Frames (5 page)

“The air down here is cool and dry, so I have hopes for this stuff. I won’t lay odds on what’s upstairs. Silver nitrate’s fickle. It’s been known to survive under conditions that would destroy so-called safety stock, and to go up like a firecracker when someone gets a hot idea. But if it is
Greed,
we don’t want some dim-witted desk sergeant mistaking it for porno and screening it at a police smoker.”

Fanta said, “What’s a smoker?”

Broadhead ignored her. “Everything in here belongs to the new owner until the authorities find out about Slim here. You’re within your rights to remove it, and they don’t need to know everything that came with the place.”

“That part isn’t within my rights,” Valentino said. “It’s— what is it, Fanta? You’re the law student.”

“Obstruction of justice,” she said. “I’m with Dr. Broadhead.”

“You’re kidding.”

“We don’t know what killed this dude. Maybe it was natural causes, and all we have is a case of improper disposal of a corpse, by someone who’s probably a stiff himself by now. If it’s murder, same story. We owe it to posterity to protect a work of art from unnecessary destruction.”

“Even if it means breaking the law.”

“It all goes back to intellectual property rights. I’m down with it.” She lifted her chin.

“Damn it, Kyle, how many young people have you managed to brainwash? You only show up two days a semester.”

“Don’t blame me. Your age group
invented
civil disobedience.”

“Not quite. I was a little young to stage a sit-in at the dean’s office in my Huggies.”

“We can stand here and rock all day,” Fanta said.
“Greed’s
still growing whiskers.”

“Your call, Val. It’s your name on the deposit check.”

He didn’t answer. Instead he stepped over and started picking up film cans.

“That’s my boy. Carpe diem.”

“Totally.” Fanta headed for the stairs.

**

“Sergeant Clifford, West Hollywood Homicide.” The woman stooped to shake his hand in the room outside the formerly hidden chamber. Considering her height and her startling green eyes and red hair, teased out in an ‘80s do, he wondered what circumstances had led her to choose law enforcement over modeling. She was beautiful enough for the movies, but too tall for most of the leading men. “You’re the owner?”

“Valentino.” He braced himself at the question he saw coming.

“The fashion designer?”

He hesitated. “No, the silent film star. I mean, that’s who most people mistake me for. Actually, I’m not related to either of them.” He was babbling. He shut himself up.

She looked at his business card. He’d given it to one of the two officers in uniform who’d been first on the scene. “Says here you’re a film detective. I thought I knew all the bureaus.”

“It’s just a jazzy name for a procurer. This is a showbiz town. I’m a consultant with the Film Preservation Department at UCLA.”

“Theaters?”

“Movies. This started out as a search for a house with a screening room.”

“Did you know a corpse came with the place?” Clifford smiled girlishly, but her eyes were as sharp as emeralds.

“If he had, he’d have tried to bargain down the price,” said Broadhead, coming to his rescue. He introduced himself and grasped the sergeant’s hand. “I teach film at the university.”

She turned to Fanta. “And what do you do, sell popcorn?

Valentino noticed that the sergeant listened to the answers to all her questions without making notes. Various personnel, in and out of uniform, flowed past the quartet in both directions, carrying cases and bizarre paraphernalia. Someone had erected a trouble light inside the room containing the skeleton and trailed twenty-five feet of orange extension cord out into the passageway. Lightning pulsed from flash equipment on the other side of the ruined wall.

“So you’re all in pictures, more or less,” said Clifford.

Broadhead said, “More less than more. We’re not affiliated with any of the studios. We’re academics.”

“Teachers’ salaries must be improving. This place had to have cost a bundle.”

“I only put down a—”

Broadhead interrupted. “Do you consider him a suspect in a seventy-year-old death?”

Her green gaze shot his way. “What makes you say seventy?”

“It’s been that long since they repealed Prohibition.”

“These bricks haven’t been up nearly that long. Not all of them. Those yellower ones weren’t available before the fifties. See, they form a rectangle, and they’re not rotten like the section you pulled down. My husband’s in construction,” she said. “He talks about his work. He has to, if we’re going to have any sort of chitchat. I can’t exactly bring my office home to dinner.”

In the light spilling out of the room being investigated, Valentino could clearly see the contrast. He remembered Broadhead’s earlier concern. “There was a door.”

“Someone walled it up. It’s easy to guess why. Our criminalist confirms a later date of death; something about the fillings in the teeth.” She caught Valentino’s face brightening. “Normally this kind of talk upsets people.”

He’d been thinking,
A film older than the building, and a corpse younger. They can’t be connected.
He felt himself turning color. “I found it interesting. A lot of the films I screen are murder mysteries.”

“Mm-hm. Man who’s seen as many pictures as you, I guess you’re not squeamish about skeletons.”

“I still flinch when Lon Chaney’s mask comes off in
The Phantom of the Opera.”

“That one I know. I saw the road show when it played L.A. Come in and take a look. Maybe you can give us a positive ID, ha-ha.”

A flash tripped just as Valentino stepped over the rubble and into the room. The on-cue timing made him feel as if he’d entered a live set; which, he supposed, was what it was. He had the sensation that the man with the camera, the uniformed officer scribbling in his report book, the pair of technicians mixing and applying their powders, the woman in the green smock bent over the pile of bones in the corner had all been running their lines and primping only a moment before, waiting for the director to take his seat in the canvas chair.

He decided that when this was over he should put in for a vacation that didn’t involve a hotel room with a movie channel.

“Ms. Johansen, a minute?” Clifford asked.

The woman in the smock sat back on her heels. She wore a cuplike mask over her nose and mouth. When she took it off, Valentino was struck by her features. She was a short-haired honey blonde with elliptical blue eyes, clear and unflawed. Her nose was straight and she had a generous mouth that looked as if it might contain a smile as bright as a klieg. Her looks were exotic, unlike Clifford’s conventional beauty, yet entirely American.

She wasn’t smiling. “A minute is an hour. What’s so important? Oh, hello.” She noticed Valentino and moderated her scowl.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t think bacteria would be a problem after so many years.”

“What? Oh, the mask. I’m allergic to dust.” She sneezed.

“Isn’t that like a jockey who’s afraid of horses?”

“Most cases don’t lie around this long waiting for attention. Even cold cases.”

Clifford said, “Mr. Valentino owns the building. Harriet Johansen, with the criminal-science division. I told you what she said about the deceased’s fillings.”

“Forgive me for not shaking hands.” She held up a miniature whisk broom in a rubber glove.

He looked past her. The trouble light shed halogen on the skeleton, which properly was no longer a pile of bones but now lay stretched out on its spine. Many of the segments had separated, but Ms. Johansen or someone had arranged all the parts according to their original locations. He figured she’d be a whiz at jigsaw puzzles. There was a musty odor under the ancient liquor smell in the room that reminded him of old magazines.

“What else have you got?” Clifford asked.

“He was about a thirty-two short, not much over five feet with his skin on. I can do a more precise measurement back at the lab, and C.G. should take care of the rest.”

C.G. stood for
computer generation.
Valentino knew that much from Cyber Age movie magic. “How do you know it was a he?”

“Shape of the pelvis. Also I caught him looking down my blouse when I bent over.”

He grinned. “Was it murder?”

“Tell you when I finish dusting, maybe. If there was bone trauma, a skull fracture, or a blade or a bullet nicked a rib, yes. Without that, or a loose slug coming to light when we move the cadaver, all we’ve got is—”

“Improper disposal of a corpse,” Valentino finished. “Hey, you swiped that from me.”

He turned at the sound of Fanta’s voice. He hadn’t even been aware she and Broadhead had followed him into the room. He made introductions. The reality of his proprietorship had only sunk in when Sergeant Clifford referred to him as the owner. Playing the host seemed appropriate.

Ms. Johansen said hello and sneezed again. “Excuse me.”

“Bless you.” All four spectators spoke at the same time.

Clifford said, “Any sign of clothing?”

“Not a scrap, and he hasn’t been here long enough for leather and fabric to decompose completely. That takes more than a century, under outdoor conditions. The building isn’t that old, and as I said his dental work postdates construction by thirty years at least.”

“A stripped body spells murder to me,” said the sergeant. “What else?”

“Ask me downtown in a day or two.” The criminalist peeled off her gloves. “You can tell the morgue team to bag him up anytime.”

Valentino straightened. His back was sore from crouching, on top of helping carry more than forty cans of old celluloid up and down stairs and loading them into the trunk of his car. He was nervous about leaving them in that uncontrolled climate for long. He asked Clifford if she had any more questions.

“Just one. What was removed from that shelf?” She pointed at the rack that had contained the film. “The dust is spread evenly everywhere but there.”

Her steely tone, and that emerald stare, got to him. He took in his breath to confess. Broadhead gave him a sideways kick in the ankle. “Ouch!”

Nothing good can come from underestimating a cop’s peripheral vision. She swung her attention to the professor. “What was that?”

“Restless Leg Syndrome.” His face wore no expression.

Just as she lifted an authoritative finger, a whey-faced plainclothesman Valentino had seen drifting in and out interjected himself into the group. “Media’s here, Sarge.”

“How many?”

“Three stations and the cop house guy from the
Times.”

“The gangs in East L.A. must be on vacation.” She stuck the finger at Valentino. “I’ve got your contact information. We’ll talk.”

The three civilians migrated toward the jagged exit. Harriet Johansen, packing her whisk broom and other assorted tools into a black steel case, stuck her striking face into a tissue and sneezed again.

“Bless you.” This time, Valentino was the only one to say it.

She wiped her nose and smiled up at him. He’d been dead right about the candlepower. “Thank you.”

Broadhead gave him a push. “Move it, Don Juan.”

“That was Douglas Fairbanks,” Valentino corrected.

**

CHAPTER

5

VALENTINO BROKE THE silence of several blocks. “Restless Leg Syndrome?”

“It’s a real condition,” Broadhead said. “Look it up.”

This time, the professor sat in the front passenger’s seat while Fanta rode in back. Valentino had had to maneuver the car out of a tight space between satellite trucks double-parked in front of The Oracle. Evidently, the discovery of a vintage corpse was of sufficient human interest to attract the press to a crumbling landmark.

“Clifford’s not an idiot,” he said. “She knows we’re hiding something.”

“Not evidence,” Fanta put in. “Not technically. The film had to have been there since before the theater changed hands the first time, long before whatever happened happened. Connecting the two would be an impossible case to make in court.”

“That’s for the police and prosecutor to decide. I’m not comfortable with lying to them.”

“You didn’t,” Broadhead said. “I did, to prevent you from blurting out a truth that could destroy a seminal artifact from the first quarter-century of the cinema. I went to prison for less reason than that. At least the L.A. County Jail has central heating.”

“If you think I’d let you go to jail while I kept silent—”

“That’s for
me
to decide.” He filled his pipe.
“Greed
and I are near contemporaries. I’ve made most of the contributions to our common purpose I’m ever likely to, but that film, that wonderful crackbrained child of a mad genius, hasn’t even started. Irving Thalberg never gave it the chance. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to determine which sacrifice is better.”

Fanta rapped her knuckles on her windowsill. “ ‘We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty on the grounds of common sense.’”