“I’m getting better with practice.”
They went into the living room with his arm around her waist. It was impossible to avoid close contact in that position and he tried to keep his mind off the heat coming from her skin. He deposited her gently on the sofa, looking anywhere but at her legs as she crossed them, and went to the kitchen without asking directions again to the coffee. At the arch he stopped, went back, and moved a half-full bottle and a smeared glass out of her reach.
“That won’t stop me,” she said. “I ran the Malibu Marathon.”
“I’m not going to confiscate it. I don’t work for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. But it would be a big help if you gave it a rest. I think the ratio of cure to cause is four cups of Maxwell House to an ounce of Gordon’s, and I don’t know how much you have on hand.”
“This is the last of it. Craig pretty much cleaned out the bar when he left.”
“How much coffee is what I meant.”
“Craig was the coffee drinker. You might find some still in the pantry. It’s probably stale.”
“It’s the caffeine that counts. You’ll just have to put up with the taste. Amateur drinkers shouldn’t be left on their own.”
He found an unopened jar of Folger’s instant and a teakettle and filled it with water. While he waited for it to boil he went back out to join her and found her sprawled to one side on the sofa with her kimono gaping, showing more cleavage than he found comfortable. She was snoring softly. He arranged her into a less awkward reclining position and covered her with a decorative shawl he drew off the arm of a chair.
Sleep was an even better restorative than coffee. He returned to the kitchen, took the kettle off the burner, and turned off the stove. Before he let himself out, he’d empty the gin bottle into the sink. It would make him feel like Eliot Ness, but a person unaccustomed to alcohol was less likely to go out for a refill once the supply was gone.
“I find a man in the kitchen sexy.”
At the sound of Lorna’s voice he turned and saw her supporting herself against the side of the arch. The sash of her kimono was untied, exposing the entire front of her person. She was smiling lopsidedly.
“How about it?” she asked. “Is this anything like you pictured?”
“Lorna, we’re friends.”
“We could be friends with benefits.”
“I can’t. There’s someone in my life.”
“Where is she?”
“Seattle.”
“Last time I looked, Seattle was a loooong way away.”
He approached her. She pushed herself upright, swaying as she spread her arms. He jerked her kimono shut, tied the sash, encircled her waist again, more tightly this time, and bundled her back to the sofa in the living room. He let go and with a push of his hip dropped her onto the cushions. She went, “Oof!” and glared up at him with an angry flush.
“I don’t expect you to thank me,” he said, panting a little from the exertion (and—he was honest with himself—desire). “I just don’t want you hating us both tomorrow.”
She put her face in her hands and sobbed.
He didn’t dare try to comfort her. In the present state of affairs he wasn’t sure if loyalty to Harriet and respect for Lorna were enough to withstand temptation a second time. He said he’d call her in the morning and left.
He was halfway home before he remembered the bottle still standing on the coffee table. To turn back was dangerous. She was a grown woman, as she’d proven beyond a doubt. He couldn’t be there to help the Craig and Lorna Hunters of the world every hour of the day and night.
It was late when he’d gathered the ruins of his sofa bed into something approaching comfort and fell into a deep sleep. He dreamt not of movies or actors, but disturbingly erotic images of Harriet and Lorna and himself. He had a vague sensation they were being watched. At first the voyeur seemed to be Henry Anklemire, got up in his cartoonish golfing togs, cheering them on with a putter in one hand, but then his features blurred and were replaced by Craig’s, observing them sadly and solemnly and silent as a tomb.
Valentino sat up straight, soaked with sweat and feeling a terrible sense of naked shame. It was as if he’d betrayed three people at once, one of them deceased.
He had no idea how long his telephone had been ringing before he was aware of it. He read the ID and groaned. It was Lorna again. He considered unplugging it, but the last time he’d ignored a late-night call, tragedy had followed.
He picked up. “Lorna, I—”
“You bounce back pretty fast.” A male voice, flat as asphalt but much harder. “I must be losing my edge.”
The perspiration coating his body turned to ice. “Pollard.”
“This boy’s got connections,” the thug said away from the mouthpiece. “I bet he knows your name, too.”
Dickey Wirtz wheezed something Valentino didn’t catch.
Pollard came back on. “I got somebody here wants to talk to you.”
There was a pause, then another voice spoke, sober now and shaking. “Val?”
“Lorna?” He gripped the receiver hard.
She started to say something, but was cut off. Pollard said, “You seen enough crime pictures to know how this works. The film for the woman. No police.”
“How do you know I’ve got the film?”
He wanted to take the words back as soon as they left his mouth. The flat voice chuckled.
“I do now. Don’t bother coming to Tarzana, ’cause we’ll be gone by the time you get here. You got one hour. Here’s the address.”
Valentino fumbled on the light and reached for a pencil, then stopped. He knew the place nearly as well as The Oracle.
20
POLLARD HAD SAID no police. He hadn’t said come alone.
Valentino thought first of Kyle Broadhead, then rejected the idea. For all his mental energy, the professor was advanced in years and even less of a match for a pair of professional bone-breakers than he. If something happened to him, Fanta would never forgive Valentino, and he would never forgive himself.
Harriet would insist he go to the law, an institution to which she belonged, but however careful the police were not to be spotted, he couldn’t risk bringing them in with Lorna in the clutches of such as Pollard and Wirtz.
Well, he’d brought luck the first time.
Jason Stickley answered his cell on the second ring. He sounded fresh despite the hour. He listened to the request, then said, “Sure.”
“You need to think about it longer. This could be dangerous.”
“As dangerous as the last time?”
“More. These characters don’t care about the consequences of their actions. They killed Craig Hunter, they beat me up, and they almost killed Teddie Goodman. I don’t feel right about asking you at all. If they find out I didn’t come alone, there’s no telling what they’ll do, except it will be unpleasant. But I need someone to know where I am in case they don’t intend for Lorna and me to come out.”
“Are you going to give them the film?”
“I don’t have any choice. It’s her life if I don’t.”
“There’s plenty of scrap film in the UCLA library. One reel looks like all the rest.”
“I can’t take the chance they won’t identify what’s on it. I knew just by holding it up to the light. They’d probably kill us both on the spot.”
The intern was silent for a moment. Valentino heard throbbing, industrial-style music in the background. “I’m in.”
“Only if you agree not even to come into the same block unless I signal you otherwise. We’ll rig up something in case they take away my cell.”
“Okay. You know the place you dropped me off for a minute last time?”
He remembered the yellow-brick factory building more than a century old. “Yes.”
“You can pick me up there. It’s on the way.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Valentino hung up.
“Be where in ten minutes?”
<
br /> He jumped a foot. Harriet had a key to the front door and had climbed the flight of steps noiselessly to the projection booth. She wore the loose-fitting jeans and unstructured jacket she always flew in and carried her travel bag strapped over one shoulder. She looked exhausted but beautiful in the short ash-blond hair that complimented the classic shape of her head, and suspicious in the extreme.
“My gosh, you scared me,” he said. “When did you get in?”
“Half an hour ago. Be where in ten minutes,” she repeated. “It’s after midnight.”
“Why didn’t you call me to pick you up?”
“I started to give you my flight information this morning. After we were cut off I tried you here and at the office. Finally I decided to throw myself at the mercy of an L.A. taxi. I’ve had more pleasant experiences dissecting corpses three weeks old. I asked you a question.”
“I can’t tell you. There isn’t time.”
“Tell me in the car.” She dropped her bag.
“Harriet, please trust me. I wouldn’t leave you in the dark if the situation weren’t crucial.”
“Crucial in your case usually means murder. Has this anything to do with Craig Hunter?”
He should have known she’d bring herself up to date on all recent murders. She knew Craig was an acquaintance. “Yes.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Jason.”
“Your intern? Just what are you getting that boy into?”
“Please, Harriet!”
“I’m going with you or I’m calling the police.”
“You can’t do that. They’ll kill Lorna.”
“Lorna Hunter? Who will?”
He gave up then. He’d lost three minutes already. “I’ll bring the car around.”
“First tell me where you think you’re going.”
“Where you just came from. LAX.”
She watched him gather up the two cans of film. “I might have known this would have something to do with some movie no one but you cares about.”
“If I thought I was the only one, I’d never have let myself get into this. But there are some things more important than movies. Human life, for one.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it. So what is it this time, lost footage from the Zapruder film, or the Second Coming? The image of Christ on an overexposed frame?”
“Frankenstein.” He mumbled it, sliding the cans into his dilapidated briefcase.
“Excuse me?”
“The test reels for the 1931 Frankenstein, starring Bela Lugosi.”
“Boris Karloff starred in Frankenstein. I’ve heard that from you a thousand times if I’ve heard it once. Val, how hard have you been working?” She sounded concerned for him for the first time that night.
“I’ll explain later.”
“LAX,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Well, that should give us time for you to fill me in.”
He leased space in a garage around the corner. Harriet was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the theater as he approached. He let up on the accelerator, then as she stepped forward he pushed down, gaining speed. In the rearview mirror Valentino saw the love of his life with her mouth open in a furious O, groping inside her handbag for her cell. He was a good deal more worried about the conversation they’d have later than whatever information she was giving her employers at police headquarters. The airport had been the first place he’d thought of when she’d asked his destination. It had been freshest in his mind.
*
Light glowed in the high gridded windows of the defunct buzz-saw blade factory. Even from the street he could hear the music from inside, reminiscent of the din that had accompanied its productive years. Either it was just the Halloween season or Steampunks were the party-throwingest creatures in a region notorious for its late-night blowouts.
At the top of the concrete steps worn hollow by the tread of many work boots, Valentino banged on the door. The edge of his fist was aching before someone heard it above the noise on the other side. A young woman—she might not have been more than a girl under metallic makeup that made her resemble a distaff Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz—opened up and beckoned him in with a finger encased in a black kid glove. Evidently his description had preceded him. He hoped it wasn’t too unflattering.
The floor shook beneath the bass notes of a band playing a switched-on version of the Anvil Chorus. The bulbs of a chandelier rigged up from a tractor tire suspended by tow chains from the twenty-foot ceiling strobed, bathing musicians and dancers in shifting hues; highlighting, then plunging in shadow figures in top hats and bowlers, picture brims and Bobbie helmets, bedecked with gears and pulley attachments and wedding veils fashioned from steel mesh. A massive flywheel twelve feet in diameter decorated a naked brick wall with a full-length coronation portrait of the young Queen Victoria mounted in the center in a jointed pipe frame. The great piece of machinery must have weighed more than a ton and had to have been brought in with a forklift truck at the least. The moment he formed that conclusion, he spotted the truck itself, hitched incongruously to a brace of life-size papier-mâché horses complete with blinders.
Gripping the newcomer’s hand in a palm studded with hobnails, Tin Woman led him serpentine fashion through the press of bodies to a sparsely populated area behind the bandstand, with exposed plumbing on more brick and lingering odors of scorched metal and lubricating grease. He wondered if the smells were that persistent after so many years or if they’d been sprayed from a can just before the guests arrived.
As visitor and escort neared their terminus, the music changed abruptly: Electric guitars and amplifiers were replaced with the sweet strains of violins and the low mellow murmur of a cello. The dancers ceased gyrating and began to waltz, decorously and at arm’s length. Valentino had spent so much of his rest time lately in dreams that if it weren’t for the urgency of his errand he’d have suspected the entire affair was the distorted fancy of an overworked mind and a hyperactive imagination.
Jason Stickley broke out of a small group to greet him. The boy wore his high silk hat accessorized from the scrapyard, frock coat, padlock and chain. “How do you feel about reinforcements?” He turned a palm toward the group—young men all, so far as Valentino could determine behind the metalwork, stiff collars, machinists’ goggles, waistcoats, and gentlemen’s headgear circa 1890, with a hefty helping of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Shy grins and gestures of welcome came with clanking accompaniment.
The archivist seized Jason’s arm and turned him aside. “I didn’t give you permission to tell anyone.”
“You didn’t say I couldn’t.” The intern sounded hurt.
“I’d be less conspicuous driving a wagon loaded with pots and pans.”
“Oh, we’ll dump the paraphernalia. We’re not stupid.”
“You’re all barely old enough to vote. I can’t be responsible for putting you in jeopardy. I’ll go alone.”
“Too late, Mr. Valentino. I know where you’re going, remember. Anyway, we’re old enough to join the army and fight a war.”
“I start basic training next month,” said one of the others who’d overheard.
“I figure this makes me older.” Another smacked his palm with a heavy brass knob fixed to a stout walking stick.
“I can’t fit you all in my car.” He realized the weakness of the argument even as he raised it.
“Pat’s got his dad’s Hummer,” Jason said. “We can all fit in it with room to spare.”
“Me, too.” Tin Woman’s valley girl accent sounded like the real thing.
“No women.” This came in chorus from the group of young men.
She stuck out a tongue that looked bloodred against silver skin. “That Victorian male chauvinist B.S. won’t work even here. See, I’m armed.” A hobnailed hand dove into her lace décolletage and came up with a steel whistle on a chain around her neck. She blew it. The shrill sound slashed across the chamber music, turning heads their way briefly fr
om the dance floor.
“We’re going whether you say yes or no,” Jason said. “We’re not freaks. When someone’s in trouble, we help.”
Valentino took his fingers out of his ears. “Just don’t blow that thing unless you absolutely have to. If these guys hear a police whistle, they’ll shoot first and ask questions never.”
“So we’re all in?” Jason’s grin was almost too broad for his narrow face.
“God help me, but I can’t fight the mob and all of you at the same time.”
“Way to go, Joy Stick!” said the boy with the bludgeon.
“Joy Stick?”
The intern flushed. “Jason Stickley, you know? We all have nicknames.”
“I’m Link.”
“Wilde Thing. With an e.”
“Pat Pend.”
“I’m Whiz. Short for Whistler’s Daughter.” The girl raised her whistle to her lips again. Valentino’s hand shot out and grasped it. She colored under the undercoat and dropped it back between her breasts.
He looked at his strap watch. They had less than twenty minutes to go fifty blocks. “You have to follow all my orders to the letter. If you don’t agree, I’ll call the cops right now and rat you all out as underage guests at a party where alcohol is served.” He showed them his cell.
“There’s no—” someone started.
“He knows about the keg from before,” Jason interrupted. “He’s hip for an old dude.”
“‘Hip’?” Link, the youth in basic training, furrowed his brow under a deerstalker cap with a brass steam pressure gauge cemented to the crown.
“Properly informed.” Whiz’s upper-class Brit clashed with her Moon Zappa.
Valentino let out the sigh of a ninety-year-old man. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The partyers divested themselves of chains, bells, and everything else likely to make noise and climbed into the boxy vehicle parked not far from the compact. Valentino leaned his head through the open window on the passenger’s side and asked Jason if he had his phone. Joy Stick showed him his punked-up cell.
“I’ll call you just before I go in and leave it on. That way you’ll hear what’s going on inside. What’s your number?”
Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! Page 16
