When he got to the foot of the stairs, I set off my third avalanche. That kept him stunned for long enough for me to dump two more piles of junk on him. By this time, the path through the front hall had all but disappeared. It was just a disorganized heap of books, magazines, and junk, with Ron squirming feebly at the bottom.
“Help me,” he kept whispering. “I can’t move. Somebody help me.”
I went back to the kitchen and snuffled around the old man’s feet for the last couple of Cheerios. I sniffed his sad, naked ankles, but he continued to be absolutely unappetizing. Curious.
Ron, on the other hand, was fat and sleek and quite tempting. As soon as he was dead—
Though that could take a while — why should I wait? I decided I’d go and see if he was telling the truth about not being able to move. And if he was, I planned on making sure his last few hours — or days — were far less enjoyable than the old man’s.
The Profane Angel
by Loren D. Estleman
© 2007 by Loren D. Estleman
Art by Laurie Harden
Loren D. Estleman’s film detective, Valentino, first saw print in the pages of EQMM and has been an EQMM exclusive ever since. That’s about to change: The first novel in the series, Framed, is expected from Forge this autumn. The following tale showcases Carole Lombard, as Valentino tries to determine the legitimacy of an old woman’s claim about the supposedly long-dead film star.
Pegasus made his majestic way down the San Diego Freeway, waiting with wings partially folded through the relatively steady stop-and-go before the morning crush and the noon rush; took brief flight on Sunset Boulevard; and settled down to wait through the standard three light changes at each intersection in West Hollywood.
The sight of the mythical beast, painstakingly worked in plaster and spray-painted all the colors of the Day-Glo rainbow, drew no more than the occasional curious glance toward its perch on the open rented trailer. L.A. had seen stranger sights on an almost daily basis.
Nevertheless, Valentino was relieved when he pulled into the alley next to the Oracle Theater and found Kyle Broadhead waiting with a pair of husky undergraduates to help him unload the sculpture. He disliked attracting attention, and had chosen the one place in America to live where it was virtually impossible.
Broadhead wrinkled his nose at the garish paint job. “What a hideous way to treat a noble creature that never existed. Where’d you find him, Fire Island?”
“Close.” Valentino got out of the car and stretched. “An Armenian rug dealer in the Valley stuck it in front of his shop to attract business. Some students from State have been redecorating it once or twice a week for five years. It’ll take ten gallons of mineral spirits just to get down to the original workmanship.”
One of the burly UCLA students snorted. “Everybody knows you can’t trust a Statie with a box of Crayolas.”
“Spoken by the young man who credited Stagecoach to Henry Ford on his midterm.” Broadhead, rumpled and dusted with pipe ash, patted Pegasus on the flank. “Welcome home, Old Paint. Your brother’s missed you.”
Valentino untied the ropes that lashed the statue in place, the students bent their shoulders to their task, and after much grunting, mutual accusations of sloth, and two pinched fingers, the winged horse stood at last on a pedestal opposite its twin at the base of the grand staircase in the littered lobby.
“There’s teamwork.” Broadhead admired the tableau.
Valentino said, “What’s that make you, the coach? I missed your contribution.”
The professor took his pipe out of his mouth. “Do you realize how much concentration it takes to keep one of these going?”
The student who had suffered the casualty stopped sucking his fingers. “The new one’s bigger.”
“It won’t be when we strip off all those coats of paint,” Valentino said. “It isn’t any newer than the other one. They were sculpted at the same time by the same artist. If I hadn’t tracked this one down by way of the Internet, duplicating it would have cost me a fortune.”
“As opposed to the several you’ve already sunk into this dump.” Broadhead nursed his pipe.
“A man has to have a hobby.”
“Movies are only a hobby when your work hasn’t anything to do with them. You spend all week procuring and restoring old films and all weekend rebuilding a theater to show them in. Which reminds me. Someone called while you were out riding and roping.” Broadhead unpocketed a foil-lined wrapper that had contained tobacco and handed it to Valentino.
“What’s it say?” He couldn’t read what was scribbled on it.
“An old lady in Century City says she has something to sell. Probably a home movie of her playing jacks at Valley Forge. I told you that interview you gave the Times would draw more pests than genuine leads.”
Valentino went up to the bachelor quarters he’d established in the projection booth and dialed a number off Caller ID. He couldn’t distinguish letters from numerals in Broadhead’s scrawl. A young woman told him he’d reached the residence of Jane Peters. He got as far as his name when she interrupted.
“Yes, Miss Peters is expecting your call. She’s resting at the moment. Are you free to come to the apartment later today? She has a property she thinks might interest you.”
“May I ask what it is?”
“A movie called A Perfect Crime.”
“The title’s kind of generic. Can you give me any details?”
Paper rustled. “It’s a silent, released in nineteen twenty-one. The director’s name is Dwan.” She spelled it.
“Allan Dwan?”
“Yes, that’s the name.”
He steadied his voice. “What’s the address?”
Broadhead was alone when he returned to the lobby. “You owe me twenty apiece for the grunts,” the professor said. “I offered them extra credit instead, but any dolt can pass a film class.”
“Here’s fifty. I’m feeling generous.”
“What’s the old lady got, The Magnificent Ambersons uncut?”
“Almost as good. Carole Lombard’s first film.”
He dropped off the trailer at the rental agency and day-dreamed his way across town. Carole Lombard, the slender, dazzling blond queen of screwball romantic comedy, had made an insignificant debut at age twelve, then blazed across the screen in the 1930s, reaching her peak of fame when she married Clark Gable, the King of Hollywood. Stories of her bawdy sense of humor and outrageous practical jokes were legend, and by all accounts the couple was deliriously happy. But it all ended tragically in early 1942, when the plane carrying Lombard home from a war-bond rally slammed into a mountain thirty miles from Las Vegas. She was thirty-three years old.
Valentino hadn’t had cause to revisit Century City since he’d moved out of a high-rise to take up residency in the Oracle, where he awoke in the morning to the zing and chatter of the renovators’ power saws and nail guns and went to bed in the evening past walls where there had been empty spaces and empty spaces where there had been walls only hours before. But in Jane Peters’ building he congratulated himself on the move: A brat hit every button on his way out of the elevator, sentencing its only remaining occupant to stopping at every floor.
“Mr. Valentino? I’m Gloria Voss, Miss Peters’ health-care provider. We spoke on the phone.”
He shook the hand of the tall, slim brunette in a white blouse, pressed jeans, and new running shoes. The living room was clean, spacious, and decorated tastefully in shades of gray and slate blue, but smelled of many generations of cigarettes under a thin layer of air freshener.