"He keeps Clark Gable from getting hurt," I said.
There was a long silence on Alice's end. In the background I could hear Natasha, her baby, cooing at something.
"He is not a young man, Toby. We've talked about this."
"Last tune, Alice. I promise."
"I don't believe you, Toby," she said. "But… it's really Clark Gable?"
I held out the phone for Gable.
"I don't need a bodyguard," he said. "I don't want a bodyguard. I won't have a bodyguard."
"The man needs a sense of self-worth," I said. "He's a fan. Humor me."
Gable shrugged and took the phone.
"Madame," he said. "This is Clark Gable. I would very much appreciate your husband's help for a brief period. I'm confident that there is no danger here."
Gable was silent for an instant and then closed his eyes.
"I love you Scarlett and by heaven you're going to learn to love me," he said and then listened to Alice for an instant before adding, "You're welcome. Good-bye."
He hung up the phone and looked at it for a beat or two before turning to me again.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he said.
'Trust me," I said, and then I called the Wilshire police station in Los Angeles and talked to Captain Phil Pevsner, my brother. After that I called Selznick International and asked for Wally Hospodar. Wally, I was told, had retired and lived in Calabasas. The man who took my call gave me Wally's phone number when I convinced him Wally and I were old friends. I hung up and tried Wally's number. A woman answered after five rings. I told her I was looking for Wally. She said she'd get the message to him if he called and he'd probably call back.
When I finished the call, Gable showed me the way out of the house. "I don't like just sitting here, Peters," he said, opening the front door for me.
"I'll call," I said. "I promise. Second I know anything. I'll call."
"Oh, the hell with it," he said with a sigh and closed the door on my back.
By breaking speed laws in Van Nuys and Beverly Hills, I got to the address I had for Karl Albert Gouda in thirty-two minutes. It was a store, a lamp store on Olympic, not far from the Santa Monica airport.
I was drenched in sweat when I found a parking spot almost half a block away and ran back. The door to the lamp shop was locked and a sign in the window read; "Away for a few minutes. Back soon."
I stood waiting, pulling my shirt from my skin, looking both ways down the street for a madman with a gun or spear. Soon was definitely not ten minutes. I have a reasonably good sense of the passage of time, no thanks to my watch. No business had been lost by Karl Albert Gouda in his absence. I was the only potential customer.
I knocked at the door. It rattled. No answer. Something or someone moved deep inside the cavern of a store. I knocked again. Through the window I watched a man hi a baggy suit stride from the shadows, past the lamps, and to the door. He was a squat man with bad skin. He had a head of white hair and a look of annoyance on his face.
"What you wan'?" he asked. "We're closed. Can't you read or something?'' "Karl Albert Gouda," I said loudly. "I've got to see him."
"Why?"
"YouGouda?"
"No," the squat man said. "Go away."
"Someone's going to try to kill nun in a minute or two."
This got his attention.
"What are you talkin'?"
"He was in Gone With the Wind," I tried.
"So?"
"So, someone is killing people who worked on Gone With the Wind."
"Get out of here," the squat man said, turning his back and starting to walk away.
"I'm telling the truth," I shouted, rattling the door again.
"Shut up," the squat man said, turning to me again. "You'll call attention. This is a business. What's the matter with you?"
"Let me in," I said.
The squat man held up a hand and said, "Wait One second. Okay?"
I waited while he disappeared hi the depths of the lamp shop. I watched the cars coming past till he returned and opened the door.
"Come on," he said wearily.
He closed the door behind me when I was inside and then hurried back into the depths of the shop without waiting to see if I could keep up with him. He made a strange clanging sound like the Tin Woodsman as he led the way to a door, opened it, and stepped back so I could enter in front of him.
The room was a warehouse, big, with crates and cardboard boxes piled to the ceiling.
"Wait here," the squat man said and left.
I was standing next to an old floor lamp with a green-glass shade. I pulled the chain and the light went on, illuminating the shade. Dark trees, leafless trees with branches like claws, were painted on the underside of the green glass. From a branch of one of the trees a man was dangling, a noose around his neck.
"You like it?" a voice came, waking me from a dream of Universal Studio monsters.
"Fascinating," I said, looking up at a husky man with a satisfied smile on his face.
The man was somewhere in his forties, good teeth, recently barbered straight brown hair. He wore a pair of brown slacks with dark suspenders over a white shirt and brown bow tie.
"Real art," he said. "Gal over in Burbank makes them. She's maybe eighty years old. Can you believe it? All her own inspiration. She did eighteen years hard time some place back east. Manslaughter. I think it was her brother. Something. Kansas. Ohio. Who knows? One of those places."
"Fascinating," I said.
"You said that already."
"Sorry."
His hands were folded in front of him just below his belly and he was rocking gently on his heels. Behind him the squat man with the white hair and bad complexion stood watching me.
"I don't make a dime on her stuff," the man in suspenders said. "Do I make a dime, Tools?"
"Not one dime, Karl," Tools said flatly.
"Do I care, Tools?"
"Not so's I ever noticed," said Tools.
Karl Gouda took a step toward me and whispered, "I got a passion for art, you see. It's been said my taste runs a little to the morbid. But, I say, who gives a shit? You take it where it goes. You Mormon or something?"
"I'm something, but not a Mormon," I said, looking at the duo facing me.
"If you were, I'd apologize for saying 'shit,' but since you're not, I don't see any need to apologize. You see a need to apologize?"
"No," I said.
"So, what's this shit about someone wanting to kill me?" Gouda said, a look of distaste on his face.
"Charles Larkin, Al Ramone, both extras in Gone With the Wind, were murdered in the last three days," I said. "The killer sent a note saying that the next victim would be K.G. and then Lionel Varney. K.G. Your initials."
"And half the county of Los Angeles," Gouda said impatiently.
"But only a few people who worked on Gone With the Wind." 1 pulled the photograph of Ramone and the soldiers saying hi to Vivien Leigh from my pocket and handed it to him. Gouda looked at the picture.
"Ramone's the one circled in red," I said. "You're all on this nut's list."
"That's me," Gouda said with a sigh, pointing to the photograph.
"And Varney?"
"Don't remember any names," he said. "We were together maybe eight, ten hours. I remember the guy who fell on the sword. This one."
He handed the photograph to me, tapping one of the stubble-covered faces.
"I think we should talk," I said.
"Come with me," Gouda said, reaching over to put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
I moved forward and he guided me toward the back of the store. Tools trailed us, shuffling past rows of lamps. Occasionally, for no reason and with no pattern I could see, Gouda paused to turn a lamp on or off. He talked softly as we walked.
"As you can see, Tiffany is my obsession," he said. "Real Tiffany or really creative stained glass, any period. Delicate, soulful."
He paused to touch the purple-glass shade of a nearby lamp and I staggered to a halt.