He gave her a card. “I’m a film archivist. I understand Mr. Pegler worked in the developing lab at MGM in the twenties. I wanted to ask him some questions about early Hollywood.” He was pretty sure “about a murder” would not result in an interview.
“You’ve told me more about his background than he’s ever told any of us, except when he’s regressing, and that’s usually a jumble. From some of the things he’s said, I thought he had something to do with pictures. He’s having a good day today. He’ll enjoy a visit. Room eighteen.”
He passed some bent elderly people pulling themselves along a rail in the hallway and stopped before eighteen. A loud argument appeared to be going on inside. Then he recognized Humphrey Bogart’s raspy lisp, inviting the coppers to come up and get him. Valentino knocked loudly to make himself heard above the TV. The shouting stopped and a voice told him to come in.
“You don’t look like you have any pills for me. Come to rob me?”
The old man seated in the wheelchair next to the bed had a full head of white hair and lively eyes in a thin, pale, pleated face. He wore a white dress shirt that looked freshly ironed and loose tailored slacks, cut off and sewed neatly at the knees, below which there was nothing. He pointed his remote control at Valentino as if it were a gun. On the TV screen atop his bureau, Bogie was shooting it out with the police in silence.
Valentino said no and held out a card. Pegler moved his lips over what was printed on it. His ninety-six-year-old eyes appeared to be in good working condition.
“What the hell’s a film detective?”
Valentino explained, then added, “I just bought the Oracle Theater. I wanted to ask you some things about it as a former owner.”
“You bought yourself a money hole, how’s that for starters? Cost you a lot less just to hang a sign around your neck saying ROB ME. Patrons, the tax man, studios, even my own projectionist took everything that wasn’t bolted down. Then Washington took everything that was. I was all set to sell to Paramount when Antitrust told the studios they couldn’t own theaters anymore. That was in forty-seven. The next nine years broke me and I finally let the old trap go to real-estate sharks for less than I owed in back taxes.”
“Why didn’t you sell Greed? Plenty of collectors would have made you a handsome price even then.” He watched closely for Pegler’s reaction.
The old man’s face was blank. “Sell greed? I didn’t think that was something you sold. Folks are generally born with it.”
“I’ll get to the point, Mr. Pegler. A man’s skeleton was found in the film vault at the Oracle, along with some reels of old film. Do you know anything about it?”
“What vault? I stored all the pictures I rented in the basement.”
“The realty firm tore down a plaster wall that was covering the vault. I thought you might know who put it up.”
Pegler scowled at his remote, as if he might wipe Valentino out by changing channels. “You’re asking me to take a lot at face value. If you’re who you say you are, if you own the Oracle, if there’s a skeleton and film in a vault, that wall was there when I bought the place. You’ll have to ask Max Fink. You’ll find him in Forest Lawn under six feet of California.”
Valentino didn’t press the point. “I understand you were a film technician at Metro.”
“Don’t make it sound so grand. I was an assistant developer. Young squirt that I was, I planned to run the studio one day, take Thalberg’s place. Then some damn fool left a cigarette burning next to some fresh film stock. When the flames hit the chemicals, the dark room went up. Me, too. They had to cut me in half to save what didn’t burn.” He thumped one of his stumps with the hand holding Valentino’s card. The card slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor. It reminded Valentino of a cinder.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not necessary. I was going to direct, then produce, then buy the studio. Instead I bought a theater. Folks needed a place to go to forget when times got hard. It was good living right up till I got robbed.”
Valentino thanked him for the information and grasped the doorknob. “Who’s Eric?” he asked.
“Eric?” The old man shook himself out of the past. “These kids around me gossip like old women. I get confused sometimes. Eric was my first dog. Smartest Great Dane you ever saw. Hell, he’s dead ninety years. Coal wagon run over him.”
“I thought it might have been Erich von Stroheim. You both worked at Metro.”
“That old fake. I’d hear him snarling at my boss outside while I was developing. You couldn’t print a frame fast enough to bring a smile to that fish face. Said he once belonged to Franz Josef ’s Imperial Guard. I bet he shoveled out the stable.”
“He was a great director, though.”
“So was DeMille, and he knew how to work inside a budget. You know von Stroheim shut down production on Merry Go Round three days waiting for delivery on Austrian Army underwear that never showed up on screen? He broke the bank finally. That’s when Mayer bought the studio and fired him.”
Valentino was about to point out that things hadn’t happened quite that quickly when Pegler lifted his remote and flipped the TV sound back on, just in time for Bogart to catch a bullet in the back and plummet to his death. The film detective left. On his way out he leaned into the office. “I’m afraid Mr. Pegler didn’t enjoy my visit after all.”
The woman in the ponytail smiled sympathy. “A little thorny, was he? That’s how you know it’s one of his good days.”
Kyle Broadhead was teaching an evening class when Valentino got back to UCLA. Valentino went to his own office to wait and found his message light blinking. Sergeant Franks had called and left her number at Homicide. He thought about putting off returning the call—she might have decided to rescind the three-day reprieve and demand immediate delivery of Greed—but worrying about disaster was as bad as the disaster itself. He dialed the number.
“You academic types keep police hours,” Franks said. “Ever hear of a director named Castle?”
He hesitated. “William Castle. He shot horror flicks on the cheap during the ’50s and ’60s. He used gimmicks to heighten the reaction: battery-charged seats to shock the audience, painted sheets on wires to send spooks flying over their heads, actors in costume running up and down the aisles. Early experimental theater.”
“That checks. Department computer shows him answering a public-nuisance complaint in nineteen fifty-eight for scaring an old lady half to death during a showing of something called The House on Haunted Hill at the Oracle. Care to hear the particulars?”
He said yes. He felt a tingle, as if he were sitting in one of Castle’s electrified seats.
“Seems a wire or something broke thirty minutes in and a certain object dropped into the old lady’s lap. She wet her pants and screamed for a cop. Guess what it was.”
“A human skeleton.”
“Maybe you are part detective. Well, this Castle is a skeleton himself now, so we can’t grill him. But if no dental records turn up suggesting otherwise, which is a crapshoot anyway after all this time, we may safely consider Mr. Bones an alumnus of some medical-school anatomy class and redirect our energies toward murders that took place in this century.”
“What does Harriet Johansen say?”
“About what, the case or your perfect cheekbones? I’m not a dating service.”
“She said I had perfect cheekbones?”
“Don’t assume you’re off the hook,” the sergeant snarled. “I don’t close cases on the evidence of convenience. You’ve got sixty hours to deliver that old film.” The connection broke.
Broadhead’s office was locked. Either he’d gone straight home from his class or had stopped in and come back out, assuming Valentino was still in San Diego. The film detective went home. This time he dreamed von Stroheim was dancing with a skeleton.
“If you’re determined to rot your brain, make sure the tripe you write about is entertaining,” Broadhead said. “When you return Dumb and Dumber,
rent a Blondie film and write about Penny Singleton.”
The student shuffled out in his baggy pants and Scary Movie T-shirt, carrying his paper rolled up with the scarlet F inside.
“He compared Jim Carrey to Chaplin.” The professor buckled his briefcase and scowled at Valentino as if he were responsible for the student’s lapse. “Good morning. You look conflicted. Did the canary you swallowed give you heartburn?”
Valentino told him about William Castle.
“I knew that,” Broadhead said. “The incident made the front page of the Entertainment section in fifty-eight.”
“Is that all you found?” Valentino accompanied him up the steps of the lecture hall.
“Nope. I almost stopped looking after March nineteen fifty-six. That’s when the projectionist at the Oracle disappeared.”
Valentino stopped with one foot on the top step.
Broadhead switched on his desk lamp and handed Valentino the printout from the Times City section:
POLICE SEEK THEATER EMPLOYEE
The Fugitive detail of the Los Angeles Police joined the Missing Persons bureau today in the search for a projectionist who vanished between his home and his job at the Oracle Theater Sunday afternoon. Theft and flight are suspected.
Albert Spinoza, 21, a film student at the University of Southern California and a part-time licensed projectionist, was reported missing Monday morning by his mother, with whom he lived, after he failed to return home Sunday night from his job at the Oracle on South Broadway. Oracle owner and manager Warren Pegler told police that Spinoza did not show up for work Sunday afternoon. Pegler, who is supervising a remodeling project inside the theater, said that a matinee showing of The Ten Commandments had to be canceled, as no replacement could be found who was licensed by the Motion Picture Projectionists’ Union.
This morning, Pegler reported to police that the box-office cash receipts were missing from Saturday night’s premiere screening of The Ten Commandments. He told officers an estimated $1,000 had disappeared from a safe in the projection booth. Police believe that Spinoza may have fled with the receipts.
The article took up five inches at the bottom of a column. “Anything else?” Valentino asked.
“Couple of items rehashing the same information, then a two-inch piece at the end of April announcing the police had abandoned the investigation. No leads.”
“Pegler said something about his projectionist robbing him, along with the government and everyone else. I thought he was just ranting.”
Broadhead gave him his Hitchcock look. “There’s another explanation for Spinoza’s vanishing act. Did you read the whole article?”
“I caught the reference to a remodeling project. You think that’s when the wall went up?”
“A safe was mentioned, but no vault. You’d think that with a man missing, the police would ask questions about fresh plaster.”
“Maybe Pegler answered them. He was past fifty even then, a legless man in a wheelchair. Probably told them some salty stories about early Hollywood. Without anything else to go on they might have written him off as a harmless old character.”
“L.A. police were just introducing computers then,” Broadhead said. “Your Sergeant Franks brought up a nineteen fifty-eight complaint. If the department’s in the habit of erasing obsolete files to make room on the hard drive, nineteen fifty-six might take awhile. It’s somewhere, though. When she finds out about Spinoza, the Castle theory goes to the back of the closet.”
Valentino shook his head. “The theft of a thousand dollars seems cheap for a murder motive, even by Eisenhower-era standards.”
“Who says theft had anything to do with it? Pegler’s the only source for the information there even was a theft. It helped make the idea of a voluntary disappearance more plausible, to cover the fact that Spinoza was already on his way toward becoming a skeleton in the vault. The real reason would be a lot juicier. Any one of the seven sins would do. One especially.”
“Greed.”
“Which would mean Franks was right after all,” Broadhead said. “The film’s involved.”
“Which means we’re back where we started. We have to make the case before the film winds up as confetti on the floor of the police evidence room.”
The professor stood and charged his pipe from a humidor shaped like Oliver Hardy. “I don’t have another class until three. If we leave now we can beat the San Diego traffic both ways.”
The woman in the ponytail wasn’t smiling. She had on yesterday’s sweatshirt or one just like it. “I’m afraid Mr. Pegler’s having one of his bad days. The conversation’s apt to be one-sided.”
Valentino said, “My friend’s closer to his age. Maybe he can draw him out.”
Broadhead glowered.
“I didn’t mean you’d be doing all the talking,” the woman said. “When Warren’s like this, he goes on and on about obscure things. Most of the people he talks about are probably dead.”
“Good.”
She glared at Broadhead.
“He means we’re good listeners,” Valentino said.
“Eric, that you?”
Broadhead, closing the door of room eighteen behind them, glanced from the man in the wheelchair to Valentino, who shrugged. “He says it was his dog.”
“Poppycock. I heard an h.”
“How can you hear an h in Eric?”
“Erich?”
This time Valentino actually heard the h. He had an insane idea. He coarsened his voice. “Varren? Varren Pekler, iss dat choo?”
“Easy on the accent,” Broadhead muttered. “He’s senile, not stupid.”
“Erich, you old fake. Still wearing that monocle. I bet you’re blind in both eyes by now. I heard you were dying.”
Valentino paused. Von Stroheim had died in France in 1957. He’d been dying when Albert Spinoza disappeared. “I am not dead yet, you drugstore developer. Vhere is mein Kind?”
“Speak English, you damn kraut. What kin?”
“Greed.”
Pegler wore what appeared to be a fresh white dress shirt and a different pair of tailored slacks. Today, however, he was huddled deep in his chair, looking shrunken beneath a heavy afghan across his shoulders on a warm California day in late spring. His eyes still shone, but were moist, not sharp. He clearly didn’t understand.
Valentino played a wild card. “Don’t act schtupid. You developed every frame of the original fifty reels. I know you didn’t destroy dem vhen T’alberg told you to. I vant Greed!” He barked the last word. Broadhead jumped.
Pegler didn’t. His face became more wizened. It took on a sly cast. “You’ll have it when I give it to you, not before. Until then you can go on paying me.”
“You are blackmailink me?” In his excitement, Valentino wasn’t faking the accent. He was von Stroheim. He tightened one fist, grasping an imaginary riding crop.
“Don’t swing that monkey-stick at me,” Pegler said. “I’m charging you storage. You can croak right here in the booth if you want. I don’t care. I’m not Spinoza.”
“What about Spinoza?” Broadhead asked. Valentino nudged him. He was afraid a strange voice would break the spell.
The old man didn’t seem to notice. “He got to snooping in the vault. When he found Greed, he wanted to send the reels to France so you would have them before you died. My fault for hiring a film-school student. He thought you were a great artist. He didn’t know he was working for a greater one. How could he? He wasn’t born when my legs burned off.”
Valentino and Broadhead were silent. The thin old face bent in the middle, making a smile as sharp as a lance. “Still smoking, Erich?” he asked.
Harriet Johansen wore a blue dress to the private screening. It brought out the startling color in her eyes. Valentino told her the smock she wore on the job didn’t do her justice.
He took her on a tour of the Oracle. Most of the debris had been cleared away, but years and many tens of thousands of dollars of work remained before the theate
r would begin to resemble a shadow of its early self. He had borrowed one of the university’s big Bell & Howell projectors and with Kyle Broadhead’s help had installed it in the booth. Broadhead, who was a licensed projectionist, came down to shake the criminal specialist’s hand, then went back up to thread in the first reel. It would be the first showing of the restored Greed on safety stock outside the Moviolas at UCLA.
Valentino, wearing a burgundy smoking jacket that had belonged to John Barrymore, poured the wine and escorted Harriet to the only two adjacent seats in the mezzanine that retained their original upholstery. Sapphire light trickled into pools on the faded carpet from the wall sconces. They’d been rewired only that morning.
“Are you going to live here?” she asked.
“Where better, for a professional film buff?”
“You’ll never get away from the movies.”
“The movies are where you go to get away from everything else.”
She shook her golden head. “I have a confession to make. I’ve never seen a silent movie.”
He touched her glass in an unspoken toast to the experience. “You’ll have to promise to see it again when it’s scored. Silent films were never really silent. When it premieres in public, I hope to have funding for a full orchestra. That’s if the renovations don’t put me out in the middle of South Broadway.”
She looked up at the ceiling, gutted of its frescoes and chandelier. “A skeleton isn’t going to fall in my lap, is it?”
“If it did, you’d probably just dust it off. I imagine you told Sergeant Franks the bones weren’t William Castle’s property.”
“Skeletons used for demonstration purposes are linked together with wire,” she said. “That had never been done with Albert Spinoza.”
“You’ve identified him positively?”
“The FBI lab in Sacramento ran the DNA from marrow samples. I doubt the evidence will be used in court. Warren Pegler’s in a bad way, I heard. They moved him from the prison ward to the ICU.”
“If he does make it to trial, Franks can have the nitrate print for evidence. We have a fresh negative in the can and two positives on safety stock in the cooler.”
Valentino: Film Detective Page 12