I almost missed him and drove on to see what was left of the Wilkes house, but a glint of moonlight hit something on the porch of Tara. I parked and walked across the field, heading for the glow of a cigarette in the darkness.
"Peters," Clark Gable said, stepping down from the porch. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Gable was in full khaki uniform, including the flight cap.
"Spelling's dead," I said.
He dropped his cigarette in the dirt, stepped on it, sighed and said, "Then that's that."
"Looks that way," I said.
Gable turned to face Tara.
"I'm shipping back in the morning," he said. "Send the bill to Encino. Someone will forward it to me."
"I'll do that."
"You look good in a tux," he said with a lopsided grin.
"And you look good in uniform," I said.
He didn't answer for a few seconds and then he said, "I didn't know how happy I was when we were making that picture. My wife and I were settling down in the house. We were talking about babies, taking home movies, and planning for the future. She was a funny woman. A beautiful, funny woman."
"I need a favor," I said.
"Name it," Gable said, turning to face me.
I told him what I needed and he said, "It'll be done in the morning before I leave. Anything else?"
"One thing," I said. "You know these lines, 'You're the last. When you're done, I don't care what happens to me. My father will be revenged.' "
"Sounds familiar," Gable said. "Let me think. I read it… Gangsters in Concrete. I was supposed to play a gangster named Marone or Barone, something like that. I think the part went to Clive Brook. Why?"
"Someone played the part badly tonight," I said.
"Wasn't much of a part in the first place," Gable said. "What's this about?"
"About a man dying even though it wasn't in the script," I said.
"Listen, Peters, if you're not going to make sense…"
"He's making sense," a voice came from one of Tara's first-floor windows behind Gable.
Gable turned and looked up. I knew what I would see.
Lionel Varney climbed through the window. He had a gun in his hand and he was aiming it down at us.
"Who is this?" Gable said irritatedly. "And what is going on here?"
"You want to tell him, Peters?" asked Varney, who was still in his tux. His tie and hair were straight now, but there was a shake to his hands and his voice that he wasn't a good enough actor to hide.
"You tell him, Spelling," I said.
"Spelling?" asked Gable.
"The way it makes sense is Spelling here killed Lionel Varney the night Atlanta burned over that hill. He had been talking to Varney and found out that he had no relatives. Spelling, here, needed a new identity. He was wanted for outstanding felonies in at least five states."
"I thought you wanted me to tell it," Spelling said. "How often does an actor get a chance to perform in front of the king himself?"
"Get to the point, whoever you are," Gable said, hands on hips.
"I killed Varney, took his place, and headed back east. I wasn't getting anywhere in Hollywood as Spelling. I thought I might be better off in summer theater as Varney. And then the irony. The damned irony."
He had moved to the edge of the steps now and he was no more than six feet from us, the gun aimed at Clark Gable's face.
"Well," Spelling said with a sigh. "I got this opportunity to return to film, the Universal contract, and I realized that there were a handful of people who might remember me when the publicity started. They might remember me and the fact that they knew me as Spelling, and the man who had died that night as Varney. Normally, they might not remember the face and name of a man met casually, but that had been a special night of burning cities and a soldier who died in a freak accident. So…"
"You came back and started to kill people on the film who might see your picture in the paper or up on the screen and go for the police," Gable said.
"Or blackmail," Spelling answered. "My mistake was hiring Edgar, who I'd met in Quentin about ten years ago."
"Edgar?" Gable asked.
"The one who died tonight," I explained. "The one who said he was Spelling's son. The poems, the clues, the jealousy over lost parts. All a fake to cover the real reason for the murders, to get me to that alley where I'd witness an attempt on your life, a scene taken right out of an old M-G-M programmer. You couldn't even write an original scene. And then it fell apart. 'Not in the script,' Edgar said. My guess is that Edgar was supposed to miss when he took a shot at you and then run away screaming like a loon into the night, never to be heard from again."
"Something like that," Spelling agreed.
"And he was stupid enough to believe you," I said.
"Seems that way, doesn't it," said Spelling.
"Now what?" asked Gable.
"A little tricky," Spelling said. "I'll have to shoot you both, of course. My first thought was that I could make it look like Edgar did it before he appeared in the alley, but that won't work. I guess you'll both have to disappear."
"Like hell I'll disappear," said Gable.
"Not much choice for either of us," Spelling said.
Gable, jaw tight, took a step toward Spelling. Something clicked in the gun. I shouted "Shoot, Phil," and dropped to the ground.
Spelling turned to look for Phil, and Gable leaped up the steps of Tara and landed a left to his nose and a right to his solar plexus before Spelling could get off a shot. The gun clattered down the steps as Gable hit Spelling with two more to the stomach. Spelling staggered backward into the front door of Tara. It gave way from five years of rot and neglect, and Spelling fell backward into shadows.
I got up and followed Gable across the porch and to the door. Spelling lay on his back in the dirt.
There was nothing behind the front wall of Tara. No rooms. No massive stairway. Just a field that led back to the next set on the back lot over a little hill. That's the way it had been five years ago and the way it was now.
I know. Gable knew and even Spelling knew that Hollywood was the work of people who knew how to build dreams. Phil wasn't out in the darkness and neither was much of Selznick International, which was in big money trouble and already selling its lot and land back to R.K.O.
"You parked far?" I asked.
"Over the hill," said Gable, adjusting his cap.
"Why don't you take off? I'll take Spelling in. He may rant about seeing Clark Gable, but I'll remind the police that you're in England flying missions over Germany."
"Maybe that'd be best," he said.
"So damn close," Spelling cursed, trying to sit up. "Now, what's going to happen to me?"
"Frankly, mister," said Gable, touching the bill of his cap in mock salute, "I just don't give a damn."
The next morning Phil was a hero. Gable had made a few calls, and a general in military intelligence in Washington had called Chief Veblin of the Los Angeles Police Department and told him that Captain Philip Pevsner was getting a commendation for an undercover assignment that he had been asked to take on for the United States, an assignment that had involved a number of deaths related to top-secret protection of an air-corps officer in a key position related to the national defense. That dangerous assignment had resulted in several deaths in the past week.
I don't know how much Veblin bought, but the documents that came to him within a few days were legit. Phil saw them. Nothing Veblin could do but shake Phil's hand and send my brother back on the streets.
My tux was a mess. So were Jeremy's, Gunther's, and Shelly's. I sat down the next day in my office with Dash on the desk and tried to make up a bill. I couldn't do it. I knew Gable could pay. That wasn't the problem. The problem was I couldn't send a bill to a man who smelled like tragedy and went out to risk his life with a price on his head. It just wasn't done. Not even by cheap private investigators with small bank accounts, bad backs, miserable love lives, and a need for Wheaties.