VALENTINO HAD COME face-to-face with a ghost; but he needed no mirror to know what his own face looked like. The man at the door stared, his eyes as big as pancakes.
“Who is it, Emiliano? Oh.” Coming up behind him, Esperanza stopped, paling under her natural coloring.
In that moment Valentino was sure who it was who had substituted random footage for Bleak Street, and that Bozal knew nothing about it.
She touched the stranger’s arm. “Está bien, hermano.”
He stepped away from the door. Valentino entered and pushed it shut behind him.
Emiliano looked less mysterious than he had across the street from The Oracle. Gone were the hat and trench coat. He wore a black T-shirt with the AC/DC logo on the front, faded jeans artfully ripped at the knees, and flip-flops. Still, his facial resemblance to the young Van Oliver was uncanny.
Esperanza had changed from her red sheath to a tank top over pleated slacks, and from heels to pink high-top sneakers. Her abundance of blue-black hair, high coloring, and bare brown shoulders were just as striking without the slinky outfit.
The room reflected her personality, with bright pink-and-black striped wallpaper, a rumpled bed with a canopy supported by minimalist black iron uprights, and posters of glamorous female pop stars of Spanish blood on the walls. There was a strong odor of night-blooming jasmine that Valentino recognized from their first meeting. It wasn’t nearly as overpowering as Bozal had described it, except psychologically.
“I think you know why I’m here,” he said.
“Who is this man?” said the Oliver clone.
Esperanza snapped her tongue off her teeth. “Don’t pretend you’re stupider than you are. Valentino, this is Emiliano, my brother.”
At close range, the other was close to his sister’s age; it was the air of intrigue that had made him look older. His features could be taken for Hispanic or Italian or Middle Eastern, as could Van Oliver/Benny Obrilenski’s Semitic ones. The skin wore a slightly olive cast.
“You almost killed me with your car.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His expression was sullen.
“Oh, stop it,” Esperanza said. “He knows it was you both times.” She turned to Valentino. “He rented the car. If he’d borrowed one of Grandpapa’s, it would have given us away. You’d have spotted it following you all the way to that Starbucks.”
“‘Us’? Why would you want to have me run down?”
“I never wanted that. I told him not to pass too close, just close enough to scare you.”
“It scared me. So did what he said afterwards: ‘Sorry, buddy. Didn’t see you. I will next time.’”
She glared at Emiliano, who shrugged. “I thought it up on the spot. I couldn’t be sure just letting him see my face would do the trick.”
Valentino wanted to ask about that face; but it could wait. “Why would you want to scare me? And why did you switch the films?”
She lifted her chin, and in that moment looked exactly like the portrait of her grandmother. In fact, seeing that haughty beauty in the flesh reminded him of someone else, someone he’d seen recently; or had he? Too much had happened in too short a time for him to sort out all his impressions. It was like trying to recall the details of a dream that faded faster the more he tried: fleeing him.
“No one else must ever see that film,” she said.
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You might as well. I’ve figured out the rest. You’ve seen Bleak Street, or at least a photograph of Van Oliver. When you realized your brother looked enough like him to serve as his imposter, you sent him out to frighten me away from the project. Almost running me down wasn’t enough. I had to have thought I was being stalked by a ghost. Just to make sure, you dressed him up like Oliver and had him show himself outside The Oracle, where you knew I lived. All that was necessary so I wouldn’t press the issue when I found out you’d switched the films.”
“That was his idea, the thing at the theater. I told him it was too risky, but he grabbed a coat and hat from Grandpapa’s closet and did it anyway.”
“I should’ve done more,” Emiliano said. “He didn’t scare as easy as you thought.” He looked at Valentino. “What she says goes. You can’t have that movie.”
“Have it your way, then. Don’t tell me why. Maybe your grandfather can shed some light.” He turned to the door and grasped the knob.
Esperanza dashed across the room and took hold of his arm, tight enough to cause pain. He reacted automatically, seizing both her wrists. All his frustrations went into that grasp. Pain and terror twisted her face. Her brother stepped forward, raising a fist.
“!Alto!” His sister’s shout startled him. He stopped. She made no resistance to Valentino’s manhandling; she was a rag doll. He let go, ashamed. She rubbed each of her wrists, marked vividly by his fingers. “I can’t explain now why we did what we did. That would cause as much harm as if we’d done nothing. If I give you the film, will you promise not to do anything with it and to say nothing to Grandpapa until I can?”
“Why can’t you explain now?”
“Not in this house. I’ll come to you whenever and wherever you like, and then all will be clear. Maybe it will even change your mind about distributing Bleak Street at all.” Once again the chin came up and she balled her fists at her sides. “If you refuse, no one will ever see it again. I’ll destroy it.”
The room filled with silence. Valentino broke it.
“Congratulations.”
A crease marred the smooth brown expanse of her forehead. “For what?”
“You finally succeeded in scaring me.”
She smiled then; the way she had on his last visit. It unnerved him nearly as much as the certainty that she intended to make good on her threat. This girl—no, this woman—was dangerous, and more to be feared than any ghost.
From under her bed she pulled a cardboard carton containing six unmarked film cans. He didn’t wait for her to bring them to him. He swept past her brother, scooped one off the top, opened it, and took out the reel. He unspooled more than a foot of glistening black celluloid and held it up to the light. The first thing he saw was Van Oliver’s face, in its proper place and time at last. Hands shaking with relief, he returned everything to the carton and hoisted it under one arm.
At the door he turned back to face Esperanza Bozal. “One week,” he said. “It will probably take that long to make a copy. If by then I don’t know what this was all about, I’ll put the film into general release. Is that understood?”
Brother and sister nodded in unison.
Outside the house, Valentino began to shake again, this time in every limb. He’d managed to run the first successful bluff of his career.
For it was a bluff. He had Bleak Street, but could not follow through on his threat to release it if Esperanza didn’t hold up her end of the bargain. If he in his turn failed to deliver on his promise to Mark David Turkus and wrap up the Oliver case, he might as well be carrying an empty box.
And then, during the relatively mindless activity of driving back to the secure storage vault at UCLA, it came to him just like that, the answer to everything. It raced through his brain, a surrealist montage of images flashing across his vision like sped-up frames in a film designed to mystify and disturb. It confused, it deranged; it enlightened. When it was finished, he knew what had happened to Van Oliver. Knew it for a certainty.
Now all he had to do was prove it.