the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "I've been on that boat," she said. "It's a Van Lent design from Holland. Steel built. The plumbing's gold plated. Even the screws're gold plated!"

  "A lotta that around here," Winnie said. "Gold plating."

  On such a hot windless day, without billowing spinnakers and flashing catamarans and wind surfers, Winnie wasn't as distracted as he would've been with sailboats to admire. He began thinking about murder.

  Neither of them had yet brought up today the subject of Conrad Binder, or the gunshot in the desert, or the man loitering across the channel from Linda Isle.

  She was the first. She said, "Have you thought about it, Win? Hack Starkey watching my house? That gunshot?"

  "I can't put it together," he said. "It jist doesn't shake itself down to anything logical. Why would Warner Stillwell or anyone associated with him-like this guy Starkey-why would he want to see you dead? He's already got everything."

  "Everything isn't that much to begin with, since they apparently managed to spend all Daddy's money during the years between his retirement and his death."

  "How much do you figure that was?"

  "I have no idea. Several million. Maybe more. I just don't know."

  "How much is the ranch actually worth?"

  She paused and said, "A house and a few acres? A bit more than a million. Land's not as valuable out there as it would be near Palm Desert or Rancho Mirage."

  "So by your standards, even if he didn't already have the land, that wouldn't be enough to kill over?"

  "That's very little money." She smiled. "By my standards."

  "But he's got the ranch. So what would he gain? See, it jist doesn't work out." Winnie paused for a moment and said, "You got a copy of the will?"

  "Of course," she said.

  "Can I have a look when we get back?"

  "You can have anything I've got," Tess Binder said.

  Tess said she wanted to go outside the jetty, which Winnie had planned on avoiding in that he'd have to cruise past Little Corona, the beach where Conrad Binder had ended his life. He stayed on the peninsula side of the main channel when he passed, staying as far as possible from Little Corona Del Mar Beach. He watched her with sidelong glances, but she never turned her head in that direction.

  When they got out of the breakwater, past the jetty, past the five-mile-per-hour speed limit, he throttled forward. The nose lifted and the boat planed. He sped down past Corona Del Mar, past Pelican Point, and Arch Rock, so covered with bird guano it looked snowcapped. The inky water changed to aquamarine along that stretch of coastline, and the beaches near Cameo Shores were dotted with people lying at the base of the sandstone cliffs, hoping for relief from the heat.

  The chop got a bit severe halfway to Laguna and they were getting bounced around, so Tess suggested they turn back. But before reaching the jetty once again, Winnie steered around the green bell buoy marking the harbor entrance. Five ocher-colored California sea lions lay on top of each other on the buoy: three females and two big bulls. The bell was clanging with each wave, wake and swell, the tapper only inches from the heads of the sea lions, who didn't seem to mind.

  "Back when I was a kid, one big guy, Quasimodo I called him, used to lay there all the time," Winnie said. "All day long with that bell clanging in his ears. Had to've gone deaf after a while. Big ugly old guy. Wonder what happened to old Quasimodo?"

  The sea lions ignored the boat, as they did all boats that didn't get close enough to deliberately frighten them. And they wisely ignored the trash that people tried to feed them.

  "My dad and me used to rent a little boat at the pavilion and fish out here. Those were the best days of my life. Those days fishing. Jist my dad and me."

  Winnie noticed that one of the sea lions had a fishing line wrapped around her neck, slicing deep into the flesh. He pointed to the animal.

  "What's wrong?"

  "She's got a line wrapped around her. She'll get infected, maybe die, if she doesn't get help. Assholes! They drown them in their gill nets! They hook them! They strangle them with their lines! Assholes/"

  Suddenly Winnie turned the boat toward the jetty and gave it throttle.

  "What're you doing?"

  "We gotta report this right away," Winnie said. "She needs help."

  Tess started to say something, but decided not to. Finally she smiled a little and said, "Aye, aye, skipper. Straight ahead. It's the only course you'd ever steer."

  By the time they got back to Linda Isle and Winnie had called the National Marine Fisheries Services, and buttoned up the neighbor's runabout, Tess said it was cocktail time. She poured drinks for herself and Winnie while he took a shower. When he came down there was a double vodka for him on the glass table in the patio, along with a sheaf of documents.

  "I'll just have a bath," Tess said, "while you look through all that stuff."

  The traffic was heavy on Pacific Coast Highway, an endless line of cars leaving the beach at day's end, heading inland, back to the more stifling heat. Winnie's glass sweated a puddle almost immediately, and he splashed a few drops onto the documents when he put the glass down. He wiped the page on his shirt and began to read the last will and testament of Conrad Philip Binder, Jr.

  The first two pages were legalese, and then came the interesting part. The estate of Conrad Binder had been left to his trust, with Warner Daniel Stillwell as executor. The most significant paragraph was offset:

  I hereby leave my ranch, commonly known as El Refugio, in the county of Riverside near La Quinta, to my friend and companion Warner Daniel Stillwell for his use as resident of said property during the remainder of his life. Upon his death the property shall be distributed to my daughter, Tess. If Tess does not survive Warner Stillwell, the property shall be distributed outright to him.

  Winnie had started on his second tub of vodka when Tess came down in a terry robe with a towel wrapped around her wet hair. "Boring reading, isn't it?" she said. "Not all that boring."

  "Why do you say that?" She sat down with her drink and looked disgustedly at her ghetto view: Pacific Coast Highway and the riverboat restaurant, probably jammed to the gunwales with tourists.

  "You never told me you were going to get the ranch eventually." "I thought I did." "You didn't."

  "Well, I get it after Warner's gone. Believe me, I could be an old lady by then. He's got Ronald Reagan genes."

  "Are you aware Warner Stillwell gets the property if you die?"

  "Of course I'm aware of it. But he already has the property."

  "Yeah, but he can't dispose of it. He can't sell it.

  He can't eat it. He can't blow it up. He can only use it. As a residence."

  "So what? That's all he wants it for. That's his home. Aside from a quite humble bungalow in Laguna Beach, that's all he's got."

  "Maybe he's sick a living out there in his desert paradise. Maybe he's lonely for . . . Oh, for boys, let's say."

  "There're lots and lots of boys in Palm Springs."

  "Maybe he likes the Laguna boys better, I don't know. The point is, he might be tired a living out in the desert and he's only got a handful a years left and he wants to live them in Laguna. Or where did you say they rented those villas?"

  "The south of France, near Nice. And Portofino, in Italy."

  "Yeah, so the only way he could sell that property is if he outlives you."

  Tess got up and started pacing nervously. She put her drink down and sat again. "Winnie, you can't turn this into a murder conspiracy! El Refugio9s not worth that much."

  "Three acres? A house like that? Maybe you're wrong. Maybe it's worth more than you think?"

  "People don't murder other people for that kind of money!"

  Winnie looked at Tess for irony, but saw none. He couldn't even address that statement. Rich people!

  Winnie said, "Tess, I've known people who'd kill you for .. ."

  "But not people like Warner Stillwell."

  "People like you, you mean. And your dad, and all the other folks you grew up
with."

  "I know it sounds terrible to you but that is what I mean. That's just not a lot of money!"

  "Who's this lawyer Martin Scroggins?"

  "Daddy's lawyer. And now Warner's. And mine if I need him. His firm's been in business since my grandfather's day. A very respectable Los Angeles firm, with an office here in Newport."

  "I'd like you to talk to Mister Scroggins."

  "About what?"

  "This will."

  "Do you want me to ask him if the selling price of a small ranch is enough for me to fear for my life?"

  "I wanna help you, Tess."

  "I'm sorry," she said, and patted his hand. "I don't mean to be flip, it's just that I'm trying to pretend I'm not scared. That man watching my house ... I don't know. It's got me unnerved!"

  "I can't stay here guarding this place forever."

  "Why not?"

  That one stopped him. He thought he'd see that mischievous grin of hers, but all he saw was a pair of gray eyes. Like pebbles on the beach, washed clean by surging tides.

  "I would like you to talk to Scroggins."

  "Okay, I will. Tell me what to ask."

  "I want you to be absolutely sure there're no stocks, bank accounts or other real property that your dad owned."

  "But a lawyer would have to tell me about that. He would've told me about that."

  "Can you go see him?"

  "Let's both go tomorrow."

  "A phone call'll do. Lawyers turn on the meter the second you make an appointment."

  "They do the same thing with phone calls, believe me."

  Winnie bent forward then, testing his back gingerly. "Let's go inside," he said. "I gotta stretch out flat for a while. My back's got more kinks than a lawyer's conscience."

  While Winnie lay supine on the floor of Tess's living room watching the six-thirty world news on TV, Buster Wiles made a run to Spoon's Landing looking for Winnie Farlowe. Buster found the zoo howling as usual, and the zookeeper perched on a stool behind the long bar. Spoon's voice droned endlessly about the twenty bucks he'd bet that the Edmonton Oilers couldn't shut out the Great Gretzky even once during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

  The rest of the bar conversation centered on the 4.6 earthquake that had struck Newport Beach at 1:07 p. M. that afternoon. Not a big quake, but the two jolts felt powerful; the epicenter was right on the Newport-Inglewood fault. The outrigger hanging from Spoon's ceiling had to be rewired to the termite-infested ceiling timbers, and Spoon had lost a dozen glasses and a picture frame that held one of the last-known photos of Al Jolson, the family's favorite singer when Spoon was growing up. Spoon always said that he hoped Jolson's ex-wife, Ruby Keeler-who often came to The Golden Orange during the summer-wouldn't write an expose of Al Jolson just because there was a natural title in it: Mammy Dearest.

  Of course, Buster hadn't felt the earthquake, in that he was too busy out on the street being attacked by canaries and lovebirds. He wondered now if maybe the earthquake had made him less surefooted while he was chasing the Asian thief. Maybe he'd actually gotten dumped by Mother Nature, not by Cockatoo Clyde.

  Buster explained his battered condition by telling the denizens of Spoon's Landing all about his day's misery, but leaving out the part about Betsy, refusing even to think about that cassette. The big cop was so despondent he ordered one of Spoon's "pizzas," prepared and frozen every Thursday by the saloonkeeper himself when he got his delivery of cheese and pepperoni from a guy in Costa Mesa, and a load of anchovies from one of the crew who manned the fishing boats that do the full and half-day runs out of Newport Harbor.

  Bilge O'Toole, who'd closed his live-bait shop early that day, heard Buster place the order. And when Spoon was out of earshot, he said to the cop, "When was the last time you ate one a Spoon's pizzas, Buster?"

  "I don't remember," Buster said. "I musta been drunk if I did it."

  "They're tougher'n fiberglass, but they don't smell as good," Bilge informed him.

  Tripoli Jones, sitting on the other side of Buster, concurred. "The anchovies must come from Alaska. Nothin that didn't die in an oil spill could taste like that. Put a dozen of 'em in a juicer, you could pour it in your crankcase."

  "I don't care what it tastes like," Buster mumbled. "I ain't that hungry anyways after the day I put in."

  "So save it for the beach," Bilge suggested. "Use it for a boogie board. Where were you when the earthquake hit?"

  Tripoli Jones said, "I was up on a pole by city hall gettin ready to check a line when the pole started to cha-cha. I did a lumberjack slide. My hands got so shaky I coulda threaded a sewin machine if it was movin. I had to come straight here for a drink!"

  Spoon logged that as the most novel drinking excuse of the year so far: An earthquake made me do it.

  "I started praying," Carlos Tuna said. "Regis got tossed off the kitchen table and pinballed out onto the porch. I started saying Hail Marys. I thought it was the big one!"

  Spoon moved his slimy cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other, and said: "A day to go down in Newport Beach history. A town where every thirty feet there's a bar or a bank, with more masseuses than the Ottoman empire. Fifteen square miles a greed and white-collar crime. And people finally pray because of a little four-point-sixer!

  "Well, in Lubbock, Texas, two hundred forty-seven people saw the Virgin Mary this month!" Carlos said. "Weird stuff's going on. I think the end is near."

  "If the end is near, I wanna live a little before I go," Buster said to his beer glass. "Gimme a double shot a Wild Turkey, Spoon."

  "Careful, Buster," Bilge warned. "You'll be gettin those three a. M. visitors like your pal Winnie. Like the ones Carlos gets, and Guppy. Me, I only get 'em on Tuesdays, Thursdays and sometimes on Monday. They don't come on weekends."

  "Nobody gets in my place at three a. M.," Buster said, " 'less they can do it with a gut full a hollow-points."

  "The ones Bilge's talkin about ain't scared a guns," Carlos informed Buster. "He's talking about life The old lady you still love? The one you still hate? The kids that never call you even on Christmas? The boss that spends his Sunday multiplying loaves and fishes but comes to work on Monday like The Nightmare on Elm Street?"

  "That's what my three o'clock dreadlies look like, come to think of it," Tripoli Jones said. "But they're wimps and pussies compared to the real monster you face at three o'clock in the morning. Your youth. The youth that was me. The me I lost!"

  Buster Wiles was having a major epiphany. He said, "I'm almost forty-five already. Forty-five! I can't believe it. Where's my youth?"

  "You got some good years left, Buster," Carlos said. "But not as many as you think. It's gonna all start to go soon. Them big muscles a yours? They're gonna fall like ethics in Washington. Better take charge a your life now, if you can."

  "You get our age," Guppy said, "your life'11 be more outta control than Central Park."

  "And then your blood pressure starts to take off," said Tripoli Jones. "And it's harder to bring down than Fidel Castro."

  "One day you look at yourself," said Carlos. "You say to yourself, people know me for miles around. But that's all I got!"

  "Shit, they don't know you for blocks around, even," Bilge O'Toole said, getting predictably surly, turning on his nemesis, Carlos Tuna.

  Becoming more surly yet-and that was as predictable as beach litter-was Tripoli Jones, who said, "The fuckin guy two stools away don't know you and you been drinkin here for fifteen years!"

  Buster Wiles left the fiberglass pizza on the bar, finished his drink, and decided to get out now that the geezers might be drunk enough to start a fight.

  For the rest of the evening he was determined to enjoy what was left of his youth. He was going to take better care of himself and pump iron two hours every other day and cut the booze down to almost nothing. In effect, Buster Wiles was making that career decision to take on a job that would change his life.

  Chapter 14 _ Zeros

  By the weekend, the heat wave was
breaking, at least in The Golden Orange. Los Angeles was still uncomfortable and the desert was a furnace, but the coastal communities had begun to settle down to more normal temperatures. Winnie had made only two brief trips to his apartment during that entire weekend. Sometimes it would seem as though Tess had forgotten about the man who'd been watching her house, but when Winnie would suggest that he go home so she could tend to ordinary business, she'd look frightened and beg him to stay.

  "I need to be baby-sat," she said, and yet when he'd look for fear in her eyes he'd see only gray pebbles.

  When she'd wrap those strong arms around his neck and work him over with her muscular tongue, Winnie didn't look for anything.

  On Monday morning they got up early to keep a hastily arranged appointment with Martin Scroggins, attorney-at-law. By mutual agreement they had a breakfast meeting at the yacht club, the one formerly commodored by Conrad P. Binder, Senior, where Scroggins himself had been a member for more than forty-five years.

  "Seems strange to come in the front door," Tess said to Winnie as they walked through the corridor. "I used to always arrive by boat when I was a kid. They put up with a lot of nonsense from me and my chums in those days."

  The club was done in blue and white fifties nautical, like most of the older yacht clubs, with racing trophies and a sailboat model on display, and the corridors lined with pictures, dating back several generations, of commodores in blazers and brass buttons and yachtsman caps.

  Tess paused before a portrait of a handsome sunburnt commodore with a long straight nose and round glasses and a stern expression.

  "My grandfather," she said. "I think Daddy was disappointed that he never became a commodore too. That's probably why he seldom came here during the last ten years of his life." Then she added, "Of course, he couldn't see that he never had a chance of being commodore after he ... after Mother died and he took on Warner as his companion.

  "Did he have a blind spot about Warner?"

  "In most ways," Tess said. "Like many men of his generation with a . . . confused sexual identity, Daddy thought other people wouldn't guess. He could be very naive, my father."