Indigo Page 2

  “How much do you know about his history?”

  “I told you where he says he got his capital. Personally, it sounds a little too close to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Did you notice the way he talks?”

  “How could I miss it? It’s like Dick Tracy marinated in Cesar Romero.”

  “When he came to this country, the TV airwaves were jammed with sports, soap operas, and old movies. He didn’t follow sports, and the soaps weren’t his cup of tea, so he learned his English from films Hollywood considered too old to re-release to theaters, so they dumped them on television. His preference happened to run to gangster movies. Anyway, that’s his story.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I don’t have one, but any man who comes out of nowhere with a bundle is bound to attract rumors: He made his stake harboring Nazi war criminals in Brazil, or was a member of the Perón government in Argentina, where he looted the treasury.”

  They entered West Hollywood, where the glow of the thousands of bulbs that illuminated the marquee of The Oracle were visible for blocks. After decades of darkness, it pleased him to come home to a dazzling display. Kyle Broadhead, less romantic, referred to it as “a human sacrifice to the gaping maw of Consolidated Edison.”

  “You don’t think there’s any truth to the rumors, do you?” Harriet said.

  “Of course not. In the absence of evidence, people will go to any lengths to provide a substitute; and they never gossip about the basic goodness of Man.”

  She smiled. “I like that you believe that. So why do you like crime thrillers so much?”

  “When I feel blue, I watch Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers. When I feel naughty, I watch Lawrence Tierney plotting a murder with Claire Trevor. The first cheers me up; the second keeps me from acting on my baser instincts.”

  “‘Baloney,’ to quote Henry Anklemire. What’s this deal Bozal was talking about, in return for the painting? You were off in a corner together, whispering like a couple of heisters.”

  He laughed, hiccupped; excused himself. “Two minutes with him and you sound like Bonnie Parker. He’s invited me to his house tomorrow morning.”

  “That sounds like more of a favor for you than for him.”

  “He was cagy about it, but from some broad hints he made I gather he’s come into a film that shouldn’t be screened except by someone who knows how to manage old stock. Of course he has a home theater, and of course it will make The Oracle look like an all-night grindhouse in San Diego.”

  “Doubt that.”

  “I wouldn’t rule anything out where Bozal is concerned. He’s one of the biggest private collectors in the business. If I play my cards right, I’ll pick up some tips on how he manages to find such treasures without the resources of a major university behind him.”

  “Greedy. You’ve already got Laura.”

  “Told you I have baser instincts.”

  They pulled up in front of the Baroque/Italianate/ Byzantine pile of sandstone, with bulbs chasing up, down, and around the towering marquee: GRAND OPENING SOON, read the legend in foot-high letters.

  “How are you feeling tonight?” Her brows were arched. “Blue or naughty?”

  “Inebriated as a North American mammal of the weasel family.” He got out, stumbling, opened the back door, and leaned in to retrieve the portrait.

  She alighted from her side. “You’d better let me carry that. You’re liable to trip and put your head through it, and then you’ll feel like Abbott and Costello.”

  3

  Court Street was old town, wop town, cook town, any town. It lay across the top of Bunker Hill and you could find anything there from down-at-heels ex-Greenwich-villagers to crooks on the lam, from ladies of anybody’s evening to County Relief clients brawling with haggard landladies in grand old houses with scrolled porches, parquetry floors, and immense sweeping banisters of white oak, mahogany and Circassian walnut.

  THAT WAS HOW Raymond Chandler, the great (and unabashedly politically incorrect) detective-story pioneer had described the place in his own time. His works had poured the foundation for film noir, Ignacio Bozal’s crash course on English as a second language, and incidentally Valentino’s guiltiest pleasure. Some of these dark forays into the abnormal psychology of crime had been based on Chandler’s novels and stories, others were filmed directly from his screenplays; most of the rest bore his influence.

  Although Valentino knew the neighborhood well—and as recently as last night’s celebration in the Bradbury Building—he looked forward to returning as a guest of its most famous resident.

  There’s nothing rarer than an East L.A. millionaire. That paradox was enough in itself to pique the film archivist’s interest, without the added incentive of an invitation to screen some mysterious property possibly lost for generations. Together, they’d compelled him to cancel his day’s appointments and brave the gangs and carjackers who preyed upon the honest residents to pay the old man a visit.

  There, scorning the mansions of Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, Ignacio Bozal had bought a city block of modest houses in the largely Mexican-American suburb of Los Angeles. A wall went up around it, sheltering his middle-aged children, grown grandchildren, and great-grandchildren under his benevolent eye. He’d kept the largest home for himself and converted it to make room for his various collections; an example of one of which boated into the curb in front of The Oracle and blew a horn that played the first four notes of the Dragnet theme.

  “Boated” sprang to mind the moment Valentino pushed through the brass-framed front door to the sidewalk: The car was more than twenty feet long, most of its length belonging to the hood, which resembled the visor of a medieval knight’s helmet. The cup-shaped headlights were encased in gleaming chromium to match wheel covers the size of hula hoops, and the paint was two-tone, liquid black and royal purple, baked on in so many coats it made a man dizzy staring into the depths of his own reflection.

  The next surprise was the driver. Such a rig suggested a chauffeur in livery. Instead, Bozal himself leaned across the front seat from behind the wheel to swing open the door on the passenger’s side. He was dressed casually in an old rust-colored suede jacket, threadbare at the elbows, faded jeans, penny loafers, and a billed cap bearing the logo of what his guest suspected belonged to a Mexican baseball team: a rattlesnake coiled around a bat, with a cigar in its mouth.

  “Bugatti Type ’forty-one,” he said as they peeled away from the curb, the motor churning like a powerful dynamo beneath the country block of hood. “The Royale. Only seven ever made, back in ’thirty-one. The kings of Spain and Belgium each had one. That year I had a bike that blew a tire before I rode it the distance from the rear bumper to the front; not that I ever saw one of these babies then.”

  Valentino felt swaddled in rich aromatic leather. The old man was a skilled driver, careful but confident. The white-enamel elephant attached to the radiator cap remained rock-steady in the center of the lane. The scenery slid by precisely at the speed limit, according to the gauge in the padded dash. This was what it must have been like to ride in a first-class cabin on the Twentieth Century Limited.

  Nearing Bunker Hill, enough of the Victorian homes were still standing to help Chandler find his bearings, but he’d have been nonplussed by the high-rise buildings that had sprung up to cast their shadows on the spires and turrets. They crossed into East L.A., passing Mexican restaurants, corner markets, and long stretches of cinder block sporting gaily colored murals, then purred to a stop before an iron gate in a stucco wall sprayed all over with graffiti. Bozal tilted his head toward the peace signs, hallucinogenic images, and aerosol text in two languages.

  “Kids, they gotta have whatchacallit artistic release. I don’t mind it, ’cause I’m behind it.” He punched the horn.

  After a short interval the gate opened and a young Hispanic man in a tailored gray uniform stepped outside. Blue-white teeth shone in a brown face. “Hi, Grandpapa!”

  “We have a guest, Ernesto.”
/>
  “!Sí! Welcome, señor.” He stood aside and they cruised through the opening.

  The compound reminded Valentino of a barrio scene in Border Crossing: tawny children in baggy swimsuits frolicking in the spray from an open fire hydrant, substantially built women in light summer dresses sitting on porches, sleek-haired hombres in bright sport shirts smoking cigarettes and conversing in rapid Spanish on the sidewalks. There was plenty of family resemblance to go around. His host had established a colony of his own north of the border, a modern-day Cortez expanding his influence deep into gringo country.

  At the end of the block they turned into a circular driveway paved with limestone around a gushing fountain. A motionless parade of exotic automobiles parked bumper-to-bumper formed a horseshoe around the edge. The guest knew little about makes and models, but he was aware that the low-slung convertibles, bus-shaped sedans, high-centered horseless carriages, and slab-sided hardtops covered the history of the motorcar from early days to the Kennedy years. They were enameled in canary yellow, emerald green, candy-apple red, cerulean blue, and gunmetal gray, and all glistening as if they’d been run through a gigantic dishwasher and dipped in molten wax.

  “Overflow,” Bozal said, pulling up behind a seven-passenger touring car straight out of the original Scarface (it might well have been in the movie, at that) and setting the brake. “I knocked down five bungalows to make room for a garage and it still wasn’t big enough. I’m waiting for my granddaughter next door to get hitched, then I’ll doze her place and build on. Her fiancé’s got a job waiting in Omaha, for cat’s sake. Maybe I’ll get some good steaks out of the deal.”

  The house was the biggest in the compound, although it was by no means palatial; its owner seemed to have had more interest in obtaining room to display his treasures than to loll in the lap of luxury.

  “Hello, Grandfather.” A woman in her twenties, pretty but pouty-looking, opened the front door. She wore a red dress, modest in design, but her trim figure, lustrous black hair, and healthy flush under olive-colored skin made it provocative.

  Bozal introduced Valentino. “Esperanza, my granddaughter. Not the one who’s deserting me for the Nebraska wilderness. I offered to put her through college, but she insists on working her way to a master’s; in communications, no less. She could be head curator of the Motion Picture Hall of Fame, but she wants to produce a news show on cable.”

  “CNN,” she clarified. “C-SPAN would be my next choice. Movies are my grandfather’s thing, not mine; but he’s forgiven me so far as to pay me three times the going wage for answering the door and taking visitors’ coats.” Despite her solemn expression, a merry light glimmered in her eye. Valentino saw something more than idle mischief when their gazes met; but he was off the market: a mantra worth repeating. She swiveled aside for them to pass.

  “What’s your poison?” Bozal took up a post behind a sleek white bar with a wall-size mirror at his back. The glittering display of liquor bottles and stemmed glasses slung upside-down from the ceiling might have belonged to a gangster boss’s lair on a 1940s soundstage.

  “It’s early for me, thanks.”

  “You ain’t had practice.” He poured amber liquid from a cut-glass decanter into a tumbler, squirted in seltzer, and carried his drink down into a sunken living room.

  The room was done in neutral tones, a sharp contrast to the warm, vibrant colors that decorated the rest of the neighborhood. It was like stepping from bright glare into shade. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in cushy leather. Above the mantel hung a portrait of a woman with the proud features of a Spanish patrician. She wore jet buttons in her ears and a plain blouse cut low to show off her shoulders. It was as haunting as the painting now in Valentino’s possession, the original centerpiece for the film Laura.

  Bozal saw the cast of his glance. “Estrella, my wife. I lost her fifty years ago. Damn careless, if you ask me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She wouldn’t know regret if it bit her on the nose. She’s responsible for everything you lay eyes on here. All I did was supply the juice. Wasn’t for her, I’d be one of them parasites you see in the country clubs, palling around with cheap broads in expensive perfume.” He lifted his glass to the image and sipped.

  “But why East L.A.?”

  “Might as well ask why Beverly Hills? There, I’d be just a spick with money, probably earned pushing drugs; a racist neighbor with unlimited credit is still a son of a bitch in a sheet. Here, I’m part of the community, something bigger than me.”

  They sat facing each other in matching armchairs.

  “I can’t thank you enough for Laura,” Valentino said. “It will occupy the place of honor in the lobby of The Oracle.”

  “Just don’t fall in love with it. That gag only works in movies, and then only through the closing credits. The audience rips it apart on the way home.”

  “Not Laura.”

  Bozal aimed a porcelain smile over the edge of his glass. It was as vaguely sinister as his eccentric use of the English language. “Okay, sure. But lay off the thanks till you see my end of the deal. You may want to give it back.”

  4

  HARRIET WAS WRONG.

  Partially, anyway. While the theater Bozal had installed in the lower level of his home didn’t make The Oracle look like a dump tailor-made for showing barely acceptable features, it outstripped the grandest screening rooms commissioned by major movie stars and most neighborhood picture houses.

  He’d taken a larger-than-average basement, extended it under his multi-car garage, and hired a team of contractors to turn it into something Valentino could describe only as an underground mall: what seemed miles of tiled hallway passed a replica of a 1930s automobile showroom, complete with Depression-era models in mint condition on display, brightly gleaming, a mid-century-type service station built of white glazed brick with a black 1955 Porsche pulled up to the pumps—waiting, it seemed, for James Dean to bring the engine to life and speed toward his date with destiny—and a men’s haberdashery stocked with mannequins decked out in vests, double-breasted suits, and snappy fedoras, decorated with patriotic posters advertising war bonds to fight the Axis.

  Their way led at last to the theater itself, a plush Art Moderne palace lit by wall sconces, with stadium seating to accommodate two dozen viewers and gold velvet curtains cloaking a screen with a stage for live performances between shows.

  “It’s magnificent,” was all the visitor could find to say.

  “You should’ve seen it when I bought the place. The previous owner hosted cockfights down here. His neighbors turned him in. He needed quick money to pay his lawyer, so I got it for a song. ’Course, more excavation and the retrofitting ate up the difference. Let’s go see the projection booth.”

  A door concealed in the molding led up a short flight of stairs into a square chamber with walls of plain concrete. It contained an ultramodern laser projector mounted to the ceiling and a black steel giant resembling a locomotive. It had reels the size of platters and a threading system as complicated as the Gordian knot.

  Valentino goggled at this. “Is that a ’forty-four Bell and Howell?”

  “’Forty. I scored it in a junk shop in Tehuantepec, where it’d been busy collecting dust and mouse turds for sixty years. Took me another ten to track down replacement parts from all over the world. I had to buy a shut-down theater in Prague just to get the lens assembly. Outfit in Detroit made the arc lamp from scratch; Bausch and Lomb the reflector mirror. I lucked out on the mechanic. He was retired, living right down there in the Valley. He’d never worked on a projector before, but it’s just a series of simple machines, going back to the Greeks.”

  “How big is your silver-nitrate collection?”

  “Big enough. But I went to all that bother for just one.”

  Bozal turned and took a pizza-size film can off a steel utility rack. “Ever hear of a mug named Van Oliver?”

  The abrupt question surprised Valentino. Pl
ainly the old man had little patience for small talk. “Old-time picture actor. He was murdered, supposedly. Another one of Hollywood’s unsolved mysteries.”

  His host jerked his chin, approving. Aged and slight as he was—his gold Rolex and cuff links looked too heavy for his fragile wrists—all his movements were steady and his eyes bright as a bird’s. “That’s refreshing. Most people don’t know Van Oliver from Oliver Hardy.”

  “We can’t all be buffs. Most people wouldn’t know him. He only made one movie, and it—” He stopped, looking at the can. He felt the old familiar thrill.

  Bozal’s smile was wicked. It was the privilege of rich men to carry suspense to the brink of cruelty. “Officially, he just disappeared. My bet is they buried him up in the hills, or rowed him out past Catalina and dumped him overboard in a cement overcoat. In those days, you couldn’t convict anyone of murder in the state of California without a corpse. I guess the law didn’t want to fry someone just because someone else decided to take a powder and forgot to tell anyone, but it sure sold a lot of shovels and quicklime.”

  “It was almost a double murder, if you can apply the term to a movie studio,” said Valentino. “He’d been getting the kind of star treatment they reserve for major properties: elocution lessons, tailors, a big flashy car, dates with glamour queens, and an army of press agents, so he could make a splash during interviews and premieres. Only he couldn’t, because he died before the film was released. They shelved it. That was the end of RKO.”

  “Helped by that nut Howard Hughes. Sooner or later he drove everything he owned into the ground. You can’t keep hiring and firing and quadrupling budgets and stay in business. Lucy told me the best day in her life was the day she bought the studio, four years after RKO fired her.”

  “You knew Lucille Ball?”

  “Through Desi. In those days the Spanish colony in Hollywood was thick as thieves.”

  Valentino had never met anyone closely connected with I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, and the birth of Desilu Studios.