“TELL ME MORE about this flirting,” Harriet said.
They were dining in The Brass Gimbal, a hangout that favored behind-the-scenes personnel connected to the movie industry: Foley operators, script supervisors, set decorators, wardrobe and makeup specialists, electricians, cinematographers, laboratory technicians, and sometimes second-unit directors, provided they minded their manners and weren’t overheard using terms like auteur, mise-en-scene, or day-for-night; the management valued craftsmen above artists. On occasion an A-list movie star would ask for a table, but although the establishment turned away no one, a chilly reception and indifferent service discouraged a return visit.
It was far from Harriet’s favorite meeting place (iceberg salad was the only item listed under “healthy choices”), but since it stood approximately halfway between the UCLA campus and LAPD headquarters, they often met there for lunch; on this day, more particularly supper. Four hours had slipped out from under Valentino unnoticed as he was convening with Old Hollywood in the undergrad library, and Harriet was due back at work in an hour. A bus transporting prisoners from the Riverside County jail to San Quentin had gone off the Pacific Coast Highway in a fiery crash near Long Beach, claiming the lives of half a dozen convicts, and the entire CSI unit had been recruited to help out with identification.
Notwithstanding her pressing schedule, she’d taken time to change from her smock and sweats into a sleek sleeveless dress that displayed her well-developed biceps to advantage; turn over just a few more cadavers and she could out-arm-wrestle him ten times out of ten.
“Flirting, that’s what you took from what I said? I’m more or less under Anklemire’s orders to plunge headfirst into a sixty-year-old police case, and all you heard was a girl batted her eyes at me?”
She poked her fork at a pile of bleached pasta topped with black squid ink—the weekly Monochrome Special—like a farmer trying to skewer a trespasser hidden in a haystack. “She batted her eyes, seriously? That’s the kind of detail I’m after. As for the other, you were up to your chin in disgruntled cops when we met, and many times thereafter. Who was it who said that beyond a certain point all risks are equal?”
“The captain of the Lusitania. She didn’t exactly bat her eyes; that was just an expression. I’m not even sure she was coming on to me. Maybe she’s that way with everyone and just doesn’t realize what it looks like.”
“You’re sweet.” She smiled. “And worse than blind. When you do manage to see something that isn’t on cold celluloid, you talk yourself out of it.”
“Are you saying you’re jealous?”
“Not of you. You I trust. This girl, this Appasionetta—”
“Esperanza.”
“Even worse. How do parents know? They look at one baby through the glass in the maternity ward and say, ‘Esperanza.’ They look at another and say, ‘Harriet.’”
“You don’t have to fish for compliments. You know very well you’re attractive.”
“Anyone can manage attractive. I want to be drop-dead gorgeous, like your Spanish señorita.”
“I never said she was drop-dead gorgeous. I didn’t even describe her.”
“You didn’t have to. Vixens all run to a type at that age, regardless of their nationality. My father always said if you want to know what a girl will look like in twenty years, take a look at her mother.”
He put down his triple-decker burger—the BCU (“big close-up”) half-eaten. His eyes had been bigger than his stomach after missing lunch, and in any case the turn the conversation had taken had squelched his hunger. “Apart from being sexist and possibly racist, there’s no evidence to support it in this instance. I never met her mother, but I’ve seen a portrait of her grandmother in Bozal’s living room. Even allowing for artistic license, she was stunning.” Belatedly, he added: “Not that any other woman’s looks interest me.”
She laughed, instantly dispelling the gloom. “I’m teasing, Val. Any serious rivals I ever had for your affections have been dead for years. Hedy Lamarr, for example. She was brilliant and beautiful.”
He changed his expression by force of will. He suspected he’d been pouting. “Torture isn’t teasing.”
“You’re right, of course. It’s just that it’s always been a mystery to me that you never raise a fuss when I work late with those young studs in the lab.”
“You dissect corpses for a living. It’s not exactly soft music and candlelight.” He picked up his burger. His appetite had returned. “You’re just as much of a detective as the suits in Homicide. What do you make of this Van Oliver angle?”
She sat back with her Perrier (she was on duty, after all). “I’d say the danger’s minimal. He’s been missing since Eisenhower, and all the dese, dem, and dose guys he associated with are either six feet under or sucking oxygen from portable tanks in stir.”
He stifled a smile. He couldn’t imagine her using “stir” in that context before taking up with a fan of crime films and prison flicks.
She didn’t notice, or feigned not to. “The police shouldn’t be a problem. All the cold cases that need to be transferred to hard drive are backed up as far as the Pet Rock, so the Oliver file will go on feeding silverfish in the sub-basement at HQ through the Second Coming, or until the L.A. Times is hard enough up for a Sunday feature. Even if you crack the case, any egos you might bruise in the CID are on pension; worst they can do is block your parking space with their walkers.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was sort of hoping you’d talk me out of it. Kyle was right when he said I shouldn’t have had ‘film detective’ printed on my business cards. I never meant it to be taken seriously.”
“You should’ve known. Henry’s been a promoter all his life. He thinks artistic license is a permit to shoot painters and poets.” She looked at her watch, laid down her napkin, and slid out of the booth. “Gotta go see a man about some stiffs. Stay here and have dessert. The ‘Key Light Pie’ doesn’t look too terribly lethal.” She stooped and kissed him on the cheek. “Give my regards to the fossils.”
“I didn’t tell you I’m going to the Country Home.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s your version of Google.” She breezed on out, trailing admiring male gazes all the way to the door. Drop-dead gorgeous, Valentino thought.
Woodland Hills, site of the Motion Picture Country Home—a facility operated by the Screen Actors Guild to keep dues-paying members in comfort and dignity during their declining years—wasn’t far, but figuring in rush hour, Valentino would likely find the doors closed to visitors when he got there. He went back to The Oracle instead and did his homework.
The climate-controlled basement housed his huge store of DVDs, opposite his smaller collection of master prints in approved aluminum containers. He selected a number of titles on disc and took them up to the projection room, which doubled as his apartment. There, a laser projector mounted to the ceiling shared space with the massive twin Bell & Howells he reserved for screening movies on celluloid. He switched on the laser unit, fed a DVD into the player, and settled in for an evening filled with paranoid crooks, sadistic cops, wicked women, and lonely men pushed to the limits of human endurance.
Laura first: Murder victim Gene Tierney’s portrait, haunting detective Dana Andrews from the grave; Clifton Webb’s effeminate intellectual snarking his way toward double-murder; Tierney’s sudden emergence from beyond the pale; and weak playboy Vincent Price, no doubt watching Webb’s performance closely for future reference as his own career took a new turn shortly thereafter. The differences between the portrait that director Otto Preminger eventually chose to replace the one now in Valentino’s possession were marked, but both bore a resemblance to something the film archivist could not quite place. He knew this would vex him until he found the missing link.
Double Indemnity next: Cocky insurance peddler Fred MacMurray, caught in the web spun by restless housewife Barbara Stanwyck, following his male member to homicide and eventually his own death.
Pitfall. Bored suburbanite Dick Powell, derailed from marital fidelity by Lizabeth Scott’s beauty and victimized innocence, threatened by the hulking jealousy of Raymond Burr (pre–Perry Mason) and cornered into the fatal shooting of another victim, a confession to the police, and the destruction of his family life.
Out of the Past. Perhaps the granddaddy of them all. Robert Mitchum refuses to send Jane Greer over for ripping off racketeer Kirk Douglas and pays for it with all three of their lives.
Each was different, but it followed a universal theme: Guilt, flight, regret, resignation, oblivion, either one’s own death or the end of all that was good in his (and sometimes her) life. “Once,” went the confession, “I did something wrong.”
It was said these films had no color, only black, white, and gray; but he saw a deeper hue, one that blended light and shadow into a melancholy wash of fear, despair, tragedy, and regret: midnight blue. No, darker yet. Indigo.
Still in a mood to be moody (but also in the interest of laying groundwork for tomorrow), he surfed his way through a string of low-budget B-thrillers showcasing Roy Fitzhugh in brief but memorable roles, doing the hatchet work for criminal superiors, swapping one-liners with fellow fast-talking newspaper reporters, driving cabs, and ratting out his underworld colleagues. Most of these activities led him directly to his doom. From film to film he honed the dying scene to perfection, executing a mortally wounded swan dive off a rotting pier, dancing a macabre jig in step with Tommy-gun rounds slamming into his torso, smacking both palms against a pane of glass with bullets in his back. He was the Astaire of the alley, the Caruso of canaries, the Garbo of the gutter. In his best year he earned scale, the Screen Actors Guild minimum.
Valentino fell asleep during Corpse and Robbers and woke up to the sound of the overture, informing him the movie had ended and the disc had returned to the menu. He switched everything off and crawled into bed without undressing.
He dozed off quickly, but heard himself saying, “Am I doing something wrong?”