Alone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “They’re picking up.”

  **

  “Man, you must’ve sucked.”

  Kyle Broadhead, hunkered in front of his pre-Columbian computer, had seemed too preoccupied with what was on the screen to have heard what Valentino had said; but he’d made his own share of bum investments in Craig Hunter for old times’ sake.

  “Big time,” said Valentino. “He got a better chance at a comeback than Lazarus and still managed to drink himself out of a sweetheart contract with CBS. The last I heard he was just getting by recording books for the blind with the Library of Congress. They had to schedule all his sessions before noon, because he started drinking on the stroke of twelve and they had to pour him into a cab.”

  “How Not to Dress is a big deal to you and me, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing that would bring Tom Cruise to cut short his honeymoon. How’s your ego holding up?”

  “Bloody, but unbowed. I told Smith Oldfield I had no experience. But—”

  “Craig Hunter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you seriously compare yourself to Mother Teresa, or were you just trying to put a light touch on a tragic situation for your Uncle Kyle?”

  “Hardly tragic. Ruth already gave me my lumps over that one. I was still in shock over their choice.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, they’ll have to give him a B-twelve shot so he can pronounce ‘Greta Garbo’ without stumbling.” Broadhead sat back. “You’re a connoisseur of faces. What would the physiognomists make of this one?”

  The faded screen was fixed on a head-and-trunk shot of a severe Slavic face in a high-peaked military cap and a tight uniform with medals and epaulets. The caption was written in a language Valentino couldn’t identify.

  “Conrad Veidt?”

  “Vladimir Bulganin, the Strong Man of Kosovo; the dispatches never use the name without the unofficial title, like ‘Batman, the Caped Crusader.’ He’s the current favorite to head up the Ministry of Police in Bosnia. We called him Vlad the Impaler in the exercise yard. Among other things.”

  “You knew him in prison?”

  “He was the warden. I hesitate to say ‘commandant’; those Serbo-Croats can hold a grudge till the cows come home, and World War Two was yesterday. I’m thinking of dedicating my book to him.”

  “Was he kind to you?”

  “He made Stalin look like Tickle Me Elmo. One could see he was destined for great things even then.”

  “Then why—”

  “Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year in nineteen thirty-nine. Humanitarians rarely set the course of great events in motion, although I hesitate to refer to my humble incarceration as a great event. The book would not be possible without Bulganin. I wonder if he’d be open to writing an introduction?”

  “I’m beginning to think this book is a bad idea. Are you sure you want to dredge up those old memories?”

  “My dear young friend, a memory that requires dredging up is hardly worthy of the name. This particular memory remains as fresh as a malarial relapse.” He punched a key: The bony, sun-blanched face of the Strong Man of Kosovo shuddered and vanished from the screen, to be replaced by Fatty Arbuckle’s uncreased innocent on the wallpaper.

  Valentino felt the need to change the subject. “I had drinks with Fanta today.”

  “Drinks? Oh, yes, the big birthday. Don’t let me forget to send her a virtual card. Whatever possessed you two to go clubbing?”

  “Two drinks isn’t clubbing. She invited me. She needed a friend. Why didn’t you tell me you were the one who decided you should stop seeing each other?”

  “Chivalry is a tubercular old wheeze, but it pleases my sense of self to give it a shot of oxygen now and again. In her set, rejection is regarded as evidence of damaged goods, whereas in mine it’s a periodic inevitability. How is she?”

  “She misses you.”

  “She’ll recover. Twenty-one is a resilient age; as it must be, for what’s expected of it. What a nuisance she was, insisting upon seeing something in me that wasn’t there to begin with.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Think back to when you were that young—last week, wasn’t it? Did your dreams and aspirations include trimming the hair sprouting from an old man’s ears? The prospect is just as distasteful for the recipient. Can the wonderful world of incontinence be far behind?”

  “That’s just vanity. What you’re describing is a committed relationship.”

  “Commitment indeed. It must have been a confirmed bachelor who coined the term. Last week I caught myself lingering in the Health and Beauty aisle in Safeway. The instructions on the Just For Men box were enlightening. I remembered how I struggled to mix the contents of those two little tubes of epoxy evenly enough to create a bond that would hold together the parts of a wooden model airplane. I’m older than plastic, you know.

  “That led me to reflect upon just how many decades had passed since it mattered to me whether those parts stayed together, and how neatly Fanta’s entire life span fit right into the middle with room for another on each side. I never cared for math, or for that matter any discipline that won’t bend to reason. I sat down with her the next day and announced my decision.”

  “You’re a fool, Kyle.”

  “A distinction we share. You let the fair Harriet fly away.”

  “That was her decision, and I’m going to put in the time and effort necessary to reverse it. I’d be as brass-bound an idiot as you if I’d sent her off.”

  “But you did. She gave you an ultimatum and you ignored it. I at least didn’t shift the burden to her.”

  “I’ve never been in love before. Two women have loved you, against all odds. One died and you sent the other packing. Just today Fanta and I were talking about how wise you are. You’re right. We’ve got a lot to learn.”

  Broadhead looked up from the pipe he was charging. Then he nodded, and went on nodding for a moment as if he’d forgotten to stop. He looked like a bobble-head doll. Pathetic, thought Valentino; and with the thought felt the physical ache of another illusion torn from him.

  “I’m no longer your mentor, it appears. Thank God. I’ve been all these years terrified of falling on my prat in your estimation. Anticipation is far more painful than the reality.” He struck a match. It shook a little, but he got the tobacco burning and blew a plume of smoke at the fire marshal’s warning tacked to the wall. “What of your friend Matthew Rankin? Perhaps he can be groomed to take my place.”

  “It’s been a bad week for role models,” Valentino said. “I may have helped stick him with a murder.”

  **

  CHAPTER

  24

  THE WORKERS HAD left for the day, but their traces remained in the buckets of spackle, litter of Gatorade bottles, waffle-patterned footprints in the sawdust on the floor. Rorschach patterns of damp plaster stained the walls and there was withal a musk of perspiration and sour breath to advertise the fact that The Oracle was no sanctuary from the world and would not be for many months to come. Valentino stood in the unfinished grotto of the grand foyer, keys dangling from the ring on his finger, and considered that he’d moved out of the residential hotel with three more days paid for; the square brass key was still on his ring. The room wasn’t much bigger than a cell, but it offered electric light, a mattress less eccentric than his sofa in the projection booth, and basic cable for escape. He was turning toward the exit when his telephone rang.

  “Padilla,” said the lieutenant. “My chief of detectives has invited Rankin and his lawyer to a conference in his office tomorrow at nine A.M. I thought you might want to sit in.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “After the story broke on the arrest in Stockholm, the chief ordered another search of Roger Akers’ apartment. The officers found a bundle of letters under a loose floorboard in the bedroom. They were all addressed to Andrea Rankin in Greta Garbo’s handwriting.”

  V
alentino said nothing.

  “You might want to put on a necktie,” the other went on. “I am. Rankins’ counsel demanded the press be present to record a formal apology from the City of Beverly Hills and my resignation.”

  **

  He slept in the theater after all; it was closer to Beverly Hills and his best suit hung in the closet where a succession of projectionists had stored the cans of feature films, cartoons, newsreels, and travelogues they had shown over and over again every evening and during Saturday matinees. When he gave his name to a uniformed officer outside the chief of detective’s office, the anteroom was already filled with people, many of them reporters and technicians reading their notes and doing systems checks on their equipment. The man who’d blacked Valentino’s eye with his microphone looked straight at him and passed his gaze onward without sign of recognition. He was deader than old news; so far as the juggernaut of celebrity and notoriety was concerned, it was as if he’d never been news at all.

  These were the unanointed: journeymen news gatherers who never sat down on camera or never appeared there, condemned to sweep up morsels of commentary from principals in flight from the actual press conference, after colleagues with more cachet had finished recording the breaking story firsthand, whose jumbled images and three-second sound bites were edited to orbit and enhance the footage that would lead the broadcast. They dressed—if they were to appear at all—from the waist up, in blazers and pins displaying their stations’ call-letters, and from there on down in denim and dirty sneakers. Those who would not appear looked like the homeless waiting for the doors of the shelter to open. Valentino had set himself apart from them merely by putting on a matching suit of clothes and tying a scrap of cloth around his neck.

  At long length the officer returned and beckoned him to follow. The crowd parted, eyes now following the man who’d been granted access, and the officer opened a paneled door and held it, neatly inserting himself into the only possible avenue of assault from aggressive media not yet resigned to their place. Valentino swept through the breech and the door shut behind him.

  The office was larger than Valentino’s and Broadhead’s combined, with three times the floor space of his apartment in The Oracle, and corner windows looking out on the wealthiest four square miles in California; but it was standing room only Cameras, cables, lights, and sound equipment created an obstacle course for the invited people crowding in for a better look at Chief Conroy seated behind a big desk with a bare polished top, Ray Padilla standing behind him, and Matthew Rankin and Clifford Adams sitting next to each other in comfortable-looking chairs arranged at a right angle to the desk. Rankin looked tense and pale inside that tight circle of eager bodies, his attorney as calm as if he were resting in a first-class lounge at the airport. Today he wore a burgundy suit and a yellow tie that complemented his sleek black close-shaven skin, with a pale blue shirt that would photograph crisp white on television. A briefcase, burgundy also, lay in his lap; a prop he had not thought necessary during his visit to Valentino’s office. His long legs were crossed comfortably and cordovans glistened on his feet.

  Conroy adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and cleared his throat, silencing the buzz of voices. “Ladies and gentlemen. As you know, you’ve been invited here at the request of Mr. Rankin and his attorney to set the record straight regarding the tragedy that took place in Matthew Rankin’s home some weeks ago. I’m going to ask you to hold your questions until we open the forum. Lieutenant Padilla has a statement to make.”

  Lenses changed and microphones shifted angles as Padilla stepped forward. He looked almost respectable in a dark blue J.C. Penney suit and a black necktie knotted too evenly to be anything but a clip-on, but his face was as gray as Rankin’s; he would never be a public animal like his burnished chief of detectives. His hands shook slightly as he unfolded a sheet of paper from an inside pocket and began reading in a monotone. Asked to speak up by a man holding an aluminum rod with a microphone dangling from it, he swallowed and started over.

  “Yesterday at approximately six P.M., a forensics crew working with the Beverly Hills Police Department was dispatched to Roger Akers’ apartment in Century City to search for further evidence in the investigation into Mr. Akers’ fatal shooting. During that search, the crew discovered this item.” He reached into another pocket and placed a stack of yellowed and dog-eared envelopes bound with a rubber band on the desk. Some of the envelopes bore red chevrons on their edges, indicating that they’d been sent by overseas air mail. The crowd on Valentino’s side of the desk leaned forward in a body. Cameras tilted to secure close-ups of the bundle. “The item represents a collection of eight personal letters written and mailed over a period of approximately twenty years by Greta Garbo, the late retired motion-picture actress, to Andrea Rankin, the late wife of Matthew Rankin. Some were written in Swedish, and these have been translated. All have been read by department personnel and copies of them made.

  “Mr. Rankin and his attorney, Clifford Adams, have asked me to state that the communications were of a friendly nature, attesting to a long-term relationship that was close, but nonsexual. They are not love letters.”

  Valentino was aware of a general deflation of atmosphere. Outside of a funeral service, there was nothing so bleak as a room full of reporters who have witnessed the destruction of a scandal.

  A blonde female reporter in a red blazer spoke up. “Why weren’t the letters found during the first search?”

  “I asked that you hold all questions until invited to ask them,” Conroy snapped. “You will all have ample opportunity—”

  “I’ll answer it,” Padilla said.

  The chief glared at him through tinted lenses, but said nothing. Valentino knew the two would discuss this departure in private.

  “During the second search,” the lieutenant said, “a crowbar was used to sound the floor, and a hollow was discovered beneath an eight-inch section of floorboard beneath a wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom. When the carpet was lifted, the board was removed and the letters found in the hollow space. The department is investigating the circumstances behind the failure to find them the first time the room was searched.”

  This satisfied no one. A rumble coursed through the spectators, interrupted by a crackle of paper as Padilla turned the sheet over and read from the other side. “Early in the investigation, Matthew Rankin stated that the deceased had extorted money from him by threatening to make public a letter purporting to show that Ms. Garbo and Mrs. Rankin were involved in a lengthy same-sex affair whose exposure would invade Mr. Rankin’s privacy and cast a shadow on the reputation of his late wife, and that when Mr. Rankin refused to continue paying Akers, Akers advanced upon him holding a heavy marble bust in an aggressive manner, which Mr. Rankin believed to be an attempt upon his life. He stated that he shot Akers dead in an act of self-defense.

  “When the letter Akers was alleged to be using for blackmail was determined to have been forged, and a number of Ms. Garbo’s authentic letters were reported missing from the Swedish Military Archives, this department speculated that Akers had had access to the stolen material and used it to create the forgery, using a computer. At that point the charges against Mr. Rankin were dismissed. However, subsequent events demonstrated that in fact that access did not exist. When the stolen material was recovered by the authorities in Stockholm, no chain of possession could be established to link them to Akers. The two events, Roger Akers’ shooting and the theft of the actual Garbo letters, were unrelated.”

  The press broke its leash. Padilla stood stone-faced, eyes fixed on his prepared statement, while the questions washed over him, an incoherent babble. Chief Conroy showed remarkable restraint, allowing the first wave to recede before rapping his knuckles sharply on his desk like a judge with a gavel.

  “I’ve explained the conditions twice,” he said. “One more display and this conference is over. You can all wait for the press release. Go on, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, s
ir. It was at Matthew Rankin’s request, submitted through his attorney, that the second search was made of Roger Akers’ apartment. The Beverly Hills Police Department speculates that the letters were found in the Rankin house, overlooked when Mrs. Rankin burned the others as Ms. Garbo requested. We have determined beyond reasonable doubt that they provided the material necessary to forge the spurious love letter.” He refolded the sheet and returned it to his pocket. A sheen of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

  “Mr. Adams?” The chief’s tone was level. Valentino could not tell if he was playing a winning hand or throwing in his cards.

  “Thank you.” The lawyer uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. He left his briefcase buckled and had nothing in his hands. “My client, Matthew Rankin, has asked me to say that this entire episode has been a nightmare for himself and an embarrassment to the City of Beverly Hills. In spite of my advice to the contrary, he wishes not to prolong it with the several legal actions it is his right to pursue. Said actions would expose a campaign driven by vindictiveness and personal ambition, based upon no evidence, to destroy his privacy, assassinate his character, and drag the memory of his beloved wife through the sewer. No judge in this country, once the facts were placed before him, would fail to find for my client and against the Beverly Hills Police Department, and recompense him in the amount of one hundred million dollars.”