A Long Walk Up the Water Slide

by Don Winslow

  “Got it,” Neal said.

  Of course Kitteredge would have a backup plan.

  “Three million,” Ed said, “no confession. Final offer.”

  Neal cradled the receiver in his neck, turned to Polly, and said, “Take it or leave it. If you don’t take it, you’re on your own. We leave.”

  Karen’s head snapped up and her face flushed in anger.

  “Neal,” she said, “we can’t—”

  “So leave,” Polly said.

  Neal told Ed it was no deal.

  “Pack your things and get out,” Ed answered. “While the truce is still on.”

  Neal set the phone down.

  Karen glared at him and said, “I’m not leaving. And—”

  “I’m trying to think,” Neal said, cutting her off.

  And you, of all people, should know how hard that is for me.

  What the hell are we going to do?

  “They want me to do what?!” Jack yelled. His voice bounced off the Alamo’s old stone walls.

  Joey Foglio calmly repeated what they wanted him to do.

  He thought the Alamo would be a good place to have this meeting. The plaza was usually empty on a Monday morning. The only people here were some Mexican workers who were cleaning the place, and if any of them spoke enough English to understand anything, they probably wouldn’t give a shit, anyway. Still and all, there was no use taking chances with Jack turning red and screaming.

  “Why don’t I just go out there,” Jack yelled, “stick a knife in my guts, and disembowel myself! Would they like that, too?”

  Joey thought the Japanese tourists would probably get a charge out of it, as a matter of fact.

  Jack continued: “No, no, no … I’ve got a better one. Why don’t I just smile at the camera, take a meat cleaver, and whack my Johnson off! Then Candy could mix it up with a little sauteed onion, some red peppers maybe, a little hot sauce, and serve it to me on the show! There’s an idea!”

  Harold belched.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  Jack stalked over toward the chapel.

  Joey followed him and said, “Your girlfriend won’t take the deal. We gotta do something.”

  Actually, Joey was pleased that Polly was shooting down this deal. It would give him more room to maneuver. Jack didn’t seem to be listening, just staring up at the old Alamo.

  “You know who stood there?” Jack asked, his eyes glistening.

  “Okay, who?” Joey sighed. He was already late getting to confession. If he got hit by a bus or something …

  “John Wayne,” Jack said. “John Wayne stood there. And fought to the death.”

  “John Wayne died here?” Harold asked.

  “For freedom,” Jack said reverentially. “John Wayne stood here and fought to the death for my freedom.”

  Joey had serious doubts that the Duke laid down his life so Jack Landis could nail some skank, but Jack was a local, so he must know the history.

  “That’s nice he did that,” Joey said. “What’s it got to do with—”

  “And you want me,” Jack said, his voice quivering with emotion, “to go before the people of this great country and … surrender? You want me, in the shadow of the Alamo, to spit on the memory of John Wayne?”

  He’s lost it, Joey thought. He’s got one foot planted firmly in the enchanted forest.

  “You can’t ask him to do that, boss,” Harold said. He looked as if he was going to cry. “You just can’t. I mean … John Wayne.”

  They’re both nuts, Joey thought. I’m the only sane guy here.

  “I knew John Wayne,” he said, wrapping a big arm around Jack’s shoulder, “back on … Iwo Jima. We was in a foxhole together, surrounded by the enemy. I’m telling you, Jack, Mexicans everywhere. And the Duke said to me, ‘Big Joe, sometimes a man just has to stand up and be a man and do the right thing. Like a man.’ Do you understand, Jack? Do you hear what I’m trying to say to you?”

  Jack ducked out from under Foglio’s arm and said, “You want me to eat a shit sandwich and smile.”

  “That’s it,” Joey said, relieved he could now get to church.

  He was very careful crossing the street.

  Kneeling in the pew, Charles Whiting felt as if he was in another country. Most of the worshipers were Hispanic women with their heads covered in black veils, and the painted statues of saints in various stages of martyred agony, their sad eyes shedding tears and blood dripping from their hands, gave the church a foreign atmosphere.

  Whiting thought that he would probably be consigned to an eternity in hell just for being in this church, never mind for the horrible sin he hoped to commit soon.

  And the entire idea of confession made him uncomfortable, not only for the obvious blasphemy but also because—were he indeed a Catholic—he had so much he would have to confess.

  His feelings for Mrs. Landis weighed heavily on his soul. He thought about the betrayal of his wife and nine children and then about the wisdom of the old Mormon elders, who knew that monogamy was not natural for men.

  He thought about his admiration for Candy Landis, her commitment to family values, the way she spoke of morality and ethics, the way her golden hair touched the soft skin on her neck, how it would look falling back on a satin pillow as she opened her arms, and he wished that Foglio would hurry up and get into the damn church. He wanted to get this over with.

  An old woman came out of the confessional booth he was watching. He crossed himself in imitation of the veiled ladies, slid down the pew, parted the curtain of the confessional, and knelt.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” he recited, knowing that his Mormon ancestors were spinning in their graves. Reaching into his pocket, he found the tiny microphone with the little suction cup.

  “It has been … uh … ten years … since my last confession,” Chuck said, promising himself that he would never, ever do another undercover job as long as he lived. Why didn’t the priest say something? “Uh … it’s been so long because … I’ve been in a coma.”

  The priest mumbled something incomprehensible.

  Chuck attached the suction cup to the underside of a piece of molding, then pressed it to make sure it stuck.

  He thought he heard the priest say something about sin.

  “I … I’m in love … with a woman who’s not my wife,” Chuck confessed, because he felt he had to say something.

  Then it all came tumbling out, how he had come to work for the woman and her husband, how the husband cheated on her, how he had come to see a softer side of her, how …

  The priest kept trying to interrupt with some mumbo jumbo, but Charles kept spewing guilt about how he had constant carnal images of the woman that he couldn’t suppress and how he wished that her husband would die and his own wife would run off with a Gentile and then he could persuade the woman to convert and stuff, until he ran out of breath and the priest said something that sounded like “Hentile?”

  Charles felt better as he went to the old truck parked around the corner.

  “Does it work?” he asked Culver.

  Culver took off his headset and asked, “You’ve got a boner for Candy Landis?”

  Evidently it works, Chuck thought.

  Joey Foglio went back to the car with a shiny new soul and a fresh resolve to take more advantage of Jack Landis’s crumbling empire. He had ridden Jack about as far as he could. It was time to change horses.

  “Did you arrange a clean phone?” he asked Harold.

  “Joey, don’t you think—” Harold started.

  “No, I don’t think,” Joey said without a trace of irony. “Carmine’s been acting like a banker so long, he thinks he is one. That’s the crucial difference between him and me. I know who I am. I’m a criminal. I commit crimes.”

  The crucial difference, Harold thought, is that Carmine has several hundred soldiers to do his bidding and you have several.

  “Carmine isn’t going to like you messing around in the middle of a d
eal,” Harold said.

  “He’s the one who’s messing,” Joey said.

  “You’ll still make money.”

  “I don’t want to make money,” Joey answered. “If I wanted to make money, I’d sell insurance. I want to take money. That’s who I am. It’s the me of me.”

  Harold took him to a phone booth on Flores Street and handed him the phone number in Rhode Island.

  “What is this phone?” Joey asked.

  “Another phone booth.”

  “Clean?”

  “Guy promises it is,” Harold assured him, aware of Joey’s paranoia about wiretaps.

  The guy answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?” Joey said.

  “Hello,” Hathaway answered. “Why am I talking to you?”

  “Because you like to make money,” Joey answered. “Because you’re tired of working like a donkey and giving the money to Marc Merolla.”

  He outlined his proposal to Hathaway.

  Hathaway was definitely interested when he heard the profit margins. Joey let him drool over the potential riches for a minute before he said, “There’s a problem, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That broad that says she was raped?” Joey said. “I was paying her to shag Jack.”

  There was a long silence, so long that Joey was afraid he had blown the deal.

  “Jesus,” Hathaway said. “You, too?”

  24

  Are you really afraid of these people?” Karen demanded as Neal packed.

  “Do you mean really in the sense of actually, or really in the sense of very?” Neal asked.

  Karen looked annoyed.

  “First one, then the other,” she said.

  “Okay. I am actually very afraid of these people,” he answered. “Really.”

  She sat down on the bed.

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

  “Did you tell that to the guy in the ski mask?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered. “I hit him with a bat.”

  He turned from his packing.

  “You’re saying we should—”

  Polly came into the room.

  “You guys should see this,” she said.

  “What?” Neal asked.

  “Jack!”

  They followed her back into her room, where Candy sat transfixed, watching Jack standing all by himself, center stage on their set.

  “What’s up?” Neal asked.

  Candy shook her head.

  Jack Landis stood stock-still, looked at the hushed audience, then said, “You’re probably wondering where Candy is.”

  The audience assented.

  “So am I,” Jack said.

  There was some nervous laughter in the crowd.

  “Earlier today,” Jack continued, “I stood in the shadow of the Alamo and thought about those brave men who stood up for what they believed—and died for it.

  “Well, I’d rather die than tell you what I have to tell you, but that would be the coward’s way out, and I guess I wouldn’t want to go out a coward. The ghosts of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett would haunt me.”

  “What’s he doing?” Karen asked.

  “They’re playing the card,” Neal said.

  “What?”

  “Watch.”

  Jack looked directly into the camera. “What I have to stand up and say is that I did have an affair with Polly Paget.”

  The audience gasped.

  “Holy shit,” Karen said.

  “Miss Paget seduced me in my office in New York …”

  “Lying sack of crud,” Polly said.

  “… and I regret to say that I fell to temptation. The affair was short-lived, but it happened, and I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

  “He’s good,” Neal said.

  “He sold used cars in Beaumont,” Candy said.

  The camera zoomed in for a tighter close-up as Jack’s eyes brimmed with tears. His voice broke as he blurted, “I have betrayed you. I have betrayed you. I have betrayed my family … my audience … and my God.…”

  He broke down, dropped his head into his hands, and sobbed. His shoulders heaved up and down as members of the audience wept and cried, “No!” A woman in the front row fainted and had to be carried out.

  The camera eased back to a head-and-shoulders shot as Jack struggled to compose himself, then continued. “I have decided to take a leave of absence from my duties at FCN.”

  More shouts of “No!”

  Jack continued, “I want to use that time to seek spiritual counseling and take a long hard look to find out just who is this man named Jackson Hood Landis.”

  He bowed his head.

  When he lifted it, he tightened his jaw, aimed his focus an inch higher, and said, “One thing I know about Jack Landis, though.…

  “ ‘He’s not a rapist,’ ” Neal murmured.

  “He’s not a rapist,” Jack said. “That charge is utterly, completely, and absolutely false. I’m sorry to say that Miss Paget is a far sicker individual than I ever thought, and when I told her that I was going to end our relationship, she made up this horrible story for revenge. She told me that’s what she was going to do, and that’s what she did.”

  “In your dreams,” Polly growled.

  The camera tightened in on Jack’s tear-streaked face.

  “One word more,” he said, “to my beloved wife, Candice.”

  The tears poured down his face and little snot bubbles came out of his nose as he stared into the camera and choked out, “Candy darling, I know I’ve hurt you … but I love you … and if … you could ever find it in your heart … to forgive me …”

  He broke into sobs, shook his head, and walked off the stage.

  A stentorian voice announced, “And now, on FCN, ‘Flipper’!”

  Jack Landis came off the stage.

  A weeping apprentice handed him a towel and said, “That was beautiful, Mr. Landis. Deeply moving.”

  “Fuck you,” Jack said.

  He wiped the sweat off his face and walked out of the studio.

  “Wow,” Karen said over strains of “They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning.”

  “We’re hosed,” Neal said. Jack’s virtuoso performance had just taken Polly’s cards out of her hands.

  “Why did he do that?” Polly asked.

  “They’ll get instant polls,” Neal said, “and see how it went over. If the public bought it, they can rebuild FCN without dealing with you.”

  You, who basically told Carmine Bascaglia to stick it up his ass.

  “So?”

  Neal didn’t want to tell her the whole truth. It wouldn’t do her any good. He knew that it might not happen right away, but it would happen. Sometime after Polly faded from the headlines, sometime after she tried to rebuild a life, someone would come and snuff it out.

  “And you know Flipper, Flipper lives in a world full of wonder …”

  He picked up the ringing phone.

  “He was great, wasn’t he?” Ed gloated.

  “He was terrific,” Neal admitted.

  Ed said, “Listen, the client decided to enter an agreement with Mr. Landis, and he doesn’t think he can go forward with Ms. Paget in good faith.”

  “Good faith, Ed?” Neal scoffed. “Are you reading from a card or something?”

  “If Ms. Paget decides to pursue her litigation, of course that is her right,” Ed continued. “But it would be a conflict of interest for our attorneys to represent her.”

  Now it’s a conflict of interest?

  “So Friends’ role is finished,” Ed said. “Mr. Kitteredge asked me to thank you for your good work, apologize for any inconveniences, and instruct you to stand down.”

  “That’s an oxymoron,” Neal observed. “Stand down.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Neal. The job is over. Go home.”

  “Let me make sure I have this straight,” Neal said. “We pick Polly up because we think she’s useful, then when
she’s served our purposes, we throw her to the sharks. Is that it?”

  “She shouldn’t have gotten greedy,” Ed answered.

  “Yeah, wanting the truth.”

  “Do you think we could protect her if we wanted to?” Ed asked. “When are you going to grow up?”

  “I’ve grown up,” Neal said. “I’m packing. We’re out of here. The job’s over, like you said.”

  He hung up and looked back at the three women who were staring at him.

  “Hey.” He shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  So we might as well do it right now.

  By the evening news, Jack had become a figure of sympathy, and Polly got the wrong end of the media’s magic wand as she slid from sexy victim on the run to love-crazed psycho female in a single afternoon.

  The radio talk shows led it off. Calls started at about four to three for Jack and then jumped to two to one in his favor when the men got to their car phones at rush hour.

  The afternoon papers rushed WHERE IS CANDY? sidebars onto the JACK CONFESSES headline stories, and the evening news commentators opened with, “ ‘I have betrayed you,’ said restaurant and media magnate Jack Landis today as he admitted an affair with a vengeful Polly Paget. Landis firmly denied, however, allegations of rape” before cutting to footage of Jack’s tearful television address.

  By nighttime, “Jack’s Confession” parties had broken out on college campuses all over the country. Students who habitually set their VCRs for “The Jack and Candy Family Hour” invited friends, made popcorn, consumed massive quantities of beer, and howled uncontrollably as they reran the “I have betrayed you” segment, until hysterical exhaustion forced an end to the festivities.

  By the late news, polls came in that were strongly in Jack’s favor on the alleged rape, feature reporters dug up men who had been “exactly in Jack Landis’s shoes” at one time, and “woman in the street” interviews gave the strong impression that America’s women thought Candy should give Jack another chance.