Tomorrow Is Another Day Read online

  “Ruth is doing fine,” he said, rolling one of his nice sharp pencils between his palms and looking at me.

  I nodded. My sister-in-law, all ninety pounds of her, had come close to dying about a month earlier. The prospect of being alone with three kids all under the age of thirteen must have scared even Phil, and the prospect of being without Ruth, who seemed to understand him, was probably more than he could have handled.

  Phil had lived the life of a cop on the verge of a breakdown for two decades. Phil hated criminals, personally. He had been promoted twice, demoted twice; each time, up or down, because he had lost his temper and a suspect had lost teeth or bones. I knew that temper. It was responsible for my flat nose and my looking like a retired and slightly overweight middleweight.

  “Kids?” I asked.

  “Boys are fine. Lucy’s learning to swim.”

  “Great,” I said. “Where’s Steve?”

  Steve was the thin ghost of a partner my brother haunted the streets of Los Angeles with.

  “Vacation,” Phil said.

  “Where?”

  “Seattle, with his sister and mother.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Happened?”

  Phil pointed at my head and hands. There was a Band-aid on my forehead and another on my left palm. The one on my palm wouldn’t stick.

  “Cut myself on some broken window glass,” I said.

  Phil nodded, sat back, looked at the sharp point of the pencil in his hand, and took a deep breath.

  “We through with crap and Shinola?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I’m going to say this calmly, Tobias,” he said. “I’m going to say this calmly for three reasons. You want to hear my three reasons?”

  “Very much,” I said, giving him my full attention.

  “First, my blood pressure is up. Like dad’s. Remember how he used to get so excited when he argued with Hal Graham? They could argue about whether cranberries were fruits or vegetables. Dad’s veins used to pop out on his forehead. His cheeks went red. Sound like someone you know?”

  It sounded like Phil Pevsner.

  “It killed Dad,” said Phil. “It would be a bad joke by the devil if I fell down dead when Ruth was recovering. You know how old Dad was when he died?”

  “About …” I started, but Phil overlapped me.

  “Just the age I am now.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I nodded knowingly.

  “Second, I lose perspective when I get excited. I get more interested in smashing than listening. And, I’ll admit, sometimes I miss important things.”

  I was attentive.

  “Third, I owe you. When Ruth was in the hospital and you got Bette Davis to see her, Ruth started to get better, to fight her way back. So, you’ve got my reasons. Now, answer some questions.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Lane Price says you claimed Sheldon Minck hired you to collect an overdue bill from a guy who was murdered in Glendale last night. Lane, as we both know, is a lazy slob, a politician, but he’s not deaf. He wants you.”

  “He was ready to rehire me and make me his right hand yesterday,” I said.

  “That was before you lied about Minck,” said Phil. “Talk. Keep me calm, Tobias. I’ve got things on my mind. My wife, my family, my job. And I’ve been wondering where the hell President Roosevelt is. Hasn’t been a word in the papers or on the news about him in a week.”

  “I don’t know, Phil,” I said.

  “But there are some questions you can answer. This is the easiest question I’m going to ask you. The next few are really tough. See if you can answer the question without my asking it.”

  A horn squawked on Wilshire. Somebody laughed. A car went by playing a song I couldn’t quite make out.

  “I was protecting my client. He thought Ramone was in danger. A guy named Charles Larkin was killed last week. My client thought the killer might go after Ramone.”

  “Why?” asked Phil, reasonably.

  “They were both extras in Gone With the Wind,” I explained. “So was Gouda.”

  “The one in the lamp store,” Phil said. “An extra?”

  “The one in the lamp store. An extra. And there’s another one, Lionel Varney, another extra. I gave you his name when I called and …”

  “Someone plans to kill every extra in Gone With the Wind?” Phil asked.

  “Not every extra,” I said. “Just the ones who were around the campfire when a fellow thespian got killed.”

  “That’s good. By the time he got done with every extra, the body count would be bigger than Bataan. And this Karen Gilmore you sent me running out to check on. She was in Gone With the Wind too?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “But why did you pick her?”

  “Initials,” I explained. “K.G. The killer said he was going to get K.G. next.”

  “The killer?”

  “Spelling,” I said. “The killer is spelling.”

  And then it hit me. It didn’t hit Phil. The killer was Spelling.

  “What?” Phil asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “You just had an idea,” said Phil, putting down the pencil.

  “No,” I said. “Just remembered something I forgot to do. Did you find Varney?”

  “There’s a Lionel Varney registered at the Carolina Hotel on Sunset. An actor. Been in town for a few days. How would you describe my attitude, Tobias? Right now. Calm?”

  “Remarkably calm,” I agreed.

  There was a knock at the door behind me. The door opened.

  “Captain,” came a voice.

  Something sailed past my head and crashed into the door as it closed.

  “I told you to leave me alone till I came out,” Phil shouted. Then he turned to me.

  “Phil,” I said calmly.

  “I’m fine,” he said, pointing a pencil at me. “Stopped drinking coffee. I’m eating cucumber-and-tomato sandwiches for lunch. Who’s your client?”

  “Phil, how many times do we have to go over this? I can’t tell you my client’s name without his or her permission.”

  “Where does it say that in any law book, any city, county, or state statute?” Phil said, placing his hands flat on his desk.

  “I think your blood pressure is going up, Phil,” I said softly, wondering if I should make a break for the door.

  “Where does it say it, Toby?” he said evenly.

  “Law of the Jungle. Code of the West. A Man’s Gotta Do. Come on, Phil. What have I got to sell but a hard head and a closed mouth? My client didn’t kill anybody. You know I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “The chief of police of Glendale wants you on a possible homicide or withholding evidence,” said Phil, standing up and turning his back on me.

  Phil’s hands were knotted behind his back.

  “Between you and me, strictly off the record?” I asked.

  “I can’t do that,” Phil said, with a distinct pause between each word.

  “You can, Phil. You just don’t want to.”

  He turned suddenly like a wild bear, face red, teeth clenched. I jumped out of my chair and moved back toward the door. Phil closed his eyes, took a deep breath. His face returned to its normal color.

  “Off the record,” Phil said.

  “Clark Gable.”

  I was standing behind the chair now.

  “Clark Gable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gable’s in England,” said Phil, loosening his tie even more and glaring at me.

  “No, he’s back for a few days. No one knows. He’s at his house in Encino. Jeremy Butler’s with him. I’ve got 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 peop
le will be murdered.”

  “Can you protect everyone who worked on Gone With the Wind?”

  “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 7

  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 watercolors 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 shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled up, slacks creased, and shoes shined. A well-trimmed wave of graying hair sat on a pleasantly Indian-looking 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 in Moline.”

  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.

  “You heard something. Saw something. Said something. Did something. Best guess is that the guy who got killed was murdered and the killer’s spent five years worrying that he might have been seen, or said something to give him away.”

  “Five years?” Varney said.

  “Doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense,” I agreed. “But when you’re crazy, you don’t have to make sense. One of the good things about being crazy.”

  Varney got up now and was pacing the room. I listened to the ice click in his glass and watched him think.

  “I’ve only been back in town for two weeks,” he said. “The studio hasn’t done any publicity. How could this person know I was even here?”

  “Crazy doesn’t mean stupid,” I said.

  Lionel Varney snorted, shook his head, and looked at his melting ice.

  “The goddamn irony,” he said. “I work a lifetime for a break and some lunatic wants to kill me. Wants to kill me and I don’t even know why.”

  “You want advice?” I aske
d.

  Varney stopped pacing and looked down at me in the chair.

  “Get a room under another name. Don’t tell anyone where you are but me. I’ll stay in touch and tell you when it’s safe.”

  He was shaking his head even before I had finished.

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’m riding some good reviews and reports and spending goodwill fast. I can’t tell Universal I have to hide for who knows how long. And Saturday. Saturday I’ve been invited to sit at Universal’s table for the Academy Awards dinner with Walter Wanger, Jon Hall, Turhan Bey, and Maria Montez. Then there’s a publicity reunion at Selznick, in front of Tara. Reporters, cameras, big names. Universal’s planning the official announcement of my contract and my first starring role. I’m not risking that, Peters. I’d rather get some protection and take my chances.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said, standing up and handing him my glass. He had one in each hand now.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said.

  “Believe it, Lionel,” I said. “Keep your door locked and pay someone big with a gun to stand outside it. And try to be calm.”

  I moved to the door.

  “Be calm,” he said with a sarcastic laugh. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not on this madman’s list.”

  “I think I am, Lionel. I think I am. I’ll call you when I have something, or more questions.”

  Varney didn’t show me out. I made my own way down the stairs. I couldn’t face Jane Powell’s big white teeth and smile. I wove my way through the lush jungle of the Carolina Hotel lobby, heard a parrot squawk behind me, and got onto the driveway.

  “Car?” asked a young man in the familiar uniform.

  “Crosley,” I said. “Sort of brown.”

  “We only have one Crosley on the lot,” he said politely and hurried off.

  I could hear tennis balls hitting and echoing as I waited. I could hear the hum of traffic on Sunset. I could hear my heart beating. I had a sudden urge to visit my niece and nephews or find Dash and see if he’d sit on my lap a while. I had a strong wish to go home, but I had a long day in front of me and Clark Gable’s money to spend.