A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

1956.

And he’s headed right for our place, too.

Neal stopped in front of the man.

The man looked at him curiously.

“Mr. Withers?” Neal asked.

Withers blinked a few times, then said, “I know you, don’t I?”

“You’re Walter Withers, right?” Neal asked.

Withers studied Neal, then his eyes brightened.

“And you are… at least you were… Joe Graham’s puppy,” Withers said. “I remember you.”

They shook hands awkwardly, then Walter Withers’s face fell.

“Oh, Lord,” he said. “Is Graham working this thing? Is he looking for her, too? You’re the competition, aren’t you? Well, of course you wouldn’t tell me, would you? Joe Graham trained you. You were trained by the best, my boy, the best.”

Neal remembered a time when Walter Withers had been pretty damn good himself, back when Withers had been with one of the big agencies and they couldn’t help bumping into each other on some of the larger jobs. Joe Graham had pointed Withers out to Neal as an example. Rumor was in those days that Walt Withers, Loomis-Chaffee old boy and Yale alum, had learned his craft in the CIA, then gone to the private side for the money and the New York nightlife. Back in the fifties, New York had style and so did Walt Withers. Walt had dressed exclusively from Brooks Brothers and Abercrombie, and one of Neal’s enduring adolescent memories was when Mr. Withers had flipped open a Dunhill cigarette case and offered him a smoke. Neal had politely declined, admitting he needed to cut back himself. Walter Withers was a gentleman.

But the nightlife had stretched into the mornings and then became an all-day affair and the big agency dropped Walt, who started the sadly predictable descent down the ladder. His fifties style went out of style, he was woefully unsuited for undercover stuff, and the jobs that Graham threw him when he needed an extra man were mostly backup stuff. But even backup guys needed to be sober to back you up, and after a couple of no-shows, Levine put the kabosh on any freelance hiring of Walt Withers. Neal hadn’t seen him for many years, and by the look of him, Walt hadn’t spent many of the intervening nights drinking coffee in a church basement.

But here he was in Austin, so was Neal, and so was Polly Paget, and neither man believed in that kind of coincidence.

“Maybe we can work something out, Mr. Withers,” Neal said.

“Call me Walter, please, my boy. It’s Neal, isn’t it?”

Neal nodded.

“Work something out… Share the kill sort of a thing, I see… Interesting…” Walter said. “Sporting of you.”

I’m a sport, Mr. Withers. And you’re standing here trying to figure out a way to beat me. Share the kill… right.

“It depends on who your client is,” Withers said.

I’m not proud of this, Walt, but here we go.

“Mr. Withers… Walter… I’m just a little thirsty,” Neal said. “Why don’t we go in and discuss this over a drink?”

The smile returned to Walt’s face.

“Joe Graham did train you well,” he said.

Uh-huh. And I hope he forgives me, Neal thought as he led Withers into Brogan’s.

‘ “The shotgun is loaded and the dog’s awake,’ ” Charles Whiting repeated. “What does that mean?”

John Culver shrugged. “I don’t interpret them, Chief. I just record them.”

“Some sort of code,” Whiting said.

Probably not, Culver thought. He’d learned from tedious hours listening to drug deals go south that what it probably meant was that the shotgun was loaded and the dog was awake.

It had been a frustrating four days since Whiting and Culver had met in Reno and driven across desert and mountain to the remote town of Austin. They’d taken a room in the better one of Austin’s two small motels, told the owner they were geologists, and spent their days dutifully driving around the hills and their nights dutifully planting microphones and driving around with a directional sound finder.

The good news was that Austin was very small, so if Polly was in town, they had a good chance of picking something up. The bad news was that Austin was very small, and it couldn’t be long before people started asking questions.

But now they had something, thanks to Culver’s hunch that in a town this small, the saloon was a good place to pick up scuttlebutt.

“Apparently,” Whiting continued, “they have a warning system set up. Did you pick up the number he dialed?”

Culver replayed the tape and listened carefully to the sounds of the dialing. He shook his head.

Whiting didn’t complain or question. He’d hired Culver away from the DEA because the drug guys were a lot better than the FBI technicians, who were so hung up on court orders and constitutional safeguards that they couldn’t record a football game on the VCR. Your basic drug guy could and would cheerfully bug a confessional booth and get Marcel Marceau’s venial sins on tape.

Whiting thought it over for a couple of minutes. If he walked over to this bar and asked questions, the bartender might make another call, and then they could train the sound finder on the phone. But this Neal person might already be in the bar and that would give away the game. There was another problem: Whom was the bartender talking about when he said that someone was in there sniffing around? Was somebody else hot on Polly’s trail? And if so, who?

Whiting had an idea. It wasn’t uncommon for people in backwater towns to harbor fugitives. If there was a conspiracy in Austin to protect Polly Paget…

Ten minutes later, he was showing Polly’s picture to the clerk at Austin’s one grocery store.

“Have you seen this woman?”

The old lady behind the counter took a quick peek and said, “Every day.”

It wasn’t quite what Chuck had been looking for. It was a whole lot better.

“Where?” he asked, his heart quickening.

The old lady pointed behind him.

Chuck whirled around to see a newspaper rack where pictures of Polly were spread all over the color tabloids.

Back to plan A, Chuck thought.

“I have a lot of money for her,” Chuck said.

The old lady smiled.

“That’s interesting,” she said.

“In fact,” Chuck continued, “I have a lot of money for anyone who could tell me where she is.”

The old woman looked around and quickly leaned over the counter until her lips were an inch from Chuck’s ear, then whispered, “Can you keep this confidential?”

“You have my word,” said Chuck.

“Elvis,” she hissed, “is sweeping up the storeroom right now.”

Chuck’s face flushed as the old woman straightened up and regarded him with disdain.

“Young man,” she said, “I sell a little produce, a lot of canned beans, some pop, and a few bottles of beer. I do not sell people. Now, I do know where you can rent a person for an hour or so, but it isn’t here.”

Chuck’s face turned from pink to scarlet.

The old lady continued: “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, ma am.”

“Then please be on your way.”

Chuck went on his way.

Evelyn picked up the phone two seconds later and dialed Karen Hawley’s number.

“Karen,” she said when her old friend answered, “I thought I should let you know that someone just came in looking for… your houseguest.”

“Thanks,” Karen said, “Brogan called, too. Neal went down to check it out. But how did you know-never mind.”

Inside the van, John Culver lowered the shotgun mike and rewound the tape. He listened for a second and gave Whiting the thumbs-up sign. This time the phone number came singing through the headset.

Within five minutes, they found Karen Hawley’s address in the reverse phone book Whiting had finagled from an old buddy in the Reno field bureau. After they’d parked the van a block away from the house, Chuck Whiting called the boss again and said to get there right away.

He didn’t want to do that. He hated to do that. But those were his orders, and Chuck Whiting had spent a lifetime obeying orders. It was too late to change now.

Overtime thought about the circus. Particularly, he thought about that moment when the Volkswagen pulls up next to the house on fire and fifteen clowns get out of the little car, trip all over themselves, spray each other with water, and throw buckets of confetti on the house. Then the house burns down.

He edged the curtain back into place and stepped away from the window. He sat down on the motel room’s one chair, its ripped mustard yellow upholstery repaired with duct tape, and opened up a package of peanut-butter crackers. He had checked in the night before and packed his own food and drink. He’d gone out once, at about three in the morning, to check the target area. He worked out his approach and his escape and it wasn’t going to be a problem.

Just in, just out.

Then he went back to his room to get some sleep and wait for the clowns.

And now they were here.