A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

I?

Not for long, thought Jorge.

“Connie,” Candy said, “I think it’s so important that the viewers out there understand that rape is not always committed by strangers in a dark alley. Sometimes it’s someone you know…”

Jorge handed Jack the phone.

“What!” Jack yelled.

“Are you watching this?” Joey screamed. “That’s your wife!”

“I recognized her.”

“What’s she doing on there?”

“Sawing my balls off,” Jack said. The world was starting to close in-black, hot and stuffy as an East Texas summer night. You want to get out, get away from the suffocating heat, and there’s no place to go but to more of the same.

“The bitch lied to me…” Jack mumbled, more to himself than to Joey. “She said she forgave me… coming home…”

“I find it incredible that the two of you have become such close friends,” Connie said. “How in the world did that happen?”

“Well, of course we had something in common,” Candy said.

As Connie giggled and shook her head, Jack handed Jorge the phone.

“Tell that son of a bitch I’m going to the Grand Caymans,” he muttered. “He can have fucking Candyland.”

The world was spinning.

“You’re a son of a bitch and Mr. Landis is going to the Grand Canyon,” Jorge said. “You can fuck having Candyland.”

Visions of a Caribbean beach, women with skin like cocoa butter, and a cool grass shack sparkled in Jack’s eyes as his arm went numb, his heartburn returned, and he felt as if someone was wrapping barbed wire around his chest.

“And then when someone tried to kill her…” Candy drawled.

Joey was trying to figure out why Jack was going to the Grand Canyon when he heard the bit about someone trying to kill Polly.

“Wait a second. That’s me!” Joey yelled indignantly. “Why the hell does she have to drag me into it? What the hell did I ever do to her?”

“You stole a boatload of money from her,” Harold suggested.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that!” Joey whined. “That’s not fair!”

“Why would someone want to kill you?” asked Connie breathlessly.

Please, please, please, please, please, Harold prayed. Don’t say it.

Please, please, please, please, please, Joey prayed. Don’t say it. Carmine will have me melted into a wax candle and burn an inch or two of me every day.

“I don’t know,” Polly answered. “There are a lot of crazies out there.”

Thank God, thought Harold.

Thank God, thought Joey.

“She’s a stand-up broad,” Harold said when he got his breath again.

“Yeah, she’s okay,” Joey said when he realized that it still wasn’t too late to knock her off.

If that numbnuts Overtime can get it right for once.

Overtime limped down the hallway and rapped softly on Withers’s door.

“Who is it?” Withers asked.

“Open the door before someone sees me,” Overtime hissed.

Walter cracked the door, Overtime pushed it open, shut it behind him, and grabbed Withers by the lapels.

“Listen, you drunken buffoon,” Overtime said. “You’re going to deliver the target the way you’re supposed to so I can get the job done.”

“Who are you?” Withers asked. “Do you work for Scarpelli?”

“Yeah, okay,” Overtime answered.

One more float, he thought, in this endless parade of idiots.

Why would they want to kill her? Neal asked himself as he watched the interview. What could she say that she hasn’t said already?

“It’s going great, isn’t it?” Karen said.

“Yeah,” Neal said.

“What?” Karen asked, picking up on his mood. Neal was such a damn perfectionist. Polly had probably dropped a t or an r or put a diphthong where there wasn’t supposed to be one or something.

What could she say that she hasn’t said already?

She talked about the affair; she talked about the rape-what else was there to Pollygate? Joey Foglio, obviously, but she didn’t even know about that until we found out that her good buddy Gloria was giving her up…

From the Book of Joseph Graham, book one, chapter one, verse one: Don’t look so hard at what’s there that you forget what’s missing.

So when you told Polly that Gloria ratted on her, she never asked, “Who’s Joey Foglio? How does Gloria know him? What does Gloria have to do with a mobster?” Nothing, just that same stupid, resentful acceptance that all men are shits, so it was no surprise Joey turned on her.

“What did Gloria owe Joey Beans?” Neal asked.

Polly kept her eyes on the television and said, “I didn’t know Gloria even knew Joey Beans.”

Joey Beans, just like that. Not “Joey who?” Not “That’s a funny name.” Nothing. Which is strange, because I never called him Joey Beans before. Neal watched her beautiful, honest image on the screen-the one he’d worked so well to bring out-and got an awful sinking feeling.

“I thought they only killed their own,” Karen had said.

I’m afraid you were right.

What could she say she hadn’t already said? That she worked for Joey Beans. She was Joey’s hook into Landis. That she pulled out too soon and Joey Beans was pissed off and scared-so pissed off and scared, he put a hit on her.

“Awwwww,” Neal groaned.

“What?” Karen said.

“How much was he paying you?” Neal asked.

“Who?” Polly said.

“Who?” Neal mocked. “You mean there was more than one!

She got that defensive look in her eye, the one he hadn’t seen since… the moments after the attempted murder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I don’t either,” Karen said. “What are you talking about?”

“Aw, man,” Neal groaned again. “She’s a player.”

“What do you mean?” asked Karen.

“Because I slept with Jack Landis?” Polly asked.

“Because you took money from Joey Beans to sleep with Jack Landis,” Neal said.

“I did not!” Polly yelled as she stood up.

Yeah, you did, Neal thought. It’s in your eyes; it’s in your voice.

“How’d it happen?” he asked.

“It happened just the way I told Connie-”

“Look, I’ve told more stories than the frigging Brothers Grimm,” Neal said. “Don’t bother.”

“I-”

“No, seriously,” Neal said. “I was stupid enough to believe you; it’s my fault. You and Joey ran a scam on Jack. Hathaway made you a better offer. You took a shot… I hope it works out for you. Now just shut up.”

Because I need to think how to get the hell out of this.

“He raped me!”

“Yeah,” Neal said. “Listen, you should have taken the three mil. What did you think, that the TV performance was going to up the ante? Now they’ll get on the phone and offer you five? What Joey Beans is going to offer you is a mouthful of concrete somewhere. But I’m not going with you, Polly, and neither is Karen.”

“He raped me!” Polly screamed.

“And that wasn’t part of the deal, was it?”

“No!”

Neal sat down on the bed.

“Bummer, huh?” he said to Karen.

Karen said, “Polly, how could you let us put ourselves on the line like that and not-”

Polly pushed past and ran out of the room.

“Let her go,” Neal said.

“We can’t just-”

They heard the door slam behind her.

Walter Withers saw Polly come out the door.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought. Walter, this is your big moment. One moment to do it all right and redeem yourself, a fresh start.

He tightened the knot on his tie, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway.

Miss Paget was weeping.

Perhaps the gallant approach.

“Excuse me, my dear,” Withers said. “I could not help but notice that you seem to be in some distress. May I be of assistance?”

“I don’t have no one,” Polly wept.

“Ah, loneliness, perhaps my greatest area of expertise,” Withers said. That treacherous young weasel Carey will be out here any second. Must move with dispatch. “Didn’t I just see you on television?”

“No.”

“Yes, you’re Polly Paget, aren’t you?” he asked. “No wonder you’re weeping. You’ve been through a great ordeal. Please allow me to help.”

“How can you help?”

Here it is, Withers thought. My make-or-break moment.

“I can offer you half a million dollars.”

Polly wiped her eyes and looked at him. She’d need money to hide from Joey Beans now.

“What do I have to do?” she asked.

“Simply pose for a few photographs,” Withers answered. He tried to think of a delicate way of putting it, then added apologetically, “En dishabille, as the French would say.”

“Huh?” ‘

“Nude,” Withers said, cutting to the point. “For Top Drawer magazine.”

Alone, Polly thought. No friends, no home, nowhere to go, a kid on the way.

“Get away from me,” she said.

“I have twenty-five thousand dollars in cash for you right now,” he said. “As a down payment.”

But I do need money, Polly thought.

“These would be like, tasteful, right?” she asked.

“Your sweet mother would show them to her friends,” Withers assured her.

He gallantly led her into the room.

Carmine Bascaglia watched the interview from his home in Chalmette Oaks. When Candy Landis gushed her revelation about the attempted murder and Polly Paget brushed it off as the act of a lunatic, he placed a call to San Antonio, brooking no nonsense about Joey Foglio’s phone phobia.

“Joseph,” he said when his hotheaded associate came on the line, “I hope you haven’t done anything hasty.”

“Of course not, Carmine,” Joey answered. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this Paget woman has just bought herself some protection,” Carmine said.

“She’s playing with us, Carmine. This is flat-out extortion,” Joey answered. “I don’t think we should stand for it.”

Carmine sighed. “You don’t think at all, Joseph. I think, and then you do what I think. I think we should proceed slowly and with great caution. Don’t do anything. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

There was a long silence before Carmine said, “Joseph, tell me you haven’t done anything stupid. Because if anything should happen to Miss Paget now, we would be subject to considerable unwanted attention.”

Joey felt as if he was kneeling in the street munching on garbage.

He said, “She’s as safe as in her mother’s arms.”

“See that she stays that way,” Carmine said. “At least for the time being.”

“We got any way of contacting Overtime?” Joey asked Harold when Carmine had finished.

“No. You know Overtime. Paranoid.”

“Yeah,” Joey said, praying that numbnuts Overtime didn’t get it right this time.

“So who are you,” Polly asked Overtime, “the photographer?”

Because he just couldn’t resist it, Overtime said, “That’s right. They’ve hired me to shoot you.”

Finally, he thought.

Polly looked around the room. “This is it? No studio? No lights?”

“You’re the photographer?” Withers asked. “Why didn’t you-”

Overtime’s pistol snaked out and clubbed Withers once and then twice against the side of the head. Withers dropped heavily to the floor.

Overtime put the pistol against Polly’s head.

It’s odd, Overtime thought, hearing her on the TV and seeing her live in front of me at the same time. Live, he thought. For a moment anyway.

“That smart son of a bitch,” Ed Levine said. “He beat Jack to death with Polly’s performance, showed us he had Candy on his side, threatened to squeal about the attempted hit, and then made a peace offer by not going through with it.”

“He’s still fired,” Kitteredge said. “How do you think Mr. Bascaglia will react?”

“The Banker will want to go back to the table,” Ed thought out loud, “but he’ll want to deal with Mrs. Landis instead of Jack, because Jack is dead meat now. He’ll also want to roast Neal over a bed of coals.”

You smart little SOB, Ed thought. You might just pull this off. Now, what can I do to help?

“You want me to get Bascaglia’s people on the phone?” Ed asked. “Tell them three million, plus Jack’s confession.”

“Possibly-”

Connie was wrapping it up with, “Now you said you had one announcement you wanted to make.”

Great, Ed thought. Now what?

Jack Landis was trying to get enough breath to get up from the sofa.

All that money, he thought, waiting in the Caymans… warm beach… skin like cocoa butter… and I can’t get up off my ass to go.

He looked at the blurry images of his wife and mistress on television. Hard to hear-what was Polly saying?

“And I’m going to have a baby,” Polly said. “Jack Landis’s baby.”

A baby, Jack thought. Jack Landis-

Then something cracked in his chest, he pitched forward, and landed face-first in the guacamole.

“You’re pregnant?” Overtime said.

He held the gun on Polly, who sat on the bed, her back against the headboard. She was too scared to talk, so she nodded.

“This is a complication,” Overtime said. He held the gun on her while he dialed the phone with the other hand.

“I’m not shooting a pregnant woman,” he told Harold indignantly.

Polly felt a breath come into her lungs.

“Unless you pay me double,” Overtime finished.

Walter Withers could just make out the man’s back. Blood caked one eye and the other didn’t focus terribly well. He felt as if he were listening to someone talk underwater.

But it appears, Withers thought, that this man is actually intending to kill this young lady. And I have led her to this.

“Counts as two people,” he heard the man insist. “Hell, I thought you guys were Catholics. What do you mean, ‘academic’?”

Walter felt as if a cold river were running through his brain as he tried to push himself onto his hands and knees. The man looked over his shoulder at him.

It’s nice, Withers thought, to hear someone play a Hart tune without butchering it, but this unpleasant, amoral young man needed correcting. And the young lady needed rescuing.

“You may want to call it off, but she’s seen me now,” Overtime said. “I’m killing her and you are going to pay me.”

As Overtime aimed the pistol, Withers pushed himself to his feet.

“See here,” he said as he reached into his jacket for the revolver he had left in New York, “the game just isn’t played this way.”

Overtime turned around and shot him in the chest.

Oh dear, Withers thought, I’ve made a mess of this.

Walter Withers’s last act on earth was to lunge forward on Overtime’s arm, stopping him from lifting his pistol as Polly sprang from the bed and ran for the door.

Overtime dropped Walt, put a bullet into his head, and said into the telephone, “Great, now she got away… What do you mean, ‘Thank God’?”

Overtime was long gone by the time Polly banged on Neal’s door, sobbed out her story, and brought him to Withers’s room.

“Oh God,” Neal said when he saw the body.

Polly went to cradle Withers in her arms.

“Don’t touch him,” Neal said. “Don’t touch anything. You’ll screw up the cops.”

“He saved my life,” Polly cried.

Neal looked down at the sad, crumpled corpse of Walter Withers.

“Yeah, well. He was a gentleman,” Neal said.

Then he hustled Polly out of there and went back to his room to phone an anonymous tip.