Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  To show his appreciation for putting him up, Valentino stopped at Safeway after his talk with Harriet, bought a precooked rotisserie chicken, potato salad, and tossed greens from the deli section and a fresh apple pie from the bakery, and finding the house unoccupied dressed the table and set out the spread in the dining room, which he suspected hadn’t been used since the death of Broadhead’s wife four years before; Swanson and Mrs. Paul reigned in the freezer and a folding tray table exercised squatter’s rights in the living room. He chilled a bottle of Chardonnay and was drawing the cork when the front door opened and shut.

  “Hi, honey, I’m home. Whoa! Someone’s been channeling Martha Stewart.”

  Valentino left the kitchen carrying two full wineglasses to find his housemate standing in the entrance to the dining room, a half-eaten taco in one hand and a jumbo milk shake in the other. He’d traded his overalls for an old tweed coat and unpressed slacks and plunked on his favorite cloth cap.

  “It’s ten to six,” Valentino said. “I’d hoped by serving dinner early to avoid this very thing.”

  “I eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired. I let my watch wind down and threw it away. The stove’s been broken for two years. Don’t tell me you fixed it. You practically had to call Bob Vila to slap up a piece of plywood.”

  “I bought everything prepared. My fault; I should have checked with you.” Valentino set down the glasses. “Why don’t you drink some wine and watch me eat?”

  Broadhead parked the remains of his meal on a plate, picked up one of the glasses, and drained it standing up. “Thanks.” He put it down. “Can’t stay. Fanta’s picking me up in a few minutes.” He strode toward his bedroom, peeling out of his coat.

  He came back out as Valentino was finishing his salad. Now he had on pleated khakis and a sport shirt that clashed with his cap. “How do I look?”

  “That depends. Are you playing golf with Porky Pig?”

  “We’re going to the rec center. She’s taking me rollerblading.”

  “You rollerblade?”

  “I don’t know. I never tried.”

  “I hope your hospitalization plan is better than mine. Want to catch the Lakers game later? We can sit in front of the tube and eat cold chicken sandwiches.”

  “Sorry. Battleship Potemkin’s playing tonight at the art museum. She’s never seen it.”

  “Don’t talk during the Odessa Steps sequence.” Valentino helped himself to chicken and potato salad.

  “Since when do you watch basketball?”

  “I decided to take your advice and broaden my interests.”

  “I hate to leave you alone your first evening. Why don’t you—”

  Valentino held up his fork, stopping him. “If you finish that sentence, you’ll never make it out of the rec center alive. Fanta will see to that. I’ll be fine. I’m just grateful to have a roof over my head.”

  “You’re not by any chance a morning person, are you?”

  “Aren’t you? You’re always in your office when I get to work.”

  “Yes, but I don’t sleep more than two hours a night since Elaine died, and they’re not always back to back. If you’re the kind that goes to bed early, I’m going to disturb you with my nocturnal habits.”

  “What do you do, clog dance?”

  “Let’s just say the things that go bump in the night are terrified of me.”

  Valentino wanted to pursue this line of conversation, but the doorbell rang. He had a clear view from his place at the table when Broadhead answered it and Fanta came in. She had the professor in both arms and a leglock before she saw they weren’t alone. She unwound herself and flashed Valentino a broad, unabashed grin. She was a willowy twenty with long straight glossy black hair and a tan that promised to go well beyond her halter top and shorts. Her feet were stuck in clunky black combat boots.

  “Hey,” she greeted. She took in the table setting. “Radical. Very Oprah.”

  “I said Martha Stewart,” Broadhead said.

  “Right. I get them mixed up.”

  “It’s easy to mistake a short fat black woman for a tall blonde ex-convict.”

  Valentino stood. “Hello, Fanta. How are you getting along with the law?”

  “Why, has my parole officer been looking for me?”

  “She’s in the top one percent of her class.” Broadhead tucked in his shirt, which had come out when she’d mauled him. “She just started her internship and the firm she works for wants her to report to them first thing she clears the bar.”

  “I said no,” she said. “I’m going to work directly for the studios, trying cases of copyright infringement.”

  Valentino said, “I hope you talk them into spending part of your first big settlement on film preservation.”

  “I will. I’m still jazzed from our excellent Greed adventure. Any big finds lately? That lost reel of Metropolis? The alternate ending to Casablanca, Bergman ditches Paul Henreid and flies off with Bogie?”

  “At the moment I’m shooting for an eighty-year-old promo for a department store.”

  The grin faded. She shrugged. “I guess they can’t all be special. I hear you’re bunking with Kyle. Spooks run you out of the Oracle?”

  “No, just the L.A. County Building Inspection Department.”

  “Ooh, scary.” She turned to Broadhead. “You ready to bust some moves?”

  He nodded. “I just hope that’s where the busting stops.”

  She got to the door first and opened it for him. As he passed through, she swept the cap off his head, sent it sailing toward the sofa, waved to Valentino, and followed Broadhead out, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Alone in the quiet house, Valentino finished his meal, decided against the apple pie, put the leftovers in the refrigerator, and washed dishes. Later, sunk among the tired springs in Broadhead’s old armchair, he watched the Lakers play for three minutes, then flipped around until he found The Postman Always Rings Twice on TCM, but he got restless after a half hour and surfed through the rest of the channels; he’d always considered the film a pale shadow of Double Indemnity, and in any case Lana Turner was no distraction when one’s mind was racing with Greta Garbo. But there was no sign of the Swedish Sphinx on any of the movie channels and he switched off the TV and cable box. He drank a second glass of wine and went to bed.

  A high-pitched whine sat him straight up in dead blackness. He turned on the bedside lamp and peered at the alarm clock; 3:16 A.M. He got up, groped with his feet for his slippers, climbed into his robe, and stepped through the door to find every room in the house ablaze with light. He followed the noise into the kitchen.

  Broadhead stood at the counter with his back to the door, holding the top on an old green blender with one hand. He wore his cap and a shabby blue caftan streaked with purple that covered him to his feet. The blender was gyrating maniacally and sounded like a jet plane taking off.

  Valentino shouted twice, but got no reaction. He crossed the room and touched Broadhead’s shoulder. The professor jumped, saw him, and turned off the blender. The noise took nearly a minute to wind down.

  “Did I wake you? I warned you about my nocturnal habits.”

  “What are you making?”

  “I’m not sure. It started out to be a margarita, but I left that behind when I threw in the eggplant. Nightcap?” He took off the top.

  “It’s more like breakfast. No, thanks. Do you do this every morning?”

  “Sometimes I make chili fries.”

  “With a margarita?”

  “I don’t recommend it. Last time it took me forty minutes to clean out the microwave. Of course, I drank the margarita before I made the fries.”

  “How was rollerblading?”

  “Turns out she was kidding about that. We had a nice dinner and went to the movie. Fanta thought the Odessa Steps sequence was better than when DiPalma swiped it for The Untouchables.” He took a frosted stemmed glass out of the freezer and po
ured the mixture into it. It was beige, with aubergine bits floating on top.

  “You went straight to dinner? You had a taco just before you left the house.”

  “I told you, I eat when I’m hungry. Some days I gorge all day long, then fast for a week. I sleep the same way. You would too, if you ever spent time in a Yugoslavian prison.”

  “Someday maybe you’ll tell me that whole story.”

  “Someday’s today. Grab a glass from the cupboard, will you? You can have this one.” He held it out.

  “Rain check. I’m going back to bed.”

  “Suit yourself. I only get the urge to tell the story once every five years.”

  Sleep was slow to return. At one point a whirring noise forced him to turn over onto his stomach and bury his head under his pillow. It sounded like the ventilation fan of a microwave oven.

  **

  Monday morning he made a detour to The Oracle before work. He was gratified to find the door open and pickups and cars belonging to construction workers parked in the alley. The sight of another vehicle caused his chest to tighten: a green sedan with the county seal on the door in gold.

  A red Vespa scooter he didn’t recognize leaned on its kick-stand near the door. He had to walk around it to enter. Inside the lobby, relief washed through him. Leo Kalishnikov was there in person.

  The theater designer was dressed conservatively by his standards, in a fawn-colored western-style suit with embroidery and black snakeskin cowboy boots. Their three-inch heels and the tall crown of his white ten-gallon hat brought him up to about five and a half feet. He was in conversation with a man in coveralls and a yellow hard hat who had to stoop to look him in the eye; Kalishnikov seldom raised his head to speak with anyone, no matter how tall. All around them, men and one woman stood on ladders, bent over sawhorses, and tested power tools. The sounds they made, so similar to the ones that had disturbed his sleep, were music now.

  “Mr. Valentino! Come, come!” The designer beckoned with a hand in a deerskin glove.

  Valentino went over and shook it. “I didn’t see your limo outside.”

  “I placed it in storage and sent Rupert on holiday. This energy crisis is everyone’s responsibility, no? My scooter, it is still outside? Not stolen? Vroom-vroom!” Laughing, he made a twisting motion with his hand.

  Valentino assured him it was still there, and Kalishnikov introduced him to the man in the hard hat. “Mr. Mercado is a serious man, a courageous man. He removes asbestos as a profession.”

  Mercado extricated his hand from Valentino’s with some difficulty. “All this way from San Berdoo just to show my license to an inspector. What’s that do to your energy crisis?”

  “Cuidado! Spink has not left the building.” The designer spoke in low tones. To Valentino, he said, “We have averted disaster, as you see. Wherever did you find this magnificent beast?” He reached up to pat the knee of the particolored Pegasus at the base of the stairs.

  Valentino gave him a brief account of his discovery. It seemed a small triumph next to Kalishnikov’s. “I can’t thank you enough for attending to this personally. I was sure it would take a week to untangle the red tape.”

  “No sweat.” All but a tiny vestige of the Russian’s accent dropped away. “The lower you go on the government food chain, the more bullies you run into. Creatures like Spink get a boot out of beating up on home owners, but when it comes to dealing with an experienced contractor they shrivel up like— Ah, Mr. Spink! How did you find the auditorium? Magical, is it not?” The Eastern Bloc was back with a vengeance.

  “It’s a wreck. The real magic trick is how this building managed to escape condemnation.”

  The man who’d answered had entered through one of the leather-cushioned doors that separated the lobby from the theater proper. He was as small as Kalishnikov without the hat and heels, pear-shaped in a black polyester suit that puckered in all the worst places and pouched above the back of his neck, but it was his head that claimed first notice. It was all out of proportion to his body: large, long, and bald to the crown, with watery blue eyes, a Kilroy nose, and a crooked row of bottom teeth that showed when he opened his mouth to speak.

  The designer performed introductions. Dwight Spink laid a hand in Valentino’s palm and slid it free, leaving a clammy trail. “Are you socially conscious, Mr. Valentino?”

  Valentino hesitated, then replied that he liked to think he was.

  “In that case, I strongly recommend you knock down this grotesquerie and donate the lot to the city for a homeless shelter. As it stands—and it barely does—it’s a useless relic of a hedonistic time that thankfully has passed, and a firetrap besides. Are you aware there is only one emergency exit from that public room, and that it’s chained and padlocked?”

  “Um, it was that way when I bought the building. I assume the former owners did it for security purposes. It had been broken into several times.”

  “By the poor disenfranchised, no doubt, looking for sanctuary. Another argument in favor of replacing it with a shelter.”

  “They ripped out all the copper pipe to sell for scrap. I thought you were here to inspect credentials and the entrance to the projection booth.”

  “Yes, yes, the licensing seems to be in order and the treacherous stairwell and nonconforming residential accommodations addressed, after a fashion. That board looks as if a monkey put it up.

  “You didn’t give me much time.” His face felt hot.

  “Just an observation. Mr. Kalishnikov has received my written approval for the corrections. This exit situation must be addressed before any construction begins in the public room.”

  “I don’t have a key for the padlock.”

  Kalishnikov called to a man cutting a piece of tin for the hacksaw in his tool chest.

  Spink squinted at a Timex strapped to the underside of his wrist. “I haven’t time for that. I’m due at a housing project in Watts in twenty minutes. I’m going to have to issue a stop-work order and come back for a follow-up inspection tomorrow. No, Friday. I’m booked up the next three days.”

  Kalishnikov said, “The carpenters are coming in this afternoon. They only have blueprints for the auditorium.” Once again his accent had slipped.

  “Then you should have corrected the violation before this. You know the code as well as I.”

  “I doubt that.” Suddenly the designer smiled brilliantly. “Can you spare one minute, Mr. Spink?”

  “Just that. The traffic situation in Los Angeles will continue to be a disgrace until we ban automobiles from the city limits.”

  Kalishnikov unbuttoned his western jacket and spread it open, exposing a hand-tooled leather holster under his left arm with the initials L.K. carved into it in loops, as if they had been spelled out with a lariat. He jerked out a big stag-handled revolver with a shiny nickel finish. Valentino recoiled. Spink squeaked and turned gray. The Russian smiled tightly. “If you will follow.”

  Spink seemed poised for flight, but all the workers in the room had stopped to watch, blocking his path to the street. He turned, and he and Valentino trailed Kalishnikov into the auditorium .

  At the fire exit he waved them back, then planted his feet, pointed the revolver at the padlock slung from the chain, closed one eye, and fired. The report made Valentino’s ears ring; Spink clasped his hands to both of his.

  Things always worked more smoothly on film. It took a second shot to shatter the lock. Kalishnikov holstered the gun, fastened his jacket, and jerked loose the chain. He threw it to the floor.

  ‘“Throw down the box.’” He grinned at Valentino. “This is a line, yes? From which western movie?”

  “Pretty much all of them.”

  They looked at Spink. The inspector produced a pad and pen, scribbled on the top sheet with a quaking hand, and gave it to Kalishnikov. “The fire code requires a second exit before the building can be opened to the public.”

  “But of course.”

  “You
r methods are reprehensible.”

  “Whereas yours are open to interpretation.”

  Spink left. The designer watched him go, fanning himself with the sheet from the pad. “I won’t charge you for that.”

  Valentino thanked him. His ears were still ringing.

  “No need. Bullets are cheap. Spink’s the one who’s going to cost you.”

  **

  II

  EAST OF SWEDEN

  **