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“You took Yayo?”
“I forgot I promised Farrah. Yeah, so I brought the yoyo along. All the guy does is bitch and say fock, in front of my little girl. I gotta dump him somewhere.”
“Bring him by,” Catlett said, “I’ll talk to him.”
Standing at the window Catlett watched the Bear’s blue Dodge van come off Santa Monica, out of traffic and into the drive. By the time Catlett made his way through the offices and the reception room to the garage, the steel overhead door was coming down to seal off street sounds, Yayo was out of the van and the Bear, his Hawaiian shirt today full of blue and yellow flowers, was coming around the front end. There was one limo parked in the garage, the white stretch reserved for the rock group, and Catlett’s car, a black Porsche 911.
He was in his shirtsleeves, a striped shirt with a tab collar, tie in place—had put it on thinking of Chili’s shirt last night; it had looked pretty sharp.
Yayo could use a clean shirt and a shave, comb his hair, Yayo giving him the Tony Montana look with the lip curl. A man that didn’t know how dumb he was.
“You have a nice time, Yayo?”
The little Colombian mule started out in Spanish before switching over to English, saying, “I tell this guy I want my focking money or you in trouble, man, believe me.”
“There’s no pleasing him,” the Bear said, fooling with his beard. “I took his picture standing with this cutout of Magnum P.I.? Tom Selleck, looks real as can be. All he does is bitch.”
Yayo turned enough to tell the Bear, “You think you funny. Is that it?”
“I took him to the Miami Vice Action Spectacular . . .”
“Man, it was shit.”
“It opens,” the Bear said, “here come Crockett and Tubbs on jet skis. It’s like a movie set. You know, some shacks at the edge of the water, we’re in the grandstand watching. The voice-over says, ‘They have ruffled some feathers in flamingo land and the band of smugglers have a dynamite surprise waiting for them.’ It’s all low-grade special effects, but the tourists eat it up.”
“It was all shit,” Yayo told Catlett.
“He kept talking like that,” the Bear said, “saying fock in front of my little girl.”
Catlett frowned, a pained look. “He did?”
“Man wouldn’t shut his mouth.”
“Listen to me,” Yayo said. “I wan’ to leave this place, go home. Wha’ you have to do, get the money and give it to me. Or give me some other money.”
“I gave you the key,” Catlett said. “That’s all you need, and some patience.”
Yayo had that lip curled saying, “I don’t wan’ no focking key. I wan’ the money.”
Catlett stood with his fingers shoved into his pockets. He shrugged saying, “Give it some time, pretty soon there won’t be nobody watching you.”
Yayo pointed a finger at him. He said, “Okay, man, I tell you something. I go the airport and open that focking locker. They bus’ me, I tell them I come to get something for you, tha’s all I know.”
Catlett said, “Tha’s all you know, huh? Wait here a minute, Yayo, I be back directly.”
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He left them: went back to Ronnie’s office and got Ronnie’s big AMT Hardballer .45 auto out of the center desk drawer and racked the slide, knowing Ronnie kept the piece loaded. Catlett walked through offices and the reception room to the garage, closed the door behind him and extended the Hardballer’s long barrel at Yayo, walking up to within ten feet of the man. Yayo didn’t move. The Bear didn’t either.
Yayo cocked his head then and put his hands on his hips, giving Catlett a Tony Montana pose.
“The fock you doing with that?”
Catlett said, “I’m taking you out, Yayo,” and shot him in the chest, the gun going off loud— man, it was loud—but didn’t buck as much as Catlett expected. No, looking down at Yayo on the cement floor now among oil stains, arms flung out, eyes stuck wide open, he’d put that hole right where he’d aimed.
“Dead focking center, man.”
“I get the feeling,” the Bear said, “you done this before.”
“Not in a while,” Catlett said.
16 
The way Chili found out Leo the drycleaner’s room number at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he wrote Larry Paris on an envelope, handed it to the girl at the front desk and watched her stick the envelope in the mail slot for 207. It looked like 207, but he wasn’t sure. So he used a house phone, around the corner by the entrance to the famous Polo Lounge, and asked for
207. The operator tried it, came back to say she was sorry, Mr. Paris wasn’t answering. Chili, friendly because he was getting somewhere, told the operator Mr. Paris was probably still out at the track giving his money away. Ha ha. To double-check, Chili stepped into the Polo Lounge and ordered a Scotch at the bar.
He didn’t see Leo or Leo’s friend Annette waiting or Doug McClure or any faces he recognized from the silver screen. The room was crowded, six P.M., people at booths and little round tables, most of them probably tourists looking for movie stars. Harry said if anybody here even halfway resembled a star the rest of the tourists would say, “There’s one. Isn’t that, you know, he was in . . .” and some guy from out of town would have a few minutes of fame
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he’d never know about. Harry said there were guys in the picture business had their secretaries call them here; they get paged, everybody sees the phone brought to the table and then watch the schmuck talking to his secretary like he was making a deal and knew personally all the names he was dropping. Harry said the trouble with Hollywood, the scheme-balls worked just as hard as the legit filmmakers.
The limo guy, Catlett, struck Chili as that type wanted to be seen. Looked good in his threads, sounded like he knew what he was talking about— the type of guy if he wasn’t dealing drugs would be into some other kind of hustle. There were guys like him Chili knew by name in Miami, all five boroughs of New York and parts of Jersey. They gave you that stuff about having something in common, being from the street but different sides of it. You had to watch your back with guys like Catlett. Keep him away from Harry.
Earlier today Harry had called from his apartment on Franklin to say he’d come home to change but would be going right back to Karen’s. “You know what I did? Asked her to come on the project as associate producer and she jumped at it.” Chili was learning a little more about Harry every time the guy opened his mouth. “Karen dropped off the script at Tower and we’re waiting to hear when Elaine can see us. Miss Bedroom Eyes. Listen to this. Elaine does-n’t even take pitch meetings, but she’ll do it for Karen. I’m telling you, bringing my old screamer aboard was a stroke of genius.” Chili asked him, shouldn’t the script be rewritten first, fixed up? Harry said, “What’s wrong with it?” Chili told him point by point what he thought and Harry said, “Yeah, Karen mentioned that. It needs a polish, that’s all. I’ll cover that at the meeting. Don’t worry about it.”
Okay, for the time being he’d forget about Lovejoy and concentrate on Leo the drycleaner, find him and get him out of town before Ray Bones showed up. Chili watched a waiter serving a tray of drinks, thinking he could sit here and get smashed and never even see Leo. Leo gets back, cleans up and goes out again without ever coming in here. It was watching the waiter with the drink order that gave Chili an idea, a way to get into Leo’s suite.
He ordered a bottle of champagne, paid his tab and told the bartender he wanted the champagne put in room 207 right away, before his buddy got back, so it would be a surprise. The bartender-acted like this was done all the time. Chili finished his drink and took the stairway to the second floor. Room 207 was right there, at an open center point where halls went off in three different directions, the wallpaper in the halls big green plants, or they might be palm-tree branches. About ten minutes later a room service waiter arrived with the champagne in a bucket and two glasses on a tray. Chili hung back by the stairway till the waiter had the door open, then moved fast to walk in right behind him saying, “Hey, I’m just in time,” and handed the guy a ten-dollar bill.