Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  The screen went dark. The shaft of light crawling with dust motes disappeared from the aperture belonging to the projection booth upstairs. Spink turned his head that way.

  “I took down the plywood and put it back up after Phil climbed the noncompliant stairs,” the archivist said. “I suppose I’m in trouble with whoever takes your place as building inspector.”

  Spink was still staring at the booth. A somewhat bullet-shaped silhouette showed against a light inside. One hand came up in a wave.

  Valentino said, “I borrowed Phil from Matthew Rankin. He’s a pro; he mastered the new technology in just one weekend. I could have operated it myself by remote control, but I didn’t want to run afoul of the projectionists’ union on top of that other violation. My life’s experience has made me a law-abiding man.”

  Dwight Spink said nothing. When his face turned back it was gray and his mouth had fallen open to expose the tilted headstones in his bottom jaw.

  **

  CHAPTER

  19

  “YOU FORCED HIM to resign?” Broadhead said.

  Valentino nodded. “After he gave me back the money. That was the price of not turning my evidence over to the county for prosecution.”

  “Isn’t that obstruction of justice?”

  “Only the legal kind. He was bound to talk in return for a lesser charge. Why get a lot of desperate people in trouble just for agreeing to his terms? I was almost one of them. Anyway, I needed the money back. Midnite Magic demanded a stiff deposit to install all that equipment on a temporary basis.”

  “You returned it?”

  “They’re dismantling the sound equipment and spycams. I’m holding on to the digital projector; they’ve given me two weeks to try it out, and a payment plan if I’m hooked. The quality’s perfect. I can use it to screen silent films until I get a more conventional audio receiver and speakers.”

  “Well, I guess you can move back in anytime. You’ve got Spink’s certificate.”

  “I tore it up.”

  Broadhead smacked his venerable Remington typewriter with a palm and fell back in his chair. They were in the home office the professor maintained in a corner of his bedroom, with a freshly opened ream of paper on the writing table but no reference books in sight. “You’re honest to a fault,” he said. “A fault. The homespun pioneer principles that work so well in Fox Fart, Indiana, don’t apply to Southern California.”

  “Fox Forage,” Valentino corrected. “The paper was no good, Kyle. It was signed by Spink, and the record will show that he resigned his position months before construction was completed.”

  “Years. Decades. So what are you going to do when another Spink shows his face?”

  “Call me idealistic, but I’m playing the percentages. They can’t all be crooks or this city wouldn’t be in a constant state of tearing down and building back up.”

  “The percentages would all be in your favor if you’d left him where he was and put that certificate in a safe deposit box.”

  “That would have made me no better than Roger Akers.”

  Broadhead charged his pipe. “I’d almost forgotten all about that.”

  “I haven’t. If I refused Matthew Rankin’s request to furnish blackmail evidence to stop Akers from blackmailing Rankin, I sure wasn’t going to blackmail Spink to renovate the Oracle. I’d never be able to set foot in the place without remembering what I had to do to make it possible.”

  “That sounds like something Harriet would say. What did she say about your little undercover sting?”

  “I haven’t told her yet. She said I should nail him somehow, but I have my doubts she’d approve how I went about it. She works for the police department, after all.” He changed the subject. “You haven’t told me what happened at the budget meeting.”

  “Yes, about that.” Broadhead put a match to the tobacco and popped his lips on the stem for thirty seconds before he was satisfied with the ignition. He blew a cloud and held the dead match until it cooled. “I tried to get the department a twenty-percent raise in its operating fund. I couldn’t swing it.”

  “It was reckless to try. The best I hoped for was that the administration wouldn’t make any cuts. Tell me you were able to talk them out of it.”

  “The subject didn’t come up.”

  “They didn’t table it! The last time that happened we were paralyzed for a year. I couldn’t travel or make acquisitions without begging for every dime. By the time it finished crawling through the system, the opportunity was gone.”

  “They counteroffered with a fifteen-percent raise.”

  Valentino blinked. “I thought we were in an economic crunch.”

  “Have you ever known the administration to say we’re flush? I reminded them of some of the properties the department’s brought into the archives this past year, including Greed and Greta Garbo’s film debut and the publicity there attendant. Your figures showing an increase in private donations after the Greed story broke didn’t exactly queer the deal. Your being asked to provide commentary for How Not to Dress on DVD cinched it. I told you our president is starstruck.”

  “How’d you find out about that?”

  “I’ve always known it. He almost soiled himself when I tagged Scorsese for a lecture series on European influences in American film.”

  “I mean how’d you find out I was invited to comment on How Not to Dress?’

  “Ruth. Her intelligence network among the secretaries and switchboard operators on this campus makes Homeland Security look like two tin cans and a string.”

  “But why would she tell you? If she had her way, the university would turn our offices back into a power plant.”

  Broadhead puffed. “And what would she do then? No other department in this institution would have her. If she joined a retirement cruise, the crew and passengers would vote to maroon her on an island. Anyway, I asked her for help. That pile of papers you gave me wouldn’t have done squat. So what about this Rankin thing? If you spring him, will he be properly grateful to the department?”

  “Kyle, sometimes your cynicism isn’t amusing. Justice should be its own reward.”

  “I got out of the habit of expecting justice a long time ago. That’s why I don’t dress like Napoleon to this day.”

  Valentino only half heard him. He was thinking about the budget. “This means I can go to Italy. A retired A.D. I’ve been pumping for information for years has been taunting me with some Fellini outtakes he claims to have in his basement. I can tell him face to face to put up or shut up.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Florence.”

  “Save your frequent flyer miles,” Broadhead said. “The Tuscan government ordered all basements sealed after the Arno overflowed its banks forty years ago. He’s probably trying to hit you up for a loan.”

  Valentino was disappointed. “Well, there’s always Siberia. They say Stalin stocked a defunct salt mine with his favorite films in case he had to go underground to avoid a nuclear attack. He was particularly fond of Eisenstein.”

  “I bet a kid on Sunset sold you a map.”

  “The point is I can start dreaming again. Thanks, Kyle. Fanta’s mistaken. You do contribute.”

  “Oh, her. She’s going to have to come around on her own. I’m not pinning my legacy on a bureaucratic victory.” He patted the typewriter.

  “What’s that?”

  “A mechanical writing machine, a marvel of the age. It processes, paginates, and prints, and it’s immune to electrical storms, power failures, hackers, and viruses. It will revolutionize the computer industry as we know it.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean that.” Valentino pointed at the sheet rolled onto the platen.

  “An Egyptian invention, originally fashioned from the pulp of the papyrus—”

  “What’s on the paper?”

  “Oh. You didn’t have to shout. It’s the first chapter of my book.”

  “It
says ‘The.’”

  “It’s more than I’ve written in years. I have the rest in order.” He tapped his temple with the stem of his pipe.

  “You finally decided on a theme. Congratulations.”

  “Don’t pop the cork until I’m finished. I’ve wasted a week in the library, the projection room, and that Mycenean monstrosity appropriately labeled the World Wide Web, only to confirm what I suspected at the start, that every stone has been turned and all the oceans plumbed to their depths. I have a new respect for the challenges confronting a modern musical composer, faced with the realization that every conceivable combination of notes on the scale has been exploited three times over. Am I the only one who noticed that ‘Autumn in New York’ and ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ are the same song, or that the refrain from Shania Twain’s ‘I Feel Like a Woman’ is actually the rallying call at Dodgers Stadium?”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew she existed.”

  “Her opus sets the mood for a dozen Web sites. Someone should appoint a road commission to study the pointless detours and dead ends on the Information Superhighway.”

  “You’re wandering off topic.”

  “So does the Net, but I at least can claim the privilege of senile dementia. There isn’t a single aspect of the history, philosophy, and psychology of film that hasn’t been poked, prodded, dissected with a scalpel, or bludgeoned beyond recognition with a blackjack. Film by decade, by year, by subject, by director, by actor, by character, by phile and phobia, by genre, by context, by politics, by cinematographer, by caterer, subdivided by individual food issues. Did you know Marlon Brando was allergic to peanuts? It explains his performance in The Island of Dr. Moreau, but no fewer than six pundits are at loggerheads over just what John Frankenheimer was eating when he puked out that one.”

  “You made your point. So what—”

  “When I’m finished, I said. As we speak, an enterprising young philistine at Princeton is preparing a chronology on product placement in the movies, beginning with a tin of crackers in Georges Melies’ Cinderella, as his doctoral thesis. Doubtless some publisher will snap it up, and four hundred pages of slick advertising bound in cloth with an arresting dust jacket will occupy place of honor on Larry Kasdan’s coffee table.”

  Valentino waited, reluctant to be scolded once again for interrupting. When Broadhead blew smoke rings, indicating intermission, he said, “Is that your theme? Nothing new under the sun?”

  “I’d be worse than senile if I spent my remaining years repeating what the rest of the world has repeated to make the case for repetition. This senseless slaughter of trees must end somewhere. I am the theme. I’m writing from my own experience.”

  “I suggested a week ago you write your memoirs. Your response was ironic.”

  “It was not. I was sincere. I’m no theologian, but I’d deserve an extra week in Purgatory if I foisted upon an unsuspecting public the clinical details of the bloody nose I earned from Stinky Burnicki when I was six. I propose to focus on the one episode that may merit a respectable first printing.”

  It burst upon him. “The prison in Yugoslavia.”

  “Depressing; but Dumas mined similar material for Edmond Dantes without disgracing himself. Although it would be colorful to paint a portrait of myself scribbling The Persistence of Vision on bits of coarse toilet paper in the gray light seeping in through a single barred window, the truth is I bartered my rations for pencils and writing paper, and the electric bulb in the corridor was adequate until the guards turned it off at eight. I’m going to concentrate on the events that led me to that cell.”

  “You were falsely accused of espionage. Readers will lap it up.

  Broadhead knocked out his pipe on the heel of his shoe. Plugs and ashes littered the floor the way dribbles of paint announced an artist at work. “How much have I told you about that period in my life?”

  “Next to nothing. I don’t think it’s come up more than three or four times in all the years we’ve known each other, and you always change the subject when I start asking questions. I assumed you didn’t want to dredge up a painful memory.”

  “It was certainly painful. When they threw me on the stone floor, I scraped my knee, the scrape became infected, and by the time a physician was called I had to exhaust my small knowledge of Croatian to persuade him not to amputate. I nearly died of enteric fever, and when the U.S. State Department made up its mind after three years to acknowledge my existence, I walked out on crutches. Also, the entire country regarded central heating as a capitalistic myth. Is any of this new?”

  “Almost all of it. You told me how long you were there, and what you were charged with, but you didn’t give details.”

  “I thought not. I was pretty sure I never said I was falsely accused.”

  The meaning of this reply reached Valentino at glacial pace. He opened his mouth to say something.

  Broadhead pointed his pipe stem at the ceiling, silencing him with this exclamation mark. “No questions. Nothing kills a book faster than talking about it. Close the door on your way out. I can’t work in fresh air.”

  **

  CHAPTER

  20

  HARRIET WAS UNUSUALLY quiet. That made the break room, normally an oasis of peace in the middle of a busy police department, tomblike in its silence. A smock-clad criminalist Valentino had met once or twice came in, greeted them both, interpreted her monosyllabic reply as something less than cordial, and left quickly after snatching a juice box from the refrigerator. Harriet’s fork rattled explosively against the plastic tray containing her pasta salad in the pall.

  Valentino made a try at conversation. “Kyle’s writing his book. Actually writing, not just talking about it.”

  “I know. Fanta told me.” She didn’t look up.

  “I didn’t know you two hung out.”

  “Girlfriends’ network. That’s how I know where you were yesterday morning.”

  “Whoops.” It was the best he could come up with after three seconds.

  “Well put.”

  “I told Kyle that in confidence.”

  “He told you about his book in confidence.”

  “I should have told you. I’m sorry. I thought if I did you’d try to talk me out of it.”

  “You’re a grown man. If you thought it was that good an idea, you shouldn’t have been worried I’d make you change your mind.”

  “You’re right. I am sorry.”

  “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “The secrets just keep piling up.” She pushed away the tray and looked at him. “I know you, mister. You only lie when you’re ashamed of what you’re doing. I’m the one who suggested you nail Spink, remember?”

  “I was ashamed. I still am, even if he did have it coming. I never thought of myself as an extortionist, but that’s what it amounted to. I tried to convince myself I did the right thing by forcing him to quit instead of putting him in my pocket, but you’re right; if there was anything honorable about it I wouldn’t have kept it from you.” He sat back, twisting and untwisting the cap on his bottle of water. “I haven’t been thinking right since this Spink business began. It wasn’t just him; the hotel is the third time I’ve moved since I bought the theater, and then there was that mess with Rankin and the only serious fight I ever had with Kyle. I’m thinking of getting out from under, putting the Oracle up for sale and moving into an apartment with a nice long lease so I won’t be tempted to tear up roots once again. Maybe the legend’s right: The place is haunted.”

  “Demonic possession is no excuse for freezing me out of your life.”

  “Right again. But you have to admit it’s original.”

  “Don’t smile! Don’t you dare. My last relationship ended when he tried one too many times to charm himself back into my good graces.”

  He said nothing. He’d run out of options.

  “How much do you think you can get for the pl
ace?”

  His chest felt tight. He’d half expected her to try to talk him out of selling. “I don’t know. I’d be surprised if I got back what I’ve put into it. When I bought it, Kyle said the smart thing to do would be to tear it down. Vacant lots are worth more than rickety old buildings in this town.”

  “Sergeant Clifford’s husband is in construction. She might be able to get you a good deal on demolition. You bought some good will when you helped her clear up that old murder at the theater.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said after a moment.