Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “That’s the good girl,” the grinder said. “You drink it.”

  “So whadda you want, then?” Blaze asked Miles. “I’m buying.”

  “Any North American beer,” he said. “It’s all mediocre. Maybe a Samuel Adams.”

  “One Sam Adams coming up,” Blaze said. “Move over and let me out.”

  “What for? They’ve got barmaids to serve us.”

  “I have to make a phone call,” Blaze said. “Be right back.”

  The big Kiwi sighed, got up, and let Blaze slide out once more. She took the mug with her and headed in the direction of the public phones by the ladies’ restroom.

  When Blaze went inside the restroom, two cuppies were combing their hair and discussing which one was going to seduce the Australian pit man and who was going to try for the bowman.

  After they’d gone, Blaze leaned on the sink and stared at her reflection. Jesus Christ! She’d never considered the possibility that he wouldn’t drink their sponsor’s beer! She poured it down the sink, palmed the second and last bindle of phenobarbital, and walked very anxiously toward the bar.

  This time she looked so grim that the flirtatious bartender didn’t flirt. He just took her order and drew the mug of Samuel Adams, then watched her curiously while she gulped down four big swallows, grimacing like the brew hater she was.

  Then she strolled toward the window as though to look down at the parking lot, and holding the mug pressed against her black turtleneck, she emptied the bindle, then stirred the beer with her finger.

  When she returned to the bar, she said, “Can you top this off, please? I spilled some on the floor.”

  “Sure,” the bartender said, happy that she was smiling again. He held the mug under the tap and filled it to the brim.

  When she got back to the table, Miles said, “I was getting ready to send out a searching party.”

  “Got you your beer,” Blaze said. “That’s what took so long.”

  “You drink it,” he said. “I’ve already got one coming from the barmaid.”

  “Goddamn it, Miles!” Blaze said. “You don’t like Steinlager, so I went over there and fought through the mob to get you one you do like! Now drink it before I pour it on your noodle!”

  “That’s telling him, Blaze!” a drunken Aussie said, giggling.

  “He needs a firm hand!” a boozy Kiwi concurred.

  “Okay, love, I’ll drink it. Keep your knickers on,” Miles said.

  “At least for the moment!” a Kiwi cried, and all the drunks roared.

  And then an incident took place that to Blaze Duvall played itself out more dreamlike than real. Later, when she tried to replay it in her mind, she couldn’t. Like a faulty video, it just wouldn’t track.

  Her mouth fell open when a cadaverous little man appeared at the table.

  “Evening, Blaze,” Simon Cooke said. “There’s somebody here I want you to meet.”

  She was jolted, startled, astonished. She couldn’t believe it. Not only was he there, but he was falling-down drunk. Smashed. Hammered. His bloodred eyes were swimming, and his fly was unzipped. He grinned stupidly at all the curious sailors.

  When she was finally able to talk, Blaze asked, “What’re you doing here?”

  “I got somebody I want you to meet!” he repeated, tottering backward until a guy caught him and propped him up.

  “Hello, Blaze!” a handsome young sailor said. “I’m Gordon. The lads’ve talked about you quite a bit.”

  “Gordon!” one of the Kiwis cried. “Buy us a drink or I’ll tell your bride you’re here!”

  “Get out of here, you sod! You’re a married man!” another said.

  “He’s a bloody newlywed!” a third piped up. “Ignore his advances, Blaze!”

  “This is the brother-in-law I told you about,” Simon said, keeping himself upright by holding on to the table with both hands.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Gordon,” Blaze said. “But don’t you think your brother-in-law’s had too much for one night?”

  “Too much for a bloody year,” Gordon said, looking down at his wife’s disgusting older brother.

  “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough!” Simon announced to all of San Diego.

  “Go home, mate,” Miles said. “Gordon, you better take him. He can’t drive.”

  “Hey, asshole!” Simon said to the giant. “I’ll decide if I can drive or not! You couldn’t even drive a fucking travel-lift till I taught you!” Then to Blaze, “This asshole couldn’t even drive a travel-lift till I taught him!” To Miles again, “Call yourself a crane operator? You couldn’t operate a weed whacker!”

  His brother-in-law grabbed the crane operator by his skinny bicep, saying, “That’s all, Simon! You’re going home now!”

  “The fuck I am!” Simon yelled, jerking away. Then he pointed to Miles and screamed, “The average length of a gorilla’s cock is one and a quarter inches!”

  “Get him out!” Miles roared, slamming his beer mug down and jumping up.

  That’s when the entire scene, as Blaze remembered it later, went out of focus.

  The little crane operator took a swing at the big one and had his bony fist stopped in midflight by a paw bigger than his head.

  But Simon Cooke, ever game, swung with his other fist, missed, and knocked the mug of Sam Adams onto Blaze Duvall’s chest.

  Then everybody started yelling and cursing and hollering. And two waitresses scampered to the bartender, who jumped over the bar and ran toward the fracas.

  Gordon, Miles, and a Kiwi grinder lifted Simon Cooke by the arms and one leg and hauled him out as he flailed at anyone in sight with his free foot, all the while yelling, “You can’t trust any of ’em, Blaze! Bunch a wallaby fuckers!”

  Blaze Duvall sat, stunned, the front of her turtleneck drenched with the full pint of drug-laced beer. She was still sitting, staring into space, when Miles and the grinder returned without Simon or his brother-in-law.

  The grinder said, “Do you know what the little beggar said when we threw him into Gordon’s car? He said, ‘You’ll need me one of these days to put your boat in the water.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t let that lunatic put my bum into bathwater,” Miles said.

  “If he ever comes near our compound I’ll feed him to the crabs,” a bowman said.

  “Excuse me,” Blaze said to Miles. “I gotta go home. My sweater’s ruined.”

  “Don’t go, Blaze!” the big man begged. “It’ll dry. Please don’t go.”

  “I gotta,” she said, still dazed.

  “Change and come back,” the Kiwi pleaded. “I’ll wait.”

  “We’ll all wait!” the grinder promised.

  Blaze said nothing. And when she was walking away, she heard Miles say to his mates, “Poor Gordon. Any child of his is going to have that thing for an uncle.”

  “A great pity,” the grinder agreed. “I fear there’s a lot of algae in the family gene pool.”

  —

  Sometimes it was just as luxurious to wear the smoking jacket over silk pajamas. Of course it wasn’t proper, and he’d hate to have anyone who knew better see him like this. Nevertheless, it was cozier than wearing his soft wool bathrobe, or even the silk one with his monogram on it.

  There was just something about that smoking jacket. On his trips to Britain he’d discussed smoking jackets with the commodores of various yacht clubs. Virtually every one of them had agreed that a smoking jacket was an irreplaceable item of a gentleman’s apparel—for a true gentleman.

  Ambrose was listening to a compact disk, Beethoven’s Eróica, when the telephone call came. He jumped up from the Chippendale wing chair and ran to the bookcase to switch off the music. His hand trembled when he picked up the telephone.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Got the money?”

  “I told you I’d have it.”

  “I mean now. Do you have the money at your house now?”

  �
�Why do you ask? Is anything…wrong?”

  “Everything’s gonna be fine,” she said, “but Simon’s making a fuss. He may need some money tonight.”

  “Simon! What’re you doing with Simon tonight? Didn’t you—”

  “I can’t explain now,” she said. “Things’re still happening. But if I should need some front money for Simon, I need to know it’s available. That you have the money tonight.”

  “I have it,” he said. “But I don’t want you to give him anything until he performs tomorrow. I thought we agreed on that?”

  “I’m working on him, Ambrose. I gotta know the bottom line in case he starts turning weird on me.”

  “How about your friend? Your very large friend? Did you make the delivery to him?”

  “Soon,” she said. “It’ll all be done soon. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later.”

  “God! I was hoping it’d be done by now. I can’t sleep. I can hardly think about anything else.”

  “I know,” she said. “Try to relax. I’ll call.”

  When she hung up the phone in her hotel room, she lay back on the pillow and stared out the window at the tall masts in the Shelter Island channel. There was no sense torturing herself with might-have-beens. It was pointless to look for another way out because there was no other way out.

  She was alone in a hotel, hiding from a vicious killer who wanted her dead. Running from the police who wanted to expose her to the killer or to one of his friends if they should get lucky and arrest him. Well, no thanks!

  She’d worked for the fifteen thousand and where had her hard work gone? Into the toilet. Or the harbor. Or wherever it was that drunken scum like Simon Cooke puked their guts out.

  She had the five grand coming, but it wasn’t enough, not the way things were going in her life. As a matter of fact, fifteen wasn’t enough. Blaze wondered if that was why she’d taped the last encounter with Ambrose Lutterworth. Maybe she’d always known she’d need more, that he’d provide if it came down to it.

  But at least she’d tried to keep her end of the agreement. It wasn’t her fault the way things had turned out. She took two deep breaths, got up, and went into the bathroom to see how she looked. Not wonderful, but she didn’t redo her lipstick, didn’t run a comb through her flaming mane, merely tied it back in a ponytail. Somehow it didn’t seem right to primp, given the job she had to do tonight.

  Blaze put on an oversize green sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white sneakers. She rummaged in her suitcase for her audiocassette player with the tape still in it. She’d considered duplicating the tape, but asked herself why she’d need it. As long as Ambrose believed her, he’d come across. But if he played hardball—though she couldn’t even imagine it—she’d decided just to throw the tape away and give up. She wasn’t an extortionist at heart, and she actually liked the old guy.

  Before leaving the room, Blaze shoved the nickel-plated revolver inside the waist of her jeans and pulled the green sweatshirt down over the gun butt, thinking: Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta…

  —

  Ambrose Lutterworth was sitting motionless in his wing chair when the doorbell rang. It startled him and yet it didn’t. Tonight he was expecting everything and nothing. This was a very strange night.

  He went to the door and switched on the porch light, seeing the swirling flame of hair through the frosted door panel. He switched off the light and opened the door.

  “So, Simon must be demanding some earnest money,” Ambrose said to her.

  “Got any of that good chardonnay?”

  “Please!” he said. “I can’t stand it! Did it happen or not?”

  “Pour me some wine.” Her voice sounded dead. “And pour yourself something.”

  “Oh, God!” He turned and trudged into the kitchen, fearing that it was over, that something bad had happened.

  Ambrose returned with two glasses of wine, but with no ice bucket this time. He handed her a glass and sat down heavily in the wing back. Exhausted and feeling old.

  Blaze sipped the wine and didn’t speak for a moment.

  Ambrose said, “Is there any good news, or is it all bad?”

  “Bad,” Blaze said. “Simon Cooke crashed my party just as I’d managed to drug Miles’s beer. I won’t bore you with what I went through up to that point. Simon was absolutely blotto and fucked up the whole deal.”

  “Look!” Ambrose said. “Okay, so it went wrong tonight. But we can try again! During the America’s Cup race when New Zealand’s facing our defender, we can—”

  “If Simon Cooke so much as sets foot in their boatyard, they’ll keelhaul him,” Blaze said. “If they still keelhaul people. He’s poison. He’s finished. He’s finished us. You should’ve been there.”

  “No,” Ambrose said sorrowfully. “No. I’m glad I wasn’t. Very glad I wasn’t.”

  “You picked our man,” she reminded him. “He wasn’t my choice. He was yours.”

  “I know,” Ambrose said. “There was no one else who could’ve done it for us. Maybe he wanted out. Maybe he got drunk and ruined everything because deep down he didn’t have the stomach for it.”

  “So that’s that,” Blaze said.

  “He’ll keep his mouth shut, I assume.” Ambrose’s voice was even more lifeless than hers.

  “What’s he gonna say? Who’s he gonna tell? He doesn’t know me. I’m just a sailing groupie named Blaze he met in a bar.”

  “I think this is the most depressing night of my life,” Ambrose said.

  “Maybe your American team’ll win anyway,” Blaze said. “Maybe you didn’t really need the edge you tried to buy.”

  “No,” Ambrose said. “It’s becoming more hopeless every day. New Zealand will win big tomorrow over the Aussies and the Cup will be gone forever next month. Gone forever.”

  “That’s a shame, Ambrose,” Blaze said. “I’m sorry for you.”

  “Do you want your five thousand now? Is that why you came in person?”

  “I would like it now,” Blaze said.

  He nodded and pushed himself up from the wing chair, using both hands on the rep-striped arms. He was too distraught to care that he must look foolish in a smoking jacket and pajamas. He felt ancient, shuffling into the bedroom in his monogrammed slippers. He felt as old as the Cup.

  The twenty-five thousand was in two packets in his underwear drawer under his polka-dot boxers. He removed the smaller packet and counted out fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. It took him a few minutes. He was so distracted that he lost count twice.

  When Ambrose returned to the living room, he was surprised to see her purse lying open on the coffee table with a small cassette player beside it.

  Blaze didn’t look when he dropped the packet onto the coffee table. She just said, “Sit down, Ambrose.”

  When he did, she punched the play button.

  Ambrose had picked up the glass of wine but put it down on the lamp table beside him when he heard Blaze’s recorded voice ask, “Powder or oil?”

  He froze when he heard his own voice say, “Powder, I think.”

  He closed his eyes and didn’t open them when he heard Blaze’s recorded voice say, “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.”

  Then he heard himself say, “Is he sure he can get the job?”

  Ambrose Lutterworth didn’t hear much more after that. He kept his eyes closed ever more tightly now as the cassette droned on. A cassette full of criminal conspiracy mixed with erotic suggestions.

  It was very peculiar, but he started thinking of his mother then. And his sister, but mostly his mother. He almost felt that if he opened his eyes he’d see her sitting where Blaze was sitting. Looking at him with her relentless disapproval.

  Then he heard Blaze’s recorded voice say, “It’s okay, Ambrose. I know I don’t need a condom with you. We’re…bonded n
ow. We’re…secret sharers. Would you like being bonded to me?”

  Ambrose Lutterworth opened his eyes and said, “Turn it off, Blaze.”

  “It’s not quite over yet.”

  He said, “Turn it off.”

  Blaze reached over and switched off the machine. Then she said, “I’ve made copies for the district attorney, your yacht club, the New Zealand syndicate, and the San Diego Union Tribune. I hope I never have to send them.”

  “I see,” Ambrose said quietly. “And now you want to sell them to me, is that it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “For five thousand apiece. Along with the five thousand you owe me already.”

  “You want twenty-five thousand,” he said. “You want it all.”

  “Not all, Ambrose,” Blaze said. “Not all.” Only what you allowed for a caper that didn’t come off. “My God, you have this house! What’s it worth? Seven figures, right? Compared to me you’re a rich man. I need that money, Ambrose. Something’s happened and I need money real bad. I’m in serious trouble.”

  “Were you in this trouble when you made that recording?” He spoke so quietly, she could hardly hear him.

  “I was just protecting myself,” she said. “If Simon hadn’t blown us out of the water, I wouldn’t be doing this. I’m sorry.”

  “And you came here absolutely certain that I’d give you the twenty-five thousand?”

  “It’s up to you, Ambrose,” she said. “I told you what I’ll do if I have to. I hope you won’t make me do it.”

  “If I’m guilty of a criminal conspiracy, so are you,” he said.

  She said, “I’ve already consulted my lawyer about it. Since our little arrangement never went anywhere, neither of us will be prosecuted. But it’s all down there on the tape for your friends and associates to hear about. The plan, the money, the drugging of a Kiwi crane operator. All so you could keep your precious Cup. The notoriety won’t hurt me. Hell, it might even get me on a talk show. Maybe a lonely old rich guy who likes massages might propose marriage. But what’ll the notoriety do to you, Ambrose? Can you handle the disgrace?”

  “I always said that you’re a very smart girl.”

  “Look at it this way,” Blaze said. “What if Simon had gone ahead and fucked things up like he probably would’ve done? Maybe got himself caught? Then we’d have to worry that it’d come back on us. If it did, we would be guilty of a felony and go to jail for it. Forget the America’s Cup. It’s over. It’s worth twenty-five grand to avoid scandal and humiliation, isn’t it?”