Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Blaze tried to keep her mouth shut. This guy was so anal, he had to get around to everything in his own time, but she had to ask. “Do you know the boatyard guy?”

  Ambrose nodded. “There’re three crane operators working there, but one of them is the brother of an American woman who’s married to a Kiwi sailor. He’ll be the one they’ll go to on such short notice because his brother-in-law’s a New Zealander and because he’s very experienced and worked for racing syndicates in the last America’s Cup regatta. I used to be a client of that boatyard. He’s hauled out my sailboat many times. I know that man will be the one who gets the job.”

  “You’re saying that something’s gonna happen to the New Zealand crane operator.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d like you to meet him. I know where he and all the Kiwis will be this Thursday evening. Where they are every Thursday evening: at the AC/DC party.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The America’s Cup Drinking Club. A different bar in town hosts a party once a week. Nobody knows where it’ll be until the morning of the party, when the organizer sends a fax to each syndicate. The crane operator will be there, and if you accept my proposition you’ll be there, too. He’ll leap at the chance to have a drink with a girl like you. Who wouldn’t?”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing yet. You have drinks. You get acquainted. You become friends. The important thing is, you’ll also be wherever he is the night before they’re to clinch the challenger series.”

  “What would I do to…incapacitate him?”

  “You’ll put some medication in his Steinlager.”

  “In his what?”

  “It’s the New Zealand beer that sponsors them. Their holy water. They all drink it. The drug is something I’ve kept since my mother’s last days. It won’t do him any real harm, but he won’t be in shape to go up on a travel-lift the next morning. The Kiwis will be panicked. They’ll have to call for help.”

  “You plan to bribe the substitute crane guy, is that it?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll take care of that. That’s what the business proposition is all about. Making a deal with Simon Cooke, the crane operator.”

  “Why me?”

  “I know Simon Cooke. Loves women, loves to drink, loves to go to Tijuana and gamble on the jai alai. Loves to talk. He’s a perfect candidate to make a deal with a beautiful girl. After he gets to trust you.”

  “Wait a minute!” Blaze said, more soberly. “You want me to get next to this guy Simon? And get to know him? I think I know what that means. And then ask if he’ll drop the New Zealand boat? Drop it on the ground?” She sat up, staring at the picture of the French sloop with its keel poking through the hull.

  “Yes,” Ambrose said. “For ten thousand dollars. That’s a lot of tax-free cash for a guy who makes fifteen dollars an hour. I know he’ll do it.”

  “How many jobs can he get after he drops a boat?”

  “He’ll think of something to blame it on. An excuse as to why it wasn’t his fault. Nobody can ever prove anything when things like that happen.”

  “Why don’t you make the guy the offer?”

  “I don’t dare get anywhere near this. Do you know what would happen to me if I got connected to a plot to sabotage a challenger’s boat?”

  “Yeah,” Blaze said. “Same thing that’d happen to me. You’d go to jail.”

  “That’s the least of it,” Ambrose said. “My reputation—my life—would be…gone. I don’t like to think about it. No, I can’t be directly linked to Simon Cooke. Nobody must ever know about me.”

  “And what do I get outta this…business proposition?”

  “Just about everything I have in the world,” Ambrose Lutterworth said. “Fifteen thousand dollars. My life savings. My annuity, you might say. You get it all, if you persuade Simon Cooke to do it. And if he does it.”

  “And you get…”

  “The Cup. I get to be Keeper of the Cup for another four years at least. Who knows? Maybe for a lot longer.”

  “This is pretty nutty,” Blaze said. “I gotta think about this.”

  “There isn’t much time,” Ambrose said. “The last race between the Kiwis and the Aussies is only three weeks away. There’s a lot to do before then.”

  Blaze said, “Let’s say I could give the New Zealand guy his sleeping pill. How do you know for sure they’d call Simon Cooke instead of somebody else? And what if he weasels out? What do I get for trying?”

  “You’ll get five thousand, whether or not Simon bites. Whether or not he does the job. You know all about me now. You can trust me just as I’ll have to trust you. I know Simon won’t turn you down. I’ve done my homework, Blaze. This will work!”

  “Why’d you pick me, Ambrose?”

  “I’ve been waiting,” he said, “for misfortune to strike the Kiwis like it’s struck everyone else. A boat has been dropped. Another sunk. A keel fell off after being hit by a rogue wave. A mini-tornado even struck one of the compounds. An aircraft carrier almost cruised into the racecourse one foggy day. But nothing happens to the goddamn New Zealand boats! I can’t afford to wait any longer. Something has to be done. The idea came to me a few days ago.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because,” he said, “you’re smart and beautiful and discreet. And you’re the only person I know—the only person I’ve ever known in my entire life—who works outside the law.”

  “What I do is a misdemeanor if I’m caught,” she said. “What you’re suggesting is a heavy-duty felony.”

  “It’s only a matter of degree,” he said. “There’s nobody else in my life who can do it.”

  “I’m going to sleep on it,” she said. “And I get five hundred for tonight. Right?”

  “Of course. But I was wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “If you could give me a quick…massage?”

  “Okay,” Blaze said. “In the bedroom?”

  “Did you bring the warming cream?” Ambrose wanted to know.

  Ten minutes later Ambrose Lutterworth was lying naked on the two large beach towels that Blaze Duvall had spread on his queen-size bed. She was standing beside the bed, squeezing some Icy Hot on her palms. She was naked except for black bikini panties. Blaze smiled professionally when she spread the cream over his buttocks, kneading the muscles gently.

  “That’s wonderful, Blaze!” he said. “Just wonderful! You have splendid hands!”

  Blaze glanced into her bag, fearing she’d forgotten the condoms, but no, a package was lying there, along with the toys that clients requested: a feather for tickling their balls, a vibrating dildo for rectal stimulation. Toys.

  “Turn over, darling,” she said, trying to speed things up so she could go home and think.

  “No, I don’t need it this time,” Ambrose said. “Just rub on some more cream, please.”

  So at least she wouldn’t have to blow the crazy old bastard.

  While she was rubbing in the Icy Hot, careful to avoid tender tissue, he said, “Blaze, move the lamp a bit to the right, please.”

  She did it and saw that he wanted light shining on a framed photo on his dresser. In the photo Ambrose was standing by a sunny foreign harbor with a young woman in a white dress.

  “Cap d’Antibes,” he explained. “She was just a girl I saw by the waterfront and I asked if she’d pose for a picture with me. Are you at all familiar with the South of France?”

  “No,” Blaze said, working his right buttock so strenuously that he grunted in delight, finding her as sultry as a cheetah—rubbing, purring, blowing her warm breath on him.

  Then he said, “It’s between Nice and Cannes. After I got the picture taken I went up to my hotel room and sunbathed nude on the balcony. No problem if the people across the courtyard could see me. In the South of France nobody worries about such things.” Then he said, “Blaze, I’d like to turn on my side, but please don’t stop.”

  She
was working up a sweat from the wine. Beads of heat lay on her upper lip, her mouth brooding and sensual.

  She paused to let him turn on his side and saw his watery blue eyes gaze up at the photo, his brows silver-flecked in the lamplight. When she began massaging again, he said, “The Cup was on the balcony with me as I sunbathed that day. I put it on a chair and watched it. The sun glinted off the silver and the sun’s rays were hot, very hot, reflected onto my bare bottom. I didn’t care if I got burned. I didn’t care about anything. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so at peace with myself. So contented with my life. So…blissfully happy.”

  Then Ambrose Lutterworth surprised Blaze Duvall by reaching down and slowly stroking his penis.

  Blaze smiled encouragingly, but he never looked at her. Never stopped gazing at the picture. In just a moment he was erect, and he didn’t take his eyes from the photo until he was through.

  This takes the cake, Blaze thought, watching Ambrose Lutterworth reliving an extraordinary moment in his life: when he’d sunbathed on a hotel balcony in Cap d’Antibes, literally basking in the reflected glow of the oldest sporting trophy on earth: The America’s Cup.

  Or, as Blaze later explained it to Dawn Coyote, “I got five hundred scoots to watch this geek skipping down memory lane and slapping old Porky. While I set his ass on fire.”

  CHAPTER 4

  On Thursday morning, April 6, the various sailing syndicates involved in America’s Cup XXIX received a fax telling them where the America’s Cup Drinking Club would be meeting that evening, the weekly do for hardworking sailors who were to begin crucial water jousting come Monday morning. A series of twelve races beginning April 10 and ending April 22 would decide the winner of the Citizen Cup and the right to defend the America’s Cup under the aegis (or “burgee,” the triangular identification flag) of the San Diego Yacht Club.

  Among those U.S.A. syndicates vying for the Citizen Cup were Team Dennis Conner in the boat Stars and Stripes and America3, called “America Cubed,” in the boat Mighty Mary, which had been sailed by an all-women crew for the first time in Cup history. That is, until syndicate head Bill Koch flinched, deciding that he needed bearded Dave Dellenbaugh as tactician, resulting in Mighty Mary being dubbed “Mostly Mary” by regatta observers. The third competing syndicate was Pact 95 in its boat Young America. All three were squaring off in the series, which awarded points for winning, bonus points for winning in the semifinals, and even a bonus point for placing second out of three. It was a perfect scoring system for an esoteric sport that was going to cost the three syndicates $67 million. Nobody outside the sailing community could understand it, and much of the sailing community was baffled as well.

  In the battle for the Louis Vuitton Challenger Cup in the best of nine races—and the right to challenge the ultimate defender—was Team one Australia in AUS-31, the only boat Australia had left after the sinking of AUS-35 during the fourth round-robin. Their budget for the regatta was an estimated $33 million. The other challenger in the Louis Vuitton finals was Team New Zealand, favored to win it all. Their 38 boat had won twenty-three straight round-robin matches, and the older 32 boat was the victor nine out of nine times when raced in the semifinals. Most observers believed that the hulls were equally fast, and equally unbeatable by any defender. The Kiwis referred to their fearsome sloop as Black Magic.

  Of course, as soon as each syndicate received its fax on Thursday morning revealing the location of the AC/DC soiree—those supersecret faxes designed to ensure against interlopers and camp followers—the sailors telephoned every free-spending interloper and camp follower they knew, informing them in which gin mill to meet.

  There were several waterfront restaurants, in the vicinity of the syndicate compounds, which hosted the weekly dos, and all were interchangeable. They were restaurant-saloons with dark paneling, nautical decor, fake fireplaces, and waiters trained at the Department of Motor Vehicles. All served acceptable fish and steaks, baked potatoes, Steinlager for Kiwis, and Foster’s for Aussies. And you could bet your boat on it, the cooked vegetables consisted of zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, or a combination thereof—cheap veggies offered everywhere in a town not known for cuisine. The other thing you could count on in a San Diego restaurant was Caesar salad, a dish created decades earlier by an Italian chef in Caesar’s Hotel, Tijuana. In these parts it was as ubiquitous as mold, even though nobody made it correctly with coddled egg.

  Fortney and Leeds had dropped by the Aussie compound in Quivira Basin on Thursday morning and promised to join a hundred other sailing-stupids who were not supposed to know the location of the boozer bash. But Team New Zealand’s compound was located in San Diego harbor on Shelter Island Drive, not far from the San Diego Yacht Club, where Keeper of the Cup Ambrose Lutterworth watched and waited. The Kiwis did not welcome visitors, with or without police badges.

  By the time Fortney and Leeds got off duty that evening and arrived at the restaurant, the AC/DC was rollicking. Both cops were in jeans and tennis shoes. Fortney, who was conscious of his expanding belly, wore a faded unbuttoned sport shirt over a Speedo print tee. Leeds, who was buffed-out and proud of his pecs, wore a Sideout tank top even though it was a brisk evening. He got bummed when he saw the sign on the door: NO BARE FEET. NO TANK TOPS. Which meant that the place was about as formal as it gets on the San Diego waterfront.

  Leeds had to go to his car for his black windbreaker and bitched all through their first round of drinks that San Diego was getting too haute couture for him—and that when he retired from the police department he was moving to Maui.

  An Aussie standing next to him at the bar said, “Come to the land of Oz, mate. In Perth you can wear a bloody loincloth and nobody wants to know.”

  By eight-thirty that evening there were so many bodies jammed together it was hard to scratch, and the decibel level was only slightly lower than it was on the runway of nearby Lindbergh Field. The cuppies, many of whom were dressed in upscale sailing togs, outnumbered sailors and sailing wannabes by a wide margin.

  A cheerful Canadian cuppie seated at the bar explained to the cops that if they gave up their barstool to go to the head, they could be sure it’d be occupied when they returned. If they asked for it back, they might get it if the occupant was a Kiwi. The Kiwis were more reserved, she said, something like Canadians. If the squatter was an Aussie, the seat might be foreclosed. Aussies were more like Yanks, was how she put it.

  Of course, if a cuppie took your vacated seat, you just smiled and moved on down the bar. Cuppies got preferential treatment and all the drinks they could hold. If the cuppie was hot-looking she had pick of the litter at AC/DC. Not many of the sailors and sailing wannabes took wives and girlfriends to the Thursday-night do.

  “Buy you a brew?” Fortney asked a pair of cuppies who’d just arrived. One of them was a moptop with hefty tits that rested on the bar top.

  She checked him out and declined. He had nice curly hair, even if it was going gray, but he was a tad long in the tooth when one is surrounded by celebrated America’s Cup sailors, the average age of whom was about thirty-three. Her younger girlfriend looked at Fortney like she’d found a dead mouse in her martini.

  He gave up, saying to Leeds, “You doing any good?”

  “You gotta sail in the Whitbread Round the World Race to get anywhere with these babes,” Leeds complained. “Maybe we oughtta try an Aussie accent and start calling them ‘sheila.’ ”

  “They’d know we’re bogus,” Fortney said. “No calluses. And our suntans aren’t salty enough.”

  “So let’s take the boat out on the ocean tomorrow,” Leeds suggested. “Cruise in the chop and get smacked in the face by gull shit and kelp. Next Thursday we can say we’re grinders with Team Dennis Conner.”

  Fortney pointed across the teeming barroom and said, “Be still, my landlubber’s heart!”

  Leeds turned and said, “Oooooh, baby!”

  A Kiwi with an albino-blond buzz-cut and shoulders wider than a Rolls-Royce grabbed a
cuppie by the hips and lifted her up onto a corner of the bar. The cuppie wore a little candy-striped cotton tee with a blue anchor on the left sleeve, white shorts, and white sneakers. Her fiery, shoulder-length hair cascaded across one shoulder and then the other each time she tossed her head to josh with the sailors surrounding her. Freckles dusted her bare legs and nose, observable because she’d wisely positioned herself directly under an overhead bar light.

  She shook hands with eager sailors, making each one tell her his name and what he did on the racing boats. She was not exactly beautiful, but she had the best body Fortney had seen in the month of April. And out there on Mission Bay he saw a lot of good ones.

  “I hate sailing and sailors,” Leeds said. “I don’t even like boats in general. But I’d learn to sail and navigate. I’d take a Coast Guard course. Hell, I’d join the goddamn Coast Guard if that’s what it takes. To get naked one time with that cuppie!”

  “Forget it,” Fortney said. “She’s giving the big eye to the creature that lifted her up. The one with a beer mug in each paw. I don’t think your nine can stop a lowland gorilla, can it?”

  “I gotta get a closer look,” Leeds said. “Save my seat.”

  “Sure,” Fortney said. “Be careful. Only thing that big I ever saw hauling beer was a Clydesdale.”

  Fortney’s younger partner squeezed through the sweating throng, nearly upsetting the tray, which held six Foster’s straight up, of a frantic cocktail waitress who was shoving people out of the way with her free hand. When he got close to the end of the long bar he smiled dreamily. She was even better up close.

  “Another white wine, love?” the huge Kiwi asked her. Up close he looked even bigger.

  She smiled at the giant and said, “Wouldn’t say no, mate!” in a passable New Zealand accent, and all the sailors murmured approvingly.

  Leeds saw in her glance a combination of jaunty smile and mysterious grin, full of mischief, full of hell. He didn’t have enough booze in him to be superbold, but he slipped off his wedding ring, switching it to his right ring finger. “A young widower,” he usually said, as if the babes he met in Mission Bay gave a damn.