Alone (13 page)

“I remember seeing part of
Grand Hotel
on TV when I was little, and of course Val screened
Mata Hari
for me before we planned my costume for the party. I was too young the first time, and then I was distracted the next because I was too busy studying details to appreciate the rest. I’m not sure she has much to offer to the generation that grew up since rhinoplasty and breast implants. I’m sorry, Val. I knew you wanted me to be blown away, but she may have saved her best moments for glamour photographers.” She squeezed his hand tighter.

“I expected something on that order.” Rankin clicked his switch. “Phil, fire up the digital.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rankin spoke to the others. “Nothing so exclusive this time, I’m afraid. I got this remastered disc from Ted Turner. It goes into general release next month.”

The movie was
The Temptress.
A
short five years had elapsed between the actress’ uncertain debut and her entrance on the scene of a gala masquerade at age twenty-one, but when Antonio Moreno persuaded the mysterious guest to remove her mask, it seemed to Valentino as if the world had entered a new orbit. Ethereally slender, astonishingly beautiful, her preternaturally long eyelashes casting shadows on her high cheekbones, Garbo slunk through a breakneck four reels, gathering men’s hearts like flowers and destroying their lives as easily as plucking away the petals. Had she approached the role as a scheming seductress, it might never have risen above any of the vamps standard at the time, and Garbo herself might have faded to a vague memory of a name along with Theda Bara and Louise Brooks, who lived on only as exotic faces on the screen savers of cinema geeks. Instead, her Elena drifted from European villa to Argentine wilderness to the slums of Paris, innocently unaware of the potency of her venom or its effect. With updated settings and costumes, full color, and a soundtrack, the film might have succeeded in any modern first-run house; but only with Garbo in the lead. Compared to her performance, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, and Halle Berry did little more than make faces for the camera.

The final image faded, of a dissipated temptress walking the Parisian streets looking for the price of a drink (“I meet so many men”). Harriet stared at the blank screen, her profile sharpening as the lights came back up.

She caught Valentino looking at her and wiped her eyes quickly. “Having a musical score helped.”

“‘Fess up,” he said. “She got you, too.”

Rankin came to her rescue. “Why not? She practically invented the chick flick. But men came in herds to see her as well.”

He got up and excused himself to go talk to Phil. When he left she said, “Exactly what happened to her between sixteen and twenty-one, besides puberty?”

Valentino said, “Mauritz Stiller. He took her and molded her into what we just saw. He directed her in
Gösta Berlings Saga,
taught her how to sit and stand and move and dress—some say to make love, too, but there’s no more evidence to support that than her so-called lesbianism—and when MGM brought him from Sweden to direct pictures for them he forced her on the studio in a package deal. By the end of the decade, he was a dead has-been, and his creature was the toast of two hemispheres. That’s showbiz.”

Matthew Rankin came back down the aisle, carrying two shallow black boxes stacked one atop the other and secured with straps. Each was big enough to contain a large pizza. Valentino and Harriet stepped out to meet him.

“This is the safety print,” Rankin said. “I’ll put someone in touch to make transportation arrangements for the nitrate print tomorrow. It’s been stored at a steady thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit and is in the same condition it was when I put it down. You saw the quality of the safety.”

Harriet read the label.
“Fran topp till ta.
It translates as
From Head to Toe.
I don’t—”

“That was the original title in Swedish. It was changed to
How Not to Dress
for English-speaking audiences.” Rankin was looking at Valentino. “This stock doesn’t need much babying, but I wouldn’t leave it in the trunk overnight.”

Valentino took away his burden. It was heavy. Nearly two thousand feet of celluloid wound onto two steel reels and packed in polypropylene and aluminum brought physical substance to a medium usually referred to in terms of light. “I accept it on behalf of the UCLA Film Preservation Department. Should I send the receipt here?”

“I’m not giving it to the university. I’m giving it to you. Do with it what you like, but if you donate it, as I’m sure you will, by all means get a receipt. The tax deduction will defray some of the cost of your construction project. You went a roundabout way of earning it, but you freed me from a grotesque state of affairs, and cleared the reputations of two great women. I know Andrea would have wanted you to have it.”

He stammered his thanks. Rankin accompanied them outside to their car, and when Valentino had secured the boxes with care in the trunk and shut the lid, the archivist and the tycoon clasped hands. Rankin stood with one hand raised until the curve of the driveway swept his image from the rearview mirror.

“Congratulations, Val,” Harriet said. “I’m sure you’ll watch it again as soon as you can get to a projector. It’s the next best thing to a private conversation with her.”

“It’s better.” He turned into the street. “Silence lasts longer.”

**

CHAPTER

12

ON TUESDAY, THE day after the prisoner was released, the Los Angeles County Prosecutor called a press conference to announce that his office had dropped all charges against Matthew Rankin except one misdemeanor count of discharging a firearm inside the Beverly Hills city limits, with a recommendation to the judge to sentence him to time served. (Later that day, this charge, too, was dropped.) Questions were directed to the commissioner of the Beverly Hills Police Department, who directed them in turn to his chief of detectives, who adjusted his tinted glasses and displayed all the symptoms of acid reflux. The un-photogenic Lieutenant Ray Padilla was not present.

On Wednesday, a van marked with the three convergent triangles of a vehicle containing hazardous material arrived at the UCLA Film Preservation Department laboratory, and a two-man crew assisted technicians in transferring two reels of silver nitrate film packed in boxes from the van to ventilated archival cabinets inside the building. (Kyle Broadhead alternately referred to the two teams dressed in hooded haz-mat suits and shiny black neoprene gloves as “Morlocks” and “Oompa-loompas.”)
How Not to Dress
had moved into its permanent home.

On Thursday, Dwight Spink red-tagged the grand staircase in the lobby of The Oracle for failure to meet safety regulations requiring a space of no more than three and one-half inches between the turned mahogany ballustrades in the banister railing. The inspector explained that children were inclined to get their heads stuck. Leo Kalishnikov suggested installing brass rods between the ballustrades at an additional cost of $2,500, not counting labor.

Later that same day, Spink approved the change but cited evidence of vermin activity on the premises that violated the health laws. Valentino got the inspector on the phone.

“They’re mice, not rats,” he said. “Rats don’t hang around a place when there’s no food. I learned that much growing up on a farm in Indiana.”

“I suggest the construction workers have been less than thorough cleaning up after themselves at the end of their lunch breaks. Hire an exterminator, Mr. Valentino.”

Valentino tracked down Kalishnikov at an excavation for a basement in Glendale, where the owner of a Mercedes dealership was planning to build his house around a home theater twice as big as Matthew Rankin’s in Beverly Hills. The theater designer wore an oilcloth cape and a yellow hard hat with a plume and stood in pirate boots up to his ankles in greasy clay. He took in the latest news with a shake of his head.

“Spink smells blood in the water,” he said. “The only way you’re going to get him off your back is to ask him his price and pay it.”

“You mean bribe him?”

“I would not use the word in his presence.” Kalishnikov slipped back into his accent. “His kind is cautious. He hopes by turning the screws to cause you to bring up the subject of emolument. That way he cannot be accused of initiating the negotiations.”

“What if I report him to the county?”

“For what, fulfilling his official responsibilities? Every matter he has brought up is legitimate. Most inspectors overlook minor things such as rodents, of which there is a healthy colony residing in the basement of City Hall. The building code is as long as the Bible and just as contradictory: One cannot conform to half the regulations without violating the other half. Spink has a zealot’s own knowledge of county scripture.”

“Well, I won’t pay him off. I’ve had all to do with blackmail I care to.”

“I applaud your integrity. I hope your pockets are deep enough to support it.” He rolled up the blueprint he’d been studying. “Bite the bullet and pay the two bucks. Otherwise the Oracle will take as long to put up as the Great Pyramid, and you’ll be buried in debt underneath it.”

Returning to his office, Valentino had Ruth put through a call to an exterminator, who calculated square footage and gave him an estimate of eight hundred dollars for the job.

“They’re mice, not escaped tigers. How much can it cost to set out a few traps?”

“It isn’t a Tom and Jerry cartoon, mister. I have to get a permit from the city, and then the building has to be evacuated and tented before I can start spraying.”

“How long does that take?”

“Oh, I can do it in an afternoon.”

“That’s not so bad. I was afraid I’d have to stop construction for a couple of days.”

“Well, that’s the actual spraying. The place will need three days to air out before anyone can go back in.”

Valentino groaned and told him to go ahead. When he hung up, Broadhead was standing in the doorway. “Rats in the revue?”

“Just one.” Valentino told him what Kalishnikov had said.

“He’s right,” Broadhead said. “Pay the two dollars.”

“Not if it
were
two dollars. It’s because people knuckle under to corruption that it flourishes. If I did, I’d never be able to look at the place again without thinking of that civil-service Uriah Heep.”

“Well, it’s your Chapter Eleven. I just dropped by to ask if you were thinking of serving roast pig or something like that tonight.”

“Dinner’s the farthest thing from my thoughts. Why?”

“Fanta and I are driving up the coast. We’re staying the weekend in a bed-and-breakfast.”

“Don’t you have a class to teach tomorrow?”

“I’m sure I do, but if I showed up after all this time I’d just confuse my T.A. and the students.” He made a gurgling noise through his unlit pipe. “I’m going to pop the question.”

“What happened to your case of cold feet?”

“Fanta’s are warm enough for both of us. I’m still too old for her, but I figure marriage to her will kill me off while she’s still young enough to shop for a second husband closer to her age.”

“Kyle, you’re an incurable romantic.”

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t. What do you think Elaine would say?”

“I think she’d be happy you found someone to look after you. You know, this is the end of eggplant margaritas at midnight.”

“That’s okay, I was starting to get on my own nerves. That’s what happens when you live alone. On a completely unrelated subject, how are you and Harriet getting along?”

“She sat with me through
How Not to Dress.”

“It’s love, then. I screened it this morning.” He grasped the doorknob. “Remember what I said about living alone. It’s an unnatural state.”

**

Alone that night in Broadhead’s house, Valentino called Harriet and told her about his day.

“I was going to tell you about mine,” she said when he’d finished. “Suddenly, trying to trace the only tooth in a homeless man’s decomposing head to the dentist who filled it doesn’t seem so bad. You aren’t going to pay the little jerk, are you?”

He smiled at the living room wall. “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who didn’t try to persuade me to.”

“You wouldn’t be who I thought you were if you did.”

“I hope you still feel that way when I finish falling from the top of the zoning tree, hitting every branch on the way down.”

“There’s another way,” she said. “Turn him in.”

“Kalishnikov says he’s too slippery. It’d be my word against his.”

“Not if you had evidence.”

He laughed shortly. “Now you think I’m a detective. I’m going back to calling myself a lowly archivist.”

“You can find something on him. You found
Greed.”

“I’m beginning to think they’ll put that on my headstone. I’m not even sure Kalishnikov is right about Spink. Maybe he’s just an overachiever.”

“If that’s true, he should lose interest soon. Spending all that time at one site can’t be a wise investment of taxpayers’ money.”

“I knew talking to you would cheer me up,” he said. “Listen, Mom and Dad left me in charge of the house this weekend. Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll roast a pig.”