Frames (27 page)

“Nice.” Broadhead tested the thickness of the red carpet with a foot. “This should be out on the sidewalk. Haven’t you ever attended a premiere before’?”

“I was afraid someone would steal it. I have to have it back to the Hollywood Foreign Press before the Golden Globes.”

The professor took something from his side pocket and held it out. It was wrapped in silver foil and tied with a red bow. “A housewarming gift. Fanta wrapped it. The number’s the same, and it has some features your old one lacked.”

The package was the size of a deck of cards. Valentino unwrapped it and opened the box. It contained a cell phone, smaller and sleeker than the one Broadhead had thrown out the window on the Santa Monica Freeway. “I’d say you shouldn’t have,” Valentino said, “but of course you should. Thank you.”

It rang, raising two pairs of eyebrows.

“Probably the company,” Broadhead said. “Telling you it’s obsolete and offering to sell you a new one.”

Valentino pulled up the antenna. “Hello?”

“Hey, Doc, you’re killing me. Why didn’t you tell me you were running a sneak preview?”

It was Henry Anklemire in Information Services. “How’d you find out about it?”

“I got sources. Listen, we need the bounce from when the story broke. You can’t live on it forever; people forget. San Diego cops dug up a human femur in the old navy yard this morning. Dem bones of ours are dead as Pharaoh. I can put a photog out front in twenty minutes, get you the front page of the entertainment section.”

“It’s a private showing, Henry. Just for two.”

“Romance! Hey, that’s almost as good as murder. She take a good picture? Never mind, this guy can make Janet Reno look like Britney Spears. Tell her to show some leg.”

“If a photographer shows up, I’ll have him arrested for trespassing.”

“That’s cold. Here I am trying to help, and you set loose the Cossacks.”

“Sorry, Henry.”

Broadhead rolled his eyes and puffed up a head of smoke.

“How about another one of those protest dealies?” Anklemire asked. “Any injuns in that picture?”

“None in the picture, and none out front. They packed up and went back to Berkeley when the police arrested Warren Pegler.”

“That was a bust. He ain’t even going to be tried. A week on Court TV’s as good as thirty seconds in the Super Bowl.”

“Good-bye, Henry. I’ll let you know when we open the film to the public.”

Broadhead watched him flip the phone shut. “Little twerp.”

“Ten more like him and we could revive the career of Bull Montana.”

“Are you sure you know how to handle that projector? I’d feel better if I stayed.”

“I wouldn’t. Three’s a crowd. I can handle a projector.”

“This isn’t a sixteen-millimeter toy.”

“I had a good teacher.”

Broadhead bit down on his pipe. “Don’t noise that around. They might expect me to teach more than two sessions a semester. Try not to touch the film. When you change the reels, don’t forget to put on gloves. I left you a whole package in case you misplace a pair.”

“If I misplace the package, I can always borrow a pair from Harriet.”

“Yes, she’s sure to carry one in her date purse. You know you’ll be jumping up every twenty minutes or so to change reels.”

“That’s why we’re watching from the booth.”

“You fixed it up nice. Comfortable bachelor apartment. Moving in?”

“Just for tonight. I don’t have a certificate of occupancy.”

“For what it’s worth coming from an old widower, you made a fine catch,” Broadhead said. “The shop talk alone should fill the awkward silences.”

“Thanks, Kyle.” He was moved.

Broadhead puffed vigorously. He seemed to be trying to build a smoke screen.

“Speaking of awkward silences,” Valentino prompted.

The pipe came away; went back for another puff, then came away again. “I’m thinking of asking Fanta to marry me.”

“Congratulations. She’s as good a catch as Harriet.”

“I thought you’d be surprised.”

“I’ve been expecting something of the sort ever since you saw her in Michelle Pfeiffer’s dress. You’re not as inscrutable an old coot as you think.”

“But I am an old coot. She had no trouble convincing that gorilla at the Country Home I was her grandfather.”

“She’s a good actress. Dr. Zinnerman owes her an apology.”

“Do your grizzled mentor a favor and forget I said anything. The idea’s demented. I should check out that room.”

“Why don’t you ask her opinion? Over dinner, and wear something that doesn’t look like you borrowed it from Sister Agnes in the Universal wardrobe department.”

“Agnes needs to cool off before I go back there. You dropped that make-believe monocle so many times she couldn’t see through the scratches.” He shook his leonine head. “If anyone from UCLA sees me dating a student, I’ll be out on my pension. It’s marriage or nothing.”

“You’re an ornament of the university. No one forces ornaments into early retirement.”

“Just between you and me, it’s not that early. Very well, I’ll ask her to dinner. Where do young people like to eat these days? Not one of those ghastly nightclubs, I hope.”

“They go there to dance. Take her to the microbrewery.”

“Ump. Romantic.”

“I met Harriet at a crime scene. Our second date was an autopsy.”

“We’re a fine pair of academics, you with your CSI beauty, me with my prom queen. Running around solving murders and haunting old theaters like the Phantom of the Opera. If Henry Anklemire were half the flack he thinks he is, he’d have us up to our mortarboards in paparazzi morning, noon, and night.”

“I’m not an academic.”

“Very well. Archivist.”

“Not that either.” Valentino pocketed his cell phone, took out a silver-plated card case, and handed it to Broadhead, It was engraved:

VALENTINO

FILM DETECTIVE

Broadhead sighed and handed it back. “One would think you were smart enough to save your money. That’s a crystal doorknob for the ladies’ lounge.”

“You’re not the only one who gives me presents.” Valentino admired the case and put it away. “I got it from Harriet for my birthday.”

“Your birthday was in July.”

“We hadn’t met yet. We’re making up for lost time.”

Broadhead’s mouth formed something cutting. Then his face paled a shade. “Fanta’s birthday is next week. What do young woman want these days?”

“How about a complete set of Agatha Christie’?”

The professor went back upstairs to finish adjusting the projector. Alone in the lobby, Valentino saw that a candle had gone out. He lifted the taper off the empty candy counter, lit it from a candle, and stepped over a bank of tiny flames to reignite the wick. When he turned back, the taper burning in his hand, he looked into the stern face of Erich von Stroheim.

The director stood in the center of the red carpet with his feet spread in black boots that glistened to his knees, both hands folded behind his back. Tonight he wore the uniform of a high-ranking officer in the Austrian Imperial Guard, or what Valentino thought such a uniform would look like if he’d ever visited Vienna before the collapse of the empire; it was a dead ringer for the one von Stroheim had worn in
The Merry Widow,
down to the skintight black tunic paved with medals and crowned with epaulets and ropes of braid, and the spiked helmet fixed with a gold tassle that hung down to cover it completely, like the fezzes worn by Shriners. His monocle glittered, and candlelight twinkled on the rows of decorations from battles won and lost. His tan riding breeches showed every muscle in his powerful thighs; the old auteur had observed a military regimen of exercise in his prime. Valentino smelled polished leather; a new feature in these visitations. The others had been sight and sound only.

“Look,” Valentino said, “you can stop pestering me now. The silver nitrate’s here, and we’ve got it on safety in negative and positives in long-term storage. We’re releasing it to theaters through MGM next spring. It’ll be out on DVD in the fall. I don’t know what else I can—”

A palm in an immaculate white glove swept out from behind the other’s back and up, silencing him. It snapped down to his side, the thumb precisely parallel with the seam of his breeches. He stood motionless in that position for what seemed a full minute. Then he bowed, a short, jerky movement from the waist, no more than an inch. His heels collided with an explosive charge. He straightened and swept up his other hand. The braided leather riding-crop he held in it touched the visor of his helmet. It swished when he swept it back down.

The toe of one boot hooked itself behind the heel of the other, and with one movement, von Stroheim turned his back on his host and marched directly into the full-length stained-glass window in the wall. His squared shoulders and pinched waist blended with those of the Teutonic knight silhouetted on the panes and evaporated.

For an instant between the bow and the salute, Valentino thought he’d seen a tear gleam in the autocrat’s naked eye. Surely he’d imagined that part.

“Are you interviewing ushers tonight?” Broadhead asked.

Valentino jumped. He hadn’t heard him coming down from the projection booth. He blew out the taper and turned to face his friend standing in the auditorium doorway. “Not yet. It’s way too early for that. Why?”

“Then who was the character in the uniform?”

“You
saw
him?”

“I couldn’t miss him in that getup.” He looked around. “Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know, but don’t tell Harriet.”

**

She arrived by cab, wearing a simple black dress, high heels, and a white lace wrap covering her bare shoulders. Valentino opened the car door for her and paid the driver. They entered the lobby arm in arm. “You look beautiful.”

“So do you. I wasn’t sure about the dress. All these years in L.A. and I’ve never been to an opening.”

“Not even with your negative cutter?”

She kissed him. It lasted fifteen seconds.

When their lips parted, she leaned back in his arms and used her fingertip to rub lipstick from his mouth. “That was to shut you up. You don’t bring up old relationships on a hot date.”

“I’d better get a booster shot, just in case.” He kissed her.

He took her on a tour of the ground floor. She gasped when they entered the auditorium. The light coming from the square opening of the booth flattered the threadbare carpet and the rows of seats awaiting reupholstering. He’d spent all day dusting and polishing the woodwork and climbing up and down a stepladder with a broom, sweeping cobwebs out of the coffers. He’d had the shreds of the old linen screen removed and replaced with one made of a synthetic material that seemed to provide its own source of illumination. “I never dreamed you’d made so much progress,” she said.

“Most of it’s illusion. It’s Hollywood, don’t forget. The halfway point’s still so far away you can’t see it.”

“Are you exaggerating?”

“You’ll know I’m not when you find yourself using the gentlemen’s lounge. They’re still pulling asbestos out of the ladies’.”

“What about your organ?”

He hesitated, searching her face in the reflected light. “The
pipe
organ! It needs new stops, a new pedal assembly, new everything. We evicted a family of mice from one of the pipes. A man’s on his way from Chicago to dismantle it and put it right. He works for the company that made it originally. It’s still in business; and so will the Oracle be, only not soon.”

“Will you open it to the public?”

“I may have to, to cover the overhead. I haven’t decided.”

“Are you going to live here?”

He smiled. “Where better, for a professional film buff?”

“You’ll never get away from the movies.”

“The movies are where you go to get away from everything else.”

She shook her golden head. “I have a confession to make. I’ve never seen a silent movie.”

“What about those Rudolph Valentino shorts in Toronto?”

“We got in a fight during the first scene. I left.”

“That’s not so bad, as confessions go. You have to promise to see it again when it’s scored. Silent films were never really silent. Dr. Broadhead’s prowling the UCLA Music Department for a gifted young composer who won’t charge us the farm.” He opened the hidden door to the stairs. They started up.

“Is a skeleton going to fall in my lap?”

“If it did, you’d probably dust it for prints.”

They entered the projection booth, which bore no resemblance to the gutted chamber of only a month before. Electric lamps cast a soft glow over a pair of armchairs from Valentino’s apartment, a low round coffee table supporting a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses, a figured rug, a sofa that unfolded into a bed. The massive air-cooled projector borrowed from the university stood sentinel at the opening into the auditorium,
Greed
stacked neatly in forty-two archival-quality cans on the floor beside it, the package of disposable latex gloves to hand. Harriet laughed when she saw the microwave oven and packets of unpopped corn.