Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Perhaps later,” he said. “This is so…exquisite!”

  But Blaze Duvall said, “Maybe I should give you the bottom line now. You might be too sleepy afterward.”

  “All right then,” he said, “but please don’t stop moving your hands.”

  She smiled. “I won’t, my darling.” Then she said, “It was just like you said it would be. Simon Cooke’s a greedy little man. And he was very interested when I told him about my anonymous friend who was willing to pay ten thousand dollars to destroy the New Zealand boat.”

  “Is he sure he can get the job?”

  “Of course. He claims he’s the best crane operator in San Diego. He’s certainly the most experienced in his boatyard. And, of course, there’s the connection with his brother-in-law. They’ll go straight to their landlord and he’ll go to Simon. You were right.”

  He shuddered when she squeezed his shoulders and worked them hard. Then he said, “Did he demand to know who your contact is?”

  Blaze laughed and said, “He’s convinced it’s Bill Koch or Dennis Conner.”

  That made Ambrose laugh, too. “That’s the first chuckle I’ve had in days.”

  “You’re feeling better already, aren’t you?” Blaze moved her fingers down his buttocks between his legs, then added, “I can feel you are.”

  “And was he scared?” Ambrose asked. “I mean, when it came to the business of drugging the New Zealand crane operator? Didn’t it frighten him?”

  “Not a bit,” Blaze said. “You’re a good judge of men, Ambrose. He’s only interested in money.”

  Ambrose Lutterworth smiled dreamily when he felt her doing things down there. He said, “I’m a good judge of women, too. I chose you and you’ve saved me. I’m not going to forget what you’ve done for me, Blaze.”

  “I care for you, Ambrose,” Blaze said. “And when the Kiwi boat is destroyed by Simon, I’d love to go to dinner with you. Someplace romantic.”

  “After the Cup has been successfully defended,” Ambrose added. “We’ll still have to beat their thirty-eight boat, won’t we?”

  “Yes, after that. After Dennis Conner or Bill Koch beats the Kiwis, we’ll celebrate.”

  “I promise you an evening you won’t forget. Do you like champagne? We’ll have champagne the likes of which you’ve never tasted.”

  “It’s a date,” Blaze said. “Would you like to turn over now, darling?”

  When Ambrose Lutterworth rolled over onto his back, Blaze said, “My, my! We are happy now, aren’t we?”

  And then Ambrose pleased her by saying, “Perhaps we should finish quickly, Blaze. We’ve both had such a stressful evening. I’m so sleepy.”

  “Good idea,” Blaze said, thinking she might even be home in bed by 1:00 A.M. She wondered if Dawn would arrive before daybreak.

  When she took the pack of condoms from her bag, Ambrose opened his eyes and said, “I’ve never asked you, but just this once? Just for me, can we dispense with that?”

  Blaze said, “I think so.”

  “You’re the only woman I’ve been intimate with for at least three years,” he said. “I know you’ve got to be careful these days, but really I’m safe, and—”

  “Hush!” Blaze said. “It’s okay, Ambrose. I know I don’t need a condom with you. We’re…bonded now. We’re…secret sharers. Would you like being bonded to me?”

  “Yes, Blaze,” he said. “Oh, yes!”

  “We don’t want anything to come between us,” she whispered. “Not a layer of latex. Nothing.”

  “No, Blaze!” he said, his excitement growing.

  “Now, Ambrose?” she asked. “Would you like it now?”.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Without the condom I’ll really feel your lips and your tongue. And will you…?”

  “Yes, I will, Ambrose,” Blaze said. “Just lie back and relax.”

  Before she began the blowjob, she reached into the duffel to return the pack of condoms. And when she did, she pushed the pause button on the cassette recorder. She already had far more than she needed.

  —

  “I ain’t quite sure I could ever be comfortable in a bed like that,” Letch Boggs remarked to Westbrook.

  The bearded vice cop was wearing a muscle tank top, but for eveningwear he’d changed his stud earring to a loop. “It’d be kinda hard to turn over,” Westbrook said, agreeing with Letch’s assessment.

  The bed was a surplus army cot in the Normal Heights bedroom of a very abnormal hooker. There were metal eye-bolts on each side of the bed at the head and at the foot, and blue steel handcuffs dangled from each of the four bolts.

  Two S&M hookers were sitting handcuffed together in the second bedroom, listlessly answering the questions of two other vice cops and Officer Rita Mason, who was still in hooker mufti. Rita had operated a john who’d introduced one of her undercover partners as his cousin from Bakersfield to the pair of S&M hookers. For that bit of cooperation the john, who’d been caught soliciting prostitution from Rita Mason, won a get-out-of-jail card. He got to go home with no record made of his naughty encounter.

  Rita Mason was counting the days. Sixteen more and her tour in Vice was over, then she could take a long, hot bath—no, make that two baths—put on her uniform, and go back to patrol, where people might hate her and even scare her but didn’t turn her stomach as horribly as those she’d met while in Vice.

  She sauntered into the back bedroom, where Letch and Westbrook were examining the setup. There were two velvet paintings of naked women on the walls, a rusty cattle prod propped in the corner, and a Mexican bull-whip draped across a low-hanging iron chandelier that had surely been bought in Tijuana. The walls were painted red. The door and door frame were done in black lacquer.

  “Look at all this,” Letch said, when Rita entered the make-believe torture chamber.

  What the Freudian implications might be, Rita couldn’t imagine. Anyway, the three-inch heels on her plastic boots were killing her. Feet were all she could think about.

  “My ankles hurt!” Rita said. “Why don’t men like to score with women in sensible shoes?”

  “You could wear anything with me, Rita,” Letch said, leering at her. “Or you could—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. Jesus! She could smell him across the room. Like tear gas! And his aloha shirt had a Day-Glo Rorschach pattern that could only be described as brutal. “Why don’t you change the batteries in that goddamn shirt? It’s so full of violence it oughtta be restricted to major motion pictures. And rated!”

  “Look!” Westbrook said, picking up a Ping-Pong paddle and ball from the nightstand, where they lay next to a hot-water bottle and a catheter.

  “They play Ping-Pong?” Rita asked.

  “This is a golf ball!” Westbrook said.

  “What do they do with a golf ball?” Rita asked. Then she noticed that Letch’s disgusting leer turned even leerier and said, “Never mind.”

  “You notice there’s only one paddle?” Letch said. “The johns never return the serve.”

  “Go wash your hands, Westbrook!” Rita said. “Kee-rist! Where that golf ball’s been? You’re as perverted as Letch!”

  “If you can’t pound it in his coal chute on the first two strokes, do you think it’s considered a double fault?” Letch wanted to know.

  “I hate this job!” Rita said. “Tonight a twelve-year-old on a skateboard propositioned me! I should’ve slapped him silly!”

  Letch really didn’t mind what Rita or any of the female cops thought of him, as long as they thought of him. He was really going to miss this buxom girl, that’s for sure. Then he remembered something he’d been meaning to ask her.

  He closed the door and said, “Remember that skinny hooker, Dawn Coyote? If you happen to see her out there tonight, lemme know. Come Monday morning she better have her bony ass outta town.”

  Rita said, “Yeah, I meant to tell you—a guy in a white Jag was asking about her tonight. Talked to two girls working my corner. They told him they had
n’t seen her for days.”

  “A brother?” Letch asked. “Big dude with a shaved head and a Fu Manchu?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s probably left town already,” Westbrook said to Letch.

  “She better have,” the old vice cop said. “Monday morning we serve the warrant.”

  Just then Westbrook’s electronic beeper went off and Letch said to Rita, “Is that your diaphragm squeaking?”

  “Catch you later,” Rita said, eager to go back to the boulevard for air.

  “We could meet for a cup of coffee after work,” Letch suggested.

  Rita said, “I’d rather swallow fish bones.”

  Letch said sadly, “Okay. See ya.”

  Rita said, “Only for two more weeks. After that, the only time I’ll see you is if they’re desperate for a pall-bearer.”

  —

  Dawn Coyote was tired, as tired as she’d ever been in her young life. Hiding out from Oliver Mantleberry had taken a toll and she needed some speedball bad. She wanted to go to Blaze’s apartment and sleep for twelve hours, but she couldn’t leave Midway Drive just yet. The girls were chumming and the johns were in a feeding frenzy. She’d already done four sailors and three older civilians at forty dollars a date, with no end in sight.

  When Dawn was crossing Rosecrans at 10:50 P.M., she spotted a very likely john in a blue Lexus ogling as he made a quick turn onto Midway, planning to turn around and come back. Dawn was too busy smiling at the guy to notice the crack in the sidewalk. Her stiletto heel caught and she pitched forward.

  She fell on her right hip, rolling over and grabbing her ankle. The pain shot straight to her knee and beyond, a very bad sprain. She’d committed a street whore’s venial sin: Watching the potential date instead of where she was walking.

  Painfully getting to her feet, she limped toward a phone stand and called her connection, Rudolph, scared he wouldn’t answer this late.

  He picked up. “Yeeeees?”

  “It’s Dawn. I gotta see you.”

  “It’s too late. How about tomorrow?”

  “No. Now. I’ll pay an extra twenty.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Midway and Rosecrans. But I ain’t staying here. I hurt my ankle. I’ll drive to you.”

  “No way. I’ll come to you, but not on the street. You still living at the same place?”

  “I moved,” she said. “How about meeting me somewheres? Anywhere. There’s this bar I know.”

  “No bar,” he said. “No street corner. No public place. If you don’t have an address, sorry. We can’t do business tonight. Maybe tomorrow, Dawn.”

  “But we did business on the street lots a times!”

  “No more,” he said. “Not this late, anyways.”

  “Rudolph, wait!” she cried. “I got an address! Jist for tonight I’m staying with a girlfriend. I’ll see you there in one hour. Got a pencil?”

  Her connection wrote down the address and the number on the security gate, saying he’d be there in one hour. When he hung up, he dialed the beeper number of Oliver Mantleberry, who’d promised him a hundred bucks for the information.

  What the fuck, Rudolph figured. Dawn was leaving town anyway, according to Oliver. She’d never be a customer again. What the fuck.

  —

  When Blaze Duvall pulled into her subterranean parking garage, it was nearly midnight and dead quiet. She didn’t like coming home this late, especially to the parking garage. It was protected by a security gate, but still…

  Yet she was sure it was probably safer than the courtyard gate one floor up. The courtyard accessed the entire apartment complex and the “security” consisted of an eight-foot metal fence and a walk-in gate. Not wrought iron, just black aluminum painted to look like iron.

  One of her neighbors, who installed security equipment for commercial buildings, told Blaze that before she moved in a tweaked-out Charger cheerleader had kicked that gate wide open when she came to see a linebacker whose wife had thrown him out. That was the kind of security the gate provided. And just thirty feet from the gate was a tall brick planter. Someone could pull himself up on it and climb over the fence without breaking anything. Some security.

  But there was nobody coming or going from any of the units at that time of night. Blaze hadn’t realized how beat she was until she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She’d even forgotten about Dawn Coyote until she got her key in the lock.

  Then she remembered, calling, “Dawn? You home?”

  No answer. She walked three steps along the balcony to a banana tree growing in a big pot. She felt for the key where she’d told Dawn it’d be hidden. It was there under the banana leaves.

  Blaze entered her apartment, kicked off her shoes, opened the fridge, and poured a large glass of orange juice. After that she went into the bathroom and took a shower.

  When she was toweling dry the phone rang. Dawn, no doubt. A flat tire, maybe? A problem of some kind? Well, Dawn wasn’t going to get her out of the apartment, not if she was in a full body cast, dying at Mercy Hospital.

  “Hello,” Blaze said, wrapping a towel around her head.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Simon.”

  “Simon! Why’re you calling so late?”

  “Sorry, Blaze,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t. I’m cold sober.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said. “Most people do things like this when they’re dead drunk.”

  “No, it’s, like, well, I can’t sleep. I been thinking about it.”

  “Look, Simon,” Blaze said. “Don’t make a hasty decision tonight. Let’s meet tomorrow and talk about it. I know we can make it work.”

  “That’s jist it,” he said. “I ain’t weaseling out. I decided to do it. I need the ten grand, and I couldn’t go to sleep till I let you know.”

  “Wonderful!” Blaze said. “That’s wonderful, Simon!”

  “I think it’ll happen next Thursday,” Simon said.

  “I know,” Blaze said. “I’ve been reading every article about the races. Thursday the Kiwis’re gonna take it.”

  “So you’ll have to do your thing Wednesday night.”

  “Let’s not discuss it now,” she said. “Are you on a cell phone?”

  “No, I’m at home,” he said. “There ain’t nobody with me. My roommate’s gone to Ensenada for the weekend.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Blaze said. “I’ll call you before noon. Get yourself a good night’s sleep.”

  “Blaze?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wouldn’t wanna…come over tonight, would ya?”

  “Not tonight, Simon. I’m pooped.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  “Night, Simon,” Blaze said.

  “There’s one thing, Blaze,” Simon said. “Only way I’ll go for this is if you get a little something for yourself. I was thinking five percent. I wanna give you five hundred bucks.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Blaze said.

  “But I want to.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s really sweet, Simon. Go to bed now. Sleep warm.”

  When she hung up, she thought she heard something out on the balcony.

  “Dawn?” she called out.

  Nothing.

  Blaze went in the bedroom and put on her blue terry robe. With her hair still wrapped in the towel, she went to the door and peered through the peephole.

  Nothing.

  Blaze finished toweling her hair but was too tired to blow it dry. She pulled back the bedspread and folded it across the foot of her bed. She liked to sleep with her feet under it. Her feet were forever cold, always had been even when she was a child sharing a bed with two little sisters. When she got enough money to get out of the massage business, she was going to wear warm socks ninety percent of the time, and the hell with how they looked to men.

  After getting in bed she heard it again. The scraping of a footstep? But this time it felt like someone had run a
cold blade along her backbone. Fear!

  She thought of calling the police but decided against it. What if it was her neighbor Charlie’s cat? What if it was her neighbor, Charlie? An alcoholic who came home soused several times a month. He might be trying to find his keys. He might have fallen down.

  She got out of bed and put on her robe and slippers. She went to the closet and reached up next to the ski cap, where she kept her mad money, and found the .32-caliber nickel-plated revolver she’d bought from the horny gas station owner who serviced her car.

  She’d never fired it, but he’d told her that he had and that the ammunition was “fresh.” She’d told him she thought of lettuce as fresh. And men. But never bullets.

  —

  As Letch was finishing up his shift that night, driving back to Central by way of the Gas Lamp District, his partner couldn’t stop talking about the Simpson murder trial, which to Letch—as it was to most Americans who didn’t need Prozac—was sickening.

  “The Dream Team,” Westbrook snorted, referring to the Simpson defense. “The Dweeb Team is more like it.”

  “Forget about it,” Letch said. Then, “There goes four more Medal of Honor winners.”

  He pointed to a quartet of ragpicking bums whom cops now had to call “the homeless.” Two of the ragpickers had a couple of tourists pinned against a restaurant window and were ready to reach into their pockets for buy-off money.

  One of the “vets” yelled, “Got any spare change for a Vietnam vet, buddy? I can’t work because a my wounds.”

  Letch rolled down the window, shouting to the tourists, “Spare change consists of anything with a string of U.S. Treasury serial numbers on it.”

  The other two ragpickers were pushing debrisladen shopping carts, causing Letch to say to Westbrook, “They’re putting the cart before the hearse. Barely.” Then he yelled to them, “How far you gotta go to your place of unemployment?”

  When one of the ragpickers flipped him the bird, Letch said, “Didn’t we share a croissant and café au lait at Club Med last summer?”

  Letch thought Westbrook had abandoned his Simpson case obsessing, but the bearded cop said, “Wonder why O.J. used a blade? Why not a gun with a silencer? A guy like him could get any weapon he wanted. Why a blade?”