build and his hair shorter than Chili’s, stepped in to put his hand on Leo’s shoulder.
Chili said, “What’s this guy do, Leo, stop traffic you want to cross the street?”
“Well, this is a surprise,” Leo said, “believe me. What’re you doing here?”
“I’m collecting,” Chili said. “Twenty grand even.”
Leo pushed his sunglasses up on his nose. He seemed to be squinting, puzzled. “I owe you twenty? How you figure that?”
“Expenses,” Chili said, “and a late charge I’m adding on.”
The young weight lifter had his eyes narrowed, giving Chili his ten-bucks-an-hour bodyguard look.
“Mr. Paris, is this guy bothering you?”
Leo waved him off. “It’s okay, Jerry.” Still looking at Chili. “I was gonna call you, it slipped my mind. Listen, when I’m through here we’ll have a drink, I’ll write you a check.” Turning to the table he said, “It’s good seeing you, Chil,” and began picking up his chips.
“You’ll write me a check,” Chili said. “You serious? Leo, look at me, I’m talking to you.”
“I’m busy at the moment,” Leo said, studying the table layout. “Okay? You mind?”
He was serious.
It didn’t make sense till Chili began to think about it, staring at Leo’s shoulders rounded inside that sporty green jacket, his sprayed hair hanging over the Hollywood collar, and said, “Lemme ask you something, Leo.”
“You heard Mr. Paris,” the ten-dollar bodyguard said. “He don’t want to talk to you.”
“Okay, you ask him,” Chili said, watching Leo reach over the table to cover his action numbers. “Does he think I just happened to run into him . . .” He saw Leo begin to straighten, bringing his arm in. “Or I knew where to look?”
Leo turned from the table. The old Leo once again, Leo the loser. He took the case from the bodyguard.
“How much you want?”
“What you owe me. I’m not into extortion, Leo. I will give you one piece of advice you can take any way you want. Call Fay. And I mean tonight, soon.” He felt the bodyguard start to move in and said to him, “Keep out of this. There’s no problem.” Now the bodyguard didn’t know what to do. Leo was bringing a stack of currency from the briefcase. “We’re old friends,” Chili said to the bodyguard. “I knew him when.”
Leo handed him the currency saying, “Fay told you, huh?”
“What’d you expect?” Chili said, looking hard at Leo, wondering what was going on in the little drycleaner’s head. “What’re you doing, Leo? You nuts or something? Can you tell me?”
Leo raised his face, sunglasses shining in the light. “What am I
The dealer, watching them with his arms folded, said, “We have a problem here, gentlemen? I can get the floorman.”
Benny Wade told him on the phone to go in the door next to the cage, the cashier’s window, take a left at the hard count room, go down past the coffeemaker and the Xerox machine and you’re there. Benny came out from behind his computer terminal—gray-haired, easygoing, not at all what Chili thought an ex-FBI agent should look like. He didn’t act like a guy who’d once been a hard-on in wing tips, either.
“So you found him.”
“I found him,” Chili said, “then lost him again.”
“You told me on the phone you collected.”
“I did. I wanted to see him about something else. He was suppose to call his wife last night—it’s a long story. I talked to her and found out he never called, so I wanted to see him again. This morning I go over the Plaza, he’s gone, checked out.”
“Maybe he’s back on the Strip.”
“No, he left, went to L.A.”
“Let me see what we have there,” Benny said, sat down at the computer and began tapping keys. “Yeah, one of Dick Allen’s customers, guy owes us a hundred and fifty K, over sixty days. You want to talk to Dick? I mean if you’re going to L.A.”
“Yeah, why not.”
Benny sat there staring at him. “You found this guy Leo and collected. But you don’t seem too happy about it. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know if I told you, I had my ass in a crack when I came here.”
“You mentioned it in passing.”
“It’s still there,” Chili said. “You remember your saying to me last night I was lucky, should lay down some bets?”
“Don’t tell me the rest,” Benny said, “I don’t want to feel responsible.”
“I’m not blaming you, I’m the one did it.”
“Okay then, how much you lose?”
“What I collected, less some change.”
7 
“You know why it doesn’t work?” Harry said. “I mean even before I find out you don’t know how it ends. There’s nobody to sympathize with. Who’s the good guy? You don’t have one.”
Chili said, “The shylock’s the good guy.” Sounding surprised.
Harry said, “You kidding me? The shylock’s the heavy in this. Leo’s the victim, but we don’t give a shit about him either. You don’t have a good guy, you don’t have a girl in it, a female lead . . . you have a first act, you’re partway into the second.”
Chili said to him, “I guess I better tell you about my coat getting ripped off and this guy named Ray Bones I shot one time and wants to pay me back.”
Harry said, “Jesus Christ.” He said, “Yeah, I think you better.”
They were still in the kitchen, three A.M., drinking coffee now and smoking Chili’s cigarettes till he ran out and Harry found a pack of Karen’s menthols.
“That’s everything?” Harry said.
“Pretty much.”
“You have scenes that appear to work, but don’t quite make it,” Harry said, wanting to know more about this guy without encouraging him too much. “The one in the casino, for example, at the roulette table. You don’t do enough with the bodyguard.”
“Like what?”
“The scene,” Harry said, “that type of scene in a picture, should build a certain amount of tension. The audience is thinking, Jesus, here it comes. They know you’re a tough guy, they want to see how you handle the bodyguard.”
“Yeah, well in real life,” Chili said, “you start something in a casino, you get thrown out and told don’t come back. What I didn’t mention, the next day it was the bodyguard, Jerry, told me Leo got on a flight to L.A. I had to find him first, check the different companies rent out bodyguards.”
“You have to threaten him?”
“You want me to say I beat him up,” Chili said, “this guy bigger’n I am. What I did, I took him out to breakfast. I even asked him how Leo did. Jerry goes, ‘Oh, not too bad. I put him on that airplane with four hundred fifty-four thousand dollars, that’s all.’ ”
“Why would he tell you that?”
“The kid was dying to tell me, it made him feel important. It’s like saying you know where a movie star lives, being on the in.”
Harry said, “I know where all kinds of movie stars live. It doesn’t do a thing for me.”
Chili said, “Yeah? I wouldn’t mind driving past some of their homes sometime.”
“You know who used to live right here? Cary Grant.”
“No shit. In this house?”
“Or it was Cole Porter, I forget which.”
Harry was lighting another one of Karen’s menthols, tired, getting a headache now, but staying with it.
“So you have no idea where Leo is, other than he’s in L.A.”
“I don’t even know that for sure. Fay, his wife, still hasn’t heard. I called her again, she gave me a name to
