A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (8 page)

“No, Ed, I’m drawing pictures of the trucks with my crayons. What do you think?”

Testy, Ed thought. Another prime symptom. He picked up his coffee mug and saw something usually described as a foreign object floating on the top. He picked the foreign object out with his thumb and forefinger and took a swallow of the coffee.

“What else?” he asked.

“I think I’m starting to hallucinate,” Graham said.

Days of sitting by a window staring through binoculars will do that, Ed thought.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Black limo comes up the road, guy gets out to talk to one of the truck drivers. Guess who the guy is?”

“Jimmy Hoffa?”

“No,” Graham answered. “Get this, Ed. I could swear I saw Joey Beans get out of that limo.”

Is this the coffee I bought this morning, Ed asked himself, or yesterday morning? And Joey Beans?

“You are hallucinating, Graham,” Ed said. “Joey Beans working for Jack Landis?”

“Or vice versa,” Graham observed.

“Naaah,” Ed said.

Joey “Beans” Foglio had been such a loose cannon in the greater New York metropolitan area mob franchise that the old men finally gave him a career choice: accept a lateral transfer down south or be recycled in a Jersey gravel pit. Joey Beans had opted for the sun and fun of the Lone Star state, and Levine had a vague knowledge that he was working card games or something out of Houston. But Joey Beans building water slides and kiddie-car tracks?

“Something is very sick here,” Graham said. “I’ll send you the plate numbers, names on the trucks, all that stuff. Can you get a look at construction invoices?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Ed answered. Shit, a gangster like Joey Beans hooked up with Landis? No way.

“We’d better give Neal a call,” Graham said. “He’s not going to be happy.”

“He’s never happy.” Ed thought he’d try to cheer Graham up and added, “Hey, speaking of happiness, guess who went to that big tote board in the sky a few days ago?”

“Who?”

“Sammy Black.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” Ed said. “Sitting in a bar at closing time. Guy walks in while the bartender’s taking a piss, pops Sammy and his bodyguard in the head, and walks out.”

“They must be having parties all over Midtown South.”

“They are. The homicide guys have a nickname for the shooter,” Ed said. “Preparation H.”

“Because he removed that itching burning hemorrhoid?” Graham said. Not that funny a topic, seeing as how he’d been sitting on this chair for three days.

“Listen, I’ll get on this Joey Beans stuff,” Ed said. “You take it easy with those tacos, okay?”

Yeah, okay, Graham thought as he hung up. He was worried. He had promised Neal there was no mob stuff, and now he thought he had seen Joey Beans. And although Ed Levine was very good at chasing paper, mob guys were pretty cute these days. It could be weeks before Ed could unravel the kind of twisted paper trail the mob was capable of leaving. And he wasn’t sure that they had days, never mind weeks. There had to be a quicker way.

Graham put his binoculars away.

Sammy Black in a box, huh? Old Walt must be standing for a round somewhere.

7

Martini please,” Walt Withers said.

Withers didn’t notice that the bartender scowled at him and didn’t move an inch to fix his drink. Withers was preoccupied trying to figure out where he’d been the past few days. He had woken up hard in a Reno hotel room and gone for a drink or two and then woken up harder in a different Reno hotel room.

Thank God Gloria had left the note in his jacket pocket, he thought. In other days, Gloria would have been what is known as a good broad, but those were different times.

So Withers had solved the mystery of what he was doing in Nevada, and he wouldn’t be the first private investigator in history to blow a few days on a bender. What bothered him was the money.

He was $1,327 short.

He had done the figures in his head thirty times. Five thousand had gone to Gloria for the tip, and he didn’t think Scarpelli could object to that. Twenty-three thousand had gone to Sammy, and certainly Scarpelli could and would object to that. Withers was just hoping that Scarpelli would be so pleased with his smutty pictures of Polly that he’d forget about it. Or maybe he could just short Polly on the up-front money. In any case, he’d much rather owe money to Ron Scarpelli or even Polly Paget than to Sammy Black. Ron Scarpelli or Polly Paget would not break his wrists.

But what had happened to the other $1,327? He had used plastic to pay for the airline ticket and the hotels.

Oh my God, Withers thought. Could I really have drunk $1,327?

The bartender was staring at him.

“Yes?” Withers asked.

“I don’t serve martinis,” the bartender growled. “I don’t serve martinis, or white wine, or anything with fruit in it.”

Withers swore he heard a dog growl from behind the bar.

The bartender continued, “I serve beer, whiskey, and gin. What do you want?”

Feeling somewhat guilty at the possibility of having consumed in excess of a thousand dollars in alcohol, Withers answered, “Do you have coffee?”

Growling dog again. Next it will be a trumpeting pink elephant.

“Made a pot just this morning,” Brogan mumbled. He stepped over to the coffeemaker, found a mug that had been washed at least once during the Reagan administration, wiped it on his shirttail, and poured it full of the greasy coffee. “Milk or sugar?”

“How old is the milk?” Withers asked.

“It has Amelia Earhart’s picture on the carton.”

“Black, thank you.”

“Fifty cents,” Brogan said.

Withers laid a five on the bar and told him to keep the change. It was time to get to work, and that meant getting in good with the locals.

“Do you have a phone I could use?” Withers asked.

“Phone booth across the street, outside the gas station,” Brogan said. He took four dollars and fifty cents in quarters out of the cash register and set the change on the bar.

Withers drank his coffee under the watchful eye of the bartender and then went across the street. Except for modern additions like the gas station and the power lines, the street looked like the set of a Western. He had never been in this small a burg in his life. He didn’t know they still existed.

That gave him an idea.

Luckily, the phone booth had an intact phone book, something you’d never see in New York. In a town this dinky, Withers thought, it shouldn’t be too tedious or time-consuming a process to take the phone number Gloria gave me and check it against the numbers listed in the book, which will then produce an address. Yes, you have to get up pretty early in the afternoon to put one over on Walter Withers, P.I., he thought.

“She can’t be pregnant,” Neal said.

“Why not?” Karen asked.

“Because she can’t be. It makes things too complicated.”

“Don’t whine.”

“I’m not whining,” Neal whined.

“I dunno,” Polly said. “My friend is usually very prompt.”

“Well, maybe your friend got a flat tire or something,” Neal said irritably.

Karen looked at Neal and shrugged.

“And this is going to be the water slide,” Jack Landis was saying on the television. “The biggest in the world.”

“I wouldn’t ride down that ting,” Polly said as she looked at the videotape of the water slide at Candyland.

“Not in your delicate condition, anyway,” said Neal.

“Right, Jack,” said Candy. “And we’re having a ‘Name the Water Slide’ contest. You can win an all-expenses-paid week during the grand opening of Candyland by picking the name for the water slide. Who are the judges going to be, Jack?”

“Why, you and me, Candy,” Jack answered.

“Can we turn this off?” Neal asked. He had a headache that had started in his toes.

“Now, what are we looking at here, Jack?” Candy asked.

“These are the time-share condos, Candy,” Jack said. “And believe it or not, we still have a few to sell, but you have to act now. Just dial one-eight hundred-CAN-DICE for a color brochure. You know, Candy, folks can buy seasonal, month-long, week-long, or even a weekend package. We have something for every size wallet, fat or thin.”

“Yes,” Candy picked it up, “and for those of you who aren’t interested in a time-share but would still like to contribute to this wonderful family fun center, we have special discount Honored Guest coupons for when you come to visit Candyland.”

“How about The Break Your Stupid Neck and Drown Ride?” Polly suggested.

“Neal,” Karen said, “if she’s pregnant, she’s pregnant, whether you want her to be or not. Believe it or not, you can’t control it.”

“Do you want to ask her?” Neal asked.

“Ask her what?”

Neal stared at her.

“Ask her if she thinks that photography is an art or not,” Neal said. “Ask her who the father is.”

The phone rang.

“That’s none of your business,” Karen said.

“Oh, you don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

The phone rang.

“It’s Jack,” said Polly.

“On the phone?” Neal asked.

“The father,” Polly answered.

The phone rang again.

Neal picked it up and said, “What?”

“There’s a guy sniffing around,” Brogan said. “I was worried he’s looking for … your houseguest.”

“How do you know …” Neal began. He turned his back away from the living room and asked, “All right, what does he look like?”

“Like he’s from the East.”

The East, meaning New York or Moscow, which were pretty much the same to Brogan.

“Okay, I’ll check it out,” Neal said, then added, “Thanks.”

“Let me know if you need me,” Brogan said. “The shotgun is loaded and the dog’s awake.”

“Thanks.”

Karen and Polly were hugging when Neal turned around.

“Oh, please,” he said.

Karen looked over Polly’s shoulder and said, “This is an important moment to a woman, Neal.”

Her eyes were teary and her nose was getting red. Neal was afraid she was going to cry. The last time he’d seen Karen cry was when a mechanic told her that her jeep was going to need transmission work.

“We don’t even know if she’s actually pregnant yet,” Neal said.

“I just feel it,” Polly said.

The women hugged again.

Neal took Karen by the elbow and guided her away, saying, “Could I talk to you for a second?”

In the kitchen, he said, “That was Brogan on the phone. He’s hinky because there’s a stranger in the bar. And he knows about Polly.”

“Neal,” Karen said, “Brogan’s is the only bar on a state highway for a hundred miles in either direction. Strangers go in there.”

Neal smiled and said, “Paranoia is not only a character flaw; it’s my business. I’m going to go check it out.”

Karen sniffled before she asked, “Why don’t you pick up one of those home-pregnancy tests until we can get to the doctor?”

A doctor, Neal thought. Great. That means a receptionist, too, and maybe a nurse. Throw in a few lab technicians, some hospital orderlies. Maybe we can just save time and go on the nightly news.

He heard Jack Landis’s mellifluous voice say, “Folks, we’ve been under attack lately. You know, there are people out there who are so afraid of our family values, they’d resort to just about anything to destroy us. And I don’t know about you, but I just can’t think of a better way to show them that they just ain’t going to get it done than to dial one-eight hundred-CAN-DICE.…”

I’ll give you a time-share, Neal thought. You can share some time in a little cell with a lonely guy named Bubba—yearly, monthly, even on weekends.

“Make her do her Shakespeare,” he said to Karen.

“Aww, Neal …” Karen whined.

“Make her do her Shakespeare.”

Neal took about three minutes to walk down the hill to Austin’s Main Street, which also happened to be Route 50. A car came through at least once every four hours or so.

A rumpled-looking guy in an old suit was coming in his direction up the sidewalk. Brogan’s right, Neal thought, he looks like the chairman of the English department at a New England prep school circa 1956.

And he’s headed right for our place, too.

Neal stopped in front of the man.

The man looked at him curiously.

“Mr. Withers?” Neal asked.

Withers blinked a few times, then said, “I know you, don’t I?”

“You’re Walter Withers, right?” Neal asked.

Withers studied Neal, then his eyes brightened.

“And you are … at least you were … Joe Graham’s puppy,” Withers said. “I remember you.”

They shook hands awkwardly, then Walter Withers’s face fell.

“Oh, Lord,” he said. “Is Graham working this thing? Is he looking for her, too? You’re the competition, aren’t you? Well, of course you wouldn’t tell me, would you? Joe Graham trained you. You were trained by the best, my boy, the best.”

Neal remembered a time when Walter Withers had been pretty damn good himself, back when Withers had been with one of the big agencies and they couldn’t help bumping into each other on some of the larger jobs. Joe Graham had pointed Withers out to Neal as an example. Rumor was in those days that Walt Withers, Loomis-Chaffee old boy and Yale alum, had learned his craft in the CIA, then gone to the private side for the money and the New York nightlife. Back in the fifties, New York had style and so did Walt Withers. Walt had dressed exclusively from Brooks Brothers and Abercrombie, and one of Neal’s enduring adolescent memories was when Mr. Withers had flipped open a Dunhill cigarette case and offered him a smoke. Neal had politely declined, admitting he needed to cut back himself. Walter Withers was a gentleman.

But the nightlife had stretched into the mornings and then became an all-day affair and the big agency dropped Walt, who started the sadly predictable descent down the ladder. His fifties style went out of style, he was woefully unsuited for undercover stuff, and the jobs that Graham threw him when he needed an extra man were mostly backup stuff. But even backup guys needed to be sober to back you up, and after a couple of no-shows, Levine put the kabosh on any freelance hiring of Walt Withers. Neal hadn’t seen him for many years, and by the look of him, Walt hadn’t spent many of the intervening nights drinking coffee in a church basement.