Valentino: Film Detective

by Loren D. Estleman

  “He said he’d quit the picture if Fox gives UCLA the distribution rights to the original Day the Earth Stood Still.”

  “I was afraid of that. He wouldn’t know it, but he’d be right at home in the old Hollywood with that attitude. We almost lost the Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941 because MGM didn’t want it to compete with the Spencer Tracy version. They bought up every print and ordered them destroyed. Those old moguls were ruthless businessmen.”

  “You’re not going to let him get away with it, are you?”

  Poll spread his hands. His fingerprints had been worn off by contact with miles and miles of safety stock. “I’m up a tree. The industry’s in love with Quincy just now. When he has his first flop, I’ll get back some leverage.”

  “He’s doing a hack job on one of the most significant pictures of the Nuclear Age. That’s his business—and Fox’s—but no one has the right to censor a classic for any reason. Especially not when it’s for his own selfish ends.”

  “Calm down, Val. Wait till Quincy’s package leaves the theaters. If it’s a hit, he won’t care if the original shares the video racks with the remake, and if it falls on its face, it won’t matter.”

  Valentino struggled to his feet; the best-engineered chair in the world was almost impossible to get out of. “No pipsqueak Roger Corman is going to stand in the way of cinema art. This isn’t the end.”

  Poll smiled crookedly in his beard. “That line’s got whiskers. You ought to get out and see a new movie every now and then. It will brighten up your dialogue.”

  “Down to the Loop was the first great Hollywood film since Lawrence of Arabia,” Valentino said at the door. “It restored my faith in the industry. I never thought the man who shot it would end up just another schlockmeister.”

  The smile turned sour. “It doesn’t happen all at once It’s the death of a thousand cuts.”

  He had an appointment in Tarzana with a retired U.S. Navy cameraman who claimed to be sitting on 25,000 feet of battle film unseen since World War II, but he called and postponed. For once in his life, Valentino hadn’t the stomach to discuss old movies. Instead, he went home to his private screening room and watched the master of The Day the Earth Stood Still. By the time Michael Rennie, as the messenger from outer space, broke into the study of Sam Jaffe’s Einstein-like scientific genius to correct his arithmetic, Valentino was enthralled and at peace.

  His door buzzer sounded just as Rennie was delivering the doomsday speech at the end. Valentino waited until the flying saucer took off, the camera following it into the cosmos, and then the closing credits, while the buzzer razzed again. He turned off the projector and went out to answer.

  “Did I get you out of bed?” The flat blue eyes of the stranger on the doorstep took in Valentino’s fully dressed condition without expression.

  “I was watching a movie. May I help you?”

  The man showed a gold badge attached to a pigskin folder. “McPherson. I’m a sergeant with L.A. Homicide. You’re Valentino?”

  Nodding, he felt a smile coming on. “Mark McPherson? Like in Laura?”

  “Henry. I wish you Hollywood types would get your heads out of pictures once in a while.”

  “Sorry, I should know better. Has there been a murder in the neighborhood?”

  “Can I come in?”

  Valentino stepped aside. The sergeant had fair hair and delicate features and was probably routinely carded whenever he entered a bar. His blue suit was inexpensive but fit his slight frame snugly. His gaze swept the living room and alighted on his host. “Where were you this evening?”

  “Here. I said I was watching a movie. It isn’t a neighborhood murder, is it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If it were, you’d be treating me more as a witness than a suspect. To answer your next question, I’ve been alone all evening. There’s no one to verify I didn’t go out. Who’s dead?”

  “A director at Twentieth Century Fox named Quincy Dundrear. You had a fight with him this afternoon.”

  Valentino felt shock, then a great emptiness. He didn’t mourn Dundrear so much as a life snuffed out so early.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” he said. “He didn’t see eye to eye on a matter I thought important. Who’d you talk to, Franklin Poll?”

  “Most innocent people would be curious to hear how Dundrear was killed.”

  “Why should that matter to anyone but the police? I’ve been involved in homicide investigations before, Sergeant. I’m not as curious as I was in the beginning.”

  McPherson’s eyes were like cheap enamel, without depth. They were unreadable. “I understand you’re some kind of film historian. How is it you’ve been involved in homicide investigations?”

  “My business cards identify me as a film detective, which describes the main part of my work more accurately. I track down and collect lost films, often in bits and pieces. I travel a great deal, and it’s a competitive market. Since videos entered the picture, it’s become a lucrative one as well. Where there’s money, there’s often murder.”

  “Fair answer. A little glib.”

  “I watch a lot of movies. The dialogue rubs off.”

  “Uh-huh. Somebody beat Dundrear to death, probably with a baseball bat, sometime between six-thirty, when his secretary went home, and seven-fifteen, when the janitor found his body. There was plenty of blood.”

  “My God.”

  “The autopsy will tell us more. It was definitely a rage killing. You fought with Dundrear over movie distribution rights. When Franklin Poll backed him up, you said,”—he took out a spiral notepad and flipped it open to a dog-eared page—“ ‘No pipsqueak Roger Corman is going to stand in the way of cinema art. This isn’t the end.’ Some people would consider that a threat.” He flipped the pad shut and put it away.

  “I meant I’d go over Poll’s head. He doesn’t run the studio and neither does Dundrear.”

  “But you didn’t go over his head. You canceled an appointment you had and went home. According to you.”

  “If you know I canceled an appointment, you checked with my secretary. I told her when I called I was going home. I needed to cool off before I talked to anyone else.”

  “So you admit you were angry.”

  “I’m angry now. An arrogant punk like Dundrear is bound to have plenty of enemies. You ought to save some energy for the others. I didn’t’ kill him, Sergeant.”

  McPherson stirred, produced a pager, and asked for a telephone. Valentino pointed it out next to the armchair from the Maltese Falcon set. The sergeant dialed, listened, said, “Be there in twenty,” and hung up. His eyes were still unreadable.

  “We’ll continue this later. That was an all-units call. We got a bomb threat.”

  “Where?”

  “Fox.”

  Alone, Valentino turned on the TV. All the local stations were covering the story, but none had details. Cameras on the street captured only barricades and police from the bomb squad suiting up in lead shields and visored helmets that reminded him of Gort the robot in the movie he’d watched earlier. Helicopter footage showed only the roofs of office buildings and sound stages at Fox and flashing red and blue lights on the ground.

  After thirty minutes, the scene switched to a room at City Hall, where a police inspector named Harrison, with gold leaf on his cap visor, announced to the press that the threat had been made by an anonymous caller to a nightside employee shortly after nine that evening, and that sixteen soundstages had been evacuated while police conducted a search for the explosive device.

  “J.R. Roberts, L.A. Times,” announced one reporter. “What can you tell us about the caller?”

  “The studio employee said it was an adult male voice with what sounded like a Brooklyn, New York, accent.”

  Another reporter, who introduced himself as Jack Fell from the San Diego Union, asked, “What were his exact words?”

  Harrison consulted his notes. “ ‘You have twenty-four hours before o
ne of your sound stages is reduced to a burned-out cinder.’ We take that to mean he was referring to an incendiary device.”

  While the inspector fielded a question about the possible motive, Valentino called police headquarters. He persuaded a sleepy-sounding officer to page Sergeant McPherson and give him Valentino’s number. Ten minutes later McPherson called.

  “It’s just a hunch,” Valentino said. “Quincy Dundrear was directing a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. At the end of the original film, Michael Rennie threatens to ‘reduce your world’—meaning our world—‘to a burned-out cinder’ if the earth doesn’t stop meddling in outer space. Those were the same words used in the bomb threat. It could be a fanatic fan.”

  “Probably a coincidence.” But the sergeant sounded less irritated than he had a moment before.

  “What have you got to lose by beginning your search with whatever sound stage Dundrear was shooting on? Franklin Poll can give you that information.”

  “Maybe the bomber got the same information from Dundrear.”

  “He could be the killer.”

  “He could still be you.”

  “Not with you as my alibi. You and I were standing in my living room when the bomber called in the threat.”

  “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be in touch.”

  Valentino went to bed. The telephone in the bedroom woke him at six. It was McPherson. He sounded tired.

  “We found it. It was on Sound Stage Eight, where they’re building the sets for The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was an incendiary with a mercury switch on a digital timer, set to go off at nine P.M. The Bomb Squad defused it.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  “We’re not making it public yet, and we asked Fox to shut down operations for today to make it look good. If this guy thinks we’re still looking for the bomb, he won’t think we’re looking for him. You should have heard them scream.”

  “Hollywood. Time is millions. A bomb is just a big noise.”

  “Yeah. We’re tracing the components, but that takes time. What do you know about fanatic fans?”

  “Sci-fibuffs often have high IQs,” Valentino said. “Their social skills usually aren’t as impressive. When they’re not attending Star Trek conventions, a lot of them live in front of their computers. If this one’s aim was to stop a cheesy remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, I’d look for a Web site specializing in pre-sixties science-fiction trivia.”

  “How many thousands of those can there be?”

  “Narrow it down to those you can trace to local addresses.”

  McPherson paused. “You’re still a suspect. You could have rigged the bombing to distract us from the murder investigation.”

  “Get some sleep, Sergeant. You’re starting to sound like Boston Blackie.”

  The morning news reported no new developments in the bombing investigation. Valentino took the master print he’d watched to UCLA and signed in the reels with the librarian in charge of the vault. Ruth, the ancient Cerberus of a secretary in whose services he held part interest, intercepted him outside his tiny office and told him he had a message from a Sergeant McPherson at police headquarters. “Been stealing office supplies again?”

  “That was one roll of splicing tape, ten years ago,” he said. “Do you ever forget anything?”

  “Only every time Harry Cohn tried to get me on his casting couch. He says he’ll pick you up downstairs in ten minutes.”

  “Who, Harry Cohn?”

  “Funny guy. I don’t need this job, you know. If I ever decided to open my mouth, I could own MGM.”

  “Forget it, Ruth. Everyone you could blackmail is dead.”

  “Serves me right for being discreet.”

  He stepped outside just as an unmarked green Chrysler drove up and McPherson told him to get in. The sergeant looked older and drawn, but he’d changed into a gray suit. As they took off, Valentino asked him if he’d managed to rest.

  “I went home and took a shower. Know anything about computers?”

  “A little. I’m no hacker.”

  “I am. These days everyone has a specialty. I figure what you know about fan Web sites can help. Does the name Ernest Sizemore mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “He’s got a site devoted entirely to The Day the Earth Stood Still. We traced it to an apartment on Sepulveda. We’ve got men on the scene. Landlady says he works days, but she doesn’t know where, always comes home around three. Wait till you see his place.”

  “He can’t be the only one who’s crazy about that film. Even in L.A. I could yell out ‘Klaatu barada nikto’ on any street and get a positive response.”

  “Yeah, well, you remember the guy who called in the bomb threat had a Brooklyn accent? According to the landlady, Sizemore moved here three years ago from Flushing.”

  “That’s promising.”

  “It gets better. We checked him with Social Security. Until he got fired last year for showing up late too many times, he worked in Special Effects at Twentieth Century Fox. He’s a demolitions expert.”

  “Step on it,” Valentino said. When the sergeant turned his head to scowl at him, he grinned. “I always wanted to say that.”

  The apartment was on the fourth floor of a building whose elevator had been out of order since Governor Brown. It was one room with a pull-down bed and dozens of reproduction posters and original lobby cards, in frames, advertising the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still. There was a cramped water closet, a hot plate, and a Macintosh computer with a bullet-shaped monitor and a seventeen-inch screen. The screen saver looked like a revolving agitator from a washing machine, but was actually the spangled interior wall of the circular corridor in Klaatu the alien’s saucer-shaped spaceship.

  McPherson had left instructions with a plainclothesman in the lobby to call him on his walkie-talkie in five minutes. It crackled. He unclipped it from his belt and spoke into it. “Working. Hit the button when anyone starts upstairs. Let ’em pass.” He returned the radio to his belt and rattled some keys on the computer board. When the Web site appeared, the eerie theremin score from the movie came out of the speakers on the sides. Animated icons of Gort, Klaatu in his flight suit, and the flying saucer jigged across the screen.

  “Most of the pages are filled with trivia questions and answers,” said the sergeant. “He’s got a file blocked out by an access code. I could run some at random, but I thought you might have some specific ideas, knowing the film.”

  Valentino sat in the office chair before the monitor. “It’s a little long, but I’ll try ‘Klaatu barada nikto.’ ” He pecked out the phrase.

  A box appeared onscreen with the words ACCESS DENIED—INCORRECT PASSWORD inside.

  He tried each of the three words separately and got the same message. “Gort” failed next. “Carpenter,” Klaatu’s alias when posing as a human, was equally disappointing. He tried the names of each of the major characters. He was glad he’d watched the film so recently. When the last, “Bernhardt,” didn’t work, he tried “burned-out cinder,” then each of the three words separately. Nothing.

  He sat back, chewing the inside of a cheek, while McPherson checked his watch. What was it Klaatu had said to the robot when he wanted to go into the saucer? The word made him think of a dance: Mambo? Samba? Surely not Lambada. He closed his eyes, willing himself out of the tiny apartment and into the movie. After a moment he smiled. “Meringue.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head and manipulated the keys: MARENGA. The icons continued to jig for another second. Then the screen switched images. The new one resembled a blueprint.

  “Floor plan,” he said.

  “It sure is.” McPherson leaned close to the screen. “Only someone who worked at Fox or spent as much time in the building as I did last night would recognize it. It’s Sound Stage Eight.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled. He turned it off, drew a flat pistol from the holster on the other side of his belt, and told Val
entino to step into the little water closet and shut the door.

  “The city’s high on good relations with the studios.” Waiting for the light at Cahuenga to change, McPherson rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Franklin Poll wants to thank the men responsible for collaring Sizemore, so instead of going home to sleep, I get to run you over to Fox and collect a pat on the head.”

  “I heard Sizemore confessed,” Valentino said. A day had passed since the arrest on Sepulveda. The bomber, a small man with a prematurely bald head, had submitted without resistance.

  “To planting the bomb and making the threat. He was a disgruntled employee, plus he’d heard when he was working there that Quincy Dundrear was going to hack the remake. He decided to take his revenge and strike a blow for the original. He sounds a little like you. You can see why you made a good suspect.”

  “He hasn’t taken the blame for Dundrear’s murder?”

  “Not yet. He will. A lot of perps cop to the lesser charge first.”

  “I hope you’re right. I can’t help wondering why he’d bother to plant the bomb after killing the director. That would have shut down the project just as well.”

  “So he’s the careful type. Belt and suspenders.”

  “Then why make the call? He’d killed once; why give Fox the chance to evacuate the rest of its employees?”

  “If you keep asking questions you’ll talk yourself back into being a suspect.” The light changed. McPherson drove on.

  Franklin Poll’s outer office was filled with visitors, all of whom glanced up from their magazines and manicures when the intercom buzzed. There had been a subtle shift of power in the studio, Valentino could tell; Poll had once again become The Man to See. The attractive Asian receptionist smiled up at the newcomers and told them to go on in.

  Poll sprang up from behind his desk and vaulted across the room to shake McPherson’s hand and then Valentino’s. He looked nearly as youthful as he sounded. The only grave thing about him was the black armband stitched to his right sleeve.

  “Splendid job, gentlemen,” he greeted them. “Quincy is a great loss, but I don’t mind telling you how good the morale is around here since you put that animal behind bars so quickly.”