place, over in Toluca Lake. You want to get a look at actual homes you can see, I’ll show you where two of the Three Stooges used to live, also Joan Crawford, George Hamilton . . . Who else? The house Elvis Presley lived in when he was out here. It’s in Bel Air. You know he made over thirty pictures and the only one I saw was
Chili kept thinking about right after the limo guys left saying to Harry, “What’s wrong with you? What’d you tell ’em all your business for? Whyn’t you do like I told you?”
Harry said, “What?” Acting surprised and then offended. “I had to tell ’em
“What’d we talk about, Harry, before? The way to handle it, you weren’t gonna tell ’em shit. Isn’t that right?”
“It didn’t work out that way.”
“No, ’cause you wouldn’t shut up. You want these guys off your back, I tell you okay, here’s how we do it. Next thing I know you’re saying yeah, maybe they can have a piece of
“I said I’d think about it. What does that mean? In this business, nothing. I was buying time. All I have to do is hold ’em off till I make a deal at a studio.”
“That’s the difference between me and you,” Chili said. “I don’t leave things hanging. If I wanted Karen to talk to Michael I’d say, ‘Karen, how about talking to Michael for me?’ I told the limo guys it wasn’t any of their fuckin business, period. They don’t like it, that’s too bad. What’s the guy gonna do, Catlett, take a swing at me? He might’ve wanted to, but he had to consider first, who is this guy? He don’t know me. All he knows is I’m looking at him like if he wants to try me I’ll fuckin take him apart. Does he wanta go for it, get his suit messed up? I mean even if he’s good he can see it would be work.”
“He could’ve had a gun,” Harry said.
“It wasn’t a gun kind of situation. You don’t pack, Harry, less you’re gonna use it. You say Ronnie plays with his in the office. That told me something right there. Then, soon as I saw the colored guy, I knew he was the one in charge. I asked him—you heard me—he goes yeah, without coming right out and saying it. Ronnie’s sitting there, he don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“What colored guy?”
“Who do you think? Catlett. I don’t know how you could’ve missed that. He lets the rich kid think he’s the boss, but Catlett’s pulling his strings. You don’t see that?”
Harry said, “You think he’s a black guy?” Sounding surprised again.
“I know he is. Harry, I’ve lived in Brooklyn, I’ve lived in Miami, I’ve seen all different shades and mixtures of people and listened to ’em talk and Catlett’s a black guy with light-colored skin, that’s all. Take my word.”
“He doesn’t talk like a black guy.”
“What do you want him to say, Yazza, boss? He might be part South American,” Chili said, “have some other kind of blood in him too, but I know he’s colored.”
They left the office talking about Catlett and the rich kid. Now they were in the car heading for Michael Weir’s house, Chili wanting to get a good look at it, maybe let Harry drop him off and he’d stroll by. Harry said, “You see anybody out strolling? Not in this part of Beverly Hills. It’s against the law to be seen on the street.”
“The one on the left,” Harry said, “that’s where Dean Martin used to live.” Chili looked at the house without saying anything. “The one coming up—see
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the gate? Kenny Rogers rented that while he was having his new home built. You know what he paid a month? Fifty thousand.”
“Jesus Christ,” Chili said.
“Okay, right around the bend on the left, the one that looks like the place they signed the Declaration of Independence, that’s Michael’s house.”
Coming up and now passing it: red brick with white trim behind a vine-covered brick wall and a closed iron gate. Through the bars Chili could see the drive curving up to the front door. He wondered if Michael Weir was in there at this moment.
“Why don’t we ring the bell, see if he’s home?”
“You don’t get to see him that way, believe me.”
“Go by again.”
Harry nosed the Mercedes into a drive, backed around and came past the house saying, “Worth around twenty million, easy.”
“It doesn’t look that big.”
“Compared to what, the Beverly Hills Hotel? It’s twelve thousand square feet plus a tennis court, pool, cabana guesthouse and orange trees on three acres.”
“Jesus Christ,” Chili said. He could see the upper windows as they crept past the wall, the top part of a satellite dish in the side yard.
“There’s no way you could sit in your car and watch the house,” Harry said, “without attracting the police inside of two minutes. If you’re thinking of waiting for him to come out.”
“What’s he do for fun?”
“His girlfriend lives with him. When he’s not here, he’s in New York. Has a place on Central Park West.”
“I’d like to find out more about him,” Chili said, “where he goes, so maybe I can run into him.”
“Then what?”
“Don’t worry about it. I got an idea.”
“There was a piece on him, a cover story,” Harry said, “fairly recently in one of the magazines. About his career, his life. I remember there’s a shot of him with his girlfriend. She was in entertainment, I think a singer with a rock-and-roll group when he met her. I wouldn’t be surprised Karen has the magazine. I know she gets the trades, has stacks of ’em she keeps—I don’t know why.”
“I have to go back there anyway,” Chili said, “pick up my car.”
For a minute or so he was quiet, catching glimpses of the big homes through the trees and manicured shrubs, all the places so clean and neat and not a soul around, nobody outside. Not like Meridian Avenue, South Miami Beach. Not anything like Bay Ridge, Jesus, you had to go all the way over past the Veterans Hospital to Dyker Beach Park to find trees of any size.
He said to Harry, “You know the one Michael Weir was in,
“Sure, every picture Michael’s in,” Harry said, “he researches the part, finds out exactly how he’s supposed to play it. That’s why he’s so good.
“Well, basically, yeah, he sounded okay,” Chili said. “What I couldn’t believe, they would’ve let him in, the kind of simple asshole he was. Or let him get away after, a snitch? He would’ve ended up with his
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dick in his mouth. I don’t mean to say there aren’t assholes in those different crews, they’re full of ass-holes. I just mean the particular kind of asshole he was in the movie.”
“If he played a Mafia character,” Harry said, “then I guarantee you he talked to some of them.”
“Tommy would know,” Chili said. “Tommy Carlo. I could call him and double-check.”
“For what?”
“I’d like to know. Me and Tommy were both in Miami when they were making the movie, but he’d remember it. It was at the time we were running the club for Momo. Tommy was the one booked the different groups’d come in. Made him feel he was in the entertainment world.”
“Well, if you want,” Harry said, “call him from Karen’s.”
“What if she’s not home? We just walk in?”
“It didn’t bother you before.”
“That was different. I’m not gonna bust in.”
