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Valentino felt a jealous spark. It had taken him five years of close association to work up the courage to address his friend by his Christian name.

“It’ll keep me off welfare for life,” said Fanta, steering the conversation back on course. “Corporate’s no turn-on for me, but I believe in creative rights. Camcorders in theaters, pirate DVDs in China and New York, downloading everywhere: Every time technology advances, protection of intellectual property takes a hit. Producers, directors, actors, and screenwriters are losing millions to the black market. Billions. The lawsuits are going to bitch up the courts for twenty years.”

Valentino said, “I agree it’s a serious problem. I just wish the studios were less easily distracted from preservation and restoration. The more established producers and directors, the film school generation, has been more than generous with donations, but funds from the front offices are drying up. The execs are so busy trying to keep the latest
Star Wars
installment out of the hands of street vendors they’re letting a hundred years of history crumble to dust.”

“There wouldn’t be any history if the pirates had their way.” Fanta’s tone stiffened to Valley bedrock. “Edwin Porter went broke trying to convince judges to stop his competitors from reshooting
The Great Train Robbery
scene for scene and refusing to pay him a penny in royalties.”

Valentino hesitated. “You didn’t get that from your great-grandmother. She’d have to have lived to a hundred to remember it.”

Broadhead said, “I consider that an insult to my teaching skills. I told you Fanta was a prize student.”

“We’re ganging up on him,” she said, softening her tone. “If we can hit one of these big-time bootleggers with punitive damages far enough in excess of what they’ve ripped off, there’ll be plenty to go around, for preservationists
and
the bean counters at Viacom.”

“I just hope that by that time there will be something left to preserve,” Valentino said.

“Amen,” said Broadhead.

“Represent,” said Fanta. She straightened in her seat. “Oh, too cool. Wicked.”

Valentino had slowed in front of The Oracle.

He’d given his new young acquaintance credit for making her case with logic and sympathy for the opposing side. Now he assigned her extra points for her ability to see past the superficial. The old building
was
too cool, and wicked besides; but it required a special gift to disregard the ravages of time and criminal neglect to recognize its original glory.

Gone was the fabulous marquee, condemned as structurally unsound sometime between its brief Bohemian renaissance as a venue for screening obscure art films and the descent of the hippie hordes, whose unshaven armpits and community bongs had left their stench. Subsequent showings of XXX smut and blaxploitation tripe had emboldened its neighbors to obscure the Deco fluting and baroque flourishes beneath a palimpsest of spray-painted gang symbols and schoolboy obscenities. Plywood covered the box-office windows.

“If we close our eyes, we might convince ourselves we’re attending the premiere of
Gone With the Wind,”
Broadhead said. “But only if we close our noses, too. What
is
that smell?”

Valentino said, “Animal-control officers raided the place next door for breeding fighting dogs. It isn’t permanent.”

“Hooray for Hollywood. I wonder if Garbo will make an appearance.”

“Get a clue, Professor. He hasn’t taken possession yet.”

Valentino could have kissed her, if he didn’t think she’d sue for harassment. He looked for a place to park.

**

“I’ve seen worse, believe it or not,” Broadhead said. “In Detroit, they turned one of their premier showcases into a parking garage. They ought to reinstate the death penalty for that if nothing else.” He lit his pipe, mingling the scent of his apple-scented tobacco with the incense and patchouli still lingering from the Age of Aquarius. He left footprints an eighth of an inch deep in the dust on the linoleum that covered the mosaic in the lobby.

Valentino, recognizing his friend’s attempt to alleviate his former negativity, swallowed his resentment. A creature of indeterminate species, possibly a bat, had marked its territory inside a glass case that had once contained an assortment of Baby Buths and Cracker Jacks. “It’s a challenge,” he said. “I expect to establish a lasting relationship with the Bank of Bel-Air.”

“Worth every penny.” Fanta caressed the plate glass preserving a letterpress poster advertising a 1979 showing of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
demonstrably the last feature that had played the location before a secession of fly-by-night retail shops had taken over the ground floor. She left a leopard-print impression of her fingerprints in the soot. “You should host a grand reopening with a Halloween showing of
Nosferatu.”

“I’m going to live here, not curate a museum.”

“Let’s brave the stairs,” Broadhead said. “I’m feeling lucky today.”

Valentino had thought to bring a flashlight; the light was fading, and the projection booth was dark enough to show a feature. The beam made shadows conducive to the appearance of Max Fink’s sad ghost.

“Greed?
You’re kidding me, right? Faculty doesn’t usually take part in sorority initiations.” Fanta studied one of the film cans in the pale orange glow.

Broadhead snatched it from her hands. He ran a thumb over the label. “Stenciling looks genuine. There’s some adhesion here; they used to ship the posters stuck to the cans. Pity. An original poster for
Greed
could finance most of the renovation.”

“You’re killing me here,” Valentino said. “You’re the one who told me Hitchcock was a sadist.”

“That was a compliment. No one who considered himself a master of suspense could be anything but. However, I’m not going to open them in this pest hole. We’ll leave that to the nerds in the lab.”

“Then why did I bring you?”

“Peer pressure, pure and simple. A historian without the support of another historian is just a geek. What’s in the basement?”

Valentino was abashed. “I haven’t seen the basement.”

Broadhead cuffed him on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “Have you learned nothing from me in all the years we’ve known each other? The answer to everything is always in the basement.”

“He’s right.” Fanta’s tone was grave. “Dr. Broadhead dissected
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
scene for scene.”

“Kyle,” Broadhead corrected.

“Mercy,” Valentino said. “Some of us have to live in the real world.”

Broadhead said, “The more pity you. To the bat cave!”

Valentino sighed and followed them to the ground floor. After some exploration they found a narrow door leading to the subterranean reaches of The Oracle.

“The Pit and the Pendulum,”
said Broadhead, as they negotiated the flight of slimy stairs to a part of Los Angeles Cortez himself had never laid eyes upon. Lime dripped all around like the drool of lizards employed by Roger Corman.

“The Shining,”
furnished Fanta.
“Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“The L.A. County building code,” Valentino said. “I mean, if you really want to be scared.”

At the base of the stairs, Broadhead pulled up before a life-size cutout of Mickey Rourke, advertising 9 1/2
Weeks.

“Now,
that’s
scary,” he said.

They followed provocative stacks of crates, wooden and cardboard, and a depressing panoply of patching material and PVC pipe, into a room that was a shambles of loose brick and mortar, most of it accumulated at the base of the far wall. The light was dim from the surface windows in the passageway. Valentino glowered at the cracks in the wall, some of which were as wide as his wrist. Seventy-five years of earthquakes and traffic vibration had taken a heavy toll. “I hope it isn’t structural.”

“You used up all your hope when you bought this pig in a poke,” Broadhead said.

Fanta put out an exploratory hand—and jumped back when a square yard of brick collapsed into a pile on the concrete floor. “Whoa!”

“Whoa!” echoed her voice from behind the wall.

Silence draped the three.

Broadhead broke it. “Physics isn’t my field. However, when you shout into what should be eight feet of solid Southern California hardpack, it isn’t supposed to shout back.”

Valentino fumbled on his flashlight.

Broadhead and Fanta climbed onto the pile and began pulling pieces of rotten brick out of the edge of the hole, dropping them onto the mound. Soon the opening was big enough for a man to step through. The beam of the flash probed through and fell on rows of dusty bottles lying on their sides in a wooden rack.

The young woman—Valentino no longer thought of her as a girl—steadied herself with a hand against the side of the hole and leaned inside. “Bitchin’ wine cellar. Why hide it?”

“That’s not a wine cellar, child,” said the professor. “It’s a Prohibition stash. We just found another of Max Fink’s secrets.”

They entered the chamber. It was nearly as big as the room they’d left, with racks and shelves all around. The bottles they’d glimpsed were shards of empty vessels, burst where they lay, their contents evaporated. There were empty wooden cases stenciled with the names of extinct brands of Scotch and bourbon and gin. All that remained of what must have been a magnificent private stock was a faint odor of stale sour mash.

“Film cans!” cried Fanta.

Valentino slid the beam along a neat row of flat tins on a shelf near the floor, held upright by a board nailed across the heavy oaken uprights.

Broadhead slid one out. “Hold that light steady.”

“I can’t. My hand’s shaking.” He gave the flashlight to Fanta, who trained it on the lid. Broadhead blew dust off the label.

“Greed.”
Three voices sang out in unison.

“They’re numbered,” said Broadhead, sliding his finger through the air along the cans on the shelf. “Twenty-five through forty-two.”

“That makes a complete print, with the two dozen upstairs,” Valentino said. “The full eight hours.”

“Or ten.
If
it’s what it says it is. This one’s not empty, at least.” Broadhead rattled the can in his hand. Then he looked around. “Odd thing about this room. There’s no entrance except the hole we came through.”

“Maybe there’s a secret panel.” Fanta prowled the walls with the beam. “Nope. Solid earth.”

“Why wall up an empty liquor room?” Valentino asked.

“Maybe we should ask
him.”

Fanta’s voice was tight. Both men turned at the sound of it. The flashlight was shining on a human skull.

**

CHAPTER

4

THE FLASHLIGHT BEAM moved, illuminating the rest of the skeleton, heaped into a crumple at the edge of the rubble that had spilled inside the room. In the shadows it had looked like part of the broken wall.

In that moment, Valentino realized he’d never seen one “in person,” and was mildly surprised to learn that it didn’t look any different from those he’d seen in movies. The leering skull and hooplike ribs wore a fine coat of gray dust.

Broadhead, ever the curious scholar, leaned down and poked at a spindly upper arm with the bowl of his pipe. The bone separated from the shoulder and fell to the floor with a hollow rattle, like film clattering around the reel on a projector.

“Offhand, I’d say it’s been here as long as the wall,” he said.

“Duh.”

They stared at Fanta, who smiled nervously and slid her hair away from her face. “Sorry, Professor. Kyle. It couldn’t have gotten in here otherwise.”

“I think we’ll go back to ‘Dr. Broadhead.’ Informality seems to have bred disrespect.”

“She’s upset,” Valentino said.

“Not really. I’ve seen worse on the Sci Fi Channel.”

“Another argument in favor of the V-chip,” Broadhead said. “We’re raising a generation of emotional robots. Boo!” he shouted. Fanta and Valentino jumped. Broadhead blew through his pipe and put it away with an evil flourish. “Not so desensitized after all.”

“Is this a joke to you?” asked Valentino.

“No, and it hasn’t been for our friend here since before either of you was born. Me, too, possibly. Or anything else. Even tragedy has an expiration date.” He turned and gathered half a dozen film cans under his arms. “Give me a hand with these. Fanta, go upstairs and bring down as many cans as you can carry without dropping them. If we’re lucky, the material inside is brittle as hell.”

She asked how that was lucky.

“Fragile we can deal with, if the techs are as good as their training. If it’s dissolved into a mess of orange goo, we might as well put it on a salad. There’s a reason it’s called the Vinegar Syndrome.”

Valentino stared. “We have to report this.”

“Yes, and once we have, the building becomes a crime scene and everything in it becomes public property indefinitely. Would you care to see what several months in a humid L.A. evidence room can do that three quarters of a century in a relatively stable environment can’t? Von Stroheim will haunt you to your grave.”

“What’s stable about it?”