Get Shorty: A Novel

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how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. You come to the last page you write in ‘Fade out’ and that’s the end, you’re done.”

Chili said, “That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s all.”

Chili said, “Then what do I need you for?”

He heard the elevator as he was opening the door to 325, looked down the hotel hallway and saw Karen coming toward him, Karen in a loose-fitting white shirt and gray slacks. Chili pushed the door open and waited, two copies of Lovejoy under his arm.

“I was in the bar when you came in,” Karen said. “I thought you saw me.” He shook his head saying no, but was glad to see her now, motioning Karen to go in. She said, “Well, I read it.” He followed her into the living room, the pagoda lamps still on, and dropped the scripts on the counter. A light on the phone was blinking on and off.

“You want to check your messages?”

“I can do it later,” Chili said. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable. I want to hear what you think.”

He took off his suitcoat as Karen went over to a fat chair next to the sofa.

“You read the script . . .”

“I could play the sister,” Karen said, “and wear sensible shoes. That would be a switch.”

Chili moved to the sofa, folding his suitcoat.

“I don’t see you doing that one, the sister.”

He laid the coat next to him as he sat down.

“But there isn’t anything else, as it stands, you’d want to do.”

“I wasn’t really looking for a part.”

“There could be a good one though. I got some ideas.”

Karen said, “You do, huh?”

Looking at Karen he could see the phone on the counter above her, the message light blinking on and off. It would have to be Tommy, something about Bones maybe, or Nicki. He began telling Karen how he thought the script needed to be fixed, change the whore to make it a bigger part: how she helps Lovejoy out and pretty soon they have something going.

“The hooker and the florist,” Karen said.

“You wouldn’t have to be a hooker exactly.”

“Mousse my hair and chew gum? Why don’t you check your messages?”

“I can wait.”

“You’ve read the script?”

“Not all of it, but I know what it’s about.”

“You and Harry’ll make a great team. Has he read it?”

“He bought it, he must’ve.”

“You sure? Harry used to have someone else read for him. Then he’d skim it if he thought he was going into production.”

“He told me he read it twice.”

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“This one he might’ve. You like the idea?”

“Basically, yeah, except what I mentioned. The part I read, the ending, I didn’t like ’cause it’s a letdown. You know what I mean? Lovejoy’s just standing there.”

“What do you think he should do?”

“Well, if he’s the star he’s the one ought to make it happen. Get some action going that’s his idea.” She kept looking at him and he said, “I don’t like the title either.”

“Harry thinks he needs you,” Karen said, “but he can’t pay you anything, he’s broke.”

Chili said, “I know exactly how much he doesn’t have.”

“So what do you get out of it?”

“You came here to ask me that?”

She said, “I want to know,” staring at him the way she did last night. It wasn’t the old dead-eyed look exactly, but it wasn’t bad.

“I like movies,” Chili said. “I help Harry make one, I’ll find out what you have to do outside of have an idea and raise the money. That doesn’t sound too hard. I was in the money business and I get ideas all the time.”

She looked so serious he had to smile at her.

“Then I’ll do one, make a movie and put you in it.”

He glanced at the message light on the phone flashing on and off.

Karen was still watching him.

She said, “I took your advice and made a deal with Harry. Not to act in it. The way I see it, if I save Harry a half million by setting him up with Michael, I should have a piece of the action. I told him I want co-producer.”

“What’d Harry say?”

“Harry would agree to anything. But I said I’d only do it if he can get a studio to put Lovejoy into development. So the first thing he has to do is sell the idea to Tower. That’s where he wants to take it. He thinks he can handle Elaine Levin.”

“What do you think?”

“If Elaine doesn’t like the idea, Harry’s not going to sell her on it. If she likes it, it could get made, with or without Michael.”

Chili said, “The script still needs to be fixed.”

“You know that,” Karen said, “and you haven’t even read it.”

He watched her lean over to push out of the chair, then pause and toss her head as she looked at him again, her hair falling away from her eyes—and remembered Karen doing it with blond hair, giving the guy in the movie the same look.

She said, “This might work. You never know.”

He asked the operator for his messages. She said, “Just a minute.” He waited. She came back on saying, “A Karen Flores called. She didn’t leave a message.” The operator sounded Latin. “A Mr. Zimm called. He’ll talk to you tomorrow.” That was it.

Later on, watching Taxi Driver on TV, Chili kept thinking of the way Karen had looked at him and wondered if she was telling him something and if he should’ve asked her to stay and have a drink. But then when Robert De Niro shaved his hair into a Mohawk, Chili started thinking of Ray Bones, even though Ray Bones didn’t have a Mohawk or look anything like Robert De Niro. Maybe it was all those guns De Niro had, wanting to shoot somebody.

15

Catlett lived way up in the Hollywood hills where you could see the lights of L.A. spread out in kind of a grid and hear coyotes yipping in the dark. Here were all these modern homes built on stilts hanging over the sides of cliffs and there were still wild animals running around free. Catlett, barefoot, wearing a white silk bathrobe, stood at the rail of his deck, nothing below it for about twelve stories to where faint voices were coming from a lit-up swimming pool, a bright little square of light blue down there in the night, a girl laughing now, a nice sound . . . while the Bear told about the Colombian mule, Yayo the yoyo, dumb son of a bitch, still out at the airport.

“Thinks they have him spotted.”

“He call you?” Catlett said, his voice quiet. “How’d he know to do that?”

“He called Miami and they gave him our service number,” the Bear said. “The service calls me and I call the yoyo at LAX. He says the focking guy you told him was a fed left, but two more focking guys just like him took his place. With those focking gones on their legs.”

“Irritable, huh?”

“Making sounds like he’s coming loose on us.”

“Yeah, that’s how those people are.”

“He makes a run at the locker they’ll grab him. Then you have to think,” the Bear said, “pissed as he is, he could give us up too.”

“Out of meanness,” Catlett said, “or making a plea deal. You suppose you could go get him?”

“That’s what I was thinking. Tell him the airport’s too hot right now.”

“I appreciate it,” Catlett said.

“You want me to take him anyplace special?”

“I don’t care, long as you get him out.”

“I could take him home.”

“Yeah, but don’t let him go near Farrah, hear? How’s the child?”

“Cute as a bug.”

Catlett said, “Bear? Something else that’s pressing. This man Chili Palmer, staying at the Sunset Marquis. I wonder you could do a read on him for me.

“Chili Palmer,” the Bear said.

“Thinks he’s mean. I wouldn’t mind you ran into him. See if he’s real.”

“I could do that.”

Catlett said, “Shit, everything at once. I also need to know where Harry Zimm’s been hanging out. Put a limo on him”—Catlett starting to grin— “tail the motherfucker in a white stretch.”

The Bear said, “I best take care of Yayo first,” and left.

It was cool out on the deck, Catlett wearing just the thin robe, but felt good, some stars out and that clear sound of voices in the dark, the girl laughing again. People with

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style knowing how to live. It looked like they might be skinny-dipping down there, couple of pink shapes in the blue-lit square. Coyotes watching them from the bushes . . . Young coyote asks his daddy, What’s that looks like a pussy over there? And his daddy says, It’s what it is, boy. They might even be movie people, work either side of the camera, it didn’t make any difference. They were the kind of people he wanted to associate with in his life, not have to fool with fools like Yayo anymore. Even if you had to watch your step in the movie business, keep from getting fucked over, at least the ones doing it had some style. Chili Palmer had it in his own way, something, but it was hard to put your finger on it. Chili Palmer looked like a mob guy and talked like one—not a movie mob guy, a real one— though he could maybe play one in a movie. He had the bullshit to make it work, if the camera didn’t scare him. Ask him what did he bring to Harry’s deal and he says, “Me.” Catlett had to smile, by himself out on his deck and starting to shiver with cold, he had to smile at the man’s bullshit. “Me.” Or was it confidence he had in himself? Either way, it could work for him. And then saying what he did, if writing a script was so easy, saying, “What do I need you for?” He did know a few things about movies, who Morgan Freeman was and how to say Greta Scacchi’s name, without looking like he’d know such things. He let you think he’d read the script but didn’t get sassy when he got caught—no, he listened to it told, wanting to know. That showed confidence, too, didn’t it? The man out in the open with himself. Maybe less bullshit about him than you think. Even though he looked and talked like a mob guy and those guys would bullshit you to death.

Catlett felt himself close to something here and said it out loud to hear it. “You close. You know it? You close.” Thinking, Chili Palmer might know something about movies. Then saying out loud, “But

you know more.”

Time to quit thinking and start doing. Yeah.

Not let anything stand in the way. No.

Not Chili Palmer, not anybody.

* * *

Ronnie said, “I have to make all the decisions around here? Why don’t you decide for a change. It’s not that hard, Cat. You want to go to Mateo’s? The Ivy? You want to go to Fennel? Drive out to Santa Monica? Or we can run across the street to the Palm, I don’t give a shit. But we have to eat, right?”

“I don’t know,” Catlett said, “do we?”

Give him a hard one like that, mess up his head.

“You have anything has to be done around here?”

There wasn’t much that looked like business on Ronnie’s desk. It stayed neat, his girl Marcella in the other office doing the scheduling and billing.

Ronnie said, “Not that I know of.”

Catlett didn’t have a desk. He sat across from Ronnie looking at Ronnie’s cowboy boots up on the desk, ankles crossed, Ronnie low in his big chair, down behind there somewhere.

“Well, I know you got three cars out working. You got to pick up the producer coming in from New York, and later on the rock group that likes the white stretch. I know that much,” Catlett said, “and I barely work here.”

Ronnie said, “You know that, but you can’t tell me where you want to have lunch. Hey, how about Chinois? The curried oysters with salmon pearls, mmmmm.”

Catlett said, “How about Spago?” acting innocent, knowing they didn’t serve lunch, and got a

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mean look from Ronnie. The last time they went there the woman tried to seat them over on the other side of the open kitchen and Ronnie went berserk, told her, “My fucking Rolls is in the front row outside and you want to put us in back?” The man had a point. You sat at the right tables if you expected to be recognized in this town. Ronnie’s trouble was nobody remembered him.

Next, Catlett heard Ronnie’s desk drawer open and saw Ronnie’s automatic come edging out of the V between his crossed cowboy boots and heard Ronnie making gunfire sounds, couuu, couuu, the little guy playing with his Hardballer .45, a pistol ten inches long. Couuu, pretending he was shooting that lady maître d’ at Spago.

“Put it away.”

“I’m not pointing it at you.”

“Ronnie?”

“Shit.”

“In the drawer.”

“I wouldn’t mind somebody trying to rip us off,” Ronnie said. “You know what this would do to a guy?”

“I know I’m not ever having lunch with you no more you don’t put that thing away.” Catlett waited, hearing the drawer slide open and close. “You have a delivery to make, don’t you? Down to Palm Desert?”

“You want to take it?”

“They your friends, not mine.”

Four years of this shit, being the buddy of an idiot. Earlier, when Catlett came in, he told Ronnie they were having trouble with Yayo and Ronnie said, “Which one’s Yayo?” Four years retained on the books as Marketing Consultant, which meant sitting here with Ronnie deciding where to eat. Then having the martini lunches and watching him get shitfaced on those see-throughs. It meant going to Ronnie’s parties with all the glitter twits. Watching Ronnie have his nose bleeds about every day. Put up with all that shit, it was still better than running a dope house or sitting in a boiler room selling fake bonds over the phone. Better than managing a string of bitchy ladies, better than thinking up the everyday kinds of hustles to get by . . . But not better than being in the movie business. He hadn’t mentioned to Ronnie he’d read Mr. Lovejoy or said anything about it since their meeting with Harry. From now on it wouldn’t be any of Ronnie’s business.

“Hey, Cat? How about Le Dôme? We haven’t been there in a while.”

They got a nice table on the aisle in that middle section and Catlett waited for Ronnie to relax with his extra-dry martini before telling him he should take a rest. “You going down to Palm Desert anyway, why don’t you stay awhile, take a month off, man, and ease out, share your toot with some nice young lady. You been working too hard.”

Get the motherfucker out of his hair while he set up making his move.

Back in the office of Wingate Motor Cars Limited, past closing time and the help gone, Catlett sitting at Ronnie’s desk starting to make plans, he got a call from the Bear.

“This guy’s driving me nuts.”

“Where you at?”

“Home. We were out at Universal—you know the studio tour? It’s like Disneyland.”

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“You took Yayo?”

“I forgot I promised Farrah. Yeah, so I brought the yoyo along. All the guy does is bitch and say fock, in front of my little girl. I gotta dump him somewhere.”

“Bring him by,” Catlett said, “I’ll talk to him.”

Standing at the window Catlett watched the Bear’s blue Dodge van come off Santa Monica, out of traffic and into the drive. By the time Catlett made his way through the offices and the reception room to the garage, the steel overhead door was coming down to seal off street sounds, Yayo was out of the van and the Bear, his Hawaiian shirt today full of blue and yellow flowers, was coming around the front end. There was one limo parked in the garage, the white stretch reserved for the rock group, and Catlett’s car, a black Porsche 911.

He was in his shirtsleeves, a striped shirt with a tab collar, tie in place—had put it on thinking of Chili’s shirt last night; it had looked pretty sharp.

Yayo could use a clean shirt and a shave, comb his hair, Yayo giving him the Tony Montana look with the lip curl. A man that didn’t know how dumb he was.

“You have a nice time, Yayo?”

The little Colombian mule started out in Spanish before switching over to English, saying, “I tell this guy I want my focking money or you in trouble, man, believe me.”

“There’s no pleasing him,” the Bear said, fooling with his beard. “I took his picture standing with this cutout of Magnum P.I.? Tom Selleck, looks real as can be. All he does is bitch.”

Yayo turned enough to tell the Bear, “You think you funny. Is that it?”

“I took him to the Miami Vice Action Spectacular . . .”

“Man, it was shit.”

“It opens,” the Bear said, “here come Crockett and Tubbs on jet skis. It’s like a movie set. You know, some shacks at the edge of the water, we’re in the grandstand watching. The voice-over says, ‘They have ruffled some feathers in flamingo land and the band of smugglers have a dynamite surprise waiting for them.’ It’s all low-grade special effects, but the tourists eat it up.”

“It was all shit,” Yayo told Catlett.

“He kept talking like that,” the Bear said, “saying fock in front of my little girl.”

Catlett frowned, a pained look. “He did?”

“Man wouldn’t shut his mouth.”

“Listen to me,” Yayo said. “I wan’ to leave this place, go home. Wha’ you have to do, get the money and give it to me. Or give me some other money.”

“I gave you the key,” Catlett said. “That’s all you need, and some patience.”

Yayo had that lip curled saying, “I don’t wan’ no focking key. I wan’ the money.”

Catlett stood with his fingers shoved into his pockets. He shrugged saying, “Give it some time, pretty soon there won’t be nobody watching you.”

Yayo pointed a finger at him. He said, “Okay, man, I tell you something. I go the airport and open that focking locker. They bus’ me, I tell them I come to get something for you, tha’s all I know.”

Catlett said, “Tha’s all you know, huh? Wait here a minute, Yayo, I be back directly.”

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He left them: went back to Ronnie’s office and got Ronnie’s big AMT Hardballer .45 auto out of the center desk drawer and racked the slide, knowing Ronnie kept the piece loaded. Catlett walked through offices and the reception room to the garage, closed the door behind him and extended the Hardballer’s long barrel at Yayo, walking up to within ten feet of the man. Yayo didn’t move. The Bear didn’t either.

Yayo cocked his head then and put his hands on his hips, giving Catlett a Tony Montana pose.

“The fock you doing with that?”

Catlett said, “I’m taking you out, Yayo,” and shot him in the chest, the gun going off loud— man, it was loud—but didn’t buck as much as Catlett expected. No, looking down at Yayo on the cement floor now among oil stains, arms flung out, eyes stuck wide open, he’d put that hole right where he’d aimed.

“Dead focking center, man.”

“I get the feeling,” the Bear said, “you done this before.”

“Not in a while,” Catlett said.

16

The way Chili found out Leo the drycleaner’s room number at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he wrote Larry Paris on an envelope, handed it to the girl at the front desk and watched her stick the envelope in the mail slot for 207. It looked like 207, but he wasn’t sure. So he used a house phone, around the corner by the entrance to the famous Polo Lounge, and asked for

207. The operator tried it, came back to say she was sorry, Mr. Paris wasn’t answering. Chili, friendly because he was getting somewhere, told the operator Mr. Paris was probably still out at the track giving his money away. Ha ha. To double-check, Chili stepped into the Polo Lounge and ordered a Scotch at the bar.

He didn’t see Leo or Leo’s friend Annette waiting or Doug McClure or any faces he recognized from the silver screen. The room was crowded, six P.M., people at booths and little round tables, most of them probably tourists looking for movie stars. Harry said if anybody here even halfway resembled a star the rest of the tourists would say, “There’s one. Isn’t that, you know, he was in . . .” and some guy from out of town would have a few minutes of fame

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he’d never know about. Harry said there were guys in the picture business had their secretaries call them here; they get paged, everybody sees the phone brought to the table and then watch the schmuck talking to his secretary like he was making a deal and knew personally all the names he was dropping. Harry said the trouble with Hollywood, the scheme-balls worked just as hard as the legit filmmakers.

The limo guy, Catlett, struck Chili as that type wanted to be seen. Looked good in his threads, sounded like he knew what he was talking about— the type of guy if he wasn’t dealing drugs would be into some other kind of hustle. There were guys like him Chili knew by name in Miami, all five boroughs of New York and parts of Jersey. They gave you that stuff about having something in common, being from the street but different sides of it. You had to watch your back with guys like Catlett. Keep him away from Harry.

Earlier today Harry had called from his apartment on Franklin to say he’d come home to change but would be going right back to Karen’s. “You know what I did? Asked her to come on the project as associate producer and she jumped at it.” Chili was learning a little more about Harry every time the guy opened his mouth. “Karen dropped off the script at Tower and we’re waiting to hear when Elaine can see us. Miss Bedroom Eyes. Listen to this. Elaine does-n’t even take pitch meetings, but she’ll do it for Karen. I’m telling you, bringing my old screamer aboard was a stroke of genius.” Chili asked him, shouldn’t the script be rewritten first, fixed up? Harry said, “What’s wrong with it?” Chili told him point by point what he thought and Harry said, “Yeah, Karen mentioned that. It needs a polish, that’s all. I’ll cover that at the meeting. Don’t worry about it.”

Okay, for the time being he’d forget about Lovejoy and concentrate on Leo the drycleaner, find him and get him out of town before Ray Bones showed up. Chili watched a waiter serving a tray of drinks, thinking he could sit here and get smashed and never even see Leo. Leo gets back, cleans up and goes out again without ever coming in here. It was watching the waiter with the drink order that gave Chili an idea, a way to get into Leo’s suite.

He ordered a bottle of champagne, paid his tab and told the bartender he wanted the champagne put in room 207 right away, before his buddy got back, so it would be a surprise. The bartender-acted like this was done all the time. Chili finished his drink and took the stairway to the second floor. Room 207 was right there, at an open center point where halls went off in three different directions, the wallpaper in the halls big green plants, or they might be palm-tree branches. About ten minutes later a room service waiter arrived with the champagne in a bucket and two glasses on a tray. Chili hung back by the stairway till the waiter had the door open, then moved fast to walk in right behind him saying, “Hey, I’m just in time,” and handed the guy a ten-dollar bill.

Three cigarettes and a couple glasses of champagne later, he heard the key in the lock and watched the door open.

Leo came in wearing a sporty little plaid hat cocked on the side of his head. Leo still playing the high roller, not even dragging after all day at the

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track, not looking over this way either, going straight for the Chivas on the desk and having one out of the bottle, ahhh, before pulling a fat wad of cash out of his jacket, tossing it on the desk like it was change from the cab fare and then taking the jacket off, the shirt too, it was coming off, Leo getting down to his undershirt hanging on bony shoulders, but not touching the hat, the sporty hat stayed, Leo thinking he must look good in it or the hat brought him luck, Leo in his four-bills-a-day hotel suite having another swig from the bottle.

“You got no class.”

The poor guy didn’t move.

Not till Chili said, “Look at me, Leo.”

Watching him now reminded Chili of the time in Vegas, Leo pinned to the roulette table, no escape, and finally coming around to say, “How much you want?” Leo the loser, no matter how much he won. Leo came around this time with the same hopeless look, but didn’t say anything. He was taking in the scene. Chili in his pinstripe, on the sofa. The champagne on the coffee table. But what caught Leo’s eye and held his attention was sitting next to the champagne. His briefcase. The same one the bodyguard had carried for him in Vegas.

“I wouldn’t think you’re that dumb,” Chili said, “leave over three hunnerd grand in the closet, underneath the extra blanket, but I guess you are.”

For a second there Leo looked surprised. “I did-n’t know where else to keep it. Where would you?”

The guy was serious.

“You’re here a while, what’s wrong with a bank?”

“They report it to the IRS.”

“You don’t open an account, Leo, you put it in a deposit box. Dip in whenever you want.”

He watched Leo nodding in his sporty hat and undershirt, thinking it over, what to do the next time he scammed an airline. Jesus, he was dumb.

“You been losing, huh?”

“I’m up twelve grand today.”

“From when? You left Vegas with four-fifty.”

“Who told you that?”

“Now you’re down to three-ten in the briefcase. You must’ve cooled off quite a bit in Reno.”

“Who says I was in Reno?”

The poor guy kept trying.

“Your friend Annette,” Chili said.

Leo narrowed his eyes and stared, trying hard to fake who he was: He raised his preshaped plaid hat and recocked it, see if that would help. No, there was nothing dumber than a dumb guy who thought he was a hotshot. You did have to feel a little sorry for him . . .

Till he said, “It was Fay, wasn’t it, told you about Annette. She tell you my whole life history, for Christ sake?”

“I wouldn’t let her if she tried,” Chili said. “Why I’m here, Leo, basically, is to save your ass.”

“How? By taking my money?”

“You can keep what you won today. That’s yours.”

“It’s all mine,” Leo said. “You don’t have any right to it.” Starting to whine. “You’re some friend.”

“No, I’m not your friend, Leo.”

“I’ll say you aren’t. Come in and ruin my life. Why are you doing this to me? I paid you what I owed.”

“Sit down, Leo.”

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Leo had to think about it, but he did. Went to the deep chair facing the coffee table, sat down and stared at his briefcase.

Chili said, “I don’t know how you stayed in business, Leo, you’re so fuckin dumb. Or how you ever got this far. But now you’re through. I’m gonna explain to you why and I hope you’re not too dumb you don’t understand what I’m saying. Okay?”

So Chili laid it out, told how Ray Bones was now in the picture and the kind of guy Bones was, the reason Leo and Annette would have to disappear or else risk serious injury. That seemed simple enough, a no-option kind of situation.

Leo thought about it a minute and said, “Well, I’m not going home.”

Look how his mind worked.

“I don’t care where you go, Leo.”

“I mean back to Fay.”

“That’s up to you.”

“After what she did to me?”

“You aren’t only dumb, Leo, you’re crazy.”

Leo thought about it another minute and said, “I don’t see any difference who takes the money, you or this other guy. Either way I’m cleaned out.”

“Yeah, but there different ways of getting cleaned out,” Chili said. “Ray Bones’ll take everything you have—”

“What—you ,won’t?”

“Leo, listen to me. When I say everything, I mean even that sporty hat if he wants it. Your watch, that pinkie you have on . . . and then he’ll hit you with some kind of heavy object if he doesn’t shoot you, so you won’t tell on him. I won’t do that,” Chili said, “take your jewelry or hurt you. You have three-ten in the case, right? I’m gonna take the three hundred you scammed off the airline, but the rest of it, the ten grand? I’m gonna borrow that and pay you back sometime.”

He knew Leo wouldn’t understand what he meant, Leo squinting at him now.

“You take all my money, but you’re borrowing part of it?”

“At eighteen percent, okay? And don’t ask me no more questions, I’m leaving,” Chili said.

He picked up the briefcase as he rose from the sofa and Leo came up out of his chair.

“You’re saying you want me to loan you the ten grand?”

“I’m not asking you, Leo. What I’m saying is I’m gonna pay you back.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Yeah, but how’re you gonna pay me?”

Chili was moving toward the door. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I mean you won’t know where I am. I don’t even know where I’ll be.”

“I’ll find you, Leo. You leave a trail like a fuckin caterpillar.” Chili reached the door and opened it.

Leo saying now, “Wait a minute. What’s this eighteen-percent-a-year shit? You want to borrow ten, the vig’s three bills a week. You hear me?” Chili crossing the hall toward the stairway, shaking his head, Leo yelling after him, “Fifteen for the vig plus the ten, that’s twenty-five big ones you go a whole year, buddy! You hear me?”

Chili stopped. He turned around. As he started back he saw Leo’s scared look just before he slammed the door shut. Jesus, he was dumb.

17

He thought Raji’s would be a cocktail lounge with entertainment, a Hollywood nightspot. It turned out to be a bar with pinball machines and video games making a racket, also a counter where you could buy Raji’s T-shirts, in case you wanted to show you had actually come in here. Sometimes it was hard to keep an open mind. Chili, in his pinstripe suit, nice tie, wondered if any regular people came here or just these kids trying to look like heroin addicts. He said to one of them, “How come there’s no sign out in front?”

The kid said, “There isn’t?”

He said to the kid, “I see they have Yul Brynner in the sidewalk outside.”

Part of Hollywood’s famous Walk of Fame, the names of 1,800 show-biz celebrities inlaid in stars.

The kid said, “Who’s Yul Brynner?”

Chili said to the bartender, a young guy who looked normal, “How come there’s no sign out in front?” The bartender said it was down temporarily while they reinforced the building against earthquakes. Chili asked him how come there weren’t any barstools? The bartender said it was a stand-up kind of place: A and R guys from the record companies didn’t like to sit down, they’d catch a group and then come back upstairs to have their conversation, where you could hear yourself think. He told Chili Guns N’ Roses had been signed out of here. Chili said no shit and asked if Nicki was around. There were “Nicki” posters by the entrance. The bartender said she was downstairs but wouldn’t be on for a couple hours yet.

“You in records?”

“Movies,” Chili said.

He had never made it with Nicki or even tried, but she still ought to remember him. The idea, get her to ask him to drop by the house, say hello to Michael and he’d take it from there. Get next to him. Look at me, Michael. See what happens.

Chili went downstairs to an empty room with a bar and a few tables, hearing a band tuning up, hitting chords. It reminded him of bands at Momo’s cranking up, doing sound checks, setting those dials just right, then blasting off loud enough to blow out the windows and he’d wonder what all that precision adjusting was for. Maybe they said they were reinforcing the place against earthquakes, but it was to keep the rockers from shaking the walls down, and that’s why they played in the basement here: the bandstand through an archway in a separate room that was like a cave in there and maybe would hold a hundred people standing up.

There were four guys, three with guitars and a guy on the drums. He didn’t see Nicki anywhere, just these four skinny guys, typical rock-and-roll ass-holes with all the hair, bare arms tricked out with tattoos and metal bracelets, all of them with that typical

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bored way they had. Looking over at him now standing in the archway, but too cool to show any interest. Some dickhead in a suit. Chili stared back at them thinking, Oh, is that right? Any you assholes want to be in the movies? No chance. They were turned toward each other now, one of them, with wild blond hair sticking out in every direction, talking as the others listened. Now the blond-haired one was looking over this way again, saying, “Chil?” The middle one.

Christ, it was Nicole, Nicki. They all looked like girls—that’s why he thought she was a guy.

“Nicki? How you doing?”

He should’ve spotted her, the skinny white arms, no tattoos. Nicki handed her guitar that had a big bull’s-eye painted on it to one of the guys and was coming over now, Nicki in black jeans that were like tights on her and, Christ, big work boots, smiling at him. Chili put his arms out as she raised hers, high, and saw dark hair under there in the sleeveless T-shirt, Nicki saying, “Chili, Jesus!” glad to see him and it was a nice surprise, knowing she meant it. Now she was in his arms, that slender body tight against him, arms around his neck giving him a hug, hanging on, while he kept thinking of her armpits, the dark tufts under there like a guy’s, though she certainly felt like a girl. Nicki let go but kept grinning at him, saying, “I don’t believe this.” Then saying over her shoulder to the guys, “I was right, it’s Chili, from Miami. He’s a fucking gangster!”

The way they were looking at him now—he did-n’t mind her saying it.

“That’s your new band, huh? They as good as the one you used to have?”

Nicki said, “What, at Momo’s? Come on, that was techno-disco pussy rock. These guys play.” She took him by the arm over to a table, telling how she met them in the parking lot of the Guitar Center, standing there with their Marshall stacks, and could-n’t believe her luck ’cause these kids could play speed riffs as good as— “You know the kind Van Halen did on ‘Eruption’ and every metal freak in the world copied? . . . No, you don’t. What am I talking about? Eight years ago you were still into Dion and the Belmonts, all that doo-wop shit.”

“ ‘I’m just a lonely teenager,’ ” Chili said.

“Right, and ‘I Wonder Why.’ Who do you listen to now?”

“Guns N’ Roses, different ones.” He had to think fast. “Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin . . .”

“You’re lying. Aerosmith, that’s who I was listening to in Miami, way back when. I’ll bet you’re a Deadhead, you dig that California acid Muzak.”

“Let’s have a cigarette,” Chili said, sitting at the table with her now. “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”

“You kidding? You’re the only guy at Momo’s didn’t try to jump me.”

“It crossed my mind a few times.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t make a big deal about it, like Tommy. I had to beat him off with a stick.” She reached across the table to put her hand on his. “What’re you doing here anyway?”

“I’m making a movie.”

“Come on—”

“And you live with a movie star.”

“Michael, yeah.” She didn’t sound too happy about it. She didn’t sound unhappy either. Glancing

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at her watch, Nicki said, “He’s gonna stop by. You

want to meet him?”

Just like that.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Michael won’t stay for the performance, too many people. Crowds scare the shit out of him, like he’s afraid he’ll get mobbed.”

“Sure, the guy’s a star. Not only that, he can act.”

“I know,” Nicki said, “he’s incredible. His new one, Elba? It isn’t out yet—I caught some of the dailies when they were shooting. You see Michael, he is Napoleon. He doesn’t play him, I mean he is this fucking military genius, man, this little guy . . .” She drew on her cigarette looking toward the bandstand. “I have to get back.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“At a performance. I was with a metal group, Roadkill? They’re still around. They try to sound like Metallica, straight-ahead rock with a lot of head banging. I had to fucking sing and throw my hair at the same time, only it was shorter then so I had to wear extensions. I remember thinking— this was about a year and a half ago—if only I was a light-skinned black chick I could make it on my voice, not have to do this shit.”

“Michael saw you perform . . .”

“I guess he was in a particular mode at the time.” Nicki tapped her cigarette over the ashtray, maybe giving it some thought. “Sees me up there thrashing, this chick in geekwear, shitkickers, hair under my arms . . . He still won’t let me shave. I guess I fill some need. He works, I work and in between we kick back. We do drugs, but not all the time. I wouldn’t call either of us toxic. We play tennis, we have a screening room, a satellite dish, twelve TV sets, seventeen phones, a houseman, maids, a laundress, gardeners, a guy who comes twice a week to check out the cars . . . But where am I really? Down in a basement with a sticky floor and three guys barely out of Hollywood High. I feel like I’m their mother.”

“Why don’t you get married?”

“You mean to Michael? I don’t think I would even if he asked me.”

“Why not?”

“What’s the point? It’s not like, wow, I’d be making it, something I’ve always wanted. You get married, then what? All it does is fuck up your life, especially marrying an actor. Look at Madonna . . . No, don’t. I don’t have all that underwear going for me. I’m a rock-androll singer and that’s it, man, nothing else.” She looked off toward the bandstand. “Listen, I have to go. But when Michael comes, I’ll introduce you.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind talking to him, he has time.”

“You want him to do a movie?”

“We’re thinking about it.”

“Good luck.” Nicki stubbed out her cigarette before looking up at him again. “We’re gonna open tonight, play around with the Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man.’ What do you think?”

With that innocent straight face, putting him on.

It took Chili four seconds to find the album cover and the title in his mind from twenty years ago, the concert recorded live at the Garden and Tommy playing the record over and over, Tommy at the time stoned on the Stones.

Chili said, straight-faced back to her, “From Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, huh? That one?”

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It got Nicki smiling at him, looking good, those nice blue eyes shining. She said, “You’re a cool guy, Chil, without even trying.”

They’d start a number, race into it and stop and Nicki would play part of it over on her bull’s-eye guitar, slower, smoother, and then one of the guitar players would pick it up, imitating, give a nod and the drummer would kick them off again. They might be good—Chili couldn’t tell. Hearing a line of music by itself, when Nicki showed them how, it sounded okay, but all of them playing together came out as noise and was irritating.

Thinking of that album cover again, he seemed to recall a guy in an Uncle Sam hat jumping up in the air with a guitar in each hand. He liked the Rolling Stones then, back in the hippie days, all the flakes running around making peace signs. It made him think of the time they grabbed this hippie, dragged him into Tommy Carlo’s cousin’s barbershop and zipped all his fuckin hair off with the clippers. He thought of that and started thinking of Ray Bones again and Leo the drycleaner, his calling Leo dumb for leaving three hundred grand in a hotel-room closet, and where was it now? Under his bed at the Sunset Marquis. He’d check, make sure Leo and Annette had taken off, just to be on the safe side. Later tonight he’d call Fay, tell her to look for three hundred big ones coming by Express Mail. Put it in one of those containers they gave you at the post office. He’d hang on to the extra ten grand. Maybe pay off Ray Bones, get that out of the way, or maybe not. But the three hundred, basically, was Fay’s. Let her do whatever she wanted with it. Two to one she’d tell a friend of hers about it and pretty soon the suits would come by, knock on the door, flash their I.D.’s . . .

He wondered what would’ve happened if he’d brought Fay with him to Vegas . . .

And realized he was thinking of it as a movie again, the way he had told it to Harry and Karen, but seeing new possibilities, getting the woman, Fay, into the story more, looking at it the same way he had looked at Lovejoy and saw what was needed. Fay comes to L.A. with him . . .

Except it wouldn’t be him, it would be an actor, Jesus, like Robert De Niro playing the shylock. And for Fay . . .

Karen. Why not? Karen even had kind of a you-all accent, though it wasn’t as downhome as the way Fay talked. Okay, now, by the time they get to L.A. they realize they’re hot for each other and aren’t even sure they want to find her husband, Leo, except he’s got all that fuckin dough. Do they want it? They know somebody who does, Ray Bones, he’s coming after them and he’ll kill for that money.

It didn’t sound too bad.

You have Leo pulling the scam on the airline in the opening . . .

Or, no, you start with the shylock and Fay waiting for Leo to come home from the track, while actually he’s out at the airport getting smashed and the jet takes off without him and goes down in the swamp, blows up.

So you have the shylock, basically a good guy, a former shylock, played by Bobby De Niro. You have Karen Flores making her successful comeback as Fay . . . She wouldn’t have a sweaty job, she could be something else, an entertainer, a singer. You have Leo . . . You wouldn’t have Harry in it or the limo guys—it wasn’t a movie about making a movie—but

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you’d have Ray Bones in it. Leo would be a tough one to cast. Get an actor who could play a good sleazeball . . . It took Chili a moment to realize the room was quiet. Nicki and her guys were looking this way, but not at him. He looked over . . .

And saw Michael Weir.

It was, it was Michael Weir crossing the room from the stairs, giving Nicki a wave, the other hand in his pants pocket, baggy gray pants too long for him. Chili saw that as part of the whole picture, his first look at Michael Weir in person, white Reeboks too. But what caught and held his attention was Michael Weir’s jacket. It was like the one left at Vesuvio’s twelve years ago, that worn-out World War Two flight jacket nobody wanted. It was exactly like it. On a guy that made seven million bucks a movie.

Now Michael Weir had his hand raised to the band. Chili heard him say, “Hey, guys,” and it was his voice, Chili recognized it from movies. Michael Weir was good at accents, but you could still tell his voice, kind of nasal. The cockrockers gave him a nod, not too impressed, these young dropouts with their hair and their guitars. Now it looked like Michael was joking around with them, doing the moonwalk and pretending he was strumming a guitar. He was good, but the guys still didn’t seem impressed. Michael turned to Nicki and right away she grabbed his arm and Chili saw them coming this way, Nicki doing the talking, Michael Weir looking up and then Nicki looking up as she said, “Chil? I’d like you to meet Michael.”

Chili got to his feet, ready to shake hands with a superstar. What surprised him now was how short the guy was in real life.

18

It took Chili a couple of minutes to figure Michael Weir out. He wanted people to think he was a regular guy, but was too used to being who he was to pull it off.

The two of them sitting at the table now, Chili asked him if he wanted a drink. Michael, watching Nicki and her band through the archway, said yeah, that sounded like a good idea. Chili asked him what he wanted. Michael said oh, anything. Did he want Scotch, bourbon, a beer? Michael said oh, and stopped and said no, he’d like a Perrier. Still watching Nicki and the band. They hadn’t started to play. Chili looked over at the bar, not open yet, thinking he’d have to go all the way upstairs to get the movie star his soda water. Right then Michael said, “They’re a tough audience.”

Chili noticed the movie star’s expression, eyebrows raised, like he’d just heard some bad news but was more surprised than hurt.

“My Michael Jackson went right by them.”

Oh—meaning his moonwalk routine. Chili said, “It looked good to me.” It did.

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“To do it right you put on a touch of eye makeup, white socks, the glove . . . I was a little off on the voice too, the baby-doll whisper?”

Chili said, “I couldn’t hear that part.”

“But I can understand it, guys like that, their attitude. It has to do with territorial imperative.”

Chili said, “That must be it,” feeling more at ease with the movie star, knowing a bullshitter when he met one. It didn’t mean the guy wasn’t good.

“I’m not certain why,” Michael said, “but it reminds me of the one, the third-rate actor doing Hamlet?” Michael smiling with his eyes now. “He’s so bad that before long the audience becomes vocally abusive, yelling at him to get off the stage. They keep it up until the actor, finally, unable to take any more, stops the soliloquy and says to the audience, ‘Hey, what’re you blaming me for? I didn’t write this shit.’ ”

Now they were both smiling, Michael still doing his with his eyes, saying, “I could tell those kids I didn’t invent Michael Jackson . . . someone else did.” Chili wondering, if it doesn’t bother him, why didn’t he just drop it? Chili looking for the right moment to bring up Mr. Lovejoy.

He was ready to get into it, said, “Oh, by the way . . .” and Nicki’s band kicked off, filling the room with their sound, and Michael turned his chair to face the bandstand through the archway. They were loud at first, but then settled down and it wasn’t too bad, more like rhythm and blues than rock and roll. The beat got the tips of Chili’s fingers brushing the table. Michael sat with his hands folded in his lap, his legs in the baggy pants stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, the laces of one of his Reeboks loose, coming untied. He looked more like in his thirties than forty-seven. Not a bad-looking guy, even with the nose, Chili studying his profile. There was no way to tell if Michael liked the beat or not. Chili thought of asking him, but had the feeling people waited for the movie star to speak first, give his opinion and then everybody would say yeah, that’s right, always agreeing. Like with Momo, the few times Chili saw him in the social club years ago, noticing the way the guys hung on to whatever Momo said. It was like you had to put kneepads on to talk to this man who never worked in his life.

Chili leaned into the table saying, “You might not remember, but we met one time before.”

He gave the movie star time to look over.

“In Brooklyn, when you were making The Cyclone, that movie.”

Michael said, “You know, I had a feeling we’d met. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, the occasion. Chil, is it?”

“Chili Palmer. We met, it was at a club on 86th Street, Bensonhurst. You dropped by, you wanted to talk to some of the guys.”

“Sure, I remember it very well,” Michael said, turning his chair around to the table.

“You were, I guess you were seeing what it was like to be one of us,” Chili said, locking his eyes on the movie star’s the way he looked at a slow pay, a guy a week or two behind.

“Yeah, to listen more than anything else.”

“Is that right?”

“Pick up your rhythms of speech.”

“We talk different?”

“Well, different in that the way you speak is based on an attitude,” the movie star said, leaning in

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with an elbow on the table and running his hand through his hair. Chili could see him doing it on the screen, acting natural. “It’s like ya tone a voice,” the movie star said, putting on an accent, “says weah ya comin’ from.” Then back to his normal voice, that had a touch of New York in it anyway, saying, “I don’t mean where you’re from geographically, I’m referring to attitude. Your tone, your speech patterns demonstrate a certain confidence in yourselves, in your opinions, your indifference to conventional views.”

“Like we don’t give a shit.”

“More than that. It’s a laid-back attitude, but with an intimidating edge. Cut-and-dried, no bullshit. Your way is the only way it’s going to be.”

“Well, you had it down cold,” Chili said. “Watching you in the movie, if I didn’t know better I’d have to believe you were a made guy and not acting. I mean you became that fuckin guy. Even the fink part,” Chili said, laying it on now. “I never met a fink and I hope to God I never do, but how you did it must be the way finks act.”

The movie star liked that, starting to nod, saying, “It was a beautiful part. All I had to do was find the character’s center, the stem I’d use to wind him up and he’d play, man, he’d play.” The movie star nodding with Nicki’s beat now, eyes half closed, like he was showing how to change into somebody else, saying, “Once I have the authentic sounds of speech, the rhythms, man, the patois, I can actually begin to think the way those guys do, get inside their heads.”

Like telling how he studied this tribe of natives in the jungles of Brooklyn. That’s how it sounded to Chili.

He said, “Okay, I’m one of those guys you mention. What am I thinking?”

The movie star put on an innocent look first, surprised. What? Did I say something? The look gradually becoming a nice-guy smile. He ran both hands through his hair this time.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying an actual metamorphosis takes place, I become one of you. That wouldn’t be acting. I had the opportunity one time, years ago, to ask Dame Edith Evans how she approached her parts and she said, ‘I pretend, dear boy, I pretend.’Well, I’ll get involved in a certain life, observe all I can, because I want that feeling of realism, verisimilitude. But ultimately what I do is practice my craft, I act, I pretend to be someone else.”

“So you don’t know what I’m thinking,” Chili said, staying with it.

It got another smile, a tired one. “No, I don’t. Though I have to say, I’m curious.”

“So, you want to know?”

“If you’d like to tell me, yeah.”

“I’m thinking about a movie.”

“One of mine?”

“One we’re producing and we want you to be in,” Chili said, seeing the movie star’s eyebrows go up, and one of the arms in the worn-out leather jacket, raising his hand as Chili tried to tell him, “It’s one you already know about, you read.”

But Michael wasn’t listening, he was saying, “Wait. Time out, okay?” before lowering his arm and settling back. “I don’t want to come off sounding rude, because I appreciate your interest and I’m flattered, really, that you’d think of me for a part. But, and here’s the problem. My agent won’t let me go

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anywhere near an independently financed production, I’m sorry.”

Chili got to say, “It isn’t that kind—” and the hand shot up again.

“My manager along with my agent, the business heads, they’ve made it our policy. Otherwise, I’m sure you can understand, I’d have pitches coming at me from independents day and night.” The movie star shrugged, helpless, his gaze moving off to the band.

“You think I’m talking about wiseguy money,” Chili said. “No way. This one’s gonna be made at a studio.”

It brought the movie star partway back.

“I’m not connected to those people anymore. Not since I walked out of a loan-shark operation in Miami.”

That brought the movie star all the way back with questions in his eyes, sitting up, interested in the real stuff.

“What happened? The pressure got to you?”

“Pressure? I’m the one applied the pressure.”

“That’s what I mean, the effect that must’ve had on you. What you had to do sometimes to collect.”

“Like have some asshole’s legs broken?”

“That, yeah, or some form of intimidation?”

“Whatever it takes,” Chili said. “You’re an actor, you like to pretend. Imagine you’re the shylock. A guy owes you fifteen grand and he skips, leaves town.”

“Yeah?”

“What do you do?”

Chili watched the movie star hunch over, narrowing his shoulders. For a few moments he held his hands together in front of him, getting a shifty look in his eyes. Then gave it up, shaking his head.

“I’m doing Shylock instead of a shylock. Okay, what’s my motivation? The acquisition of money. To collect. Inflict pain if I have to.” Michael half-closed his eyes. “My father used to beat me for no reason . . . Take the money I earned on my paper route, that I kept in a cigar box . . .”

“Hold it,” Chili said. “I was a shylock—what do I look like?”

“That’s right, yeah,” Michael said, staring at Chili, his expression gradually becoming deadpan, sleepy.

“You the shylock now?”

“Guy owes me fifteen large and takes off, I go after him,” the movie star said. “The fuck you think I do?”

“Try it again,” Chili said. “Look at me.”

“I’m looking at you.”

“No, I want you to look at me the way I’m looking at you. Put it in your eyes, ‘You’re mine, asshole,’ without saying it.”

“Like this?”

“What’re you telling me, you’re tired? You wanta go to bed?”

“Wait. How about this?”

“You’re squinting, like you’re trying to look mean or you need glasses. Look at me. I’m thinking, You’re mine, I fuckin own you. What I’m not doing is feeling anything about it one way or the other. You understand? You’re not a person to me, you’re a name in my collection book, a guy owes me money, that’s all.”

“The idea then,” the movie star said, “I show complete indifference, until I’m crossed.”

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“Not even then. It’s nothing personal, it’s business. The guy misses, he knows what’s gonna happen.”

“How about this?” the movie star said, giving Chili a nice dead-eyed look.

“That’s not bad.”

“This’s what I think of you, asshole. Nothing.”

“I believe it,” Chili said.

“I turn it on when I confront the guy.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t found him yet.”

Chili watched the movie star wondering what he was supposed to do next, giving him a strange look, Chili wondering himself exactly what he was doing, except he could see it right there in his mind so he kept going.

“The guy took off for Las Vegas.”

“How do I know that?” The movie star picking up on it.

“The guy’s wife tells you.”

Chili paused, the movie star waiting.

“Yeah?”

“The wife wants to go with you on account of her husband skipped with all her money . . . three hundred grand,” Chili said, starting to roll and not seeing anywhere to stop, “they conned off an airline after this jet crashed the guy was supposed to be on but wasn’t and everybody was killed.”

The movie star was looking at him funny again.

“If the guy wasn’t on the plane . . .”

“He was, but he got off just before it left and blew up. So his bag’s on the plane, his name’s on the passenger list . . .”

“The wife sues the airline,” the movie star said, nodding. “This is a gutsy babe.”

“Good looking too.”

“The husband takes off with the money, plus he still owes me the fifteen large,” Michael the shylock said, “and the wife and I take off after him. Go on. When do I meet up with the guy and give him the look?”

Chili had to think about it. Tell Michael what actually happened or what he thought would sound better?

“It’s not that simple,” Chili said. “You have to be careful. Leo, the husband, isn’t much to worry about, outside of he could try and nail you from behind if you get close. But there’s another guy that comes along, a hard-on you happen to owe money to. A mob guy. He knows about the three hundred grand and would like to take you out anyway, on account of a past situation.”

This time when Chili paused, wondering how to get back to where this thing had started, the movie star said, “This actually happened, didn’t it? It’s a true story.”

“Basically,” Chili said.

“You’re the shylock.”

“I was at one time.”

“So, did you find the guy? What’s his name, Leo?”

“I found him,” Chili said, “yeah.”

That was a fact. But now he didn’t know what else to say, or how he actually got this far into it.

“You understand, you’re pretending you’re a shylock.”

“Yeah? Go on.”

“I mean that’s all we’re doing. You wanted to see if you can think like a shylock, get in his head. So I gave you a situation, that’s all.”

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“You’re not going to tell me the rest?”

“At this point, basically, that has to be it.”

Michael was giving him a strange look again: not so confused this time, more like he was figuring something out. He said, “Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” and started to grin. “I don’t know how long you’ve been in the business, but that was the most ingenious pitch I’ve ever had thrown at me, and I mean in my entire career. You got me playing the guy, the shylock, before I even realized it was a pitch. So now I have to read the script to find out what happens. Beautiful. Really, that was artfully done.”

Chili said, “Well, actually . . .” The movie star had his head turned and was watching Nicki and her group wailing away. “Actually, what I started to mention, the movie we want you to be in is Mr. Lovejoy. We understand you read the script and like it . . . a lot.”

Now he had to wait for this to make sense, give the movie star time to think about it. Michael said, “Lovejoy,” looking over again. “That’s the one, the florist sees his boy run over?”

“And goes after the guy, to catch him driving his car.”

“What production company was that?”

“ZigZag, Harry Zimm.”

“That’s right, the slime-people guy. I read for Harry when I first started working in features. I did-n’t get the part.”

Chili said, “He turned you down? Come on.”

“I wasn’t Michael Weir then,” Michael said.

He wasn’t kidding either. It sounded strange.

“Anyway, we’re going to Tower Studios with it,” Chili said, and that got a smile from Michael.

He said, “You know what they say about Elaine Levin. She fucked her Rolodex to get where she is. But I’ll tell you something, she didn’t have to if she did. Elaine knows what she’s doing. She made an awful lot of money for Metro up to the time they forced that disaster on her. Did you see it, San Juan Hill?”

“I liked it,” Chili said.

“It wasn’t a bad picture,” Michael said. “It had the facts right for once, the black troops saving Teddy Roosevelt’s ass, but that didn’t sell tickets and it was way overproduced. The picture cost more than the actual war, which hadn’t been done to my knowledge since A Message to Garcia with John Boles. I remember a script called Siboney, the same war, I thought very seriously about doing. That was a fascinating period, the U.S. emerging as a world power, the enactment of the Monroe Doctrine, eminent domain . . . I might look at that script again, Siboney. That was where our troops landed in Cuba.”

“Sounds good,” Chili said, not having any idea what the guy was talking about. He tried to get back to Lovejoy with, “Listen, what we’re thinking—”

But Michael was already saying, “The title does have a nice sound. Build the score around the song. Si-bo-ney, da da da da . . .”

Christ, now he was singing it, against the rock beat in the background.

“Da da da da, Si-bo-ney . . . It’s an old piece but has all kinds of dramatic riffs in it. It can be stirring, romantic, militaristic. Someone like John Williams could score the ass off that picture.”

Chili said, “What I wanted to mention . . .” and paused. The room was quiet again, the band finished

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with their number. “We’re definitely gonna produce the movie at a studio.”

Michael Weir nodded. But now he was getting up, looking over at Nicki raising her guitar strap over her head. He said, “I guess we’re taking off. It was nice talking to you.”

“You have to go, huh?”

“Nicki’s waiting. We’re going to duck out . . .”

“But you like Lovejoy?”

“I like the character, the guy, he has possibilities. But the way the plot develops it turns into a B movie by the time you’re into the second act. Take a look at The Cyclone again, the way a visual fabric is maintained even while the metaphor plays on different levels, with the priest, with the mother . . . so that you never lose sight of the picture’s thematic intent.”

Chili said, “Yeah, well, we’re already making changes. Getting a girl in it, fixing up the ending . . .”

“Sounds good.”

“Can we talk about it, you get a chance?”

“Anytime,” Michael Weir said, moving away. “Call Buddy and we’ll set something up.”

“Buddy?”

“My agent,” the movie star said. “Harry knows him.”

Chili opened the door to 325 to see the message light on the phone blinking on and off. He lit a cigarette before dialing the operator.

She said, “Just a minute.” The one with maybe a Latin accent. She came back on saying, “A Mr. Zimm called. You have a meeting tomorrow, three

P.M. at Tower Studios. He’ll call you in the morning. Let’s see. And a Mr. Carlo called. He said he was going out for the evening and to tell you . . . Mr. Barboni will arrive tomorrow on Delta Flight Eighty-nine at twelve-oh-five. You like me to repeat that?”

Chili told her thanks anyway.

19

Catlett was thinking maybe the best way would be if Lovejoy did have a gun and shot Roxy with it to get his satisfaction.

He was dressed casual today, white linen jacket over French blue India cotton, sitting in Ronnie’s chair in Ronnie’s office waiting for the Bear to come in and report, Marcella’s radio playing Top 40 hits in the other office. There was no reason for her to come in here; Marcella was the kind you said hi to and bye to, you didn’t chat with her.

The audience would like it: see Lovejoy open this old trunk of his, take out a big revolver and load it. Be dramatic, that part, except this was movies and the kind of good guy Lovejoy was couldn’t just go out and shoot the bad guy—like you drive past a man’s house was edging into your business and shoot him off his front steps. Or another time the man was sitting in his car, pull up next to him, bam. The way it was done in real life. The way soon as Yayo threatened him, bye-bye, Yayo, the mean little Colombian now two feet under the desert somewhere off U.S. 10. The Bear had said, “Never again. I don’t clean up after, become an accessory.” The Bear due here any minute now. Yayo’s people in Miami had called asking where he was and Catlett told them, “I saw him take the bag from the locker. He never came back? You have any friends down in Old Mexico could look into it? Check out Acapulco? Ixtapa?” Something you could pull on those people one time only. Losing a hundred and seventy grand and a mule was worth a phone call; it ever happened again, they’d be out. Man, but that money and the stepped-on bag of product in the locker could come in handy for something else now, the way Catlett was looking at his future: his mind going from Lovejoy to Chili Palmer, but most of the time stuck on Chili Palmer and the need to get the man out of the picture.

* * *

The Bear brought Farrah and a video game they plugged into the TV, something to occupy the child while the Bear made his report.

“One, according to the plane ticket on his dresser he’s C. Palmer. Flew here from Vegas and has an open return to Miami. Two, also on the dresser, an Express Mail receipt for a package he sent to a person by the name of Fay Devoe in Miami. Three, the label in his suit and a couple of sport coats are all a men’s store in Miami. So what does that tell you?”

Catlett was watching the little girl playing Top Gun, three years old in a jet fighter, zapping bandits out of the sky. He said, “Look at that child.”

“I mean what else does it tell you,” the Bear said, “outside of he’s from Miami?”

“Not what you’re thinking,” Catlett said. “That he’s connected to Yayo? Uh-unh. He was here before Yayo, has nothing to do with product, or he’d have made some mention of it or let it slip. What else have you got to tell me?”

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“The man has ten grand in casino bank straps, all hundreds.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Laid out in the bottom of his suitcase.”

“You take it?”

“I almost did.”

“Anybody see you go in his room?”

“Come on.”

“Just checking. What about Harry? You put somebody on him?”

“Harry showed up at his apartment yesterday afternoon, stayed about an hour and came out carrying a hanging bag. He drove to an address on La Collina in Beverly Hills, top of the street. I went over there later and spoke to a neighbor’s maid walking the dog. For ten bucks, she says, ‘Oh, that’s a movie star lives there, Karen Flores.’ ”

“Man, I been trying to place that name. Sure, Karen Flores,” Catlett said. “Was in some of Harry Zimm’s pictures and some others after that, but never made it. That’s where he’s been hanging out?”

“It’s where he was last night.”

“That old man—I believe he’s casting. Gonna get himself some of that. Say he’ll give her a part in Lovejoy if she’ll play Great Balls of Fire with him.”

“What’s Great Balls of Fire?”

“You never played it? You light your dick and the woman quick has to blow it out.”

The Bear didn’t say anything.

“Man, you don’t ever smile, do you?”

“If I hear something funny.”

“So—Karen Flores, yeah. The way she was built she could play the whore, except she be too old now. Less they want to do the part as an old whore. That wouldn’t hurt nothing. Get Theresa or Greta for the new female lead.” Catlett paused. He said, “Wait a minute,” getting up straighter in Ronnie’s cushy chair. “Karen Flores, she was married one time to Michael Weir. And Michael Weir’s suppose to be in the movie.”

He saw the Bear watching Farrah shooting down jets with that electronic wapping-zapping sound, hitting every one of them as they popped on the screen, the Bear urging her now, saying, “Get it, honey. Get that son of a bitch.”

“You hear what I’m saying?” Catlett said. “Karen Flores, Michael Weir, and Harry’s over at her house . . . The man wasn’t lying, Harry’s doing the picture with Michael Weir and, man, it’s gonna be big. I had the feeling, you know it, ever since I noticed the way Harry was hanging on to that script. Like it was made of gold and you’d have to kill him to get it. I knew it without even reading it. Then when I did . . .”

The Bear was grinning, watching his little girl.

“There was two copies of the script and Chili Palmer took ’em both. Wouldn’t even consider us getting together on it, the perfect team. Dumbass, hadn’t even read it. And Harry took him as his associate? Bear, this is my chance. Chili Palmer’s gonna have to wait on his, get in line. You listening to me?”

Not only listening the Bear was a jump ahead, saying, “I’m not taking any more trips to the desert. I told you that. Stick my neck out to help your career. You want to be a producer there’s all kinds of deals in this town you can buy into.”

Catlett said, “Not with Michael Weir on a twenty-million-plus production. This is a big big one. No

GET SHORTY 195

mutated bugs, no bloodsucking geeks or kung-fu kind of Rambo assholes kicking the shit out of dress-extras, uh-unh. This’s the big movie I’ve been looking to get in on.”

“They all sound big,” the Bear said, “at the talking stage.”

Catlett said, “Bear, I drive limos now and then.”

“I know that.”

“Why—’cause I like to listen, hear all about the deals and shit happening. Hear who’s hot and who’s not. What names you can take to the bank this month. Learn what studio head is on his way out ’cause he pissed on a big producer’s script. Learn who the hot agents are, what they’re packaging, who’s getting two hundred phone calls a day. Hear the agent tell the actor he’s gonna pull out the guns, kill to make the deal, gonna take no fucking prisoners. Weekends, some of the agents and producers and studio execs, they’re up in the Malibu hills playing war games with these CO₂ guns. Running around in

the woods shooting paint bullets at each other. You hear what I’m saying? They talk about how they’re gonna kill to make a deal. Then they go out and play with toy guns.” Catlett grinned. “Shit, huh? You think I can’t manage with people like that? Man, I’ve done it for real.”

“I’ve played that game,” the Bear said. “It’s fun.”

“And you’ve fallen off buildings and rolled cars and been in five hundred fights—in the movies. But you don’t know what the real thing is like, do you? The ultimate deed. Shoot a man.”

“How many have you?” the Bear said, not watching Farrah now, Farrah on her own.

“What’s the difference, one on five, on ten? One and you’re blooded,” Catlett said, leaning on Ronnie’s desk. “My first time, I was eighteen years old and had gone to Bakersfield to see my mother. Got out of school, picked up an Olds Cutlass, maroon, and drove there from Detroit. This day we’re out for a ride, we stop at a gas station, my mother wanting to use the ladies’ room. The gas station man told her no migrants could use it. Then he changed his mind, said okay. She’s in there, he comes in and starts messing with her. She told me in the car, after. I drove back there, I said to the man, ‘You disrespected my mother. I’d like you to apologize to her.’ He start laughing and told us to get out. My mother was crying the whole time . . . I went back later on to have a talk with the man. He got ugly and I shot him.”

“Eighteen years old,” the Bean said. “Where’d you get the gun?”

“I had it. Brought it with me.”

“But why’d you have it?”

“I was out of school, starting to look over career possibilities.” Catlett smiled. “Way before I knew I wanted to be in the movie business.”

“You killed a man ’cause he showed your mother disrespect?”

“He dissed me too. Said I must be one of those motherfuckers he’d heard about. I did him, got on the interstate and went back to Detroit. Oh, and I took his cash. I sent it to my mother.”

“Show her,” the Bear said, “what a sweet boy you are.”

“I see her. She’s living in Delano now, has friends there she doesn’t want to leave. I bought her a house.”

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“I imagine,” the Bear said, “not knowing any better, she’s proud of you.”

Catlett watched the Bear, rubbing his beard, look over toward the wapping-zapping sound of his child knocking jets out of the sky. A daddy proud of his little girl. It would be fun to have one of those of his own. Pick a good-looking woman with nice features and have one. Pick a woman wasn’t a tighthead. He used to say he didn’t deal in coal when he was running around with white women, but had changed his mind about that, since meeting some fine little sisters out here.

He said, “Bear? This man Chili Palmer, what you suppose he does?”

“Ten grand in his suitcase,” the Bear said, “what do you think, he’s a bank messenger?”

“He scored it at a casino, didn’t he?”

“Whether he did or not,” the Bear said, “the guy’s into some kind of hustle.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve done desk reads in this business,” the Bear said, looking over, “where somebody wants to know, say, what this executive is up to. Like if he’s about to leave with a property he hasn’t told the studio about. They want to know if he might be negotiating someplace. I look at the man’s telephone notes, play his recorder, see who’s on his Rolodex, get to know him. This guy C. Palmer has got nothing that puts him with anybody or tells what he might be doing. He’s too clean. The only thing he had written down on his note pad was ‘Raji’s, Hollywood Blvd. near Vine.’ ”

Catlett frowned. “Raji’s? Man, that’s a hard rock joint. You can tell looking at Chili Palmer he ain’t into that metal shit. I might have to look into that one.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” the Bear said. “You shoot him, you’ll never see me again.”

Catlett started frowning again. “No, man, I don’t want that on my conscience. Focking Yayo, that was different, he could’ve hurt us. And I mean both of us, right? You buried that monkey chaser you were protecting your own ass as much as mine. No, what I’m thinking . . . Bear, you listening?”

“I can hear you.”

“We got the cash out the airport and the stepped-on bag that ain’t worth shit. What I’m thinking, what if Chili Palmer went out there to pick it up?”

Catlett waited for the Bear to turn his head this way, the Bear nodding, seeing the picture.

“Yeah?”

“We even call the feds. Make that anonymous kind of phone-in tip they love to get. What would happen?”

“You’d be out a hundred and seventy grand.”

“When they bust him, haul his ass off to jail.”

“You don’t care about the money?”

“We got stuff for it, didn’t we? We’re not out nothing.”

“He’ll tell the feds he was set up.”

“I ’magine he will, but how’s he gonna put it on me? I don’t even know the man and there isn’t anybody seen us together.”

“Harry has.”

“I can talk to Harry,” Catlett said. “No, the trick will be getting Mr. Chili Palmer to go out to the airport and open that locker.”

Find some way to work that or do it clean and quick, the way Farrah was zapping jets out of the sky.

Catlett said, “Man, she’s gooood.”

The Bear said, “That’s my little ace.”

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Ray Bones came off the Delta flight to find a young guy with more hair and gold jewelry than he needed holding a square of laundry cardboard that said MR BARBONE in black Magic Marker. The young guy’s shirt was open halfway down, his sleeves turned up twice. He said, “Mr. Bar-bone? Welcome to L.A. I’m Bobby, your driver. Mr. DePhillips asked me to extend you his best and be of help any way I can. You have a good flight?”

Bones said, “I hope you drive better than you fuckin spell. My name’s Barboni, not Bar-bone.”

Northbound from the airport on 405, Bones rode in the backseat of the Cadillac enclosed in dark glass. He commented on the traffic. “Shit, this isn’t bad. Miami, we got bumper to bumper all day long.” He asked Bobby the driver, “What’s that over there?”

“Oil wells,” Bobby said.

“They’re ugly fuckin things. You got oil wells and freeways. You got smog . . .”

“You ever wanta go to the beach,” Bobby said, “here’s the freeway you take, we’re coming to.”

“I live in Miami Beach,” Bones said, “and you want to show me a fuckin beach? The sun ever come out here, or you have this smog all the time? Jesus. Where’s downtown at? I don’t see it.”

Four-oh-five to Santa Monica Boulevard to the Beverly Hilton, Bobby telling Bones it was the home of Trader Vic’s, if he liked Chinese. Bones said he hated it. They pulled up to the hotel entrance and got out.

“What do you have for me?”

Bobby opened the trunk, brought out Bones’ luggage, one bag, went back in and came out with a black leather attaché case. “Compliments of Mr. DePhillips. The names and phone numbers are in here. The same ones that were given to your friend Mr. Palmer.”

“What else?”

“It’s in there too. Beretta three-eighty, a nice one.”

“Gimme the car keys.”

“I’m suppose to drive you.”

“Frank DePhillips said extend me his best wishes and help me out any way I want, right?”

“Yeah . . .”

“So gimme the fuckin keys.”

Bones handed the kid five bucks and told him to get a haircut.

20

In the car on the way over, Harry told Chili and Karen what to expect. “We’ll sit down and start schmoozing about the business. Who got fired, divorced, had an abortion, entered a treatment center, moved back to New York, died of AIDS, came out of the closet . . . We’ll get offered something to drink like Evian water or decaffeinated coffee and Elaine will ask if Lovejoy was inspired by a true story reported in the media—since you don’t see that many original ideas that are original and weren’t stolen from a book or a picture made forty years ago—and that’s when I begin to ease into the pitch. I say, ‘You know why you ask that, Elaine? Because Lovejoy is about life, about universal feelings of sorrow and hope. It’s about redemption and retribution, the little guy’s triumph over the system . . .”

Karen said, “Harry, you’re full of shit.”

He said, “If I’m wrong then I haven’t made something like three hundred pitches in my career. You’re talking to a distributor or studio execs, it’s the same thing.”

Karen said, “You haven’t met Elaine Levin.”

Chili had his dark pinstripe suit on, striped shirt and conservative dark tie, walking into Elaine’s office in the Hyman Tower Building on the Tower Studios lot, Hollywood, California. It wasn’t like an office; it was like a big old-fashioned living room with a dining L, but unfinished, or as if all this furniture was in the wrong room. A dark-haired woman in her forties, wearing glasses down on her nose was sitting at a dining room table talking on the phone. She covered it with her hand as they came in and said, “Hi, I’ll be right there. You want a soda, mineral water, some coffee?” She was from New York, no question. Karen gave her a wave saying thanks, but they just had lunch. Harry said to Chili, “What’d I tell you?” They sat down in the living room part, Chili next to Karen on a dull-green sofa that looked like an antique and felt like one, the seat round and hard. Harry was moving his butt around in a chair with a carved wood back and arms, trying to get comfortable. The floor and the walls were bare, no carpeting, no pictures or anything. As Chili was looking around Karen said, “Elaine’s redecorating. All this stuff goes.” Harry said, “Studio office, one week it’s Old English, the next week art deco moderne. You know who makes out in this town, the interior designers. On account of turnover.” Harry started pushing himself up and now Karen got up, so Chili did too as Elaine came over to them, her hand out.

She was smaller than Chili thought she’d be, maybe five-two in her stocking feet, which was the way she actually was, wearing a beige suit with the sleeves pushed up but no shoes. She wasn’t bad looking though, even with that mop of hair all over the place, like she hadn’t combed it in a week. Shaking