Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard Page B

moment there the two of them looking at each other in a different way than before. Like starting over. Karenbroke the spell saying she had to run and he got out of her car.
    Still looking at the photos on the wall he thought about taking a closer look at the ones Karen was in. Check out her eyes. See what they were like when she was a screamer with blond hair. Maybe later.
    Right now Harry was saying, “Here we are.”
    Harry, in the doorway, stepping aside, the two limo guys coming into the office past him.

10
    Chili stayed where he was, at the desk. The one he took to be Ronnie Wingate—and had been thinking of as the rich kid—glanced at him, that’s all, then looked around the office saying, “Harry, what year is it, man?” with a lazy rich-kid way of talking. “We enter a time warp? I feel like I’m back in the Hollywood of yesteryear.” He was wearing a suede jacket so thin it was like a second shirt, with jeans and running shoes, sunglasses resting in his rich-kid hair he hadn’t bothered to comb.
    The other one, Bo Catlett, was an opposite type, tall next to Ronnie and put together in a tan outfit, suit, shirt and tie all light tan, a shade lighter than his skin. But what was he? From across the room he looked like the kind of guy who came from some island in the Pacific Ocean you never heard of. Ronnie kept moving as he looked at the photos over the sofa, his motor running on some chemical. Now Harry was waving his arm, inviting them to sit in the red chairs facing the desk.
    Chili watched Catlett coming first, saw the mustache now and the tuft of hair beneath the lower lipand wondered what was wrong with Harry. The guy wasn’t Latin or even from some unknown island out in the ocean. Up close he was colored. Colored and something else, but still colored.
    Sitting down he said, “How you doing?”
    That’s what he was and what the other Catlett, the jazz drummer, was too. Chili said to him, “You any relation to Sid Catlett?”
    It brought a smile, not much, but enough to make his eyes dreamy. “Big Sid, huh? No, I’m from another tribe. Tell me what brings you here.”
    â€œThe movies,” Chili said.
    And Catlett said, “Ah, the movies, yeah.”
    Ronnie was seated now, one leg hooked over the chair arm, the leg swinging up and down on some kind of energy, his head moving too, as if plugged into a Walkman. Behind them Harry said, “This is my associate, Chili Palmer, who’ll be working with me.”
    Harry already forgetting his instructions.
    The limo guys nodded and Chili gave them a nod back. “I want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding here,” Harry said. He told them that despite rumors they might have heard, their investment in Freaks was as sound as the day they signed their participation agreement.
    â€œHarry, are you making a speech?” Ronnie had his face raised to the ceiling. “I can hear you, but where the fuck are you, man?”
    â€œWhat I been wondering,” Catlett said in a quiet voice, looking at Chili, “is where he’s been.”
    Ronnie said, “Yeah, where’ve you been? You called us once, Harry, in three months.”
    Harry came around from behind them to stand at one side of the desk, his back to the window, sayinghe’d been off scouting locations and interviewing actors in New York and his secretary had left without his knowledge to work for an agent, for Christ sake, Harry saying that was the kind of help you had to rely on these days, walked out, didn’t even tell him.
    Chili listened, not believing he was hearing all this.
    Ronnie said, “Let’s get the man a girl. Harry, you want one with big hooters or one that can type?”
    Chili’s gaze moved from Ronnie the fool to Bo Catlett the dude, the man composed, elbows on the chair arms, his fingertips touching to form a tan-skinned church, a ruby ring for a stained-glass