He shut the door and followed me in, holding my card. “Elvis Cole, huh? I like it. It’s got catch. It’s got pump and pizzazz. You got a nice look, too. You know who you look like?”

“Buddy Ebsen.”

“Nah. Michael Keaton. A little taller, maybe. A little better built. But sensitive and sharp. A guy you don’t mess around with.”

“I always thought I looked like Moe Howard.”

“Take my word for it. You got the look and the name. Some of the kids come in here, Christ, they got names flat as piss on a plate. Pat Green. Steve Brown. I say that’s no good. I say, you know what you need?”

“Pizzazz.”

“Fuckin’ A. Look at Steve Guttenberg. Take away the Guttenberg, whattaya got? Nuthin!” He sat behind the desk and shot a glance at the door. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time.”

“A long time ago you represented an actress named Karen Shipley. I’m trying to find her.” I took out the 8 × 10 and showed it to him.

He nodded. “Yeah. Sure. I remember Karen. Great kid. Terrific body.”

“Do you still represent her?”

He handed back the head shot. “Nah. I haven’t heard from Karen in, what is it, ten years, something like that?” He put another glance on the door, anxious to get to other things. “She musta went to another agency.”

I nodded. “Did you continue to represent her after her divorce from Peter Alan Nelsen?”

Oscar Curtiss stopped looking at the door and sat forward in the chair and blinked at me. “That’s who she was married to?”

“Yeah.”

“Karen Shipley was married to Peter Alan Nelsen?”

“Yeah.”

“The Peter Alan Nelsen?”

“Peter Alan Nelsen wasn’t Peter Alan Nelsen when they were married.”

Oscar slumped back in his chair and said, “Jesus H.”

“He was in film school when they married. After he busted out of USC, he divorced her. Now he wants to find her again.”

“Sonofabitch. I remember when she got divorced. She came here with the kid and sat down right over there and said she was divorced and needed to work. I said, sit-ups, Christ, a body like yours you wanna get it back, do sit-ups. Peter Alan Nelsen. Jesus Christ.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring somewhere in midspace, seeing the old scenes, worrying them through to recall if he’d done anything that could piss off Peter Alan Nelsen. All the worrying made his eyebrows dance around on his face.

I said, “Do you know how we can contact her?”

“It’s been years. Christ, I saw her a couple more times after that, then zippo. Nada. I never heard from her again.” The mouth started moving with the eyebrows.

“Okay. Where was she living?”

“It was somewhere over there.” He made a gesture that could mean anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

“That’s a little broad, Oscar.”