Golden Orange (23 page)

The first two pages were legalese, and then came the interesting part. The estate of Conrad Binder had been left to his trust, with Warner Daniel Stillwell as executor. The most significant paragraph was offset:

I hereby leave my ranch, commonly known as
El Refugio
, in the county of Riverside near La Quinta, to my friend and companion Warner Daniel Stillwell for his use as resident of said property during the remainder of his life. Upon his death the property shall be distributed to my daughter, Tess. If Tess does not survive Warner Stillwell, the property shall be distributed outright to him.

Winnie had started on his second tub of vodka when Tess came down in a terry robe with a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

“Boring reading, isn't it?” she said.

“Not all that boring.”

“Why do you say that?” She sat down with her drink and looked disgustedly at her ghetto view: Pacific Coast Highway and the riverboat restaurant, probably jammed to the gunwales with tourists.

“You never told me you were going to get the ranch eventually.”

“I thought I did.”

“You didn't.”

“Well, I get it after Warner's gone. Believe me, I could be an old lady by then. He's got Ronald Reagan genes.”

“Are you aware Warner Stillwell gets the property if you die?”

“Of course I'm aware of it. But he already
has
the property.”

“Yeah, but he can't dispose of it. He can't sell it. He can't eat it. He can't blow it up. He can only use it. As a residence.”

“So what? That's all he
wants
it for. That's his home. Aside from a quite humble bungalow in Laguna Beach, that's all he's got.”

“Maybe he's sick a living out there in his desert paradise. Maybe he's lonely for … Oh, for boys, let's say.”

“There're lots and lots of boys in Palm Springs.”

“Maybe he likes the Laguna boys better, I don't know. The point is, he might be tired a living out in the desert and he's only got a handful a years left and he wants to live them in Laguna. Or where did you say they rented those villas?”

“The south of France, near Nice. And Portofino, in Italy.”

“Yeah, so the only way he could
sell
that property is if he outlives you.”

Tess got up and started pacing nervously. She put her drink down and sat again. “Winnie, you can't turn this into a murder conspiracy!
El Refugio's
not worth that much.”

“Three acres? A house like that? Maybe you're wrong. Maybe it's worth more than you think?”

“People don't murder other people for that kind of money!”

Winnie looked at Tess for irony, but saw none. He couldn't even address that statement. Rich people!

Winnie said, “Tess, I've known people who'd kill you for …”

“But not people like Warner Stillwell.”

“People like
you
, you mean. And your dad, and all the other folks you grew up with.”

“I know it sounds terrible to you but that
is
what I mean. That's just
not
a lot of money!”

“Who's this lawyer Martin Scroggins?”

“Daddy's lawyer. And now Warner's. And mine if I need him. His firm's been in business since my grandfather's day. A very respectable Los Angeles firm, with an office here in Newport.”

“I'd like you to talk to Mister Scroggins.”

“About what?”

“This will.”

“Do you want me to ask him if the selling price of a small ranch is enough for me to fear for my life?”

“I wanna help you, Tess.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and patted his hand. “I don't mean to be flip, it's just that I'm trying to pretend I'm not scared. That man watching my house … I don't know. It's got me unnerved!”

“I can't stay here guarding this place forever.”

“Why not?”

That
one stopped him. He thought he'd see that mischievous grin of hers, but all he saw was a pair of gray eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses. Unfathomable gray eyes. Like pebbles on the beach, washed clean by surging tides.

“I
would
like you to talk to Scroggins.”

“Okay, I will. Tell me what to ask.”

“I want you to be absolutely sure there're no stocks, bank accounts or other real property that your dad owned.”

“But a lawyer would have to tell me about that. He
would've
told me about that.”

“Can you go see him?”

“Let's both go tomorrow.”

“A phone call'll do. Lawyers turn on the meter the second you make an appointment.”

“They do the same thing with phone calls, believe me.”

Winnie bent forward then, testing his back gingerly. “Let's go inside,” he said. “I gotta stretch out flat for a while. My back's got more kinks than a lawyer's conscience.”

While Winnie lay supine on the floor of Tess's living room watching the six-thirty world news on TV, Buster Wiles made a run to Spoon's Landing looking for Winnie Farlowe. Buster found the zoo howling as usual, and the zookeeper perched on a stool behind the long bar. Spoon's voice droned endlessly about the twenty bucks he'd bet that the Edmonton Oilers couldn't shut out the Great Gretzky even once during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The rest of the bar conversation centered on the 4.6 earthquake that had struck Newport Beach at 1:07
P.M.
that afternoon. Not a big quake, but the two jolts felt powerful; the epicenter was right on the Newport-1nglewood fault. The outrigger hanging from Spoon's ceiling had to be rewired to the termite-infested ceiling timbers, and Spoon had lost a dozen glasses and a picture frame that held one of the last-known photos of Al Jolson, the family's favorite singer when Spoon was growing up. Spoon always said that he hoped Jolson's ex-wife, Ruby Keeler—who often came to The Golden Orange during the summer—wouldn't write an exposé of Al Jolson just because there was a natural title in it: Mammy Dearest.

Of course, Buster hadn't felt the earthquake, in that he was too busy out on the street being attacked by canaries and lovebirds. He wondered now if maybe the earthquake had made him less surefooted while he was chasing the Asian thief. Maybe he'd actually gotten dumped by Mother Nature, not by Cockatoo Clyde.

Buster explained his battered condition by telling the denizens of Spoon's Landing all about his day's misery, but leaving out the part about Betsy, refusing even to
think
about that cassette. The big cop was so despondent he ordered one of Spoon's “pizzas,” prepared and frozen every Thursday by the saloonkeeper himself when he got his delivery of cheese and pepperoni from a guy in Costa Mesa, and a load of anchovies from one of the crew who manned the fishing boats that do the full and half-day runs out of Newport Harbor.

Bilge O'Toole, who'd closed his live-bait shop early that day, heard Buster place the order. And when Spoon was out of earshot, he said to the cop, “When was the last time you ate one a Spoon's pizzas, Buster?”

“I don't remember,” Buster said. “I musta been drunk if I did it.”

“They're tougher'n fiberglass, but they don't smell as good,” Bilge informed him.

Tripoli Jones, sitting on the other side of Buster, concurred. “The anchovies must come from Alaska. Nothin that didn't die in an oil spill could taste like that. Put a dozen of 'em in a juicer, you could pour it in your crankcase.”

“I don't care
what
it tastes like,” Buster mumbled. “I ain't that hungry anyways after the day I put in.”

“So save it for the beach,” Bilge suggested. “Use it for a boogie board. Where were you when the earthquake hit?”

Tripoli Jones said, “I was up on a pole by city hall gettin ready to check a line when the pole started to cha-cha. I did a lumberjack slide. My hands got so shaky I coulda threaded a sewin machine if it was movin. I had to come straight here for a drink!”

Spoon logged that as the most novel drinking excuse of the year so far:
An earthquake made me do it.

“I started praying,” Carlos Tuna said. “Regis got tossed off the kitchen table and pinballed out onto the porch. I started saying Hail Marys. I thought it was the
big
one!”

Spoon moved his slimy cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other, and said: “A day to go down in Newport Beach history. A town where every thirty feet there's a bar or a bank, with more masseuses than the Ottoman empire. Fifteen square miles a greed and white-collar crime. And people
finally
pray because of a little four-point-sixer!”

“Well, in Lubbock, Texas, two hundred forty-seven people saw the Virgin Mary this month!” Carlos said. “Weird stuff's going on. I think the end is near.”

“If the end is near, I wanna
live
a little before I go,” Buster said to his beer glass. “Gimme a double shot a Wild Turkey, Spoon.”

“Careful, Buster,” Bilge warned. “You'll be gettin those three
A.M.
visitors like your pal Winnie. Like the ones Carlos gets, and Guppy. Me, I only get 'em on Tuesdays, Thursdays and sometimes on Monday. They don't come on weekends.”

“Nobody gets in my place at three
A.M
.,” Buster said, “'less they can do it with a gut full a hollow-points.”

“The ones Bilge's talkin about ain't scared a guns,” Carlos informed Buster. “He's talking about
life
! The old lady you still love? The one you still hate? The kids that never call you even on Christmas? The boss that spends his Sunday multiplying loaves and fishes but comes to work on Monday like
The Nightmare on Elm Street?
”

“That's what my three o'clock dreadlies look like, come to think of it,” Tripoli Jones said. “But they're wimps and pussies compared to the
real
monster you face at three o'clock in the morning. Your
youth.
The youth that was me. The me I lost!”

Buster Wiles was having a major epiphany. He said, “I'm almost forty-five already. Forty-five! I can't believe it. Where's
my
youth?”

“You got some good years left, Buster,” Carlos said. “But not as many as you think. It's gonna all start to go soon. Them big muscles a yours? They're gonna fall like ethics in Washington. Better take charge a your life now, if you can.”

“You get our age,” Guppy said, “your life'll be more outta control than Central Park.”

“And then your blood pressure starts to take off,” said Tripoli Jones. “And it's harder to bring down than Fidel Castro.”

“One day you look at yourself,” said Carlos. “You say to yourself, people know me for miles around. But that's
all
I got!”

“Shit, they don't know you for
blocks
around, even,” Bilge O'Toole said, getting predictably surly, turning on his nemesis, Carlos Tuna.

Becoming more surly yet—and
that
was as predictable as beach litter—was Tripoli Jones, who said, “The fuckin guy two stools away don't know you and you been drinkin here for fifteen years!”

Buster Wiles left the fiberglass pizza on the bar, finished his drink, and decided to get out now that the geezers might be drunk enough to start a fight.

For the rest of the evening he was determined to enjoy what was left of his youth. He was going to take better care of himself and pump iron two hours every other day and cut the booze down to almost nothing. In effect, Buster Wiles was making that career decision to take on a job that would change his life.

14

Zeros

B
y the weekend, the heat wave was breaking, at least in The Golden Orange. Los Angeles was still uncomfortable and the desert was a furnace, but the coastal communities had begun to settle down to more normal temperatures. Winnie had made only two brief trips to his apartment during that entire weekend. Sometimes it would seem as though Tess had forgotten about the man who'd been watching her house, but when Winnie would suggest that he go home so she could tend to ordinary business, she'd look frightened and beg him to stay.