the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

"Well, Starkey knows his way around the ranch. He's ridden those trails with Warner. In fact, during the last couple of years Hack and Warner seemed a little too friendly."

  "Tess, I'd like to talk about your dad's death."

  "Oh God!" She got up and went to the wet bar. She poured herself a double Scotch. When she came back her hands were shaking.

  "Tell me about his suicide. How it happened. Who informed you. Details. I know it's tough."

  Tess sighed and took a good long hit on the Scotch before saying, "I didn't even know Daddy was ill. He couldn't have been terribly sick yet, but . . . well, according to Detective Vogel at the police department, my father simply walked down to Little Corona Beach, one night last summer. One warm, starry night, last summer. And he put a gun to the side of his head. And he did it. They found nothing by way of a note. His wallet and money were still in his pocket." She paused to sob for a second, gained control and said, "Why does a man go off to a lonely beach to do something like that, Win?"

  "I don't know," he said, taking her hand. "They do it in unpredictable ways. Did the police find the gun?"

  "Yes. It was Daddy's gun. A thirty-eight-caliber revolver he'd kept at the ranch. His body eventually slid down the beach when the tide came in. By the time he was spotted by a fisherman, Daddy had been in that cold water all night. They found . . . what do you call it. . . dark marks on both sides of his body?"

  "Lividity?"

  "Yes. They said it indicated he was lying for several hours on one side and then the tide turned him over on the sand and he lay for several more hours. He was nearly afloat in the water when a fisherman finally spotted him the next morning."

  "And the gun was still on the beach?"

  "Yes, partly buried by the tide. He'd had it registered with the Indio sheriffs."

  "What happened to it?"

  "I gave it to Warner when it was returned to me with Daddy's things: his wallet, wristwatch, his Stanford graduation ring, his clothes and shoes. I kept all the other things, but I gave the gun to Warner. I wanted to throw it away, but where do you throw a gun? I thought about tossing it in the ocean. I thought about burying it in the ground. Finally I just gave it to Warner."

  "Tess, was there any, I mean, any suggestion of foul play?"

  "How foul can it get?"

  "I mean, that it was anything other than suicide?"

  "No!" she said quickly. "None whatsoever. There were powder marks on his temple. What do you call it?"

  "Stippling. From the gunpowder tattooed under the skin."

  "The coroner and the detective from Newport Beach, everyone was satisfied. Especially after they talked to Daddy's doctor and found out about his .. . illness."

  "You said he was sick, but he wasn't sick. What was it?"

  And then she did cry. Tess buried her face in the back cushion of the sofa and began to weep. Winnie sat helplessly and touched her shoulder once or twice. He guessed.

  "AIDS?" he said.

  "HIV," she said, still sobbing, "It wasn't AIDS yet. But he was carrying the virus. His doctor and the pathologist concurred."

  "How about Warner? Is that why you say he goes to the doctor periodically?"

  Then she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, put her glasses back on and said bitterly, "I don't know. He must have it. The virus at least. He must have given it to my father. Where he got it I can't say."

  "He's an old man, isn't he?"

  "Seventy-two. Old men get it too. But he's a fit, athletic man who looks ten years younger. I know he gave the disease to my father!"

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Win, goddamnit! My father wasn't an I. V. user, or a junkie, and he didn't get a transfusion, and you don't get it from toilet seats! How else could he've gotten it? Are you implying my father picked up hustlers from bars? Hustlers like Hack Starkey? Are you suggesting that?"

  Winnie put down his drink and took her in his arms. "I'm not suggesting anything. I just wanna help you."

  "I know," she said, holding on tight.

  "I wanna check out a few things. Maybe I can help, maybe not."

  "You can help by staying with me tonight. Please don't leave me alone tonight!"

  Still holding her, he said, "I won't leave you."

  When she looked up she tried to smile. "You can even use my toothbrush. I've never let anyone share my toothbrush. Not anyonel"

  Chapter 12 _ Betsy

  Both Tess and Winnie (who had a very brief buzzard visit at 3:30 a. M.) slept late the next morning, and while they slept, Buster Wiles was drawing ever closer to his career change. The Santa Ana wind condition had drawn 300,000 to Southland beaches. Even on this weekday the peninsula was gridlocked, and the beach patrol had started writing beer tickets at ten o'clock in the morning.

  Balboa peninsula, a crooked finger of land bordered by the ocean on one side and lower Newport Bay on the other, is less than five hundred yards wide at its widest point, and about four and a half miles long. Balboa Boulevard, which divides the peninsula, is lined with apartment houses that charge big bucks to short-term tourists, as well as to students in for a fling.

  During this onslaught by the Santa Anas, the peninsula was a circus. At the Newport Pavilion the big catamaran was loaded to capacity for the hour-and-a-half run to Santa Catalina Island. Kids mobbed the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel at the Balboa Fun Zone and lined up at Skee Ball machines in the arcade. The Balboa and Newport piers looked in danger of collapse, overrun by fishermen and others desperate for an offshore breeze that just wasn't there.

  The ribbon of pavement that borders the vast white beach of Newport was jammed with bicyclists and roller skaters. And the sand was a patchwork of "saltwater taffy," those living breathing morsels of sweetness in French-cut bikinis.

  Three "jogglers" from the local colleges, a young woman and two young men, sprinted along Ocean Front, amazing the acres of sun lovers. The young woman, dressed in a polka-dotted tank top and Capri-length striped tights, juggled four red balls. The young men juggled five balls each. Both of them wore three-piece outfits consisting of solid cotton T-back tops and matching briefs over striped knee-length Lycra trunks. All three jogglers wore Reeboks and mismatched socks, since mismatched socks were up-to-the-minute. At least, for the moment.

  The section of water on the ocean side of the harbor jetty, known as the Wedge, was jammed with kids daring the reeeelyawesome waves that sometimes roar to twelve feet and break bones against jetty rocks, a legendary site for body surfers and boogie-boarders, featured in the surfing classic, Endless Summer.

  Buster found himself partnered with Hadley again, and the young cop's mouth started revving before they'd finished their first cup of morning coffee. Buster had gotten to the stage in life where he couldn't stand extended conversations with any person under the age of thirty-five, much less having to spend eight hours a day with a twenty-two-year-old. Much less one like Hadley, who thought he could score with surfer bimbos and beach bimbettes by telling fecal jokes.

  "Knockers 'n fannies far as the horizon!" Hadley cried, as the cops walked along the surf line. "A sea of tender flesh with nary a ripple on the surface! Hey! Scope-out on that one!"

  He'd spotted a tall one in an apricot bikini. They were lying in rows, all this Golden Orange saltwater taffy, in taffy-colored French cuts and thong bikinis: lemon, licorice, tangerine, strawberry. They were soft and pliable and tasty, these lithesome saltwater taffy morsels.

  "Yeah, she's got the shape-of-a-shape," Buster said, sweat beading on his forehead and lip. "Maybe when she grows up, huh?"

  "She'd be perfect if she had a liquor license," Hadley giggled. "And if she'd give me a license to lick her!"

  Hadley didn't laugh, he brayed. The bimbette with the shape-of-a-shape looked up at Hadley, curled her lip and whispered something to a friend, a more full-figured bimbette who lay face down, her top undone for no tan line. But they both took a peek at Buster and smiled sympathetically.

  Hadley said, "She reminds me of on
e I met at Smedley's party. They call her Fangs. Thinks your dick's an artichoke leaf. Likes to drag the meat off."

  While Hadley brayed again, Buster adjusted the ride of his holstered gun and wiped his face with the white hand towel he'd tucked inside his Sam Browne. Buster's uniform shirt was already soggy.

  He said, "I know you seen Beverly Hills Cop eighteen times, and I know Eddie Murphy brays like a jackass too, but he's got forty million so nobody tells him!"

  Buster suggested they go get a soda pop. When they reached the sidewalk on Ocean Front-which borders the beach all along the peninsula-a gorgeous red-haired skater in a hot-pink thong bikini throttled back to eyeball Buster. She cut him a big smile, and posed on one wheel when Buster turned on those thick-lashed lilac lamps of his.

  "Do you have the time, Officer?" she asked.

  "For what?" Hadley piped up, causing Buster to shake his head wearily.

  Buster looked at his watch and said, "It's only ten-thirty, but believe me, it feels like five o'clock in the afternoon."

  The redhead was only about twenty years old and Buster had long since given up that kind of trouble.

  Hadley was wild about the fine coat of freckles covering the skater's legs and shoulders and back, and said, "If I was your boyfriend I'd love to play connect the dots!"

  "Yeah, I know," she said sardonically. "With your tongue, right? I hear that all the time." Then, to Buster: "What is this, simian rivalry?"

  It was the first time Buster smiled all day, but she was still too young. "We gotta go before I get heatstroke," he said. "I'm even too weak to drink from a straw."

  "I'm staying down on Seventeenth Street," she said quickly. "Maybe you could come by tonight and tell me if it's a safe neighborhood?"

  Then Buster broke her heart by saying, "Sugar, I got handcuffs older'n you," while he mopped the back of his neck with the towel and headed toward the hamburger stand.

  "Hey! I kinda like handcuffs!" the skater said, with a forlorn gaze at Buster's buns inside those cute police department shorts.

  When they were seated at a stool having a root beer, Hadley said, "She was all-time, that redhead! The look she gave you, you could wear out two dildos with. If you half tried, Buster, you could draw bigger crowds than Bruce Springsteen or the fuckin Chinese pandas. These surfboard Suzies want you more than Day-Glo earrings. How 'bout you take some and give me your leftovers? Man, life's a beach, don't ya know?"

  Buster ran his hands through his hair, surprised that even his scalp was soaked. He sighed and said, "Now comes the terrible truth, Sonny. Old Buster had a taut cord attached from his cock to a troubled psyche, okay? See, the cock has to have some slack so it can grow. Mine ain't got none these days."

  "Why?"

  "I got problems up here." Buster tapped his head.

  "What problems? My mom says you used to be king a the beach around here."

  "Fact is, I need to get in another line a work. If this was Nam I'd shoot myself in the foot to get a ride home." Then he realized what Hadley had said. "Your mom!"

  "You tired a police work?"

  "Give yourself another fifteen years," Buster said. "It won't seem so impossible."

  "Different strokes," Hadley said. "Depends on what gets you off, I guess. I'd pay to do this job. All those wood burners on the beach? Yeah, I'd pay to do this job!"

  "Depends on what gets you off," Buster said. "Me, I can't stand the thought a lookin at another computerized police report with all those little boxes on 'em. I've filled in more little boxes in my time than a gynecologist. I'm ready for a career change."

  "What could you do? All you know is police work, right?"

  "Somethin akin to my trainin. Maybe a job in a lab. Maybe shockin mice till they go bonkers. That's like police work. Only in police work, I'm one a the fuckin mice! Now let's go write some beer tickets, kid."

  On their way to ticket the early-morning boozers in the parking lot by the Newport Pier they ran into Cockatoo Clyde. As usual, the little fat man was surrounded by parrots and cockatiels, canaries and love birds. They perched on his shoulders, or on his head, or sat obediently on temporary perches that encircled him on the sidewalk. Clyde did shows for tourists and bimbettes.

  Buster found the vivid and beautiful creatures strangely depressing. He had a terrible feeling something was going to happen on this scorching day. Something that wouldn't be beautiful. In fact, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach when Hadley paused and disgusted a bimbette by saying to her: "Know how to turn a canary into a hummingbird? Cut off its feet!"

  "You're real smooth and sophisticated," Buster said to his partner. "Like dago red in a fruit jar."

  They continued walking along Ocean Front.

  When they got to Fifteenth Street, they saw a pair of young Asians looking into the window of a BMW 325i. The local cops say that when two or more Vietnamese go within fifty feet of a German car, there's de facto probable cause to stop and frisk. They say that Vietnamese thugs down from Westminster's Little Saigon can strip a radio out of a Mercedes faster than you can tune it to a Dodgers game.

  The two Asians spotted the cops and started moving fast, toward Balboa Boulevard.

  Buster was much too hot and tired, but Hadley said, "He's carrying something!" Then he yelled: "Hold it!"

  And the chase was on! The taller Asian held the BMW radio like a football.

  Buster put out a call for assistance over his hand set before lumbering after the fleeing Asians. Hadley, who had good speed for his size, powered along in a hang-it-out sprint. The young cop was almost sideswiped by a red pickup on Balboa Boulevard, and a kid with a baseball hat on backwards stuck his head out the window and yelled, "You'd write me a jaywalking ticket for that, you shithead!"

  The shorter and slower Asian headed east toward Main Street, a shady tree-lined thoroughfare near the old post office. The other Asian doubled back toward the beach. Hadley figured they had their wheels parked back there, maybe in the vicinity of the BMW, but since the tall one was carrying the radio, Hadley stayed with him, hoping Buster could keep up with the slower shorter one.

  Meanwhile, Buster was trucking along breathlessly, cursing Asian boat people and rookie partners and the Santa Ana winds and his life in general as he ran across the boulevard by the Balboa Cinema. A car had to careen toward the oncoming traffic lanes, forcing Buster to leap on top of a parked car to keep from getting creamed. Another car screeched and fishtailed and dove to a stop just in time.

  Horns were blowing and people were screaming, but no harm was done except to Buster's nervous system as a geyser of adrenaline blew through him. Then Buster, too, wondered if they might've stashed their car somewhere near the place where they'd first been spotted. He chugged back toward the beach.

  The taller Asian ran back to the sidewalk along Ocean Front, dodging in and out among strollers, skaters, runners, loiterers, and cyclists in Spandex. With the radio still under his arm he juked and jibed, and looked back at Hadley once too often.

  He crashed into the three jogglers. Red balls went flying. Bodies covered in polka dots and stripes did back flips and cartwheels and whoop-de-doos. The jogglers smashed into two kids on beach bikes who collided with two skaters going the other way. People shouted and screamed, arms flailing, legs akimbo. Metal and flesh skidded along the pavement. Big wheels and little ones spun upside down in the air. Hadley plunged through all of it without losing a step.

  And he made it to the corner. Where he stepped on one little red ball, a jogglers ball, belonging to the girl who could sprint all-out while keeping four of them in the air.

  The young cop's legs went horizontal! He did a head-first, belly-flopping, boogie-boarding slide along fifteen feet of sidewalk, upending a tourist from Tacoma who had already decided that folks were a little different in California.

  Hadley yelped, rolled over and gaped in horror at his knees and shins. The stolen car radio lay broken in the street ten feet away. The cassette player was jammed and a tape had popped out. Had
ley limped over, retrieved the stolen property and sat down on the curb.

  Buster had been prowling through the alleys behind the row of rental units along the beach, looking for a likely car that might belong to the two suspects, when he spotted the tall Asian two hundred yards farther west along the beachfront!

  The thief was now bare-chested, using his shirt to mop sweat and blood from the abrasions on his chest, arms and forehead. He looked like he'd been dipped in olive oil, his lean sweaty body and shiny black hair gleaming in the pitiless sunlight. Buster yelled: "Stop, you little slopehead, or I'll blow you back to the boonies you came from!"

  The Asian was losing it, running in slow motion. He wasn't breathing, he was rattling. He turned a corner away from the beachfront, back toward Balboa Boulevard again. Where he had his luckiest break of the week. He had just enough time to dance off the sidewalk.

  When Buster rounded the corner-having decided to sprint all-out for another fifty yards and then, fuck it-he wasn't so lucky.

  An exploding palette! Color! A kaleidoscope of emerald green and blood scarlet and lemon yellow and cobalt blue! Buster heard exotic cries he hadn't even heard in the jungles of Vietnam! Shrieks and whistles and screams! Colors dove and swooped and wheeled and hovered before his eyes!

  Buster Wiles found himself sitting splaylegged on the sidewalk. Cockatoo Clyde sat opposite him, looking every bit as dazed as Buster, but a lot more terror-stricken. Clyde was swarmed on by birds scurrying to safety. His cockatoos and parrots and canaries and cockatiels and lovebirds and parakeets screamed in rage and fear, even biting at their master in confusion.

  Buster was covered with a mosaic of feathers and bird shit. Terror-loosened bird bowels had simply let go! Buster was awash in green and white, and strangely enough, a kind of magenta slime. He could taste bird shit: It was even dripping down his nose.

  "I got a headache," the dazed cop said in a soft demented voice to the equally dazed bird man. "If you promise not to bitch to my boss about me scarin your birds, I promise I won't tear your face off and eat it."

  The bird man gaped at the ferocious, bloodied, psychotic-looking cop, and said, "Can I just say something, Officer?"