A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

9

Levine pulled the plastic lid off the cardboard cup and frowned. He set the cup down on his desk and looked at the young accountant, who was taking his own coffee out of the bag.

“Does this look black to you?” Ed asked.

The accountant looked into Ed’s cup and said, “No, it looks regular.”

“Maybe you have the black.”

The accountant took the lid off the other cup and gave Ed the bad news. “Regular.”

“What did you tell the guy?”

“I told the guy one black, one regular.”

“He gave you two regulars.”

“Do you want me to go back?” the young accountant asked. He was afraid of Levine.

Levine was irritated. Why did deli guys invariably screw up and give you regular instead of black when it would be a lot better if they screwed up and gave you black instead of regular? You could always put the cream and sugar in, but you couldn’t take it out. It didn’t make sense.

“I have to get a coffeemaker,” Ed said. He started to drink the coffee and the relieved accountant sat down. “This better be an onion bagel, though.”

“It is. I watched him put it in the bag.”

“What’d you get?”

“Plain, toasted, with butter.”

Ed unwrapped his bagel and wondered why Spitz and Simon had sent him the only goy accountant in midtown. Maybe because they knew it was going to be an all-nighter. They’d better be giving me a discount on the hourly, Ed thought.

“So, what’d you bring?” Ed asked.

The accountant looked worried.

“You said a bagel and coffee,” he said.

“Your research,” Ed said. “What did you think, I brought you over here to eat? What do you have?”

The accountant wiped his fingers off on a napkin and reached into his briefcase.

“Mr. Spitz worked these up for you,” he said.

There goes the discount, Ed thought.

“What you’ll see there,” the accountant said, laying a stack of papers on the desk, “is that there are about twenty companies delivering various goods and services to the Candyland construction site. We managed to track eight of them back to the source and we should have the rest in a couple of days.”

Ed made himself swallow some coffee on the theory that there was still caffeine in there with the milk and sugar.

“And?” he asked, because the accountant was just sitting there looking proud of himself.

“The eight we traced go back to something called Crescent City Management in New Orleans.”

Ed felt his stomach turn sour, and it wasn’t the coffee. It was the knowledge that organized crime in Texas was a colony of Carmine Bascaglia’s empire in New Orleans.

“Who’s behind Crescent City?” Ed asked.

“A group of lawyers,” the accountant answered. “It’s all there in the report.”

“Eat your bagel,” Ed said. He started to worry. Was it possible that the mob had the arm on Landis? Had they just muscled their way in to get the job, or were they sucking the blood out of him, as well? There’d be so many ways to do it-eight guys on a job that needed five

… four supervisors on every electrical outlet… overcharges on materials… bill for top quality and deliver the cheap shit instead…

But what was in it for Jack Landis? It didn’t make sense for him to rob himself. Unless…

Oh shit. It was so wonderfully evil that Levine had to smile. No, it couldn’t be, could it? All that money pouring through the telephone lines-just dial 1-800-CAN-DICE and make your contribution to organized crime? Get yourself a time-share in a condo that is never going to be built? Or if it is, is going to fall down on you the first time you sneeze?

Nah.

But Graham sees a lot of trucks coming and going with no time to unload, then he thinks he sees Joey Foglio get out of a limo on the site, and… what?

What could Joey Beans have on Jack Landis?

Oh shit.

Ed set down his coffee and reached for the phone.

There was always a lot of controversy about what to do with the San Antonio River where it made the big bend downtown. The city’s important wives, who were sensitive about living in a backwater, wanted to turn it into the Venice of the West. Their businessman husbands, who were tired of pumping the water out of their store basements, wanted to pave the damn thing over and use it as a sewer.

The wives won.

The local story has it that those civic-minded ladies put on a puppet show for the city council, but a lot of cynics would tell that it was some heavy-duty string pulling at home that turned the tide, so to speak. Anyway, the city of San Antonio hired a designer named Hugman to turn their fair burg into the Venice of the West, and damned if he didn’t do it.

The River Walk runs for a dozen or so blocks through the center of San Antonio like a substratum of the city. Numerous staircases take you down from the street level and twenty or so bridges can take you from one side to the other.

Down on the river itself, you can stroll either bank and wander among sidewalk cafes, restaurants, bars, shops, even bookstores. You can get about any kind of food down on the River Walk, from Tex-Mex to Mex-Mex, from French cuisine to Cajun cooking, from Italian to your old basic burger and chicken-fried steak. You can eat it indoors, outdoors, on a barge cruising the river, or carry it around with you if you want. And they’ve been known to serve a drink or two on the River Walk.

It isn’t exactly Venice and it isn’t exactly Texas, either. The River Walk is a hybrid of Spanish, Texan, French, Italian, New Orleans. You can do a lot of traveling in a short distance on the River Walk, but Jack Landis wasn’t paying attention to any of it.

Jack was in a sweat.

Joey Beans was just digging into a blackened filet mignon when Jack came huffing to the table.

“Siddown before you have a heart attack,” Joey said. “Relax.”

That’s the trouble with these Anglo types, Joey thought. They just can’t relax and enjoy what life has to give to you. Here it is, a beautiful evening on the River Walk-the trees sparkling with lights, the lights reflecting off the river, a table with a view of the river and half the young pussy in San Antonio-and this crooked little businessman can’t drink it in.

“A glass of red for Mr. Landis,” he told Harold. The muscle-bound hunk went into the restaurant to fetch the waitress.

“Make that hemlock,” Jack said as he sat down. “Guess what?”

“You went to take a whiz and your dick fell off?”

Joey Beans was in a humorous mood.

“Worse,” Jack said. “We found Polly. Whiting just called. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Joey Beans tasted a bite of his steak. It was superb.

“My beeper went off,” he said as he chewed. “I had Harold call you, but you must have left.”

Joey paused to scope out a leggy young blonde crossing the footbridge over the river. Joey figured she was probably headed for a night of beer drinking at the Lone Star Cafe on the other side of the river.

He jutted his chin at the woman crossing the bridge.

“Why does she want to drink beer with a cowboy when she could have champagne with Joey Foglio?” he asked. “Hey, Jack, other than the fact that your retired fed bastard didn’t die in a plane crash, that’s good news you found Polly, isn’t it? You want a steak? I’ll tell Harold to order you a steak. How do you take it?”

“I don’t want any damn steak,” Jack answered as soon as the blonde got out of sight. “Guess who’s with Polly right now?”

“We gonna play guessing games all night, Jack?” Joey asked.

“Candice,” Jack said.

Joey noticed that the poor bastard’s hands were shaking.

“So?”

“SO!” Jack hissed. “So what if Polly tells her everything?”

Joey smeared some sour cream on his baked potato.

“Jack,” he said, “what’s she gonna say she ain’t said already? That you pronged her parakeet, too?”

The waitress came with a glass of red. Joey Foglio gave her a ten-dollar bill and a “when do you get off” leer. Joey was in the mood for some strange tonight.

“So what if Candy believes her?” Jack asked.

“Jack, are you saying to me now that you did this girl?”

Jack guzzled his wine.

Joey didn’t believe what he was seeing. Grown man looks like a twelve-year-old caught in the bathroom with a National Geographic. Guy builds an empire, two empires… a frigging fortune… and he’s pissing his pants because his wife might find out he’s getting some outside the house.

“Well?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Jack answered.

“Maybe,” Joey echoed. “So tell Candy to pay her off.”

“It’s not that easy,” Jack said.

Joey cut another bite of steak, chewed it deliberately, then said, “Sure it is. If Canned-Ice believes you, you got no problem. If Canned-Ice believes her, you still got no problem. You just drag her wifely ass into the bedroom and tell her to shut her mouth. What you do outside the house is none of her business. Tell her she’s got a nice deal going-lots of money, good clothes, nice furniture-and if she wants to hold on to it, she’ll stay in line. She gets mouthy with you, take your belt to her. Either way, lay her down on the bed, do the job, be a man, Jack.”

“That’s what you’d do, huh?” Jack asked sarcastically.

Both men stopped to look at a comely brunette stroll by the table.

Joey said, “A man keeps his wife in line. He also keeps his mistress in line. That way, the wife doesn’t suffer disrespect.”

Jack Landis had heard about enough. He wasn’t some poor little diner owner you bully into taking your vending machines. He was Jackson Hood Landis, he owned about half this town, and he could make one call to the Rangers and they’d beat the olive oil out of this cheap gangster. Except it would be inconvenient to explain his relationship to Joey Beans.

“Well, there’s one problem, Joey,” he said. “I’d be happy to take my wife into the bedroom and smack her around, except I don’t know where she is!”

Joey Foglio stared at him.

“You keep losing women, Jack. You should burn a candle to Saint Anthony.”

“My wife isn’t some fat guinea with eight kids, a mustache, and signing privileges at Two Guys from Sicily Pizza Parlor,” Jack said. “She’s a smart businesswoman. If she gets mad and decides to divorce me, she can take about half that business with her, maybe more.”

Wait a second. Now we’re talking about my money, Joey thought.

“I think we need a new plan,” Joey answered.

“Well, make it good this time,” Jack snapped as he stood up to leave.

“Not to worry, Jack. Not to worry,” Joey said. And that remark about my wife is going to cost you, by the way, you cracker bastard.

Landis huffed off.

“Harold, get on the horn and find out what’s happening.”

Joey looked up at the bridge, where another delectable piece of ass strolled in front of a little one-armed guy who was likewise ogling her.

Joey cut another bite of steak and debated whether to pursue the blonde or the brunette.