THAT SATURDAY HAD been set aside for months: Harriet wanted to take in the annual Renaissance Fair in Agoura’s Paramount Park. Valentino, who preferred as a rule to limit his theme-park experience to the Universal Studios tour, had agreed, but only because a tent showing had been arranged there for the newly restored Black Shield of Falworth, a prize he’d narrowly lost to Supernova International.
“Tony Curtis as a medieval knight?” she’d asked. “‘Yonder lies the castle of my fadda’?”
“He never said that; it’s just another myth, like Cagney saying, ‘You dirty rat.’ But, yes. Mostly I like Torin Thatcher as the master of knights. I think Alec Guinness took notes when he was prepping for Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
“What costume will you wear?”
“Do we have to? I mean, isn’t that for kids?”
“What are we, Ma and Pa Kettle?”
So he put on a leather jerkin and a hat with a feather in it, courtesy of the wardrobe department at Warner Brothers; the outfit had faded from its original Lincoln green and smelled of moth flakes, but the sewn-in label bore the name of Errol Flynn’s stunt double. He felt a little less foolish when Harriet came to her door in tights and a laced corset. At least nobody would be looking at him.
They walked out on The Black Shield of Falworth before the end of the first reel. He was steaming. She laced her arm inside his.
“Sorry, Val. I blame social media. Parents need to teach their brats to keep their opinions to themselves during the campy parts, at least in public.”
He patted her arm. “It’s okay. I guess it is kind of a dumbed-down Ivanhoe.”
“You’ve got it on DVD, right? We’ll watch it in The Oracle.”
“If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. A knock-kneed jester with a neck tattoo scowled at them and said, “Hie thee to a room!”
In the commissary they dined at a trestle table on a mutton joint (Valentino; actually a lamb shank) and roast boar (Harriet; actually a BLT), while jugglers and tumblers performed to the lively strains of a trumpet and lute. After the entertainers exited, he filled her in on his investigation, finishing with the mysterious stranger he’d spotted across from the theater.
“A trench coat and fedora?” she said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“It didn’t seem so funny last night.”
“Did you notify the police?”
“I just did.”
“What am I going to do, track him down, dissect him, and weigh his brain?”
“Thanks.” He put down his knife and fork and pushed away his plate.
“You know what I mean.”
“What could they do? This morning I checked out that doorway. It belongs to a restaurant closed for renovation. There weren’t any Egyptian cigarette butts or darts dipped in African frog venom or bits of clay that can only be found in Argentina. I think someone’s just trying to scare me off the case.”
“You’re an archivist, Val. You don’t have cases. What do you think he’ll do if he can’t scare you off?”
He took a spoonful of mint jelly, testing his stomach’s powers of recovery. “I’m no danger to anyone. Whoever’s responsible for Oliver’s vanishing act—if anyone is—he’s either dead or too old to pose any kind of threat.”
“Still, you should report it.”
“They’d laugh me out of the station.”
She bit into her sandwich, chewed, swallowed. “You’re probably right. A guy dressed like a character out of Oliver’s movie, in the last place in the country that needs a coat and hat of any kind? Who just happened to look up just as you stepped outside, so you could see his face clearly in the light? No one who meant you any harm would do that. You’re right: Someone’s just trying to spook you.”
“It’s working. That thing downtown was a close call.”
“Yes, and I was about to drop a piano on you for keeping that from me when you got to that business across the street. I still might.”
“I didn’t want you to worry in case it turned out to be nothing.”
She pushed away her plate, the BLT unfinished. “Val, if we’re not in this together, what are we?”
“You’re right.”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation.”
“I know. I just—”
“What if some jerk almost ran me down and I kept it from you? How could I know it was an accident? Could be it was someone who knew I was connected with the police. It’s open season on every department, the way the press plays it up every time someone accuses a cop of stepping out of bounds.”
He watched an ogre climbing off the bench belonging to the neighboring table. His green mask was still peeled up from his mouth so he could eat. “I never thought of it that way.”
“I can’t keep walking you through the steps of a relationship. You can’t just jump-cut to another scene when it suits you.”
He smiled. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Don’t even try changing the subject that way. You’re not Kyle.” She plucked a chickpea (the chalkboard menu referred to it as “grapeshot”) off his plate and ate it. “You think Fitzhugh was right and Ivy Lane had something to do with what happened to Oliver?”
“You know what?” He brightened. “I’m going to go with that: The circumstances of her death are sure to be public knowledge by tonight. Access Hollywood thrives on that stuff. It’s just the kind of publicity angle Henry Anklemire can run with.”
“Accusing someone who isn’t here to defend herself, on no evidence but an old man’s suspicions? That’s not like you.”
He chewed morosely. “You’re right, of course. Well, I’m through with it. I’ve taken the thing as far as I can. Whoever my ghost is, he can haunt someone else. Meanwhile we’ll finish duping Bleak Street and hope Turkus will change his mind about releasing it.”
“Let’s drink a hearty quaff of mead in honor of that decision.” She lifted her tankard.
He clanked his against it and sipped. “I never knew ye olde knights of olde drank anything that tasted so much like Diet Pepsi.”
Waiting for her outside a portable restroom, Valentino saw something that stirred the mutton in his stomach. He crossed a long line waiting in front of a food truck and laid his hand on the epauleted shoulder of a figure in a trench coat with a hat pulled low over his forehead. The figure started and turned. It was a boy of seventeen or eighteen with a pearl in his nose that looked like a giant zit. Valentino turned his palms up in apology and walked back the way he’d come. America’s youth had a lot to learn about what constituted Renaissance wear.
On Monday, he dropped by the lab. Jack Dupree, sporting a white smock in place of his heavy-duty chemical wear, came out of the restricted area, looking less greenish under his dark pigment than he had the day after the celebration in the Bradbury Building.
“Looks like Dr. Broadhead’s Elixir cleared away the alcoholic clouds,” Valentino said in greeting.
“That, and the ice-cold beer I had for breakfast.”
“Any progress on Bleak Street?”
The smile evaporated. “You know, we moved it up on the schedule as a favor to you and Broadhead. Practical jokes don’t fly in cases like that.”
“What kind of practical joke?”
Dupree studied his expression. “Let’s go to the movies.”
Gone was the old screening room with linoleum floors, folding chairs, a roll-up screen, and a projector on a squeaky cart. Thanks in no small part to some high-profile discoveries made by Valentino, alumni donations had paid for a soundproof chamber with blackout walls and ceiling, graduated seats, interchangeable high- and negative-gain screens, noise-absorbing carpeting, a ten-channel stereo receiver, concert-class speakers, and acoustic diffusers that reflected sound evenly in all directions. This was no plush theater like Ignacio Bozal’s or The Oracle, but a room intended strictly for the scientific study of film, as up-to-the-minute as a NASA control room. Equipment designed to project both digital and analog images made it possible to view either Julia Roberts or Greta Garbo at the top of their form, in sharper focus than the originals.
Some things never changed, however. At Kyle Broadhead’s insistence, the university kept a certified projectionist on permanent retainer, not to please the union so much as to ensure the proper handling of his department’s most valuable properties. This one kept sentry in a booth above the top row in back.
Dupree sat down beside Valentino in the center sweet spot. “Roll ’em, Sid!” To the archivist: “The can said ‘Bleak Street, Reel One.’”
Minutes later they watched a lively figure whistling as he steered a boat, spinning the spoked helm and tugging a steam whistle. The character was instantly recognizable in the most remote corners of the world, and had been seen by more people than George Washington, Napoleon, Shirley Temple, Mao Tse-Tung, and Oprah Winfrey combined.
“Steamboat Willie,” Valentino whispered. “What—?”
Dupree said, “I prefer to call him Mickey. I’ve been on a first-name basis with him since I was ten. That’s when my parents took me to Disneyland the first time. Okay, Sid!”
The film stopped fluttering through the gate and the screen went white. The lab technician turned to Valentino. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”