In the brief silence, he felt his heart rate slowing. His fear lapsed into annoyance. Not a ghost or even a dream, but a practical joke, and he recognized the hand that had fashioned it. So they hadn’t been even after all.
“Nice costume,” he said. “Tell Kyle you accomplished your mission. Where’d he reach you, through your booking—”
“Silence!” The riding crop whistled through the air and struck one of the shining boots with a crack. “You will save it, or I will see that you never work in this town again.”
Valentino forced himself to meet the iron gaze. A nerve twitched in a closely shaven cheek, branded by a thin white cicatrix like a Heidelberg dueling scar. It seemed to him the monocle had misted.
A bell rang. Von Stroheim looked up as if he’d heard an air-raid siren—then vanished. The shaft of moonlight fell uninterrupted to the carpet.
The noise continued, a harsh insistent sound, more buzzer than bell. Valentino sat up as if jerked by a wire. Sunlight filled the room. He reached over and smacked the button on his alarm clock. The buzzing stopped. The digital face read 7:31. Time to get up.
He put on his robe and prowled the bedroom, looking for wires and projection equipment, not yet prepared to believe he’d dreamt the encounter. He hadn’t had so vivid a nightmare since the night his mother had taken him to see Alien (Rated R; what could she have been thinking?) and he’d awakened screaming, certain a hideous extraterrestial beast had erupted from his abdomen.
There was no sign of a prank, high-tech or otherwise, there or in the living room, dominated by a forty-eight-inch rear-projection television, VCR/DVD combo, surround-sound tuner, and speakers. An unexpected bonus from his department head for his part in recovering the lost courtship footage from the 1954 version of A Star Is Born had started him thinking of getting a flat-screen TV, or even installing a digital projector and state-of-the-art screen, but then his landlord had told him he was raising the rent after Valentino’s lease ran out in December. That was what had set him on the house hunt.
Well, if anything could fill a man’s head with startling images, the decision to commit to a white elephant in West Hollywood and the simultaneous discovery of both a legendary lost masterpiece and mysterious human remains more than qualified. “Mein Kindling” was, of course, the late director’s brainchild, butchered and cast aside by the studio. Rescuing it from destruction had been uppermost on Valentino’s mind when he went to bed. It would have been unusual not to have conjured up something weird in his sleep.
Thirty minutes later, bathed, shaved, and dressed in California casual, he left for work. By the time he’d stopped for his morning jolt of Starbucks, the ghost of Erich von Stroheim had vanished from his thoughts nearly as thoroughly as it had from his bedroom.
**
“God, I love foul play!”
Henry Anklemire leaped up from behind his desk next to the boiler room in the basement of the administration building. The assistant director of Information Services was an evil cherub in one of the toupees he bought from Nicolas Cage’s hairdresser when the star was through with them and a checked suit (size portly), polka-dot tie, and striped shirt that made a cataclysmic statement his visitor thought could not have been coincidental. His face glowed as from a strong shot of whiskey.
“We’ll just keep that between ourselves,” Valentino said. “My department head thinks Sherlock Holmes was a sociopath. He prefers things orderly and without mayhem.”
“I know from bosses.” The little flack twirled a finger beside his temple. “Meshuggener, and besides that depressing to be around. I could’ve had a nice comfortable space down the hall from the director’s, with a window yet. I said, no thanks, I’ll curl up down here with the rats and spiders. All those downer vibes can crush a man’s spree de corpse.”
“I heard that was the director’s decision.”
“Who cares where an idea came from if it’s good?” Anklemire was on a roll. “Murder and malice, yum. Look at Marilyn Monroe; not one-tenth the talent of Judy Holliday, but she had the good sense to get herself killed by the Kennedys. You ever see Judy Holliday on a T-shirt?”
“There’s some question about whether she was murdered, and whether the Kennedys were involved. And you wouldn’t know Judy Holliday from Doc Holliday if I hadn’t forced you to watch Born Yesterday on DVD.”
The little man was younger than he looked. Male-pattern baldness and a high-pressure career on Madison Avenue had aged his appearance, but the spring mechanism that propelled his thoughts and actions remained intact. Retired in his thirties on a medical disability (pernicious hemorrhoids; although Kyle Broadhead insisted the surgeons had kept the hemorrhoid and thrown away the patient), he had offered his marketing savvy to the university on condition that his salary wouldn’t threaten his Social Security benefits. The director of Information Services had assured him that low pay was no obstacle to his employment.
Broadhead wasn’t alone in his opinion of Anklemire. Most of the administration and faculty loathed him for the very reasons Valentino liked him. He was an aggressive promoter who knew the common denominator that shook loose money from every area of society, and he had no patience for questions of propriety or prestige. Give him a salable commodity and he’d sell it. Give him a dead dog with live fleas, and he’d sell that too. He knew nothing about movies or their history, but he knew how to turn silver nitrate into gold.
“Born Yesterday. Great flick. They ought to colorize it. What you want to do, you want to send the picture—what’s it called again?”
“Greed. But that’s not what I—”
“I like it. One-word titles pop: Porky’s, Rambo, Caddyshack. Big-time boffo box office. And when you stick a Roman numeral on the end: Kaboom! Blockbuster. Any chance of a sequel?”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“Well, you can’t always get cream cheese with your bagel. You want to send the picture on tour, book all the revival houses, pass the hat for donations. Then you bring it out on disc. This outfit sure can use the cash.” He raised his voice above the banging of the water pipes next door. “What we do to get them in is play up the murder mystery angle. Dust off some retired forensics geek to C.G. what Mr. Bones might’ve looked like when he was walking around, air it on America’s Most Wanted. Make sure Greed gets a mention, run a thirty-second clip. See the movie, catch a killer, get a reward. Can’t miss.”
“We may have found a great film that’s been missing for eighty years. Isn’t that worth anything?”
Anklemire exposed gold teeth in a yawn. “Strictly third paragraph. Below the fold and after the sports and weather. Nobody cares.”
“Nobody but the people you and I work for.” But he didn’t argue. The assistant director’s opinion sadly reflected the majority’s. “If it turns out to be Greed, I’ll come back for this lecture. What I need is to spin the situation so the LAPD doesn’t seize the film for evidence before we can strike off a safety print.”
“Who’s the cop?”
“Sergeant Clifford, with West Hollywood. I don’t know her first name.”
“A broad. Why’n’t you say so in the first place? Send her flowers.”
“That’s the dumbest, most offensive thing I’ve—”
“Relax, Doc. I was speaking metaphysically.”
“Metaphorically.” He didn’t bother to set him straight on Doc. To the little man, everyone at UCLA not connected with the administration was faculty. He watched Anklemire circle behind his desk, sit down, and use his handkerchief to snap a piece of lint off one of his Italian loafers. What he saved on his clothes and hairpieces he spent on shoes.
He poked the handkerchief back into his pocket and fussed with it until it blossomed like a poppy. “You eggheads are sitting on the best chick magnet in Southern California and you never get laid. You got like a billion dollars of snazzy equipment there in the lab, but you don’t show it off. You said Broadaxe mentioned turning the dingus over piece by piece?
Valentino was sure
Anklemire knew the name was Broadhead. “If by dingus you mean Greed, yes. But—”
“Soften her up. Blind her with bling. All them computers and electronic microscopes and projectors and that gizmo that stamps and stacks discs, guys waltzing around in haz-mat suits, it’s Willie Wonka Meets Doctor No. Did I get that right?” The glint of insecurity faded before his listener was sure he’d seen it. He nodded.
“When she’s impressed, hit her with the proposition.”
“It can’t be as simple as that.”
“It’s a simple world. Somebody has something to sell, somebody else is looking for something to buy. I made a nice little commission for years bringing ‘em together. She call you yet?”
“Not yet. Should I wait?”
“No. Don’t buy that BS the feminists shovel out. Broads like it when you make the first move.”
“Are you married?”
“No, I’ve been in advertising all my life. Call her.”
“I’m trying to stay out of jail, not ask for a date.”
“You’re asking for a date, all right. You’re just not picking her up or paying for dinner. Call her.” He picked up his telephone, standard, receiver, and all, and banged them down on Valentino’s side of the desk.
“I’d better run it past Dr. Broadhead first. At this point we don’t even know what we’re trying to protect. We haven’t unwrapped it yet.”
“Don’t stall too long, that’s my advice. If she calls first, your odds get cut in half.” He bounced his crossed leg up and down, admiring the shine on his toe. “What?”
Valentino realized he was staring at him. “Did you ever happen to read a book called What Makes Sammy Run?”
“What is it, a bio of Sammy Davis, Jr.?”
“Not quite. You might want to check it out. There’s someone in it you might recognize.”
“Well, I hope it’s short. I waded through three hundred pages of that Day of the Locust deal you gave me and didn’t see so much as a cockroach.” He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The man simply couldn’t keep still; Valentino wondered if it was the hemorrhoids. “If this Greed turns out to be the McCoy, get me what you can for the campaign.”
“Such as?”
“You’re the archaeologist. Start digging. I can’t write copy without material.”
“Archivist, not archaeologist.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Not a lot.”
“Do your homework, Poindexter. Interview people. Get me color: crazy directors, bootleg booze, wild parties in big houses on Sunset. Voh-doh-de-oh-doh!” He jogged his upper body, elbows out. He was a living video arcade.
“Who do you suggest I interview? Von Stroheim’s been dead almost fifty years and time hasn’t been any kinder to the rest of the cast and crew.” He was glad he hadn’t said anything about last night’s dream. Anklemire would have had him stalking the ghost around like a paparazzo.
“There’s always somebody, or if it isn’t somebody it’s somebody’s son or grandson. Nobody blows through this town without leaving something behind: diaries, letters, pirate maps, arr! Get me something I can use to sell popcorn.”
“That I can do. I’m not sure about America’s Most Wanted.”
“Yeah. On second thought, a mystery’s no good without a solution. People just get pissed when you get their curiosity all worked up for bubkes.”
Valentino laughed. “What do you want me to do, solve the case?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble.”
**
II
DOUBLE
FEATURE
**
CHAPTER
7
HE FOUND RUTH at her desk, limning a set of bright orange fingernails in yellow from a tiny bottle on the blotter. They looked like candy corns; further proof, he thought, that the ability to distinguish colors deteriorated with age. “Dr. Broadhead’s been asking for you.” She didn’t look up from her project.
He started toward Broadhead’s office.
“Not there. In the projection room at the lab. He wants to show you something.”
He felt a thrill of anticipation. Then he reminded himself the techs couldn’t have finished duplicating enough footage of Greed (if it was Greed; he kept having to remind himself not to build up hope) to screen more than a couple of seconds. The shriveled little sourpuss who had signed it in the day before hadn’t inspired him to think they’d get to it right away. “Did he say what it was?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. Something old and musty and full of dead people, what else? I suppose you’re going to waste another fine California day watching movies.”
The sky that morning looked like bad tapioca pudding. Several school districts had canceled classes in response to a smog alert.
“Why don’t you join us?” he asked. “Admission and popcorn are free.”
“The last time I went to a private screening, David O. Selznick chased me around the pool.”
“We’ll try to restrain ourselves. Is there anything about movies you approve of?”
She blew on her nails. “They’re shorter than most baseball games.”
“Baseball too? What about apple pie?”
“I never eat dessert.”
“Why do you work here, Ruth? You must be miserable all the time.” Which would explain a great deal.
“It’s better than my third marriage. He played shortstop for the Dodgers; that’s what brought him out here from Brooklyn. That’s why I don’t like baseball.” She looked up at him. Her face was like fine painted china. He had the impression that if someone struck it, it would crack apart, like Vincent Price’s in House of Wax. She said, “You’re young, it doesn’t matter how many hours you waste, day after day. A man Dr. Broadhead’s age ought to make the best of the time he has left.”
“What is Dr. Broadhead’s age?”
“If I had to go by how he looked when I came in, I’d say a hundred and fifty.”
“He was here when you came in? Even he never makes it that early.”
“He never went home. He was here all night.” She screwed the cap back on the bottle of polish adeptly, sparing contact with her nails. No arthritis there. “It’s not healthy to keep so much company with dead people. That comes soon enough.”
Valentino went to the laboratory building, a sleek example of ultramodern architecture more in keeping with Angry Red Planet than West Coast Ivy League. Through the thick glass inside he saw technicians working in the lab, in smocks and shiny neoprene gloves, some wearing hoods to protect them from the toxic fumes coming from film in the third stage of decomposition and beyond—haz-mat suits indeed, as Anklemire had said. Valentino thought fleetingly of Harriet Johansen in her breathing mask. He couldn’t forget her smile, once he’d finally coaxed it into the open.
“There you are.” Broadhead sounded irritated. “When did you start keeping banker’s hours?”
The professor had just stepped into the hall from the projection room, as if he’d been waiting at the open door. He looked more unpressed than usual in the clothes he’d worn the day before. His face sagged like a deflated balloon. He looked a hundred and fifty easy.
“I had a meeting with Henry Anklemire. Ruth said you were here all night. I thought you were going home to take a bath and watch Survivor.”
“I came to the conclusion it would survive without me. You didn’t bring that little fisher with you, did you?”
“No.”
“Good. This would be wasted on him, along with table manners and the Queen’s English.” He placed a hand on Valentino’s back and shoved him toward the open door. There was nothing wrong with the old pedant’s stores of adrenaline.
The projection room looked like an ordinary college classroom, which it was much of the time, with rows of desks for film students to sit and watch movies and make notes. A stout projector stood on a table facing a collapsible screen. They crossed the room without stopping. Broadhead entered a code into a wall p
anel, opened a steel fire door on the buzzer, and held it for Valentino. A pneumatic tube pulled it shut behind them.
This was the room reserved for projecting cellulose nitrate, air-conditioned to an even seventy degrees year-round, and enclosed entirely with firewall, so that if the film caught fire, the blaze would destroy only the projectionist and his audience instead of spreading beyond the room. To slow down that process, heat-sensitive sprinklers pierced the ceiling and there was an extinguisher illuminated on every wall. The projector, a permanent fixture bolted to a steel stand, was several times larger than the one in the outer room, with oversize Mickey Mouse—ear magazines to contain the reels and seal them off from outside catalysts. It, too, was equipped with an air-cooling system capable of regulating the temperature in a building of modest size.
The facility had cost as much to install as a plush private theater with all the extravagant trimmings, but all the money had gone into technology and fire prevention. It was just big enough to throw a clear image on the flame-retardant screen, the palette was industrial beige, and folding metal chairs provided seating. Indirect lighting came from behind ceiling soffits, not to enhance mood, but to prevent the heat of the bulbs from coming into contact with the stock. It fell upon a flat can lying open and empty on the worktable beside the projector stand, like a clamshell that had given up its meat. Valentino picked up the lid, turned it over, and read the label. His heart bumped.
“You can project it?”
“I can, yes,” Broadhead said. “The dues I pay to the projectionists’ guild would keep me in mahogany, but it’s a lot more convenient than digging up someone with a card on short notice, and most of them don’t know the first thing about handling vintage. They might as well be twirling spaghetti.”
“I meant the film.”
“The stuff from the room next to the projection booth had me worried; conditions there were much less stable than the basement. Thank God we’re in a desert. When I saw there was no rust ring on the cans, I began to hope. I spent four hours last night with a techie in the lab, opening reel one, here, and unrolling it inch by inch. There was no adhesion, and only the odd amber spot.”
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