“KYLE, I NEED your help.”
“Does it have anything to do with Van Oliver?”
“It has everything to do with Van Oliver.”
“Can’t do it, sorry.”
“Kyle—”
“Can’t, son. My gat’s in the shop. The guy offered me a loaner but I said I’d be better off without it for a while. I made a New Year’s resolution to give up gambling and stop shooting people.”
“You don’t gamble.”
“Then I’m halfway there. Call your buddy Anklemire. He’s a smaller target.”
“All I need is some advice.”
“Give it up. How’s that?”
“Kyle, I’m coming over. You can turn me down to my face.”
“Nope. I’m on a fishing boat in Catalina.”
“No, you’re not. I called you at home. You don’t own a cell.”
“Nuts. I won’t answer the door.”
Something clicked. Valentino thought he’d hung up. Then Fanta’s voice came on. “Come on over, Val. I’ll put on coffee.”
Broadhead said, “Get off the extension!”
Valentino said, “I didn’t know you were home.”
“The defense wants to settle the copyright infringement case I was working on. I got the day off.”
“Blast you, woman! I’m going to the club.”
“Shut up, old man,” she said. “They kicked you out for non-payment of dues before I was born.”
Valentino said he was on his way.
Kyle Broadhead seldom went to his office on Monday. He’d lived in a Wilson-era clapboard bungalow in a neighborhood that had gone downhill after the motion-picture colony moved to Beverly Hills and Malibu, then came back when the population swelled between world wars, then slid again during the era of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, but had commenced to climb up again with gentrification. In Valentino’s experience the professor had always kept it up, painting it a cheery yellow every few years, replacing the roof and windows, and overpaying a succession of youths to cut the grass; but since his marriage to Fanta, lilac bushes and beds of iris and poppies the bright orange of crepe paper had transformed it into a modest showplace. Valentino parked in a driveway the couple shared with the house next door, wiped his feet on a crisp new welcome mat, and pushed the bell.
Fanta, tall and tan in a sleeveless white top knotted at her midriff, yellow shorts, and flip-flops, gave him a hug and dragged him over the threshold by the hand. “Welcome, stranger. This is the first time you’ve honored us since the wedding. I was afraid you’d dropped us when I made an honest man out of Kyle.”
“I’m—”
“For the love of Mike, don’t apologize!” came a voice from the little den off the living room. “The whole reason I gave H.R. only a P.O. box for my checks was to keep the university away from my door. If it gets out we invited anyone from work, everyone but the janitor will follow the trail and the next thing you know we’ll be throwing Christmas parties.”
“This is what I live with, Val.”
“I warned you, as I recall.” He followed her into the den.
Broadhead was sitting in the dilapidated overstuffed chair that had held court in the living room from the time he’d moved in until Fanta arrived. He wore a dingy gray cardigan blown out at the elbows, baggy slacks, and heelless slippers on his feet. In front of him, a portable TV set with rabbit ears sat on a combination TV, radio, and phonograph in a console the size and shape of a coffin. Both sets were on with the sound turned down. A baseball game made up of all Japanese players took place on the larger screen, with what looked like a curling competition on the portable, both in silence.
“I didn’t know you were into sports,” Valentino said.
“Not since the introduction of the designated hitter and the reviewed play. I only turn on a game because people keep interrupting my reading.” He marked his place in the book in his lap with a finger.
“He’s talking about me,” Fanta said. “He’s formed the conclusion that if he pretends to be watching, I won’t disturb him.”
“You agreed to that?”
“Humor him in the things that don’t count, so I can nag him into the things that do; like not blowing off friends when they come to him for help.”
“That’s not settled,” Broadhead said.
She leaned down and kissed him on the top of his shaggy head. “Coffee’s almost ready.” She went out and drew the door shut.
Valentino took in the den. It was cluttered with items that had occupied the living room during Kyle’s widowerhood, including a large pewter urn on the mantel of a small gas fireplace. “Is that—?”
“The late Mrs. Broadhead, yes. I wanted to move it out before the honeymoon; I even looked into reserving a space next to her favorite stars in Forest Lawn; by-the-by, Marilyn Monroe’s booked for blocks. Fanta wouldn’t have it. Some nonsense about not erasing my past just because I’ve discovered the future.”
“That sounds like the kind of advice you give your students.”
“Turn those things off, will you? They didn’t come with remotes.”
Valentino switched off the TVs. The pictures imploded and the screens went black. He sat on the arm of a love seat that faced Broadhead’s chair at an angle; the cushions were piled with framed pictures, a loose collection of briar pipes, and ashtrays banished from around the house since it had turned into a place of cohabitation. Somehow it all seemed of a piece with the professor’s lifestyle: Stark and organized at work, chaotic at rest. He listened to the latest development with his lids lowered and his hands folded across his middle, Buddha fashion.
“Steamboat Willie wouldn’t fill five reels,” he said.
“I only saw part of one, but Jack Dupree says the others were a hodgepodge of comedy shorts, newsreels, and out-of-date travelogues. Batista’s Cuba sounds like a fun place to spend a weekend, but only if you’re a Yanqui.”
“You’re sure the film cans were never out of your sight from the time Bozal gave them to you until you put them in storage?”
“I am; and department security has never been compromised in the past.”
“The conclusion being that Bozal switched the reels sometime between the private screening and when he gave you the cans.”
“To state the obvious, yes.”
“There’s nothing so obscure as the obvious, boys.”
Both men looked up at Fanta, who had managed to open the door while carrying a loaded tray without drawing attention. Valentino sprang up to clear rubble off a square ottoman, took the tray, and placed it on the leather seat. The room would not sit three, but she waved off the visitor’s offer to clear the love seat and lifted the steel carafe to pour.
“The trouble with you academic types is you see everything as up and down, left and right,” she said, handing out the steaming mugs. “If you ever spent any time in a courtroom you wouldn’t be so sure. Motive’s everything. Bozal wanted to trade Bleak Street for Greed, correct?”
“That was the arrangement.” Valentino sat back down with his coffee.
“Then why renege? From what you’ve told us about him, he’s not the kind to take foolish chances. He had to have known you’d screen the film again before you delivered on your end.”
“Nothing obscure about that.” Broadhead’s tone was dry.
“Any judge in the district would throw your case against him out of court during the preliminary.” She looked at Valentino. “Did you actually see Bozal put the reels in the cans before he gave them to you?”
“No. As a matter of fact—” He fell silent.
“What?” This in unison from Fanta and Kyle.
“Just a thought.” He stood and set his coffee on the tray untasted. “Thanks, both of you.”
Fanta said, “You’re going out there, aren’t you? East L.A.”
“I’ll call first.”
She smiled. “When I invite myself to someone’s house, I always bring a gift.”
When that sank in, Valentino smiled too.
As arranged over the phone, Jack Dupree met him at the door of the secure storage facility next to the lab with an oversize gym bag in his arms. The technician’s face asked a question. Valentino shrugged an answer, thanked him, and slung the bag over his shoulder by its strap. It was heavy.
A female voice answered the phone at Ignacio Bozal’s house: low-pitched, with a slight Hispanic accent. He recognized it.
“My grandfather’s napping, Mr. Valentino. May I take a message?”
“I’d like to visit, if he has time this afternoon. I have something for him. He’ll know what it is.”
He wished he could see Esperanza Bozal’s face. Her tone was hard to interpret over the wire. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”
Outside, he started down the street to the north lot, where he’d parked. An automobile slowed and turned into the curb as if to let someone out. The driver’s side door swung open, blocking his path. The man who stepped out stood well over six feet tall. His charcoal-gray suit was tailored; had to be, to contain his chest and shoulders. Valentino looked from him to the vehicle. It was a black, slab-sided town car with shuttered headlights.