Brazen

by Loren D. Estleman

  Padilla laid the speedometer needle all the way over to the right. The car leapt forward, brushing lesser machines from its path like dried leaves before a gale; the blasting of horns fell away in the distance.

  For once, Valentino was less in fear of his life with the lieutenant at the wheel than of the consequences of driving the legal limit; in fact, he wished the machine could move faster. Whatever its speed, it couldn’t match the pace of the images flashing through his brain.

  Broadhead and Padilla were old enough, and their young companion enough of a film historian, to remember the lurid details of rising star Sharon Tate’s murder in 1969; a ritual slaughter, along with three friends, in a bungalow in Bel Air by the Charles Manson “family” of devil-worshippers. They’d been stabbed multiple times and Sharon’s blood used to smear the word “Pig” on the front door.

  “At least there’s one thing I can blame on you and not procedure,” Padilla told Valentino. “If you’d run this past me when you first thought of it, I’d have remembered the brains behind the massacre wasn’t even on the scene when it took place. Manson did it all by remote control, same as Augustine.”

  The man seated beside him made no response. The sun-drenched street they were racing along seemed as bleak as midnight.

  25

  ORSON’S GRILL, WHICH had rushed in, after the protean fashion of Southern California, to occupy a defunct Burger Chef on Cahuenga Boulevard, featured posters and memorabilia—the latter locked inside shatterproof glass cases—relating to the life and career of Orson Welles, with a menu engineered to replicate the late actor-director’s expansive waistline in its clientele: Rib-eye steaks ringed with fat, lobsters swimming in butter, and cream sauces abounded. All about were displayed treasures such as Rosebud, the sled that had proven the key to unlock the mystery that was Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, Welles’s astrakhan official’s cap from Journey Into Fear, a costume worn by Rita Hayworth, briefly Mrs. Welles, from The Lady from Shanghai, a miniature pre-production mock-up of the Viennese Ferris wheel from The Third Man, and the white suit Welles had worn in Touch of Evil, which would have fit Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca and sheltered a troupe of tumbling dwarves. Many of the tables were decorated with lids from the auteur’s multiplicity of boxes of consumed Cuban cigars, embalmed beneath laminate. Valentino thought that if he closed his eyes and opened his nostrils he could smell the exhaust from thousands of smokes inhaled during an equal number of hours scrounging financial backing for Don Quixote; a lost unfinished masterpiece the film archivist hoped one day to unveil to the public, piecemeal project that it was. Even the registration desk appeared to be a pared-down version of the prow-shaped pulpit Welles had mounted by means of a rope ladder to deliver his sermon on Jonah in Moby Dick.

  Typical of his vocation, Valentino mused upon this late local embrace of the twenty-six-year-old New York parvenu whom Golden Age Hollywood had so deeply resented for showing them how to make movies. In the last great western boomtown, box-office profits were the sole invitation necessary to acceptance in society.

  Dimly, over a concealed sound system, Welles’s infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds played on a continuous loop under Thus Spake Zarathustra, the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey; a production in which he had taken no part. Spoken dialogue uninhanced by music contributed little or nothing to the appetite. Generations earlier, the program had spread panic throughout a nation convinced that the Martians had invaded.

  While the party awaited the arrival of the maitre d’, Broadhead said, “If the floor show is one of Orson’s magic acts, I’m outta here.”

  “You knew him well enough to address him by his first name?” Valentino despaired of ever plumbing the depths of his mentor’s experiences in Hollywood.

  “He sawed me in two once; if that doesn’t qualify me, I don’t know what would.”

  When at last the maitre d’ honored them with his presence, he appeared capable of balancing out the restaurant’s inspiration on a seesaw: three hundred pounds on the hoof, in a three-piece double-breasted tuxedo that might have covered the infield at Dodger Stadium when rain threatened. Unfortunately, his voice lacked Welles’s celebrated timbre, as in a piping voice that apparently had never cracked, he directed them toward a private room in back.

  They passed tables laden with Chicken a la Ambersons Magnifique, steak marinated in rosebuds, and bottle upon bottle of Paul Masson, of which Welles as commercial spokesman had spoken as the wine never served “before its time.”

  “That time being the first Tuesday after it was bottled,” murmured Broadhead.

  Valentino shushed him. The man was incapable of recognizing real-life drama.

  A series of gasps from the seated parties they passed drew Valentino’s attention to Ray Padilla, and the sidearm he’d drawn. “Is that necessary?”

  “Not to worry. If I have to shoot this sonofabitch in the stomach, I’ll make sure the white wine comes up with the fish.”

  Broadhead chuckled. “Lieutenant, I’m beginning to like you. You’re living proof the Neanderthal had a sense of humor.”

  Padilla responded to this accolade with a verb and a pronoun.

  “Classic,” offered the academic.

  Valentino sighed.

  To a man (and woman), there wasn’t a diner present whose white hair hadn’t been dyed a preposterous youthful color, or whose naked scalp wasn’t cloaked beneath an elaborate wig or a toupee. All told there was a million dollars of plastic surgery on display.

  “Has-beens, also-rans, and wannabes.” Padilla’s voice was tight. “Those are Augustine’s targets. Life would be simpler if these twisted jerks would just kill their mothers and be done with it.”

  Valentino made no reply. He was tense and his throat was hoarse from arguing in favor of the presence of two civilians at the showdown. In the end he’d compromised, agreeing to hang behind in order to avoid being trapped in the crossfire between the lieutenant and the uniformed backup he’d ordered to cover all the exits.

  A burly waiter stood before the door to the back room. That was where the establishment’s conceit ended. He had the build of a professional wrestler under his white dinner jacket, the pockets of which sagged beneath the weight of brass knuckles and blackjacks. Even such faded screen luminaries as frequented the place were possible targets of paparazzi and celebrity stalkers.

  “Sorry, gents.” His voice came squeezed through a larynx dented by fists and galvanized pipes. “Private party. Not even staff’s allowed inside till after the movie.”

  “Whose orders?” Padilla showed him his gun and shield. The waiter blanched.

  “He said he was the projectionist.”

  “You see a projector?”

  “He was carrying a big black case like one comes in.”

  “How long ago?”

  A pair of muscular shoulders shrugged; they were like a rockslide settling. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Stand clear, Kong.”

  Kong stood clear.

  The door was locked from the other side. The lieutenant clasped his semi-automatic in both hands and raised a foot.

  “That’s private property!” But the waiter/bouncer’s protest was drowned out by the splintering of wood. The door was more cooperative for Padilla than Beata’s had been for Valentino; he decided it was a matter of leverage and experience. It swung open, leaving a piece still connected to the frame, and banged against the wall on the other side.

  “Police! Drop it!”

  “They actually say that?” whispered Broadhead.

  “He’s a cop; they don’t have to come up with clever lines.” Valentino craned his neck to see inside.

  Four middle-aged people in formal dress sat around a linen-covered table laden with silver and a centerpiece with reels of film elaborately interwoven among flowers, eyes wide above gags tied around their mouths. One was a woman in her middle fifties with a chrysanthemum head of improbably butter-colored hair. She would be the guest of honor. Their
hands were out of sight; tied, Valentino supposed, to their upholstered chairs.

  A sallow-faced man in cords and a tweed sportcoat stood this side of the table with his back to Padilla, glaring over his shoulder at the source of the interruption. A feral expression leapt to his features. He’d stopped in the midst of drawing a collapsible steel baton—the kind modern police used in place of nightsticks—from a black leather case standing open on the table. The case was filled with long-bladed knives and coils of nylon rope.

  Just then a door on the other side of the room burst open and two police officers in uniform sprang through, a man and a woman, the man standing, his female partner dropping into a crouch. Their sidearms were trained on the man holding the baton.

  His head spun that way. Then his shoulders sagged and he let his weapon fall back into the case.

  Padilla barked another command. The man lately known as Joe Yule, Junior, turned to face him and folded his hands on top of his head with a gesture that suggested earlier experience.

  “Pigs,” he said.

  “What?” Padilla’s tone was harsher than any Valentino had heard from him. He was a man of many parts, the lieutenant with Homicide.

  The killer of three (that they knew about) shrugged.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. That’s the message he paid me to deliver. I take a job, I follow the client’s instructions. They don’t have to make sense as long as his money spends.”

  Holiday O’Shea whimpered through her gag.

  26

  JOE YULE, JUNIOR, aka Spangler Arlington Brugh, Bernard Schwartz, and Mike Morrison, upon investigation, turned out to be one Patrick Barlow, aged thirty-six. Under that name he had a long list of felony priors, including homicide, attempted homicide, unlawful imprisonment, and assault with intent to commit great bodily harm. Although his juvenile record was sealed, the secret sources of the Los Angeles Police Department pulled up eight years in a juvenile home for suffocating his infant brother to death with a pillow at age ten. He was a known associate of a number of individuals connected with organized crime.

  “Not the first in his profession to turn independent,” added Ray Padilla, after furnishing Valentino with the above information over the phone. “Oh, and one of his legit jobs was with a local outfit that manufactures cosmetics for the movie studios. That’s where he learned how to make up a corpse.”

  “So does that close the case?”

  “Don’t forget his paycheck. We’re staking out Arthur Augustine’s mother’s house and the Wilshire Hotel. If he shows, we’ll nail him on suspicion, and if my faith in the LAPD pans out, we’ll scrounge up enough evidence while he’s in custody to send him to San Quentin, or to the maximum-security ward in the giggle house at Camarillo, which is just as likely.”

  “I still can’t figure out why a man could resent his starstruck mother so bitterly he’d pay someone to prey on would-be starlets long past their bloom.”

  “Oh, I can see it. I’m not nuts, but I still got a beef with my sweet old lady for making me take accordion lessons when I was thirteen. Every couple of months I’m called down to her assisted-living community when she switches to the all-Lawrence Welk station in the community room while the rest of the residents are watching Matlock.”

  Kyle Broadhead, overhearing the conversation on speaker while visiting Valentino in his office, said, “I bet you haul out the squeeze-box every Mother’s Day and give her a concert of ‘Lady of Spain.’”

  “‘Amazing Grace,’ actually; but, yeah. In the old bat’s defense, I have to say I’d’ve given Myron Floren a run for his money.”

  “Who’s Myron Floren?” asked Valentino, when the receiver was back in its cradle.

  “Worst serial killer since the Düsseldorf Ripper,” said Broadhead. “There’s no telling how many viewers he drove to suicide, not counting the Strauss waltzes he murdered on his accordion. I think it’s on display in the Black Museum in Nashville, next to a death-mask of Fabian’s voice coach.”

  The professor looked less shabby than usual in a rented tuxedo with a canary-yellow cummerbund and bow tie to match. The pair were clearing their desks in preparation for his wedding-rehearsal dinner.

  Valentino tugged down the vest of his own evening dress; wishing he could channel Fred Astaire, who’d worn white tie and tails as casually as if they were flannel pajamas. Twice dressed formal in one month was atypical, but the sensation was no less confining. “What are the chances Padilla catches up to Augustine at home or work?”

  “Slim and none. As good as our local authorities are at suppressing publicity, there were too many witnesses to Barlow’s stunt at Orson’s Grill. The minute CNN broke into the President’s latest plea for his lost popularity to announce an arrest, our push-button killer went as scarce as a Bugs Bunny entrée at an Elmer Fudd dinner.”

  “That worries me. When Barlow failed to pull off a remake of the Tate-LaBianca bloodbath, Augustine’s rage lost its outlet. He’ll just find another Barlow, or take the next killing into his own hands.”

  “Who’s left?”

  “Who else?”

  The ironclad unflappability of Kyle Broadhead gave way to a visible shudder. “Dorothy Stratten’s parasite boyfriend tortured and raped her, blew off her head with a shotgun, and violated her decapitated corpse. If that’s Augustine’s template, he’d settle for nothing less. I can’t think of a professional killer in the long black history of the trade who’d follow that plan.”

  “Then he’d have to do it himself.” Valentino blew air. “Thank God, I can’t think of anyone living who fits her profile: a Playboy centerfold-turned-starlet. The most recent candidate’s dead of a drug overdose.”

  Broadhead slid his hip off the corner of Valentino’s desk and touched his Tweety Bird tie. “Let’s take comfort in that, and show me the way to the guillotine.”

  * * *

  The bridegroom was in no condition to drive (although only his closest friend could observe in his apparently unflappable exterior the subtle signs of panic), so Valentino ferried him to Harriet’s apartment, where she ascended the stairs to the front door resplendent in a shimmery olive-green off-the-shoulder gown, her chestnut hair caught up in ivory combs: a gift from her beau, acquired at auction. Gene Tierney had worn them in Oriental dress in The Shanghai Gesture, with no more aplomb than their present owner. (The man besotted with her may have been prejudiced in this judgment, but not, he was convinced, to the point of exaggeration.)

  “Do I look ridiculous?” she asked, hoisting the hem of her gown to enter the car.

  Broadhead, who had moved to the backseat, said, “You’re one touch short of making me reconsider my choice of bride.”

  “Be on your best behavior, or I’ll report what you said to Fanta.”

  “Careful,” Valentino whispered to her. “Moby Dick’s about to blow.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Ten years working fifteen feet away from him.”

  They’d reserved a private dining room at the Brass Gimbal for the affair. Fanta, who might be expected to protest the choice of venue, had agreed readily, in reverence to past conspiracies launched there in the battle to save Lost Hollywood from the elements of destruction. They picked her up on the curb in front of her apartment house, a vision in a little black dress and only pearl buttons in her ears for jewelry: Valentino couldn’t suppress memories of Grace Kelly. At that busy pedestrian hour, male passersby paused to look back at her, and when escorted by a female, had their biceps clenched in the grip of a dainty hand.

  “You’re incapable of dressing down, aren’t you?” But Broadhead was visibly impressed. “I won’t be responsible if some gigolo sweeps you off your feet on your way down the aisle.”

  “Kyle, you have the gift of insulting a girl and tying it up with a pink ribbon.” She took his arm and led him toward the head table.

  The room had been decorated for the occasion with framed posters advertising Hepburn and Tracy romantic comedies, Harold and Maude, Holly
woodland, and other motion-picture classics old and new celebrating the union of—well, old and new. Lilies and spring blossoms were intermixed in the table centerpiece, and (here Broadhead’s sardonic humor had prevailed), blown-up photos of the bridegroom in mortarboard and academic gown accepting his third Ph.D., cheek-by-jowl with those of Fanta wobbling uncertainly astride a bicycle with training wheels, both knees patched with Band-Aids: The shots had been taken almost simultaneously to the day. Valentino couldn’t decide if this was a product of Broadhead’s sardonic humor or the future Mrs. Broadhead’s indulgence of his bend toward the macabre.

  Someone patted his arm; Harriet. “He’s the kind of man who takes shots at himself before anyone else has the chance.”

  “Do you think he’ll get over it?”

  “If she can’t manage that, she’ll never sway a jury to her case.”

  It was a splendid evening. The guests, on the groom’s side, included a stout revered director, with a head of astonishingly full and snow-white hair and a middle-European accent, bouncy and obviously still vibrant, but unable to find work in the Industry (with few exceptions, seventy was the cutoff date for auteurs, forty for beautiful actresses in youth-obsessed Hollywood); a stunning Japanese woman in her sixties who almost immediately upon being introduced claimed to have been Akira Kurosawa’s mistress; an elaborately dignified dwarf who’d been employed as a page boy by Harry Cohn; and a pipe-smoking Brit with bad teeth and excellent bearing who’d directed second-unit for Carol Reed at Ealing Studios. All told they represented some two hundred years’ experience in making movies, and their conversation, quiet though it was, convinced Valentino he’d known next to nothing about the medium he adored prior to making their acquaintance.

  The bride’s side was no less impressive, led by Fanta’s mother, a U.S. ambassador dripping with apologies for her inability to stay long enough to attend the wedding, her services being required on the Continent before week’s end. The best man had assumed she’d be a prepossessing woman, tall and aristocratic; instead, she struck him as the quintessential doting mom, short, a bit frowzy, and wearing the brocaded jacket her prospective son-in-law associated with the typical mother of the bride at every reception, sprinkled with cigarette ash. Notwithstanding, Valentino found her cheerful demeanor a refreshing break from the cynicism he often found in people who’d spent their life in politics.