"Sure. Spoon's a party animal like Howard Hughes was a party animal," Buster said disgustedly. "Like Rudolph Hess was a party animal." Then he turned to Winnie and said, "Young coppers these days? Idea a fun is drivin a pickup over chuck holes. Or belly-bumpin people off barstools. I don't know where they get 'em. Gimme a fuckin headache, is what they do."
"Still on the beach patrol?"
"Long as I can keep the job." Buster nodded.
"Still contemplating a career change?"
"Sooner'n you think," Buster said.
"Still can't talk about it?"
"Soon."
"I admit, you got me curious," Winnie said.
"That's jist like you. You're the most curious guy I ever worked with. Gotta know how everything works. I said you'd be the first to know, and if it don't work out, I'll be here till I retire. Or till I run into another psycho with an Uzi that shoots straighter."
The young cops playing snooker were getting noisier. Hadley had guzzled four ounces of bourbon with the glass in his teeth and his hands behind his back. When he finished he wiped his chin and marched triumphantly around the snooker table, slapping palms with the others.
"You fuckin kids decide to break out a cornet or slide trombone, I'll cite you for no parade permit!" Buster Wiles barked. Then to Winnie: "Wanna go divin tomorrow? I heard they took some real big abalone by Dana Point. Been thinkin about takin a drive down. I can borrow an extra tank and wet suit."
"I haven't dived since . . . come to think of it, since you and me went to Catalina on Woody's Bertram twenty-eight. He still got the same boat?"
"Yeah, but he don't go out much no more."
"Guess you can still borrow it?"
"Anytime," Buster said. "We could go out for a couple days fishin if you want."
"Thanks, Buster, but diving doesn't interest me much anymore. Getting too old. Cold water makes my back ache sometimes."
"You think youre gettin old? Man, I'm forty-five almost! I even catch myself watchin the Phil Donahue show sometimes. Sittin there lookin at all those guests that jist missed the electric chair but got Phil convinced the naughtiest thing they ever did was paint happy faces on the hobbyhorse in nursery school. Far as I'm concerned, purgatory'd be an eternity of watchin the Phil Donahue show. Hell'd be watchin him interview movie stars."
"Lemme get my schedule together," Winnie said. "We'll do some fishing soon. I been out looking for a job, you know."
"You ever thought about being a P. I.? You could give whatzisname a call. Kilroy? You know, the P. I. up in Santa Ana? He runs a pretty respectable business."
"Me, a P. I.?"
"Ain't exactly police work, but sometimes you might get a decent case," Buster said.
"I was thinking about selling boats."
"You can sail 'em, but I can't see you sellin em," Buster said. "You're too straight. Too much of a straight-ahead guy."
"That's what she calls me!"
"Who?"
"Tess Binder. The woman I introduced you to the other night."
"Oh, yeah, the lady. That her name? Binder?"
"Yeah, she called me a straight-ahead guy too."
"When they flatter you, watch out." Buster got up and went to the bar while one of the young cops dropped some coins in the jukebox, looked at the selections and, seeing nothing he even recognized, punched three numbers at random. The first spooked Winnie. It was Frank Sinatra.
It seems we stood and talked like this before We looked at each other in the same way then
But I cant remember where or when.
Winnie was astonished. He yelled to Spoon, "Hey! How long's that song been on the jukebox?"
"Since about the last time Carlos Tuna bought somebody a drink," the saloonkeeper answered. "Back when Wayne Newton still sang like a girl."
"I never noticed before," Winnie mumbled.
Buster came back with a double vodka for Winnie, and said, "Guy sittin by Guppy at the bar? Tried to get me in a game a liar's poker. He's got a dollar bill with a knife crease in it. I says, 'Sure, pal, how 'bout we have a little side bet too? I'll bet two-oh that your dollar bill's got about six of a kind on it, probably aces.' Suddenly, he don't wanna play no more."
Winnie said, "I seen him around. Works a bar like a minesweeper. Stealing tips."
Then Buster said, "What's the name a that bitch ... sorry, that lady you were with? Binder?"
"Yeah, Tess Binder."
"They fished a guy outta the surf over by Little Corona last year. Name was Binder. Let's see, Charles? No. Chester?"
Winnie said, "Conrad? Conrad P. Binder?"
"Yeah, that's it," Buster said. "Conrad Binder. Suicide. Shot himself down there on the sand one night. Fishermen spotted him the next morning. Crabs had a luau."
"When was it?"
"Oh, August. Maybe September."
"I was drinking pretty heavy then," Winnie said. "Feeling real sorry for myself right after they retired me. Guess I missed it in the papers."
"Local guy. Stockbroker or something."
"Mortgage banker."
"Was that it? Anyways, he smoked himself down there on the sand and the tide moved him around. The Harbor Patrol got called first, but you know how they are. Offshore's supposed to be county, but up to the surf line is ours. I bet they got a gaff and pushed the body so there'd be no doubt who handles it. Can't figure why anybody'd wanna be on the Harbor Patrol. P. R. job. Triple A on-the-water, far as I'm concerned."
"Where'd he shoot himself?"
"Little Corona."
"I mean, head? Temple? Mouth?"
"Temple, I think. I didn't see the body. The other dicks were talkin about it. You know, one day a guy's a prominent retired banker, next day the crabs're eatin his face. Ends up in a room with rubber wallpaper, wearin a toe tag."
"Why'd he kill himself? Any note?"
Buster shrugged and said, "I don't really know much about the case. Ask Sammy Vogel. He handled it. I think the guy was sick. Cancer or some-thin. Maybe heart."
"They find the gun?"
Buster thought for a moment and said, "I think they did. Pretty sure. Why?"
"Why? 'Cause if they didn't, how can they be sure it was suicide? Jesus, Buster, you been working dope so long you're zombied out."
"They musta found the piece. There was no talk about a homicide. Guy went down on the beach one night, probably sang a medley a the Beach Boys' greatest hits, and busts a cap in his own skull."
"You're a real romantic, Buster," Winnie said, signaling to Spoon for refills.
"How come so much interest in this guy, Binder? You ain't been makin it with that lady in white, have ya?"
Winnie was suddenly stopped cold. There it was again! That maddening sensation of d6ja vu The song was playing in his mind! Playing at the wrong speed.
We smiled at each other in the same way then But I cant remember where or when.
"Talk about me being zombied out!" Buster said, finally.
"What?"
"You're zonin. How 'bout comin back to planet earth?"
"It's that goddamn song!" Winnie said, snapping out of it.
"What song?"
"The one jist finished on the jukebox."
"I didn't notice."
"I know I've seen that woman somewhere before. Maybe talked to her. Maybe ..."
"What woman?"
"Tess Binder. I've been ... seeing her in my mind. But . . . like, I've seen her before. Like, like ... in a dream"
Spoon was putting the drinks on the table. The saloonkeeper had an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lip, and his Mister Roberts naval officer's cap was perched on the back of his head. His aloha shirt was unbuttoned and his hairy belly was dripping sweat, on this, the afternoon of one of the most fiery Santa Anas in Southern California history.
"Hey, Spoon, Winnie's gettin spooky!" Buster said. "Rememberin people from another life. Better dial the Shirley MacLaine hotline."
"Don't remind me a Shirley MacLaine," the saloonkeeper
droned. "The night a couple years ago when her I-lived-other-lives story was on television, the customers wanted to watch it. There she is, old Shirley, dancin around with some young dude she was boffin. He kept say in he created himself. He was God. She says, I'm God!' He says, 'No, I'm God!' 'No,' she says, 7'ra God!' Me, I'm goddamn boredl I turned on a ballgame and that's what led to the fight where somebody tossed a bottle and busted out my big screen. Cost me nearly a thousand bucks for repair. Don't mention Shirley MacLaine in this joint!"
When Spoon finished droning and shuffled back behind the bar, Buster said, "Anyways, if you're all that interested in the Binder deal check with Vogel. There mighta been somethin questionable about it, but not to my knowledge. What's wrong? Your little friend Tess suspect foul play?"
"No, it's jist that, well ... he offs himself with a handgun. And somebody took a shot at us with a handgun."
"Somebody ... wait a minute! Where? When?"
While Winnie briefly described his desert holiday with Tess Binder, leaving out hammocks and kitchen tables, Tess was having a tall glass of iced tea on the beach at her club. The temperature on the sand had reached 100 degrees. Corky Peebles's power bob had lost its sizzle. Everything seemed to droop after twenty-four hours of relentless Santa Anas. Nature had unplugged the power in all the power bobs.
Corky was limp and lifeless on the sand, defanged and declawed. An F. F. H. millionaire showed up, but not a single feverishly hot momma could so much as budge. On a day like this you could actually see what was rumored: Each hot momma averaged three eye jobs and one and a half facelifts. The unlifted hands looked parchment dry, the flesh seeming to curl like old wallpaper. After her ice melted, Tess went home.
When Winnie was finished with his story, Buster said, "You been off the job too long. I think you're lookin for new employment. I mean, just 'cause your girlfriend's old man ices himself don't mean there's some connection with a gunshot in the desert. Which may not have been a gunshot? Which may have been an accident in the first place? Maybe you shouldn't look into a P. I. job, Win. You got too much imagination already."
"Yeah, maybe," Winnie said. "Jesus, it's hot! Maybe the Santa Ana winds're making me goofy."
"Must be it," Buster agreed. But then the big cop sipped at his drink, put it down and said, "On the other hand, where was this guy when the shot was fired? The one you say Binder gave the ranch to? His boyfriend?"
"Warner Stillwell? Supposedly went to the hospital for a few days. She don't know what's wrong with him."
"Maybe my brain's gettin scorched from these Santa Anas but..."
"Yeah?"
"But, with old man Binder and his daughter outta the way . . . Naw, that don't work out. You said Stillwell already has the property."
"Wait a minute!" Winnie said. "What if there's more property? Assets. Stock. Gold. I don't know, whatever rich people stash for a rainy day. What if there's a lotta assets Tess don't know about? Maybe assets he can't get till she dies. Make sense?"
"Ya got me," Buster shrugged. "I'm jist a dope cop. Former dope cop. By the way, I decided to put a move on the boss to get the environmental services job. Hazardous waste dumpin, chemical spills, midnight flushers in the bay. Trash cop. I was born for that job. Officer Trash. Anyways, I don't know about probates and wills and like that. Maybe you oughtta talk to Sammy Vogel if you really think there's somethin to all this. And if there is, maybe you better get another girlfriend . . . No, wait a minute. Don't get another girlfriend! If her dead old man's ex-boyfriend is tryin to snuff her, it must mean she's got somethin he wants. She might be rich and don't know it. How about arrangin another introduction for me, Winnie!"
"You took enough a them off me over the years," Winnie said, finishing his vodka. "This one's a keeper. If she ever calls me again."
"Yeah, well, she wasn't my type anyways. I can't stand broads wearin white. Means there's a black heart under there."
"She was wearing red the night you met her."
"Yeah, but she's the white linen type if ever I saw one," Buster said. "Am I right?"
"You do know women, Buster," Winnie agreed.
Buster Wiles looked up and said, "Uh oh," but couldn't get away in time. Tripoli Jones had just come in and spotted them at the corner table.
He wasn't Libyan, he'd gotten his nickname from the Marine Corps hymn. Tripoli Jones was a living embodiment of "Once a Marine always a Marine." He made Ollie North look like a draft dodger, everybody said. Two drinks and the fifty-eight-year-old telephone lineman was back at the Chosin Reservoir fighting his way up icy Korean slopes, firing a B. A. R. with one hand. When he was ten years younger, Tripoli Jones was more dangerous than New Year's traffic. They said he'd busted more skulls than Harley-Davidson, but he'd had a triple bypass that had slowed him down some. And he despised Vietnam vets.
Without being invited, Tripoli Jones sat next to Winnie and said, "Watcha doin, boys? Reliving Nam? Remembering all the good Thai stick you smoked?"
"Time to go," Buster said.
"That movie Platoon was about your war, all right," Tripoli Jones sneered. "The enemy is us. What bullshit! The enemy is the left-wing assholes that make that garbage. Always easy to tell the good G. I.'s from the bad ones in those pinko movies. The good ones all smoke pot, the bad ones re the rednecks drinking beer."
After his film analysis, Tripoli Jones signaled to Spoon for a beer.
"We don't really have to go back to the thirty-eighth parallel tonight," Winnie said. "Do we, Tripoli?"
"What'd us Korea vets get when we came home?" Tripoli Jones said, sneering to the ceiling this time. "They get psychiatrists and a slab a granite in Washington and Jane Fonda. What'd we get? Who gave a shit about the fifty-four thousand dead? But we don't sit around and whine about flashbacks and Agent Orange and posttraumatic stress disorder! Shit! We killed gooks and came home and worked for the telephone company, is what we did!"
"Yes, Tripoli," Buster sighed. "And we jist smoked dope and made babies in Cambodia and Vietnam and Thailand."
"And two in Burbank," Winnie said. "Don't forget those."
"The whiner's war, is what," Tripoli Jones said. Having gotten it off his chest, the loyal legionnaire yelled to Spoon, "Bring my comrades a drink!"
Then he got up and staggered over to the snooker table to see if there were any other veterans around.
"Can't stand a roamin drunk," Buster said. "If they stay put, you can avoid em."
"His wife's in here looking for him five nights a week," Winnie said. "Guy needs a beeper collar."
Spoon brought them the drinks from Tripoli Jones just as the phone rang. Spoon shuffled back to the bar, picked it up and said, "Yeah, he's here." Then to Winnie he yelled, "For you. Mister Farlowe."
Winnie had run out to his car and was starting the engine before he even realized he'd forgotten to say good-bye to Buster Wiles. Tess Binder had asked him to come to her house right away. She said she was frightened for her life.
The gate guard at Linda Isle looked at his clipboard and said, "Go right in." He didn't even give Winnie's battered VW ragtop a second look. Probably figured Winnie was a boat cleaner or maybe one of the car polishers who regularly visited the island.
Tess's house was one with an electric gate buzzer. Winnie figured such precautions were overkill. In all his years with NBPD he couldn't remember a significant burglary on Linda Isle except for a few inside jobs by employees or local kids. It just wasn't worth it for opportunist thieves to overcome kiosk security, or to raid by boat.
The gate buzzed and clicked open. Tess stood at the door waiting for him in an off-the-shoulder white jersey and a sarong skirt. She didn't look as scared as she'd sounded on the phone. She threw a suntanned, well-muscled arm around his neck and kissed him. A long one. A probing one. When she finally stepped back he said, "That don't feel like a scared kiss."
"It's a scared kiss and a grateful kiss. Come on Tess led him to the living room, to the sofa he well remembered. She offered him a double vodka without aski
ng. She'd stocked up on Polish vodka. She had a diet drink.
After he'd taken a few sips she said, "I hadn't planned on seeing you so soon. I wanted to give it a rest. I wanted to sort it out and see how I really feel about you, but something happened. I had to call."
"So tell me."
"When I got home, I did my mail and watered a few plants. I'd planned to skip dinner and was upstairs when the phone rang. I answered, but the caller hung up. I was about to get undressed and take a shower. It's so bloody hot I went to the French doors. You know, the ones beside the bed?"
"I'm not likely to forget."
That brought a little smile, then she continued: "I opened the doors and the Santa Ana wind just seemed to rush in. Took my breath away. Something made me look across the channel. I saw a man. He was in the parking lot by the restaurant, standing by an old blue car. Looking up at my window. Oh, he pretended to be just admiring the boats docked in the channel. I stepped back from the window but kept an eye on him. He walked around for a while, then he came back."
"Is that when you called me?"
"No, I waited. I had a cigarette. He was still out there, but sitting in the old blue car. Then he got out and walked over to the water and pretended to look at a big sailboat. He walked along the railing and I could see him the whole time except when he'd disappear behind one of the big powerboats. I don't have binoculars, but I think I know who it was."
"Who?"
"I think it was Hugh Starkey. They call him Hack. A guy who used to work for my dad and Warner. Hack took care of Daddy's boat for several years and often went out to El Refugio to do their cars or other odd jobs. The man finally got back in the old blue car and drove away. I think it was a Plymouth."
"Is he gay?"
She nodded. "He's about, oh, now he'd be about fifty years old, a big strong guy. Always had his hair permed, and dyed it black as he got older. I think it was Hack Starkey and he was trying to figure how to get in this house!"
"So whaddaya suppose he had on his mind?"
"I don't know, Win! Look, I have a confession. I've been thinking about that gunshot out on the trail."
"Yeah, so've I."
the Golden Orange (1990) Page 13
