“You have to go, huh?”
“Nicki’s waiting. We’re going to duck out . . .”
“But you like Lovejoy?”
“I like the character, the guy, he has possibilities. But the way the plot develops it turns into a B movie by the time you’re into the second act. Take a look at The Cyclone again, the way a visual fabric is maintained even while the metaphor plays on different levels, with the priest, with the mother . . . so that you never lose sight of the picture’s thematic intent.”
Chili said, “Yeah, well, we’re already making changes. Getting a girl in it, fixing up the ending . . .”
“Sounds good.”
“Can we talk about it, you get a chance?”
“Anytime,” Michael Weir said, moving away. “Call Buddy and we’ll set something up.”
“Buddy?”
“My agent,” the movie star said. “Harry knows him.”
Chili opened the door to 325 to see the message light on the phone blinking on and off. He lit a cigarette before dialing the operator.
She said, “Just a minute.” The one with maybe a Latin accent. She came back on saying, “A Mr. Zimm called. You have a meeting tomorrow, three
P.M. at Tower Studios. He’ll call you in the morning. Let’s see. And a Mr. Carlo called. He said he was going out for the evening and to tell you . . . Mr. Barboni will arrive tomorrow on Delta Flight Eighty-nine at twelve-oh-five. You like me to repeat that?”
Chili told her thanks anyway.
19 
Catlett was thinking maybe the best way would be if Lovejoy did have a gun and shot Roxy with it to get his satisfaction.
He was dressed casual today, white linen jacket over French blue India cotton, sitting in Ronnie’s chair in Ronnie’s office waiting for the Bear to come in and report, Marcella’s radio playing Top 40 hits in the other office. There was no reason for her to come in here; Marcella was the kind you said hi to and bye to, you didn’t chat with her.
The audience would like it: see Lovejoy open this old trunk of his, take out a big revolver and load it. Be dramatic, that part, except this was movies and the kind of good guy Lovejoy was couldn’t just go out and shoot the bad guy—like you drive past a man’s house was edging into your business and shoot him off his front steps. Or another time the man was sitting in his car, pull up next to him, bam. The way it was done in real life. The way soon as Yayo threatened him, bye-bye, Yayo, the mean little Colombian now two feet under the desert somewhere off U.S. 10. The Bear had said, “Never again. I don’t clean up after, become an accessory.” The Bear due here any minute now. Yayo’s people in Miami had called asking where he was and Catlett told them, “I saw him take the bag from the locker. He never came back? You have any friends down in Old Mexico could look into it? Check out Acapulco? Ixtapa?” Something you could pull on those people one time only. Losing a hundred and seventy grand and a mule was worth a phone call; it ever happened again, they’d be out. Man, but that money and the stepped-on bag of product in the locker could come in handy for something else now, the way Catlett was looking at his future: his mind going from Lovejoy to Chili Palmer, but most of the time stuck on Chili Palmer and the need to get the man out of the picture.
* * *
The Bear brought Farrah and a video game they plugged into the TV, something to occupy the child while the Bear made his report.
“One, according to the plane ticket on his dresser he’s C. Palmer. Flew here from Vegas and has an open return to Miami. Two, also on the dresser, an Express Mail receipt for a package he sent to a person by the name of Fay Devoe in Miami. Three, the label in his suit and a couple of sport coats are all a men’s store in Miami. So what does that tell you?”
Catlett was watching the little girl playing Top Gun, three years old in a jet fighter, zapping bandits out of the sky. He said, “Look at that child.”
“I mean what else does it tell you,” the Bear said, “outside of he’s from Miami?”
“Not what you’re thinking,” Catlett said. “That he’s connected to Yayo? Uh-unh. He was here before Yayo, 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.”