Valentino: Film Detective

by Loren D. Estleman

  He finished his coffee over a plate of eggs and called Kym Trujillo at the Motion Picture Country Home. Roy Fitzhugh, she reported, was in fine fettle that morning. He was looking forward to Valentino’s visit.

  The old character actor had a cheerful room with a fine view of the Santa Monica Mountains and a TV set with a forty-eight-inch screen where the guests on an all-female talk show clucked in merciful silence. He wore a crisp flannel shirt buttoned to the neck, navy sweats, and the chirpy air of a man fully prepared to spring out of his wheelchair and dash around the neighborhood. Valentino saw in his faded eighty-eight-year-old features the horse face and jug ears of slang-talking sidekicks in a hundred movies and dozens of TV shows.

  “You’ve brought me a great deal of happiness over the years, Mr. Fitzhugh. I’ve seen all your films.”

  “Not all.”

  The old thespian’s lips pleated when he smiled. His dentures did the rest of his grinning, in a glass of water next to his tidy bed.

  “Every one. Even Big Ed.”

  This drew no reaction. “I got a new one opening next week at Sid Graumann’s. I’ll get you a pass.”

  Valentino hesitated. “A new one?”

  “Some screwball comedy thing. I forget the title. Jim Stewart’s in it, and that dish Lombard.” He growled lecherously.

  His visitor understood then. Kym had told him Fitzhugh’s memory, shaky about things that had been said or done a few minutes previously, was rocksteady when it came to events of a half-century and more ago. On occasion, he confused the past with the present. Medical policy was to humor him rather than try to correct him and cause distress. That suited Valentino’s purposes, as Ignacio Bozal might say, “down to the ground.”

  “Thank you. I can’t wait to see it. But it’s Big Ed I wanted to talk about.”

  Fitzhugh frowned. “That swish Fletcher. Said I talked through my schnozz, I should take voice elocution lessons. I said, ‘Mr. Warner’s been paying me for a year to talk through my schnozz. Go to MGM if it’s Jack Barrymore you want.’ ” The smile returned. “I made four pictures since December. I can afford to sit out a suspension.”

  “You were pretty friendly with Van Oliver.”

  “Vinnie’s swell. From the beginning he tells me to lay off that Van stuff. He was a smuggler, just like me da’.” Suddenly his expression changed. “What’s a college egghead want from an old dropout like me? I ain’t worked since they canned me from Hawaii Five-Oh for blowing lines. That never happened before.”

  Valentino adjusted to the time shift. “We found a print of Big Ed. We’re planning a big publicity campaign to honor the film and fund the Film Preservation Department. Anything you could tell us about the production would be a big help.”

  “That swish Fletcher said I talked through my schnozz.”

  “What about Madeleine Crane?” Valentino said patiently. “What was she like?”

  His scowl lifted. “Maggie was a doll. She had a beautiful voice, used to sing old Spanish songs on the set. She was Puerto Rican, but you wouldn’t know it except when she sang or got tired and forgot her voice lessons. She died.”

  Valentino stiffened.

  “I heard she got married and moved out of the country,” he said.

  “I mean after, long after. But still too soon. She never got to see her grandchildren.”

  “She had grandchildren?”

  “Her grandchildren had children. She missed ’em all.”

  “Are you saying you kept in touch with her after she went to Europe?”

  He tried to keep excitement out of his voice. Until now, Madeleine Crane’s vanishing act had been as complete as Van Oliver’s, if not as dramatic.

  “Europe? Who said she went to Europe?”

  Valentino realized then he’d had only one source for the Europe story. Everyone else had merely said she’d left the United States. Something inside him began to hum. “Where did she go? Who did she marry?”

  He’d pushed too hard. Fitzhugh changed again. “Listen. Do I sound like I talk through my schnozz?”

  He swallowed his impatience. “The night Oliver disappeared, you put him in a cab outside Fletcher’s house. I guess you didn’t get a good look at the driver.”

  “Who needs cab drivers? I played one so many times I could drive anyone anywhere. Almost anywhere.”

  “Did you drive Oliver?” He tried to make it sound casual. If the 1931-model Fitzhugh mistook him for a detective, he’d clam up or switch gears back to the present. Alzheimer’s was an effective defense mechanism in the old actor’s case.

  “Not all the way. The rest he had to get out and walk. I couldn’t even visit him and Maggie.”

  Him and Maggie.

  Vincent Olivera and Magdalena Carvello.

  Van Oliver and Madeleine Crane. Married and gone to—

  “Mexico,” Valentino said aloud. “You couldn’t cross the border, because you’d been told to stay out.”

  Fitzhugh said nothing. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair, fighting to maintain his hold on the present.

  Valentino tried something. He wasn’t proud of it. He was taking advantage of an old man’s sickness. He put on a Spanish accent and said, “You’re a stand-up guy, Roy. Too good for a mug like me.”

  The old actor grinned, showing his gums. “You’re the only one visits from the old days, Vinnie. Quite a hike for an old bird from East L.A.”

  On his way out, Valentino stopped by Kym Trujillo’s office. She was a pretty, sharp-witted brunette of thirty who had turned down a modeling job for Sports Illustrated to study for her MBA. Her smile turned disapproving when Valentino asked for a look at the Visitors’ register he’d signed on his way in.

  “Privacy Act,” she said. “No can do.”

  “If I give you a name, can you at least tell me if he’s been here to visit?” he asked. “I won’t even ask who he came to see.”

  She thought for a second, then nodded.

  He spoke the name. She nodded again.

  A black sedan with the longest hood Valentino had ever seen outside a movie boated into the curb as he came out of the building. It had running boards and headlamps that stuck up from stalks on the front fenders. He hesitated, halfexpecting a submachine gun to poke out the window. Instead, the rear passenger’s door popped open and Ignacio Bozal leaned out.

  The elderly collector wore a sharp pinstripe suit that would have cost two hundred dollars in 1931, a dove-gray fedora with the brim turned down over one eyebrow, and matching spats on his shiny patent-leather shoes. Store-bought teeth shone in a grin. “Get in the car.”

  He made it sound gruff, like a henchman in an old gangster film. There was no trace of Spanish accent.

  “I drove my car here,” Valentino said.

  “‘S’okay. We’ll just drive a little. You never rode in a car like this. I own nine Cadillacs and this is my favorite.” He spoke out of the side of his mouth, Chicago fashion.

  Valentino got in. He recognized the driver. He’d traded his white houseboy coat for a chauffeur’s uniform. “Where to, Grandpapa?”

  “Couple times around the lawn, Ernesto. My daughter Magdalena’s boy,” he told his guest. “You met him yesterday.”

  Ernesto turned back to the wheel and they pulled ahead smoothly. The mohair upholstery molded itself around Valentino’s back as if a drawstring had been pulled. “You named her after your wife,” he said.

  “Maggie died in Peru in ’forty-six; cancer. That’s why I left for Acapulco. We had fifteen good years, but there were too many memories there. The kids were my first staff when I opened the hotel. They learned good manners and passed them on.”

  “You’re Vincent Olivera.”

  “I ditched that name when I quit the mob. Never could get used to Van, though; sounded like a delivery truck. I knew you’d figured it out this morning when I called to see if Roy was up for a visitor and they told me he was expecting one. It had to be you. No one else comes to see him since the Alzheimer’s.”
/>   “I only put it together during the visit. Your name on the register confirmed it. Ignacio Bozal had no reason to shoot the breeze so often with an old character actor. Van Oliver did.”

  “Roy’s losing ground. In the old days he wouldn’t’ve said help if he was drowning.”

  “He’s still cagey. All I got out of him was you and Madeleine Crane went to Mexico, and that only indirectly. You were the only one who said she went to Europe after she got married. You misdirected me that way twice. You said you got Big Ed from an estate sale in Europe.”

  “I didn’t lie about getting it from the splicer. I slipped him a thousand to strike off an extra print before I lit out back in ’thirty-one. Just a sentimental souvenir. I met Maggie on that set.”

  “You’re forgetting the thirty thousand that came away with you, too. No wonder there are so many rumors about where you got your financing.”

  “I earned that money!” Bozal’s cheeks showed color for the first time; he never looked more like Big Ed from the film. “I wasn’t about to kick back half to that fat bastard Capone.”

  Valentino watched the cool green lawn slide past as they circled the composition driveway. The motor sounded like marbles sliding on Teflon. “So that’s why you left.”

  “The mob thought they owned me, just ’cause they bought my train ticket West and paid my expenses till I signed with Warners. I offered to pay it back with interest. I turned down their counter-offer: fifty percent of everything I took in from then on. I might’ve been more polite about it, but that wouldn’t have made them like it any better. If they knew how much I made from coffee and mining during the war, they’d blow a gasket.”

  “Madeleine coached you well on your Spanish accent. Sicilians and Mexicans have the same coloring. As long as you stayed in character, anyone who recognized you years later might have doubted his own judgment.”

  The old man rested his hat on his knee and ran a brown hand through his white hair. “I had a couple of close calls. But by then Capone was dead. I upgraded the mugs’ rooms, tore up their bills, and they decided they’d made a mistake. Also I had some pull in Mexico City. It didn’t pay to blow any whistles.”

  “You sound just like Big Ed.”

  “You might say I was the first method actor. I been playing Bozal so long, I had to put on this suit to pull off Van Oliver. I figured you earned a second feature. You call yourself a film detective. I had to see if you lived up to the billing.”

  “That’s not why you called me.”

  “No. If it wasn’t for this phony town, I’d’ve would up on a slab in Cook County or making gravel in Alcatraz. I only done two things right in my life. You got to see what came of them both. Now it’s the world’s turn. But I’d like to be in the ground before my great-grandchildren find out I’m a phony, too.”

  “What about Ernesto?”

  “He figured it out the first time he screened Big Ed for me. He’s a damn fine projectionist, and he’ll be a great cinematographer when he graduates film school. He’s got the eye.”

  Ernesto smiled from the rearview mirror. “Thanks, G.P.!”

  “Cut it out and drive.”

  Valentino said, “None of the others know?”

  Bozal shook his head. “They’ll forgive me when I’m gone, but I worked a hell of a lot longer getting Bozal right than I ever did Big Ed or Van Oliver, and any time you watch an actor put everything into a role and tell him what a good actor he is, it means he’s failed. I’d rather not get bad reviews from my flesh and blood.”

  The archivist made a decision.

  “I’ve got a born-again classic, and an enduring Hollywood mystery to promote it. At this point, a solution would only gum up the works.”

  The old man reached out a hand and took Valentino’s knee in a grip that would crack iron. “My whole film collection goes to UCLA two minutes after I croak.”

  Valentino was moved, despite the block in his circulation. “When that day comes, I’ll make the arrangements to have it picked up.”

  Van Oliver gave him a sinister smile. “You and what army?”

  Garbo Writes

  “I WANT TO BE ALONE,” Harriet said.

  “Vant,” Valentino corrected, emphasizing the V. “It’s ‘I vant to be alone.’ Your accent needs work.”

  “No, I mean I really want to be alone. My bra came unhooked.”

  He’d misinterpreted her fidgeting under the off-the-shoulder velvet gown as a seductive dance, in keeping with the dress and the bejeweled contraption on her head, a reproduction of an outfit Greta Garbo had worn in Mata Hari.

  “I think the ladies’ room is behind that column.” He pointed.

  She excused herself and went that way, leaving him alone among two or three dozen women dressed as Garbo in her various movie roles: disguised as a not-very-convincing young man in boots and jerkin from Queen Christina; hauntingly amnesiac in platinum-blond hair and elegant evening dress from As You Desire Me; gung-ho Stalinist in severe suit and cloche hat from Ninotchka. He counted no fewer than five Anna Christies and as many Mata Haris, although none as bewitching as Harriet Johansen wearing that outfit. She bore an amazing resemblance to her inspiration, a fact Valentino hadn’t noted until she’d revealed herself in costume.

  There were fat Garbos, old Garbos, black Garbos, an Asian Garbo, and one or two Garbos wearing powder over what looked like five-o’clock shadows. Among the escorts was one very good Erich von Stroheim, several John Gilberts, and three Charles Boyers attempting to look Napoleonic in Conquest. Valentino himself wore an imperial Russian uniform and a think Ramon Novarro moustache, cemented with spirit gum to his upper lip. He’d have preferred to go as John Barrymore, but that would have been the wrong movie.

  The fancy-dress couples drifted to and fro across the ballroom of the great Beverly Hills mansion, sipping from glass flutes and spilling champagne on the glittering parquet floor. The walls and columns were ornamented in a relentless Art Deco motif, with original and reproduced posters from Garbo’s most famous films and glossy black-and-white stills of that iconic face blown up ten times life size among the clamshells and stylized swans. The party had been convened to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the star’s birth.

  “Let me guess,” said a familiar voice. “Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff.”

  Valentino turned to shake hands with the host. Matthew Rankin was a trim, erect eighty in a beautifully cut tuxedo with flared 1930s lapels, white shirt, tie, and hair all of a piece and interrupted only by his aristocratic face with its carefully topped-off tan. He might have been an older version of the Melvyn Douglas who had played opposite Garbo three times.

  “Right on the nose,” Valentino said. “I doubt three people in this room can match the filmography you carry around in your head.”

  “I’ve Andrea to thank for that. She was a fan of Greta’s for years before they were friends. They died the same day, you know.”

  His guest nodded sympathetically. Fifteen years had planed away only a little pain from Rankin’s tone. “Did you know Garbo well?”

  “I never met her. She and Andrea went back to before we were married. They’d visit whenever Andrea made a buying trip to New York, but after Andrea retired, they kept in contact through the mail. She burned the letters at Greta’s request, not long before she and Greta died. Some of her other so-called friends had begun to sell her letters at auction.”

  “Mrs. Rankin was a real friend. The people in charge of the Swedish Military Archives are offering a large reward for the return of several stolen Garbo letters.”

  “As it happened, I’d just returned from Stockholm when the story broke. I attended a reception for a researcher friend who was sharing the Nobel Prize with another fellow. People will steal anything these days. They aren’t content just to hound living celebrities into armed compounds to protect their privacy; now they’ve begun to prey on the dead ones as well.”

  Rankin’s bitterness seemed justified. A former chemist with a hefty respect fo
r technology, he’d computerized his late father-in-law’s department-store chain and built new stores in Europe, Japan, and Australia. His highly visible executive presence, often accompanied by his equally aristocratic wife, had made them public figures, with all the unwelcome press attention that entailed. Since Andrea’s death, Rankin had retreated into virtual seclusion, emerging only for such events as this, in respect to her friendship with Garbo and his keen interest in classic films in general.

  Valentino had benefited from the latter. As an archivist with the UCLA Film Preservation Department, he’d been pleased to accept generous donations from Rankin to update equipment and purchase rare prints of motion pictures long considered lost. He’d accepted with alacrity the invitation to attend the Garbo party with a guest.

  His motives weren’t entirely social. Somewhat disingenuously—for he knew the answer, from rumors—he asked his host how Garbo and his late wife had come to be friends. The anger evaporated from Rankin’s face. “They met in one of Andrea’s father’s stores,” he said. “My dear girl was working there to prepare herself for an executive position. Greta was a salesgirl, you know, in Sweden; made her debut, in fact, in a promotional film for the store, How Not to Dress.”

  “That footage has been missing for many years,” Valentino prompted.

  “Your avarice is showing, young man. I’m sure you’ve heard the story that Greta made her a present of her own print, one former department-store clerk to another. It wouldn’t have offended me if you’d come out and asked if I still have it.”

  “I’m sorry. My cards say Film Detective; ‘Archivist’ makes people’s eyes glaze over and they don’t hear my pitch. Sometimes I get to believing my own publicity and try to be slick. I won’t bother you about it again.” His face felt hot with shame.

  Rankin laughed boomingly, drawing curious glances from some of his milling guests. “I was paraphrasing Andrea’s father. If I’d asked him directly for her hand, he’d have had me thrown out of his house as a golddigger. I’ve waited fifty years to turn someone on the spit the way he did me that day, just before he agreed. UCLA’s in my will. You’ll have those reels by and by.”