He had waited this long so as not to be seen or run into by other cars on the street. Most went to bed early in this town, but some stayed out to party and drove home drunk when the bars closed or in a nod. Four A.M. was the quietest time. He had been here now since four-twenty. Shit. If Chili Palmer didn’t come down in the next two minutes he’d have to go upstairs and find him.
Chili put on his pants and shoes, Karen watching him, and got out the Lakers T-shirt he’d bought at the airport to go with Karen’s Lakers T-shirt if he got lucky. But when he did, when they came upstairs earlier and jumped in bed, he wasn’t thinking of T-shirts.
This one fit pretty well. Karen probably couldn’t see what it was. He walked over to the bedroom door and stood listening. He was pretty sure the movie was
Rio Bravo.
After about a minute Karen said, “Are you going down?”
He turned to look at her.
“I don’t know.”
She said, “Then I will,” getting out of bed.
“You’re as bad as Harry.”
He watched her pull on the bulky sweater and a pair of jeans. She looked about twenty. When she came over to the door he raised his hand and then laid it on her shoulder.
“What if it isn’t Harry?”
“Someone else comes in and pulls exactly the same stunt?”
She was calm about it. He liked that.
“I think Harry might’ve told Catlett, and that’s who it is.”
She said, “Oh.”
Maybe accepting it, he wasn’t sure. “Or it could be somebody Catlett sent. You don’t have a gun, do you? Any kind would be fine.”
Karen shook her head. “I could call the police.”
“Maybe you better. Or call Harry first, see if he’s home.”
She moved past him to the bed, sat on the edge as she picked up the phone from the night table, punched Harry’s number and waited. And waited. Karen shook her head. “He’s not home.”
“He could be asleep, passed out.”
“It’s Harry,” Karen said, coming away from the bed. “I’m sure. Paying you back.”
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Maybe, though it wasn’t Chili’s idea of a payback, the kind that kept you looking over your shoulder waiting to happen. He wanted to believe Karen was right. It was Harry trying to be funny. She knew Harry a lot better than he did. He wanted so much to believe her that he said, “Okay, I’ll go. I’ll sneak down the stairs.” He looked through the doorway to the big open area that reached from the foyer below at a high domed ceiling above the curved staircase and the upstairs landing. “You stand over there by the railing, okay? You can see the door to the study. I don’t want any surprises. You see anything at all, let me know.”
“How?” Karen said.
“I don’t know, but I’ll be watching you.”
Time to do it. Catlett got up from the desk with the big Hardballer ready to fire. He moved past the lit-up noisy screen where John Wayne and Dean Martin were shooting bad guys and ducking bullets singing off walls, the bad guys falling through those rickety porch railings. El Dorado was the name of it. Fine sound effects to go with what he was about to do. Loud, but not as loud as the Hardballer would be once he had it pointed at Chili Palmer. Catlett moved through the doorway into the front hall, heard his heels click on the tile and turned enough to face the stairway. He bent his head back to look at the upstairs railing that curved around the open part of the second floor and looked back at the stairway: did it quick to catch something dark there partway down, a shape against the light-colored wall. There was that moment he had to decide was it Chili Palmer or the woman and said Chili Palmer, though right then didn’t care if he had to do them both, he was this far. Catlett raised the Hardballer to put it on the shape, got it almost aimed and a scream came at him out of the dark—a scream that filled the house and was all over him and he started firing before he was ready, firing as that scream kept screaming, firing at that shape dropping flat on the stairs, firing till that fucking scream turned him around without thinking and he ran down a hall to the back of the house and got out of there.
The first thing Karen said was, “I haven’t screamed in ten years,” amazed that she could still belt one out. Chili told her it was a terrific scream, she ought to be in the movies. The second thing she said was, “We’d better call the police.” And he said, not yet, okay? But didn’t say why.
Now they were downstairs: Karen waiting in the kitchen, lights on, the television off, Chili looking around outside. She watched him come in shaking his head and noticed his purple and gold T-shirt for the first time.
“You said last night the Bear called?”
She nodded toward the counter saying, “The number’s by the phone,” and watched him walk over and look at the notepad next to it. “I have a T-shirt like that only it’s white.”
He said, “I know you do.”
“Is that why you got one?”
She watched him with the phone in his hand now punching numbers. He waited and said, “Bear? Chili Palmer.” She watched him listen for several moments before he said, “Yeah, well he tried. Tell me where he lives.” He listened and said, “I’ll find it.” Then lis
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tened again, longer, for at least a minute, and said, “It’s up to you,” and hung up. “You didn’t answer my question,” Karen said. “Is
that why you bought it?” He said, “I guess so,” and turned to walk out. “You’re going to Catlett’s house—why?” “I’m not gonna spend another twelve years wait
ing for something to fall on me.” “What did the Bear want?” “He’s gonna meet me there.”
27
Catlett had put on Marvin Gaye to pick him up, Marvin Gaye’s voice filling the house now with “I’ll Be Doggone.” No sun yet: barely starting to get light out on the deck.
This tape he was playing had all of Catlett’s favorites on it gathered from other tapes and records. It had “The Star-Spangled Banner” on it, Marvin Gaye doing our national anthem, and had “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” he did with Tammi Terrell, deceased. Both of them now. Marvin Gaye, the Prince of Motown, shot dead by his own father in the hot moment of an argument, a pitiful waste . . . Catlett thinking, And you can’t shoot a man needs to be done?
If it was the man, Chili Palmer, on the stairs and not the woman. Trying to decide which was what had thrown him off at the time and then the scream coming to finish the job, a scream like he hadn’t heard since Slime Creatures, Karen Flores doing her famous scream, which meant it must have been Chili Palmer on the stairs and maybe he did hit him and the job was done, ’cause Chili Palmer had gone
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down, shot . . . Or had dropped down to get out of the way. All that had been in his head coming home, thinking Karen Flores would call the cops when she quit screaming. That was the reason he wiped the gun clean and almost chucked it in some weeds going up Laurel Canyon; but didn’t.
Came home, put his car in the garage part of the house, ran inside and changed from his black racecar-driver coveralls to his white silk dressing gown, barefoot. Mussed up the bed, mussed up his hair and then combed it again, Marvin Gaye doing his “Sexual Healing” now when he heard the car outside the front and thought of cops. He knew they couldn’t have a court-signed search warrant this soon, so did-n’t worry about the gun; he went to the front window with a sleepy innocent expression ready. But it was-n’t even a car. The headlights aimed at the house close went off and it was a van parked in the drive: the Bear getting out now, coming to the door with a suitcase.
Catlett let him in saying, “You know what time it is?” What anybody would say.
“I want to get rid of this,” the Bear said, holding the Black Watch plaid suitcase Yayo had brought. “I came by last night after you called me, but you weren’t home, so I came in to leave this stuff,” the Bear said, talking all at once, “but then I thought no, I better deliver it in person and you check what’s in
here. Less what Ronnie took out for Palm Desert.”
Catlett said, “Wait now. You came in my house last night?”
“I just told you I did,” the Bear said.
This stove-up muscle-bound stuntman sounding arrogant. Catlett took it as strange. He said, “Bear, why you talking to me like that? I thought you and I got along pretty good, never argued too much. I always considered you my friend, Bear.”
“I’m the one falls down the goddamn stairs,” the Bear said. “But you take a fall, that other kind, and I go with you, huh? Well, I don’t need a friend that bad.”
“What?” Catlett frowned at him. “What I said on the phone to you? Man, I was putting you on is all. How’m I gonna scare you? I said, ’cause I was a mean motherfucker, right? When do I ever talk like that?”
“It’s what you are, whether you say it or not,” the Bear said. “I’ll tell you right now, I don’t fucking trust you. I want you to look in this suitcase and see what’s in it, so you don’t say later on I took any.”
Catlett watched the Bear lay the bag on the floor and get down on his knees to zip it open.
“Eight keys,” the Bear said, “right?”
“Right. You want a receipt?”
He watched the Bear zip the bag closed and said to him on the floor, “Listen to Marvin Gaye doing ‘Ain’t That Peculiar,’ Bear. Ain’t it, though. You coming by this time of day, can’t wait? How come you haven’t asked me anything?”
Catlett watched the Bear get to his feet, the size of him rising up in that shirt full of flowers.
“You haven’t asked did I get in the woman’s house without you helping me. Did I do what I went in there for.”
“You didn’t,” the Bear said, “or you’d have told me soon as I walked in. Then you’d give me some shit about keeping my mouth shut, saying I’m in it too.”
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Look at that, Catlett thought, surprised, but not taking it as strange anymore, seeing how the Bear’s mind was working.
“I told you I quit and I meant it.”
Telling him more than that.
“What’s wrong with me?” Catlett said. “You talked to Chili Palmer, didn’t you? Since you quit. When was it, last night? . . . This morning?”
The Bear didn’t answer, or have to, Catlett seeing the dumbass half-a-grin on the Bear’s face, trying to look wise, the Bear here because Chili Palmer was coming.
Catlett said, “Bear, I’m glad you stopped by,” and left him, went in the bedroom and got the big .45 out of the bureau where he’d put it, slipped it in the pocket of his dressing gown and had to keep hold of it on account of the gun’s weight and size. He heard two sounds then, as if timed to come one right after the other:
Heard a car drive up to the front.
And heard Marvin Gaye begin his “Star-Spangled Banner,” recorded at the Forum before an NBA All-Star game: Marvin’s soul version accompanied by a lone set of drums. Listen to it. A way to start this show by dawn’s early light. Marvin’s soul inspiring Catlett, setting his mood, telling him to be cool.
Chili found the house looking for a van parked in front, a little stucco Spanish ranch house, half two-car garage, it looked like, till he was inside and saw how the house was built out into space. Across the living room the doors to the deck were wide open. All he could see out there was sky starting to show light. He wanted to have a look and must have surprised Catlett and the Bear when he walked past them saying, “So this’s one of those houses you see way up hanging over the cliff.” Meaning from Laurel Canyon Drive. It didn’t get any kind of comment.
He half turned in the doorway, light behind him now, to see the Hawaiian Bear standing by a suitcase on the floor, Mr. Catlett in his bathrobe, hands shoved in the pockets, soul music coming from somewhere in the white living room. Hardly any color showing at five-thirty in the morning. White carpeting, white sectional pieces forming a square, white artwork on the walls that might have spots of color. Green plants showed dark, the suitcase on the floor, dark, Catlett’s face dark, his bare feet in the white carpeting dark. He would say he hadn’t been out of the house. It didn’t matter. Chili knew where to begin and was about to when he realized, Jesus Christ, it was the national anthem playing, some guy doing it as blues.
Chili got his mind back on Catlett and started over saying, “I’ve been shot at before—once by accident, twice on purpose. I’m still here and I’m gonna be here as long as I want. That means you’re gonna have to be somewhere else, not anywhere near me or Harry. If you understand what I’m saying I won’t have to pick you up and throw you off that fuckin balcony.”
“My turn,” Catlett said, feeling Marvin Gaye behind him and the big .45 in his right hand, inside the silky pocket.
He moved toward Chili Palmer saying, “You mean out there, that balcony? That’s my sun deck,
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man. You gonna try your rough stuff I want to move us off my seventy-bucks-a-yard carpeting, so it don’t get messed up.”
The way Chili Palmer stood looking at him Catlett thought he’d have to show the gun; but the man moved, walked out on the deck looking across to where the canyon road cut through to climb over into the Valley. Catlett glanced aside, motioning to the Bear to go out there too.
“Say you been shot at before,” Catlett said, following them out. “I can believe it. What I can’t understand is you’re not dead.”
“I been lucky,” Chili said, “but I’m not gonna press it. Okay, what can I do, go to the cops and complain? I read in the paper a guy was knocked off and dumped out’n the desert ’cause he was trying to ace this woman out of a movie deal and she had him killed. I was surprised—you know, it’s only a movie. But it’s high stakes, so I guess it can happen. I look at me and you in maybe the same kind of situation. I get shot at over it and I think, you bet your ass it can happen. But I’m in and you’re out. You understand? That’s the way it’s gonna be.”
“It cost forty million and some to make that movie,” Catlett said, “the one the guy was killed over. But you know what? The movie bombed, man, and everybody lost money. It’s high stakes and it’s high risk too. What I’m saying, I’m not gonna let you be in my way.”
He heard Marvin Gaye coming to “home of the brave,” the end of the anthem, and felt a need to hurry, get this done. Time to bring out the Hardballer and he did, putting it on Chili Palmer standing in the middle of the deck.
“You broke in my house and I have a witness to it,” Catlett said, glancing at the Bear. “Witness or accessory, I’ll go either way.” He said to Chili Palmer, standing there looking stupid in a purple Lakers T-shirt and suit pants, “Only no sound effects this time, huh? John Wayne and Dean Martin shooting bad guys in El Dorado.”
“It was Rio Bravo,” Chili said.
“Robert Mitchum was the drunk in El Dorado, Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, practically the same part. John Wayne, he also did the same thing in both. He played John Wayne.”
Chili couldn’t tell if Catlett believed him or not, but it was true. He had won five bucks off Tommy Carlo one time betting which movie Dean Martin was in. He could mention it though he doubted it would interest Catlett much. So he got down to what this was all about and said to him, “Okay, you win. I go back to Miami and you become the mogul, how’s that? I’m not gonna argue with anybody holding a gun on me.” The biggest fuckin automatic he’d ever seen in his life. “I’ll leave today. You want, you can see me get on the plane.” Catlett kept pointing the gun, but with a fairly calm look on his face. Chili had a feeling the guy was going to say okay, go. And then maybe threaten that if he ever saw him again . . .
But it was the Bear, for Christ sake, who got into it then, the Bear saying, “I’m a witness, Cat. Go ahead, do it.” And Chili saw the gun barrel come up an inch or so to point right at his chest.
“You don’t have to,” Chili said, “I’m telling you. It’s not worth it, man.”
That fuckin Bear, now what was he doing? Taking Catle
tt by the arm, telling him, “You got to
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set it up, have a story for when they ask you how it happened. If I’m in it, I won’t do it any other way. It’s like I used to choreograph fight scenes,” the Bear said. “You’re over there and he’s coming at you. You don’t want to shoot him and he knows it. So you keep backing away till the last second and you don’t have any choice.”
“Like I say, ‘I warned him, Officer,’ ” Catlett said, getting into it, “ ‘but he kept coming at. me . . .’ Hey, but he should have a weapon, a knife or something.”
“We’ll get it later,” the Bear said. “He’s here . . .” The Bear took Chili’s shoulders in both hands and moved him two steps back, toward the door, then motioned to Catlett. “You’re around on that side. Yeah, right there. Okay, now you start backing away. Go ahead.”
Catlett said, “You worked this in a movie, huh?”
“Now you go toward him,” the Bear said to Chili.
Chili didn’t move. He said, “You’re out of your fuckin mind,” and tried to turn, get out of there, but the Bear got behind him to grab hold of his shoulders again.
“This’s okay where he is,” the Bear said to Catlett. “You understand why we’re doing this. You see it happen, you’re able to remember each step when you tell it.”
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