A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (13 page)

He put his big hand over the car keys.

“I’m not accustomed to barmen getting cheeky with me,” Withers said.

“Open the briefcase, Mr. Withers,” Neal said.

Withers slid off his bar stool, picked up the briefcase, and pulled himself to his full height.

“Well, you can go to hell, my boy,” he said as he weaved in front of them. “And you can go with him, my good man. I have never been treated so shabbily in my life. You can both rest assured that you will hear from my attorney, of the law firm of … of … Howard, Fine and Shep … an experience you will not enjoy … I assure you.”

Neal got off his stool and caught him before he hit the floor.

“He’s got a load on,” Brogan said.

“I loaded him,” said Neal.

He gently laid the unconscious Withers on the floor and took the briefcase out of his hand. Setting it on the bar, he said, “If you’re squeamish about felonies, you might not want to watch this.”

The nice thing about metal, Neal thought, is that it trains itself to the touch. After the owner dials the same combination a few hundred times, the dials simply respond to the touch and go right to the required numbers. Unless, of course, the owner changes the combination every month or so, which is what Walter Withers had apparently done, because the dials refused to cooperate.

“Impressive,” Brogan muttered as he handed Neal a screwdriver.

“Thank you,” Neal answered. There was nothing like having an unconscious victim, all the time in the world, and no need for secrecy. It was also nice not to have Joe Graham there to observe and make sarcastic comments. He ripped the lock open with the surgical delicacy of a stockyard butcher.

“Shit on toast,” Brogan said.

“Yep,” Neal agreed.

The briefcase was full of real cash. No outfit in the business would use this amount of real money as a prop. Neal figured that Withers’s original story about
Top Drawer
magazine had been the truth, or as close to the truth as one ever came in a scam like this.

“I ain’t gonna ask,” Brogan said.

“Thanks,” Neal answered. “If you can help me get him up, I think I can carry him across the street. Leave his keys on the bar; he can get them in the morning.”

Brogan came around the bar and helped lift Withers into a fireman’s carry over Neal’s shoulder.

“What if he comes back tonight?” Brogan asked.

Neal answered, “I doubt he’s going to come to soon, but if he comes back in, shoot him.”

“Never shot a man wearing a tie before,” Brogan observed as Neal staggered out of the bar.

Neal crossed the street and walked over to the motel. He knew that the door to the office—a double-wide trailer—would be unlocked. He went in, leaned Withers against the wall, and reached into the large Maxwell House can on a wooden shelf and pulled out a key. He took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and put it in the can. Hefting Withers over his shoulder, he crossed the gravel parking lot, let himself into room number four, and flopped the old detective down on the bed. He loosened Withers’s tie and maneuvered his jacket off him.

Withers started to snore.

Neal took the opportunity to go through Withers’s jacket. There were a few loose bills in his wallet, a driver’s license, and an American Express card. Tucked under the bills were some slips of papers with names and phone numbers … Ron Scarpelli … Sammy Black … and someone named Gloria, whose phone number was the same as Neal and Karen’s.

Neal put the wallet back and hung the jacket up.

He found a pad by the telephone and wrote, “Walter, a cheery good morning. I have your briefcase for safekeeping—both ours and yours. I guess you know where to call. You make any other calls and you can kiss the money good-bye.”

He left the note on the pillow.

Overtime woke up and for a single second didn’t know where he was. Then he recalled parking the car off a dirt road on the outskirts of town to get a little sleep. He needed the sleep to achieve sufficient clarity of thought.

Point one: Nobody at the target location had actually seen him, so his person was secure.

Point two: They might have seen the car, so the car was dangerous. He would have to acquire a new vehicle.

Point three: A question, a dangerous unknown. Who were the people who had come in behind him? Were they still in the house? Was the target still in the house?

The terrain has shifted, Overtime thought. The fog of battle has descended. The tactical situation was unclear.

So what to do? The cautious option would be to withdraw, to find a new staging area and contact the client. Advantage: Safety. Disadvantage: Acknowledgment of failure. Damage to reputation. Fresh contact with client.

It was one of his prime rules: Each contact with the client represents a danger of exposure—telephones tapped, tapes rolling, voiceprints tracking.

Reduce client contact to the minimum. Contact client only when absolutely necessary.

Question: Was it now necessary?

Analysis: You are in a small, remote town where individuals attract attention. The target may be at least aware that there is an exposure.

Question: Where is that idiotic private investigator, the oblivious screen?

Further analysis: The target may be deceived that the exposure has already occurred or been diverted. It is nighttime. The approach to the potential target area is simple and without risk. The escape from target area presents few problems—with a different vehicle.

Analysis: The situation is unclear but not without possibilities.

Decision: While disadvantages do exist, the overall gain, predicated on the acquisition of a new vehicle, suggests an attempt.

He got back in the car and headed for town.

12

To the best of his recollection, Neal Carey had never taken LSD.

But he questioned this when he stepped back into the house, because the scene in front of him resembled everything he’d ever heard about an acid flashback.

The first weird and twisted hallucination that met his eyes was a distorted version of Candy Landis sitting on a chair in his kitchen. Her formerly sculpted blond hair was
… big … BIG …
teased into a high, wild golden forest of sprayed and moussed branches.

Neal looked more closely to see whether he could recognize Mrs. Landis’s face beneath the mascara, rouge, pancake, and something wild and electric blue that sparkled on her eyelids.

Yeah … he thought tentatively, that was her in there. That was her mouth beneath the frosted hot-pink lipstick highlighted with brown pencil. Those were her fingers touching her mouth, her fingers with the scarlet stiletto fake nails.

Despite his best effort, Neal’s eyes wandered downward, pulled by the sheer magnetic force of the black lace undergarment that peeked above one of Polly’s red silk blouses. Gone was the prim white blouse with the bow tied at the chin. The top three buttons of the red silk were undone, showing the black bra that performed its structural function of producing—what was the term?—cleavage. Right, cleavage that revealed freckles on Mrs. Landis’s chest. The freckles gave her a sort of vulnerable sweetness.

“Quit staring at her boobs and tell us what you think,” Polly demanded.

Neal looked up and decided that he must be having a nervous breakdown, because there was another hallucination, this one more bizarre than the first. Polly Paget—at least he thought it was Polly—was standing behind Mrs. Landis with a comb in her hair, apparently trying to produce an even taller tower of hair. But this Polly … No, it couldn’t be Polly, because this woman’s hair had been washed, brushed to a shine, and cut so it hung thick and straight above her neck. Her hair was parted high on one side and then flipped over her forehead.

And this woman wore makeup so subtle that you could barely tell she had any on. Neal could actually see her eyes, which were even sexier without the accoutrement. And she was wearing one of her denim shirts over jeans. She looked like a tall, modern Joan of Arc with a sex drive.

“What?!” Polly demanded, blushing. She thought she looked good, but she just wasn’t sure yet.

Her face flushed and Neal realized that he was staring.

He looked around the table to Karen, who was elbow-deep in a half-gallon carton of Häagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. She picked up a can of Reddi Wip, sprayed it onto the ice cream, and dug in her spoon.

“Want some?” she asked him.

He noticed the scissors on the table by her hand.

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

“Girl stuff,” Karen answered.

“We decided,” Polly explained, “that Candy’s next husband is not going to take up with some sex kitten.”

“He’ll have the sex kitten at home,” Candy said, then added, “Meow.”

The woman is sloshed, Neal thought.

“And you’re retiring from sex kittendom, I take it,” Neal said.

“So whaddya tink?” Polly asked. Then she pushed up her chin and slowly repeated, “So … what do you think?”

“I’m speechless.”

“Then we should do this more,” Polly said.

Neal said, “I think you look great.”

Polly curtsied.

“Let’s do that thing for him,” said Karen.

What thing? Neal wondered.

“What thing?” Polly asked.

But Neal noticed she said
thing,
not
ting.

“That thing we practiced,” Karen answered. She got up from her chair, stood next to Polly, and whispered in her ear.

After the requisite laughter, Polly pronounced, “ ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.’

“ ‘I think she’s got it,’ ” Candy slurred.

“ ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain,’ ” Polly sang.

“ ‘By George she’s got it,’ ” Candy hollered.

“ ‘Now, once again, where does it rain?’ ” Karen asked.

“ ‘On the plain! On the plain!’ ”

“ ‘And where’s that nasty plain?’ ”

“ ‘In Spain! In Spain!’ ”

Neal left the three of them singing and dancing in the kitchen and retreated to the bedroom. He slid the briefcase under the bed, then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He dropped onto the mattress a few minutes later, determined to get some sleep. He wanted a clear head in the morning to work out a number of questions. Who was Gloria and why did she have their phone number? And what to do about Walter Withers?

Overtime spotted Withers’s car parked outside Brogan’s. No surprise there, Overtime thought. Hire a dipso detective and that’s what you get. He made a mental note to tell the client that the next time he provided a screen, he wanted a sober one.

But it did give him an idea.

He parked his own car down the road and walked back to the saloon. Switching vehicles with a drunk like Withers should be a simple operation, and well worth the slight risk of exposing his identity in a dark bar. And the idea of sticking Withers with a murder charge was just too amusing to let slide.

He got out of the car and went into the saloon.

But Withers wasn’t there. The place was empty save for a filthy man snoring away in a decrepit lounge chair and an enormous mongrel likewise snoring at his feet.

What I won’t do for a client, Overtime thought, yearning for the clean sunshine of an immaculate Caribbean strand. He pushed the thought from his mind and spotted the set of car keys on the man’s disgusting lap.

There are rewards for virtue, Overtime thought.

He leaned over the bar and saw the Hertz logo on the plastic tab.

Problem: I need a fresh vehicle.

Potential solution: Keys glistening before me.

Question: Can I get them without waking this loathsome specimen of the great unwashed? And his mutt?

Answer: I am a professional.

He paused to listen to the breathing rate of the endomorph in the suburban electric chair. The man’s sound sleep was probably a result of alcohol ingestion. Overtime switched his attention to the dubious result of canine miscegenation. The dog was out. If it wasn’t, it surely would have awoken when I came through the door.

Just then one of the beasts—was it the man or the dog?—released a gaseous effluence so noxious that it forced a decision. One had to leave; the question was whether it was with the keys or without.

Overtime stepped over to the man in the chair and reached to his right for the keys.

Now, Brezhnev had laid his nose in Brogan’s crotch on thousands of occasions. The warm spot between his master’s fat thighs represented a dizzying festival of smells, so the dog could understand the attraction. But he would be damned if he’d let a stranger grope around in there.

“
Son of a bitch!
” Overtime screamed with presumably unintentional irony as the big black dog sprang from the floor and clamped his jaws on his wrist.

At first, Brogan thought that the growls and screams were just part of a pleasant dream, but then he opened his eyes, to see Brezhnev drive an intruder to the floor and attempt to replace his clamp on the man’s wrist with a more satisfying grip on his throat.

Overtime managed to pull his arm from the dog’s jaws and lay it over his own throat. At least this temporarily saved his life, but it made it very awkward to pull his revolver from his shoulder holster.

“Do something!” he croaked.

Brogan reached for his shotgun but couldn’t find an angle to shoot without a risk of hurting the dog.

Overtime got his wounded right leg up and under the dog’s belly and kicked. Nothing happened.

Problem: Homicidal dog has sufficient mass and muscularity to retain its advantageous position.

Analysis: Continuing status quo will shortly result in my death.

Solution: Attack animal at weakest point.

He kicked the dog in the balls.

Brezhnev flew back several feet and landed on its haunches.

“That’s enough, Brezhnev,” Brogan said as the dog started forward again.

But by that time, Overtime had regained his feet, pulled his pistol, and pointed it at the dog.

Brogan swung the shotgun on the stranger.

“Don’t,” he said.

Temper, Overtime thought. Rein in your temper. You are not being paid to kill a revolting old man and his disgusting mongrel. Temper. But it would be so easy … and satisfying … and unprofessional.