“Get over there, by the sofa.”
“You don’t need that,” Chili said. “You want to sit down and talk, it’s fine with me. Get this straightened out.”
Chili turned his back on him, walked over to the sofa and sat down. He watched Bones come in the room to stand by the counter, by the suitcoat hanging on the chair, and began to see what was going to happen.
GET SHORTY 241
Bones had on a shitty-looking light-gray suit with a yellow sport shirt, the top button fastened. It might be the style out here, but Bones looked like a Miami bookmaker and always would. Jesus, and gray shoes.
“I gave up looking for the drycleaner,” Chili said. “This place’s all freeways, you can drive around forever and never leave town. How’d you get in here?”
“I told them at the desk I was you,” Bones said. “I acted stupid and they believed me.”
He came to the middle of the room, still pointing the gun, and held up the laundry sack.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Vegas. I won for a change.”
Bones stared at him, not saying anything. Then swung the sack to drop it on a chair.
“Get up and turn around.”
“What’re you gonna do, search me?”
Chili got to his feet. Bones motioned with the gun and he turned to face the painting over the sofa that looked like a scene in Japan, misty pale green and tan ricefields, the sky overcast, not a lot going on there. He felt Bones lift his wallet out of his back pocket.
“You won the ten grand in Vegas?”
“That’s where Leo went before he came here and I lost him.”
“Las Vegas.”
“Yeah, it’s in Nevada.”
“Then how come the straps on the ten grand say Harrah’s, Tahoe? Can you explain that to me?”
There were figures in the painting he hadn’t noticed, people way out in the field picking rice.
Chili said, “You sure it says that, Harrah’s?”
He hadn’t noticed any printing on the money straps either, or didn’t remember.
“You’re the stupidest fuckin guy I ever met in my life,” Bones said. “Let’s see what’s in your pockets.”
Chili shoved his hands in and pulled the side pockets out.
“What you should’ve done was told me the guy was alive and skipped, soon as you found out.”
Chili heard the voice moving away. He looked over his shoulder to see Bones pulling his suitcoat from the back of the chair at the counter.
“Why would I do that?”
“ ’Cause the guy’s my customer now, stupid. His ass belongs to me.”
Bones laid the pistol on the counter, held the suitcoat up with one hand and felt through it with the other. Chili waited for his expression to change. There—his eyes opening wider.
“What have we here?” Bones said. His hand came out of the coat with the locker key.
Chili sat down in the sofa again.
“Give me my cigarettes. They’re in the inside pocket.”
Bones threw the coat at him. “Help yourself.” And held the key up to look at it. “C-oh-one-eight.” Frowning now, putting on a show. “I wonder what this’s for, a locker? Yeah, but where is it?”
Chili sat back to smoke his cigarette and let it happen.
“I checked a bag at the airport, when I came.”
“Yeah? Which terminal?”
Chili hesitated. He said, “Delta,” and it was done.
GET SHORTY 243
Bones said, “You found Leo, didn’t you? . . . Took the poor asshole’s money and put it in a locker, ready to go.” Bones looked over. “Why haven’t you left?”
“I changed my mind. I like it here.”
“Well, there’s nothing for you in Miami.”
Bones was nervous or anxious, touching his thin strands of hair, his collar, making sure it was buttoned.
“How much’s in the locker? Just out of curiosity.”
Chili drew on his cigarette, taking his time. “A hunnerd seventy thousand.”
“Jesus Christ, that drycleaner left with three hunnerd,” Bones said. “I hadn’t got here you would’ve pissed the rest of it away. You knew I was coming, right? That fuckin Tommy Carlo, I know he phoned you.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t know why. ’Less you told him about the drycleaner.”
“I didn’t tell him nothing.”
“What about Jimmy Cap, you tell him?”
Bones paused. He said, “Look, there’s no reason why you and I shouldn’t get along. Forget all the bullshit going back to that time—I don’t even remember how it started. You took a swing at me over some fuckin thing, whatever it was—forget it. You owe me eight grand, right? Forget that too. But, you don’t say a fuckin word about this to anybody. It’s strictly between you and I, right?”
“I get to keep the ten in the laundry bag,” Chili said.
Bones had to think about that one.
“Look,” Chili said, “I was gonna pay you the eight I owe you out of the ten. See, but now you tell me I don’t have to. So . . .”
“So I take two out of it and we’re square,” Bones said. “How’s that?”
“Sounds good to me,” Chili said.
He looked up the number for the Drug Enforcement Administration in the phone book, dialed it and told the woman who answered he wanted to speak to the agent in charge. She asked what it was in regard to and he said a locker out at the airport, full of money.
A male voice came on saying, “Who’s speaking, please?”
“I can’t tell you,” Chili said, “it’s an anonymous call.”
The male voice said, “Are you the same anonymous asshole called last night?”
“No, this’s a different one,” Chili said. “Have you looked in that locker, C—oh-one-eight?”
There was a pause on the line.
“You’re helping us out,” the male voice said. “I’d like to know who this is.”
“I bet you would,” Chili said. “You want to chat or you want me to tell you who to look for? The guy’s on his way out right now.”
This DEA agent wouldn’t give up. He said, “You know there’s a reward for information that leads to a conviction. That’s why I have to know who this is.”
“I’ll get my reward in heaven,” Chili said. “The guy you want has a bullet scar in his head and is wearing gray shoes. You can’t miss him.”
24 
“This was Warren’s office,” Karen said, “before he was shipped off to Publicity. Warren Hurst, I think I mentioned him to you.”
“Beth’s Room,” Chili said, sitting across from Karen at her big oak desk. “The one that said if you did it your way they wouldn’t have a movie.”
“You remember that.”
She said it with that nice look in her eyes she had been using on him lately. Interested, letting him know she liked him. The only difference today, she had on glasses, round ones with thin black frames. She was telling him now the office decor was pre-Warren, he hadn’t been here long enough to redecorate; that it wouldn’t be bad in a men’s club, but she wasn’t going to touch it. “Not till I see if I get a vote here.”
Chili said, “You don’t fool around.”
“What, taking the job? Why not?”
Karen’s shoulders moved in the beige silk blouse, the little ninety-pounder behind the big executive desk.
“I think I’ll be good at it if they let me. Look at the scripts.”
She picked up one from a stack of about ten and moved it to another part of the desk.
“Elaine says all of them have spin in varying degrees. That means they’re supposed to be good.”
She picked up another one. “Beth’s Room, still under consideration.”