Floaters

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “I’ll transfer you to her voice mail,” the operator said.

  And then Ambrose Lutterworth heard a recorded voice saying, “This is Detective Anne Zorn, San Diego Police Department, Homicide. I’m away from my desk, but if you’ll just leave—”

  And his life was over. That was that. Blaze Duvall had made a duplicate tape and the police possessed it. For some reason they were not ready to arrest him yet but were keeping him under surveillance, in his own club, with the conscious help of Murray Page. And they were probably watching his office. Certainly they were now outside watching his house.

  That explained the man in the blue station wagon yesterday afternoon. The man who pretended to be looking in a map book and checking addresses. And it explained the telephone call late last night, pretending to be a wrong number. He wondered how many detectives were assigned to his case. Of course, the man with Anne Zorn at the yacht club was obviously a detective, too.

  He remembered exactly what she’d asked: “We’ve heard that people’ll stop at nothing to win….How could anyone care so much about a trophy?”

  He should have known immediately. She was toying with him. She wanted him to know that the noose was tightening. What an ironic image: a noose. It would be very ironic, very fitting, to hang himself from the railing of his balcony. To let his dead eyes look down on San Diego harbor, at Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes when it sailed out of the channel, perhaps to victory. But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t die like…like she had died.

  He’d been an avid if mediocre sailor all his life, as was his father before him. He knew what he had to do now. But he was so exhausted, he hoped he could find the strength.

  —

  A bit later that morning, Serenity Jones received a visitor.

  The old woman peeked out, then opened the door and embraced her visitor warmly, saying, “Thank you, darling! Thank you!”

  Her visitor, a pretty young black woman with a painted beauty mark on her cheek, said, “Always glad to help an old friend. You did me lots of good turns when I worked for you.”

  “It’s on the kitchen table,” the old woman said, then waddled back to her recliner, where she had to battle the cat for the vacated seat.

  When the young woman came back into the living room, she was putting the package of money into her purse.

  “If I’d had more I’da paid it,” Serenity said.

  “This ain’t chump change,” the young woman said. “I’m satisfied.”

  “You oughtta come by and see me from time to time,” Serenity said. “I get lonely.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  “You like Chinese?” Serenity asked. “You gimme a call and I’ll order Chinese for us. We can talk about the old massage-parlor days. You and Dawn and Blaze and me, we had good times together.”

  “I will,” the young woman said. “I’ll do that, Serenity.”

  “Fab, darling,” Serenity Jones said, waving bye-bye. “That’s simply fab!”

  —

  The fleet of spectator boats were out on the racecourse just after noon, when somebody who couldn’t have cared less about sailboat racing received an urgent phone call at her City Heights home.

  “Tamara!” the caller cried. “It’s Harold!”

  “Yeah?” Tamara Taylor said. “Whadda you want?”

  “I gotta tell you somethin’, Tamara! Somethin’ terrible! I’m in a hotel room. And I jist found Oliver. He’s dead!”

  Tamara thought that one over for a moment, then said, “What happened? One a his bitches shoot him?”

  “No!”

  “Stab him?”

  “No! He died from a hot shot. The damn needle’s still hangin’ out his arm.”

  “No shit?” Tamara Taylor said. “Well, I knew he’d either die from drugs or bitches. But I thought it’d be bitches.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Why you askin’ me?”

  “Gud-damn, woman! He was your old man!”

  “It ain’t my problem.”

  “Ain’t your problem? Is that all you kin say? I’m here with your old man and he’s layin’ out on the bed stiffer than your gud-damn ironin’ board!”

  “Tell you what,” Tamara Taylor said. “Put him in the back of a pickup and take him to the Sixth Avenue Bridge. Chuck the motherfucker off onto the freeway and let a few cars run over him. That’ll soften him up.”

  CHAPTER 18

  On Wednesday, April 26, Dennis Conner in Stars and Stripes defeated Bill Koch’s Mighty Mary in what the sailing world called a miracle comeback. Conner’s team was down by a sailing eternity of four minutes and eight seconds at the final mark, yet somehow made up a deficit of forty-two boat lengths, the most memorable last-leg rally in Cup history. No trailing boat had ever made up five minutes in three miles and won going away. Dennis Conner’s team had at last earned the right to defend the America’s Cup against Team New Zealand.

  International journalists flooded into the San Diego Yacht Club, as overweening and surly as your average customs official, knowing they were covering the high colonic of sports, primarily fancied in America by Northeasterners who also enjoyed squash, lacrosse, and arbitrage larceny. The journalists had so many wires, cables, and electronic gimcracks dangling off them, they looked like creatures you shoot at in a video arcade.

  Ordinary San Diegans laughed at a “race” that proceeded at the speed of basal-cell carcinoma. They said it was all a blur of inactivity. They said that America’s Cup racing was so slow that the announcer’s comments echoed.

  In short, nobody outside the yachting circle gave a shit one way or the other if Team New Zealand whipped Dennis Conner like a strawberry margarita and sent him packing back to New York or wherever he was going to settle.

  —

  Officially, the murder of Dawn Coyote and, unofficially, the murder of Blaze Duvall were considered cleared by the demise of Oliver Mantleberry from an accidental overdose of unusually pure heroin. Homicide detectives, especially Anne Zorn, suspected that Letch Boggs knew more about the pimp’s death, but Letch wasn’t talking. His leering snicker added to his legend by implying that yes, the Shadow knows.

  —

  Nobody had seen Ambrose Lutterworth since the party on Friday night. His office had left numerous messages that he didn’t answer until Monday, when he told them he’d been ill with the flu. Then on Thursday, after Dennis Conner’s spectacular comeback victory, Ambrose Lutterworth shaved, showered, and laid out his double-breasted blazer, his white flannels, and his very best pinpoint oxford shirt. He chose the tie of the Royal Temple Yacht Club, and he wore deck shoes so that nothing would seem amiss.

  Ambrose carefully packed a picnic lunch in a heavy-duty wicker basket that had cost him three hundred dollars in London. He put the Stilton in the cheese compartment and included a bottle of old Château Margaux and a loaf of French bread. He made sure he had a corkscrew, a cheese board, and a cheese knife. He almost forgot a china plate but then remembered, wrapping it carefully in a white linen napkin.

  When he showed up at the club that afternoon, he went to the glass cube housing the America’s Cup. He looked at the Cup for a long time. He was content now, convinced that it would not be going to New Zealand. Dennis Conner was still the greatest sailor in the world.

  Then he went to the boat slip belonging to his long-time friend, Henry Roth, who was working on his 58-foot motor sailer. Henry was surprised when Ambrose asked if he could take out his 22-foot Catalina sloop for a sail.

  Henry Roth told him to help himself but was very worried by the gaunt, almost ghostly appearance of his old friend.

  “I’ve had a terrible bout of flu,” Ambrose explained. “If I don’t get out in the fresh sea air, I’m afraid I’ll never recover.”

  —

  There was wind and a low somber sky off Point Loma that day. Tattered cormorants and gulls veered toward his sloop, hoping for tidbits. Ambrose was a bit chilly, but the red wine helped to warm him. He sipped th
e Margaux and nibbled some cheese and bread while setting his course.

  When he was half a mile past the mouth of the channel, he balanced the sails, trimming the jib sheet and the mainsheet to run downwind. He rigged a preventer and tied it to the rail to keep the mainsail from flopping if the boat headed up into the wind and prevented an accidental jibe when going downwind. Then he tied the tiller, centering the helm. He was sure that it would eventually run aground somewhere on Coronado strand and not suffer damage on the sandy beach.

  Ambrose wished he could have at least seen the first race on May 6, but he dared not wait any longer. How close they must be by now, close to knocking on his door. How near he was to dishonor and disgrace, not just for himself but for the club and the regatta. And for the Cup itself. He couldn’t face that, and he hoped that if he did the right thing the police would have no reason to reveal all that they’d learned about him.

  Years ago he used to race with a man who played Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” on his tape deck at the end of every regatta. Now Ambrose could hardly remember the man, but he could almost hear the upbeat song.

  How happy we’ll be beyond the sea

  And never again I’ll go sailing.

  No more sailing. So long sailing. Bye-bye sailing…

  Ambrose stood up gingerly so as not to tip the picnic basket. He removed his blazer, folded it carefully, and put it on the seat.

  It would look like a boating accident. There were lots of accidents in these waters, even with experienced sailors. They’d think he’d rigged the boat so he could have a nice relaxing sail. Perhaps he’d stood up to take a pee and lost his balance. People intent on self-destruction would never take a picnic basket so carefully packed and arranged. Would never have tasted the Stilton and bread. Would not have sampled the Margaux.

  He knew the water was very cold, so the best thing would be to swim straight out as hard and as fast as he could. He’d never been a strong swimmer. It wouldn’t take long.

  Now no one need ever know what a coward he was. What a coward he’d always been. His mother had always known, and she’d always been right.

  A gull screamed then, hanging on the wind, drifting to and fro like a pendulum marking the time. Telling him it was his time.

  The blue and green were gone from the sea. The water was as gray as a shark’s fin. But then the sun broke through the ragged clouds and cast a golden glow on the Point Loma lighthouse and the sandstone cliffs.

  —

  Cloud shadow, dappled whitecaps, shimmering cliffs receding. Cold, dark water enveloping.

  The beloved memory sustains him: A balcony in Cap d’Antibes with the sun roaring down. Basking in the glow of reflected silver sunlight from the America’s Cup.

  EPILOGUE

  They called it “Slaughter on the Water.” Dennis Conner had persuaded defeated rival Pact 95 to give him the use of their fast boat, Young America, but nevertheless his team was annihilated in five straight races by Black Magic. The Kiwis led at all thirty marks and gained time on twenty-five of the thirty legs, trailing less than a half hour in thirteen hours of sailing. It was one of the most lopsided defeats in Cup history.

  The remains of Ambrose Lutterworth, apparent victim of a sailing mishap off Point Loma, were found entangled in the kelp beds by a fishing trawler on May 6, the date of the first Kiwi victory. After an autopsy revealed death by drowning, he was buried on May 14, the day of Team New Zealand’s final victory, when they officially took the America’s Cup, which was bound for Auckland.

  Even Dennis Conner admitted that the Cup would probably enjoy its sojourn in the City of Sails. “The America’s Cup will have a good life in New Zealand,” Conner said, thus joining a legion of others who, over the span of a century and a half, had anthropomorphized the silver vessel.

  That particular subject, of attributing human qualities to nonhuman objects, came up when one of the news cameras revealed cheering throngs in New Zealand pubs with banners that read: CONNER IS A GONER and BLACK BOAT. WHITEWASH. The announcer was gleeful and said that their archenemy had received the worst thrashing ever given outside of an English boarding school.

  The television feature ended with a shot of a deliriously happy lifelong member of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, who said, “When the lads arrive home I hope to greet the Cup with a big kiss and an assurance that life will be good under my care.”

  When asked if it was normal and healthy to attribute human qualities to a trophy, the yachtsman said, “We do it with dogs, cats, horses, boats, lawyers. Why not a gloriously historic trophy?”

  When the yachtsman was asked what assurance he had that the Cup would approve of his being its caretaker, the yachtsman said, “No one could love the Cup more. I shall be the most reverential caretaker the Cup has ever known. I fully understand the responsibility and honor of being Keeper of the Cup.”

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