Valentino Will Die Read online

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Donis Casey

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  Cover images © Ilina Simeonova/Trevillion Images

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Casey, Donis, author.

  Title: Valentino will die / Donis Casey.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2020] | Series:

  The Bianca Dangereuse Hollywood Mysteries ; episode 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020017136 | (trade paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Valentino, Rudolph, 1895-1926--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery

  fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.A863 V35 2020 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017136

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Bianca LaBelle and Rudolph Valentino Together at Last!

  Donatella, Queen Berengaria’s faithful maidservant, runs on tiptoes into her mistress’s bedchamber.

  You are invited to The Highly Anticipated World Premiere of The Son of the Sheik

  Women Admire Her and Men Desire Her

  Valentino Dead! …Is a Scurrilous Rumor!

  Two Weeks Later, Back in California, our Story takes a Turn

  We Return to a Farmhouse in China, Where Last we Saw Bianca Dangereuse…

  August 1932

  “Here was a young man who was living daily the dream of millions of other young men. Here was one who was catnip to women. Here was one who had wealth and fame. And here was one who was very unhappy.”

  Real Or Not Real?

  Real

  Maybe Real, Maybe Not

  Not Real

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For D.K., with great love now and forever

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction based on an actual event—Rudolph Valentino’s sudden death in 1926 at the age of thirty-one. The fact that the handsome, romantic screen idol died so young, so tragically, so unexpectedly, gave him a cultic, almost mythic, status that shook popular culture to the core all over the world at the time and persists to this day, nearly a century after his death. Valentino’s short life was full of much more intrigue and adventure than I addressed in this novel, which only deals with the last few months of his life. Many of the events I wrote about actually happened, but I did combine characters and events and compress the timeline. A huge amount of information about Valentino’s life and death can be found online and in countless books and magazines, but I particularly recommend Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, an in-depth biography by Emily Wortis Leider, 2003.

  Bianca LaBelle and Rudolph Valentino

  Together at Last!

  In Grand Obsession

  ~ Queen Berengaria of Moldava, as haughty as she is beautiful. Mysterious. Untouchable. Until she meets dashing Duke Fyodor Ostrienski, the only man alive capable of melting her Icy Heart ~

  A rose.

  He draws its tender petals across her cheek, then raises it to his face and breathes deeply of her essence. He affixes the thorny stem to his chest by tucking it behind the family crest on his scarlet baldric, then brushes a kiss across her wrist before gently taking her hand.

  The queen is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, tall, slender as a reed, but unbending as an iron rod. Her skin is as white and cool as alabaster, but her limpid eyes are full of sorrow, a deep well of sadness that the errant duke longs to fill with love.

  In full view of the court, oblivious to the wrathful glare of King Mark, Duke Fyodor takes the queen in his arms and pulls her close. Not a sliver of daylight separates their bodies as he begins to move with pantherlike grace around the floor of the ballroom in a sinuous, sensuous waltz that draws every eye. The music swells, as does the queen’s heart, unable to resist the passion stirring in her breast, so long unmoved. His smoldering gaze holds hers, enrapt, until his cheek presses close to hers, and into her ear he whispers…

  “Cara, if I do not sit down for a moment, I will fall down.”

  * * *

  The queen raised her jewel-bedecked arm above her head and sent a tinkling wave at the director. “Cut, cut, cut! We could use a break, here, Rex.”

  Director Rex Ingram leapt out of his chair, and the music came to an ignoble, bleating end. “Not again. Rudy, you look about as passionate as a dead fish. What is wrong with you today? Yesterday when we did the scene in the palace garden, you were on fire. I thought I was going to have to throw a bucket of water on the two of you. Now, shape up! Only two weeks left on this shoot. Time is money!”

  Rudolph Valentino and Bianca LaBelle moved apart during Ingram’s tirade but kept holding hands, mainly because Rudy wanted to punch the director in the face and Bianca wanted to prevent mayhem.

  Rudy overcame his irritation enough to say, “Scusi, Rex. Sorry. It has been a long day and I am tired.”

  “Well, never mind, we got some good footage today, and we can take up where we left off first thing tomorrow. Besides, Marty Levinson from the publicity department wants to see you two before you go home tonight, so head on over to the front office after you get out of those costumes.”

  If Rudolph Valentino and Bianca LaBelle had not been two of the most famous and well-regarded actors in the world, both would have been tempted to fall to the floor and kick their heels in frustration. Bianca made do with a moan. Ingram was already striding out of the studio and wouldn’t have cared about his actors’ feelings, anyway.

  “Do you want to sit for a minute, Rudy, before we head to the co
stume warehouse?”

  “All right, just for a minute.”

  The extras were already emptying the elaborate ballroom set that had been constructed on Stage Nine, but the wardrobe mistress and the dancing master, who had been standing behind the cameras, started toward the actors, both with concerned expressions. Bianca waved them off. “We’ll be along in a minute, Caroline.”

  The actors made their way to the side of the set, where an authentic nineteenth-century, Austro-Hungarian brocade-covered bench sat against the fake wall. Rudy flopped down with a sigh, and Bianca carefully seated herself and her substantial bustle beside him.

  “I hate Ingram,” Rudy said.

  This was no news to Bianca. She knew Valentino’s likes and dislikes well. “What’s wrong, Rudy? Besides the fact that Rex Ingram is an ass? You haven’t been yourself since we started this picture.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, cara. It is my stomach again, acting up worse today. I have not felt so well.”

  “Rudy, you’ve been having stomach problems for months now. Did you see Dr. Moore about it, like I told you to do two weeks ago?”

  “Yes, of course. Do not scold me. He says nothing new that he can find. Not to worry because I shall irritate my ulcer. To rest. To not eat spicy food. Ha! I cannot rest, and food is my only pleasure since Natacha left me. My new house, Falcon Lair, it is torn to pieces with the renovation, and reporters, fans, they will not leave me alone…”

  “Look, why don’t you spend tonight at my estate? In fact, you’re welcome to stay at Orange Garden for as long as you want, at least until the remodel is done on Falcon Lair. I know just how to take care of a tender stomach. Besides, Fee is off tonight, and I’d be glad of the company.”

  “Such a generous offer, cara. Yes, maybe just for tonight. You have always taken good care of me.”

  Bianca smiled. Rudolph Valentino may have been known worldwide as the greatest Latin lover to ever grace the silver screen, but in real life, poor Rudy had always had singularly bad luck with his romances. Bianca knew why, too, and had never been shy about telling him all about it. Rudy was drawn to the wrong kind of woman—or wrong for him, at least. He was attracted to strong, independent, artistic women, and fell madly, instantly, into the throes of amore. But as the relationships advanced, his stubborn, old-world expectation of what a woman should be like—gentle, compliant, Madonna-like—ended up driving her away.

  Bianca had informed him more than once that you can’t tell a woman you admire her for being one way and then demand she change into something else. In her experience, too many men fell into that trap. Especially Italian men. Especially this particular Italian man.

  Rudy just laughed at her. “You are one to talk,” he’d accuse. Bianca LaBelle, a world-renowned beauty, never had relationships at all, at least not one that hadn’t been specifically set up by a studio publicist to promote her image as a woman of mystery and dangerous allure.

  Bianca and Rudy had been friends for years, but nothing more than friends. They had both come to Hollywood broke and in trouble, and though he was a decade older than she, each by their own lightning-strike of fortune had gone from completely unknown to incredibly famous at about the same time. For Rudy, one sultry tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had vaulted him into the stratosphere. For Bianca, one fantastic, swanlike leap from the queen’s balcony in The Three Musketeers led to a series of wildly popular adventure pictures about the indomitable world traveler, journalist, and sometime spy, Bianca Dangereuse.

  Valentino and LaBelle had met at a party. There was always a party involved in Hollywood. That fateful shindig had been at silent screen legend Alma Bolding’s house back in 1922. Rudy was newly divorced from actress Jean Acker (or so he thought) and living with set designer and his eventual second ex-wife, Natacha Rambova (née Winifred Shaughnessy), in a tony house down the hill from Alma’s Whitley Heights mansion. He and Natacha had owned a lion cub then and walked it on a leash around the neighborhood every evening, which said a lot about their mutual disregard for convention.

  Bianca was Alma’s protégé at the time, still living with the star while Bianca’s own Beverly Hills mansion was being built, just down the road from Mary Pickford’s and Douglas Fairbanks’s place, Pickfair.

  Bianca had liked Rudy right away. They were alike, both headstrong and restless, eager for adventure, and loved dogs and horses. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t have a giant ego like many of the men she dealt with in Hollywood. He was sweet and rather naive and told terrible jokes that she didn’t get. The two of them had been trying to navigate their newfound fame, and both were still a bit shell-shocked, unsure of who to trust. They were the hottest new faces on the Hollywood scene. The fact that they both had “it,” whatever that was, gave them a kind of kinship.

  Now, four years later, their stellar fame had not lived up to its shining promise, and Valentino and LaBelle were like old war buddies. No one who had not lived through the same bloody battles they had could understand their bond.

  ~ Fame, as it turns out, is not all it’s cracked up to be ~

  After resting on the brocade bench for a few minutes, Valentino declared himself better and walked with Bianca off the stage and across a short alley to the costume and makeup bungalow. The sight of a beautiful, regal, green-eyed woman in a fake diamond tiara and purple sateen Hapsburg-era ball gown, and a striking man with smoldering dark eyes, dressed in tails with a medal-encrusted red baldric across his chest would normally be no occasion for remark here on the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio lot, where actors of every imaginable stripe wandered the grounds. But these two were not ordinary mortals and passersby who caught sight of them stopped to gawk and whisper behind their hands. Bianca and Rudy no longer noticed. They both were accustomed to being admired, or at least to being objects of intense scrutiny.

  Wardrobe mistress Caroline White and her minions were waiting for them when they arrived at the warehouse, and the actors had barely cleared the doorway before multiple hands began removing their expensive costumes—sashes, tiaras, medals, and jewels, Bianca’s elaborate wig. Bianca and Rudy chatted comfortably as they were stripped down to their underwear. As soon as the costume elves disappeared with armfuls of clothing, they made their way to their individual dressing nooks to don street clothes and remove their makeup with buckets of cold cream.

  Before walking all the way from the backlot to the front offices to meet with the studio publicist, Bianca telephoned to warn that they were on the way. They were told to stay put until a guard could arrive to drive them across the acres of studio lot. If they legged it, they were liable to be so delayed by adoring fans, aspiring actors, and other admirers that they might not make it to their appointment at all.

  The head of United Artists’ publicity department, Marty Levinson, didn’t wait for his starstruck assistant to drool over Rudy before he ushered them into his office, where he proceeded to drool over Bianca.

  Bianca withdrew her damp hand none too gently from Levinson’s grasp. “What do you want, Marty? It’s been a long day and we’re both beat.”

  Levinson pouted a bit but got down to business. “Listen, Miss Pickford thinks that Grand Obsession is going to be a blockbuster. But this is a damned expensive shoot…”

  “What, expensive?” Bianca interrupted. “If we were shooting in Vienna, like we ought to be, that would be one thing, but on the Santa Monica Boulevard backlot?”

  Levinson was not cowed. “Yes, expensive. The cost for the sets and costumes is astronomical. You know how Mary demands quality. Besides, the salaries for the two of you are through the roof.”

  “As they well should be.” Bianca slid a glance at Rudy. He looked every inch the matinee idol, clad in plus-fours and an open-collar white shirt, his black hair slicked back and shiny as a mirror. He had crossed his legs and relaxed into his chair with his elbows on the armrests and his fingers steepled before him, letting h
er do the talking. She was more than willing to do so. Rudy was too easygoing about this sort of thing. Bianca returned her attention to Levinson. “You know very well our names are going to make the studio a bundle. Now, what did you want to see us about?”

  Levinson sat down on the edge of his desk, amused at Bianca’s immediate power maneuver. The two veteran actors knew that they were about to be hustled into cooperating with some publicity stunt, and she was reminding him that they were too big to be strong-armed. He was just the publicity guy. It was no skin off his nose.

  “Here’s the deal, Bianca. Since Rudy and Pola Negri have tragically broken up, and since you are a famous virgin…”

  Bianca and Rudy burst into laughter at the same time.

  “Why not?” Levinson said. “A romance between you two would sell a million tickets worldwide.”

  “Why do you think I have broken with Pola?” Rudy said. Pola Negri was a fiery Polish-born screen vamp whom he had been dating off and on for several months.

  “Louella Parsons wrote in the Examiner that you two broke up in April.”

  Rudy gripped the chair arms and leaned forward. “Pola and I are still seeing one another. Besides, Natacha and I may never be together again, even if I do still love her. How will it look to her if Bianca and I…”

  “Both Pola and Natacha know how things work around here. Just tell them it’s a sham. Better yet, have Bianca tell her, whichever one you really want. In the meantime, what a story for the public. Bianca comforting you, soothing your broken heart. Two lonely people finding one another in this cold, cruel world.”

  Bianca didn’t offer an opinion. She had been paired in the industry journals with infinitely less appealing men than Rudolph Valentino. It never meant anything. But in this case, Rudy really was suffering from a broken heart, so as far as she was concerned it was up to him whether or not to go along with this particular illusion.

  “You are both too pretty to do a project together and have people believe the sparks don’t fly. This way you can control the narrative.”