“Who says this was in his cuff?”
“I found it there. His daughter had the box all this time, unopened. I went through it this morning and I found the shells.”
“Well, I guess you’ll just have to join the Baker Street Irregulars, Winnie,” said Sammy Vogel. “But you are not going to turn this suicide into a whodunit. In the first place, even if there was a desert shell in the cuff of his pants, so what? The guy coulda picked up that shell anytime. Christ, he lived there! Why couldn’t he have a shell or two stuck in his clothes? The guy shot himself and the tide did the rest. Period. Ask the coroner if he killed himself. By the way, the guy was sick. He had a reason for pulling that trigger.”
“Yeah, I know about the HIV.”
“Okay, Win.” The detective stood up. “It’s been great seeing you again, but …”
“You know anything about a guy named Hack Starkey? Real name’s Hugh Starkey. Used to work for Binder. Used to spend a lotta time out there working around the ranch. Lives in Laguna, I think. I wanna talk to him.”
“You talk to anybody you want,” said Sammy Vogel, “but I’m not gonna run his name through C.I.I. if that’s what you’re thinking. And I’m not gonna get involved in this because if you start bugging innocent people you’re gonna get your ass in a lawsuit. And maybe you got nothing to lose, but I do. So long, Win. If I was you, I’d consider getting in touch with my Higher Power.”
“What’s that?”
“Go to an A.A. meeting. You’ll hear some speakers who were dysfunctional drunks at one time. I’ve been dry three years now. Before that, my thought process was getting the way yours is now. The brain starts blowing its horn and careening around like a Cairo cabbie. Think about going to an A.A. meeting. I go every Tuesday and Friday night. You wanna go with me sometime, gimme a call. I’ll take you and bring you home afterwards. Otherwise, don’t call me, Winnie.”
Winnie spent an hour fast-walking to Balboa Island and back for exercise. He tried unsuccessfully to watch a movie on TV, then washed and vacuumed his car in Tess’s garage, a job he hated above all others. After that, he showered and put on a cotton knit shirt and chinos. He even wore socks and a belt. He was going to work.
“The last time I saw you looking this excited, we were suspended in midair on a hammock,” Tess said, when she came in the house with a bag from Louis Vuitton.
“Sit, lady, I’ve got some news,” he said.
Tess went into the kitchen and got a diet drink from the refrigerator and a Mexican beer for Winnie. She wore a brand-new white and mint-green chemise dress, and he thought she looked radiant.
Triumphantly, he pulled the shell from his shirt pocket and showed it to her.
“Yes?”
“This came from the cuff of the pants your dad wore the night he died! And this …” he showed her the shell fragment, “came from the bottom of the box that contained the clothes! It could’ve also been in his cuff or maybe his shoe!”
Tess didn’t say anything. She stared at the shells as though she’d never seen one before. She took a sip of her diet drink and said, “Is it possible, Win? Is it possible?”
“I think so,” he said. “Your father was killed at El Refugio and his body was driven down here!”
“But is it proof?”
“In a court of law? Of course not.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
“You’re not going to the police?”
“I already have.”
That startled her. “You have?”
“Yeah, but Sammy Vogel kissed it off. He was always a little bit lazy. Sleepy Sammy, we called him. He thinks a guy that lived out there in the desert might limp through life with shells in his shoes. Says it was suicide. Period.”
Tess thought for a moment and said, “I suppose he’s right. He could’ve been out hiking and caught a shell in his cuff.”
“We know different, you and me,” said Winnie. “And now I know those shots were no accident. It was a botched attempt on your life.”
“Hack Starkey?”
“Gotta be,” Winnie said.
“So what’s next?”
“A little police work.”
“I thought you said the police aren’t interested.”
“Hey, lady, you’re looking at an ace detective! I get to do police work again. And I get to help the girl I …”
“Don’t stop now.”
“The girl I been hired to protect.”
“Oh, I’m hiring you, am I?”
“Sure, now that I know you’re gonna get that ranch someday, I’m gonna bill you soon as you’re rich.”
“I’ll pay whatever you ask,” she said, and then she put her glasses on top of her head, and moved onto Winnie’s lap and kissed him. Then she asked, “So what now?”
“I gotta locate Starkey. Vogel won’t help me, but somebody will. Maybe I’ll call Buster.”
“I wouldn’t,” Tess said.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t like him.”
“Well, yeah, he was in his smart-mouth mood the night you met him, but he’s okay. A good cop when he lets himself be.”
“He didn’t seem trustworthy. From what you’ve told me about him, he isn’t. He might want something in return for any favor he did.”
“He’d be doing it for me.”
“He’d probably send me a bill or something. Can’t you get somebody else?”
“Okay,” Winnie said. “Maybe I shouldn’t even mess with the guys I used to work with. “There’s a P.I. in Santa Ana, Pat Kilroy. Used to be a cop here. Got retired on an injury same as me. He owes me one from the old days.”
“That might be better,” she agreed. “Keep the police completely out of this.”
She kissed Winnie again, one of her muscle-tongue specials, and said, “Police work can wait a few minutes, can’t it?
“How many?”
“Oh, I think I’ll need about thirty,” she said, tugging on his belt.
Tess seemed willing to let him out of her sight at last. But when Winnie was ready to leave, she made him promise he’d come back to sleep with her no matter how late it was.
When he got home to check his mail, the apartment had never looked gloomier. Tess Binder had taken up so much time lately the spiders now controlled his kitchen. He sat down with a stack of mail, bills mostly, and wrote some checks. Then he called Kilroy and was lucky to catch him at his desk.
“Pat, it’s Winnie Farlowe,” he said. “I need a job done.”
“Win!” Kilroy was a four pack-a-day man with a voice like a rivet gun. “Long time. Glad to see you came outta that ferry hijacking okay.”
“Yeah, I been meaning to call you, Pat. Thought we could have lunch sometime. But now I got this lady friend needs to locate a guy named Hugh Starkey. Hack, they call him. She says he’s white, about forty-eight to fifty, six-feet-two, two-ten, gray hair dyed black, brown eyes. No real job. Lives in Laguna maybe. Maybe hangs around gay bars.”
“You had one of the guys run him through C.I.I.?”
“No, this is one I don’t wanna use the cops for. I’d like you to handle it for me.”
“I can call you in ten minutes if he’s got a rap sheet. How far you want me to go if there’s no record?”
“I could check voter’s registration myself. Maybe you could check with D.M.V. He’s gotta have a driver’s license. And if we end up with nothing, I’d appreciate it if you’d run him through the major credit institutions. He’s gotta have a financial rap sheet. That kinda guy owes money to everyone.”
After hanging up, Winnie looked around and couldn’t stand it. He had to do a little housekeeping in case the landlady dropped in for something. He was down on his knees dueling with spiders when the phone rang. It was Kilroy.
“That was fast,” Winnie said.
“Hugh Willis Starkey,” Kilroy said. “Has a misdemeanor record. Gotta be him. Last busted by the highway patrol for D.U.I. Let’s see … two ye
ars ago. Gave an address in Laguna Beach.”
Winnie wrote down the address of the apartment house and said, “Could be a transient place.”
“Might be,” Kilroy said, “but there’s no point me going any further till you check out this address.”
“Absolutely,” said Winnie. “Only thing bothers me, this is too easy. I figured the guy was gonna be more of a challenge. Wish I could get his mug shot right away.”
“Gimme a couple hours,” said Kilroy. “I’ll have one of my people deliver it. Where you gonna be, Spoon’s Landing?”
It made Winnie squirm, his reputation. But he said, “Yeah, jist have it dropped off at Spoon’s Landing.” Then he said, “By the way, Pat, would a guy with a misdemeanor record have any trouble getting a P.I. license?”
“What kind of misdemeanor?”
“Oh, D.U.I., let’s say.”
Kilroy was savvy. “You mean like B.U.I.? Boating under the influence?”
“Yeah,” Winnie admitted. “I’m talking about me. I been thinking about your line a work. I was a pretty good detective at one time.”
“Sure you were,” said Kilroy. “I think you could probably swing it, the license, I mean.”
“I was wondering, maybe you might need another guy sometime? Doesn’t have to be full time.”
Kilroy hesitated and said, “I can always use part-time guys that know what they’re doing, but … well, I got a strict rule. I won’t hire someone if I even suspect he’s got a problem with booze.”
It was Winnie’s turn to pause. Then he said, “Don’t let the boat parade thing fool you. I don’t drink that much. Certainly not more than I can handle.”
Kilroy said, “Yeah, well, maybe we can talk about it.”
“Okay. Thanks for the help,” Winnie said.
When he hung up he grabbed the bottle of beer he’d just opened and started to pour it down the sink. Then he thought it over. One lousy problem with booze in his entire life! That goddamn boat parade! Well, shit! He knew what he could handle and what he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to let people intimidate him. He tipped the bottle up and drank it. Then he went to Spoon’s Landing to await the delivery of Hack Star-key’s mug shot.
Winnie was surprised to find Buster Wiles sitting at the bar. And shocked to see the bruises, contusions, abrasions and swelling over Buster’s face and arms and hands.
Winnie took the stool next to the big cop, and said, “Who designed that face? Salvador Dali?”
“I tried to leave you a note from my roof. But my fuckin brain’s so squishy I couldn’t spell Farlowe and decided to climb down. If my life don’t change for the better, I swear I’m gonna bite it. I can’t live like this.”
“What the hell happened?”
Buster turned painfully and said, “Oh, yesterday I spent a riotous, fun-filled day at the beach, is all. Till I ran into a pair a dinks that evened up the score a little bit for all that napalm we used to lay on ’em.”
“You look like an eggplant. In fact, your eye looks like cooked eggplant.”
“This is what happens when you get teamed up with twenty-two-year-old baby cops who tell you their mom thought you were king a the beach, and maybe to prove somethin you get carried away and start chasin someone along the oceanfront when what you should do at your age is strictly drive-by police work. Hand tickets out the window of a patrol unit or shoot the motherfuckers from inside the car with an assault rifle. But under no circumstances should you be tryin to run after thievin slopes with some fuckin kid cop who actually says stuff like, ‘Life’s a beach!’”
Buster turned back to his drink and hunched his mulish shoulders and signaled to Spoon for another round. Winnie decided to drop the subject of Buster’s wounds, except to say, “I take it you won’t be going to work today?”
“I oughtta take the week off,” Buster said. “My head feels like a bag of plastique. A comb might blow it up.”
“If you got nothing to do and feel up to it, I could use some help.”
“Doin what?”
“I gotta find a guy.”
“What guy?”
“Guy named Starkey. I’m expecting his mug shot here pretty soon. Kilroy’s getting it for me.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t ask one a the guys at the office if you wanted a mug shot.”
“Gonna keep the PD outta this. I think this guy’s trying to kill Tess Binder.”
Buster hurt himself turning to face Winnie. “What’s that broad doin to you?”
“It’s a long story. If you’re willing to help me I’ll fill you in on it while we drive down to Laguna.”
“For what?”
“I wanna talk to the guy.”
“You wanna ask him why he wants to shoot your little pal?”
“What made you say shoot? I don’t know how he’d pull it off.”
Buster said, “Most a the world these days, that’s the way they do it. California’s got more guns than the Warsaw Pact.”
“You gonna help me?”
“Can’t. I almost got killed by a flock a canaries yesterday. My luck’s run out.”
“Actually, Tess’d be very unhappy if she even knew I was talking to you about it. You didn’t make a great impression on her that night.”
“Sure, she’s got you running around lookin for imaginary snipers. Pretty soon she’ll be wearin your nuts for earrings. They’re all the same, broads like her. Two-steppers. Remember those snakes in Nam? They bite you and you’re dead in two steps.”
“I think she’s all right,” Winnie said.
Buster nodded doubtfully and said, “Well, I can’t help you. I only do police work when the city pays me for it. And then I only do it if there’s a sergeant watchin me.”
“What I need is, I need a backup for when I talk to this guy. I want somebody with a gun behind me. Jist in case.”
“It ain’t gonna be me,” said Buster. “Don’t you still have your piece?”
“Yeah, but a medical retirement doesn’t entitle me to run around carrying a concealed weapon.”
“Sorry, Win. Why don’t you try one a the other guys you partnered with?”
“Since my boat parade caper the guys seem to avoid me. I’m bad news. They think I might get involved in another …”
“Debacle’s the word you’re searchin for.”
“Yeah, they think I’m an alcoholic.”
“Well, you’re not. You jist drink a little too much. Maybe Kilroy’d back you up. Maybe his guy, the one that brings the mug shot. Why not ask him?”
Winnie let it drop and ordered another drink and one for Buster. They were both watching a golf tournament on ESPN, when a guy walked in and said to Spoon, “I have something for Win Farlowe.”
“That’s me,” Winnie said.
He looked older than Spoon. Buster’s left leg outweighed him and had more hair on it. He might’ve been consumptive. He handed Winnie the envelope and said, “With Pat Kilroy’s compliments, Mister Farlowe.”
When he left, Winnie said, “How’d you like to rely on him for a backup?”
Buster said, “Don’t get me in trouble, man! I’ll go along to watch you talk to this guy, but that’s it!”
“That’s all I want,” Winnie said. He’d rarely seen Buster so adamant. Buster’s hand wasn’t steady when he picked up the drink. “I’m on the verge a new things,” Buster said. “I don’t want you screwin me up jist because you gone loopy over some little squeeze from Linda Isle.”
“I won’t get you involved,” Winnie said. “We’ll go in my car.”
As they were leaving, Tripoli Jones reeled into the barroom, too drunk to be walking, let alone driving the car that he’d parked with two wheels on the sidewalk.
Spoon took one look at him and said, “Forget it. No way. Go home.”
The former marine muttered and cursed and staggered into the men’s room, where he took a header. When he came out he insisted that somebody had installed speed bumps in there.
16
The Hound
The cops referred to The Golden Orange as “le Côte de Fraud.” That, because there were so many major and minor fraud cases emanating from the Gold Coast. Still, The Golden Orange someday may become the financial heart of the American Southwest, they say. The cops referred to it as Goyim Heights, whose West Bank, they said, is Security Pacific.
Fraud and financial scams in The Golden Orange were on the mind of Winnie Farlowe during the drive down Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna Beach early that evening. It was warm enough to keep the top down, but the VW was noisy, and when he got out of Corona Del Mar the engine whined, unable to pass a slow-moving Cadillac Fleetwood.
“We ain’t in no hurry,” Buster said. “I’d like to survive the drive so somebody can shoot me. It’s more dramatic, right?”
“I’m getting curious about your career change,” said Winnie. “Something’s going on. You seem a lot different somehow.”
“I said I’ll let you know if it comes about, okay?”
“Remember the boiler room?” Winnie said. “The guy you and me busted? Worked out of an apartment?”
“Which one? I busted lotsa guys sellin those so-called precious metal stocks. A fryin pan contains more precious metal.”
“I was thinking of the guy that was selling all that gold to out-of-state buyers at two hundred an ounce. Only it was still in the ground and their money was supposed to get it out within fifteen months.”
“Yeah, what was his name?”
“You got pretty friendly with him. You should remember.”
“He was a decent guy for a thief,” Buster said.
“And the way he put it, it didn’t seem so bad,” said Winnie. “If the investment cost more to get the gold out, well, the company would pay the difference, he said. Amazing how people went for it.” Then Winnie looked at Buster. “I remember you said they could afford it, those investors. Average investment was only, what? Five grand? A few lost twenty, but nobody got hurt too much, you said.”
“Guy drove a Lamborghini,” Buster recalled. “And his girlfriend had an Aston Martin Lagonda.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Winnie. “He did okay with oil and gas investments too. Except I got more gas in my belly right now than he ever owned. What I’m wondering, is your career change along the lines a something like that? You always said a guy with half a brain coulda pulled it off.”
Golden Orange Page 20
