Wambaugh, Joseph - Floaters

by Floaters (lit)

  It was very peculiar, but he started thinking of his mother then. And his sister, but mostly his mother. He almost felt that if he opened his eyes he'd see her sitting where Blaze was sitting. Looking at him with her relentless disapproval.

  Then he heard Blaze's recorded voice say, "It's okay, Ambrose. I know I don't need a condom with you. We're bonded now. We're secret sharers. Would you like being bonded to me?"

  Ambrose Lutterworth opened his eyes and said, "Turn it off, Blaze."

  "It's not quite over yet."

  He said, "Turn it off."

  Blaze reached over and switched off the machine. Then she said, "I've made copies for the district attorney, your yacht club, the New Zealand syndicate, and the San Diego Union Tribune . I hope I never have to send them."

  "I see," Ambrose said quietly. "And now you want to sell them to me, is that it?"

  "Yes," she said. "For five thousand apiece. Along with the five thousand you owe me already."

  "You want twenty-five thousand," he said. "You want it all."

  "Not all, Ambrose," Blaze said. "Not all ." Only what you allowed for a caper that didn't come off. "My God, you have this house! What's it worth? Seven figures, right? Compared to me you're a rich man. I need that money, Ambrose. Something's happened and I need money real bad. I'm in serious trouble."

  "Were you in this trouble when you made that recording?" He spoke so quietly, she could hardly hear him.

  "I was just protecting myself," she said. "If Simon hadn't blown us out of the water, I wouldn't be doing this. I'm sorry."

  "And you came here absolutely certain that I'd give you the twenty-five thousand?"

  "It's up to you, Ambrose," she said. "I told you what I'll do if I have to. I hope you won't make me do it."

  "If I'm guilty of a criminal conspiracy, so are you," he said.

  She said, "I've already consulted my lawyer about it. Since our little arrangement never went anywhere, neither of us will be prosecuted. But it's all down there on the tape for your friends and associates to hear about. The plan, the money, the drugging of a Kiwi crane operator. All so you could keep your precious Cup. The notoriety won't hurt me. Hell, it might even get me on a talk show. Maybe a lonely old rich guy who likes massages might propose marriage. But what'll the notoriety do to you , Ambrose? Can you handle the disgrace?"

  "I always said that you're a very smart girl."

  "Look at it this way," Blaze said. "What if Simon had gone ahead and fucked things up like he probably would've done? Maybe got himself caught? Then we'd have to worry that it'd come back on us. If it did, we would be guilty of a felony and go to jail for it. Forget the America's Cup. It's over. It's worth twenty-five grand to avoid scandal and humiliation, isn't it?"

  Ambrose said nothing. He just pushed himself up again and, with his head bowed, shuffled into the bedroom. He couldn't stop thinking of her his mother . He opened the underwear drawer and took out the money. He put it in the pocket of his smoking jacket When he did that, he looked at the band of his satin sash. He couldn't take his eyes off that wine-red, sash, just as he couldn't stop thinking of his mother. She'd always implied that he was a failure for lack of fortitude. She'd always used words like backbone .

  When Ambrose came back into the living room, Blaze had already put the cassette player in her purse. Ambrose took the stack of bills from his pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table.

  She was very pale and didn't look at him, but she was looking at the money. All that money. All those fresh new bills. As fresh as the bullets in her gun.

  Ambrose walked around the sofa toward the front door as though to open it. He stood staring at the door. He could see his mother as clearly as he could see Blaze in the reflection of the frosted glass. He could see her milky-blue eyes and papery skin, loose and ill-fitting. She'd never come right out with, it, but she'd thought he was a coward .

  He reached down and quietly threw the dead bolt on the door, locking it. Blaze had her back to him, bending over the coffee table, trying to stuff the stack of bills into the small purse. Ambrose Lutterworth untied his sash and removed it.

  Blaze heard a rustle of silk behind her, Her first instinct did not involve the gun. She'd never carried a gun before. No, she grabbed for the purse and pulled it to her with both hands.

  Ambrose vaults over the back of the sofa and loops the sash down over her head to hep throat. He roars.

  She can hear him screaming one word as her body is jerked backward. They both tumble over the sofa and crash to the floor.

  The word he screams is; No! And not just to Blaze.

  Blaze also screams, or tries to. She drops the purse and reaches up, grabbing at the satin-piped cuffs of the smoking jacket. Then she claws at the sash, but it's drawn even tighter. She can't breathe.

  Blaze thinks: But he's just a harmless old man!

  She rolls and lunges and hits the back of the sofa. But still Ambrose Lutterworth holds on. And the sash grows tighter.

  She can't breathe.

  Then she thinks of the gun and gets her hand on it. But it slips down, down to the crotch of her jeans. Blaze rips at the button, then at the zipper. But the sash gets tighter.

  Breath! She needs breath!

  The ceiling turns to pink Jell-O. The lamp on the table crashes to the floor and pieces explode in pink shards of Jell-O. The walls are undulating Jell-O.

  Blaze gets the gun free, but she needs a breath. Just one. And can't get it.

  The gun sails from her hand. The gun is no longer a gun, it's a Frisbee. It sails away like a Frisbee in pink Jell-O .

  A whirl of shimmering color. The lamp rained down kaleidoscopic glass, as from the Episcopal church windows of his youth. Ambrose wasn't roaring anymore. He was panting, wheezing, whimpering. He was trapped inside a kaleidoscope of stained glass. Still, he pulled tighter on the garroting sash. He was not a coward after all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AMBROSE SAT FOR A LONG TIME IN THE WING BACK. THE SMOKING jacket was torn at one shoulder seam and was hanging open; the buttons were ripped from his pajama top. There were lacerations on the back of his right hand from Blaze's fingernails.

  The wine-dark satin sash was loosely coiled around her neck, no longer biting into her flesh. She lay in a fetal position.

  Ambrose hadn't looked at her since he'd sat down. He stared at his wineglass and for a moment thought about drinking it. It seemed an insane idea, drinking the wine. The thing that kept drawing his eyes was the nickel-plated revolver on the floor among the broken ceramic shards. Wherever his gaze roamed, it would always come back to that revolver.

  He expected his Omega gold chronograph to be broken, but it wasn't, showing the time as 1:45 A.M. In the past, whenever he'd look at that chronograph, he'd think of the Barcelona boat show, but this time he didn't. His treasured chronograph had turned into an ordinary wrist-watch.

  And his burgundy smoking jacket? Suddenly he needed to take it off. When they'd crashed to the floor, blood had gushed from her nose and his sleeve had become sticky, glistening with her blood. The bloodstain was similar to the color of the sash: wine-dark.

  He stood up and the smoking jacket fell from his body. He kicked it over by the broken lamp next to Blaze Duvall, whose lifeless body would soon begin the process of livor mortis: the obedience of blood to gravity's law.

  In the end it was not fear or hopenot remorse or atonementthat powered his decision. It was that Ambrose Willis Lutterworth, Jr., could not bear for the world, his little worldbut primarily the greater world of the America's Cupto know him as a base, contemptible murderer.

  He must not let that happen. He owed it to the Cup.

  Jesse Bledsoe, toll sergeant at the Coronado bridge administration building, was dozing. Who wouldn't at two-thirty in the morning? What was he supposed to do, sit up and stare at the dark grainy images on the monitors to see if any sea gulls were crapping on the guardrails? Or maybe run up there and stop jumpers if one was crazy enough to come out on a foggy n
ight like this when he could just drive up there in warm sunshine tomorrow and kill himself in comfort?

  Jesse Bledsoe never even glanced at the monitors when the old Cadillac sedan slowly made its way through the fog blanket and stopped at the top of the bridge.

  That was the first time that Ambrose Lutterworthwho'd lived in San Diego all his liferealized that video cameras had been installed at strategic locations near the suicide hotline numbers on the very crown of the Coronado bridge.

  The cry of a lost and lonely heron made Ambrose look up at the foggy night sky, where he spotted a camera mounted high on a stanchion, looking down at him. Then, fog bank or not, Ambrose mashed on the accelerator and drove dangerously fast over the bridge through the tollbooth. Then he proceeded to Orange Avenue, turned around, and got back on the bridge for a return to San Diego with the body of Blaze Duvall in the trunk.

  She was wrapped in an old blanket from his mother's bed, and her right ankle was tied to a concrete block with the satin sash that had strangled her. He didn't know why he'd used the sash. Perhaps an unconscious need to give them a clue? Tying her ankle to the concrete block with the sash was as senseless as the entire episode had been.

  The smoking jacket would end up in his trash can along with any peace of mind that should have been his at this stage of life. Ambrose Lutterworth was now certain that he'd kill himself in the near future. It only remained to decide when and how and to assure that it could never be linked to his sordid relationship with Blaze Duvall.

  When he was back on the freeway heading north, he thought of Mission Bay. Yes, she didn't have to be in San Diego harbor. Mission Bay was deep enough to hold her, at least long enough for nature to dispose of the dozens of clues he'd probably left. Like most people who commit only one crime in their lives, Ambrose Lutterworth believed the authorities had omnipotent detection skills.

  Thirty minutes later he was driving slowly through mist and darkness along Ingraham Street in Mission Bay. The fog had lifted somewhat and there was almost no traffic this early in the morning, but he was so distracted that he overshot the south bridge, a better and more remote drop site,

  When Ambrose was on the north bridge between Vacation Isle and Grown Point, he stopped the Cadillac and got out, shivering. He was wearing a windbreaker over his pajamas and was still in his bedroom slippers.

  Ambrose was walking around to the trunk when suddenly he heard an engine behind him. A vehicle had pulled out onto Ingraham from Vacation Road and was coming his way in the fog, moving very fast.

  Police! He knew it was the police. Who else would it be?

  He ran back to the driver's door but couldn't get it open. He realized he'd locked it by reflex when he got out. He couldn't find his keys and the vehicle was coming, closer!

  Then he found the keys. They were in his hand.

  Ambrose unlocked the door, leaped inside, and flooded the engine while pumping the accelerator in panic. Terror stabbed his belly like a hot dagger.

  He had the nickel-plated revolverBlaze's revolverbeside him. He picked it up with both hands. He hoped he had the courage to pull the trigger before the officers got out of their car. He raised it to his face.

  The car sped by too fast considering the weather conditions. It was a bread truck making an early delivery to the hotel.

  Ambrose sat for a moment with the gun in his quaking hands before putting it down on the car seat. He got back out of the car, but his legs were so weak that he was afraid they'd cave when he lifted her. When he opened the trunk, her blanket-wrapped body was illuminated by the compartment light.

  She was staring at him. He slammed the trunk shut. The blanket had come partially undone and she was staring at him.

  Ambrose started to sob and, with eyes closed, reached down and unlocked the trunk again. He raised it up and grabbed the blanket, rolling her onto her front, eyes down. Then he reached under her stomach and legs and lifted.

  His back was struck by a spasm and he almost cried out. She'd been so fit that her flesh was all muscle, and heavy. She seemed heavier than when he'd put her into the trunk.

  Wheezing, he lifted her and the block of concrete up over the pedestrian barrier. He dragged her to the metal guardrail, but dropped her, falling on his knees beside her body. Then he hauled himself up and, with all he had left, hoisted Blaze Duvalls corpse to the top of the railing. And shoved it over.

  But he forgot the concrete block tied to her ankle. It tried to follow her, clanging on the rail when she dropped, but the satin sash broke loose from her leg. The body splashed down into Fisherman's Channel, still half wrapped in the blanket, and the concrete block smashed down onto his slippered foot.

  Pain shot clear to his crotch. Moaning, Ambrose picked up the concrete block still fastened by the sash and limped to the car, then heaved it into the trunk.

  Through tears of pain and horror he began to drive home but found himself almost in La Jolla before realizing he was going the wrong way. He cried out in utter frustration.

  When Ambrose finally found his way home, he drove into the garage and sat in the darkness for several minutes. He got out of the car and hefted the gun again, but at last shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker. He tried to open the trunk to dispose of the concrete block and satin sash but couldn't.

  He was afraid of the satin sash. He was terrified to open the trunk. What if she was still in there staring at him? Not Blaze. She was down in the cold, dark waters of Mission Bay. No, not Blaze. She wasn't what he feared.

  When he'd opened the trunk of the Cadillac to take her out, it hadn't been Blaze staring at him. Those eyes hadn't been green. They were blue. They were the milky-blue, censorious eyes he'd known all his life!

  When Leeds tried to discover the origin of Fortney's hellish hangover, he was told to shut up and drive the boat.

  When Leeds tried gallows humor by suggesting they take the boat out onto the ocean and try to jump it in board-breaking surf, Fortney patted his nine-millimeter and said, "We jump, you die."

  "Wanna attempt some police work?" Leeds asked finally. "Down in the big harbor there's a lotta smugglers on Jet Skis with cocaine in their backpacks, Wanna check some Mission Bay backpacks?"

  Fortney merely said, "Can't you drive more steady?"

  "This ain't a freeway," Leeds grumbled. "Damn, you even smell boozy. Like a Dumpster diver. Eau de Thunderbird."

  No response. Fortney sat holding his aching head, sucking in sea air to drive away evil spirits. He was holding up his head because his neck didn't seem strong enough for the job.

  A 31-foot Sea Ray cruised past, the engine noise depositing a load of pain into Fortney's skull. Two guys on the boat were playing a Grateful Dead tape at a jaw-breaking decibel level. It sounded to Fortney like Jerry Garcia was strumming on a plate-glass window with a brick.

  After an interval his bored partner said, "You read about the Coast Guard catching those poachers with lobsters and scallops squirreled away in their diving tanks? We oughtta check dive tanks for lobsters and scallops."

  "Not today," Fortney croaked.

  A family of four putted by in a rented 16-foot Bayliner and a five-year-old boy waved exuberantly, yelling, "Hi, Officers!"

  "Hello, citizen," Leeds said with a little salute.

  Fortney looked up at him questioningly. "I've,decided to say 'Hello, citizen' to kids from now on," Leeds said. "You know, like Batman used to do on TV?"

  Fortney said, "I feel grotesque enough to play the Joker. What color am I? Rust-Oleum green?"

  "Maybe you oughtta quit drinking so much," Leeds said. "You might remember something we could share. I could get more communication outta Lonny, the bomb-squad robot."

  "If I quit drinking so much there'd be nothing worth sharing," Fortney said. "My life's that boring."

  The patrol boat was on the north side of Fiesta Bay just beyond Ski Island when Leeds, scanning with binoculars, saw some people standing on the north Ingraham Street bridge, looking down at the water.


  "Something's happening on the bridge," Leeds said. "Let's mosey."

  Fortney said, "I wonder, if I poured more coffee into my tormented body, would it hurt or help?"

  "Maybe it's a desperate jumper," Leeds said. "You ready for lifesaving?"

  "Very humorous," Fortney said, in that the bridge was only twenty-five feet higher than the tide.

  "You hear, about the jumper that dove off the Coronado bridge twice ?" Leeds asked. "Didn't die the the first time, so he had to try again a month later. Wore a weighted belt the second time and sunk like the Mexican peso."

  Fortney murmured, "I wouldn't wanna look for him at night in that dark water."

  "Every dive is a night dive in that muck," Leeds said.

  The people on the bridge spotted the approaching police boat and started waving and yelling.

  Leeds said, "Hang on!" and turned on the blue light, throttling forward while Fortney tried to keep from tossing his cookies.

  Beneath the bridge over Fisherman's Channel was a Filipino fisherman, standing on the bank as if he had a great white shark on the line and didn't know what to do with it.

  He had hooked something large, all right, but it wasn't Jaws. He'd snagged the jeans of a female floater partially wrapped in a blanket. She was half submerged, and her hair trailed like fiery seaweed.

  The Flip was terrified and jabbered something in Tagalog, but Fortney wouldn't have understood him if he'd held up Sesame Street flash cards. Fortney was gaping in horror at that ghostly trail of familiar flaming tresses.

  When they got next to her, Leeds grabbed the radio mike, but Fortney didn't have to turn her over. He knew who it was face down in that cold murky water.

  Ambrose was stunned when he opened his eyes and realized he'd actually slept. He still had the same thundering headache he'd had at daybreak when he'd gone to bed. That was after he'd taken a bath and disposed of his silk pajamas and the burgundy smoking jacket by slashing them to pieces and burying them in his trash container. They were just rags now, waiting for a pick-up.