Wambaugh, Joseph - Floaters

by Floaters (lit)

  FLOATERS

  by Joseph Wambaugh

  For the Gants: Dick, Janene, Loxie, and Holden

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As usual, terrific cop talk was arranged by the San Diego Police Department's storytelling impresario, Detective Tony Puente.

  SDPD officers included: Russ Bristol, Cheri Curley, Jorge Duran, Antoine Assis, Karl Ellison, Christine Gregg, Rick Hansen, Barbara Harrison, Renee Hill, Roy Huntington, Alicia Lampert, Scott Lee, Joe Lehr, Dave Michalek, Bill Montejano, Sharon Newberry, Anne O'Dell, Mike O'Neill, Mike Richardson, Rich Rundberg, Sandra Smullen, Lou Tamagni, and John Tefft.

  Wonderful conversation was also provided by officers of the Harbor Police: Jen Borgen, Kathy Fabregas, Gordon Galligan, Dave King, Gary Leeson, and Cynthia Markley.

  Team New Zealand anecdotes Were offered by grinder Craig Monk, as well as by Dave Pizzini of the Otahuhu Police and John Purkis of the Auckland Police, the team security force.

  Jerry La Dow of Team Dennis Conner was extremely helpful in unraveling the intricacies of America's Cup yacht racing.

  Tom and Jane Wilson of the San Diego Yacht Club related the fascinating history and captivating lore of the Cup itself.

  Other yachtsmen who furnished lively chat and insight were Fred Delaney, John Driscoll, Mike Driscoll, Larry Maio, and Bryan Worthington of the San Diego Yacht Club.

  Dr. Tom Cummings and John Urquhart also provided valuable facts.

  The author offers a thousand thanks to one and all. Could not have been a book without them.

  FLOATERS

  by Joseph Wambaugh

  PROLOGUE

  On December 7, exactly fifty three years after the day that lives in infamy, a 75-foot boat that cost nearly as much as some of those lost in the Pearl Harbor raid was photographed just after it fell from its cradle fifteen feet above the launching dock. The keel of the boat, like all of the closely guarded, supersecret keels of the America's Cup sailing yachts, was driven up through the deck like a torpedo. It was to have been the maiden launching of this boat, called France 2 by the French yachting syndicate.

  The team members were so beside themselves that one of the sailors actually started screaming, " Sacrc bleu! Sacre bleu !" causing a man who was snapping pictures to say to his partner, "I thought they only said that in Pink Panther movies."

  The irony of the boat being trashed on Pearl Harbor day wasn't lost on the partner, who said, "This time around nobody can blame it on the banzai boys. They're too busy with the Kiwis for sneak attacks."

  By that he meant that in a sport notorious for espionage, Team Nippon had its hands full with America's Cup racing and Cup politics, confronted as it was by two hot boats in the New Zealand syndicate as well as the Kiwis' accusations that the Japanese had violated the two-boat limit with their added JPN-30 hull.

  Moreover, Team Nippon had to worry about a formidable foe in oneAustralia, although the other Australia challenger didn't scare anybody, nor did the Spanish. Nor any longer did the French, now that they were gawking at Waterloo on Mission Bay.

  Suddenly, one of the Frenchmena starboard trimmer from Cherbourg who was even ruder than the othersspotted the man snapping the photos. This was the same Frog who threatened to phone the consulate every time he got stopped for ripping around Mission Bay like a Paris cabbie in one of those dopey little Citroens, fit only for delivery of car bombs by neurotic Arabs. His idea of defensive driving was tooting the horn, and Mission Bay cops referred to him as a marginally rehabilitated Algerian terrorist. They also called him "the creme de la crumbs."

  The Froggie scampered across the boatyard to the fence, yelling: "No! You shall not to fo-toe le keel!"

  The shutterbug's partner could only gape as the 25-ton yacht settled a few more inches, causing the keel to angle up. His comment was "Ooh-la-la. Like a giant hard-on yearning to be free."

  The photographer stopped snapping long enough to say, "Let's beat feet to the Photo-Mat. Gotta get these to the press before Carlos the Jackal here phones the mayor, the State Department, and Catherine Deneuve!"

  While the furious Frog stormed away, yammering to his team that their secret keel was being compromised, - two security guards belatedly tossed a tarp over it. And the crane operator who'd dropped the boat sat- in his crane, jaw agape, trying to decide whether to jump into Mission Bay and swim for Catalina or climb down and be torn limb from limb by three dozen raging Frenchies.

  Unlike the Kiwis and Aussies, the French were relentlessly arrogant with the cops, infuriating all five members of Mission Bay's San Diego Police Department Harbor Unit. The cops promised a case of beer to the first one who could bust a Frog for DUI or any other law violation on land or water. And that included French syndicate sponsors and their boyfriends, girlfriends, priests, or poodles.

  A short time later the photographer and his partner were still grinning like chum-lusting tiger sharks when they boarded their 22-foot Boston Whaler to begin their routine patrol of Mission Bay. But when they cruised past the compound of the French, who were wondering what to do with a $2 million mangled heap of fiber-reinforced composites, the amateur photographer turned on the patrol boat's gumball-blue light and hit them with a few siren yelps.

  The Froggies returned fire with rude French gestures as well as with American expressions all ending in "cock-suck-airs!" And the snapshooter turned to his partner, saying, "Sometimes a policeman's lot really is a happy one."

  His photograph headlined "French Follies," was soon seen in all parts of the planet where anyone gives a damn about a regatta that last time around had cost the losing Italian syndicate more than $100 million, triggering bankruptcy and suicide.

  Of course, the happy shutterbug couldn't have known that his picture of a dildo keel would soon inspire a plot leading to murder and ensnare human beings like dolphins in a gill net. For he was just a San Diego cop who drove a boat, not a true man of the sea. Not one who understands in his soul that the actions of people are like the tides that chase the moon but invariably come crashing back, with all manner of thrashing things roiling in their foamy wake.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BLAZE USED TO USE A HENNA RINSE ON HER PUBIC HAIR BEFORE she became an outcall masseuse. Of course, she was no more a real masseuse than she'd been a real dancer back in the days when she'd hire out at parties delivering striptease telegrams. Her massage customers didn't care about fiery pubes any more than telegram recipients had cared that she'd been a hopeless singer and dancer, for she had other attributes.

  Blaze Duvall was a lustrously muscled but relentlessly female aerobics devotee who diligently practiced every buns-of-steel exercise devised by instructors at the class she took five times a week. But with her thirtieth birthday approaching, Blaze imagined she saw disturbing things in the full-length mirror behind the entry door of her overpriced, one-bedroom Fashion Hills apartment: a tiny dollop of cellulite here, a minuscule sag there, where flesh used to be firm as plastic.

  With only two thousand dollars in her bank account and a net worth of no more than twenty thousandincluding her yellow Mustang convertible, her modestly priced furniture, and some decent jewelry given by bucks-up clients who appreciated her talentsBlaze's future was tenuous.

  Foremost among her talents was an ability to talk to men. Long before her shoulder-length mane became ferociously red at seventy-five dollars a pop, excluding tip, and long before her name was Blaze Duvall, she'd been able to do that very well. Because she'd always been a woman and every man she'd ever known was a child. Secondly, Blaze was a chameleon, able to adjust to any audience.

  Blaze examined her naked, body in the mirror. Brown pubic hair? Who cared, now that she was no longer stripping in lighted rooms, singing bawdy telegrams of
f-key?

  For this evening she chose a matching set of panties and bra, pink with scalloped bands of lace? Her client, "number eight." liked pink even though it wasn't her best color, not with flaming hair, wide set, shamrock-green eyes, and a dust of sandy freckles all over. But the customer was always right as long as the customer obeyed her rules.

  The doorbell. Blaze checked the time on her gold Rolex and put on her blue terry robe. She squinted through the peeper in gloomy twilight at a spindly blonde, who knew she was being observed.

  "Hi, Blaze!" said Dawn Coyote, whose true name was no more Dawn Coyote than hers was Blaze Duvall. The San Diego police and Dawn's mother also knew her as Jane Kelly.

  Dawn entered the apartment in her street costume: see through cobweb of a red blouse, shiny black leather skirt, red spike heels. She was way past lean now, bones knobbing out at the wrists, knees, and ankles. Mournful blue eyes peered out under ragged putty-colored bangs that might as well have been cut with pruning shears.

  Blaze was mad. "I told you don't come here when you're working! You're gonna bring cops here one of these days. How do you know Vice isn't following you?"

  Dawn rushed past her, wobbling on the spikes, heading straight for the tiny kitchen, saying, "They ain't, Blaze. They ain't."

  Dawn Coyote had lisped ever since she got her tongue pierced, finding it hard to wrap it around sibilants what with the zircon stud getting in the way. She tore open a bag of M&M's and popped a few in her mouth.

  Blaze watched Dawn pulling up the sleeves of the red polyester blouse, examining the tracks where she slammed her speedballs, a mixture of powdered cocaine and Mexican tar heroin.

  "Girl, don't you dare shoot up in my home!" Blaze said,

  "I ain't, Blaze!" Dawn lisped, "I'm just putting some vitamins on, is all. Works better than cream. But, like, I gotta put it on right after I shoot up."

  The young woman's bony hand trembled as she squeezed liquid from a plastic bottle and dabbed it on her inner forearm. Then she put the bottle away and started scratching. First her ass, then her underarms, then below her tiny tits. Then she backed against the fridge and scratched herself on the chrome door-pull.

  Disgusted, Blaze said, "You were better off tweaking. Your color's all leached out. Your beautiful skin is wrecked. You're gonna look forty when you're thirty if you don't get off those speedballs."

  "I'm getting off," Dawn promised, as she always did. "Soon as I dump Oliver."

  "I'm sick of warning you about that pimp. You better shine him now."

  "Kin you loan me a hundred, Blaze? I got me a two-hundred-dollar date Saturday night."

  "Why don't you get it from Oliver?"

  "He's all pissy these days. Won't give me nothin' hardly. I'm gonna go to L.A., see my sister. Might jist stay there." Then she paused and said, "Got any gum?"

  Blaze opened the kitchen cabinet and gave Dawn a pack of Juicy Fruit, saying, "Here, this flavor works best."

  "Ever try bubble gum?" Dawn asked, biting open the pack. "Some girls say bubble gum works best."

  "What're you gonna do with the baby?"

  The sallow, sniffling girl jammed two sticks in her mouth and began chewing painfully.

  "My sister'll help me with Billy. She wouldn't if he was Oliver's baby. She goes, 'Long as he ain't half nigger I'll take him.' Lucky for him he ain't."

  "Wait here." Blaze disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Dawn was her friend, but a junkie's a junkie.She retrieved a roll of bills from inside a knitted ski cap at the top of the closet and counted out five twenties. When she returned, she found Dawn unbuttoning the polyester blouse and displaying her bare torso before the full-length mirror.

  "Whadda ya think, Blaze? Oliver says the johns'll pay jist to look at this!"

  Dawn's little breasts were tattooed with giant spiders whose legs encircled her nipples. A gold alligator clip was clamped onto each nipple, joined by a gold chain that was hooked onto a second chain that disappeared down inside her skirt. Dawn unzipped her leather skirt, peeled it down, and showed Blaze where the second chain went. "Tit 'n clit chains. Right now they're only clamped on, but pretty soon I'm gonna get 'em pierced, like when I get used to the pain."

  "You dumb shit!" Blaze said. "Take that off!"

  "No, wait! It ain't gonna hurt no more once it's done right. Oliver says the Johns like to pull on the chain a little bit when they can't get movin' and groovin'. Then I get all, like, I'm in pain big time? And the John gets all feelin' bad? 'Cause me, I'm cryin'! So they give me an extra twenty at least! Oliver goes"

  Interrupting, Blaze said, "Remember that movie Pretty Woman ? The one you loved so much, about the happy young hooker? Well, they forgot to show this fucking part!"

  When Dawn's skirt snagged on the clit chain, she whimpered and rezipped it gingerly.

  "Tell me, Dawn," Blaze said, "did you nurse your baby when you were shooting up speedballs?"

  Shaking her head, "I wouldn't do that, Blaze. I bottle-fed him."

  "What kind of fool am I?" Blaze asked rhetorically, but went ahead and handed Dawn the twenties.

  Dawn tucked the money inside her panties, took out the gum pack, and shoved yet another stick in her mouth.

  When Blaze opened the door, Dawn said, "I don't know? Maybe bubble gum would do it better? I jist can't ever get the taste a condoms outta my mouth! Kin you?"

  Norman G. "Letch" Boggs was one of those middle-aged cops immune to sexual-harassment complaints. Letch was short, bald, lardy at the hips, with the muscle tone of a bruised banana. He smelled worse than a Beastie Boys concert because he consumed more garlic than Sicily. He loved it roasted, fried, sauteed, raw. He ate tomato-mayonnaise-and-raw-garlic sandwiches that made people want to puke just watching him. Convinced that garlic retarded aging and enhanced potency, Letch claimed he'd get garlic withdrawal if ever he missed a day. So he didn't.

  Letch's wet grinmore of a leer, which exposed oversized rodent teethhad a lecherous quality to it, hence his nickname. Moreover, he spent more time watching confiscated porn flicks than any vice cop in the history of the SDPD, so his sobriquet was earned. Though he'd made a pass at nearly every female who'd set foot on the fifth floor of the downtown police headquarters, no one believed that a woman would take him seriously. Still, some had; he was twice divorced.

  Letch could get away with amorous suggestions, lascivious whispers, even an occasional pat that'd make his target gasp and retreat the second she taught a whiff, but it never initiated a complaint, That's because sex with the leering debauchee was unthinkable. Letch was like a police dog that humped your leg.

  But he was an astoundingly effective vice cop with a memory like an IBM laptop. And Letch had the instincts of a ferret, which was even better for someone in his sordid line of work.

  He sat dozing in his unmarked vice car on a street in Fashion Hills, staked out on Dawn Coyote, who was visiting an unknown person in one of those nice little apartments overlooking Mission Valley. He wasn't directly concerned about a junkie hooker like Dawn Coyote, but he knew she worked for Oliver Mantleberry, a pimp long overdue for a serious fall. Having busted Dawn twice when she was a tweak monster on crystal meth, and hearing that she was now, heavy into speedballs, Letch figured she was ripe to roll over on her pimp. Especially if Letch could use her little cub as leverage.

  They were all alike, junkie whores, their whelps being their last link to a sense of self as human beings. Use their cubs as a twist and they'd drop a dime on their mothers. Or their pimps as the case might be.

  Letch Boggs was sleepy because he'd been up late for the third night in a row, peeing on a tree. All because this nutcase little Scottish terrier living next door to him was driving him crazy. The dog started barking the minute his mistress left for work at 8:00 A.M. That was just when the weary night-shift vice cop would be deepest into REM sleep, dreaming about Jacuzzis and pubescent maidens. Letch thought about slipping the bowser some barbiturates but was afraid it might croak. He didn't want an OD'd Scotti
e on his conscience.

  One morning he noticed that each time the buxom mistress took her Scottie for a stroll, the dog got all obsessive-compulsive about peeing on top of any other dog pee he encountered. He particularly favored a pepper tree between the neighbor's house and Letch's duplex apartment in his residential neighborhood on the north side of Ocean Beach.

  The Scottie's mistress was a buffed-out Aussie, and after returning from work in the late afternoon she usually wore a wraparound skirt over a leotard and tights while walking the Scottie. In the past, Letch had displayed his hamster leer and tried a "G'day" on her a few times, but she'd just given him a chilly nod. Once when she was only wearing the leotard and tights minus the skirt, he whistled "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," but she told him to bugger off.

  So Letch finally changed tack and confronted her at the curb in front of his duplex. He suggested that maybe her little dog was real unhappy, what with her gone to work six days a week, because the little hairball barked nonstop from 8:00 A.M. till he got hoarse. Letch suggested that she ought to consider giving the dog to the nice family across the street because the only time he'd shut up was when one of the kids came over to play with him and give him treats. He was sure they'd take the dog off her hands in a heartbeat, and the pooch'd have a much happier home.

  The Aussie told Letch she doubted that the terrier barked all that much because nobody else had ever complained. And, sure, the dog could come and go through the doggy door in the daytime, but he almost always preferred to stay inside and sit quietly on the back of the sofa by the window. "Gazing quietly and doglike at life on the street outside" was what she said.

  Letch told her he was a day sleeper and, trust him, the dog didn't sit quietly on sofa, and would she please just lock him in when she went to work because at least his yapping would be somewhat muffled.