“Even when I’m awake?”
“I can’t speak for what shape you were in today, but you looked kind of wasted that day at the theater. I used to doze off sitting at my desk at USC after pulling an all-nighter with the books. My head never touched the desk.”
“Dr. Broadhead suggested sleepwalking.”
“It’s more common than you think. Why do you think von Stroheim used only as much German as you still retained from high school? That was as much as your subconscious mind gave him access to.”
He blinked. “Wow. I never thought of that.”
“You’re not haunted.” She reached across the table and took both his hands in hers. “And you’re not crazy.”
Crazy about you, he thought; but it was too early for that. Instead he squeezed her hands. “If I ever feel I’m slipping, I’ll run straight to you. Anyone who’d run a DNA test on a spook could talk me sane.”
“Mr. Valentino, that’s just about the sweetest thing anyone ever told a forensic pathologist.” She glanced around the empty room, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
**
CHAPTER
18
VALENTINO HAD TIMED himself to arrive late the next morning; but the LAPD, evidently determined to spare him nothing, was behind schedule as well. After his daily exchange of unpleasantries with the grumpy parking attendant, he emerged on foot from the garage in time to see a bearing party of officers in helmets and flak jackets lugging carton after carton from the preservation building to an armor-plated SUV parked in front. Sergeant Clifford seemed to have accepted Harriet’s assessment of the cargo at face value.
Ruth ambushed him from behind her desk in the old power plant. “You’re late. The joint’s been raided.”
He’d guessed they’d been there first, from the amount of mud that had been tracked onto the floor downstairs. A misty rain had been falling all morning. “It was expected. Didn’t Dr. Broadhead warn you?”
“They tramped in while he was talking. I haven’t seen so many cops in one place since they arrested John Landis.”
That would be for the accident that killed Vic Morrow and two child extras on the set of Twilight Zone—The Movie. He’d had no idea her studio experience had lasted so late. “He was acquitted,” he said. “We should have such luck. Where’s Dr. Broadhead?”
“He went with them.”
“Don’t tell me they arrested him.” He had a sudden horrible picture of his friend refusing to cooperate, reliving the martyrdom of his younger years.
“He took them over to the lab. Here he is now.”
The professor strolled in in hat, trench coat, and rubbers, puffing his pipe. Ruth, who had appointed herself monitor of the university’s smoke-free policy, scooped a heavy ashtray out of a drawer and thrust it at him. Meekly he rapped the smoldering dottle out into the tray and watched her stab at the glowing ash with the eraser end of a pencil.
Valentino said, “I was afraid I was going to have to go downtown and bail you out.”
“It was extraordinary,” Broadhead said. “They came with dozens of cartons, enough to clean out the entire library. I suspect they were misled to believe they were here to confiscate Foolish Wives. You know, the sour Kraut shot three hundred reels before Thalberg shut him down that time. No one seems to care about recovering those. Discrimination seems to be gaining ground even among fanatics.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he began by rebuilding Monte Carlo from the ground up and then filming a reel of establishing footage before he got three yards inside the door. Things escalated from—”
“I mean with the police!”
“Oh. Most civilized. There’s not a Barton MacLane or a Bill Demarest to be found among this polite college-educated breed. I supervised the loading, and the fellow in charge, a sergeant named Masserian, kept inventory and gave me a copy with a signed receipt. The vandals who moved Elaine and me into our house could have taken lessons from the way this crew handled the merchandise. There wasn’t a dramatic moment, in case you were afraid you’d missed anything.” He fixed Valentino with his bland gaze.
“I missed it on purpose. I hate attending funerals.”
“I hope you’ll make an exception in the case of mine. I’ve made some alterations in the text.”
“I wish I had your sense of humor. I can’t find a single thing to smile about this morning.”
Ruth said, “I sure can’t. I’m not getting much work done in this gabfest.”
“Step into my office,” Broadhead told Valentino.
“Let’s step into mine. Today of all days I need my personal clutter about me.”
“What do you suppose she finds to work on? I write all my letters, and you’re never around long enough to hitch her to the plow.” Broadhead made himself comfortable in his usual seat and began packing his pipe.
Valentino said, “Would you mind not doing that? Rebellion gets old fast.”
Broadhead raised his bushy brows, then shrugged and laid the pipe in the Schwab’s saucer where his friend kept paper clips. “You behave as if I’m the only revolutionary in situ,” he said. “How’s progress with the Oracle Murder Case?” He made it sound like a lost Philo Vance title.
“We may have identified the victim. And we found Warren Pegler. That is to say Fanta found him. I interviewed him yesterday at the Country Home.”
“He’s alive? Dear me. Does this mean I have to look forward to shaving this face for another few decades?”
Valentino filled him in on Albert Spinoza and what he’d gotten from Pegler. The old man’s information sounded even more meager in summary.
“Do you suspect him?” Broadhead asked.
“I don’t know. Diminished capacity can be a real advantage during interrogation.”
“Did you tell any of this to the Big Red Dog?”
“I ran into Clifford last night at headquarters. I never thought about it, to be honest. We were making arrangements for her to seize Greed. That was very civilized, too. You’d have been proud of my behavior.”
“I am. There’s no sense making a scene when you’re surrounded by people with guns and handcuffs. What were you doing at headquarters?”
“I was there for that tour Harriet promised.”
“Elucidate.” He never sounded more the professor taking a pupil through his lessons.
“It was illuminating. Did you know you can track a suspect’s movements over the past year by analyzing the wax in his ear?”
“Stop being so romantic. Did you get to first base?”
Valentino colored. For the first time in their long acquaintance, Broadhead’s brows made contact with his shaggy hairline. He laughed sincerely, loud and booming. Out in the hall, Ruth pounded her foot for silence.
“Right brain meets left,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Your children will spend all day in the video store and all night scraping the discs to see what makes them work.”
“That’s out of line, even for you. I apologized for asking about you and Fanta.”
Subdued, Broadhead tugged at the hem of his sweater-vest. “How did your meeting go with Kalishnikov? I hear he’s eccentric. When a second-unit AD at Fox complained about his bill, he had the equipment and furnishings ripped out and turned the theater back into a storeroom, with the original junk. He went to the landfill to retrieve it personally.”
“He probably started that rumor himself. He’s a pro in parvenu clothing.” Valentino took one of the slips out of his wallet and passed it across the desk.
“What’s this, the population of Santa Monica?”
“That’s his fee. He offered to waive it if I let him use the Oracle in his promotion.”
“He is eccentric. Of course you accepted.” He placed the estimate atop the pile of papers on the desk.
“Even if I did, the actual work would put me into debt beyond the grave.”
“If you made that calculation, you must be considering going ahead.”
&
nbsp; Valentino shook his head. “I’m thinking of selling the place to someone who can afford to restore it.”
“Anyone with that kind of money would be smart enough to level it and put up an office building on the site. You’d never forgive yourself.”
“The other day you tried to talk me into forgetting the whole thing.”
Broadhead picked up his pipe and straightened out a paper clip to probe inside the stem. “As your only friend, I have the responsibility to perform as your Greek chorus. If I thought you’d take the advice, I wouldn’t have offered it. When God goes out of His way to hand you an epiphany, turning it down would only tick Him off.”
“That’s the second time God’s come up in conversation in the last twelve hours. I thought this was a secular town.”
“Balderdash. Every time someone with a bright line of patter throws a butt into the gutter on Cahuenga, a dozen people swarm around it to erect a shrine. My mailman can’t deliver my utility bill because the box is stuffed with circulars predicting the end of the world; even the Apocalypse has its positive side. Bite the bullet, Val. If you start moping around wringing your hands because some practical type built yet another Comerica Bank on hallowed Hollywood ground, I’ll have to strike up a conversation with Ruth just to break the monotony.”
Valentino smiled despite himself. “Well, we can’t have that.”
“I knew you’d come to your senses if I put it in an altruistic context. A personal relationship with Ruth could drive me back to the classroom. Have you given any more thought to selling Greed to the university?”
“Pegler said you shouldn’t have to sell greed since it isn’t in short supply. Apparently I’ve got my share. Do you really think I can get fifty thousand?”
“You can get double, but don’t tell the department head I said that. He already thinks we’re all going to be selling flowers on the entrances to the San Diego Freeway if the Democrats don’t get back in next time around.”
“I couldn’t ask for a hundred. I feel like a traitor considering any price at all.”
“Next week, some stinking rich alumnus fresh out of white-collar prison will present the president with a giant novelty check, and every third-string player on the football team will have his own personal Jacuzzi. UCLA will survive. So will the Oracle; but only if you stop thinking of Greed as if it were the Wailing Wall and treat it as the commodity it was intended to be.”
Valentino watched him puttering with his pipe, the only fetish in his acerbic, ascetic life. “You’re a good friend, Kyle.”
“Your only friend. You can’t count Harriet Johansen yet. She’s still your Dulcinea at this early stage.”
“You forgot Kym Trujillo at the Country Home.”
“Have you ever had dinner at her house? Or had her to dinner at yours?”
“Lunch, a couple of times.”
“Lunch is a bribe, to patch up the pipeline to your best source of anecdotal information. Did you tell her about your ghost?”
“Of course not.”
“I rest my case. How is old Erich, by the way? Dead and well, I trust? In good spirits?”
“I missed him last time. He left his smoking paraphernalia in my car, but only for a moment.”
“Urn.” Broadhead sucked on the cold pipe. “I wouldn’t think an apparition had any pressing engagements.”
“When I said you were a good friend, I was referring to your efforts to distract me from the thought that right now a bunch of day laborers with flat feet and a taste for deep-fried pastry are putting their ham fists all over the find of two centuries.”
“Snobbery doesn’t become you. As a matter of fact, many of L.A.’s finest are blessed with admirably high arches. As to the value of the confiscated property, I have my doubts; although dogs are universally popular. You said Pegler still mourns the one he lost to a coal wagon ninety years ago.”
“What do dogs have to do with Greed?”
“Nothing, in context. Gluttony’s as close as they come to that human sin. But I do expect a proper demonstration of wrath when Sergeant Clifford and her people get past the first three reels and find themselves following the adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin.”
Valentino sat up. “Elucidate.”
“History has largely forgotten that before the brothers Warner greenlighted The Jazz Singer, rescuing us all from the poetry of silence, the exploits of a heroic German shepherd were all that stood between them and bankruptcy. They ran that studio on a shoestring and gallons of red ink.”
“Tell me you didn’t put Rin-Tin-Tin in those cans before you let them go.”
“Very well. I did not.”
“Kyle!”
“Assuming you wish to rephrase that as a question, I will respond that I did not do that solely. I’m no piker, and anyway I couldn’t fill all forty-two cans with less than three thousand feet of film. I put in reels one, two, and three of Greed, which we’d just barely transferred to safety, threw in the dog, and finished out the bill with Tarzan of the Apes, starring the immortal Elmo Lincoln, his leopard skin, and his beer belly. Grand stuff, and we’ve got it all on backup. What more could you ask, short of a travelogue, a newsreel, and Porky the Pig?”
Valentino cursed loud and long. Ruth pounded.
“I considered The Perils of Pauline,” Broadhead said, “but it doesn’t date nearly as well. I have standards.”
A fist slammed the desk, starting a paperslide of scripts and playbills that continued long into the speech that followed. “This isn’t a fraternity prank. We started out by withholding evidence, now we’re tampering with it. Clifford’s smart enough to spot the difference between Zasu Pitts and a police dog.”
“Debatable. Pitts was no great beauty. But Greed’s safe in our hands, and posterity will judge whether it’s more important to punish a murderer or save a masterpiece.”
“You’re wrong. A judge will judge, and you and I will be watching all our movies in the San Quentin cafeteria. And how did Greed manage that tricky U-turn back to masterpiece? A few minutes ago it was a commodity.”
“I was speaking for posterity, not myself. Anyway, it won’t even be a commodity if we let them stick it in the refrigerator with the tuna sandwiches. Your view of penal life is confined to the screen, incidentally. If you don’t actually shiv someone in the shower room, they pipe basic cable into your cell. Citizen Kane with feminine hygiene spots is better than no Kane at all.” Broadhead scratched the side of his nose with the paper clip, leaving an ashen mark. “But that’s my burden. You’ll be in your own Xanadu, fighting with building inspectors, while I’m busy rattling my cup against the bars, demanding more gruel.” He cocked his head. “No, that’s Oliver Twist. It’s high time I retired to the rock pile. I can no longer distinguish between Jackie Coogan and Jimmy Cagney.”
“If you think I’m going to stand by and let you take the rap alone—”
“Spoken like George Raft. It’s not your choice. I’ll exonerate you in my confession. I won’t have you playing Cook to my Peary and smudging my individual achievement.”
“Don’t you mean your martyrdom?”
“The image is inconsistent. Cook and Peary were explorers, not martyrs. Those don’t come in pairs. Which was the whole point of my argument.” He smiled his baggy academic smile. “Don’t weep for me. The cell is bound to be more comfortable than that Eastern European dungeon, and if I can resist the temptation to crash the gate, the warden may let me have paper and pencils to finish my book. A lot of great literature has been created behind bars: Don Quixote, the stories of O. Henry, The Gulag Archipelago.”
“You left out Mein Kampf.”
“Hitler’s style meandered too much to qualify. Anyway, that whole Holocaust thing detracts from the text. Mad dictators should hire ghosts to write their memoirs; meaning no offense to Herr von Stroheim.”
“Heroes make a difference. That’s how you know they’re heroes. You’ll just be a drain on the taxpayers while Clifford gets a court order and takes the film
anyway.”
“That’s her privilege. We’ll have it on safety by the time my trial date is set. The publicity alone should encourage our president to put the entire technical staff on the job and step up the pace.”
Valentino said, “I know just how he’ll feel.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you just doubled my determination to solve this case before they drag you away to jail.”
Broadhead tapped a tooth with the mouthpiece of his pipe. “Can I play too?”
**
CHAPTER
19
FANTA JOINED THEM at the microbrewery downtown, where the bunkerlike atmosphere of booths and conversational buzz provided a comfortable environment for plotting strategy. They’d hoped for a spot by the picture of Basil Rathbone with deerstalker and pipe, but that was occupied by some mid-level studio executives scribbling new dialogue on a script with a pen borrowed from their waitress. The trio settled for one near the kitchen under the sardonic supervision of Warren William.
“Didn’t he play Sam Spade once?” Fanta asked.
“Badly,” Broadhead said.
“Perfect,” said Valentino. “He won’t show us up.”
The men ordered beers, the young woman iced tea, and they shared a platter of ethnic samplers, referred to in the menu as the Our Gang Plate. Valentino watched the professor strip all the greenery from a pita sandwich. “Why the change of heart? You’ve been riding me with Junior G-Man jokes all week. Now you’re joining the squad.”
“That was work, this is play. I told you my job is to be the wise Fool to your King Lear.”
“You said you were the Greek chorus.”
“They provide the same stage business. In any case it’s been no fun hovering upstage. I want to share the center spot.”
Fanta said, “Do you two think we can restrict the analogies to the movies? I was just starting to recognize some of them, and now you ring in Aeschylus and Shakespeare.” She colored when the men stared at her. “Okay, I went for a theater major my freshman year. I was going to be the next Barrymore.”
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