Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! Read Online Free

fiercer than usual.
    “That would be the bridegroom. What are nuptials without a guest who gives the couple six months at the outside?”
    “I never said that.”
    “Really? My mistake. I misread your body language.”
    “Just don’t include me in the wedding party. I’ve had more fun being a pallbearer.”
    Fanta bent down, gave Ruth’s laminated cheek a pat, and whirled on out. The elevator doors opened at her touch. Valentino stared at the secretary, fascinated despite his horror. But Ruth’s expression was as unreadable as a bisque-headed doll’s. He fled to sanctuary, hoping Broadhead wouldn’t ignore his knocking as he sometimes did. Fortune smiled. The professor’s voice beckoned from the other side.
    The office was nearly sterile, the bare polar opposite of Valentino’s, which was cluttered with posters framed and rolled, kitschy knick-knacks, and piles of shooting scripts. The only exception—and it was new—was a slightly out-of-focus photo in a frame of Fanta on some gray, blustery beach, looking over her shoulder at the camera and laughing. She wore a leather windbreaker with the collar turned up.
    Broadhead saw where he was looking. “It’s bewitched. No matter where I stand in the room, it’s me she’s laughing at.”
    “It’s always like that when they look directly into the lens.”
    “See for yourself.”
    Valentino walked to the far rear corner of the room, watching the photo. He crossed to the opposite corner, then to the next. It was true. She was staring at Broadhead and splitting her sides at the ridiculous sight.
    “I’m not sure such a thing is possible, but you’re right.”
    “She’s part gypsy, you know. She cast a spell on me the first day she walked into my classroom.”
    “Try telling that to the review board. Good thing she waited until she was no longer your student before she made her move.”
    “What makes you think the first move wasn’t mine?”
    “You might stick your neck out on a point of film theory, but not in matters of romance.”
    Broadhead unscrewed his pipe and screwed it back together, a habit he’d acquired after the university banned smoking on campus. He claimed to have carved it by hand during the three years he was incarcerated in Yugoslavia on suspicion of espionage. “I’m to choose this sentiment on that paper stock in a third color. I’d suggest elopement, but I’m afraid of ladders.”
    “Isn’t picking out invitations something a bride does with her mother?”
    “She’s in Luxembourg.”
    “Why Luxembourg?”
    “Because she isn’t U.S. ambassador to anywhere else.”
    “Fanta’s mother is an ambassador?”
    “Needless to say, she isn’t available to discuss champagne fountains.”
    “Why do we even have an ambassador there?”
    “I haven’t the foggiest, but she seems to be earning her keep. We haven’t been at war with the place in my memory.” He stopped playing with the pipe and put it in a drawer. “When you didn’t show up here yesterday, I’d hoped you were in Argentina, assembling a blooper reel for Triumph of the Will : Hitler falling on his prat in Nuremberg. But you have the look of an exasperated home remodeler. How normal. I mourn.”
    “It’s worse than that. Craig Hunter’s been calling me.”
    “ There’s a name from the past. I thought he’d have mixed up a cemetery cocktail by now.”
    “Not that he hasn’t tried, based on how he sounded late last night. I wasn’t diplomatic. I thought you might talk me out of feeling guilty.”
    “As emotions go, it’s as useful as boxing gloves on a Buddhist. Being polite is no way to get rid of a pest.”
    “He tried again this morning, here at work.”
    Broadhead’s telephone rang. “Let me show you a trick I learned in the Far East. No charge for this wisdom.” He lifted the receiver and let it fall back down. “Needy drunks are like amateur housebreakers. When a lock won’t pick they give up and try next door. You wouldn’t have done him any