Get Shorty: A Novel

“He could be asleep, passed out.”

“It’s Harry,” Karen said, coming away from the bed. “I’m sure. Paying you back.”

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Maybe, though it wasn’t Chili’s idea of a payback, the kind that kept you looking over your shoulder waiting to happen. He wanted to believe Karen was right. It was Harry trying to be funny. She knew Harry a lot better than he did. He wanted so much to believe her that he said, “Okay, I’ll go. I’ll sneak down the stairs.” He looked through the doorway to the big open area that reached from the foyer below at a high domed ceiling above the curved staircase and the upstairs landing. “You stand over there by the railing, okay? You can see the door to the study. I don’t want any surprises. You see anything at all, let me know.”

“How?” Karen said.

“I don’t know, but I’ll be watching you.”

Time to do it. Catlett got up from the desk with the big Hardballer ready to fire. He moved past the lit-up noisy screen where John Wayne and Dean Martin were shooting bad guys and ducking bullets singing off walls, the bad guys falling through those rickety porch railings. El Dorado was the name of it. Fine sound effects to go with what he was about to do. Loud, but not as loud as the Hardballer would be once he had it pointed at Chili Palmer. Catlett moved through the doorway into the front hall, heard his heels click on the tile and turned enough to face the stairway. He bent his head back to look at the upstairs railing that curved around the open part of the second floor and looked back at the stairway: did it quick to catch something dark there partway down, a shape against the light-colored wall. There was that moment he had to decide was it Chili Palmer or the woman and said Chili Palmer, though right then didn’t care if he had to do them both, he was this far. Catlett raised the Hardballer to put it on the shape, got it almost aimed and a scream came at him out of the dark—a scream that filled the house and was all over him and he started firing before he was ready, firing as that scream kept screaming, firing at that shape dropping flat on the stairs, firing till that fucking scream turned him around without thinking and he ran down a hall to the back of the house and got out of there.

The first thing Karen said was, “I haven’t screamed in ten years,” amazed that she could still belt one out. Chili told her it was a terrific scream, she ought to be in the movies. The second thing she said was, “We’d better call the police.” And he said, not yet, okay? But didn’t say why.

Now they were downstairs: Karen waiting in the kitchen, lights on, the television off, Chili looking around outside. She watched him come in shaking his head and noticed his purple and gold T-shirt for the first time.

“You said last night the Bear called?”

She nodded toward the counter saying, “The number’s by the phone,” and watched him walk over and look at the notepad next to it. “I have a T-shirt like that only it’s white.”

He said, “I know you do.”

“Is that why you got one?”

She watched him with the phone in his hand now punching numbers. He waited and said, “Bear? Chili Palmer.” She watched him listen for several moments before he said, “Yeah, well he tried. Tell me where he lives.” He listened and said, “I’ll find it.” Then lis

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tened again, longer, for at least a minute, and said, “It’s up to you,” and hung up. “You didn’t answer my question,” Karen said. “Is

that why you bought it?” He said, “I guess so,” and turned to walk out. “You’re going to Catlett’s house— why?” “I’m not gonna spend another twelve years wait

ing for something to fall on me.” “What did the Bear want?” “He’s gonna meet me there.”

27

Catlett had put on Marvin Gaye to pick him up, Marvin Gaye’s voice filling the house now with “I’ll Be Doggone.” No sun yet: barely starting to get light out on the deck.

This tape he was playing had all of Catlett’s favorites on it gathered from other tapes and records. It had “The Star-Spangled Banner” on it, Marvin Gaye doing our national anthem, and had “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” he did with Tammi Terrell, deceased. Both of them now. Marvin Gaye, the Prince of Motown, shot dead by his own father in the hot moment of an argument, a pitiful waste . . . Catlett thinking, And you can’t shoot a man needs to be done?

If it was the man, Chili Palmer, on the stairs and not the woman. Trying to decide which was what had thrown him off at the time and then the scream coming to finish the job, a scream like he hadn’t heard since Slime Creatures, Karen Flores doing her famous scream, which meant it must have been Chili Palmer on the stairs and maybe he did hit him and the job was done, ’cause Chili Palmer had gone

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down, shot . . . Or had dropped down to get out of the way. All that had been in his head coming home, thinking Karen Flores would call the cops when she quit screaming. That was the reason he wiped the gun clean and almost chucked it in some weeds going up Laurel Canyon; but didn’t.

Came home, put his car in the garage part of the house, ran inside and changed from his black racecar-driver coveralls to his white silk dressing gown, barefoot. Mussed up the bed, mussed up his hair and then combed it again, Marvin Gaye doing his “Sexual Healing” now when he heard the car outside the front and thought of cops. He knew they couldn’t have a court-signed search warrant this soon, so did-n’t worry about the gun; he went to the front window with a sleepy innocent expression ready. But it was-n’t even a car. The headlights aimed at the house close went off and it was a van parked in the drive: the Bear getting out now, coming to the door with a suitcase.

Catlett let him in saying, “You know what time it is?” What anybody would say.

“I want to get rid of this,” the Bear said, holding the Black Watch plaid suitcase Yayo had brought. “I came by last night after you called me, but you weren’t home, so I came in to leave this stuff,” the Bear said, talking all at once, “but then I thought no, I better deliver it in person and you check what’s in here. Less what Ronnie took out for Palm Desert.”

Catlett said, “Wait now. You came in my house last night?”

“I just told you I did,” the Bear said.

This stove-up muscle-bound stuntman sounding arrogant. Catlett took it as strange. He said, “Bear, why you talking to me like that? I thought you and I got along pretty good, never argued too much. I always considered you my friend, Bear.”

“I’m the one falls down the goddamn stairs,” the Bear said. “But you take a fall, that other kind, and I go with you, huh? Well, I don’t need a friend that bad.”

“What?” Catlett frowned at him. “What I said on the phone to you? Man, I was putting you on is all. How’m I gonna scare you? I said, ’cause I was a mean motherfucker, right? When do I ever talk like that?”

“It’s what you are, whether you say it or not,” the Bear said. “I’ll tell you right now, I don’t fucking trust you. I want you to look in this suitcase and see what’s in it, so you don’t say later on I took any.”

Catlett watched the Bear lay the bag on the floor and get down on his knees to zip it open.

“Eight keys,” the Bear said, “right?”

“Right. You want a receipt?”

He watched the Bear zip the bag closed and said to him on the floor, “Listen to Marvin Gaye doing ‘Ain’t That Peculiar,’ Bear. Ain’t it, though. You coming by this time of day, can’t wait? How come you haven’t asked me anything?”

Catlett watched the Bear get to his feet, the size of him rising up in that shirt full of flowers.

“You haven’t asked did I get in the woman’s house without you helping me. Did I do what I went in there for.”

“You didn’t,” the Bear said, “or you’d have told me soon as I walked in. Then you’d give me some shit about keeping my mouth shut, saying I’m in it too.”

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Look at that, Catlett thought, surprised, but not taking it as strange anymore, seeing how the Bear’s mind