Get Shorty: A Novel

“Part or mostly?”

“You know DePhillips?”

“Enough about him.”

“Then you oughta know if I worked for a guy like DePhillips,” Chili said, “we wouldn’t be talking. I would’ve thrown you out that window by now. I don’t work for him and I don’t work for Harry, either. It’s what he said, I’m his associate.”

Catlett slipped his glasses off. “You must bring something heavy to the deal.”

“That’s right, me,” Chili said, and watched the man’s smile come all the way, showing goldwork on his teeth.

Catlett said, “But no special talent, huh? Walk in off the street and become a film producer. You the financial or the creative side?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Can I ask you—how ’bout your lead? Who you see for Lovejoy?”

“We’re getting Michael Weir.”

“Hey, shit, come on. How you gonna do that?”

“I put a gun right here,” Chili said, touching the side of his head, “and I tell him, ‘Sign the paper, Mikey, or you’re fuckin dead.’ Like that.”

“I wonder,” Catlett said, “would that work. Man, it would simplify dealing with movie stars. They get temper’mental on you, lay the piece alongside their head. ‘Get back to work, motherfucker.’ Yeah, Michael Weir, he’d be good. You got anybody else?”

“We’re working on it.”

“You know who I see for Al Roxy? Harvey Keitel. The man could do it with his eyes closed. But

GET SHORTY 137

you know who else? Morgan Freeman. You know who I mean?”

Chili said, “Yeah, Morgan Freeman. But he’s a colored guy.”

“Where’s it say in the script he’s white? Color is what the part needs, man, somebody to do it has some style. The way it is now Ronnie could do it, play himself, a cracked-out asshole. You also what you need is a good woman part, get some love in it. The only women you have now, you have Lovejoy’s sister, on his ass all the time, and you have that whore friend of Roxy’s, but she’s only in two scenes.”

Chili was trying to think of the name of the girl in the one page of the script he’d read. Not Irene . . .

“You know what I’m saying? A good juicy woman part.”

Chili gave him a nod, still trying to think of the girl’s name.

“You have Lovejoy smelling his flowers, right. So what you need is a woman different than he is to come along and help him out. Like, say, Theresa Russell, man. Or the one, what’s her name? Greta something . . .”

“Greta Scacchi,” Chili said.

“That’s the one. That’s how you pronounce it, huh, Skacky? I never knew that. I heard Scotchy, I never heard Skacky.”

“You’re hearing it now,” Chili said.

“Sexy woman. You can go either way, Greta or Theresa Russell,” Catlett said. “Take Roxy’s friend the whore and make her more important. You understand? Like he beats up on her, so she goes to Lovejoy, tells him something important will help him out, just about the time he’s thinking of giving up.”

Chili remembered the girl’s name in the script. “There’s Ilona.”

“What about her?”

“Get something going there.”

“With Ilona? You know how old Ilona is?”

Chili got out a cigarette and lit it. He felt the guy watching him. “Yeah, she’s young.”

“She’s sixteen,” Catlett said, “same age as Lovejoy’s kid, Bernard, she calls Bernie.”

“I was thinking you could make her older.”

The guy kept staring at him.

“You do that, you lose her telling things to Lovejoy about his own son he don’t know about, when he thought he was so close to the boy.” Catlett paused a moment and said, “Have you read this?”

“Part of it, yeah.”

“Part of it?” Catlett said, sitting back in Harry’s creaky chair. “You know what it’s about?”

“I know Lovejoy’s following this other guy . . .”

There was a silence, not long, Chili and Catlett looking at each other until Catlett said, “Al Roxy, the one he’s following around, killed his kid.”

“Killed him—how?”

“Ran over him with his car. On his way home drunk, hits the kid crossing the street and keeps going. It’s right in front of Lovejoy’s flower shop. He sees it happen and almost goes to pieces right there, his boy laying dead. Before this we know Lovejoy’s wife left him and all he has is this boy. The boy and his flower business, that’s his whole life.”

Chili didn’t say anything.

He hadn’t read the script, so the guy was telling him about it and it seemed okay. Why not? Saying now there was a witness who got the license number . . .

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“So the cops pick up Roxy, he says he didn’t know he hit anybody. It’s the next day, so there’s no way to tell he was drinking, but they have evidence, find some blood on his car matches up . . . Anyway, Roxy’s lawyer does a job on the court and all the man gets is his license suspended, can’t drive a car for six months. Lovejoy, he’s at the court hearing, can’t believe it. That’s all? The motherfucker kills my kid and that’s all he gets? That’s what he’s thinking, but see, the man is too . . . well, he’s too timid to come out and say anything. After it’s over Roxy says to Lovejoy, ‘Tough break. But the kid shouldn’t have run out in the street.’ Or, ‘The kid should have watched where he was going.’ Something like that.”

“What’s Roxy do?” Chili said. “I mean, what kind of work?”

“He runs a body shop. You know, bump and paint. Does good too. This is in Detroit it takes place, Harry’s hometown, though he don’t have a fondness for the city like I do. I lived there nine years.”

A question popped into Chili’s mind.

“You ever do time?”

The guy started to smile, then let it go.

“I been bound over, but no jail time, no.”

“So what happens?”

“Lovejoy gets it into his head Roxy, sooner or later, is gonna drive his car, this Cadillac. So what Lovejoy does, he takes his florist delivery van and changes it over. Paints out the name, has peep-holes cut in the sides and gets in there with a video camera. He’s gonna stay on Roxy every time the man shows himself. The minute he ever drives off in a car, Lovejoy is gonna have it on tape and show it to the cops.”

“Ilona helps him out?”

“She drives him after school and they talk about Bernard, the kid. See, but now he’s letting his business go to hell and his sister gets on him. Her and her husband, this big asshole that’s always giving Lovejoy a hard time. It’s good the way it starts out, but then it gets slow in the middle. You see Roxy, what he’s doing. Likes to drink, likes to gamble, but you don’t see him do anything so bad you get the idea the man’s dangerous. You know what I’m saying? Like if Lovejoy gets too close and Roxy sees what he’s doing, Lovejoy could get taken out. What I was thinking was if Lovejoy finds out the man’s got some kind of crooked deal going.”

“Using his place as a chop shop,” Chili said. “Buys hot cars, cuts ’em up and sells the parts.”

“Yeah, that’s the kind of thing. Then get the woman in it, she’s the one tells Lovejoy what the setup is.”

“He catch the guy driving or not?”

“Yeah, he catches him, videos the man driving down the road. Catches him the last day he’s gonna do