Alone (6 page)

“At least it wouldn’t make him a cold-blooded killer.”

“Manslaughter is still a jailable offense, and at his age, a year could be a life sentence.” He studied Valentino’s face. “I didn’t know you had any close friends among the plutocracy.”

“I don’t. But he’s been a good friend to the Film Preservation Department, and I don’t like to see anyone railroaded.”

“Of course, this has nothing to do with the promise he made.”

The archivist unfolded a shirt and refolded it the same way. “I suppose that’s part of it.”

“I’m as interested as you are in rescuing the history of cinema from the ravages of time. Helping a murderer to escape the consequences of his crime is a steep price to pay to recover a couple of reels of celluloid.”

“I agree. By the same token I’d let them go to the devil if they got in the way of clearing an innocent man.”

Broadhead let his pipe go out. “We set a bad precedent by interfering in an official police investigation to prevent
Greed
from rotting away in a non-climate-controlled evidence room. I’ve never seen
How Not to Dress,
nor has anyone else who’s still breathing his own oxygen, but I doubt a promotional documentary conceived and executed to bring customers into a department store that closed its doors under Gustav the Fifth is worth a felony record for obstruction of justice.”

“I never said a word about interfering with the police.”

“You didn’t. That’s what has me worried.”

“I’ve got my hands full with this pile of bricks, not to mention Dwight Spink. The sleuths’ union hasn’t a thing to fear from me.”

Broadhead smiled. “That’s all I needed to hear. I wouldn’t want to be accused of harboring a wanted man.” He pointed at Valentino’s coffeemaker. “You might want to take that with you. I haven’t had a taste of caffeine since Elaine died. I can’t sleep more than an hour at a time even without it.”

“Without it I can’t wake up. Thanks again for letting me crash at your place. At the rate I’m going I couldn’t swing a week at the Bates Motel.”

“I still think you ought to bunk at Harriet’s. I have it on the authority of my dear departed wife that I’d drive Gandhi to violence after two nights under the same roof.”

“That would be problematic,”

“Bring her flowers. For some reason that always worked with Elaine. You could have knocked me over with a bus the first time she fell for it. I guess there’s a reason some things hang around long enough to become clichés.”

“We’ll work it out. It’s just too early in the relationship to show up at her door with a toothbrush.”

“You’re the expert. Thank God I don’t have to chew over that kind of thing anymore. The wind from the grave can be quite liberating.”

Valentino closed and latched the suitcase. “I thought you were working up the courage to plight your troth with the fair Fanta.”

“I was, until I did the simple arithmetic. Do you have any idea how many numbers have come and gone between my Social Security number and hers? I was eligible for AARP when she was learning how to finger paint.”

“How does she feel?”

“I haven’t asked her. She’s interning with a legal firm downtown and studying law at night. She hardly has time to think about a decrepit old monomaniac.”

“You’re not decrepit.”

Broadhead struck another match. “How much does a bachelor need to pack? I wouldn’t leave a decent piece of plywood unguarded in a neighborhood like this for ten minutes. One of your neighbors is probably building a deck behind his refrigerator box as we speak.”

Valentino unplugged his coffeemaker, tucked it under one arm, hoisted the suitcase, and took one last look around. Spare as it was, the projection booth had been his home for weeks, and he shared with Broadhead the sense of discovery that would always bathe that room with golden light. He turned his back on it and led the way downstairs.

He was glad Leo Kalishnikov had not been present to see the variety of mishaps a lifelong academic and a practical film scholar could bring to the simple business of boarding up the entrance to a staircase. They managed to knock a corner off the plywood sheet carrying it through the doorway, bent several nails fixing it in place, had to pull it down and start all over again when it failed to cover the doorway, mashed two thumbs (both Valentino’s), and performed microsurgery removing a splinter from the heel of Valentino’s right palm with a pair of pliers and an application of mineral spirits to prevent infection; the sting had shot Valentino to his feet and chipped one of Broadhead’s teeth when he bit down on his pipe stem. At length the barricade was in place and the professor returned his tools to his box.

“Remind me to lay a wreath on my grandfather’s grave next Memorial Day,” he said. “My father always looked down on him because he didn’t finish his formal education.”

“You know, thousands of ordinary homeowners do this kind of thing every weekend.”

“I think you and I agree this isn’t an ordinary home.”

Valentino thanked him for his help, even though he hadn’t provided much, sitting in one of the draped theater seats smoking and making observations, and drove them from there to Broadhead’s house in a cul-de-sac off Beverly Glen Boulevard, the unfashionable section north of Sunset. It was a brick box with functional shutters, a relic of the sleepy Los Angeles of retirement housing and milk wagons, just a five-minute walk from the UCLA campus. The professor seldom took his thrifty compact car out of the garage, and then only to annoy their department head, whose SUV burned gas like weeds. Broadhead directed Valentino to the guest bedroom and knocked out his pipe in a smoking stand by the dilapidated armchair in front of the TV while his guest carried in his suitcase and coffeemaker.

The first eight bars of the theme to
Gone With the Wind
bleated; it was Valentino’s ring tone. He answered his cell clumsily. His thumbs were still throbbing.

“I got your messages,” Harriet said. “If you’d told me what you were up to with Matthew Rankin, I might have answered them sooner.”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Garbo’s letter just landed on my desk. You also might want to check out today’s
Times.”

He walked out of the guest room holding the phone to his ear just as Broadhead was closing the front door. He had a rolled-up copy of the
Los Angeles Times
in one hand.

Valentino took it from him and shook it open. His picture was on the front page with his name in the caption. His face looked washed out in the glare of the strobe with Rankin’s house in the background.

**

CHAPTER

6

“YOU’RE NOT VERY photogenic, you know. I guess it was your personality I fell for.”

“I come off better when I’m not ambushed. They must have traced my license plate number. I didn’t answer any of their questions or tell them my name.”

They were in the break room outside the forensics laboratory at Los Angeles Police headquarters, where Harriet worked six days most weeks. The
Times
was spread on the table between them, collecting crumbs from her tuna sandwich.

‘“Rankin confidant,’ it says.” She chewed and swallowed. “They probably connected his donations to the university to you. Beverly Hills cops put the wraps on tight or the newsies wouldn’t be snatching at straws.”

“Meanwhile I’m fair game. They’re bound to link me to the Oracle. Having to clear out of there may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.” He hesitated. “Does this meeting mean I’m forgiven?”

“Blackmail, it says here. I take it he asked you to help get him out from under. That’s a legitimate reason to keep a secret.”

“I had a better one than just that. He wanted me to dig up dirt on Akers so he could bargain with him on level ground.”

She met his gaze. In her work clothes and regular makeup, with no headdress covering her short, ash-blonde hair, she looked less like Garbo than last night, but she still had the chilly stare.

“I wasn’t going to do it,” he said. “I went out of nosiness. And because he’d dangled
How Not to Dress
in front of me as incentive.”

“Thank God.” She picked up her sandwich. “I was afraid you were leading a double life. Turns out the one you’re leading just got away from you. You told this to the police?”

“Yes, and so will Rankin, if he has the kind of attorney he can afford and takes his advice. It helps corroborate his version of what happened.”

“Tag. You’re it.”

“What’s that mean?”

She swallowed tuna and washed it down with diet Coke. “Hiding out at Kyle’s place won’t protect you from the press. You’ll need plastic surgery and a new name. I’d suggest Kato Kaelin, but that might make things worse.”

He changed the subject. “How did the Garbo letter wind up in your caseload? Beverly Hills has its own facilities.”

“Not as good as ours. We’ve got the best in the state. It’s a reciprocal thing: L.A. goes to the hills when we want to know which wine to serve with the veal at the commissioner’s banquet.” She took a folded sheet out of a pocket of her smock and spread it on the table. A glop of mayonnaise fell from her sandwich onto the text, smearing the ink when she brushed at it.

“What kind of way is that to treat evidence?”

“Chill out. We ran off a dozen copies from the fax they sent us. It’s Swedish, all right. Would you like a translation?”

“I thought Johansen was Danish.”

“It still is. My father taught Scandinavian Literature at the University of South Dakota. He believed in starting at home, and he felt about translations the way you feel about colorizing black-and-white films. I never got a handle on Finnish, but I aced the rest.”

“How is it I’m just finding this out now?”

“Do you really want to get back on the subject of full disclosure?”

“No, ma’am.”

She finished her meal, pushed aside the clutter, and gave the letter a pop. “This is a recap of a rendezvous between Andrea Rankin and Greta Garbo in New York City, sometime in nineteen forty-nine or fifty: They went to see
All the King’s Men,
and I looked up the running dates. The rest is pretty steamy. You want it grope by grope or just a summary?”

“Neither. I can wait for the tabloids to get hold of it and spill all the salacious details. I’d sort of hoped there weren’t any, and that Rankin’s Swedish wasn’t as good as he let on.”

“Sorry, Val. She was human.”

“I know that. It would be nice if just one star were left to shine untarnished in the firmament.”

“Apart from sounding pompous, that’s homophobic.”

“That’s an automatic reaction on your part. If a person’s sexual preference didn’t matter, the columnists and talk-show hosts wouldn’t whisper and giggle so much whenever someone famous got outed. As for me, I’d be just as worked up if Garbo had a hot-and-heavy affair with Harry Truman. I prefer my
Titanics
at the bottom of the ocean, my Jack the Rippers unidentified, and my Garbos mysterious.”

“But not your shootings.”

“I like Matthew Rankin, but I have a professional stake in this one as well. If he goes to prison, my department won’t take possession of
How Not to Dress
until he dies and his heirs finish fighting over the will. He says it’s being kept under climate-controlled conditions, but that’s no guarantee someone won’t crank up the thermostat after he passes.”

“Seems to me we had this conversation before, when
Greed
was in police lockup.”

“There’s also the real possibility the will may be broken and we’ll never see those reels.”

“That’s your obsession, and it got a man killed. If you’d told the police Rankin was being blackmailed, Roger Akers would be in jail instead of the morgue, and Rankin wouldn’t be in custody.”

“I promised him I wouldn’t.”

She put down the letter. “I may be part of the law enforcement community, but I’m also your friend. Didn’t you ever think you could discuss a matter of questionable legality with me and I wouldn’t go running off to report it?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He leaned his elbows on the table and spread his hands. “I never knew Andrea Rankin. She died of a sudden heart attack just when they were planning retirement together. He was as anxious to protect her privacy as I am Garbo’s. Neither one of us was capable of making a wise choice under those circumstances.”

“For someone who’s a casual acquaintance, you make him sound like a bosom buddy.”

“Kyle said the same thing. I denied it, but maybe you’re both right. At the very least I admire the old man. When the bottom fell out of the department-store business, right in the middle of his bereavement, he could have bailed, but he didn’t. Instead he pumped his personal fortune back into the chain to drag it into the computer age, at a time when most industries thought the technology was witchcraft. He kept thousands of people employed. Then when things turned around, he used some of the profits to help out the film preservation program, asking nothing in return. I’d have offered my help without his having to promise anything. Short of breaking the law,” he added.

“I accept your apology.” She picked up the letter. “The fingerprint people in Beverly Hills are pretty good. They matched the victim’s prints to the letter and to the marble bust, so at least part of Rankin’s story checks out.”