Don Winslow - A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

“Not at all,” he said. Then he spotted a waiter coming through the door. “Oops, hold on. I’ve got one of the horny bastards right here. He’ll be right up.”

Karen called into the next room, “They’re coming now!”

“Yeah, right!” Neal answered. He turned back to Polly. “Once again: The long thing in the middle of your face is your nose. It’s for breathing and things to do with mucus we don’t need to discuss right now. The oval-shaped thing beneath it, the one crammed with chocolate at the moment, is your mouth. It’s for speaking, and, as you already know, eating. The idea is to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in the form of speech. Swallow first.”

Polly swallowed a mouthful of $4.50-a-bar Toblerone, inhaled deeply, and said, “I first met Jack Landis when I was a typist in his New Yawk office.”

“Not bad. But there’s an r in York. Try it again.”

“I first met Jack Landis when I was a typist in his New York office.”

“Good. Breathe deeply, because that gives you the nice soft tone. When you don’t breathe, you sound tinny.”

“Cheap,” Candy suggested.

“Thank you, Mrs. Landis,” Neal said. “Go on.”

“I tought-”

“Thought,” Neal corrected.

“-thought he was handsome, and I guess he thought I was cute, and it wasn’t long befaw-”

“Before.”

“-before one thing led to another.”

“You got that r. Great.”

There was a knock on the door in the other room. Neal put his fingers to his lips, switched places with Karen, and shut the adjoining door. He put the pistol in his belt, at the small of his back, and slipped on his jacket.

“Room service!”

Neal opened the door and saw Walter Withers, in a white tunic and sandals, standing beside the cart.

They stared at each other for a half second, then Neal grabbed him by the front of the tunic, kicked the door shut with his foot, and shoved him down the hallway and into the alcove with the ice machine in it. Turning so he could keep an eye on the hallway, he pushed Withers against the wall and stuck the gun barrel in his face.

“You dirty lying alkie son of a bitch,” Neal said. “I should shoot you right here.”

“You stole my money,” Withers accused.

“I am going to shoot you,” Neal said. He would have cocked the hammer for effect, but he was nervous around guns, his hands had the adrenaline shakes, and he only wanted to blow Withers’s head off in fantasy. “Is that the money you took for setting Polly up?”

“It’s the front money,” Walter explained. “Neal, they’re downstairs waiting.”

“What, and you came up to warn me? How did you find us?”

“It was an accident, I swear.”

Neal pushed the barrel into Withers’s cheek.

“I know. I don’t believe it myself,” Withers said. “But I got lucky.”

“How?” Neal asked.

“You made quite a splash as a pornographer, my boy,” he answered. “I’m afraid you overplayed your cover.”

First I underplay. Now I overplay. I should have it bracketed now.

“Who are you working for?” Neal asked.

“Top Drawer-Ron Scarpelli. It’s his money you took. Neal, I’m in big trouble.”

“You’ve got that right.”

But I’m not in much better shape, Neal thought, and Withers knows it. He can blow the whistle and we’ll have the media around our ears in about twelve seconds. And we’re not ready for that yet.

Buy some time.

“I’ll give you ten thousand of it now to keep your mouth shut,” Neal said. “The rest goes to you in New York in two days if everything stays nice and quiet.”

“That just puts me even, Neal. I need something for my trouble.”

“You unbearable little shit…”

“My boy, I need something,” Withers said, his eyes twinkling with the joy of combat, “or I’ll have no choice but to sell this information to the media.”

You’d do it, too, Neal thought. In a heartbeat, if you had one.

“Okay, another ten for your so-called trouble,” Neal said, “In one week’s time, not before.”

“Twenty in three days.”

“Fifteen in five.”

“Done,” Withers said. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

Neal slipped the gun back under his belt and released his grip on Walt.

“I’ll go get your damn money,” he said.

“That’s wonderful, my boy, wonderful,” Withers said, straightening his tunic. “But do you suppose you might advance me, say, a thousand? I find myself fiscally embarrassed.”

“I’m giving you ten large!” Neal protested.

“Unfortunately, I have to remit that to my soon-to-be-former employer, Mr. Scarpelli. Thank you for releasing me from the clutches of that tawdry flesh peddler, my boy.”

“Wait here,” Neal said. “And quit calling me that.”

Neal went into the room, took $11,000 from the briefcase, went back out into the hall, and handed it to Withers.

“If I see you poking around here-no, if I see anyone poking around here, I will shoot you, Walter,” Neal said.

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” Walt said.

And a dope, Neal thought.

He pushed the room-service cart into the room, checked it for electronic bugs, and called the ladies to dinner.

Withers strolled into Scarpelli’s suite, walked to the bar, and made himself a martini. Then he sat down on the couch and put his feet on the coffee table, which was shaped like a lyre.

“I saw her,” he announced to the startled Scarpelli and Haber. “She’s in the room with Heskins.”

“That’s terrible!” Scarpelli said. “Or great… Which?”

“It’s great, Ron,” Ms. Haber said, “if we can get access to her.”

“Access,” Scarpelli repeated. He was pretty sure he’d been to a seminar on access. He couldn’t recall what was said about access, but he did remember it was an important thing. “We need access.”

“We could access Heskins,” Ms. Haber suggested.

“We could…” Ron said thoughtfully.

“Why would we want to do that?” asked Withers.

“Tell him, Haber.”

“To make a deal,” she explained. “We can buy and sell Heskins. We’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Still flush with success from his deal with Neal, Withers asked, “Why pay twice? Why not go right to the source?”

“How do we access her?” she asked.

“Actually, access is not a verb, my dear,” Withers said. “And why don’t you leave that little problem to professionals such as myself? I think you’d have to agree that I’ve done pretty well for you so far. And Ron, would you mind horribly if we settled up on my expenses? I hate to let these things go too far.”

Because, Withers thought, when Lady Luck is kind enough to land in your hand, work the faithless strumpet to death.

Overtime drove past the Bluebird Motel three times before he eased into the parking lot, turned off the motor and the lights, and watched. There was a car parked in front of 103 and lights shone through the cheap drapes. He could even see the flicker of the television.

Overtime didn’t want a long wait. His right arm throbbed from the shoulder on down and his back was stiff. But he’d bungled the last operation by rushing in, and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Someone would come out the door. Someone always did. It was proof of the lack of discipline that infected Western society. Even people in great danger would eventually get bored or careless and throw their lives away going to the soda machine, or for something they forgot in their car, or just for a breath of fresh air.

Most people didn’t have the patience for hiding, not in the long run-especially not women. Besides, these people would think they had dodged the bullet. They wouldn’t expect another attack this soon.