Get Shorty: A Novel

1

When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years ago they were having one of their off-and-on cold winters: thirty-four degrees the day he met Tommy Carlo for lunch at Vesuvio’s on South Collins and had his leather jacket ripped off. One his wife had given him for Christmas a year ago, before they moved down here.

Chili and Tommy were both from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, old buddies now in business together. Tommy Carlo was connected to a Brooklyn crew through his uncle, a guy named Momo, Tommy keeping his books and picking up betting slips till Momo sent him to Miami, with a hundred thousand to put on the street as loan money. Chili was connected through some people on his mother’s side, the Manzara brothers. He worked usually for Manzara Moving & Storage in Bensonhurst, finding high-volume customers for items such as cigarettes, TVs, VCRs, stepladders, dresses, frozen orange juice. . . . But he could never be a made guy himself because of tainted blood, some Sunset Park Puerto Rican on his father’s side, even though he was raised Italian. Chili didn’t care to be made anyway, get into all that bullshit having to do with respect. It was bad enough having to treat these guys like they were your heroes, smile when they made some stupid remark they thought was funny. Though it was pretty nice, go in a restaurant on 86th or Cropsey Avenue the way they knew his name, still a young guy then, and would bust their ass to wait on him. His wife Debbie ate it up, until they were married a few years and she got pregnant. Then it was a different story. Debbie said with a child coming into their lives he had to get a regular job, quit associating with “those people” and bitched at him till he said okay, all right, Jesus, and lined up the deal with Tommy Carlo in Miami. He told Debbie he’d be selling restaurant supplies to the big hotels like the Fontainebleau and she believed him—till they were down here less than a year and he had his jacket ripped off.

This time at Vesuvio’s, they finished eating, Tommy said he’d see him at the barbershop—where they had a phone in back—turned up the collar of his Palm Beach sport coat for whatever good it would do him and took off. Chili went in the checkroom to get his jacket and all that was in there were a couple of raincoats and a leather flight jacket must’ve been from World War Two. When Chili got the manager, an older Italian guy in a black suit, the manager looked around the practically empty checkroom and asked Chili, “You don’t find it? Is not one of these?”

Chili said, “You see a black leather jacket, fingertip length, has lapels like a suitcoat? You don’t, you owe me three seventy-nine.” The manager told him to look at the sign there on the wall. WE CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST ARTICLES. Chili said to him, “I bet you can if you try. I didn’t come down to sunny Florida to freeze my ass. You follow me? You get the coat back or you give me the three seventy-nine my wife paid for it at Alexander’s.”

So then the manager got a waiter over and they talked to each other in Italian for a while, the waiter nervous or he was anxious to get back to folding napkins. Chili caught some of what they were saying and a name that came up a few times, Ray Barboni. He knew the name, a guy they called Bones he’d seen hanging out at the Cardozo Hotel on the beach. Ray Bones worked for a guy named Jimmy Capotorto who’d recently taken over a local operation from a deceased guy named Ed Grossi—but that was another story. The manager said to the waiter, “Explain to him Mr. Barboni borrow the coat.”

The waiter, trying to act like an innocent bystander, said, “Somebody take his coat, you know, leave this old one. So Mr. Barboni put on this other coat that fit him pretty good. He say he gonna borrow it.”

Chili said, “Wait a minute,” and had the waiter, who didn’t seem to think it was unusual for some asshole to take a jacket that didn’t belong to him, explain it again.

“He didn’t take it,” the waiter said, “he borrow it. See, we get his coat for him and he return the one he borrow. Or I think maybe if it’s your coat,” the waiter said, “he give it to you. He was wearing it, you know, to go home. He wasn’t gonna keep it.”

“My car keys are in the pocket,” Chili said.

They both looked at him now, the manager and the waiter, like they didn’t understand English.

“What I’m saying,” Chili said, “how’m I suppose to go get my coat if I don’t have the keys to my car?”

The manager said they’d call him a taxi.

“Lemme get it straight,” Chili said. “You aren’t responsible for any lost articles like an expensive coat of mine, but you’re gonna find Ray Bones’ coat or get him a new one. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Basically, he saw they weren’t telling him shit, other than Ray Bones was a good customer who came in two three times a week and worked for Jimmy Cap. They didn’t know where he lived and his phone number wasn’t in the book. So Chili called Tommy Carlo at the barbershop, told him the situation, asked him a few times if he believed it and if he’d come by, pick him up.

“I want to get my coat. Also pull this guy’s head out of his ass and nail him one.”

Tommy said, “Tomorrow, I see on the TV weather, it’s gonna be nice and warm. You won’t need the coat.”

Chili said, “Debbie gave me it for Christmas, for Christ sake. I go home, she’s gonna want to know where it’s at.”

“So tell her you lost it.”

“She’s still in bed since the miscarriage. You can’t talk to her. I mean in a way that makes any fuckin sense if you have to explain something.”

Tommy said, “Hey, Chil? Then don’t fuckin tell her.”

Chili said, “The guy takes my coat, I can’t ask for it back?”

Tommy Carlo picked him up at the restaurant and they stopped by Chili’s apartment on Meridian where they were living at the time so he could run in and get something. He tried to be quiet about it, grab a pair of gloves out of the front closet and leave, but Debbie heard him.

She said from the bedroom, “Ernie, is that you?” She never called him Chili. She called him honey in her invalid voice if she wanted something. “Honey? Would you get my pills for me from the sink in the kitchen and a glass of water, please, while you’re up?” Pause. “Or, no—honey? Gimme a glass of milk instead and some of those cookies, the ones you got at Winn-Dixie, you know the chocolate chip ones?” Dragging it out in this tired voice she used since the miscarriage, three months ago. Taking forever now to ask him what time it was, the alarm clock sitting on the bed table a foot away if she turned her head. They had known each other since high school, when he’d played basketball and she was a baton twirler with a nice ass. Chili told her it was three-thirty and he was running late for an appointment; bye. He heard her say, “Honey? Would you . . .” but he was out of there.

In the car driving the few blocks over to the Victor Hotel on Ocean Drive, Tommy Carlo said, “Get your coat, but don’t piss the guy off, okay? It could get complicated and we’d have to call Momo to straighten it out. Okay? Then Momo gets pissed for wasting his time and we don’t need it. Right?”

Chili was thinking that if he was always bringing Debbie her pills, how did they get back to the kitchen after? But he heard Tommy and said to him, “Don’t worry about it. I won’t say any more than I have to, if that.”

He put on his black leather gloves going up the stairs to the third floor, knocked on the door three times, waited, pulling the right-hand glove on tight, and when Ray Bones opened the door Chili nailed him. One punch, not seeing any need to throw the left. He got his coat from a chair in the sitting room, looked at Ray Bones bent over holding his nose and mouth, blood all over his hands, his shirt, and walked out. Didn’t say one word to him.

Ernesto Palmer got the name Chili originally because he was hot-tempered as a kid growing up. The name given to him by his dad, who worked on the docks for the Bull Line when he wasn’t drinking. Now he was Chili, Tommy Carlo said, because he had chilled down and didn’t need the hot temper. All he had to do was turn his eyes dead when he looked at a slow pay, not say more than three words, and the guy would sell his wife’s car to make the payment. Chili said the secret was in how you prepped the loan customer.

“A guy comes to see you, it doesn’t matter how much he wants or why he needs it, you say to him up front before you give him a dime, ‘You sure you want to take this money? You’re not gonna put up your house or sign any papers. What you’re gonna give me is your word you’ll pay it back so much a week at interest.’You tell him, ‘If you don’t think you can pay at least the vig every week when it’s due, please don’t take the fuckin money, it wouldn’t be worth it to you.’ If the guy hesitates at all, ‘Well, I’m pretty sure I can—’ says anything like that, I tell him, ‘No, I’m advising you now, don’t take the fuckin money.’ The guy will beg for it, take an oath on his kids he’ll pay you on time. You know he’s desperate or he wouldn’t be borrowing shylock money in the first place. So you tell him, ‘Okay, but you miss even one payment you’re gonna be sorry you ever came here.’You never tell the guy what could happen to him. Let him use his imagination, he’ll think of something worse. In other words, don’t talk when you don’t have to. What’s the point?”

It was the same thing getting his coat back. What was there to say?

So now it was up to Ray Bones. If getting his nose busted and his teeth pushed in pissed him off he’d have to do something about it. Some things you couldn’t prevent. Tommy Carlo told him to get lost for a while, go fishing in the Keys. But how was he going to do that with Debbie an invalid, afraid to take a leak she might see blood?

He imagined different ways Ray Bones might try for him. Eating at Vesuvio’s, look up, there’s Bones pointing a gun. Or coming out of the barbershop on Arthur Godfrey Road where they had their office in back. Or, no—sitting on one of the chairs while he’s shooting the shit with Fred and Ed, which he did sometimes when there weren’t customers in the place. That would appeal to Ray Bones, with his limited mentality: the barbershop was here and it was the way guys had gotten hit before, like Albert Anastasia, that Ray Bones would know about. Chili said shit, went over to S.W. Eighth Street and bought a snub-nosed .38 off a Cuban. “The famous Smit and Wayson model treinta y ocho.”

It happened when Chili was in the backroom office making entries in the collection book. Through the wallboard he heard Fred say, “Paris? Yeah, I been there plenty of times. It’s right offa Seventy-nine.” Ed saying, “Hell it is, it’s on Sixty-eight. It’s only seventeen miles from Lexington.”

Fred saying, “What’re you talking about, Paris, Kentucky, or Paris, Tennessee?” Then a silence, no answer to the question.

Chili looked up from the collection book, listened a moment to nothing, opened the desk drawer and got out the .38. He aimed it at the open doorway. Now he saw Ray Bones appear in the back hall, Bones in the doorway to the office, his face showing surprise to see a gun aimed at him. He began firing the big Colt auto in his hand maybe before he was ready, the gun making an awful racket, when Chili pulled the trigger and shot him in the head. The .38 slug creased Ray Bones, as it turned out, from hairline to crown, put a groove in his scalp they closed up at Mt. Sinai with more than thirty stitches—Chili hearing about it later. He pried two slugs out of the wall and found another one in the file cabinet he showed Tommy Carlo.

Tommy called Momo and Momo got in touch with Jimmy Cap, taking the situation to the table, so to speak, discuss whether Ray Bones had been shown disrespect by an associate from another crew, or was it his own fault he got shot. Otherwise it could get out of hand if they let it go, didn’t make a judgment. The two bosses decided this coat thing and what came out of it was bullshit, forget it. Jimmy Cap would tell Ray Bones he was lucky he wasn’t dead, the guy’s wife had given him the coat for Christmas for Christ sake. That was the end of the incident, twelve years ago, except for one unexpected event that came out of it right away, and something else that would happen now, in the present.

The unexpected event was Debbie walking out on Chili, going home to Bay Ridge to live with her mother over a clothing store.

It happened because during the discussion period Momo called Chili to get his side—as a favor to Tommy Carlo, otherwise he would never have spoken to him directly—and Debbie listened in on the extension. All Momo told Chili was to cut out the schoolyard bullshit, grow up. But that was enough for Debbie to know Chili was still connected. She went so far as to get out of bed to keep after him, wanting to know what he was doing with Momo and “those people,” becoming screechy about it until finally he told her, so he was working for Momo for Christ sake, so what? Thinking it would shut her up and he’d get the silent treatment for about a month, which he could use. But instead of that she became hysterical, telling him, “That’s why I had the miscarriage, I knew it. I knew you were back in that life and the baby knew it from me and didn’t want to be born!”

What? Because its dad was operating a quick-loan business? Helping out poor schmucks that couldn’t get it from a bank? How did you talk to a woman who believed an unborn kid would know something like that? He tried. He told her she ought to see a doctor, get her fuckin brain looked at. Debbie’s last words to him, she said, “You think you’re so smart, let’s see you get a divorce, big shot.” In other words she would pass up alimony and live with her mother over a clothing store to prevent his ever remarrying. Debbie, too dumb to realize the world had changed with rock and roll and the pill, believed it would keep him from ever getting laid again.

Chili, from then until now, went with a succession of women, some on a serious basis, some not. There was one named Rose, a bartender, who lived with him a few years. One named Vera, a go-go dancer he fell in love with, but he couldn’t stand other guys watching her and they broke up. He took out women who were waitresses, beauticians, sales clerks at Dadeland Mall, would take them to dinner and a movie, sometimes to bed. There was a singer named Nicole he liked a lot, but her whole life seemed to be rock and roll and he never knew what she was talking about. Chili liked women and was comfortable with them without putting on any kind of act. He was who he was and they seemed to go for him. What some of the women didn’t go for was seeing so many movies, practically every time they went out. They would get the feeling he liked movies more than he did them.

The other thing that came out of the coat incident, now twelve years later, happened right after they got word about Momo, shot dead as he left a restaurant on West 56th in Manhattan, and Tommy Carlo went to attend the funeral. The day after that Chili had a couple of visitors come in the shop looking for him, a big colored guy he had never seen before and Ray Bones.

“They cut straight hair in this place,” Bones asked Chili, “or just fags?”

Times changed. Fred and Ed were gone and a couple of guys named Peter and Tim were doing hair of either sex in an art deco backstage-looking setup, light bulbs around rose-colored mirrors. They were okay. They had Chili combing his hair straight back, no part, like Michael Douglas in Wall Street.

Chili had changed too in the past dozen years, tired of showing respect to people he thought were assholes. Momo had been okay, but guys in his crew would come down to Miami on vacation and act like hard-ons, expecting him and Tommy to show them around, get them broads. Chili would tell the hardons, “Hey, I’m not your pimp,” and they’d give Tommy a bad time because he was Momo’s nephew and had to go along. The result of this situation, Chili was phasing himself out of the shylock business, only handling a few regular customers now who did-n’t give them any trouble. He was also doing midnight car repossessions for small loan companies and some collection work for local merchants and a couple of Las Vegas casinos, making courtesy calls. He had chilled down a few more degrees too.

Still, he couldn’t help saying to Ray Bones, “The way you’re losing your hair, Bones, you oughta let these guys style what you have left, see if they can cover up that scar. Or they can fit you with a rug, either way.”

Fuck him. Chili knew what was coming.

There weren’t any customers in the shop. Ray Bones told Peter and Tim to go get a coffee. They left making faces and the big colored guy backed Chili into a barber chair, telling him, “This man is the man. You understand what I’m saying? He’s Mr. Bones, you speak to him from now on.”

Chili watched Mr. Bones go into the back hall toward the office and said to the colored guy, “You can do better’n him.”

“Not these days,” the colored guy said. “Not less you can talk Spanish.”

Bones came out with the collection book open, looking at all the names of who owed, the amounts and due dates in a green spiral notebook. He said to Chili, “How you work it, you handle the spics and Tommy the white people?”

Chili told himself it was time to keep his mouth shut.

The colored guy said, “The man’s talking to you.”

“He’s outta business but don’t know it,” Bones said, looking up from the book. “There’s nothing around here for you no more.”

“I can see that,” Chili said. He watched Bones put his nose in the book again.

“How much you got working?”

“About three and a half.”

“Shit, ten grand a week. What’d Momo let you have?”

“Twenty percent.”

“And you fucked him outta what, another twenty?”

Chili didn’t answer. Bones turned a page, read down the entries and stopped.

“You got a miss. Guy’s six weeks over.”

“He died,” Chili said.

“How you know he died, he tell you?”

Ray Bones checked the colored guy to get some appreciation, but the guy was busy looking at hair rinses and shit on the counter. Chili didn’t give him anything either. He was thinking he could kick Mr. Bones in the nuts if he came any closer, then get up and nail him. If the big colored guy would leave.

“He got killed,” Chili said, “in that TransAm jet went down in the Everglades.”

“Who told you?”

Chili got out of the chair, went in the back office and returned with a stack of Miami Heralds. He dropped them on the floor in front of Bones and got back in the chair.

“Help yourself. You find him on the list of victims, Leo Devoe. He’s Paris Cleaners on Federal Highway about 124th Street.”

Bones nudged the stack of newspapers with a toe of his cream-colored perforated shoes that matched his slacks and sport shirt. The front page on top said “TransAm Crash Kills 117.” Chili watched Bones toe his way through editions with headlines that said “Winds Probed in Crash” . . . “Windshear Warning Was Issued” . . . “Nightmare Descends Soon After Farewells” . . . getting down to a page of small photographs, head shots, and a line that read, “Special Report: The Tragic Toll.”

“His wife told me he was on the flight,” Chili said. “I kept checking till I saw, yeah, he was.”

“His picture in here?”

“Near the bottom. You have to turn the paper over.”

Bones still wasn’t going to bend down, strain himself. He looked up from the newspapers. “Maybe he took out flight insurance. Check with the wife.”

“It’s your book now,” Chili said. “You want to check it out, go ahead.”

The colored guy came over from the counter to stand next to the chair.

Ray Bones said, “Six weeks’ juice is twenty-seven hunnerd on top of the fifteen you gave him. Get it from the guy’s wife or out of your pocket, I don’t give a fuck. You don’t hand me a book with a miss in it.”

“Payback time,” Chili said. “You know that coat? I gave it to the Salvation Army two years ago.”

“What coat?” Bones said.

He knew.

The colored guy stood close, staring into Chili’s face, while Bones worked on the Michael Douglas hairdo, shearing off a handful at a time with a pair of scissors, telling Chili it was to remind him when he looked in the mirror he owed fifteen plus whatever the juice, right? The juice would keep running till he paid. Chili sat still, hearing the scissors snip-snipping away, knowing it had nothing to do with money. He was being paid back again, this time for reminding Ray Bones he had a scar that showed white where he was getting bald. It was all kid stuff with these guys, the way they acted tough. Like Momo had said, schoolyard bullshit. These guys never grew up. Still, if they were holding a pair of scissors in your face when they told you something, you agreed to it. At least for the time being.

Chili was still in the chair when the new-wave barbers came back and began to comment, telling him they could perm what was left or give him a moderate spike, shave the sides, laser stripes were popular. Chili told them to cut the shit and even it off. While they worked on him he sat there wondering if it was possible Leo Devoe had taken out flight insurance or if the wife had thought about suing the airline. It was something he could mention to her.

But what happened when he dropped by their house in North Miami—the idea, see what he could find out about any insurance—the wife, Fay, stopped him cold. She said, “I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”

She didn’t say it right away, not till they were out on the patio with vodka and tonics, in the dark.

Chili knew Fay from having stopped by to pick up the weekly four-fifty and they’d sit here waiting for Leo to get home after a day at Gulfstream. Fay was a quiet type, from a small town upstate, Mt. Dora, not bad looking but worn thin in her sundress from working at the cleaner’s in that heat while Leo was out betting horses. They’d sit here trying to make conversation with nothing in common but Leo, Chili, every once in a while, catching her gaze during a silence, seeing her eyes and feeling it was there if he wanted it. Though he couldn’t imagine Fay getting excited, changing her expression much. What did a shy woman stuck with a loser think about? Leo would appear, strut out on the patio and count the four-fifty off a roll, nothing to it. Or he’d come shaking his head, beat, saying he’d have it tomorrow for sure. Chili never threatened him, not in front of the woman and embarrass her. Not till he left and Leo would know enough to walk him out to his car parked by the streetlight. He’d say, “Leo, look at me,” and tell him where to be the next day with the four-fifty. Leo was never to blame: it was the horses selling out or it was Fay always on his back, distracting him when he was trying to pick winners. And Chili would have to say it again, “Leo, look at me.”

He owed for two weeks the night he didn’t come home. Fay said she couldn’t think where Leo could be. The third week she told him Leo was dead and a couple weeks after that his picture was in the paper.

This visit sitting on the patio, knowing Leo was not going to appear, strutting or otherwise, the silences became longer. Chili asked what she planned to do now. Fay said she didn’t know; she hated the drycleaner business, being inside. Chili said it must be awful hot. She said you couldn’t believe how hot it was. He got around to asking about life insurance. Fay said she didn’t know of any. Chili said, well . . . But didn’t move. Fay didn’t either. It was dark, hard to see her face, neither one of them making a sound. This was when she said, out of nowhere, “You know what I been thinking?”

Chili said, “Tell me.”

“I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”

Chili kept still. Don’t talk when you don’t have to.

“He’s called me up twice since going out to Las Vegas and since then I haven’t heard a goddamn word from him. I know he’s there, it’s all he ever talked about, going to Las Vegas. But I’m the one stuck my neck out, I’m the one they gave the money to, not him. I’m talking about the airline company, the three hundred thousand dollars they gave me for losing my husband.” Fay paused to shake her head.

Chili waited.

She said to him on that dark patio, “I trust you. I think you’re a decent type of man, even if you are a crook. You find Leo and get me my three hundred thousand dollars back if he ain’t spent it, I’ll give you half. If he’s hit big we split that, or whatever he has left. How’s that sound as a deal?”

Chili said, “That’s what you been thinking, huh? Tell me why the airline thinks Leo got killed if he wasn’t on the flight.”

“His suitcase was,” Fay said, and told Chili everything that happened.

It was a good story.

2

Harry Zimm believed if he kept his eyes closed and quit listening that sound coming from somewhere in the house would stop and pretty soon they’d go back to sleep.

But Karen wouldn’t leave it alone. He heard her say, “Harry?” a couple of times, maybe not sure if she was hearing something or not. Then, “Harry—” still a whisper but putting more into it. This time when he didn’t answer she gave him a poke in the back, hard. “Harry, God damn it, somebody’s downstairs.”

They hadn’t slept in the same bed on a regular basis in over ten years, not since they had lived together, and Karen still knew when he was faking. The only other time, in this same bed, was right after she and Michael were divorced and Michael, a star by then, gave Karen the house. There was no way to hide from her. So he rolled over and there she was in her Lakers T-shirt, sitting up on her side of the king-size bed, a soft white shape in the dark, a little porcelain doll.

“What’s wrong?”

“Be quiet and listen.”

A tough little porcelain doll under that loose T-shirt.

“I don’t hear anything.” It was true, he didn’t at the moment.

“I thought at first it might be Miguel,” Karen said. “My houseman. But he’s visiting his mom in Chula Vista.”

“You have a houseman?”

“Miguel does everything, cleans the house, takes care of the outside . . . There,” Karen said. “If you can’t hear that, Harry, you’re deaf.”

He wanted to ask her how old Miguel was and what he looked like. Miguel . . . and thought of Michael, her former, now a superstar. Michael had lived here and slept in this bed. He wondered if Miguel ever got in it with her. Karen was closing in on forty but still a knockout. She kept in shape, had given up dope for health food, switched from regular cigarettes to low-tar menthols.

“Harry, don’t go to sleep on me.”

He said, “Have I ever done that?” Was quiet for a moment and said, “You have any idea what that is?”

“Those are voices, Harry. People talking.”

“Really?”

“On television. Somebody came in and turned the TV on.”

“You sure?”

“Listen, will you?”

Harry raised his head from the pillow, going along, hearing a faint monotone sound that gradually became voices. She was right, two people talking. He cocked his head in the bedroom silence and after a moment said, “You know who the one guy sounds like? Shecky Greene.”

Karen turned her head, a slow move, to give him a look over the shoulder. “You’re still smashed, aren’t you?” Judging him, but the tone not unsympathetic, a little sad.

“I’m fine.”

Maybe half in the bag but still alert, with a nice glow. The headache would come later if he didn’t take something. He must have put away half the fifth of Scotch earlier, down in the study where the TV was on, while he told Karen about his situation, his thirty years in the picture business on the brink. He was about to become either a major player or might never be heard from again. And she sat there listening to him like a fucking Teamsters business agent, no reaction, no sympathy. He thought of something else and said:

“Maybe, you know how you go downstairs in the morning sometimes you see pictures cockeyed on the wall? You’re thinking, This is some hangover, wow. Then you see on the news there was an earthquake during the night over near Pasadena someplace. Not a big one, like a four-point-two. You know? Maybe it’s something like that, an atmospheric disturbance turned on the TV.”

Karen was listening, but not to him, staring at the bedroom doorway, pitch-dark out there, her nice slim back arched.

“Or maybe it’s only the wind,” Harry said.

That got her looking at him again because she knew the line, intimately. From Grotesque, Part Two, one of his highest grossing pictures. The maniac’s up on the roof ripping out shingles with his bare hands; inside the house the male lead with all the curly hair stares grimly at the ceiling as Karen, playing the girl, says to him, “Maybe it’s only the wind.” She hated the line, refused to say it until he convinced her it was okay, it worked.

“I love your attitude,” Karen said. “What do you care if somebody broke in, it’s not your house.”

“If you think somebody broke in, why don’t you call the police?”

“Because I don’t intentionally allow myself to look stupid,” Karen said, “if I can help it. Not anymore.”

The way she kept staring at him, over the shoulder, was a nice angle. The dark hair against pale skin. The lighting wasn’t bad either, Karen backlit with the windows behind her. It took at least ten years off her age, the tough little broad a sweet young thing again in her white T-shirt. She was telling him now, in a thoughtful tone, “When I came upstairs, you stayed to finish your drink.”

“I didn’t turn the TV on.”

“You said you wanted to watch a few minutes of Carson.”

She was right. “But I turned’ it off.”

“Harry, you can’t be sure what you did.”

“I’m positive.”

Yeah, because he had turned it off the moment he thought about getting in bed with Karen instead of sleeping in the guest room: the idea, start talking again, work on her sympathy . . .

“I used the remote control thing and laid it on the floor,” Harry said. “You know what could’ve happened? The dog came in and stepped on it, turned the TV back on.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“You don’t? What happened to Muff?”

“Harry, are you going down, or you want me to?”

He wanted her to but had to be nice, obliging, to have any hope of using her.

Getting out of bed his boxer shorts hiked up on him and he had to work them down, get the elastic band under his belly. Karen thought he was fat.

In the study, earlier, he had told her about the story he’d optioned that could change his life, an original screenplay: no fiends or monsters, this one straight-up high-concept drama. He told her he was taking it to a major studio and Karen said, “Oh?” He told her—making it sound like an afterthought— yeah, and guess who read the script and flipped over it? Michael. No kidding, loves it. Her ex, and she didn’t say a goddamn word, not even “Oh?” or make a sound. She stared at him, smoking her cigarette. He told her he did have a few problems. One, getting past Michael’s agent, the prick, who refused to let Michael take a meeting with him. And, there was some sticky business to clean up that involved money, naturally, not to mention getting out from under his investors, a couple of undesirables who’d been financing him. Which he did mention, in detail. This was his career on the launch pad, about to either fly or go down in flames; and Karen sat there letting the ice melt in her drink, blowing menthol smoke at him. Didn’t comment outside of that one “Oh?” or ask one question, not even about Michael, till he was through and she said, “Harry, if you don’t lose thirty pounds you’re going to die.” Thanks a lot. He told her he was glad he stopped by, find out all he had to do to save his ass was join Vic Tanny.

“Harry? What’re you doing?”

“I’m putting my shirt on.”

He moved to a window to be moving, doing something while he worked on the goddamn buttons.

“Is that okay? So I don’t catch cold? But I’m not gonna get all dressed for some friend of yours thinks he’s funny.”

“Friends don’t break in, Harry, they ring the bell.”

“Yeah? What about stoned they might.”

Karen didn’t comment; she was clean now, above it. Harry looked out the window at the backyard, overgrown around the edges, a tangle of plants and old trees surrounding the lawn and the pale oval shape of the swimming pool. It looked full of leaves.

“Does Miguel skim the pool? It needs it.”

“Harry—”

He said, “I’m going,” and got as far as the door. “If somebody broke in, how come the alarm didn’t go oft?”

“I don’t have an alarm.”

“You have it taken out?”

“I never had one.”

That’s right, it was the house in Westwood, where Karen had lived with him. She’d come in, forget to touch the numbers to turn it off . . . Marlene had the alarm system now and the house that went with it. He had married Marlene, his director of development, after Karen left to marry Michael. Then when both marriages ended at about the same time he told Karen it was a sign, they should get back together. Karen said she didn’t believe in signs. Which was a lie, she read her horoscope every day. Marlene was married to a guy who at one time ran production at Paramount and was now producing TV sitcoms, one of them a family with a Chihuahua that could talk. Tiny little dog with a tiny little fake Puerto Rican accent. Why chew look hat me like dat? The dog always fucking up. He was thinking of Karen in the Westwood house instead of this one, her own place, a semi-French château high up in Beverly Hills, above the lights of L.A. Built in the late twenties for a movie star and passed on to others.

From the doorway he said to Karen, “Why chew make me do thees?”

“Because I’m a girl,” the pale figure on the bed answered, “and you’re bigger than I am. A lot.”

Harry moved down the curved staircase in his shirt and boxer shorts, the monotone sound of voices becoming more distinct; he could hear words now and what sounded like audience response, the volume turned up to be heard on the second floor. He believed it was the Letterman show. The tile in the foyer was cold on his bare feet. Mexican tile now and primitive art, hardwood floors except in the study, all the fat comfortable slipcovered furniture from Michael’s time gone. And yet there were pictures of him in the study, among the dozens of photographs of movie people and movie posters covering the paneled walls.

He crossed to the study, the door open partway, dark inside except for the glow from the big thirtytwo-inch Sony. There, David Letterman talking to someone—not Shecky, it wasn’t his voice.

Harry couldn’t see the desk, where he and Karen had sat with the bottle of Scotch, schmoozing, Karen telling him she was reading a script she might do. Oh, really? Want to get back into it, huh? Great. Biding his time until finally making his presentation: here is my tremendous opportunity, but here are the problems. Pause. Waiting then for her to say, Maybe I can help. No, she tells him he ought to lose weight.

Still, there was hope. Asking him to spend the night was a good sign. Looking after him, saying he was in no condition to drive. It meant she cared. Though not enough to let him sleep with her when he suggested it, as kind of a trip down memory lane. Spunky Karen said, “If you think nostalgia’s going to get you laid, forget it.” He could take the guest room or a cab. Fine, sleeping with her wasn’t that important anyway; they were back on familiar ground with one another. When he did slip into her bed, later, Karen said, “I mean it, Harry, we’re not going to do anything.”

But, she didn’t kick him out.

So he felt pretty good pushing open the door to the study, telling himself there was no one in here. If there was it would be one of Karen’s friends, no doubt stoned, some bit-part actor thinking he was funny. Okay, he’d nod to the guy very nonchalantly, turn the TV off and walk out.

Moving into the glow from the big Sony now, most of the room dark, he saw David Letterman talking to Paul Shaffer, his music guy, the two of them acting hip. Harry felt his bare feet in the warm carpeting. Felt himself jump and said, “Jesus Christ!” as Letterman and Paul Shaffer vanished, the screen going to black in the same moment the desk lamp came on.

A guy Harry had never seen before was sitting there, hunched over a little, his arms resting on the desk. A guy in black. Dark hair, dark eyes, that lean, hard-boned type. A guy in his forties.

He said, “Harry Zimm, how you doing?” in a quiet tone of voice. “I’m Chili Palmer.”

3

Harry pressed a hand against his chest. He said, “Jesus, if I have a heart attack I hope you know what to do,” convinced the guy was a friend of Karen’s, the way he was making himself at home, the guy staring at him out of those deep-set dark eyes but with hardly any expression.

He said, “Where you been, Harry?”

Harry let his hand slide down over his belly, taking his time, wanting to show he had it together now, not the least self-conscious, standing there without his pants on.

“Have we met? I don’t recall.”

“We just did. I told you, my name’s Chili Palmer.”

The guy speaking with some kind of East Coast accent, New York or New Jersey.

“Tell me what you been up to.”

Harry still had a mild buzz-on that made him feel, not exactly reckless, but not shy either.

“You mean what am I doing here?”

“You want, you can start with that.”

He didn’t appear upset or on the muscle. But if he had a key to get in—Harry assuming that—the guy was closer to Karen than just a friend, Karen maybe going in for rough trade now.

Harry said, “I’m visiting, that’s all. I’m up in the guest room, I hear the TV. . . . You turned it on?”

The guy, Chili, kept staring, not saying anything now. Typecast, he was a first or second lead bad guy, depending on the budget. Hispanic or Italian. Not a maniac bad guy, a cool bad guy with some kind of hustle going. But casual, black poplin jacket zipped up.

The answer came to Harry and he said, “You’re in pictures, right?”

The guy smiled. Not much but enough to show even white teeth, no doubt capped, and Harry was convinced of it. The guy was an actor friend of Karen’s and she was in on it—the reason she was so anxious to get him down here—setting him up for this bullshit audition. The guy scares hell out of you to prove he can act and you give him a part in your next picture.

“Did you stop to think what if I had a heart attack?”

The guy didn’t move, still doing the bit, no expression, very cool.

He said, “You look okay to me, Harry. Come over here and sit down. Tell me what you been up to.”

The guy wasn’t bad. Harry took one of the canvas director’s chairs by the desk, the guy watching him. He knew how to stare without giving it much. The angle was nice too: the guy lean and dark, the bottle of Scotch, the ice bucket and the glasses he and Karen had left, in the foreground. Harry raised one hand and passed it over his thinning hair. He could feel it was losing its frizz, due for another permanent and touch-up, add some body and get rid of the mousy gray trying to take over. The guy had a full head of dark hair, as that type usually did, but close-cropped so you could see the shape of his head, like a skull. It was a nice effect.

He said, “Harry, you looking at me?”

Harry brought his hand down. “I’m looking at you.”

“I want you to keep looking right here, okay?”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Harry said, going along. Why not? The guy was from Brooklyn or the Bronx, one of those. If he was putting it on he had it down cold.

“Okay, so tell me what’s up.”

He was good, but irritating.

“I don’t have a script,” Harry said, “so I don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay?”

“You don’t have a script,” Chili said. “How about, you happen to have a hunnerd and fifty big ones on you?”

Harry didn’t answer.

“You’re not saying nothing. You remember being in Vegas November twenty-sixth of last year, at Las Mesas?”

It was starting to sound real. “I go to Vegas, that’s where I stay, at Mesas,” Harry said. “Always have, for years.”

“You know Dick Allen?”

“Dick Allen’s a very dear friend of mine.” It still could be a script, something Karen put together. “How far you want to go with this?”

The guy gestured, his hands limp, very natural.

“We’re there, Harry. You signed markers for a hunnerd and a half, you’re over sixty days past due and you haven’t told anybody what the problem is.”

It wasn’t a script.

Harry said, “Jesus Christ, what’re you, a collector? You come in here, walk in the house in the middle of the fucking night? I thought you were some actor, auditioning, for Christ sake.”

The guy raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?” He seemed about to smile. “That’s interesting. You thought I was acting, huh?”

“I don’t believe this,” Harry said. “You break in the house to tell me I owe on some markers? I know what I owe. So what? I go to Mesas I get comped, the whole shot. I got a credit line for as much as I owe—and they send you here to collect?” Harry felt an urge to move, do something. He pushed up out of the chair to look down at the guy, get an advantage on him. “We’ll see about this,” Harry said, picked up the phone and punched the 0. “Operator, how do I get Las Vegas Information?” He listened a moment and hung up.

Chili said, “Lemme give you some advice, okay?”

Harry looked up, the phone in his hand again, about to punch the number.

“You don’t want to act like a hard-on you’re standing there in your undies. You know what I’m saying? You got enough to handle. You got the markers and you got another outstanding debt if I’m not mistaken. What you wanta do, Harry, is use your head, sit down and talk to me.”

It stopped him. “What outstanding debt?”

“Put the phone down.”

“I want to know what you’re talking about,” Harry said, getting a peeved tone now, indignant, “outside of what I owe at Mesas, which they know I’m good for.”

“They know you’re good up to your last trip. After that, as they say, nobody knows nothing.” Chili waited.

Harry hung up the phone. He felt the chair against his bare legs and sat down.

“A marker’s like a check, Harry . . .”

“I know what a marker is.”

“They don’t want to deposit yours and have ’em bounce, insufficient funds, or they find out the account’s closed. That’s embarrassing. So your customer rep, your very dear friend Dick Allen’s been calling, leaving messages on your machine, but you never get back to him. So basically, you want to know why I’m here—I don’t actually work for Mesas, but Dick Allen asked me as a favor would I look you up. Okay, I come to L.A., try your apartment, your office, you’re not anywhere around. So I contact some people I know of, get a few leads—”

“What people?”

“You have high blood pressure, Harry? You oughta lose some weight.”

“What people?”

“You don’ know ’em, some people I was put in touch with. So I start calling around. I call here, Karen tells me she hasn’t seen you. So we talk, I ask her if this’s the Karen Flores used to be in the movies. Yes, it is. Well, how come I haven’t seen you? . . . I remember her in Grotesque with the long blond hair. I start to think, this is where I’d come if I was Harry Zimm and I want to stay off the street.”

“You think I’m hiding out?”

“What’re you getting excited about?”

“I don’t like the insinuation, I’m hiding.”

“Well, that’s up to you, what you like or what you don’t. I called your former wife, the one in Westwood? She goes, ‘I hope you’re a bill collector and you find the cheapskate.’ ”

“You have fun talking about me? Jesus,” Harry said, “that broad used to work for me. She’s supposed to know the business, but apparently has no idea what I was going through at the time.” His gaze moved to the bottle of Scotch thinking of Marlene, who liked her booze, also thinking he wouldn’t mind having one.

“You’re not looking at me, Harry.”

“Why do I have to keep looking at you?”

“I want you to.”

“You gonna get rough now, threaten me? I make good by tomorrow or get my legs broken?”

“Come on, Harry—Mesas? The worst they might do is get a judgment against you, uttering a bad check. I can’t imagine you want that to happen, man in your position.”

“I’ve won there and I’ve lost,” Harry said, staying with the peeved tone. “They carry me and I always pay what I owe. But now all of a sudden they’re worried I’m gonna stiff ’em? Why? They don’t give you a credit line of a hundred and a half unless they know you’re good for it.”

“What’s that, Harry?”

“You heard me.”

“What I heard,” Chili said, “your credit line’s an even hunnerd and they gave you the extra fifty TTO, this trip only, ’cause you had front money, that cashier’s check for two hunnerd thousand, right? Four hours later, the night’s still young, it’s all gone, the two you rode in on and the hunnerd and a half. It can happen to anybody. But now a couple months go by, Dick Allen wonders if there’s a problem here, if Harry Zimm was playing with scared money. He says you never put down more than ten on a basketball game in your life. You come in this time and drop the whole load, like you’re not doing it for fun.”

“I didn’t have to twist any arms. I told ’em what I wanted to put down and they okayed it.”

“Why not? It’s your money.”

“They tell you what game it was and the point spread? Lakers and the Pistons, in Detroit. Which happens to be where I grew up. Now I’m out here I follow the Lakers, had seats up to last year. Not down there with Jack Nicholson, but they weren’t bad seats. You don’t recall the game?”

“I mighta read about it at the time. What was the spread?”

The guy showing interest. It picked Harry up.

“The sports book line had the Pistons by three and a half. The bad boys from Motown over the glamor boys from showtown.”

“You live here,” Chili said, “but you like the Pistons. I can understand that. I don’t live in New York anymore, I’m in Miami, but I still follow the Knicks, put a few bucks on ’em now and then. Even though it’s been years.”

“I don’t happen to bet that way,” Harry said, “emotionally. I like the Pistons this time ’cause they’re at home, twenty thousand screaming fans on their ass. Also the fact they beat the Lakers four zip in the finals last year.”

He had the guy’s attention; no question about it, waiting to hear about a basketball game that was played more than two months ago.

“You know how I bet it?”

“You went with the Pistons and the Lakers won.”

“I went with the Pistons,” Harry said, “and the Pistons won.”

Right away Chili said, “The point spread.”

Harry sat back in the director’s chair. “The Pistons by three and a half. The score was one-ohtwo to ninety-nine. They won and I lost.”

Now Chili sat back. “That was close. You almost did it.”

The guy showing sympathy. Good. Harry wanted him to get up now, shake hands and leave. But the guy was staring at him again.

“So then you go through your credit line playing blackjack,” Chili said, “chasing what you lost, going double-up to catch up. But when you have to win, Harry, that’s when you lose. Everybody knows that.”

“Whatever you say,” Harry said, tired of talking about it. He yawned. Maybe the guy would take the hint.

But Chili kept at it. He said, “You know what I think? You went in the hole on some kind of deal, so you tried to bet your way out. See, I don’t know anything about your business, Harry, but I know how a guy acts when he’s facing a payment he has to make and he doesn’t have it. You get desperate. I know a guy put his wife out on the street, and she wasn’t bad looking either.”

“You don’t know anything about my business,” Harry said, showing some irritation, “but you don’t mind sticking your nose in it. Tell Dick Allen I’ll cover the markers in the next sixty days, at the most. He doesn’t like it, that’s his problem. First thing in the morning,” Harry said, “I’m gonna call him, the prick. I thought he was a friend of mine.”

Harry paused, wondering whether or not he should ask the guy how he got in the house, and decided he didn’t want to know. The guy says he broke a window—then what? Harry waited. He was tired, irritable, not feeling much of a glow. He said, “We gonna sit here all night or what? You want me to call you a cab?”

The guy, Chili, shook his head. He kept staring, but with a different kind of expression now, more thoughtful, or maybe curious.

“So you make movies, huh?”

“That’s what I do,” Harry said, relieved, not minding the question. “I produce feature motion pictures, no TV. You mentioned Grotesque, that happened to be Grotesque, Part Two Karen Flores was in. She starred in all three of my Slime Creatures releases you might’ve seen.”

The guy, Chili, was nodding as he came forward to lean on the desk.

“I think I got an idea for one, a movie.”

And Harry said, “Yeah? What’s it about?”

4

At first, all Karen heard was Harry’s side of whatever was going on. As soon as she came out of the bedroom she heard his voice, Harry saying, “Jesus Christ!” and it gave her goose bumps standing in her T-shirt and panties, one hand on the railing that curved around the open upstairs landing. Her eyes held on the foyer, directly below: dark except for a square of light on the floor, coming out of the study. A few minutes passed. Karen was about to step back into the bedroom to call the police when she heard Harry’s voice again, Harry saying, “What people?” and then repeating it, “What people?” With an edge this time, Harry acting tough. A good sign. He wouldn’t use that tone with a burglar. Little Harry Zimm, with his perm, his frizzed hair, loved to act tough. But then Karen began to wonder if Harry could be talking to himself. Harry into the Scotch again.

What people?

Meaning the people he wanted to get out from under, his investors, the undesirables. Harry trying to convince himself there was no problem.

What people?

As if to say, What, those guys? Seeing if he could make the mess he was in seem trivial.

It was possible. He used to talk to himself sometimes when he was loaded, or rewriting dialogue in a script, look at the line and recite it to her aloud, when they were living together. She liked the idea of Harry boozing, trying to reassure himself. She liked it a lot better than thinking someone had broken in and was still in the house. Harry talking to himself made sense.

Until his voice, raised, came out of the study again.

“You heard me.”

Karen listened, holding on to the railing.

That was it. You heard me. Then silence.

Would he say that to himself? She didn’t think so. Unless he was acting out his own kind of scene, imagining what he would like to tell his money guys. You heard me. Harry hating to be controlled, especially by outsiders, people not in the movie business. Harry called investors a necessary evil. Talking to him earlier he had sounded okay . . .

But looked awful.

In the past ten years he’d become a fat little sixty-year-old guy with frizzy hair. The same guy she once thought was a genius because he could shoot a ninety-minute feature in ten days and be looking at a workprint two weeks later . . .

Harry doing the first of the Slime Creatures in Griffith Park when she read for him in bra and panties, he said to give him an idea of her figure, and she got the part. Karen asked him if he did horror or T and A and Harry explained to her the philosophy of ZigZag Productions. “Zig for the maniac, escaped lunatic and dope-crazed biker pictures.” No vampires or werewolves; she would never get bitten or eaten. “Zag for the ones featuring mutations fed on nuclear waste, your slime people, your seven-foot rats, your maggots the size of submarines. But there’s nothing wrong with showing a little skin in either type picture.” She told him if he was talking about full frontal nudity, forget it, she didn’t do porn, hard or soft. If she had to go to bed with him, okay, one time only, but it would have to be an awfully good part. Harry acted insulted. He said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, I’m old enough to be your uncle. But I like your spunk and the way you talk. Where you from, somewhere in Texas?” She told him he was close, Alamogordo, where her dad was a rocket man and her mom was in real estate. Karen told him she left to study drama at New Mexico State, but since coming here had done nothing but wait on tables. Harry said, “Let’s hear you scream.” She gave him a good one and he gave her a big smile saying, “Get ready to be a star.”

Karen was slimed to death within twenty minutes of her first appearance on the screen.

Michael, who had also read for a part and was turned down, told her she was lucky, not have to hang around the set. It was where she first met Michael, when they were casting Slime Creatures fifteen years ago, saw him a few other times after, but they didn’t seriously get it on until Michael was a star and she was living with Harry . . . tired of it, saying mean things and arguing by that time, picking at dumb lines that had never bothered her before. Like the one Harry threw at her in bed, out of nowhere . . .

“Maybe it’s only the wind.”

Knowing she’d remember it.

Instead of giving him a look, she should have said, “What’re you up to, Harry? What can I do for you?”

Make him come out and say it instead of trying to take her down memory lane. It was so obvious. Harry wanted her to use her influence with Michael to set up a meeting. But wanted it to be her idea, happy to do him this favor because she owed him, theoretically, for putting her in pictures, making her a ZigZag Productions star.

But it was weird—hearing that line again.

When she first read it she said to Harry, “You’ve got to be kidding.” It was his line, he was always rewriting, sticking in additional dialogue. Harry said, “Yeah, but it works. You hear the roof being torn off, you look up and say to the guy, ‘Maybe it’s only the wind.’You know why?”

“Because I’m stupid?”

“Because you want it to be the wind and not that fucking maniac up there. It may sound stupid, but what it does, it gives the audience a chance to release nervous laughter.”

“At my expense,” Karen said.

And Harry said, “You going to sulk? It’s entertainment, babe. It’s a put-on, the whole business of making pictures. You ever catch yourself taking it seriously you’re in trouble.”

Karen recited the line. It got a laugh and a picture that cost four hundred thousand to make grossed over twenty million worldwide. She told Harry it was still schlock. He said, “Yeah, but it’s my schlock. If it does-n’t make me famous, at least it can make me rich.”

She might ask Harry in the morning, “Who’s taking it seriously now?” Harry dreaming of a twenty-million-plus production he’d never get off the ground. And a star he’d never sign. With or without her help.

She might ask him, “Remember I told you last night about a picture I’ve been offered?” After a seven-year layoff. She had expected Harry to at least be curious, show some interest. “You remember I wanted to talk about it and all you said was ‘Yeah? Great’?”

Now she was the one taking it seriously, standing on the upstairs landing in her T-shirt . . . listening, beginning to see the stairway and the foyer below as a set.

It would be lighted to get eerie shadows and she would have on a see-through nightie rather than a T-shirt. She hears a sound and calls out softly, “Harry? Is that you?” She starts down the stairs and stops as a shadow appears in the foyer, a moving shadow coming out of the study. She calls again, “Harry?” in a stupid, tentative voice knowing goddamn well it isn’t Harry. If it’s a Zig shadow, now the maniac appears, looks up, sees her. A Zag shadow is followed by a gross, oversized mutation. Either one, she stands there long enough to belt out a scream that will fill movie theaters, raise millions of goose bumps and make Harry a lot of money.

Karen cleared her throat. It was something she always did before the camera rolled. Cleared her throat and took a deep breath. She had never screamed for the fun of it because it wasn’t fun. After only three takes—Harry’s limit—her throat would be raw.

The house was so quiet.

She was thinking, Maybe do one, hang it out there for about five beats. See what happens.

And in almost the same moment heard Harry’s voice coming from the study.

“We gonna sit here all night?”

Now she heard a faint murmur of voices, Harry’s and another voice, but not the words, Harry carrying on a conversation with someone who had walked in her house, or broken in. You could take that seriously. Now she heard Harry’s voice again, unmistakably Harry.

“Yeah? What’s it about?”

Those familiar words.

A question she heard every day when they were living together and Harry got her involved in story development because he hated to read. What’s it about? Never mind a script synopsis, coverage to Harry meant giving him the plot in three sentences, fifty words or less.

Karen went back through the bedroom to the bathroom and turned the light on. She stared at herself in the mirror as she took a minute to run a comb through her hair.

What’s it about? . . . It’s what Hollywood was about. Somebody making a pitch.

5

While they were still in the other room, the study, getting ready to come out here, Harry said to him, “You’re Chili? . . . I don’t think I caught your last name.”

Chili told him it was Chili Palmer and saw Harry give him that look. Oh? Like he was wondering what the name was before somebody changed it.

They were in the kitchen now. It was as big as the kitchen in the Holmhurst Hotel, Atlantic City, where he had washed dishes a couple of summers when he was a kid, back before they tore the place down to make a parking lot. The fifth of Dewar’s, what was left of it, and a tray of ice were on the butcher-block table. There were all kinds of pots and pans hanging from a rack right above them. He saw Harry, who was sitting at the end of the table facing the door to the hall, look up as he was about to take a drink and stop.

Harry said, “Karen?” sounding surprised. He took the drink then and said, “Karen, say hello to Chili Palmer. Dick Allen sent him. You remember Dick, at Mesas? Chili, this is Karen Weir.”

“Flores,” Karen said.

“That’s right,” Harry said, “you changed it back.”

Chili had been telling his movie idea until this interruption, which he didn’t mind at all, a chance to meet Karen Flores. He sat with his arms resting on the table, looking past his shoulder now at Karen in the doorway, the hall behind her dark. She looked smaller in real life than in movies, about five-two and no more than ninety-nine pounds. She was still good looking, but where was all the blond hair? And the boobs he remembered as big ones for her slim figure. He nodded, saying to her, “Karen, it’s a pleasure. How you doing?”

She didn’t say anything, looking at him as if trying to figure out if she knew him. Or she was giving him a pose, standing there with her arms folded in a Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt that came down just past her crotch and was like a little minidress on her. Middle of the night, never saw him before in her life—she could be on the muscle without showing it. Her legs were nice and tan.

Harry was telling her, “Chili’s the one called you the other day. He says just from talking to you on the phone he had a feeling I’d show up here sooner or later. You imagine that?”

Harry seemed in a better mood since coming out here to get ice and they sat down with their drinks, Harry more talkative. Listening to the movie idea he kept sticking his own ideas in.

Chili straightened, touched the front of his jacket to smooth it down. He thought of getting up but now it was too late. He liked the way Karen kept looking right at him without appearing nervous or emotional, putting on any kind of act. No, this was her. Not anything like Karen the screamer facing the maniac with a butcher knife or seven-foot rats or giant ticks gorged on human blood. He liked her hair, the way it was now, thick and dark, hanging down close to one eye. He noticed how thin her neck was and took a few more pounds off, got her down to around ninety-five. He figured she was now up in her thirties, but hadn’t lost any of her looks to speak of.

“He’s telling me an idea for a movie,” Harry said. “It’s not bad, so far.” He motioned with his glass. “Tell Karen, let’s see what she thinks.”

“You want me to start over?”

“Yeah, start over.” Harry looked at Karen again. “Why don’t you sit down, have a drink?”

Chili watched her shake her head.

“I’m fine, Harry.”

He liked her voice, the quiet way she spoke. She was looking at him again, curious, doing a read.

“How did you get in the house?”

“The door from the patio, in back.”

“You broke in?”

“No, it was open. I mean it wasn’t locked.”

“What if it was?”

That was a good question. He didn’t have to answer it though, Harry saying, “He works for Dick Allen. Got sent here to check up on me.”

Karen said, “Oh,” and nodded. “That makes it all right to walk in my house.”

Chili didn’t say anything. He liked the way she was handling it. If she was pissed off you couldn’t tell.

“He knew I was gonna turn up here,” Harry said, “just from talking to you on the phone.”

“Why, what did I say?”

“Something about your voice. It was a feeling he had, a hunch. You want to hear his idea?”

Chili watched her. His feeling now was Karen’d say no and tell him to get the hell out of her house. But she didn’t say anything. Or Harry didn’t give her a chance.

“It’s about a guy,” Harry said, “who scams an airline out of three hundred grand. Go on, tell her.”

“You just did.”

“I mean the way you told it to me. Start at the beginning, we see how the story line develops.”

“Well, basically,” Chili said, “this guy owes a shylock fifteen thousand, plus he’s a few weeks behind on the vig, the interest you have to pay, on account of he doesn’t have it. The guy runs a drycleaner’s but spends everything he makes at the track.”

Chili could see Harry ready to cut in and let him.

“You understand what he means,” Harry said. “The guy borrowed money from a loan shark. It’s the kind of situation, you don’t pay you get your legs broken.”

“Or the guy thinks he could get ’em broken,” Chili said. “You have to understand the loan shark’s in business the same as anybody else. He isn’t in it looking for a chance to hurt people. He’s in it to make money. You go to him, you understand that, you’re gonna pay him every week. You don’t like that idea, you don’t have any business going to him.”

Karen said, “Yeah?” Telling him to go on.

“But you don’t make your payments,” Harry said, “you can get your legs broken, or worse.”

“It can happen,” Chili said, looking at Karen, “but it’s not, you know, the usual way. Maybe once in a while you hear about it.”

“If the guy doesn’t think it’s gonna happen to him,” Harry said, “you don’t have a story. That’s the only reason he gets on the plane, he’s scared to death, he’s running for his life.”

“That’s right,” Chili said, “the guy’s scared. I just meant he wouldn’t necessarily get his legs broken in that kind of situation, a few weeks behind. The guy doesn’t know any better, so he gets on the plane.”

“This’s Miami,” Harry said. “He’s going to Vegas. He’s got a few bucks and he’s thinking maybe it’s his only chance.”

“He gets on the plane,” Chili said, watching Karen’s eyes come back to him, “ready to go, and the plane sits there at the gate, doesn’t move. They announce over the PA there’s some kind of mechanical problem, they’ll be there maybe an hour, but keep your seats in case they get it fixed sooner. The guy’s nervous, in no shape to just sit there, sweat it out. So he gets off the plane, goes in the cocktail lounge and starts throwing ’em down, one after the other. He’s in there when the plane takes off . . .”

“Without him,” Harry said. “The guy’s so out of it he doesn’t even know it’s gone.”

“That’s right,” Chili said. “As a matter of fact, he’s still in the cocktail lounge when he hears people talking about a plane crash. But the shape he’s in, he doesn’t find out right away it’s the plane he was on. It didn’t gain altitude on account of something to do with the wind and went down in the Everglades, the swamp there, and exploded. Killed everybody aboard, a hunnerd and seventeen people counting the crew. Then when the guy finds out it was his flight, he can’t believe it. If he’d stayed on that plane he’d be dead. Right then he knows his luck has changed. If everybody thinks he’s dead he won’t have to pay back the fifteen or what he owes on the vig, four and a half a week. He’d be saving himself a pile of dough.”

Karen was about to say something, but Harry beat her.

“Not to mention saving his ass.”

She said to Chili, “The interest is four hundred and fifty a week on fifteen thousand?”

“That’s right. Three percent.”

“But a week,” Karen said. “That’s a hundred and fifty percent a year.”

“A hunnerd and fifty-six,” Chili said. “That’s not too bad. I mean some’ll charge you more’n that, go as high as six for five on a short-term loan.”

He watched her shrug without unfolding her arms.

“What the guy does,” Chili said, “is look in the Herald for his name on the list of victims. See, the way the plane exploded and went down in the swamp, they’re not only having trouble identifying bodies, they can’t find ’em all. Or a lot of ’em, they find like just parts of bodies, an arm . . . Others, they’re burned beyond recognition. So when the guy doesn’t see his name in the paper right away, he has his wife call the airline and say her husband was on that flight. What they do, they bring her out to the airport where they’re identifying bodies and going through personal effects, whatever wasn’t burned up. See, the guy’s bags were on the plane. Oh, the bodies they keep in refrigerated trucks right there in the hangar. They don’t show the wife any bodies, they tell her to get her husband’s dental chart from his dentist. She says Leo hasn’t been to a dentist for as long as they’re married. The guy’s name is Leo, Leo Devoe.”

Karen moved to lean against the doorjamb and Chili noticed she was barefoot. He wondered if she wore anything under that T-shirt she slept in.

“So what the wife does, she identifies stuff from Leo’s bags. Tells ’em what to look for and there it is, his monogrammed shirts, what kind of razor he used, things only she would know about. So Leo’s identified and gets his name in the paper. A couple days go by, people from the airline come to see the wife, tell her how sorry they are and all and offer her a settlement, the amount based on what he would’ve earned operating the drycleaner’s the rest of his life. Leo had some kind of trouble with his kidneys, so they were giving him about ten years.”

“Yeah, but wait,” Harry said. “The best part, the guy hadn’t even thought about a settlement, he’s so happy to get out from under the shylock. All of a sudden he realizes he can sue the airline, go for at least a million. It’s the loser’s grandiose dream, see, but now he’s pressing his luck . . .”

Karen said, “How much is the wife offered? . . .”

Chili started to tell her as Harry said, “Three hundred grand, and they take it, money in the hand, babe. The guy has his wife cash the check and he takes off for Las Vegas with the dough. Gets there, he’s supposed to call her, tell her when to come out . . . Wait, he does call her a couple of times.”

“Twice,” Chili said. “Basically stringing her along.”

“After that, nothing,” Harry said. “She never hears from him again. Meanwhile, the guy’s hot.

Runs the three hundred grand up to almost half a million . . .”

“He comes to L.A.,” Chili said, and stopped as Harry raised his hand.

“It drives the guy nuts, he’s winning but can’t tell anybody who he is. You show in a back story his motivation, his desire to be famous, pal around with celebrities, the headliners doing the big rooms. Now he’s got the dough to buy his way in, mix with celebs and he can’t resist the temptation. Even if it means he’s liable to be revealed as a fraud, and very likely shot dead by the shylock, he makes up his mind to go for it. Where else but Hollywood. That wouldn’t be a bad title, Go for It.” Harry said all this to Karen. Now he looked at Chili again. “So, he comes to L.A . . . .”

“I don’t know about his wanting to meet celebrities,” Chili said, “that’s something new. But, yeah, he comes to L.A. Then, after that, I don’t know what happens.”

He saw Karen waiting. She seemed patient, moved only that one time. He turned his head to see Harry looking at him, Harry saying after a moment, “That’s it? That’s your great idea for a movie?”

“I said I had an idea, that’s all.”

“That’s half a movie, with holes in it.” Harry looked at Karen. “Maybe forty minutes of screen time.”

Karen said, “How did you know Harry was here?”

Like that, getting back to it.

“His car’s in the garage,” Chili said.

“You called, that was four days ago. How did you know he’d be here this evening?”

“I’ve been stopping by. See if there’s a gray ’83 Mercedes around with ZIGZAG on the license plate.”

“So you walked in. What if all the doors were locked?”

“I would’ve rung the bell.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Harry said. “The guy’s a friend of Dick Allen’s. He’s not gonna take anything.”

“It might be okay with you,” Karen said. “What you’re doing, Harry, you’re bringing your dirty laundry into my house and I don’t want it.”

Chili felt she was going to keep talking but Harry moved in saying he should’ve rung the bell. Why didn’t he? Chili said he wanted to surprise him, catch him with his pants down, so to speak. A little humor there. Nobody laughed though or even smiled. Karen asked, what if she had called the police? Chili told her Harry would’ve explained to them it was okay, just like he explained it to her now. She stared at him and he stared back at her until Harry told him, well, anyway, he had the beginning of an idea but it was full of holes.

“In the first place,” Harry said, “it’s not believable the wife would get a settlement that fast. From an insurance company? Without them checking her out?”

“They did,” Chili said. “I didn’t tell you all the details, how nervous she was about it and all.”

“Harry doesn’t realize it’s a true story,” Karen said.

They were both looking at her now.

“That Miami flight that went down in the Everglades, it was on the news every day for about a week, covering the investigation, interviews with witnesses, relatives of the victims from around here . . . Harry was busy.”

Chili caught the tone. So she knew about Harry’s problems, but wasn’t exactly crying over them.

Harry was squinting, as if to get his memory to work, saying, “Yeah, on the news . . .” and then turning to Chili. “That’s where you got the idea.”

“Part of it, yeah.”

“And you made up the rest.”

“No, it’s all true, Harry, everything I told you.” This got him squinting again. Chili could see his mind working. He expected to hear from Karen, but Harry was staying with it.

“The part about the shylock?”

“Everything.”

“Wait a minute. You’re not the guy, are you?”

Chili said, “You mean Leo?” shaking his head. It was getting good.

“You wouldn’t be talking to me if you were.”

“I’m not the guy, Harry.”

Again he expected Karen to jump in and say something as Harry started thinking, looking up at the pots and pans before getting an idea.

“You know the wife?”

“Yeah, I know her. Fay.”

Harry seemed to like that. It got him hunched over the table. “You’re related to her. Wait— you’re her brother.”

Chili shook his head, not giving him any help.

“But you’re a close friend. She asked you to help her find her husband.”

“I talked to her, that’s all.”

Chili waited. Harry was still thinking of it as a movie instead of real life. You could see him going over the story in his head, trying to come up with the answer. Staring at his glass now to see if it was in there.

Harry said, “Okay, the guy goes to Vegas . . .” Then stopped and looked at Chili. “How’s the wife know for sure that’s where he went?”

“Take my word for it.”

“Okay, he’s in Vegas,” Harry said, “he can’t trust anybody . . . So he uses an assumed name. Right?”

“Larry Paris.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay, he starts gambling, gets hot right away . . . Wait a minute, you made that part up. The guy doesn’t win. That’s it—he not only doesn’t win, he blows the entire three hundred thou, gets into Mesas for a chunk of dough and they send you to find him.”

Now he was back to real life, putting in things he knew, but still making it sound like a movie. Chili felt like saying to him, See? Not a bad idea, huh? At least so far. But Harry was still talking.

“It’s what you do, working for the casino. It’s why you’re here tonight.”

“You’re close,” Chili said, “but you’re coming at it wrong. I’m looking for the guy, yeah, but it wasn’t the casino sent me. They asked would I look you up, that’s all.”

“Which I resent,” Harry said, “and believe me Dick Allen’s gonna hear about it.”

“Okay, but getting back,” Chili said, watching the way Harry was staring at him, still interested, “where you think I fit in the picture?”

Karen said, “Harry, for God’s sake,” sounding bored.

They both looked over at her, Harry saying, “What’s the matter?”

“He’s the shylock,” Karen said.

She was staring at him again as Harry said, “Is that right, that’s what you do for a living?”

“What I did up till recently,” Chili said, still looking at Karen. “After I get done here I’ll think about what I’m gonna do next.”

Karen straightened, where she was leaning against the doorjamb. “With your experience,” she said to Chili, “you could always become an agent. Right, Harry?”

“Yeah, that’s what we need,” Harry said, “more agents.”

Still looking at Chili she said, “Well, if I don’t see you again . . .” gave him kind of a shrug and walked away, left them.

“She’s upset,” Harry said.

“You think so?”

She didn’t seem upset to Chili; he thought she had it together, handled it just right.

“You should’ve rung the bell,” Harry said, hunching over the table. “But getting back for a minute—it was the guy’s wife told you where he went, huh?”

“Yeah, Fay. She felt it was her money more’n it was his,” Chili said. “So she offers me half of whatever I bring back, if I find Leo and he has any of it left.”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“You said keep it simple.”

“But what it does,” Harry said, “it adds a whole new dimension to the story. So you went to Las Vegas but did-n’t find him. The guy stayed a jump ahead of you.”

“No, I found him,” Chili said, and paused.

Harry, waiting, seemed more interested now than he did before.

“You want to hear about what happened in Vegas?”

6

The next evening after the visit with Fay he was in Las Vegas, checked into the Golden Nugget and on the phone with Benny Wade, the man in charge of collections at Mesas. Chili knew him well enough to call his house, tell him he was in town looking for a Leo Devoe and didn’t have much time, a couple of days . . .

“Never heard of him.”

Chili said to Benny somebody must know of a flashy kind of guy comes to town with three hundred grand. Benny said high rollers left their money at home and played on credit; this guy sounded like a runaway, the kind dreams of making a score and then flying down to Rio by the sea-o.

“Can you check for me? I’ll do you one gratis.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Where are you?”

“The Nugget, downtown.”

“What’s the matter with Mesas? Give you casino rate.”

“The Strip,” Chili said, “you have to get a cab to go anywhere. Here, you walk out the door you’re in Vegas.”

Right there out the window, the Pioneer, Binion’s, Sassy Sally’s, all the grind joints, hot slots, discount prime ribs, keno, bingo, race and sports book . . . cleaning and pressing While-U-Wait . . .

“Downtown, you get it out of your system, why you’re here, in less’n twenty-four hours.”

“Not to mention it’s cheaper,” Benny said. “You could stay in your room, watch TV, you want to save money. Or you could’ve stayed home.”

“I wouldn’t be here,” Chili said, “if I didn’t have to find this guy. He took a walk, so the new management tells me he pays or I do.”

Benny said, “Let me get on it. Leo Devoe?”

“Yeah, but listen, he could be using a different name,” Chili said, looking at While-U-Wait in red neon down on the street. “You don’t score with Devoe, try Paris. It’s the name of his drycleaning place.”

Chili wasn’t going to get dressed up but changed his mind, put on a dark suit and tie, white shirt—so he wouldn’t look like a tourist—a giant neon cowgirl watching him through the window. The suit picked him up, made him feel like going out, find some broad to have dinner with him, nice bottle of wine . . . He was studying himself in the mirror, smoothing his short hair forward to lie flat, wondering why people didn’t like to get dressed up anymore, when Benny Wade called back.

“You ought to put down some bets tonight, you’re lucky. Did you know that?”

“I try to be.”

“There’s a Larry Paris keeps changing hotels, moving up the Strip. Stayed a few nights at the Trop, left and went to the Sands, the Desert Inn, Stupak’s Vegas World. Currently he’s appearing right up the street from you, at the Union Plaza.”

“So is ‘Nudes on Ice,’ ” Chili said, feeling himself getting more into a Vegas mood. “How’s he doing?”

“Nobody knows. He didn’t apply for a credit line anywhere he stayed.”

“Not with a phony name. It must be the guy.”

“I mentioned ‘Larry Paris’ and the night manager at Stupak’s knew right away who I meant. He said Mr. Paris rented a bodyguard to carry his cash. They do that, pay some local stiff ten bucks an hour, try and impress you.”

“That’s Leo,” Chili said. “He must think he died and went to heaven.”

Benny Wade said he sounded like the kind you’d find shooting craps, where you can draw a crowd. Check the dice tables at the Plaza.

It made sense, but didn’t take into account this was Chili’s lucky night. He went downstairs, walked across that flowery Nugget carpeting and there was Leo playing roulette, a lady’s game, Leo betting numbers while his bodyguard, a guy who looked like a young dressed-up weight lifter, held his briefcase.

Chili stood away from the table, behind Leo and a little to one side. Two women in their thirties, wearing party dresses but not too attractive, were across the table from Leo, who was trying to get something going. He’d shake his head at their betting one chip at a time, saying you had to take risks if you wanted to score big. Leo was playing what they called the action numbers, 10 through 15 and 33, the numbers scattered evenly around the wheel. His chips were a shade of green to match his outfit, but there was no way to tell what the chips were worth or how much he was betting. The two women were playing with blue and pink chips. A lot of color at the table, Leo looking like the Easter bunny in a pale green sport coat with gold buttons, an open pink shirt with one of those high Hollywood collars, Leo’s face hunched in there behind sunglasses, hair slicked back. Chili watched the wheel spin and stop. The house won. As the two women walked away Leo told them the dinner offer was still on. They said thanks anyway and turned to each other rolling their eyes. Leo watched them go, the poor little dry-cleaner trying to be a high roller. The bodyguard, a young guy with shoulders that filled his suit, was opening the briefcase now. He brought out a stack of 100’s in a paper strap and handed it to Leo, the dealer waiting. Leo tore the strap, wet his thumb and counted out twenty bills he passed to the dealer, who gave Leo his stack of twenty green chips. So he was betting a hundred a spin on each of the seven action numbers, looking for a hit that would pay him 35 to 1. Chili watched. Leo hit and put three chips on each number, his idea of a system. He hit again, collecting over ten grand, tried three chips again on the seven numbers and lost. Now he went back to betting a hundred on each and was covering the numbers when Chili walked up behind him, said, “Look at me, Leo,” and Leo spilled his chips. The dealer looked over.

Leo, getting himself ready, didn’t turn right away. When he came around he was adjusting his sunglasses over a casual expression that showed just enough surprise—a guy who scams three hundred thousand ready to put on whatever kind of act was needed—though all he managed to say was “Well, well . . .” The bodyguard, with his build and his hair shorter than Chili’s, stepped in to put his hand on Leo’s shoulder.

Chili said, “What’s this guy do, Leo, stop traffic you want to cross the street?”

“Well, this is a surprise,” Leo said, “believe me. What’re you doing here?”

“I’m collecting,” Chili said. “Twenty grand even.”

Leo pushed his sunglasses up on his nose. He seemed to be squinting, puzzled. “I owe you twenty? How you figure that?”

“Expenses,” Chili said, “and a late charge I’m adding on.”

The young weight lifter had his eyes narrowed, giving Chili his ten-bucks-an-hour bodyguard look.

“Mr. Paris, is this guy bothering you?”

Leo waved him off. “It’s okay, Jerry.” Still looking at Chili. “I was gonna call you, it slipped my mind. Listen, when I’m through here we’ll have a drink, I’ll write you a check.” Turning to the table he said, “It’s good seeing you, Chil,” and began picking up his chips.

“You’ll write me a check,” Chili said. “You serious? Leo, look at me, I’m talking to you.”

“I’m busy at the moment,” Leo said, studying the table layout. “Okay? You mind?”

He was serious.

It didn’t make sense till Chili began to think about it, staring at Leo’s shoulders rounded inside that sporty green jacket, his sprayed hair hanging over the Hollywood collar, and said, “Lemme ask you something, Leo.”

“You heard Mr. Paris,” the ten-dollar bodyguard said. “He don’t want to talk to you.”

“Okay, you ask him,” Chili said, watching Leo reach over the table to cover his action numbers. “Does he think I just happened to run into him . . .” He saw Leo begin to straighten, bringing his arm in. “Or I knew where to look?”

Leo turned from the table. The old Leo once again, Leo the loser. He took the case from the bodyguard.

“How much you want?”

“What you owe me. I’m not into extortion, Leo. I will give you one piece of advice you can take any way you want. Call Fay. And I mean tonight, soon.” He felt the bodyguard start to move in and said to him, “Keep out of this. There’s no problem.” Now the bodyguard didn’t know what to do. Leo was bringing a stack of currency from the briefcase. “We’re old friends,” Chili said to the bodyguard. “I knew him when.”

Leo handed him the currency saying, “Fay told you, huh?”

“What’d you expect?” Chili said, looking hard at Leo, wondering what was going on in the little drycleaner’s head. “What’re you doing, Leo? You nuts or something? Can you tell me?”

Leo raised his face, sunglasses shining in the light. “What am I doing? You kidding? I’m doing what I never dreamed in my whole life I’d ever have a chance to. That’s what I’m doing.”

The dealer, watching them with his arms folded, said, “We have a problem here, gentlemen? I can get the floorman.”

Benny Wade told him on the phone to go in the door next to the cage, the cashier’s window, take a left at the hard count room, go down past the coffeemaker and the Xerox machine and you’re there. Benny came out from behind his computer terminal—gray-haired, easygoing, not at all what Chili thought an ex-FBI agent should look like. He didn’t act like a guy who’d once been a hard-on in wing tips, either.

“So you found him.”

“I found him,” Chili said, “then lost him again.”

“You told me on the phone you collected.”

“I did. I wanted to see him about something else. He was suppose to call his wife last night—it’s a long story. I talked to her and found out he never called, so I wanted to see him again. This morning I go over the Plaza, he’s gone, checked out.”

“Maybe he’s back on the Strip.”

“No, he left, went to L.A.”

“Let me see what we have there,” Benny said, sat down at the computer and began tapping keys. “Yeah, one of Dick Allen’s customers, guy owes us a hundred and fifty K, over sixty days. You want to talk to Dick? I mean if you’re going to L.A.”

“Yeah, why not.”

Benny sat there staring at him. “You found this guy Leo and collected. But you don’t seem too happy about it. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know if I told you, I had my ass in a crack when I came here.”

“You mentioned it in passing.”

“It’s still there,” Chili said. “You remember your saying to me last night I was lucky, should lay down some bets?”

“Don’t tell me the rest,” Benny said, “I don’t want to feel responsible.”

“I’m not blaming you, I’m the one did it.”

“Okay then, how much you lose?”

“What I collected, less some change.”

7

“You know why it doesn’t work?” Harry said. “I mean even before I find out you don’t know how it ends. There’s nobody to sympathize with. Who’s the good guy? You don’t have one.”

Chili said, “The shylock’s the good guy.” Sounding surprised.

Harry said, “You kidding me? The shylock’s the heavy in this. Leo’s the victim, but we don’t give a shit about him either. You don’t have a good guy, you don’t have a girl in it, a female lead . . . you have a first act, you’re partway into the second.”

Chili said to him, “I guess I better tell you about my coat getting ripped off and this guy named Ray Bones I shot one time and wants to pay me back.”

Harry said, “Jesus Christ.” He said, “Yeah, I think you better.”

They were still in the kitchen, three A.M., drinking coffee now and smoking Chili’s cigarettes till he ran out and Harry found a pack of Karen’s menthols.

“That’s everything?” Harry said.

“Pretty much.”

“You have scenes that appear to work, but don’t quite make it,” Harry said, wanting to know more about this guy without encouraging him too much. “The one in the casino, for example, at the roulette table. You don’t do enough with the bodyguard.”

“Like what?”

“The scene,” Harry said, “that type of scene in a picture, should build a certain amount of tension. The audience is thinking, Jesus, here it comes. They know you’re a tough guy, they want to see how you handle the bodyguard.”

“Yeah, well in real life,” Chili said, “you start something in a casino, you get thrown out and told don’t come back. What I didn’t mention, the next day it was the bodyguard, Jerry, told me Leo got on a flight to L.A. I had to find him first, check the different companies rent out bodyguards.”

“You have to threaten him?”

“You want me to say I beat him up,” Chili said, “this guy bigger’n I am. What I did, I took him out to breakfast. I even asked him how Leo did. Jerry goes, ‘Oh, not too bad. I put him on that airplane with four hundred fifty-four thousand dollars, that’s all.’ ”

“Why would he tell you that?”

“The kid was dying to tell me, it made him feel important. It’s like saying you know where a movie star lives, being on the in.”

Harry said, “I know where all kinds of movie stars live. It doesn’t do a thing for me.”

Chili said, “Yeah? I wouldn’t mind driving past some of their homes sometime.”

“You know who used to live right here? Cary Grant.”

“No shit. In this house?”

“Or it was Cole Porter, I forget which.”

Harry was lighting another one of Karen’s menthols, tired, getting a headache now, but staying with it.

“So you have no idea where Leo is, other than he’s in L.A.”

“I don’t even know that for sure. Fay, his wife, still hasn’t heard. I called her again, she gave me a name to check, some broad she knows Leo met at a drycleaners’ convention. It’s why I’m staying at the motel over on Ventura Boulevard. It’s near Hi-Tone Cleaners, the broad’s place, but she’s out of town. I’m hoping she’s with Leo and they’ll be back sometime.”

“Say you find him, then what?”

Chili didn’t answer right away and Harry waited. He saw the guy himself having far more possibilities than his idea for a movie.

“There are different ways I could go with it,” Chili said. “Basically, you might say it’s the wife’s money. It was paid to her.”

“Basically,” Harry said, “it’s the airline’s money. That doesn’t bother you?”

“Bother me—I didn’t cop it, they did.”

“Yeah, but you’re talking about going halves with the wife.”

“No, I said that’s what she offered. I never said anything else about it. There might even be a few things, Harry, I haven’t told you.”

Starting to get cagey on him.

Harry had to think a moment, go at it another way. He said, “The plot thickens, huh? You have a girl in it now, even though she doesn’t do much. See, it gets better the more details you give me. So you’re at the roulette table, he pays off his debt . . . You did-n’t discuss the wife?”

“He realized I must’ve talked to her. That’s what brought him back to earth.”

“I mean you didn’t say anything about basically it was her money.”

“It looked like management was gonna get involved, so I left. But I told him, yeah, he better call her.”

“So then you took the twenty gees in your hot little hands,” Harry said with some pleasure, “and blew it.”

“I dropped a little over seventeen,” Chili said, “before my brain started working again. But the thing that got me about Leo, he looks me right in the eye and goes, ‘When I’m through here I’ll write you a check.’ Like he’s telling me he’ll do it when he has time, so get off my back. This drycleaner, been on the hook to us for years, talking to me like that. I couldn’t believe it.”

Harry said, “He must’ve thought you ran into him by accident.”

“Yeah, like I don’t know he’s suppose to be dead. But what I’m talking about, he knows he’s six weeks behind on the vig. That has to be right in the front of his head. But what’s he do, he cops an attitude on me. I couldn’t believe it. He comes on to me like there was no way I could touch him.”

“It made you mad,” Harry said.

“The more I thought about it, yeah. At the time, it surprised me. I never saw him act like that before. Then after, I got pretty mad thinking about it.”

“That kind of attitude,” Harry said, “is called delusions of grandeur, or, trying to play the power game. Having the bodyguard carry his bag was the tip-off. Out here it’s very common. You see it in actors—guy making a hundred grand a picture gets lucky, his next one turns out to be a hit and his price goes up to a million. Pretty soon he’s up to several million a picture plus a cut of the gross. He’s the same schmuck who made it on his tight pants and capped teeth, but now all of a sudden he knows everything there is about making pictures. He rewrites the script or has it done. He tells the director how he’s gonna play his part, and if he doesn’t like the producer he has him barred from the set. But directors, producers, anybody can play the power game, especially agents. You keep score by getting so many points for being seen with the right people, driving a Ferrari or a Rolls, what table you get at Spago or The Ivy, what well-known actress blew you on location, how many of your phone calls to the real power players in town are returned, all that kind of bullshit.”

Harry paused. He was getting off the track, wasting time.

“But when Leo tried to play the game, you pulled it out from under him. That was pretty neat, it’s a good scene.”

Harry paused again and was aware of the refrigerator humming in the silence. It was too bright in here, uncomfortable and his head ached. He didn’t want to move, though. Not now.

“I like the coat story, too, you mentioned. It plays, but would work better if it wasn’t a flashback. What it does, though, it shows you know how to handle yourself in that kind of situation. I imagine in your line of work there were other times . . .”

“I’m out of that now.”

“But there were times, right, you had to get tough? Say one of your customers stopped paying?”

“They always paid,” Chili said. “Oh, I’ve smacked guys. Smacking was common, just an open-hand smack. I’m talking to a guy trying to get my money, he looks away and I smack him in the face. ‘Hey, you look at me when I’m fuckin talking to you.’ Like that, get their attention. See, the kind of people we were dealing with, a lot of ’em thought they were tough guys, you know, from the street, guys that were basically hustlers, thieves, or they were into drugs. We had them besides the legit people, who ordinarily didn’t give us any trouble, always paid on time. I think what you’re getting at, Harry, you have the same attitude as some of the legitimate people I did collection work for. Like a car dealer, or a guy runs a TV store . . . They’re carrying a deadbeat, they want you to get the money and they don’t care how, break his fuckin legs. That’s the first thing they think of, come up with that statement. I say to ’em, ‘How’s he gonna pay you he’s in the hospital?’ They don’t think of that. They want a piece of the guy and their money.”

Harry said, “Well, you’ve been in some tight spots. The business with Ray Bones—that’s a good name for a character. I meant to ask you, you weren’t arrested for shooting him that time?”

“Bones had the idea of doing me on his own,” Chili said. “He told the cops it happened out on the street, an unknown assailant come up to him. He still wants to do me, it’s on his mind.”

“And you still have to pay him?”

“Yeah, only we have a different arrangement now. I talked to Tommy Carlo on the phone. . . . You have to know Tommy, his personality, he gets along with everybody. Jimmy Cap I mentioned, Capotorto? He always liked Tommy. But he has to go along with Ray Bones up to a point, Ray’s his guy. So Jimmy Cap says split what the dead guy owes, me and Tommy, fuck the running vig, a flat eight grand each and that’s it, forget it.”

“You spoke to Tommy,” Harry said, leaning over the table on his arms. “So now he knows Leo’s still alive.”

“Did I say that?”

Harry sat back again, questions popping in his mind along with the headache, but wanting to appear relaxed, the producer showing a certain amount of interest in a story.

“So you didn’t happen to mention it to him,” Harry said and grinned at the deep-set eyes staring at him. “You want Leo Devoe for yourself.”

“What I don‘t want,” Chili said, “is Ray Bones finding out. Tommy, he’d think it’s pretty funny, this drycleaner taking an airline. He’d swear he wouldn’t tell a soul, but I know he would. So why put him in that position?”

“But you still have Ray Bones to think about.”

Chili moved his shoulders. The deep-set eyes didn’t change.

“You gonna pay him?”

“Maybe, when I get around to it.”

“What if he comes looking for you?”

“It’s possible. The guy’s got a one-track mind.”

“Have you been involved in any shootings since Ray Bones?”

Chili’s eyes moved and he seemed to be thinking about it or trying to remember, looking off for a moment.

“Well, there was one time, it was when me and Tommy were running a club in South Miami, a guy came in looking for another guy, not me, but I was in the way.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He shot the guy and left.”

Now Harry paused. Chili Palmer had been sent to him from heaven, no question about it.

“You were running a club?”

“Belonged to Momo. We had entertainment, different groups’d come in; catering mostly to the younger crowd.”

Harry had the next question ready.

“You pack a gun?”

Chili hesitated. “Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not ordinarily. Maybe a few times I have.”

“You ever been arrested?”

“I’ve been picked up a few times. They’d try to get me on loan-sharking or a RICO violation—you know what I mean? Being in what they call a racketeering kind of activity, but I was never convicted, I’m clean.”

“Racketeering, that covers a lot of ground, does-n’t it?”

“What do you want to know?”

Harry hesitated. He wasn’t sure.

“Why don’t you get to the point, Harry? You want me to do something for you, right?”

8

Here was a man had made forty-nine movies and named a bunch of them earlier, when he was making coffee. Chili remembered having seen quite a few. The one about the roaches—guy turns on the kitchen light, Christ, there’s a fuckin roach in there as big as he is. He had seen some of the Grotesque movies, about the escaped wacko who’d been in a fire and was pissed off about it. The one about the giant ticks trying to take over the earth. The one about all the people in this town getting scalped by an Indian who’d been dead over a hundred years, Hairraiser . . . Forty-nine movies and he looked more like a guy drove a delivery truck or came to fix your air-conditioning when it quit, a guy with a tool kit. When he’d gone over to the range to get the coffee in his shirt and underwear showing his white legs, skinny for a fat guy, he looked like he should be in detox at a booze treatment center. Chili had seen loan customers in this shape, ones that had given up. Harry’s mind seemed to be working okay, except all of a sudden he wasn’t as talkative as before.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Harry.”

Maybe he didn’t know how to say it without sounding like a dummy.

“Okay, you want me to help you out in some way,” Chili said. “How do I know—outside of your asking me questions here like it’s a job interview. I happened to mention—we were in the other room— I said when I came out here I talked to some people and you kept saying ‘What people?’having a fit. You remember that? Well, they were a couple lawyers I was put in touch with. I told you I talked to Tommy Carlo . . .”

Harry was listening but making a face, trying to understand everything at once.

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“I go to your apartment, your office on Sunset, ZigZag Productions, you’re not either place and nobody knows where you are. So I call Tommy, now in tight with Jimmy Cap, and ask him, see if he can get me a name out here, somebody that knows somebody in the movie business. Tommy calls back, says, ‘Frank DePhillips, you’re all set.’You ever hear of him?”

Harry shook his head.

“Don’t go to sleep on me, okay?”

“I got a headache, that’s all. Who’s Frank DePhillips?”

“He’s to some part of L.A. what Jimmy Cap is to South Miami. But I don’t meet with him, he’s on a level only talks to certain people. I meet with one of his lawyers down at the courts, criminal division. Young guy, he comes running out of a courtroom loaded down with papers and shit, looks at me, says, ‘What do you want?’ Fuckin lawyers, they’re always rushing around the last minute. I remind him Mr.

DePhillips set this up, also I happen to represent one of the biggest casinos in Vegas. That gets me about two minutes of his time. He says, ‘I’ll see what I can do. Gimme a phone number.’ I tell him I’ll call him, otherwise I’d never hear. Also I don’t want him to know I’m staying at this dump on Ventura. Two days later I meet him and another lawyer in a restaurant in a hotel that’s Japanese. I mean the entire hotel, not just the restaurant, a Japanese hotel right in the middle of downtown L.A.”

Harry said, “Yeah, the Otani.”

“Right by the city hall. These two lawyers eat there all the time. I watch ’em dig into the raw fish, suck up bowls of noodles . . . The noodles weren’t bad. So this other lawyer gives me addresses and phone numbers, yours and anybody you ever been intimate with on a single sheet of paper. He says, ‘You’re not the only one looking for old Harry Zimm,’ and mentions your investors have been trying to find you for two months. I said, ‘Oh, what’s the problem?’ Guy says, ‘It looks like Harry skipped with two hunnerd thousand they put in one of his movies.’ ”

Harry was shaking his head. He looked worn out.

“That doesn’t surprise me. This town loves rumors, everybody knows everything, just ask them. My investors have been trying to find me for two months? I spoke to them, it wasn’t more than two weeks ago.”

Chili said, “You mention the Piston–Lakers game?”

Harry said, “Look, these guys came to me originally, I mean before. They already put money in two of my pictures and did okay, they’re happy. Which you can’t say about most film investors, the ones that want to be in show biz, get to meet movie stars and they find out, Christ, it’s a high-risk business.”

Harry was easing into it, watching his step.

Chili said, “Yeah? . . .”

“These guys already know movie stars, celebrities; they run a limo service. So they come in on another participation deal—this was back a few months ago when I was planning what would be my next picture. About a band of killer circus freaks that travel around the country leaving bodies in their wake. The characters, there’s a seven-hundred-pound fat lady who wouldn’t fit through that door, has a way of seducing guys, gets them in her trailer—”

Chili said, “Harry, look at me,” and waited to see his watery eyes in the kitchen light, fizzed hair standing up. “You’re trying to tell me how you fucked up without sounding stupid, and that’s hard to do. Let’s get to where you’re at, okay? You blew their two hunnerd grand on a basketball game and you haven’t told ’em about it. Why not?”

“Because they’re not the type of guys,” Harry said, “would take it with any degree of understanding or restraint.”

“They scare you.”

“What’d I just say?”

“I’m not sure. You want to say something to me, Harry, say it, don’t beat around the bush.”

“Okay, they scare me. I keep thinking the first thing they’d do is break my legs.”

“You got that on the brain. What’s the second thing?”

“Or they’d have it done—you don’t know these guys. They’re not exactly financial types.”

“Harry, I prob’ly know ’em better than you do. What you’re telling me,” Chili said, “they got more out on the street than limos. They’re dealing, huh? Selling dope to movie stars and using you to launder their dough. Put it in a Harry Zimm production, take it out cleaned and pressed.”

Chili waited.

Harry eased back. The chair creaked and that was the only sound.

“You don’t know or you don’t want to or you’re not saying,” Chili said. “But from what you tell me, that’s what it sounds like.”

He smiled, wanting Harry to relax.

“You have my interest aroused. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about these guys, if they’re real hardons or they’re giving you a buncha shit. Or what their connections are, if they have any. But what I want to know first,” Chili said, “is why you took their two hunnerd grand to Vegas, put yourself in that kind of a spot. I mean if you’re scared of these guys to begin with . . .”

“I had to,” Harry said, sounding pretty definite about it. “I’ve got a chance to put together a deal that’ll change my life, make me an overnight success after thirty years in the business. . . . But I need a half a million to get it started.”

“A movie,” Chili said, wanting to be sure.

“A blockbuster of a movie.”

“You don’t want to ask your limo guys?”

“I don’t want them anywhere near it,” Harry said. “It’s not their kind of deal, it’s too big.” Harry was hunching over the table again. “See, what happened . . . This’s at the time I’m getting Freaks ready for production. I’ve got a script, but it needs work, get rid of some of the more expensive special effects. So I go see my writer and we discuss revisions. Murray’s good, he’s been with me, he wrote all my Grotesque pictures, some of the others. He’s done I don’t know how many TV scripts, hundreds. He’s done sitcoms, westerns, sci-fi, did a few Twilight Zones . . . Only now he can’t get any TV work ’cause he’s around my age and the networks don’t like to hire any writers over forty. Murray has kind of a drinking problem, too, that doesn’t help. Likes the sauce, smokes four packs a day . . . We’re talking— get back to what I want to tell you—he happens to mention a script he wrote years ago when he was starting out and never sold. I ask him what it’s about. He tells me. It sounds pretty good, so 1 take the script home and read it.” Harry paused. “I read it again, just to be sure. My experience, my instinct, my gut, tells me I have a property here, that with the right actor in the starring role, I can take to any studio in town and practically write my own deal. This one, I know, is gonna take on heat fast. The next day I call Murray, tell him I’m willing to option the script.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You pay a certain amount to own the property for a year, take it off the market. It’s an option to buy. I paid Murray five hundred against twenty-five thousand if I exercise the option, then another twenty-five at the start of principal photography.”

“That doesn’t sound like much.”

“It’s an old script, been shopped around.”

“Then why do you think you can get it made?”

“Because on the other hand it’s so old it’s new. The kid studio execs they have now had just come into the world when Murray wrote it.”

“So you don’t buy it,” Chili said, “till you know you have a deal. Is that right?”

“Or raise the money independently,” Harry said, “which is the way I prefer to go. You retain control. But with the actor I have in mind, I know I’m looking at a twenty-million-dollar picture, minimum, and that means going to one of the majors. Otherwise I wouldn’t go in a studio to take a leak.”

“You’re so sure it’s a winner,” Chili said, “what’s the problem?”

“I told you, I need a half a million to get started,” Harry said. “See, the guy I want is the kind of star not only can act, he doesn’t mind looking bad on the screen. Tight pants and capped teeth won’t make it in this one. If I could get Gene Hackman, say, we’d be in preproduction as I speak. But Gene’s got something like five pictures lined up he’s committed to, I checked.”

Chili thought of his all-time favorite. “What about Robert De Niro?”

“Bobby De Niro is possibly the finest actor working today, right up there with Brando. But I don’t quite see him for this one.”

“Tom Cruise?”

“Wonderful young actor, but that’s the problem, he’s too young for the part. I’ll have to show you my list, the ones I’ve considered are at least good enough and the right age. Bill Hurt, Dreyfuss, who happens to be hot at the moment, Pacino, Nicholson, Hoffman . . . Dustin I saw as a close second choice.”

“Yeah? Who’s your first?”

“Michael Weir, superstar.”

Chili said, “Yeah?” surprised. He said, “Yeah, Michael Weir,” nodding then, “he’s good, all right. The thing I like about him, he can do just about anything, play a regular person, a weirdo . . . He played the mob guy in The Cyclone that turned snitch?”

“One of his best parts,” Harry said.

Chili was nodding again. “They shot that in Brooklyn. Yeah, Michael Weir, I like him.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Harry said.

“He’s a different type than your usual movie star. I think he’d be good,” Chili said, even though he did-n’t know how to picture Michael Weir in this movie, whatever it was about. “Have you talked to him?”

“I took a chance, sent the script to his house.” Harry sat back, brushing a hand over his frizzy hair. “I find out he not only read it, he flipped, absolutely loves the part.”

“You found out—he didn’t tell you himself?”

“Remember my saying I need half a mil? I have to deposit that amount in Michael’s name, in a special escrow account before he’ll take a meeting with me. This is his fucking agent. You have to put up earnest money to show you’re serious, you’re not gonna waste his time.”

“That’s how it’s done, huh? Make sure you can handle it.”

“It’s how this prick does it, his agent. He says, ‘You know Michael’s price is seven million, pay or play.’That means if he signs and for any reason you don’t go into production, you still have to pay him the seven mil. You make the picture, it’s released, and now he gets ten percent of the gross. Not the net, like everybody else, the fucking gross. Hey, but who cares? He loves the script.”

“How’d you find out?”

“From the guy who’s cutting the picture Michael just finished, the film editor. We go way back. In fact, I gave him his start on Slime Creatures. He calls, says Michael was in the cutting room with the director, raving about a script he had with him, Mr. Lovejoy, how it’s the best part he’s read in years. The cutter, the friend of mine, doesn’t know it’s my property till he notices ZigZag Productions on the script. He calls me up: ‘You’re gonna do one with Michael Weir? I don’t believe it.’ I told him, ‘Well, you better, if you want to cut the picture.’ I don’t know yet who I want as my director. Jewison, maybe. Lumet, Ulu Grosbard . . .”

Chili said, “What’s it called, Mr. Lovejoy?”

“That’s Murray’s title. It’s not bad when you know what it’s about.”

Chili was thinking it sounded like a TV series, Mr. Lovejoy, about this faggy guy raising a bunch of kids of different nationalities and a lot of that canned laughter. He wondered if they got people to come into a studio, told them to go ahead, laugh, and they recorded it, or if they told them jokes. He remembered a TV program about how movies were made that showed people kissing their hands, the sound of it being recorded to go in a love scene the hand kissers were watching on a screen. Movies were basically fake. The sounds in a fight scene weren’t anything like what you heard nailing some guy in the mouth. Like the fight scenes in the Rocky movies, Stallone letting some giant asshole pound him, he’d be dead before the end of round one. But there were good movies too, ones that had the feeling of real life . . .

Harry was saying once he had a development deal at a studio, that would satisfy Mesas, they’d quit bothering him. Harry saying now if he could get to Michael Weir through Karen he wouldn’t need to raise the half a mil . . .

Wait a minute. “What?”

“You knew she was married to Michael at one time.”

“Karen? No . . .”

“Four years, no kids. This is the house they lived in till Michael walked out on her.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Chili said. “So you want her to call him, set up a meeting?”

“That’s all—put in a good word.”

“They get along okay?”

“They never see each other. But he’d do it, I know.”

“Then what’s the problem? She won’t ask him?”

“I haven’t asked her,” Harry said. “If I did, I’m pretty sure she’d turn me down. See, but if she thinks about it a while and it becomes her idea, then she’d do it.”

“I don’t follow.”

“That’s ’cause you don’t know actors,” Harry said, “the way their minds work. Karen can’t just call Michael up cold and ask him. She wasn’t even that talented—aside from having that chest, you might’ve noticed, which I think is what made her a fantastic screamer. But, she still has that actor mentality. Karen would have to feel the situation. First, she has to want to do it as a favor to me . . .”

“For putting her in your movies.”

“Yeah, and she lived with me too. Then, she has to have a certain attitude when she calls Michael, feel some of the old resentment. He walked out on her, so he owes her the courtesy of a positive response. You understand?”

“You and Karen lived together?”

“Three and a half beautiful years. So for old times’ sake Karen lays a guilt trip on Michael and I get a free meeting with him.”

“Will she do it?”

“She’s lying in bed at this moment thinking about it.”

“It sounds like a long way around to get there,” Chili said, taking his time. He couldn’t see Karen living with this guy, even if he wasn’t fat then. He could see her with Michael Weir. He said to Harry, “Well, if she doesn’t want to help you for some reason, maybe I could talk to Michael, get you your meeting.”

Harry said, “How? Threaten him?”

“I’m serious,” Chili said. “I think I could get next to him, talk about that movie he was in, The Cyclone.”

“How would you do that?”

“You want to discuss Michael Weir or Leo the drycleaner? All that dough he’s carrying around? Came here with four hundred and fifty thousand . . .”

Harry wasn’t saying a word now.

“You’re thinking,” Chili said, “what if I was to put you next to the drycleaner. Ask him what he’d rather do, invest his dough in a movie or give it back to the airline and do some time.”

Harry squirmed around in his chair saying, “It did cross my mind.”

He reached for the pack of cigarettes and tore it open to get at the last one.

“Except I know it would bother you,” Chili said, “the idea of using money Leo got the way he did.”

Harry said, “Well, you take my investors, if you want to get technical,” tapping the cigarette on the table, fooling with it, “or any investors. You don’t ask where their money comes from.”

“Which brings us to the limo guys,” Chili said. “You want ’em to leave you alone, be patient. The time comes to do the Freaks movie, okay, you’ll give ’em a call. But right now you’re into something does-n’t concern them.”

Harry looked like he was afraid to move, hanging on every word.

“See, what I could do is talk to the limo guys along those lines,” Chili said, “make the point in a way they’d understand it.”

He reached over to take the cigarette from Harry’s fingers.

“You gonna smoke this?”

“No, it’s yours.”

Harry struck a match to light it.

“What would you say?”

“I’d tell ’em it’s in their best interest, till you’re ready for ’em, to stay the fuck off your back. Isn’t that what you want?”

“You don’t know these guys.”

“It’s up to you, Harry.”

Chili watched Harry’s gaze follow a stream of smoke. Harry the producer, with his forty-nine horror movies and his frizzy hair, looking at the offer. His gaze came back to Chili, his expression tired but hopeful.

“What do you get out of this?”

“Let’s see how we get along,” Chili said. “I’ll let you know.” He thought of something that had been on his mind and said to Harry, “The seven hundred-pound broad that seduces guys in her trailer—what exactly does she do?”

Karen felt the bed move beneath Harry’s weight. Lying on her side she opened her eyes to see digital numbers in the dark, 4:12 in pale green. Behind her Harry continued to move, settling in. She watched the numbers change to 4:13.

“Harry.”

“Oh, you awake?”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s late—I felt you wouldn’t mind if he stayed over.”

“Harry, this isn’t your house.”

“Just tonight. I put him in the maid’s room.”

“I don’t have a maid’s room.”

“The one back by the kitchen?”

There was a silence.

“I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“This guy—what’re you doing?”

“He’s got some ideas, gonna help me out.”

“Harry, the guy’s a crook.”

“So? This town he should fit right in.”

Harry rolled away from her, groaning in comfort.

“Night.”

There was a silence, the house quiet.

“Harry?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on?”

“I told you.”

“You want me to call you a cab? You and your buddy?”

She felt Harry roll back toward her.

9

Chili asked Harry if he liked to sleep in. He said, “If you’re gonna sleep in and 1 have to sit around waiting, forget it. Anything I can’t stand is waiting for people.”

Harry acted surprised. He said it was only ten after ten. “I got back in bed and Karen wanted to talk.”

That stopped Chili.

He wanted to know if Harry was putting him on or what. He couldn’t imagine Karen letting this fat guy get in bed with her. But there was no way to find out if it was true.

He said, “Well, she was up, no problem. She dropped me off to get my car. I come back and have to sit here another hour.”

Harry said the limo guys never got to their office before ten-thirty eleven anyway. Then they’d discuss for about an hour where they were going to have lunch and take off. He said it didn’t matter what time you went to see the limo guys, you always had to wait.

Chili said, “Harry, we don’t go see them. They come see us. You want to make the call or you want me to?”

Now they were in Harry’s office: upstairs in a two-story building that was part of a block of white storefronts, on Sunset Boulevard near La Cienega. Harry turned on lights, wall sconces in the shape of candles against dark paneling, raised venetian blinds behind his big desk stacked with folders, magazines, scripts, papers, unopened mail, hotel ashtrays, a brass lamp, a clock, two telephones . . .

“Remember 77 Sunset Strip on TV? Edd Kookie Byrnes, the parking attendant always combing his hair?”

Harry nodded out the window.

“They used a place right across the street for exteriors. I used to stand here and watch ’em shoot. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and Roger Smith were the stars, but the one you remember is Kookie.”

“I wanted blond hair just like his, with the pompadour,” Chili said. “I was about ten,” He watched Harry staring out the window. “What about the script?”

“That’s right,” Harry said, “you haven’t read it.”

“I don’t even know what it’s about.”

Going through the pile on his desk, Harry said he hadn’t been in the office much lately and his girl, Kathleen, had left him to work for the guy that owned the building, a literary agent who’d been working in Hollywood over fifty years. Had lunch at Chasen’s every day, or he’d call and have them deliver. Scallops and creamed spinach. Go down the hall right now—Harry bet that’s what he’d be eating, scallops and spinach. “I asked him one time what type of writing brought the most money and the agent says, ‘Ransom notes.’ ”

“What about the script, Harry?”

The guy’s mind was wandering all over the place. In the car on the way here, Harry had started talking about Mr. Lovejoy, the story, but was barely into it when he said, “The famous Trocadero once stood right there,” and the ride to the office became a tour of Sunset Strip, Harry pointing out mostly where places used to be. Schwab’s drugstore. Ciro’s, known for movie-star bar fights, now the Comedy Store. A restaurant that was once John Barrymore’s guesthouse. The Garden of Allah, where movie stars used to shack up, now a bank and a parking lot. The Chateau Marmont was still there—look at it—home on and off to Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, where John Belushi checked out. Harry wide-awake, but off into Old Hollywood. Then telling what it was like when hippies took over the Strip, little broads in granny dresses, traffic bumper to bumper. “By the time you got from Doheny to here, you were stoned on the marijuana fumes.” Chili reminded him the limo guys were coming at noon and Harry said, “Oh . . . yeah.”

He poked through the clutter on his desk till he came to several Mr. Lovejoy scripts. “Here it is.”

Chili picked one up, the first time he’d ever held a movie script in his hands. He had no idea what it would look like. It wasn’t as thick as he thought it would be, less than an inch of pages between red covers, ZigZag Productions printed in gold on the front with speedlines coming off the lettering, the way they showed cars moving in a comic strip. Chili opened the script about in the middle, studied the way the page was set up and began to read, not understanding the first word he saw but kept going.

INT. LOVEJOY’SVAN – DAY

Ilona sits behind the wheel watching the corner bar across the street. Behind her, Lovejoy is getting his video camera ready for action.

ILONA How long’s he been in there?

LOVEJOY (glancing at his watch)

Seventeen and a half minutes.

ILONA I wish he’d hurry up.

LOVEJOY

(focusing camera) We have to be patient. But sooner or later . . .

ILONA There he is!

LOVEJOY (quietly) I see him.

EXT. CORNER BAR – CLOSE ON ROXY – DAY

Roxy hooks his thumbs in his belt, looks about idly. Gradually his gaze moves to the van and holds.

INT. LOVEJOY’SVAN – DAY

Ilona reacts, hunching down behind the wheel.

ILONA He sees us!

LOVEJOY No, he’s walking to the car. Ilona, this could be it!!!

Chili looked up from the script. “What’s he doing, following the guy?”

“Read it,” Harry said. “It’s a grabber.”

Chili closed the script, laid it on the desk where he stood between a pair of fat red-leather chairs, old and cracked. He said to Harry, “We better get ready,” placing his hands on the chairs. “Make sure they sit here, not over on the sofa.” He saw Harry tugging at the string to lower the venetian blinds. “Leave ’em up, we want the light in their eyes. I’ll be at the desk . . . But don’t introduce me, let it go, just start talking. You’re gonna be here.” Chili stepped back from the chairs. “Behind ’em when they sit down.”

“They’ll be looking at you,” Harry said. “They don’t know who you are.”

“That’s right, they’re wondering, who’s this guy? You don’t tell ’em. You’re on your feet the whole time. You say, ‘Well, I’m glad you assholes stopped by, so I can set you straight.’ ”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s up to you. You’re talking, relaxed, you stroll around to where you are now—all you tell ’em is the movie’s been postponed. Say, till next year, if you

want. But don’t tell ’em why or what you’re doing.”

“They won’t like it.”

“They don’t have to. Just do what I tell you,” Chili said. “Okay, now the two guys. The one in charge is Ronnie? . . .”

“Ronnie Wingate. That’s the name of the company, Wingate Motor Cars Limited, on Santa Monica.”

Harry was poking around the desk again, straightening it up. Or nervous, feeling a need to be doing something.

“Ronnie, I think of as a rich kid who never grew up. He’s from Santa Barbara, real estate money, came to Hollywood to be an actor but didn’t make it. He thinks he knows the business because his grandfather was a producer at Metro at one time. Now he’s after me to give him a part, wants to play one of the freaks.”

“Why’s he scare you?”

“I don’t trust him, he’s unstable. He’s close to forty, he acts like a burned-out teenager.”

“Maybe that’s what he is.”

“He has a gun in his office. He’ll take it out and start aiming it around the room while he’s talking to you. With one eye closed, going ‘Couuu,’ making that sound, you know, like he’s shooting.”

“What kind of gun?”

“I don’t know, an automatic.”

“And the other one, Bo Catlett?”

It was a familiar name. When Chili first heard it he thought of an all-star jazz drummer by the name of Catlett.

“He doesn’t say much,” Harry said. “The only time he opened up, I happened to mention I was raised in Detroit and started out there doing movies for the car companies. Catlett said, ‘Yeah? I went to high school in Detroit. Loved it, like home to me.’ I told him I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He said, ‘Then you don’t know it.’ Other times he’d call me Mr. De-troit. He might be Chicano or some kind of Latin, I’m not sure, but he has that look. Ronnie mentioned once Catlett had been a farm worker, a migrant, and a lot of them I know are Chicano. He’s tall, dresses up . . . You see Ronnie, the boss, he looks like he’s going out to cut the grass, Catlett will have a suit and tie on. In fact, almost always. Dresses strictly Rodeo Drive.”

“Bo Catlett,” Chili said. The one he was thinking of was Sid Catlett. Big Sid.

“Ronnie, sometimes he’ll call him Cat. He’ll say, ‘Hey, Cat, what do you think?’ But you know Ronnie’s already made up his mind.” Harry came away from the desk. “I have to go down the hall.”

“You nervous, Harry?”

“I’m fine. I gotta go to the bathroom, that’s all.”

He walked out and Chili moved around behind the desk to sit in the creaky swivel chair and look over Harry’s office, his world, old and dusts, his shelves of books and scripts, his photos on the wall above the sofa: Harry with giant bugs, Harry shaking hands with mutants and maniacs, Harry and a much younger Karen with blond hair, Harry holding her by the arm. He didn’t look too bad in the pictures. It got Chili thinking about them in bed together. It didn’t make sense. There was no way, with her looks, she could be that hard up. This morning when he walked in the kitchen . . .

Karen was having a cup of coffee, reading the paper. Dressed up, ready to leave. Purse and a movie script on the table. She said good morning and asked if he slept okay. Karen could be one of those people who acted more polite when they were pissed off. Chili poured a cup and sat down with her, saying he woke up and forgot where he was for a minute. Karen started reading the paper again and he felt stupid, wanting to start over. She had on a neat black suit, no blouse under it, pearl stud earrings in her dark hair, some eye makeup. Her eyes were brown. She had a nice clean look and smelled good, had some kind of perfume on.

“I’m sorry about walking in your house last night,” Chili said, thinking she’d pass it off and that would be it.

But she didn’t. Karen put the paper down saying, “What do you want me to tell you, it’s okay? I’m glad you’re here?”

Giving it back to him, but sounding like she was asking a simple question. She wasn’t anything like most of the women he was used to talking to. They would’ve said it in a real sarcastic tone of voice.

“I have a hunch,” she said now, “if the patio door was locked you would’ve broken in, one way or another.”

He kept looking at her mouth, done in a light shade of lipstick. She had small white teeth, nice ones. He said, “I was never much into breaking and entering.”

Karen said, “But you’ve always been a criminal, haven’t you?” With the cool look and quiet voice, daring him. That’s what it seemed like.

So he took it to her saying he had pulled a few holdups when he was a kid and didn’t know better, hijacked freight, truckloads of merchandise and hustled it for a living, associated with alleged members of organized crime, but never dealt narcotics; telling her he’d been arrested, held over at Rikers Island, but never convicted of anything and sent to prison. “Okay, I was a loan shark up till recently and now I’m in the movie business,” Chili said. “What’re you doing these days?”

“I’m reading for a part,” Karen said.

She took her coffee cup to the sink, came back to the table and picked up her purse and the script. Chili asked if she could give him a lift down to Sunset— he’d left his car there, back of a store. Karen said come on.

It wasn’t until they were in her BMW convertible, winding down the hill past million-dollar homes, she started to come out of herself and communicate. He asked where she was going. Karen said to Tower Studios. She said she hadn’t worked in seven years, didn’t have to, but the head of production at Tower had offered her a part. Chili asked if it was a horror movie. A mistake. Karen gave him a look saying she hadn’t screamed since leaving ZigZag and was never going to scream again, even in real life. Chili had noticed the title on the cover of the script, Beth’s Room.

“What’s it about?”

This was what opened her up.

“It’s about a mother-daughter relationship,” Karen said, already with more life in her tone, “but different than the usual way it’s handled. The daughter, Beth, leaves her yuppie husband after a terrific fight and comes home to live with her mom, Peggy.”

“Which one’re you?”

“The mom. I was in high school when I had Beth and now she’s twenty-one. I did get married but the guy, the father, took off right after. So for the next twenty years I devoted my life to raising Beth, working my tail off—but that’s all in the back story, it’s referred to. The picture opens, I’m finally living my own life. I own a successful art gallery, I have a boyfriend, an artist, who’s a few years younger than I am . . . and along comes Beth, wanting to be mothered. Naturally I’m sympathetic, at first, this is my baby . . .”

“She act sick?”

“She has migraines.”

“I can hear her,” Chili said. “ ‘Mom, while you’re up, would you get me my pills off the sink in the kitchen?’ ”

Karen was staring at him. She looked back at the road and had to crank the wheel to swerve around a parked car.

“ ‘And bring me a glass of milk, please, and some cookies?’ ”

“Warm milk,” Karen said, “with a half ounce of Scotch in it. Did you look at the script?”

“Never saw it before. The daughter, she have a whiney voice?”

“It could be played that way. It’s a young Sandy Dennis part. You know who I mean?”

“Sandy Dennis, sure. The daughter blame the mom for her marriage going to hell?”

Karen gave him another look. “She accuses me of talking her into getting married before she was ready. And that, of course, adds to my sense of guilt.”

“What’d you do you feel guilty about?”

“It’s not anything I did. It’s more . . . what right do I have to be happy when my daughter’s miserable?”

“You know the kid’s faking?”

“It’s not that simple. You have to read it, see the way Beth works on me.”

“You got a problem.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what the picture’s about.”

“I mean feeling guilty. I think what you oughta do, either give little Beth a kick in the ass or tell her go see a doctor, get her head examined.”

“You don’t get it,” Karen said. “I’m her mother. I have to come to grips with my maternal feelings.”

Turning off Doheny, Karen shot through an amber light to swing into the traffic crawling along Sunset.

“People have guilt trips laid on them all the time and they accept it, the guilt. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s the way people are.”

“Anywhere along here’s fine,” Chili said, thinking of times he had been asked if he was guilty and not once ever having the urge to say he was. Real-life situations, even facing prison time, were never as emotional as movies. Cops got emotional in movies. He had never met an emotional cop in his life. He liked the way Karen sideslipped the BMW through a stream of cars to pull up at the curb. He thanked her, started to get out and said, “What happens, the kid goes after your boyfriend and that’s when you finally stand up to her?”

“You’re close,” Karen said.

What he liked best, thinking about it, was not so much guessing the ending but the look Karen gave him when he did. The eye contact. For a moment there the two of them looking at each other in a different way than before. Like starting over. Karen broke the spell saying she had to run and he got out of her car.

Still looking at the photos on the wall he thought about taking a closer look at the ones Karen was in. Check out her eyes. See what they were like when she was a screamer with blond hair. Maybe later.

Right now Harry was saying, “Here we are.”

Harry, in the doorway, stepping aside, the two limo guys coming into the office past him.

10

Chili stayed where he was, at the desk. The one he took to be Ronnie Wingate—and had been thinking of as the rich kid—glanced at him, that’s all, then looked around the office saying, “Harry, what year is it, man?” with a lazy rich-kid way of talking. “We enter a time warp? I feel like I’m back in the Hollywood of yesteryear.” He was wearing a suede jacket so thin it was like a second shirt, with jeans and running shoes, sunglasses resting in his rich-kid hair he hadn’t bothered to comb.

The other one, Bo Catlett, was an opposite type, tall next to Ronnie and put together in a tan outfit, suit, shirt and tie all light tan, a shade lighter than his skin. But what was he? From across the room he looked like the kind of guy who came from some island in the Pacific Ocean you never heard of. Ronnie kept moving as he looked at the photos over the sofa, his motor running on some chemical. Now Harry was waving his arm, inviting them to sit in the red chairs facing the desk.

Chili watched Catlett coming first, saw the mustache now and the tuft of hair beneath the lower lip and wondered what was wrong with Harry. The guy wasn’t Latin or even from some unknown island out in the ocean. Up close he was colored. Colored and something else, but still colored.

Sitting down he said, “How you doing?”

That’s what he was and what the other Catlett, the jazz drummer, was too. Chili said to him, “You any relation to Sid Catlett?”

It brought a smile, not much, but enough to make his eyes dreamy. “Big Sid, huh? No, I’m from another tribe. Tell me what brings you here.”

“The movies,” Chili said.

And Catlett said, “Ah, the movies, yeah.”

Ronnie was seated now, one leg hooked over the chair arm, the leg swinging up and down on some kind of energy, his head moving too, as if plugged into a Walkman. Behind them Harry said, “This is my associate, Chili Palmer, who’ll be working with me.”

Harry already forgetting his instructions.

The limo guys nodded and Chili gave them a nod back. “I want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding here,” Harry said. He told them that despite rumors they might have heard, their investment in Freaks was as sound as the day they signed their participation agreement.

“Harry, are you making a speech?” Ronnie had his face raised to the ceiling. “I can hear you, but where the fuck are you, man?”

“What I been wondering,” Catlett said in a quiet voice, looking at Chili, “is where he’s been.”

Ronnie said, “Yeah, where’ve you been? You called us once, Harry, in three months.”

Harry came around from behind them to stand at one side of the desk, his back to the window, saying he’d been off scouting locations and interviewing actors in New York and his secretary had left without his knowledge to work for an agent, for Christ sake, Harry saying that was the kind of help you had to rely on these days, walked out, didn’t even tell him.

Chili listened, not believing he was hearing all this.

Ronnie said, “Let’s get the man a girl. Harry, you want one with big hooters or one that can type?”

Chili’s gaze moved from Ronnie the fool to Bo Catlett the dude, the man composed, elbows on the chair arms, his fingertips touching to form a tan-skinned church, a ruby ring for a stained-glass window.

“The main thing I want to tell you,” Harry said, “the start date for Freaks is being pushed back a little, a few months. We should be in production before the end of the year. . . . Unless because of unforeseen complications we decide it would be better to shoot next spring.”

Chili watched Ronnie’s leg, hanging over the chair arm, bounce to a stop.

“What’re you telling us, Harry?”

“We have to put the start date off, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but why? Next spring, that’s a whole year away.”

“We’ll need the prep time.”

Ronnie said, “Hey, Harry? Bullshit. We have an agreement with you, man.”

Chili raised his hand toward Harry.

“Wait a minute, okay? What we’re talking about here—Harry, you’re gonna make the movie, right. Freaks?”

Harry said, “Yeah,” sounding surprised.

“Tell him.”

“I just did.”

“Tell him again.”

“We’re gonna make the picture,” Harry said. He paused and said, “I’ve got another project to do first, that’s all. One I promised this guy years ago.”

Chili wondered if there was a way to shut Harry up without punching him in the mouth.

He saw Catlett watching him over the tips of his fingers while Ronnie fooled with his sunglasses, Harry telling them he’d be starting the other project any time now, a quickie, and as soon as it wrapped Freaks would go before the cameras.

There was a silence until Ronnie got up straighter in his chair and said, “I think what happened, you put our bucks in some deal that blew up in your face and now you’re trying to buy time. I want to see your books, Harry. Show me where it is, a two with five zeroes after it in black and white, man. I want to see your books and your bank statements.”

Chili said to the rich kid, “Hey, Ronnie? Look at me.”

It caught him by surprise. Ronnie looked over. So did Bo Catlett.

Chili said, “You have a piece of a movie, Ronnie. That’s all. You don’t have a piece of Harry. You don’t tell him what you want to see that has to do with his business, that’s private. You understand what I’m saying? Harry told you we’re doing another movie first, before we come along and do Freaks. And that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

“Excuse me,” Ronnie said, “but who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the one telling you how it is,” Chili said. “That’s not too hard, is it, figure that out?”

He watched Ronnie turn to Catlett, who hadn’t moved or changed his expression much. Ronnie said, “Cat? . . .”

Chili watched Catlett now. He still couldn’t understand how Harry missed seeing the guy was colored. He was light-skinned and his hair was fairly straight, combed over to one side, but that didn’t mean anything. The color itself didn’t mean anything either, Chili thinking the guy wasn’t any darker than he was. Colored, but could you call him black? The guy was taking his time, giving the situation some thought.

When he spoke it was to Harry, Catlett asking, “What’s this movie you’re doing first?”

A simple enough question.

Chili said, “Harry, let me answer that.”

He saw Catlett looking at him again.

“But first, I want to know who I’m talking to. Am I talking to you, or am I talking to him?” Meaning Ronnie.

He saw Catlett’s expression change, not much, but something in the eyes, with that dreamy kind of half smile, that told Chili the man understood. The man saying now, “You can talk to me.”

“That’s what I thought,” Chili said. “So let me put it this way. Outside of Freaks, it’s not any of your fuckin business what we do.”

Now it was between them, Chili giving the guy time but that’s all, no way out for him except straight ahead or back off and the guy knew it too, looking at it and not moving a muscle, making up his mind . . .

Christ, when Harry stepped in, Harry reaching over the desk to pick up the script, Harry telling them, “This is the project, Mr. Lovejoy. I’m not trying to pull anything on you guys. This is it, right here.” Harry blowing the setup and there wasn’t a thing Chili could do about it.

He eased back in the chair and saw Catlett watching him with that dreamy half-smile again.

Ronnie was saying, “Mr. Loveboy ?” reaching for the script. “What is it, Harry, a porno flick?”

Harry saying, “Lovejoy,” backing away, holding the script to his chest.

“Okay, but what’s it about?”

“It’s fluff, it’s one I got involved in as a favor to a writer friend of mine. The guy’s terminally ill and I owe it to him. Believe me, it’s nothing you’d be interested in.”

Ronnie said, “You think we go see the shit you turn out? Cat says he’s seen better film on teeth.” He looked at Catlett and said, “Right? I bet it’s porno. Harry’s lying to us.”

Chili watched Catlett, the guy taking it all in, Harry telling them now the script was unread-able—holding it with both hands against his body—it needed all kinds of work. Catlett pushed out of the chair, in no hurry, and Chili had to look up to see his face, with that bebop tuft under his lip.

“I got an idea,” Bo Catlett said to Harry. “Take our twenty points out of Freaks and put ’em in this other one, Mr. Loverboy. What’s the difference.”

“I can’t do it,” Harry said.

“You positive about that?”

“It’s a different kind of deal.”

“Okay.” Catlett paused. “Then be good enough to hand us our money back.”

“Why?” Harry said. “We have a deal, a signed agreement to do a picture I guarantee you is gonna get made.”

“Take some time, think about our going into this other one,” Catlett said. “Will you do that?”

“Okay, I’ll think about it,” Harry said. “I will.”

“That’s all we need to know, Harry. Till next time.”

Chili watched Catlett look over before he turned—not long enough to be in each other’s face, just a look—and walked out, Ronnie following after him.

Now they were in Harry’s Mercedes, Chili not saying much for the time being: getting his thoughts together, deciding what kind of attitude he should have if he was going to stay in this deal: take it seriously or just go along and see what happens. So when Harry said, “That’s where Lew Wasserman lives,” Chili didn’t ask who Lew Wasserman was. When Harry said, “There’s where Frank Sinatra lives,” Chili did look up, caught a glimpse of the house, but saw mostly Frank Sinatra’s bushes, nice ones.

“You want to look at a star’s home you can’t even tell it’s there,” Harry said, “I’ll take you past Bob Hope’s place, over in Toluca Lake. You want to get a look at actual homes you can see, I’ll show you where two of the Three Stooges used to live, also Joan Crawford, George Hamilton . . . Who else? The house Elvis Presley lived in when he was out here. It’s in Bel Air. You know he made over thirty pictures and the only one I saw was Stay Away, Joe? A wonderful book they completely fucked up.”

Chili kept thinking about right after the limo guys left saying to Harry, “What’s wrong with you? What’d you tell ’em all your business for? Whyn’t you do like I told you?”

Harry said, “What?” Acting surprised and then offended. “I had to tell ’em something.”

“What’d we talk about, Harry, before? The way to handle it, you weren’t gonna tell ’em shit. Isn’t that right?”

“It didn’t work out that way.”

“No, ’cause you wouldn’t shut up. You want these guys off your back, I tell you okay, here’s how we do it. Next thing I know you’re saying yeah, maybe they can have a piece of Mr. Lovejoy. I could-n’t believe my fuckin ears.”

“I said I’d think about it. What does that mean? In this business, nothing. I was buying time. All I have to do is hold ’em off till I make a deal at a studio.”

“That’s the difference between me and you,” Chili said. “I don’t leave things hanging. If I wanted Karen to talk to Michael I’d say, ‘Karen, how about talking to Michael for me?’ I told the limo guys it wasn’t any of their fuckin business, period. They don’t like it, that’s too bad. What’s the guy gonna do, Catlett, take a swing at me? He might’ve wanted to, but he had to consider first, who is this guy? He don’t know me. All he knows is I’m looking at him like if he wants to try me I’ll fuckin take him apart. Does he wanta go for it, get his suit messed up? I mean even if he’s good he can see it would be work.”

“He could’ve had a gun,” Harry said.

“It wasn’t a gun kind of situation. You don’t pack, Harry, less you’re gonna use it. You say Ronnie plays with his in the office. That told me something right there. Then, soon as I saw the colored guy, I knew he was the one in charge. I asked him—you heard me—he goes yeah, without coming right out and saying it. Ronnie’s sitting there, he don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“What colored guy?”

“Who do you think? Catlett. I don’t know how you could’ve missed that. He lets the rich kid think he’s the boss, but Catlett’s pulling his strings. You don’t see that?”

Harry said, “You think he’s a black guy?” Sounding surprised again.

“I know he is. Harry, I’ve lived in Brooklyn, I’ve lived in Miami, I’ve seen all different shades and mixtures of people and listened to ’em talk and Catlett’s a black guy with light-colored skin, that’s all. Take my word.”

“He doesn’t talk like a black guy.”

“What do you want him to say, Yazza, boss? He might be part South American,” Chili said, “have some other kind of blood in him too, but I know he’s colored.”

They left the office talking about Catlett and the rich kid. Now they were in the car heading for Michael Weir’s house, Chili wanting to get a good look at it, maybe let Harry drop him off and he’d stroll by. Harry said, “You see anybody out strolling? Not in this part of Beverly Hills. It’s against the law to be seen on the street.”

“The one on the left,” Harry said, “that’s where Dean Martin used to live.” Chili looked at the house without saying anything. “The one coming up—see

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the gate? Kenny Rogers rented that while he was having his new home built. You know what he paid a month? Fifty thousand.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chili said.

“Okay, right around the bend on the left, the one that looks like the place they signed the Declaration of Independence, that’s Michael’s house.”

Coming up and now passing it: red brick with white trim behind a vine-covered brick wall and a closed iron gate. Through the bars Chili could see the drive curving up to the front door. He wondered if Michael Weir was in there at this moment.

“Why don’t we ring the bell, see if he’s home?”

“You don’t get to see him that way, believe me.”

“Go by again.”

Harry nosed the Mercedes into a drive, backed around and came past the house saying, “Worth around twenty million, easy.”

“It doesn’t look that big.”

“Compared to what, the Beverly Hills Hotel? It’s twelve thousand square feet plus a tennis court, pool, cabana guesthouse and orange trees on three acres.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chili said. He could see the upper windows as they crept past the wall, the top part of a satellite dish in the side yard.

“There’s no way you could sit in your car and watch the house,” Harry said, “without attracting the police inside of two minutes. If you’re thinking of waiting for him to come out.”

“What’s he do for fun?”

“His girlfriend lives with him. When he’s not here, he’s in New York. Has a place on Central Park West.”

“I’d like to find out more about him,” Chili said, “where he goes, so maybe I can run into him.”

“Then what?”

“Don’t worry about it. I got an idea.”

“There was a piece on him, a cover story,” Harry said, “fairly recently in one of the magazines. About his career, his life. I remember there’s a shot of him with his girlfriend. She was in entertainment, I think a singer with a rock-and-roll group when he met her. I wouldn’t be surprised Karen has the magazine. I know she gets the trades, has stacks of ’em she keeps—I don’t know why.”

“I have to go back there anyway,” Chili said, “pick up my car.”

For a minute or so he was quiet, catching glimpses of the big homes through the trees and manicured shrubs, all the places so clean and neat and not a soul around, nobody outside. Not like Meridian Avenue, South Miami Beach. Not anything like Bay Ridge, Jesus, you had to go all the way over past the Veterans Hospital to Dyker Beach Park to find trees of any size.

He said to Harry, “You know the one Michael Weir was in, The Cyclone? When I saw it I recognized places on Bayview, Neptune Avenue, Cropsey. That’s all close to my old neighborhood. I was in Miami then, but I heard some guys I know actually met him.”

“Sure, every picture Michael’s in,” Harry said, “he researches the part, finds out exactly how he’s supposed to play it. That’s why he’s so good. The Cyclone, he makes you believe he’s a Mafia character.”

“Well, basically, yeah, he sounded okay,” Chili said. “What I couldn’t believe, they would’ve let him in, the kind of simple asshole he was. Or let him get away after, a snitch? He would’ve ended up with his

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dick in his mouth. I don’t mean to say there aren’t assholes in those different crews, they’re full of ass-holes. I just mean the particular kind of asshole he was in the movie.”

“If he played a Mafia character,” Harry said, “then I guarantee you he talked to some of them.”

“Tommy would know,” Chili said. “Tommy Carlo. I could call him and double-check.”

“For what?”

“I’d like to know. Me and Tommy were both in Miami when they were making the movie, but he’d remember it. It was at the time we were running the club for Momo. Tommy was the one booked the different groups’d come in. Made him feel he was in the entertainment world.”

“Well, if you want,” Harry said, “call him from Karen’s.”

“What if she’s not home? We just walk in?”

“It didn’t bother you before.”

“That was different. I’m not gonna bust in.”

“If the patio door was open last night,” Harry said, “it’s still open. Karen’s never been good at locking doors, closing windows when it rains, putting her top up . . .”

“When you were living together?”

“Anytime. She’d come in, forget to shut off the alarm system. Then the company that put it in calls and you have to give them an identifying code, three digits, that’s all. But Karen could never remember the numbers. Pretty soon the cops pull up in the drive . . .”

“Harry, if Karen sets up Michael for you, what does she get?”

“She already got it.” Harry said, “Me. I made her a movie star. She wasn’t too bad, for that kind of picture. There aren’t any lines that run more than ten words. Now she’s reading for a part . . . Hasn’t worked in seven years, she wants to get back in it. I don’t know why—Michael set her up for life.”

“Beth’s Room,” Chili said.

“What?”

“Beth’s Room. That’s the name of the movie she’s gonna be in.”

Harry gave him a quick glance. Looking at the road again he said, “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks she doesn’t get the part.”

11

Bo Catlett liked to change his clothes two or three times a day, get to wear different outfits. In less than two hours he was meeting friends at Mateo’s in Westwood, so he had dressed for dinner before driving out to the airport.

Seated now in the Delta terminal, across the aisle from the gate where the mule from Miami would arrive by way of Atlanta, Catlett had on his dove-gray double-breasted Armani with the nice long roll lapel. He had on a light-blue shirt with a pearl-gray necktie and pearl cufflinks. He had on light-blue hose and dark-brown Cole-Haan loafers, spit-shined. The loafers matched the attaché case next to him on the row of seats. Resting on the attaché case was a Delta ticket envelope, boarding pass showing—for anyone who might think he was sitting here with some other purpose in mind. Anyone who might think they recognized him from times before. Like that casual young dude wearing the plaid wool shirt over his white T-shirt, with the jeans and black Nikes.

Catlett liked to watch people going by, all the different shapes and sizes in all different kinds of clothes, wondering, when they got up in the morning if they gave two seconds to what they were going to wear, or they just got dressed, took it off a chair or reached in the closet and put it on. He could pick out the ones who had given it some thought. They weren’t necessarily the ones all dressed up, either.

The young dude in the jeans and the wool shirt hanging out, he’d given that outfit some thought. A friendly young dude, said hi to the ladies behind the airline counter and they said hi back like they knew him.

Catlett wondered if the Bear had noticed that.

The Bear, having shown himself once, like reporting in, was around someplace: the Bear in a green and red Hawaiian shirt today with his baby girl.

Ninety-nine percent of the people in L.A. did not know shit about how to dress or seem to care. Nobody wore a necktie. They’d wear a suit and leave the shirt open. Or the thing now, they’d button the shirt collar, wearing it with a suit but no tie, and look like they’d just come off the fucking reservation. Ronnie Wingate, not knowing shit either, said, “Why wear a tie if you don’t have to?” Like not wearing it was getting away with something. He had told Ronnie one time, “I use to dress just like you when I was a child and didn’t know better.” Living in migrant camps, moving from Florida to Texas to Colorado to Michigan, out here to California, the whole family doing stoop labor in hand-me-down clothes.

He said to Ronnie Wingate, “You know what changed my whole life?” Ronnie said what and he told him, “Finding out at age fourteen, not till then, I was part black.”

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Asshole Ronnie saying, “Negro?”

“Black. And if you’re part, man, you’re all.”

Finding it out in a photograph the time he and his mother and three sisters went to visit his grandmother about to die; drove all the way to Benson, Arizona, from Bakersfield and his grandma got out her old pictures in an album to show them. The first ones, her own grandparents in separate brownish photos. An Indian woman in a blanket. (He had been told about having some Warm Springs Apache Indian blood, so this fat woman in the blanket came as no surprise.) It was the next photo that knocked him out. A black guy in the picture, no doubt about it. But not just any black guy. This one had a fucking sword, man, and sergeant stripes on his uniform. He was a U.S. Cavalryman, had served twenty-four years in the Army and fought in the Civil War when he was fifteen years old and was wounded at a place called Honey Springs in Missouri. Across the bottom of the photo it said: Sgt. Bo Catlett of the 10th, Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, June 16, 1887. And was signed by a man named C. S. Fly.

He asked could he have the photo and his grandma gave it to him.

“I think it was the sword did it,” Catlett said to Ronnie that time. “I kept thinking about it a year until now I was fifteen. You understand the significance of what I’m saying? I changed my name from Antonio to Bo Catlett, left the camps for good and took off for Detroit to learn how to be black.”

Asshole Ronnie didn’t get it. “Detroit?” Even sucking on his base pipe didn’t get it or ever would, ’cause the man would always be from Santa Barbara and never know shit about Detroit, about Motown, about Marvin Gaye . . .

Catlett spotted the Bear in his Hawaiian shirt, the Bear coming along carrying his three-year-old baby, cute little girl licking an ice-cream cone, dripping it on the Bear’s shirt. The Bear looked this way without making eye contact, turned his head toward the young dude in the wool shirt and back this way again, wiping his little girl’s mouth with a paper napkin, the Bear playing he was big and dumb but a nice daddy.

A voice just then announced the Atlanta flight was on the ground and would be at the gate in a few minutes.

Catlett got his mind ready. He’d been told the mule coming with the product this trip was a Colombian dude he had met one time before by the name of Yayo. Like so many of those people a mean little Colombian dude, but no size on him to speak of, going maybe one-thirty. They saw that movie Scarface and turned into a bunch of Al Pacinos doing Tony Montana. Only they didn’t know how. They maintained a level of boring meanness that was like an act they put on. It made him think of the man sitting at Harry Zimm’s desk, Chili Palmer, in his black jacket zipped up, not looking like any kind of movie producer or sounding like them either, full of shit. Chili Palmer maybe could be a mule, except he was bigger than any Colombian and looked at you different. Didn’t put it on so heavy. Chili Palmer was quiet about it but came right at you, wanting to get it done. Catlett was thinking he could put the Bear in front of Mr. Chili Palmer, see if the man behaved the same way, gave the Bear that look . . .

The Bear and his baby girl were among the people by the gate now. Passengers were coming out of

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the ramp from the plane. The way it was set up, Yayo would have his ticket envelope in his hand, the envelope with a baggage claim check stapled inside. He’d lay the envelope on the trash container right there, not stick it down in, and keep coming. The Bear would step over, pick up the envelope and take off with his little girl to the baggage claim area. There it was happening . . .

And now Yayo was looking straight ahead coming through the people waiting—Catlett seeing them from behind moving aside to give this ignorant bean picker who looked like he’d never been in an airport before the right of way. That’s what he reminded Catlett of, a migrant picker dressed for Saturday night in a clean starched shirt and khakis too big for him. Ignorant man, didn’t know shit. Look at him being cool looking this way, coming over now.

As Yayo reached him Catlett said, “Don’t say nothing to me. Turn around and act like you’re waiting for somebody suppose to meet you.”

“The fock you talking about?” Yayo hitting the word hard, the way Tony Montana did. “They nobody know me here, man. Give me the focking case.”

“Ain’t in the case. Now turn around and be looking,” Catlett said. “You got eyes on you. Man over to your right in the blue wool shirt hanging out . . . The other way, derecho.”

Catlett hunched over to rest his arms on his thighs, the seat of Yayo’s khakis hanging slack before him, Yayo between him and the dude in the wool shirt now.

“That’s a federal officer of some kind, most likely DEA. He moves his leg look for the bulge. You savvy bulge? Something stuck to his ankle, underneath his pants. His backup piece . . . Hey. Try it without looking right at him if you can.”

Come out here you should always take some pills first, keep your blood pressure cool.

“You know he’s there, now forget about him. While you wondering where your relatives are, suppose to meet you, I’m getting up. Gonna leave you and walk over to the cocktail lounge. After I’m gone, you sit down in this same seat I’m in. You feel something under your ass it’s the key to a locker where your money is. But before you go open the locker you look around good now, understand? You don’t want any guys have bulges on their ankles watching you. Take your time, go have a snack first. You know what a snack is?”

Yayo turned his head to one side. “You suppose to give me the focking money yourself.”

Catlett got up, adjusted his dove-gray double-breasted jacket, smoothing the long roll lapel. He said, “Try to be cool, Yahoo,” turning to pick up the ticket envelope and attaché case. “I was to hand you this fulla money we’d be speed-cuffed before we saw it happen. Do it how I told you and have a safe trip home. Or as you all say, vaya con Dios, motherfocker.”

Down in Baggage Claim, Catlett stood away from the Bear and his little girl waiting at one of the carousels, the Bear looking at the numbers on the claim check that told him which bag coming out of the chute would have ten keys of cocaine in it. Seventeen thousand a key this month, a hundred and seventy grand waiting in the locker, the money plus some product they were returning: a whole key stepped on so many times it was baby food. No prob

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lem if Yayo was careful, looked around before he opened the locker. The trouble with this business, you had to rely on other people; you couldn’t do it alone. Same thing in the movie business, from what Catlett had seen, studying how it worked. The difference was, in the movie business you didn’t worry about somebody getting turned to save their ass and pointing at you in court. You could get fucked over in the movie business all kinds of ways, but you didn’t get sent to a correctional facility when you lost out. The movie business, you could come right out and tell people what you did, make a name. Instead of hanging out on the edge, supplying highs for dumb-ass movie stars, you could get to where you hire the ones you want and tell ’em what to do; they don’t like it, fire their ass. It didn’t make sense to live here if you weren’t in the movie business. High up in it.

The Bear came away from the carousel carrying his little girl and a Black Watch plaid suitcase. Catlett followed them outside, through the traffic in the covered roadway that was like an underpass to one of the islands where people were waiting for shuttles in daylight. The little girl said, “Hi, Bo,” to Catlett coming up to them.

Catlett, smiling, said, “Hey, Farrah. Hah you, little honey bunny? You come see the big airplanes?”

“I been on airplanes,” Farrah said. “My daddy takes me to Acapulco with him.”

“I know he does, honey bunny. Your daddy’s good to you, huh?”

Little Farrah started to nod and the Bear nuzzled her clean little face with his beard saying, “This here’s my baby sweetheart. Yes her is. Arn’cha, huh? Arn’cha my baby sweetheart?”

“Man, you gonna smother the child.” Catlett raised the little girl’s chin with the tips of his fingers. She seemed tiny enough to get lost in that shaggy beard, one tiny hand hanging on to it now, her tiny body perched on the Bear’s arm. The Bear was going to fat but had taught bodybuilding at one time, worked as a movie stuntman and had choreographed fight scenes. Catlett thought of the Bear as his handyman.

“You know that place they use to shoot 77 Sunset Strip?”

“Yeah, up by La Cienega.”

“Harry Zimm’s office is right across the street, white building, you see venetian blinds upstairs. I need to get in there, pick up a movie script. If you could meet me there tonight, open the door . . .”

“You want, Bo, I’ll go in and get it.”

“No, you do the B part and I do the E.”

“I know that,” Farrah said in her tiny voice. “A, B, E, C, D.”

Catlett was smiling again. “Hey, you a smart little honey bunny, ain’cha?”

“Yes her is,” the Bear said.

12

Chili reached Tommy Carlo at the barbershop but didn’t get a chance to talk about The Cyclone and Michael Weir.

Tommy said, “I been wanting to call you, but you didn’t gimme a number. Ray Bones is looking for you. He’s got some kind of bug up his ass, can’t sit still. He kept after Jimmy Cap about he wants to go to L.A. till Jimmy tells him to go ahead and fuckin go, he’s tired hearing about it.”

Chili was at the desk in Karen’s study, the chair swiveled so that his back was to Harry, across the room. Harry was sitting on the floor; he had the cabinet in the bookcase open and was going through magazines.

Chili said, “You hang out with Jimmy Cap now?” keeping his voice low.

“I happen to be by there when they’re talking, I notice Bones, how he’s acting.”

“You pay him the eight yet?”

“Fuck no, he’ll get it when he gets it. Chil, it doesn’t have nothing to do with money, you know that. I hate to say I fuckin told you, but I did. I told you, don’t start nothing with him that time.”

“You said don’t say nothing, and I didn’t.”

“No, you broke his fuckin nose instead.”

Talking about something that had happened twelve years ago, still hanging over him. “The guy only has room in his brain for one thing,” Chili said, “that’s the problem, he’s a fuckin idiot.”

“He don’t like the way you talk to him. You ever showed him any kind of respect at all, he wouldn’t be on your ass.”

“I should’ve hit him a half-inch lower that time, with the thirty-eight. You think he’s coming out, uh?”

“I know he is. He asked me where you’re staying. I told him I didn’t know. I still don’t.”

“When’s he coming?”

“He never said, but I think the next couple days.”

Getting into the kid stuff again and sounding stupid, hearing himself, Jesus, like he was reverting, talking like those hard-ons sitting around their social clubs.

“Wait a minute,” Chili said. “How’s he know I’m here?”

“I told him you went out to Vegas on a collection job and they sent you to L.A.”

“What’d you tell him that for?”

“He already knew it. I don’t know how unless— did you talk to the drycleaner’s wife since you’re out there? What’s her name, Leo’s wife? I know Bones went to see her and maybe she mentioned it. This was yesterday.”

“Tommy? What makes you think I told Fay I was going to Vegas?”

“I don’t know—it musta been something Bones said. I just assumed.”

“I’ll call you back,” Chili said, hung up and dialed information to get the number of Paris

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Cleaners in North Miami. Fay answered the phone. Chili asked her how she was doing. He was going to take his time, ease into it, but Fay started talking right away, sounding anxious to tell him.

“A man came to see me said was a friend of yours? He asked had I spoken to you since Leo was killed and I said yes, I had. He asked what it was we talked about. I said oh, nothing in particular, and he hit me with his fist. I have a black eye and my jaw hurts something awful, I try to eat on that side? It might be broken. When I get off I think I’ll go the doctor’s and see about it.”

“Fay? You told him what we talked about?”

“He asked had I given you any money and then, yeah, he made me tell him. If I didn’t he was all set to beat me up.”

“I mean, you told him Leo was alive?”

“I had to.”

“And about the money, the settlement?”

“He went through my things and found the letter from the airline the check come in.” “Fay, what else did you tell him?”

“That’s all.”

“What about the woman Leo knows out here, Hi-Tone Cleaners?”

“Oh. Yeah, I might’ve mentioned her, I forget.”

That meant she did. Chili was pretty sure.

“I was kinda groggy from him hitting me.”

“There was nothing you could do, Fay.”

She said, “I guess now everybody’s gonna know about Leo, what he did.”

“No, I think just us three,” Chili said. “The guy won’t tell anybody. I think what he’ll do is try and find Leo, get the money for himself.”

Fay said, “Well, how are you doing otherwise? Are you coming back here sometime?”

Chili gave her Karen’s number, hung up and called Tommy Carlo at the barbershop.

“Tommy, did Bones say anything to Jimmy Cap about Leo?”

“Not that I heard. Why?”

“Only that he was gonna come looking for me?”

“That’s what he said.”

“He didn’t tell you anything, I mean about Leo?”

“Like what?”

“Nothing,” Chili said. “Listen . . .” and asked about Michael Weir and the time he was in Brooklyn making the movie.

Tommy said yeah, he knew guys talked to him personally, had Michael Weir to their club, one on 15th corner of Neptune, another place on 86th Street. Yeah, they shot scenes in Bensonhurst, Carroll Gardens, on the bridge, the Bush Terminal docks, the amusement park . . . “That movie, you know, was from a book called Coney Island, but Michael Weir had it changed, he didn’t like the title. He said to call it The Cyclone and they did.”

“The Cyclone,” Chili said, “the roller coaster.”

“Yeah, the roller coaster. You remember the movie? Michael Weir, he’s Joey Corio, he’s running the fuckin roller coaster in the beginning part, before he gets in with the guys and he’s made. So the guys call him Cyclone. ‘Hey, Cyc, how you doing?’ You don’t remember that?”

Chili looked up to see Harry coming to the desk with a stack of magazines. “I’ll talk to you later,” Chili said, paused, lowered his voice then as he said, “Tommy? Find out when’s he coming out. I’ll call you,” and hung up.

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“Michael’s in every one of these,” Harry said, dropping the magazines on the desk. “Recent ones in American Film and Vanity Fair, about the picture he just finished, called Elba. This one, there’s a cover story. Everything you ever wanted to know about him. There’s a picture of Karen in there and also his present live-in.”

Chili picked up the magazine, Premiere, to see Michael Weir full face, almost life-size, grinning at him. The guy had to be up in his late forties but looked about thirty-five. Not bad looking, thick dark hair he wore fairly long, kind of a big nose. There was that Michael Weir twinkle in his eyes, Michael telling his many fans he was basically a nice guy and didn’t put on any airs. It said next to the picture in big letters, MICHAEL WEIR, and under it, smaller, WILL THE REAL ONE PLEASE STAND UP?

“He’s got a big nose,” Chili said. “I never noticed that before.”

“Prominent,” Harry said.

“It’s big,” Chili said, opening the magazine to the cover story, a full-page color shot of Michael in a faded work shirt and scruffy jeans, wearing black socks with his Reeboks. See? Just a regular guy who happened to make seven million every time he did a movie. Chili started to tell Harry his observation in a dry tone of voice, but caught himself in time.

What was he putting Michael Weir down for? He didn’t even know the guy.

He had that fuckin Ray Bones on his mind now, that was the problem, and he was taking it out on this actor who happened to have a big nose and liked scruffy jeans.

The beginning of the article, on the opposite page, had for a title over it, WEIR(D) TALES. On the next two pages were more pictures of Michael, Michael in different movies, Michael in The Cyclone holding a gun and looking desperate, Michael with Karen—there she was—still a blonde.

Chili turned the page, looked at more pictures, still thinking about Ray Bones, realizing Bones would check out the woman at Hi-Tone Cleaners and if he didn’t find her he’d use his connections, talk to the lawyers that ate raw fish, and next he’d be coming this way to check out Harry Zimm. That fuckin Bones, all he did was mess things up.

“Here’s the one he’s living with now,” Harry said over Chili’s shoulder as he turned the page. “Nicki. She’s a cutie, except for all that hair, a rock-androller. They met at Gazzarri’s, on the Strip. Nicki was performing with some group.”

“You know what?” Chili said, looking at a color shot of Michael and Nicki by a limo, both in black leather jackets. “I think I know her. There was a girl with a group we used quite a few times at Momo’s . . . Only her name was Nicole.”

“That’s close,” Harry said. He ran his finger down a column of the story. “Here. She’s twenty-seven, born in Miami. Performed with different groups . . . she’s a singer.”

“So’s Nicole,” Chili said, “but her hair’s a lot blonder and she’s older.” He picked up the phone and dialed the back room of the barbershop.

Tommy said, “I talk to you more in L.A. ‘n when you’re here.”

“There was a group we had at Momo’s about seven eight years ago, the girl singer’s name was Nicole?”

“Sure, Nicole. Man, I wanted to jump her so bad.”

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“She had blond hair, almost white?”

“Yeah, but not necessarily. I meant to tell you,” Tommy said, “we talking about Michael Weir? Nicole lives with him. Only now she’s Nicki.”

“You sure it’s the same one?”

“I just read about her, putting together a group. She was out of music for a while.”

“How old would Nicole be, thirties?”

“Around there, thirty-four.”

“This one’s twenty-seven.”

“Hey, Chil, it’s the same broad, take my word.”

“What’s the name of the group?”

“Prob’ly ‘Nicki.’ I’ll check, see what I can find out.”

Chili gave him Karen’s number and hung up. He said to Harry, “I was right, I know her.”

Harry said, “Yeah, but does she know you?”

Now they were having a drink while they looked at magazines, Chili learning facts about Michael Weir: that he had three homes, three cars, three ex-wives, a dirt bike he rode in the desert, liked to play the piano, cook, didn’t smoke, drank moderately . . . That he had appeared in seventeen features he was willing to talk about . . . That while grips and gaffers loved him, directors and writers “were not that enchanted by Michael’s tendency to trample indifferently on their prerogatives; but since he was arguably a genius . . .”

Karen walked in on them in her neat black suit, looking good, calm, but maybe putting it on, and Chili learned a little more about her and about the movie business. Karen said, “Nothing’s changed in ten years—you know it?” Harry raised his glass saying, “And it never will. Let me guess what happened. No, first tell me who was there.” Chili, at the desk, became the audience, looking from one to the other.

Karen: “You know Warren Hurst?”

Harry: “Never heard of him.”

Karen, looking at their drinks: “He’s one of the production v.p.’s, a new guy. I don’t think he’ll last.”

Harry, as Karen picked up Chili’s drink, took a big sip and handed him the glass: “Who else?”

Karen: “Elaine Levin . . .”

Harry: “No—what’s she doing at Tower?”

Karen: “Harry, she runs production. Don’t you read?”

Harry: “What, the trades? I’ve missed a few lately.” To Chili: “This’s good. Elaine Levin, a few years ago was selling cosmetics . . .”

Karen, lighting a cigarette: “She was at UA and then Metro nine years.”

Harry: “Okay, but before that she was at an ad agency in New York, right? Elaine comes up with an idea for a cosmetic she calls ‘Bedroom Eyes’— you put it on you increase your chances of getting laid. The head of a major studio says to her, ‘Honey, if you can sell that shit you can sell movies.’ Next thing you know she’s a vice-president of production.”

Karen: “Elaine started in marketing.”

Harry: “And how long was she there? That’s what I’m talking about, before they moved her into production, this broad that sold eye makeup?”

Karen: “Harry, everybody used to do something else. What about when you were Harry Simmons making slide films, How to Load a Truck?” To Chili: “Did you know Zimm wasn’t his real name?”

Harry: “The only thing I wasn’t sure of, should Zimm have one m or two? Hey, but I was always a

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filmmaker, behind the camera. These people that run the studios, they’re lawyers, former agents. They’re strictly money guys.”

Karen: “What are you, Harry?”

Harry: “They wouldn’t even see movies, I’m convinced, they didn’t have a screening room on the lot. That’s why with few exceptions I’ve remained independent. You know that song Old Blue Eyes does, ‘I did it my way’? . . .”

Karen: “But now you’re going to a studio.”

Harry: “I have no choice. But you know which one? Tower, I just decided. Play the power game with Bedroom Eyes, see if she’s any good. Get in there and compete with all the ass kissers and bottom feeders, all the no-talent schmucks that constellate around the studio execs who don’t know what they’re doing either. All trying to figure out what the public wants to see. How about teenagers from outer space?”

Karen: “It’s been done.”

Harry: “Well, I got a property I know is gonna go into release. We open on a thousand screens we’ll do over ten mil the first weekend. You oughta read it, see what I’m talking about. Why Michael would be the perfect Lovejoy. Karen? One phone call, I’m in business.”

Chili watched her stub the cigarette out in the ashtray, maybe giving herself time to think. Harry said, “I’m gonna be optimistic, okay?” Karen didn’t answer and Harry, after a moment, brought it back to where they had started.

“You haven’t told us what happened at the meeting.”

“I thought you wanted to guess.”

“Okay. They liked what you did and’ll let you know.”

“I didn’t read. I turned down the part.”

“I thought you wanted to do it.”

“I changed my mind,” Karen said, and walked out.

“You know what happened,” Harry said to Chili. “They told her don’t call us, we’ll call you, and she won’t admit it.” Harry paused to sip his drink. “I’m serious about going to Tower.” He paused again. “I’ll wait’ll Karen’s in a better mood and lay the script on her.”

“I thought,” Chili said, “I was gonna read it.”

“What’d you bring, one copy?”

Chili thought about it and said, “I’m going back to the motel, get cleaned up and check out, find someplace over here to stay. Lemme have the key to your office, I could stop on the way back, pick up a script for myself. How would that be?”

Karen, still in the neat black suit, was at the kitchen table pouring a Coke. Chili watched her from the doorway—where she had stood last night in the Lakers T-shirt.

“Can I ask you a question?” She looked up at him and he said, “Why’d you change your mind?”

“About the part? I can’t say I was dying to do it.”

Karen looked down to pour some more Coke in the glass, careful that it didn’t foam over. Chili got ready to say well, maybe he’d be seeing her sometime, when she looked up at him again.

“I probably would’ve taken it though. But during the meeting I got into what we were talking about this morning, my feeling guilty? You know . . .”