Buster's voice was so soft he could hardly hear himself speak. He said, "Yes, if it's not critical of me. Because life is fuckin me over real bad and I feel like I might have a stroke any minute now, and I'm jist about as dangerous as an English soccer fan. So if I was you, I wouldn't say nothin critical"
Cockatoo Clyde gulped and said, "I was just going to tell you, Officer, that the man you're chasing staggered into the alley over there and fell down."
It took Buster Wiles about two minutes to get to his feet and limp toward the alley. Halfway down, the Asian was leaning against the wall of a garage. He wasn't going to run, but he wasn't going to go the easy way. He just stood there, waiting for Buster.
Buster Wiles's temples throbbed with pure fury. His eyeballs were seared, swollen with rage. He advanced toward the Asian, who stood stoically but with some defiance in his delicate face. He wasn't really as young as Buster had first thought. His face said: "Where I come from I got used to men with guns beating the living shit out of me. One more time won't matter."
Suddenly, a ten-year-old Pontiac chattered through the alley, almost pinning Buster to a telephone pole before he leaped to safety! He found himself on his ass again. The Pontiac was driven by the other Asian, who squealed to a stop near his pal, just as a Newport Beach patrol unit slammed to a stop at the opposite end of the alley.
The driver started to reverse the Pontiac without having rescued his partner, but Buster was on his feet and had drawn his revolver, very willing to crank off every round. The car stalled and the driver leaped out and tried to run back out of the alley with the rejuvenated partner hot behind him.
Buster smacked the little one with his side-handle baton when the guy tried to scamper past. The little one did a forward somersault, but got up running, blood streaming down the back of his head. The tall one made it past Buster.
Another Newport Beach patrol unit pulled up on the other end of the alley, and Buster, along with a female cop named Babs Morris, found themselves rolling on the sidewalk with the shorter thief, a biting, spitting, gouging little boat person who didn't want to go to jail that day. Buster was already exhausted and Babs Morris didn't have all that much upperbody strength. The little Asian managed to slug her twice on the side of the face and kick Buster in the groin.
A crowd of college kids, already drunk by noon, came pouring out onto the street from where they'd been watching a game of volleyball on the beach, and immediately took sides with the game little Asian. Buster got the guy in a chokehold, while Babs Morris looked for the handcuffs that he'd kicked out of her hand. Buster tried his best to pinch off the Asian's carotid arteries with what was left of his strength.
The college kids yelled things like:
"You don't have to kill the guy!"
"Let him up, for chrissake, he can't breathe!"
"Does it take two cops to arrest one little guy?"
"Just put the handcuffs on him and stop hurting him!"
By then, there were five patrol units screeching toward the alley with lights gumballing. Two cars slid to a stop and the cops jumped out and piled on. One of them knelt on the Asian's back, and at last he submitted to handcuffs and was dragged to a police car.
Buster rolled over and looked at the crowd still yammering and twittering. To him those college kids looked like they were standing on the other side of an aquarium. Or he was.
He staggered to his feet and limped toward the mob of kids. He picked out one who was making chirping noises like the Bedouin women in desert movies. The kid quieted down when Buster was six feet away, when he saw a pair of eyes emitting a death beam.
The kid said, "Hey! Hey, wait a minute!" when Buster slowly drew out his handcuffs. "You can't arrest me! I haven't done anything!"
Those violet eyes floated in a sea of lava. Those eyes were coming at the kid like little purple asteroids from a galaxy far away.
Buster was lunatic-furious. He said, "I ain't gonna arrest you! I'm gonna deputize you!" Then Buster snatched the kid's arm. And while the crowd started hollering about police brutality and civil rights and such, Buster bent that arm straight up, and whispered, "Do you swear to uphold the law and defend the Constitution? Yes? Fine! I hereby deputize you!" Then he slapped the handcuffs in the kid's hands and said, "Now let's see you go catch the one that got away without hurtin him! Make sure any bruises and broken bones belong to you, not him, YOU LITTLE MAGGOT SUCKIN FRATERNITY VERMIN!"
A sergeant who had just arrived, ran up, took Buster in tow and pointed him toward a patrol car. Then he went to the college kid, retrieved Buster's handcuffs and said, "He was hit in the head by the suspect. Concussion. You understand."
While Buster sat in the sergeant's car for safekeeping, the crowd of college kids went back to volleyball and drinking beer. And the patrol units at the scene cleaned up the carnage of the day.
Hadley rode back to the scene of the car burglary and pointed out the BMW to a patrol officer, who ran a radio check on the license plate. It came back as an LAPD stolen, with a hold-for-crime-scene-investigation, and the unusual request to notify West L. A. detectives when the stolen car was recovered. And just after a tow truck arrived to hook up the stolen car, there was another radio message that Hadley and Buster should go to the station.
While they were being driven to Newport Beach PD by Officer Babs Morris, who had a black eye, Hadley said, "That BMW wasn't even jimmied! Probably the jerkoff that owns it left it unlocked! Might as well write 'steal me!' on it, you leave a BMW unlocked up there in L. A."
Buster didn't seem to be hearing Hadley. His bell was still ringing and he couldn't focus all that well. Finally he said, "Somethin's wrong. This is supposed to be a safe place to do police work. Yet in the same week, I get shot at for stealin a dead mouse and almost killed by a fuckin cockatoo."
Babs Morris turned and looked at Buster Wiles very strangely. With her one good eye.
When they got to the station Sammy Vogel was waiting for them.
"You mean, this ain't about me jackin up that smart-mouth college kid?" Buster said. "I was figurin he probably called in to beef me."
The bald little detective scratched his shiny pink jaw and said, "That BMW you guys impounded? It was hot."
"Yeah, we know," Hadley said, "with a request to notify LAPD."
"That's because it was stolen during a residential burg where a woman and her daughter got murdered," Vogel said. "The car belonged to the victim.
That stoked young Hadley. "A double murder? They know who did it?"
"No," Vogel said, "but they know about a serial murderer with the same M. O. They call him the Audio Killer."
"I got a headache," Buster said. "Whaddaya want us to do?"
"Just wait here at the station for LAPD, is all. Don't go anywhere. They probably wanna see if your suspect could have anything to do with their case."
"No way," Buster said. "Our gooks were jist two opportunists. Happened to see a BMW that wasn't locked and went for the radio."
"I got the radio back," Hadley said to Vogel, "but the guy I was chasing got away."
"Yeah, well, I don't suppose LAPD cares about a recovered radio. They're looking for a serial killer. Any chance for prints on it?"
"Sure," Hadley said. "I picked it up real careful. The guy's prints're all over it."
"I mean the killer s prints!" Vogel said. "Not your guy. The guy that killed the people and stole the car. His prints. He's fruity over cassette players, this Audio Killer. He mighta played one of his tapes on that car radio."
Suddenly Hadley reached into a half-ripped pocket of his shorts and took out the audiocassette, holding it by the edges. He said to Vogel, "I almost forgot about this. It popped out."
Vogel took the cassette from the battered young cop. It was plain, without a commercial label. It had Betsy scrawled across it.
Vogel crossed the squad room to a cassette machine on top of a filing cabinet. He put the cassette in the machine, holding the edge between his thumb and forefinger. He p
unched the button on the machine.
There were two other detectives in the squad room. Everyone stopped when, after a few seconds of tape hissing, they heard a woman weeping hysterically. Then she cried out: "Pleeeeease! Pleeeeease!"
Then she tried to scream, but it was muffled by something. Then someone made gargling noises.
Then they heard the tape hissing again, followed by someone panting into the mike. Then there was a gasp and something that sounded like wheezing. Then the tape hissed again. Then it all stopped.
Buster looked at Hadley but nobody spoke. The action on the tape resumed with the sound of a small child crying. Then a man's voice said, "Mustn't cry, Betsy. There's no need to cry."
The child's voice said, "Where's my mommy? I want my mommy."
The male voice said, "Sure, Betsy. You'll be with your mommy soon. Real soon."
Then the child was screaming in terror. Then she was screaming in agony. They could easily detect the difference. The screaming went on for perhaps thirty seconds before it was muffled, and a man's panting excited voice said, "Betsy. Betsy!"
Then the sound stopped and the tape hissed again.
Buster and Hadley waited in the lunch room for the LAPD detectives. Buster had a diet drink while Hadley just sat quietly. But the hair on Buster's forearms was still electric, and he shivered up his back as he thought about the tape. He had watched Hadley's young face go gray during the playing of the cassette. There had been a white line around the cop's mouth, his lips were pressed so tightly together, and Buster thought he'd seen tears in the kid's eyes.
The LAPD detectives arrived at 5:15 p. M., apologizing for the delay. They seemed satisfied that the Asian thieves had nothing to do with their double murder, but they were extremely excited to get the cassette. A dusting for latent prints had produced nothing except smudges from Hadley's own fingers. But the voice of the serial murderer was on that tape, their first and only lead to the Audio Killer.
"I'm gonna have our boss write you guys an attaboy," one of the detectives said.
Ordinarily, Hadley would've been thrilled by a commendation, but he'd been subdued since hearing the Betsy tape. After the LAPD cops were gone, and Buster and Hadley had had their abrasions tended to and were in the locker room changing to civvies, Hadley finally said, "Know how old the little girl was? Betsy?"
"No."
"Three years old. I asked them and they said she was three years old."
"Yeah, well," Buster said. "Well." He couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Guys from Santa Ana PD always say that here in our town a beer ticket's a felony, right? And they always ask, whadda we get? One-point-seven homicides in a bad year? Well, I'd rather be here and deal with a million frauds and ripoffs than deal with one a those kinda homicides. Or something like the Randy Kraft case."
Hadley was referring to Orange County's most notorious murder trial ever. Randy Kraft, a forty-four-year-old computer consultant, was linked to the drugging, strangling and mutilation of forty-five young men, sixteen of them in Orange County, between 1972 and 1983. Like the Audio Killer, Kraft also relived his moments, and kept a diary with cryptic allusions to various victims. If all of Kraft's killings ever became known, he might be the U. S. A. S premier killer, even topping Ted Bundy, no mean feat in the land of recreational murder.
The audiocassette with Betsy scrawled across it was not uncommon, the LAPD detectives had pointed out to Hadley. Modern American serial killers were even using videocameras to memorialize their deeds.
"Know how I feel today, Buster?" Hadley said, when he finally put on his Nikes, ready to go home. "I feel like I'd be the one looking for a career change if I had to deal with stuff like that. Like Betsy."
Buster had a roaring headache, and other parts of his body hurt just as much. He'd asked for and been granted the next two days off. He dragged himself painfully to his feet, and just before Hadley left the locker room, Buster said to him, "This job sucks"
Hadley turned in the doorway, looking very young and sad. He said, "You didn't always feel that way. Did ya?"
Overflowing with venom, Buster Wiles said: "Only difference between this job and my ex-wife is, this job always will suck!"
Chapter 13 _ The Dell Buoy
The temperature in downtown L. A. was 106 which beat the record for the date by fifteen degrees! The surge in energy use from all the air conditioners in L. A. and Orange County had knocked out traffic signals. Schoolchildren were being kept off the playgrounds, and lights were turned off in classrooms.
Winnie had convinced Tess Binder to get out of the house and spend a large part of that scorching afternoon cruising in Newport Harbor. Tess borrowed a twenty-foot open-bow runabout, powered by an inboard-outboard engine, from her next-door neighbor. She packed a picnic basket full of light snacks, cold beer and California Chardonnay, and she sunbathed while Winnie piloted the boat.
Newport Beach is composed of eight islands, one natural and the rest man-made. Tess knew every island and every channel as well as Winnie did, but wasn't interested in the sights. She reclined across the bench seat in the open bow and rolled down her purple high-waist bikini. To Winnie she was as firm and sleek as an ocelot, and yet she'd never left him to go to a gym or even talked about it. Winnie wore baggy cotton shorts and a faded red tank with a screen print of a catamaran flying a hull on the front. He'd gotten enough confidence by now to stop sucking in his gut.
Winnie took the runabout under Newport Boulevard into the narrow channels by Balboa Coves, passing a gondola going the other way, a motor-powered gondola with the pilot in a Venetian striped jersey and a straw gondolier's hat. The steaming tourists in the gondola drooped like dead dandelions.
"Remember Corky Peebles from my club?" Tess lowered her oversized sunglasses to peek at Winnie, who leaned back, steering with his bare feet.
"Which one was she? The other blonde?"
"No, the one with the bobbed black hair and the gorgeous body."
"Oh yeah. The one that looked at me like I was a strange spot on a hotel pillowcase. I remember her."
"If she were with us, she could do a running commentary of who lives in which house, as long as it's someone with a net worth of more than ten million."
"Why just ten? Why not F. F. H. numbers?"
"There's only a handful of those in the harbor, but there's a lot of the other."
"Seven-one-four rich, right?"
"You learn fast."
"Told ya I wasn't too dumb, lady," Winnie said, holding a cold beer to his face and letting the water drops fall onto his chest.
"And as far as Forbes' Four Hundred, well, if someone slips three places, or jumps two on that list, Corky knows about it. And knows if he plays, or if his wife plays, and with whom. She's always ready to strike when there's an opportunity."
"Tell me, Tess," Winnie said, noticing for the first time that her hands were older than the rest of her. "What would it take for someone like ... like Corky to be content?"
"The Sultan of Brunei couldn't make Corky content."
"Well, yeah, but let's take someone like ..."
"Me, you mean."
"Okay, you."
"How much is your pension worth?"
"Come on, I'm serious."
"Okay, seriously, I don't need much. If I'd gotten my father's ranch I would've waited till it appreciated and sold it and bought a condo and scraped by. Now, well, I'll have to do what you're going to do. I'll have to get a job. And I've never had one."
"In your life?"
"In my life. Men've always taken care of me. First Daddy, then my three husbands. Men who treated me like a Rolls-Royce hood ornament."
Later, when Winnie passed Harbor Island on the main channel side, Tess said, "There. That's the best location on the water as far as I'm concerned. I used to think my inheritance would be large enough to buy a house on Harbor Island, a house that didn't need too much remodeling. One with a nice lawn."
"How much would that cost now?"
"With a turning basin view? Oh, six or seven, I suppose. For a decent one."
"Million?"
"Of course. The guy who bought the John Wayne house has a hundred and twenty-seven foot mega-yacht worth ten million."
"You were expecting that kind of bucks when your father died, and you got nothing, right? So tell me, how the hell could those two old guys spend so much?"
"You'd have to ask Warner Stillwell. I've asked him and he just shrugs it off. Refers to all the cruises and the villas they leased in the south of France and Portofino. That sort of thing."
Winnie steered quietly for a long time. It was very hard for him to conceptualize real wealth. And to realize that by Golden Orange standards Conrad P. Binder wasn't even all that rich. The old family home in Bayshores was a scraper, according to Tess, torn down within a week after the new buyer cleared escrow. Winnie finally had to concede that he simply had no idea what it meant: rich.
Then Winnie began thinking about the hot mommas. What would they do on a day like this? Maybe they'd go up to South Coast Plaza or Fashion Island to browse in air-conditioned shops. How much would they spend?
Suddenly it occurred to him. "Know what?"
"What?"
"I lived around here all my life and I never even bought so much as a pair a socks up there in Fascist Island. Imagine that!"
"That is amazing," she said.
He nibbled on a sandwich and drank beer. Tess occasionally ate a carrot or a celery stick and sipped Chardonnay. Winnie noticed that the wine had a store sticker price of $25.95 so she couldn't be that broke. He had less money than that to tide him over until the next pension check arrived.
Winnie kept the boat in lower Newport Bay, though he preferred the natural beauty of the upper bay, where there was still undeveloped land and lots of wildlife. Winnie's grandfather had helped float the barge Theda Bara rode on there, during the filming of Cleopatra. But Winnie figured the back bay would be a few degrees hotter so he decided to avoid it.
There were over sixty thousand boats in Orange County, but few were cruising the harbor in these melt-down Santa Ana conditions. By the Lido peninsula they cruised past a Feadship, a 102-foot motor yacht.
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