Golden Orange (12 page)

“I never
needed
to be rich, Win,” she said. “Comfortable, yes. I'm used to certain comforts, I don't deny that.”

“Wanna come to bed?”

“In a minute. After I finish this cigarette.”

“I saw this guy in your club tonight,” he said. “Real wrinkled old guy. The kind where you wanna swag his neck? Wearing either a solid gold Rolex or the hubcap off his wife's Mercedes. And I thought,
this
is the guy I handled a burglary for one time. Residential job out on the peninsula. They stole his wife's full-length lynx which cost a hundred grand. And they also got his gold-plated license-plate holder. That cost twenty grand, with its own burglar alarm on it. I had to make a supplemental report for them after he got through thinking it all over. About the insurance and all? So I went to your club, this was, oh, seven, eight years ago. I took the report on his yacht. One a those eighty-footers where you could fill the slips below the waterline with concrete and he'd never notice 'cause it never goes out. And I thought, there's something very very wrong with my life.”

He paused to clear the vodka mucus from his throat, and she said, “What was wrong?”

“I got a conscience,” he said. “I got this baggage
he
didn't have. I mean, I knew the report was bullshit so he could rape the insurance company and IRS. And his wife was there and had to excuse herself to go pick up the poodle at the doggie day-care center. I bet there's lots like her making annual visits to a plastic surgeon where the croaker's floor is slushy with sucked-out pheasant and fried squid in pumpkin sauce, and the goddamn sludge from kiwi and angel-hair pasta can wear out a dozen Roto Rooters. And I thought, Where's the justice here? Me? I had a few chances at bad bucks during the years I policed this town, but there I was, bankrupt as Eastern Airlines.”

“Are you saying your conscience held you back, is that it?”

“That's it.”

“Any regrets that you have this policeman's overdeveloped superego?”

“Sometimes. Know some a the things I
hate
about cop shows on TV? They always say, ‘Put out an APB.' Me, I never put out an APB in my life which is just this thing when nobody can find the suspect and already gave up. Another thing that gets me on the cop shows is when they go, ‘Use extreme caution.' Like, after a guy shoots a bunch a people with an AK-forty-seven. If they gotta
tell
you to use caution you gotta be brain-dead, right? But more than all that, I really hate where they say, ‘The defendant was sentenced to life three times and he showed no emotion.' They even say that in the newspapers all the time.”

“Why do you hate it?”

“'Cause he can't show any emotion. He's a sociopath, most likely. His feelings are deader than ten-cent phone calls. All this brings me back to the guy on his yacht, phoneying up that supplemental burglary report. And me, I'm sitting there helping him screw the insurance man and the taxpayers. And I know it and he knows it, but he don't give a shit if I know it. He's a sociopath, no doubt. And he's glad of it.”

“Ever get
tempted
to do something illegal for money? When you were a cop?”

Tess Binder snuffed out the cigarette and got up from the chaise, but didn't come to bed. She walked toward the window, toward the cold marble nymph. She stood by the wall and Winnie could feel those smoke-gray eyes watching him from dark shadows.

“Once, maybe,” he said. “There was this doctor. He had this rich wife, even richer than he was.”

It was a case he'd worked on just before his injury. He was teamed with Buster Wiles at that time, before Buster became the cynical burnout Winnie had introduced to Tess at Spoon's Landing. It began as a simple follow-up to an anonymous phone call.

“I've got to meet a homicide detective,” the anonymous caller had said. “There's going to be a contract murder. Meet me at two o'clock. End of Balboa Pier. I'll be wearing a black T-shirt.”

Winnie and Buster had absolutely nothing going that day, having finished their routine paper work. It was a bright summer day, and they could always get a hamburger at the faux-forties diner out on the end of the pier. So even if the anonymous tipster turned out to be just a nut case, they decided to make an appearance. They found him standing by six fishermen, who were doing okay from the looks of the battered buckets full of dead fish.

Buster approached the guy and said, “You the one that called?”

He was as tall as Buster, but lean and stringy. Ruddy and fair, he was one of those beach lovers who were candidates for skin cancer but refused to wear hats. His lips were raw, and he had a couple of precancerous flakes on his nose and cheeks and old dermatology burns along his forehead and eyebrows. Winnie had gotten sick of warning guys about Haole-rot, back in his lifeguard days.

The tipster had seen too many cop movies, because he pretended not to have heard Buster. He looked past both cops, then walked toward the west side of the pier away from the blazing sun. When he was gazing toward Catalina, with a detective on either side of him, he said, “Let's make a deal.”

“You're tuned to the wrong channel,” Winnie informed him. “We don't make deals.”

“My name's Harvey Devlin,” he said. “I've been indicted for a misunderstanding. Involves junk bonds. I'm a broker.”

“If it's a mistake, what kind a deal you lookin for?” Buster asked.

“My lawyer thinks I'm sure to be convicted for some sort of fraud. All I want is someone to put in a word for me with the judge when I'm sentenced. I think I've already decided to plead guilty and not have a trial.”

“Yeah, well, we don't know much about junk bonds,” Winnie said. “And anyway …”

“You know about murder,” the bond broker said, turning to look at them.

Buster moved closer. “So whaddaya wanna tell us about murder?”

“What's the crime when somebody offers you money to kill someone? Conspiracy?”

“Maybe,” Winnie said. “Probably soliciting murder. Easier to prove.”

“Okay,” the broker said, and he looked both ways and then down the pier toward the beach. He
had
seen too many movies! “There's a doctor that lives on Lido Isle. Out by the end in one of the bigger houses. Cosmetic surgeon with three offices. Done some business with me in the past, and one time we scored pretty big with high yield bonds. So, I did some bragging one time. Said I could arrange anything he ever wanted, from broads to murder. He took me seriously. Wants me to arrange a hit on his wife.”

Buster asked: “Why's he want her dead?”

“Who knows? Money has to be part of it. Always is. Around here anyway.”

“So if, and I'm saying if, our boss and the D.A.'s office was interested, would you agree to wear a wire and go to your doctor pal and let us record his statements while he offers to hire a hit on his old lady?”

“I'll do it!” the bond broker said. “But it's not going to be easy. When he first mentioned it to me he made me pull up my shirt and even ran his hand inside my belt and down my legs. He frisked me pretty good. I've seen part of his portfolio, which is worth about fifteen mil. He's not stupid.”

“It can be done without a wire,” Buster said. “But it's not as easy. We'd have to rely on your testimony.”

“I'm willing to testify, and I think he'll hand me the payoff money on the spot. Soon as I give him the IUD.”

“What IUD?” asked Winnie.

“Hers. That's what he wants as proof. I'm supposed to hire a guy to fly to Aspen where she summers. And do the job and remove her IUD and bring it back as proof. He doesn't want a Polaroid of her dead body, or her wedding ring, or any other goddamn thing. Not even a newspaper report that she's dead is enough to make him happy! He wants her IUD. Says he'll pay me on the spot.”

“How'll he know it's hers?” Winnie asked.

“He put it in. Maybe he marked it or knows the brand. The guy's a little weird. Anyway, he wants her IUD as proof she's dead.”

“Just a sentimental old fool, ain't he?” said Buster.

While they took down all of the pertinent information that afternoon on Balboa Pier, and the sun was powering its way westward, a sea gull wheeled and shrieked and dove toward a bait box on the west side of the pier. An Asian fisherman yelled at the gull and chased it just as the bird was getting airborne with his booty. The frustrated gull dropped the fish along with a load of guano. It plopped on Winnie's right shoulder.

“I hope this ain't an omen,” Buster said.

The deal was to go down in four days. The bond broker's imaginary hit man was to fly to Aspen that weekend with expense money supplied by the broker, along with instructions as to the wife's habits and living arrangements. She was to be strangled when she answered the telephone in her bedroom at nine
P.M.
on Saturday, when he usually placed a call just to make sure she wasn't out at a disco. The broker's hit man was to enter with a key supplied by the doctor, and leave the door unlocked when he departed, as though she'd forgotten to lock it.

The broker middleman was instructed as to removal of an IUD, and agreed to have his man do his best to rape her, either before or after the murder, whichever was easier for him to accomplish. This to supply a better motive for murder. And then the killer was to fly back to John Wayne Airport.

When the bond broker said that he didn't know if his man could commit rape either on the dead or soon to be, the doctor said, “Just offer him an extra thousand. He'll get an erection.”

The police in Colorado, and the doctor's wife, were alerted. Everything was arranged for the Saturday night payoff on Lido Isle. The intended victim had had her IUD removed, and as an ironic gesture, had put it in a Tiffany jewel box for presenting to her husband. The box was express-mailed to the Newport Beach Police Department.

The only thing that went wrong was that the doctor changed the deal to Friday and nobody was ready. The bond broker finally located Winnie at his home number, after trying unsuccessfully to reach him for six hours on Winnie's day off, telling him that the doctor's wife had to be killed that night or all bets were off. This caused Winnie to phone Buster at home, speed to the station, pick up the Tiffany box, and meet with the bond broker at a bar on Lido peninsula. They were twelve minutes late getting the bond dealer and the Tiffany box to the one
A.M.
rendezvous at the four-million-dollar waterfront home on Lido Isle. And they had no backup team.

The bond broker was inside for less than fifteen minutes. When he came out so quickly, Winnie and Buster figured the doctor hadn't taken the bait. They followed the broker, who drove to the Lido Isle bridge, as instructed. There, the broker parked his Jaguar XJ-S and waited for the detective car to pull in behind him.

The cops were astonished when the broker dumped several stacks of currency into Buster's lap. Then he said, “I did my part. I'm trusting you to blow in the D.A.'s ear for me.”

Winnie remembered that Buster couldn't take his eyes off the bucks, and Winnie finally had to say, “Let's go pop the doc.”

When they barged into the house, guns drawn, the first thing the doctor said was, “I beg you, gentlemen! Let's be reasonable!”

He was dressed in a maroon silk robe and wore monogrammed velvet slippers, blue ones with a gold crest on each toe. He had his hands up facing drawn guns, but he didn't look terrified, just disappointed.

Winnie said, “Let's go in the bedroom and get dressed, Doctor. I have to advise you that you have the right to remain silent …”

Five minutes later, both cops had holstered their guns and were letting the doctor get ready. They walked him to drawers and closets to retrieve clothing: underwear, a golf shirt, matching slacks and sweater, tasseled loafers. He looked like he was going out for eighteen holes instead of to the slam.

When he was completely dressed, he went to the dresser and smoothed back his pearl-gray hair with a silver-inlaid brush in each hand. Then he turned and said, “Gentlemen, can we negotiate?”

“We got nothing to trade,” Winnie said.

“And neither do you, Doc,” Buster said.

“Please, gentlemen, may I?” He turned and went to a wall safe inside a huge walk-in closet filled with business suits and shoes. He began turning the dials. Winnie started to say something, but Buster was interested.

When the surgeon gave the tumbler the final turn and the lock clicked open, Winnie drew his two-inch stainless steel revolver and put the muzzle of the gun on the bone behind the doctor's left ear.

“I don't think there's a piece in there, partner,” Buster said to Winnie.

“I assure you there's not,” the doctor said reasonably, as though he was used to people tapping on his skull with a Smith & Wesson.

Winnie shined his light in the safe and watched in amazement as the doctor removed stacks of money. One-hundred-dollar bills. Twenty-one stacks. He had an armload when he finished cleaning out the safe. He calmly turned and walked to the king-sized bed and dropped the money on it.

Then he said, “I want you to know that I'm not attempting to bribe you. One felony crime is quite enough.”

“What are you attempting to do?” Winnie asked.

“I'm protecting myself from burglary,” the doctor said. “You're taking me to jail and someone might break into my house and ransack my safe. I was hoping you might … safeguard this money. You could hold it wherever you like.”

“Maybe you better put it back in the safe,” Winnie said. “And set your burglar alarm.”

“There must be a hundred thou here,” Buster said. He walked toward the bed like a priest to an altar. Reverently, was how Winnie remembered it.

“There must be two hundred and ten thousand,” the doctor said. “But I can make four times that much in the next six or eight months if I don't lose my license.”