Wambaugh, Joseph - Floaters

by Floaters (lit)

  Of course, most of those tweak monsters chose to bring along their old ladies and three or four kids they may or may not have fathered, as well as the pit bull that guarded their crystal meth on and off the water. And you could bet they'd have a broken-down pile of smoke-belching iron with two flat tires left illegally parked near the launching ramp. So when the cops would eventually have to come to a lifeguard's rescue, they'd inherit a boatload of seagoing melanoma, and they'd end up dealing with the whole shebang, dog included.

  Cops referred to lifeguards as rad dudes who'd turned a summer job into a career. Whenever the police boat cruised by the red lifeguard boat anchored by the south jetty, the cops could expect to find a lifeguard kicking back and staring blissfully out to sea, uttering things like: "Land can be totally gnarled, but out there"a wave of the hand"out there, dude! It's cosmically metaphysical!"

  That would chase away the police patrol every time, leaving the lifeguard to gaze out metaphysically, waiting for the green flash that sometimes appeared when the sun dropped below the horizon.

  That's how the cops wanted the lifeguards: gazing out to sea, not rampaging around Quivira Basin unnecessarily pissing off some tattooed biker on a rented Jet Ski. Or, worse yet, fronting-off the Asian gangbangers who hung out at South Cove, mad-dogging any rival gang that infringed on their turf. The cops called that part of Vacation Isle "Laos Beach."

  Every cop could relate an incident of pulling lifeguard rat out of the fire when the water cowboys were out doing Clint Eastwood aqua-style. The lifeguards longed to carry guns, but if they ever got that kind of police power, the cops wanted body armor. Better to risk drowning in a flak jacket than to get accidentally blown away by an aging surfer who'd no doubt look at the dead cop he'd just ventilated and say, "Sorry, dude. That was totally uncool of me."

  Or, as the Harbor Patrol sergeant-in-charge put it: "Lifeguards should spend their lives facing west toward the ocean. Not east toward the parking lots."

  That, Saturday- morning, April Fools' Day, one of the lifeguards was impressing the bejesus out of a ride-along female citizen by whipping his boat into 180s on Fiesta Bay west of a tiny patch called Government Island, which housed the Lindbergh Field airport beacon. Of course, the lifeguard boats were not designed to do 180s, and ride-along citizens were not designed to stand perfectly balanced on the whitecapped waters of Mission Bay, so when the Harbor Unit cop who'd photographed the secret French keel pulled the half-drowned ride-along from the foamy chop, he said to her, "That's why we call the lifeguard boat The Ejaculator ."

  On warm afternoons there was a huge number of pleasure craft in the 4,600-acre aquatic park, including "personal watercraft" such as Jet Skis, Wet Bikes, Dynafoils, Wave-Runners, and Wave-Jammers. Most of the park, 2,500 acres in fact, was under Water to a maximum depth of twenty feet. There were usually a hundred or so motor homes illegally parked around the bay, and because the parking lots are closed from 2:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M., the motor homes had to move out during those hours, a small inconvenience compared to the free use of bayfront property, manicured lawns, and nice public bathrooms if you didn't mind sharing them with the occasional rat-fucking transient

  That afternoon the cops happened to cruise past the Aussie compound when AUS-31 was returning from a practice run on the ocean. The Aussies were down to one boat and stood little chance against the coldly efficient Kiwis. Three weeks earlier, during a race against New Zealand, oneAustralia had lost one of its two sloops, the first such sinking in the entire history of America's Cup racing. The boat developed cracks on, both sides of the hull aft of the mast, then jackknifed and sank in less than two minutes.

  When the ocean poured into the sloop, a crewman turned incredulously to another and said, "Big fella, are we sinking?" He answered his own silly question by jumping overboard, along with everyone else. The "sewer man" below decks who tended the sails was lucky to escape with his life.

  The Aussies waved a g'day at the police patrol boat, and one of the Aussie sailors, a massive grinder from Perth, yelled, "Buy you a Foster's later!"

  The cops gave him a thumbs-up. They liked the gregarious, hard-drinking Aussies as much as they disliked the demanding French, who had recently squabbled with them over cars parking near their compound, where they'd set up their own little restaurant to avoid eating the disgusting local fare.

  "Most necessary zat we park here," the Frog informed the cops. "Please to move ze toureests from ze stseet!"

  The cops told the Frenchman that the tourists were citizens of the country, not guests who were going home soon and therefore wouldn't have to cope with people who annoyed and vexed them, people who bathed every day. Then the cops reminded the Frenchman that when it came to illegal parking they were world-class, parking their Citrons on lawns, sidewalks, and driveways. Picnickers couldn't leave an egg-salad sandwich unattended without a funny French car backing over it.

  After the Frog looked at the cops' name tags, he realized that these were the same two who had demeaned the French before the world by photographing their keel. He threw up his hands in disgust and stormed off.

  The photographer's name tag said FORTNEY. His partners said LEEDS. Each had been with the Harbor Unit for more than five years and neither wanted to work anywhere else, even though the unit was constantly threatened by budget cuts that might do away with the patrol altogether. In which case they'd have to return to regular dry-land patrol or, if they were lucky, to a plainclothes job somewhere. Fortney had twenty years in the police department and Leeds had nine.

  Their patrol-boat radio was on the Northern Division VHF police frequency, which they were supposed to monitor, but they usually got sick of listening to it and turned it off. All that scurrying around by landlocked cops who were slaves to radios? Not for them. They preferred to serve out their police careers in "Club Harbor Unit," working the four-ten plan: four ten-hour days, three days off.

  The water cops couldn't get weekends off like regular patrol officers, especially not in summer when pleasure craft swarmed Mission Bay shore to shore, but there were other compensations. One was that they had a day job, 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. They didn't work at night because there was no boat traffic at night. At dusk, even in the open-speed area of Fiesta Bay, boaters had to slow down to five miles an hour, the same speed limit as in the channels and smaller passages all over the water park.

  The water cops thought their uniform alone was a plus. Instead of the regular tan SDPD wool blend, the Harbor Unit got to wear comfortable cotton khaki with an embroidered badge that wouldn't rust in the salt spray. And nylon gun belts with a quick-detacher in case they fell overboard. And blue baseball caps, with blue jackets that doubled as flotation devices. They could even wear shorts, weather permitting. Nylon gun belts were issued after it was discovered that in just a few months on the bay, a leather Sam Browne, would come to resemble an elephant's ass.

  So far, Leeds hadn't come up with an April Fool's Day joke to play on his boss. Two years earlier he'd gone to the trouble of capturing a ground squirrel and putting it in the bottom drawer of the sergeant's desk. Recapturing it after it scared the crap out of the guy had nearly destroyed the entire office.

  These days Leeds was preoccupied with politics rather than practical jokes. A hobnailed Republican, he'd dedicated himself to purging the nation of President Clinton, whom he called the dude with the world's worst taste in babes. Anything could bring on a political diatribe. When they cruised past the Youth Camp area on Fiesta Island and a boozy bunch of teenagers playing volleyball on the beach flipped them off, Leeds said, "I wanna retire to a place where everyone waves at cops with all their fingers. It's still not too late to turn the country around if the Republicans get the White House."

  "Here we go again." Fortney sighed.

  Leeds said, "Okay, okay," meaning he wouldn't get started on politics that irritated Fortney, a self-styled Libertarian who believed that all politicians were gasbags and that people who belonged to tongs and tribes were better led. />
  To get Leeds off the subject Fortney pointed to an up to-the-minute yupster standing on the bow of a 31-foot Chaparral with twin- screws and a radar arch. The guy wore one of those banded-collar shirts with trendy sleeves down past his elbows, brand-new chambray shorts, and sockless Top-Siders. He was topped off by a Greg Norman golf hat, and lazily swung a five iron while his bikini clad girlfriend drove the boat. He'd stop each swing at the top and pose, asking her if his club had passed horizontal.

  "He swings like one of Jerry's kids," Fortney said. "Get him a telethon. Tonight he'll be in the cabin with palms up staring at a crystal pyramid and listening to Yanni. I've seen chimps better dressed on the David Letterman show."

  Leeds said, "You're just jealous of his boat. And his clothes, and especially his girlfriend."

  "Well, no shit," said Fortney. "How observant you are."

  "Trouble with you is, you're a very archaic person for someone who ain't that old," Leeds said, checking out the babe, who smiled at him.

  Fortney said, "In August I'm forty-five. Then I'm old."

  "You been old for years," Leeds said. "Give the modern world a chance. You probably didn't vote Republican in the last election because our senatorial candidate's wife was a New Age preacher. Am I right?"

  Fortney replied, "Okay, name the most nonsensical things in the modern world if it isn't New Age music, decaf coffee, booze-free beer, and Ross Perot."

  "You didn't vote for our candidate, did ya?" Leeds persisted. "Even though lots of political leaders had crack-pot spouses. People like Abe Lincoln, Ferdinand Marcos, Nelson Mandela, Hillary Clinton."

  "There you go again," Fortney said. "I happen to think Willie's main squeeze is sexy. If I ever take a third wife I'd like somebody much like Hillary Clinton, only warm-blooded."

  "What was wrong with that babe down at the bar the other night?" Leeds wanted to know. "The cuppie with the black hair and slightly gray roots? She doesn't have Hillary's chunky loins, but what the hell."

  "What's a cuppie?"

  "That's what they call the America's Cup groupies," Leeds said. "Cuppies."

  "Nothing's wrong with her except she's older than the regatta."

  "She told me she's thirty-eight."

  "Sure," Fortney said. "If you ever pull off her panty girdle, just count the rings and report back if she's thirty-eight."

  Leeds eyed a leggy babe sprawled on the seat of a 22-foot ski boat. Her boyfriend tried to throttle back to the speed limit as soon as he spotted the cops. "I won't be pulling off panty girdles," he said. "My marriage is as sacred to me as Gramma's underpants."

  Fortney didn't reply. He knew that his handsome young partner spent at least two nights a week at the little gin mill on Quivira Way, feasting on Aussie leftovers whenever the professional sailors weren't around to handle roving cuppies.

  "Look at this," Fortney said suddenly, turning the Boston Whaler toward a rented Bayliner that had run aground at Crown Point.

  There were six black gangbangers on the grounded powerboat, all in colors. Each one wore an oversized tank top or sweatshirt and Jams baggy enough to hold his ass and a case of Colt 45 malt liquor. Two of the bangers had shaved heads, two others wore knit caps; all wore black high-top sneakers, half unlaced. They were trying to look bad, but that's pretty hard to do when you're sitting dead in the water and a beach full of white teenagers is hooting and hollering.

  The first thing Fortney said when he rafted up to the Bayliner was "Okay, gentlemen, we're here to help, but first-thing we do is, we put on these."

  Leeds tossed six dumb-looking orange life jackets to the bangers, who said things like "Shee-it, we gotta wear these funky things? We rather drown, man!"

  "Gotta be nice .and safe when we're doing a heroic rescue," Leeds told them.

  The bangers couldn't stop glaring at the teenagers on the beach, who were dissing them louder than ever, and when, the cops were finally motoring the jacketed bangers back to the boat rental, Fortney got the bad-eye from the most sullen one, who had a high-top haircut with nubs on top.

  So Fortney said, "I know how it is, dude. Awful hard to style with those goofy fucking jackets,on. Kinda makes you look like the plastic cones they use for road-work."

  Late that Saturday afternoon Serenity Jones received a call on her cell phone while she soaked her bulk in the bathtub, devouring chocolate-chip cookies and the National Enquirer .

  She picked up the call on the third ring as usual and was surprised to hear the familiar voice of number sixty-three.

  "Please tell our redhead to change the location tonight," he told her. "Ask her to meet me at eight o'clock. Corner of Rosccrans and Shelter Island Drive in Point Loma. I'll be parked near the intersection."

  "Fab, darling," Serenity said. "I'll see she gets the message. Anything else?"

  "No," he said, "nothing else."

  Blaze Duvall was also surprised to hear that sixty-three was changing the location. He'd never done that before. He was very anal, sixty-three was, rigid and predictable. Once he'd told her that he seldom wore a necktie that he hadn't bought from the same mail-order catalog. He said that some of the ties cost a hundred dollars, but were worth it because they were "utterly reliable." Blaze had wondered at the time what a necktie had to do to be utterly reliable, but she'd let it pass.

  Now she was wondering why he'd be meeting her in his car. Apparently, he'd be taking her somewhere. She hoped to hell he wasn't in the mood for a "real date." It happened sometimes with clients his age. Instead of a massage and a quick blowjob in a motel room, they'd get all sentimental about a candlelight dinner. Then Blaze would have to let them know gently that a massage took far less time than dinner, no matter how pleasant such an evening would be. And that she just didn't have the time, working as she did all day long as a licensed massage therapist in the proper office of a physician who specialized in pain control through massage and acupuncture.

  All of which was bullshit, Blaze had learned all she knew about massage from rented videos and a how-to manual she'd read in thirty minutes. But the clients wanted to believe she was legit, that the extra things she did was because they had "rapport." That such an obviously intelligent young woman recognized special needs that could never be satisfied by wives or regular girlfriends. Clients were always quick to reassure Blaze that hers was the first "massage of its kind" they'd ever received, and that they had only contacted her in the first place, because of, recommendations from "a very upscale massage salon" frequented by downtown businessmen.

  As if Blaze Duvall gave a shit. Actually, the downtown massage salon wasn't downtown but on El Cajon Boulevard in the vicinity of North Park, where street whores occupied ten blocks of the boulevard, day and night. The salon was operated by an old pal of Serenity Jones's, who referred very promising clients to Serenity when the client wanted "something special" that the salon didn't dare provide because of unannounced visits from vice cops.

  Blaze got dressed for the appointment the way number sixty-three preferred women to dress: tailored. That's what he'd told her the first time they'd met. She decided on a plaid linen jacket and long pants of linen and wool, all in neutral shades of beige. Under it she wore a long-sleeved creamy cotton blouse, and with it of course sensible pumps. That'd suit him.

  She knew without a doubt he'd be wearing a blue blazer, gray or tan trousers, and loafers. Since it was Saturday night he'd also be wearing a white or blue dress shirt and one of those hundred-dollar neckties that he called "old boy" ties.

  Blaze hoped this wasn't going to be one of those let's-have-a-real-date episodes. They could get so gooey. She had to think for a minute whether he'd know her yellow Mustang. He was always in the motel room when she arrived, and they'd never left together. Well, that was his problem. He was the one who had changed the location to a goddamn street corner.

  While driving to Point Loma at dusk, she thought that rather than a lengthy story as to why she couldn't go on a boring dinner date, she'd rather blow him right there in his c
ar. That's what Dawn would do. But the Dawn Coyotes of this world went to jail often and got hurt and even murdered doing their work in cars. Sometimes they got killed by tricks they'd done business with safely on other occasions. There were lots of unsolved prostitute murders in San Diego, like everywhere else.

  When Blaze arrived, she spotted him right away, sitting behind the wheel of a ten-year-old red Cadillac Seville, nervously fiddling with his old-boy necktie.

  He saw her and waved shyly.

  When she drove up beside his car, he mouthed the words "Follow me" and drove off, leading her out toward the naval base, toward a pricy part of Point Loma called La Playa, where she'd never been.

  He pulled to the curb on a quiet residential street just off Rosecrans and Blaze pulled in behind him. He leaned out the window and gestured for her to lock her car, so she got out carrying her beach duffel crammed with powder, oils, and other implements.

  "I'm taking you home, Blaze," he said, opening the door of the Cadillac. "I have something very important to discuss with you."

  "Okay," she said with her sunniest smile but feeling some apprehension.

  As the Cadillac snaked around the narrow streets, climbing ever higher toward the top of the point, he didn't say a word. This was unpredictable, but she felt that sixty-three was harmless, a very shy and polite older gentleman.

  It was reassuring for her to recall how, when they'd begun their relationship seven months earlier, she'd told him that it was better for both of them if he never used his name, just, a number when he phoned, one he'd remember.

  "Sixty-three," he'd replied instantly, not explaining the choice.

  She'd jotted it down without comment. But on one occasion when he was in the bathroom showering after his massage, she'd peeked in his wallet to learn his true name and address. In her business you never knew when such information might come in handy.

  She'd had to stifle a giggle upon reading his birthdate. Very predictable. He was sixty-three years old.