Golden Orange (43 page)

Winnie was already outside the door when the phone rang again. He went back inside and answered it on the fifth ring.

“Mister Farlowe?” the telephone voice said, “This is Pete at Boyd Schuyler Yacht Brokerage.”

“Yeah?”

“We've got something I think you'll be interested in, Mister Farlowe. Can you come by this morning?”

He figured it might be a job offer. The day they'd gone sailing, Tess had mentioned to Boyd Schuyler that Winnie was interested in boat sales. So he changed from a T-shirt and jeans to a Reyn Spooner, slacks and his best deck shoes. With socks.

He went straight to the yacht brokerage, where he was met by Pete, who reminded him of himself fifteen years and a thousand drinks ago: a sunburnt sailor who'd take any job that kept him near boats or on the ocean.

The young salesman took Winnie into a private office, where he said, “I've never been involved in anything like this before!” He opened a drawer and took out a large manila envelope full of manuals and documents, and a set of keys.

He said, “You've got a boat out there! In
your
name. Paid for. And you'll find in here the location of a boat slip on the peninsula. It's been leased for you for one year. You've got some friend, that Miss Binder! She arranged all this three weeks ago, but I was told you weren't ready for it yet. Today she phoned and said you were ready.”

Pete's grin was wider than the Lido Channel. The kid's nose was peeling from too much sun and ocean glare. He seemed to want Winnie to cheer, or something.

“It's the ultralight, I guess?”

“Oh, yeah! Mister Schuyler said you already took it on a sea trial. She's a sweet boat and she's loaded! Miss Binder wanted everything you could put on it. Wanna take her out now? I got time if you need me to help.”

“Not now,” Winnie said. “I gotta go get a bite to eat. Not now.”

The kid looked disappointed, but he said, “Well, if you
ever
need someone to crew for you, just call.”

“Okay,” Winnie said, standing up and taking his envelope. “One thing, do you know about her leasing a big powerboat for a run to Mexico?”

“Sure. In fact, there was a panic around here early this morning. She's decided to go today instead of in two weeks like she'd been planning. Two of our guys've been working all morning getting the boat ready. It's a seventy-five-foot custom job, called
Windspray.
Wanna see?”

“I don't wanna see,” Winnie said. “I gotta go get an omelet.”

“I wish I was going on that Manzanillo trip,” Pete said. “The boss got invited.”

“You mean Boyd Schuyler?”

“Yeah, he's a pretty good friend of hers. He's taking three weeks off, and flying back from there. She's flying on from there to the Bahamas. To
live
, from what I hear. I guess you know all that? Anyway, I sure wish I could go along and bring the boat back, but I don't have enough seniority around here.”

“I gotta go get an omelet,” Winnie said.

“Be sure to buy boat insurance,” the kid said. “That's a valuable sloop and you're her master now.”

After eating a rubbery omelet at a Balboa Island family restaurant, Winnie didn't know what to do with himself. He had to do something until four o'clock. He knew where he'd be then. He decided to go home and check the mail.

There was nothing but bills. He looked at his watch. He tried to read but it was no good. He went to his phone and dialed a number a prisoner had given him, the only prisoner more miserable than himself. A young woman answered on the first ring.

“This is Win Farlowe. I'm a friend of Doug Bracken. Can I speak to him, please?”

After a very long silence the young woman said, “Yes, my dad mentioned you in his letters, Mister Farlowe. I … I'm sorry to … to say that Daddy shot himself last night, and …” There was another pause. “I want you to know … to know how much it meant to all of us that you … that you played basketball with my dad.”

At 3:30 that afternoon Winnie was back on the jetty, only this time on the east side, there by little Corona Del Mar Beach where Conrad Binder had ended his life. Winnie was watching a kid about ten or eleven years old, fishing with his father. They were having a great time, father and son, not caring much if they caught anything. The kid was horsing around, trying to drop an anchovy down his old man's shirt, and the father was pretending to be scared of the dead fish. The “old man,” Winnie noted, was nearly ten years younger than he was.

Finally they got tired of fishing, and the kid snuggled up against his father and they just sat quietly like that. And Winnie sat quietly and watched them, realizing that probably he would never be a father, wondering what kind of father he'd have been, a guy who'd never been much good at anything, maybe not even as a cop.

Four o'clock came and went. So did the father and son. Other jetty fishermen were calling it a day. Winnie sat and watched the commercial boats coming in, trailing flocks of gulls, the birds hoping for tidbits that might be tossed off the stern.

At five o'clock he thought maybe she wasn't heeding his warning. He was ready to leave when a gleaming white motor yacht came powering down the channel. It was close to his side of the jetty, and he didn't even have to look for
Windspray.
He knew this was it.

Then he saw Tess. She was wearing a white jumpsuit with a white cardigan tossed over her shoulders. She stood on the sun deck, gazing aft toward The Golden Orange. Back to the place she wouldn't be seeing anymore. Then Winnie saw a suntanned man in a blue blazer walk out onto the deck, holding a tall glass. He said something to Tess, but she shook her head. He stood behind her and kissed her neck, but she didn't respond. Still she gazed back at The Golden Orange.

Winnie was running along the seawall without realizing it. He was keeping up with the slow-moving motor yacht as it crept out of the harbor, out to the open ocean. Boyd Schuyler put his arms around Tess Binder's waist and kissed her neck again.

Then Winnie yelled: “NOW I KNOW YOU!”

The couple on the motor yacht looked over at the jetty, at the man in a sweatshirt and jeans running along beside them. “NOW I KNOW YOU!” Winnie shouted.

Boyd Schuyler said something to Tess Binder, but she shook her head and said something back. He turned away from her and walked reluctantly into the main salon. When she was alone, Tess approached the port rail. She clutched it with both hands, watching Winnie run.

“I KNOW YOU!” he yelled, still running. “NOW I KNOW YOU!”

Tess put her hands to her face, as though to weep. He'd seen her do that before, but he'd seen her
really
cry only once. On that hilltop overlooking Two Harbors, at the isthmus of Santa Catalina Island, when there was magic all around them in the twilight.

Tess dropped her hands back to the rail. She held on to it and shouted something. Winnie wasn't sure what, and he kept running along the seawall, but he was nearing the end. They'd be past the jetty in a moment and the skipper would throttle forward and she'd be gone forever.

Then she shouted: “ONLY YOU! NOBODY ELSE! NOT EVER!”

He was panting and out of breath when he reached the end of the seawall. Winnie cupped his hands to his mouth, while the skipper was already starting to give the big yacht some speed.

Winnie had to yell it over the rumble of the diesels: “YOU CAN'T LOVE ANYONE! YOU NEVER WILL! NOT EVERRRR!”

It was like last night. He was standing at land's end seeing someone else for the very last time. And not knowing for sure whether or not this one too was a murderer.

The lazy sea lions on the bell buoy weren't even curious when the lustrous white motor yacht powered past them and turned southeast.

25

La Venganza

T
he yacht brokerage had been closed for hours. He parked his car, got a flashlight from the glove compartment, and ran down the ramp to the docks, carrying with him two five-gallon cans of gasoline. The sailboat was in the same slip where he'd last seen her, only this time there was a name painted on the transom:
La Venganza.

Winnie climbed aboard and went below to turn on the lights and start the engine. There by the galley, on the mahogany chart table, was a note in Tess Binder's handwriting. The note said: “Sailing well is the best revenge.”

The harbor was quiet when Winnie hoisted sail. His was the only boat out this late. He wished there was more wind, but even in light air she responded. She was a wonderful light-air boat. He tried not to think of anything until he reached the jetty.

He didn't want to sail her out on the ocean. It seemed a cruel and brutal thing to do. He was already beginning to think of her as a living thing, this quick agile sloop. So he merely pointed her toward the open sea and started the diesel. Then he went back on deck and dropped the inflatable dinghy over the side, letting it trail. He went below again and poured five gallons of gasoline over everything. When he was finished, he poured the other can over the deck, letting it puddle in the cockpit.

He tossed the empty cans into the dinghy, started the dinghy motor, and made sure it was securely tied. Then he climbed back on deck with the flare gun. He glanced down the hatch for only a second or two. He fired once and ran aft. There was a loud PLOOM! and fire burst out of the companionway within seconds. He got the dinghy untied just before the flames spread topside. It was correct what he'd always been told—the resin in a fiberglass boat burns extremely hot and is almost impossible to extinguish.

The burning boat powered out into the bleak infinite ocean, sails alight in the darkness, blazing through sapphire water. The moon had vanished for a while.

When Winnie walked into the office of the Harbor Patrol an hour later, he was greeted with skepticism. An Orange County sheriff's deputy said, “Your boat caught fire the same
day
you took it from the broker?”

“It was my own fault,” Winnie said. “I bought a lotta gas for my dinghy and I accidentally dropped a can into the galley. The stove was lit.”

The deputy obviously suspected a torching. He said, “And how
much
insurance did you have on this new boat, Mister Farlowe?”

“None,” Winnie said. “Not a dime's worth.”

That stunned the deputy, who said, “Damn! You should've gotten insurance before taking it out!”

“I've always been a loser,” Winnie Farlowe said.

It was after ten o'clock when he arrived at Spoon's Landing. All the regulars hollered his name, and made a fuss, and shook hands with him the moment he entered. Guppy Stover was there and Bilge O'Toole with his turtle, Irma. Carlos Tuna was there with Regis, his stud turtle, who was in a carrying bag on the bar. Tripoli Jones was berating two Vietnam vets who worked at the boatyard next door.

Everyone said how good Winnie looked and how much they'd missed him. But they seemed to sense that he was
much
changed after two months of sobriety. In that they were all alcoholics, they were confused and threatened by such a change. But Spoon understood.