Be Cool

  Chili stood at the urinal, cigar clamped in his jaw, hearing Linda's voice on the phone telling him, "I'm sorry, it just slipped out." He asked her name and she said Linda, Linda Moon.

  There was more, several minutes of conversation with the tape recorder running. He had listened to some of it again to hear her voice, this girl with the easy drawl, nothing put-on about her. The next time he'd listen to her with story in mind: a girl who could sing but didn't like what they were doing . . . Why didn't she quit?

  Chili walked back through the coffee shop thinking of what he'd say to Tommy. Surprise him and sound interested. Give him a scenario off the top of the head: The guy who plays Tommy Athens is the main character. His name . . . Tommy Amore, like the song, the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie. The girl . . . she's with a group but wants to do her own stuff, so she comes to Amore Records. Walks in, Tommy takes one look at her and love is instantly in the fuckin air. But is she any good? Let's say she has the potential, she'll make it if she listens to Amore, does what he tells her. But Linda has ideas of her own. She fights Amore every step of the way. While this is going on the subplot develops. Some deal Amore thought was behind him's now giving him fits. The real Tommy will start nodding his head because it could be true. Like in Get Leo you have the plot, talk a star into making your movie, and you have the subplot, try to keep from getting killed while you're doing it. Make it up as you're telling him. Which is what movie pitches sound like anyway.

  CHILI PALMER CAME OUT of Swingers looking at his watch. It was 1:50 in the afternoon of a nice sunny day in mid September, the temperature 80 degrees, the traffic on Beverly Boulevard steady, the way it always was during the day.

  A four-door sedan, black, needing a wash, was turning onto Beverly from the side street, Laurel Avenue, and had to stop before making the turn. For a few moments the car was directly in front of Chili pausing to relight his Havana. He noticed the front-seat passenger and stared at the guy, no more than fifteen feet away, because the guy's hair didn't go with his face. The face had seen a lot more years than that thick, dark hairpiece, a full rug that appeared too big for his head. The guy turned now, he was wearing sunglasses, and seemed to be looking right at Chili. But he wasn't, he was looking past him, and now the car was moving again, making the turn on Beverly but still creeping as it moved past the cars parked along the curb, past Tommy's car—the white Rolls sitting there like a wedding cake—came even with the Ford pickup and stopped. Chili waited. It was like watching a scene develop:

  The front door of the sedan opened and the guy with the rug got out. A wiry little guy fifty or so wearing some Korean girl's hair so he'd look younger. Chili felt sorry for him, the guy not knowing the rug made him look stupid. Somebody ought to tell him, and then duck. He looked like the kind of little guy who was always on the muscle, would take anything you said the wrong way. Chili saw him looking toward Swingers now, staring. Then saw him raise both hands, Christ, holding a revolver, a nickelplate flashing in the sunlight, the guy extending the gun in one hand now, straight out at arm's length as Chili yelled, "Tommy!" Loud, but too late. The guy with the rug was firing at Tommy, squeezing them off like he was on a target range, the sound of gunfire hitting the air hard, and all at once there were screams, chairs scraping, people throwing themselves to the ground as the plate glass shattered behind Tommy still in his chair, head down, broken glass all over him, in his hair. . . . Chili saw the guy with the rug standing there taking in what he had done. Saw him turn to the car, the door still open, and put his hand inside, on the windowsill. But now he took time to look this way, to stare at Chili. Took a good look before he got in and the car drove off.

  A WOMAN SAID, "Oh, my God," and turned to make her way out of the crowd gathering to look at Tommy Athens hanging slumped in his chair, Chili right there now feeling people all around him, closing him in. Voices asking if the man was dead. Asking if anyone had called for a doctor, an ambulance. Asking if the guy who got shot was somebody. A voice saying, "They called nine-eleven." A voice near Chili saying, "You were with him, weren't you?" Another saying, "They were together."

  It looked like Tommy had been shot in the head, only one shot hitting him of the five Chili could still hear and count, but the one was enough. Chili stood there not saying a word. He had watched it happen without seeing it coming, and that scared him. Jesus, feeling sorry for the guy in the rug, wasting time like that, instead of yelling at Tommy as soon as the guy was out of the car.

  He knew he ought to get out of here right now, or spend the rest of the day telling homicide detectives what he was doing with Tommy Athens, why they were having lunch. Why he wasn't at the table when Tommy got popped. They'd look Tommy up on their computer, they'd look them both up, shit, and go round and round about their other life for a few hours.

  But he couldn't just walk away, not with all these witnesses, all these helpful citizens waiting to turn him in, dying to cooperate with the police. He looked around and saw faces staring at him. They looked away when he stared back, and moved aside as he worked his way through the crowd, some good-looking girls, not one of the guys wearing a suit and tie. By the time he got to the corner both EMS and a black and white had arrived and two uniforms were telling everyone to stay where they were for the time being, don't anybody leave. The first thing the uniforms did was collect the driver's license of each witness: the ones who said they'd gotten a look at the guy before the plate glass shattered.

  Detectives arrived in a Crown Vic and followed pointed fingers to Chili Palmer, spoke to him for a few minutes and asked would he mind coming to the Wilshire station with them, La Brea and Venice Boulevard; they'd bring him back to get his car.

  Chili didn't say yes he would mind or no he wouldn't. He kept his mouth shut looking at the scene again, starting to rewrite it in his mind, the guy playing Tommy no longer the lead. You couldn't have the star get popped ten minutes into the picture.

  No, but it could be the way to open it. A movie about the music business.

  2

  * * *

  THEY BROUGHT CHILI in the back way and through a squad room that looked like a Barney Miller set only a lot bigger: rows of desks butted together, each with a computer, rows of file cabinets, stacks of cardboard boxes marked "Arrest Packages" . . . through the squad room to a private office where a detective named Darryl Holmes introduced himself to Chili and asked would he like a cup of coffee. Chili said he wouldn't mind; black, please, and said, "You know something? This is the first time a cop's ever offered me anything but a half-assed plea bargain."

  Darryl Holmes said, "Yeah? You plead down those times?"

  "I always stood mute or not guilty," Chili said. He felt Darryl Holmes would appreciate the candor, see he wasn't going to have to step around any bullshit. There shouldn't be a problem here: a white guy and a black guy, both wearing good suits—Darryl's a beige tone—chatting in the Detective Division commander's office.

  "The L.T. was kind enough to let us use his office," Darryl said, "have some peace and quiet. They bring all those eyeball witnesses into the squad room, be like a hooker sweep out there. It's crowded as is."

  Chili said, "You're not the lieutenant?"

  "I'm Organized Crime, helping out," Darryl said, about to leave to get the coffee, but then said to Chili, "You made that movie Get Leo? Man, that was a funny movie. The only trouble I had with it, seeing Michael Weir in that part he played? The man's too short, try to intimidate anybody." Darryl said, "Make yourself comfortable. I be right back."

  Make yourself comfortable, my ass. The guy was Organized Crime, not Homicide. It told Chili what Darryl would be asking about. Make yourself comfortable . . . the office was as crowded as the squad room: overtime reports spread out on a round table that occupied most of the space in front of the commander's desk. A wallboard listed Parolees At Large, 123 warrants served, 53 arrests. A sign read: "Our strategy for dealing with predators is very simple: first we're going to target them and then we're going to book
them." Chili sat at the round table looking at overtime reports, the display board, photos of cops and framed commendations on the walls, waited exactly twelve minutes—he timed it—for Darryl Holmes to return with their coffee in styrofoam cups and join him at the table.

  "From past experience," Chili said, knowing by now they'd looked him up, "I thought you'd stick me in one of those interrogation rooms."

  "You mean interview room," Darryl said.

  "If that's what you call 'em now. It used to be a metal table and a tin ashtray that was never clean." Chili took a sip of coffee, hot but stale, left over from this morning. He said, "In case you didn't know, I was busted a few times in my previous life but never convicted, I'm happy to say, of breaking the law."

  Darryl said, "Usury isn't breaking the law?"

  "That was later, in Miami Beach. I was, you might say, a loan shark. But as far as it being illegal, I always saw it as a gray area, open to question. I was never booked for it and nobody ever brought a complaint."

  "Too scared to?"

  "Darryl, the only people who came to me were the ones banks wouldn't touch, the poor risks. When the borrower has nothing to put up you have to charge a fairly high rate of interest. I'd tell each one that came to me, 'If you think you might have trouble paying this back, please don't take the fuckin money.' They don't sign anything or put up collateral, not even—as I've often said—their wife's car." Chili paused but didn't get a smile from Darryl Holmes, the Organized Crime detective waiting to ask his questions. "So all you have is their word. My customers all paid on time except this one guy, Leo Devoe, ran a drycleaning store. Leo took off on me, I follow him out here and before I know it I'm in the movie business."

  "I know," Darryl said, "I read the stories in the paper about you, how you came to do Get Leo. Then didn't you make a sequel to it?"

  "Yeah, but that's another story. I want to be sure you know the facts about my record. That is if I still have a sheet, I don't even know. Those few times I was arrested back in Brooklyn, in my youth, I was brought up on RICO charges. Something to do with racketeering, but mainly on account of the people I was alleged to have been associated with. Some of 'em, I understand, did go down."

  Darryl was nodding. "Some of 'em still in, too."

  "But I never spent a day locked up except pending an appearance. You know how that goes, nothing you can do."

  "I know waiting can be a drag," Darryl said, looking past Chili toward the door. "All those eyeballs out there, they have to wait to tell one at a time what they believe the shooter looked like. You know what I'm saying? Tell a sketch artist and see if we can get a likeness everyone agrees is the guy we want. It could take some time." Darryl sipped his coffee. "Less you want to tell us the shooter's name and we go pick him up."

  Chili smiled. "Trying to sneak up on me, aren't you? Shame on you, Darryl. Why would I know the guy?"

  "From this previous life you mention, where you knew Tommy Athens from."

  "I had a hunch," Chili said, "we'd be going back to yesteryear. Connect the guys with mob connections to Tommy's past catching up with him. Did I have anything to do with it? No. Next question: how come I happened not to be at the table when he got whacked? Because I had to take a leak. Which I think of now as the luckiest piss I ever took in my fuckin life. Saved by my bladder. I say that knowing I could've been whacked too. Not as part of the contract, I don't mean that, but on account of this guy couldn't shoot straight."

  "He hit him in the head," Darryl said.

  "Yeah, he squeezes off five rounds from no more'n twenty feet away, hits Tommy once and breaks windows with the other four rounds. You ever hear of that, Darryl? Give a contract to a guy who doesn't know how to fuckin shoot?"

  This Darryl Holmes was patient. He listened to Chili and then asked in his quiet tone, "But you did work with him back in Brooklyn."

  "Tommy? Never. I knew him, I'd see him around, that's all. Since I'm out here I've run into him a few times, mostly at Lakers games. Yesterday he calls me out of the blue."

  "He had your number?"

  "He must've looked it up."

  "You're in the book?"

  "Like everybody else. Only I don't have 'Call Waiting.' Anybody pulls it on me, 'Just a second, I got another call,' I hang up."

  "Wasn't the other way around, you called him."

  "Believe me, man, I didn't set him up, if that's what you're getting at. He called, wants to have lunch."

  "Chat about old times?"

  "He thought he had an idea for a movie."

  "About gangsters?"

  "About him. Tommy was in the record business, doing okay, too, drove a Rolls. . . ."

  The phone on the commander's desk started to ring. Darryl made no move to pick it up. The phone rang three times and stopped and Darryl said, "What's the name of his record company?"

  Chili had to think. He came up with it, but then heard the door behind him open, a woman's voice say, "Darryl, line two," and the door closed. Chili watched Darryl get up and go around the desk to pick up the phone and stand there in his beige suit, his maroon figured tie and a shirt pure white against his skin. He said his name, listened for several seconds and said, "You never heard of Swingers? On Beverly Boulevard near Fairfax. We put it at one-fifty this afternoon. . . . Athens, like the city." Darryl said, "He owned a record company," and looked at Chili.

  "NTL Records, out'n Silver Lake."

  "NTL Records, in Silver Lake." Darryl listened and looked at Chili again.

  "Nothing To Lose."

  "Nothing To Lose. . . . Yeah, shot in the upper body. Was all the way gone, medics never hooked him up. . . . No, he was with somebody," Darryl said, looking at Chili again. "I'm not at liberty to tell you that, not just yet. Lemme ask you one. How come TV arrived and you're not anywhere around? . . . Uh-huh, well, that's all I can tell you for the time being, I gotta go." Darryl Holmes said, "Anytime," replaced the phone and came back to the round table, Chili watching him.

  "You know Tommy was shot in the head."

  "We speak to the press," Darryl said, "we call anything above the waist the upper body. On the phone just now, that was a friend of mine with the Times, a good friend, but I didn't tell him who Tommy Athens was having lunch with, did I?"

  "No, you didn't, and I appreciate it."

  "I imagine you would. The shooter, he was to see your picture in the paper he could remember you, huh, from that previous life?"

  Sticking to it with that quiet tone of voice. Chili had to shake his head. "Darryl, you're still trying to put me and Tommy together. You're Organized Crime, I can understand you want to see it as a mob thing, but I'm gonna have to disappoint you. The only reason Tommy got me there was to talk about making a movie."

  "Yeah, but you're telling me about a contract, about Tommy getting whacked. That sounds pretty much like a mob thing to me."

  Darryl acting innocent now.

  "The guy got out of the car," Chili said, "popped him and got back in the car. I didn't see the driver. I use the word 'contract' loosely. Whether the shooter was hired or did it on his own it was a hit, taking care of business. But if it was a mob thing, you can be sure they'd hire a guy knew how to fuckin shoot. The way you fire a pistol you hold it in two hands, right? Not this cowboy. He extends the piece in one hand, a .357 nickelplate or it might've been a .44, and starts blazing away."

  "You know those weapons, uh?"

  "I use 'em in movies."

  "You must've got a good look at him."

  "He's a short white guy," Chili said, "not over five-six, if that, at least fifty years old."

  "What color hair?"

  "I don't know, he wore a rug."

  "You sure?"

  "I can tell a rug. This one didn't fit him, it was too big. I don't know why but it reminded me of that story—I think it was Robert Mitchum, he sees this actor come on the set wearing a rug and he says to one of the grips, 'See that guy's toupee? It looks just like Joan Crawford's bush.' "

  "Rober
t Mitchum, yeah, I can hear him," Darryl said. "So you see this man pull a gun. . . ."

  "I yelled at Tommy, but too late."

  "The guy heard you?"

  "He might've. He looked over as he got in the car."

  "And saw you."

  "You want to believe he knows me, don't you?"

  Darryl shrugged saying, "I can understand you not wanting to believe it. What kind of car was it?"

  "Black four-door sedan. Could be a late-model Olds or any number of foreign makes."

  "What you're telling me, it could be anything."

  "Yeah, but I got some of the license number." Chili paused. "If I was in on this I wouldn't help you with the car, would I?"

  "Since it's most likely stolen," Darryl said, "what's the difference? You're not giving up anybody."

  "California plate, seven-T-L-four and two numbers I didn't get."

  Darryl wrote it down on a pad. "You say the car could be foreign. What about the guy?"

  "You mean was he Chicano?"

  "Was he?"

  "I doubt it."

  "He by any chance look Russian to you?"

  Chili said, "I can see your mind working, Darryl. If it wasn't our mob maybe it was the Russian mob. You read about 'em now, organized crime with a Russian accent, our new gangsters. They come here 'cause there's nothing at home worth stealing." Chili felt a sense of relief for the first time. "Tommy mentioned ethnics trying to shake him down, but didn't say what nationality."

  Darryl said, "Didn't take 'em serious?"

  "That's what it sounded like. He did mention some hip-hoppers with nasty manners and you read about them—you know, shooting each other."

  Darryl said, "What hip-hoppers we talking about?"

  LATER ON DARRYL HOLMES found the Detective Division commander over in the Gang Squad section busy with one of the sergeants. Darryl got along fine with Lt. Moyers, a big man with a heavy build. The L.T. couldn't help dressing like a white cop with twenty years in, it's what he was. But the man was decent, knew his business, and you could learn from him. Darryl, waiting for the L.T., looked at a wallboard of photos taken of deceased gangbangers lying shot to death in the street, some with tubes sticking out of them, the tubes meant to save their lives but too late. All the photos had R.I.H. scribbled on with a felt-tip pen. Rest in Hell. There was a closeup shot of a young man who had taken his own life when his girlfriend left him for someone else, blown the top of his head off with a shotgun. The inscription on the photo read love hurts.