A Long Walk Up the Waterslide nc-4

by Don Winslow

  “The dog’s going to be all right,” Candy said. She daubed Brezhnev’s neck with antiseptic. The dog lay panting on the floor, with what looked like a satisfied smile on its face.

  Karen bent over, stroked the dog’s neck, and said, “You have a lifetime’s supply of biscuits coming from me, kid.”

  I put her in a position where an old dog saved her life, Neal thought. Just saved her life.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

  “I’m okay. I’m shaken… I think we all are… but I’m okay.”

  Neal kissed the top of her head, then walked over to Polly, who stood in the middle of the floor with that stupid expression on her face. It made him even angrier. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward the bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  But he noticed that she didn’t resist.

  “We’re going to have a talk,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for an answer or an argument, but hauled Polly into the bedroom and sat her down on the bed.

  “I want the truth from you now,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like who is Gloria?” Neal snapped.

  “She’s my best friend,” Polly said, “and my supervisor at work.”

  “Well, your best friend gave you up,” Neal said.

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “How’d she know where you are?”

  She chewed her lip.

  I have to control my temper, Neal thought, because my temper isn’t getting anywhere. She’s perfectly capable of just dummying up if I keep getting angry.

  He sat down next to her.

  “You have to help me now, Polly,” he said. “Someone wants to kill you, and someone came very close to killing Karen, so you have to help us.”

  “I called her.”

  Neal felt his face turn hot with anger. He fought to keep the bite out of his voice as he asked, “Why?”

  “She’s my best friend,” Polly repeated. “We talk.”

  Not anymore, you don’t.

  “Does she have a man friend named Walter?”

  “She has lots of man friends,” Polly answered. “I don’t know one named Walter.”

  “Do you know a guy named Walter Withers?”

  “No.”

  The phone rang and Neal picked it up.

  Polly took the chance to run out of the room.

  “You were supposed to call me back,” Graham said. “There may be some complications.”

  “Like a hit man coming to my house?” Neal asked.

  “Hell no, nothing like that,” Graham said. “Don’t be paranoid.”

  “Okay, a button man just hit our place, but I’m sure it was nothing personal.”

  “What happened?” Graham asked.

  “Someone just took a run at our honored guest.”

  “Is everyone all right?!”

  “No thanks to me,” Neal said. “Karen did a Mickey Mantle on his lumbar vertebrae. You told me this wasn’t a mob thing, Dad. Can you still tell me that?”

  Graham sounded ashamed. “No.”

  He briefed Neal on everything he’d learned. Neal, in turn, told him about Chuck Whiting, Mrs. Landis, Gloria, and Walt Withers.

  “Walt Withers isn’t a hit man,” Graham said. “He’s taken a fall, but not that far.”

  “Far enough to be a wheelman?” Neal asked. “The hitter got away in Walt’s car.”

  Neal had his own doubts, though. He had left Withers just hours before, dead-drunk. It seemed barely possible that he could have driven a car, let alone made an assassination attempt.

  “We’ll get a team out there,” Graham said. “Can you sit tight until morning?”

  A team? Neal thought. So far, the old team had blown his location, let in at least three opposing players, and seemed to have given the other team copies of the playbook. He’d had about enough of the team. And there was a practical problem. With security so badly compromised, he couldn’t be sure that any team that arrived didn’t have one or more opposing players on it.

  Neal answered, “I think I’ll try a solo sport for a while.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Well, I am doing that.”

  A long silence. Neal could almost see Graham rubbing his artificial fist into his real palm.

  Then Graham said, “Son, every time something goes wrong, you go off on your own, and every time you do that, you fuck things up worse. You can’t be doing that anymore. You have to stop running away like some sulking thirteen-year-old. You have to stay connected now, son. I know you’re mad and you’re scared, but it’s time to grow up and stay connected.”

  “Fuck you, Graham.”

  But he’s right, Neal thought. I can’t handle this one on my own.

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

  Graham told him.

  “Neal…” Karen stood in the doorway. She saw he was on the phone and so she sat down on the bed.

  “Polly says you hate her and she wants to leave,” she said.

  “I’ll drive her to the airport,” Neal offered.

  “Someone tried to kill her, Neal!”

  “And almost killed you instead,” Neal answered. “All because she had to get on the phone and blab to her buddy.”

  “She trusted her friend,” Karen said. “Is that such a sin?”

  “See?” Neal said. “Trust?”

  “Neal…”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Neal said, “she can take a hike. She’s not worth it.”

  “I dunno,” Karen said. “A deck and a hot tub?”

  “We’re going to have to run, you know,” he said. He reached for her and pulled her close. “I almost lost you. I couldn’t take that.”

  “I wouldn’t be so thrilled about it, either,” she answered, stroking the back of his head. “How long will we have to run?”

  “I don’t know,” Neal answered. “But we need to get going.”

  “I’m going with you,” Candy Landis said, stepping into the room.

  “Doesn’t anybody in this house knock anymore?” Neal asked. “And no, you’re not coming with us.”

  He was throwing things into a duffel bag when Chuck came back from Brogan’s.

  “He has a hell of a bruise and a possible fracture of the cheekbone,” Chuck said. “That lady from the store is driving him to Fallon to check it out. They’re going to stop by for the dog.”

  I owe Brogan, Neal thought-big-time. Not to mention the dog.

  He could feel Chuck staring at him.

  “Yeah?” Neal said. He didn’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings toward old Chuck.

  “I should remove Mrs. Landis from the area,” Chuck said.

  “Well, Chuckles, we’re about to remove ourselves from the area,” Neal said. “And Mrs. Landis is going with us.”

  “That’s just not an option.”

  Neal turned from his packing and stared up at Whiting, who did not seem particularly intimidated.

  “You want options, buy a Buick,” Neal told him. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea, either, but the women insist, and I don’t have the time to argue.”

  And between me and me, until I can figure out who is on whose side, I don’t mind having a little leverage in the person of Mrs. Jackson Landis.

  “Can you protect her?” Chuck asked.

  Neal saw the little bones protrude at the base of Chuck’s jaw and wondered if maybe this was a little more than business.

  “I don’t know,” Neal answered. “Can you?”

  “Of course.”

  Neal zipped up the duffel bag and said, “Yeah, you’ve done a pretty good job so far. She was, what, six feet from a gun barrel, would you say?”

  The little bones looked as if they were going to pop right through his skin.

  “The danger came precisely from her proximity to that… tramp,” Chuck said.

  “Agreed. You could have put that on the wreath,” Nea
l said. “Look, I don’t know what your feelings for Mrs. Landis are, but if you really want to help her, you’ll let her work this out.”

  Chuck looked legitimately puzzled.

  “Work what out?”

  “See, that’s the thing,” Neal said. “You don’t know and I don’t know, so how can either of us help her? The best thing we can do is step away a little bit and let her do what she needs to do.”

  And besides all that good stuff, she’s my trump card and I might need her handy.

  “I don’t think this is the time for feminist rhetoric,” Chuck said.

  “You’re right,” Neal said. “So try this: If Candice was a devious shit like me or you, she would have come here, found out what she needed to know, gone back to hubby, kept her mouth shut, and let him think everything was hunky-dory. And if you weren’t so much in love with her, you wouldn’t have made that call to Jack and blown what might have been a tremendous advantage. But she’s not cold-blooded enough to be a mole in her own bedroom, and you’re so jealous and so angry at Jack that you couldn’t resist showing him the ace in the hole.

  “Now Jack gets to calculate his next moves with the knowledge that Candy is no longer an ally, but an adversary-information that I’d have preferred he didn’t have, but never mind-and we’re left groping around in the fog as to his thoughts and intentions.”

  And I’m going to omit the happy news that Jack is apparently cheek-to-cheek with a known gangster who has caravans of empty trucks making deliveries to Candyland, because I don’t know if you and Mrs. Landis already know that, and I don’t want you to know that I know.

  “I am not in love with Mrs. Landis,” Chuck said.

  “Whatever.” Neal shrugged. “But I need your help and so does Mrs. Landis. Are you going to work with me on this, or what?”

  Neal finished loading the jeep and walked back into the house. He’d hammered out a deal with Chuck, who left with the storekeeper-Evelyn, Brogan, and Brezhnev, so he was anxious to get moving.

  He went back into the living room and said to Karen, “If the Sisterhood is ready to depart…”

  “Funny,” she answered. “Funny boy.”

  Polly asked, “Can’t I just take my-”

  “No,” Neal answered for the fifteenth time. “There’s not a lot of room and we have to travel light.”

  “Yeah, but I need-”

  “We can buy things,” Neal said.

  We have lots of cash, he thought.

  Karen drove because she was the better driver and so Neal could concentrate on what was outside. The first few minutes would be the worst. If someone was going to make a try at Polly in the jeep, he’d have to do it before or near the first possible turn, so Neal held his breath until they were headed west on Route 50 and out of town.

  Karen turned down the dirt road that led to the Milkovsky place. Jackrabbits and the occasional coyote scampered from the headlights. The moonlight turned the sagebrush silver. Neal usually loved to drive through this country at night, but now the effect was eerie and frightening.

  “Where you taking us, the moon?” Polly cracked, then with genuine alarm asked, “Hey, we’re not going camping, are we?

  “Keep your head down like I told you to and shut up,” Neal said. Polly seemed to have recovered her spirits, which was a mixed blessing.

  Neal had Karen stop at the turnoff to the Milkovskys’. He felt a little edgy about making a stop there, since Withers knew about it and might figure they’d run there.

  “How fast can you drive up to the house?” he asked Karen.

  There was no point in sneaking in, and he wanted to give anyone inside as little time as possible to get ready.

  “Please,” she said. She stood on the gas pedal and the little jeep hurtled, bounced, and leapt toward the house. She hit the brake and the jeep fishtailed to a stop in the gravel driveway.

  “Are we there yet?” Polly asked.

  “We’re just looking for a place to park,” Karen answered.

  “Shut up!” Neal hissed.

  “I’ve got to pee,” Polly whined. “Those bumps…”

  Neal glared down at her and then listened.

  He didn’t hear a sound, which didn’t mean much, but he got out of the jeep anyway and stepped up on the porch of the house. He walked around to the kitchen door and let himself in. The house was dark and quiet.

  Neal felt the tingling sensation he always got in his arms when he was going into a dark and potentially hostile room. He wondered whether he was ever going to get over that. Joe Graham’s opinion was that if he ever got over it, he should get out of the business.

  I should get out of the business, anyway, Neal thought. If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen now.

  He reached over and flipped the light switch.

  Nothing.

  Neal opened a drawer under the countertop and found two sets of keys. He used one to open Steve’s gun cabinet. Steve wasn’t big on pistols, but Neal found a. 44 revolver that was bigger than he wanted but would have to do. The pistol in his hand, he walked through the rest of the house and found it empty. He went back out on the porch and hollered, “If you want to use the bathroom, now’s the time to do it!”

  While the women were thus engaged, Neal went back to the gun cabinet and selected a lever-action Winchester. 30–30, a twelve-gauge pump, and found the matching ammunition.

  “You think you have enough firepower there?” Karen asked.

  “I hope so. Give me a hand with this, will you?”

  They loaded the rifle and shotgun, carried them out to the open shed that served as a garage, and arranged them under the front seats of Steve’s new Laredo. Neal backed it out of the shed, they transferred the bags, and Karen pulled her jeep into the shed.

  “Think we’ll be back before Steve and Peggy?” she asked.

  “I hope so.”

  Neal took the wheel this time. He turned south toward a fifty-mile stretch of rugged dirt road that was the loneliest part of the High Lonely. It would take him straight down the Reese River Valley, then west over the Shoshone Mountains, then down into the low desert. He had driven it many times in daylight and never seen a single other car, and he sure didn’t want to see one tonight.

  “Where are we going?” Polly asked.

  “God knows,” Neal answered.

  Polly thought a few seconds before she asked, “Is that in California?”

  No, Neal thought. Las Vegas.

  Part Two

  Candyland

  14

  Marc Merolla opened the door before the bell stopped chiming.

  Ed liked the door, black exterior enamel with a brass knob at waist height. The refurbished mock-Federal door epitomized the recent Yuppie homesteading in the old neighborhood on Providence’s east side. Once shabby and bohemian, it was becoming the place to be for young doctors, lawyers, and business types who could buy an old house cheaply and put the money they saved into renovations. The general rule seemed to be that the new owners would freshen up the exteriors, leaving the Colonial flavor intact, and gut the insides. Behind the tranquil quaint facades, contractors knocked down walls, exposed beams, sank tubs, and installed kitchen islands over which to hand stylish copper pots and pans that were much too expensive to mess up with food.

  “Ed, hello,” Marc said. “Come in.”

  Marc was a small man, compact and trim. His thick dark brown hair was short and he wore a neat mustache. His eyes, almond-shaped and deep brown, were soft and expressive, betraying the basic component of Marc’s personality-kindness.

  Marc Merolla was unfailingly kind. Soft-spoken and polite, he was a successful stock trader and investor who wanted to do well by doing good and had pulled it off so far. Even his clothes seemed calculated not to threaten. Today he was wearing a plum polo shirt with the collar turned up over a cream-colored sweater. His dull brown corduroy trousers were baggy and fell over suede shoes.

  “Sorry to disturb your Saturday morning,” Ed said
.

  Ed had taken the 3:00 A.M. train from New York, gone to the offices in the bank to shower and change clothes, then taken a cab to Merolla’s.

  “You’re never a disturbance, Ed,” Marc said as he ushered him in. “Let me tell Theresa you’re here.”

  He took Ed’s jacket and hung it on an antique coat rack in the hallway. He motioned for Ed to wait, then returned a few moments later with his wife and two young children.

  Small and dark, Theresa was a perfect match for Marc. Her black hair framed sharp, pretty features and her brown eyes seemed to engage without challenging. She and Marc had dated since high school, all the way through college, and then married.

  Theresa had an arm around each child’s shoulder as she whispered to them and pushed them forward to shake their guest’s hand.

  Ed squatted to greet them. He made small talk with Theresa for a few minutes before she excused herself and the children to return to the kitchen, where they were busy baking a cake.

  “Do you want to come in the library?” Marc asked. “And can I make you a cappuccino? It’s my Saturday-morning indulgence.”

  “Sounds great. Thanks.”

  Marc opened the library door, just off the hallway, and gestured to a Danish-modern chair.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Ed took a walk around the large room. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases held collections of the classics and an assortment of reference books. Several music stands, their surfaces laid flat, held oversized, open photography books, most of them of Italian country scenes. The walls were decorated with opera posters, mementos, and framed photographs of Marc and Theresa, their family, and their friends.

  As Ed surveyed the pictures, music came piping softly from speakers in the bookcases. Opera, Ed thought with a smile. A typical Marc Merolla gesture, because Marc and Ed had first met at the opera. It was a charity event that Kitteredge had been desperate to dodge, so he’d sent Ed instead. To his own great surprise, Ed had enjoyed the music and also the Merollas.

  Marc came in juggling two large cups of cappuccino. He set them both on his desk, handed one to Ed, then sat down. Ed sat down across from him.