A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (3 page)

That, Graham told Neal, was when the minority owner called Ethan Kitteredge at the bank. Kitteredge paid off Polly’s lawyer, brought in a new firm, and arranged for Polly Paget to drop out of sight.

The press went crazy. A missing Polly Paget was much better than an all-too-present one. Delicious speculation seized the public. Where was Polly? Why had she run? Had someone threatened her? Did this prove she was lying? Where was she?

“We put a fake Polly on a plane to L.A.,” Graham explained, “and drove the real Polly up to Providence. She hid out at Kitteredge’s house for ten days while the lawyers grilled her. That’s when we decided we needed your dubious services. So we got on a private plane, flew to Reno, and here we are.”

Hiding Polly turned out to be a brilliant move. With Polly not there to open her mouth, the minority owner was able to fill the ravenous media void with stories of cost overruns, lavish expenditures, and shoddy accounting until the press, inevitably, dubbed the affair “Pollygate.”

And media magic struck Polly, too. Missing, she made the delicate transition from bimbo to sex symbol. Mysterious, she became a combination of Garbo and Monroe. Casual friends sold their stories for four figures. Grainy snapshots went for more. Offers came pouring into the new law firm and went unanswered—television interviews, magazine stories, a centerfold.

It was a feeding frenzy, a media circus. The only thing missing from Pollygate was Polly.

3

Where is she?”

Candy Landis asked this question as if she actually expected an answer.

Her husband, Jack, stood against the big floor-to-ceiling corner window she had specially built to give him views of both the River Walk and the Alamo. She thought he looked handsome standing there, his full head of hair still black, his back straight, his tummy hanging just slightly over his belt.

Charles Whiting cleared his throat and started again. “She left her New York apartment in the company of a tall, heavyset male Caucasian and entered the back of a black limousine with opaque windows.”

“Opaque? What’s opaque?” Jack asked.

“You can’t see through them, dear,” Candy Landis said.

“Opaque,” Jack Landis repeated to himself. “Go ahead.”

“The limousine proceeded to La Guardia Airport, where Miss Paget exited the vehicle in the company of the same male Caucasian. The subject then proceeded to a first-class counter at American Airlines—”

“What subject?”

“Miss Paget.”

“So what’s the subject?” Jack Landis asked. “Geometry … history? Are we back in junior high or something?”

“That’s an FBI phrase,” Candy explained. “Isn’t that an FBI phrase, Chuck?”

“It’s a general law-enforcement term, Mrs. Landis.”

“So then what did the subject do?” Jack Landis asked as he watched a young lady with legs longer than a deer’s stroll along the sidewalk.

Charles Whiting cleared his throat again. In his years with the bureau, he’d had occasion to brief the director several times and hadn’t been interrupted like this. But then again, Charles cut a distinguished figure. At fifty-four, his six foot three inches were still taut and ramrod-straight. Even under his gray suit, his shoulders showed the effects of his fifty daily push-ups. There was just enough gray on his temples to give him an air of experience, and his blue eyes were clear and firm.

“The subject boarded a flight for Los Angeles,” Charles said. “Then …” Whiting paused.

“Go ahead, Chuck,” Candy Landis said.

“Well … that’s when we lost her, ma’am.”

“Lost her? Lost her!” Jack Landis yelled. “What did she do, parachute or something!”

“She was a … uh … different woman when she got off the plane, sir.”

“I’ve felt that way after a long flight myself,” Candy said.

Jack gave her a look that was meant to be withering. It wasn’t.

To his disappointment, Candy looked as composed as she always did. Her heart-shaped face was freshly made up, her lipstick was perfectly painted on her thin, tight lips, and every single one of her blond hairs was in place and then sprayed into a perfect halo of shining marble. She was wearing her usual business suit: tailored jacket, mid calf skirt, a white blouse with a rounded collar and a little red bow.

She’s a goddamn pretty woman, Jack thought, but she looks like a painted statue, and about as soft.

Charles Whiting jumped into the awkward silence. “When she exited the aircraft, she was not Polly Paget.”

“Was she in the company of the aforementioned male Caucasian?” Landis asked acidly.

“Yes, sir.”

“So they pulled a switch in this opaque limo, huh?”

“That’s what we think, sir.”

“Too bad we didn’t think that
before
she disappeared, huh, Chuck?”

Chuck assumed that Landis meant this to be a rhetorical question and didn’t answer. He’d become familiar with rhetorical questions at the bureau. The director liked them.

The next question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Who’s behind all this?” Candy asked.

Jack Landis turned around slowly, his hands spread out and his jaw open in mock disbelief.

“Oh, come on, boys and girls,” Jack said. “We know who’s behind all this, don’t we? I mean, shit, it don’t take Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., to figure out that Peter Hathaway tried to use this lying bimbo to get my television stations from me. She couldn’t go through with it and now he’s whisked her away before people find out he’s behind it. Believe you me, Pollygate is over with.”

“But it isn’t over with, Jackson,” Candy said patiently. “Restaurant receipts are down, franchise offers are down, and contributions to Candyland have just about dried up.”

Jack chuckled. “Okay, but I’ll bet the ratings on the show are way up, so we’re making up in advertising dollars whatever we’re losing on the other end.”

And, Sam Houston, will you look at the bumpers on that one.

“Not even close,” Candy said. She’d spent three days reviewing the figures with the comptroller. “Ratings are up, but most of our advertisers are family-oriented businesses, and they’re nervous about being associated with a scandal.”

“Get new advertisers, then,” Jack snapped. “Get some with some
cojones.

Whiting winced at the vulgarity. Candy didn’t blink a perfect eyelash.

“Well, hell, the woman disappeared, didn’t she?” Jack asked. “Don’t that just prove what I been saying all along, that she made this whole thing up?”

Candy answered, “As a matter of fact, the polls show that her credibility rating has gone up six points since she disappeared from public view.”

“
Up?
” Jack yelled.

“Up,” Candy answered. “Sixty-three percent of respondents think that it is ‘more likely than not’ that you slept with her—”

“I didn’t.”

“And twenty-four percent believe that you raped her. Consider this for a moment, dear: If these numbers reflect the opinions of the board members—”

“I’m the chairman of the damn board!”

“Perhaps not for long, dear,” Candy said calmly. “If these numbers don’t turn around, Peter Hathaway might be chairman of the board soon. He’s already bought up forty-three per—”

“I know, I know!” Jack yelled. “What are you, Miss Percentage today? So what are we supposed to do?”

Candy answered, “What we really need is for Miss Paget to come forward and publicly admit that she lied.”

“Maybe you want to bring her on the show,” Jack said.

“If that’s what it takes,” Candy said, then added, “dear.”

Jack Landis stared down at the Alamo. Christ, he thought, I know how those poor bastards must have felt. And what if it ain’t Hathaway who has Polly? What if it’s the Justice Department? Or worse, “60 Minutes.” Goddamn, that ancient capon Mike Wallace would just love to spend a few of those sixty minutes with Polly Paget.

And so would I, Jack thought. Speaking of low dogs, so would I.

He missed going to bed with Polly. Polly was wild in bed, just wild. She would do things … just do things without thought or calculation that just made him crazy. That red hair whipping around, and those crazy green eyes sparkling …

Not like Canned-Ice, who tried hard, Lord knows. But that was just it. Everything Candy ever did in the bedroom, you thought she read in some magazine or book or something. You could almost hear her thinking about “technique.” She brought all the spontaneity of a metronome into the bedroom.

Candice Hermione Landis looked at her husband and knew what he was thinking.

Jackson Hood Landis had grown up in poverty in East Texas and was scared to death of going back to either one. Candice herself had grown up in middle-class Beaumont, where her minister father made just enough money to send her to SMU before he died of a heart attack. Her mama thought that she was definitely marrying down when Candice took the vows with a salesman like Jack Landis, but Candice loved him, so that was that.

She and Jack saved and worked hard and bought a little restaurant in San Antonio, then another, and then another, and then Jackson heard the magic word:
franchise.
It didn’t seem like it was very long at all before there were Jack’s Family Diners (“A Lot of Good Food for a Little of Your Money”) all over the country, and suddenly Jack and Candice were rich—very rich, oil money—rich, so rich that they didn’t know what to do with the money.

So they bought the television station. (“Two things Americans are always going to do,” Jack said, “eat and watch TV.”) Of course, Jack wasn’t content with one little station in San Antonio. He had to franchise that, too, and pretty soon they had a network. And because Jack figured that since they were a family restaurant, they ought to be a family television network, too, that’s what they did. They started the Family Cable Network, television the whole family could watch.

They sold America good wholesome food and good wholesome entertainment. And then came that fateful day when they decided to host an on-the-air Christmas party to thank all the employees and the viewers. Jack and Candice appeared together and the viewing public just loved it.

Who would have thought it? All they did was host a little party together, just like they did at home. They had guests and made conversation, and Candy played “The Old Family Bible” on the piano and everyone sang, and then Jack carved the turkey and Candy served, and the letters came
pouring
in. So they did a Fourth of July on-the-air barbecue, and then Thanksgiving … and another Christmas, and they had advertisers lining up to buy airtime.

“The Jack and Candy Family Hour” was born. At first it appeared weekly, but by popular demand, it became a daily show—five afternoons a week, plus the holiday specials, constant reruns morning and night.

Jack was wonderful on the show. He was a great performer … so handsome … and the audiences loved him, but Candy had the brains; it became her life’s work.

She programmed the guests, bringing on good family entertainers, people with inspiring stories, and experts with some useful knowledge to share. (She really liked to find some good family entertainer who had an inspirational story or some expert knowledge. She had yet to find anyone who had all three.) She especially liked singers who had once been alcoholics and got cured by God, or comedians who’d had a gambling problem but got cured by God, or just plain folks who had had something horribly wrong with them and got cured by God. Not that the show was overtly religious; they were always very careful about not specifying which particular God did all this curing—it could be either a Christian
or
a Jewish God. She also liked to have women ex-convicts on the show—especially the ones who had had kids while in prison—and then have an expert on at the same time to teach them money management and how to stay within a budget instead of stealing things.

Candy planned the menus for the kitchen segment, making sure that each and every meal was both wholesome and economical, although she did splurge a little bit on her annual “Romantic Dinner for Two When the Kids Are Spending the Night at Grandma’s” segment. Mostly she specialized in “stretcher meals”—making that Sunday roast last through Tuesday, or the chili that you could eat as just chili, or chili over spaghetti, or chili on a baked potato—not, as Jack had once joked on the air, meals that you ate before you got carried out on a stretcher.

Candy gave makeup tips (she noticed that women ex-convicts either wore too much makeup, which was unattractive to men, or no makeup at all, which was also unattractive to men, although she suspected that some of these women weren’t interested in attracting men at all), and weight-loss tips (a can of Budweiser and a chocolate doughnut do not a breakfast make), and even tips on how to keep the passion alive in your marriage (a filmy negligee behind a locked door doesn’t necessarily make you a prostitute).

While Candy knew that some people—perhaps thousands of people—made fun of her, she also knew that her work did some good for thousands of others. There were people out there who had sought help because a show had set an example for them, there were families who had made it through the week on her tuna casserole, and there were marriages that were better off just for the fact of having sent the kids to Grandma’s for the night.

“You have to find her, Chuck,” Candy said. “Find Polly Paget and persuade her to come forward and tell the truth.”

Chuck Whiting met her eyes and saw the pain in them. Chuck Whiting, former FBI agent, dedicated Mormon, devoted husband and father of nine, was a true believer. He believed in God, country, family, and Jack and Candy—especially Candy. Looking at Candy’s blue eyes, at her firm jaw and silky skin, at the golden hair that shone like a temple, at the shimmering purity that was Candice Landis, Chuck Whiting—had he not been a true believer in God, country, and family—would have thought he was in love.

“I’ll find her, Mrs. Landis,” he said. He felt a lump in his throat.

“Well, you kids have a good time playing detective,” Jack said. “I got a meeting to go to.”

He nodded to Whiting, gave Candy a peck on the cheek, and walked out.

Charles Whiting could barely breathe. His chest was tight and he was afraid he was blushing, because Candy Landis was looking at him in a very personal way. Charles Whiting wasn’t comfortable with emotional intimacy and would have been the first person to tell you so.