Marlene Dietrich died—in Germany somewhere, and it had nothing to do with the riots. I spent most of Thursday morning creating a special shelf for her videos. We’d noticed an uptick in the rentals of our classics when an actor died—especially the ones from the studio days—so we tried to encourage those rentals.

We had my two favorite of her films, Witness for the Prosecution and Stage Fright; Destry Rides Again; Judgment at Nuremberg; and Orson Welles’ very strange Touch of Evil. We also had An Evening With Marlene Dietrich, a 54-minute TV special that would likely be the most popular of the bunch.

“I have a friend who does her,” Mikey said. “He might be willing to make an appearance.”

“We only have six tapes to rent. This is really all we need to do to keep them rented for the next three weeks.”

“We could get more copies.”

“It’ll take a month for them to arrive. This is plenty.”

Missy came out from behind the counter. She wore flannel and denim, and her hair flew everywhere. “So, like, who’s Marlene Dietrich?” She pronounced her first name Mar-Leen and Mikey rolled his eyes.

“You really need to give people a test before you let them work here.”

I liked Missy, though. She never told me what to do. And she hadn’t known Jeffer. She’d begun working at Pinx after he died. We’d had one brief conversation about him, which ended with her saying, “That is so sad.” And then she seemed to forget all about him before the end of that short sentence.

“Marlene Dietrich was a very famous German actress,” I explained. “You should take one of her movies home.”

“In a couple of weeks. When interest dies down,” Mikey instructed.

“Someone should be behind the counter,” I said, and then went back to my office and looked through the brochures the studios sent planning out next month’s video order.

About a half an hour later, Mikey stuck his head into the office. “We have a situation.”

“We do?”

“I wouldn’t bother you, but it’s Guy Peterson’s boyfriend.”

“Guy had a boyfriend?”

“Yes, didn’t you know that?”

“No. I had no idea.”

“Anyway, he rented five videos the day before the riots started and he’s only bringing them back now. I told people they had to get the videos in by Tuesday in order to avoid late charges.”

“Wait, that’s not what I told you to do. I told you no late fees no matter when they brought the videos back.”

“Yes, but that was ridiculously generous. I mean, his videos are six days late. That’s sixty dollars in late fees. I think we can bring it down to twenty and he’ll be—”

“What’s his name?” I asked, pushing my way out of the office.

“Ted. Ted Bain.”

“Thanks.”

A few seconds later, I was walking up to a guy just a year or two younger than me. He had long hair cut in a chin-length bob. It was a terrible haircut, but it looked good on him—mainly because any haircut would look good on him. He had wide cheeks and a square jaw; features that were strong and perfectly formed. I guessed that he’d take an amazing photograph. Which might explain how he met Guy the Camera Guy.

“Hi, Ted?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Noah Valentine. I’m the owner of Pinx.”

“Look, this all a misunderstanding. I’ll just pay the sixty dollars.”

“I understand you were Guy Peterson’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah, who are you again?”

“Noah. Anyway, you don’t owe any late fees.”

“Okay, well, thanks.” He walked away. The videos were all on the counter. Three new releases and two pornos. I hurried to catch up with him.

We were out on the sidewalk by the time I said, “You should know that the police were in asking about Guy’s friends.”

“Here? They came here?”

“Yes.”

“You talked to the police?”

“Yes, they came in and asked if I knew any of Guy’s friends.”

“Why did they come here? Why did they come talk to you?”

“Guy’s family gave them my name. I met them when I went by to pick up a couple of videos Guy rented before the riots.”

“You pick up videos? You mean I could have called and had those picked up a couple of days ago?”

“Well, no, we don’t actually do that. It’s just—I saw that Guy’s shop had burned down. I figured he had a lot going on. So—I was being nice. I didn’t know he was dead.”

“So, you were hoping to see him?”

“To pick up the videos.” He was looking at me like I was the biggest crook in Los Angeles. “It’s lunch time. Can I buy you a taco? Or a pop?” I waved vaguely down the block at Taco Maria.

“Pop?”

“Soda. I grew up in the Midwest.”

He looked at me for a moment and then said, “Maybe you’d better.”

Taco Maria was in the same building, but they’d painted their storefront a very orange terra cotta—which might have been the reason the landlord would not let us paint our part pink. There were just six booths inside and murals on two of the walls, both depicting a crowd of primitive people swimming at a beach. There was no waitress. I went up to the order window and asked for two chicken taco combo plates and two medium Cokes.

I took the pop back to the table we’d claimed and sat down to wait for our lunches. Before I could decide what to ask Ted first, he said, “I know who you are. Guy told me he tried to have sex with you once and you freaked out.”

“It wasn’t that long after my lover died.”

“That’s weird. I heard death makes people horny.”

I ignored that. “I have some of Guy’s photos. Maybe you’d like to have them.”

He just stared at me. I think I was confusing him somehow. I continued, “His sister put them in the alley, you know, throwing them away. I rescued them.”

“Which photos do you have?”

“I only got two boxes. You can come and look at them if you’d like.”

“No, thank you.”

“Did Guy need money for some reason?”

“What do you mean?”

“I spoke to someone he knew. I don’t want to say who, but Guy was trying to blackmail him. Over some photos he’d taken.”

“How do you know all these things?”

“I really don’t know much. You probably know more than I do. For instance, why Guy was trying to blackmail—” I almost said Rex but at the last minute finished my sentence with “…this person? Why did Guy need money?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“See, I went to the camera shop. After it burned—”

“Why would you do that?”

“I was curious.”

“Stop. Stop being curious.”

“No, you see, when I went to the camera store it didn’t look like it had been looted—

“Stop!”

He was visibly shaking. Very quietly he got up and walked out of the taco place. The food arrived while I was still trying to understand why he’d just gotten up and left.

“Um, could you put that in a box to go?” I asked the server/cook. “My friend changed his mind.”

* * *

It was dark when I got back to my apartment, around nine o’clock. A single Tiki light burned over the table in the courtyard. Marc was stacking the last of the remnants from dinner. Presumably, Louis was inside doing dishes. It looked as though Leon had already left, if he’d been at all.

Marc saw me as he juggled dishes. “Well, hello stranger.”

Stopping on the stairs to the second floor, I asked, “How was the opera?”

“Best four-hour nap I’ve ever had.”

“Marc’s not an opera buff,” Louis said, popping out of the apartment to take dishes from Marc.

“Louis’ first partner was the conductor of the San Antonio Philharmonic. Louis learned music by osmosis. The kind of osmosis that can get you arrested in twenty-six states.”

Louis ignored him and instead said, “So, No-ra, we heard you had an adventure.”

“Yes, I met Rex Hoffman.”

“How was that?”

Given that he’d just called me Nora, I figured he already new everything. “Not as much fun as Leon wanted it to be. It was interesting, though. I think Guy needed money for something.”

“Maybe he was trying to burn the place down for insurance,” Marc suggested.

“He didn’t own the building.”

“But the cameras must be insured. Maybe he was trying to burn the place down and accidentally got stuck inside.”

“Did he accidentally stab himself with the spanner wrench?” Louis asked.

“We don’t know that anyone got stabbed with that. And we only think there’s blood on it. We haven’t done any testing,” Marc pointed out. Not that we had access to testing.

“Guys, I’m tired. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Yes, of course,” Louis said. “We’re meeting for drinks tomorrow at New York, New York. About six.”

Only in Los Angeles would someone name a bar New York, New York. It was in Atwater Village, which was a sliver of a neighborhood between Los Feliz and Glendale, bordering the 5 freeway. It wasn’t a bad place to put a bar if you wanted an after-work crowd. It was easy to stop there if you were going home from Burbank, Glendale, Silver Lake, or even downtown. They sold two-for-one cocktails from five to eight, making it a great place to wait out rush hour traffic.

I hadn’t been in a while, so I said, “All right, that sounds fun.”

Finally, I continued up the stairs to my apartment. I could have told them about meeting Guy’s boyfriend, but it had been a long day. I’d tell them tomorrow at New York, New York.

Inside my apartment, I threw my keys into a dish on the bookshelf by the door and hit the answering machine I kept on the small table next to the sofa. There was a message from my doctor asking to move my appointment from next Thursday to next Friday. That wasn’t going to be a problem. There were two hang-ups and then a message from my mother. She said, “Call me when you get in. It doesn’t matter what time. We need to talk.”

When it came to my mother, “We need to talk” could mean just about anything. It could mean she was about to have surgery or it could mean she couldn’t decide what kind of oil to put into her 1978 Dodge Aspen, both were given the same urgency.

It was one o’clock in the morning back in Michigan, so I was not going to call her. We could talk in the morning. Probably far too early in the morning for my taste.

I put in a CD, Sunday in the Park with George, a favorite, though why a musical whose theme was art and children appealed to me seemed odd since I had no interest in either. Pouring a glass of cheap chardonnay, I sat down at the dining table and looked out at the basin. It would have appealed to George Seurat, all the little points of light.

Why had Ted Bain run away from me? Why had he told me to stop being curious? Well, obviously there was something he didn’t want me to know. Something that made him nervous. Had Ted killed Guy? That would explain why he wanted me to stop being curious, but it seemed wrong somehow. Killing your boyfriend was a crime of passion, spontaneous, the result of conflict. Why would Guy and Ted have such a conflict at the camera store? People were passionate at home or at backyard parties or bars—

My phone was ringing. I’d left the receiver on the table, so I was able to pick up without even moving. “Hello?”

“Isn’t it a tragedy?” It was my mother.

“What is?”

“Marlene Dietrich. She’s gone.”

I got up and turned down the CD player. George was finishing the hat and now I’d barely be able to hear it.

“Mom, they said in the paper she was ninety.”

“Time is such a cruel thing.”

“I hope you live to be ninety.”

“Thank you, dear, that’s sweet. You’ll be fifty-five when I’m ninety.”

“Yes.” Though why that was import—

“How old would Jeffer have been?”

“I don’t know,” I said. All I could really think about was the fact that he was thirty-eight when he died. And it was too confusing to add or subtract anything from that.

“She was such a good person.”

“Who was?”

“Marlene Dietrich. You know she did so much during the war. She hated the Nazis. Hated what they did to her country.”

“I made a shelf for her at the store. Most of the videos rented, so now it’s kind of empty.”

“Oh that’s lovely. You know, you should open a video store here. I don’t even know where I’d go to rent a Marlene Dietrich movie.”

“Mom, you have cable. They’ll be playing her movies all day long on American Movie Classics.”

“It’s not the same. A video store is like a library, you get to wander around and discover things.”

“Why are you up so late?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I worry. Are you seeing anyone, Noah? It’s been almost two years.”

“I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

“For what?”

“For worrying about me.”