“You should know he can come off a little arrogant. If he’s feeling defensive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“But he really knows his stuff.”
“Does he?”
“Oh, hell yeah. He worked on the 4K restorations of Gun Crazy and The Big Shakedown. Oh, and Murder in Harlem. Crime films are his specialty. If you can get him going on the topic of film noir, he’s actually pretty good company.”
“Crime films were Georgie’s specialty too?”
“That’s right.” Alex raised his glass in a half toast. “Their life of crime brought them together.”
They talked a little while longer. Jason declined another drink. Wilshire, the backbone of Los Angeles, was always crowded, and at this time of the evening it would take at least half an hour to get over to Koreatown and find a place to park. The indie director with the lungs of an opera singer had made it very clear tardiness was not acceptable. He did not want an aria on the topic of being late.
Alex insisted on picking up the tab, which Jason suspected was about not wanting to feel his information had been bought and paid for.
“Thanks for the drink. Can I ask a favor? Can I ask you to keep my identity confidential?”
Alex, tucking his credit card into the leather server book, smiled cynically. “I knew that was coming.”
“It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”
Alex considered. He sighed. “To be honest, I’ve been trying to make my mind up. I don’t want to have to lie to friends or colleagues.”
“I understand.”
Alex’s gaze was troubled. “But for now, yes, I’ll keep your identity confidential.”
Jason didn’t try to hide his relief. “Thank you. I mean that.”
Alex shrugged it off. “By the way, are you still dating that flinty profiler?”
Jason couldn’t help the instinctive smile at the thought of Sam. “I am. Yes.”
“That’s a shame.”
Jason winked. “Thanks, but I can’t agree.”
Sunset fell around eight o’clock this time of the year, but the light was already changing, turning soft and pensive. The summer air was dry and warm and laced with the usual Los Angeles fragrance of smog and tar and night-blooming jasmine. It was less than a minute’s walk to the parking structure where Jason had left his car. He had plenty to think over. What Alex hadn’t said had been as interesting as what he had. Though he’d skirted the topic of film piracy, he obviously knew Ono had filed a report with the FBI accusing film collector Eli Humphrey of piracy—and he clearly had not been on Team Ono.
Understandable if Alex felt conflicted. The FBI raids in the 1970s of high-profile film collectors like Roddy McDowall and Woody Wise were still a sore spot with cinephiles. Film buffs with the foresight to preserve what the studios at the time considered disposable had been harassed and prosecuted by those very studios once they realized their error. The studios had the money and influence to recreate history, and unfortunately, in that endeavor the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had too often acted as corporate lackeys.
The raids were now largely considered a mistake. Not only had most of the charges ultimately been dropped, harassment of innocent collectors had made the collecting community as a whole far less likely to cooperate with the authorities when it came to genuine pirates and pirating.
Being on the wrong side of film preservation—let alone history—was not a thought that gave Jason a lot of pleasure.
Another thought that did not give him pleasure was the realization that Alex might be more involved in his case than he’d anticipated.
He retrieved his car and was just turning onto Wilshire when J.J. phoned, greeting him with a cheerful, “Hey, I heard you almost got wiped out last night?”
“What?”
“That near collision over Wilshire. The 747 nearly hit your apartment building.”
“Oh, right.”
“Don’t tell me you slept through that?”
“No. No, I woke up for that. It’s just been a long day.”
“I bet. Speaking of. How was your first day of school?”
Was there maybe just a hint of glee in J.J.’s undertone? Bastard.
“I’m gonna need a bigger box of throat lozenges.”
J.J.’s tone grew reminiscent. “It should be a dream come true for you, West. Hours and hours of droning on to one captive audience after another. Those sleep-deprived youngsters are finally going to catch up on their rest.”
“Hey. They were hanging on my every word. They’ll never burn another illegal copy of a CD again.”
“Riiight. Speaking of bullshit, how are you going to fake teaching a bunch of college-level courses?”
“I’m not worried about that.”
J.J. began to splutter.
“I give seminars all the time on protecting and preserving art collections. It’s not that much different.”
“Uh, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. Do you know anything about film or film studies?”
“More than I did at this time last night. Anyway, I have Dahle’s lesson plan to follow.”
“Show them a movie. That’s what our substitutes always did.”
“I’ve already got the entire junior varsity napping in my back row.”
J.J. said sincerely, “Those poor kids.”
Jason laughed. “You’re an asshole. Is there a point to this phone call, or did you just want to savor my misery?”
“Why can’t it be both?” J.J.’s tone changed. “But okay, you know how I thought this was a total waste of our time?”
“How could I forget?”
“It turns out, maybe Grandpa isn’t totally delusional.”
“You found something?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
Jason, nudging his way into the slow-moving train of traffic, grinned. “Sorry.” The driver of the car parallel to his flipped him off. Jason, fluent in the dialect of inner-city driving, absently flicked his middle finger in answer. “What have you got?”
“The month before Ono died, she reported two separate attempts to break into her apartment.”
Jason stopped smiling, glancing instinctively at his messenger bag. “There’s no mention of that anywhere in her case file.”
“She didn’t report it to the cops or even to campus security. She reported it to Touchstone’s onsite security service.”
“Why the hell, after her death, didn’t they report it to the cops?”
“Cutting through the corporate-speak, they didn’t believe her. Or claim they didn’t believe her. And since her death was clearly not homicide, it was irrelevant.”
“Part of why her death was not investigated as a homicide would be the withholding of that kind of evidence!”
“I know. There might have been an interterritorial pissing match going on.”
“Fucking fantastic.”
“There’s more.”