Frames (9 page)

“I didn’t say he’d know
why
he made sense,” Broadhead said. “He’s a Neanderthal savant. All these new scientific weapons in the war on crime have turned the cop with the flattest feet on the beat into a techno-nerd. If she sees firsthand what we’re trying to do, the expense involved, she might be sympathetic. And he’s right about approaching her. If she has to come fetch what she wants, you’ll have to dig yourself out of a hole just to bargain with her on level ground.”

“In that case, we’d better get back.” Valentino stood.

“Leave the ‘we’ to the little piggy. As soon as I get this back in cold storage, I’m going home to sleep. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter since Orson Welles kept me up drinking Paul Maisson and kvetching about what RKO did to
The Magnificent Ambersons.
”

Broadhead was gray with exhaustion. Valentino asked if he could get home all right.

“I drive better when I’m asleep. If you don’t stop mothering me, I’ll call Immigration on your construction crew.”

“Thanks, Kyle.”

“Oh. Call Fanta and bring her up to speed. Her number’s in my Rolodex.”

When Valentino returned to his office, Ruth flagged him down with a fistful of telephone messages. Three of them were from Sergeant Clifford.

**

CHAPTER

8

HE DUMPED THE messages on his desk, slumped into his chair, and stirred the little scraps morosely with the eraser end of a pencil. They were written in Ruth’s spiky hand on peach-colored sticky notes with a sun beaming in the corners; he figured the pad was a gift from someone who didn’t know her very well and she was too thrifty to throw it out. Reporters had called from KLBA, the
Times,
the
Post,
and something called the
Prong.
Evidently the media had traced The Oracle to its new owner. He puzzled over a request for information from someone named Fresca until he realized it was actually Fanta who had called. Three others read simply, “Call Sgt. Clifford,” with her number at the precinct.

He sighed. It wasn’t the first time he’d let a movie get in the way of important business.

Still, he stalled; there seemed no reason not to now. He got Ruth on the intercom. “What on earth is the
Prong?”

“He said it was the student organ at Berkeley.” She sounded even flintier over the speaker than she did in person. “I didn’t like the way he said ‘organ.’ He sounded like one of those rappers. They say ‘yo’ a lot, like pirates.”

“I thought the
Barb
was the student paper there.”

“That’s what I thought. He said it was reactionary, so he started his own. What’s this about the Oracle and a skeleton?”

He filled her in, and closed his eyes awaiting the reaction. This was almost as bad as the chewout he had coming from Clifford. But Ruth surprised him.

“Beautiful theater,” she said. “My first husband proposed to me there while Errol Flynn was wooing Olivia de Havilland in
Captain Blood.
It was a revival,” she added, “on a double bill with
The Sea Hawk.
I’m not as old as some people seem to think.”

“Maybe I’ll run them both again in your honor when I reopen. I may need the income to handle the mortgage.”

“I wonder if that skeleton was there that night.”

“I doubt it. If the police expert was right, it was placed there long after the house stopped showing big-ticket films.” He hesitated; an opinion was something one never sought from Ruth. She gave them out like gum. “Was I mistaken to buy it?”

“Someone had to. I’m glad it was you. The last thing this town needs is another gym.”

He thanked her, hung up, drummed his fingers on the desk, lifted the receiver from his telephone, and dialed.

“I was about to send a squad car,” Clifford said when he’d identified himself. “I talked to Anita Sarawak this morning.”

“Anita who?”

“Your realtor. She said there were a lot of film cans in the room by the projection booth when she showed you the place yesterday morning. We found only a few when we went through it. They were empty.”

Valentino said nothing, avoiding a trap. He’d had experience with reluctant informants, old-time film people’s personal servants and the like, and knew the power of silence. Some people would say anything to fill it.

“Our CSI team found steel shavings on that empty shelf in the basement that match the ones I had a couple of uniforms bring back from upstairs. I’m asking you again what you took away from my crime scene.”

“Is
it a crime scene?”

“It is until I say it isn’t. If I have to ask the question a third time, it’ll be downtown.”

He took a deep breath and told her about
Greed.
He’d barely begun to explain the circumstances of its filming when she interrupted. “I’ll send someone to pick it up. You’ll get a receipt, and you can reclaim it when my investigation is finished. You might have to wait longer if there’s anyone alive to bring to trial.”

“It’s a priceless historical artifact. It needs to be stored in a stable environment.” He made his lecture on the fragility of silver nitrate brief. “Sergeant, why don’t you come down and visit our facility? I think you’ll find it instructive from a professional—”

“How long does it take to knock off a copy on this safety film?”

“In this case, a month at least, working in shifts. It has to be done a frame at a time, and the length of—”

“You’ve got three days.”

“How do you know the film has anything to do with that skeleton?”

“How do you know it doesn’t? It’s two minutes past ten. If it isn’t in this precinct by three minutes past ten Friday morning, I’m sending that squad car: for you
and Greed.”

He’d just hung up on the dial tone when Ruth buzzed him on the intercom. “You’ve got a call on line one. That Sergeant Clifford.”

“I just spoke to her.”

“She says she forgot something.”

Instructing him to punch line one was unnecessary. His department seldom received enough calls to activate the second line. He pushed the button and picked up. He had the childish hope she’d changed her mind.

She started talking before he could say hello. “Ever hear of a director named Castle?”

He ran a thumb through his mental file. “William Castle. He shot horror flicks on the cheap during the fifties and sixties. He used gimmicks to amp up the reaction: battery-charged seats during
The Tingler
to shock the audience, painted sheets on wires to send spooks flying over their heads during
Thirteen Ghosts.
Sometimes he hired actors to run up and down the aisles in hideous costumes. Early experimental theater.”

“That checks. Department computer shows him answering a public-nuisance complaint in nineteen fifty-eight for scaring an old lady half to death during a showing of something called
The House on Haunted Hill,
at the Oracle. Care to hear the particulars?”

He said yes. He felt a tingle, as if he were sitting in one of Bill Castle’s electrified seats.

“Seems a wire or something broke thirty minutes in and a certain object dropped into the old lady’s lap. She wet her pants and hollered cop. Guess what it was.”

“A human skeleton.”

“Maybe you’ve got a little detective in you after all. Well, this Castle is a skeleton himself now, so we can’t interview him. But if no dental records turn up suggesting otherwise, which is a crapshoot anyway after all this time, we may safely consider Mr. Bones an alumnus of some medical-school anatomy class and redirect our energies toward murders that took place in this century.”

“Then you won’t need the film.”

“We’ve got three days minus ten minutes to establish that. You’re on the clock.”

“What does Harriet Johansen say?”

“About what, the case or your perfect cheekbones? I’m not a dating service.”

“She said I have perfect cheekbones?”

“DNA’s no good without a national database or a surviving relative to provide a match. That brings us back to finding the dentist who put in those fillings forty or fifty years ago, and since this one isn’t exactly a department priority, you’re going to surrender those reels before we turn up any X-rays.”

“What’s the hurry, if it’s not a priority?”

“Because I had to come to you. If you’d given up the information yesterday, I might have been in a mood to work something out.”

“I was in shock, Sergeant.” He almost added,
and under peer pressure,
but there was nothing to be gained by ratting out Kyle and Fanta. “I can have two reels for you by Friday, and the rest as they’re transferred. Please? I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

The line was silent. He was beginning to think she’d hung up when she came back on. “The answer’s no. But I
will
take you up on your invitation.”

“Invitation?”

“To tour your facility. Maybe it’ll give me an angle on this case I hadn’t considered.”

That was encouraging. With Kyle along, wearing the charm he assumed for cocktail party fund-raisers, he thought he might be able to bring the Big Red Dog to heel. “When would you like to come down?”

“Not me. Criminalist Johansen. You two seem to speak the same language. Wait for her call.”

This time the connection broke. He sat chewing the inside of a cheek. He thought of calling Broadhead for advice, but he decided not to disturb him; he was worried about the old fellow’s health after twenty-four hours without sleep. He picked up the phone to call Anklemire, then put it down without dialing; twenty minutes with that little fugitive from the Warner Brothers animation department were exhausting enough. Then his gaze fell to one of the message slips on his desk.

He got up suddenly and charged across the hall. Ruth glanced up from her computer. “What’s the matter, on the lam?”

“I left something in Dr. Broadhead’s office.”

“Hope it’s still there. He never locks the door. Someday he’ll find his computer missing.”

“It’s a Wang.”

He didn’t need the computer. Broadhead only used the huge museum piece to write letters to colleagues, which he printed out and sent by snail mail. Valentino, who had carried in Fanta’s message even though it contained nothing useful, spun the Rolodex on the desk, found her number, and called her from Broadhead’s phone.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “Well, is it the real deal or is it the bogus hocus-pocus?”

He heard plumbers working in the background, complete with banging wrenches and cursing. When the volume went down suddenly he realized she’d been listening to music.

“It’s the real deal, but I can tell you all about it later. What do you know about William Castle?”

“The hamburger tycoon?”

“That’s White Castle. Never mind, I’ll handle that end myself. How’s your course load?”

“Not bad today. I’ve got archery practice in an hour.”

“Can you blow it off?”

“I—don’t know. . . .” She drew it out, sounding guarded.

It struck him then he was talking to an attractive coed who was probably hit on often. He hastened to tell her about Sergeant Clifford’s demand.

Her tone changed. “That’s a bummer. The way Dr. Broadhead explained it, you can’t copy anywhere near eight hours of film in that time.”

“Or ten. Turning over the original isn’t an option. I could go to jail, be a hero, but it wouldn’t save
Greed.
She’d just get a court order and seize the reels.”

“Bummer to the twelfth power. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“I’m a grown-up. That means I can get in trouble all by myself. Anyway, it was the right thing to do. When a man is murdered, that’s one man’s tragedy, but a work of art belongs to all of us.”

“What can we do?”

He felt himself smiling. “I’m glad you said ‘we.’” He told her.

“Wow?”

“ ‘Wow?’ Isn’t there some New Age expression that fits?”

“Not for
Greed.
Um, and ‘New Age’ is kind of old maid.”

Valentino scratched his neck, checking for wattles.

“Will Dr. Broadhead be joining us?” she asked.

“He’s resting. He was up all night working in the lab.”

“Is he okay? I mean, that can’t be healthy for a man his— in his position.”

“Now you sound like our secretary. She thinks the world would be a better place if everyone acted his age.” But he was touched by the young woman’s concern. Broadhead could lecture for hours on the inattention and ingratitude of the current crop of undergraduates.

“I talked to her on the phone this morning. What’s her problem?”

“You’re young. She’s not. But she knows everyone in the industry. So what do you think?”

“This is my first murder,” she said. “Where do we start?”

**

CHAPTER

9

THEY DIVVIED UP two of the four estates. Fanta took Government, Valentino the Press.

Dropping her off at the Civic Center, he watched her cross the sidewalk, a tall, slender, self-assured young woman in a white linen jacket and khaki slacks, cork-heeled sandals on her tanned feet. She’d tied her blue-black hair in a ponytail and put a notebook and pen in a leather shoulder bag. He’d noticed during the drive that she’d pruned the kid stuff from her speech. First impressions counted. The Los Angeles County property records were open to the public, but it was possible to get a clerk with an attitude.