Alone (3 page)

A maid took Harriet’s wrap in the foyer. They went into the ballroom, where a number of dancers, some with skill, danced to the music of the string quartet. Others mingled and chatted in line at the open bar.

Harriet turned to Valentino. “Now that we’ve made our entrance, I have to leave you alone for a while.”

“Not too long, I hope.”

“There’s engineering involved. Next time,
I
wear the pants.”

She stranded him among two or three dozen women dressed as Garbo in her various movie incarnations: disguised as a not-very-convincing young man in boots and jerkin from
Queen Christina;
hauntingly amnesiac in platinum-blonde hair and elegant evening wear from
As You Desire Me;
gung-ho Stalinist in severe suit and cloche hat from
Ninotchka.
A number of Camilles wisped about, perishing beautifully, and he counted no fewer than five Anna Christies and as many Mata Haris, although none as startling as Harriet Johansen wearing that outfit. He couldn’t believe he’d never noted the resemblance. Maybe he had, on some level, and that was what had compelled him to find out more about her.

But he was satisfied that he hadn’t fallen for a phantom. Funny and outgoing, dedicated to her career but never letting it interfere with her social life, Harriet was as unlike that living sphinx as could be.

When a waiter whose uniform was uncomfortably similar to his own offered him a tray loaded with stemware, Valentino thanked him and relieved him of two glasses of champagne, then retreated to a corner to observe his fellow guests from safe ground.

There were fat Garbos, old Garbos, black Garbos, an Asian Garbo, and one or two Garbos wearing heavy powder over distinct five o’clock shadows. Their escorts looked only slightly less exotic. There was one very good Erich von Stroheim, several John Gilberts, and three Charles Boyers attempting to look Napoleonic in
Conquest.
Valentino didn’t spot any other Ramon Novarros, but the night was young and guests were still arriving. He’d have preferred to come as John Barrymore, but that would have been the wrong movie.

The fancy-dress couples fluttered about, sipping from flutes and spilling champagne on the glittering parquet floor. The walls and columns were ornamented in a relentless Art Deco motif, with original and reproduced posters from Garbo’s most famous films and glossy black-and-white stills of that iconic face blown up ten times life size among the clamshells and stylized swans. The party had been planned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the star’s birth.

“Pardon me, old sport, but I think your britches are ringing.”

A man bearing small resemblance to Clark Gable, but whose gravel-voiced impression was spot on, grinned and winked as he danced past in the arms of Garbo as Susan Lenox. Valentino realized then it was his cell he was hearing and not one of the instruments playing on the bandstand. He set the champagne glasses on a cloth-covered table and took the phone from his pocket.

“I have received your message,” Leo Kalishnikov said, in the broad Balkan accent he affected for customers. “What disaster has befallen?”

Valentino turned away from the music and chatter and gave the contractor a quick summary of his conversation with the building inspector.

“Ludicrous. We aren’t removing asbestos for two more weeks. What is this fellow’s name?”

“Dwight Spink.”

Kalishnikov said something in harsh Russian. “I know this man. He is a cossack. I’ll see that a man with the proper credentials is on the site Monday.”

“What about sealing off the stairs to the projection booth?”

“Nail a four-by-eight sheet of plywood over the entrance. You can manage this, yes?”

“With help. I’m not exactly handy.”

“I will apply to the zoning board for a variance so you can live on the premises. That takes time. You will have to make other arrangements meanwhile.”

Valentino thanked him and flipped the phone shut. When he turned back to the dance floor, his host was approaching with a hand out.

“Let me guess,” Matthew Rankin said. “Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff.”

Valentino grasped the hand. “On the nose. A dozen of these people might have identified the actor, but I doubt more than one or two could have named the character in the movie.”

“I have Andrea to thank for that. She was a fan of Greta’s— G.G., she called her, all her friends did—for years before they connected, and continued to be one throughout her life. She dragged me to every revival theater showing her pictures on the West Coast. I sat through
Flesh and the Devil
nine times.” His throat worked. “They died the same day, you know.”

Fifteen years had planed only a little of the pain from the widower’s tone. He was a trim, erect eighty in a beautifully cut tuxedo with flared 1930s lapels, white shirt, tie, and hair all of a piece and interrupted only by his aristocratic face with its carefully topped-off tan. He might have been an older version of the Melvyn Douglas who had played opposite Garbo three times.

“Did you know Garbo well?”

“I never met her. The friendship predated our marriage. They’d visit whenever Andrea made a buying trip to New York, and after Andrea retired they kept contact by mail. She burned the letters at Greta’s request, near the end. Some of her other so-called friends had begun to sell her letters at auction.”

“Mrs. Rankin was a real friend. A single Garbo letter would bring a fortune on today’s market. I couldn’t begin to guess at the value of an entire correspondence.”

Rankin’s brows carved a deep scowl line between them. “Ghouls. People will try to make a buck off anything these days. They aren’t content just to hound living celebrities into self-imposed house arrest to protect their privacy; now they’ve begun to prey on the dead ones as well.”

Valentino, taken aback by the direction the conversation had taken, complimented him on the decor.

Calming, Rankin replied that the photos and posters had come from his late wife’s collection. But his guest knew the reason for the tirade. A former chemist with a hefty interest in technology, Rankin had computerized the department-store chain he’d inherited from his father-in-law and expanded into Europe. His strong executive presence, in company with his aristocratic wife, had made them public figures, with all the unwelcome attention that entailed. Since Andrea’s death, Rankin had retreated into virtual seclusion, emerging only for such events as this, in respect for her memory and his own interest in film.

Enter Valentino. On behalf of the UCLA Film Preservation Department, he’d been privileged to accept generous donations from Rankin to update equipment and acquire rare prints of motion pictures long considered lost. He’d responded with alacrity to the invitation to attend the Garbo party with a guest.

His motives weren’t entirely social. He picked up one of the glasses and sipped champagne, considering his approach. “How did Mrs. Rankin and Garbo become friends? She withdrew from society a long time ago.”

The millionaire recovered his good humor. “They met in one of Andrea’s father’s stores. My dear girl was working there to prepare herself for an executive position. Greta was a salesgirl, you know, in Sweden; made her debut, in fact, in a promotional film for the store,
How Not to Dress.”

“That footage has been missing for many years.”

“Your avarice is showing, young man. Everyone in your line of work knows that Greta made her a present of her own print: one former department-store clerk to another. Why didn’t you just come out and ask me if I still have it?”

Valentino shrank from the directness of the old man’s gaze. “I’m sorry. My cards say
Film Detective;
‘Archivist’ makes people’s eyes glaze over and they don’t hear my pitch. Sometimes I get to believing my own publicity and try to be slick. I won’t bother you about it again.”

Rankin was silent for a moment. Then he laughed boomingly, drawing curious glances from some of his milling guests. “I was paraphrasing Andrea’s father. If I’d asked him straight out for her hand, he’d have had me evicted from his house as a gold digger. I’ve waited fifty years to turn someone on the spit the way he did me that day, just before he agreed. UCLA’s in my will. You’ll have those reels by and by.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rankin. You don’t know what that means.”

“A second disc on the DVD rerelease of
The Temptress,
no doubt, and a lot of hyperventilating on the part of a select group of cinema geeks. Apathy apart from that. Adam Sandler fans have done in old movies as surely as mall rats did in the department store. Call Roger. He’ll arrange a screening.”

“I’d like that very much.”

“It’s been stored under ideal conditions. I think you’ll be pleased. I—Good Lord!”

Valentino put out a hand to steady his host, whose face had gone dead white beneath the tan. He appeared to be having a seizure. Then he realized that Rankin was staring at something behind him.

He turned. Harriet was approaching. The legendary head shot of Greta Garbo, full face, in the identical Mata Hari headdress, hung on the wall behind her; she seemed to be coming straight out of the frame. When Valentino turned back smiling, Rankin was no longer standing before him. He lay on the floor, pale and unconscious, with a crowd beginning to gather around him.

**

CHAPTER

3

VALENTINO ENVIED THE doctor.

The man was dressed as John Barrymore, in a double-breasted
Grand Hotel
-style
blazer with a coat of arms embroidered on the handkerchief pocket. His silver temples and pencil moustache were genuine, but someone who knew a good bit about prosthetics had altered his nose to resemble the straight prominent beak of the Great Profile. Beside him, the archivist in his fussy uniform felt like a sophomore in a high school play.

He was alone in Rankin’s private study with Rankin, the doctor, and another male volunteer who had helped him carry the tycoon in from the ballroom and stretch him out on the leather sofa. By the time the doctor had his dress shirt open the patient had come around, but the doctor insisted on listening to his heart.

He smiled, removing the stethoscope from his ears. “Just a faint, I’d say. You might try a looser collar next time you play dress-up.”

Valentino was comforted, both by the diagnosis and by the way the lamp next to the sofa showed traces of Just for Men in the doctor’s moustache. His wife, who’d been with him in the ballroom, had looked big-boned and awkward in a ballerina’s frilly tutu—although no less so than Garbo in that costume. Fortunately, she’d worn more becoming outfits in most of her scenes.

“It wasn’t the collar.” Rankin’s eyes sought Valentino’s. He looked every year of his age, and still a little disoriented. “Who on earth was that woman? I thought it was the guest of honor back from the grave.”

“Harriet Johansen, my date. She doesn’t look that way most of the time. She’s a criminal expert with the LAPD. I’m very sorry she gave you a start.”

“Make sure she’s still here when we give out the prize for Best Look-Alike. Phyllis won’t mind, will she, Ned? I’d hate to lose my personal physician over a social gaffe.”

“She has a sense of humor. I told her she looked like one of the dancing hippos in
Fantasia.
I’m still standing, as you see.” The doctor latched his bag and rose from the sofa. “Just to be sure, why not schedule an appointment? We won’t have nearly as much fun dressing for your funeral.”

Rankin assured him he would. The doctor left, followed by the man who’d helped Valentino carry in Rankin. He wore a tight morning coat over a waistcoat and checked trousers and had wound a silk stock around his neck in a fair approximation of Robert Taylor’s costume in
Camilla.
Valentino had considered the man’s tall, wistful escort Harriet’s only serious competitor for the prize.

Roger Akers, Rankin’s personal assistant, entered moments later. He was a lean, high-shouldered, narrow-faced man of forty, a tightly wrapped, nervous type whom the archivist had dealt with occasionally in his exchanges with his employer. The man went straight to the sofa without a glance toward the archivist.

“I came as soon as I heard,” Akers said.

“I’m sure you did. Did you finish those letters?” The old man sat up and buttoned his shirt. He hadn’t completely recovered from his shock; his fingers slipped on the gold studs.

“Of course not. They said you’d collapsed.”

“Well, I didn’t die, so you’re still employed. Help yourself to a drink, since you’re here, but I expect those letters here on my desk in the morning.”

“You know I don’t drink. Have I ever failed to finish an assignment?”

“You’ve never been one to overlook a detail—or an opportunity. Now, please leave. I’ve something to discuss with this gentleman.”

Spots of color the size of quarters glowed high on Akers’ otherwise sallow cheeks, but he turned and left without comment. Thirties dance music drifted in from the ballroom, sealed off by the closing of the door.

“That was fairly unpleasant,” Valentino said.

Rankin stood and refastened his tie before an antique mirror. Heavy vintage furniture anchored the room, lightened slightly by a computer with a plasma screen glowing on the massive carved desk. “His concern for my health was real. If I die, that man will have to live on an assistant’s salary.”