the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Did you hear!" she cried. "The house across from Margie's is in escrow for nearly seven mil! That tops the price for John Wayne's place!"

  "No, I hadn't heard," Tess said.

  "But that's nothing" Corky breathed. "The other one? The big one, sold to some . . ." When she thought about the ramifications of the buyer-F. F. H. rich-she said, "... some Oriental gentleman for, are you ready? Fifteen million!"

  "Truly unbelievable," Tess said, trying to look unimpressed, but Winnie could see that she was. And why not, he was!

  Tess said to Winnie, "It's a nineteen-thousand-square-foot house with underground parking for nine cars."

  "And a twelve-thousand-bottle wine cellar," Corky added.

  "And a three-thousand-foot master bedroom," said Tess.

  "And it's got what they call poured-in-place concrete construction," Corky said to Winnie, eyes alight. "With steel I-beam construction. It can take a hit of eleven on the Richter scale!"

  "If the next is an eleven, that guy's gonna be king a the coast," Winnie said, and Corky's eyes went even wider.

  "That's right!" she said. "You're absolutely right!"

  She wiggled her fingers then, and jetted back to the hot mommas on the other side of the patio, leaving a vapor of wrinkle cream in her wake.

  "She's now finding out if the gentleman's married," Tess said to Winnie, "and whether he likes round-eyed women, and if there's anything new out of Cal Tech regarding earthquake predictions. If the big one comes and he's the only rich man left she'll get him if she has to ride it out on a rubber dinghy."

  "I'm starting to like her," Winnie said, trying not to gulp his beer. "She's got more moves than Bekins Van Lines."

  Tess said, "Don't get too comfortable around here with the likes of Corky. I don't get the ranch until Warner dies. Could be ten years. Maybe fifteen."

  Winnie said, "Whaddaya mean by getting comfortable?"

  "I'm not planning on letting you get away from me," she said. "But you'll have to wait a long time till I can afford a waterfront villa."

  Winnie gaped. She was barely smiling. She was gazing at him with gray pebble irises behind rose-tinted lenses. Wearing her white dress. The goddamn white dress!

  "What's the matter, love?" she asked.

  Winnie realized that his mouth was hanging open. He snapped his jaws shut and said, "I guess I looked like a stroke victim, huh? One a those guys with his mouth frozen open like he's gonna laugh but it never comes? I guess I looked like that, huh?"

  "Something wrong?"

  He didn't mention the white dress. It made him feel dizzy to think about it. He wanted it to go away. That maddening sensation of dPSj& vu, something just beyond a curtain of white linen. Then it was all gone.

  "Maybe it's what you said. Something made me drift. Becalmed. No wind for my sails. A sailor in irons."

  "Why?"

  "Hearing you even suggest you're gonna hang in there with a guy like me? I mean, you might think you know what you're doing, but. .."

  Then Tess Binder leaned forward in her chair and touched his hand the way she'd touched Martin Scroggins' hand. She said, "Win, when I make up my mind about something, I always know exactly what I'm doing."

  She leaned even closer and kissed him. When she pulled back he glanced over at the hot mommas, at Corky Peebles, who saw the kiss and turned to her tablemates to whisper.

  Winnie said, "Corky's looking at me, thinking, a house jist sold for fifteen mil and Tess's playing kissy face with a guy that wears sneakers a Shanghai longshoreman wouldn't be caught dead in."

  When Winnie excused himself to go to the rest-room, Corky Peebles scurried back to Tess's table.

  "You just got to tell me!" Corky demanded. "Why him?"

  Tess blew a cloud of smoke in Corky's direction and smiled mysteriously, saying nothing.

  "Why, Tess?" Corky cried, her power bob bouncing in frustration. "I mean, sure, he's sorta Our Gang cute, but he couldn't get mugged in Harlem!"

  "Maybe he's a superb lover," Tess said, broadening the smile that was driving Corky mad.

  "Puh-leeese!" Corky cried. "How could anybody in the whole wide world even attempt to reach orgasm with a guy that wears a Timex watch?"

  When Winnie returned Corky waved bye-bye and wriggled away.

  Tess said to Winnie, "Want to talk about more ordinary things? Like murder?"

  "Sure," he said. "You and me, that makes me start to sweat, and think about an old song I don't understand. Murder, that I can understand."

  Tess lit a cigarette and said, "Okay, here's how I see it: Warner waited a discreet period of time, eight months after Daddy died. Now he wants to sell the ranch and go back to Portofino or wherever. But he can't. He can only live in it. Unless I die."

  "Wait a minute, Tess," Winnie said. "Start at the beginning. Your dad bought that land without you knowing. Must a cost him a few million, four or five maybe. So your father didn't blow his money. He invested most of it but jist didn't tell you."

  She puffed on a cigarette, looking toward the main channel beside the club. Except that her view was blocked by a large yacht fisher, custom built in Australia and said to have cost its owner three million dollars. And there were other more expensive yachts blocking the view from where they sat on the club patio.

  Winnie followed her eyes and thought, That is the view here. Landlocked yachts. The ultimate in conspicuous consumption. The water itself is set decoration!

  Finally she said, "Yes, of course. From the beginning, here's how I explain it: Warner told Daddy that he'd discussed the land purchase with me. Daddy assumed that I knew all about it."

  "Something that important? Doesn't wash," Winnie said. "He'd talk it over with you himself, your father."

  "Remember, I told you that Warner was the dominant one in their relationship? Besides, Daddy had something more pressing on his mind."

  "What could be more pressing?"

  "Maybe he was preoccupied with the HIV virus. He could've known about it for years."

  Winnie thought a while and said, "That could obsess a guy for sure, but dumping all that cash in a huge land purchase? Naw, he'd tell you if he wanted you to know."

  "Okay then, goddamnit! Martin Scroggins was right! Daddy and Warner decided that I shouldn't know. That I was too ... immature, and always had been. And when my marriage to Ralph Cunningham failed, as Daddy knew it would, then he'd tell me all about it. Then he'd tell me I wouldn't be a pauper after he was gone. That I'd be well provided for."

  "Yeah, I'd call that well provided for," Winnie agreed.

  "He probably developed symptoms last year. And he started thinking about it: AIDS. The dreadful agony. The ... the humiliation of it. He couldn't see any way out except to take his gun and go back to where he'd been happiest, back here where he'd been a husband and a father..."

  Tess stopped then and sniffled. Winnie waited a moment and said, "Okay, that scenario I can almost buy. A guy like your old man, living all those years in a closet..."

  "He thought he was closeted. Of course, everyone knew."

  "Yeah, well, he had to get outta this world right away. I can see that part. And he figured after he was dead Warner'd let you know about the land. About how you'd be rich in a few years after Warner was gone."

  "Don't count on a few years, old son," Tess said. "Warner is an amazing physical specimen for a man of seventy-two."

  "Yeah, but you said he's probably got the virus, if not AIDS itself. Otherwise, how would your dad . . ."

  Tess's chin trembled, so Winnie stopped right there. He signaled to the waitress. When she came over he looked at his watch and said, "I'll have a vodka on the rocks. Polish if you got it. It's late enough."

  Tess at last addressed the painful subject. "Okay, let's assume that Daddy got the virus but Warner doesn't have it. Or, let's say they both have it but Warner's optimistic. Maybe he believes in that Tijuana AIDS clinic that claims to have a handle on it. Or he thinks a cure's on the way. He always was more of an optimist t
han Daddy. Let's assume he isn't about to kill himself. On the contrary, he's going to enjoy life. He wants to try to spend those millions in the years he has left. Now, go with that one.

  "Where you're trying to take me, I got trouble going," Winnie said, "See, all this would rest on a personality switch. Warner Stillwell's spent half a lifetime with your dad. Let's say, he only pretended to love your father because a the life-style he was provided with. Still, the man's over seventy. He's got it made the rest a the way, long as he stays on the ranch and continues what he's been doing, and . . ."

  "Hack Starkey!" she interrupted. "Maybe he's been heavily involved with Starkey. Maybe Starkey doesn't want to live on the ranch. Maybe he wants to do the things with Warner that Daddy did with Warner."

  "Return to Sorrento?"

  "Something like that."

  "And Starkey persuades him that you gotta go, so the ranch can be Warner's to sell. But Starkey's not a professional killer and he butchers the shot he takes at you out on the trail. And he's a pretty sloppy guy on a surveillance too, when he's checking out your house."

  "Exactly."

  "I don't like it," Winnie said. "How do you explain the will and the trust arriving at your house, but not the land deed?"

  "There was something I deliberately withheld from Martin Scroggins. Something that would've made him interrogate Warner Stillwell immediately, no matter what."

  "Yeah?"

  "At the time those documents were sent, I was staying at the ranch. Arranging for the funeral at the desert cemetery after the coroner was through with Daddy's body. Making notifications. Doing a thousand little things. Helping to see Warner through his grief, at least I thought he was grieving.

  "Who had access to your mailbox on Linda Isle?"

  "Anybody on the list I've given to the gate guards."

  "Who would that be?"

  "A housekeeper comes in once a week, a girl from Guatemala who's worked around this island for years. Then there's the water delivery man. Corky Peebles and three other girl friends're on the list as well. I put Ralph Cunningham on the list in case we had more business about the divorce. And Warner Stillwell, he's on the list. Hack Starkey could've come and claimed to be Warner Stillwell."

  "How would he get inside your house?"

  "The maid and the service people get the key from the guard and return it when they've finished with their work. Warner and Daddy, they had their own key, in case they ever cared to drop in unexpectedly, but they never did. They were old-fashioned gentlemen who'd never come unannounced."

  "Would the gate guards keep the logs from last year? And would the logs have license numbers of your visitors?"

  "I assure you our gate guards are not policemen."

  "Okay, so Hack Starkey coulda got in and stolen that piece a mail. Still, I don't like the notion that Warner suddenly turned homicidal over big bucks because your dad conveniently killed himself. That's the part I don't like. I don't like convenience when it comes to a murder for profit. Which is not a crime of impulse."

  "At least you have a motive. A motive for murder."

  "What I'm thinking now is, I'd like to get rid of all the convenient events here. We been talking about a motive for your murder. How about all this being a continuing plot? For a double murder? Your father first, then you."

  Tess spilled her beer across the table. But she scooted back quickly enough to keep it from staining that white linen dress.

  Chapter 15 _ Higher Power

  Buster Wiles wasn't sure if the hollow banging that woke him was from his erratic heartbeat or the cheap plumbing. He felt like he'd fought an orangutan in an elevator.

  He knew he'd be hurting in the morning, but not like this! From the neck down he was covered with ugly abrasions and bruises: purple, black and lime green. He couldn't remember ever bruising green before.

  Worse than all of that was the hangover. Everything he couldn't see felt swollen and inflamed. His nerves twitched and danced. His hands seemed palsied, and every arrhythmical heartbeat sloshed painfully to his head. Buster needed a surgical collar to support a skull this big.

  Buster tried to take a cold shower but the jets hurt. He tried to dry with a soft towel but the towel hurt. Buster limped outside his apartment and stood naked on the back porch to dry in the sun, blinded by the light. He ran the risk of some kid on the way to school seeing him and maybe telling a teacher who might call the cops, but he figured the way things were going in California these days they'd probably need videotape of the crime as well as a signed confession that he waved his whanger before anybody would bother. That made him think of last night's news. The notorious McMartin Preschool Molestation Case was entering its third year in Los Angeles Superior Court, and had already cost the California taxpayers fifteen million dollars. If due process in California had come to three-year trials, why should he worry about the misdemeanor of exposing his shattered body on the back porch of a crummy apartment in Newport Beach, U. S. A.?

  Buster was hurting too much to make coffee. So he just sat facing the morning sun and thought about Life, his life in The Golden Orange. About living in this little city with its police force of 145 officers, where the average cop can't afford to live if he wants a decent house. And how very soon there'd be only 144. He thought of many seemingly unconnected things. For instance, he thought of how he helped to protect one of the biggest Rolls-Royce dealerships in the world, he, the driver of a Ford Escort. He thought of how a Mercedes was considered a Chevy Nova around these parts, and if you don't at least drive a Lotus Turbo keep it to yourself, they say.

  Buster Wiles knew that these disturbing thoughts were flooding his swollen brain because he needed to rationalize what he knew he was going to do. What he had to do if the remainder of his life was to have comfort and meaning and dignity. If he was to enjoy what was left of youth. If there was any of that left to a man of forty-five.

  The time had come for Buster Wiles to address the Cop's Syllogism, which has led thousands of burned-out, overwhelmingly cynical members of the law enforcement business into alcoholism or drug addiction, police corruption or suicide.

  The Cop's Syllogism is very simple and exceedingly dangerous: "Pfeople are garbage. I am a person. Therefore . . ." Once it's consciously or unconsciously acknowledged and accepted, whatever follows is something bad.

  And so at last, after months of grappling with a tottering superego, the conscience of Buster Wiles had at last collapsed, and lay like a bloated corpse in the surf. There was no turning back now. As soon as he was recovered from the ravages of this morning he would proceed with his "career change." He was going to take the assignment, absolutely.

  "How are you today?" she said, hobbling down the alley.

  Buster lowered his face from the sun's rays, but didn't move and he made no effort to cover his nakedness. He just sat there in a folding chair, almost dry enough to go in and get dressed, and looked blandly at the old crone pushing a shopping basket through the alley.

  He'd never known where she lived. She wasn't exactly a bag lady, more of a pack rat, always wearing layers of dresses. Always pushing a shopping cart loaded with junk. The nameless old woman lived somewhere between Twenty-eighth and Thirty-third streets, near Winnie Farlowe, or so Buster supposed. Yet he wouldn't have been surprised if she owned ten thousand shares of Xerox. Around here, anything was possible.

  Her stockings were rolled around ankles as white as the shells that lay on Buster's porch near a pair of black swim fins so old and rotten he didn't care if an alley thief stole them.

  She looked over at Buster again and said, "Fine, I hope."

  Buster said, "Huh?"

  "I just asked, how are you today?" said the nameless old woman. "And you didn't answer."

  "I don't like trick questions," said the utterly naked man, suddenly stricken with nausea.

  The smell of food woke Winnie up. He knew at once she was making him a killer omelet. He jumped out of bed, for once not reluctant to slide from between thos
e peach-colored sheets. He showered, shaved, put on a clean Reyn Spooner flowered shirt, jeans, and Top-Siders. Forget the socks; he didn't have to impress her anymore. The omelet was ready by the time he got downstairs.

  "We have become wonderful one-times-one," she said. "I don't even have to call you."

  "The killer omelet did the job." He sat down expectantly. "Don't you ever eat?"

  "I haven't been going to my aerobics class. I don't dare eat."

  "I got regrets heavier than you," he said. "Not even a piece a toast?"

  "I'll watch you eat and I'll drink coffee."

  The omelet wasn't perfect in that the jalapenos weren't fresh like the ones at the ranch. But Winnie told her it was heavenly, and when he'd finished he said, "When am I going home again?" "I'll let you know in a year or two." "Am I a prisoner here?" "Yes."

  "Know one a the things I admire about you?" he said. "I like how you talked to your cleaning lady yesterday afternoon. You aren't one a those women they're ever gonna call 'Uh.' " "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I been around these parts long enough to see how Nouveau Newport talks to servants. Like, 'Oh, call me Jill! Don't call me Mrs. Roderick!' But the Salvadoran maid ain't about to ever call her Jill, so she ends up callin her 'Uh.' Gets real difficult sometimes when the maid's gotta yell for the lady a the house. She goes: 'Uh! Uh! Telephone! Uh! You there, Uh?' You been dealing with servants all your life. You got no problem."