A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

15

Breakfast didn’t taste good to Jack Landis, even though it was the breakfast that Candice would never let him eat. He had taken advantage of her absence to order Pedro to fix him his “Early Retirement Heart Attack Special”-three fried eggs, bacon and sausage, rye toast dripping with real butter, a pot of strong coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a big old cigar.

Pedro balked at first, whining something about “Mrs. Landis wouldn’t want me to,” but Jack reminded him that Mrs. Landis wasn’t there to rescue his wetback ass if Jack started feeling vengeful about the Alamo, so he’d better shut his mouth and fix breakfast or he’d be frying tortillas in Nuevo Laredo by lunchtime.

That seemed to do it. Jack got his artery clogger, but somehow he couldn’t enjoy it. He ate it all right, but it didn’t taste as good as it usually did. Pedro said that maybe he was tense.

Well shit, Jack thought, I don’t know what I have to be tense about. My former girlfriend is accusing me of rape, that prick Hathaway is about to take my network from me, I’m neck-deep into an amusement park more labor-intensive than the Great Wall of China, a lunatic mobster is hitting me up for money, I got about three days of canned shows left before 50 million members of the viewing public start wondering where my loving wife is, and that same lady is about to cut off my balls, stuff them in my mouth, and parade me bare-assed down Broadway as an object lesson to any other husband who might be thinking about unleashing his hound outside the sacred confines of the old home place. Tense? Why, I’m as tranquil as one of them crazy monks when they pour gas all over themselves and strike a match.

Jack lighted the cigar and walked all over the big mansion, puffing as much smoke as he could into every room. He paid particular attention to Candy’s personal bathroom, on the odd chance that if the ice sculpture did come home, it would really piss her off. She’d probably get the house anyway, the cars, half the restaurants, and half of what was left of the TV stations after Hathaway was finished sucking the meat off the bones.

The worst thing, the absolutely worst thing, was that the old ball and chain was gone and yet Jack couldn’t do the one thing he really wanted to do. The breakfast was okay, so were the whiskey and cigars and boxing matches on cable, the ones where two skinny Mexicans you couldn’t tell apart beat the guacamole out of each other. All just fine. But, thanks to the recent publicity, he couldn’t do the one thing he really wanted to do.

Jack Landis couldn’t get laid.

Nope, Jack thought. Here I am with more money than brains, my hound dog straining at the leash, and I absolutely, positively cannot let it hunt.

For the first time in a lifetime spent in the relenting pursuit of the dollar, Jack Landis asked himself what all that money was worth, anyway. He was rich, but he was a lot less free than he was back in the days when he went door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners and giving away hoses.

He had a shitload of money stowed away in the Cayman Islands, anyway…oh, peanuts compared to his aboveboard net worth in the old U.S. of A., but more than enough to live out a long retirement in the Caribbean. He didn’t know if they made chicken-fried steak down there, but given enough long green, they could probably learn. And he could probably learn to like rum, and the women… well, he had heard that the women down there hadn’t even heard of Gloria Germaine Greer Steinem or whatever the hell that uppity broad’s name was.

“Pedro!” he yelled.

Jorge’s name wasn’t Pedro, but it was easier just to answer.

“Yes, Mr. Landis?”

“This was a better country before the women started getting hyphens in their names like those inbred British chromosome cases!”

Jorge didn’t think it was worth making the point that neither Mrs. Landis nor Polly Paget had hyphens in their names, so he said, “Yes, Mr. Landis!”

Jack thought he heard a little cheek in his voice anyway, so he hollered, “Pedro! You ever hear of the Goliad massacre?”

“No, Mr. Landis!” Jorge answered, wondering why the boss’s husband was bringing up an unfortunate incident 150 years ago in which Santa Anna’s troops had executed some Texas rebels.

“Well, I’m still mad about it!”

“Yes, Mr. Landis!”

“So watch yourself!”

“Yes, Mr. Landis!” Jorge agreed. Then he decided he had to do a little something to preserve his self-respect. “Mr. Landis, when is Mrs. Landis coming home?”

Jack pretended not to hear and stormed out the front door.

Actually, that’s a good question, he thought. He went to find Joey Foglio and ask him how things were going up in Nevada.

Driving gave Neal some time to think, an activity he hadn’t exactly been overdoing up to that point.

He knew that even if he’d cut himself off from Friends of the Family, Friends hadn’t cut him off from them. Graham would be doggedly finding out whether this Joey Beans had put a contract out on Polly Paget and Levine would be working the paper trail. Kitteredge would be politely blowing a gasket because he didn’t like to get mixed up with mob business.

Neither did Neal, of course, but he knew that he had to let go of his irritation at Friends and concentrate on keeping the three women in the car safe. What he had to do now was focus on what he had in front of him. The first step in that process was to look back.

So start with what you know, he thought. Three sets of intruders located Polly at the house. The first was Walter Withers, the second was Candy Landis and her boy Chuckles, and the third was a would-be hit man.

Withers apparently got the location from Polly telling Gloria and was dumb enough to keep it in writing. He was probably more afraid of forgetting phone numbers than he was of compromising his source.

Landis and Whiting claim they got the location by bugging Peter Hathaway’s office and half of Austin. They have no apparent reason to lie at this point.

The would-be button man got the location… how?

From Candy Landis and Chuckles? Not unless they’re the best actors in the history of deception, and they aren’t. Which still leaves the possibility that they leaked it unintentionally.

From Withers? The hitter drove away in Withers’s car, but only after beating up Brogan to get the car keys, although that might have been an accident touched off by the dog. And Withers had the blood-alcohol level of a Saturday night in Moscow, unless he was faking it for an alibi, and I don’t think anyone could fake it that well.

Withers did have a pile of cash on him, which matched his Top Drawer story, but he gave up that tale in a heartbeat when I thought he was working with Whiting. And the cash could have been front-end money on the hit, but then why would Withers carry it around?

Whatever the case, Walt Withers is at the center of this thing, whether he knows it or not. The answers to Withers’s involvement rest in two places: Top Drawer magazine and Polly’s best friend, Gloria.

Neal pulled the car over at a gas station in Luning, a back-route crossroads in the mineral-rich desert of southwest Nevada. The left fork led to the Sierra Madres and California; a right turn took you down through the desert to Las Vegas. Karen, next to him, in the front seat, woke up when he stopped. Polly remained sound asleep, her head on Candy’s shoulder.

“Be back in a sec,” Neal said.

He went into the phone booth, dialed information, and got the offices of Top Drawer magazine. An annoyed answering service operator told him that no one, especially Mr. Scarpelli, was in the office on a Saturday.

“Do you like your job?” Neal asked.

The operator answered that except for a few stupid calls, she liked it a lot.

“Then I suggest you find a way to get in touch with Ron Scarpelli right away and tell him that Walter Withers is at two-oh-five five-five-five three-four-four-six and that he has thirty minutes to call.”

The operator asked if he was nuts.

Neal replied that he probably was but that if she wanted to take the chance he wasn’t, that was up to her. He hung up as Karen got out of the Jeep and walked over.

“You want something from inside?” she asked.

“Coffee would be great,” he answered. “And maybe you should buy some food for the road. The Haynes sisters are going to be hungry if they ever decide to wake up.”

White Christmas was one of Karen’s favorite movies. Karen would watch White Christmas on an August afternoon when the temp was 102.

She brought him a plain doughnut and black coffee and he was surprised at how good they both tasted as he stood waiting in the phone booth. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

“Walter?” Ron Scarpelli asked. “Where the hell are you? Did you find Polly?”

Neal hung up.

Either Walter Withers had an extremely elaborate cover or the hit man had used him as a bird dog.

Neal had heard of a button man who liked to do that, a guy who preferred to stay in the background, let other people shake things loose, and then step in. But he’d always thought he was just a legend, one of those apocryphal underworld superkillers that turn out to be just a legend. In the whispers he’d heard, the guy even had a jive name, like boxers often gave themselves. What was it?

Neal got back in the car and turned left.

“Neal, you’re heading for Las Vegas,” Karen said.

“I know.”

“Half the mobsters in the country live in Vegas and the other half vacation there! Why the hell-”

“It’s neutral ground, a money machine as long as the tourists feel safe. The wise guys don’t do hits in Las Vegas.”

He’d driven about five minutes when he remembered the legend’s name. Overtime-because it means sudden death.

Sudden death, my butt. We’ll play for the tie.

Jack Landis stood on the terrace and gazed out across the Great Family Plaza that formed the center of Candyland. The Candy Club Condos, or the shells of them anyway, rose unsteadily from the ground on the far side.

“I have a vision,” he said.

“Who’s that dicking around on the water slide?” Joey asked him. The gigantic structure loomed to his immediate left.

Jack turned and looked up about one hundred feet in the air where a small man stood on the starting platform.

“That’s just old Musashi,” he said.

“Who’s Musashi?” Joey asked. He didn’t like people who didn’t work for him messing around on the construction site, in case a ladder rung snapped or a piece of wall gave way or something.

“He’s the engineer who designed the damn thing,” Jack said. “Candice heard the Japs were the best for moving water. Something about Zen, I think.”

“Oh.”

“He used to be a kamikaze pilot,” Jack added. “Don’t you want to hear about my vision?”

Joey didn’t want to hear about Jack Landis’s vision. Joey figured the lights were about to go out on Jack Landis’s vision, anyway. Unless Polly was smart enough to keep her mouth shut, which wasn’t likely, the afternoon papers would be screaming about the attempted hit.

Jack would be the prime suspect-which was okay with Joey, except he’d better arrange to suck as much cash out of Jack while it was still there to suck.

“What’s your vision?” Joey asked, rolling his eyes at Harold.

Jack’s eyes got dreamy.

“I see that big empty plaza filled with thousands of happy people,” Jack said, “each one of them carrying a Jack and Candy souvenir. Over yonder, I see the condos all built, a hundred percent occupancy and a waiting list. I see people in line for rides, people in line for food… shit, people in line just to get in.”

I see people in line to get a chunk of your ass, Joey thought, unless we can get to Polly.

“I have a vision, too,” Joey said.

“We ain’t naming the water slide after your hooter,” Landis said.

“No,” Joey continued. “I have a vision of a terrible fire at night, the water slide crumbling to the ground, the condominiums as burnt-out shells. I see Candyland as a big black wasteland.”

Jack turned and looked up at him.

“Your plan didn’t work, did it?” Jack asked.

“Construction insurance, Jack,” Joey said. “This is a beautiful country.”

“Arson?!”

“Let’s just call it nonspontaneous combustion.”

“This is the biggest theme park in the world!” Jack yelled. “You’d need a goddamn tankerful of gas to burn this down!”

“Or a couple of guys from Louisiana,” Joey said.

“We used the finest fire-resistant materials-”

Joey shook his head.

“No, we didn’t.”

“We didn’t?”

“We billed for the finest fire-resistant materials,” Joey explained. “We used the cheapest shit we could find.”

“And half of that we hijacked,” Harold added.

“You got a big discount, Jack,” said Joey.

“I thought you were just padding the labor.” Jack groaned.

“Nah,” Joey answered.

Jack turned around and gazed across the plaza. His dream was looking more like a nightmare.

“None of this stuff can pass a safety inspection, can it?” he asked.

Joey and Harold cracked up.

“Shit,” Jack muttered.

Joey put a big paw around his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Joey said. “We’ll get a big insurance check, and then we can build it all over again.” All over again? Jack thought. It’d be nice to be able to do it all over again.