Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 01 - Frames

by Loren D. Estleman

  She loped toward the car. Valentino scrambled out from under the wheel.

  “This is Fanta,” Broadhead said.

  Fanta was an athletic-looking five-ten in jeans, flip-flops, and a sweatshirt barely hanging on by her collarbone. Glistening black hair fell like a spill of graphite to her tan shoulders. Her grip was dry and firm. “I’m totally psyched, Mr. Valentino. I hope to intern with the film preservation program next summer.” Self-assurance bubbled through the shallow Valley Girl voice.

  “Just Valentino,” he managed to say. She was stunning—and very young. “I left behind the mister when I crossed the state line.”

  She laughed out of proportion to the humor of the remark.

  “Fanta breezed through the spring term with a four-point-oh,” said Broadhead. “She’s with the archery team. We need young muscles to carry away the booty, or pull me out when I step through a rotten floorboard. Your old soul won’t answer.”

  “Shotgun!” She hopped in on the passenger’s side.

  Broadhead bent to open the rear door. Valentino put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “How old is Fanta?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. Nineteen or twenty, I suppose. She’s a junior.”

  “Kyle, she’s named after a soft drink!”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to pass judgment on people’s names.”

  “How long has it been since Elaine died?”

  Understanding came up like thunder under the tweed cap. “Not that long. My God, never that long. What kind of old goat do you think I am? Her father was my teaching assistant my first year here. He died on the U.S.S. Cole.”

  “How much did you tell her?”

  “Just that you bought a white elephant of a theater and found something of possible interest to the university. You can tell her as much or as little as you want. She’s in pre-law, studying to represent the industry in cases of copyright infringement. Ethics is one of the courses she aced last spring.”

  “I’m sorry.” Valentino withdrew his hand. “It’s this town. Sometimes you see things that make you want to hire a crop duster and spray the whole place with saltpeter.”

  “Well, you can count me out. Elaine gave me as much in that department as a man could ever want, and devotion besides. I’d still be rotting in jail if she hadn’t camped out on the State Department steps for three years.”

  “Forgive me.”

  The professor fluttered his lips rudely and unlatched the door. “Glad to see you’ve got something on your mind other than the flickers. There may be hope for you.”

  During the drive, Fanta showed a healthy interest in the scenery rolling past her window, a refreshing change from so many of her peers, who insulated themselves from the world, jabbering on cell phones and listening to music no one else could hear, over minimal headsets like the kind they gave out in coach class—“cretins with iPods,” as Broadhead called them. Valentino caught her making faces at a delighted little girl in the backseat of a station wagon at a stoplight. Turning onto Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, he felt encouraged to conduct a guided tour.

  “Wallace Beery lived there.” He pointed at an estate entirely hidden behind a twelve-foot concrete wall. “He tied with Fredric March for Best Actor in nineteen thirty-two; the only time that ever happened in the history of the Academy. In real life, Beery wasn’t nearly as lovable as the characters he played,” he confided.

  “He was a son of a bitch.”

  He glanced at her, startled by both the comment and its bright delivery.

  “I’m a Hollywood brat,” she said. “My great-grandmother was a script supervisor at MGM. ‘Script girls,’ they called them then.” She giggled. “Jackie Cooper accidentally shot him in the foot with a prop pistol on the set of Treasure Island. The crew gave him a standing ovation.”

  Broadhead chuckled maliciously. “You don’t want to go toe to toe with Fanta over antiquated showbiz gossip. She was her great-grandmother’s favorite, and she listened.”

  “Maybe I’d be safer switching to a subject I don’t know much about. Dr. Broadhead tells me you’re studying copyright law.”

  “Kyle,” Broadhead corrected. “If you can ditch your title in Lake Tahoe, I’m not going to lug mine off campus.”

  Valentino felt a jealous spark. It had taken him five years of close association to work up the courage to address his friend by his Christian name.

  “It’ll keep me off welfare for life,” said Fanta, steering the conversation back on course. “Corporate’s no turn-on for me, but I believe in creative rights. Camcorders in theaters, pirate DVDs in China and New York, downloading everywhere: Every time technology advances, protection of intellectual property takes a hit. Producers, directors, actors, and screenwriters are losing millions to the black market. Billions. The lawsuits are going to bitch up the courts for twenty years.”

  Valentino said, “I agree it’s a serious problem. I just wish the studios were less easily distracted from preservation and restoration. The more established producers and directors, the film school generation, has been more than generous with donations, but funds from the front offices are drying up. The execs are so busy trying to keep the latest Star Wars installment out of the hands of street vendors they’re letting a hundred years of history crumble to dust.”

  “There wouldn’t be any history if the pirates had their way.” Fanta’s tone stiffened to Valley bedrock. “Edwin Porter went broke trying to convince judges to stop his competitors from reshooting The Great Train Robbery scene for scene and refusing to pay him a penny in royalties.”

  Valentino hesitated. “You didn’t get that from your great-grandmother. She’d have to have lived to a hundred to remember it.”

  Broadhead said, “I consider that an insult to my teaching skills. I told you Fanta was a prize student.”

  “We’re ganging up on him,” she said, softening her tone. “If we can hit one of these big-time bootleggers with punitive damages far enough in excess of what they’ve ripped off, there’ll be plenty to go around, for preservationists and the bean counters at Viacom.”

  “I just hope that by that time there will be something left to preserve,” Valentino said.

  “Amen,” said Broadhead.

  “Represent,” said Fanta. She straightened in her seat. “Oh, too cool. Wicked.”

  Valentino had slowed in front of The Oracle.

  He’d given his new young acquaintance credit for making her case with logic and sympathy for the opposing side. Now he assigned her extra points for her ability to see past the superficial. The old building was too cool, and wicked besides; but it required a special gift to disregard the ravages of time and criminal neglect to recognize its original glory.

  Gone was the fabulous marquee, condemned as structurally unsound sometime between its brief Bohemian renaissance as a venue for screening obscure art films and the descent of the hippie hordes, whose unshaven armpits and community bongs had left their stench. Subsequent showings of XXX smut and blaxploitation tripe had emboldened its neighbors to obscure the Deco fluting and baroque flourishes beneath a palimpsest of spray-painted gang symbols and schoolboy obscenities. Plywood covered the box-office windows.

  “If we close our eyes, we might convince ourselves we’re attending the premiere of Gone With the Wind,” Broadhead said. “But only if we close our noses, too. What is that smell?”

  Valentino said, “Animal-control officers raided the place next door for breeding fighting dogs. It isn’t permanent.”

  “Hooray for Hollywood. I wonder if Garbo will make an appearance.”

  “Get a clue, Professor. He hasn’t taken possession yet.”

  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 Ruths 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 r
eally. 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 fire-cracker 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.”