Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! (17 page)

“Didn’t tell her what you were up to, did you?”

“She thinks I’m at a party.”

“I bet Fanta breakfast in bed you wouldn’t. She’s the winner there, though. You’ve tasted my cooking.”

“You know, your sense of humor doesn’t always fix things.”

“That’s what Fanta says. I’ll see what I can do, but you’ll have to make the best of it till morning.”

“I suppose I deserve this, with Teddie in intensive care or worse.”

“You don’t have a crystal ball. Also, you didn’t invite her to burgle your home. She made that decision all by herself.”

He lowered his voice. It was a busy precinct, with uniformed and plainclothes officers drifting back and forth past the bars. “Do you think it was Grundage’s henchmen?”

“You need to brush up on your post–Hays Office vernacular. I seriously doubt anyone on his payroll writes
henchman
in the ‘occupation’ blank in Form 1040. Maybe she slipped.”

“Gill and Yellowfern are pretty certain she was pushed.”

“Don’t believe in accidents; how Freudian. Don’t fret over it. Teddie wouldn’t, if the shoe were on the other foot.”

“I’d never commit a crime just to lay hands on a film.”

“Spoken by a man in the hoosegow for doing just that. I know some people. I’ll make some calls.”

“What do I do meanwhile?”

“Learn to play the harmonica.”

*   *   *

He’d hoped for some glimpse of Sergeant Clifford, a West Hollywood criminal investigator who was not exactly a friend, but at least a familiar face, but either the tall runway-model type was off duty or had been reassigned, because all he saw were strangers.

He was gripping the bars. He’d always wondered why prisoners did that in movies, but now he knew it was to cling as closely as possible to freedom as the barriers permitted. When his fingers cramped, he rested his wrists on the cross bars with his hands dangling outside, palms down; his hands, at least, were at liberty. He fought exhaustion as long as he could, not wanting to surrender himself to the depths of his incarceration, but at last his body surrendered in protest. He retreated to the cot and gentle darkness swaddled him.

When he opened his eyes, daylight had softened the harsh white of the fluorescents in the ceiling and someone had drawn up a desk chair to sit facing his cell. The man was an aging adolescent type, wearing an argyle sweater vest over a pink shirt, khakis in need of pressing, and what must have been the last pair of PF Flyers gym shoes on the planet. His ginger-colored hair looked as if he cut it himself, with a cowlick sticking up from his crown, and his eyes were furtive behind tortoiseshell glasses, like those of a boy too shy to maintain eye contact.

He was one of the ten richest men in the world, and had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday by paying for a seat on the space shuttle.

“Please don’t be offended when I don’t offer my hand,” he said in a voice barely above a murmur. “That’s how disease is spread.”

Valentino swung his feet to the floor and brushed back his hair with both hands, as if sleeping on it would have made it any untidier than his visitor’s. “How do you do, Mr. Turkus?”

Mark David Turkus’ smile was tentative, oddly innocent. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember if we’ve met.”

“We haven’t, but your face isn’t exactly unknown.” It had appeared on the cover of
Forbes
when he’d sold all his Internet stock just before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and again when he’d bought the early film library of every major studio in Hollywood. He’d started Supernova International in his parents’ basement at age twenty-six and now it had offices on five continents.

As Turkus seemed to search for an appropriate response, Valentino asked him about Teddie Goodman.

“She’s critical but stable; the doctors at Cedars of Lebanon got her blood pressure to stop dropping and are draining blood from the abdominal cavity. She has many broken bones, of course, including her left cheek and eye orbit. I’m flying in specialists, but there will be months of therapy and cosmetic procedures. That was a steep flight of stairs.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“I’m the one who should apologize. I haven’t been as curious as I should have been about how she gets results.”

“The police are holding me responsible.”

“They insist on assigning responsibility for everything. The world’s more random than that.”

“I’m not so sure they’re wrong in this case. Teddie and I have had our differences, but I never wished her harm. She might not be where she is if I’d come forward.”

“And if I’d been on the ball,
Citizen Kane
wouldn’t have gone to Ted Turner. Regret is a useless emotion. You can’t change the past, but you can affect the future.”

Valentino said nothing, waiting. Turkus leaned back in his borrowed chair, bent one leg, and clasped his hands around it just below the knee, exposing a sagging white gym sock and three inches of pale ankle. “My attorney is at City Hall, waiting for a writ for your release. The police can hold you for forty-eight hours without charging you, but there’s no reason you should sit here going stale while the
Frankenstein
test is floating around out there somewhere.”

“What are you suggesting?” Although he could guess.

“Don’t worry. Teddie’s job is safe, and she’ll have the best people working around the clock on her case. Her iron will, I’m confident, will do the rest. I’m offering you ten percent of the gross profits for exhibition, sales, and rentals of the property if you can deliver it for a million or less.”

“I can’t do that, sir. I’m a paid consultant for the UCLA Film Preservation Department. It would be a conflict of interest.”

“They can’t possibly match this offer.”

“I’m afraid that’s irrelevant.”

“Would your conscience be clearer if I put it on a hiring basis? I’ll need a replacement for Teddie until she’s ready to return to work. After that you’ll perform as a team. There are too many properties wandering around lost out there for one person to track down. It makes no sense that the two best scouts in the business are operating in competition, duplicating each other’s efforts. That’s bureaucratic thinking. You’re leaving one position for another that pays much better, with more opportunity for advancement. That’s not betrayal, just good capitalism.”

“It still feels wrong. I began this search as a representative of the university.”

“The job includes the company jet whenever I’m not using it, and a town car for your personal use. A medical plan U.S. senators can only dream about.”

“I owe two more payments on my compact and I’m accustomed to flying economy. As for the medical plan, I guess I’ll just have to take good care of myself.”

“You realize what you’re turning down.”

“I’m trying not to think about that, Mr. Turkus.”

He scowled. Then he unclasped his knee and lowered his foot to the floor. “Well, I’m not a vindictive man. I’ll go through with that writ.”

“That won’t be necessary. I have friends who are looking out for me.”

“Not all friends are equal; lawyers certainly aren’t. I’m offering you a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Thank you, but it isn’t exactly free, is it?”

The tycoon’s shy smile broke the surface. “You’re wise in your generation.”

Valentino felt himself returning the smile. “Ernest Thesiger.
Bride of Frankenstein
. Wrong film.”

“They’re all the same to me. Movies are an investment, not a passion.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“For what?” Turkus was standing now, a lanky six-foot-two despite his stoop. “You’ve refused all my favors.”

“For making me feel better about it. With me, they
are
a passion.”

“You may be right. I’d probably fire you in the end.”

“It’s more than probable.”

The billionaire leaned forward. His smile now was wicked. “But what a severance package.”

17

“AS IT TURNS
out,” Broadhead said, “most of the friends I thought I had in this town are dead. The others are good only for reminiscing. I hate reminiscing. This is the best I could do.”

The best he could do was a criminal attorney who had secured the acquittals of more than half the celebrated felons in Hollywood, a sly-faced former NFL first-draft choice. He wore a chinchilla coat—in a Southern California autumn—over a suit spun from virgins’ hair and showed diamond grillwork when he smiled, which was more or less constantly.

“Don’t sign the receipt till you count the money in your wallet,” he said. “I’m just saying.” He winked at the officer behind the bulletproof glass, who shot him a poisonous look back and snatched the receipt from under the last stroke of the pen in Valentino’s hand.

The former prisoner distributed his belongings among their various pockets. “I can’t afford him. I’m sure you can’t either, asset to the institution though you are.”

“You’d be surprised: a nickel here, a nickel there. I haven’t bought a suit since Nixon. But I wouldn’t spend a penny on the best lawyer in America if I were up for high treason. As far as I’m concerned, the serpent slithered out of Eden right behind Adam and Eve and hung out his shingle. No offense, Counselor.”

“None taken, I assure you. There are days I can’t stand my own company.” Diamonds twinkled.

“Then, who—?”

“Fanta,” Broadhead said. “You can’t overestimate the allowance an ambassador can offer her daughter when she counts her euros.”

“Kyle, I can’t accept.”

“Sure you can. We’ll write it off as the bridegroom’s traditional gift to his best man. She never touches a penny. It goes into blue chip stock and keeps on growing obscenely, like an obese child playing
Grand Theft Auto
.” Suddenly serious, he said, “I’ve been, don’t forget. A holding cell in West Hollywood is a Hilton Garden Inn compared to a craphole in Zagreb, but it’s all the same when you want to go out for air and they won’t let you.”

Valentino shook hands with the attorney, who said, “This is the end of it. Cops don’t get the chance to scare the pants off square citizens often. When you call their bluff they generally go away and lean on some schnook with a rap sheet as long as Baja. Just in case they don’t.” He produced a card with a magician’s flourish—Valentino swore he actually conjured it from inside his French cuff—and vanished in a cloud of glitter and chinchilla hair. The archivist wondered if he’d been there at all.

Broadhead seemed to understand. “He’s just a special effect, animatronics and computer generation. He sleeps in a prop room, up on a hook. Let’s away.”

They left the station in Valentino’s compact, Broadhead behind the wheel, punishing the gears and using the indicators in the middle of lane changes to confirm for other drivers the decision he’d already acted upon. Horns serenaded his every move. Under normal circumstances his passenger would have been perched on the edge of his seat, gripping the dash and tromping on phantom pedals on his side of the car. But movement was freedom. He subsided into the cushions, watching the scenery stutter past. “Any news on Teddie?”

“I called Cedars of Lebanon, but the Privacy Policy police wouldn’t tell me anything. I wouldn’t worry about her. Some people are just too nasty for the Other Side.”

“I can’t help feeling responsible.”

“That’s cop talk. It’s their business to make everyone guilty. You didn’t tell her to burgle your home. If she’d asked, the answer would’ve been no. Where to now, the office? Bury yourself in work?”

“The theater. I’ve been in these clothes more than twenty-four hours, and I need to assess the damage to the projection booth.”

“I drove past on the way to the hoosegow. The police tape is gone. Somebody must’ve robbed a bank or else they turned on the light at Krispy Kreme.” Broadhead clicked off the turn indicator, which had been clicking for five minutes. “That’s all you’re doing, I hope: changing clothes and sweeping up.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning when what you’re doing lands you in jail, it’s either time to stop doing it or choose the criminal life. I wouldn’t recommend the latter in your case. So far you’ve been caught every time.”

“You can save the lecture. If Craig had that film, he hid it so well I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for it. Gill and Yellowfern will have turned his apartment in Long Beach inside out by now.”

“You can’t get them all, Val.”

“I’d like to get enough of them so that doesn’t become the department motto.”

“If that’s your ‘I give up’ speech, it needs work.”

“Don’t worry. I know when I’m licked.”

“Better.”

The Oracle looked more deserted than usual when they pulled up in front; Valentino supposed the police had turned the workers away during their investigation. He made a note to call Leo Kalishnikov and get them back. He was starting to think the place was cursed as surely as
Frankenstein
. Everyone connected with it seemed to have come to a no-good end starting with Max Fink, who had gone broke building it and took his own life.

He opened the door on the passenger’s side. “You can take the car on in. If it’s as bad as they said, I won’t be in to work today.”

“Ruth will be disappointed. She’s volunteered to act as your parole officer.” Broadhead waved good-bye and peeled away from the curb without looking, forcing a city bus to whoosh its air brakes and redistribute the passenger load from back to front.

Valentino was reaching for the front door when it swung open. A large man he’d never seen before stood in the doorway, wearing a suit two sizes too small in the coat and a gap-toothed grin. Before Valentino could react, something hard nudged his right kidney from behind and the big man stepped aside. He had no choice but to step across the threshold.

The man behind him followed noiselessly and pulled the door shut against the constant murmur of L.A. traffic. Valentino started to turn to get a look at him, but a blow to his solar plexus changed his mind. He emptied his lungs and groped for support at the big man’s fist. His legs were swept from under him. As he fell, a knee connected with his chin, snapping his jaw shut and chipping a tooth. That was the last thing he saw for a while. But he could hear.