Her eyes went wild then, extraordinary eyes, bigger than Theda Bara’s. The brute lunged behind her, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her in close. His face like a slavering wolf, right up against hers. She drew in an enormous breath, her eyes widening still…and then just sighed it out. Defeated. Her expression died there on nitrate stock, heavy-lidded eyes and her formerly full mouth forming a thin, straight line. She slumped, and the brute relaxed his grip, nodding as he grinned.
Together they walked back into the mist until they were subsumed by the shadows. There the video ended.
The only film of Grace Baron, or at least a part of it. And I’d just watched it by way of a close-shot cell phone video. My mouth hung open like the hinges were broken. I was transfixed, partly because of the insane Indiana Jones moment in front of me, but mostly because the few surviving stills of Grace in her short prime did little justice to her haunted beauty.
She was extraordinary.
“Well, Mr. Woodard?”
I still held the receiver to my face, but until she spoke I’d managed to forget it was there. I cleared my throat and tried to focus. All I really wanted to do was hang up the phone and watch the reel again. And then again after that. Instead, I closed out the window and sucked a deep breath into my lungs. I wished it were infused with nicotine more than ever.
“This isn’t bullshit,” I said. That elicited a small laugh.
“No, it certainly isn’t,” she said.
“But listen: this is a major find. I mean, it’s a really major find. I know it’s the wrong end of the continent, but somebody like UCLA would probably be the place to take this. And the lady who found it — she’s here in Boston, too?”
“Oh no, Mr. Woodard,” she said, “I’ve never even been to Boston, I’m sorry to say. I’m right in the heart of old Hollywood, as a matter of fact. UCLA would be a skip and a jump for me, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the route I want to take just now.”
“Well, why the hell not? This is bigger than Convention City.” Classic MGM comedy; offended the Catholics, so the studio boss ordered all the prints destroyed. I could always feel it in my gut that there was still a print out there somewhere.
“It’s the Holy Grail,” Ms. Wheeler agreed, “or one of them, at least. But I want to know more, and while I’m trying to figure that out, I want you to restore the one reel we have so far.”
“God, I hope you’re keeping it in a cool, dry place,” I said breathlessly.
“I am, don’t worry. I know a thing or two about film preservation too, Mr. Woodard.”
“Of course you do,” I came back, a little worried that I’d offended her. “I’d be glad to dupe the reel, though I won’t sleep a minute until it arrives. Shipping something that fragile—”
“Again you misunderstand me,” she interrupted. “I prefer not to ship the film. I would prefer you came here to do the work. I can provide you with all the equipment you need, all the software, to ensure an excellent negative dub and digital copy can be made. I’ll expect you to work on the grain and decay of the print, of course…”
I sat down in Freddie’s chair, slumped.
“You want me to come out to L.A.? Ms. Wheeler, I’m afraid that’s impossible; I have a job to do here on the right coast, you know. Two jobs, as a matter of fact — I teach, too, when school’s in — but neither of them affords me the luxury of skipping off to California for God knows how long.”
“All of that will be taken care of,” she insisted. “You’ll have a hotel room, a decent one, and free reign of a lab to work in. And with some luck, we’ll turn up the rest of the picture while you’re here, increasing your workload — and your pay — tenfold.”
When I first started talking to Leslie Wheeler, I pictured some old maid with too much time on her hands and a chunk of dough left to her by some relative or another, enough to set her up sipping tea and talking about old movies to all of her old maid friends. Now I wasn’t so sure. More and more she was starting to sound like someone with some kind of stake in finding and restoring Angel of the Abyss, though I couldn’t for the life of me see what that was. Still, money was money, and the opportunity was undeniably golden even if I’d be a lot closer to my ex-wife than was comfortable to me. Last I’d heard from her, she’d jaunted out to Southern California with the Neanderthal she’d left me for. But hell, L.A. was a big town, easy to miss folks, and I’d be hunkered down in the lab all the time anyway.
And more than that, I’d be a part of history and one of the very first people to see a lost treasure in nearly a century.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Let me talk to my boss here in Boston. Guy’s the biggest old-movie nut in the world, so when I tell him what we’ve got—”
“No, you can’t tell anybody about the film,” she said suddenly. “Not now. Not yet. Not until we have a much better grasp on what it is we’ve got. Surely you can understand that.”
I didn’t. But I said, “Sure, I understand. But that still leaves my day gig.”
“Tell them it has to do with Helen, family drama. You are coming to Los Angeles, after all.”
My fingernails dug into the chair’s upholstery.
“Hang on a minute — how do you know about my ex-wife?”
Leslie Wheeler chuckled softly.
“Who do you think recommended you to me, Mr. Woodard?”
2
At the sound of the telephone, Grace Baronsky rolled over on the thin mattress and pulled a lumpy pillow over her head. The bells jangled across the whole bungalow like she were sleeping in a belfry, and she silently cursed Saul for installing the damned nuisance in the first place. She had never lived with one before and hardly understood why she had to start doing so now. If Saul wanted to talk to her, she was only a taxi ride away. And if he needed her at the studio at a certain time, there was plenty of time to tell her before she left for the day. So she rebelled, punishing her boss by ignoring it entirely. Or at least not picking up the receiver; no one could ignore such a hellish racket, even if they were stone deaf.
After eleven infuriating rings, the bungalow fell silent again. But Grace could still hear the bells echoing inside her skull.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she groused, and she threw the pillow across the room. Her hopes of sleeping a little longer were dashed, and the throbbing behind her eyes from last night’s gin came on full. “Damn it, Saul.”
The head of Monumental Pictures may have been the savior who pulled her from the hard work and obscurity of vaudeville, but he was also a relentless taskmaster — both on and off the set. Late fifties and built like a teapot, Saul Veritek never tired. He drove cast and crew like a lion tamer from nine in the morning until six at night, and when the stage lights dimmed and the camera stopped rolling, it was time to hit the gin joints. And when Saul Veritek asked you to join him, he wasn’t asking.
Grace sat up and threw her slender legs over the side of the bed. The cold floor met the bottoms of her feet and she hissed through her teeth. The place was sweltering by noontime, but then she was almost never home between the start of the workday and last call. How a fat, middle-aged man who smoked half a dozen cigars every day could outlast her was anyone’s guess, but she knew for a fact Saul wasn’t hurting this morning.