The Thief (24 page)

Motorcycle messengers with sidecars full were rushing reels of film in and out of Imperial’s first-floor film exchange. The exchange was plastered with “No Smoking Allowed” signs, which none of the cyclists distributing highly flammable reels to exhibitors were obeying. The building directory listed offices and lofts on the upper floors housing laboratories, machine and repair shops, properties and costume wardrobes, and a main studio containing Stage 1 and Stage 2 in the glass penthouse.

The entire second floor was devoted to the factory’s own moving picture theater—the Imperial. Newspaper reviews posted in the lobby called it a “Movie Palace,” and while absorbing the details of the building and the people coming and going, Bell read of gleaming gilt cherubs in a “finely appointed place that will draw the more wealthy classes who do not patronize moving picture shows except on ‘slumming’ exhibitions.”

The doormen patrolling the lobby were harder-cased than he would expect to find wearing uniforms as lavishly gilded as Captain Turner’s. That a bruiser corps was considered a wise precaution for an independent a full three thousand miles from New Jersey spoke volumes about the power of the Edison Trust. One of the doormen watching Bell read the reviews swaggered over to investigate.

Bell said, “It says here that ladies who come downtown on shopping expeditions spend an hour in the Imperial.”

“And bring their friends next time. What can we do for you, mister?”

“I have an appointment with the managing director.”

“Seventh floor, sir.”

The elevator operators were unusually young and fit. On the seventh floor a male receptionist, who looked like he had learned his trade in a football flying wedge, led him through a locked door to a secretary who ushered him into a large office, curtained against the blazing sun. To Isaac Bell’s surprise, the managing director who rose smiling from her desk was Marion’s beautiful, dark-eyed Russian friend Irina Viorets.

She was dressed in a stylish suit, with a long skirt and jacket that hugged her closely, and she had collected her beautiful hair high in the back as the women directors did to allow them to peer through the lens of the camera.

“You look surprised, Isaac,” she greeted him with a warm laugh. “I assure you, no one is more surprised than I.”

Bell took the hand she offered. “May I congratulate you on what must be the quickest immigrant success story in America? You have landed on your feet and then some.”

“Sheer luck. I bumped into an old friend who knew my work in Russia. He introduced me to a banker, who introduced me to a group of Wall Street men who had already jumped on the movie bandwagon and suddenly had this factory and no one to run it. I leaped at the chance. Moving pictures will all be made in California. The sun shines here every day.”

“Quite a leap,” Bell marveled, “from making pictures to running the entire factory.”

“Well,” she said, lowering her eyes modestly, “I had experience of business in Petersburg. But I don’t overrate my position here. The Wall Street bankers back in New York call the tune. I am merely the piper. Or, at best, the arranger. They burn the telegraph wires firing demands across the continent night and day. Where is your lovely bride? Taking pictures of Jersey scenery?”

“San Francisco, visiting her father.”

“What does she do next?”

“She’s contemplating her next move.”

“Perfect. We must get Marion to join us here, where she may take pictures of things more attractive than ‘Jersey scenery.’”

“I imagine she would like that. I certainly would.”

“In the meantime, come to lunch and tell me all about ‘Talking Pictures.’”

They rode the elevator down to a staff commissary feeding actors costumed as plutocrats, policemen, washerwomen, countesses, cowboys, and Indians. Many were grease-painted with purple lips, green skin, and orange hair to show up in the chartreuse glow of the Cooper-Hewitts. Irina sashayed among them, exchanging friendly waves and greetings, and into an exquisite private dining room that looked like it had been removed board by board from a London club and reassembled in the new building.

Bell asked, “Did Clyde mention anything about his Talking Pictures machine on the boat?”

“Just enough to make me think, when Mr. Griffith telephoned, that it could be exactly what my investors in the Artists Syndicate are looking for.”

I
SAAC
B
ELL ENJOYED A FLIRTATIOUS
 lunch with Irina Viorets while making it clear he was a one-woman man, and Marion was that one woman. But he had the strong impression that Irina’s smiles, flashing eyes, and light touches on his arm were more for show than intent.

“I meant to ask on the ship, how do you happen to speak such interesting English? Sometimes you sound almost like a native-born American.”

“Almost, but not quite. Though I’m improving. It is a wondrous language.”

“How did you learn it?”

“In Petersburg my father played the piano at the American embassy. I had many friends among the children.”

For some reason, thought Isaac Bell, that was a story he wanted Van Dorn Research to verify. In fact, there was something about this whole setup that rang a little false. Perhaps it was just the incredible speed with which Irina’s good fortune had unfolded, or perhaps the detective’s nemesis, coincidence. Or maybe it was simply a memory of Marion saying that Irina’s story about fleeing the Okhrana changed with each glass of wine, though there was no wine at this lunch, merely orange juice and water.

“When was that?”

“Let me think,” she said. “Oh, Isaac, it’s embarrassing how long ago that was. Bloody Nicholas hadn’t taken the throne.”

“Before, when was that, 1894?”

“Not too far before,” Irina said, her full lips parting in a warm smile. “Allow a woman a certain latitude with her age.”

“Forgive me,” Bell smiled back, satisfied that Grady Forrer—the brilliant head of Van Dorn Research, a large man in whose presence barroom brawls tended to peter out quickly and a hound dog of a tracker—would soon put the question to American embassy officers who had served in Russia when Czar Alexander III still reigned.

“Tell me, Irina, will you miss directing pictures now that you’re running the whole show?”

“Will I miss positioning the camera and waiting for the sun for hours so I may transfer full beauty to the negative? Yes, very much. Will I miss a banker who lent me the money to position the camera for hours telling me that it would be better if I positioned it
there
, instead of
there
? No! Not one bit. Now my only ‘boss’ is the Artists Syndicate, and they are three thousand miles away in New York.”

“Who are the investors in the Artists Syndicate?”

“The syndicate is closely held. I met none of them. I don’t even know their names.”

“Why do you suppose they are so secretive?”

“For two reasons,” she answered, with a laugh that did not conceal a certain discomfort, Bell thought. “They are probably respectable bankers who don’t want their wives, club brothers, and fellow progressive reformers to know with whom they rub shoulders. Don’t forget, motion picture manufacturers are thought to be either risqué or tainted by sinful nickelodeon profits or careers that started in carnival shows and low-class vaudeville. I am told that this is a uniquely American attitude, but I saw the same snobbishness in London.”

“And the second reason?”

“The second reason is what I suspect is the real reason: fear. As wealthy as they are, they are not as powerful as Thomas Edison. They’re afraid that if Edison interests learn who they are, the Trust will fight back by shutting them out of their
other
businesses, not only moving pictures.”

Bell eyed her closely. There was something about the Russian woman he liked—a sense of decency, he supposed, and her liveliness. And she certainly was easy on the eyes. But he wondered, would she ever question the nature of the investors backing her dream of being a boss? Or would her ambition still her doubts?

“We have a proverb,” he said. “‘She who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.’”

Irina Viorets laughed it off. “Russians have a proverb, too: ‘When the devil finds a lazy woman, he puts her to work.’ I admit to many flaws, but sloth is not among them. And I never forget that we Russians also say, ‘God keeps her safe who keeps herself safe.’”

Isaac Bell reckoned he might have opened a chink in her armor. Nonetheless, he would wire a second inquiry to Grady Forrer:

WHO PAYS THE BILLS FOR

IMPERIAL FILM???

A
FTER LUNCH THEY GOT DOWN TO
business, with Bell acting his part as a Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock insurance executive anxious to invest in the movies. Bearing in mind the outright rejection by Pirate King Tarses, he opened with Marion’s fierce defense. “Without pictures that talk, the screen shrinks drama, tragedy, comedy, and farce to pantomime.”

“But the screen is democracy,” said Viorets, “if not socialism. We are reproducing the rich man’s tragedies, comedies, and farces in pantomime that men on the street can afford.”

“Clyde has invented a way to do it with words and music instead of pantomime,” said Isaac Bell.

Irina nodded. “I heard that your insurance firm was investing in Clyde’s Talking Pictures machine. That’s really why I was intrigued when Mr. Griffith telephoned.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From moving picture people you were shopping it to in New Jersey.”

“Then you heard that my firm seeks manufacturers who are up to taking superior pictures with the same photography and finish as the French.”

Irina Viorets reached across the table and placed a pretty hand on Bell’s arm. “I promise you, Mr. Bell, Imperial will out-French the French—let me show you,” she said, and took him on a tour of the Imperial Building that left Bell with no doubt that Irina Viorets was in command of a going concern.

She showed him the laboratories and machine, repair, and carpentry shops that Griffith had raved about. He saw printing and perforating instruments in the darkrooms, properties and wardrobe rooms of costumes for hundreds of soldiers, police, and cowboys, and rows of flats in the scenic department painted black and white. On the fourth floor was a soundproof recording room, like Edison’s, the walls padded, the floor corked tile, with an array of acoustic horns to capture sound.

She took him outside. In a vacant lot on the south side of the building, a mock street facing toward the sun could be made to look like New York, or London, or medieval Paris.

Next to the building was a life net. Ordinarily held by firemen to catch people jumping from a burning house, this one was permanently fixed. “For catching actors,” Irina laughed, pointing at the building’s parapet a hundred feet off the ground. “Just outside of camera range.”

Bell quoted Clyde Lynds: “Providing thrills dear to the heart of the exhibitor.”

They went back indoors and rode the elevator ten stories to the roof. Irina said, “The best photoplays of the future will be those that are created inside the film studio.”

The picture-taking studio had room for several cinematograph studio stages with glass ceilings to capture natural light. At one edge of the roof stood a stone wall that could serve as a precipice or a building. Bell leaned over and looked down. The life net winked back at him, no bigger than a dime.

“I have one more thing to show you.” She took him down to the eighth floor to a gleaming camera and projector machine shop, with a laboratory attached.

“Everything is up-to-date. Would you like to use our facility, Isaac?”

“Will your Artists Syndicate allow it?”

“I will deal with the Artists Syndicate. You and Clyde will deal with me.”

“Done,” said Isaac Bell. “With one proviso. My firm will staff Lynds’s workshop with mechanicians.”

“If you like, though we already have the best in Los Angeles.”

“And we will provide our own guards.”

“Whatever for? This building is a fortress.”

“So I noticed. Nonetheless, my directors are conservative. They will demand that we do everything possible to protect Lynds’s invention.”