So Hathaway broadened his smile, looked around the wood-paneled office with its mahogany bookcases, wooden model sailing ships, and dingy nineteenth-century nautical paintings and said, “You know, Ethan, you could stand to get some light in this office.”
Ed saw Ethan Kitteredge wince at Hathaway’s use of his first name and wondered just what the hell this yuppie Hathaway was talking about. Sitting there in his preppy little black sports jacket and green cord trousers, with his shiny new Haliburton briefcase at his moccasined feet, wasting Kitteredge’s time when he should be out playing tennis or lacrosse or some other kid’s game.
Ethan Kitteredge sat back in his chair, touched the tips of his fingers together, and smiled at Hathaway.
“This is a bank, Mr. Hathaway,” Kitteredge said. “We handle people’s money. In this particular office in this bank, we handle people’s problems. There is nothing… light… about it.”
Hathaway acknowledged the gaffe of calling Kitteredge by his first name but still felt some gratification that the bank president had picked up his metaphor. Once your co-communicator has picked up your metaphor, you have won the communication.
“That’s true, Mr. Kitteredge,” he said. “But you are keeping me in the dark.”
“Yes,” Kitteredge agreed.
Hathaway’s smile was sincere. He liked winning.
“So where is she?” he asked again.
“Safely in our hands,” Kitteredge answered.
Peter Hathaway dropped the metalevel.
“I’m the client, right?” he asked petulantly, brushing a shock of black hair from his forehead. “I want to know.”
Kitteredge looked to Ed.
“It’s like this,” Ed explained. “If you knew where Polly Paget was, you might inadvertently say or do something that might lead to her discovery.”
John Culver, sitting in the back of a van parked on the street outside, chuckled at the truth of this statement.
“I’m not a child! I’m not stupid!” Hathaway yelled.
Keep your voice down, Culver thought as he eased the headset away from his ears.
“Nobody said you were,” Ed said. We were just thinking it, he added to himself. “It’s just that you’re not a professional at this kind of thing, and we are, so why don’t you let us handle it?”
Kitteredge added, “We are continuing our investigation of Mr. Landis. When that inquiry has… matured… and Miss Paget has progressed to a point where we feel she can successfully negotiate the media and the legal process, we will contact you.
Hathaway sank back into his chair and sulked.
I’m a professional, he thought. All right, the rape was sheer luck, but I was professional enough to contact Paget, bring her into our orbit, create a media sensation… and now this nineteenth-century throwback and his pet bear refuse to tell me where she is!
“I gave her to you!” Hathaway argued.
“Would you like her back?” Kitteredge asked.
No, Hathaway admitted to himself. I wouldn’t know what to do with her. The slut is a disaster. If she opens her mouth in public one more time, Jack Landis will have the world thinking that she raped him.
“Excuse me,” Peter said. “I have to visit the little boys’ room.”
Please, Culver thought, leave the briefcase here. I didn’t go to all the trouble of breaking into your office and planting a bug in your new Haliburton for the dubious pleasure of listening to you urinate-at best.
Hathaway went into the lavatory to relieve himself and do a couple of lines. Cocaine gave him a competitive edge.
“Have you heard from Mr. Graham?” Kitteredge asked.
Ed nodded. “He got her safely to Austin, no problem.”
Now why, Culver pondered, would they take her to Austin, a mere sixty miles from San Antonio?
“And do we think Ms. Paget will remain willingly in the wilds of Nevada?” asked Kitteredge.
Nevada? Austin, Nevada, Culver thought. Is there such a place?
“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.