“My God,” he said aloud. “I’m Norma Desmond.”
It was a subject that needed serious consideration before he entered a lonely middle age filled with the empty clutter of pop memorabilia and framed certificates of merit awarded by obscure fellowships dedicated to arcane cinema; but not today. Not this moment. He had an overpowering urge to revisit The Oracle—his Oracle—and run his hands over the fossils and pottery shards of Old Hollywood.
**
The building, conceived upon a Jew’s idea of a cathedral, but scaled down to nestle into the relatively horizontal cityscape of Tinseltown in the 1920s, assumed a tombstone aspect under the low smutty skies of Los Angeles post-1960. The uniformed officer standing sentry at the entrance represented a later model of Valentino’s nemesis in the parking garage. He compared the visitor’s features with the picture on his driver’s license, spoke into the two-way radio clipped to an epaulet, and got an answer crackling back.
“You can go in,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”
Valentino ducked under the yellow police tape stretched across the doorway and entered the lobby. He had it to himself just then, but could hear sounds of activity beneath his feet, where investigators would be moving crates and dismantling racks in the basement, searching for bullets buried in the walls or whatever. He felt a sense of violation and trespass—and at that moment assumed in full the role of property owner, with all its challenges and responsibility.
The room was cavernous, a colossal waste of space by Eastern standards, and completely in character with the idolatry of excess that had dictated fashion in the age of sheiks and shebas, Theda Bara’s milk baths, and champagne fountains at Pickfair. Its designers had striven to shame the pharaohs of Egypt, but they had neglected to build in the permanence of the Old Kingdom. The workmen were the same who had erected the Tower of Babel for Intolerance and the Roman Coliseum for Ben-Hur; great edifices made of plywood and papier-mâché, intended to stand throughout principal photography, then to be knocked down or left to decay in the Hollywood Hills. Without regular maintenance, mildew and tarnish and termites moved in to claim their inheritance. A pane had fallen from the smiling countenance of the archangel in a stained-glass window, making him look as if he were missing a tooth.
Just because he could, and to declare defiance of officer’s orders, Valentino drew a furrow with a finger through the chalky dust on the glass surface of the candy counter, then tugged the sheet off a hunchback shape beside the staircase to the mezzanine. A cloud erupted. He stepped back to avoid being enveloped, but it left a fine skin of dessicated architecture on his shoes. He regarded the plaster cast of Pegasus with nostrils distended, wings poised to unfurl, one forefoot raised for takeoff. The gilding had flaked off the Grecian curls on the equine forehead, leaving the impression of balding, and a careless mover or a kid with an air rifle had knocked a huge chip out of a knee, but Valentino thought the sculpture could be restored. Its mate was another story. The pedestal that had supported it on the other side of the staircase was vacant. It would have to be replaced, and he had serious doubts about finding a capable craftsman or the money to compensate him. It would be more practical to remove the remaining figure.
A terrible chilling sensation of buyer’s remorse racked him. The theater was too big, too far gone, there was too much to be done, and he didn’t know where to start. And Pleasure Domes had described The Oracle as one of the smaller surviving picture palaces!
He sneezed. How Freudian, as if he could expel the burden through his nose.
“Bless you.”
Startled, he looked up at the creature descending the stairs. The naked bulb someone had wired in place of the chandelier cast a halo around short blonde hair, and for a nanosecond he thought a stained-glass angel had separated itself from a window to rescue him. But she was wearing Harriet Johansen’s smock and carrying her tackle box. He noticed her legs were well shaped, with trim ankles and long graceful muscles in the calves.
“Thank you,” he said. “I thought you were finished here.”
“I wanted another look upstairs, for signs the victim was killed there and moved to the basement. Postmortem lividity’s not an option when there’s no flesh on the corpse.”
“What did you find?”
“Some interesting stains. I did a hemoglobin test on what looked like a classic arterial-laceration pattern—slit throat— but it looks like someone just got careless opening a can of soda. Old semen traces in the projection booth; quite a lot of semen. I prescribe Clorox and plenty of it.”
“Free love,” he said. “This was a shrine to the Age of Aquarius for a while. Before my time.” He felt foolish adding it.
“That explains the traces of cannabis I found in a floor crack.” She stepped off the bottom stair and shook his hand. Hers was cool.
“You carry equipment to test for marijuana?”
“Everywhere I go.” She touched her nose. “Don’t tell the boys in the narc squad.”
“Sergeant Clifford thinks the skeleton might have been left over from a horror-show spectacle back in the fifties. It might have come from a medical school.”
“She told me. I had to disappoint her. Skeletons used for demonstration purposes are linked together with wire, to keep them from falling apart when you tap them with a pointer. That had never been done with this one. There would be wear marks and traces of metal. Also I scraped skin cells off the floor where the body was found. It did all its decomposing here on the premises.” She read his expression. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re anxious to start renovating.”
He was grateful that Clifford hadn’t been generous with the information about Greed. He preferred to choose the time and circumstances of the announcement. “It isn’t your fault. Have you figured out what killed him?”
“The skull was fractured, glancing blow from a blunt instrument. It might not have been fatal if he’d received medical treatment. As it was he probably lapsed into a coma and died either from starvation or shock.”
“Shock, I hope,” he said, with a shiver. “I never got over The Black Cat. I saw it on WGN when I was eight and I never had the courage to watch it again.”
“That’s a brave admission to make to a stranger. Most guys try to macho it out.”
Great. He was coming off as a wimp. “What else have you found out?”
Her face lapsed into deep thought, which in her case was deep indeed; she struck him as fiercely intelligent, even beyond the demands of her work. Then she shrugged, with a bright toss of her head that sent electricity tingling to his nerve ends.
“I suppose it will be on tonight’s news,” she said. “The last satellite truck pulled out only a few minutes ago; the crew got tired of waiting for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime after fifty years. He was in his late teens or early twenties, slight of build, probably not too well off. Those fillings in his teeth were primitive work, possibly by a student at a college clinic. Middle European, based on the cranium and mandibula. German or Dutch would be my guess. Don’t quote me on that. Profiling’s verboten. I don’t want to be picketed by boys in Buster Brown haircuts and wooden shoes.”
“I thought all that CSI mumbo-jumbo was Hollywood hogwash.”
“There’s a healthy dose of science fiction on those shows, but nothing we won’t have in a few years. A lot of money goes into criminology research, thanks to the statistics. We don’t have the authority those actors have. We can’t carry guns, for instance, or interview suspects, or threaten them with arrest. Those specialties belong to people like Karen Clifford.”
“Her name’s Karen? I didn’t know that.”
She smiled, with a narrowing of her exotic eyes. “What’s my first name?”
“Harriet.” He felt himself blushing.
“You have the advantage.”
“I only use mine at the DMV and to get airline tickets. My friends call me Val.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Yes.” He answere
d without hesitation.
“Don’t call me Harry. People in this town make assumptions based on your haircut and your line of work.”
“I like your haircut. It fits the shape of your skull.”
She smiled again, and this time she released the full candlepower. “Val, you couldn’t have made a better choice of words with a forensic pathologist.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “This is a euphemistic minefield, isn’t it?”
“I’m not offended. Ghouls rule. You’re in the industry, right? You must have to deal with your own share of BS. Convenience store clerks pushing screenplays.”
“I’m not with the industry. Most of my clients are as dead as yours. I’m an archivist with the UCLA Department of Film Preservation.” He braced for the reaction.
“I love old movies. Astaire and Rogers.”
“Laurel and Hardy.”
“William Powell and Myrna Loy.”
“Joseph and Herman Mankiewicz.”
Her face clouded. His stomach sank.
“That’s where people start to make assumptions,” he said.
She tossed her head again. He could get used to that. “I’d like a tour sometime. It’s a wonderful building. You don’t see a lot of lath-and-plaster these days. Every cent I make seems to go into my rent, and I can hear my neighbors brushing their teeth.”
It made him think of The Crowd. He shoved that aside like a Trekkie hiding the Klingon dictionary in his closet. “How about right now?”
“I have an autopsy at two. A drowning, three days washing around in the surf off Malibu. Black tie only. That means gas mask and neoprene. Rain check?”
“Speaking of a tour—” He was reminded suddenly of more pressing things.
“UCLA film lab. Sergeant Clifford told me. How’s tomorrow morning?”
“Nine o’clock?”
“It’s a date.”
She left swinging her instrument case, sensible heels snapping on a floor paved with priceless marble and cheap linoleum and dust. Distractedly, he patted the balding head of winged Pegasus and pushed his way through the marvelous swinging inlaid mahogany-and-ebony door into the auditorium.
Erich von Stroheim greeted him, a ghastly figure separated in shreds and tatters from what remained of The Oracle’s linen screen, hanging like silk stockings from the rail at the top of the stage. He wore a cutaway coat with tails, a stiff shirtboard, and a black-rimmed monocle attached by a ribbon to his lapel: the butler in Sunset Boulevard, reduced by devotion and circumstances from Norma Desmond’s first director (and first husband).
“You are a handy fellow with the ladies, Herr Valentino,” he said. “But how are you at saving mein Kindling? I see no progress.”
Valentino blinked. He was wide awake now, he knew it; yet he was facing a ghost. He’d made the mad leap from harmless obsessive to full-blown psychotic with no stops along the way. Best to humor the vision; and by reflection himself.
“I’ve taken steps,” he said. “Reel two’s in process of transference to safety stock. I had to screen reel one to be sure we had what we thought.”
“But you allow yourself to be distracted. Die Frauen—Ja, they provide comfort in times of trouble and help to propagate the species—but also they distract us from the business at hand. You must focus. This is a metaphor, ja? And yet it was so important to art—mein art—that the world embraced it as a model to emulate. Emulate, this is the right word, ja?”
“Ja” Valentino said. “I mean yes. But you’re overlooking an important issue. You’re dead. You’ve been dead for forty-eight years. I have a hard time accepting advice from a corpse.”
“And yet who else has such wisdom of experience?” No humor showed on that stern face, separated as it was into disconnected pieces, an eye here, half a nose there, the mouth twitching out of line with the other features, like a reflection in a shattered mirror. “Seek the dead for your counsel, Herr Valentino. They have all the answers.”
And then he was alone.
The ribbons of torn fabric hung blank from the frame, stirring slightly in the current of air coming through broken slates on the roof and places where joints failed to join.
“‘Seek the dead for your counsel,’” Valentino muttered. “Can’t you spooks talk any plainer than that?”
For reply, The Oracle groaned on its foundation.
**
CHAPTER
11
“YOU NEED TO have new cards made.” Kyle Broadhead ran a pipe cleaner through the barrel of his pipe. “You’ve got detective on the brain.”
The professor looked as much like an unmade bed as ever, but the linen appeared fresh. He’d regenerated himself completely from the exhausted wreck of yesterday morning. Valentino wished he could say the same for himself. He’d had a rocky night after his phantom encounter; needing rest and yet reluctant to lapse into unconsciousness for fear of inviting the apparition back. He’d fallen asleep finally without dreaming, but any resemblance he bore to a fully functioning human being came from the jumbo Starbucks cup perched on the corner of Broadhead’s desk.
“I don’t see any other approach,” Valentino said. “Clifford won’t back off from her ultimatum. We have to crack the case to save Greed.”
“And what can you bring to it that the entire Los Angeles Police Department can’t?”
“Passion and determination. It’s just routine for them, apart from the snazzy trappings. Without a weeping widow or some other cause célèbre to fan the fire, the press will lose interest, and failing that there’s no pressure to solve it. But you and I and film history will never recover from the loss.”
“Who’s responsible for this sleuthing bug, you or Henry Anklemire?”
“I admit he’s the one who brought it up, but he was thinking of the publicity. All I’m interested in is preservation.”
Broadhead ran thick fingers through his rumpled hair. “I wish you’d run all this past me before involving Fanta. The police are treating it as a homicide, after all. You’re perilously close to child endangerment.”
“She’s past the age of consent. And anyone with a personal interest in keeping the case unsolved would be too feeble by now to put up much of a threat. If it’s murder, chances are the murderer is dead. You’re going to have to come up with a better reason than that to let the matter drop.”
“How about getting in the real detectives’ way, bollixing up their investigation, and ensuring the worst possible scenario?”
“It’s just old records, Kyle. Public property. It’s not like we’re scaring off eyewitnesses.”
“Well, you know where I stand. Saving a film and solving a murder is a pip of a double feature to try to pull off. You’re a scholar, not Sherlock Holmes. While you’re galumphing about sniffing for clues, some illiterate housemaid in Pasadena could be snipping up The Wind to start a fire in the hearth.”
“It isn’t fall yet. I think we can wait till New Year’s to worry about that, when the thermometer drops below seventy.”
“That isn’t the point and you know it.”
Valentino gulped coffee. “I’m not as far out of my element as you think. In our work we need many of the same skills as a professional investigator: interviewing people, combing through dusty files, playing hunches, making connections. A scrap of celluloid can wriggle itself into a much smaller hole than a murderer.”
“And a country deacon can run for pope. But he isn’t likely to get very far with the college of cardinals.” He rammed the pipe cleaner through one last time. The inside of the barrel must have been as clean as a dairy by then.
“This is getting us nowhere. Did you talk to Coppola about speaking at commencement?”
“This morning. He’s going to be shooting in Germany then, but he agreed to a satellite feed. It took some persuading. I had to remind him who got James Wong Howe to see him when he was setting up American Zoetrope. Our president’s making arrangements to bring giant TV screens into the auditorium, like you see at
Rolling Stones concerts. And he’s greenlighted Greed. It still won’t be finished in two days and counting. I couldn’t get him to commit enough techies to set up an assembly line on one project. There’s a lot of inventory, and each item is someone’s foster child.”
Kindling, Valentino thought. He took another hit from his cup. “I wouldn’t be too hard on him. He’s not a film person.”
“Most people aren’t, and I include the industry. It’s all about the Deal; but then it always was. Otherwise every scrap of footage ever shot in this town and on location would be safe on shelves, and I’d be teaching freshman English to troglodytes. God only knows what you’d be doing, a dreamer like you.”
“Tour guide at the Hollywood Wax Museum,” he said. “Which reminds me. I’m showing Harriet Johansen through the lab in half an hour.”
Broadhead’s smile was sly. “Anklemire suggested Sergeant Clifford.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “Clifford suggested Ms. Johansen. A gathering of nerds, as it were. Join us? I never saw a skinflint you couldn’t charm out of his checkbook.”
“Not this time. This time I’d just be in the way. You’ve got Cupid in your corner.”
“I’ve had just about enough of that. This isn’t junior high.”
“Don’t be offended when I say I don’t care if you ever find the love of your life. She’s attracted to you: Clifford saw it, Fanta saw it, and so did I. You’d be a blind fool not to use it to buy time.”
“That’s cold-blooded.”
“No more so than butting into an official investigation. It’s all about saving Greed.”
“I’m thinking of taping that to my bathroom mirror. I ran into Johansen in the theater last night.” He told him what she’d said about the skeleton.
“I could have told you it wasn’t the one Bill Castle used. He kept it hanging in his study among all the other knick-knacks from his pictures. Forrest J. Ackerman, the publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland, bought it from his estate. He dresses it in a tuxedo at Halloween.”
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