A Long Walk Up the Waterslide nc-4 Read online

  It was a little early for a beer, but it was also a little early to be taking on a new case, so Neal popped the cap with only a trace of guilt. Brezhnev, an enormous black dog of indeterminate breed, raised his head an inch off the floor and growled until Neal left a dollar on the counter. Brogan, the owner and namesake of the grubby saloon, snored away behind the bar in the old BarcaLounger he had rescued from the county dump. Neal hadn’t seen Brogan get out of that chair except to go to the john, and there were people in Austin prepared to swear, based on olfactory evidence, that he didn’t always get up for that.

  Brogan started snoring. His head was tilted back and something kind of yellow dribbled from the edge of his mouth.

  “Is he asleep or faking it?” Graham asked.

  Neal looked over at Brezhnev, who kept one narrow eye on him.

  “He’s asleep. They take turns when someone is in the bar. The dog won’t go to sleep unless Brogan is awake.”

  “He can’t fake out the dog?”

  “Nobody can fake out that dog.”

  Neal opened a second bottle, hopped back over the bar, and sat down at a table next to Graham, who was busily wiping the greasy tabletop with a handkerchief.

  “Isn’t there a clean place in this town?” Graham complained.

  “It doesn’t open until dinner,” Neal answered. “So what does the bank have to do with Polly Paget?”

  Karen had thrown them out of the house for a while so she could “get Polly settled.” Which, Neal figured, meant putting away her underwear, finding a place for her cosmetics, and pumping her for information.

  “Can I have a glass?” Graham asked.

  “Brogan probably has one somewhere, but I don’t think you want to see it,” Neal answered. You could pull fifteen years of fingerprints off one of Brogan’s beer glasses.

  Graham took a fresh handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the mouth of the beer bottle. He took a tentative sip and said, “Jack Landis is the majority owner of the FCN network. The bank’s client, Peter Hathaway, is the largest minority owner. The minority owner wants to be the majority owner. Hathaway is pissed off because he thinks that Jack is overextending. And then there’s Candyland.”

  “Candyland.” Neal chuckled. He’d heard about Candyland on “The Jack and Candy Family Hour.”

  Candyland was going to be an enormous “family vacation resort” on the outskirts of San Antonio-as soon as it was finished, of course. They were still several million dollars short, so Jack and Candy were selling shares to their faithful viewers. Just send in five hundred bucks for your time-share condo. Jack and Candy made this offer about every twelve seconds. They were like vice cops in a strip joint when it came to hitting you up for Candyland money.

  “It’s a disaster,” Graham said. “They’re way over budget in every category and they’re running out of cash.”

  “Are they really going to build it?”

  Graham shrugged.

  “Let me guess,” Neal said. “The bank has a loan on it.”

  “But of course,” Graham answered. “And the minority owner wants to work with the bank and get it straightened out. But how do you fire the most popular couple in America?”

  “Tough one,” Neal answered. “Maybe if he raped his secretary…”

  “Bingo,” Graham said.

  “So is Polly telling the truth?” Neal asked.

  “I dunno,” Graham answered.

  “The cops didn’t believe he raped me,” Polly said to Karen. “I mean, I was balling the guy for a year, right, and then I cry rape. But honest to God, the last time it was.”

  Karen was helping Polly put her underwear away in the small guest room. This was no easy task. Polly had a lot of underclothes.

  “Jack is no great shakes in the sack anyway, to tell you the truth,” Polly continued, “but who would be married to ‘Canned-Ice’-that’s what he used to call his wife. I mean, where would he get the practice, right? So he needed somebody, okay, and he was, like, nice to me? So every time he came to New York, we’d go back to my place and do it… and do it and do it and do it… but I got feeling bad about myself. I mean, this thing was going nowhere and there was his wife on the TV talking about how they had tried to have kids but couldn’t and I’m in bed with the guy watching this. He used to like to do it while they were on the TV together, which got really creepy. I mean, there they were together all sweet and lovey-dovey and there we were in bed doing it. Don’t you think that’s kind of creepy?”

  “Definitely creepy,” Karen said.

  “Even my best friend, Gloria, thinks it’s creepy, and she’s looser than I am. So anyway, after a while I said, ‘Jack, I’m not doing it anymore while “The Jack and Candy Family Hour” is on,’ and he got mad and we broke up, but then he came back and was really sweet and everything and so I took him back and we started doing it again, but not during ‘The Jack and Candy Family Hour.’ That’s on tape, not live, you know.”

  “I kind of figured that out,” Karen said. She handed Polly a bra that looked like a postdoctoral project at MIT.

  Polly held it up and said, “One of the things I’m going to do with the money is have my boobs done, because I’m thinking about trying Hollywood, and you need boobs. I mean, I have boobs, of course, but not boobs.”

  She held her hands out to demonstrate what she had in mind.

  Karen winced.

  “I think you look great,” she said.

  “Do you? Awwww,” Polly said. “Sometimes I think I look like a cheap tramp. I think that’s what the cops thought, like ‘She was asking for it,’ you know, but I wasn’t. I told Jack it was over. I was through with him and he asked for one last time and I told him no, but he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and the son of a bitch held me down and did it and I think that’s rape, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So do I, but try telling that to the cops. They look at you like you’re nuts or something, but we’ll see who’s nuts.”

  Probably Neal after a month of this, Karen thought.

  “So you decided to sue the son of a bitch,” Karen said.

  “The only way to make him pay,” Polly said, “and I need the money, too, seeing as how I’m out of a job and I’m a shitty secretary anyway, to tell the truth, and I’m going to have a hard time finding a job because everyone in the whole country hates me.

  “I don’t hate you,” Karen said. She felt goopy for saying it, but it felt like one of things you have to say. Anyway, she meant it. She kind of liked Polly Paget.

  “You know the rest,” Graham said to Neal. “Polly goes to some sleazebag lawyer, whose first move is to call every tabloid in the phone book and tell them how to spell his name.”

  Neal remembered seeing the headlines at the checkout counter in Austin’s only grocery store, I WAS RAPED, SCREAMS BIMBO. BOMBSHELL DROPS BOMBSHELL. HAPPY JACK CAUGHT IN LOVE NEST. POLLY GETS HER CRACKER. IT’S ALL A LIE, SAYS CANDY LANDIS. CANDY STANDS BY MAN. Then the networks picked it up-a more somber tone but the same voyeuristic thrust: “Family Network chief Jack Landis accused of rape by alleged longtime mistress. Financial improprieties also alleged. An unidentified board member said to be demanding an investigation.”

  Then Jack responded. Media rivals were trying to destroy him. Filth peddlers wanted to drag him down into the gutter with them. The usually buttoned-up Candy broke into sobs on the show-who could be so cruel to do something like this? Polly Paget was a tool. The Family Cable Network will go on. Candyland will be built! Wild applause… audience members wept unashamedly. It was beautiful.

  Then Polly’s idiot lawyer held a press conference. Polly made a statement. She looked awful on camera and sounded worse. The good gentlemen and ladies of the press shredded her during the Q and A. She came across as a hard, cold, calculating… bimbo. It was awful.

  That, Graham told Neal, was when the minority owner called Ethan Kitteredge at the bank. Kitteredge paid off Polly’s lawyer, brought in a new firm, and arra
nged for Polly Paget to drop out of sight.

  The press went crazy. A missing Polly Paget was much better than an all-too-present one. Delicious speculation seized the public. Where was Polly? Why had she run? Had someone threatened her? Did this prove she was lying? Where was she?

  “We put a fake Polly on a plane to L.A.,” Graham explained, “and drove the real Polly up to Providence. She hid out at Kitteredge’s house for ten days while the lawyers grilled her. That’s when we decided we needed your dubious services. So we got on a private plane, flew to Reno, and here we are.”

  Hiding Polly turned out to be a brilliant move. With Polly not there to open her mouth, the minority owner was able to fill the ravenous media void with stories of cost overruns, lavish expenditures, and shoddy accounting until the press, inevitably, dubbed the affair “Pollygate.”

  And media magic struck Polly, too. Missing, she made the delicate transition from bimbo to sex symbol. Mysterious, she became a combination of Garbo and Monroe. Casual friends sold their stories for four figures. Grainy snapshots went for more. Offers came pouring into the new law firm and went unanswered-television interviews, magazine stories, a centerfold.

  It was a feeding frenzy, a media circus. The only thing missing from Pollygate was Polly.

  3

  Where is she?”

  Candy Landis asked this question as if she actually expected an answer.

  Her husband, Jack, stood against the big floor-to-ceiling corner window she had specially built to give him views of both the River Walk and the Alamo. She thought he looked handsome standing there, his full head of hair still black, his back straight, his tummy hanging just slightly over his belt.

  Charles Whiting cleared his throat and started again. “She left her New York apartment in the company of a tall, heavyset male Caucasian and entered the back of a black limousine with opaque windows.”

  “Opaque? What’s opaque?” Jack asked.

  “You can’t see through them, dear,” Candy Landis said.

  “Opaque,” Jack Landis repeated to himself. “Go ahead.”

  “The limousine proceeded to La Guardia Airport, where Miss Paget exited the vehicle in the company of the same male Caucasian. The subject then proceeded to a first-class counter at American Airlines-”

  “What subject?”

  “Miss Paget.”

  “So what’s the subject?” Jack Landis asked. “Geometry… history? Are we back in junior high or something?”

  “That’s an FBI phrase,” Candy explained. “Isn’t that an FBI phrase, Chuck?”

  “It’s a general law-enforcement term, Mrs. Landis.”

  “So then what did the subject do?” Jack Landis asked as he watched a young lady with legs longer than a deer’s stroll along the sidewalk.

  Charles Whiting cleared his throat again. In his years with the bureau, he’d had occasion to brief the director several times and hadn’t been interrupted like this. But then again, Charles cut a distinguished figure. At fifty-four, his six foot three inches were still taut and ramrod-straight. Even under his gray suit, his shoulders showed the effects of his fifty daily push-ups. There was just enough gray on his temples to give him an air of experience, and his blue eyes were clear and firm.

  “The subject boarded a flight for Los Angeles,” Charles said. “Then…” Whiting paused.

  “Go ahead, Chuck,” Candy Landis said.

  “Well… that’s when we lost her, ma’am.”

  “Lost her? Lost her!” Jack Landis yelled. “What did she do, parachute or something!”

  “She was a… uh… different woman when she got off the plane, sir.”

  “I’ve felt that way after a long flight myself,” Candy said.

  Jack gave her a look that was meant to be withering. It wasn’t.

  To his disappointment, Candy looked as composed as she always did. Her heart-shaped face was freshly made up, her lipstick was perfectly painted on her thin, tight lips, and every single one of her blond hairs was in place and then sprayed into a perfect halo of shining marble. She was wearing her usual business suit: tailored jacket, mid calf skirt, a white blouse with a rounded collar and a little red bow.

  She’s a goddamn pretty woman, Jack thought, but she looks like a painted statue, and about as soft.

  Charles Whiting jumped into the awkward silence. “When she exited the aircraft, she was not Polly Paget.”

  “Was she in the company of the aforementioned male Caucasian?” Landis asked acidly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So they pulled a switch in this opaque limo, huh?”

  “That’s what we think, sir.”

  “Too bad we didn’t think that before she disappeared, huh, Chuck?”

  Chuck assumed that Landis meant this to be a rhetorical question and didn’t answer. He’d become familiar with rhetorical questions at the bureau. The director liked them.

  The next question wasn’t rhetorical.

  “Who’s behind all this?” Candy asked.

  Jack Landis turned around slowly, his hands spread out and his jaw open in mock disbelief.

  “Oh, come on, boys and girls,” Jack said. “We know who’s behind all this, don’t we? I mean, shit, it don’t take Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., to figure out that Peter Hathaway tried to use this lying bimbo to get my television stations from me. She couldn’t go through with it and now he’s whisked her away before people find out he’s behind it. Believe you me, Pollygate is over with.”

  “But it isn’t over with, Jackson,” Candy said patiently. “Restaurant receipts are down, franchise offers are down, and contributions to Candyland have just about dried up.”

  Jack chuckled. “Okay, but I’ll bet the ratings on the show are way up, so we’re making up in advertising dollars whatever we’re losing on the other end.”

  And, Sam Houston, will you look at the bumpers on that one.

  “Not even close,” Candy said. She’d spent three days reviewing the figures with the comptroller. “Ratings are up, but most of our advertisers are family-oriented businesses, and they’re nervous about being associated with a scandal.”

  “Get new advertisers, then,” Jack snapped. “Get some with some cojones.

  Whiting winced at the vulgarity. Candy didn’t blink a perfect eyelash.

  “Well, hell, the woman disappeared, didn’t she?” Jack asked. “Don’t that just prove what I been saying all along, that she made this whole thing up?”

  Candy answered, “As a matter of fact, the polls show that her credibility rating has gone up six points since she disappeared from public view.”

  “Up?” Jack yelled.

  “Up,” Candy answered. “Sixty-three percent of respondents think that it is ‘more likely than not’ that you slept with her-”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And twenty-four percent believe that you raped her. Consider this for a moment, dear: If these numbers reflect the opinions of the board members-”

  “I’m the chairman of the damn board!”

  “Perhaps not for long, dear,” Candy said calmly. “If these numbers don’t turn around, Peter Hathaway might be chairman of the board soon. He’s already bought up forty-three per-”

  “I know, I know!” Jack yelled. “What are you, Miss Percentage today? So what are we supposed to do?”

  Candy answered, “What we really need is for Miss Paget to come forward and publicly admit that she lied.”

  “Maybe you want to bring her on the show,” Jack said.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Candy said, then added, “dear.”

  Jack Landis stared down at the Alamo. Christ, he thought, I know how those poor bastards must have felt. And what if it ain’t Hathaway who has Polly? What if it’s the Justice Department? Or worse, “60 Minutes.” Goddamn, that ancient capon Mike Wallace would just love to spend a few of those sixty minutes with Polly Paget.

  And so would I, Jack thought. Speaking of low dogs, so would I.

  He missed going to bed wit
h Polly. Polly was wild in bed, just wild. She would do things… just do things without thought or calculation that just made him crazy. That red hair whipping around, and those crazy green eyes sparkling…

  Not like Canned-Ice, who tried hard, Lord knows. But that was just it. Everything Candy ever did in the bedroom, you thought she read in some magazine or book or something. You could almost hear her thinking about “technique.” She brought all the spontaneity of a metronome into the bedroom.

  Candice Hermione Landis looked at her husband and knew what he was thinking.

  Jackson Hood Landis had grown up in poverty in East Texas and was scared to death of going back to either one. Candice herself had grown up in middle-class Beaumont, where her minister father made just enough money to send her to SMU before he died of a heart attack. Her mama thought that she was definitely marrying down when Candice took the vows with a salesman like Jack Landis, but Candice loved him, so that was that.

  She and Jack saved and worked hard and bought a little restaurant in San Antonio, then another, and then another, and then Jackson heard the magic word: franchise. It didn’t seem like it was very long at all before there were Jack’s Family Diners (“A Lot of Good Food for a Little of Your Money”) all over the country, and suddenly Jack and Candice were rich-very rich, oil money-rich, so rich that they didn’t know what to do with the money.

  So they bought the television station. (“Two things Americans are always going to do,” Jack said, “eat and watch TV.”) Of course, Jack wasn’t content with one little station in San Antonio. He had to franchise that, too, and pretty soon they had a network. And because Jack figured that since they were a family restaurant, they ought to be a family television network, too, that’s what they did. They started the Family Cable Network, television the whole family could watch.

  They sold America good wholesome food and good wholesome entertainment. And then came that fateful day when they decided to host an on-the-air Christmas party to thank all the employees and the viewers. Jack and Candice appeared together and the viewing public just loved it.

  Who would have thought it? All they did was host a little party together, just like they did at home. They had guests and made conversation, and Candy played “The Old Family Bible” on the piano and everyone sang, and then Jack carved the turkey and Candy served, and the letters came pouring in. So they did a Fourth of July on-the-air barbecue, and then Thanksgiving… and another Christmas, and they had advertisers lining up to buy airtime.