Golden Orange

by Joseph Wambaugh

  While the judge was still talking, the defendant suddenly grabbed his mouth and began gagging. As the judge watched in horror, the defendant tossed his cookies all over the counsel table.

  Winnie was close to fainting when the judge said, “Get this man to the men’s central jail where they can do something with him!”

  Winnie was not able to recall much about the drowsy drive to downtown L.A. except that something in his chest was trying to break out. Something that kicked like a horse. A buffalo, probably. A Catalina wild buffalo was running amok inside his rib cage.

  When he arrived at the men’s central jail, he was taken directly to the seventh floor where the hospital unit is located, not because he was suffering from alcohol withdrawal but because he was a retired police officer. There on the seventh floor of the hospital was the high-security wing, referred to as “the high-power unit,” where people like Winnie were housed: law enforcement or former law enforcement officers, most of them unsentenced court prisoners who wouldn’t last a week in the general population. Also in high-power were prisoners being held for civil contempt; they weren’t criminals and couldn’t be housed with the general population.

  Along with them there were other special cases on the seventh floor: prisoners into PCP withdrawal, strapped down at the ankles and wrists. There were suicidal prisoners, and diabetics, those needing regular medication. And there were certain court prisoners who needed ultra high security. Winnie wasn’t there twenty minutes when he saw two deputies walking down the corridor with Richard Ramirez—the notorious Nightstalker who had terrorized the Southland during the bloody spring and summer of 1985, accused of murdering thirteen people and mutilating others.

  The first nurse Winnie saw on the seventh floor said to him, “What’s your drug of choice? Booze?”

  Winnie nodded, but when he saw her heading for a cabinet he said, “I don’t want any medication. I refuse it.”

  “Gonna go it cold turkey, huh?”

  Winnie nodded again.

  “How about just an injection of vitamins?”

  He shook his head.

  “If you change your mind, call for a deputy,” the nurse said.

  That night the spasms were so bad he had to put his blanket in his mouth to keep from crying out. But it was his fourth day of sobriety and he felt a little better when his eyes finally opened. There was no knifing pain. He only ached. He felt like somebody had kicked his guts out.

  As far as the ordinary county jail inmates were concerned, Winnie was in “the playpen.” On this, the hospital floor, there were no cells, only rooms with locked doors guarded by deputies. And the seventh floor was the only place other than the roof that didn’t smell like the hold of a slave ship.

  In Winnie’s room there were five other men. One was a member of the Beverly Hills Police Department, awaiting trial in Superior Court for burglary. Another was a retired probation officer who’d shot his wife. And there was a DEA agent who’d decided that keeping the drugs and releasing the pushers was more lucrative than booking the whole shebang. The latter two were in the middle of their felony trials in Superior Court. The other two roommates were already sentenced misdemeanor prisoners like Winnie. One was a retired corrections officer, convicted for the third time of driving under the influence of alcohol. The last was an LAPD sergeant who’d pleaded guilty to a string of indecent exposures, his victims being young schoolgirls. Unlike the general jail population where most prisoners were black or Latino, in Winnie’s room they all happened to be white.

  There were enough bunks for eight men in the room, four down and four up. There was a toilet, a sink, a metal table and two metal benches, one on each side of the table. The prisoners wore a V-neck dungaree outfit with L.A. County Jail stenciled over the shirt pocket. These men were isolated from prisoners in the general population and were allowed to exercise on the roof for one hour twice a week. They could shoot basketball, or jog, or make calls, since there were phones on the roof.

  There was another room for active or former law enforcement officers, only this one held four men, one of them black, one Latino. Two of them were members of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, both of whom had worked here at one time. On the proper side of the locked doors.

  The most notorious seventh-floor inmates—those awaiting or undergoing trial, like the Nightstalker—lived in private rooms in total isolation, only coming in contact with deputies, or with trustees who used their position to buy and sell and barter.

  Winnie was in central jail for five days before he was able to consume a normal portion of food. The DEA agent traded Winnie his lower bunk for the upper when he saw Winnie dry-heaving. He didn’t want a sick alky above him. The jail food, the DEA agent warned, was just like they’d served him on Aeroflot on a clandestine government trip to the Black Sea. He told Winnie what to eat and what to avoid.

  On Friday, one week after the incident at Isthmus Cove, 547 yachts and 4,000 sailors competed in the forty-second annual Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, known as “The Tequila Derby” for the binge that takes place at the end. For the first time in years, Winnie cared nothing about the race. It was a slow race and, as predicted, Dennis Connor’s boat finished first.

  That day he’d finally decided to make a phone call. He spoke to his sister and to his mother. He tried to call Tess Binder, but got no answer.

  On Saturday, Buster Wiles came to see him. The visiting area for the high-power prisoners was a two-room space divided by a common wall of glass. A prisoner and a visitor could sit and talk by telephone.

  Buster shook his head in utter disgust and disbelief and said into the phone, “You look like shit!”

  Winnie nodded.

  “You dumb bastard!” Buster said. “What’s wrong with you? Why’d you plead guilty?”

  “I was guilty,” Winnie said.

  “Why’d you turn down a probation report and piss off the judge? You coulda bailed out. Hell, he’d a released you on your own recognizance. A moron coulda defended you and beaten that case. You didn’t have to go to jail, you asshole!”

  Winnie said, “I did what I had to do, Buster. I killed that man.”

  “The guy fell off a boat! It happens all the time. You think that’s the first fatality in Catalina this year? It ain’t even the first one this month.”

  “I coulda saved him,” Winnie said, “if I’d a been sober. Even if I’d a been just normally drunk.”

  Buster put down his telephone and shook his head. When he picked it up again, he said, “Man, you are pathetic. You’re dumb!”

  Winnie didn’t say anything.

  Buster said, “The guy’d been drinking too, right? It was his own fault. And he was seventy-two years old. That’s the life expectancy of an American male, for chrissake!”

  “That doesn’t change anything,” Winnie said.

  “Okay, if you wanna sit here and suffer for the world’s sins like Gandhi or somebody, what can I do for ya?”

  “Nothing,” Winnie said.

  “Cigarettes?” Buster said. “You can use them for money.”

  “I don’t need anything,” said Winnie. “I had money in my wallet when I was booked. Enough for little stuff. I got all I need.”

  “You talk to your mom?”

  Winnie nodded.

  “You talk to your friend Tess Binder?”

  Winnie shook his head and said, “No answer. I’ll try tomorrow. We only get to call out once a day.”

  “You shouldn’t be in jail. You could be with your little pal, sleeping on peachy sheets,” Buster said.

  Winnie could not remember ever having seen Buster Wiles this upset, this agitated, so brimming with frustration. When he got back to his bunk, something Buster had said was troubling him, but he couldn’t think clearly, not yet.

  He felt like he was in one of the recurring dreams where his sails are luffing, and he’s incapable of trimming them. In the dream he’s always helplessly drifting out to sea. That’s how he felt now. His br
ain was still in irons.

  21

  Peachy Sheets

  On his tenth day in custody at the men’s central jail, Winnie Farlowe had a visitor: Martin Scroggins. The old lawyer was waiting nervously in the visiting room when the prisoner entered on the other side of the glass wall. There were two other inmates talking with lawyers, along with the LAPD sergeant—serving six months for indecent exposure—who was talking to his wife. She couldn’t stop weeping, and kept touching the glass with her hand.

  The lawyer looked shaken. Winnie smiled ironically, the first time he’d smiled in ten days. He said, “You never been in a jail before, have you, Mister Scroggins?”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “Did Tess send you?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “I’ve tried to phone her. Ten times. Once every day. All I get is the answering machine or no answer at all.”

  “She’s acting on my instructions,” Martin Scroggins said. “I knew you’d be calling her, but I don’t want you two to have any contact whatsoever. Not yet.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I’m trying to expedite things. I don’t want any complications. Any hint. Or innuendo. Not the slightest rumor that because of Tess, you could’ve been having … unwholesome thoughts out there on that boat that night.”

  “Unwholesome thoughts.”

  Martin Scroggins seemed unnerved by Winnie’s appearance. The prisoner had lost ten pounds. He was already developing a jailhouse pallor. And he spoke in a scary monotone. He looked like the lawyer’s mental image of a lifer.

  “Look,” the lawyer said, “when Warner Stillwell fell out of that boat, well … some people might think you had certain ideas flash through your mind. Such as: What if I don’t diligently rescue him? Then Tess could immediately inherit El Refugio. Not years from now. But now. It’s possible that people could think such a thing if you and Tess were thought to be closely linked.”

  “I see.”

  “But as it presently appears, you were dating her for a couple of weeks and that’s about it. You’re not engaged. You’re not even lovers.”

  “It doesn’t appear that we are,” Winnie said.

  “So I can expedite things with no complications.”

  “What things?”

  “Having Warner Stillwell declared dead. I’m prepared to file a petition with the court. In fact, I’ve brought a stenographer with me today. She’s waiting outside. I want an affidavit from you.”

  “And what will I say in the affidavit?”

  “You’ll just describe as briefly as possible the events of Friday night, April twenty-first. You see, when the absence of a person is not satisfactorily explained after diligent search or inquiry, a person can be presumed to be dead. And being the only third-party witness to the tragedy, you, and only you, can provide us with an irrefutable presumption. Without any complications, I believe that the remainderman in the trust—sorry, that’s Tess—can automatically receive her inheritance sooner than sixty days. As trustee I can deed the land over to her.”

  “And if there were … complications, then what?”

  “The court would probably decide to wait out the statutory period of five years before declaring Warner Stillwell dead.”

  “I see,” Winnie said. “And I’ll still be in jail when he’s declared dead, when she gets the property.”

  “I don’t think so, Mister Farlowe,” Martin Scroggins said. “This facility is so overcrowded the sheriff is acting under the guidelines of a federal judge with instructions to release. I’ve learned that the sixty-day prisoners are serving only thirty-four. I expect a ninety-day prisoner like yourself could be out of here a lot sooner than you think. You’ll serve less than two months, I should think.”

  “Will Tess be willing to talk to me then? Or can you answer that, counsel?”

  “Of course!” Martin Scroggins said. “She wants to see you right now! It’s just not in her …”

  “Best interest?”

  “Correct.”

  “Okay,” Winnie said.

  Martin Scroggins smiled and said, “You’re doing exactly the right thing. And remember, Warner Stillwell had also been drinking that night. He contributed to his own demise. I liked Warner immensely but …”

  “He was seventy-two years old,” said Winnie.

  Martin Scroggins stopped smiling because he was seventy himself, and he wasn’t ready to go over the side. “I was about to say he should’ve known better than to be driving that boat with a nearly unconscious man in it, and no one else to help him. Well, it’s over now and I think Tessie’s shown great maturity since the tragedy. I believe she’s ready for her inheritance.”

  “I imagine she’s asked you to take over all her legal affairs?”

  “Why not? I was her family’s attorney. And I’ve always hated irrevocable trusts. It’s too often used to control others from the grave … Vanity. All is vanity.”

  “It’s a way to take it with you,” Winnie said. “Okay, counsel, send in your stenographer.”

  Nineteen days after his incarceration, Winnie Farlowe was sitting on the roof of the jail watching two of his roommates shoot free-throws after they’d gotten tired of playing one-on-one. By this time the DEA agent had been convicted and was awaiting a sentence to a federal prison, and two other ex-lawmen had come into the high-power unit: one a former Secret Service agent, another a police captain from the South Bay.

  Winnie noticed that his fellow prisoners weren’t much different from all the other lawbreakers he’d arrested in his police career. Each one claimed he was not guilty, or his offense was mitigated by certain factors: a disloyal wife, a jealous superior, an addiction he couldn’t control. And so forth. The only inmate who freely admitted his culpability, other than Winnie himself, was Douglas Bracken, the LAPD sergeant who had compulsively exposed himself to schoolgirls many times over an eight-month period before being caught. He was ten years older than Winnie: a lot thinner, a lot grayer.

  Even here in high-power there was the inmates’ pecking order. Bracken was ostracized and ignored. They called him “Short Eyes” behind his back and sometimes to his face. He was the only man on the seventh floor who looked sadder and more miserable than Winnie Farlowe. The man who looked the most content and carefree was the Nightstalker, but when he got into the courtroom he could be irritable and histrionic.

  One of the two men shooting baskets missed a dribble pass, and the ball rolled over to Winnie’s feet. He picked it up and, without thinking, tried a jump shot. It swished in.

  Douglas Bracken was standing behind him. He said, “Nice shot. I bet you used to play the game.”

  “Only in high school,” Winnie answered. “I warmed the bench mostly.”

  Bracken took a few steps closer and said, “I used to play in high school too. Never got tall enough to be any good.”

  When Winnie didn’t respond, Bracken dropped his eyes and turned to walk away. Then Winnie said to himself: I’m no better than he is. I’m no better than anybody.

  Winnie said, “Wait a minute. Wanna play one-on-one? I’ll give it a try if you will.”

  Bracken and Winnie exhausted themselves after ten minutes of basketball. When the exercise period was over, Bracken walked back downstairs with him. “You’re looking a lot better than when you first came in,” Bracken said. “I know about booze. I think it led to my own problem in some ways. The nurse told me you wouldn’t even let them give you vitamin shots. You’re doing it the hard way. Awful tough to white-knuckle it.”

  “Next time you wanna play one-on-one, lemme know,” Winnie said.

  Bracken hesitated, then said, “Instead of spending all your time thinking about what can’t be changed, you ought to think about the future. You’ll have a lot of sobriety under your belt when you get out. You can change things.”

  “How about you?” Winnie said. “Can you change things?”

  Swallowing twice, Bracken said, “I hope so. I got a wife and three kids. My d
aughter’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.