the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

"I can't do three months in jail, Chip!" Winnie said. "I can't do three daysl"

  The lawyer propped up a paper clip again, shook his head sadly, ran it down with his Testarossa and said, "Yes, life truly is unfair, isn't it."

  Then Winnie watched as Chip aimed the Testarossa at the pathetic kneeling wire man and squashed it flat.

  Reliving that meeting with Chip Simon brought forth a dive-bombing attack from one of the winged scavengers. Fear plummeted straight for his guts. Winnie cried out and bolted upright in bed. The huge turkey buzzard retreated and grinned like a gargoyle, a coil of Winnies large intestine dangling and dancing from that horrible leering rictus.

  Chapter 2 _The Ghetto

  Tess Binder secretly hated the ocean because she feared infinity. Of course, the water in Newport Harbor is usually placid, particularly in the summer, but it is seawater, even though at night the harbor sometimes reminded her of lily pads and frogs. The water never reassured her, not like the water of Lake Arrowhead, where she'd summered as a girl.

  Tess liked to pretend that it didn't chase the moon and tide, this normally placid water outside her home on Linda Isle, but it certainly did impose definite limits in her life: north to Dover Shores in upper Newport Bay, so-called because of the white cliffs, then south to the Balboa peninsula, west to Balboa Coves, and east . . . She didn't like to think of east. East was the harbor jetty and beyond. There her water turned into the vast bleak ocean. Infinity.

  It wasn't only infinity that frightened Tess Binder. Since her latest divorce she had discovered that she was afraid of crowds, sagging triceps, AIDS, herpes, being single, trying to survive on her last $50,000.

  Tess Binder was forty-three years old, and had been searching with growing despair for another husband, one who would not insist on a prenuptial agreement. But there were very few of those around The Golden Orange these days.

  Tess opened the balcony door of the master bedroom and put on her round tortoiseshell serious glasses to look west toward Bayshores. But she didn't have a main channel view. She was forced to face Pacific Coast Highway and to endure traffic noise. Once, at a party on Spyglass Hill, she heard her side of the island called "the ghetto" by a Linda Isle neighbor on the other side.

  She had made the mistake of starting the day by going grocery shopping in the market she'd used during her short marriage to Ralph Cunningham: one of those where white eggplant, apple pears, elephant garlic, and Maui onions are individually wrapped in little nets. And the long-stemmed strawberries are so big that only eight of them fit in a basket, and Pepino melons go for nearly ten dollars a pound, ditto for Holland purple bell peppers. She did note that soft-shell crab was on sale at thirty bucks. And white truffles were being "offered" at sixteen hundred dollars a kilo. In short, a week's shopping could overdraw a plumber's Visa card.

  Just shopping there made it impossible not to think of her present state of affairs. She was surrounded in the store by people she knew casually, people who could still afford to buy anything they wanted. She saw the parvenue wife of a Costa Mesa car dealer, buying slabs of abalone like it was lunch meat, at forty dollars per pound. That was when a panic attack struck Tess Binder, the first since Ralph Cunningham left her. She had to get out of that place in a hurry. She had to go to the beach.

  When she reached her five-year-old Mercedes (the one Ralph Cunningham let his office help use to run errands), she discovered with amazement that she was holding an empty banana skin! She'd been compulsively eating a banana while she was in the store and hadn't even realized it. When she got in the car she almost wept. Tess Binder wasn't just an abandoned woman. She was a goddamn thief.

  The Easter season had brought with it Santa Ana winds from the desert. It was 85 degrees Fahrenheit on the sand at her club, and the club's hot mommas were white-hot on that Saturday afternoon. There was a tanker load of Bain de Soleil sliding over a thousand square yards of winter-white, health-club-firm, middle aged female flesh on the tiny beach.

  Some of the women chose to wear the dated string-bikinis instead of the newer French-cut. This by way of proclaiming that there were no irreparable stretch marks. No hip scars from liposuction, at least none you could notice. Most of the hot mommas were no younger than Cher and no older than Jane Fonda. Many could rival either when it came to body sculpting. It was astonishing what the Nautilus, the knife, and single-minded dedication had accomplished in The Golden Orange.

  Tess Binder arrived on the beach that afternoon wearing tinted prescription glasses with white plastic frames. She nodded to the other hot mommas, acknowledged a few panther smiles and found a suitable place on the sand away from the others but close enough not to seem aloof. She sensed whispering, actually heard a few giggles, and imagined she heard a few clucks of sympathy. Which were about as genuine as those heard when Vilma Draper, former queen of the hot mommas, had experienced silicone-curdle and sued Dr. Max Jenner (Max the Knife), a swashbuckling surgeon whose work was on carnal display in the club lounge one afternoon a week, when the price of booze was reduced and free food was offered.

  As she was applying the lotion to her arms Tess got more depressed. There was no doubt about it, her triceps were sagging! Tomorrow she'd do at least three hundred tricep extensions.

  Corky Peebles was smiling at Tess as though she was about to join her. Corky was at least forty-two years old, though she swore she was thirty-eight-one year younger than Tess claimed she was. Corky's triceps were firm and smooth, and there wasn't a dimple on her thighs, not one. She must have had a tummy tuck, but Tess couldn't see the goddamn scar. The fact is, her skin and muscle were twenty-five years old, the bone and viscera, forty-two.

  The summerlike weather had brought hordes of outsiders to the club that weekend, including the Reverend Wilbur Matlock, a television celebrity who'd spent the last ten years pursuing evangelical work for the Cathedral of Heavenly Bliss. Tess watched as Reverend Matlock and two acolytes in blue satin cassocks stood solemnly on the yacht-lined dock just below the ramp leading down from the cocktail lounge. Reverend Matlock faced a resplendent yacht and raised his arms to the heavens, and prayed.

  He said, "May He who guides us on our voyage to eternity, keep this ship and this glorious crew safe from all harm!"

  A few people sitting on the patio mumbled "Amen" into their mai tais and pina coladas, and two of them started applauding but got shushed by the sober ones.

  The "ship" was the seventy-foot custom yacht Ecstasy. And "this glorious crew" were Beverly Hills caterers hired for the day. It would perhaps voyage to Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island once or twice a year, less than thirty miles from its slip at the club. The boat's owner, Jeb Driscoll, was busy with three commercial real estate developments in San Diego and L. A., and rarely saw his boat. Like the other seven-figure yachts docked at the club it was a condo-on-the-water, a pied-d-mer, so to speak.

  Driscoll was single once again and had been definitely targeted by the hot mommas. But Tess Binder felt that she had no chance whatsoever with Jeb Driscoll, having blown her opportunity by foolishly accepting a marriage proposal from Ralph Cunningham, one of the biggest developers in Orange County, and the 303rd wealthiest man in America, according to Forbes magazine. Ralph had never become quite as popular as she'd hoped, in that he'd declined to join "Team 100," along with the dozen or so Golden Orange donors who each gave $100,000 to the presidential campaign of George Bush. After multiple solicitations he did manage to step up with a $50,000 check, but it was too late, coming as it did after Bush was well into his insurmountable lead.

  And then, long before George Bush was inaugurated, Ralph had played a game of singles at the John Wayne Tennis Club with a thirty-year-old manicurist who had a hell of a backhand and a tongue like fibrillating paddles. The manicurist and Ralph moved in together, and Tess was suddenly living alone in the ghetto, in a home she bought from him during the divorce with a minimum down payment and monthly payments that were exhausting what was left of her family trust. Her third marriage had laste
d seventeen months from honeymoon to final decree.

  Tess Binder had never thought for a minute that she couldn't persuade Ralph to abrogate the pre-nuptial agreement. If she'd known how heartless he was she'd never have invested a chunk of her inheritance in gold certificates at exactly the wrong time with exactly the wrong swarm of goldbugs.

  Lying on the hot sand, Tess suddenly felt a shadow cross. She looked up to find Corky Peebles in her ultra-revealing jet-black bikini, with a jet-black power bob like silent film star Louise Brooks. Tess was sure that Corky dyed her hair. Nobody's was that lustrously black, but she hadn't been able to prove it. And Tess hadn't had a real conversation with her since Corky had returned from a six-month cruise with the 342nd richest man in America who decided not to marry her after all.

  "You should be visiting the tanning salon at least twice a week," Corky said, kneeling in the sand, her fingernails studded with ersatz gems, k la Olympian Florence Griffith-Joyner.

  "I think a natural tan might be less damaging than your ... unnatural salon tan," Tess said, forced to note that the goddamn powerhouse Lulu bob looked smashing on Corky.

  "There's a great deal of research being done these days on the effects of ultra violets," Corky said, peering across the dock at Reverend Matlock, who was being congratulated by several landlocked yachtsmen wearing blazers and a gin flush at eleven o'clock in the morning.

  "Ultra Violet was the playmate of Andy Warhol," Tess said dryly.

  "Who?"

  "Never mind." Artsy allusions didn't register around these parts, but an obscure reference to Donald Trump or any billionaire west of Suez could get you an instant grin of recognition.

  "Has Jeb invited you to tour his new boat?" Corky asked, sure that he had not. So far, only half a dozen locals had been aboard the yacht since its delivery, and Corky was one of them. Everyone knew that she'd slept with Driscoll on land and sea, and once, it was said, during a flight to Tahoe in his jet.

  "I guess I'm just not interested in boats," Tess said. Then she added, "How much did it cost?"

  "I've heard three-point-five," Corky said. "Sam Sloan's cost four, you know. Four-point-two-million to be exact."

  "He's still married, isn't he?" Tess asked, since Corky obviously wasn't ready to leave without finding out whatever she'd come to find out.

  "Sam? Barely."

  "He must be sixty-five."

  "A vigorous sixty-five."

  "You should know," Tess said, relishing a micro-line that slashed its way across Corky s golden forehead.

  "I should, but I don't. I've only heard. Vigorous does not always mean what you think it does."

  Tess kept smiling but turned her face to the sun.

  Then Corky said, "He's dating Vera. If he marries her he'll need to mortgage the boat to pay for her prescriptions. She uses more drugs than a Bulgarian weight lifter."

  Tess turned a hip ever so slightly away from Corky, but instantly regretted it. There was a trace of cellulite forming on her thigh and Corky wouldn't miss it!

  "She'll end up regretting it more than he does," Corky continued. "He has a dry day about as often as Joan Collins irons her sheets. He'll have the prenuptial put on a granite slab and she'll have to chisel her signature onto the goddamn thing. Speaking of prenuptials, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear that after Ralph left, you ended up with zilch, yes? I mean, living on Linda Isle isn't zilch, but you know what I mean. Leased land? Facing the highway? A huge mortgage? He could at least have bought you a house outright where you wouldn't be making land-lease payments as well as mortgage payments. Yes?"

  "I'll get along," Tess said, the sweat boiling and beading through the lotion.

  But Corky was relentless. "And when your father passed away. I mean, I was more shocked than you were when I heard he left his desert estate to his old . . . pal in La Quinta. Yes?"

  Tess felt faint. She kept smiling, but her upper lip stuck to her teeth.

  Corky tossed her head and her power bob bobbed powerfully. Three men sipping long drinks in the beach-hut bar whispered and nodded in her direction. She sucked in her tummy and arched her back, causing her breasts to balloon. "Let's have something cool, yes?" Corky had eyes like a seagull. She looked toward the three guys without turning her head an inch. "Maybe a Ramos fizz." She dropped her gaze toward Tess's hips and said, "Or something with fewer calories?"

  "I don't think so, Corky," Tess said, finally summoning the courage to abandon her horrible smile. "I'm not feeling well. Cramps."

  "Well, it won't be long before that too shall pass. Permanently. Cramps, I mean. Yes?"

  Corky stood up suddenly, no-hands, pirouetted, sashaying back toward the other hot mommas. Causing the three guys in the beach-hut bar to start pumping the bartender, who referred to Corky's little patch of sand as The Kill Zone.

  Relieved to be alone, Tess opened her beach bag, took out a copy of the local newspaper and turned to the inside page, scanning a story about the ex-ferryboat pilot who was being sentenced today. She looked at the photo of forty-year-old Winston Farlowe, taken back in December when he'd been bailed out of jail by his lawyer. There was another photo of Winnie beside the sad jail shot-an old one of him in a police uniform. The article said that Winnie had been a detective for most of his fifteen years of police service.

  A forelock tumbled across his brow, and he had a little boy's cowlick. He looked like a strapping man who was going to fat, probably from booze. The journalist wrote that Winnie was well known at Spoon's Landing, a waterfront saloon where millionaires and yuppies often went for "atmosphere." Sort of the white Republican equivalent of Harlem slumming in the thirties.

  Corky Peebles must ve learned something about the guys at the beach-hut bar. Tess saw her moseying in that direction, looking at her watch, as though she was expecting someone. Actually, she'd caught the scent.

  The French parfumeries say that there are a few "noses" in the world-most of them from Grasse-that can correctly identify a scent across a crowded bistro with one sniff. At her club Tess Binder knew at least a dozen hot mommas who could correctly identify a Dun and Bradstreet with half a sniff. The presence at the club of one of the country's fifty-two billionaires was like a visit from the Pope. The noses of Grasse had nothing on the hot mommas.

  Tess Binder read the story of the Christmas boat parade. Then she put the paper down, faced the heavens and tried not to think about potential skin damage: keratosis, basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinoma. Not to mention melanoma! Then she sat up.

  Tess looked at Winnie Farlowe's photo again. She was suddenly feeling some very strange emotions. The eyes were soft and vulnerable, the eyes of this problem drinker. The eyes of a lost little lad.

  First Tess felt a growing excitement. Then she felt something else-fear.

  Chapter 3 _ The Virgin

  It wasn't as though he was facing a felony, he told himself. Technically, it was only a violation of Section 655 of the Harbors and Navigational Code, pertaining to reckless or negligent operation of a vessel while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. But it wasn't often that such a colorful breach of the code was brought before a judge in Orange County. The local newspapers in and around The Golden Orange were still having fun with imaginative references to the hijacking. But in that the groaning wheels of American justice haven't received a dollop of grease in this century, it was a fairly easy matter for Chip Simon to have his client's sentencing postponed until local interest had waned.

  The Honorable Jesse W. Singleton looked like a graying Mike Tyson on steroids. He weighed just less than a tuna ship anchor, had been a college football player in the late forties, and a cop for five years, before completing his law degree and leaving police work for the D. A.'s office. Because he was smart, and because he was black when tokenism paid dividends, he had been appointed to the bench by a liberal Democratic governor. After which, Judge Singleton had disappointed that governor and tickled the hell out of the next one, a conservative Republican, by being the hanging jud
ge that Republican Orange County had come to love.

  Unfortunately for Winnie Farlowe, Judge Singleton despised drunk drivers even more than he hated short-eyed pedophiles. He often jailed first offenders for drunk driving and always jailed a "deuce" with a prior. And especially unfortunate for Winnie was the fact that the Christmas joyride had resulted in a disruption of the Newport Harbor Christmas Boat Parade on the very night that Judge Singleton was an honored guest of the parade committee.

  Chip Simon was halfway through his eloquent plea for leniency in Harbor Court that April morning when Judge Singleton interrupted him.

  "Let's take a short recess, counsel," he said abruptly, glowering at Winnie with luminous black eyes. "I'd like to see the defendant in chambers."

  The request was so unusual that both the prosecutor and Chip Simon followed the judge into his office, seeking an explanation. Judge Singleton poured a cup of Evian water, sat in his red leather throne-on-casters, and with his robe billowing like a black spinnaker, or maybe the wings of a nightmare bat, said, "I want to see the defendant. Alone."

  "Judge," said the prosecutor, "is there something i>t can . ..

  "No," said the judge. "You're excused."

  "Your Honor," said Chip Simon, "I think if you wish to see my client privately I ought to ..

  "No you ought not to," said the judge. "If I were you I'd ask my client to step in here and then I'd go outside and have a soda pop until you're called. That's what I'd do if I were you."

  The lawyer weighed it. If he challenged the hanging judge, Winnie was going to the slam without a doubt. If he let the judge indulge his eccentricity .. .

  Ninety seconds later Winnie Farlowe stood alone and silent' before Judge Singleton. The judge downed another glass of Evian, and finally, with a look that could've opened a safe, he said, "Do you know what they say in county jail when somebody farts and the other prisoners hear it?"

  "Excuse me, Your Honor?"

  "Do you know anything about me?"