Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Well, he hoped Anne and Fortney had had a good night’s sleep, but he didn’t think so. Not with all that intrigue and espionage ricocheting around in their skulls. After they’d sent Simon Cooke off, they jabbered like monkeys about Dennis Conner and Bill Koch and murder on the water. Cup crap. A crazy conspiracy that belonged in an Oliver Stone movie.

  He figured the real truth was they were probably hot for each other, and this sabotage stuff was an excuse to get together. They might not even realize it yet, just two more lonely middle-aged cops trying to climb aboard a boat passing in the night. Letch sort of liked that imagery. He was feeling poetic today.

  Well, he was all through dicking around with the whole bunch of them. He was the Shadow. He was going to find Oliver Mantleberry and wrap up both murders. Let them chase their spy theories with a bunch of rich sailboat sissies who couldn’t choke a gas lawn mower, let alone a human being.

  But before he was completely finished with the homicide team he had a little more business to conduct, so Letch got dressed, choosing a black aloha shirt with green Day-Glo lizards crawling all over it, and headed downtown.

  Anne Zorn had already been to the morning briefing and heard about everything that had been learned the day before. First, that Blaze Duvall had been garroted, possibly with a rope or a thick wire. That the search of her apartment had led them to her closest relative, a sister in Escondido who hadn’t seen Blaze in more than a month. And finally, that they’d gotten a break from a hotel on Shelter Island that reported a missing guest named Mary Ellen Singleton and a ransacked room.

  By now they’d thoroughly gone over her telephone diary, but most of the numbers seemed innocent. In addition to her sister’s, there were the numbers of her beauty salon, her aerobics studio, and three men who turned out to be guys in her aerobics class. But there were a dozen other men’s names with double digits beside them and no telephone numbers. One of the names was “Jeremy 63.”

  There was also a number they’d already linked to Dawn Coyote through the separate phone line in Dawn’s apartment. In short, it was easy enough to connect Blaze to Dawn, and Dawn to Oliver Mantleberry, but they’d found nothing to link Blaze to Oliver Mantleberry. That seemed to confirm their guess that during the ambush of Dawn Coyote, Oliver Mantleberry had been seen by Blaze Duvall, but that was the extent of their linkage.

  And the best news of all was that, although the DNA testing was not finished, the preliminary work on the bloodstained washcloth indicated that it was the blood of Dawn Coyote, aka Jane Kelly.

  There was one thing that Anne Zorn did not discuss with any member of the team or with her sergeant and lieutenant. That was her interview with Simon Cooke and his claim that Blaze Duvall had been murdered by none other than the most famous sailor on the planet, Dennis Conner. Letch had dismissed it, and Anne and Fortney had agreed to keep that little theory to themselves for a while. Fortney said he had an idea of his own and would call her that afternoon.

  Anne was in the team’s cubicle with Sal Maldonado when Letch Boggs came in.

  “Good day, sleuths,” he said.

  “It’s ninety-percent positive on the bloodstained washcloth,” she said. “We’ll know for sure pretty soon.”

  “Good enough for a warrant,” Letch said. “A death warrant.”

  “And about the other case,” Anne said. “A patrol unit got a call from a hotel on Shelter Island. A room registered to Mary Ellen Singleton had been ransacked. Her clothes were there but not her wallet or car keys. Her car was in the hotel lot.”

  “Oliver Mantleberry,” Letch said. “Just like a scum-sucking pimp to steal her purse after he killed her.”

  “Maybe I’m slow,” Anne said, “but how’d he get her body out of the room?”

  “Simple. He didn’t. He ambushed her away from the hotel somewhere, took her hotel key, and went back to the room.”

  “Why?”

  “He needs money. He’s holed up and almost broke.”

  “Just what I told her,” Sal Maldonado said.

  “I’d like to see her trick book,” Letch said to Anne.

  Sal looked at Letch and said, “It isn’t a trick book. There’re a few names with numbers by them that could be a code. Might be her massage clients, but no phone numbers. We checked out most of them. Pretty legit stuff.”

  “Mind if I have a look?” Letch asked.

  Sal flipped him the telephone diary and left the cubicle for a coffee run. Letch went straight to the S’s and J’s. There was nothing interesting under J, but under S there was a local telephone number. He jotted it down, then turned to Anne. “I guess you ain’t really convinced,” he said. “You and Fortney’re still gonna look for a killer down there on the water, am I right?”

  “I’m not totally convinced Oliver did Blaze.”

  “Suit yourself,” Letch said. “When I get him, I’ll make him confess to dumping Blaze before I cap him right between the goddamn horns.”

  “What’re you looking for in Blaze’s telephone book?” Anne asked.

  “A connection to Dawn. Or to Oliver.”

  “We’ve already—”

  “I know, I know,” Letch said. “Did anybody check this phone number here under S?”

  He pointed to the number he’d jotted down. Anne shrugged as Sal Maldonado returned. “Did anybody check this phone number?” Letch asked him. “Under the S’s?”

  “Yeah,” Sal said. “It’s a pet shop.”

  “Did Blaze have a pet?”

  “She lived in a no-pet building,” Sal Maldonado said.

  “Then why’d she have a pet shop’s number?” Letch asked.

  “Probably wrote down a wrong digit,” Sal said.

  “Then you don’t know why it’s under S?”

  Sal said, “The pet shop’s called Pet’s Heaven.”

  “That don’t begin with an S,” Letch said. “Must be a mistake. Guess I’ll go get me a bite to eat. I was you, I’d forget wussy little murder suspects. Blaze Duvall was ambushed by a big strong guy.”

  “You know the most dangerous words a woman can utter?” Anne said. “ ‘I can handle myself if a guy gets rough.’ Well, I learned way back in my police career that no matter how fit I got, an average guy could toss me all over the place.”

  “So?” Letch said.

  “She could’ve been strangled by just about any guy she came in contact with. He didn’t have to be a big strong guy like Oliver Mantleberry. Even a wussy little amateur could’ve pulled it off.”

  “Oliver Mantleberry is your guy,” Letch said stubbornly. “Bye-bye, Annie.”

  The moment Letch left Homicide he ran up the stairs to the Vice Unit. Three of the day-shift guys were working in the office but weren’t particularly surprised to see Letch this early. Nobody questioned the Shadow, not as long as he got things done that ordinary mortals could not.

  Letch went to a telephone and started dialing all combinations with the first digit of the phone number that Sal Maldonado had said was a pet shop. When he got an answer, he’d just say, “Oops! Wrong number.”

  When he was finished, he did the same with the last digit of the telephone number. On the third phone call, when he’d changed the written number 4 to a 3, it took a little longer to start ringing.

  When the call was picked up by an old babe with a whiskey voice, Letch said, “Oops! Wrong number.” And hung up, grinning.

  He’d never met a hooker yet who had the imagination to transpose anything but a first or last digit in a confidential trick-book number. The delay on the ring had told him he had a call-forwarding location, hence, something very fishy.

  He picked up the phone and called his old pal Rudy at Pacific Bell. “It’s Letch,” he said. “How ya doing? I got a number I’d like you to run up on your computer.”

  When Rudy objected, Letch replied, “Warrant? No, but I can get two box seats when the Padres play the Dodgers. Interested? Here’s the number, but it’s gonna roll over to another number.”

  A short
time later the phone rang and Letch picked it up, saying, “Rudy? A cell phone? That’s what I figured. Okay, thanks.”

  Fifteen minutes later Letch had AirTouch’s version of Rudy on the phone, and he said, “Billy, it’s Letch. I need a favor. Yeah, I know, but this is important. I got a cell phone number and I gotta know the billing address right away.”

  —

  She was really looking forward to the show today. She had a plate heaped with cheese and crackers and sardines and a half-gallon of pralines ‘n cream from Thirty-One Flavors. And two quarts of high-octane Coca-Cola. The cat was as excited as she was. The sardines were driving him crazy.

  The talk show’s panel consisted of family members who had dirty little secrets about sexual encounters with other than humans. The teaser indicated that one person admitted to sex with a llama. Another claimed she had sex with an extraterrestrial, but Serenity found that boring. These days everybody claimed to have had sex with extraterrestrials.

  The second Serenity Jones got cozy in her recliner, the goddamn doorbell rang.

  She sighed, grumbled, pulled her enormous bulk out of the chair, and went to the door. There was a man out there in the apartment courtyard, his back to the peephole. He was balding, shaped like a piñata, and had on a shocking Hawaiian shirt. There was something about that shirt….

  She opened the door, saying, “Yessssss?”

  He turned around, leering, and she recognized him at once.

  “Been a few years, Serenity,” he said.

  “Oh, m’God!” She flattened her hands over her enormous chest, which was heaving inside the muumuu.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Mister Boggs!”

  “Some things never change, Serenity,” he said, walking past the old woman.

  He looked her over. Same Dolly Parton hairdo. Same Tammy Faye Bakker eyelashes. She’d gained an extra fifty pounds or so, not that it made any difference. He figured she was over seventy by now, maybe seventy-five. With babes this fat, you could never tell for sure.

  “Is this official?” Serenity asked.

  “Why? You engaged in some illegal activity?” With the leery little grin she’d always hated.

  “If it is, I gotta see your warrant,” she said.

  “Let’s siddown,” Letch said. “Unless you’re printing fifty-dollar bills in the back bedroom, I ain’t interested in what you’re up to. I gotta talk to you about somebody you know.”

  Serenity led Letch into the kitchen. He sat and she took two cans of beer out of the refrigerator, popped the tabs, and put one in front of him.

  “Now I gotta move out again,” she said. “If you found me that easy.”

  “It wasn’t that easy,” he said.

  “So what’s it about?” Serenity asked. “I’m retired from the game.”

  “Semiretired,” Letch corrected her. “I was talking about you to somebody. Girl by the name of Dawn Coyote. Remember her?”

  Serenity licked the foam off her lip and said, “Dawn…yeah, a skinny little blonde? Ain’t you the one that busted my massage parlor that time? When Dawn was working for me?”

  “Your memory’s not as good as it once was,” Letch said. “No, it wasn’t my case, but I looked up the paperwork. There was another girl working for you then. Blaze? Remember her?”

  “Sorta,” Serenity Jones said. “I can sorta picture her.”

  “Redhead. Tall. Green eyes.”

  “I sorta remember her.”

  “Never seen the girl myself,” Letch said, “but I feel like I know her. Anyways, did you read where Dawn Coyote was murdered early Easter morning?”

  “No!”

  Letch could see that her surprise was genuine. “Yeah. There wasn’t much about it in the papers.”

  “I don’t read the papers no more,” Serenity said. “And the only TV shows I watch is happy stuff. I’m too old to wanna know about all the pain out there. Who killed the poor girl?”

  “A pimp named Oliver Mantleberry.”

  “A nigger?”

  “Yeah. Big dude, bald, mustache. Drives a white Jag. Or did. He’s hiding out now, but I think he’s still in town. Where’s he gonna go?”

  “I feel awful about Dawn,” Serenity said. “Poor little thing. She was a lost little girl when I hired her.”

  “She never got found,” Letch said. “But I’m gonna find him.”

  “What brings you to me?”

  “Dawn stayed friends all these years with Blaze Duvall. And I found your phone number in Blaze’s telephone diary.”

  “My number?”

  “Well, your number after I decoded it and traced it through the rollover at the answering service to the cell phone company.”

  “You always were a smart cop, Mister Boggs.”

  “Did you see on TV about a woman named Mary Ellen Singleton getting fished outta Mission Bay yesterday morning?”

  Serenity Jones didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. She tried to set the can down and missed the table. It clunked to the floor and beer spurted out. Letch picked it up and put it in the sink.

  Serenity Jones suddenly looked her age. Her red moon face burst in a huge bubble of a sob. Then the old woman started weeping. In a moment the mascara was all over her lips and chin and the front of her muumuu.

  Letch sipped his beer silently until she was finished.

  “The…lamb,” Serenity said at last. “The poor, poor little lamb! I wondered where she’d been the past few days!”

  “Sorry to break it to you, Serenity,” Letch said.

  “Who…who killed her?”

  “Same guy,” Letch said. “Oliver Mantleberry.”

  “A pimp?” Serenity said. “A nigger pimp killed my little lamb?”

  “Yeah, we figure she happened to be there when he ambushed Dawn Coyote. She saw too much and he had to shut her up.”

  “I hope he tries to resist arrest,” Serenity said grimly. “I hope you kill him.”

  “What I was hoping was maybe you had a lead for me. That maybe some time or other you stayed in touch with Dawn?”

  Serenity wiped her eyes and said, “No, but I knew Blaze talked to her from time to time. I saw Blaze maybe once a month, but we’d talk on the phone. Sometimes she’d pick up Chinese and bring it over here and we’d have supper together. And I arranged for a few highly recommended outcall clients from my old business, just to help her out.”

  “I ain’t concerned about your outcall business,” Letch said. “She wasn’t killed for giving a massage. She was ambushed by Oliver Mantleberry. But I don’t know where it happened, and if I knew that, maybe I could find him easier. Can you think of any way he coulda located Blaze after she moved outta her apartment? We know she was running from Oliver when she checked into a hotel on Shelter Island. And that’s as far as we got.”

  “Dawn Coyote would be her only connection to a nigger pimp,” Serenity Jones said. “Maybe he followed her to the hotel. I once had vice cops follow me for a whole week and I never even knew they were there.”

  “Maybe,” Letch said, finishing the beer and standing up. “Well, it was a long shot. Good to see you anyways.”

  “Sure,” Serenity said. “This means I gotta move again and change my phone number.”

  “Don’t bother,” Letch said. “I don’t hassle senior citizens.”

  “I appreciate that, Mister Boggs,” Serenity said. “I’m too old to move around all the time.”

  Letch handed her a business card and said, “Call me if you think a something.”

  “I will,” she said, adding, “There’s a colored girl used to work for me. She’s out on El Cajon Boulevard now, hooked on drugs. She knew Dawn. I’ll see if she can find Oliver Mantleberry.”

  “So long,” Letch said.

  Before she’d closed the door behind him, he heard the old woman start sobbing again, harder than ever.

  Letch wasn’t back at his office five minutes before he received a phone call. “Mister Boggs?”

  “Serenity?
What’s up?”

  “I been thinking, Mister Boggs. I truly might be able to help you find him through that colored girl I told you about. But she’s gonna need a starting point.”

  “I can give you his home-base address in City Heights if you don’t mention where you got it from. His old lady lives there with his three kids. She’s an ex-hooker by the name a Tamara Taylor.”

  “I got a pencil,” Serenity said. “I’m ready.”

  —

  Both Fortney and Anne Zorn had a pretty good idea why they were getting together at seven that evening. Partly to explore unfamiliar territory and partly to see each other again. Since both were veterans of police marriage wars, both understood the extra zap that opposite genders sometimes get when they share a stressful police experience and get through it. Like all cops who’d been burned by marrying other cops, each had vowed to only date civilians and never marry another badge-packer.

  Yet Anne rushed home after work, bathed, shaved her legs and underarms, gave herself a hair treatment designed to turn chestnut frizz into smooth tousles, and dabbed on perfume. All—or at least in part—because Fortney had arranged for an invitation to an America’s Cup soiree, where they were maybe going to have an opportunity to see Simon Cooke’s suspects in the flesh.

  Anne decided to wear her latest purchase, which she couldn’t afford but couldn’t resist: a two-piece cocktail outfit with a camel-colored jacket and what looked like a straight knee-length camel skirt. But with the jacket off she was actually wearing a waist-hugging, sexy strapless dress. It had cost nearly a month’s take-home pay.

  If anything, Fortney went even more overboard, at least by his standards. He got off work early, sped home, showered, shaved, trimmed his own hair, showered again because he couldn’t stop sweating, and used a hint of Grecian Formula because his hair looked as dull gray as a bayonet.

  He’d borrowed a linen plaid sportcoat in beige and neutral tones from Leeds. It looked good with the cocoa-colored slacks he’d bought for a Christmas party that he hadn’t bothered to attend. He wore his best blue oxford shirt and a yellow silk tie printed with figures of Babar the elephant. He fretted that the tie was too whimsical, but he wanted Anne to realize that he was younger than he looked.