and the piano player had disappeared. I stopped when I heard Gable and turned to see him rub his nose with his right hand, take a deep breath, and throw a solid right to Frank's stomach, followed by a left to his kidney as the big man spun to his side. One woman gasped. The other screamed. Frank's partner went for Gable but the old sailor was on his back.
I went through the heavy curtain as everyone in the bar-Lester, sailors, women, and cops-screamed and started breaking furniture and each other.
There wasn't much light backstage at the Mozambique, but there wasn't much to see either. A dirty wooden floor. A door with an exit sign over it. Three other unmarked wooden doors and a sputtering light bulb to guide the way.
I went for the first door, opened it, and found myself in a closet set up like a dressing room. Just enough space for a small table and chair and a peeling mirror. Table, chair, and mirror frame had all been painted a sick, thick, and uneven green. The room was empty except for the furniture and a photo tucked into the corner of the mirror. I took a look at the scratched photo. A group of guys in Confederate uniforms were lying on the ground and holding up their hands to Vivien Leigh, begging. One of the guys was circled in ink, He was lying in the dirt, his hands crossed in death. He was skinny and bearded, but Al Ramone's fake teeth gave him away. I looked at the photograph for another few seconds and had the feeling that I had seen this lost patrol before.
A motorcycle cranked up outside. I moved to the open window and pushed the dirty curtain aside in time to see Clark Gable roar into the Glendale night. Behind him and me the battle raged on.
I left the room and tried the next door. It was a closet that smelled of something strong and acrid.
That left one door next to the exit. I pushed through and found myself facing a sink ringed with brown-yellow stains. The faucet dripped. There were two toilet stalls. One was open and needed flushing. The other was closed.
'Ramone?' I said, looking down at the pair of feet below the closed stall's door. Someone's pants were down, and his pale, hairy ankles were showing.
No answer. The battle continued to rage in the lounge of the Mozambique, but I could barely hear it as I pushed open the stall and found Al Ramone sitting there, his hairpiece in his lap, his teeth pushing forward against his pursed lips, his sagging suit supporting a sagging rod of dark metal that had skewed him to the papered wall. He had looked better as a dead Confederate soldier than as a dead crooner.
I stood over Al Ramone for a few seconds before reaching for a piece of paper folded neatly and pinned to Ra-mone's sleeve. Since it said 'Toby Peters' on it, in what looked like the same pen and block letters as the poem in my pocket, I figured it was for me, unpinned it, and started to unfold it. Something creaked behind me and I shot back through the stall door, throwing my back against the wall next to the dripping sink.
I was breathing hard now, half expecting someone to rush through the toilet door with a big surprise for me. No one came. The battle went on. Sidney screamed 'Wow' in the distance and I read the note, wishing that I had brought my duly registered and seldom used.38 with me. Who knew?
'Welcome to the game,' the note read. 'No time for a proper poem, but cage-e is next. There is more than one way to spell t.h.a.t. And then Lionel Varney.'
For a beat or two it made no sense, and then something came through. I recalled the name Varney, the burning of Atlanta. The actor in the Confederate uniform who said he had been beaten out for Rhett Butler.
'Shit,' I muttered.
Everyone's a writer, an actor, a producer, a director. I like my jobs straight and simple. No poems or newspaper clips. No riddles or games. You get a threat. I protect. Someone is after you. I find him. You lost your cat or your aunt or your gold fillings, and I'm on the job. I don't do crazies if I can help it. But sometimes you can't help it. I tucked the bloodstained note, the poem, the clipping, and the card into the envelope Gable had given me. It was getting thick and, with the sound of a siren very nearby, it was getting hot.
I got out of the toilet as the police car, from the sound of its siren, pulled up in front of the Mozambique. I could make it though the window in Al Ramone's dressing closet and probably be in my Crosley and on the way home in less than thirty seconds, but Lester knew my name and I was easy to find.
I did go back to Al's dressing room, plucked the photograph of him pretending to be dead and found Varney, or what might have been Varney, in the picture, lying at the far right, beard covering his mouth. I folded the photo into the now-bulging envelope, hurried into the broom closet, where I stood on top of an overturned bucket and stashed the envelope under a carton of Gold Dust Cleanser boxes. It wouldn't be good for me or Gable for the police to find that envelope and what was in it.
I put the bucket in the corner, closed the closet, and moved back onto the stage of the Mozambique, where I was transported back a decade. The place looked bombed. All that was missing was Andy the giant Samoan standing on someone's stomach. Two uniformed cops had sat the sailors down against the bar. Frank, his pal, and their dates or wives were sitting at what was left of their table. Frank spotted me and said, 'That's him.'
I longed for the bad old days.
'That's him,' Lester confirmed.
The two cops looked over at me and I said, 'There's a dead baritone in the toilet.'
Behind me, the piano player, who had appeared from nowhere, launched into a melancholy version of 'After You've Gone.'
Chapter 2
Captain G. Lane Price was sitting behind his desk, wearing what looked like the same uniform he had worn a little over ten years ago when he'd shaken my hand, wished me well with my life as a civilian, and gone to lunch with the mayor of Glendale.
Captain G. Lane Price was leaning over to polish his shoes with a spritz from the bottle of Griffin ABC Liquid Black that sat on his desk.
The 'G' stood for Gene. Lane Price did not think of himself as a 'Gene.' At least he hadn't two or three decades ago when he was considering a career in movies, politics, or public relations, whichever came first.
'Pevsner,' he grunted, looking up at me for an instant and then returning to the task of shining his shoes. 'Don't look much different. A pound here, there. A little gray at the sideburns.'
'The scars don't show,' I said, standing in the large masculine office complete with leather-covered chairs, a massive desk, and pictures on the walls of dead animals and dead politicians.
'Something to be thankful for. Have a seat.'
'And I changed my name to Peters a long time ago, Toby Peters.'
'Suit yourself,' he said. 'Nothing new in the City of Angels.'
I sat.
Lane Price was a little more bald, a little more hefty, and a lot darker under the eyes than he had been when I left the Glendale Police Department. Price had always looked like a man who just woke up. Now he looked like a man who wanted to go back to sleep.
'How they look to you?' he said, pulling his chair out from behind the desk so he could show me his shoes.
'Ready for inspection by Patton himself,' I said.
'Maybe,' he said, pursing his lips and examining his work. 'Maybe. But I don't figure the wife and her brother'll be after my shoes. There's plenty to criticize on the way down to keep them occupied.' He rolled his chair back behind the desk, tapped his fingers on the clear surface of the desk, and continued, 'Last I heard you were doing security at Columbia.'
'Warners,' I corrected. 'Got canned for punching a cowboy star.'
'Not Bob Steele?' the chief asked seriously.
'No,' I said, to his relief. 'I'm a licensed investigator in L.A. County.'
'How's the wife?…'
'Anne and me,' I said, wanting to kick off my tight shoes. 'We got divorced when I was at Warners.'
'Happens,' said Price with a sympathetic shake of the head. 'You kill that guy in the Mozambique?'
'No,' I said.
