“I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Valentino nodded. “It’s the key, isn’t it?”
“The simplest in the world, but without it, the code might slow down even
Stephen Hawking. I’d never have guessed what it was if you hadn’t plunked that notebook down on my desk. You have to understand it was ten years between the few minutes I had at Zanuck’s and the moment that thing slid into my lap.”
“I’m surprised you kept it.”
“I was still curious then. I never made the connection until now. I might still be wrong.” His eyes pleaded for a conclusion he seemed reluctant to suggest.
Valentino spoke carefully. “Fortunately, I can’t do anything tonight because the notebook’s in the bank and it’s closed. Otherwise we’d be up all night. We’ll go over it together in the morning when we’re fresh.”
“Sounds fair.” Broadhead finished his drink and stood. “Don’t expect any big names. Edward G Robinson was washed up already, and if you think Larry Parks was any loss, go back and watch The Jolson Story again. Congress took a swipe at Lucille Ball and went down hard. It gave up on Hollywood because it couldn’t win votes by ruining people no one had ever heard of.”
“I won’t peek, Kyle.”
“Of course you will. I recommended you for your job because you’re a bloodhound.”
The next morning, the professor lifted a stack of Photoplay magazines off the chair in Valentino’s office, saw no place to put it down, and sat with it on his lap. “You look like you’ve been up all night with Harry Potter,” he said.
“Just since the bank opened.” Valentino planted an elbow on either side of the notebook on his desk and rested his chin on his fists. “That piece of cardboard fit right over the sheets. The names read diagonally, the letters showing through the holes. Some surprised me, especially on the last pages. The studio bosses got carried away near the end.”
“Would you have recognized any if you weren’t a film geek?”
“Never having been anything else, I can’t be sure. Why didn’t you tell me you were on it?”
“How could I know? I only had a minute with it and I didn’t have the key then. I guessed what it was, because that’s what I always thought it would look like.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
Broadhead chuckled. “You can label anyone you don’t like a subversive. I worked on The Persistence of Vision for twenty years, reading excerpts to book clubs and film societies. I revealed that Jack Warner shut down the Warner Brothers animation studio when he found out he didn’t own Mickey Mouse. I was the first to call Howard Hughes a nut publicly. I’d be disappointed if I weren’t on the list.”
“Why did they bother? It was discredited by then.”
“They’d tinkered with it too long to quit. They’d lost most of their power; the Film School Generation was forcing them out. That notebook was the one thing they still had control over. Nowadays I suppose it would be called therapeutic. They say Nixon was still adding to his Enemies List in San Clemente.” He took out his pipe, but to play with, not to smoke. “Have you decided how you’re going to sell it?”
“Kyle, I can’t. Some of these people are still around. Even if I withheld the key, someone would be bound to crack the code, causing a lot of embarrassment.
Not for you, but I see nothing but legal action against the studios for ten years. They’d go bankrupt, which would affect the entire entertainment industry. What’s it matter how many old films we can buy if no one will distribute them? They cost money to restore and preserve.”
“You’d still profit personally.”
Valentino smiled—ironically, he hoped. “I didn’t apply for this job to get rich. If they stopped making movies, what would I spend it on?”
“You can always do what Zanuck should’ve done.”
“I can’t burn it either. Knowing I’d destroyed so large a part of Hollywood history would haunt me forever.”
Broadhead got up, returned the magazines to the chair, and held out a hand.
Valentino didn’t move. “It would be the same if I let you burn it.”
“I won’t burn it. I’ll slip it onto a shelf at Universal, where anyone who finds it will just think it’s a prop from a spy picture. Even if he suspects what it is, he couldn’t prove it without your testimony or mine, and why would he even ask us? Can you think of a better place to hide an important historical artifact than in the land of make-believe?”
“Why do I keep thinking about the government warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark?”
“I knew you’d appreciate it. Just as I knew you would never sell the list.”
Valentino picked up the notebook and held it out. Broadhead took it, touching it for the first time. He slid the riddled sheet of cardboard from between the pages where the other had left it and put it on the desk. “No sense making it easy.”
The film archivist picked up the key to the code, opened a drawer, and took out the box of strike-anywhere matches he’d bought from the woman in Tijuana. “I knew these would come in handy sometime.” He struck one.
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.
Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.
Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s Motor City Blue, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel, Sugartown, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is Infernal Angels.
Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980, The High Rocks was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s The Book of Murdock. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author. Journey of the Dead, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.
Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.
Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.
Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.
Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.
Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book Journey of the Dead.
Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.
Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003.
Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original story on “Papa’s” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 i
n Springfield, Missouri.
Estleman with his granddaughter, Lydia Morgan Hopper, as he reads her a bedtime story on New Year’s Eve 2008. Books are among Lydia’s favorite things—and “Papa” is quick to encourage this.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, with the late Elmer Kelton and his wife, Anne Kelton, in 2008. Estleman is holding his Elmer Kelton Award from the German Association for the Study of the Western.
Estleman in front of the Gas City water tower, which he passed by on many a road trip. After titling one of his novels after the town, Estleman was invited for a visit by the mayor, and in February 2008 he was presented the key to the city.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Dark Lady Down,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [hereafter EQMM], March 1998, copyright © 1998, Loren D. Estleman; “The Frankenstein Footage,” EQMM, July 1998, copyright © 1998 Loren D. Estleman; “Director’s Cut,” EQMM, December 1998, copyright © 1998 Loren D. Estleman;, “The Man in the White Hat,” EQMM, May 1999, copyright © 1999 Loren D. Estleman; “Picture Palace,” EQMM, July 2000, copyright © 2000 Loren D. Estleman; “The Day Hollywood Stood Still,” EQMM, March 2001, copyright © 2001 Loren D. Estleman; “Greed,” EQMM, May 2002, copyright © 2002 Loren D. Estleman; “Bombshell,” EQMM, August 2003, copyright © 2003 Loren D. Estleman; “Shooting Big Ed,” EQMM, May 2005, copyright © 2005 Loren D. Estleman; “Garbo Writes,” EQMM, February 2007, copyright © 2006 Loren D. Estleman; “The Profane Angel,” EQMM, September/October 2007, copyright © 2007 Loren D. Estleman; “Wild Walls,” EQMM, December 2007, copyright © 2007 Loren D. Estleman; “Preminger’s Gold,” EQMM, July 2009, copyright © 2009 Loren D. Estleman; “The List,” EQMM, May 2010, copyright © 2010 Loren D. Estleman
Copyright © 2011 by Loren D. Estleman
Cover design by Andrea C. Uva
978-1-4804-4395-2
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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EBOOKS BY LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
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Valentino: Film Detective Page 27