Get Shorty: A Novel

right in the middle, in a courtyard. Harry had recommended it and made the reservations, saying it used to be popular with rock groups and guys whose wives had kicked them out of the house for one reason or another. What Chili had in 325 was a twohundred-buck suite with windows facing apartment balconies about fifty feet away; but that was okay, he wouldn’t be looking out much. There was a phone in the bedroom, another one on the counter separating the living room from the kitchenette. Chili got the number of the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he asked for Larry Paris, the operator said just a moment, she’d connect him, Chili wondering how the little drycleaner had ever come this far as dumb as he was, going to the track every day and living in a four-hundred-dollar suite Chili would bet couldn’t be any nicer than this one. It had an oriental look to it, maroon lamps shaped like pagodas. He let it ring till the operator came back on to say Mr. Paris’s room was not answering. Chili had no intention of speaking to him anyway. He hung up and phoned Tommy Carlo at home, six P.M. in Miami.

“How about Nicole?”

“You mean Nicki,” Tommy said. “I got hold of the guy use to be her manager through the booking service. You remember him? Marty, little guy with hair down to his ass?”

“Yeah, sorta.”

“He’s the A and R guy for a record company in Los Angeles, scouts new talent. He says Nicki’s getting ready for a gig at Raji’s on Hollywood Boulevard. She’s been rehearsing there, putting a new band together and that’s prob’ly where you’ll find her. Raji’s on Hollywood Boulevard. I think Marty said east of Vine, you got it?”

Chili was making notes on the Sunset Marquis pad by the phone. “Yeah. What about Bones? When’s he coming?”

GET SHORTY 131

“I don’t know any more’n I told you already.”

“You find out anything, call me, okay?”

Chili gave him the number and said, “I’ll see you.”

“When?” Tommy said.

It stopped him.

Chili said, “I don’t know, I may be going into the movie business, see what it’s like.”

Now it sounded like Tommy was stopped. “What’re you talking about? You wanta be a movie star?”

“I’m no actor. I’m talking about producing.”

“How you gonna do that? You don’t know shit about making movies.”

“I don’t think the producer has to do much,” Chili said. “The way it is here, this town, it goes out in all directions with all kinds of shit happening. You know what I mean? Like there’s no special look to the place. Brooklyn, you got streets of houses are all exactly the same. Or Brooklyn in general, you know, has a bummed-out look, it’s old, it’s dirty. . . . Miami has a look you think of stucco, right? Or high-rises on the beach. Here, wherever you look it’s something different. There homes’ll knock your eyes out, but there’s a lot of cheap shit, too. You know what I mean? Like Times Square. I think the movie business is the same way. There aren’t any rules—you know, anybody saying this’s how you have to do it. What’re movies about? They’re all different, except the ones that’re just like other movies that made money. You know what I’m saying? The movie business, you can do any fuckin thing you want ’cause there’s nobody in charge.”

Tommy said, “Hey, Chil, you know what I think?”

“What?”

“You’re fulla shit.”

He sat down on the sofa to relax for a while in his new surroundings with the oriental look, turned on the TV and punched remote control buttons to see what they had out here. . . . As many Spanish programs as Miami . . . The Lakers playing Golden State . . . Shane. He hadn’t seen Shane in years. Chili got low in the sofa, his feet on the glass coffee table, and watched from the part where Shane beats the shit out of Ben Johnson for calling him sody pop to where he shoots Jack Wilson, practically blows him through the wall. It was almost real the way the guns went off in that movie, loud, but still not as loud as you heard it in a room, shooting a guy in the head just a little too high, and now the guy was coming out here.

Chili left his rented Toyota in the hotel garage, hiked up Alta Loma the half block to Sunset and had to stop and catch his breath from the climb, out of shape, before walking along Sunset till he was opposite white storefronts across the street. It was dark, a stream of headlights going by. He stood waiting for a break in the traffic, his gaze on the white building, and began to wonder why a light was on in Harry’s office. He was pretty sure it was Harry’s, the wide window with the venetian blinds. Maybe the cleaning woman was in there.

Chili jogged across the wide street, let himself in and climbed the stairs to ZigZag Productions, dark except for a light at the end of the hall. It was Harry’s office, but not a cleaning woman who looked up from the desk as Chili entered.

GET SHORTY 133

It was the colored limo guy, Bo Catlett, wearing glasses and with a movie script open in front of him.

Catlett said, “This ain’t bad, you know it? This Mr. Lovejoy. The title’s for shit, but the story, man, it takes hold of you.”

14

Chili walked toward the desk thinking he’d better nail the guy right away, not say a word, hit him with the phone, wrap the cord around his neck and drag him out. Except the guy had not busted the door, jimmied the lock, he wasn’t robbing the place, he was sitting there with his glasses on reading a script. The guy telling him now, “I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. I’m at the part—let’s see, about fifteen pages to go— Lovejoy’s coming out of court with his sister, can’t believe what’s happened to him.” Chili reached the red leather chairs facing the desk, the guy saying, “I want to know how it ends, but don’t tell me.” Saying, “Yeah, I can see why Harry’s dying to do it.”

The guy talking about the script, but saying to Chili at the same time, Let’s see how cool you are.

Chili sat down in one of the red leather chairs. He unbuttoned the jacket of his pinstripe suit to get comfortable and said, “I don’t like the title either.”

For a moment he saw that dreamy look in the man’s eyes, almost a smile.

“You understand I knew Harry was lying,” Catlett said. “I’m talking about his saying this was

GET SHORTY 135

n’t any good, but holding on to it, man, like you have to break his fingers to get it from him.” Catlett paused. “I’m explaining to you what I’m doing here. Case you think I come to rob the place, rip off any this dusty old shit the man has.”

Chili said, “No, I’d never make you as a burglar, not with that suit you have on. It tells me what you do— when you’re not taking people for rides in your limo.”

“It’s funny, I was thinking along the same line,” Catlett said. “Guys in your business you don’t see dressed up much anymore, but you have a nice suit of clothes on.”

“You mean the movie business,” Chili said.

There was that little slow gleam in Catlett’s eyes again, showing understanding, maybe appreciation.

“Movie people don’t dress up either, ’cept the agents. You see an agent duded up it means he’s taking a serious meeting someplace, at a studio or a network. Or he wants you to think it’s what he’s doing. Or the older crowd, at Chasen’s, in the front room, they dress up. But I’m talking about your main business, working for the Italians.”

“Yeah? How you know that?”

“Man, listen to you. You street, same as me, only we from different sides of it,” Catlett said. “See, the first thing I wonder about I see you, I ask myself, What’s this man Chili Palmer doing here? Is he’n investor? Harry called you his associate, but what does that mean? I never heard your name spoken in the business or read it in Variety or The Reporter or anyplace. I kept thinking till it came to me. It’s wiseguy money financing Lovejoy and Frank DePhillips, the man, put you here to look out for Harry, see he doesn’t mess up or keep people like

myself from bothering him.”

“You’re part right,” Chili said.