A Long Walk Up the Water Slide

by Don Winslow

  “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.

  Overtime lowered the pistol, then brought it up in an arc against the side of the man’s head. The man and his shotgun dropped at Overtime’s feet. The dog whimpered, crawled to his master’s prone body, and started to lick the blood from his head.

  “You recognize a gun, don’t you, you bastard?” Overtime asked the cowering dog. He stepped over to the cash register and emptied the till. Then he picked up the keys and let himself into Withers’s rented car.

  The dog’s fangs had shredded his right wrist but had missed the artery.

  He was mad—at himself, at the dog, at this job. He’d come here to do a simple and clean removal. Instead, he’d tried to get too cute—a quality he despised about other s
o-called professionals in his business. They made things too complicated. The thing to do was spot the target, fix the target, and then walk in and shoot the target. And there was only one acceptable option now: Go to the target location and get it done.

  Just in, just out.

  Brezhnev licked and whimpered until Brogan opened his eyes and moaned. After his master pulled himself to his feet, Brezhnev wagged his tail and stopped whimpering. He sniffed the blood on the floor until he distinguished his master’s from the intruder’s, until the intruder’s blood filled his senses. He would remember it.

  He’d just been doing his job before. Now it was personal.

  Karen slid under the covers and pressed against Neal. She slid her hand down and touched him until his eyes opened.

  “You wanna do it?” she asked in a startlingly good imitation of Polly Paget.

  “Do it?” Neal mumbled. “Do what?”

  “It,” Karen repeated, her motion demonstrating her meaning. She smiled and added, “Yeah, I think you want to do it.”

  “Are your guests asleep?”

  “My shy boy,” she said. “They’re in the living room watching ‘The Jack and Candy Family Hour.’ We can be quiet. I can, anyway.”

  Afterward, she asked, “Do you think she’s attractive?”

  “Who?”

  “Who,” she mocked. “Polly!”

  Neal recognized dangerous ground when he saw it.

  “I think she’s more attractive now than she was,” he said.

  Karen elbowed him in the ribs.

  “You’re such a diplomat,” she said. “Would you like to do it with her?”

  Would I? Neal thought.

  “No.”

  “Good answer.”

  “Thank you.”

  But he still couldn’t get to sleep.

  Candy leaned across the sofa and studied Polly’s face. Candy was in that phase of inebriation that is like the eye of a hurricane. For a little while, everything is still, calm, and clear. It is more sober than sobriety. It is the time when the terrible truths come.

  “Did Jack really rape you?” she asked Polly.

  Polly nodded.

  Without all the makeup, Polly’s eyes were remarkably expressive. Candy knew right then that the woman was telling the truth.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I don’t. But I need to know.”

  “Jack comes to my apartment,” Polly answered. “I tell him it’s over, that I don’t want to see him anymore because I feel so guilty, I can’t ask Saint Anthony for even an earring and I’m too ashamed to go to confession. He says that’s superstitious Catholic bullshit and that I don’t have anything to feel guilty about because the two of you—”

  Polly suddenly stopped.

  “Didn’t have sex anymore?” Candy asked. “That’s a lie.”

  We just weren’t having good sex anymore, Candy thought.

  “Yeah … anyway, I tell him it doesn’t make any difference, that I just don’t want to see him anymore, and I try to close the door, and I guess that makes him mad, because he pushes it open and grabs me and starts trying to kiss me.

  “I slap him, but I guess that just makes him madder, and he rips my nightgown open, which makes me pretty mad, because I’d just bought it and it was expensive, so I punch him and he pushes me on the floor, but I have hold of his jacket, so he falls on top of me, which isn’t so smart on my part, I guess.

  “He’s strong, you know, and he pushes my legs open and says something like, ‘You wanna play, huh?’ And I’m telling him to stop, but he doesn’t stop.

  “After a while, he gets up and leaves. I call my friend Gloria and tell her and she doesn’t think I should call the cops—you know, ‘you play, you pay’ attitude—but I did, and I guess you know the rest of it. And Candy …I’m really, sorry I did that to you. Even though I’d see you on TV, you were never a real person to me, but now you are, and I am so, so sorry.”

  Candy had seen a lot of young women cry, most of them ex-convicts who had stolen stuff. She had handed them tissues and recipes and monthly budget planners, but now she scooted across the couch and held this young woman and let her cry into her shoulder. She didn’t think that’s what a priest did in confession, but that’s what she did. She watched the strange image of herself on television, a picture that now looked like some old documentary, held the young woman to whom she was strangely related, and wondered what would happen next.

  13

  Overtime was experiencing what von Clausewitz had called “the frictions of war.”

  His wrist was raw and radial pain throbbed into his hand. He had driven near the target house, couldn’t find a decent angle from the front, so he had to work his way laboriously to the uphill slope behind the house before he found a workable shot.

  But when he peered through the scope, the operational situation became confused. There were two women, not one, and neither looked like the picture he had of Polly Paget.

  Problem: insufficient clarity of identification.

  Analysis: Risk increases with proximity.

  Solution: Nevertheless, there is nothing to do but move closer.

  Charles Whiting heard a sound that was distinctly human. The long hours hiding in the drainage ditch were a testament to his bureau training and his own personal discipline. Hungry, cold, and tired, he had heard nothing but coyotes, an owl, and the occasional rabbit. But now he sensed movement, human movement, headed toward the house and Mrs. Landis. Charles started to bear-crawl toward the house.

  It wasn’t exactly a sound that woke up Neal; it was the feeling of a sound. He lay still for a few moments and identified the electric chatter from the television set and the nondistinct sound of the two women sitting in the living room. Karen slept beside him, breathing softly. But there was something else, something outside.

  He slipped out of bed, put on a black sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, went into the bathroom, and lowered himself out the window.

  That goddamn Walter, he thought as he moved quietly around the corner. Dead-drunk and he doesn’t give up.

  Overtime worked down the slope to get a better view through the window. He was almost in the backyard. He dropped into a sitting marksman’s crouch, wrapped the sling around his aching arm, and looked through the scope.

  Lesbians, he observed as he saw the women embracing. What a town: mad dogs and dykes.

  There was nothing to do now but get in the house, identify the target, and dispatch her. And if someone got a look at his license plate, too bad for Walter Withers.

  He started to edge down toward the house.

  Then he saw the man crawling across the lawn. He raised his scope.

  The force of the hit slammed Neal against the wall and drove the air from his lungs. A spectacular jolt shot up his spine and his legs collapsed under him. He would have fallen to the ground if the guy who’d rushed him hadn’t grabbed him and held him against the wall.

  “Who are you?” the guy hissed.

  Neal didn’t waste breath on an answer. He stalled with an unfeigned effort to catch his breath, then wrapped his ankles behind the tall man’s knees, twisted his own body away from the wall, and pulled his heels back. The man’s knees buckled and he started to fall forward. As Neal fell backward, he grabbed the man’s shirt and pushed his upper arm so that they spun and he landed on top of his attacker. He brought his elbow forward and smashed it against the man’s nose.

  Neal heard a grunt, then his attacker came up with a knee, pivoted his hip, and threw Neal off. Lunging forward, he took Neal clean in the chest and knocked him backward. Neal rolled before the guy could grab him again, then kicked out and hit the side of the man’s knee. The intruder crumpled to the ground.

  Overtime watched the fight as he screwed the silencer onto his pistol and pulled the ski mask over his head. If he moved quickly enough, he could be out of this job tonight.

  Just in, just out.

/>   He ran for the house.

  Karen reached the phone by the fourth ring. It was Brogan, and he sounded drunk. Karen couldn’t make out what he was saying. She reached for Neal and was surprised that he wasn’t there. He was probably in the kitchen getting his usual postcoital snack.

  She found her sweatshirt and jeans on the floor, crawled into them, and hurried for the kitchen.

  Neal put a headlock on his man and found himself flying through the air a second later.

  He pulled himself to his knees and peered through the darkness at the tall man who likewise knelt in front of him sucking air.

  “You wanna discuss a truce?” Neal asked.

  Overtime raced up the steps to the deck, ducked under the kitchen window, and slid along the wall to the sliding glass door.

  He found it unlocked, so he pushed it open and stepped into the living room. The two women on the couch looked up.

  Which one? Overtime asked himself. Which one?

  “Oh my Gawd,” Polly said.

  Then he knew which one was Polly.

  A professional makes his own luck, Overtime decided.

  He raised the pistol.

  Neal heard the glass door slide open. He got up and sprinted toward the house.

  Chuck Whiting raced after him.

  They both heard the scream.

  A lot of purists complain about the cheap ping an aluminum bat makes when it hits the ball. They miss the solid thunk of wood on leather. But Karen really leaned into her swing and her aluminum bat made a very traditional crack when it ripped into Overtime’s lower back. There were some bonus sounds, too, because softballs don’t generally scream after they’ve been hit or whimper after they drop to the ground.

  Overtime held on to the pistol, though. He pointed it up at Karen even as pushed himself along the floor back toward the door. He was half-tempted to put one in her stomach as she stood there with the bat raised over her head, poised to bash his brains in.

  Let’s see how tough you are with your guts hanging out and your life pouring onto the floor, he thought.