Valentino could have kissed her, if he didn’t think she’d sue for harassment. He looked for a place to park.
**
“I’ve seen worse, believe it or not,” Broadhead said. “In Detroit, they turned one of their premier showcases into a parking garage. They ought to reinstate the death penalty for that if nothing else.” He lit his pipe, mingling the scent of his apple-scented tobacco with the incense and patchouli still lingering from the Age of Aquarius. He left footprints an eighth of an inch deep in the dust on the linoleum that covered the mosaic in the lobby.
Valentino, recognizing his friend’s attempt to alleviate his former negativity, swallowed his resentment. A creature of indeterminate species, possibly a bat, had marked its territory inside a glass case that had once contained an assortment of Baby Buths and Cracker Jacks. “It’s a challenge,” he said. “I expect to establish a lasting relationship with the Bank of Bel-Air.”
“Worth every penny.” Fanta caressed the plate glass preserving a letterpress poster advertising a 1979 showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, demonstrably the last feature that had played the location before a secession of fly-by-night retail shops had taken over the ground floor. She left a leopard-print impression of her fingerprints in the soot. “You should host a grand reopening with a Halloween showing of Nosferatu.”
“I’m going to live here, not curate a museum.”
“Let’s brave the stairs,” Broadhead said. “I’m feeling lucky today.”
Valentino had thought to bring a flashlight; the light was fading, and the projection booth was dark enough to show a feature. The beam made shadows conducive to the appearance of Max Fink’s sad ghost.
“Greed? You’re kidding me, right? Faculty doesn’t usually take part in sorority initiations.” Fanta studied one of the film cans in the pale orange glow.
Broadhead snatched it from her hands. He ran a thumb over the label. “Stenciling looks genuine. There’s some adhesion here; they used to ship the posters stuck to the cans. Pity. An original poster for Greed could finance most of the renovation.”
“You’re killing me here,” Valentino said. “You’re the one who told me Hitchcock was a sadist.”
“That was a compliment. No one who considered himself a master of suspense could be anything but. However, I’m not going to open them in this pest hole. We’ll leave that to the nerds in the lab.”
“Then why did I bring you?”
“Peer pressure, pure and simple. A historian without the support of another historian is just a geek. What’s in the basement?”
Valentino was abashed. “I haven’t seen the basement.”
Broadhead cuffed him on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “Have you learned nothing from me in all the years we’ve known each other? The answer to everything is always in the basement.”
“He’s right.” Fanta’s tone was grave. “Dr. Broadhead dissected The Invasion of the Body Snatchers scene for scene.”
“Kyle,” Broadhead corrected.
“Mercy,” Valentino said. “Some of us have to live in the real world.”
Broadhead said, “The more pity you. To the bat cave!”
Valentino sighed and followed them to the ground floor. After some exploration they found a narrow door leading to the subterranean reaches of The Oracle.
“The Pit and the Pendulum,” said Broadhead, as they negotiated the flight of slimy stairs to a part of Los Angeles Cortez himself had never laid eyes upon. Lime dripped all around like the drool of lizards employed by Roger Corman.
“The Shining,” furnished Fanta. “Nightmare on Elm Street.”
“The L.A. County building code,” Valentino said. “I mean, if you really want to be scared.”
At the base of the stairs, Broadhead pulled up before a life-size cutout of Mickey Rourke, advertising 9 1/2 Weeks.
“Now, that’s scary,” he said.
They followed provocative stacks of crates, wooden and cardboard, and a depressing panoply of patching material and PVC pipe, into a room that was a shambles of loose brick and mortar, most of it accumulated at the base of the far wall. The light was dim from the surface windows in the passageway. Valentino glowered at the cracks in the wall, some of which were as wide as his wrist. Seventy-five years of earthquakes and traffic vibration had taken a heavy toll. “I hope it isn’t structural.”
“You used up all your hope when you bought this pig in a poke,” Broadhead said.
Fanta put out an exploratory hand—and jumped back when a square yard of brick collapsed into a pile on the concrete floor. “Whoa!”
“Whoa!” echoed her voice from behind the wall.
Silence draped the three.
Broadhead broke it. “Physics isn’t my field. However, when you shout into what should be eight feet of solid Southern California hardpack, it isn’t supposed to shout back.”
Valentino fumbled on his flashlight.
Broadhead and Fanta climbed onto the pile and began pulling pieces of rotten brick out of the edge of the hole, dropping them onto the mound. Soon the opening was big enough for a man to step through. The beam of the flash probed through and fell on rows of dusty bottles lying on their sides in a wooden rack.
The young woman—Valentino no longer thought of her as a girl—steadied herself with a hand against the side of the hole and leaned inside. “Bitchin’ wine cellar. Why hide it?”
“That’s not a wine cellar, child,” said the professor. “It’s a Prohibition stash. We just found another of Max Fink’s secrets.”
They entered the chamber. It was nearly as big as the room they’d left, with racks and shelves all around. The bottles they’d glimpsed were shards of empty vessels, burst where they lay, their contents evaporated. There were empty wooden cases stenciled with the names of extinct brands of Scotch and bourbon and gin. All that remained of what must have been a magnificent private stock was a faint odor of stale sour mash.
“Film cans!” cried Fanta.
Valentino slid the beam along a neat row of flat tins on a shelf near the floor, held upright by a board nailed across the heavy oaken uprights.
Broadhead slid one out. “Hold that light steady.”
“I can’t. My hand’s shaking.” He gave the flashlight to Fanta, who trained it on the lid. Broadhead blew dust off the label.
“Greed.” Three voices sang out in unison.
“They’re numbered,” said Broadhead, sliding his finger through the air along the cans on the shelf. “Twenty-five through forty-two.”
“That makes a complete print, with the two dozen upstairs,” Valentino said. “The full eight hours.”
“Or ten. If it’s what it says it is. This one’s not empty, at least.” Broadhead rattled the can in his hand. Then he looked around. “Odd thing about this room. There’s no entrance except the hole we came through.”
“Maybe there’s a secret panel.” Fanta prowled the walls with the beam. “Nope. Solid earth.”
“Why wall up an empty liquor room?” Valentino asked.
“Maybe we should ask him.”
Fanta’s voice was tight. Both men turned at the sound of it. The flashlight was shining on a human skull.
**
CHAPTER
4
THE FLASHLIGHT BEAM moved, illuminating the rest of the skeleton, heaped into a crumple at the edge of the rubble that had spilled inside the room. In the shadows it had looked like part of the broken wall.
In that moment, Valentino realized he’d never seen one “in person,” and was mildly surprised to learn that it didn’t look any different from those he’d seen in movies. The leering skull and hooplike ribs wore a fine coat of gray dust.
Broadhead, ever the curious scholar, leaned down and poked at a spindly upper arm with the bowl of his pipe. The bone separated from the shoulder and fell to the floor with a hollow rattle, like film clattering around the reel on a projector.
“Offhand, I’d say it’s been here as long as the wall,�
� he said.
“Duh.”
They stared at Fanta, who smiled nervously and slid her hair away from her face. “Sorry, Professor. Kyle. It couldn’t have gotten in here otherwise.”
“I think we’ll go back to ‘Dr. Broadhead.’ Informality seems to have bred disrespect.”
“She’s upset,” Valentino said.
“Not really. I’ve seen worse on the Sci Fi Channel.”
“Another argument in favor of the V-chip,” Broadhead said. “We’re raising a generation of emotional robots. Boo!” he shouted. Fanta and Valentino jumped. Broadhead blew through his pipe and put it away with an evil flourish. “Not so desensitized after all.”
“Is this a joke to you?” asked Valentino.
“No, and it hasn’t been for our friend here since before either of you was born. Me, too, possibly. Or anything else. Even tragedy has an expiration date.” He turned and gathered half a dozen film cans under his arms. “Give me a hand with these. Fanta, go upstairs and bring down as many cans as you can carry without dropping them. If we’re lucky, the material inside is brittle as hell.”
She asked how that was lucky.
“Fragile we can deal with, if the techs are as good as their training. If it’s dissolved into a mess of orange goo, we might as well put it on a salad. There’s a reason it’s called the Vinegar Syndrome.”
Valentino stared. “We have to report this.”
“Yes, and once we have, the building becomes a crime scene and everything in it becomes public property indefinitely. Would you care to see what several months in a humid L.A. evidence room can do that three quarters of a century in a relatively stable environment can’t? Von Stroheim will haunt you to your grave.”
“What’s stable about it?”
“The air down here is cool and dry, so I have hopes for this stuff. I won’t lay odds on what’s upstairs. Silver nitrate’s fickle. It’s been known to survive under conditions that would destroy so-called safety stock, and to go up like a firecracker when someone gets a hot idea. But if it is Greed, we don’t want some dim-witted desk sergeant mistaking it for porno and screening it at a police smoker.”
Fanta said, “What’s a smoker?”
Broadhead ignored her. “Everything in here belongs to the new owner until the authorities find out about Slim here. You’re within your rights to remove it, and they don’t need to know everything that came with the place.”
“That part isn’t within my rights,” Valentino said. “It’s— what is it, Fanta? You’re the law student.”
“Obstruction of justice,” she said. “I’m with Dr. Broadhead.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We don’t know what killed this dude. Maybe it was natural causes, and all we have is a case of improper disposal of a corpse, by someone who’s probably a stiff himself by now. If it’s murder, same story. We owe it to posterity to protect a work of art from unnecessary destruction.”
“Even if it means breaking the law.”
“It all goes back to intellectual property rights. I’m down with it.” She lifted her chin.
“Damn it, Kyle, how many young people have you managed to brainwash? You only show up two days a semester.”
“Don’t blame me. Your age group invented civil disobedience.”
“Not quite. I was a little young to stage a sit-in at the dean’s office in my Huggies.”
“We can stand here and rock all day,” Fanta said. “Greed’s still growing whiskers.”
“Your call, Val. It’s your name on the deposit check.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he stepped over and started picking up film cans.
“That’s my boy. Carpe diem.”
“Totally.” Fanta headed for the stairs.
**
“Sergeant Clifford, West Hollywood Homicide.” The woman stooped to shake his hand in the room outside the formerly hidden chamber. Considering her height and her startling green eyes and red hair, teased out in an ‘80s do, he wondered what circumstances had led her to choose law enforcement over modeling. She was beautiful enough for the movies, but too tall for most of the leading men. “You’re the owner?”
“Valentino.” He braced himself at the question he saw coming.
“The fashion designer?”
He hesitated. “No, the silent film star. I mean, that’s who most people mistake me for. Actually, I’m not related to either of them.” He was babbling. He shut himself up.
She looked at his business card. He’d given it to one of the two officers in uniform who’d been first on the scene. “Says here you’re a film detective. I thought I knew all the bureaus.”
“It’s just a jazzy name for a procurer. This is a showbiz town. I’m a consultant with the Film Preservation Department at UCLA.”
“Theaters?”
“Movies. This started out as a search for a house with a screening room.”
“Did you know a corpse came with the place?” Clifford smiled girlishly, but her eyes were as sharp as emeralds.
“If he had, he’d have tried to bargain down the price,” said Broadhead, coming to his rescue. He introduced himself and grasped the sergeant’s hand. “I teach film at the university.”
She turned to Fanta. “And what do you do, sell popcorn?
Valentino noticed that the sergeant listened to the answers to all her questions without making notes. Various personnel, in and out of uniform, flowed past the quartet in both directions, carrying cases and bizarre paraphernalia. Someone had erected a trouble light inside the room containing the skeleton and trailed twenty-five feet of orange extension cord out into the passageway. Lightning pulsed from flash equipment on the other side of the ruined wall.
“So you’re all in pictures, more or less,” said Clifford.
Broadhead said, “More less than more. We’re not affiliated with any of the studios. We’re academics.”
“Teachers’ salaries must be improving. This place had to have cost a bundle.”
“I only put down a—”
Broadhead interrupted. “Do you consider him a suspect in a seventy-year-old death?”
Her green gaze shot his way. “What makes you say seventy?”
“It’s been that long since they repealed Prohibition.”
“These bricks haven’t been up nearly that long. Not all of them. Those yellower ones weren’t available before the fifties. See, they form a rectangle, and they’re not rotten like the section you pulled down. My husband’s in construction,” she said. “He talks about his work. He has to, if we’re going to have any sort of chitchat. I can’t exactly bring my office home to dinner.”
In the light spilling out of the room being investigated, Valentino could clearly see the contrast. He remembered Broadhead’s earlier concern. “There was a door.”
“Someone walled it up. It’s easy to guess why. Our criminalist confirms a later date of death; something about the fillings in the teeth.” She caught Valentino’s face brightening. “Normally this kind of talk upsets people.”
He’d been thinking, A film older than the building, and a corpse younger. They can’t be connected. He felt himself turning color. “I found it interesting. A lot of the films I screen are murder mysteries.”
“Mm-hm. Man who’s seen as many pictures as you, I guess you’re not squeamish about skeletons.”
“I still flinch when Lon Chaney’s mask comes off in The Phantom of the Opera.”
“That one I know. I saw the road show when it played L.A. Come in and take a look. Maybe you can give us a positive ID, ha-ha.”
A flash tripped just as Valentino stepped over the rubble and into the room. The on-cue timing made him feel as if he’d entered a live set; which, he supposed, was what it was. He had the sensation that the man with the camera, the uniformed officer scribbling in his report book, the pair of technicians mixing and applying their powders, the woman in the green smock bent over the pile of bones in the corner had all been running their lines and
primping only a moment before, waiting for the director to take his seat in the canvas chair.
He decided that when this was over he should put in for a vacation that didn’t involve a hotel room with a movie channel.
“Ms. Johansen, a minute?” Clifford asked.
The woman in the smock sat back on her heels. She wore a cuplike mask over her nose and mouth. When she took it off, Valentino was struck by her features. She was a short-haired honey blonde with elliptical blue eyes, clear and unflawed. Her nose was straight and she had a generous mouth that looked as if it might contain a smile as bright as a klieg. Her looks were exotic, unlike Clifford’s conventional beauty, yet entirely American.
She wasn’t smiling. “A minute is an hour. What’s so important? Oh, hello.” She noticed Valentino and moderated her scowl.
“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t think bacteria would be a problem after so many years.”
“What? Oh, the mask. I’m allergic to dust.” She sneezed.
“Isn’t that like a jockey who’s afraid of horses?”
“Most cases don’t lie around this long waiting for attention. Even cold cases.”
Clifford said, “Mr. Valentino owns the building. Harriet Johansen, with the criminal-science division. I told you what she said about the deceased’s fillings.”
“Forgive me for not shaking hands.” She held up a miniature whisk broom in a rubber glove.
He looked past her. The trouble light shed halogen on the skeleton, which properly was no longer a pile of bones but now lay stretched out on its spine. Many of the segments had separated, but Ms. Johansen or someone had arranged all the parts according to their original locations. He figured she’d be a whiz at jigsaw puzzles. There was a musty odor under the ancient liquor smell in the room that reminded him of old magazines.
“What else have you got?” Clifford asked.
“He was about a thirty-two short, not much over five feet with his skin on. I can do a more precise measurement back at the lab, and C.G. should take care of the rest.”
C.G. stood for computer generation. Valentino knew that much from Cyber Age movie magic. “How do you know it was a he?”
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