Chili didn’t answer. Bones turned a page, read down the entries and stopped.
“You got a miss. Guy’s six weeks over.”
“He died,” Chili said.
“How you know he died, he tell you?”
Ray Bones checked the colored guy to get some appreciation, but the guy was busy looking at hair rinses and shit on the counter. Chili didn’t give him anything either. He was thinking he could kick Mr. Bones in the nuts if he came any closer, then get up and nail him. If the big colored guy would leave.
“He got killed,” Chili said, “in that TransAm jet went down in the Everglades.”
“Who told you?”
Chili got out of the chair, went in the back office and returned with a stack ofMiami Heralds. He dropped them on the floor in front of Bones and got back in the chair.
“Help yourself. You find him on the list of victims, Leo Devoe. He’s Paris Cleaners on Federal Highway about 124th Street.”
Bones nudged the stack of newspapers with a toe of his cream-colored perforated shoes that matched his slacks and sport shirt. The front page on top said “TransAm Crash Kills 117.” Chili watched Bones toe his way through editions with headlines that said “Winds Probed in Crash” . . . “Windshear Warning Was Issued” . . . “Nightmare Descends Soon After Farewells” . . . getting down to a page of small photographs, head shots, and a line that read, “Special Report: The Tragic Toll.”
“His wife told me he was on the flight,” Chili said. “I kept checking till I saw, yeah, he was.”
“His picture in here?”
“Near the bottom. You have to turn the paper over.”
Bones still wasn’t going to bend down, strain himself. He looked up from the newspapers. “Maybe he took out flight insurance. Check with the wife.”
“It’s your book now,” Chili said. “You want to check it out, go ahead.”
The colored guy came over from the counter to stand next to the chair.
Ray Bones said, “Six weeks’ juice is twenty-seven hunnerd on top of the fifteen you gave him. Get it from the guy’s wife or out of your pocket, I don’t give a fuck. You don’t hand me a book with a miss in it.”
“Payback time,” Chili said. “You know that coat? I gave it to the Salvation Army two years ago.”
“What coat?” Bones said.
He knew.
The colored guy stood close, staring into Chili’s face, while Bones worked on the Michael Douglas hairdo, shearing off a handful at a time with a pair of scissors, telling Chili it was to remind him when he looked in the mirror he owed fifteen plus whatever the juice, right? The juice would keep running till he paid. Chili sat still, hearing the scissors snip-snipping away, knowing it had nothing to do with money. He was being paid back again, this time for reminding Ray Bones he had a scar that showed white where he was getting bald. It was all kid stuff with these guys, the way they acted tough. Like Momo had said, schoolyard bullshit. These guys never grew up. Still, if they were holding a pair of scissors in your face when they told you something, you agreed to it. At least for the time being.
Chili was still in the chair when the new-wave barbers came back and began to comment, telling him they could perm what was left or give him a moderate spike, shave the sides, laser stripes were popular. Chili told them to cut the shit and even it off. While they worked on him he sat there wondering if it was possible Leo Devoe had taken out flight insurance or if the wife had thought about suing the airline. It was something he could mention to her.
But what happened when he dropped by their house in North Miami—the idea, see what he could find out about any insurance—the wife, Fay, stopped him cold. She said, “I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”
She didn’t say it right away, not till they were out on the patio with vodka and tonics, in the dark.
Chili knew Fay from having stopped by to pick up the weekly four-fifty and they’d sit here waiting for Leo to get home after a day at Gulfstream. Fay was a quiet type, from a small town upstate, Mt. Dora, not bad looking but worn thin in her sundress from working at the cleaner’s in that heat while Leo was out betting horses. They’d sit here trying to make conversation with nothing in common but Leo, Chili, every once in a while, catching her gaze during a silence, seeing her eyes and feeling it was there if he wanted it. Though he couldn’t imagine Fay getting excited, changing her expression much. What did a shy woman stuck with a loser think about? Leo would appear, strut out on the patio and count the four-fifty off a roll, nothing to it. Or he’d come shaking his head, beat, saying he’d have it tomorrow for sure. Chili never threatened him, not in front of the woman and embarrass her. Not till he left and Leo would know enough to walk him out to his car parked by the streetlight. He’d say, “Leo, look at me,” and tell him where to be the next day with the four-fifty. Leo was never to blame: it was the horses selling out or it was Fay always on his back, distracting him when he was trying to pick winners. And Chili would have to say it again, “Leo, look at me.”
He owed for two weeks the night he didn’t come home. Fay said she couldn’t think where Leo could be. The third week she told him Leo was dead and a couple weeks after that his picture was in the paper.
This visit sitting on the patio, knowing Leo was not going to appear, strutting or otherwise, the silences became longer. Chili asked what she planned to do now. Fay said she didn’t know; she hated the drycleaner business, being inside. Chili said it must be awful hot. She said you couldn’t believe how hot it was. He got around to asking about life insurance. Fay said she didn’t know of any. Chili said, well . . . But didn’t move. Fay didn’t either. It was dark, hard to see her face, neither one of them making a sound. This was when she said, out of nowhere, “You know what I been thinking?”
Chili said, “Tell me.”
“I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”
Chili kept still. Don’t talk when you don’t have to.
“He’s called me up twice since going out to Las Vegas and since then I haven’t heard a goddamn word from him. I know he’s there, it’s all he ever talked about, going to Las Vegas. But I’m the one stuck my neck out, I’m the one they gave the money to, not him. I’m talking about the airline company, the three hundred thousand dollars they gave me for losing my husband.” Fay paused to shake her head.
Chili waited.
She said to him on that dark patio, “I trust you. I think you’re a decent type of man, even if you are a crook. You find Leo and get me my three hundred thousand dollars back if he ain’t spent it, I’ll give you half. If he’s hit big we split that, or whatever he has left. How’s that sound as a deal?”
Chili said, “That’s what you been thinking, huh? Tell me why the airline thinks Leo got killed if he wasn’t on the flight.”
“His suitcase was,” Fay said, and told Chili everything that happened.
It was a good story.
2
Harry Zimm believed if he kept his eyes closed and quit listening that sound coming from somewhere in the house would stop and pretty soon they’d go back to sleep.
But Karen wouldn’t leave it alone. He heard her say, “Harry?” a couple of times, maybe not sure if she was hearing something or not. Then, “Harry—” still a whisper but putting more into it. This time when he didn’t answer she gave him a poke in the back, hard. “Harry, God damn it, somebody’s downstairs.”
They hadn’t slept in the same bed on a regular basis in over ten years, not since they had lived together, and Karen still knew when he was faking. The only other time, in this same bed, was right after she and Michael were divorced and Michael, a star by then, gave Karen the house. There was no way to hide from her. So he rolled over and there she was in her Lakers T-shirt, sitting up on her side of the king-size bed, a soft white shape in the dark, a little porcelain doll.
“What’s wrong?”
“Be quiet and listen.”
A tough little porcelain doll under that loose T-shirt.
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“I don’t hear anything.” It was true, he didn’t at the moment.
“I thought at first it might be Miguel,” Karen said. “My houseman. But he’s visiting his mom in Chula Vista.”
“You have a houseman?”
“Miguel does everything, cleans the house, takes care of the outside . . .There, ” Karen said. “If you can’t hear that, Harry, you’re deaf.”
He wanted to ask her how old Miguel was and what he looked like. Miguel . . . and thought of Michael, her former, now a superstar. Michael had lived here and slept in this bed. He wondered if Miguel ever got in it with her. Karen was closing in on forty but still a knockout. She kept in shape, had given up dope for health food, switched from regular cigarettes to low-tar menthols.
“Harry, don’t go to sleep on me.”
He said, “Have I ever done that?” Was quiet for a moment and said, “You have any idea what that is?”
“Those arevoices, Harry. People talking.”
“Really?”
“On television. Somebody came in and turned the TV on.”
“You sure?”
“Listen, will you?”
Harry raised his head from the pillow, going along, hearing a faint monotone sound that gradually became voices. She was right, two people talking. He cocked his head in the bedroom silence and after a moment said, “You know who the one guy sounds like? Shecky Greene.”
Karen turned her head, a slow move, to give him a look over the shoulder. “You’re still smashed, aren’t you?” Judging him, but the tone not unsympathetic, a little sad.
“I’m fine.”
Maybe half in the bag but still alert, with a nice glow. The headache would come later if he didn’t take something. He must have put away half the fifth of Scotch earlier, down in the study where the TV was on, while he told Karen about his situation, his thirty years in the picture business on the brink. He was about to become either a major player or might never be heard from again. And she sat there listening to him like a fucking Teamsters business agent, no reaction, no sympathy. He thought of something else and said:
“Maybe, you know how you go downstairs in the morning sometimes you see pictures cockeyed on the wall? You’re thinking, This is some hangover, wow. Then you see on the news there was an earthquake during the night over near Pasadena someplace. Not a big one, like a four-point-two. You know? Maybe it’s something like that, an atmospheric disturbance turned on the TV.”
Karen was listening, but not to him, staring at the bedroom doorway, pitch-dark out there, her nice slim back arched.
“Or maybe it’s only the wind,” Harry said.
That got her looking at him again because she knew the line, intimately. FromGrotesque, Part Two, one of his highest grossing pictures. The maniac’s up on the roof ripping out shingles with his bare hands; inside the house the male lead with all the curly hair stares grimly at the ceiling as Karen, playing the girl, says to him, “Maybe it’s only the wind.” She hated the line, refused to say it until he convinced her it was okay, it worked.
“I love your attitude,” Karen said. “What do you care if somebody broke in, it’s not your house.”
“If you think somebody broke in, why don’t you call the police?”
“Because I don’t intentionally allow myself to look stupid,” Karen said, “if I can help it. Not anymore.”
The way she kept staring at him, over the shoulder, was a nice angle. The dark hair against pale skin. The lighting wasn’t bad either, Karen backlit with the windows behind her. It took at least ten years off her age, the tough little broad a sweet young thing again in her white T-shirt. She was telling him now, in a thoughtful tone, “When I came upstairs, you stayed to finish your drink.”
“I didn’t turn the TV on.”
“You said you wanted to watch a few minutes of Carson.”
She was right. “But I turned’ it off.”
“Harry, you can’t be sure what you did.”
“I’m positive.”
Yeah, because he had turned it off the moment he thought about getting in bed with Karen instead of sleeping in the guest room: the idea, start talking again, work on her sympathy . . .
“I used the remote control thing and laid it on the floor,” Harry said. “You know what could’ve happened? The dog came in and stepped on it, turned the TV back on.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“You don’t? What happened to Muff?”
“Harry, are you going down, or you want me to?”
He wanted her to but had to be nice, obliging, to have any hope of using her.
Getting out of bed his boxer shorts hiked up on him and he had to work them down, get the elastic band under his belly. Karen thought he was fat.
In the study, earlier, he had told her about the story he’d optioned that could change his life, an original screenplay: no fiends or monsters, this one straight-up high-concept drama. He told her he was taking it to a major studio and Karen said, “Oh?” He told her—making it sound like an afterthought—yeah, and guess who read the script and flipped over it? Michael. No kidding, loves it. Her ex, and she didn’t say a goddamn word, not even “Oh?” or make a sound. She stared at him, smoking her cigarette. He told her he did have a few problems. One, getting past Michael’s agent, the prick, who refused to let Michael take a meeting with him. And, there was some sticky business to clean up that involved money, naturally, not to mention getting out from under his investors, a couple of undesirables who’d been financing him. Which he did mention, in detail. This was his career on the launch pad, about to either fly or go down in flames; and Karen sat there letting the ice melt in her drink, blowing menthol smoke at him. Didn’t comment outside of that one “Oh?” or ask one question, not even about Michael, till he was through and she said, “Harry, if you don’t lose thirty pounds you’re going to die.” Thanks a lot. He told her he was glad he stopped by, find out all he had to do to save his ass was join Vic Tanny.
“Harry? What’re you doing?”
“I’m putting my shirt on.”
He moved to a window to be moving, doing something while he worked on the goddamn buttons.
“Is that okay? So I don’t catch cold? But I’m not gonna get all dressed for some friend of yours thinks he’s funny.”
“Friends don’t break in, Harry, they ring the bell.”
“Yeah? What about stoned they might.”
Karen didn’t comment; she was clean now, above it. Harry looked out the window at the backyard, overgrown around the edges, a tangle of plants and old trees surrounding the lawn and the pale oval shape of the swimming pool. It looked full of leaves.
“Does Miguel skim the pool? It needs it.”
“Harry—”
He said, “I’m going,” and got as far as the door. “If somebody broke in, how come the alarm didn’t go oft?”
“I don’t have an alarm.”
“You have it taken out?”
“I never had one.”
That’s right, it was the house in Westwood, where Karen had lived with him. She’d come in, forget to touch the numbers to turn it off . . . Marlene had the alarm system now and the house that went with it. He had married Marlene, his director of development, after Karen left to marry Michael. Then when both marriages ended at about the same time he told Karen it was a sign, they should get back together. Karen said she didn’t believe in signs. Which was a lie, she read her horoscope every day. Marlene was married to a guy who at one time ran production at Paramount and was now producing TV sitcoms, one of them a family with a Chihuahua that could talk. Tiny little dog with a tiny little fake Puerto Rican accent. Why chew look hat me like dat? The dog always fucking up. He was thinking of Karen in the Westwood house instead of this one, her own place, a semi-French château high up in Beverly Hills, above the lights of L.A. Built in the late twenties for a movie star and passed on to others.
From the doorway he said to Karen, “Why chew make me do thees?”
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“Because I’m a girl,” the pale figure on the bed answered, “and you’re bigger than I am. A lot.”
Harry moved down the curved staircase in his shirt and boxer shorts, the monotone sound of voices becoming more distinct; he could hear words now and what sounded like audience response, the volume turned up to be heard on the second floor. He believed it was the Letterman show. The tile in the foyer was cold on his bare feet. Mexican tile now and primitive art, hardwood floors except in the study, all the fat comfortable slipcovered furniture from Michael’s time gone. And yet there were pictures of him in the study, among the dozens of photographs of movie people and movie posters covering the paneled walls.
He crossed to the study, the door open partway, dark inside except for the glow from the big thirty-two-inch Sony. There, David Letterman talking to someone—not Shecky, it wasn’t his voice.
Harry couldn’t see the desk, where he and Karen had sat with the bottle of Scotch, schmoozing, Karen telling him she was reading a script she might do. Oh, really? Want to get back into it, huh? Great. Biding his time until finally making his presentation: here is my tremendous opportunity, but here are the problems. Pause. Waiting then for her to say, Maybe I can help. No, she tells him he ought to lose weight.
Still, there was hope. Asking him to spend the night was a good sign. Looking after him, saying he was in no condition to drive. It meant she cared. Though not enough to let him sleep with her when he suggested it, as kind of a trip down memory lane. Spunky Karen said, “If you think nostalgia’s going to get you laid, forget it.” He could take the guest room or a cab. Fine, sleeping with her wasn’t that important anyway; they were back on familiar ground with one another. When he did slip into her bed, later, Karen said, “I mean it, Harry, we’re not going to do anything.”
But, she didn’t kick him out.
So he felt pretty good pushing open the door to the study, telling himself there was no one in here. If there was it would be one of Karen’s friends, no doubt stoned, some bit-part actor thinking he was funny. Okay, he’d nod to the guy very nonchalantly, turn the TV off and walk out.