“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
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