Wambaugh, Joseph - Floaters

by Floaters (lit)

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE OFFICE WALLS WERE PAINTED YOUR BASIC POLICE-STATION bilious green. Everything else, including desks and file cabinets, was mucous gray. But the "designer" had added a touch that vice officers called "nouvelle cop," a no-nap bile-green carpet that showed every coffee stain and ended up looking like camouflage tarps from the Gulf War. The cops repaired all rips with gray duct tape.

  "I don't believe this!" Officer Rita Mason said to her eyebrows when she encountered Letch Boggs that evening. He was all alone in the vice office, feet on a table, doing what he did best.

  Letch was watching a confiscated videotape. In the tape a naked woman was writhing on a bed to background music by Madonna, And trying her damnedest to insert a baby boa into her own vagina, tail first.

  Letch hadn't heard Rita Mason come in. Engrossed, he was munching on one of those horrible tomato-and-garlic sandwiches he brought from home. She saw a Pepsi bottle beneath the desk, also from home, no doubt. The leering hamster was notoriously cheap and never patronized the drink machines. As usual, he was wearing one of those cheesy Hawaiian shirts, this one covered with the world's ugliest pink flamingos, resembling turtles on stilts.

  Finally Letch noticed Rita behind him, all tarted-up for another evening on the john detail: Day-Glo green satin shorts, knee-high green plastic boots with spike heels, a white peekaboo chemise, a sequined jacket on top. Her hair was ratted and teased and she thought she looked disgusting.

  Letch thought she was devastating. He loved girls this large in the bustle. Displaying his leer, he said, "Gosh, you look smashing, Rita!"

  "Why wouldn't I?" she responded. "Sixteen guys teaching me how to become a slut? Only thing this outfit lacks is neon. What're you doing watching that garbage again? Don't you have any shame?" Then she answered herself: "Dumb question."

  "I'm only paying close attention to the wallpaper, Rita," Letch said. "I think I know where this was taped. A motel over on Midway Drive."

  Rita sneered at the randy vice cop, "Uh-huh. And how about the snake? Recognize him ?"

  " I think he works down in the mayor's office, but I ain't sure." Letch mashed the last of the garlic cloves with those rodent like teeth of his, saying, "Go, snake! Go!"

  "You're sick!" Rita said. "I can't wait to go back to patrol, where I only gotta deal with nice clean stabbings and drive-bys."

  Letch sighed and turned off the TV. "Okay, Rita, let's go to work. I watch any more a this, I'll start slapping my slinky."

  "You really are a revolting old pervert!" Rita said sincerely. Then she took a closer look at the Pepsi bottle on the floor. "Why's that Pepsi yellow?"

  To which Letch failed to respond.

  "What's in the freaking bottle?" Rita demanded. "Is it what I think it is?"

  "I could find more compassion in a Tijuana bullring," Letch said grumpily, gathering his gun, handcuffs, and flashlight. "I don't have a jelly bean for a prostate. I'm fifty-three years old, for chrissake. My prostate's bigger'n your left tit, and it's a long walk to the head: And, anyways, I didn't wanna leave at the good part. You know, where the snake looks around with that goofy look on his serpent kisser? Like he's saying, It's not the booze, honey. I really do care about you. That part."

  Rita Mason was getting green around the gills. "I'll meet you in the car. Take that bottle and pour it in the goddamn toilet !"

  While she was stalking down the hall in her spike-heeled boots, she heard Letch muttering something about passing a kidney stone bigger than Alcatraz.

  When they were driving out to El Cajon Boulevard in Letch's brown Camaro vice car, preparing to rendezvous with two vice teams who would tune to the transmitter Rita wore under her bra, Letch said, "You know a whore named Dawn Coyote? Junkie? Skinny blonde? Always got the shakes?"

  "I've seen a girl like that out there," Rita said. "Why?"

  "I been trying to nail her old man. Pimp named Oliver Mandeberry. I hear when she's having domestic problems with Oliverlike when he's kicked the living piss outta hershe takes her baby to the streets with her. And I hear he stomped her ass last night."

  "What's she do with the baby?"

  "A snitch told me she puts the little whelp in that motel we busted last month. The Dream Scene Motel?"

  "How old's the baby?"

  "Plenty old enough to take care of himself," Letch said. "About ten months, I think."

  "Jesus," Rita said. "Gimme a good stabbing or a drive-by. You can have this vice shit."

  "Anyways," Letch said, "when you're out there looking oh-so-cute- and getting lots a offers from all the horny Harrys, keep an eye out for Dawn. You see her, just talk into the wire. Tell me where she's at, what she's doing. Tell me if you see a black pimp in a white Jag cruising the boulevard."

  "Four more weeks." Rita Mason sighed. "Then I'm outta here."

  "I used to know a massage-parlor hooker that looked just like you," Letch said, working those gray- brown eyebrows that looked like proned-out chipmunks. "She gave me a massage with rubber gloves on before I busted her. Now every time I go to a supermarket and see Playtex Living gloves I get a big woody. You ever consider giving a guy a massage?"

  "Sure, Letch," she said. "Long as I can use an oil substitute."

  "Saliva?"

  "Ground glass."

  "Gee, I'll miss you, Rita," Letch said dreamily.

  With a curling lip: "Me too, Letch. Just like I'd miss lawyers and vaginal warts. Or a horned toad in my panty hose."

  While Officer Rita Mason was getting ready to take offers of sex for money from horny Harrys who'd be swooped up by lurking vice cops, Blaze Duvall was entering the hillside Point Loma home of number sixty-three, the man she called "Jeremy" during previous encounters. A man she knew from her surreptitious search of his wallet was Ambrose Willis Lutterworth, Jr.

  "It's not much of a house," he said, turning on the light in the living room and locking the front door behind them.

  "Wow!" Blaze was stunned by the breathtaking view through the picture window. At this time of evening the rising moon was hanging over the twinkling high-rise office buildings studding the waterfront, and the sky and glassy harbor were lavender in the vanishing twilight.

  Ambrose Lutterworth chuckled nervously. "As they say in real estate: location location location. The house is badly built and worthless, but the land's worth plenty. It's a double lot, actually."

  Blaze put her blue duffel on the sofa, pretending to admire the furnishings but reassuring herself there was not someone lurking in one of the spooky little nooks.

  "Would you like a drink, Blaze?" he asked. "We've never had the opportunity to raise a glass before, not in those motel rooms."

  "Sure. White wine if you have it."

  "I've got a bottle in the fridge," he said. "Make yourself comfortable."

  After he disappeared into the kitchen, Blaze peeked into the little study just off the living room. The entire house was meticulous. On his desk number-two pencils lay in perfect formation, each the same length.

  When she heard the refrigerator door open, she risked taking a few steps down the hall to look into what appeared to be an old lady's bedroom. There was a lace doily on the back of a worn-out reading chair and the lamp table beside it was covered by a lace tablecloth, starched and white. The bed was a double four-poster, like in a moldy movie set.

  Blaze hurried back to the tidy living room before he returned, and managed a smile when he handed her the crystal wineglass.

  He poured one for himself, then motioned to the leather chesterfield sofa. "Sit down, Blaze. There, where you can enjoy the view. When the city lights all come on it's very beautiful. That's part of the reason I haven't sold. I'd miss the city lights."

  Blaze sipped the wine. "Very good. Chardonnay?"

  "Right you are, Blaze," he said. "You're obviously a sophisticated girl who appreciates-fine things. I've known you were special from the first."

  Here it comes. I want to get to know you better, Blaze. I'm lonely, Blaze. Perhaps we
could go on dates. Perhaps

  He stopped her by saying, "I'm going to give you the chance to make some money. Real money. I'm going to make you a business offer."

  With a cute but seductive smile this time: "As Dumbo would say, I'm all ears."

  "First of all," he said, "my name isn't Jeremy. It's Ambrose. Ambrose Lutterworth."

  "Well, I can understand the need to be careful."

  "I wonder if your real name is Blaze?"

  "Yes, it really is."

  "Suits you. That lovely flaming hair."

  "Thank you Ambrose."

  "That's better. I like to hear you use my true name."

  She looked discreetly at her watch and said, "I'm afraid I don't have a lotta time, Ambrose."

  "Don't worry about the time, Blaze," he said. "I want the entire evening. You're going to get five hundred dollars tonight whether or not you accept my business proposition. Is that all right?"

  "You own me," she said with a girlish grin that brought out the dusty freckles on her nose. "For the evening."

  "First I'd like to tell you about myself. I'm a sailing enthusiast. Do you sail?"

  "Never tried it."

  "I used to have a thirty-three-foot sloop," Ambrose said. "Had to sell it when the real-estate market crashed. I'm also a realtor, you see."

  For five hundred she could put up with it, so she unbuttoned her jacket and took another sip. At least the wine was good, better than she could afford.

  Officer Rita Mason did a lot of damage to male libidos that Saturday evening. She bagged three motoring Johns before she was out there an hour. It was a very busy evening on El Cajon Boulevard, and the horny Harrys were circling the hookers like little orbiting satellites. The more they orbited, the brighter they glowed. Not one of them guessed that the buxom babe in screaming-green shorts could be a member of the San Diego Police Department. And they were really shocked to learn later that cops were no longer writing citations for prostitution offenses but were taking Johns to jail.

  One of them got so horny while parked near the corner of Ohio Street trying to chisel down the price that he stuck his hand inside his pants. Rita figured him for one of those creeps who wanted to stiff the hooker by getting off in his own sweaty palm just from talking. He was still fondling himself when a blue Olds containing two mustachioed brigands squealed up beside his car.

  His head swiveled toward the vice car, then back to Rita, and he exclaimed, "Are they carjackers?"

  "Relax, honey," Rita told him. "They don't want your ride. And you can quit spanking little Sam. You're busted ."

  After the vice team put the John in the backseat of their car, he cried and begged them just to write him a citation.

  "No more coupons," Rita informed him. "It's slam city for you, hot pants."

  When he cried and begged them not to call his wife, Rita said wickedly, "Doesn't your family have, a right to know you're inviting AIDS?"

  A blue Lexus stopped a block from Rita Mason while she was tormenting the blubbering John. She watched a string-bean blonde, in a skirt Rita couldn't have fit into when she was twelve years old, get out and thank the driver. The blonde sauntered to the street corner, held her purse down beside her thigh, and waited for the next one.

  Rita spoke into her bra. "Letch, I think it's that girl you're interested in. Corner of Thirtieth."

  Then she returned to the vice car, where the teary John screamed at her, "You can't arrest me! You lied to me!"

  To which Rita replied, "I don't know where it says I have to tell you where I really work."

  Then the John cried out, "You can't arrest me! I gotta go pick up my kids at Boy Scouts camp!"

  To which Rita replied, "I'll phone your wife and tell her to get them. Should she stop for pizza on the way home?"

  Letch Boggs watched Dawn Coyote pick up two dates that evening. Dawn was too streetwise to be tailed closely, but Letch watched her take them to the general vicinity of the Dream Scene Motel, owned and operated by an Iranian they'd arrested two months earlier.

  That she was going to the expense of a motel room was suspicious in itself. Most of the street whores would just direct the John to someplace safe, like an apartment-house garage when a parking gate was left open.

  The "strawberries," or rock whores, who worked farther east on the boulevard, would Wow a, guy in a doorway just for a taste of rock cocaine, but Dawn liked to take her tricks to a quiet church parking lot in North Park for the blow jobs. Sometimes they'd get to hear another organ being played in the church.

  Referring to the Iranian motel owner, Letch said to his partner, "Some a those hanky-head dromedary rapers never learn."

  His partner for the evening, a bearded, burly cop named Westbrook whose mother was a Lebanese Muslim, said nothing.

  When Dawn Coyote emerged from the motel after turning her second date, she didn't return to the boulevard. Instead she walked directly from room number 4 downstairs to room number 13 upstairs. She was in number 13 for ten minutes before she came out and returned to work

  When Dawn was back on the boulevard, Letch and Westbrook entered the motel office, where the Iranian was watching American Gladiators . He was about Letch's age, but shorter, fatter, and his collar was littered with dandruff. Instead of rodent teeth, two of his were gold-capped, and the grease-clogged pore pattern on his fleshy nose and cheeks looked like a street map.

  He recognized Letch at once and said, "Good evening, Officer! You have come to examine the register, yes? Please, you may help yourself! May I offer you a soda? Or a cup of tea? Or"

  "The key to number thirteen," Letch said.

  "Number thirteen!" The Iranian blanched. "What is the problem? What ?"

  "Or you can wait till I talk to Dawn Coyote about how you rented her a hot bed tonight. Again . And failed to list her on the motel register, a violation of the municipal code."

  "Officer!" The Iranian pressed his hands together in a prayerful gesture. "Please! I cannot be perfect. I was not present when the room was rented. I was gone to the mosque to pray for my mother. With great respect I must ask if you have a warrant to search?"

  "You have the right to remain silent," Letch said. "You have the right to"

  "Wait! Wait!" the Iranian pleaded. "If I give you permission to enter number thirteen"

  "You can go back to American Gladiators and we'll forgive and forget. This time."

  The Iranian reached under the counter and handed Letch a key.

  " Allah ahkbar ," Letch said to his partner. "God is great . Sometimes."

  "I never liked selling real-estate," Ambrose explained while Blaze stifled a yawn.

  The third glass of wine had relaxed her to a snooze. She battled to keep her eyes open, smiling politely when he poured another from the second bottle.

  He was careful to wipe the mouth of the bottle with a damask napkin. A drop plinked onto the old walnut coffee table and he quickly dabbed at it, then polished the spot with the dry half.

  By now he'd removed his jacket and so had she. But he still hadn't loosened his old-boy tie, and he hadn't come close to stating his business. Blaze decided that she was going to earn the five hundred bucks one way or the other.

  "Most of us have jobs we aren't fond of," she said.

  "Of course," Ambrose said. "I'm sure you don't like yours."

  "Sometimes I do," Blaze said, trying a coy smile even though her lids were at half-mast. "Like now."

  "That's kind of you," he said, sipping his wine. "I know it must be hard for you to offer relief to old duffers like me."

  "You're not old, Ambrose," Blaze said. "What're you, fifty? No more than fifty-five."

  "You'd be surprised," he said with a delighted chuckle. "I try to stay in decent shape by playing tennis and running on the beach twice a week."

  "You're very fit," Blaze said. "I should know. I've handled your body often enough." Another coy smile and then, "Do you think we could talk about the business arrangement?"

  "Of course. I just ramble
sometimes when I'm with someone simpatica . There isn't a woman in my life right now. I'm rather lonely, to tell you the truth."

  "I can't believe that," Blaze said. "A fine-looking man like you?"

  "One of my passions is cribbage. I belong to a cribbage club. Do you play?"

  "No."

  Suddenly he said, "What do you know about the America's Cup?"

  Blaze looked blank-"it's about sailing, right?"

  "The world's greatest regatta. And I I'm the Keeper of the Cup."

  The announcement had no effect.

  Rambling again, he said, "I was just an ordinary member of the yacht club, and so was my father, a successful developer until he made some bad investments. It's feast or famine in that business. Probably why I never got into it. I'm just an agent in a local real-estate office."

  "I'm sure you're a very good agent." The wine made her slur.

  "When Dennis Conner won back the Cup from Australia in nineteen eighty-seven under the aegis of the San Diego Yacht Club, my life changed. Drastically. Dramatically."

  Blaze kicked off her shoes, tucking her feet beneath her on the sofa, ready for a long evening. "Tell me about it, Ambrose."

  "It's not easy to explain. I was living in an apartment at that time. Oh, I've lived in this house off and on over the years when my father was alive, and even later with my mother. And I've been in lots of little business deals. At the yacht club you hear about this and that, but nothing ever worked out for me. And then we got the Cup."

  "Do you get paid a lot to be the"

  "Keeper of the Cup? Lord, no! I'm unpaid, except for a stipend when we travel together, the Cup and me."

  "You make the Cup sound like a person," Blaze said.

  He studied her, then said, "That's an interesting observation, Blaze. I think I've chosen the right girl to help me. You're very simpatica ."

  Dawn Coyote was delighted that her third date of the evening was a premature ejaculator, saving a hell of a lot of work and time. She called them "preemies."