Winnie extended his gun hand and said, “You haven’t answered me. How did you get out to La Quinta that evening to fire those shots? Did you leave work early? Did you hire a pilot and a private plane?” He aimed at Buster’s left eye.
Buster was livid. He was trembling from the cold, from terror, from rage. He covered his head as though his hands could stop the bullet, but the fury took over. He looked up at Winnie and screamed: “YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH! I DIDN’T FIRE THOSE SHOTS! WARNER STILLWELL DID!”
23
The Cub
Winnie backed up until he was sitting on top of the jetty, then told Buster he could climb up to a drier rock. He kept his gun aimed while Buster dragged himself up higher, until he sat shivering and wet, his arms wrapped around his knees.
Buster said, “You don’t have it figured out! It ain’t about murder, Win! We didn’t want to hurt nobody! You understand about the trust, don’t you? It couldn’t be broken. That property couldn’t be sold till Stillwell died, and he’s a very healthy guy with a long life ahead of him. This ain’t about murder! It ain’t even about theft! It’s about fixin a legal technicality!”
“But his life on the ranch was …”
“Bullshit! That was bullshit! Get real, Win! Warner Stillwell hated the fuckin ranch! Tess’s old man was the one who wanted to live on the ranch. Stillwell never had a dime of his own ’cept what Conrad Binder gave him when he was alive, and what was provided for in his trust. Warner Stillwell loves the Riviera, he says. Him and Tess worked out the plan. They needed a guy like me and a guy like you.”
“You’re trying to make me believe Warner Stillwell’s alive?”
“As you are.”
“Where?”
“Search me,” Buster said. “He thinks Portofino’s gettin too expensive, but he’s not too far from there, I imagine. I’d give you the name he used for the passport but I don’t know it. Tess does. She’ll be sendin serious money soon as she closes escrow on the ranch.”
“You always could think and talk fast,” Winnie said. “But even for you this is good.”
“Jesus Christ, I’m tellin you the truth! Why should I lie?”
“Because you murdered Warner Stillwell and let me think I was responsible for his death. And you’re trying to save your ass. You still carry your dive knife when you go down?”
“Yeah, I still carry my knife,” Buster said.
“You stuck him because he wouldn’t drown peacefully. Then you couldn’t leave the body. You swam the corpse out to your boat and …”
“I tell ya he’s alive! If the goddamn probate and trust laws weren’t so strict those two woulda just terminated the trust and divided up the inheritance back when Conrad Binder killed himself! Don’t you see, Win? All we did, all three of us, was make the law more workable. More fair. It was her money! She wanted to spend it! Warner wanted to spend it! I wanted to spend a little piece of it!”
“Why did you need a fourth?”
“Back in the beginning we were gonna do it without a fourth. Without a Winnie Farlowe. I was gonna witness the boat accident where Warner disappears. But the more we learned about probate law the less we liked it. A judge wouldn’t declare him dead without an absolutely convincing witness. And if the judge had doubts he’d just put it all on hold and declare Warner dead after five years of being missing. Well, we decided we didn’t have five years to spare, none of us.”
“Then you thought of me.”
“She did. After she saw your picture she called me and asked is this the guy that came to your apartment that night so ripped he fell down on your porch. Wait a minute! Is that it? Did you finally remember her from my apartment that night?”
Winnie said, “Keep going, Buster. My patience is limited.”
“Anyways, she said with your history as the boat parade drunk, nobody’d doubt how it happened. Not for one minute. And when I told her what a straight-ahead guy you are, well … she said you were jist perfect. A perfect …”
“Fall guy.”
“Nobody was supposed to get hurt!”
“Fifty-four days in jail, Buster. It hurts.”
“That was your fault! Nobody wanted that. Not even her. Fact is, I think she got a little soft on you. That ruined my own plans. I was hopin to be her fourth husband when she got rich.”
“Maybe I can spoil everybody’s plans,” Winnie said.
“It’s over!” Buster said. “Warner Stillwell’s been declared dead and Tess has the property. She’s in the middle of closin a deal with a developer for almost twenty million. What can you do? You think I’m gonna go into the D.A.’s office and tell him about this? Man, I already got a down payment on a little dive-boat business in Maui. You can go to the D.A. with a wild story if you want, but people’ll jist say your brain’s too marinated to come back to normal. You been in the news twice. You’re a big-time drunk. They’ll jist think you got wet-brain.”
“Where’s Tess now?”
“You can find Tess livin at her club. She already sold her house and closed escrow on that. I hear she’s leased a big yacht for a trip to Mexico. You can go ask if she’ll take you along as a deck hand if you want. But if you leave it alone, I bet she’ll take care a you. You’ll get something for yourself outta this.”
“I got a real problem,” Winnie said. “If I let you walk away from here I’ll never know if I got conned one more time, will I? I’ll never know if it happened the way you say, or if it always was a two-person conspiracy to kill Warner Stillwell. I’ll never know for sure whether or not you stuck your dive knife in that old man’s guts and dumped him in the Catalina Channel. You always were real fast on your feet, Buster.”
“I guess you gotta trust your instincts,” said Buster Wiles. “You known me a long time. You think I’m a murderer? You gotta decide. Either way, there’s nothin you could ever prove, is there? Now, I’m freezin to death. So whaddaya gonna do, Win? Shoot me or what?”
Winnie studied Buster Wiles, sitting there on the black rock, teeth chattering, the surf exploding like thunder beneath him in churning foam, then in a swirl of black water. Winnie said, “I wanna believe you for my own sake. I wanna believe he’s still alive. But if his body’s ever found in that channel, I’ll go to the D.A. whether they listen to me or not. Whether I can prove anything or not.”
Then Winnie tucked the gun under the sweatshirt. The last thing he ever said to Buster was, “Did you get enough, Buster? Was it worth it?”
“Enough to start a new life,” Buster said above the shrill hiss of wind. “I wasn’t all that greedy. But then, I’m not a cold-blooded killer. I’m jist your basic nonviolent opportunist, is all I am. And you, you’re jist a loser and you always were.”
There was no more to say. Winnie Farlowe stood up then, turned and climbed down to the beach, leaving his friend Buster Wiles shivering and alone while the sea lashed the black granite rocks.
Winnie drove straight to her club. He went to the front desk and asked if they could take a message for Tess Binder who was living in one of the apartments. He wrote out a message and put it in a sealed envelope. It said:
Dear Tess,
I understand you’ve leased a yacht for a cruise to Mexico. I don’t know when you planned to go but you’re going tomorrow. If you’re not out of my town by four P.M. I’m going to the D.A. whether or not it does any good. Then I’m going to the newspapers whether or not they believe me. Remember, you’re leaving here tomorrow and you’re not coming back. Not ever.
Yours,
Win
Winnie drove home then. He held the steering wheel in a death grip when he passed Spoon’s Landing. He thought about Polish vodka and about a cocktail called The Golden Orange. He wouldn’t be having one tonight. That’s all he knew for sure. Not tonight.
He slept fitfully. Theta sleep. If he dreamed about the stone nymph he didn’t remember it in the morning. He did remember a sweet lovely dream about climbing Mount Blackjack with his father, back when he wore Cub Scout blue
.
24
The Seawall
Winnie cleaned his apartment that morning. When he was finished it was more than shipshape. In fact, he’d never lived in a place as clean and orderly as his was that morning. He phoned his mother to tell her he was going out to look for a job. He told her he was thinking about selling sailboats, and that she shouldn’t worry about him; he’d be all right.
Talking to his mother made him feel better. He suddenly craved an omelet with jalapeño chilis, but there wasn’t even an egg in his refrigerator. He was preparing to go out for breakfast when the phone rang. It was Sammy Vogel from Newport Beach PD.
“Win,” Vogel said. “I just wanted to tell you there’s an A.A. meeting tonight at seven-thirty, over on Thirty-second Street. A speaker meeting. I think you’d enjoy it. I’ll be there if you wanna come.”
“Thanks,” Winnie said. “Can’t make it tonight. Maybe tomorrow night.”
Before hanging up, the detective said, “Don’t try to do it on your own. A do-it-yourself circumcision’d be easier.”
Winnie was already outside the door when the phone rang again. He went back inside and answered it on the fifth ring.
“Mister Farlowe?” the telephone voice said, “This is Pete at Boyd Schuyler Yacht Brokerage.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got something I think you’ll be interested in, Mister Farlowe. Can you come by this morning?”
He figured it might be a job offer. The day they’d gone sailing, Tess had mentioned to Boyd Schuyler that Winnie was interested in boat sales. So he changed from a T-shirt and jeans to a Reyn Spooner, slacks and his best deck shoes. With socks.
He went straight to the yacht brokerage, where he was met by Pete, who reminded him of himself fifteen years and a thousand drinks ago: a sunburnt sailor who’d take any job that kept him near boats or on the ocean.
The young salesman took Winnie into a private office, where he said, “I’ve never been involved in anything like this before!” He opened a drawer and took out a large manila envelope full of manuals and documents, and a set of keys.
He said, “You’ve got a boat out there! In your name. Paid for. And you’ll find in here the location of a boat slip on the peninsula. It’s been leased for you for one year. You’ve got some friend, that Miss Binder! She arranged all this three weeks ago, but I was told you weren’t ready for it yet. Today she phoned and said you were ready.”
Pete’s grin was wider than the Lido Channel. The kid’s nose was peeling from too much sun and ocean glare. He seemed to want Winnie to cheer, or something.
“It’s the ultralight, I guess?”
“Oh, yeah! Mister Schuyler said you already took it on a sea trial. She’s a sweet boat and she’s loaded! Miss Binder wanted everything you could put on it. Wanna take her out now? I got time if you need me to help.”
“Not now,” Winnie said. “I gotta go get a bite to eat. Not now.”
The kid looked disappointed, but he said, “Well, if you ever need someone to crew for you, just call.”
“Okay,” Winnie said, standing up and taking his envelope. “One thing, do you know about her leasing a big powerboat for a run to Mexico?”
“Sure. In fact, there was a panic around here early this morning. She’s decided to go today instead of in two weeks like she’d been planning. Two of our guys’ve been working all morning getting the boat ready. It’s a seventy-five-foot custom job, called Windspray. Wanna see?”
“I don’t wanna see,” Winnie said. “I gotta go get an omelet.”
“I wish I was going on that Manzanillo trip,” Pete said. “The boss got invited.”
“You mean Boyd Schuyler?”
“Yeah, he’s a pretty good friend of hers. He’s taking three weeks off, and flying back from there. She’s flying on from there to the Bahamas. To live, from what I hear. I guess you know all that? Anyway, I sure wish I could go along and bring the boat back, but I don’t have enough seniority around here.”
“I gotta go get an omelet,” Winnie said.
“Be sure to buy boat insurance,” the kid said. “That’s a valuable sloop and you’re her master now.”
After eating a rubbery omelet at a Balboa Island family restaurant, Winnie didn’t know what to do with himself. He had to do something until four o’clock. He knew where he’d be then. He decided to go home and check the mail.
There was nothing but bills. He looked at his watch. He tried to read but it was no good. He went to his phone and dialed a number a prisoner had given him, the only prisoner more miserable than himself. A young woman answered on the first ring.
“This is Win Farlowe. I’m a friend of Doug Bracken. Can I speak to him, please?”
After a very long silence the young woman said, “Yes, my dad mentioned you in his letters, Mister Farlowe. I … I’m sorry to … to say that Daddy shot himself last night, and …” There was another pause. “I want you to know … to know how much it meant to all of us that you … that you played basketball with my dad.”
At 3:30 that afternoon Winnie was back on the jetty, only this time on the east side, there by little Corona Del Mar Beach where Conrad Binder had ended his life. Winnie was watching a kid about ten or eleven years old, fishing with his father. They were having a great time, father and son, not caring much if they caught anything. The kid was horsing around, trying to drop an anchovy down his old man’s shirt, and the father was pretending to be scared of the dead fish. The “old man,” Winnie noted, was nearly ten years younger than he was.
Finally they got tired of fishing, and the kid snuggled up against his father and they just sat quietly like that. And Winnie sat quietly and watched them, realizing that probably he would never be a father, wondering what kind of father he’d have been, a guy who’d never been much good at anything, maybe not even as a cop.
Four o’clock came and went. So did the father and son. Other jetty fishermen were calling it a day. Winnie sat and watched the commercial boats coming in, trailing flocks of gulls, the birds hoping for tidbits that might be tossed off the stern.
At five o’clock he thought maybe she wasn’t heeding his warning. He was ready to leave when a gleaming white motor yacht came powering down the channel. It was close to his side of the jetty, and he didn’t even have to look for Windspray. He knew this was it.
Then he saw Tess. She was wearing a white jumpsuit with a white cardigan tossed over her shoulders. She stood on the sun deck, gazing aft toward The Golden Orange. Back to the place she wouldn’t be seeing anymore. Then Winnie saw a suntanned man in a blue blazer walk out onto the deck, holding a tall glass. He said something to Tess, but she shook her head. He stood behind her and kissed her neck, but she didn’t respond. Still she gazed back at The Golden Orange.
Winnie was running along the seawall without realizing it. He was keeping up with the slow-moving motor yacht as it crept out of the harbor, out to the open ocean. Boyd Schuyler put his arms around Tess Binder’s waist and kissed her neck again.
Then Winnie yelled: “NOW I KNOW YOU!”
The couple on the motor yacht looked over at the jetty, at the man in a sweatshirt and jeans running along beside them. “NOW I KNOW YOU!” Winnie shouted.
Boyd Schuyler said something to Tess Binder, but she shook her head and said something back. He turned away from her and walked reluctantly into the main salon. When she was alone, Tess approached the port rail. She clutched it with both hands, watching Winnie run.
“I KNOW YOU!” he yelled, still running. “NOW I KNOW YOU!”
Tess put her hands to her face, as though to weep. He’d seen her do that before, but he’d seen her really cry only once. On that hilltop overlooking Two Harbors, at the isthmus of Santa Catalina Island, when there was magic all around them in the twilight.
Tess dropped her hands back to the rail. She held on to it and shouted something. Winnie wasn’t sure what, and he kept running along the seawall, but he was nearing the end. They’d be past the jetty in a m
oment and the skipper would throttle forward and she’d be gone forever.
Then she shouted: “ONLY YOU! NOBODY ELSE! NOT EVER!”
He was panting and out of breath when he reached the end of the seawall. Winnie cupped his hands to his mouth, while the skipper was already starting to give the big yacht some speed.
Winnie had to yell it over the rumble of the diesels: “YOU CAN’T LOVE ANYONE! YOU NEVER WILL! NOT EVERRRR!”
It was like last night. He was standing at land’s end seeing someone else for the very last time. And not knowing for sure whether or not this one too was a murderer.
The lazy sea lions on the bell buoy weren’t even curious when the lustrous white motor yacht powered past them and turned southeast.
25
La Venganza
The yacht brokerage had been closed for hours. He parked his car, got a flashlight from the glove compartment, and ran down the ramp to the docks, carrying with him two five-gallon cans of gasoline. The sailboat was in the same slip where he’d last seen her, only this time there was a name painted on the transom: La Venganza.
Winnie climbed aboard and went below to turn on the lights and start the engine. There by the galley, on the mahogany chart table, was a note in Tess Binder’s handwriting. The note said: “Sailing well is the best revenge.”
The harbor was quiet when Winnie hoisted sail. His was the only boat out this late. He wished there was more wind, but even in light air she responded. She was a wonderful light-air boat. He tried not to think of anything until he reached the jetty.
He didn’t want to sail her out on the ocean. It seemed a cruel and brutal thing to do. He was already beginning to think of her as a living thing, this quick agile sloop. So he merely pointed her toward the open sea and started the diesel. Then he went back on deck and dropped the inflatable dinghy over the side, letting it trail. He went below again and poured five gallons of gasoline over everything. When he was finished, he poured the other can over the deck, letting it puddle in the cockpit.
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