Golden Orange (34 page)

“With you I gotta be ready for anything,” Winnie said, picking at the fried eggs with his fork.

“Warner Stillwell's going to arrive tomorrow!”

That got his attention. “Who with?”

“He'll be coming with some people from China Cove. They have a big custom powerboat called
Circe.
We'll be there when they arrive.”

“So tomorrow I meet him?”

“We'll have a long talk, Warner and you and me.”

“Let's see how it goes first,” Winnie warned. “See who's with him. Maybe I'll talk to him
alone.
”

“You're the skipper,” she said.

His hands were trembling so much he spilled coffee on his eggs. He was
not
going to have a drink until this thing with Stillwell was over. In fact, he decided he'd go on the wagon for a month just to prove he could do it. He didn't like the way he looked and felt this morning. It
scared
him.

“Hurry, slowpoke,” Tess said. “
The Catalina Flyer
leaves in forty minutes. We've got to pack a few things.”

“I want you to promise we're not gonna drink
anything
till this is all over,” Winnie said. “My brain feels like I leased it out.”

“Whatever you say, Cap'n. We'll drink plain orange juice.”

“I feel like I been drinking
Agent
Orange juice,” Winnie said, hoping his hands would stop shaking before noon. “By the way, who was
Circe
? A goddess or what?”

“She was a bad bad girl,” said Tess Binder.

The sailmaker was yelling at two employees when Buster Wiles climbed the stairs to the cavernous sail loft. The sails were laid out on the huge varnished floor with drawings under the Kevlar material. Six men sat at sewing machines in pits below floor level.

Woody saw Buster and growled something else at the two employees, who seemed very glad for the interruption.

“Problems, Woody?” Buster said to the sailmaker.

Woody was so weather ravaged and bald it wasn't easy to guess his age, but Buster thought he was about seventy.

“Can't find decent help these days,” the sailmaker grumbled, wiping his sweaty face with the tail of his green T-shirt.

Buster said, “I could hear you clear from the street. Had a sergeant once could air out a guy like you do.”

“What good is it? They come and go like grunion, these beach bums.” The ponderous sailmaker had a Frankenstein gait from a fused right knee, and practically clanked down the stairs to the glassed-in cubicle that served as his office. Designs and brochures and sail samples were everywhere. He opened the desk drawer and handed Buster a set of keys attached to a flotation cork.

“Okay if I don't bring her back till tomorrow?” Buster asked. “Thinkin about maybe goin down to Dana Point. I know a guy down there lets me tie up all night. Sells out-boards. Name a Guthrie. Know him?”

The sailmaker shook his head and walked with Buster out to the street, where the cop had double-parked by one of Woody's vans. “Keep it a week if you want,” the sailmaker said. “Don't know why I don't sell that boat. I can't use it. Leave here for half a day and these idiots'd probably burn the place down. Can't get decent help no more.”

The cry of The Golden Orange, from the hot mommas to an old guy in a sail shop. Can't get decent help.

“The police department can't run very long without me so I'll be back tomorrow,” Buster said.

The old sailmaker looked in the back of Buster's car. The entire seat and the floor were taken up by scuba gear. “You oughtta get a hatchback or a van. Gonna ruin your upholstery with that stuff.”

“I'm lucky I can afford gas on my salary,” Buster said. “Those two douche bags I divorced grab half a what the city pays me. They got hearts like an Iranian judge.”

“You might take some lobster and abalone around Catalina this time a year,” the sailmaker offered. “Not too many tourists, now that spring vacation's over.”

Winking, Buster said, “I'd rather stay around Dana Point. There's this waitress down there. She can dive without tanks. Lungs out to here.”

“Have fun, kiddo,” the sailmaker said. “Gotta go back inside or those morons'll cut up my goods to patch their crummy jeans.”

The boat slip that the sailmaker had leased from the city of Newport Beach was only a few minutes from his shop. Woody's twenty-eight-foot Bertram was seedy from lack of use. Two gulls and a pelican were living on the fly bridge. Buster hauled his gear to the dock beside the boat and hopped aboard. At first he was afraid the batteries were dead, but then he remembered that Woody had installed an anti-theft battery bypass. He reached into the engine compartment and turned the bypass switch on. After he ran the blowers, the engines fired at once.

It wasn't a particularly warm morning, but Buster felt exceptionally clammy. He took off his windbreaker and began to transfer his gear from the dock to the boat: a black wet suit, mask, fins, a weight belt, two tanks, a black hood, a light, a knife …

America's largest catamaran,
The Catalina Flyer
, left its berth by the Balboa Pavilion at nine o'clock sharp. The huge cat held five hundred persons, and could make the twenty-five nautical-mile crossing in seventy-five minutes, weather permitting.

Winnie had been aboard the catamaran only one other time, and for this trip he sat on the top deck forward, facing the wind. Hoping for revival.

“I need an oxygen tank, is what I need,” Winnie said to Tess, who looked gorgeous in a lime-green cableknit sweater, with her butterscotch hair blowing free. For the first time he noticed the tiny line of scar in front of her ear, when the wind blew the hair back.

“You'll be in the pink after we get there, old son,” she said.

Tess eventually went below for coffee, but Winnie stayed put. He passed the time by breathing deeply—trying to purge every vein and artery with a fix of sea air. He avoided contact with other passengers. They were youngish couples with small children, and older people whose children were grown, people not ruled by school schedules.

Santa Catalina Island was bought from the pioneering Banning family by the Wrigleys of Chicago in 1914. The island is now mainly controlled by a conservancy, a nonprofit charitable foundation, which was deeded forty thousand acres by the Wrigleys and is responsible for keeping its eighty-six percent of the island in a natural state forever.

The island is twenty-two miles long and eight miles wide at its widest point. Formerly a verdant paradise without large herbivores, the island has been ravaged by animals introduced for man's pleasure. The Spanish brought the goats, the Yankees introduced feral pigs and deer for hunting, and Hollywood brought the buffalo for the filming of Zane Grey's
Vanishing American
, the famous author himself being a resident at Avalon. The buffalo ended up on the cutting-room floor, but stayed on Catalina Island, where they roam the hills and, when the herds are cropped, end up in buffalo burgers and buffalo tacos.

Now, what with thousands of wild pigs eating the acorns, wild bison and deer eating the grasses, and wild goats eating everything, there is a constant effort on the part of the conservancy to keep the animals under control and the shallow soil intact. Still, Catalina is a beautiful place, and Winnie was always glad to return.

The ocean swells were three to four feet during the crossing, but Winnie knew they sometimes reached sixteen feet from trough to peak, this being a treacherous stretch of ocean. After an hour had passed, when the big cat slowed with Avalon Harbor dead ahead, Winnie was starting to feel better. He always loved the sight of the Avalon Pavilion off starboard. Tall as a twelve-story building, with art deco murals, the once fashionable casino is now used as a big-band ballroom, art gallery and cinema.

In the summer months the harbor of Avalon is under siege by an armada of yachts, and moorings have sold for more than $175,000, Catalina Island being one of the few destinations available to mainland yachtsmen. The narrow beach in Avalon is jammed in the summer, and the streets are mobbed.

Avalon is a very small town on a dot in the ocean, and doesn't offer much variety in the way of entertainment. Winnie knew that if he lived here he'd
really
become an alcoholic. The thought of it made him look at his hands. They'd finally stopped shaking. He was starting to regret he hadn't eaten his breakfast, but it was too early for lunch.

The sailboats and power yachts occupied most of the moorings, and shore boats taxied their passengers ashore for two bucks a head. The cruise ships and
The Catalina Flyer
were allowed to dock at the quay.

After Winnie and Tess disembarked and were strolling along Crescent Avenue, the main promenade, Tess said, “No point rushing to the isthmus. We've got lots of time to kill.”

Winnie looked at his watch and Tess eyed him knowingly.

“I'm
not
looking to see if it's late enough for a drink,” he said.

“I didn't say you were.”

“I'm just seeing if it's too early for lunch.”

“We can eat any time you like,” she said.

They chose a restaurant favored by many of the two thousand locals, off the main promenade. Tess ordered a salad, no dressing, and Winnie asked for a cheeseburger and fries. While they were waiting for their food, Tess said, “Greasy stuff takes care of the alcohol in your system. It's the best thing when you've been drinking. I don't think a beer'd hurt you.”

“I'm
not
drinking today!” Winnie said.

She reached over, and touched his cheek and said, “You don't mind if I do?”

“Why should I mind?”

He was surprised when she didn't order a beer. She didn't even order a glass of white wine. She ordered a
double Scotch
at eleven o'clock in the morning! And she asked for a bucket glass.

“I'm on holiday,” she said apologetically. “I'm going to have
fun.
”

When the drink came, Tess got animated. She picked it up and clicked it against Winnie's water tumbler.

“Chin chin,” she said. “I'll do the drinking for both of us.”

She sipped, threw her head back like a bird, and said, “Mmmmmmm.” He watched her throat muscles work on the Scotch. He could almost see it gliding down that graceful throat. He
loved
bucket glasses. They seemed more nautical—a heavy solid honest bucket glass.

He caught a glimpse of pink. Her tongue flicked along her chrome-red lipstick. She sucked the liquid like a she-wolf. Winnie waved to the waitress. He ordered a double vodka on the rocks. Tess said nothing.

“Unfortunately,” he explained, “this is the only thing for a hangover. One a these and I'll feel okay.”

“You look okay now,” Tess said seductively. “You look good enough to eat. One more of these and I might decide to
do
it. Maybe we could try it on a glass-bottom boat? Give the divers and the fish a show.”

The cheeseburger arrived and it was okay. So were the fries. The drink was a
very
honest one. Tess said he still looked a little shaky and should probably have another.

Winnie ordered another double vodka. He had three before they left the restaurant at twelve-thirty. He and Tess were in a great mood. She kept repeating that he looked “extraordinarily sexy.”

They walked down Crescent Avenue to the pavilion and watched some scuba divers sitting on the seawall, shucking clams.

“Let's come about, skipper,” Tess said.

“Okay, where we going?”

“I know a lovely little tavern in the town.”

“There
is
no lovely little tavern. Too many tourists in them.”

“This one's different.”

“Don't you think we oughtta do something besides drink?”

Tess looked around, and saw that the tourists were all watching the divers. She ran her hand down inside his belt tickling his lower belly with her long vermilion nails. Her gray eyes narrowed, vulpine and sly. “I
will
do something besides drink if I can get you in a dark corner of that lovely dark tavern!”