“Warm milk,” Karen said, “with a half ounce of Scotch in it. Did you look at the script?”
“Never saw it before. The daughter, she have a whiney voice?”
“It could be played that way. It’s a young Sandy Dennis part. You know who I mean?”
“Sandy Dennis, sure. The daughter blame the mom for her marriage going to hell?”
Karen gave him another look. “She accuses me of talking her into getting married before she was ready. And that, of course, adds to my sense of guilt.”
“What’d you do you feel guilty about?”
“It’s not anything I did. It’s more . . . what right do I have to be happy when my daughter’s miserable?”
“You know the kid’s faking?”
“It’s not that simple. You have to read it, see the way Beth works on me.”
“You got a problem.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what the picture’s about.”
“I mean feeling guilty. I think what you oughta do, either give little Beth a kick in the ass or tell her go see a doctor, get her head examined.”
“You don’t get it,” Karen said. “I’m her mother. I have to come to grips with my maternal feelings.”
Turning off Doheny, Karen shot through an amber light to swing into the traffic crawling along Sunset.
“People have guilt trips laid on them all the time and they accept it, the guilt. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s the way people are.”
“Anywhere along here’s fine,” Chili said, thinking of times he had been asked if he was guilty and not once ever having the urge to say he was. Real-life situations, even facing prison time, were never as emotional as movies. Cops got emotional in movies. He had never met an emotional cop in his life. He liked the way Karen sideslipped the BMW through a stream of cars to pull up at the curb. He thanked her, started to get out and said, “What happens, the kid goes after your boyfriend and that’s when you finally stand up to her?”
“You’re close,” Karen said.
What he liked best, thinking about it, was not so much guessing the ending but the look Karen gave him when he did. The eye contact. For a moment there the two of them looking at each other in a different way than before. Like starting over. Karen broke the spell saying she had to run and he got out of her car.
Still looking at the photos on the wall he thought about taking a closer look at the ones Karen was in. Check out her eyes. See what they were like when she was a screamer with blond hair. Maybe later.
Right now Harry was saying, “Here we are.”
Harry, in the doorway, stepping aside, the two limo guys coming into the office past him.
10 
Chili stayed where he was, at the desk. The one he took to be Ronnie Wingate—and had been thinking of as the rich kid—glanced at him, that’s all, then looked around the office saying, “Harry, what year is it, man?” with a lazy rich-kid way of talking. “We enter a time warp? I feel like I’m back in the Hollywood of yesteryear.” He was wearing a suede jacket so thin it was like a second shirt, with jeans and running shoes, sunglasses resting in his rich-kid hair he hadn’t bothered to comb.
The other one, Bo Catlett, was an opposite type, tall next to Ronnie and put together in a tan outfit, suit, shirt and tie all light tan, a shade lighter than his skin. But what was he? From across the room he looked like the kind of guy who came from some island in the Pacific Ocean you never heard of. Ronnie kept moving as he looked at the photos over the sofa, his motor running on some chemical. Now Harry was waving his arm, inviting them to sit in the red chairs facing the desk.
Chili watched Catlett coming first, saw the mustache now and the tuft of hair beneath the lower lip and wondered what was wrong with Harry. The guy wasn’t Latin or even from some unknown island out in the ocean. Up close he was colored. Colored and something else, but still colored.
Sitting down he said, “How you doing?”
That’s what he was and what the other Catlett, the jazz drummer, was too. Chili said to him, “You any relation to Sid Catlett?”
It brought a smile, not much, but enough to make his eyes dreamy. “Big Sid, huh? No, I’m from another tribe. Tell me what brings you here.”
“The movies,” Chili said.
And Catlett said, “Ah, the movies, yeah.”
Ronnie was seated now, one leg hooked over the chair arm, the leg swinging up and down on some kind of energy, his head moving too, as if plugged into a Walkman. Behind them Harry said, “This is my associate, Chili Palmer, who’ll be working with me.”
Harry already forgetting his instructions.
The limo guys nodded and Chili gave them a nod back. “I want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding here,” Harry said. He told them that despite rumors they might have heard, their investment in Freaks was as sound as the day they signed their participation agreement.
“Harry, are you making a speech?” Ronnie had his face raised to the ceiling. “I can hear you, but where the fuck are you, man?”
“What I been wondering,” Catlett said in a quiet voice, looking at Chili, “is where he’s been.”
Ronnie said, “Yeah, where’ve you been? You called us once, Harry, in three months.”
Harry came around from behind them to stand at one side of the desk, his back to the window, saying he’d been off scouting locations and interviewing actors in New York and his secretary had left without his knowledge to work for an agent, for Christ sake, Harry saying that was the kind of help you had to rely on these days, walked out, didn’t even tell him.
Chili listened, not believing he was hearing all this.
Ronnie said, “Let’s get the man a girl. Harry, you want one with big hooters or one that can type?”
Chili’s gaze moved from Ronnie the fool to Bo Catlett the dude, the man composed, elbows on the chair arms, his fingertips touching to form a tan-skinned church, a ruby ring for a stained-glass window.
“The main thing I want to tell you,” Harry said, “the start date for Freaks is being pushed back a little, a few months. We should be in production before the end of the year. . . . Unless because of unforeseen complications we decide it would be better to shoot next spring.”
Chili watched Ronnie’s leg, hanging over the chair arm, bounce to a stop.
“What’re you telling us, Harry?”
“We have to put the start date off, that’s all.”
“Yeah, but why? Next spring, that’s a whole year away.”
“We’ll need the prep time.”
Ronnie said, “Hey, Harry? Bullshit. We have an agreement with you, man.”
Chili raised his hand toward Harry.
“Wait a minute, okay? What we’re talking about here—Harry, you’re gonna make the movie, right. Freaks?”
Harry said, “Yeah,” sounding surprised.
“Tell him.”
“I just did.”
“Tell him again.”
“We’re gonna make the picture,” Harry said. He paused and said, “I’ve got another project to do first, that’s all. One I promised this guy years ago.”
Chili wondered if there was a way to shut Harry up without punching him in the mouth.
He saw Catlett watching him over the tips of his fingers while Ronnie fooled with his sunglasses, Harry telling them he’d be starting the other project any time now, a quickie, and as soon as it wrapped Freaks would go before the cameras.
There was a silence until Ronnie got up straighter in his chair and said, “I think what happened, you put our bucks in some deal that blew up in your face and now you’re trying to buy time. I want to see your books, Harry. Show me where it is, a two with five zeroes after it in black and white, man. I want to see your books and your bank statements.”