Golden Orange

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “She was wearing red the night you met her.”

  “Yeah, but she’s the white linen type if ever I saw one,” Buster said. “Am I right?”

  “You do know women, Buster,” Winnie agreed.

  Buster Wiles looked up and said, “Uh oh,” but couldn’t get away in time. Tripoli Jones had just come in and spotted them at the corner table.

  He wasn’t Libyan, he’d gotten his nickname from the Marine Corps hymn. Tripoli Jones was a living embodiment of “Once a Marine always a Marine.” He made Ollie North look like a draft dodger, everybody said. Two drinks and the fifty-eight-year-old telephone lineman was back at the Chosin Reservoir fighting his way up icy Korean slopes, firing a B.A.R. with one hand. When he was ten years younger, Tripoli Jones was more dangerous than New Year’s traffic. They said he’d busted more skulls than Harley-Davidson, but he’d had a triple bypass that had slowed him down some. And he despised Vietnam vets.

  Without being invited, Tripoli Jones sat next to Winnie and said, “Whatcha doin, boys? Reliving Nam? Remembering all the good Thai stick you smoked?”

  “Time to go,” Buster said.

  “That movie Platoon was about your war, all right,” Tripoli Jones sneered. “The enemy is us. What bullshit! The enemy is the left-wing assholes that make that garbage. Always easy to tell the good G.I.’s from the bad ones in those pinko movies. The good ones all smoke pot, the bad ones’re the rednecks drinking beer.”

  After his film analysis, Tripoli Jones signaled to Spoon for a beer.

  “We don’t really have to go back to the thirty-eighth parallel tonight,” Winnie said. “Do we, Tripoli?”

  “What’d us Korea vets get when we came home?” Tripoli Jones said, sneering to the ceiling this time. “They get psychiatrists and a slab a granite in Washington and Jane Fonda. What’d we get? Who gave a shit about the fifty-four thousand dead? But we don’t sit around and whine about flashbacks and Agent Orange and posttraumatic stress disorder! Shit! We killed gooks and came home and worked for the telephone company, is what we did!”

  “Yes, Tripoli,” Buster sighed. “And we jist smoked dope and made babies in Cambodia and Vietnam and Thailand.”

  “And two in Burbank,” Winnie said. “Don’t forget those.”

  “The whiner’s war, is what,” Tripoli Jones said. Having gotten it off his chest, the loyal legionnaire yelled to Spoon, “Bring my comrades a drink!”

  Then he got up and staggered over to the snooker table to see if there were any other veterans around.

  “Can’t stand a roamin drunk,” Buster said. “If they stay put, you can avoid ’em.”

  “His wife’s in here looking for him five nights a week,” Winnie said. “Guy needs a beeper collar.”

  Spoon brought them the drinks from Tripoli Jones just as the phone rang. Spoon shuffled back to the bar, picked it up and said, “Yeah, he’s here.” Then to Winnie he yelled, “For you. Mister Farlowe.”

  Winnie had run out to his car and was starting the engine before he even realized he’d forgotten to say good-bye to Buster Wiles. Tess Binder had asked him to come to her house right away. She said she was frightened for her life.

  The gate guard at Linda Isle looked at his clipboard and said, “Go right in.” He didn’t even give Winnie’s battered VW ragtop a second look. Probably figured Winnie was a boat cleaner or maybe one of the car polishers who regularly visited the island.

  Tess’s house was one with an electric gate buzzer. Winnie figured such precautions were overkill. In all his years with NBPD he couldn’t remember a significant burglary on Linda Isle except for a few inside jobs by employees or local kids. It just wasn’t worth it for opportunist thieves to overcome kiosk security, or to raid by boat.

  The gate buzzed and clicked open. Tess stood at the door waiting for him in an off-the-shoulder white jersey and a sarong skirt. She didn’t look as scared as she’d sounded on the phone. She threw a suntanned, well-muscled arm around his neck and kissed him. A long one. A probing one. When she finally stepped back he said, “That don’t feel like a scared kiss.”

  “It’s a scared kiss and a grateful kiss. Come on in.”

  Tess led him to the living room, to the sofa he well remembered. She offered him a double vodka without asking. She’d stocked up on Polish vodka. She had a diet drink.

  After he’d taken a few sips she said, “I hadn’t planned on seeing you so soon. I wanted to give it a rest. I wanted to sort it out and see how I really feel about you, but something happened. I had to call.”

  “So tell me.”

  “When I got home, I did my mail and watered a few plants. I’d planned to skip dinner and was upstairs when the phone rang. I answered, but the caller hung up. I was about to get undressed and take a shower. It’s so bloody hot I went to the French doors. You know, the ones beside the bed?”

  “I’m not likely to forget.”

  That brought a little smile, then she continued: “I opened the doors and the Santa Ana wind just seemed to rush in. Took my breath away. Something made me look across the channel. I saw a man. He was in the parking lot by the restaurant, standing by an old blue car. Looking up at my window. Oh, he pretended to be just admiring the boats docked in the channel. I stepped back from the window but kept an eye on him. He walked around for a while, then he came back.”

  “Is that when you called me?”

  “No, I waited. I had a cigarette. He was still out there, but sitting in the old blue car. Then he got out and walked over to the water and pretended to look at a big sailboat. He walked along the railing and I could see him the whole time except when he’d disappear behind one of the big powerboats. I don’t have binoculars, but I think I know who it was.”

  “Who?”

  “I think it was Hugh Starkey. They call him Hack. A guy who used to work for my dad and Warner. Hack took care of Daddy’s boat for several years and often went out to El Refugio to do their cars or other odd jobs. The man finally got back in the old blue car and drove away. I think it was a Plymouth.”

  “Is he gay?”

  She nodded. “He’s about, oh, now he’d be about fifty years old, a big strong guy. Always had his hair permed, and dyed it black as he got older. I think it was Hack Starkey and he was trying to figure how to get in this house!”

  “So whaddaya suppose he had on his mind?”

  “I don’t know, Win! Look, I have a confession. I’ve been thinking about that gunshot out on the trail.”

  “Yeah, so’ve I.”

  “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 anyone!”

  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 one 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 shoulder
s 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 has 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!”