THE DRIVER, AT least, bore no resemblance to the man who had nearly run him down and who had skulked in the shadows outside The Oracle; but his size and fierceness of expression weren’t encouraging.
When he spoke, however, his voice was light, despite the echo chamber that was his chest. “Get in the car, please.”
Please? Not a word in the vocabulary of the usual run of hood that kidnapped citizens on the street in broad daylight. But as Bozal had said, the mob had developed subtle methods since Prohibition. Their victims’ bodies seldom showed up in ditches anymore, for instance, but in the foundations of skyscrapers and football stadiums.
“Another time, maybe. I’m in a hurry.” He turned to go around the man, only to be stopped by a hand on his arm; not as big a hand as Vivien “Bull” Broderick’s, nor the grip as punishing, but not one to be shaken off easily.
What would Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum say in this situation; or Woody Allen, for that matter? He had nothing to lose.
“I know someone who’s bigger than you are.”
The man nodded. His face was grave. “I believe you. I was two months’ premature. Thirty-one ounces at birth. There’s no telling how far I’d have developed if I’d gone full term.” He dropped the hand. “Five minutes. I promise.”
Valentino was pondering just how much damage could be inflicted on a person in five minutes when the window belonging to the rear passenger’s seat hummed down and the man seated there leaned his head out the window. “I’ll drop you off anywhere you want, and send the car back for you when you’re ready. Please.” A latch clicked and the door opened.
He’d feared this was Van Oliver’s ghost—or at least his double—but recognized the face from another time. It belonged to the man who’d once sprung him from police custody on an obstruction case over a property both men were in competition to acquire. Mark David Turkus, the man who’d built a teenage hobby he’d started in his parents’ home into the biggest entertainment vendor in the world, had aged a bit—his trademark do-it-yourself haircut showed traces of gray, and creases had appeared around his plain black-rimmed glasses—but his face retained the naïf quality that had lulled so many of his competitors into underestimating his gift for ruthlessness. “The Turk,” as they came to call him, was Supernova International, as surely as Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan, Sean Connery James Bond, and Pee-wee Herman—well, Pee-wee Herman.
Turkus slid to the other side of the seat. The driver grasped the handle and swung the door wide.
Valentino climbed in and rested his hands on the bag in his lap. As soon as his body made contact with the buttery leather seat, he knew this wasn’t the car that had nearly crushed him downtown. It was like comparing a dinghy to an ocean liner. There was room to stretch his legs without coming into contact with the front seat, and a complete portable bar straddled the upholstered hump above the transmission. Characteristic of his host’s juvenile tastes, among the fifths of premium vodka, bourbon, and single-malt Scotch stood a two-liter bottle of Diet Dr Pepper.
The door snicked shut and the driver returned to his seat behind the wheel. Turkus tipped open the top of a built-in cooler and plunged a silver scoop into the ice. “Libation?” When Valentino declined, he filled a crystal tumbler with cubes and poured soda-pop inside slowly to control the fizzing. “My doctor says that if I insist on soft drinks, I should go with the full-leaded; sugar’s more healthy than artificial sweetener. I’m used to it, though, and I make enough decisions without adding another. What’s your position?”
“I don’t have one.”
Valentino realized then the car was moving; the motor was nearly silent, the suspension of the sort not to be found in any factory. Los Angeles slid past the tinted windows as smoothly as back-projection.
“He’s head of surgery at the Mayo Clinic; but don’t let that intimidate you.” Turkus sipped at the effervescent beverage and belched discreetly into his fist. “A physician who carries five million in malpractice insurance is no one to fear, unless you’re his patient. Where to?”
“Just circle around and drop me off at my car. That shouldn’t take any longer than five minutes, even in this town.” Valentino’s knuckles whitened on the bag in his lap. A man with Turkus’ resources and business savvy posed as much of a threat as a thug with a tommy gun.
“What’ve you got there? You’re holding it like it’s the key to Fort Knox. There’s no gold there, by the way; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff conducted me on a personal tour last year. The actual bullion is stored someplace ten stories underground; can’t tell you where. The fort itself is just diversion: spray-painted wooden blocks surrounded by marines in dress blues. Don’t breathe a word of that to anyone,” he whispered, leaning close. “It’s a state secret.”
“It’s Greed.”
“I’m sorry?”
Valentino patted the bag. “The von Stroheim film. I promised it to a friend. It’s in general release now. Bleak Street is in secure storage, if that’s what you’re getting at.” There was no sin in lying to the competition.
Mark David Turkus laughed; a juvenile laugh, not at all the sinister chuckle of the megalomaniac that Valentino had come to associate him with. It ended in a burp. “Excuse me. I don’t want the film; for myself, I prefer musical extravaganzas, lots of glitz in bright high-key lighting. But I understand the appeal of the dark stuff. It’s why Adolf Hitler’s autograph is worth twenty times Winston Churchill’s. My attorneys assure me Bleak Street is as safe from public viewing as if it were socked away with all that gold in—” He burped again. “Whoops. I almost spilled the beans. Anyway, ironclad doesn’t signify. I make sure everything’s in steel surrounded by concrete; am I right, Sean?”
The driver answered without looking away from the windshield. “Yes, sir.”
Turkus’ smile was boyish. It was one of his most lethal weapons. “Sean’s one of my attorneys.”
“He’s not a bodyguard?”
“That’d be bad for my image. Only gangsters need bodyguards. I selected him on his academic record. He got into Harvard on a football scholarship. When he blew out his knee, he started reading Blackstone. Turned out he had a knack for the law. I asked him to drive only because I just found out today I forgot to renew my license.” Turkus’ face went serious then. “That film must never be exhibited.”
For no reason that Valentino could identify, he sensed he was being asked for help. He pressed the point before he could talk himself out of it.
“If you’ve tied it up so tight, why talk to me?”
“You don’t let things go, that’s why. You’ll appeal the court ruling, and when it holds up you’ll take it to the next court and the next, and even though you’re bound to end in failure, the press will lap it up every step of the way. In this country, and especially in this town, when someone who’s even marginally connected with the entertainment industry pushes an issue, the media take note. As a result, the thing someone has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep quiet—and manages to do so legally—has a way of finding its way to the public, whether or not there’s any evidence to support it. The result’s the same. Someone’s reputation is destroyed, along with thousands of lives that depend on it.”
“Whose reputation are we talking about?”
Turkus pressed a toggle switch in his armrest. A Plexiglas shield slid up between the front and back seats. No doubt it was soundproof, but he lowered his voice anyway.
“Lawyer-client privilege is just a concept,” he said. “You know it exists only when it’s been violated. If you repeat this conversation to anyone and it gets back to me, as I assure you it will, you won’t be able to get a job delivering pizza anywhere in this country. The same goes for your entire staff. Your girlfriend, Miss Johansen? Unemployed and unemployable; thanks to the anonymous donor who made it possible to replace all the onboard computers in the LAPD fleet with next year’s model.
“Not enough? Okay. Everything you brought to the university will become the property of Supernova. Your entire department—the archives, the film library, the laboratory, and the screening facility—will cease to exist.”
Valentino experienced the same chill he’d felt when he saw the phantom outside The Oracle. He swallowed—silently, he hoped. “I take it not telling me what you’re about to tell me is not an option.”
“No, because without an explanation you’d never give up. Even if you failed to find out what happened to Van Oliver, your meddling would revive enough interest to reopen the investigation, if not by the police then by the press. Regardless of whether anything definite comes of it, the muck they’ll rake up will cling to everyone involved with what happened sixty years ago, however remotely. The stock in Supernova will plummet. Who’d place any faith in a business everyone is convinced is founded on murder? The board of directors would have no choice but to force me to resign.”
The car stopped for the light at Hollywood and Vine. A mob of pedestrians in straw hats and loud sportshirts crossed the street in front of them, holding cell-phone cameras at arm’s length trained on the signs identifying the historic corner. Valentino found himself lowering his voice as well.
“What does Supernova have to do with the Oliver case?”
Turkus subsided in his seat, hands dangling limp between his thighs. “My uncle, Constantine Venezelos Turkus; Connie, to his friends. His enemies called him something else. He was the original Turk. You know that saying, ‘He knows where all the bodies are buried’? According to family lore it was Uncle Connie who buried them.”