They were quiet and then she said, “What’s Nicki like?”
“She’s a rock-and-roll singer.” He thought a moment and said, “She doesn’t shave under her arms.”
“Michael probably goes for that. He thinks he’s earthy.”
“You still like him?”
“I don’t hold anything against him. He’s Michael Weir . . . and he’s great.”
“You mean his acting.”
“What’d you think I meant, in bed? In bed he was funny.”
“Funny in what way?”
“He was
For a few moments they were quiet again.
“He’s a lot shorter than I thought.”
“That’s not his fault,” Karen said.
Chili dropped her off in front of Tribeca, a storefront kind of cafe with the name on the plate glass, and drove up the street looking for a place to park.
They weren’t at that old-time-looking bar or anywhere on the main floor. Chili headed for the open stairway and started up. The place could be called the Manhattan or the Third Avenue, that’s what it looked like, one of those typical overpriced New York bar-restaurants. The TriBeCa area, he thought of warehouses, buildings with lofts, but it was as good a
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name as any. He saw a railing along the upstairs, this end of it open, overlooking the bar. And he saw a guy standing near the top of the stairs, the guy a few steps down but not coming down, standing there waiting for him. A guy in a Hawaiian shirt with beef on him and a full reddish-brown beard.
Moving up the stairs Chili got a good look at the guy and his size. Now he saw Bo Catlett appear above the guy to stand on the top step, almost directly behind him, and Chili knew the guy wasn’t going to move. He got within three steps of the guy and stopped, but not looking up now, not wanting to put himself in that awkward position, his head bent back. He was looking at the guy’s waist now at eye level, where the Hawaiian shirt bloused out of the elastic band of the guy’s blue pants, double-knit and tight on him.
Catlett’s voice said, “I like you to meet my associate, the Bear. Movie stuntman and champion weight lifter, as you might’ve noticed. Picks up and throws out things I don’t want.”
Chili looked at the thickness of the guy’s body, at red and gold hibiscus blossoms and green leaves on a field of Hawaiian blue, but wouldn’t look at his face now. He knew they were hibiscus, because Debbie used to grow them on Meridian Avenue before she flipped out and went back to Brooklyn.
Now the guy was saying, “I know Chili Palmer. I know all about him.”
The Bear sucking in his stomach and acting tough, his crotch right there in Chili’s face. This guy was as nuts as Debbie. You could tell he had his stomach sucked in, because the waistband was creased where the guy’s gut ordinarily hung over and rolled it, the pants as out of shape as this guy trying to give him a hard time. But Chili didn’t look up.
Catlett said, “We think you ought to turn around and go back to Miami.”
Chili still didn’t look up. Not yet.
The Bear said, “Take your ten grand with you, while you still have it.”
And Chili almost looked up—this guy as much as telling him he had been in his hotel room, nothing to it, saw all that dough and left it—but he didn’t. Chili kept his eyes on the guy’s waist and saw the stomach move to press against the elastic band, the guy still putting on his show but giving his gut a breather. Chili looked at the guy’s crotch one more time before moving his gaze up through the hibiscus till he was looking at the guy’s bearded face.
Chili said, “So you’re a stuntman,” with the look he’d use on a slow pay. “Are you any good?”
What the Bear did in that next moment was grin and turn his head to the side, as if too modest to answer and would let Catlett speak for him. It made the next move easier, the guy not even looking as Chili grabbed a handful of his crotch, stepped aside and yanked him off the stairs. The Bear yelled out of pain and fear and caught Chili’s head with an elbow going by, but it was worth it to see that beefy guy roll all the way down the stairs to land on the main floor. Chili kept watching till he saw the guy move, then looked up at Catlett.
“Not bad, for a guy his size.”
* * *
Karen saw it.
There was a scene like it in an Eastwood picture only Clint grabs the guy a little higher. The thug asks
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him where he thinks he’s going. She couldn’t remember if Clint had a line. He’s going upstairs in a hotel to have it out with Bobby Duvall. Grabs the guy with one hand and in a Reverse you see him tumble down the stairs to crash at the bottom. It was a western.
Karen had left the table within moments of seeing Catlett stop at the top of the stairs with the bearded guy, the Bear, in front of him, a few steps below, and knew they were waiting for Chili and something was going to happen. As a film sequence it would work from her point of view if she represented a third party in the scene. Then another setup to get the effect of it on her face. But there would have to be close shots too of what was going on. His hand grabbing the guy’s crotch. A tight close-up reaction shot of the guy’s face. As he begins to scream cut to a Reverse to see him go down the stairs. Catlett was down there now. They were leaving, the guy looking back this way, but not Catlett. Karen watched from the upstairs railing, people from tables around her now asking what happened. Chili was coming past the ones at the top of the stairs. She heard him say, “I guess the guy fell.” Now he was looking at her. He came over and she said, “What did he do to you?” Chili shook his head. He touched her arm and they moved through the tables to the corner booth where Harry was standing with his drink in his hand.
Harry said, “What was that all about?”
Karen sat at one end of the round booth so she’d have an angle on both of them at once and wouldn’t have to turn her head looking from one to the other. She moved the shrimp salad that hadn’t been touched away from her, and the half glass of white wine. Chili brushed bread crumbs away from his place. He would look over, wanting to include her at first, telling them Catlett and the bearded guy, the Bear, had broken into his hotel room and gone through his things. Telling it matter-of-factly, making the point: “These are the kind of people you’re dealing with, Harry. They want me out of the way so they can have a piece of you.” Nice irony. The ex-mob guy telling Harry to look out for the limo guys, they’re crooks.
Harry had been acting strange ever since she arrived and he introduced her to Catlett and Catlett introduced her to his friend the Bear and they let her stand there a few minutes, Harry’s broad, nothing more, while Catlett spoke to him and placed a key on the table next to Harry’s meatloaf. Most of it and the baked potato eaten; he hadn’t touched his green beans. When Catlett got up he smiled and touched her arm and said it was a pleasure. A good-looking guy, he reminded her of Duke Ellington, dressed by Armani or out of that place on Melrose, Maxfield’s, wearing about two thousand dollars’ worth of clothes.
The key wasn’t on the table now.
Harry said to Chili, “You know what he is, you told me. So what? I need a hundred and a half, at least, and he’s loaning it to me, no strings, I write any kind of agreement I want. All I have to do is pick up the dough. Okay? If you have a problem with him that’s your problem. I don’t.”
It seemed that simple till Chili asked, “Is he giving you a check or cash?” and it got interesting. Harry said cash. He said it happened to be waiting right this moment in a locker at the airport. He said
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something about a business deal that didn’t go through and Chili said, “Jesus Christ, the guy’s setting you up. Don’t you see that? You pulled out of their
Karen wished she could write some of it down.
