AS WAS SO often the case when it came to digging up long-ago events, the interview with Roy Fitzhugh had left Valentino with as many questions as answers.
Was Ivy Lane a murderess, if not directly, then by proxy? A spat over a casting decision seemed a flimsy motive for taking a human life; but then, the motion-picture industry was ruled by ego, and what would seem ludicrous in every other society was a matter of survival in the precarious business of entertaining a fickle public. At the time Bleak Street was in production, barely a generation had passed since the talkie revolution had carved a bloodbath through Hollywood royalty. The image of John Gilbert, the brightest star of his era, scraping along playing bit parts on stages he’d commanded only a few years before, was etched indelibly in memory.
William Goldman, the late great screenwriter, had said it best: “Never underestimate the insecurity of a major star.”
Or:
Could the old man have deliberately misled Valentino with well-timed displays of false senility? He had by his own admission withheld crucial evidence from the police, despite the stone-age methods of interrogation in those pre–Civil Rights days. Since then he’d had decades to perfect his act. A man stuck in the unchanging routine of assisted living might exploit a young visitor’s gullibility for no reason other than his own amusement.
And what of Madeleine Nash? Ignacio Bozal had provided a bucolic sketch of a gifted player who had turned her back on stardom for marriage abroad, while Fitzhugh had said she’d died “too young.” How young was too young? What, precisely, did those two words mean to a man pushing ninety?
In the end, Valentino trusted neither man not to have sent him on a wild-goose chase, just because he could. Eyewitness testimony was reliable only when it was confirmed, and the Grim Reaper had swept his sickle through the population of witnesses who could corroborate or contradict their stories. When it came to cold cases, Van Oliver’s was forty below zero.
He crossed the city limits and turned onto Ventura, which had been transformed into a parking lot. Police barricades blocked the lanes in both directions. Two stuntmen were fighting on the roof of a four-story building in the next block, their fists swishing an inch past each other’s face, with a stack of mattresses and empty cardboard boxes reaching from the sidewalk in front to the second floor. One of the men at least would plunge into that safety net eventually.
It was a familiar disruption in L.A., but that didn’t stop the natives from blowing their horns. This one would go on for a while; the camera crews on the roof and on the street were seated in canvas chairs, drinking bottled water and punching buttons on cell phones while their equipment stood idle. When the rehearsal would end and the actual filming would begin was anybody’s guess, including the director’s. Valentino switched off his ignition. He was nursing his domestic compact along until such time as the revenue from The Oracle laid his worst debts to rest, and the tired motor stalled whenever it idled longer than a minute.
He tapped his own horn for the sake of the brotherhood of the boulevard, then picked up his own phone and hit speed dial. One fought fire with fire, and old men with old men.
“That’s never a good sign,” Kyle Broadhead said.
The sign read CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH, and it was stuck to the glass entry door to The Brass Gimbal.
Valentino caught the attention of a man in a black polyester suit, white shirt, and black knitted necktie, a bureaucrat straight from central casting. He’d just finished smoothing the adhesive border to the glass.
“Is this temporary?”
“Not up to me; at least until the board sends me back for a compliance visit and I see what’s what. I found a whole colony of cockroaches playing leapfrog in the salad bar.”
“The Green Screen?” Broadhead said. “I told Fanta there’s a reason rabbits don’t live long.”
“Where do we go now?”
Broadhead waved an arm, taking in the Starbucks on their side of the street and its double on the opposite corner. “Take your pick.”
The one they chose was crowded, with a long line, but the barista in charge was efficient. Ten minutes after they entered, the pair took their tall high-dollar waxed-paper cups, a cruller, and a lemon-filled long john to one of the stand-up tables and rested their elbows. Valentino had bought, as he’d suggested the conference. While waiting in line he’d filled in his mentor on what he’d learned.
“Roy Fitzhugh,” Broadhead said. “They built this town on his back. He never starred, went unbilled often as not; just showed up on time every day, sober and on his mark, lines down pat, and made ten pictures to Clark Gable’s one. No Oscars, not even a nomination, but he lent money to some who won.”
Valentino blew steam off his cup. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about him.”
“I don’t; yet I do. He represents an endangered species. Movies are technically better than ever, and their top-notch talent are almost worth their confiscatory salaries, but the industry will never again have the deep bench of supporting players it had in the old days. As soon as one gets more than a just a mention in the trades, the studio builds a feature around him, and lets whatever other project that might have benefited from his contribution collapse under its own weight. And so Adam Sandler winds up carrying the film on his hydrocephalic head.”
“Stirring speech, Kyle, although if you’re planning to address a Guild meeting you’d better be sure Happy Gilmore isn’t in attendance.”
“I don’t give speeches; it’s in my contract. I’m quoting chapter two of the new book.”
“I’ll be sure and pick up a copy. Right now it doesn’t solve my dilemma.”
“It’s not your dilemma. Go back to Henry Anklemire and tell him he’ll have to work with what he’s got. He’ll whine a spell and kick a cat out a window, then put his nose to the stone.” He shook his head. “All this time you’ve spent around old crocks like me and you still haven’t learned you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I do if I want to keep on paying my bills.”
Broadhead dunked his pastry in his coffee and twirled it like a swizzle. “They call me an ornament of the university. You know what an ornament is? A strip of colored paper you throw out after a party. It’s the pillars that stick.”
“I’m a pillar?”
“Shut up. I don’t know why the sky pilots call pride a sin. Modesty’s worse. Every time you snag a rare film and give it to the program, you dig your toe in the dirt and say your reward is in serving the cause of cinema history. You’ve accomplished more than all your predecessors put together.”
“I wouldn’t say—”
“Sinner! Damn it, man, you need to cash in on your reputation! You could strangle the dean’s wife live on TMZ and he’d have Anklemire spin it so it came out you were giving her the Heimlich maneuver. You’re bullet-proof, and you’re afraid a Nerf ball will shatter a rib.”
Valentino watched him rescue the sodden doughnut from ruin. It seemed to require all his concentration. “I guess I could just walk away.”
“You guess? Were you this clueless when I had you in my class, or am I the only one here who’s getting smarter?”
He let Broadhead have that one. It was preferable to the reaction he’d get if he told him he didn’t want to walk away. He had the scent now.
He took a last bite of his cruller and a swig of coffee. It was still hot enough to poach an egg. “Let’s blow.”
Broadhead stared. “How many of those hard-boiled flicks have you been watching?”
They bussed their table and stepped outside. The sun had dipped below the smog, tinting its normally brown underside an eerie shade of copper. Like the green sky that warned the Midwest of a tornado, it promised a major ozone alert by morning, and with it the standard official admonition to avoid going outside, which few locals obeyed. Valentino was parked across the street. He offered Broadhead a lift.
“I’ll walk. It may be my last fresh air for a spell. Also I enjoy the look on the faces of Angelinos when they see a man using his feet for something other than the gas pedal.”
They shook hands and the archivist stepped off the curb.
“Look out!”
A black, slab-sided town car with shuttered headlights sped straight at Valentino. He leapt back onto the sidewalk just as it swept past, close enough to snag the hem of his jacket in the slipstream. Braking, its tires shrilled, slewing the vehicle into the curb.
The window hummed down on the passenger’s side and the driver leaned across the seat, framing his face in the opening. Teak-colored eyes in a nut-brown face caught Valentino’s gaze. “Sorry, buddy. Didn’t see you. I will next time.”
The car slammed into gear and was gone around the corner before Valentino could react.
Broadhead seized him by the shoulders from behind and spun him around. “That maniac! Are you okay?”
“Did you hear what he said?”
“No. What?”
Somehow it sounded even more suggestive when he repeated it.
“Huh.” The professor looked at the little haze of dust still settling in the car’s wake. “I guess this would have been a good time to get a license number.”