A Long Walk Up the Water Slide

by Don Winslow

“Where is she?” he asked simply, as if for the first time. As if he thought they’d tell him.

  In Austin, Nevada, Culver thought.

  4

  Neal Carey watched Polly Paget eat dinner.

  Neal had seen some real eating in his life. He’d seen horses eat and pigs eat. He’d seen Ed Levine eat. But he’d never seen any creature eat like Polly.

  Polly ate like a hyperkinetic steam shovel in a gravel pit. She scooped slices of London broil and heaps of baked potato into her mouth and consumed them without seeming to chew or, for that matter, swallow. And as the putative digestion process continued, her hand whirled around on the plate for another go.

  “More salad?” Karen asked.

  “Mmmflckmmmff,” answered Polly.

  “I think she’s asking you to pass the rolls,” Neal said.

  Polly smiled and nodded. Small drops of sour cream oozed from the sides of her mouth.

  Karen set a roll on her plate. Polly’s knife flicked out and covered it with butter.

  “How do you keep your figure?” asked Karen.

  “MMttbbllsmm.”

  “Metabolism,” Neal translated.

  “I got it,” said Karen.

  I wish I got it, Neal thought.

  He was in a vile mood. Graham had left cheerfully, sticking him with Polly Paget and what seemed an impossible task: Turn this bimbo into America’s sweetheart. Get her ready for a deposition, and a trial, and a trial by media. Teach her how to speak, how to answer questions, and how to not answer questions.

  That last bit should be no problem, Neal thought, just get some food within reach. The big problem would be Graham’s final command: Make her get her story straight.

  That made Neal think that maybe Friends had some doubts.

  You could interpret it two ways, Neal thought. Maybe they think she’s such an airhead that she needs practice recalling the facts in some kind of order. That’s the nice interpretation. The not-so-nice interpretation is that’s she’s lying and needs to decide which tale she wants to tell and then memorize it. In which case, they want me to pick apart inconsistencies and work on them until her story is unassailable. And the really ugly interpretation is that Friends helped set this thing up from jump street.

  “So,” Polly said in a rare pause between bites, “you’re supposed to turn me into a real lady, is that it?” (Actually, “Yaw spozt tuh toin me intareel lady, zatih?”)

  “Something like that.”

  “Good luck. My mother couldn’t do it; the nuns couldn’t do it … Saint Anthony couldn’t do it.”

  She paused for a laugh.

  “That was a joke,” she said. “Saint Anthony … patron saint of lost causes. I pray to him all the time.”

  “Really?” Karen asked.

  Polly actually set down her fork. “Oh, yeah, patron saint of anything lost. He’s helped me find my contacts, my keys.… He wouldn’t help me find my birth-control pills, though, because the Pope is against birth control, you know.”

  “I heard that,” Neal said.

  “Yeah, anyways, Saint Anthony is my favorite saint.”

  “How did you get the name Polly?” Karen asked.

  Polly shoved down some salad and answered, “I know, it doesn’t sound very Catholic, does it? I mean, I don’t think there’s any Saint Polly. My dad used to say before he died that he named me Polly because he’d always wanted a parrot, but he was just teasing; really, it was the movie.”

  When Neal’s head stopped spinning, he asked, “What movie?”

  “Pollyanna. He liked it a bunch.”

  “Apparently.”

  She set her fork down again, rested her chin on the tops of her hands, looked at Neal, and said, “You think I’m a bimbo, don’t you?”

  It caught him off guard.

  “No,” he said.

  “Say the truth,” she said.

  If that’s what you want.

  “Okay,” he answered. “It’s crossed my mind.”

  “Neal!” Karen said.

  “No offense,” Neal said. “My mother was a bimbo.”

  Polly’s head snapped back and she gasped. “That’s an awful thing to say about your mother! You should be ashamed, talking about your mother that way!”

  Neal shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

  “All the more reason,” she said. Then she turned to Karen. “You know what I don’t like about men?”

  Karen took a moment to give Neal a dirty look before answering. “I have a few ideas.”

  “They’re stupid,” Polly said.

  We sure are, Neal thought.

  Walter Withers sat at the bar at the Blarney Stone and snuggled up to a glass of Jameson’s that felt so good, he didn’t mind Rourke’s habitual harangue.

  “This used to be a great town, you know that?” the bartender asked. “When Jimmy Wagner ran it, him and the Irish and the Italians.”

  Withers nodded agreeably.

  It’s a great town right now, he thought. I’m sitting in a nice warm dark bar with a glass of good whiskey in my hand and fifty thousand dollars in cash at my feet. And as soon as I complete my business here, I’m going to meet Gloria at the Oak Room, speaking of the days when this was a great town. A drink or two at the Oak Bar and then a taxi over to the Palm for a rare porterhouse and a glass or two of dark red.

  And I wonder where Blossom Dearie is singing tonight.

  “A great town,” the bartender repeated. “Guy got out of line, the cops smacked him around, and that was that.”

  Withers nodded again. As the only customer at the bar, it was his job.

  “Ah, Walt, the wife walked out again.”

  Withers shook his head sympathetically. “Women, huh?”

  “Yeah, says she can’t stand my drinking. I don’t drink that much. You know that bartenders aren’t drinkers, Walt. We see too much.”

  An opening.

  “Have you seen Sammy Black, Arthur?” Walk asked. “Has he been around?”

  “Just this afternoon he was in here asking about you,” Rourke answered. “So I says to her, I say, ‘You don’t like my drinking? I don’t like your eating.’ She gets pissed off, packs her things, and storms off to her mother’s—who’s what, maybe ninety?”

  Withers was almost grateful when Sammy Black walked in, even if he did have Chick Madsen with him.

  “Break his wrist, Chick,” Sammy ordered. Sammy was wearing a black overcoat, black sports jacket, black shirt, black shoes, probably black underwear. “A man who picks Minnesota to beat the spread on the road on Monday night deserves a broken wrist.”

  Chick waddled over to Withers’s stool, started to grab his wrist, then hesitated.

  “Right or left, Sammy?” Chick asked.

  “You right-handed or left-handed, Walter?” Sammy asked.

  “The sinister hand,” Withers told him.

  “What?”

  “Left-handed, Sammy,” Withers explained.

  “His left wrist,” Sammy ordered.

  Chick grabbed his left wrist.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Withers said. “I have the payment in full.”

  “You do? Hold on. Let me tell Tinkerbell. Tink, Walter has the money,” Sammy said. He paused to listen, then said, “Tink doesn’t believe you, Walter. Let’s all clap and say we believe.”

  “I can’t clap, Sammy. Chick has hold of my arm,” Withers said.

  “And I don’t hear any snapping of bones or screams of agony, Chick,” Sammy chided.

  Withers said, “It’s in the briefcase by my feet. Let me get it.”

  “Okay, I’ll play.” Sammy sighed. “Let’s see what’s in the briefcase.”

  “Unhand me, sir,” Withers said.

  Chick let go of his arm. Withers took a hit of the Jameson’s, then reached down and picked up the briefcase. He turned on the stool so his back was to the bookie and his goon and dialed the combination. Then he opened the briefcase and set it on the bar.

  Sammy Black’s eyes got
big the way they always did when he saw a lot of cash. Then he got mad.

  “You been betting with someone else?” he asked with the righteous indignation of a wronged spouse. “Walter, you munt, I carry you all this time and you get well with someone else? This is gratitude, Walter?”

  “I didn’t win this money,” Withers said. “I found gainful employment.”

  “Very gainful, indeed, Walter,” Rourke said as he looked into the briefcase.

  “Now, my good sir,” Withers said, “how much do I owe you?”

  “As of today, it’s twenty-two five,” Sammy said. “Walter, do you know there’s a very interesting line on Raiders-Pittsburgh tomorrow?”

  Withers handed him two stacks of the cash and then counted three thousand dollars off another. He closed the briefcase, slid off the bar stool, and handed the money to Sammy.

  “Keep the change,” he said. “Buy yourself some clothes that don’t make you look like a lounge singer at the Albany Ramada Inn.”

  “You’re a loser, Withers,” Sammy said.

  “Not tonight, my good man. Not tonight.”

  Withers tossed Arthur a jaunty wave and strolled out the door.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Sammy mumbled.

  “The wife walked out on me again, Sammy,” Arthur said.

  Sammy Black just stared out the door.

  “Women, huh?” answered Chick.

  “The missus still believe you?” Joey Foglio asked as he stood at the urinal.

  “Candice is the least of my worries,” Jack Landis called out from his stall.

  They were in the men’s room of Big Bob’s, one of Joey’s restaurants. Big Bob’s was a barbecue joint so basic, they didn’t even have plates. They just dumped slabs of meat on sheets of butcher paper and sent you out to the long picnic tables to gorge yourself.

  “There ain’t no Big Bob really, is there?” Jack asked.

  “You wanna see Big Bob?” Joey asked. “Come on out here!”

  Joey, Harold, and the two guys guarding the door laughed. Harold was Joey’s personal assistant, which usually meant he personally assisted Joey in beating up people. The two guys at the door were bodyguards, just in case any of those people came back with a resentment coupled with a gun.

  Jack Landis didn’t laugh, truly believing that Joey Foglio was egomaniacal enough to name an eating establishment after his own Johnson—which he guessed was preferable, anyway, to naming one after somebody else’s.

  Joey shook himself off, zipped up, and stepped over to the sink to wash his hands.

  “I got a lot of unhappy people out there, Jack,” he said.

  “The sausage?” Jack asked.

  “I mean my subcontractors,” Joey answered.

  Jack hitched his pants up, took his jacket off the hanger, and put it on.

  “I ain’t exactly delirious with joy, either,” Jack said.

  He opened the door and walked over to the mirror to check his hair.

  Joey Foglio came and stood beside him. It was not a comfortable feeling. Joey Foglio was a big man. He had a big broad head with a flat forehead you could sell advertising space on.

  Foglio looked into the mirror and combed his own full head of silver hair straight back.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked. “You ain’t been paying your bills.”

  “Maybe it would help if your contractors would just overcharge me by, say, fifty percent instead of a hundred,” Jack said.

  “That was the deal,” Joey reminded him. “You get your kickbacks.”

  “Not lately,” Jack complained.

  “Because you ain’t been paying your bills,” Joey said.

  “Because contributions are down.”

  “Because you tripped over your own dick,” Joey said. He put his comb back in his pocket.

  Jack eased a stray strand of hair back over his ear. “Someone put her up to this. The bitch isn’t smart enough to do it on her own.”

  “Smart or stupid,” Joey said, “she’s got you by the short and curlies.”

  Jack always thought Joey sounded stupid when he tried to talk like a Texan. He was even dressed like one today, with Tony Lama boots, brand-new jeans, piped cowboy shirt, and a vest.

  A greaseball cowboy, Jack thought. Great.

  “Just find her,” Jack said. “Find her and pay her off.”

  “I’ll find her,” answered Joey. “You pay her.”

  “Half and half,” Jack offered.

  “And I get the half that eats?” Joey asked. “You play, you pay.”

  “I never touched her.”

  “Jack, Jack, Jack. You’re like, what, a Baptist?”

  “Yeah.” What was this greaseball talking about?

  “You should be a Catholic, Jack,” Joe Foglio continued, “then you wouldn’t be consumed by all this guilt. Look at me. Do I look like I’m consumed with guilt?”

  Jack Landis had heard that the very definition of a sociopath was a person who didn’t feel guilt, but he decided not to share that thought at the moment, so he said, “No.”

  “Because I’m a Catholic,” Joe said proudly. “See, you Baptists are supposed to—what is it?—Accept Christ as your personal savior, right?”

  “I guess that’s the basic idea,” Jack answered to get it out of the way. “Now, what are we—”

  Joey continued. “See, that’s a mistake, that ‘personal’ part. What you need is a middleman, a fixer, a priest. I go to confession every day, Jack, every day. I go to confession, I rat myself out to the priest, the priest squares it with God, then I got the whole rest of the day to chase more pussy, skim more money—whatever—and the odds are still on my side I go to heaven. I couldn’t believe it when the nuns first told me about this, I thought it was so great.

  “Believe me, Jack, this world was made for Catholic men. You want me to set you up with a priest? I think you gotta take a few classes, let him pour some holy water on you … no big deal.”

  Jack wondered how on earth he got to be partners with a man who was obviously insane. He had to get Joey focused on the problem of Polly Paget.

  “The gravy train’s derailing, Joe, you’re the guy who can get it back on the track.”

  Talking to me like he’s on TV, Joey thought. Like I’m going to buy a time-share in Candyland. Like I’m a jerk.

  I’ll show you a freaking train, Jackie.

  “I already got a plan,” Joey said.

  “You do?” Jack asked. “What is it? No, I don’t want to know.”

  “No, you don’t want to know, Jack.” Joey looked at Harold and they both laughed.

  Jack straightened his string tie, smiled into the mirror, and steeled himself to go back out into public.

  “You’re the man, Joe,” he said.

  Harold opened the door and Jack Landis stepped out.

  “And you’re the jerk,” Joey said softly.

  The bodyguard started to laugh.

  “He still doesn’t get it, does he?”

  Foglio shook his head. “Proves you don’t need brains to make money in this country.”

  Landis had any brains, Foglio thought, he’d know that I knew all about him and Polly Paget almost from the first cigarette—an insurance policy against Jack Landis canceling our deal.

  A sweet deal it is, too. So much easier than honest crime.

  And the stupid Paget skank blows it. Because maybe this cracker bastard doesn’t buy her dinner and a movie one night. Rape, my aching ass. Broad can’t sell it, then complains it’s been stolen. And then goes to the newspapers.

  “You want me to make the call, Joe?” Harold asked.

  “Yeah,” Joe said. He didn’t make phone calls himself, lest he someday appear on the Justice Department’s Greatest Hits tapes, volume five. “Yeah, reach out.”

  Reach out, reach out and touch someone.

  Joey Foglio left the men’s room humming to himself.

  5

  It’s nice, Walter Withers thought, that there’s a place you can
still go to hear someone do a Hart tune and not butcher it. Or do a Hart tune at all, for that matter.

  Ah, New York, New York. Sitting in a dark room, listening to a smoky piano behind a chanteuse, sipping on quality scotch with a beautiful woman at the table beside you.

  All right, maybe Gloria is not exactly beautiful in the modern anemic fashion, and perhaps she is a bit … bed-worn … a woman of experience, one might say. Perhaps the blond hair comes from a bottle. So many good things do. Perhaps her makeup is a tad thick. A woman of a certain age is entitled. Perhaps she smokes incessantly. She came to maturity in the age of black-and-white films, and besides, it allows me to light her cigarettes for her. Perhaps she is a drunk. I have been buying her drinks.

  To loosen her tongue, among other things.

  He leaned over his glass and peered through the smoke into her eyes.

  “You look lovely tonight, darling,” he said.

  Gloria took a demure sip of her fourth martini and said, “Let’s go back to my place.”

  “Check, please,” Withers said.

  She saw his eyes light up and said, “Walter, if you think I’m giving you so much as a hand job, you’re fooling yourself. It’s late and I’m expecting an important phone call, if you know what I mean.”

  Walter knew what she meant. He paid the tab and gave the doorman a five to hail a taxi.

  Gloria lived in a huge drab building on West Fifty-seventh Street. A blue plaque outside the main door claimed that Bela Bartók had once resided there.

  Withers didn’t particularly care for Bartók.

  Her apartment was big, a testament to rent control. Withers plopped himself down in one of her old overstuffed chairs in the living room.

  “You want a drink, Walter? What a dumb question,” she said. She went into the kitchen, found a bottle of scotch, and poured a straight shot.

  “Why are you doing this?” Withers asked as she handed him the glass.

  “Does it make a difference? Look, I’m like an older sister to the kid. I love her. But she’s never going to beat Jack Landis in court and she’s never going to make it on her brains, so she might as well get something out of this mess.”

  “Posing nude for a magazine?” Withers asked.

  “Marilyn Monroe … Jayne Mansfield … Mamie Van Doren …” she said, counting them off on her fingers. “Look what it did for them.”