A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (2 page)

“
Maybe?
”

Graham said, “It might depend on how good you do with her.”

“Who is she,” Neal asked, “Eliza Doolittle?”

Graham rubbed his artificial hand into his real palm. It was a habit he had when he got nervous or impatient.

“Are you on, or what?” Graham asked.

“Is this a mob thing?” Neal asked. Because mob witnesses were dangerous. People tended to get killed in their general vicinity. “You want me to clean up some mob bimbo who’s mad because Guido slapped her around, and now she wants to tell the world about his funny friends, right?”

“Nothing like that,” Graham promised.

“And where do I have to go?”

“That’s the next beauty part. You don’t even have to leave the house. We want to bring her here.”

“Here,” Neal echoed.

“Here?” Karen asked.

“Here,” Graham repeated.

Neal laughed and turned to Karen. “Now how much do you want the deck?”

Graham also turned to Karen and gave her his most obsequious smile. “We think
you
would be a major asset in the cleaning-up process.”

Karen poured Graham a fresh cup of coffee, sat down next to him, and put her arm around his shoulder.

“You know, Joe,” she said, “when I envision this deck, I see a cedar hot tub on it.”

Neal whooped with laughter.

“I like her,” Graham said. “She’s a vicious putz like you, but I like her.”

“There’s a lot to like,” Neal agreed. A lot to love, he thought.

Graham said, “Okay, we’re talking deck with Jacuzzi money.”

“That was easy. Who is this mystery witness?” Neal asked.

Graham paused dramatically. He chewed his last bite of toast twenty-eight times and announced, “Polly Paget.”

Karen’s big blue eyes got bigger.

“The whole country’s looking for Polly Paget,” Neal said. “I should have known you had her.”

Graham shrugged.

“Where is she?” Neal asked.

“Out in the car.”

“You left that woman sitting out in the car?!” Karen yelled. “What do you think she is, luggage?”

“She was asleep.”

Karen punched Graham in the shoulder and stormed out the kitchen door.

“Ouch,” Graham said, looking a little hurt.

“One of Karen’s dirty little secrets,” Neal explained as he took a blueberry muffin, “is that she reads
People
magazine. Is it all true?”

“Polly Paget says it is,” Graham said as he rubbed his shoulder.

Neal munched on the muffin. Graham’s answer meant that he didn’t know whether or not to believe what Polly Paget was saying about Jackson Landis.

2

Polly Paget had been a typist in the secretarial pool of Jack Landis’s New York office and, according to Polly, Jack Landis had done a few laps in her end of the pool.

On its own, Neal knew this was not particularly earthshaking. Polly Paget certainly wouldn’t be the first secretary who had typed twenty words an hour and had the job security of a federal employee, and she wouldn’t be the last secretary who did more work on her desk than at it. What started to make Polly Paget exceptional was the fact that she claimed she had been raped.

None of which would have even made the paper, except that the alleged rapist was none other than Jackson Landis himself, the founder, president, and majority owner of the Family Cable Network. Jack was also the devoted husband of Candy Landis, with whom he cohosted the top-rated cable show in the country, “The Jack and Candy Family Hour,” a program so wholesome it made “The Lawrence Welk Show” look like a Tijuana animal act.

Neal didn’t know whether he believed Polly himself.

She fits the part, Neal thought.

“Disiz a cute lihul place yoo got heah,” Polly said as Karen set her suitcase down in the kitchen. “Gawd, izit faw enough away from evryting, or what. Oi mean, we drove an drove an drove an drove and Oi dint see anyting, nevuh moind a mall. An joo have a batroom Oi could use? Oi have
really
gadda pee.”

Polly Paget was a walking, talking—especially talking—stereotype. Her auburn hair was
big
—teased, blow-dried, and sprayed into a huge red halo that looked like a sunset over an oil refinery. She had a handsome, long face with a wide slash of mouth and two long incisors that looked just a little like fangs and gave her a slightly predatory look. Her long, thin nose had a slight Roman curve. Neal had to admit to himself that her eyes were sexy. Framed by wide red eyebrows, her green cat eyes sparkled behind the layers of mascara, eyeliner, and fake lashes. Everything about Polly screamed
bimbo.

And Polly Paget was tall—a good five ten, with long legs, small breasts, and wide shoulders. She looked a hell of a lot more like the wolf than the lamb.

And the clothes: Today she was dressed entirely in brand-new denim that made it look as if she’d gone shopping for her trip to the West. Lots of silver and turquoise jewelry, and bright red fingernails that were so long, she couldn’t possibly type even if she wanted to.

“You got any losh?” she asked as she came out of the bathroom. “So my hands don’t dry? I’ve got the worst problem with dry hands. They crack if I don’t use enough losh. I have some in one of the other bags, but it’s out in the car.”

Neal winced. Polly didn’t say
the
or
they;
she said
de
and
dey,
and she seemed to have a little ventriloquist hidden in her throat that made her words sound as if they were coming out of her nose. And she didn’t say
car;
she said
caw.

Karen said, “I think I have some lotion in the bedroom. I’ll go get it.”

“I’ll go get it with you,” Neal said.

In the bedroom, Karen found a plastic bottle of lotion while Neal rummaged through the chest of drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Karen asked.

“A revolver,” answered Neal. “One bullet or two?”

Karen smiled and grabbed Neal’s shoulders.

“Her hair is so big!” she whispered. “I’ve always wanted to meet a woman with big hair like that.”

“But do you want her staying here for a month or more?”

Karen looked at him sharply.

“Neal, the woman was raped!”

“The woman
says
she was raped.”

Karen’s blue eyes got serious as she tightened her grip on his shoulders.

“Neal Carey,” she said, “if a woman says she was raped, then she was raped.”

Not necessarily, Neal thought.

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.