Golden Orange (7 page)

“Looks like he needs a drink,” Buster said. “Anyways, the cat attacks! The goddamn thing goes right for my arm and starts gougin and hissin and spittin! I come straight up, and like, stumble back inside this closet. And I toss the little bastard up in the air where he hits the ceiling. But it ain't the ceiling. It's a trapdoor!”

“Uh oh,” said Winnie.

“Yeah! He knocks the little door cockeyed and there's the second guy we thought jumped out the window. And I'm starin at an Uzi on full auto, and I scream louder than the goddamn cat, and Novak over there, he runs in and starts crankin off rounds up into the crawl space, and that unemployed musician's gonna have a closed coffin after the undertaker gets a gander at the mess those hollow-points made of his face.”

“The guy get any off?”

“A burst,” Buster said. “Before or after Novak capped him? I can't say for sure. Neither can Novak. What difference does it make?”

“An Uzi's a
gun
for chrissake!” said Guppy Stover whose attention span was exhausted. “Why didn't you
say
so? Probably one of those assault guns George Bush isn't sure if he's for or against, right?”

Buster stopped talking when Novak the narc walked to the end of the bar, reached over and grabbed Spoon's private phone without asking permission. He looked grim.

He dialed a number and after a moment said, “It's me, Ma. Yeah, I knew it'd be on television.” There was a pause and he said, “Ma, I don't
know
if he had a family! Look, he was a doper! He woulda over-amped anyways. Overdosed, I mean.” Another pause and then in utter frustration, “Of
course
I didn't enjoy it, Ma! I even got sick to my stomach that time Lorrie got her ears pierced! Remember?”

Turning to Buster, Winnie said, “The cat? Why'd he attack you?”

“Oh yeah,” Buster said, and Winnie could clearly see the wonder in Buster's violet eyes. That's how they looked in Nam sometimes. Eyes full of wonder. “Know why the cat jumped me? I was into
his
stash. The cat had a dead mouse stashed inside the chair and he was protectin it! A fuckin
mouse
! I almost got killed for stealin a dead mouse!”

“Have another drink,” Winnie said.

Bilge O'Toole entered the saloon, drunk, and spotted Buster. “Saw you on TV!” he said. “What happened down there?”

Buster rolled his eyes at Winnie and said to Bilge, “There I was, thinkin I was forty clicks outta Da Nang. Charlie was in the wire. My piece jammed. I can't talk about it. Doctor's orders.”

“Vietnam flashback, huh?” Bilge clucked, lurching to the other side of the bar where eavesdropping showed some promise.

When they were alone again, Buster said to Winnie, “I'm
real
sick a my job, Win. Slam dunkin these little two-oh and five-oh dopers. Endin up with kibbles 'n bits and a sack full a subpoenas to ruin my days off. I'm gettin real sick and
real
tired. Wish I could hurt my back like you did. I'd trade my strong back for your weak pension
any
day.”

Winnie's nose twitched. He sniffed the air like a pointer. Jasmine! He whirled around. She was sitting three stools to his left. She smiled.

“Hello,” Winnie said.

She was wearing a red and white sailor-striped tee, with a red chambray wrap skirt and white deck shoes.

Buster stared at his drink and didn't look up.

“Thought I'd have a nightcap,” she said. “Went to the movies.”

“Any good?”

“Tedious. Brat-pack stuff.”

“This is my friend, Buster Wiles. Buster, meet Tess Binder.”

“I heard your name on the car radio,” she said to Buster. “You were in a shoot-out today. How
are
you?”

“You'll have to try me and find out,” Buster said, his eyes slits of purple.

She didn't like that and neither did Winnie. She turned away and lit a cigarette with the gold lighter.

“Be cool, will ya!” Winnie whispered. “She's a
lady.
”

“Sure. They all are.” Buster finished his drink, turned to Winnie and said, “My life's takin a turn. I'm on the verge of … a
big
career change. Meantime, I ain't gonna let some faggot dust me with an Uzi! I'm gonna ask for an inside job, startin right away.”

“When we did police work together you wanted to do
real
police work,” Winnie said.

“Trouble with you, Win, the job was a way of life. That's why you're so lost now, flounderin around and beatin the livin shit outta your own liver. With me it was never more than a job. Best I could get with no skills other than ridin a board.”

“You're not really thinkin about leaving the department?”

“Thinkin hard, pardner. I got an offer to consider, a
real
offer. This thing today, it helped me make up my mind.”

“Yeah?”

“Can't talk about it yet.”

“Even to
me
?”

“Maybe I'm scared if I talk about it, it'll burn off like cloud cover in the morning. You know how superstitious I am.”

“Jist do yourself a favor, Buster. Think before you pull the pin. It's cold out here in the civilian world. You'll never find the same kind a friends you have on the job.”

“Maybe I don't need em like you do. Things work out for me, I promise you'll be the first to know about it. You're one a my only friends, right? Meantime I'm askin the boss to give me a different job. I've
had
it with street work.”

“The heavyweight iron-pumping finalist of the 1979 Police Olympics?” Winnie said. “Pushing a
pencil
?”

“I'm almost forty-five years old,” Buster said. “When was the last time a middle-aged guy got shot by a pencil? Ya know what that guy sounded like breathin his last? Like the static on your stereo speakers. Like maybe he had a bad tweeter or woofer. Yeah, I don't mind pushin a pencil. Thirty-six grand a year ain't enough no more. Not for me. Man, I'm gettin
old.
”

Buster finished the Scotch and squeezed Winnie's shoulder, a bonding gesture of his that Winnie always hated. Buster had a grip like a five-pound pipe wrench.

The big cop crossed the saloon in half a dozen long strides without so much as a glance at Tess Binder. And that was definitely
not
like Buster Wiles, whose bedroom exploits, they said, kept the Orange County abortion clinics in business. He was a different man now than the guy Winnie had partnered with off and on for six years. Winnie felt very sad for his old pal.

“Your chum has a few problems, doesn't he?” Tess said, blowing a cloud of smoke that Winnie, a nonsmoker, would have resented from any but her vermilion lips.

“Burnout. Stress. Same old story,” Winnie said. “Used to be a good detective. He's not all brawn, there's some brains up there.”

“Most unusual eyes,” Tess Binder said.

“Pansy purple, I used to say. Guy could haul out the old Catalina steamship with his bare hands and he's got eyes like Liz Taylor.”

“Lavender, I'd say,” Tess said. “Maybe lilac. Hard to say in this light.”

Not
another
one lost to Buster Wiles! To test her he said, “Guy's a hunk, huh?”

“If you care for the type,” Tess shrugged, lifting Winnie's spirits. “Probably wears a pinkie ring when he gets dressed up.”

Winnie laughed at that, but reached below the bar to remove the opal pinkie with “Win” in zircons that Tammy had given him for a birthday three weeks before she served him up a dose of bankruptcy.

“How about you?” Tess Binder asked. “Were
you
a good detective?”

“How'd you know I was a detective?”

“The newspaper said you were a detective prior to your police retirement.”

“Yeah, well, I was … why not admit it? I was good as any. Some guys thought I was maybe the most dedicated. You put me on a case, I didn't know how to let up. Used to drive guys like Buster nuts 'cause I jist wouldn't quit. Especially if it was a good case.”

“What's a good case?”

“Somethin big.”

“Murder?”

“Yeah, like that. An unsolved murder is like … personal.”

“A personal insult?”

“Yeah, Buster said that to me one time. Like an insult to
me
personally, not jist to the corpse. We hardly ever had a whodunit homicide in this town. If we did, I'd solve it. If I had to kill to do it.”

“You loved being a cop, didn't you?”

Winnie was looking into her eyes now. Even three stools away, even in this light, he could see they were gray, and opaque, like the water off Newport Pier sometimes got. Usually around the Gold Coast when you looked into unusual irises, like hers or Buster's, you knew they were contact lenses. But Winnie was convinced that everything about her was real. He was getting that feeling again. His heart was contracting prematurely. He felt like a shellfish, jiggly and boneless. Tess Binder was so exciting she was scaring the living crap out of Winnie Farlowe.

He didn't know what else to say, so he said, “Yeah, I
loved
being a cop.”

“Why're we sitting so far apart?” she asked.

Tess turned toward him on the stool and uncrossed her legs. A significant piece of body language, Winnie was sure of it.

He practically jumped over the two stools, the sudden movement making him wince.

“Your back?”

“Yeah, sometimes I forget and then I get reminded.”

“Can surgery correct it?”

“I'm scared a the knife. Besides, disks're iffy no matter what. I'm okay, long as I don't do heavy lifting. Oh well, could be worse, huh?”

“Not for you. It cost you your job.”

“You see right into a person.” Winnie turned ever so slightly toward Tess Binder while the drunks at the other end of the saloon let out a cheer for Magic Johnson's fifth assist of the Lakers' game.

“You're not so hard to read,” Tess said. “You're a straight-ahead guy. Seldom do I meet a straight-ahead guy.”

Winnie's heart started doing the trick again. He massaged his chest for a moment, then said, “How about another round?”

“Got to go home.”

“Is it the noise in here? We could …”

“Got to go,” she smiled, turning gracefully and sliding off the stool, just as Carlos Tuna came staggering into the saloon, too drunk to have any chance of being served. Carlos, carrying Regis, caromed off the hemp-wrapped pillar in the center of the bar, causing it to shudder. Then he ricocheted off a chair, sending it crashing, and finally he was safely leaning on the bar. Regis was lucky he was armor plated.

“Coming back tomorrow?” Winnie called out hopefully as Tess moved through the gloom which had never looked more depressing to him.

“Probably,” she said, waggling her long fingers at him.

Carlos Tuna put his stud turtle on the bar and said to Spoon, “Regis is depressed. Won't snap out of it. Ever since he met Bilge's Irma. Don't eat right or nothin.”

“Yeah, well I ain't got time for lovesick turtles,” the saloonkeeper droned, but he mercifully poured some beer into a saucer for Regis.

Carlos didn't bother to try for one, drunk as he was. Particularly after Spoon took one look at him and said, “You're about as welcome as junk mail.” Then to Winnie, “I got twenty on the Celts and right now Magic's shovin the ball up their ass!” Then Spoon hobbled back to the other end of the bar, where the TV mob was screaming in anguish because Bird just made a three-pointer and the Celtics had shaved the lead to two.

On the verge of his own crying jag, Carlos looked mournfully at Regis, who was trying to climb into the saucer of beer, splashing foam all over the bartop.

“I wish I never asked Bilge to bring Irma in here,” Carlos said to Winnie. “I wish Regis never even
seen
Irma.”

Winnie was growing more and more depressed. Especially when, just before he left the bar, Guppy Stover, so blanched she looked like she'd been soaked in water all night, said to the beer-soaked reptile: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she had to crawl into
this
one!”

Winnie staggered out the door with an aching heart, thinking of star-crossed lovers: Bogart and Bergman, Irma and Regis. But mostly he thought of himself and Tess Binder, while the saloonkeeper took time out from Lakers' basketball to play “As Time Goes By” for Regis on the battle-scarred bar-top with a pair of particularly filthy spoons.

6

Night of the Lizard

W
innie was going job hunting. So to speak. That is, he was so worried about paying his lawyer, among others, that he got up before ten
A.M.
And instead of putting on jeans and a T-shirt, he borrowed a suit from his downstairs neighbor, a failed mortgage broker now working out of an abandoned warehouse in Costa Mesa, selling worthless mining stock to wealthy coupon clippers.