Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Nope. Can’t be done then,” Simon said. “How about another round?”

  Without waiting, he held up two fingers to the saronged waitress while Blaze said in exasperation, “You just said it could be done, Simon!”

  “How you gonna get your guy in the yard so he can do it? Those pri—those guys won’t let my sister in there unless my brother-in-law’s holding her hand. They probably make her wear a blindfold if their goddamn keel’s exposed.”

  “You could climb over the fence from your part of the boatyard to theirs, couldn’t you?”

  “With barbed wire and security guards that’d tear your nu—head off? No way!”

  That was it then. Blaze leaned against the backrest and scooted away a bit. It couldn’t be done. She’d have to settle for five grand. It was a stupid idea in the first place.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when he said, “You’d have to do it when they’re out racing. Maybe like you said, on the day of the last race against the Aussies. Everybody would be glued to the TV set, even the security guys.”

  Blaze leaned forward again and this time she grabbed his arm. “Keep going, Simon,” she said. “Don’t stop.”

  Simon Cooke looked across the restaurant, straining his gin-fogged brain for her. “You’d do it at four-thirty in the afternoon,” he said. “When they’re back from the race. They’re gonna kick Aussie ass, so they’ll all be congratulating themselves. That’s when you’d do it. The sling’d already be cut by then, by the guy in your story. And the spaghetti’d be unraveling.”

  “How did you get in the yard to do it when they were out racing?”

  “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’m a Yank. They don’t trust no Yanks. They wouldn’t trust the U.S. Supreme Court. In your story you gotta get the Kiwi operator to do it. The guy who puts the boat into the water in the morning is on standby in the yard all day. He sits in the travel-lift reading a book if it’s quiet. And it’ll be real quiet in the yard on that last day. They’ll be huddled around the TV from one to four o’clock, that’s for sure.”

  “So for my purposes I gotta get the Kiwi crane operator to do the sabotage on the sling and drop the boat himself?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “But what if…what if on the morning of the last race against the Aussies—the clinching race—their travel-lift operator couldn’t come to work?”

  “You kidding? That guy’s making more’n he’s ever made in his miserable life as a bottom painter, or whatever he was down in that shitty little country. I used to be a bottom painter myself. Worked my way up to cranes and travel-lifts. When I worked for the Italians, they paid me four times what I make now. He’s not gonna—”

  “Let’s just say for story purposes he can’t come to work. Who’s gonna put the boat in the water? And be on standby all day? And take it out of the water? Who?”

  Simon Cooke stared at Blaze for a moment. Then he tossed down his third gin and tonic, wiped his mouth on his sweatshirt, and said, “They’d have to come to us. We’re the landlords. My boss is, I mean.”

  “Who would they get to run the travel-lift on that important day? On such short notice?”

  “I guess…me,” Simon Cooke said. “I guess you gotta put me in your story.”

  Blaze expelled a mighty breath, then said, “Thank you, Simon. Want another drink?”

  —

  Fortney’s body temperature reached 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit sometime before their shift ended that Saturday. It was one of the worst days he’d experienced since wearing a badge. He was thankful their sergeant was an understanding old-timer, not one of those pimpled semi-adolescents with chevrons on their sleeves, computer cops with no military experience and little life experience, too young to be out after curfew.

  He remembered one such sergeant at a jumper call on the Coronado bridge. The crazed jumper was himself an off-duty cop with a nine-millimeter in his hand, trying to get up the nerve to blast himself off the span.

  The young sergeant ordered him to put down the gun. Why? “Because it was city property.” Which made Fortney want to draw his own nine and use it on the kid sergeant who lived with a permanent hard-on, but only for the troops.

  His partner’s erection was obviously aimed in another direction. Before they got their reports finished, Leeds said, “Let’s go trolling for cuppies tonight, whaddaya say?”

  “I’ve had a very busy day, Junior,” Fortney replied. “Didn’t you happen to notice, I almost drowned?”

  “Come on!” Leeds said. “I gotta test that stupid survey about married people having better sex lives than single people. Hear about that? Tonight I’m gonna be a single guy and find out the real truth.”

  “You’ve always been a single guy,” Fortney said. “Trouble with you is, you’ve never been a married guy since you got married.”

  “So let’s go blow that freaking survey right outta the water.”

  “Don’t mention water,” Fortney said.

  He didn’t mention to Leeds or anyone else how much panic he’d felt during that moment in the bay. Even though he was wearing a flotation jacket. Even though his partner was right there in the Whaler instantly reaching down for a handful of that jacket. Even though Fortney knew logically that he wasn’t going to drown, it was there, worming its way from the back of his mind to the front: a morbid fear of drowning in dark water. If it had happened at night he might have died of fright. He wondered if he’d dream about it.

  Suddenly he wanted a drink. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go along. The experience will no doubt be more amusing than anything that gets my taxpayer dollars on PBS.”

  An hour later they were eating tough potato skins, rigid calamari strips, and limp French fries in a Shelter Island restaurant that was not only packed with race enthusiasts but also with tour groups ready for a San Diego weekend at Sea World and the zoo.

  Fortney looked around and said, “Name of tonight’s story is: Natural Fibers Takes a Holiday. This looks like Rush Limbaugh’s TV audience.”

  “I never seen so many VFW poppies,” Leeds said. “And I’m pretty sure a couple of the females ain’t primates.”

  “I’m not feeling all that human myself,” Fortney said, “after drinking mutant-making liquids from the bay. If I ever find a third wife young enough to have my baby, I’ll have to warn her it won’t look good in family photos. She’ll give birth to a blob of slime mold or a patch of fungus.”

  As soon as Fortney finished the potato skins, he got bilious. He jumped up and ran to the restroom. When he returned five minutes later, he said, “It’s starting already. I just hunked up something that looks like Ross Perot, only taller.”

  —

  Midway Drive wasn’t such a bad place to catch dates, Dawn told herself, except that a lot of them were U.S. Navy enlisted men. She hadn’t really done a lot of swabbies before and thought they might not have enough money. They looked pretty young and scared to her, with those sidewall haircuts, driving those cheap little cars. How much money could they have?

  At least there were a lot of close-by motels on Rosecrans Street. She’d learned that many of the sailors would rather pay the tariff at a motel than risk doing the date in parked cars, and they seemed to like having a place to sleep away from the navy barracks. Dawn didn’t mind a motel room. It was their money, and this was her last night in San Diego.

  She looked at her watch hoping to catch five more dates. Then she’d call her connection, score some speedball, go home to Blaze’s apartment, and tomorrow? A new life! The thought was so exciting that for the first time in months she actually felt happy.

  It had occurred to Dawn that she’d better take off the nipple and clit chains. They’d worked very well with older dates up on El Cajon Boulevard. In fact, one guy gave her a thirty-dollar tip just to shoot a Polaroid picture of the thing. But this evening when the first navy guy took her to a motel room he’d almost passed out when she stripped.

  While removing the clit chain she’d accidentally pinched he
rself and cried out in genuine pain, which brought tears to her eyes.

  The young sailor almost started crying, too. He said, “Nobody in Deming, New Mexico, goes around looking like a walking scrapyard!”

  She had a hell of a time getting him hard.

  —

  The moment he arrived home, Ambrose Lutterworth removed his blazer and trousers and hung them on the cherrywood gentleman’s valet in the corner of his bedroom. The white flannels would have to be cleaned if he couldn’t remove the stain from the cocktail sauce that one of those drunken fools had splashed on him when they were out on the terrace at sundown.

  He brushed his teeth and squirted a little cologne on his cheeks and neck, anticipating Blaze’s arrival. Then he put on taupe cotton trousers and his monogrammed bedroom slippers. He thought the shirt and tie he’d worn that evening would look all right under his burgundy smoking jacket.

  He loved the softness of the jacket, the shawl collar, the feel of the satin piping and the satin waist sash. He often wore the jacket when he was home alone in the evening. It made him consider taking up cigars, but he never could stand the smell of burning tobacco. He didn’t have a single friend at the club who’d ever spoken of the incomparable pleasure of removing one’s coat and slipping into a smoking jacket.

  Ambrose sat in his Chippendale wing chair, upholstered in the red and copper stripes of the Royal Temple Yacht Club. He’d spotted that chair in London on his second trip with the America’s Cup, bought it on the spot, and had it shipped to San Diego.

  When he picked up the Union Tribune, he felt that sack of wet sand in his belly just from reading about Peter Blake, the forty-seven-year-old leader of the Team New Zealand syndicate. A man with five hundred thousand miles of sailing experience! The master of the Whitbread Round the World Race and the only man to race in the first five Whitbreads, the toughest sailing event ever devised. And he’d won two of them.

  The article told how, in 1992, Blake sailed a 92-foot catamaran nonstop around the world in a record seventy-four days, twenty-two hours, seventeen-and-one-half minutes. Reading of such incredible sailing feats made Ambrose admit that few Americans would take on the Whitbread. It seemed that only Aussies and Kiwis were crazy enough and macho enough to do it, and Ambrose could recall only one American boat out of fourteen in the last race. He wondered if Yank sailors were no longer tough enough for what to a Kiwi like Peter Blake was a rite of passage.

  One thing was certain, and Ambrose just had to keep reminding himself of it: Neither Peter Blake nor his helmsman and skipper, Russell Coutts, nor anybody else, could win this race in a boat that was not fast enough. Not when the boat that was fast enough lies broken in a heap in a Shelter Island boatyard.

  Ambrose let the newspaper fall onto the floor by his feet, feeling a bit light-headed and drowsy. He closed his eyes, hoping for a refreshing little doze. He almost removed his tie but decided against it. For the elegance of a smoking jacket to have an effect, the shirt and tie had to be as neat as it was when one conducted important business.

  —

  It was hard to get rid of Simon Cooke, especially after Miles, the giant Kiwi, spotted them in the booth together. Miles strode across the barroom and the crowd fell back as crowds do for extremely large people. He was wearing a black T-shirt in honor of their boat, Black Magic. Below the too-short cuff of his jeans, red socks showed. Red socks were worn by Peter Blake for good luck, and had become the hottest apparel item in New Zealand. Everyone from politicians to nuns was wearing red socks, New Zealand television reported, and that included Border collies and sheep.

  Emblazoned in crimson across the front and back of the T-shirt was: BLACK MAGIC RULES THE WAVES, DENNIS CONNER WAIVES THE RULES.

  “Hi, Miles!” Blaze said when he reached the table.

  “Evening, love,” he replied. “Been out on the water to see our lads doing business?”

  “Haven’t had a chance,” she said. “I guess you know Simon Cooke?”

  “Taught me how to operate the travel-lift,” Miles said, shaking hands halfheartedly with the little man.

  “Taught him in less time than a guy’d need to take a sh—nap,” Simon said. “How’s it behaving?”

  “Right as rain,” Miles said. In his paw the beer mug looked like a whiskey glass.

  “Well, it’s good to see ya,” Simon said to Miles, and turned to Blaze as though to resume their conversation.

  Miles didn’t take the hint. He continued to smile at Blaze, exposing a gap where an eyetooth was missing. His white-blond hair was as short as any boot camp swabbie’s.

  Blaze said, “Can I buy you a beer, Miles?”

  Only then did he glance at Simon and say, “I better go join my mates at the bar. Have to keep them out of mischief. Why don’t you join us?”

  “In a bit,” Blaze said with a smile that made Simon Cooke want to get up and kick that big ape in the balls.

  But then of course he’d die on the spot when the leg that did the kicking was torn from his torso and thrown into San Diego harbor.

  After Miles was gone, Simon said, “I never liked that guy. Of course I never liked any a the Kiwis, especially—”

  “The one that married your sister,” Blaze said in that way of hers that made Simon’s heart flutter.

  “Yeah,” he said, “especially him.”

  “How bad has he treated you?” Blaze asked, and signaled to the cocktail waitress again with two fingers up.

  “Real rude, the arrogant cocksucker!” Simon said. “Pardon my French. One time I says to him, ‘When you and my sis go to New Zealand and have your first kid, I’m gonna come down and visit.’ Know what he says to me?”

  “What?”

  “He says, ‘That’s a terrifying thought.’ I says, ‘Why is it a terrifying thought?’ He says, ‘That you might use our towels.’ The prick! No offense.”

  “Guys like that should get what’s coming,” Blaze said.

  “I’ll say.”

  “I wonder how he’d like to go back to New Zealand a loser?”

  “He won’t,” Simon said. “They’re gonna beat anybody the Yanks throw up against them.”

  “Not necessarily,” Blaze said. “Just think about it. All the money they’ve spent? All the months of hard work and sacrifice? All the fame and goodies they think they’re gonna get when they go home with the Cup? All of it down the drain if they lose.”

  “Yeah!” Simon said. “Works for me!”

  “Could happen,” Blaze said. “If they have to race in their thirty-eight boat. I tell you the thirty-eight just isn’t as good as their thirty-two.”

  “Well, they’re gonna race the thirty-two boat,” he said, “if that’s the fastest one.”

  “Not if it’s outta the water lying on its back like a dead turtle.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Not if it’s dropped from a travel-lift!” Blaze said, then lowered her gaze.

  Simon didn’t respond. He stared at her, and when she looked up with those heart-stopping eyes, he said, “Miles? He’s gonna drop the boat?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Blaze!” Simon moved his arm away even though she was touching it with those satin fingers. “What’s going on here? Are you really writing a story or what?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but while I’ve been working on it and doing the research, I’ve met lots of people. I know a man…” She put her hand back on his arm tentatively. He didn’t move away, so she said, “Can I trust you? I mean, completely trust you?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I know a man who wants to see that thirty-two boat on the ground. And he’s willing to pay for it.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say who. But I can tell you he’s serious.”

  “But why’s he telling this to you?”

  “Because I told him that I know you. He understands how the Kiwis run their security. And about things like the travel-lift. He already knows about you.”

  �
��About me? What about me?”

  “That you’re the best crane operator in San Diego. That you taught the Kiwi operator everything he knows about the travel-lift. That you’ve been crapped on by the Kiwis even though you and your boatyard always treated them real good. I told him that I know you very well because I could see I was talking to a very serious player.”

  “Player in what?”

  “In the America’s Cup.”

  Then Simon’s expression changed. His narrow lips widened to a blade and he said, “You were talking to Bill Koch, weren’tcha?”

  “I can’t say,” Blaze replied with a cunning grin of her own.

  “I know it was him!” Simon said.

  “I really can’t, Simon. Please don’t ask.”

  “Or Dennis Conner? You coulda been talking to Dennis Conner?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Anyways, it was one a the two,” Simon said. “I hope it was Koch. I don’t think he’s got more balls than Conner, but he sure got more money.”

  “The point is, the man I talked to is serious.”

  “You must think I’m dumb,” Simon said, and now the crafty look had vanished. He looked hurt.

  “Of course I don’t!”

  “Now I see why you’re friendly with that pus-gut Kiwi. You’re gonna make him an offer, ain’tcha?”

  “You’ve got it wrong, Simon,” Blaze said, “but hold the thought.”

  The waitress set the drinks down on the table and picked up the empty glasses. When she was gone, Blaze said, “You’ve got it wrong. I could never trust Miles. I don’t even like the Kiwis.”

  “I seen you playing up to them,” Simon said. “You got yourself into something with Koch or Conner, whichever. You got yourself into the America’s Cup spy game. That’s what you done.”

  “Is it a mistake?”

  “I knew guys around this harbor that did spy jobs during the last America’s Cup. Some of ’em got paid good money, some of ’em didn’t. It was to take pictures of the keel. I never heard a nobody getting paid to dump a boat out. And I don’t think your pal Miles is gonna do it for you.” Then he added, “No matter what you promised to do for him.”