Wambaugh, Joseph - Floaters

by Floaters (lit)

  He dreaded what he had to do. He was terrified of doing it, but he knew he had to pull himself together and go to the hotel on Shelter Island. On the bed beside him was Blaze Duvall's purse and its contents included her room key.

  Ambrose didn't dare put it off. For all he knew she might have told them that she was checking out today, so he'd have to search the room before the maid went in to clean. He assumed that checkout time was around noon, so he had to get it done now. He had to search for four cassette tapes worth five thousand dollars each,

  But what made him think they'd be in the room? They could easily be at her apartment in Mission Valley, the address on her driver's license. He was looking for an excuse not to go to that hotel.

  Ambrose sat up in bed and once again opened the leather wallet. It wasn't the kind he'd seen most women carry. His sister had always had a red leather wallet fat as a kidney, crammed with credit cards and photos. Blaze's contained only a driver's license, a Visa card, and ninety-seven dollars, with thirty-seven cents in the change purse. There was one photograph: a high school girl who bore a resemblance to Blaze. On the back of the photo was written: "To Mary Ellen. Love, Rosie."

  Going through the wallet the first time had left him enormously upset. Even now he had to wipe tears when he read her name on the license: Mary Ellen Singleton. He'd always guessed that Blaze Duvall was only a name for her massage clients, but he hadn't figured on her having such a nice name: Mary Ellen Singleton.

  Suddenly Ambrose Lutterworth started to sob.

  There'd been very little news coverage concerning the murder of Dawn Coyote, aka Jane Kelly, but Anne Zorn hadn't expected much. The location of the murder, a nice middle-class apartment building in Fashion Hills, should have warranted reporters, but as soon as the press found out that Dawn Coyote was a hookerand a street whore at thatthey lost interest. There were lots and lots of unsolved hooker murders. It went with the territory, everyone said. N.H.I. murders they were called: No Humans Involved. Who cared when another hooker got murdered?

  Letch Boggs cared. He'd been phoning so frequently, it made Anne think of her mother. Letch was full of suggestions about where Oliver Mantleberry might be hiding out, but none of them had paid off. At first Anne had thought the horny old vice cop was just trying to hit on her, but she came to understand how badly he wanted the pimp who'd murdered Dawn Coyote.

  Misplaced guilt. She'd seen it before. Letch Boggs probably felt that if he hadn't coerced her into making the report, she'd still be alive. He was right, of course, but Anne figured that Dawn Coyote wouldn't have lived long in any case. She'd have OD'd, or the pimp would have killed her for some other reason. Or, even more likely, a sexual psychopath would have murdered her. There were enough, of them out there, that's for sure.

  Anne had to admit that she felt a twinge for the old lecher. As a Catholic, even a lapsed Catholic, heavyweight guilt always touched her heart, so when Letch called five minutes after she got to the office Thursday morning, she didn't get annoyed at him.

  She just said, "We don't have any fresh ideas today, Letch. Except we're sending a criminalist back out there to make sure no blood evidence was missed. Just in case Oliver Mantleberry cut himself when he was carving on Dawn Coyote."

  "Did you request a rush on the DNA testing of the washcloth?"

  "Yes, Letch, yes," Anne said, rolling her eyes at Sal Maldonado. "But it takes time for genetic fingerprinting. Don't worry, that's Dawn's blood. We know it is."

  "A clincher would be if some of Oliver's blood was there. You oughtta have them check by the security gate."

  "We're going to take another look," Anne said; "but we'll still have a good case when the washcloth tests positive."

  "Lemme meet you there," Letch said. "I got eyes like a pelican. I'll find Oliver's blood if it's there."

  "Okay, Letch," Anne said, sighing. "The criminalist told me he'd get there about ten o'clock. Be there and you can watch, but stay out of his way, okay?"

  After she hung up, Anne said to Sal Maldonado, "It doesn't seem fair when Internal Affairs puts a cop on a polygraph. We're such a guilt-ridden breed it's too easy to make us blow a needle off the chart. Poor old Letch."

  Ambrose drove Blaze's car down the winding streets to Shelter Island but made a stop at the pharmacy to buy pancake makeup for his lacerated hand and some rubber gloves.

  After parking her car in the hotel lot, he wiped off the steering wheel and door handle and then entered the lobby; where guests were queuing for checkout. All through the regatta the little hotel had been well booked, and it was full of guests coming and going. Ambrose worried that someone from the yacht club might be in the dining room having breakfast.

  He put on his sunglasses and kept his chin lowered to his chest, using the staircase in order to avoid people in the elevator. He encountered an elderly couple in the second-floor corridor arguing about whether to visit Sea World or the zoo. Ambrose walked past them as though he knew where he was going.

  But he didn't. He discovered that Blaze's room was in the other direction, so he stopped and looked at his watch as though he'd forgotten something. Then he turned and proceeded past the battling couple until he found the room. He unlocked it and went inside.

  Wearing the rubber gloves, he began in the closet. She'd brought a lot of clothes for such a short visit, but why should he believe that her apartment was being fumigated? Why should he believe anything she'd said?

  Maybe there were no tapes! Maybe he was being a fool once again! Maybe He had to get ahold of himself. He had to assume she'd made copies. He had to begin a methodical search.

  After he finished running his hands over an item of clothing, he'd drop it on the floor by the bed. And when he was finished searching the closet, he searched the drawers.

  Nothing but women's things.

  He pulled the drawers out and looked under each one. In the movies people taped things to the bottoms of drawers. Then he tore the bed apart and looked under the mattress. He checked the bathroom, even behind the toilet and under the sink.

  Nothing.

  Ambrose was astonished at the jumble he'd made and started to put things back. But then he thought, No, better to leave it. Better if they find the room ransacked and a guest missing. They'd think she met a man who robbed and killed her, perhaps a man she'd picked up and taken to her room. Yes, better this way.

  Ambrose left the room. As he was walking down the hall, he saw a Mexican housekeeper pushing a cleaning cart in his direction. She didn't look at him, but he rushed past her. He got to the staircase and was struck with panic.

  The doorknob! He hadn't put on the gloves until he got inside. Would his fingerprints be on the doorknob? Or would the housekeeper destroy the fingerprints when she opened the door? He couldn't risk it.

  And then he couldn't remember if he'd wiped the steering wheel of the car. His mind wasn't working properly. He couldn't remember what he'd done twenty minutes ago!

  It was hard not to run back down the hall, straight to the door. He walked. He purposely dropped his key when he was abreast of the door, and when he stooped to pick it up, he pulled a silk handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the doorknob.

  When he turned around, he was terrified that the woman would challenge him. That she'd look at him suspiciously and ask if it was his room. That she would demand to see his key.

  Ambrose was afraid to make eye contact, but when he finally looked at her, he saw that she was munching a candy bar and reading the funnies. She didn't give a shit about a frantic old gringo.

  By the time Anne arrived, Letch Boggs was already parked in front of Blaze's apartment building in Fashion Hills. The moment she saw him she knew she'd guessed right: Letch had the guilts.

  "A lotta people walking around here since Saturday night," he said when she walked up.

  "And good morning to you," Anne said.

  He was wearing the most ungodly aloha shirt she'd ever seen. It was mostly yellow, but all of the primary colors writhed aro
und, making the basic hue hard to call. "That shirt could cause permanent squints," she said.

  "I think Oliver's gotta come home soon," Letch said. "Gonna have to make the rounds' and muscle his girls for some quick green."

  "Letch, everybody's seen his mug shot and everybody has his license number."

  "He ain't gonna be in the Jag no more," Letch said.

  "Maybe not."

  "I think you oughtta tell patrol to watch for a, blue Beemer convertible," Letch said. "This whore I know, she used to run with a whore that worked for Oliver. Told me he had a bro that drives a blue Beemer. Look for a blue Beemer."

  "We'll get him, Letch," Anne Zorn said, patting his shoulder, the first time in her life she'd actually touched the vice cop.

  "You don't think I'm becoming obsessive about this, do you?"

  "No, Letch," Anne said. "Of course not."

  By the time the old red Cadillac was driving slowly down the street, pausing to check addresses, Letch Boggs and Anne Zorn were inside near the swimming pool. A criminalist was complaining to Anne that it was a wild-goose chase. That nobody could expect to find any more blood evidence.

  "How 'bout the O. J. Simpson case?" Letch Boggs said to the criminalist. "They found blood weeks later."

  "Yeah, and I remember the defense claiming it was planted," the criminalist retorted. "You want a loudmouth lawyer like Flea Bailey yapping at you?"

  Ambrose Lutterworth held Blaze's driver's license in his hand as he checked the facades of each apartment building. When he saw her address, he pulled to the curb half a block down the street so that nobody in the building would see his car.

  He was still exhausted from having walked all the way home from Shelter Island, afraid to call a cab from her hotel. And his foot was throbbing, possibly from a toe fracture. He dragged himself out of the Cadillac, banking that 009 of her keys was for the security gate.

  When he got to the staircase, he let out a gasp and stopped. Yellow San Diego Police Department tape was temporarily blocking the walkway by the swimming pool. They'd found her already! And they'd found her residence even though she'd had no identification on her. They were already in the midst of a full-blown murder investigation.

  When Ambrose was limping back to his Cadillac, he fully expected to be arrested before day's end. He was convinced. The police had incredible investigative powers.

  After their futile search for more blood evidence, Anne Zorn was still feeling sorry for poor old Letch Boggs. She coaxed him to an Italian restaurant on India Street with an offer to buy lunch. When they got there, they took a sidewalk table and ordered linguine for her and a veal chop with roasted garlic for Letch.

  The waiter raised an eyebrow when Letch said, "Bring extra garlic cloves. Maybe six or eight. They don't gotta be cooked."

  After the waiter left, Anne said, "Garlic doesn't really have anything to do with potency, Letch."

  "Oh, yeah?" he said with his notorious leer. "I could prove you're wrong."

  "Glad to see you're back to normal," Anne said. "Which means anything but."

  "We oughtta go out on a date sometime," Letch said. "And get better acquainted."

  "I'm not much for slam dancing," Anne replied. "It wouldn't work out."

  Just then her beeper went off and Letch said, "Snapped your garter belt? I have that effect on women." She looked at the number and said, "The office. I better call."

  While she was gone. Letch passed the time by ogling the downtown office girls who lunched on India Street. He wished that skirts were shorter. Anne was wearing a nice white blazer that didn't hide her bustline, but her blue skirt wasn't short enough. Legs like hers should be flaunted, Letch thought.

  When Anne came back, she had a dazed look. She sat down and said, "You aren't gonna believe this!"

  "They got him!" Letch said. "They got Oliver Mantleberry?"

  "No, Oliver Mantleberry got, Blaze Duvall! And dumped her in Mission Bay!"

  "What?"

  Letch Boggs yelled it loud enough to stampede the pigeons. The cops canceled their lunch order and sped downtown.

  The team was assembled in the cubicle by the time Anne and Letch arrived. Everybody said hello to Letch, already having accepted his involvement, and Anne asked, "What happened?"

  Sal Maldonado replied, "So far, all we know is there were ligature marks on her neck and maybe a crushed trachea. And you can bet there's no water in the lungs. No ID on her. Fully clothed."

  "Did you ID her from prints?" Letch asked.

  "Yeah," the detective said, "but we pretty well knew who she was."

  "How'd you find out?" Anne asked.

  "Lucky break. One of the water cops had seen her around the Shelter Island bars. Called us saying he found a floater in Mission Bay by the name of Blaze. And I go, bingo!"

  "Good thing she had that one arrest for prostitution or there wouldn't be prints on file," the sergeant said.

  "Good thing we have Letch," Anne reminded her boss. "We wouldn't've put any of it together if Letch hadn't told us about Blaze's connection to Dawn Coyote."

  The sergeant said to Letch, "Oliver Mantleberry's obviously still in business. We may need more of your help before we're through. I'll clear it with your boss."

  "This is curiouser and curiouser," Anne said. "Why would a City Heights pimp dump a body clear down in Mission Bay?"

  "Why would anybody?" Sal Maldonado said. "To get rid of it. To feed it to the fish."

  "It was a dumb place to drop it," Anne said, "if the guy's got any brains at all."

  "He ain't a Phi Beta Kappa," Letch said. "He strangled her and dumped her and now we want his ass a little bit more than we wanted it yesterday."

  The lieutenant entered the cubicle and said, "Okay, the skipper says these two homicides are yin and yang, so your team gets this one, too. Randy, you go to Blaze Duvall's apartment. Get ahold of the landlady. Search it for anything that'll link the victim to Dawn Coyote or Oliver Mantleberry. After it's dusted for prints. We might find Mantleberry's prints inside, you never know."

  "We won't," Anne said. "She didn't know him."

  "We'll do it anyway," the lieutenant said. "Zeke, you find out what she drives. We gotta locate her car. Sal, find out when they're posting her and get to the morgue with an evidence tech."

  "I'd like to interview the Harbor Unit officer," Anne said. "He might be able to place Blaze with somebody that knows Mister Mantleberry."

  "I never heard of hookers hanging around Shelter Island," Letch said. "Farther down on Rosecrans, sure. But I guess it's possible."

  "She wasn't a real hooker," Anne said.

  "She's real dead," Letch said. "Lemme go with you, Annie. If there's any hookers working around Shelter Island, I'll spot 'em."

  By the time Ambrose got home from his frightening experience at Blaze Duvall's apartment building, the sailboat race was on ESPN. In order to keep from going utterly mad, he forced herself to turn on the TV and watch.

  Ambrose Lutterworth needed all 100 billion neurons to even concentrate enough to learn that AUS-31 had got a terrific wind lift on the first leg and had actually led into the wind on the first mark. But then as AUS-31 rounded the leeward mark, their gennaker wasn't retrieved fast enough and the sail fell into the water, wrapping around the keel.

  As AUS-31's skipper ordered his crew to cut away a sail that cost $35,000, Black Magic cruised to victory and the Louis Vuitton Cup. Ninety-six days after their initial race, the Kiwis were the first to qualify for the America's Cup regatta next month.

  So that's it, Ambrose thought. They even have luck when they need it. How is Dennis Conner going to defeat that? How could any defender defeat that? Black-magic luck.

  Ambrose called his office, half expecting to receive a message to phone the San Diego Police Department. But there were just three calls from potential clients who'd received his flyer and wanted a preliminary home appraisal. Ambrose didn't bother jotting down their numbers.

  He took a bath, swallowed four aspirin with
orange juice, and went to bed. He didn't bother to put on pajamas. He slept naked and dreamed terrifying dreams.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  FORTNEY HAD A PRETTY GOOD IDEA WHAT IT WAS ABOUT when they received the radio call to go to the office. After they docked their boat, they found their sergeant waiting by his car. He said to them, "A homicide dickette's in there waiting for you guys. And there's a vice cop with her. Name of Boggs."

  "Letch Boggs," Fortney said. "I can smell him from here."

  When Fortney and Leeds entered their office, the woman stood up, saying, "I'm Anne Zorn. I think one of you knows Letch?"

  "Worked together for a while," Fortney said, shaking hands with the vice cop. "How's it going, Letch?"

  "I miss those good old days, Mick," Letch said. "Kick a door, bust a whore."

  "I'm Leeds," the young cop said, shaking hands with the two detectives.

  Everybody sat down and Anne opened a notebook. Fortney liked the way she looked in that blazer. She had a great shape for a woman her age. He figured she was a couple years his senior.

  Anne thought Leeds was a stud muffin, especially in those cute khaki shorts and sneakers. She thought Fortney looked better when he took off his baseball cap. His curly hair was attractive even if it was a washed-out gray. He had a good chin and a nice suntan. She figured he was a few years older than she was, but that was no excuse for his spare tire. His butt was okay, though.

  "Tell us what you know about Blaze Duvall," she said.

  Leeds said, "We saw her one night, oh, a couple weeks ago at a joint on Shelter Island. Then we saw her last Saturday night at the same place. It's where the America's Cup sailors hang out."

  "And I saw her last night," Fortney said, "at the same place."