The man and woman were headed straight for Selznick. I nudged Wally, who turned.
'Selznick's brother, Myron, the agent,' he said. 'Looks like he's had a few under his belt tonight.'
'He supposed to be on the set?' I asked.
'You wanna tell him to go away? Step in and make a mistake and you'll be looking for short-order work in Topeka,' Wally said.
I moved closer to Selznick just in case. Varney had now disappeared.
David O. Selznick didn't see his brother and the girl for an instant. He had turned back to light a cigarette and watch the flames consume what was left of the Atlanta set.
'David,' Myron said.
'Went without a hitch, Myron. Without a hitch,' Selznick said with a sigh, turning to face his brother. 'Did you see?'
'David,' Myron said, looking in the flickering light like a Freddy March about to turn into Mr. Hyde. 'I'd like you to meet Scarlett O'Hara.'
Selznick turned now and looked down at the young woman. He took her hand and grinned at his brother, probably more happy with having the scene successfully in the can than with the prospect of Myron having discovered a last-minute Scarlett after two years of searching and screen tests of every actress in Hollywood, with the possible exception of Mae West.
'Vivien Leigh,' said Myron, and Vivien Leigh, her small, pale hand in David Selznick's large one, smiled.
'Hear that?' Wally said at my side.
There was noise all around. Fire trucks. Cranes, trucks, the voices of people congratulating each other.
'What?' I asked.
'Come on,' he said, touching my shoulder.
I followed Wally away from the meeting between the Selznicks and Leigh. He ran down a gully on his spindly legs and hurried into a stand of bushes. I went after him into the darkness. Now I could hear something ahead of us.
Wally plowed ahead until we cleared the trees, went up a little hill, and found ourselves panting and looking at a group of Confederate soldiers who were about thirty yards ahead of us around an open fire.
'He's dead,' one of the soldiers shouted. 'I've seen dead. He's dead.'
Wally pushed ahead and we made our way through the group that included the guy named Varney who had talked to us a few minutes earlier.
When we broke through we saw the dead man, in a gray uniform. He was lying at the bottom of what looked like a drainage ditch. A sword was plunged into his stomach. The sword swayed as if someone had set it in motion.
'Anybody see what happened?' Wally said.
'Just fell on it, I guess,' an extra in a gray private's uniform said.
'I saw him fall on it,' said Varney, as Wally and I scurried down the side of the ditch toward the dead man.
Wally got down first and kneeled next to the corpse, careful not to touch anything.
'Dead for sure,' he said. 'First, probably not the last, on a picture this big.'
I stood next to him, my trouser cuffs getting wet with mud. I'd see them dead before. Wally got up.
'Picture like this,' he went on, reaching for his pipe and tobacco, 'no surprise. Bound to be some accidents. Think we had four or five killed on Ben-Hur back in the old days. My guess is they'll want to keep this quiet a while. Low key.'
I'd seen cover-ups at Warners when I worked security there, had even helped with one or two that would have been the end of rising and falling stars, writers, and directors.
Wally and I looked up to the top of the ditch. The Confederate extras had scurried into the night and the smell of burning sets, but someone was standing in the shadows at the top of the hill. Our eyes met for a second and then Clark Gable, or a hell of a ringer, turned and walked away.
Wally spent the next few hours writing the report and talking to the Culver City Police. The dead man hadn't been carrying identification. His wallet and things were probably in his car, parked in the lot with hundreds of others. The police would find it, check it out, and mark it down as a freak accident. Case closed. Atlanta burned. On to Tara, being built about half a mile away.
I was called early the next afternoon. I was half asleep.
'Toby,' said Wally. 'Going to have to let you go. I'll see to it you get paid for the week.'
'The dead soldier?' I guessed.
'You got it. Powers that be think it best if you and the extras who were around that fire not be here where you might make mention of the incident to a reporter or some gaffer with a big mouth.'
'I wouldn't do that, Wally,' I said.
'I know you wouldn't, but this way, I don't have to put myself on the line and say so. What do we gain? Nothing. What can I lose? My job. Let's keep it this way. Simple. I'll be looking for more work for you down the line.'
'Did you talk to Gable?' I asked.
'Gable?'
'He was there,' I said. 'Top of the hill when we found the body.'
'Not a chance, Toby,' he said. 'Gable didn't have a call last night and he's not the kind that stands around watching people make movies when he doesn't have to.' 'My mistake,' I said.
'I'll call you as soon as I've got something for you.' It would be five years before I talked to Wally again.
Chapter 1
Aside from the fact that a giant Samoan named Andy was not standing on the chest of a little man named Charles Westfarland, and the tables and chairs weren't torn and shattered in front of the bandstand, the Mozambique Lounge in Glendale looked pretty much the way it had when I had last been in it almost ten years earlier.
It was early in the evening, Sunday, February 28, 1943, and I had come to see a client who had asked me to meet him at the Mozambique. I said I could, and he had started to give me directions; I cut him off and told him I knew the place, knew it well.
The Mozambique was dark and heavy with the same smell of alcohol and tired lust it had a decade ago. Two couples sat at one of the white-and-red-checkered tables in front of the bandstand, where a bored-looking old guy who looked like Clifton Webb was playing a pretty damned good boogie-woogie version of 'There's a Breeze on Lake Louise.' At the table next to the two couples, who were laughing like phony ex-tras, a trio of uniformed sailors sat nursing Gobel beers and won-dering whether they should pay attention to Clifton Webb or swap prewar stories. Two of the sailors were about ten years old and probably didn't have any stories but the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The third sailor was a lot older. In fact, if he could act, he probably had a good shot at playing Sheridan Whiteside in a road-company production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. Seaman Whiteside was doing the talking.
The red-leatherette booths along the wall to my right were empty except for a guy in the far corner, hidden in the shadows and smoking. The bar was long, dark wood shined like a mirror from hell, the pride of Lester Gannett, who owned the place and poured the drinks. I was sure that when I last saw him four years earlier Gannett had been leaning on the bar the way he was now. But back then he hadn't been pouring something amber from a bottle into the tumbler of a little girl made up like someone's bad idea of a lady of the evening. The kid in the army air- corps uniform next to her smiled and looked at Lester in the hope of getting some acknowledgment of his good luck at landing this infant version of Lana Turner.
'Wow,' said Sidney, perched just about where he had been a year before the war started. Sidney ruffled his white feathers and closed his beak, looking at me as to one more rich in hope. Sidney was an old cockatoo. The Mozambique was perfect. It even smelled like the jungle.
Lester noticed me. His round head cocked to one side like the old bird next to me, as he tried to place my dark eyes and busted nose.
