Read Online A Long Walk Up the Waterslide by Don Winslow - Free Book Online Page B

right,” Levine said patiently, figuring that Graham was suffering from stakeout syndrome, the combination of boredom, cabin fever, and loneliness that compels surveillance guys to invent reasons to talk on the phone. “What else?”
    “It looks like a Teamsters picnic out here,” Graham said. “You got trucks coming and going, coming and going, coming and going all the time.”
    “Uhhh, it’s a construction site, Joe,” Ed said. Maybe I’d better think about pulling him, he thought.
    “Yeah, but when do they unload?” Joe asked. “I’ve seen the same truck go in, come out ten minutes later, and go right back in.
    “You’re taking down the plate numbers, right?”
    “No, Ed, I’m drawing pictures of the trucks with my crayons. What do you think?”
    Testy, Ed thought. Another prime symptom. He picked up his coffee mug and saw something usually described as a foreign object floating on the top. He picked the foreign object out with his thumb and forefinger and took a swallow of the coffee.
    “What else?” he asked.
    “I think I’m starting to hallucinate,” Graham said.
    Days of sitting by a window staring through binoculars will do that, Ed thought.
    “Why is that?” he asked.
    “Black limo comes up the road, guy gets out to talk to one of the truck drivers. Guess who the guy is?”
    “Jimmy Hoffa?”
    “No,” Graham answered. “Get this, Ed. I could swear I saw Joey Beans get out of that limo.”
    Is this the coffee I bought this morning, Ed asked himself, or yesterday morning? And Joey Beans?
    “You are hallucinating, Graham,” Ed said. “Joey Beans working for Jack Landis?”
    “Or vice versa,” Graham observed.
    “Naaah,” Ed said.
    Joey “Beans” Foglio had been such a loose cannon in the greater New York metropolitan area mob franchise that the old men finally gave him a career choice: accept a lateral transfer down south or be recycled in a Jersey gravel pit. Joey Beans had opted for the sun and fun of the Lone Star state, and Levine had a vague knowledge that he was working card games or something out of Houston. But Joey Beans building water slides and kiddie-car tracks?
    “Something is very sick here,” Graham said. “I’ll send you the plate numbers, names on the trucks, all that stuff. Can you get a look at construction invoices?”
    “I’ll give it a shot,” Ed answered. Shit, a gangster like Joey Beans hooked up with Landis? No way.
    “We’d better give Neal a call,” Graham said. “He’s not going to be happy.”
    “He’s never happy.” Ed thought he’d try to cheer Graham up and added, “Hey, speaking of happiness, guess who went to that big tote board in the sky a few days ago?”
    “Who?”
    “Sammy Black.”
    “No shit.”
    “No shit,” Ed said. “Sitting in a bar at closing time. Guy walks in while the bartender’s taking a piss, pops Sammy and his bodyguard in the head, and walks out.”
    “They must be having parties all over Midtown South.”
    “They are. The homicide guys have a nickname for the shooter,” Ed said. “Preparation H.”
    “Because he removed that itching burning hemorrhoid?” Graham said. Not that funny a topic, seeing as how he’d been sitting on this chair for three days.
    “Listen, I’ll get on this Joey Beans stuff,” Ed said. “You take it easy with those tacos, okay?”
    Yeah, okay, Graham thought as he hung up. He was worried. He had promised Neal there was no mob stuff, and now he thought he had seen Joey Beans. And although Ed Levine was very good at chasing paper, mob guys were pretty cute these days. It could be weeks before Ed could unravel the kind of twisted paper trail the mob was capable of leaving. And he wasn’t sure that they had days, never mind weeks. There had to be a quicker way.
    Graham put his binoculars away.
    Sammy Black in a box, huh? Old Walt must be standing for a round somewhere.

7
    Martini please,” Walt Withers said.
    Withers didn’t notice that the bartender scowled at him and