A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

Don Winslow
Prologue

He never should have smelled the coffee.

Neal Carey was lying in bed when the scent drifted under the door and snuck into his nose.

As he lingered in that pleasant zone between sleep and wakefulness, he savored the fact that it was Saturday morning and he didn't have to get up for anything. But the coffee smelled so good, not rushing-to-work, out-of-a-can coffee, but some of that special coffee that Karen had bought in Reno last month. Saturday-morning coffee, hazelnut or maybe Kenya AA, and he thought he detected a scent of chocolate.

If it was a custom blend, Karen must have been up early grinding it, which was unusual because she liked to sleep late on weekends. Neal pictured her shiny black hair and blue eyes and decided that maybe he’d join her in the kitchen so he could sip coffee and look at her. They could have a big breakfast and then drive out into the hills somewhere for a long hike, or maybe head out to Milkovsky ranch, borrow a couple of horses, and ride along Sandy Creek until they found a spot for a picnic. The day had the potential to be a glorious September Saturday in the northern Nevada wilderness known as the High Lonely, where for the first time in his life Neal Carey wasn’t a bit lonely.

And that coffee just smelled so damn good.

Neal rolled out of bed, opened the door, and heard a voice.

That voice: the voice with all the soothing qualities of a rock scraping across a cheese grater.

“This is very nice,” the voice was saying. “Your own blend?”

Neal heard Karen answer, “Half hazelnut, half macadamia.”

Macadamia?

“And these muffins,” the voice said, “delicious.”

“Neal made them,” Karen said.

Neal stood behind the bedroom door for a second, then walked through the small living room and stood in the kitchen doorway.

Karen spotted Neal first.

“Honey,” she said, “look who’s here.”

“Hello, son,” Joe Graham said.

It isn’t just the voice, thought Neal. It’s the smile, the sweet, cheerful, mocking smile of a rat on a landfill.

“Hello, Dad,” Neal answered.

Karen gave Neal a peck on the cheek and handed him a cup of coffee.

Maybe I should give this stuff up, Neal thought. It smells like battery acid, makes my stomach hurt, and gives me a headache.

He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

That’s where he made his big mistake. He should have gone back to bed, pulled the covers over his head, and refused to come out until Joe Graham was thirty thousand feet in the air, winging back to New York. If Neal Carey had done that, he never would have met Polly Paget, or gone to Candyland, or had to take a long walk up the water slide.

But he didn’t.

He smelled the coffee.

Then he drank it.