed. You ought to come take a look sometime.”
“I’ve seen them all.”
“So have I, and I daresay more times even than you. There’s no getting around it, sir; I’m a Justin Ring fan, ever since I saw Fear the Wicked the first time on the late show when I was in high school.”
“I tried to get out of that contract. In the end I needed the money to finish Ibsen. That died. Fear the Wicked lives, on cable and video and every time some chucklehead decides to put together a Ring festival. Is it any wonder I retired?”
Valentino had heard the retirement was less than voluntary. He also thought the Ibsen biopic pretentious and dull. Aloud he said, “Actually, there’s one Ring film I haven’t seen, and neither has anyone else in forty years. That’s the reason I called for this appointment.”
“My student film.”
“No one who appeared in it has come forward, and the only person who saw it besides you is dead. That was your instructor for the course.”
“There were three in the cast. Two died, and here sits the third. I always was my favorite lead.”
“UCLA has cleared a generous offer for a print for our archives. You can accept it in cash or donate the film and deduct the amount from your taxes.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the amount.”
Ring topped off his glass. “You know about my tax problems or you wouldn’t have suggested a charitable deduction. It couldn’t possibly be enough to offset my debt to the IRS. But that’s moot. The film doesn’t exist. I burned every print and the negative years ago.”
“That’s a common ploy to close discussion,” Valentino said. “The true auteur rarely destroys his work, regardless of its merit. It’s like killing one of his children.”
“Thank God I never had any. They’d have sided with my ex-wives. Sorry you wasted a trip, Mr. Chaney.”
“Valentino. Chaney was the horror star.”
“Valentino was pretty horrible in Son of the Sheik.” Ring chuckled. “I’m through with the movie business, or rather it’s through with me. The industry has no room for aging legends. I’m preparing to sail my launch around the world. Fifty-foot waves and a typhoon at sea hold no fears for someone who’s dealt with studio accountants. Who is it, Ki?”
The white-coated houseboy who had shown Valentino to the pool materialized at his elbow. Ki was far from a boy: After a heavy rainstorm, the cracks and seams in his ancient Asian face might have held enough water for a desert journey. “Mister Cortez.” He thrust a cordless telephone at his employer.
Ring snatched it from him as if it were a gun. “Goodbye, Valentino.”
The visitor strode toward the house. As he turned into the flagstone walk that led to the street, he saw that the director was just then raising the receiver to his ear.
They didn’t talk again. Three months later, Justin Ring’s motor launch, the Billy Bitzer, lost radio contact with Australia and was believed to have broken up on the Great Barrier Reef. Rescue craft found splinters of wreckage, but no Ring. All the producers who had refused to finance his later films turned out for the memorial services in Hollywood. One wept for the CNN cameras.
All this happened eight years ago. In the meantime, Valentino was promoted to head the Film Preservation Department at UCLA. His reputation as a bloodhound who sniffed out traces of long-lost celluloid treasures gave birth to an indulgence: He had business cards printed identifying him as a “film detective.” He kept his small office, however, explaining that he had enough trouble finding items he’d mislaid without broadening his options. Working out of that cramped venue, Valentino had brought to light nineteen motion pictures whose recovery the cinematic world had despaired of, and was in the process of restoring an additional
five.
When the man whose visit would catapult him back eight years knocked on his door, the film detective was in fact deeply ensconced in 1920. Twenty-two feet of the silent feature Sherlock Holmes—the key scene between John Barrymore’s Holmes and Gustav von Seyffertitz’s Professor Moriarty—were jumping and stuttering through the Movieola on his desk. The footage, inexpertly spliced and spotted orange with oxidation, was nevertheless the only significant portion that had surfaced since talkies came in.
Muttering resentment at the interruption, Valentino rewound the reel carefully and placed it in the custom-designed, climate-controlled miniature vault he ruefully referred to as his $12,000 Frigidaire. Then he opened the door to a tall, slender specimen of over-the-hill Malibu surf bum: balding in front, with shoulder-length hair tinted and beautifully styled, and a comfortably threadbare silk sportcoat over a Pink Floyd T-shirt and faded Wranglers. He wore sandals on his bony bare feet.
“Valentino? Man, who’s your plastic surgeon?” The man’s gaze flicked from his face to Rudolph Valentino’s on the framed poster for The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on the wall behind the desk—the historian’s one self-deprecating nod to his immortal namesake—just in case the joke wasn’t clear.
Valentino smiled tolerantly. His visitor had a brown paper bundle under one arm. He wondered if this was a marijuana delivery sent to the wrong address. “This is the faculty floor,” he said. “I think you want the student lounge downstairs.”
“Not unless the movie guy’s there. I got something for him.” He patted the bundle, which might have contained film reels.
“I’m the movie guy, but if that’s your answer to Endless Summer, I’m not in the business.”
“My name’s Elmo Kirdy. You knew my uncle, I think. Justin Ring?”
Valentino searched the man’s face, but could see no resemblance to the obese, bearded saurian of Ring’s later years. Perhaps there was a little, to photographs taken on the set when he was the enfant terrible of a different Hollywood. “I wasn’t aware he had any blood relatives.”
“Neither was he, apparently, for all the attention he paid my mother, his own sister. He didn’t even come to her funeral.”
Valentino: Film Detective Page 4