Wally and I looked up to the top of the ditch. The Confederate extras had scurried into the night and the smell of burning sets, but someone was standing in the shadows at the top of the hill. Our eyes met for a second and then Clark Gable, or a hell of a ringer, turned and walked away.
Wally spent the next few hours writing the report and talking to the Culver City Police. The dead man hadn't been carrying identification. His wallet and things were probably in his car, parked in the lot with hundreds of others. The police would find it, check it out, and mark it down as a freak accident. Case closed. Atlanta burned. On to Tara, being built about half a mile away.
I was called early the next afternoon. I was half asleep.
"Toby," said Wally. "Going to have to let you go. I'll see to it you get paid for the week."
"The dead soldier?" I guessed.
"You got it. Powers that be think it best if you and the extras who were around that fire not be here where you might make mention of the incident to a reporter or some gaffer with a big mouth."
"I wouldn't do that, Wally," I said.
"I know you wouldn't, but this way, I don't have to put myself on the line and say so. What do we gain? Nothing. What can I lose? My job. Let's keep it this way. Simple. I'll be looking for more work for you down the line."
"Did you talk to Gable?" I asked.
"Gable?"
"He was there," I said. "Top of the hill when we found the body."
"Not a chance, Toby," he said. "Gable didn't have a call last night and he's not the kind that stands around watching people make movies when he doesn't have to." "My mistake," I said.
"I'll call you as soon as I've got something for you." It would be five years before I talked to Wally again.
Chapter 1
Aside from the fact that a giant Samoan named Andy was not standing on the chest of a little man named Charles Westfarland, and the tables and chairs weren't torn and shattered in front of the bandstand, the Mozambique Lounge in Glendale looked pretty much the way it had when I had last been in it almost ten years earlier.