A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

17

My informant doesn’t know which room yet,” Withers told Scarpelli. “But soon.”

“If butts were gold, baboons would be billionaires,” Ron answered.

Withers figured that Scarpelli has doubtless heard that tasteful analogy at one of those motivational seminars. He also figured that he was about at the end of his rope with the publisher of Top Drawer, and if he didn’t produce something soon, Scarpelli was going to start asking nasty questions about his fifty thousand dollars.

The lovely, efficient Ms. Haber rode to his rescue once again when she returned, predictably, with results.

“Heskins is in twelve-thirty-eight and twelve-thirty-nine,” she said in that cold tone that Withers found inexplicably erotic. “We owe a kid at the desk named Bobby a lifetime subscription.”

“Two rooms? What is he, fat?” Ron asked.

“He has his wife and two actresses with him,” Ms. Haber reported. “A Ms. Flame and a Ms. Desire.”

Withers saw a chance to buy a little time.

“Code names,” he said in his most professional voice.

Ron shook his head and said, “Nom de porno. A lot of the girls use them.”

Withers hung in there.

“Code names,” he repeated. “At least it’s worth checking out.”

“You got any bright ideas on how to do that?” Ron asked.

“Yes, actually I do,” Withers said.

And he actually did.

Two minutes later, Ms. Haber approached Bobby at the desk and asked him how he’d like to have a date with Miss July.

Karen sat on the edge of the bed and tapped her foot impatiently. The room-service manager finally came on the line.

“Yes,” Karen said, trying to keep her voice soft and even. “We ordered four Vesuvius burgers with everything an hour and a half ago. We were told then it would be forty minutes. The next time I called back, I was told it would be up in twenty minutes. Now your guy tells me it’ll be another half an hour. What do you have to do to get some food around here?”

The exasperated manager sighed and said, “You want the truth?”

“I can take it,” Karen said.

“It’s that adult-film convention,” he said, sounding close to tears. “The waiters go up to a room and they don’t come back.

“You’re joking.”

“Wish I was. I’ve already fired two kids, but what can I do, fire them all?”

Karen’s stomach was growling and Polly had already worked her way through the snack food in the courtesy bar.

“Don’t you have any waitresses?” Karen asked.

“I used to,” he answered. “Half of them are signing contracts as we speak. Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll have the cook burn your burgers again and I’ll bring them up, okay? To tell you the truth, I could use the break.”

“Well, that’s nice of you.”

“Not at all,” he said. Then he spotted a waiter coming through the door. “Oops, hold on. I’ve got one of the horny bastards right here. He’ll be right up.”

Karen called into the next room, “They’re coming now!”

“Yeah, right!” Neal answered. He turned back to Polly. “Once again: The long thing in the middle of your face is your nose. It’s for breathing and things to do with mucus we don’t need to discuss right now. The oval-shaped thing beneath it, the one crammed with chocolate at the moment, is your mouth. It’s for speaking, and, as you already know, eating. The idea is to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in the form of speech. Swallow first.”

Polly swallowed a mouthful of $4.50-a-bar Toblerone, inhaled deeply, and said, “I first met Jack Landis when I was a typist in his New Yawk office.”

“Not bad. But there’s an r in York. Try it again.”

“I first met Jack Landis when I was a typist in his New York office.”

“Good. Breathe deeply, because that gives you the nice soft tone. When you don’t breathe, you sound tinny.”

“Cheap,” Candy suggested.

“Thank you, Mrs. Landis,” Neal said. “Go on.”

“I tought-”

“Thought,” Neal corrected.

“-thought he was handsome, and I guess he thought I was cute, and it wasn’t long befaw-”

“Before.”

“-before one thing led to another.”

“You got that r. Great.”

There was a knock on the door in the other room. Neal put his fingers to his lips, switched places with Karen, and shut the adjoining door. He put the pistol in his belt, at the small of his back, and slipped on his jacket.

“Room service!”

Neal opened the door and saw Walter Withers, in a white tunic and sandals, standing beside the cart.

They stared at each other for a half second, then Neal grabbed him by the front of the tunic, kicked the door shut with his foot, and shoved him down the hallway and into the alcove with the ice machine in it. Turning so he could keep an eye on the hallway, he pushed Withers against the wall and stuck the gun barrel in his face.

“You dirty lying alkie son of a bitch,” Neal said. “I should shoot you right here.”

“You stole my money,” Withers accused.

“I am going to shoot you,” Neal said. He would have cocked the hammer for effect, but he was nervous around guns, his hands had the adrenaline shakes, and he only wanted to blow Withers’s head off in fantasy. “Is that the money you took for setting Polly up?”

“It’s the front money,” Walter explained. “Neal, they’re downstairs waiting.”

“What, and you came up to warn me? How did you find us?”

“It was an accident, I swear.”

Neal pushed the barrel into Withers’s cheek.

“I know. I don’t believe it myself,” Withers said. “But I got lucky.”

“How?” Neal asked.

“You made quite a splash as a pornographer, my boy,” he answered. “I’m afraid you overplayed your cover.”

First I underplay. Now I overplay. I should have it bracketed now.

“Who are you working for?” Neal asked.

“Top Drawer-Ron Scarpelli. It’s his money you took. Neal, I’m in big trouble.”

“You’ve got that right.”

But I’m not in much better shape, Neal thought, and Withers knows it. He can blow the whistle and we’ll have the media around our ears in about twelve seconds. And we’re not ready for that yet.

Buy some time.

“I’ll give you ten thousand of it now to keep your mouth shut,” Neal said. “The rest goes to you in New York in two days if everything stays nice and quiet.”

“That just puts me even, Neal. I need something for my trouble.”

“You unbearable little shit…”

“My boy, I need something,” Withers said, his eyes twinkling with the joy of combat, “or I’ll have no choice but to sell this information to the media.”

You’d do it, too, Neal thought. In a heartbeat, if you had one.

“Okay, another ten for your so-called trouble,” Neal said, “In one week’s time, not before.”

“Twenty in three days.”

“Fifteen in five.”

“Done,” Withers said. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

Neal slipped the gun back under his belt and released his grip on Walt.

“I’ll go get your damn money,” he said.

“That’s wonderful, my boy, wonderful,” Withers said, straightening his tunic. “But do you suppose you might advance me, say, a thousand? I find myself fiscally embarrassed.”

“I’m giving you ten large!” Neal protested.

“Unfortunately, I have to remit that to my soon-to-be-former employer, Mr. Scarpelli. Thank you for releasing me from the clutches of that tawdry flesh peddler, my boy.”

“Wait here,” Neal said. “And quit calling me that.”

Neal went into the room, took $11,000 from the briefcase, went back out into the hall, and handed it to Withers.

“If I see you poking around here-no, if I see anyone poking around here, I will shoot you, Walter,” Neal said.

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” Walt said.

And a dope, Neal thought.

He pushed the room-service cart into the room, checked it for electronic bugs, and called the ladies to dinner.

Withers strolled into Scarpelli’s suite, walked to the bar, and made himself a martini. Then he sat down on the couch and put his feet on the coffee table, which was shaped like a lyre.

“I saw her,” he announced to the startled Scarpelli and Haber. “She’s in the room with Heskins.”

“That’s terrible!” Scarpelli said. “Or great… Which?”

“It’s great, Ron,” Ms. Haber said, “if we can get access to her.”

“Access,” Scarpelli repeated. He was pretty sure he’d been to a seminar on access. He couldn’t recall what was said about access, but he did remember it was an important thing. “We need access.”

“We could access Heskins,” Ms. Haber suggested.

“We could…” Ron said thoughtfully.

“Why would we want to do that?” asked Withers.

“Tell him, Haber.”

“To make a deal,” she explained. “We can buy and sell Heskins. We’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Still flush with success from his deal with Neal, Withers asked, “Why pay twice? Why not go right to the source?”

“How do we access her?” she asked.

“Actually, access is not a verb, my dear,” Withers said. “And why don’t you leave that little problem to professionals such as myself? I think you’d have to agree that I’ve done pretty well for you so far. And Ron, would you mind horribly if we settled up on my expenses? I hate to let these things go too far.”

Because, Withers thought, when Lady Luck is kind enough to land in your hand, work the faithless strumpet to death.