the number. I think someone may want to kill him. Spelling, the guy who shot Gouda.'
'Why?' Phil asked. 'Why does this guy Spelling want to kill Clark Gable?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Give me a few days and maybe I'll find out.'
'And maybe more people will be murdered.'
'Can you protect everyone who worked on Gone With the WindT' 'Friday,' said Phil, sitting at his desk. 'You got till Friday.'
'Thanks, Phil,' I said.
His eyes were closed now.
'Phil?'
'I'm meditating,' he said.
'Medi-?'
'Just close the goddamn door and get the hell out of here. Friday you come with answers or I find you, manacle you, and personally drag you to Glendale.'
I didn't say thanks. I didn't say anything. I opened the door and left. I took a cab back to Gouda's lamp store. A crew of men and women in overalls were sweeping up glass and boarding up windows.
Tools Nathanson was standing in front on the sidewalk, a blank look on his face, a hammer in his hand, watching the crew sweep away his partner's passion.
I got in my Crosley and headed for the Farraday Building.
Chapter 8
The Carolina Hotel was top dollar. A girl in a cute red-and-gold short-skirted uniform, one of those little bellboy caps tied around her chin, took the keys to my Crosley and gave me a grin. I gave her a buck for not noticing I wasn't driving a Lincoln.
An old man in a red-and-gold uniform, long pants, opened the hotel door for me and I walked into one of the great lobbies of America. Mosaic-tile floors with flower pattern, gold walls, and plump furniture in little nooks made private by tall ferns and plants. Parrots gurgled in a dozen cages. People bustled in and out, talking business, making deals, trying not to notice if they were being noticed.
I walked the half mile across the lobby and informed the tuxedoed clerk that Mr. Varney was expecting me. The clerk, who looked as if he never needed a shave, did something with his head that might have been a nod, or maybe he just closed his eyes for an instant in acknowledgment.
I was wearing a zippered tan Windbreaker, dark slacks, a white shirt fraying only slightly at the collar, and a tie that came close to matching the dark of my trousers. In New York, I'd definitely be sent to the service entrance. In Los Angeles, hundred thousand-dollar-a-year executives dressed the way I was dressed, even for business meetings. Working-man casual was in. Only actors dressed in suits.
The clerk stepped discreetly back out of my hearing and picked up a house phone. He was replaced by a near-duplicate ready to greet the next inquiry. Nobody inquired. Clerk Two didn't smile. Clerk One returned and said, 'Room 304. Mr. Varney is expecting you.'
Which was what I had said.
I said thanks and turned in search of the elevator. I found it in a niche beyond where three men and a woman were sitting forward and whispering at the top of their voices.
The Carolina had an elevator operator with a smile of perfect teeth, who wore an appropriate gold-and-red uniform and looked a little like Jane Powell. She took me up to the third floor and opened the door for me.
The Carolina was Hollywood class.
The red-and-gold carpeting was thick and clean-smelling. The walls were lined with paintings and watercol- ors of California mountains, beaches, and forests. No movie stars. No reproductions of famous paintings by long- dead Dutchmen.
The door to 304 was open.
'Peters, come in,' Varney called, and I came in and closed the door behind me.
The room was big. More carpets. A sofa. A pair of matching stuffed chairs with a glass-top coffee table between them. An open bar against one wall and balcony looking out on the swimming pool and Beverly Hills.
Varney was at the bar, fresh white shut open at the collar, sleeves rolled up, slacks creased, and shoes shined. A well-trimmed wave of graying hair sat on a pleasantly Indian-looMag tan face. He didn 't look anything like the dusty bitter Confederate soldier I'd met five years earlier.
'Drink?' he asked, holding up a glass of dark liquid over ice to show me he was having one.
'Pepsi, if you've got it,' I said, moving to the window to get a better look at two tan girls taking lessons from a man in white.
'Meet it. Don't beat it,' the tennis pro said in a booming voice three floors below.
I could hear the girls giggle. I could hear ice tinkle behind me.
'Pepsi, on the rocks,' Varney said, handing me the glass.
'Thanks.'
He looked down at the pro and the girls and sighed.
'Things change,' he said.
'Some things,' I said.
I turned and Varney pointed to one of the chairs with his free hand. I sat.
'Last time you saw me I was feeling more than a bit sorry for myself and wondering if I should spend my last few dollars and head back to selling women's shoes hi Mo-line.'
He sat and looked around.
'And now,' he continued. 'There's a bedroom through there and a bathroom as big as a small destroyer beyond it.'
'What's your story?' I asked.
'Went to New York,' he said, after a long sip of golden liquid. 'Did well on the radio. Tried the theater. Lucky. I came when the leading men were shipping out and the choice just off Broadway was babies or old farts for leading men. Two years earlier and I would have hit the skids and headed for Moline. Never to be heard from or cared about. I was an only kid. Mother and father dead. Relatives are all in Finland. Never married. Studio's going to have to be creative in making a biography that will get a line or two with Hedda.'
'I gather you've got a movie contract,' I said.
'Three pictures. Universal. All Bs, but I'm the star. God, I was lucky. Associate producer named Cantor caught me in something called Is This Seat Taken? I had a death scene and I was feeling perfect that night. I…'
He was looking at me when he stopped and he must have seen something that told him I hadn't come to admire his triumphant return.
'What is it?' he said, putting down his drink.
'The night I met you. Burning of Atlanta. Man got killed.'
'I remember,' he said. 'Crazy accident.'
'One for Ripley,' I agreed. 'You scare easy?'
'Normal,' he said, cautiously watching my eyes.
'Looks like someone's killing off all of you,' I said.
'All of?…'
'The extras playing Confederate soldiers. The ones who were there when that guy got killed.'
I fished out the photograph and handed it to him. He held it in both hands for a few seconds before saying, 'That's me. And this one, right here,'' he said, turning the photograph to me. 'He's the one who died. Lord God, I had all but forgotten that night. Do the police know? What are they doing?'
I took the photograph back and said, The police know. They're doing what they can do. Remember his name? The man who got killed?'
'No. Wait. Maybe it was Lang, or Long. I don't… someone is killing us? Why?'
I had finished my Pepsi but I didn't feel like asking for another.
