A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

23

“No,” Polly said.

“What do you mean, no?” Neal asked.

“You know-no. N-O,” Polly insisted. She sat on the bed in Neal’s room, looking defensive and hostile. Neal sat on the bed beside her, Candy watched from a chair, and Karen stood beside the television set, on which Jack and Candy were hawking time-shares at Candyland. “No means no.”

“Isn’t that where this whole thing started?” Karen asked.

“Right?” Polly asked.

Candy nodded vigorously.

“If the NOW meeting is over…” Neal said.

“What’s NOW?” asked Polly.

“The National Organization of Women,” Karen explained.

Polly said, “That’s a good idea.”

“You ain’t kidding.”

The exchange stopped at the sound of Neal’s head rhythmically smacking into his hands.

“Polly,” Neal said. “Two million dollars. Two… million… dollars.”

All in all, Neal thought, it’s a good settlement, hammered out over a long night. Polly would get the $2 million in exchange for dropping the suit. Neither she nor Jack would discuss the affair, the paternity, or the alleged rape with the press.

On the business level, Jack would sell enough shares at fair market price to give Peter Hathaway majority ownership, but Jack and Candy would own their show and sell it to FCN at top dollar.

As for Candyland, Hathaway would agree to let the project continue. Foglio would retain his contracts but perform real work at reasonable costs. He would also acquire certain maintenance contracts on the same terms. Kitteredge and Bascaglia would appoint a mutually agreeable comptroller to monitor costs.

It was a good settlement and Neal could see Kitteredge’s careful fingerprints all over it.

“All you talk about is money,” Polly said.

“You launched a civil suit,” Neal reminded her.

“Because he should pay for what he did,” Polly argued.

“Two million freaking dollars!” Neal said. “And he loses control of his company! That’s paying!”

Polly chewed on her bottom lip and thought.

Please take it, Neal thought. So I can go back to my life. So Carmine Bascaglia doesn’t kill us all.

His eyes caught Candy’s.

He wondered what she could be thinking, having okayed a deal that would send her back to her scummy husband for two years. She was apparently willing to trade two years of misery to save her life’s work. Such are life’s bargains.

He didn’t have to wonder what Karen was thinking. She reminded him at every private moment. She was pissed off. She thought the whole thing stank. She was a cowgirl who thought they should just shoot it out, in the courtroom or wherever, and take their chances. He loved her madly, but she just didn’t realize that they didn’t have a chance against Bascaglia.

Polly seemed to be wavering.

“I’ll try to get two-five,” Neal said, hoping to push her over the edge.

Karen grunted in disgust.

“I’ll take it,” Polly said.

Thank you, God.

“If he says he raped me.”

Thanks, God. Thanks a lot.

Karen applauded.

“Good for you,” she said.

“Polly,” Neal started again, “if he admits he raped you, ‘The Jack and Candy Family Hour’ will fall off the charts. The network will lose millions of dollars and Candyland will never be built. There won’t be enough money to finance the deal. Jack might as well take his chances in front of a jury.”

And we can take our chances in front of a firing squad.

“That’s fine with me,” Polly said. “That’s what I wanted in the first place. That’s what you were supposed to be helping me with, wasn’t it?”

“We didn’t know the mob was involved,” Neal said.

“So the mob is involved, that makes it okay to rape me?”

“And keep raping her?” Karen asked.

That’s a damn good point, Neal thought.

“This is not the time for tired feminist cant,” he said. “The point is-”

“Oh, goodie,” Karen said. “Neal’s going to tell us what the point is.”

“The point is that we can talk right and wrong, fair and unfair until the sun goes down, but at the end of the day we have to look at what is possible,” Neal said. “This is about the best deal we’re going to get.”

“What do you think?” Polly asked Candy.

Swell, Neal thought. First she’s boffing her husband, now she thinks the woman is her big sister.

“I’m not the one who was raped,” Candy said.

“I don’t know about that,” said Karen.

“Will you stop?” Neal asked her.

Karen shrugged.

“I don’t know,” said Candy. She watched herself whip up a low-fat noncholesterol ‘His First Night Home from the Hospital Dinner’ while Jack made funny faces to the camera. “I’m kind of tired of cooking for the son of a bitch.”

“Will you talk to them?” Neal asked Karen. “Tell them it’s a great deal.”

Karen talked to them.

“This deal sucks,” Neal said into the telephone a few minutes later.

“It doesn’t suck,” Ed answered tightly as he watched Kitteredge look quizzical and Hathaway turn pale. “It’s a terrific deal.”

“It sucks!” Neal repeated. “Two million lousy dollars! He forks over some chump change and walks away from raping her? It’s a terrific deal all right-for Jack! How am I supposed to sell this to her?”

Please tell me, Ed. Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked.

“I’m putting you on speaker phone, Neal,” Ed answered. That would help settle Neal down, if he knew he was talking directly to Kitteredge. “Could you summarize her objections to this proposal for Mr. Kitteredge and Mr. Hathaway?”

“Yeah, it sucks!” Neal bellowed. He repeated the rationale.

“Neal, Ethan Kitteredge here!” Kitteredge shouted. Kitteredge thought the speaker phone was yet another symptom of societal decline. “How are you?”

Oh, I’m trapped in a hotel room in the wise guy capital of the world with three women who want to take on both the Merolla and Bascaglia crime families, the entire Family Cable Network, and you. One of the women is pregnant, another is discovering herself, and the third one is just nuts.

“Fine, sir. And yourself?”

“I’m a bit puzzled. Perhaps you can enlighten me,” Kitteredge said, “as to why Ms. Paget feels this arrangement-how did she phrase it…?”

“Sucks, sir.”

“Yes… sucks.”

“It eats shit!” Polly yelled.

“Was that Ms. Paget?” Kitteredge asked.

“Yes it was.”

“Your tutorials aren’t going especially well, are they?” Kitteredge asked.

Neal filled him in on Polly’s demand that Jack confess to raping her.

Kitteredge listened and said, “I’m afraid that’s just not possible, Neal. Perhaps she would consider another million as an alternative.”

You’re afraid? You’re not sitting next to the human bull’s-eye here. And you’ve been lowballing us?!

“Three million, no confession,” he said to Polly.

“Eat shit,” Polly answered.

“She declined the offer, sir.”

“I heard her, Neal.”

“Because she pronounced her t’s,” Neal said. Let’s not be defaming my tutorials. “A week ago, she would have said, ‘Eeh shih.’”

“Ask this jerk who he thinks he is,” Hathaway demanded.

“He can hear you,” Ed said.

“Who do you think you are?” Hathaway asked.

“There is some confusion on that score,” Neal admitted.

“I mean, are you her agent now?” Hathaway asked. Now that Polly had served her purpose, he wanted this matter settled quietly. The scandal that was such an asset was becoming a liability. “Are you getting a piece of her settlement?”

“No, Mr. Hathaway,” Neal answered. “The only person who is gaining financially from Ms. Paget’s rape is you. And by the way-”

Ed flicked off the speaker.

“-eat shit,” Neal concluded. “Hi, Ed.”

“Hi, Neal,” Ed said pleasantly. “Neal, a number of highly placed people have worked very hard to put this package together. Just in case you’ve forgotten, we don’t represent Polly Paget; we represent Mr. Hathaway. Mr. Hathaway is satisfied with this arrangement. If Ms. Paget persists in being stubborn, we will just have to walk away from her. She can hire her own lawyer, her own speech coach, and her own security. You can go back to doing whatever the hell it is that you do. Got it?”

“Got it,” Neal said.

Of course Kitteredge would have a backup plan.

“Three million,” Ed said, “no confession. Final offer.”

Neal cradled the receiver in his neck, turned to Polly, and said, “Take it or leave it. If you don’t take it, you’re on your own. We leave.”

Karen’s head snapped up and her face flushed in anger.

“Neal,” she said, “we can’t-”

“So leave,” Polly said.

Neal told Ed it was no deal.

“Pack your things and get out,” Ed answered. “While the truce is still on.”

Neal set the phone down.

Karen glared at him and said, “I’m not leaving. And-”

“I’m trying to think,” Neal said, cutting her off.

And you, of all people, should know how hard that is for me.

What the hell are we going to do?

“They want me to do what?!” Jack yelled. His voice bounced off the Alamo’s old stone walls.

Joey Foglio calmly repeated what they wanted him to do.

He thought the Alamo would be a good place to have this meeting. The plaza was usually empty on a Monday morning. The only people here were some Mexican workers who were cleaning the place, and if any of them spoke enough English to understand anything, they probably wouldn’t give a shit, anyway. Still and all, there was no use taking chances with Jack turning red and screaming.

“Why don’t I just go out there,” Jack yelled, “stick a knife in my guts, and disembowel myself! Would they like that, too?”

Joey thought the Japanese tourists would probably get a charge out of it, as a matter of fact.

Jack continued: “No, no, no… I’ve got a better one. Why don’t I just smile at the camera, take a meat cleaver, and whack my Johnson off! Then Candy could mix it up with a little sauteed onion, some red peppers maybe, a little hot sauce, and serve it to me on the show! There’s an idea!”

Harold belched.

“Excuse me,” he said.

Jack stalked over toward the chapel.

Joey followed him and said, “Your girlfriend won’t take the deal. We gotta do something.”

Actually, Joey was pleased that Polly was shooting down this deal. It would give him more room to maneuver. Jack didn’t seem to be listening, just staring up at the old Alamo.

“You know who stood there?” Jack asked, his eyes glistening.

“Okay, who?” Joey sighed. He was already late getting to confession. If he got hit by a bus or something…

“John Wayne,” Jack said. “John Wayne stood there. And fought to the death.”

“John Wayne died here?” Harold asked.

“For freedom,” Jack said reverentially. “John Wayne stood here and fought to the death for my freedom.”

Joey had serious doubts that the Duke laid down his life so Jack Landis could nail some skank, but Jack was a local, so he must know the history.

“That’s nice he did that,” Joey said. “What’s it got to do with-”

“And you want me,” Jack said, his voice quivering with emotion, “to go before the people of this great country and… surrender? You want me, in the shadow of the Alamo, to spit on the memory of John Wayne?”

He’s lost it, Joey thought. He’s got one foot planted firmly in the enchanted forest.

“You can’t ask him to do that, boss,” Harold said. He looked as if he was going to cry. “You just can’t. I mean… John Wayne.”

They’re both nuts, Joey thought. I’m the only sane guy here.

“I knew John Wayne,” he said, wrapping a big arm around Jack’s shoulder, “back on… Iwo Jima. We was in a foxhole together, surrounded by the enemy. I’m telling you, Jack, Mexicans everywhere. And the Duke said to me, ‘Big Joe, sometimes a man just has to stand up and be a man and do the right thing. Like a man.’ Do you understand, Jack? Do you hear what I’m trying to say to you?”

Jack ducked out from under Foglio’s arm and said, “You want me to eat a shit sandwich and smile.”

“That’s it,” Joey said, relieved he could now get to church.

He was very careful crossing the street.

Kneeling in the pew, Charles Whiting felt as if he was in another country. Most of the worshipers were Hispanic women with their heads covered in black veils, and the painted statues of saints in various stages of martyred agony, their sad eyes shedding tears and blood dripping from their hands, gave the church a foreign atmosphere.

Whiting thought that he would probably be consigned to an eternity in hell just for being in this church, never mind for the horrible sin he hoped to commit soon.

And the entire idea of confession made him uncomfortable, not only for the obvious blasphemy but also because-were he indeed a Catholic-he had so much he would have to confess.

His feelings for Mrs. Landis weighed heavily on his soul. He thought about the betrayal of his wife and nine children and then about the wisdom of the old Mormon elders, who knew that monogamy was not natural for men.

He thought about his admiration for Candy Landis, her commitment to family values, the way she spoke of morality and ethics, the way her golden hair touched the soft skin on her neck, how it would look falling back on a satin pillow as she opened her arms, and he wished that Foglio would hurry up and get into the damn church. He wanted to get this over with.

An old woman came out of the confessional booth he was watching. He crossed himself in imitation of the veiled ladies, slid down the pew, parted the curtain of the confessional, and knelt.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” he recited, knowing that his Mormon ancestors were spinning in their graves. Reaching into his pocket, he found the tiny microphone with the little suction cup.

“It has been… uh… ten years… since my last confession,” Chuck said, promising himself that he would never, ever do another undercover job as long as he lived. Why didn’t the priest say something? “Uh… it’s been so long because… I’ve been in a coma.”

The priest mumbled something incomprehensible.

Chuck attached the suction cup to the underside of a piece of molding, then pressed it to make sure it stuck.

He thought he heard the priest say something about sin.

“I… I’m in love… with a woman who’s not my wife,” Chuck confessed, because he felt he had to say something.

Then it all came tumbling out, how he had come to work for the woman and her husband, how the husband cheated on her, how he had come to see a softer side of her, how…

The priest kept trying to interrupt with some mumbo jumbo, but Charles kept spewing guilt about how he had constant carnal images of the woman that he couldn’t suppress and how he wished that her husband would die and his own wife would run off with a Gentile and then he could persuade the woman to convert and stuff, until he ran out of breath and the priest said something that sounded like “Hentile?”

Charles felt better as he went to the old truck parked around the corner.

“Does it work?” he asked Culver.

Culver took off his headset and asked, “You’ve got a boner for Candy Landis?”

Evidently it works, Chuck thought.

Joey Foglio went back to the car with a shiny new soul and a fresh resolve to take more advantage of Jack Landis’s crumbling empire. He had ridden Jack about as far as he could. It was time to change horses.

“Did you arrange a clean phone?” he asked Harold.

“Joey, don’t you think-” Harold started.

“No, I don’t think,” Joey said without a trace of irony. “Carmine’s been acting like a banker so long, he thinks he is one. That’s the crucial difference between him and me. I know who I am. I’m a criminal. I commit crimes.”

The crucial difference, Harold thought, is that Carmine has several hundred soldiers to do his bidding and you have several.

“Carmine isn’t going to like you messing around in the middle of a deal,” Harold said.

“He’s the one who’s messing,” Joey said.

“You’ll still make money.”

“I don’t want to make money,” Joey answered. “If I wanted to make money, I’d sell insurance. I want to take money. That’s who I am. It’s the me of me.”

Harold took him to a phone booth on Flores Street and handed him the phone number in Rhode Island.

“What is this phone?” Joey asked.

“Another phone booth.”

“Clean?”

“Guy promises it is,” Harold assured him, aware of Joey’s paranoia about wiretaps.

The guy answered on the third ring.

“Hello?” Joey said.

“Hello,” Hathaway answered. “Why am I talking to you?”

“Because you like to make money,” Joey answered. “Because you’re tired of working like a donkey and giving the money to Marc Merolla.”

He outlined his proposal to Hathaway.

Hathaway was definitely interested when he heard the profit margins. Joey let him drool over the potential riches for a minute before he said, “There’s a problem, though.”

“What’s that?”

“That broad that says she was raped?” Joey said. “I was paying her to shag Jack.”

There was a long silence, so long that Joey was afraid he had blown the deal.

“Jesus,” Hathaway said. “You, too?”