Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! (24 page)

“Funny. Like they used to say in theaters.” But Detective John Yellowfern showed no sign of amusement. His Indian-penny features looked haggard, more likely on account of weariness with others of his species than ordinary fatigue. Day or night, he looked as if he could cause milk to curdle at a glance.

So Valentino went back to scratch.

Back to that first call from Craig Hunter, Lorna’s anxious summons following his disappearance, the books he’d left behind, the conversations with Lysander and Grundage and J. Arthur Greenwood, and continuing uninterrupted until the point where the two plainclothesmen from San Diego arrived at the wax museum in response to a courtesy call from the LAPD. He left out Lorna’s inebriated advances the night before, from the same motives that had compelled him to cloak her nudity with his Windbreaker before he freed her from the straps. Telling the rest from start to finish was like watching a movie he’d once liked and couldn’t remember why. He wasn’t the same person he’d been the first time around.

Yellowfern broke the silence that followed. “Forget about who killed Hunter, Columbo. Tell us when you found time to eat.”

“One mystery at a time, Detective.” Gill was staring at what he’d written as if he couldn’t figure out how it got there. “They always say don’t call the police. It’d be nice if square citizens had as much faith in us as crooks do. Well, your story about what went down at the museum hasn’t changed since you told it the first time; that’s refreshing. Also it checks with what we got from the freaks.”

“They’re not freaks.” It came out automatically.

“Have it your way. At least they hollered cop before they bulled in. Greenwood’s in custody. If his lawyer’s any good he’ll tell him to give us what we need. Old guy, rich, my guess is he’ll never see the inside of San Quentin. I doubt he knew what Lysander had in mind after he left. We’ve got an APB out on that shyster. The way he likes to talk, he just might filibuster himself onto Death Row.”

“Not if Grundage gets to him first,” Yellowfern said, no disapproval in his tone.

“He’ll have to do it without Pollard and Wirtz. Without Lysander to stand up for them, there’s a chance they’ll tell us their hat size.”

“They can beat the needle if they throw in Grundage. They didn’t learn to bust arms in medical school. Anyway, there’s plenty where they came from. Let’s put Valentino in with Pudge and Dickey. They can talk about movies they’ve seen.”

“Not this time. We got our witnesses, we got our evidence, and we’ll get our man soon enough, feet first or no. Don’t think you did us any favors,” Gill told Valentino. “We didn’t run up the best conviction record in the department by holding hands with amateur detectives. We’re giving you a pass because your little stunt put two of the worst button men in the state of California in the bag. I won’t put that at risk by busting you a second time and handing the defense the opportunity of impeaching your testimony on the stand.”

“We’ve got Hunter’s widow for that; no sense giving her grief over lying to us at the start. I never get tired of putting the cuffs on this guy.”

“All bad cop, all the time. Give it a rest.”

The detective jerked as if he’d been slapped. “Jeez, Ern; in front of
him
?”

“Squawk to the skipper. Just because I spend more time with you than my wife and kids doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Gill’s face changed. “Forget I said anything, okay? It’s the overtime talking.”

“It should keep its mouth shut.” But Yellowfern appeared mollified, or as close as he ever got to it.

“Go home, Valentino, before I change my mind. Get your head clear before you make your formal statement.”

He hesitated. “I know I’m not in a position to ask for anything.”

“We’re keeping the film. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Personally, I never want to see it again, but I have a responsibility to UCLA and posterity. All I’m requesting is that your people consult with experts on how it should be stored. It’s the reason I got into this mess.”

“I’ll pass it along. I wouldn’t hold my breath. We get chewed out by the board of commissioners every time we order fresh coffee filters.” The sergeant slapped shut the notebook and put it away. “Let’s go, Serpico. I’ll let you run the siren.”

Yellowfern paused on his way out, looking at Valentino. “This picture you stuck your neck out for: Is it even any good?”

“Not very.”

“So how come all the fuss?”

“Why are you a policeman?”

“Free burial.” He left.

*   *   *

The nurse at the floor station was a strikingly beautiful woman with the longest lashes Valentino had ever seen outside a movie set. He wondered if she’d come to L.A. hoping to break into show business and had settled for medicine instead. She checked her records and told him Mrs. Hunter’s doctor had left instructions for the patient not to be disturbed. He asked what her condition was.

“Are you family?”

“Friend.”

“I’m sorry. We can’t give out that information except to relatives.”

“I have another—friend—in intensive care. Are visitors allowed?”

“Not in ICU, family excepted.”

He thanked her and used the pay phone in the lobby to call a cab. His cell was in police custody along with Pudge Pollard. When the taxi came, he changed his mind about picking up his car at the wax museum and gave the driver the address of The Oracle instead. He got the dreads just thinking about all those still cold figures. He dragged himself up the stairs to the projection booth and was unconscious the moment he fell into the ruins of his bed, many fathoms below the level at which he dreamed. It was an unexpected lucky break.

24

DURING THE NEXT
few days he had only a few fleeting telephone conversations with Harriet Johansen. He told himself not to read anything personal into it: There had been a vicious gang fight in East L.A. the night after the wax museum incident and every CSI team in the county including hers had been called in to sort through the bodies and evidence. Their exchanges had been too brief to interpret anything beyond essentials.

He’d slept around the clock, changed his dressing, swallowed three ibuprofen to dull the throbbing in his head, took another cab to where he’d left his car, which had three overtime parking tickets but miraculously had not been towed, and wolfed down a McDonald’s breakfast on his way to the university. The radio news was mostly concerned with the gang fight and there were no fresh details in the Hunter murder case and kidnapping. Horace Lysander was still being sought by police as a person of interest. Valentino’s name did not appear. Every investigation withheld some piece of information, and he was grateful that this time he was it. If the press ever tumbled to how often he found himself ensnarled in homicide, he’d never be able to go about his business without dragging along an army of paparazzi. The Fourth Estate had fallen to their level for good and all.

Ruth, of course, was in the loop. Very little had happened locally since the Manson murders that the Film Preservation Department secretary didn’t know about before anyone else. From inside her doughnut-shaped fortress she peered up at the bandage on his temple. “I thought rubber hoses didn’t leave marks.”

“I’m not quite the desperate character you think I am. Are there any messages?”

“On your desk. You can’t miss them, although you might miss the desk under all that paper. If you showed up for work a little more often, you wouldn’t have to catch up.”

“Do you think I only work when I’m in the office?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what I think. The mystery to me is why they ever converted this place from a power plant.”

He spent the morning touching base. An early Fellini film was his for the taking if he agreed to fly the owner and his mistress from Florence to the U.S. and arrange visas at UCLA’s expense. (He heard from this person roughly once every six weeks, and invariably from his wife a few days later, canceling the offer.) The family of a retired studio executive currently in a nursing home in Oxnard threatened to sue the university for copyright infringement because their uncle/father/third cousin claimed ownership of a Mr. Moto film missing from December 1941 until last year. (He filed it with similar communications for Smith Oldfield to read and evaluate in Legal.) Mark David Turkus had called three times through an assistant, leaving only messages for Valentino to call back. (Clearly, the entertainment magnate had read between the lines of the adventure in the wax museum and wanted to shower the archivist in gold in return for betraying his employers and delivering the
Frankenstein
test to Supernova International. He crumpled this sheet savagely and launched it at his wastebasket.) His contact in San Francisco reported that the lead on
London After Midnight
had fizzled out. (No regrets. He’d had his fill of horror films for a while.) There was a routine request from Accounting to clear up discrepancies on his expense sheets, a probably drunken question about movie trivia placed from a nearby fraternity house, with a six-pack riding on the answer, and a wrong number from a woman interested in storm windows.

He checked his e-mails and found them all to be more or less the same thing. He deleted them at a stroke. At such times he understood Ruth’s curiosity about the worth of the film preservation program.

Jason Stickley knocked and opened the door wide enough to stick his narrow head through. “Mr. Valentino, are you busy?”

“Never too busy for you. Come in.”

Genuinely glad to see the young man, he got up and shook his hand. “I didn’t get the chance to thank you and the rest for what you did. You saved two lives at the risk of your own.”

Jason flushed slightly. He wore ordinary campus attire: baggy cargo pants, scuffed sneakers, and a plaid long-sleeve shirt that concealed his tattoos over a Bruins T-shirt. “I was afraid you’d be mad at me for not staying put like you said.”

“Don’t tell your professors I said it, but some orders are meant to be disobeyed.”

“The gang’s pretty jazzed about the whole thing. Whiz says you can blow her whistle anytime. Um, that means—”

“I think I can figure it out. Tell her thanks, but I’m spoken for.” He had no idea if that was still true. “Listen, I’m recommending you for a job with the department, a paying gig. Not just from gratitude for what you did. You’re too valuable to waste as an unpaid intern.”

“Thanks. I really mean that. People your age look at guys like me and make up their minds against me right away, but you never did. But I can’t take the job.”

“If you’re worried about your classes, we can make the hours flexible.”

“It’s not that. I’m transferring to MIT at the end of the term. I’m majoring in engineering. Big surprise, huh?” How his grin managed to extend beyond the margins of his face was a mystery best left to experts; which Valentino firmly intended to solve in the future.

“Congratulations. It’s a fine school. Are you sure you can afford the tuition?”

“Yeah. My dad gets a nice royalty from the U.S. Navy. He designed the hatch hinges they use on nuclear submarines. Tinkering with things sort of runs in the family.”

“I’ll be sorry to lose you, and that’s a fact. Does this mean no more steampunk parties?”

“No, sir. We’ve reserved the factory building for Halloween. That’s the reason I stopped by, to give you this.” He slid something out of a cargo pocket and handed it to Valentino.

It was a formal invitation, lettered in elegant Victorian copperplate on linen stock. The florid language entreated him to bring a guest.

“I’ll be there, although I’m not sure if I’ll be accompanied. The person I have in mind is pretty busy.”

“I can help you with your costume.”

“Actually, I think I can manage. Professor Broadhead has a friend in the Universal wardrobe department who can fix me up.”

“Just so long as it follows the theme.” Another cargo pocket delivered a ruled sheet folded into a square, which Valentino accepted and opened.

He looked up. “A list of movie titles?”

“Steampunk films. The police kept Pat, Whiz, and the rest of us waiting at the wax museum before they talked to us. We put it together to pass the time.”

“
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
?”

“Totally.”

“
Wild Wild West
,
Van Helsing
—these are all relatively recent. Some of them—” He stopped himself, not wanting to offend his young friend.

“I know. Some of them we watch with the sound turned down. The look’s the thing. The art direction. They’re not all bad, and some of them have been around for a while. Turn it over.”

He did so. “
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
is steampunk?”

“Think about it. The
Nautilus
? All those exposed pipes and spinning turbines, that cool iris window? That one was my suggestion.”

“I see all the classic
Frankenstein
s are here. I never dreamed the movement went back that far.”

“It didn’t have a name then. Like I said, machines are different now: no moving parts you can see. A computer’s about as interesting to watch in operation as a toaster oven, but any little kid can look at a belt spinning around a pulley and figure out what’s going on. When’s the last time you saw an ordinary person tinkering on his car with the hood up? The smallest thing goes wrong, they have to do a diagnostic at the dealership. No one can tell the difference between a good circuit board and a bad one just by sight. I’m not saying we want to bring back cholera and child labor, just—”

“A sense of being in control.”

Jason beamed, surprised. “Yeah!”

“We can all use some of that.” Valentino thanked him. They shook hands again.

After the intern left, Kyle Broadhead called.

“I was planning to bake you a cake with a file in it,” he said, “but it’s just as well they sprang you. You’ve seen what I can do to a kitchen.”

“Thanks for the thought. How are the wedding plans coming along?” Change of subject.

“Fanta just called to report some new disaster or other. I confess I wasn’t listening. I’ve been a widower so long I thought I’d lost that particular nonskill. I’m relieved to learn I still possess it. It’s more useful in married life than you know.”