Golden Orange (39 page)

“Do you know what you're saying?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I was a policeman for many years.”

“I'm aware of that,” said the judge. “Very well. You leave me no alternative but to give you the maximum sentence for this misdemeanor.”

“I deserve all you got,” said Winnie Farlowe. “A man is dead. I should've saved him. I
would've
saved him if I'd been sober.”

The judge studied the defendant. He could see that the prisoner was suffering severe withdrawal pain. Every few seconds Winnie would grimace. The judge figured this guy
had
to confess and be punished. This guy was an alcoholic Saint Augustine.

Finally the judge said, “I suppose you'll never forgive yourself for this, nor should you. I suppose you might even consider doing something intelligent, like seeking a treatment program. I suppose you
might
stop being stupid. You're only forty years old. You're still a young man, Mister Farlowe.”

“I don't feel young,” Winnie said.

“Do you want some water?” the judge asked.

“I'd just heave it up,” Winnie said.

The judge stared at the wreckage before him and said, “I'm not going to give you the maximum sentence, regardless of your need to salve your conscience. But a man is missing and undoubtedly dead. I'm sentencing you to ninety days in the county jail. When you come out of there you'll be dry and sober but you
won't
be into a recovery mode. Do you understand the difference between a sober alcoholic and a recovering alcoholic? Only in the A.A. program can you get yourself into the recovery mode.”

While the judge was still talking, the defendant suddenly grabbed his mouth and began gagging. As the judge watched in horror, the defendant tossed his cookies all over the counsel table.

Winnie was close to fainting when the judge said, “Get this man to the men's central jail where they can
do
something with him!”

Winnie was not able to recall much about the drowsy drive to downtown L.A. except that something in his chest was trying to break out. Something that kicked like a horse. A buffalo, probably. A Catalina wild buffalo was running amok inside his rib cage.

When he arrived at the men's central jail, he was taken directly to the seventh floor where the hospital unit is located, not because he was suffering from alcohol withdrawal but because he was a retired police officer. There on the seventh floor of the hospital was the high-security wing, referred to as “the high-power unit,” where people like Winnie were housed: law enforcement or former law enforcement officers, most of them unsentenced court prisoners who wouldn't last a week in the general population. Also in high-power were prisoners being held for civil contempt; they weren't criminals and couldn't be housed with the general population.

Along with them there were other special cases on the seventh floor: prisoners into PCP withdrawal, strapped down at the ankles and wrists. There were suicidal prisoners, and diabetics, those needing regular medication. And there were certain court prisoners who needed
ultra
high security. Winnie wasn't there twenty minutes when he saw two deputies walking down the corridor with Richard Ramirez—the notorious Nightstalker who had terrorized the Southland during the bloody spring and summer of 1985, accused of murdering thirteen people and mutilating others.

The first nurse Winnie saw on the seventh floor said to him, “What's your drug of choice? Booze?”

Winnie nodded, but when he saw her heading for a cabinet he said, “I don't want any medication. I
refuse
it.”

“Gonna go it cold turkey, huh?”

Winnie nodded again.

“How about just an injection of vitamins?”

He shook his head.

“If you change your mind, call for a deputy,” the nurse said.

That night the spasms were so bad he had to put his blanket in his mouth to keep from crying out. But it was his fourth day of sobriety and he felt a little better when his eyes finally opened. There was no knifing pain. He only ached. He felt like somebody had kicked his guts out.

As far as the ordinary county jail inmates were concerned, Winnie was in “the playpen.” On this, the hospital floor, there were no cells, only rooms with locked doors guarded by deputies. And the seventh floor was the only place other than the roof that didn't smell like the hold of a slave ship.

In Winnie's room there were five other men. One was a member of the Beverly Hills Police Department, awaiting trial in Superior Court for burglary. Another was a retired probation officer who'd shot his wife. And there was a DEA agent who'd decided that keeping the drugs and releasing the pushers was more lucrative than booking the whole shebang. The latter two were in the middle of their felony trials in Superior Court. The other two roommates were already sentenced misdemeanor prisoners like Winnie. One was a retired corrections officer, convicted for the third time of driving under the influence of alcohol. The last was an LAPD sergeant who'd pleaded guilty to a string of indecent exposures, his victims being young schoolgirls. Unlike the general jail population where most prisoners were black or Latino, in Winnie's room they all happened to be white.

There were enough bunks for eight men in the room, four down and four up. There was a toilet, a sink, a metal table and two metal benches, one on each side of the table. The prisoners wore a V-neck dungaree outfit with
L.A. County Jail
stenciled over the shirt pocket. These men were isolated from prisoners in the general population and were allowed to exercise on the roof for one hour twice a week. They could shoot basketball, or jog, or make calls, since there were phones on the roof.

There was another room for active or former law enforcement officers, only this one held four men, one of them black, one Latino. Two of them were members of the L.A. Sheriff's Department, both of whom had worked here at one time. On the proper side of the locked doors.

The most notorious seventh-floor inmates—those awaiting or undergoing trial, like the Nightstalker—lived in private rooms in total isolation, only coming in contact with deputies, or with trustees who used their position to buy and sell and barter.

Winnie was in central jail for five days before he was able to consume a normal portion of food. The DEA agent traded Winnie his lower bunk for the upper when he saw Winnie dry-heaving. He didn't want a sick alky above him. The jail food, the DEA agent warned, was just like they'd served him on Aeroflot on a clandestine government trip to the Black Sea. He told Winnie what to eat and what to avoid.

On Friday, one week after the incident at Isthmus Cove, 547 yachts and 4,000 sailors competed in the forty-second annual Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, known as “The Tequila Derby” for the binge that takes place at the end. For the first time in years, Winnie cared nothing about the race. It was a slow race and, as predicted, Dennis Connor's boat finished first.

That day he'd finally decided to make a phone call. He spoke to his sister and to his mother. He tried to call Tess Binder, but got no answer.

On Saturday, Buster Wiles came to see him. The visiting area for the high-power prisoners was a two-room space divided by a common wall of glass. A prisoner and a visitor could sit and talk by telephone.

Buster shook his head in utter disgust and disbelief and said into the phone, “You look like shit!”

Winnie nodded.

“You dumb bastard!” Buster said. “What's wrong with you? Why'd you plead guilty?”

“I
was
guilty,” Winnie said.

“Why'd you turn down a probation report and piss off the judge? You coulda bailed out. Hell, he'd a released you on your own recognizance. A moron coulda defended you and beaten that case. You didn't
have
to go to jail, you asshole!”

Winnie said, “I did what I had to do, Buster. I killed that man.”

“The guy fell off a boat! It happens all the time. You think that's the first fatality in Catalina this year? It ain't even the first one this month.”

“I coulda saved him,” Winnie said, “if I'd a been sober. Even if I'd a been just
normally
drunk.”

Buster put down his telephone and shook his head. When he picked it up again, he said, “Man, you
are
pathetic. You're dumb!”

Winnie didn't say anything.

Buster said, “The guy'd been drinking too, right? It was his own fault. And he was seventy-two years old. That's the life expectancy of an American male, for chrissake!”

“That doesn't change anything,” Winnie said.

“Okay, if you wanna sit here and suffer for the world's sins like Gandhi or somebody, what can I do for ya?”

“Nothing,” Winnie said.

“Cigarettes?” Buster said. “You can use them for money.”

“I don't need anything,” said Winnie. “I had money in my wallet when I was booked. Enough for little stuff. I got all I need.”

“You talk to your mom?”

Winnie nodded.

“You talk to your friend Tess Binder?”

Winnie shook his head and said, “No answer. I'll try tomorrow. We only get to call out once a day.”

“You shouldn't be in jail. You could be with your little pal, sleeping on peachy sheets,” Buster said.

Winnie could not remember ever having seen Buster Wiles this upset, this agitated, so brimming with frustration. When he got back to his bunk, something Buster had said was troubling him, but he couldn't think clearly, not yet.

He felt like he was in one of the recurring dreams where his sails are luffing, and he's incapable of trimming them. In the dream he's always helplessly drifting out to sea. That's how he felt now. His brain was still in irons.

21

Peachy Sheets

O
n his tenth day in custody at the men's central jail, Winnie Farlowe had a visitor: Martin Scroggins. The old lawyer was waiting nervously in the visiting room when the prisoner entered on the other side of the glass wall. There were two other inmates talking with lawyers, along with the LAPD sergeant—serving six months for indecent exposure—who was talking to his wife. She couldn't stop weeping, and kept touching the glass with her hand.

The lawyer looked shaken. Winnie smiled ironically, the first time he'd smiled in ten days. He said, “You never been in a jail before, have you, Mister Scroggins?”

The lawyer shook his head.

“Did Tess send you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“I've tried to phone her. Ten times. Once every day. All I get is the answering machine or no answer at all.”

“She's acting on my instructions,” Martin Scroggins said. “I knew you'd be calling her, but I don't want you two to have any contact whatsoever. Not yet.”

“And why is that?”

“I'm trying to expedite things. I don't want any complications. Any hint. Or innuendo. Not the slightest rumor that because of Tess,
you
could've been having … unwholesome thoughts out there on that boat that night.”

“Unwholesome thoughts.”

Martin Scroggins seemed unnerved by Winnie's appearance. The prisoner had lost ten pounds. He was already developing a jailhouse pallor. And he spoke in a scary monotone. He looked like the lawyer's mental image of a lifer.

“Look,” the lawyer said, “when Warner Stillwell fell out of that boat, well … some people might think you had certain ideas flash through your mind. Such as: What if I don't diligently rescue him? Then Tess could immediately inherit
El Refugio.
Not years from now. But
now.
It's possible that people could think such a thing if you and Tess were thought to be closely linked.”

“I see.”

“But as it presently appears, you were dating her for a couple of weeks and that's about it. You're not engaged. You're not even lovers.”

“It doesn't appear that we are,” Winnie said.