“You’re an orphan,” she said. “Like me.”
“My mom’s still alive. Lives with my sister and brother-in-law up in Tustin. I’m jist a half-orphan. Talking about not going to college reminds me, you know the song I hate worse than any in the world? ‘My Way.’ You know: ‘Regrets I had a few …’ Well, I had a few thousand in my life. I got a few new ones every single day.”
Tess got up from the chair and cleared the table, popping a chili into her mouth like it was a grape. When she took his coffee cup, he thought she was going to refill it, but she put it on the tile counter by the sink. Then she took off her glasses and pulled her loose cotton blouse over her head. She stepped out of her sandals and was wearing only her khaki shorts.
“What the hell?”
Tess walked over to him and sat astride his lap. She kissed and licked him with a tongue hot from jalapeño.
“Here?” he said, between kisses.
“Here, on this table.”
“Real old table.”
“It might not hold us. There’s the danger.”
“I got myself a daredevil here,” Winnie Farlowe said. “Hope I got enough nerve for you, lady.”
When he stood up with Tess Binder clinging to his neck and her legs wrapped around his hips, he didn’t feel any pain. His back started hurting an hour later when he climbed into the hammock.
Winnie asked Tess if they could stay home again that night, and she said she wouldn’t have it any other way.
They made the ride back the following day before the late afternoon traffic was heaviest, not talking very much during the drive. Winnie spent the two hours wondering if someone like Tess Binder had satisfied her curiosity, or whatever it was, and wouldn’t need to go slumming at Spoon’s Landing. Wondering if, when he kissed her good-bye, it would be his last closeup of the opaque gray eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses.
When she drove across Pacific Coast Highway onto Balboa peninsula, Winnie was dozing.
“Home again, big boy,” she said and his head bobbed.
“Yeah, so I am.”
“Santa Ana winds’re blowing,” she said. “It’s hot!”
“Not like the desert,” he said.
He was wrong. High pressure in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, and low pressure offshore allowed air to flow from land to sea. Compression on the mountain slopes was funneled through the canyons and made the air strike Los Angeles and Orange counties like an open-hearth furnace. During the first week of April, heat records were broken and it stayed hot for days. It was 99 degrees Fahrenheit when Tess turned into the alley behind Winnie’s apartment and parked. He got his bag from the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Santa Anas,” he said. “Feels like God’s blow dryer’s hitting me in the mouth.”
In a way, she looked as unapproachable as she had the first time he saw her at Spoon’s Landing. He thought he should thank her and shake hands. But then he fancied he could smell jasmine, could still taste her tongue burning with jalapeño. He remembered that hammock beneath him and could almost hear her squealing with excitement. He stood gazing at her with a forlorn expression.
“What is this?” she said, finally. “An H.F.H. good-bye?”
“What?”
“Ho-fucking-hum. Is that all I’m going to get out of you, old son?”
Tess Binder opened the door of the Mercedes, stepped out onto the alley and grabbed a handful of Winnie’s hair, pulling his head down. The good-bye kiss broke the record of the one he’d gotten at the hacienda.
When she finally pulled back she said, “I’ll call you. I’ve got some thinking to do. Okay?”
“I’ll be around,” Winnie said. “You won’t have no trouble finding me. If you’re looking.”
“I’ll be looking, old son,” Tess Binder said, jumping back in the car.
When Winnie arrived at Spoon’s Landing at four o’clock that afternoon, he was greeted by a newspaper headline, from the joke newspapers they do for tourists. Spoon had taped it over the mirror behind the bar. The headline said: NEW SKIPPER HIRED TO PILOT THE EXXON VALDEZ.
Below the headline there was a photo of the ill-fated oil tanker’s drunken skipper, Joseph Hazlewood, and another of Winnie Farlowe leaving jail after the Christmas debacle.
The column led with: “Crew will never know the difference.”
“This came a little late for April Fools’ Day,” Spoon explained. “Where the hell you been? I almost called the beach patrol. Had ’em check sand bumps for feet.”
“I was with a lady,” Winnie said.
“Yeah,” Spoon said doubtfully. “Computer dating service really works, huh? So what’ll you have? Your see-through drink? Polish vodka?”
Winnie missed Tess Binder already, and he realized that he might get blind drunk if he wasn’t careful. Spoon’s droning voice was depressing.
“A beer,” Winnie said, finally. “Better make it a beer.”
The first didn’t make him feel any better. Neither did the second. Then he ordered a Polish vodka.
Cops arrived at 4:15, five of them: Novak the narc, two new ones Winnie didn’t know, Hadley, the big cop who worked beach patrol with Buster, and Buster Wiles himself.
Buster introduced Winnie to the two new cops, and Winnie was bagged enough to buy everyone a round of beers even though he was down to his last twenty bucks. Buster and Winnie shared a table away from the other cops, who began shooting a raucous game of snooker.
One of the young cops yelled to the dour saloonkeeper, “Come on, Spoon, get in the game! I hear you’re a snooker-shootin party animal!”
“Sure. Spoon’s a party animal like Howard Hughes was a party animal,” Buster said disgustedly. “Like Rudolph Hess was a party animal.” Then he turned to Winnie and said, “Young coppers these days? Idea a fun is drivin a pickup over chuck holes. Or belly-bumpin people off barstools. I don’t know where they get ’em. Gimme a fuckin headache, is what they do.”
“Still on the beach patrol?”
“Long as I can keep the job.” Buster nodded.
“Still contemplating a career change?”
“Sooner’n you think,” Buster said.
“Still can’t talk about it?”
“Soon.”
“I admit, you got me curious,” Winnie said.
“That’s jist like you. You’re the most curious guy I ever worked with. Gotta know how everything works. I said you’d be the first to know, and if it don’t work out, I’ll be here till I retire. Or till I run into another psycho with an Uzi that shoots straighter.”
The young cops playing snooker were getting noisier. Hadley had guzzled four ounces of bourbon with the glass in his teeth and his hands behind his back. When he finished he wiped his chin and marched triumphantly around the snooker table, slapping palms with the others.
“You fuckin kids decide to break out a cornet or slide trombone, I’ll cite you for no parade permit!” Buster Wiles barked. Then to Winnie: “Wanna go divin tomorrow? I heard they took some real big abalone by Dana Point. Been thinkin about takin a drive down. I can borrow an extra tank and wet suit.”
“I haven’t dived since … come to think of it, since you and me went to Catalina on Woody’s Bertram twenty-eight. He still got the same boat?”
“Yeah, but he don’t go out much no more.”
“Guess you can still borrow it?”
“Anytime,” Buster said. “We could go out for a couple days fishin if you want.”
“Thanks, Buster, but diving doesn’t interest me much anymore. Getting too old. Cold water makes my back ache sometimes.”
“You think you’re gettin old? Man, I’m forty-five almost! I even catch myself watchin the Phil Donahue show sometimes. Sittin there lookin at all those guests that jist missed the electric chair but got Phil convinced the naughtiest thing they ever did was paint happy faces on the hobbyhorse in nursery school. Far as I’m concerned, purgatory’d be an eternity of watchin the Phil Donahue show. Hell’d be watchin
him interview movie stars.”
“Lemme get my schedule together,” Winnie said. “We’ll do some fishing soon. I been out looking for a job, you know.”
“You ever thought about bein a P.I.? You could give whatzisname a call. Kilroy? You know, the P.I. up in Santa Ana? He runs a pretty respectable business.”
“Me, a P.I.?”
“Ain’t exactly police work, but sometimes you might get a decent case,” Buster said.
“I was thinking about selling boats.”
“You can sail ’em, but I can’t see you sellin ’em,” Buster said. “You’re too straight. Too much of a straight-ahead guy.”
“That’s what she calls me!”
“Who?”
“Tess Binder. The woman I introduced you to the other night.”
“Oh, yeah, the lady. That her name? Binder?”
“Yeah, she called me a straight-ahead guy too.”
“When they flatter you, watch out.” Buster got up and went to the bar while one of the young cops dropped some coins in the jukebox, looked at the selections and, seeing nothing he even recognized, punched three numbers at random. The first spooked Winnie. It was Frank Sinatra.
It seems we stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when.
Winnie was astonished. He yelled to Spoon, “Hey! How long’s that song been on the jukebox?”
“Since about the last time Carlos Tuna bought somebody a drink,” the saloonkeeper answered. “Back when Wayne Newton still sang like a girl.”
“I never noticed before,” Winnie mumbled.
Buster came back with a double vodka for Winnie, and said, “Guy sittin by Guppy at the bar? Tried to get me in a game a liar’s poker. He’s got a dollar bill with a knife crease in it. I says, ‘Sure, pal, how ’bout we have a little side bet too? I’ll bet two-oh that your dollar bill’s got about six of a kind on it, probably aces.’ Suddenly, he don’t wanna play no more.”
Winnie said, “I seen him around. Works a bar like a minesweeper. Stealing tips.”
Then Buster said, “What’s the name a that bitch … sorry, that lady you were with? Binder?”
“Yeah, Tess Binder.”
“They fished a guy outta the surf over by Little Corona last year. Name was Binder. Let’s see, Charles? No. Chester?”
Winnie said, “Conrad? Conrad P. Binder?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Buster said. “Conrad Binder. Suicide. Shot himself down there on the sand one night. Fishermen spotted him the next morning. Crabs had a luau.”
“When was it?”
“Oh, August. Maybe September.”
“I was drinking pretty heavy then,” Winnie said. “Feeling real sorry for myself right after they retired me. Guess I missed it in the papers.”
“Local guy. Stockbroker or something.”
“Mortgage banker.”
“Was that it? Anyways, he smoked himself down there on the sand and the tide moved him around. The Harbor Patrol got called first, but you know how they are. Offshore’s supposed to be county, but up to the surf line is ours. I bet they got a gaff and pushed the body so there’d be no doubt who handles it. Can’t figure why anybody’d wanna be on the Harbor Patrol. P.R. job. Triple A on-the-water, far as I’m concerned.”
“Where’d he shoot himself?”
“Little Corona.”
“I mean, head? Temple? Mouth?”
“Temple, I think. I didn’t see the body. The other dicks were talkin about it. You know, one day a guy’s a prominent retired banker, next day the crabs’re eatin his face. Ends up in a room with rubber wallpaper, wearin a toe tag.”
“Why’d he kill himself? Any note?”
Buster shrugged and said, “I don’t really know much about the case. Ask Sammy Vogel. He handled it. I think the guy was sick. Cancer or somethin. Maybe heart.”
“They find the gun?”
Buster thought for a moment and said, “I think they did. Pretty sure. Why?”
“Why? ’Cause if they didn’t, how can they be sure it was suicide? Jesus, Buster, you been working dope so long you’re zombied out.”
“They musta found the piece. There was no talk about a homicide. Guy went down on the beach one night, probably sang a medley a the Beach Boys’ greatest hits, and busts a cap in his own skull.”
“You’re a real romantic, Buster,” Winnie said, signaling to Spoon for refills.
“How come so much interest in this guy, Binder? You ain’t been makin it with that lady in white, have ya?”
Winnie was suddenly stopped cold. There it was again! That maddening sensation of déja vu! The song was playing in his mind! Playing at the wrong speed.
We smiled at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when.
“Talk about me bein zombied out!” Buster said, finally.
“What?”
“You’re zonin. How ’bout comin back to planet earth?”
“It’s that goddamn song!” Winnie said, snapping out of it.
“What song?”
“The one jist finished on the jukebox.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I know I’ve seen that woman somewhere before. Maybe talked to her. Maybe …”
“What woman?”
“Tess Binder. I’ve been … seeing her in my mind. But … like, I’ve seen her before. Like, like … in a dream.”
Spoon was putting the drinks on the table. The saloonkeeper had an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lip, and his Mister Roberts naval officer’s cap was perched on the back of his head. His aloha shirt was unbuttoned and his hairy belly was dripping sweat, on this, the afternoon of one of the most fiery Santa Anas in Southern California history.
“Hey, Spoon, Winnie’s gettin spooky!” Buster said. “Rememberin people from another life. Better dial the Shirley MacLaine hotline.”
“Don’t remind me a Shirley MacLaine,” the saloonkeeper droned. “The night a couple years ago when her I-lived-other-lives story was on television, the customers wanted to watch it. There she is, old Shirley, dancin around with some young dude she was boffin. He kept sayin he created himself. He was God. She says, ‘I’m God!’ He says, ‘No, I’m God!’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘I’m God!’ Me, I’m goddamn bored! I turned on a ball-game and that’s what led to the fight where somebody tossed a bottle and busted out my big screen. Cost me nearly a thousand bucks for repair. Don’t mention Shirley MacLaine in this joint!”
When Spoon finished droning and shuffled back behind the bar, Buster said, “Anyways, if you’re all that interested in the Binder deal check with Vogel. There mighta been somethin questionable about it, but not to my knowledge. What’s wrong? Your little friend Tess suspect foul play?”
“No, it’s jist that, well … he offs himself with a handgun. And somebody took a shot at us with a handgun.”
“Somebody … wait a minute! Where? When?”
While Winnie briefly described his desert holiday with Tess Binder, leaving out hammocks and kitchen tables, Tess was having a tall glass of iced tea on the beach at her club. The temperature on the sand had reached 100 degrees. Corky Peebles’s power bob had lost its sizzle. Everything seemed to droop after twenty-four hours of relentless Santa Anas. Nature had unplugged the power in all the power bobs.
Corky was limp and lifeless on the sand, defanged and declawed. An F.F.H. millionaire showed up, but not a single feverishly hot momma could so much as budge. On a day like this you could actually see what was rumored: Each hot momma averaged three eye jobs and one and a half facelifts. The unlifted hands looked parchment dry, the flesh seeming to curl like old wallpaper. After her ice melted, Tess went home.
When Winnie was finished with his story, Buster said, “You been off the job too long. I think you’re lookin for new employment. I mean, just ’cause your girlfriend’s old man ices himself don’t mean there’s some connection with a
gunshot in the desert. Which may not have been a gunshot? Which may have been an accident in the first place? Maybe you shouldn’t look into a P.I. job, Win. You got too much imagination already.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Winnie said. “Jesus, it’s hot! Maybe the Santa Ana winds’re making me goofy.”
“Must be it,” Buster agreed. But then the big cop sipped at his drink, put it down and said, “On the other hand, where was this guy when the shot was fired? The one you say Binder gave the ranch to? His boyfriend?”
“Warner Stillwell? Supposedly went to the hospital for a few days. She don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Maybe my brain’s gettin scorched from these Santa Anas but …”
“Yeah?”
“But, with old man Binder and his daughter outta the way … Naw, that don’t work out. You said Stillwell already has the property.”
“Wait a minute!” Winnie said. “What if there’s more property? Assets. Stock. Gold. I don’t know, whatever rich people stash for a rainy day. What if there’s a lotta assets Tess don’t know about? Maybe assets he can’t get till she dies. Make sense?”
“Ya got me,” Buster shrugged. “I’m jist a dope cop. Former dope cop. By the way, I decided to put a move on the boss to get the environmental services job. Hazardous waste dumpin, chemical spills, midnight flushers in the bay. Trash cop. I was born for that job. Officer Trash. Anyways, I don’t know about probates and wills and like that. Maybe you oughtta talk to Sammy Vogel if you really think there’s somethin to all this. And if there is, maybe you better get another girlfriend … No, wait a minute. Don’t get another girlfriend! If her dead old man’s ex-boyfriend is tryin to snuff her, it must mean she’s got somethin he wants. She might be rich and don’t know it. How about arrangin another introduction for me, Winnie!”
“You took enough a them off me over the years,” Winnie said, finishing his vodka. “This one’s a keeper. If she ever calls me again.”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t my type anyways. I can’t stand broads wearin white. Means there’s a black heart under there.”
Golden Orange Page 13
