“I first saw Frankenstein on my family’s old black-and-white TV set, in my bedroom after they replaced it with a color television in the living room. I was sitting up in my bed with Pepi, my Chihuahua-terrier, curled up in my lap. Every time I’ve seen it since, I’ve felt that same cuddly warmth. I’ll miss that next time, thanks to you.”
“Don’t. Karloff wouldn’t appreciate your tears, nor would he feel he deserved them. His last marriage was a long and happy one, and it produced a well-adjusted daughter, who supplements her income talking about her father on DVD extras.”
“What was he like?”
Broadhead put down his burger and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I keep forgetting you’re a sprockethead first and a scholar second. He was extremely gracious, in an Old World way you don’t find anymore, even in polite Europeans. His conversation grew tedious when he talked about his American family, which he did often; but he had that wonderful warm baritone and that marvelous lisp.
“His famous gentle sense of humor was solidly based on irony,” he went on. “Lugosi, and for that matter your friend Hunter, might have been able to keep things in perspective had they possessed such a thing.”
“You’re forgetting that Karloff was looking back from a position of triumph. Peering out from the depths of misery is a different thing altogether.”
“True, although the aphorism rings false coming from one of your tender years. You have yet to experience true misery.”
“Don’t give up hope. I just spent fifty bucks on a can of paint older than you are.”
“If you’ve come to me for sympathy, you wasted a trip. I’ve advised you from the beginning to let that Hindenburg go down in its own flames before they consume you.”
“Noted. None of this has helped me figure out why Craig was murdered.”
Broadhead raised his bushy brows. “I’m an academic, and by definition useless in all things practical. Please tell me you haven’t decided to play detective yet again.”
“I don’t have any choice. I still have two hundred cards that say I’m a film detective, and I can’t afford to throw them out.”
“That, too, is a decision I warned you against. Either I’m a singularly inept mentor or you’re the worst protégé who ever lived. You realize the police are fully equipped to investigate homicide, even in a wilderness like San Diego.”
“Granted, but with them it’s just routine. You can devote only so much time to one case in an eight-hour tour of duty. My involvement is personal.”
“Yes. Emotional baggage is so much more portable than the professional kind.” Broadhead sipped his beer, made a face, and set down the mug. “Since counsel from me is so easily ignored, I offer more, knowing it will bring no repercussions. You should have a talk with that young man of yours. Find out whether he’s a threat to himself and others or just odd.”
“My young man? You mean Jason? He does what I ask and doesn’t talk back. He isn’t exactly a conformist, but the university doesn’t offer credits for that. Did you forget you sent him to me in the first place?”
“That was when I thought he was just another campus goofball. On my way here I saw him coming out of your office, dressed like an undertaker and wearing what looked like the cross-section of a submarine on his head.”
“A submarine?” He remembered the high silk hat. “He said something about stopping by a junkyard. I guess he found something to modify his outfit and used my office for a workshop. It’s okay, as long as I didn’t need it.”
“He was wearing a chain and padlock. When he said he was on his way to a party, I asked if he was going as a hardware store. He said it wasn’t a costume party.”
“He told me the same thing.”
“Well, he’s your intern, and your property, so to speak. But I’m locking my office from now on. Assuming he isn’t wearing a jockstrap made of skeleton keys.”
Valentino was spared the labor of fashioning a rejoinder by his cell phone: the two-note theme of Jaws, which he’d downloaded for the Halloween season. He answered.
He recognized the cool voice immediately. “Mr. Valentino, I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Horace Lysander. Are you free to meet with him in his office at four o’clock this afternoon?”
7
NO SHADY MOB mouthpiece out of Central Casting, Horace Lysander was senior partner in a firm that took up two floors of a sparkling glass tower in Century City. The reception room outside the office was paneled in tiger maple, with ambient lighting that illuminated every square inch from behind soffits. The buff-colored leather upholstery gripped Valentino’s hips and buttocks like a giant and gentle toothless dog.
He waited less than five minutes until the receptionist, a lacquered-looking redhead with the cool voice he’d heard over the phone, said, “Yes, sir,” into her headset and told him he could go in. He got up and had his hand out to work the knob of the inner door before he realized it didn’t have one. Something clicked and it drifted inward, then back into the frame when he was on the other side.
The office was fifteen times the size of his own, with an enormous Turkish carpet that predated California’s founding and a glass wall looking out on the city, which appeared less smoggy from that point of view, as if that was the spot where the photographers who made picture postcards for the chamber of commerce set up their tripods. Built-in bookshelves held rows of legal volumes bound in cream-colored leather—superfluous in the Digital Age, but reassuring to clients—and German Expressionist paintings hung on the remaining two walls, their exaggerated perspectives and jagged lines reminding Valentino of cels from the original Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There was about the place a sense of monolithic stability, with the cars looping freeway cloverleafs many stories below representing a world in a constant state of flux outside.
Lysander himself was more animated than the interior, a large, soft, smiling pink bald man in a beautiful gray suit who popped up from behind his desk and strode around it to shake Valentino’s hand. The desk was a great oblong sheet of polished obsidian resting on a pedestal, heavy enough to require a reinforced floor to sustain its weight; an eternity in construction purgatory had made Valentino an informal expert on zoning restrictions in Los Angeles County.
“Are you working with the police?” Lysander’s smile remained in place and his eyes on his visitor’s, who was nevertheless acutely aware that his daily uniform of sweatshirt and jeans was out of place.
“No, they’re not so desperate they’ve taken to hiring film archivists to assist in their investigations. I’m looking into Craig Hunter’s death as a friend.”
“Please accept my sympathy. At my age I’ve grown accustomed to burying friends, but it must be traumatic for one so young.”
“Thank you. I’m older than I look, but I hope I never get so old I’ll take murder in stride.”
“As do I. As a criminal attorney I’ve seen more than my share of crime-scene photos and autopsy reports. I despair sometimes for the future of the race. Two detectives interviewed Mr. Grundage in my presence this morning. We both assured them that we never had any contact with Hunter.”
Valentino knew this for a lie, but it was too early to spring the trap. He wanted to know more about the man he was dealing with. “Craig was beaten to death and his arms were broken ritually above the elbows. Detective Yellowfern said Grundage practically has a patent on the method.”
“If he’d said that here, in front of a third party, I’d seek damages for slander and defamation of character. Mr. Grundage has never been charged with a crime, much less indicted or convicted.”
“That’s a sterling claim for an upstanding citizen to post on his website.”
If he expected the lawyer to bridle at that, he was disappointed. Many hundreds of hours in court had sealed his emotions inside layers of hard shell. “His father, Anthony Grundage—Big Tony—worked his way up from a common longshoreman in San Diego to become an influential labor leader during the Depression. The competition developed its tact
ics with crowbar in hand, not from behind a desk. His son would be the first to concede that he responded in kind. The Kefauver Committee indicted Anthony on six counts of extortion in interstate commerce in 1951, then dropped all charges for lack of evidence. However, his exposure on national television during his testimony branded him a notorious character until his death. Whatever improprieties the father may or may not have committed, it’s irresponsible and actionable to apply them to the son.”
“He’s being investigated by Congress, just as his father was,” Valentino said. “But you know that, having sat beside him during his appearances. Our senators and representatives don’t take that step for their own amusement.”
“I agree. Are you a native Californian?”
“No. I was born and raised in Indiana.”
“I am. The first firm I interned with had a department that specialized in contract law and represented people in the entertainment industry. In your time here you can’t have failed to note that publicity is the coin of the realm. Washington is no different. Face time means as much to a politician as it does to an actor. When it comes to headlines, the name Grundage is magic. Now, if there’s nothing else you wanted to see me about, I have important calls to place.”
It was a scene-ending line if ever there was one, but rather than turn away in dismissal, Lysander held his ground. Clearly he was expecting his visitor to make the next move. In that moment, Valentino realized the attorney had consented to the interview as much to gain information as to impart it. It was time for the archivist to play his card.
“There is something else. You denied ever hearing from Craig Hunter, but he called you in this office last Friday night.”
Lysander didn’t blink. “Who said that?”
“No one. Your number was on his redial.”
“Anyone is free to dial my number. It’s listed. Perhaps he misdialed.”
“Angering you enough to tell your client, who had him killed using his modus operandi. That’s no sillier than to call it coincidence.”
“Be careful, young man. The line between hypothesis and false accusation is very thin.”
“I have a witness who says he was in conversation for some time with whoever answered. It was the last call he made from that phone before he was murdered.”
“And the name of your witness?”
Valentino shook his head.
“Young man, I’ve faced many an ambitious prosecutor. I know when I’m being bluffed.”
“I told you I’m older than I look. Telephone company records will show whether a call was placed to your number and for how long.”
For the first time he saw an authentic-looking reaction on the lawyer’s face, a slight deepening of the pink on his cheek. “I need to confer with a client before I continue this conversation,” he said. “Would you step outside for a few minutes?”
“Mike Grundage?”
“Please step outside.”
Valentino did so, strolling the reception room and reading certificates of public service preserved in clear Lucite as the woman behind the desk whispered her fingers over her computer keyboard. She stopped typing, listening over her headset. She gave the visitor a chilly smile and pushed the button that unlocked and opened the door to the private office.
This time Lysander remained sitting. Valentino consigned himself to more butter-soft leather in front of the great mass of obsidian.
“What you and I discuss can never leave this office.” The lawyer’s hands were clasped on the glistening surface separating host from guest. Valentino kept his own hands off it, knowing he’d leave a wet mark. “I made that promise in return for permission to breach attorney-client privilege. I can go no further until you agree to that.”
“If it’s a criminal matter, I’m bound to report it. I have no such privilege.”
“So far as my client and I are aware, it involves nothing illegal.”
“If that’s the case, I agree.”
An index finger detached itself from the others and pointed toward the ceiling. “If word of the conversation gets out, I face disbarment. That’s nothing compared with the firestorm of litigation you will face from my partners. It will follow you for years, drain all your resources, and plunge you so deep in debt your heirs will never be able to repay it.”
“I’m already there, Mr. Lysander. I’m rebuilding a theater.”
“You’ll lose it and everything you’ve invested in it. In the end you’ll wish you and Hunter had never met.”
He was used to that feeling; but he nodded.
The finger rejoined its mates. “Hunter’s business was with Elizabeth Grundage, not Mike.”
“His wife?”
“His stepmother. Tony, her late husband, controlled the stagehands’ and projectionists’ unions in Hollywood during the so-called Golden Age of the 1930s. They worked on the sets of All Quiet on the Western Front, The Wizard of Oz, Frankenstein—”
“Frankenstein?” He thought of that suitcase full of books.
“Yes. Of course, that was long before I was born, but my firm represented the family when Tony was too old and ill in mind and body to look after his financial interests, and counseled Elizabeth when his will was in probate.”
“She must be ninety.”
“Far from it. Tony remarried late in life, after Mike’s mother died. The family has continued to retain me all these years.”
“What business could Craig have had with a gangster’s widow?”
“Quite apart from the slur on Tony’s memory, I resent your characterizing Elizabeth in that way. She’s a grand lady, not a cheap gun moll.”
For the second time in the meeting, upset showed on the smooth face of the officer of the court. It could be artifice; Valentino gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I’m sorry.”
Lysander nodded, apparently mollified. “I was bound by the seal of my profession to divulge none of this to the police, even when it involved Hunter.”
“You admit he called you?”
“I state it, in strictest confidence, and only because Mrs. Grundage gave me leave to do so. He approached her last week with a transaction. When he found out later I’d advised Elizabeth not to become involved, he called me to complain. He became abusive, threatening. He was drunk. I hung up on him.”
“This was Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“What was the transaction?”
“I can’t discuss details. She refused to allow me to, and as her attorney I agree with the decision. She’s suffered enough at the hands of authority and the media through no fault of her own. These latest troubles involving Mike have tried her sorely. She’s entitled to her privacy.”
“Any transaction with the victim of a homicide is evidence that’s being withheld from the police.”
“But there was no transaction. She turned him down.”
“All the more reason to come forward with the details. She can’t possibly be held accountable—unless she told her son and he reacted in gangsterish fashion.”
“Have you had any training in law?”
“Not unless you count helping restore three Perry Mason movies starring Warren William.”
“Even if Mr. Grundage confessed to me that he had conspired to commit a murder—which I assure you he has not—I could not pass the information along without his permission.” Lysander glanced at a platinum Rolex strapped to the underside of his wrist. “I can give you no more time. If you were consulting me professionally, I would send you a bill for two hundred dollars for the amount I’ve given you already.”
Valentino kept his seat. “Why did you agree to see me at all?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I must ask you to leave.”
The archivist stood. “Craig Hunter developed a sudden interest in Universal horror films shortly before his death, Frankenstein among them. You told me his father had a direct connection with that productio
n. All that, together with how Craig died, convinces me Mike Grundage is involved. He’s a pretty slick character, from what I’ve heard and read. I think if he’s as determined as you are to protect his stepmother from harassment, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to break Craig’s arms and point suspicion directly at himself. I think you may be thinking the same thing, and that’s why you hoped I might be able to help.”
“And what makes you think I’d look for it from an amateur like you?”
“In law, yes; but I’m an expert in what you called ‘the so-called Golden Age of the 1930s.’ I’m pretty sure now you offered to meet with me because of what I do for a living, but you’re too tied up in legal red tape to come out and ask for my advice. Maybe after you’ve conferred with both Elizabeth and Mike, you’ll be in a position to come clean with me. If you’re convinced your client is innocent, and if you can convince me far enough to establish reasonable doubt, please call.”
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”
He’d turned to leave, but the defeat in Lysander’s tone made him turn back. The attorney looked less plump and pink, like a neon bulb that had sprung a leak, losing precious gas.
“There’s a third connection,” he said, “one the police aren’t aware of yet, but they’ll find out once they finish tracing Mike’s financial interests.”
“You mean the legitimate ones.” He could kick himself for alienating his source this close to an agreement; but the lawyer was preoccupied.
“He owns the Grotto, the bar where Hunter’s body was found. Thank you, Mr. Valentino. I very much hope we can meet again—without the legal red tape, as you put it.”
8
HE DIDN’T FEEL like going home—or rather, to The Oracle; his concept of home didn’t include carpenters and plasterers and mad Russians drifting in and out at will. He went back to the office, where there was always work to be found, a new lead on London After Midnight to be followed up or a crisis in the lab to attend to that would distract him from an unsatisfactory day of sleuthing. Before, he was vexed by how much he didn’t know; after his session with Horace Lysander, what he thought he’d known he didn’t know now. The case against Mike Grundage had appeared to be open and shut, with only the why left unanswered. Now he seemed an unlikely suspect at best.
Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! Page 6
