Valentino: Film Detective Read online

  “Miss Lane is dead. She committed suicide late last night or early this morning.”

  The news came as a physical blow. Valentino had never lived in a world that didn’t contain Ivy Lane. She had sounded so lively over the telephone, so much more like herself than the dozens of female impressionists who had done her onstage in years past. “Have the police definitely established suicide?”

  “We’re waiting for them now,” Georgia Tanner said. “She always came down promptly at eleven for brunch. When she was more than a half-hour late, Vivien went up to look in on her. He tried to wake her, but her skin was already cool. He called me. I found an empty prescription bottle on her bedside table. It was Seconal.”

  “Vivien is the butler?”

  “Bodyguard,” said the giant.

  Valentino looked from him to the attorney. “Why would a seventy-year-old woman need a bodyguard?”

  “She didn’t. She hadn’t since she quit being Hollywood’s Bitch Goddess when CinemaScope came in. But she was accustomed to having one around. She played so many villainesses, you see, and some moviegoers had trouble separating screen reality from the genuine article. That was over long before Vivien came. In his two years here he was more of a companion. He was absolutely devoted to her.”

  He looked again at the big man, and saw that his eyes were pink and swollen. Valentino felt a little more kindly toward him then. They were both fans of Ivy Lane.

  “May I see her?”

  Ms. Tanner was startled. “Why?”

  “I’ve waited all my life. Of course, I’ll understand if you refuse.”

  She consulted the floor. It was blue and white Mexican tile, the same shining squares William Demarest had dropped his cigar ashes on when he came to investigate Cornel Wilde’s murder.

  “I don’t suppose it would do any harm,” she said.

  “I go too.” Vivien sounded like the ape man of old.

  The three walked through large, sun-splashed rooms and up an open swirl of staircase with a brass banister like the railing of an ocean liner. Original paintings for posters advertising Ivy Lane’s movies lined the staircase wall: Ivy locked in steamy embraces with Wilde, Dick Powell, John Payne, Robert Mitchum, Alan Ladd. Invariably, a sinister figure lurked in the keylit background, gripping a gun: Peter Lorre, Elijah Cook, Jr., Steve Brodie—a pictorial Who’s Who of shady supporting players from Central Casting’s endless supply of bottomfeeders. The original Dark Lady of the uncertain postwar period, Lane was the stereotypical seductress who lured the ambivalent hero to the wrong side of the law, and eventually his doom. Her gleaming black tresses and predatory purr had furnished an insidious antidote to the blond, perky heroines who had dominated the cinema before Pearl Harbor.

  The bedroom, done entirely in cream and black and as big as a warehouse, was scarcely large enough to contain the enormity of death. Fresh flowers bloomed unaware in a vase on a low dresser cluttered with unposed family pictures in silver frames; a pair of fuzzy pink slippers on the floor beside the bed and a pale pink silk dressing gown draped over the footboard awaited their mistress. Here the only item pertaining to her movies was the honorary Oscar presented to her two years before by a grateful Academy, looking lonely on a corner of the vanity table. A framed certificate commemorating her efforts on behalf of the World Hunger Foundation occupied a much more prominent position on the wall just inside the door.

  As the trio entered, a man and woman seated next to the sleigh bed looked up at them with bleak eyes. The man was gray-haired, dressed expensively but rather obviously in stacked lapels and a yellow silk handkerchief, and might have been considered large in any company that didn’t include the hulking Vivien. The woman was a few years younger and wore plain slacks and a sweater and no makeup. Her hair was cut short.

  “Dale Grant, Miss Lane’s nephew,” said Ms. Tanner. “His wife, Louise. This is Mr. Valentino.”

  “Valentino will do,” said Valentino.

  Grant rose and offered a listless hand. “Are you a policeman?”

  Valentino shook his head. That made twice in his thirty-three years he’d been mistaken for the law, both times on the same day. “Just a fan. With your permission, I’d like to pay my respects.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s on the news already. I wouldn’t have thought she was such good copy. It’s been so long since she retired.”

  Miss Tanner said, “Valentino is here by invitation. He made an appointment yesterday.”

  “That’s odd.” Grant’s brow puckered. “Aunt Ivy was scrupulous about keeping commitments. Even despondent as she must have been—”

  The attorney interrupted. “These decisions are often made on the spur of the moment, Dale. She put up a cheerful front, but I don’t suppose she ever forgave Hollywood for tossing her on the scrap heap at the age of thirty. There’s talk of remaking Carlotta, with Madonna, of all people. That was Ivy’s signature film. It must have eaten at her, though she wouldn’t show it. She seemed in good spirits when I left her last night; but then, she was an actress.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Be my guest, Valentino. She’ll be on exhibit from now until she’s buried anyway. Too bad she can’t enjoy it. She pretended otherwise, but she enjoyed being the center of attention. If you’ll excuse me.” He went out. His wife remained in her chair for an undecided moment, then got up and followed him.

  “He loved his aunt very much,” Georgia Tanner said. “It was a shock for him to come here for brunch and hear the news.”

  “Is he a bitter man usually?”

  “Only with himself. I understand there was a row when he dropped out of medical school and went into business. Things were never the same between aunt and nephew after that. Not that they ever spoke of it when I was around.”

  Valentino approached the small still figure on the bed. Age had scored and lengthened the face that had seduced half the second string of leading men, and yet the features were girlish in repose. Her hair, tinted yellow now to conceal the gray, was arranged in a demure braid over her left shoulder. She wore a plain flannel nightgown and her slim perfect hands were nearly as pale as the cream-colored spread upon which they rested.

  “Did she leave a note?”

  The attorney shook her head, watching the inert face. “She wasn’t much for writing, notes or letters.”

  “Was she as vain as Grant said?”

  “Not among friends and family, but she liked to put on a show for strangers. She said people who came to see Ivy Lane expected an event, and she wasn’t about to disappoint them.”

  As she spoke, Valentino wandered the room, unobtrusively peeping inside drawers and closets. The inlaid ebony dresser was full of extravagant evening gowns, the racks a riot of rainbow silk and satin negligees. Some still had price tags.

  Vivien’s steam-shovel paw descended upon Valentino’s shoulder.

  “Get your jollies looking at dead women’s undies?” The bodyguard’s voice was a low growl.

  Valentino ignored him—so far as one could ignore a garage door with an attitude. “Was Grant her only living relative?” he asked Ms. Tanner.

  “Yes. There was a son by her first marriage, but he was killed in Vietnam. Why?”

  “Close family members are generally well provided for in wills.”

  She smiled then. “I think you’re starting to take the detecting part of your work too seriously. As much as an adoring fan might prefer to think otherwise, there’s nothing to indicate Ivy didn’t take her own life.”

  “Attorneys who execute wills frequently come in for a handsome commission,” he said.

  Vivien squeezed Valentino’s shoulder. The bones shifted. “You paid your respects, Monsieur Beaucaire. Hit the road.”

  Valentino gritted his teeth against the pain. “What’s a bodyguard’s devotion worth in probate?”

  The reply was a Tarzan yell and constricted ligaments. The film detective felt his blood draining into his feet.

  “We’ll humor him, Vivien. He’s starstruck.”<
br />
  The hand lifted.

  Ms. Tanner crossed her arms. “Ivy’s third husband went through what was left of her fortune thirty years ago. Aside from this house and property, her Social Security pension was all she had, and most of that went into taxes and upkeep. I charged her a minimal fee to manage her affairs.”

  “Was Grant here last night?” he asked Vivien.

  The bodyguard scowled. “No. This is the first time he and Mrs. Grant have been in all week.”

  “Does he have a key?”

  “Sure. He’s her nephew. But nobody comes in or goes out without me knowing.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “Other end of the hall.”

  “Let’s go talk to Grant.”

  “Did I hear my name?”

  The three turned as Dale Grant opened the door from the hall. His wife fluttered in behind him.

  Valentino said, “One question, Grant. How’d you do it?”

  “Do what?” The nephew’s big heatlamp-tanned face was flat.

  Georgia Tanner unfolded her arms. “Now I’m beginning to side with Vivien. Weren’t you listening, Valentino, when I said Miss Lane’s estate wasn’t worth committing murder to acquire?”

  “Wasn’t it? A big house on four acres in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in town? How much was the last offer she refused?”

  The attorney’s eyes dilated behind her glasses. “A million five. She told the agent she’d see him in hell before she’d let some Arab potentate house his harem in the garden.”

  “Was Grant present when the offer was made?”

  Grant’s face darkened. He took a step toward Valentino. The bodyguard held up an index finger as big as a sash weight and he stopped.

  “I’ll guess your method,” the film detective said. “I’ve made a career out of assembling things from scrap. Last night, after Ms. Tanner left and you were sure your aunt and her watchdog were asleep, you let yourself in, dissolved a lethal dose of Seconal into a solution, and injected it into her bloodstream. You’d know how much to use from your medical school training, and anyone can get hold of a hypodermic. Vivien wouldn’t have heard anything from his room because there was no struggle. Being family, you knew where she kept the pills. It wouldn’t have taken any time at all to empty the bottle into a sink, wipe off your fingerprints, and place it on her bedside table to make it look like suicide. A million dollars for ten minutes’ work is good wages even by Hollywood standards.”

  Grant turned to Vivien. “This is my house now. Throw this man out.”

  The big man stayed put. “I don’t come with the house.”

  “Please go on,” said Georgia Tanner.

  Valentino said, “Grant forgot one thing: Miss Lane’s nightgown. You said she liked to put on a show for strangers, and he said himself his aunt liked being the center of attention. She had closets full of beautiful negligees. She would never have taken her own life in plain flannel.”

  A howl, as of a mortally wounded grizzly, shattered the tension in the room. Vivien reached down, gathered Dale Grant’s stacked lapels in his enormous hands, and lifted him off the floor. The nephew gulped air.

  “Put him down!”

  Three heads swiveled toward Louise Grant. Dale’s wife had her purse open in one hand and a hypodermic syringe in the other. She held the needle in an underhand grip like a switchblade. The point glittered. “Put him down or I’ll stick this in one of your kidneys,” she told Vivien. Her thin, drawn face was feral.

  After a moment the bodyguard lowered her husband to the floor and let go. Grant clawed the yellow handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face.

  “She wouldn’t die.”

  The others said nothing, watching the woman. Her knuckles were white on the barrel of the syringe.

  “She was going to outlive us all,” she said. “Dale’s business was failing. She could have sold the house and bailed him out and had plenty left over, but she wouldn’t. I pleaded with her. She said he should have considered the consequences when he dropped out of medical school.”

  “Louise.” Grant twisted his handkerchief between his fists.

  “I knew you’d never do it. She made you dance to her tune the same way she manipulated the men in her movies. I was a registered nurse when I married you. Remember how refreshed you felt this morning? You never suspected I put Seconal in your tea last night. I was gone for over an hour with your keys and you slept right through it.”

  “What are you going to do, Mrs. Grant?” Valentino asked. “There’s no place to run.”

  For a second she appeared lost. Then her eyes grew as cold as the corpse on the bed.

  “Yes, there is,” she said. “The same place I sent the old hag.” And before anyone could move, she stabbed the needle into her left arm and rammed home the plunger.

  “That should do it.” The lieutenant from L.A. Homicide, blond and freckled in a Michael Jackson suit—narrow lapels and a ribbon tie—flipped shut his notebook. He was no William Demarest. “Your name’s Valentino?”

  Valentino nodded and braced himself.

  “That’s Spanish, isn’t it?”

  He relaxed. “Italian. Several generations back.”

  “No kidding. I’ve got an uncle who’s Neapolitan. He married into the family.”

  He wondered if the lieutenant even knew that films had once been silent.

  “Will Mrs. Grant live?” Georgia Tanner asked.

  “Maybe. The EMS boys said there’s a good chance there was just some residue in the needle. If she does it’s off to lockup.”

  He reminded them to come downtown later and make a statement for the record, then left. Valentino and the attorney were standing in the tiled foyer. Dale Grant had accompanied his wife in the ambulance and Vivien was outside making sure the morgue attendants didn’t drop the stretcher containing the mortal remains of Ivy Lane. Ms. Tanner said, “You really are a detective. Did you suspect Louise when you accused Dale?”

  “If I said I did, would you believe me?”

  “I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t think Miss Lane would kill herself because they were doing a crummy remake of one of her best pictures. I saw her bedroom. She placed more importance on old family snapshots and her charity work than she did on her acting career. She may have been a little vain, but she was no Norma Desmond.”

  “Poor Ivy. How she’d have reveled in all this fuss.” She opened the front door for him. “She wasn’t rich, but she always made good on her debts. How can she repay you for solving her murder?”

  Six months later, when California Probate Court was satisfied with the division of the Ivy Lane Estate, a messenger came to Valentino’s office carrying a package containing all four reels of Shades of Night.

  The Frankenstein Footage

  VALENTINO FIXED A DRINK and slumped into the glistening leather armchair he’d bought at Sotheby’s. Both Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet had sat in it in Sam Spade’s apartment in The Maltese Falcon, and although it had since been reupholstered, the chair’s new owner felt as if he drew strength and spirit from it whenever he sat there. Tonight he was low on both.

  The telephone purred on the table beside the chair.

  “Valentino?”

  The furred, broken voice on the other end aroused his suspicions. Valentino’s number was unlisted, yet hardly a week went by that some drunk didn’t call and ask to borrow the camel.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Just Valentino. Not Rudolph. No relation, and anyway, he’s dead. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Craig.”

  He groaned. Craig Hunter had been a popular action-movie star before changing tastes and a messy public divorce reduced him to an occasional bit on TV. He and Valentino had been friends, but lately Hunter had become a pest, calling him up at all hours, usually from some bar and invariably finishing with an appeal for a loan.

  “Craig, I’m not in the mood. Viacom just outbid me for rights to a
silent Buster Keaton comedy two-reeler. I was this close to closing the deal.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Don’t ask me for money. I’m through subsidizing half the distilleries and bookies in the U.S.”

  “Gimme a minute, okay? I’m in a bar in Dan Shie—I mean, in San Diego—”

  “What did you do, drink up all the stock in L.A.?”

  “Valentino, I need help. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “You know what would be worth my while, Craig? It would be worth my while if you’d stop pestering me for something you can only give yourself. Call A.A.”

  “Listen. Don’t—”

  He banged down the receiver. When the telephone purred again he lifted the handset, replaced it, then lifted it again and laid it on the table. Then he went to bed.

  His business cards identified Valentino as a “film detective,” a romantic indulgence. As a consultant with the film department at UCLA, he was often compelled to jet to some remote region to track down a fragment of some great motion picture long considered lost. At these times he was more Sherlock Holmes than Joe Academic, and it was this part of the work that had drawn him to it. His name, and his unfortunate resemblance to the Great Lover of the silent screen, caused him a good deal of embarrassment, but unlike much of Hollywood he refused to change his name or his appearance for mere convenience. On some rare occasions he benefited: They might lose his card, but they seldom forgot his name.

  His office was a shoebox in a building that had once been part of the university’s power plant, cluttered with film books and piles of video cassettes, but he had partial use of a secretary named Ruth, iron-haired old dragon that she was. She fixed him with her gray, polished-stone gaze when he walked in a little after eight. “You look like Georgie Jessel the morning after he turned down The Jazz Singer,” she said.

  “I lost the Keaton. To Viacom.”

  “Oh, that. I knew yesterday they were going to outbid you. I had lunch with one of the secretaries in their video division.”

  “Thanks for warning me.”

  “We learn from loss, kiddo. Say, you in trouble with the law? You had two calls this morning from a Sergeant Fish with the police.” She squinted at the scratches on her message pad.