the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Swallowing twice, Bracken said, "I hope so. I got a wife and three kids. My daughter's gonna have a kid of her own soon. I looked down the barrel more than once. I truly wanted to bite it. Now maybe I wanna live. This place either makes a good man wanna die or it makes him really wanna live."

  Winnie paused. "Are you a good man, Bracken?"

  "I don't know," Bracken answered. "But I think you are."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "There's no secrets here. Everybody knows you wouldn't even be here if you hadn't forced the judge to give you time. Only a good man'd do a thing like that. That's what I think."

  That night Winnie started an exercise program. It was very hard to do twenty push-ups. Sit-ups were nearly impossible, but Bracken encouraged him and even held Winnie's ankles so he could do them.

  When Winnie had finished, lying exhausted in his bunk, Bracken took out his harmonica. It was one thing about him the others didn't criticize. When they were in their bunks at night, it wasn't unpleasant to hear old Short Eyes blowing a mournful, heart-cracking tune on his harmonica.

  There was something Winnie wanted to hear, but he didn't ask for it. He just listened quietly. The others said, yeah, it was the only good thing about Short Eyes. He could really make music, that old wienie wagger.

  As the weeks passed, on the seventh floor there were some amazing changes taking place in Winnie's little world. It wasn't because of his fellow inmates-some of whom were gone, only to be replaced by other errant lawmen-it was that his body chemistry was being dramatically altered. His cerebral cortex was humming along. The beta brain waves were surging against his skull like the surf at the Wedge. The alpha waves were cresting even while he lay calm and relaxed. It was strangely exciting. He could think! He was able to remember things. He could even remember things that had happened when he'd been drinking, many of which he'd just as soon have forgotten. Of course he couldn't remember the real blackouts, but he could remember things around the fringes of those blackout periods and sometimes little moments in the middle of that alcoholic darkness.

  Physically, he was healthier than he'd been in a long time. His heart rhythm had smoothed out and the premature contractions were gone. He was able to sleep through the night, except when he had nightmares of screams in dark water. Or when he had a dream about Tess Binder holding him in her arms and calling him "old son." Sometimes he'd wake up then. But ordinarily, he was sleeping eight hours every night. Usually though, it was fitful theta sleep. Sometimes it was delta sleep, deep and profound, with tormenting dreams. Of course, in jail, sleep was the ultimate escape. The best and only real escape available.

  On June first, forty-one days after the incident in Isthmus Cove, Winnie was lying on his bunk thinking about the past, still unable to visualize a future. Two of his roommates were playing chess. One was writing a letter. Bracken was playing the harmonica. Winnie thought he was brave enough now, or he should be.

  "Bracken," Winnie said, "can you play 'Where or When'?"

  Bracken nodded and segued into the song. Winnie had never heard it on the harmonica. It wasn't just more melancholy, it was mournfully sad.

  Winnie sang it very quietly to himself:

  It seems we stood and talked like this before We looked at each other in the same way then Winnie thought of her, how she looked the first time in Spoon's Landing. And how she looked most beautiful: in that white linen dress with the gardenia in her hair. On the hilltop overlooking Two Harbors.

  The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore...

  Then Winnie stopped thinking of Tess. He had a nagging unpleasant ghost of a memory. It happened when he wasn't well yet, when Buster came to visit him. What was it that had bothered him then, when his brain was in irons? What?

  The harmonica wept, the way Bracken played it. It sounded like someone crying.

  The things that happened for the first time Seem to be happening again...

  Then he struck! Like when the dinghy struck! It was that shocking! He remembered now what Buster had said: "You shouldn't be in jail. You could be with your little pal, sleeping on peachy sheets."

  It wasn't just an expression, peachy sheets. Lots of things were peachy, but not sheets. Only Tess Binder's sheets. Only if you'd seen them!

  And at last, Winnie Farlowe started to grasp something. Partly because of connecting Buster to the peach-colored sheets. Partly because of the song triggering emotions he'd repressed. But mostly because he'd been sober for forty-one days, had stopped hammering his frontal lobes with massive daily doses of alcohol. Winnie Farlowe untangled the dream. The crazed sensation of deja vu. The nymph!

  It had happened back in October, months before he'd met Tess Binder in Spoons Landing, and smelted her jasmine, and become tormented by the words of a song. He'd been drinking a lot that night at Spoons Halloween party. In fact, he was absolutely fried when he staggered outside searching for the off-duty barmaid who'd come to Spoon's party, dressed as a mermaid with feet, with only green pasties over her nipples.

  The night air didn't revive him, and he did something insane. He got into his car and drove twelve blocks to Buster Wile's apartment, hoping to bring him back to the party.

  He couldn't remember parking the car on Balboa Boulevard. He did remember staggering toward Buster's porch. He couldn't remember falling. He did remember lying on the sidewalk and getting up. He couldn't remember crashing against Butler's door, but he did remember falling back on the floor of Buster's porch, flat on his back, with the porch roof spinning above him.

  He remembered the door opening and the nymph appearing, all dressed in white, lipstick like blood. She wasn't wearing her glasses then and her hair was mussed. Buster came out behind her and said something.

  The nymph laughed. Like wind chimes. She reached her hand toward Winnie, who was too drunk to lift his head. She held out her hand to pull him up, but he couldn't even take it. Then Buster said something and she laughed again and went back inside, leaving him with Buster.

  He couldn't remember what happened next, but he learned the following day that Buster had carried him to his car, drove him home, put him to bed. Buster told Winnie he'd interrupted his opening night with a new squeeze he'd met while on duty. Buster refused to talk about her except to say she was a keeper.

  Winnie lay on his bunk tense and rigid. By the time Bracken was finishing with the haunting version of the song, Winnie was as rigid as the nymph.

  On his forty-first night of sobriety, Winnie Farlowe wanted out of jail desperately. That was when he began counting the days.

  For the ninety-day prisoners the overcrowding had forced the authorities to knock off thirty for good time and work time. Then they took off five days more, pursuant to Section 4024.1 of the California penal code authorizing early releases. Then one day was deducted because of time spent in court. It meant that Winnie would serve only fifty-four days in all. He had thirteen to go.

  As he lay on his bunk that evening he had another flash of insight. He realized that for a long time he'd been unable to picture himself in any moment of pleasure without imagining a drink in his hand or one close by. Any daydream of himself relaxing on the beach, or listening to jazz, or watching Masterpiece Theater-especially any sexual fantasy-all of it included a vivid image of a bucket of booze. That afternoon he'd read an article in the Los Angeles Times about cruising the Mediterranean. He'd visualized himself standing on the aft deck, with Tess Binder who was dressed in white. A drink was in his hand. The drink was the most vivid part of the fantasy.

  The only exception was sailing. Winnie could always picture himself in the cockpit of a sloop with the sun at dusk flaring across the sky and a plume of blue water in his face. He didn't need a drink in that fantasy. Sailing was enough.

  Winnie suddenly jumped down from his bunk and began to do push-ups. Bracken again held his ankles for him while he did sit-ups. Two hundred of them.

  Chapter 22 _ The Wedge

  Mid-June could be hot and soggy and miserable in downtow
n Los Angeles, but it was usually cool and overcast along the coast. Winnie longed for clouds and cool sea air. In fact, he craved it. He was suppressing thoughts of all the other things he craved.

  The early release of Douglas Bracken came rather suddenly, three days before Winnie's. Actually, a misdemeanor prisoner had to be some kind of bad not to get an early discharge, given the overcrowding of the facility. The night before Bracken left he played his harmonica for an extra long time. He played every song that Winnie liked, including "Where or When."

  In the morning, Bracken gathered his things and said good-bye to a few of the others, most of whom still avoided Short Eyes. When Winnie shook hands and wished him luck, Douglas Bracken said, "I wish I could do something for you like you did for..

  "What'd I do?"

  "Asked me to play basketball."

  Winnie shrugged. "Well . . ." Then he shrugged again.

  Bracken said, "Remember, about A. A., okay? You don't have to believe in God to connect with your higher power. Your higher power can be the A. A. experience itself. You can't white-knuckle it forever. You'll need some help, right?"

  Winnie said, "I'll keep that in mind. Take care of yourself and your family."

  "Thanks again," Bracken said, "for those games of one-on-one."

  Winnie watched when Douglas Bracken was escorted to the elevator. To freedom, where he would once again have to confront his own fierce demons.

  Winnie's sister was waiting for him on the street by the jail when it was his turn. She cried and hugged him out there in the shadow of that massive building. Then they got in her car and she drove him to her house in Tustin, where he spent two hours with his mother. She also cried, shocked by his loss of twenty-five pounds, until he convinced her that it had all been booze-saturated, toxic fat. And he made lots of promises to his mother and wondered if he'd keep any of them. Then he drove his ragtop VW out of his sister's garage after vowing to pay her back for doing his mail and cashing his pension check and paying his rent. For keeping his leaky little ship afloat.

  He wasn't all that surprised when, after getting home to his apartment, and phoning the Newport Beach Police Department, he learned that Buster Wiles had already put in his resignation papers, stating as his reason that he'd been offered some vague business deal in Hawaii.

  Winnie went to his bedroom closet and moved some books on the top sheR Behind the books was a bundle wrapped in a towel. In that bundle was his stainless-steel, two-inch Smith & Wesson revolver, and half a box of hollow-points. He inspected the cylinder and barrel. He inserted five rounds. He called Buster's house, but got no answer. He changed to a T-shirt, a hooded blue sweatshirt, jeans and deck shoes.

  At 3:30 that afternoon Winnie left a note on Buster's door. The note said: "Am fishing on the jetty by the Wedge. Meet me there at 8:15 tonight. Urgent. Win."

  It was almost 8:30 before Buster arrived at Peninsula Point, parking his Ford on Channel Road, looking for his friend Winnie Farlowe. The thousands of granite rocks making up the jetty weigh ten to fifteen tons each, and are piled about twenty feet above the water at low tide. Buster didn't see Winnie on the beach, so he walked through the soft white sand toward the Wedge, where the waves, crashing against the jetty rocks, exploded off other waves striking the steep beach, thus creating the dangerously huge surf. The body surfers were gone. Even they weren't usually crazy enough to try the Wedge this late, particularly on what promised to be a dark and chilly night.

  Buster glanced up at a gull playing on the wind, screaming at him. Out on the ocean was lots of popcorn, little white puffs of water, popping into the darkness. The water looked particularly black now, and the surf was thundering against the jetty. With such an overcast June sky, there had not been a lovely blazing sunset, not tonight. The indigo sky was getting very dark, very quickly.

  The last fishermen had gone by now, and he thought maybe Winnie had left too. Then he saw a man sitting fifty yards out on the surf-blackened rocks, gazing out to sea. The figure sat like a statue, his back to Buster, a figure in a dark hooded sweatshirt. It didn't look like Winnie. He wasn't as heavy as Winnie Farlowe.

  When he was down below the hooded figure, scrambling up onto the huge blackened rocks, Buster Wiles yelled, "Win? That you?"

  The hooded man suddenly turned and Buster was shocked to be looking into a gun muzzle!

  "Win!" Buster cried. "Are you nuts?"

  "Sane," Winnie said. "They drove me sane, Buster. You'd be surprised how sane you can get after fifty-four days, locked up with your thoughts. Able to have thoughts because you're cold sober."

  "Put that goddamn thing away!" Buster yelled.

  But Winnie Farlowe said, "Keep coming, Buster. Sit down below me on the rocks. That's it. Till you feel the surf spraying your back. And don't think about getting cute. I'm in a lot better shape now."

  Buster's hands were partly raised. He was looking frantically toward the beach. There were two lovers walking along the surf line, heading toward Channel Road, three hundred yards away.

  "Put your hands down," Winnie said, and he dropped the gun down beside his leg. "They won't notice us, Buster. But if you yell or try to run I'll kill you without a thought."

  "You're crazy!" Buster said. "You've gone stir crazy!"

  "You better consider that," Winnie said. "You better if you wanna survive. But on the other hand, I can't guarantee you got any chance at all. Sit down on the rocks, just like the crabs do. Go on, Buster. Sit."

  Buster hesitated, but Winnie's voice persuaded him. He got down on his knees, then sat down on a big rock. The surf was crashing against the rocks six feet below him and Buster was feeling the spray.

  He zipped up his windbreaker. "Goddamnit, it's cold!" Buster said. "Let's get outta here! Let's go have a drink and talk about whatever ..."

  "No drinks, Buster," Winnie said. "It won't be so easy this time."

  "Okay, you had your little show. Now what the fuck you want with me? What the . .."

  Winnie extended his arm and fired two rounds past Buster's ear, zinging into the rocks! The rounds ricocheted dangerously. The surf exploded. The shots couldn't have been heard fifty yards away, but there was no one to hear them anyway.

  Buster fell on his knees, yelping when his shin cracked against the edge of a sharp rock. He cowered on the slimy black rock in the darkness.

  "Goddamnit!" he screamed. "Goddamnit!"

  "I think I might have to kill you," Winnie said.

  "Wait a minute!" Buster cried. "Wait a minute! Jesus Christ!"

  "Tell me how it started," Winnie said. "Did you stop Tess Binder for a ticket, or what?"

  Buster rolled up the leg of his trousers and dabbed at the blood running down his leg; he was bleeding black in the misty moonlight. Then he looked up at Winnie's face and at the gun muzzle. It was darker now and Winnie's eyes had vanished in shadow. "How'd you figure it out?"

  "Was it a traffic ticket?"

  "No," Buster said. "I was the one that got sent to bring her to the station when her old man iced himself. I phoned her two weeks later and made a date. I never told anybody about her. She was private stock. I thought she had big bucks." He paused. "If you're wearin a wire by any chance, it ain't worth shit. Whatever a man says under duress with a gun in his face ain't worth shit in a court of law. A man might say anything to save his own life."

  "Last August," Winnie said. "As long ago as that. Who decided to bring me into your little plot, you or her?"

  "Her," Buster said. "She saw your picture in the paper when you got sentenced. She said she had a killer idea."

  "A killer idea," Winnie said. "To kill Warner Stillwell."

  "No!" She always talked like a goddamn valley girl. Killer idea. Killer omelet. You musta got one a those goddamn omelets. It's the only thing that bitch can cook."

  "Why me, Buster?"

  "I told you. It was her idea! She said you were perfect. A guy we could absolutely rely on to be piss-ass drunk when we needed a witness to Still-well's disappearance.
A guy nobody would doubt for one minute."

  "Why so elaborate? Why the gunshots out at the ranch? The seashells? The thing about somebody watching her house? Why not just Tess and me having a little fling, where she destroys what's left of my mind with sex and drugs? And gets me out on the boat with Stillwell? Why not do it a more simple way?"

  Buster sat on a rock just as a wave surged in and broke two feet below him. Suddenly he was soaked.

  "Goddamnit, Win! I'm freezin!"

  Now it was very dark. Winnie scooted to a lower rock, his gun muzzle ten feet from Buster's face. He said, "Why Buster? Why all the stuff about how maybe Stillwell killed Conrad Binder and was trying to kill Tess?"

  "That was my idea, you asshole!" Buster yelled, clutching his arms, teeth chattering. "I did it for you!

  "You did it for me."

  "Yeah, I know what a mushy bastard you are. I knew how you'd go on a guilt binge when you didn't save a drowning man because you were drunk. I thought up that bullshit, most of it. That part about Hack Starkey, that was her dumb idea, and we almost got screwed when you found him and he told you different stuff than shed been feedin you. She was jist supposed to say a tall dark man was watchin her house. Period. She came up with all the rest. The gunshots. The goddamn seashells. She got caught up in it. The lie took on a life of its own! The poor little rich girl was havin fun/"

  "I still don't see how all that was for my sake, Buster."

  "Don't ya see? I thought it'd be easier for you if you thought the guy that drowned was a murderer. A guy who maybe killed Conrad Binder and wanted to kill your lady love. I figured then you'd say he got what he deserved. God settled your problem with a nice clean boating accident. That's what I thought you'd say. But no, you gotta put on a hair shirt and beat yourself to death with chains like some fuckin nut case in Tehran! You gotta demand to go to jail! Nobody wanted you to get hurt, Win! I didn't want you to get..."

  Suddenly Winnie cranked off two more rounds past Buster's left ear. The only creature to see the fireballs was a terrified pelican that shrieked and wheeled.