Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! (20 page)

*   *   *

The daydream ended when the movie did and the menu popped back up onscreen. Valentino turned off the player and the laser projector, returning the auditorium to shadow. Lugosi had been wrong about his last role but one. (
Plan 9 from Outer Space
would not appear until three years after his death.) Small-budget studio that it was then, United Artists had breathed new life into the horror genre, reviving the faltering careers of classic stars like Rathbone and Carradine and providing viewers with a respite from the thunderous science fiction programmers of the Atomic Age, with their elephantine insects and heavy-handed apocalyptic themes. The ailing actor’s turn as the mute Casmir was moving and tragically sympathetic, reminiscent of both the visual poetry of the silent cinema and Boris Karloff’s performance in
Frankenstein
. It had been the last brilliant spurt of flame among the embers.

Valentino smiled sadly in the darkness of the projection booth. Ironically, Karloff had argued
against
giving the Monster the ability to speak in
Bride of Frankenstein,
insisting that it would destroy audience empathy, and had pleaded to strike all his lines from the script; surely a unique request in an ego-driven profession. He, too, had been overridden, but like Lugosi, he had been wrong. While his rival’s valedictory effort had been overlooked, Karloff’s semi-articulate artificial man was met with huge success in theaters and among critics. (“The Monster Talks!” advertisements proclaimed, echoing the success of “Garbo Speaks!”) From start to finish, the two European artists had mirrored each other’s career in reverse images, meteors whose trajectories had crossed moving in opposite directions. What a strange and arbitrary country was Hollywood.

It was questionable whether Bela Lugosi had seen his last onscreen appearance in life.
The Black Sleep
premiered in June 1956, and he died in August. Karloff, so the legend went, paid his colleague the ultimate compliment at his visitation, where he lay in state in one of the cloaks he had worn as Count Dracula: “You wouldn’t be fooling us, would you, Bela?”

Lugosi, most probably, would not have accepted the remark in the spirit in which it was intended. Dry Anglo-Saxon wit was lost on demonstrative Hungarians. In any case, a quarter-century in the West Coast meat-grinder had bled him of whatever sense of humor he had brought to it.

The land line rang. Without switching on a light, he read the caller ID in the glow of the LED, and felt a cold hand on the back of his neck, as from the grave: After two years Lorna Hunter hadn’t gotten around to having Craig’s name removed from the number.

“Val, I’m sorry to disturb you. Are you busy?”

He hesitated. Her words were slurred. Had he lost one alcoholic friend only to replace him with another? “No. Are you all right?”

“Actually, I’m not. Can you come over?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Please? I haven’t spoken to another living soul in person in days. I really have to see you.”

He calculated the driving time by the standards of homebound L.A. traffic. What he really needed was a calendar. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

Ice cubes tinkled against glass on her end. “Try to make it sooner, okay?”

He managed to shave five minutes off his original estimate. A truck driver and the chauffeur of a white stretch limo were two people he no sooner wished to meet again on foot than Pudge Pollard and Dickey Wirtz.

He’d barely touched the doorbell when the door opened and she fell against him. He had to put his arms around her to steady himself. He smelled gin—no tonic—and he was uncomfortably aware that she wore nothing beneath a yellow silk kimono that reached barely to her thighs. The warmth of her was overpowering. “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God. I was afraid you’d decided not to come.” She raised her face as if for a kiss.

He took her chin between thumb and forefinger and forced it away as gently as possible, which wasn’t too gently; he was alarmed. Her makeup was streaked, and for a terrible moment he thought she was bruised. Had she had a visit similar to his? He asked again if she was all right.

The roughness of his handling seemed to bring her out of whatever fog she was in. She shuddered in his arms and straightened, pushing herself away. A hand went to her hair, smoothing it back from where it had fallen about her face. There were no marks, except for bluish circles beneath her eyes. She nodded. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I need a friend.”

“Has something happened?”

“No. The phone keeps ringing, that’s all. They don’t leave messages. I guess they’ve given up on my ever calling them back. They’re getting less persistent. Craig isn’t that big of a story. They’re more interested in who killed Michael Jackson’s giraffes.”

He was surprised reporters were still calling at all. Hunter’s name seemed to have slipped clear off the air. But he didn’t say that. “Where do you keep the coffee? I’m sorry to be blunt, but you stink at drinking.”

“I’m getting better with practice.”

They went into the living room with his arm around her waist. It was impossible to avoid close contact in that position and he tried to keep his mind off the heat coming from her skin. He deposited her gently on the sofa, looking anywhere but at her legs as she crossed them, and went to the kitchen without asking directions again to the coffee. At the arch he stopped, went back, and moved a half-full bottle and a smeared glass out of her reach.

“That won’t stop me,” she said. “I ran the Malibu Marathon.”

“I’m not going to confiscate it. I don’t work for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. But it would be a big help if you gave it a rest. I think the ratio of cure to cause is four cups of Maxwell House to an ounce of Gordon’s, and I don’t know how much you have on hand.”

“This is the last of it. Craig pretty much cleaned out the bar when he left.”

“How much coffee is what I meant.”

“Craig was the coffee drinker. You might find some still in the pantry. It’s probably stale.”

“It’s the caffeine that counts. You’ll just have to put up with the taste. Amateur drinkers shouldn’t be left on their own.”

He found an unopened jar of Folger’s instant and a teakettle and filled it with water. While he waited for it to boil he went back out to join her and found her sprawled to one side on the sofa with her kimono gaping, showing more cleavage than he found comfortable. She was snoring softly. He arranged her into a less awkward reclining position and covered her with a decorative shawl he drew off the arm of a chair.

Sleep was an even better restorative than coffee. He returned to the kitchen, took the kettle off the burner, and turned off the stove. Before he let himself out, he’d empty the gin bottle into the sink. It would make him feel like Eliot Ness, but a person unaccustomed to alcohol was less likely to go out for a refill once the supply was gone.

“I find a man in the kitchen sexy.”

At the sound of Lorna’s voice he turned and saw her supporting herself against the side of the arch. The sash of her kimono was untied, exposing the entire front of her person. She was smiling lopsidedly.

“How about it?” she asked. “Is this anything like you pictured?”

“Lorna, we’re friends.”

“We could be friends with benefits.”

“I can’t. There’s someone in my life.”

“Where is she?”

“Seattle.”

“Last time I looked, Seattle was a loooong way away.”

He approached her. She pushed herself upright, swaying as she spread her arms. He jerked her kimono shut, tied the sash, encircled her waist again, more tightly this time, and bundled her back to the sofa in the living room. He let go and with a push of his hip dropped her onto the cushions. She went, “Oof!” and glared up at him with an angry flush.

“I don’t expect you to thank me,” he said, panting a little from the exertion (and—he was honest with himself—desire). “I just don’t want you hating us both tomorrow.”

She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

He didn’t dare try to comfort her. In the present state of affairs he wasn’t sure if loyalty to Harriet and respect for Lorna were enough to withstand temptation a second time. He said he’d call her in the morning and left.

He was halfway home before he remembered the bottle still standing on the coffee table. To turn back was dangerous. She was a grown woman, as she’d proven beyond a doubt. He couldn’t be there to help the Craig and Lorna Hunters of the world every hour of the day and night.

It was late when he’d gathered the ruins of his sofa bed into something approaching comfort and fell into a deep sleep. He dreamt not of movies or actors, but disturbingly erotic images of Harriet and Lorna and himself. He had a vague sensation they were being watched. At first the voyeur seemed to be Henry Anklemire, got up in his cartoonish golfing togs, cheering them on with a putter in one hand, but then his features blurred and were replaced by Craig’s, observing them sadly and solemnly and silent as a tomb.

Valentino sat up straight, soaked with sweat and feeling a terrible sense of naked shame. It was as if he’d betrayed three people at once, one of them deceased.

He had no idea how long his telephone had been ringing before he was aware of it. He read the ID and groaned. It was Lorna again. He considered unplugging it, but the last time he’d ignored a late-night call, tragedy had followed.

He picked up. “Lorna, I—”

“You bounce back pretty fast.” A male voice, flat as asphalt but much harder. “I must be losing my edge.”

The perspiration coating his body turned to ice. “Pollard.”

“This boy’s got connections,” the thug said away from the mouthpiece. “I bet he knows your name, too.”

Dickey Wirtz wheezed something Valentino didn’t catch.

Pollard came back on. “I got somebody here wants to talk to you.”

There was a pause, then another voice spoke, sober now and shaking. “Val?”

“Lorna?” He gripped the receiver hard.

She started to say something, but was cut off. Pollard said, “You seen enough crime pictures to know how this works. The film for the woman. No police.”

“How do you know I’ve got the film?”

He wanted to take the words back as soon as they left his mouth. The flat voice chuckled.

“I do now. Don’t bother coming to Tarzana, ’cause we’ll be gone by the time you get here. You got one hour. Here’s the address.”

Valentino fumbled on the light and reached for a pencil, then stopped. He knew the place nearly as well as The Oracle.

20

POLLARD HAD SAID
no police. He hadn’t said come alone.

Valentino thought first of Kyle Broadhead, then rejected the idea. For all his mental energy, the professor was advanced in years and even less of a match for a pair of professional bone-breakers than he. If something happened to him, Fanta would never forgive Valentino, and he would never forgive himself.

Harriet would insist he go to the law, an institution to which she belonged, but however careful the police were not to be spotted, he couldn’t risk bringing them in with Lorna in the clutches of such as Pollard and Wirtz.

Well, he’d brought luck the first time.

Jason Stickley answered his cell on the second ring. He sounded fresh despite the hour. He listened to the request, then said, “Sure.”

“You need to think about it longer. This could be dangerous.”

“As dangerous as the last time?”

“More. These characters don’t care about the consequences of their actions. They killed Craig Hunter, they beat me up, and they almost killed Teddie Goodman. I don’t feel right about asking you at all. If they find out I didn’t come alone, there’s no telling what they’ll do, except it will be unpleasant. But I need someone to know where I am in case they don’t intend for Lorna and me to come out.”

“Are you going to give them the film?”

“I don’t have any choice. It’s her life if I don’t.”

“There’s plenty of scrap film in the UCLA library. One reel looks like all the rest.”

“I can’t take the chance they won’t identify what’s on it. I knew just by holding it up to the light. They’d probably kill us both on the spot.”

The intern was silent for a moment. Valentino heard throbbing, industrial-style music in the background. “I’m in.”

“Only if you agree not even to come into the same block unless I signal you otherwise. We’ll rig up something in case they take away my cell.”

“Okay. You know the place you dropped me off for a minute last time?”

He remembered the yellow-brick factory building more than a century old. “Yes.”

“You can pick me up there. It’s on the way.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Valentino hung up.

“Be
where
in ten minutes?”

He jumped a foot. Harriet had a key to the front door and had climbed the flight of steps noiselessly to the projection booth. She wore the loose-fitting jeans and unstructured jacket she always flew in and carried her travel bag strapped over one shoulder. She looked exhausted but beautiful in the short ash-blond hair that complimented the classic shape of her head, and suspicious in the extreme.

“My gosh, you scared me,” he said. “When did you get in?”

“Half an hour ago. Be
where
in ten minutes,” she repeated. “It’s after midnight.”

“Why didn’t you call me to pick you up?”

“I started to give you my flight information this morning. After we were cut off I tried you here and at the office. Finally I decided to throw myself at the mercy of an L.A. taxi. I’ve had more pleasant experiences dissecting corpses three weeks old. I asked you a question.”

“I can’t tell you. There isn’t time.”

“Tell me in the car.” She dropped her bag.

“Harriet, please trust me. I wouldn’t leave you in the dark if the situation weren’t crucial.”

“Crucial in your case usually means murder. Has this anything to do with Craig Hunter?”

He should have known she’d bring herself up to date on all recent murders. She knew Craig was an acquaintance. “Yes.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Jason.”