Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “She said that?”

  “She was more diplomatic, but the meaning is the same. I’m a slacker.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you were writing a new book?”

  He tapped his bulging brow. “It’s all paying itself out in the echo box. I tried to make her understand that my method is an extension of John Ford’s editing Stagecoach and The Informer in the camera, so that when all the footage was in the can all the editor of record had to do was piece it together.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It was scatological in nature. There are limits to the young lady’s diplomacy.”

  “She dumped you.”

  “No. Hers is not an all-or-nothing generation. We’re going to the Greek Theater next week. If it’s Electra I’m walking out.” He scooped the bowl of his pipe inside an open tobacco can on the table beside his chair and tamped it with his thumb. The action reminded Valentino suddenly of the can in the old director’s lonely shabby quarters in Tijuana.

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Stop smoking and lose weight, but thank God she wasn’t adamant about that.”

  “She’s right.”

  Broadhead paused with the pipe between his teeth and a match poised to strike on the side of the box. He glared at his guest from under the tumble of dust-colored hair on his forehead. “A man who has no vices has no experience against which to measure the conduct of his acquaintances.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your weight and your smoking. I spent the day with an old man who pretended he had something I wanted, just so I’d spend time with him. He wasn’t a patch on you in his prime, but the life he’s living now isn’t that much different from yours. You’ve just got a better location. There’s nothing seriously wrong with microwaving chili fries in the wee hours, but I don’t think you even like them.”

  “They have the consistency of the stuff that collects in rain gutters.”

  “So why not use the time and actually write the book?”

  “Here’s a question for you.” The professor struck the match, got his pipe going, shook out the flame, and dropped the stump in an ashtray containing a smoldering heap of slag. “When will you be able to move back into the Oracle?”

  **

  “So you moved out.” Harriet shut the door on the delivery man and laid the pizza boxes side by side on the table in her dinette: medium pepperoni for Valentino, breadsticks with ranch dipping sauce for her. Valentino always knew whether she’d taken part in an autopsy recently, based on her attitude toward red sauce and meat.

  “Lock, stock, and pride. He asked me where I was going and I said the Holiday Inn. We shook hands. In between there was a lot of standing around with our hands in our pockets, trying to work up the courage to apologize. Didn’t happen.”

  “Men.”

  “Women. All of you generalize too much.”

  She made a gesture and took the napkin he offered. “I’m surprised you lasted this long. When’s the last time you saw anything by Neil Simon?”

  “Wes Craven is closer to the mark. Kyle keeps vampire hours.”

  “Obviously he didn’t throw you out because you took Fanta’s side. He had to lash out at someone when she turned him down. Do you think they’ll break up?”

  “It looks that way, despite what he said. He’s a loon in a lot of ways, but he has traditional ideas about courtship. The last time he wooed a girl they wound up married for twenty-five years. And Fanta’s young and attractive and smart. She’s bound to meet a good-looking young lawyer and establish something with pretensions toward permanency.”

  “So much for the smart part.”

  He peeled up a pepperoni and munched at it. “I’m not so sure he blew up at me over the sting to his vanity. I don’t know just what nerve I touched, but I don’t think that was it.”

  “Writer’s block?” She plunged a breadstick into the little plastic medicine cup.

  “He’d bathe me in scorn if I suggested that to his face. He’s always said writer’s block has the same foundation in reality as plumber’s and housepainter’s block.”

  “Denial.” She took a bite. “Did you say ‘wooed a girl’?”

  Cinderella Man, one of a handful of recent films Valentino considered worthy of preserving for future generations, was playing on AMC. They ate in front of it, washing down the respectable fast-food fare with chianti. When the film ended, Harriet said, “It’s pretty late to be checking into a motel. You won’t get much back from the investment beyond a night’s sleep.”

  “You don’t know how wonderful that sounds. The only thing that could spoil it would be the noise from a blender someone smuggled into the next room.”

  She regarded him over her wine, a low-key shot that put red lights in her pupils. “You’re just no good at all at taking a hint, are you?”

  “I’m better at avoiding them.”

  “What’s the matter, I still smell of formaldehyde?”

  “If you did, the cologne companies would hound you for the formula. Stop trying to pretend you have no sex appeal. Impersonating Greta Garbo doesn’t mean you can act.”

  “I’m not suggesting you move in,” she said. “I’m not your Mexican director. Living alone suits me fine. I’ve got round-the-clock bathroom privileges and when I set something down it’s still there when I need it.”

  He sipped his wine. The residual effects of the afternoon’s tequila were still present; his head was attached to his body by a thin filament, like a balloon filled with helium. “Sleeping arrangements?”

  “Well, there’s the sofa, but as you can see it’s a futon. The Japanese have a lot more to answer for than Pearl Harbor.”

  “Just for tonight,” he said. “I’ll look for an extended stay place tomorrow. Kalishnikov is confident he’ll swing a variance when the zoning board meets this week so I can move back into the theater. Maybe by next weekend I can leave the vagabond life behind.”

  “Your apartment’s in the projection booth. How will you get to it, levitation?”

  “Oddly enough, he informs me that an eighty-dollar aluminum extension ladder with a three-hundred-pound load limit is a preferable alternative to a stout set of nonconforming stairs, according to the County of Los Angeles.”

  She put down her glass and slid closer to him on the futon. Warmth radiated from her body. “Are we going to spend the rest of the night discussing zoning ordinances, or are we going to fool around?”

  **

  CHAPTER

  14

  THERE FOLLOWED A tense period during which Valentino kept to his office and Broadhead to his. Once only, the younger man miscalculated his timing, or the professor fell behind schedule, and they arrived at the same time. The brief silent elevator ride to their floor seemed interminable. When the doors slid open they broke for cover without pausing at Ruth’s desk. The intercom buzzed as soon as Valentino shut his door.

  “What’s the fight about?” Ruth asked. “Can’t agree on the name of the fourth Stooge?”

  “Shemp. And stop using office equipment for personal communications.”

  “I thought it was Zeppo.”

  “That was the fourth Marx brother.”

  “Right. I dated him once. Did you know he was Jewish?”

  “They were all Jewish, Ruth.”

  “I thought Chico was Italian.”

  “What did I say about office equipment?”

  “If I waited for business to come along all the wires would corrode.” She clicked off.

  When the buzzer sounded again he mashed down the toggle and said, “What is it now, the fourth Musketeer?”

  “That cop’s on the line.”

  “What cop?” He’d genuinely forgotten.

  She might not have heard him. His telephone button lighted up. He hesitated, then lifted the receiver and spoke his name.

  “Ray Padilla. Your pet billionaire’s dug deep in his burrow. I can’t get any closer t
o him than his lawyer. I thought maybe you could put me in contact.”

  “Are you back on the case?”

  “There is no case, didn’t you hear? Rankin’s scot-free, Garbo’s a dyke, and I’ve been suspended without pay pending a hearing to can my butt from the force. It seems I leaked sensitive information to the press.”

  Valentino made a pumping motion with his fist. But he kept his tone level. “In view of all that, what do you have to talk about with Rankin?”

  “To begin with I want to ask him why he didn’t spot the letter for a phony. The man practically invented the computer. He should’ve seen everything the lab rats at the LAPD saw.”

  “Obviously he didn’t. He paid Akers blood money to keep the letter under wraps.”

  “He paid him for something. We’ve only got Rankin’s word it was over the letter.”

  “Some people think he was inclined to believe it was real because of previous rumors and lingering doubts.”

  “You don’t make more money than God with a history of jumping to conclusions.”

  “I don’t understand you, Lieutenant. Your job is hanging by a thread. Do you hate the wealthy so much you’d risk snapping it just to make one of them more miserable than he already is?”

  “I’ve got nothing against the rich. I’ve never given up hope I’ll be one someday, but I’m a cop, so it isn’t likely. But I am a cop. A man’s dead who didn’t contribute anything worthwhile to society while he was alive, but the statutes on homicide don’t say anything about how life’s spent, just how it ended. So what about getting me in touch?’’

  “I can’t help you. I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I can’t reach him myself without going through Clifford Adams.”

  “Well, thanks for nothing.” Padilla’s tone changed. “How’s the shiner?”

  “I found out they go away when people stop sticking microphones in your eye.”

  “I heard something like that. It’s my good luck the department’s in no hurry to stand me up in front of the press.” The line clicked.

  At lunchtime, Valentino thought, picked up the telephone to call Broadhead, put it back down, picked it up again, and called Harriet, but she told him she had a heavy caseload and was eating at her desk. “Why don’t you call Kyle and mend that fence?”

  “I tried, but I wound up dialing your number instead.”

  “You’re twenty feet away from him. Get your angular hindquarters out of your chair and walk across the hall and knock on his door. Honestly, Val, sometimes you’re like a high school kid who’s too shy to ask a girl out.”

  “My hindquarters are angular?”

  “You could slice cheese.”

  After the conversation he sat another five minutes, then got up and went out and crossed in front of Ruth’s desk and rapped on Broadhead’s door. When thirty seconds went by without a response, he knocked again.

  Ruth said, “He left ten minutes ago.”

  He turned her way. She was poking at a salad in a plastic container with a fork, plastic also. He’d pegged her for a carnivore. “If you knew that, why’d you let me go on standing here like an idiot?”

  “I’m on lunch.”

  He decided to go to the student union and see what was in the vending machines. On the sidewalk he spotted a big, redheaded man he recognized, too late to duck for cover. He couldn’t believe he’d been too preoccupied to notice that neon-blue blazer in time to take defensive measures.

  “Mr. Valentino! Red Ollinger, Midnite Magic Theater Systems. Remember me?”

  Valentino retrieved his hand from the salesman’s flipperlike palm. “You’re hard to forget. You make an impression. If you’ll excuse me, I’m in—”

  “Sure. You’re a busy man. I just wanted to tell you we made our first public test of the digivid recording system at Grauman’s over the weekend.”

  “Digivid?”

  “You know, the digital projector and webcam setup to surveil the audience while playing the feature. I gave you the brochure.”

  “Yes. I haven’t had—”

  “It caught a rotten kid flipping malted milk balls over the railing of the balcony. That’s how sensitive it is.”

  “Congratulations. Will you be sentencing him to life at hard labor or lethal injection?”

  “That’s the manager’s headache. The point is exhibitors will know instantly how the audience reacts—there’s always some posing when they fill out those cards—and of course pirates will be caught red-handed. We’re trying out a new slogan: ‘Watch them watch.’ What do you think?”

  “I think the DVD rental business should make you man of the year. There won’t be a cricket in any theater in this country when words gets out. This may come as a surprise to someone living in Hollywood, but most people don’t go out to be looked at. They prefer to be let alone and unobserved.”

  Ollinger scratched the spare tire around his middle. “Well, good luck with your enterprise. You’ll need it. You think more like the guy that buys the tickets than the guy that sells them.”

  “Then you understand me. I’m not looking to make a profit, just to keep from sinking in too deep.”

  “You don’t need projection equipment. What you need is water wings.”

  **

  Valentino ate a sandwich in the cafeteria—it tasted like the cellophane it had been wrapped in—and went to the graduate library to look up old Los Angeles for the historical project he was doing on commission. He walked past an occupied carrel, stopped, and reversed himself for a closer look at the occupant. Kyle Broadhead sat hunched over a heap of books, shielding an open volume like an old lion guarding its kill.

  “Hiding out in the last place anybody’d think to look for you?” Valentino asked.

  Broadhead started and looked up. His eyes were baleful above the tops of his reading glasses. “I warned the administration the library was turning into a shelter for the homeless. Are you down to eating from Dumpsters yet?”

  “Close. I had lunch at the union.” Valentino read the title on one of the stacked spines. “Hitchcock/Truffaut. Are you doing research?”

  “Certainly not. Can’t a man read during his lunch hour without being interrogated like the Unabomber?”

  “You’re getting ready to write a book.”

  “What would be the point?” He slapped shut the one he’d been reading and sat back. “Everything’s been written that can be. Nothing new has been said about the cinema since the Lumiere brothers, and they’ve been dead since the last ice age. Even my one leap into the mire only added to the compost.” He flicked his fingers toward his own Persistence of Vision, sandwiched between a biography of D.W. Griffith and Shelley Winters’ tell-all memoirs.

  “It’s seminal.”

  “So’s masturbation, but I wouldn’t go public with that either. If I read one more line of tripe about Welles’ seven-minute tracking shot in Touch of Evil, I’ll dig up the fat clown and slap the pork chop out of his hands.”

  “What about a straight autobiography? My Life in the Celluloid Trenches.”

  “I almost drowned once. My past flashed before my eyes. I fell asleep.” Broadhead traded the book for another from the stack and spread it open. “Sorry I threw you out.”

  “What?” Valentino had barely heard him.

  “I’m an irritable old gasbag infatuated with a girl who’s younger than green wine. I should’ve thanked you for pointing it out instead of throwing you into the street.”

  “I didn’t say anything like that.”

  “You were tactful, but that was the effect. The room’s yours if you want it. I haven’t even changed the sheets.”

  “As tempting as you make it sound, I’m okay. I expect to be home soon, among the nail guns and circular saws.”

  “Are you sure? I was thinking of making chili fries for supper.”

  Valentino laughed. Broadhead stuck out a hand without looking up from the page. Valentino shook it.
<
br />   **

  III

  PALE WRITER

  **

  CHAPTER

  15

  HE DETECTED NO traces of industrial-strength insecticide when he strolled among the construction debris. The exterminator had folded his tent and stolen away; stolen being the operative word. Valentino folded and pocketed his copy of the work completion order, for which he’d traded a check for eight hundred. It pleased him to see the carpenters and plasterers eating their sandwiches and sipping their sports drinks without apparent fear of toxic fumes (and, he noted, keeping scrupulous track of crumbs and spills), although ordinarily he’d have been impatient about the work that wasn’t getting done. He assumed labor regulations forbade the practical concept of taking breaks in shifts instead of shutting down a project for sixty minutes at a stretch. The sight of a Frisbee on the floor made him scowl. No one took an hour to eat, and the bored workers filled the rest of the time flinging a projectile across a room filled with fragile and irreplaceable architectural treasures. He’d talk to Kalishnikov about that.