Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

What’s the second thing?”
    â€œOr they’d have it done—you don’t know these guys. They’re not exactly financial types.”
    â€œHarry, I prob’ly know ’em better than you do. What you’re telling me,” Chili said, “they got more out on the street than limos. They’re dealing, huh? Selling dope to movie stars and using you to launder their dough. Put it in a Harry Zimm production, take it out cleaned and pressed.”
    Chili waited.
    Harry eased back. The chair creaked and that was the only sound.
    â€œYou don’t know or you don’t want to or you’re not saying,” Chili said. “But from what you tell me, that’s what it sounds like.”
    He smiled, wanting Harry to relax.
    â€œYou have my interest aroused. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about these guys, if they’re real hard-ons or they’re giving you a buncha shit. Or what their connections are, if they have any. But what I want to know first,” Chili said, “is why you took their two hunnerd grand to Vegas, put yourself in that kind of a spot. I mean if you’re scared of these guys to begin with . . .”
    â€œI had to,” Harry said, sounding pretty definite about it. “I’ve got a chance to put together a deal that’ll change my life, make me an overnight success after thirty years in the business. . . . But I need a half a million to get it started.”
    â€œA movie,” Chili said, wanting to be sure.
    â€œA blockbuster of a movie.”
    â€œYou don’t want to ask your limo guys?”
    â€œI don’t want them anywhere near it,” Harry said. “It’s not their kind of deal, it’s too big.” Harry was hunching over the table again. “See, what happened. . . This’s at the time I’m getting Freaks ready for production. I’ve got a script, but it needs work, get rid of some of the more expensive special effects. So I go see my writer and we discuss revisions. Murray’s good, he’s been with me, he wrote all my Grotesque pictures, some of the others. He’s done I don’t know how many TV scripts, hundreds. He’s done sitcoms, westerns, sci-fi, did a few Twilight Zones . . . Only now he can’t get any TV work ’cause he’s around my age and the networks don’t like to hire any writers over forty. Murray has kind of a drinking problem, too, that doesn’t help. Likes the sauce, smokes four packs a day . . . We’re talking—get back to what I want to tell you—he happens to mention a script he wrote years ago when he was starting out and never sold. I ask him what it’s about. He tells me. It sounds pretty good, so 1 take the script home and read it.” Harry paused. “I read it again, just to be sure. My experience, my instinct, my gut, tells me I have a property here, that with the right actor in the starring role, I can take to any studio in town and practically write my own deal. This one, I know, is gonna take on heat fast. The next day I call Murray, tell him I’m willing to option the script.”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?”
    â€œYou pay a certain amount to own the property for a year, take it off the market. It’s an option to buy. I paid Murray five hundred against twenty-five thousand if I exercise the option, then another twenty-five at the start of principal photography.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound like much.”
    â€œIt’s an old script, been shopped around.”
    â€œThen why do you think you can get it made?”
    â€œBecause on the other hand it’s so old it’s new. The kid studio execs they have now had just come into the world when Murray wrote it.”
    â€œSo you don’t buy it,” Chili said, “till you know you have a deal. Is that right?”
    â€œOr raise the money independently,” Harry said, “which is