Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was in deep shock. Garbo accepted their security, and she didn’t place her faith lightly. Do they have any idea what happened?”

  “Not yet. They’re rattled, too. But for us it opens up a whole new line of speculation. Akers needed to gain access to that material, and it goes missing just about the time he started making substantial monthly deposits in his savings account. If we can establish how it got from a locked file in Sweden to a mansion in Beverly Hills, we can drop the lid on the case. Any ideas?”

  “None whatsoever,” he lied.

  “And you call yourself a film detective.”

  He decided to derail that train of thought. “Are the archives going public with this discovery?”

  “Not yet. They’ve asked us to keep it from the press until they can come up with some kind of strategy. My opinion? They’ll offer a fat reward for the documents’ return, to steer attention away from a colossal blunder. If I were the curator I’d just wait for them to show up on eBay.”

  “Whoever was smart enough to sneak them out from under armed guard is probably smart enough not to try to peddle them publicly.”

  She spoke to someone on her end. “Tom, who broke that Picasso case?”

  Valentino heard a murmuring in the background. It sounded like “Danielle.”

  “Right. Thanks.” She spoke into the receiver. “Danielle Cox works Wire Fraud. Last year four men broke into a house in Bel-Air, walked around a high-tech security system with five backups, and left with one-point-two million in Picasso drawings from a private collection. They posted them on eBay. Danielle traced them to the robbers in forty-five minutes. No one’s smart all the way around third base.”

  “How much of this is confidential?”

  “The Picasso perps are public record, and guests of the state for the next fifteen to twenty. And the whole department knows about the other thing. Stockholm must know it’s going to be a race between its media team and whoever leaks it to the press on this end.”

  “You’re leaking it to me.”

  “You’re not the press. How are you two getting along, by the way?”

  “So far it’s First Amendment, one, Valentino, zero. Don’t be alarmed next time you see me. You’ve heard about someone getting a black eye in the newspapers?” He told her about his encounter with the microphone.

  Her tone softened. “Why don’t you come to my place tonight and I’ll put a compress on it? Ancient Danish recipe, guaranteed to reduce swelling, cure the grippe, and repel vampires.”

  “Actually, I was just about to ask you if you’re free tonight. We’re invited to dinner at Rankin’s.”

  “That might be a conflict of interest on my part,” she said after a moment. “He’s still under suspicion.”

  “The invitation came from his attorney. He seemed confident the prosecution will drop charges. So does Lieutenant Padilla, your nemesis.” He decided not to mention Padilla’s personal interest in the case. He was sorry he’d mentioned him at all. He didn’t want to spend quality time with Harriet discussing the man. He hoped she wouldn’t pursue the subject.

  “Are you there?” he asked after a moment.

  “I was just wondering what I should wear. He’s seen the Garbo outfit.”

  He said he was sure she’d think of something and arranged to call for her at six-fifteen.

  When he locked his office Ruth was at her desk, lacquering her nails a stoplight red, to match her lips. As a rule, not many demands were made upon their department, so she kept her own personal cosmetics counter in the drawers of her desk with which to while away the hours. Her nails were fully an inch and a half long, apparently homegrown, and filed to bayonet points. How she managed to type with them as fast as she did and without making errors was too deep a mystery for a mere film detective to solve.

  “I’m glad things slowed down finally,” she said without looking up from the operation. “If things kept up the way they did this morning I would’ve had to put in for a raise. I don’t know what to do with the money I make now.”

  “I didn’t realize the university was so generous to its clerical staff.”

  “It pays less than Taco Bell. When you’ve been around this burg as long as I have, you’ve bought everything worth having and seen everything worth looking at. After that you’re just treading water till death.”

  “How would you like to invest in a theater restoration project that will bring glory to our fair city for decades to come?”

  She blew on her nails. He swore he saw a wisp of flame. “I said I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t say I was looking for a furnace to shovel it into. Go shake your cup on Sunset. Sell maps to the movie stars’ homes. There are still some people who think they live in the United States.”

  “There’s always travel. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

  “Whenever it was, I found someone sitting at my desk when I got back. That weirdo son of a bitch Howard Hughes never wasted a minute replacing a female employee who wouldn’t put out. And not only female. But you can pay to read my autobiography when it hits the stores, just like everyone else.”

  He hoped for the sake of his adopted hometown she never published it. The city might survive the Big One, but not that.

  **

  Harriet Johansen’s otherworldly resemblance to Greta Garbo had vanished with the costume, replaced by a beauty that was hers entirely. Her short, smoky blonde hair clung to a head that seemed to have been shaped specifically not to be concealed beneath heavy tresses, and the slightly Far Eastern tilt of her eyes, which suggested a bloodline other than Scandinavian, compelled Valentino as he drove to make remarks that required her to turn her head his way to respond.

  “Are you admiring me again?” she said.

  “Guilty.”

  “Well, stop it. I’m self-conscious enough. I know I’m dressed all wrong.” She was wearing a blue cocktail dress that brought out the color in her eyes.

  “You look elegant. I, on the other hand, look like the guest of honor at a lynching. I can’t remember the last time I wore a necktie.”

  “You should more often. You’re too old to pass for the drummer in a grunge band.”

  “Says you. I’ve still got one of my baby teeth. You lose the habit of duding up when you spend as much time as I do rummaging through the dusty back rooms of junk shops looking for Charlie Chan Carries On.”

  “You’re better equipped for that than you are to interrogate suspects in homicides.”

  “That again. There’s no law against being curious.” He’d confided his idea to her, and had regretted it almost immediately. It was easy to forget, once she’d hung up her green work smock, that she was basically a cop.

  “There is when it involves obstruction of justice. This beef with Padilla’s going to land you in the pokey.”

  “Do they still call it that?”

  “Don’t try going off topic with me. My powers of concentration are my livelihood.”

  “I’m responding to a social invitation. I didn’t even know about the missing letters when I accepted. If the subject comes up—”

  “It will. You’ll make sure of that.”

  “If it does,” he pressed on, “I have the right to ask a question or two. But I’m looking forward to a pleasant evening. I admire our host. After the weekend he’s had, the fact that he’d rather entertain you and me than turn in early and try to forget it is flattering.”

  “The last time he invited you to his home it was to bribe you to commit a felony.”

  “He had an agenda then, I admit. But he’s as good as free and clear now. His secret is out, or soon will be; you said yourself the police can’t plug all the leaks, and anyway it’s a lie. And his claim of self-defense is holding. All he wants us to do for him is enjoy the poached salmon.”

  “I hope he doesn’t serve it with the head still on.”

  “You’re funny. You dissect dead peo
ple all day but you can’t eat a fish when it’s staring at you.”

  “I don’t eat the people either.”

  **

  Because though he was, and notwithstanding the experience of the past few days, Matthew Rankin proved a charming host. He greeted them in a large quiet living room with a full-length portrait of his late wife hanging above a massive fireplace of marble and brushed steel, served cocktails from an elaborate bar, and told Harriet she must never again impersonate anyone else and let others aspire instead to her loveliness.

  “I said almost the same thing,” Valentino said. “Maybe she’ll believe it coming from you.”

  “Maybe if you expressed yourself as well.” She sipped at her martini.

  Rankin wore a midnight blue suit that fit him like a sheath, with a liquid-silk necktie that made Valentino feel as under-dressed as Ray Padilla. Apart from a slight puffiness beneath his eyes, the department-store magnate looked as rested as if he’d spent the weekend in the country. He’d steered aside words of sympathy, showing more concern for Valentino’s embattled face. His brow darkened when he heard the explanation.

  “Did the pests follow you here? I pay a private security company to throw people like that into the street.”

  “That won’t be necessary tonight. Campus police escorted me to my car and I was able to leave the stragglers behind in city traffic. One of the advantages of earning an archivist’s salary is I drive a car that doesn’t stick out.”

  “A gang of them was camped on the curb when I got home,” Rankin said. “The police sent a squad-car team to break them up as a traffic obstruction. Clifford Adams says the department is trying to get on my good side before I take it to court.”

  Harriet asked if Beverly Hills had dropped the charges against him.

  Rankin gulped single-malt Scotch and shook his head. “Adams says they will tomorrow. If they moved as fast to clear an innocent man as they did to besmirch his reputation in the first place”—he smiled apologetically—”but let’s not talk about that. I’m going to be a self-indulgent host and inform you both you’re in for a treat tonight.”

  “The meal sounds wonderful.” Valentino drank from his glass of imported beer.

  “I meant dessert. That I’m serving in my home theater.”

  The Asian housekeeper came to the doorway to announce that dinner was served. She looked far more composed than she had the other morning, in the demure livery of a mature maid-servant and a slight scent of tarragon; in addition to performing as Rankin’s majordoma, it appeared she ran the kitchen as well. They adjourned to the dining room.

  Whatever language challenges faced the housekeeper (whose English was still better than Valentino’s Chinese—or was it Korean? A platoon of European actors pretending to be Asian detectives had hindered his ability to distinguish between the nationalities), she was more than equal to that posed by the culinary art. The salmon was moist but flaky, with a most delicate flavor, and each of the several side dishes would have qualified as an entree in any restaurant in southern California. The wine their host had selected, a product of his own vineyard in the Napa Valley, accompanied them all to perfection. When the woman brought out the last course, sweetened ices topped with a dollop of cognac, the table applauded her. She flushed deeply and withdrew with a slight bow.

  Throughout the meal, Rankin asked his guests questions about their work that demonstrated more than polite interest and unusual knowledge.

  “Those television programs about criminal technicians are claptrap, I know,” he told Harriet. “One of my companies works closely with the police departments of several major municipalities, tailoring computer equipment to their needs. If the screenwriters concentrated on pure science and left the cop-show clichés to the actors playing actual cops, they’d be more entertaining and certainly more accurate. Which search method do you prefer, spiral or grid?”

  She touched her napkin to her lips. “Neither. I start at the corners of the room and work my way toward the center.”

  “Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “From my father.”

  “Was he a criminalist?”

  “He was an academic. But that’s the way he assembled jigsaw puzzles, and he never left one unfinished.”

  Rankin laughed. Then he turned to Valentino. “My buyers keep me supplied with films restored for DVD distribution. I’ve seen the comparisons with the damaged stock; the difference is night and day. Just how do you reclaim what no longer exists?”

  “My specialty is finding footage, not restoring it,” Valentino said. “But the technicians have been patient enough to let me watch as long as I keep my mouth shut and don’t touch anything. Once they’ve struck off a safety print from silver nitrate, they transfer it to a high-definition master tape. They can’t do anything to make up for a missing section of more than a few frames, apart from inserting a ‘scene missing’ card, which is an admission of failure on my part as a scrounger, but they can perform a frame-by-frame improvement process by sampling the frames surrounding one that’s been compromised by dirt and blemishes. The space between is only a blip in time, too fast for the naked eye to encompass. In effect, the techies borrow elements of dark and light from the better frames and apply them to the scratched and stained ones to obtain a match.”

  “It sounds like Photoshop.”

  “Times a hundred. It’s much more tedious to watch than it is to hear about. Three or four reels with moderate damage can run up two hundred hours in the lab. But when the proper pains are taken the end product is smooth and undectable. It’s called the Lazarus Technique.”

  “Splendid! No wonder you and Ms. Johansen wound up together. Your work is almost identical.”

  “Not quite,” she said. “Val’s goes up on marquees and in millions of home theaters. Mine goes into evidence files and graveyards.”

  This allusion caused Rankin’s smile to collapse. He leaned forward from his place at the head of the table, looking at Valentino. “I can’t thank you enough for your support these past few days. My own business manager suggested I keep my picture off the cover of the quarterly report, to avoid frightening away investors with my black reputation. You’re one of the few who didn’t cheer my fall from grace, and you resisted pressure to blab to the media the circumstances of that ghastly letter. Giving you Andrea’s print of How Not to Dress is a small enough gesture—”

  Valentino came upright in his chair, interrupting him. Deliberately he kept his gaze from Harriet’s. He knew she was sending him silent signals to lay off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t let you finish that thought without asking one question.”

  His host sat back slightly, drawing his brows together. But he nodded.

  “Mr. Rankin, when was the last time you visited Stockholm?”

  **

  CHAPTER

  11

  MATTHEW RANKIN STUDIED his wineglass as intently as if it were made of fortune tellers’ crystal. “I don’t remember mentioning to you I’d ever been to Stockholm.”

  “You didn’t. Lieutenant Padilla saw it stamped in your passport. He’s jealous of people who dress better than he does and can afford to travel beyond Long Beach.”

  “You don’t know that,” Harriet said. “Don’t be a snob.”

  “The question’s a non sequitur,” Rankin said, “but I assume you’ll explain. It would have been autumn of last year. I attended a reception there for a researcher friend who was sharing the Nobel Prize with another fellow. He used to work for me, developing software. His name—”

  “That’s not necessary, sir. I’m not going to check up on you, although the police probably will. They’re bound to make the same connection I did. Did you by any chance visit the Swedish Military Archives while you were there?”

  “No. I’d hoped to—Andrea would’ve insisted I pay my respects to Greta by looking at her letters—but I had to cut my trip short to put out a fire in the department
-store end of my operation. It’s not the sort of thing you can do from near the Arctic Circle.”

  “Did Roger Akers accompany you on that trip?”

  “Of course. That was his function as my assistant, to see to the mundane details. I’m too old and travel has become too much of an ordeal to waste time arguing with hotel clerks over what constitutes a king-size bed in Sweden.”

  “Do you know if Akers went to the archives?”

  “He did not. That was a personal mission. There’d have been no point in sending him in my place.”