“If he was drinking all night . . .” Chili let the words trail off before saying, “he’d be out of it, wouldn’t he? How could he drive?”
“Ask him,” Karen said, “he’s waiting for you.”
She turned to fix her pillows, puff them up, and sunk back in the bed.
“If I know Harry he’ll act surprised to see you. ‘Oh, did I wake you up? Gee, I’m sorry.’ What happened at dinner, well, not forgotten, but put aside. This is Harry the survivor. Sometime during the past five hours or so he realized that if his project is dead, he’d better quick get a piece of yours. He’ll offer to take over as producer . . .”
“I don’t know,” Chili said, wanting to listen for sounds, different ones than the TV.
But Karen kept talking.
“He’ll get a writer, probably Murray, and handle all negotiations. He’ll already have a plot idea and that’s why he’s here at four-thirty in the morning. He’ll say he couldn’t wait to tell you. But the real reason is he wants to be annoying. He still resents what he thinks you pulled on him, stealing Michael, and I know he doesn’t like the idea of us being together . . .”
Telling him all that until he said, “I don’t think it’s Harry.”
And that stopped Karen long enough for him to hear the TV again and what sounded like gunshots and that sharp whining sound of ricochets, bullets singing off rocks.
Karen said, “If it isn’t Harry . . .”
“I don’t know for sure,” Chili said, “and I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.” It was a western. He heard John Wayne’s voice now. John Wayne talking to the West’s most unlikely cowboy, Dean Martin. Getting out of bed he said to Karen, “I think it’s Rio Bravo.”
GET SHORTY 283
Catlett sat in the dark with the big-screen TV on loud the way Harry said Chili Palmer had done it; the difference was a movie instead of David Letterman and Ronnie’s Hardballer .45 in his hand resting on the desk and pointed at the door part open. He believed the John Wayne movie was El Dorado, the big gunfight going on now with the sound turned up so high it was making him deaf, but he wanted Chili Palmer to hear it and come down thinking it was Harry paying him back. He’d checked to make sure Harry was home and not here and after so many rings he almost hung up, got Harry on the line slurring his words bad, the man almost all the way gone. He told Harry to go to bed before he fell down and hurt himself. All there was to do now was do it. Chili Palmer walks in the door—let him say something if he wanted, but don’t say nothing back. Do him once, twice, whatever it took and leave the way he had come in, through the door on the patio he found unlocked.
He had waited this long so as not to be seen or run into by other cars on the street. Most went to bed early in this town, but some stayed out to party and drove home drunk when the bars closed or in a nod. Four A.M. was the quietest time. He had been here now since four-twenty. Shit. If Chili Palmer didn’t come down in the next two minutes he’d have to go upstairs and find him.
Chili put on his pants and shoes, Karen watching him, and got out the Lakers T-shirt he’d bought at the airport to go with Karen’s Lakers T-shirt if he got lucky. But when he did, when they came upstairs earlier and jumped in bed, he wasn’t thinking of T-shirts.
This one fit pretty well. Karen probably couldn’t see what it was. He walked over to the bedroom door and stood listening. He was pretty sure the movie was
Rio Bravo.
After about a minute Karen said, “Are you going down?”
He turned to look at her.
“I don’t know.”
She said, “Then I will,” getting out of bed.
“You’re as bad as Harry.”
He watched her pull on the bulky sweater and a pair of jeans. She looked about twenty. When she came over to the door he raised his hand and then laid it on her shoulder.
“What if it isn’t Harry?”
“Someone else comes in and pulls exactly the same stunt?”
She was calm about it. He liked that.
“I think Harry might’ve told Catlett, and that’s who it is.”
She said, “Oh.”
Maybe accepting it, he wasn’t sure. “Or it could be somebody Catlett sent. You don’t have a gun, do you? Any kind would be fine.”
Karen shook her head. “I could call the police.”
“Maybe you better. Or call Harry first, see if he’s home.”
She moved past him to the bed, sat on the edge as she picked up the phone from the night table, punched Harry’s number and waited. And waited. Karen shook her head. “He’s not home.”
“He could be asleep, passed out.”
“It’s Harry,” Karen said, coming away from the bed. “I’m sure. Paying you back.”
GET SHORTY 285
Maybe, though it wasn’t Chili’s idea of a payback, the kind that kept you looking over your shoulder waiting to happen. He wanted to believe Karen was right. It was Harry trying to be funny. She knew Harry a lot better than he did. He wanted so much to believe her that he said, “Okay, I’ll go. I’ll sneak down the stairs.” He looked through the doorway to the big open area that reached from the foyer below at a high domed ceiling above the curved staircase and the upstairs landing. “You stand over there by the railing, okay? You can see the door to the study. I don’t want any surprises. You see anything at all, let me know.”
“How?” Karen said.
“I don’t know, but I’ll be watching you.”
Time to do it. Catlett got up from the desk with the big Hardballer ready to fire. He moved past the lit-up noisy screen where John Wayne and Dean Martin were shooting bad guys and ducking bullets singing off walls, the bad guys falling through those rickety porch railings. El Dorado was the name of it. Fine sound effects to go with what he was about to do. Loud, but not as loud as the Hardballer would be once he had it pointed at Chili Palmer. Catlett moved through the doorway into the front hall, heard his heels click on the tile and turned enough to face the stairway. He bent his head back to look at the upstairs railing that curved around the open part of the second floor and looked back at the stairway: did it quick to catch something dark there partway down, a shape against the light-colored wall. There was that moment he had to decide was it Chili Palmer or the woman and said Chili Palmer, though right then didn’t care if he had to do them both, he was this far. Catlett raised the Hardballer to put it on the shape, got it almost aimed and a scream came at him out of the dark—a scream that filled the house and was all over him and he started firing before he was ready, firing as that scream kept screaming, firing at that shape dropping flat on the stairs, firing till that fucking scream turned him around without thinking and he ran down a hall to the back of the house and got out of there.
The first thing Karen said was, “I haven’t screamed in ten years,” amazed that she could still belt one out. Chili told her it was a terrific scream, she ought to be in the movies. The second thing she said was, “We’d better call the police.” And he said, not yet, okay? But didn’t say why.
Now they were downstairs: Karen waiting in the kitchen, lights on, the television off, Chili looking around outside. She watched him come in shaking his head and noticed his purple and gold T-shirt for the first time.
“You said last night the Bear called?”
She nodded toward the counter saying, “The number’s by the phone,” and watched him walk over and look at the notepad next to it. “I have a T-shirt like that only it’s white.”