“Seems to be.”
Hathaway came back in a few moments later looking considerably refreshed.
“Where is she?” he asked simply, as if for the first time. As if he thought they’d tell him.
In Austin, Nevada, Culver thought.
4
Neal Carey watched Polly Paget eat dinner.
Neal had seen some real eating in his life. He’d seen horses eat and pigs eat. He’d seen Ed Levine eat. But he’d never seen any creature eat like Polly.
Polly ate like a hyperkinetic steam shovel in a gravel pit. She scooped slices of London broil and heaps of baked potato into her mouth and consumed them without seeming to chew or, for that matter, swallow. And as the putative digestion process continued, her hand whirled around on the plate for another go.
“More salad?” Karen asked.
“Mmmflckmmmff,” answered Polly.
“I think she’s asking you to pass the rolls,” Neal said.
Polly smiled and nodded. Small drops of sour cream oozed from the sides of her mouth.
Karen set a roll on her plate. Polly’s knife flicked out and covered it with butter.
“How do you keep your figure?” asked Karen.
“MMttbbllsmm.”
“Metabolism,” Neal translated.
“I got it,” said Karen.
I wish I got it, Neal thought.
He was in a vile mood. Graham had left cheerfully, sticking him with Polly Paget and what seemed an impossible task: Turn this bimbo into America’s sweetheart. Get her ready for a deposition, and a trial, and a trial by media. Teach her how to speak, how to answer questions, and how to not answer questions.
That last bit should be no problem, Neal thought, just get some food within reach. The big problem would be Graham’s final command: Make her get her story straight.
That made Neal think that maybe Friends had some doubts.
You could interpret it two ways, Neal thought. Maybe they think she’s such an airhead that she needs practice recalling the facts in some kind of order. That’s the nice interpretation. The not-so-nice interpretation is that’s she’s lying and needs to decide which tale she wants to tell and then memorize it. In which case, they want me to pick apart inconsistencies and work on them until her story is unassailable. And the really ugly interpretation is that Friends helped set this thing up from jump street.
“So,” Polly said in a rare pause between bites, “you’re supposed to turn me into a real lady, is that it?” (Actually, “Yaw spozt tuh toin me intareel lady, zatih?”)
“Something like that.”
“Good luck. My mother couldn’t do it; the nuns couldn’t do it… Saint Anthony couldn’t do it.”
She paused for a laugh.
“That was a joke,” she said. “Saint Anthony… patron saint of lost causes. I pray to him all the time.”
“Really?” Karen asked.
Polly actually set down her fork. “Oh, yeah, patron saint of anything lost. He’s helped me find my contacts, my keys… He wouldn’t help me find my birth-control pills, though, because the Pope is against birth control, you know.”
“I heard that,” Neal said.
“Yeah, anyways, Saint Anthony is my favorite saint.”
“How did you get the name Polly?” Karen asked.
Polly shoved down some salad and answered, “I know, it doesn’t sound very Catholic, does it? I mean, I don’t think there’s any Saint Polly. My dad used to say before he died that he named me Polly because he’d always wanted a parrot, but he was just teasing; really, it was the movie.”
When Neal’s head stopped spinning, he asked, “What movie?”
“Pollyanna. He liked it a bunch.”
“Apparently.”
She set her fork down again, rested her chin on the tops of her hands, looked at Neal, and said, “You think I’m a bimbo, don’t you?”
It caught him off guard.
“No,” he said.
“Say the truth,” she said.
If that’s what you want.
“Okay,” he answered. “It’s crossed my mind.”
“Neal!” Karen said.
“No offense,” Neal said. “My mother was a bimbo.”
Polly’s head snapped back and she gasped. “That’s an awful thing to say about your mother! You should be ashamed, talking about your mother that way!”
Neal shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“All the more reason,” she said. Then she turned to Karen. “You know what I don’t like about men?”
Karen took a moment to give Neal a dirty look before answering. “I have a few ideas.”
“They’re stupid,” Polly said.
We sure are, Neal thought.
Walter Withers sat at the bar at the Blarney Stone and snuggled up to a glass of Jameson’s that felt so good, he didn’t mind Rourke’s habitual harangue.
“This used to be a great town, you know that?” the bartender asked. “When Jimmy Wagner ran it, him and the Irish and the Italians.”
Withers nodded agreeably.
It’s a great town right now, he thought. I’m sitting in a nice warm dark bar with a glass of good whiskey in my hand and fifty thousand dollars in cash at my feet. And as soon as I complete my business here, I’m going to meet Gloria at the Oak Room, speaking of the days when this was a great town. A drink or two at the Oak Bar and then a taxi over to the Palm for a rare porterhouse and a glass or two of dark red.
And I wonder where Blossom Dearie is singing tonight.
“A great town,” the bartender repeated. “Guy got out of line, the cops smacked him around, and that was that.”
Withers nodded again. As the only customer at the bar, it was his job.
“Ah, Walt, the wife walked out again.”
Withers shook his head sympathetically. “Women, huh?”
“Yeah, says she can’t stand my drinking. I don’t drink that much. You know that bartenders aren’t drinkers, Walt. We see too much.”
An opening.
“Have you seen Sammy Black, Arthur?” Walk asked. “Has he been around?”
“Just this afternoon he was in here asking about you,” Rourke answered. “So I says to her, I say, ‘You don’t like my drinking? I don’t like your eating.’ She gets pissed off, packs her things, and storms off to her mother’s- who’s what, maybe ninety?”
Withers was almost grateful when Sammy Black walked in, even if he did have Chick Madsen with him.
“Break his wrist, Chick,” Sammy ordered. Sammy was wearing a black overcoat, black sports jacket, black shirt, black shoes, probably black underwear. “A man who picks Minnesota to beat the spread on the road on Monday night deserves a broken wrist.”
Chick waddled over to Withers’s stool, started to grab his wrist, then hesitated.
“Right or left, Sammy?” Chick asked.
