Chili said, “Lemme give you some advice, okay?”
Harry looked up, the phone in his hand again, about to punch the number.
“You don’t want to act like a hard-on you’re standing there in your undies. You know what I’m saying? You got enough to handle. You got the markers and you got another outstanding debt if I’m not mistaken. What you wanta do, Harry, is use your head, sit down and talk to me.”
It stopped him. “What outstanding debt?”
“Put the phone down.”
“I want to know what you’re talking about,” Harry said, getting a peeved tone now, indignant, “outside of what I owe at Mesas, which they know I’m good for.”
“They know you’re good up to your last trip. After that, as they say, nobody knows nothing.” Chili waited.
Harry hung up the phone. He felt the chair against his bare legs and sat down.
“A marker’s like a check, Harry . . .”
“I know what a marker is.”
“They don’t want to deposit yours and have ’em bounce, insufficient funds, or they find out the account’s closed. That’s embarrassing. So your customer rep, your very dear friend Dick Allen’s been calling, leaving messages on your machine, but you never get back to him. So basically, you want to know why I’m here—I don’t actually work for Mesas, but Dick Allen asked me as a favor would I look you up. Okay, I come to L.A., try your apartment, your office, you’re not anywhere around. So I contact some people I know of, get a few leads—”
“What people?”
“You have high blood pressure, Harry? You oughta lose some weight.”
“
“You don’ know ’em, some people I was put in touch with. So I start calling around. I call here, Karen tells me she hasn’t seen you. So we talk, I ask her if this’s the Karen Flores used to be in the movies. Yes, it is. Well, how come I haven’t seen you? . . . I remember her in
“You think I’m hiding out?”
“What’re you getting excited about?”
“I don’t like the insinuation, I’m hiding.”
“Well, that’s up to you, what you like or what you don’t. I called your former wife, the one in Westwood? She goes, ‘I hope you’re a bill collector and you find the cheapskate.’ ”
“You have fun talking about me? Jesus,” Harry said, “that broad used to work for me. She’s supposed to know the business, but apparently has no idea what I was going through at the time.” His gaze moved to the bottle of Scotch thinking of Marlene, who liked her booze, also thinking he wouldn’t mind having one.
“You’re not looking at me, Harry.”
“Why do I have to keep looking at you?”
“I want you to.”
“You gonna get rough now, threaten me? I make good by tomorrow or get my legs broken?”
“Come on, Harry—Mesas? The worst they might do is get a judgment against you, uttering a bad check. I can’t imagine you want that to happen, man in your position.”
“I’ve won there and I’ve lost,” Harry said, staying with the peeved tone. “They carry me and I always pay what I owe. But now all of a sudden they’re worried I’m gonna stiff ’em? Why? They don’t give you a credit line of a hundred and a half unless they know you’re good for it.”
“What’s that, Harry?”
“You heard me.”
“What I heard,” Chili said, “your credit line’s an even hunnerd and they gave you the extra fifty TTO, this trip only, ’cause you had front money, that cashier’s check for two hunnerd thousand, right? Four hours later, the night’s still young, it’s all gone, the two you rode in on and the hunnerd and a half. It can happen to anybody. But now a couple months go by, Dick Allen wonders if there’s a problem here, if Harry Zimm was playing with scared money. He says you never put down more than ten on a basketball game in your life. You come in this time and drop the whole load, like you’re not doing it for fun.”
“I didn’t have to twist any arms. I told ’em what I wanted to put down and they okayed it.”
“Why not? It’s your money.”
“They tell you what game it was and the point spread? Lakers and the Pistons, in Detroit. Which happens to be where I grew up. Now I’m out here I follow the Lakers, had seats up to last year. Not down there with Jack Nicholson, but they weren’t bad seats. You don’t recall the game?”
“I mighta read about it at the time. What was the spread?”
The guy showing interest. It picked Harry up.
“The sports book line had the Pistons by three and a half. The bad boys from Motown over the glamor boys from showtown.”
“You live here,” Chili said, “but you like the Pistons. I can understand that. I don’t live in New York anymore, I’m in Miami, but I still follow the Knicks, put a few bucks on ’em now and then. Even though it’s been years.”
“I don’t happen to bet that way,” Harry said, “emotionally. I like the Pistons this time ’cause they’re at home, twenty thousand screaming fans on their ass. Also the fact they beat the Lakers four zip in the finals last year.”
He had the guy’s attention; no question about it, waiting to hear about a basketball game that was played more than two months ago.
“You know how I bet it?”
“You went with the Pistons and the Lakers won.”
“I went with the Pistons,” Harry said, “and the Pistons won.”
Right away Chili said, “The point spread.”
Harry sat back in the director’s chair. “The Pistons by three and a half. The score was one-ohtwo to ninety- nine. They won and I lost.”
Now Chili sat back. “That was close. You almost did it.”
The guy showing sympathy. Good. Harry wanted him to get up now, shake hands and leave. But the guy was staring at him again.
“So then you go through your credit line playing blackjack,” Chili said, “chasing what you lost, going double-up to catch up. But when you have to win, Harry, that’s when you lose. Everybody knows that.”
“Whatever you say,” Harry said, tired of talking about it. He yawned. Maybe the guy would take the hint.
But Chili kept at it. He said, “You know what I think? You went in the hole on some kind of deal, so you tried to bet your way out. See, I don’t know anything about your business, Harry, but I know how a guy acts when he’s facing a payment he has to make and he doesn’t have it. You get desperate. I know a guy put his wife out on the street, and she wasn’t bad looking either.”
“You don’t know anything about my business,” Harry said, showing some irritation, “but you don’t mind sticking your nose in it. Tell Dick Allen I’ll cover the markers in the next sixty days, at the most. He doesn’t like it, that’s his problem. First thing in the morning,” Harry said, “I’m gonna call him, the prick. I thought he was a friend of mine.”
Harry paused, wondering whether or not he should ask the guy how he got in the house, and decided he didn’t want to know. The guy says he broke a window—then what? Harry waited. He was tired, irritable, not feeling much of a glow. He said, “We gonna sit here all night or what? You want me to call you a cab?”
The guy, Chili, shook his head. He kept staring, but with a different kind of expression now, more thoughtful, or maybe curious.
“So you make movies, huh?”
“That’s what I do,” Harry said, relieved, not minding the question. “I produce feature motion pictures, no TV. You mentioned
The guy, Chili, was nodding as he came forward to lean on the desk.
“I think I got an idea for one, a movie.”
