A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (25 page)
He thought about his admiration for Candy Landis, her commitment to family values, the way she spoke of morality and ethics, the way her golden hair touched the soft skin on her neck, how it would look falling back on a satin pillow as she opened her arms, and he wished that Foglio would hurry up and get into the damn church. He wanted to get this over with.
An old woman came out of the confessional booth he was watching. He crossed himself in imitation of the veiled ladies, slid down the pew, parted the curtain of the confessional, and knelt.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” he recited, knowing that his Mormon ancestors were spinning in their graves. Reaching into his pocket, he found the tiny microphone with the little suction cup.
“It has been … uh … ten years … since my last confession,” Chuck said, promising himself that he would never, ever do another undercover job as long as he lived. Why didn’t the priest say something? “Uh … it’s been so long because … I’ve been in a coma.”
The priest mumbled something incomprehensible.
Chuck attached the suction cup to the underside of a piece of molding, then pressed it to make sure it stuck.
He thought he heard the priest say something about sin.
“I … I’m in love … with a woman who’s not my wife,” Chuck confessed, because he felt he had to say something.
Then it all came tumbling out, how he had come to work for the woman and her husband, how the husband cheated on her, how he had come to see a softer side of her, how …
The priest kept trying to interrupt with some mumbo jumbo, but Charles kept spewing guilt about how he had constant carnal images of the woman that he couldn’t suppress and how he wished that her husband would die and his own wife would run off with a Gentile and then he could persuade the woman to convert and stuff, until he ran out of breath and the priest said something that sounded like “Hentile?”
Charles felt better as he went to the old truck parked around the corner.
“Does it work?” he asked Culver.
Culver took off his headset and asked, “You’ve got a boner for Candy Landis?”
Evidently it works, Chuck thought.
Joey Foglio went back to the car with a shiny new soul and a fresh resolve to take more advantage of Jack Landis’s crumbling empire. He had ridden Jack about as far as he could. It was time to change horses.
“Did you arrange a clean phone?” he asked Harold.
“Joey, don’t you think—” Harold started.
“No, I don’t think,” Joey said without a trace of irony. “Carmine’s been acting like a banker so long, he thinks he is one. That’s the crucial difference between him and me. I know who I am. I’m a criminal. I commit crimes.”
The crucial difference, Harold thought, is that Carmine has several hundred soldiers to do his bidding and you have several.
“Carmine isn’t going to like you messing around in the middle of a deal,” Harold said.
“He’s the one who’s messing,” Joey said.
“You’ll still make money.”
“I don’t want to
make
money,” Joey answered. “If I wanted to
make
money, I’d sell insurance. I want to
take
money. That’s who I am. It’s the me of me.”
Harold took him to a phone booth on Flores Street and handed him the phone number in Rhode Island.
“What is this phone?” Joey asked.
“Another phone booth.”
“Clean?”
“Guy promises it is,” Harold assured him, aware of Joey’s paranoia about wiretaps.
The guy answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” Joey said.
“Hello,” Hathaway answered. “Why am I talking to you?”
“Because you like to make money,” Joey answered. “Because you’re tired of working like a donkey and giving the money to Marc Merolla.”
He outlined his proposal to Hathaway.
Hathaway was definitely interested when he heard the profit margins. Joey let him drool over the potential riches for a minute before he said, “There’s a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“That broad that says she was raped?” Joey said. “I was paying her to shag Jack.”
There was a long silence, so long that Joey was afraid he had blown the deal.
“Jesus,” Hathaway said. “You, too?”
Are you really afraid of these people?” Karen demanded as Neal packed.
“Do you mean
really
in the sense of
actually,
or
really
in the sense of
very?
” Neal asked.
Karen looked annoyed.
“First one, then the other,” she said.
“Okay. I am actually very afraid of these people,” he answered. “Really.”
She sat down on the bed.
“I thought they only killed their own,” she said.
“Did you tell that to the guy in the ski mask?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “I hit him with a bat.”
He turned from his packing.
“You’re saying we should—”
Polly came into the room.
“You guys should see this,” she said.
“What?” Neal asked.
“Jack!”
They followed her back into her room, where Candy sat transfixed, watching Jack standing all by himself, center stage on their set.
“What’s up?” Neal asked.
Candy shook her head.
Jack Landis stood stock-still, looked at the hushed audience, then said, “You’re probably wondering where Candy is.”
The audience assented.
“So am I,” Jack said.
There was some nervous laughter in the crowd.
“Earlier today,” Jack continued, “I stood in the shadow of the Alamo and thought about those brave men who stood up for what they believed—and died for it.
“Well, I’d rather die than tell you what I have to tell you, but that would be the coward’s way out, and I guess I wouldn’t want to go out a coward. The ghosts of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett would haunt me.”
“What’s he doing?” Karen asked.
“They’re playing the card,” Neal said.
“What?”
“Watch.”
Jack looked directly into the camera. “What I have to stand up and say is that I did have an affair with Polly Paget.”
The audience gasped.
“Holy shit,” Karen said.
“Miss Paget seduced me in my office in New York …”
“Lying sack of crud,” Polly said.
“… and I regret to say that I fell to temptation. The affair was short-lived, but it happened, and I am deeply, deeply sorry.”
“He’s good,” Neal said.
“He sold used cars in Beaumont,” Candy said.
The camera zoomed in for a tighter close-up as Jack’s eyes brimmed with tears. His voice broke as he blurted, “I have betrayed you. I have betrayed you. I have betrayed my family … my audience … and my God.…”
He broke down, dropped his head into his hands, and sobbed. His shoulders heaved up and down as members of the audience wept and cried, “No!” A woman in the front row fainted and had to be carried out.
The camera eased back to a head-and-shoulders shot as Jack struggled to compose himself, then continued. “I have decided to take a leave of absence from my duties at FCN.”
More shouts of “No!”
Jack continued, “I want to use that time to seek spiritual counseling and take a long hard look to find out just who is this man named Jackson Hood Landis.”
He bowed his head.
When he lifted it, he tightened his jaw, aimed his focus an inch higher, and said, “One thing I know about Jack Landis, though.…
“ ‘He’s not a rapist,’ ” Neal murmured.
“He’s not a rapist,” Jack said. “That charge is utterly, completely, and absolutely false. I’m sorry to say that Miss Paget is a far sicker individual than I ever thought, and when I told her that I was going to end our relationship, she made up this horrible story for revenge. She told me that’s what she was going to do, and that’s what she did.”
“In your dreams,” Polly growled.
The camera tightened in on Jack’s tear-streaked face.
“One word more,” he said, “to my beloved wife, Candice.”
The tears poured down his face and little snot bubbles came out of his nose as he stared into the camera and choked out, “Candy darling, I know I’ve hurt you … but I love you … and if … you could ever find it in your heart … to forgive me …”
He broke into sobs, shook his head, and walked off the stage.
A stentorian voice announced, “And now, on FCN, ‘Flipper’!”
Jack Landis came off the stage.
A weeping apprentice handed him a towel and said, “That was beautiful, Mr. Landis. Deeply moving.”
“Fuck you,” Jack said.
He wiped the sweat off his face and walked out of the studio.
“Wow,” Karen said over strains of “
They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning.
”
“We’re hosed,” Neal said. Jack’s virtuoso performance had just taken Polly’s cards out of her hands.
“Why did he do that?” Polly asked.
“They’ll get instant polls,” Neal said, “and see how it went over. If the public bought it, they can rebuild FCN without dealing with you.”
You, who basically told Carmine Bascaglia to stick it up his ass.
“So?”
Neal didn’t want to tell her the whole truth. It wouldn’t do her any good. He knew that it might not happen right away, but it would happen. Sometime after Polly faded from the headlines, sometime after she tried to rebuild a life, someone would come and snuff it out.
“
And you know Flipper, Flipper lives in a world full of wonder …
”
He picked up the ringing phone.
“He was great, wasn’t he?” Ed gloated.
“He was terrific,” Neal admitted.
Ed said, “Listen, the client decided to enter an agreement with Mr. Landis, and he doesn’t think he can go forward with Ms. Paget in good faith.”
“Good faith, Ed?” Neal scoffed. “Are you reading from a card or something?”
“If Ms. Paget decides to pursue her litigation, of course that is her right,” Ed continued. “But it would be a conflict of interest for our attorneys to represent her.”
Now
it’s a conflict of interest?
“So Friends’ role is finished,” Ed said. “Mr. Kitteredge asked me to thank you for your good work, apologize for any inconveniences, and instruct you to stand down.”
“That’s an oxymoron,” Neal observed. “Stand down.”
“You’re not hearing me, Neal. The job is over. Go home.”
“Let me make sure I have this straight,” Neal said. “We pick Polly up because we think she’s useful, then when she’s served our purposes, we throw her to the sharks. Is that it?”
“She shouldn’t have gotten greedy,” Ed answered.
“Yeah, wanting the truth.”
“Do you think we could protect her if we wanted to?” Ed asked. “When are you going to grow up?”
“I’ve grown up,” Neal said. “I’m packing. We’re out of here. The job’s over, like you said.”
He hung up and looked back at the three women who were staring at him.
“Hey.” He shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
So we might as well do it right now.
By the evening news, Jack had become a figure of sympathy, and Polly got the wrong end of the media’s magic wand as she slid from sexy victim on the run to love-crazed psycho female in a single afternoon.
The radio talk shows led it off. Calls started at about four to three for Jack and then jumped to two to one in his favor when the men got to their car phones at rush hour.
The afternoon papers rushed
WHERE IS CANDY
? sidebars onto the
JACK CONFESSES
headline stories, and the evening news commentators opened with, “ ‘I have betrayed you,’ said restaurant and media magnate Jack Landis today as he admitted an affair with a vengeful Polly Paget. Landis firmly denied, however, allegations of rape” before cutting to footage of Jack’s tearful television address.
By nighttime, “Jack’s Confession” parties had broken out on college campuses all over the country. Students who habitually set their VCRs for “The Jack and Candy Family Hour” invited friends, made popcorn, consumed massive quantities of beer, and howled uncontrollably as they reran the “I have betrayed you” segment, until hysterical exhaustion forced an end to the festivities.
By the late news, polls came in that were strongly in Jack’s favor on the alleged rape, feature reporters dug up men who had been “exactly in Jack Landis’s shoes” at one time, and “woman in the street” interviews gave the strong impression that America’s women thought Candy should give Jack another chance.
On one late-night talk show, the host delivered a deliberately lame joke in his monologue, paused, and blubbered, “I have betrayed you,” to thunderous applause, while on another network, a serious news show offered psychologists’ views on “recovering from adultery,” two friends of Candy who thought that she and Jack—with time and prayer—would rebuild their marriage, and a gentleman from the Men’s Liberation Front who warned about vengeful women and rape charges.
On a late-late talk show, two actresses dressed as Polly and Candy identified themselves in the studio audience, then slugged it out in the aisle, and each subsequent guest desperately tried to give his or her new movie or book a “Jack hook.”
By the time this show aired on the West Coast, Polly was firmly entrenched as the other woman, the vengeful other woman, whose mendacity was proven by the very fact that she would not—as Jack had done—come out and tell the truth. She was, in the public opinion, afraid to show her face. “At least,” said one woman caller on a late-night radio show, “she has some sense of shame.”
By that time, Joey Foglio’s “Jack’s Confession” party was winding down in a hotel bedroom with three young ladies.
By that time, Candy had reached Jack at home, telling him she loved him and forgave him and that’s she’d be coming home tomorrow to start working out their problems.
By that time, Walter Withers was unconscious and therefore missed the camera crew that came as quietly as it could to the room across the hall.
The television woke Withers up.
His eyes popped open when he heard, “exclusive interview with Polly Paget.” He sat bolt upright on the floor and remembered within minutes exactly where he was.
A dozen or so miniature booze bottles lying empty on the floor provided the first clue. By the time he vomited the contents of those bottles into the john, he had it all pieced together.