Get Shorty: A Novel

has nothing to do with product, or he’d have made some mention of it or let it slip. What else have you got to tell me?”

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“The man has ten grand in casino bank straps, all hundreds.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Laid out in the bottom of his suitcase.”

“You take it?”

“I almost did.”

“Anybody see you go in his room?”

“Come on.”

“Just checking. What about Harry? You put somebody on him?”

“Harry showed up at his apartment yesterday afternoon, stayed about an hour and came out carrying a hanging bag. He drove to an address on La Collina in Beverly Hills, top of the street. I went over there later and spoke to a neighbor’s maid walking the dog. For ten bucks, she says, ‘Oh, that’s a movie star lives there, Karen Flores.’ ”

“Man, I been trying to place that name. Sure, Karen Flores,” Catlett said. “Was in some of Harry Zimm’s pictures and some others after that, but never made it. That’s where he’s been hanging out?”

“It’s where he was last night.”

“That old man—I believe he’s casting. Gonna get himself some of that. Say he’ll give her a part in Lovejoy if she’ll play Great Balls of Fire with him.”

“What’s Great Balls of Fire?”

“You never played it? You light your dick and the woman quick has to blow it out.”

The Bear didn’t say anything.

“Man, you don’t ever smile, do you?”

“If I hear something funny.”

“So—Karen Flores, yeah. The way she was built she could play the whore, except she be too old now. Less they want to do the part as an old whore. That wouldn’t hurt nothing. Get Theresa or Greta for the new female lead.” Catlett paused. He said, “Wait a minute,” getting up straighter in Ronnie’s cushy chair. “Karen Flores, she was married one time to Michael Weir. And Michael Weir’s suppose to be in the movie.”

He saw the Bear watching Farrah shooting down jets with that electronic wapping-zapping sound, hitting every one of them as they popped on the screen, the Bear urging her now, saying, “Get it, honey. Get that son of a bitch.”

“You hear what I’m saying?” Catlett said. “Karen Flores, Michael Weir, and Harry’s over at her house . . . The man wasn’t lying, Harry’s doing the picture with Michael Weir and, man, it’s gonna be big. I had the feeling, you know it, ever since I noticed the way Harry was hanging on to that script. Like it was made of gold and you’d have to kill him to get it. I knew it without even reading it. Then when I did . . .”

The Bear was grinning, watching his little girl.

“There was two copies of the script and Chili Palmer took ’em both. Wouldn’t even consider us getting together on it, the perfect team. Dumbass, hadn’t even read it. And Harry took him as his associate? Bear, this is my chance. Chili Palmer’s gonna have to wait on his, get in line. You listening to me?”

Not only listening the Bear was a jump ahead, saying, “I’m not taking any more trips to the desert. I told you that. Stick my neck out to help your career. You want to be a producer there’s all kinds of deals in this town you can buy into.”

Catlett said, “Not with Michael Weir on a twenty-million-plus production. This is a big big one. No

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mutated bugs, no bloodsucking geeks or kung-fu kind of Rambo assholes kicking the shit out of dress-extras, uh-unh. This’s the big movie I’ve been looking to get in on.”

“They all sound big,” the Bear said, “at the talking stage.”

Catlett said, “Bear, I drive limos now and then.”

“I know that.”

“Why—’cause I like to listen, hear all about the deals and shit happening. Hear who’s hot and who’s not. What names you can take to the bank this month. Learn what studio head is on his way out ’cause he pissed on a big producer’s script. Learn who the hot agents are, what they’re packaging, who’s getting two hundred phone calls a day. Hear the agent tell the actor he’s gonna pull out the guns, kill to make the deal, gonna take no fucking prisoners. Weekends, some of the agents and producers and studio execs, they’re up in the Malibu hills playing war games with these CO₂ guns. Running around in

the woods shooting paint bullets at each other. You hear what I’m saying? They talk about how they’re gonna kill to make a deal. Then they go out and play with toy guns.” Catlett grinned. “Shit, huh? You think I can’t manage with people like that? Man, I’ve done it for real.”

“I’ve played that game,” the Bear said. “It’s fun.”

“And you’ve fallen off buildings and rolled cars and been in five hundred fights—in the movies. But you don’t know what the real thing is like, do you? The ultimate deed. Shoot a man.”

“How many have you?” the Bear said, not watching Farrah now, Farrah on her own.

“What’s the difference, one on five, on ten? One and you’re blooded,” Catlett said, leaning on Ronnie’s desk. “My first time, I was eighteen years old and had gone to Bakersfield to see my mother. Got out of school, picked up an Olds Cutlass, maroon, and drove there from Detroit. This day we’re out for a ride, we stop at a gas station, my mother wanting to use the ladies’ room. The gas station man told her no migrants could use it. Then he changed his mind, said okay. She’s in there, he comes in and starts messing with her. She told me in the car, after. I drove back there, I said to the man, ‘You disrespected my mother. I’d like you to apologize to her.’ He start laughing and told us to get out. My mother was crying the whole time . . . I went back later on to have a talk with the man. He got ugly and I shot him.”

“Eighteen years old,” the Bean said. “Where’d you get the gun?”

“I had it. Brought it with me.”

“But why’d you have it?”

“I was out of school, starting to look over career possibilities.” Catlett smiled. “Way before I knew I wanted to be in the movie business.”

“You killed a man ’cause he showed your mother disrespect?”

“He dissed me too. Said I must be one of those motherfuckers he’d heard about. I did him, got on the interstate and went back to Detroit. Oh, and I took his cash. I sent it to my mother.”

“Show her,” the Bear said, “what a sweet boy you are.”

“I see her. She’s living in Delano now, has friends there she doesn’t want to leave. I bought her a house.”

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“I imagine,” the Bear said, “not knowing any better, she’s proud of you.”

Catlett watched the Bear, rubbing his beard, look over toward the wapping-zapping sound of his child knocking jets out of the sky. A daddy proud of his little girl. It would be fun to have one of those of his own. Pick a good-looking woman with nice features and have one. Pick a woman wasn’t a tighthead. He used to say he didn’t deal in coal when he was running around with white women, but had changed his mind about that, since meeting some fine little sisters out here.

He said, “Bear? This man Chili Palmer, what you suppose he does?”

“Ten grand in his suitcase,” the Bear said, “what do you think, he’s a bank messenger?”

“He scored it at a casino, didn’t he?”

“Whether he did or not,” the Bear said, “the guy’s into some kind of hustle.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve done desk reads in this business,” the Bear said, looking over, “where somebody wants to know, say,