Finally, Alex said, “I don’t think anyone would—but if it did happen, it was probably one of the guys in our film club.”
Jason didn’t blink, didn’t bat an eye. Here was the confirmation he’d been looking for. The cinephile supper club Senator Ono had spoken of was real. The fallout from Georgie going to the police about Eli Humphrey might indeed have played a role in her death.
Also, troublingly, Alex was a lot more involved in Jason’s case than Jason had hoped.
“Who else belongs to this film club?”
Alex made a face, shook his head. “People come and go. I’m really not comfortable naming names. What I am willing to do is bring you to our next screening as my guest. As my date, I guess. Anything after that introduction is up to you. But I’m warning you, if you do go after these people for copyright infringement or piracy or any of that bullshit…”
Alex didn’t complete his thought because what was there to threaten Jason with? I won’t like you?We won’t be friends anymore? They weren’t friends now. Friendly, yes.
Jason dismissed that cynical thought. The truth was, he did like Alex, and he did appreciate his cooperation. He’d do his best not to betray Alex’s trust. He was sincere about the narrow scope of his investigation—he wasn’t forgetting the lesson of Montana. And frankly, the more he learned about film preservation, the more ambivalent his feelings were about the Bureau’s lack of a nuanced approach to some pretty complicated issues.
“I appreciate the offer, and I promise you I’m looking for a murderer—who may or may not exist. I’ll do my best not to jeopardize your standing within that community.”
Alex nodded, unconvinced. “Truthfully, I didn’t want to do this, but murder trumps social awkwardness.”
“I’m glad you think so. When’s the next film screening?”
“Friday. We’re meeting at Eli Humphrey’s home in Beverly Hills. Supper’s at eight. We usually have cocktails about seven thirty.”
“It turns out my social calendar is empty.”
“Great.” Alex looked less than thrilled. “Where should I pick you up?”
Jason considered and rejected all scenarios that might result in future complications. “Here. I’ll leave my car in the faculty parking. You can drop me off afterward.”
“That’ll work.” Alex rose. He looked preoccupied and a little grim.
Jason rose too. “Listen, Alex, chances are, we have a nice meal, watch an interesting movie, and that’s that.”
Alex nodded, but what he said was, “I wish I believed that. The truth is, there’s something off.”
“Off?”
“Something’s not right about those guys. I don’t know what. I can’t put my finger on it. But something’s been off for a while.” His smile was sour. “Maybe you’ll figure it out before they figure you out.”
After the office door closed behind Alex, Jason tried giving Sam a call.
He’d dozed off twice during their conversation the previous evening, and Sam had finally, wryly, told him to go to sleep and they’d talk tonight.
His call went straight to message. That wasn’t unusual, of course. Sam was a busy guy. What was unusual was that Jason didn’t get a return phone call before he had to leave for his first class of the day. Even then, it wasn’t so out of the ordinary as to trigger concern. Sam was well aware that he and Jason didn’t share the same sleep patterns, so it wasn’t like he was going to take offense at Jason nodding off in the middle of a recounting of Sam’s day.
Not that Sam really recounted his day in any but the most general terms.
Sam spent a lot of time in meetings—his least favorite thing about the job—so that was the most likely explanation for his lack of response.
It was a little surprising when Jason still hadn’t heard back after the ninety-minute Celluloid Closet seminar concluded. Even if Sam didn’t have time to talk, he’d typically leave a message to that effect.
Jason tried phoning again, and once again, his call went straight to message.
“Touching base,” he said and clicked off.
If there was an actual reason to be worried about Sam, he’d already know. Jonnie or someone else would already have been in touch. So, Sam was just…offline.
It was puzzling but still not alarming. Even after their recent rough patch—or maybe because of it—Jason knew that if Sam was, inexplicably, angry with him, he wouldn’t ghost him. In fact, it would be the opposite. Sam would be up in Jason’s face—or at least his FaceTime—spelling out his displeasure in terms there was no mistaking.
Simmer down, West.
It’s not like he’d said it was urgent he hear from Sam. If Sam was busy, he’d figure whatever it was could wait till that evening. Which was perfectly true.
After the conversation with George that morning, it was clear he couldn’t afford to waste time. He used the time before his next class to search YouTube for more bits and pieces of Snowball in Hell.
Eventually he came across several uploads of the movie’s official trailer.
Dramatic music, opening shot of oil derricks nodding knowingly against the ominous sky—foreshadowing Chinatown’s opening?—and…a soggy corpse being dragged out of La Brea tar pits.
“Hell of a thing,” said the tall, gray-haired detective of the snippet Jason had watched the night before.
“Hell of a thing,” Matthew Spain agreed.
The camera panned to a group of reporters smoking and talking beside snarling cement saber-toothed tigers, zoomed in on Nathan Doyle lighting a cigarette for a female reporter. Doyle looked across at Spain, the camera lingered.
“Yeah, it was a hell of a thing,” Joe North said in the voice over. “A society kidnapping gone about as wrong as a thing could go.”
More overwrought music and melting retro movie font spelling out: BLACKMAIL…BETRAYAL…MURDER!
(So much for alliteration.)
There were frames introducing the two main characters, looking good in fedoras as each spoke a line of cryptic dialog, and then a few seconds of what looked like the two main characters in a shootout with each other.
“I knew it,” muttered Jason.
And, finally, there was the usual Coming Soon to a Theater Near You! and studio info.
Jason replayed the trailer a couple of times, thinking things over.
The actors playing Spain and Doyle looked to be in their late twenties-early thirties, so they’d be getting up there, but might still be around. Jason could probably determine that much from their IMDb filmographies, assuming they’d made more than one film.
He let his fingers do the walking down the mean streets of the internet and learned that David Aubrey had made three films after Snowball in Hell. They were all standard B fare monster movies, where he was inevitably cast as a bewildered-looking love interest for a buxom beauty being menaced by apes or aliens. He’d died of a drug overdose in 1967 at age 37.
It seemed unlikely any unauthorized film prints had come out of that quarter.