Be Cool

  "Irv. The fuck're you doing answering your phone? Good morning, Acme Records. CDs, tapes, videos, T-shirts and egg creams, can I help you? . . . What? Irv, I'm kidding with you, for Christ sake. You're the most successful guy I know in the business, that's why I said . . . Irv?"

  Raji watched Nick look over.

  "Fucking guy hung up on me."

  "I need to talk to you," Raji said.

  "That's never happened to me before in my life. The fucking guy hung up on me."

  "I need to talk about this man Chili Palmer."

  "He makes piss-poor movies," Nick said, looking toward the doorway. "Robin, who's on three?"

  Seattle.

  "I'll do Marty first. Where is he?"

  "On four."

  Nick punched a button.

  "Marty, my man, make me smile. . . . Yeah? . . . Yeah? . . . You didn't. Come on, you didn't. Marty, that is hot. That is so fucking hot. Man, your chops must've been really tight. Marty, hang on a sec, will you, bro? Be right back."

  Raji said, "Nick, you gonna talk to me?"

  Too busy with his phone bullshit.

  Nick saying, "I hate this fucking guy," and punched the button.

  "Jerry, my man, how you doing, bro? . . . I know you are. I just wanted to tell you, Jer, I was in Maui last week at the Grand Wailea. You ever been there? . . . You got to do it, man. They have eleven, count 'em, eleven fucking swimming pools, gardens all over the place. I thought of you right away, Jer, knowing you're an orchid freak. Man, they hang from trees at this place. . . . Well, as a matter of fact, no, it's a solid group, but their name, Tout Suite, may be a bit too coy. I'm thinking of changing the spelling, Americanize it to toot, like tooting a horn, and Sweet, like in sweet tooth. Change it, you know, before the cement gets hard. . . . They do sort of low-fi indie pop, just left of alternative center. . . . Yeah, I understand, Jer. Hey, good talking at you, man." Nick turned off the phone. "Asshole."

  Coming over to the desk and sitting down Raji said, "Yeah, I understand, Jer," in a nasal white-guy way of speaking. "Good talking at you, man."

  "I talk to that asshole," Nick said, "I have to lie down after. He throws me off my rhythm. I don't know why, but I start thinking when I'm talking to him instead of just talking."

  All jive on the phone. Gets off, he's his deadass self again. Turns it on, turns it off.

  "What do you want?"

  "Say in the paper this Chili Palmer used to be a wiseguy."

  "He was a gofer, a hired hand."

  "And you know him."

  "Tell me what you want, Raj."

  Playing godfather now in his bluejeans and UCLA athletic shirt. Middle-aged guinea with a full head of dyed-black hair, a diamond pinky ring.

  "The white chick, Linda," Raji said, "wants to leave the Chicks and have this Chili Palmer be her manager."

  "She told you that?"

  "He did."

  "Yeah? What'd you do?"

  "Let him know she's on a five-year contract."

  "You felt you had to explain it to him? You didn't kick his ass?"

  "The man gives Elliot some jive to turn his head. Told him he ought to be in the movies. Elliot raises his one eyebrow and becomes squirmy. You know what I'm saying? Thrilled to death."

  "He's a fruitcake, you know that. You think it's cool to have a queer for a bodyguard. But what good is he?"

  "He's smart in his own way," Raji said, "besides liking to hurt people. I don't mean he's smarter than me. No, what my man Elliot does, he gives me a different view of things."

  "And Chili Palmer's a talker," Nick said. "That's what he does, he talks. You should've hit him in the mouth."

  "Yeah, but see, I don't know the man. Who is this dude wears a suit of clothes, nice threads? I don't know does he pack or what. Now I find out he was connected."

  "What he does, Raj, is make movies about a shylock, 'cause that's what he was at one time, all he was, a fucking shylock. What else you want to know?"

  "That Get Lost wasn't bad."

  "Yeah, the amnesia part. You can do a lot with amnesia once you get it going. You know, that might not be a bad name for a group. Amnesia." Nick began nodding his head. "They do soul, R and B? Maybe some kind of mellow urban." He paused. "No, I think there already is an Amnesia."

  The man's mind taken up with getting spins. Looking at MTV now on the television. Prodigy, it looked like; yeah, Prodigy doing "Smack My Bitch Up."

  "What I'm saying to you," Raji said, "the white chick Linda, she leaves, the label's gonna cancel me out and I have to start over. They in love with Linda, and Vita. Linda walks, Vita's liable to. I needed to have this Chili Palmer moved way aside. I trust my man Elliot to do a number on anybody but this Chili Palmer. So who do I use?"

  Nick was drumming his fingers on his desk and ducking his head up and down to Prodigy.

  "You want Joe Loop."

  One of the retired tough guys Nick had brought out from the east and worked cheap.

  "The old guy," Raji said. "Yeah, if he's up to it. What I want is Chili Palmer to disappear from the earth."

  "You want Joe Loop," Nick said.

  "Yeah, but what if he knows Chili from those days? Like they was friends at one time."

  "You kidding? Half the guys he whacked would've been in his crew, one time or another. You know where Chili lives?"

  "I can get it. Call the sister works for L.A. Gas. She can look him up for me."

  Right then Nick stopped ducking his head up and down, said, "Shit," and punched a button on the console.

  "Marty? Man, I'm sorry to make you wait like that. You know Raji. . . ." Nick's fingers pinched the head of the little mike, looking at Raji. "Marty says, 'Yeah, your houseman.' " Then, into the phone again, "Raj had a panic attack over nothing. I had to settle him down. So, my brother, tell me what else is new in your life?"

  DARRYL HOLMES SAID to his wife Michelle, "I wouldn't mind jumping off the cliff. How about you?" They were in bed for the night, a lamp still on.

  Michelle said, "I wouldn't mind."

  "You wouldn't mind?"

  "That's how you said it. You want a push, fine. Only I don't fall, I get reborn."

  "As a string of firecrackers. We only got what, a couple months?"

  "Doctor said you can do it long as it isn't uncomfortable. Right up to near term." She said, "Little Maxine's gonna say, 'Hey, what's that banging going on?'"

  Darryl said, "Oh, man . . ."

  His reaction to what they planned to call the baby, and Michelle said what she always did, "What's wrong with pleasing a lonely old lady?"

  Talking about her mother, a mean, unpleasant old woman, the reason she was lonely.

  What Darryl couldn't figure out was how some old women like Maxine were looked up to as knowing everything when they were dumb as stumps, never smiled, never spoke a word less it was to criticize. "Y'all like your snap peas raw, huh? Next time I come I better cook 'em." Boil the snap peas in milk till they turn to mush. "Children should be seen and not heard." Full of pronouncements like that.

  They had a boy named Michael and a boy named Darryl Junior. Either one could've been Max, after the old woman, if Darryl hadn't put his foot down. He'd said to Michelle, "You aren't supposed to give a child a name 'cause you're too scared not to."

  Lying there in bed looking at each other in the lamplight he tried another reason: "The way Alzheimer's setting in on her, pretty soon she won't know any of our names and we can put her in a home."

  "You want to go round on that some more," Michelle said, "or jump off the cliff?"

  "Yeah, let's get to the edge."

  The phone rang as they were moving toward it.

  Heads close they stared into each other's eyes.

  Michelle said, "I told you mama has powers. She must've heard you."

  Darryl said, "If it's her, we getting a divorce."

  He rolled over and picked up the phone from the night table, said hello.

  "Darryl, it's Chili Palmer."

&nbsp
; "Yeah? What can I do for you?"

  "I come home tonight—there's a dead guy in my living room."

  9

  * * *

  DARRYL WAS THERE in twenty minutes.

  "I came in the back," Chili said. "I'm about to turn on the light in the kitchen and I notice a light showing in the dining room and the hall, coming from the living room. I know when I left the house this morning I turned all the lights off."

  "You came in here," Darryl said.

  "I came through the dining room. I see this guy sitting at my desk, leaning over it, the lamp on. . . ."

  "The way he is now?"

  "Just like that, bleeding on my fuckin desk, all over the chair . . ."

  "He was still bleeding when you came in? You saw the blood running out?"

  "No, I guess it had stopped."

  "You didn't touch him."

  "No, I didn't."

  "Then how'd you see his face—you say you don't know who he is?"

  "I see the exit wounds in his back," Chili said, "I lifted his head up by his hair and took a look. That's the only part of him I touched, his hair. It's kind of greasy."

  "What about the gun?"

  A pistol lying on the desk, the grip toward the guy.

  "I smelled it, but I didn't touch it. What is it, a Walther?"

  "Yeah, PPK, a three-eighty, it looks like."

  Chili said, "I don't think it's been fired." He watched Darryl stoop down to sniff the barrel.

  "I don't either," Darryl said, rising.

  "Get down and smell the guy."

  "I don't have to, the man reeks of garlic."

  Darryl brought a pair of latex gloves from his jacket and worked his hands into them. Now he took hold of the man's hair and raised his face. "Look at him again. Is this the guy shot Tommy Athens?"

  Chili shook his head. "Kind of the same build, but this guy's younger by twenty years or so, and I'm pretty sure he's taller." He looked to Chili like a guy who worked outside at a trade, like an ironworker or a guy who poured concrete.

  "You sure you haven't seen him before?"

  "Positive."

  "You ever see a dead guy with his eyes open?"

  Half open, not enough that you could tell their color.

  Chili said, "Not that I recall."

  He watched Darryl pick up the guy's hand from the desk and feel his fingers, flexing them. "No rigor yet. He couldn't be dead more'n an hour, an hour and a half. You called me right away?"

  "I looked around the house first. He broke a window in the bedroom to get in."

  "No alarm system?"

  "Anybody breaks in takes his chances."

  "You mean takes anything he wants. How'd the guy who popped him get in?"

  "I haven't figured that out."

  Darryl was looking at the dead guy again. "Shot twice, both through and through, and through the back of the chair," Darryl showing him the punctures in the maroon leather. "Now come around here and look at the wall."

  Chili stepped over to see the two holes in the white plaster, big ones you could stick your fingers in, bigger than any bullets would have made. He looked at Darryl.

  "Who ever shot him dug the bullets out."

  Darryl said, "The man was thorough, huh? Knew what he was doing."

  "Except he did the wrong guy."

  "That's how you see it?"

  "How else? The first guy comes in and sits here in the dark waiting for me. Maybe he hears the second guy come in, maybe not. Or he dozed off, tired of waiting. The second guy comes in, doesn't waste any time, walks up to the desk and pops the guy twice in the chest. Then turns the lamp on to see how he did."

  "Notices," Darryl said, "he ain't you."

  "If he saw my picture in the paper or he knows me, yeah. But what if he's never seen me?"

  "It's possible," Darryl said, "he could think this is you. Say all he was given was the address and told to do the man lives here. This guy could've been told the same thing. Maybe they saw your picture, maybe they didn't. But this coming right after you were in the paper—it looks like that's how they found you. But now the shooter, if he didn't know you before, he's gonna find out soon enough he did the wrong man. Be thinking to himself, Then who was that guy sitting there?"

  "You're telling me," Chili said, "this'll be in the paper, maybe on TV?"

  "Both, most likely. The man was killed in your home, not out on the street. The first thing anybody's gonna ask is who lives here."

  "Darryl, you know I didn't shoot him. I don't even have a gun."

  "I know what you told me."

  "Would I have called you? I shoot a guy in my own house and call a cop?"

  "He was a burglar that broke in you would."

  "If that's my story, would I leave him sitting at my desk? I'd have the gun in my hand, nothing to hide."

  "You know you gonna be asked all kinds of questions," Darryl said, "only not by me this time. It isn't my case. You not in the City of the Angels living here, it's county jurisdiction. Their body, their case. I'm gonna have to call county homicide, downtown, bring them in on it."

  "Go through all that again," Chili said, sounding tired, "my past life, looking for a connection."

  "I can tell them about you, save some time." Darryl looked around. "You have another phone? I don't want to use the one on the desk."

  "In the kitchen. But Darryl, don't you want to know who the guy is? Man, I'm dying to know."

  "We will soon enough."

  "Darryl, look. You see the guy's back pocket, the bulge? That has to be his wallet."

  Darryl nodded, looking down the man's back, past the blood and the rips in the man's jacket. "It could be his wallet, yeah."

  "You got your rubber gloves on, you can reach down in there and slip it out, take a peek at the guy's driver's license. That's all we want to know, his name. Where he lives, while we're at it. But that's all. And then put it back. Who's gonna know?"

  Darryl kept looking at the man's back pocket, studying it or making up his mind.

  "The man's sitting on it."

  "I lift him up," Chili said, "you reach down and get the wallet. Nothing to it."

  "I could get called in on this one. The chances are I will. But not being my case I can't begin the investigation, go through the man's clothes. Technically, I'd be tampering with evidence."

  "Darryl, we find out who this guy is, maybe it'll tell us who sent him."

  "Unless this guy was acting on his own."

  "I'd know him if he was, if it was something personal, wouldn't I? I'm thinking this could tie in with Tommy's death."

  Darryl jumped on that. "It could tie in? What else you have going, man, you could get shot for?"

  Answer that one even speculating, bring up Raji as a threat, a possible suspect—Chili saw himself getting sidetracked talking about Raji when he wasn't even sure the guy was a threat. All he could think of right now was finding out who this dead guy was. He said to Darryl, "Look at it as that gray area you guys like, where you lay the book aside and go by your gut, your instinct. You see a connection between Tommy and this guy."

  "A nexus, yeah."

  "So you look at his I.D."

  "Just his wallet," Darryl said, "and I put it right back. All right, let's do it quick. Lift him up."

  Chili moved around to the other side of the chair, worked one hand under the guy's arm, took hold of the front of his jacket with the other and lifted as he pulled, straining to hold the man up until Darryl, sliding his hand down in there said, "Okay, I got it."

  A wornout brown leather wallet with a curve to its shape from riding against the man's butt.

  "Two twenties and some singles," Darryl said. "That's all taking you out pays?"

  "You see his license?"

  "I'm looking," Darryl said, working rubber-glove fingers into the folds and pockets of the wallet. He said, "Not much here," but then brought out a card.

  Chili said, "That's not a license."

  "It's a green card," Darryl s
aid. "The man's an immigrant, come here this past May. I bet he doesn't speak three words of English."

  "Darryl, come on. Who is he?"

  "Ivan Suvanjiev." Darryl held up the card so Chili could see the name. "The man's Russian."

  10

  * * *

  RAJI WAS TOLD to meet Joe Loop at Canter's on Fairfax. This was two days after Joe Loop hit the Russian by mistake. He wouldn't admit he'd screwed up. He said to Raji, "I never seen a hit like this one before. You got to fuckin get in line to whack this guy."

  "The man's popular," Raji said, "offends all kinds of people. You know Chili Palmer?"

  "I've heard the name. Who he is don't mean nothing to me."

  "Business is business," Raji said. "I like to ask you—something I been wondering—how many guys you whacked in your time."

  "None of your fuckin business."

  "So much for small talk," Raji said.

  They sat facing each other in a booth, Raji with this fat little sixty-year-old guinea, round shoulders, no neck on him you could detect, the man wearing glasses all smudged with his fingerprints, a safety pin holding the temple on one side to the frame, a musty-looking suit on but no tie. Not the set of a man you paid twenty-five hundred dollars to do a job. Raji tried not to look directly at him; this was an ugly man with an ugly disposition. He gazed about the room instead, the biggest deli he'd ever seen, a bakery counter in front, Joe Loop telling him how the place had been closed for health reasons but was open again, Joe Loop saying they must've got rid of the roaches or whatever the problem was, cleaned up the kitchen.

  What was weird, Raji's mind flashed back to when he was a kid he'd turn the light on in the kitchen at night and see roaches running for their lives. Raji seeing this again as Joe Loop said, "I turn on the light—who's this guy?" Like mentioning the roaches reminded him of turning on a light. Weird. "Right away," Joe Loop said, "I see this ain't the guy was in the paper."

  "No, he's the one has his picture in there today," Raji said. "There was a Russian one time you might've heard of, Ivan the Terrible? And there's this one they call Ivan the Fuckup, sitting there in the dark. According to the paper, 'Said to be a member of the notorious Russian Mob.' You believe it?"