Leo turned from the table. The old Leo once again, Leo the loser. He took the case from the bodyguard.
"How much you want?"
"What you owe me. I"m not into extortion, Leo. I will give you one piece of advice you can take any way you want. Call Fay. And I mean tonight, soon." He felt the bodyguard start to move in and said to him, "Keep out of this. There"s no problem." Now the bodyguard didn"t know what to do. Leo was bringing a stack of currency from the briefcase. "We"re old friends," Chili said to the bodyguard. "I knew him when."
Leo handed him the currency saying, "Fay told you, huh?"
"What"d you expect?" Chili said, looking hard at Leo, wondering what was going on in the little drycleaner"s head. "What"re you doing, Leo? You nuts or something? Can you tell me?"
Leo raised his face, sungla.s.ses shining in the light. "What am Ido ing? You kidding? I"m doing what I never dreamed in my whole life I"d ever have a chance to. That"s what I"m doing." ing? You kidding? I"m doing what I never dreamed in my whole life I"d ever have a chance to. That"s what I"m doing."
The dealer, watching them with his arms folded, said, "We have a problem here, gentlemen? I can get the floorman."
Benny Wade told him on the phone to go in the door next to the cage, the cashier"s window, take a left at the hard count room, go down past the coffeemaker and the Xerox machine and you"re there. Benny came out from behind his computer terminal-gray-haired, easygoing, not at all what Chili thought an ex-FBI agent should look like. He didn"t act like a guy who"d once been a hard-on in wing tips, either.
"So you found him."
"I found him," Chili said, "then lost him again."
"You told me on the phone you collected."
"I did. I wanted to see him about something else. He was suppose to call his wife last night-it"s a long story. I talked to her and found out he never called, so I wanted to see him again. This morning I go over the Plaza, he"s gone, checked out."
"Maybe he"s back on the Strip."
"No, he left, went to L.A."
"Let me see what we have there," Benny said, sat down at the computer and began tapping keys. "Yeah, one of d.i.c.k Allen"s customers, guy owes us a hundred and fifty K, over sixty days. You want to talk to d.i.c.k? I mean if you"re going to L.A."
"Yeah, why not."
Benny sat there staring at him. "You found this guy Leo and collected. But you don"t seem too happy about it. What"s the matter?"
"I don"t know if I told you, I had my a.s.s in a crack when I came here."
"You mentioned it in pa.s.sing."
"It"s still there," Chili said. "You remember your saying to me last night I was lucky, should lay down some bets?"
"Don"t tell me the rest," Benny said, "I don"t want to feel responsible."
"I"m not blaming you, I"m the one did it."
"Okay then, how much you lose?"
"What I collected, less some change."
7.
"You know why it doesn"t work?" Harry said. "I mean even before I find out you don"t know how it ends. There"s n.o.body to sympathize with. Who"s the good guy? You don"t have one."
Chili said, "The shylock"s the good guy." Sounding surprised.
Harry said, "You kidding me? The shylock"s the heavy in this. Leo"s the victim, but we don"t give a s.h.i.t about him either. You don"t have a good guy, you don"t have a girl in it, a female lead ... you have a first act, you"re partway into the second."
Chili said to him, "I guess I better tell you about my coat getting ripped off and this guy named Ray Bones I shot one time and wants to pay me back."
Harry said, "Jesus Christ." He said, "Yeah, I think you better."
They were still in the kitchen, three a.m., drinking coffee now and smoking Chili"s cigarettes till he ran out and Harry found a pack of Karen"s menthols.
"That"s everything?" Harry said.
"Pretty much."
"You have scenes that appear to work, but don"t quite make it," Harry said, wanting to know more about this guy without encouraging him too much. "The one in the casino, for example, at the roulette table. You don"t do enough with the bodyguard."
"Like what?"
"The scene," Harry said, "that type of scene in a picture, should build a certain amount of tension. The audience is thinking, Jesus, here it comes. They know you"re a tough guy, they want to see how you handle the bodyguard."
"Yeah, well in real life," Chili said, "you start something in a casino, you get thrown out and told don"t come back. What I didn"t mention, the next day it was the bodyguard, Jerry, told me Leo got on a flight to L.A. I had to find him first, check the different companies rent out bodyguards."
"You have to threaten him?"
"You want me to say I beat him up," Chili said, "this guy bigger"n I am. What I did, I took him out to breakfast. I even asked him how Leo did. Jerry goes, "Oh, not too bad. I put him on that airplane with four hundred fifty-four thousand dollars, that"s all." "
"Why would he tell you that?"
"The kid was dying to tell me, it made him feel important. It"s like saying you know where a movie star lives, being on the in."
Harry said, "I know where all kinds of movie stars live. It doesn"t do a thing for me."
Chili said, "Yeah? I wouldn"t mind driving past some of their homes sometime."
"You know who used to live right here? Cary Grant."
"No s.h.i.t. In this house?"
"Or it was Cole Porter, I forget which."
Harry was lighting another one of Karen"s menthols, tired, getting a headache now, but staying with it.
"So you have no idea where Leo is, other than he"s in L.A."
"I don"t even know that for sure. Fay, his wife, still hasn"t heard. I called her again, she gave me a name to check, some broad she knows Leo met at a drycleaners" convention. It"s why I"m staying at the motel over on Ventura Boulevard. It"s near Hi-Tone Cleaners, the broad"s place, but she"s out of town. I"m hoping she"s with Leo and they"ll be back sometime."
"Say you find him, then what?"
Chili didn"t answer right away and Harry waited. He saw the guy himself having far more possibilities than his idea for a movie.
"There are different ways I could go with it," Chili said. "Basically, you might say it"s the wife"s money. It was paid toher. " "
"Basically," Harry said, "it"s the airline"s money. That doesn"t bother you?"
"Bother me-I didn"t cop it, they did."
"Yeah, but you"re talking about going halves with the wife."
"No, I said that"s what she offered. I never said anything else about it. There might even be a few things, Harry, I haven"t told you."
Starting to get cagey on him.
Harry had to think a moment, go at it another way. He said, "The plot thickens, huh? You have a girl in it now, even though she doesn"t do much. See, it gets better the more details you give me. So you"re at the roulette table, he pays off his debt ... You didn"t discuss the wife?"
"He realized I must"ve talked to her. That"s what brought him back to earth."
"I mean you didn"t say anything about basically it was her money."
"It looked like management was gonna get involved, so I left. But I told him, yeah, he better call her."
"So then you took the twenty gees in your hot little hands," Harry said with some pleasure, "and blew it."
"I dropped a little over seventeen," Chili said, "before my brain started working again. But the thing that got me about Leo, he looks me right in the eye and goes, "When I"m through here I"ll write you a check." Like he"s telling me he"ll do it when he has time, so get off my back. This drycleaner, been on the hook to us for years, talking to me like that. I couldn"t believe it."
Harry said, "He must"ve thought you ran into him by accident."
"Yeah, like I don"t know he"s suppose to be dead. But what I"m talking about,he knows he"s six weeks behind on the vig. That has to be right in the front of his head. But what"s he do, he cops an att.i.tude on me. I couldn"t believe it. He comes on to me like there was no way I could touch him." knows he"s six weeks behind on the vig. That has to be right in the front of his head. But what"s he do, he cops an att.i.tude on me. I couldn"t believe it. He comes on to me like there was no way I could touch him."
"It made you mad," Harry said.
"The more I thought about it, yeah. At the time, it surprised me. I never saw him act like that before. Then after, I got pretty mad thinking about it."
"That kind of att.i.tude," Harry said, "is called delusions of grandeur, or, trying to play the power game. Having the bodyguard carry his bag was the tip-off. Out here it"s very common. You see it in actors-guy making a hundred grand a picture gets lucky, his next one turns out to be a hit and his price goes up to a million. Pretty soon he"s up to several million a picture plus a cut of the gross. He"s the same schmuck who made it on his tight pants and capped teeth, but now all of a sudden he knows everything there is about making pictures. He rewrites the script or has it done. He tells the director how he"s gonna play his part, and if he doesn"t like the producer he has him barred from the set. But directors, producers, anybody can play the power game, especially agents. You keep score by getting so many points for being seen with the right people, driving a Ferrari or a Rolls, what table you get at Spago or The Ivy, what well-known actress blew you on location, how many of your phone calls to the real power players in town are returned, all that kind of bulls.h.i.t."
Harry paused. He was getting off the track, wasting time.
"But when Leo tried to play the game, you pulled it out from under him. That was pretty neat, it"s a good scene."
Harry paused again and was aware of the refrigerator humming in the silence. It was too bright in here, uncomfortable and his head ached. He didn"t want to move, though. Not now.
"I like the coat story, too, you mentioned. It plays, but would work better if it wasn"t a flashback. What it does, though, it shows you know how to handle yourself in that kind of situation. I imagine in your line of work there were other times ..."
"I"m out of that now."
"But there were times, right, you had to get tough? Say one of your customers stopped paying?"
"They always paid," Chili said. "Oh, I"ve smacked guys. Smacking was common, just an open-hand smack. I"m talking to a guy trying to get my money, he looks away and I smack him in the face. "Hey, you look at me when I"m f.u.c.kin talking to you." Like that, get their attention. See, the kind of people we were dealing with, a lot of "em thought they were tough guys, you know, from the street, guys that were basically hustlers, thieves, or they were into drugs. We had them besides the legit people, who ordinarily didn"t give us any trouble, always paid on time. I think what you"re getting at, Harry, you have the same att.i.tude as some of the legitimate people I did collection work for. Like a car dealer, or a guy runs a TV store ... They"re carrying a deadbeat, they want you to get the money and they don"t care how, break his f.u.c.kin legs. That"s the first thing they think of, come up with that statement. I say to "em, "How"s he gonna pay you he"s in the hospital?" They don"t think of that. They want a piece of the guyand their money." their money."
Harry said, "Well, you"ve been in some tight spots. The business with Ray Bones-that"s a good name for a character. I meant to ask you, you weren"t arrested for shooting him that time?"
"Bones had the idea of doing me on his own," Chili said. "He told the cops it happened out on the street, an unknown a.s.sailant come up to him. He still wants to do me, it"s on his mind."
"And you still have to pay him?"
"Yeah, only we have a different arrangement now. I talked to Tommy Carlo on the phone. ... You have to know Tommy, his personality, he gets along with everybody. Jimmy Cap I mentioned, Capotorto? He always liked Tommy. But he has to go along with Ray Bones up to a point, Ray"s his guy. So Jimmy Cap says split what the dead guy owes, me and Tommy, f.u.c.k the running vig, a flat eight grand each and that"s it, forget it."
"You spoke to Tommy," Harry said, leaning over the table on his arms. "So now he knows Leo"s still alive."
"Did I say that?"
Harry sat back again, questions popping in his mind along with the headache, but wanting to appear relaxed, the producer showing a certain amount of interest in a story.
"So you didn"t happen to mention it to him," Harry said and grinned at the deep-set eyes staring at him. "You want Leo Devoe for yourself."
"What Idon"t want," Chili said, "is Ray Bones finding out. Tommy, he"d think it"s pretty funny, this drycleaner taking an airline. He"d swear he wouldn"t tell a soul, but I know he would. So why put him in that position?" want," Chili said, "is Ray Bones finding out. Tommy, he"d think it"s pretty funny, this drycleaner taking an airline. He"d swear he wouldn"t tell a soul, but I know he would. So why put him in that position?"
"But you still have Ray Bones to think about."
Chili moved his shoulders. The deep-set eyes didn"t change.
"You gonna pay him?"
"Maybe, when I get around to it."
"What if he comes looking for you?"
"It"s possible. The guy"s got a one-track mind."
"Have you been involved in any shootings since Ray Bones?"
Chili"s eyes moved and he seemed to be thinking about it or trying to remember, looking off for a moment.
"Well, there was one time, it was when me and Tommy were running a club in South Miami, a guy came in looking for another guy, not me, but I was in the way."