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  “A little murder and a lot of laughs.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Floaters is classic Wambaugh, a wildly satirical look at the sport of millionaires, yacht racing, and the obsession of enthusiasts with winning a silver trophy called The America’s Cup.”

  —The Associated Press

  “A taut tale.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A wacky, gritty and sleazy yet thoughtful cop story about the America’s Cup regattas in San Diego and behind-the-scenes shenanigans.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  MICK FORTNEY—A veteran of twenty years on the force and two marriages, Fortney’s life consists of cruising the harbor and boozing in the harborside bars. But a body in the bay sends him into a world of the superrich and of an elite sport shot through with corruption—a world where a harbor patrol cop is out of his element….

  “[A] darkly comic cops-felons caper…As usual, Wambaugh writes a rambunctious narrative.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Murder, vice, biting jabs and ripping dialogue—all the Wambaugh trademarks are present in abundance.”

  —The Tampa Tribune-Times

  LEEDS—A married man with an eye for the seagoing beauties lounging on pleasure craft, he makes a pass but fails to score. Then his cop mind starts working overtime: Why would a luscious babe like Blaze Duvall have eyes only for a couple of skanky crane operators?

  “Wambaugh skillfully details the traditions, tensions and ruthless competition surrounding the fight for the biggest prize in yachting. The eccentric characters are a delightful bunch of misfits and malcontents.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “[Wambaugh] has never lost his policeman’s nose for pretension—or his sense of cosmic humor about the good-and-evil biz….By the time this salty tale hits the beach, readers will be wet-eyed with laughter.”

  —People

  BLAZE DUVALL—A sexy outcall masseuse, she’s just been offered a deal to make a quick killing by arranging for an unfortunate accident to happen to one of the America’s Cup racing teams. But she’s about to learn that still waters run deep, and sometimes the most genteel clients can get you in over your head….

  “Ex-cop Joseph Wambaugh has mastered the genre of the comic crime novel….[His] snappy police dialogue reads like the rare lighter lines of TV’s NYPD Blue. But it crackles with veracity….Warning: This stuff is not politically correct. It is awash in dopers, bums, boozers, whores and lowlifes.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  AMBROSE LUTTERWORTH—A real estate man and Yacht Club member who knew plenty about quiet desperation until he became Keeper of the Cup, the world’s oldest sporting trophy. He’s accompanied the Cup around the world and into the company of kings, and he means to see the Cup stay in America…and in his keeping.

  “[A] romp among the yachtsmen, cops and prostitutes who gather in San Diego for the America’s Cup….It has the same elemental smack and tang of all his work, the smell of the street and the sound of the human voice under the stress of crime and punishment….Wambaugh is one of our links to the good old days when books were fun.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  BOOKS BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

  Fiction

  The New Centurions

  The Blue Knight

  The Choirboys

  The Black Marble

  The Glitter Dome

  The Delta Star

  The Secrets of Harry Bright

  The Golden Orange

  Fugitive Nights

  Finnegan’s Week

  Floaters

  Nonfiction

  The Onion Field

  Lines and Shadows

  Echoes in the Darkness

  The Blooding

  This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  FLOATERS

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition published / June 1996

  Bantam paperback edition / April 1997

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the lyrics from “Beyond the Sea” written by Charles Trenet and Jack Lawrence.

  Copyright © 1945 PolyGram International Publishing, Inc., France Music Corp., and Ed. Raoul Breton (and as designated by co-publisher).

  Copyright © renewed 1973 Charles Trent. English version copyright © 1947 T. B. Harms. Copyright © renewed 1975 MPL Communications, Inc. Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by the Wambaugh Family Trust.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-26625

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 9780553575958

  eBook ISBN 9780804150668

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  v4.1

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  For the Gants:

  Dick, Janene, Loxie, and Holden

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Joseph Wambaugh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As usual, terrific cop talk was arranged by the San Diego Police Department’s storytelling impresario, Detective Tony Puente.

  SDPD officers included: Russ Bristol, Cheri Curley, Jorge Duran, Antoine El-Assis, Karl Ellison, Christine Gregg, Rick Hansen, Barbara Harrison, Renee Hill, Roy Huntington, Alicia Lampert, Scott Lee, Joe Lehr, Dave Michalek, Bill Montejano, Sharon Newberry, Anne O’Dell, Mike O’Neill, Mike Richardson, Rich Rundberg, Sandra Smullen, Lou Tamagni, and John Tefft.

  Wonderful conversation was also provided by officers of the Harbor Police: Jen Borgen, Kathy Fabregas, Gordon Galligan, Dave King, Gary Leeson, and Cynthia Markley.

  Team New Zealand anecdotes were offered by grinder Craig Monk, as well as by Dave Pizzini of the Otahuhu Police and John Purkis of the Auckland Police, the team security force.

  Jerry La Dow of Team Dennis Conner was extremely helpful in unraveling the intricacies of America’s Cup yacht racing.

  Tom and Jane Wilson of the San Diego Yacht Club related the fascinating history and captivating lore of the Cup itself.

  Other yachtsmen who furnished lively chat and insight were Fred Delaney, John Driscoll, Mike Driscoll, Larry Maio, and Bryan Worthington of the San Diego Yacht Club.

  Dr. Tom Cummings and John Urquhart also provided valuable facts.

  The author offers a thousand thanks to one and all. There could not have been a book without them.

  PROLOGUE

  On December 7, exactly fifty-three years after the day that l
ives in infamy, a 75-foot boat that cost nearly as much as some of those lost in the Pearl Harbor raid was photographed just after it fell from its cradle fifteen feet above the launching dock. The keel of the boat, like all of the closely guarded, supersecret keels of the America’s Cup sailing yachts, was driven up through the deck like a torpedo. It was to have been the maiden launching of this boat, called France 2 by the French yachting syndicate.

  The team members were so beside themselves that one of the sailors actually started screaming, “Sacré bleu! Sacré bleu!” causing a man who was snapping pictures to say to his partner, “I thought they only said that in Pink Panther movies.”

  The irony of the boat being trashed on Pearl Harbor day wasn’t lost on the partner, who said, “This time around nobody can blame it on the banzai boys. They’re too busy with the Kiwis for sneak attacks.”

  By that he meant that in a sport notorious for espionage, Team Nippon had its hands full with America’s Cup racing and Cup politics, confronted as it was by two hot boats in the New Zealand syndicate as well as the Kiwis’ accusations that the Japanese had violated the two-boat limit with their added JPN-30 hull.

  Moreover, Team Nippon had to worry about a formidable foe in oneAustralia, although the other Australian challenger didn’t scare anybody, nor did the Spanish. Nor any longer did the French, now that they were gawking at Waterloo on Mission Bay.

  Suddenly, one of the Frenchmen—a starboard trimmer from Cherbourg who was even ruder than the others—spotted the man snapping the photos. This was the same Frog who threatened to phone the consulate every time he got stopped for ripping around Mission Bay like a Paris cabbie in one of those dopey little Citroëns, fit only for delivery of car bombs by neurotic Arabs. His idea of defensive driving was tooting the horn, and Mission Bay cops referred to him as a marginally rehabilitated Algerian terrorist. They also called him “the crème de la crumbs.”

  The Froggie scampered across the boatyard to the fence, yelling: “No! You shall not to fo-toe le keel!”

  The shutterbug’s partner could only gape as the 25-ton yacht settled a few more inches, causing the keel to angle up. His comment was “Ooh-la-la. Like a giant hard-on yearning to be free.”

  The photographer stopped snapping long enough to say, “Let’s beat feet to the Photo-Mat. Gotta get these to the press before Carlos the Jackal here phones the mayor, the State Department, and Catherine Deneuve!”

  While the furious Frog stormed away, yammering to his team that their secret keel was being compromised, two security guards belatedly tossed a tarp over it. And the crane operator who’d dropped the boat sat in his crane, jaw agape, trying to decide whether to jump into Mission Bay and swim for Catalina or climb down and be torn limb from limb by three dozen raging Frenchies.

  Unlike the Kiwis and Aussies, the French were relentlessly arrogant with the cops, infuriating all five members of Mission Bay’s San Diego Police Department Harbor Unit. The cops promised a case of beer to the first one who could bust a Frog for DUI or any other law violation on land or water. And that included French syndicate sponsors and their boyfriends, girlfriends, priests, or poodles.

  A short time later the photographer and his partner were still grinning like chum-lusting tiger sharks when they boarded their 22-foot Boston Whaler to begin their routine patrol of Mission Bay. But when they cruised past the compound of the French, who were wondering what to do with a $2 million mangled heap of fiber-reinforced composites, the amateur photographer turned on the patrol boat’s gumball-blue light and hit them with a few siren yelps.

  The Froggies returned fire with rude French gestures as well as with American expressions all ending in “cock-suck-airs!” And the snapshooter turned to his partner, saying, “Sometimes a policeman’s lot really is a happy one.”

  His photograph, headlined “French Follies,” was soon seen in all parts of the planet where anyone gives a damn about a regatta that last time around had cost the losing Italian syndicate more than $100 million, triggering bankruptcy and suicide.

  Of course, the happy shutterbug couldn’t have known that his picture of a dildo keel would soon inspire a plot leading to murder and ensnare human beings like dolphins in a gill net. For he was just a San Diego cop who drove a boat, not a true man of the sea. Not one who understands in his soul that the actions of people are like the tides that chase the moon but invariably come crashing back, with all manner of thrashing things roiling in their foamy wake.

  CHAPTER 1

  Blaze used to use a henna rinse on her pubic hair before she became an outcall masseuse. Of course, she was no more a real masseuse than she’d been a real dancer back in the days when she’d hire out at parties delivering striptease telegrams. Her massage customers didn’t care about fiery pubes any more than telegram recipients had cared that she’d been a hopeless singer and dancer, for she had other attributes.

  Blaze Duvall was a lustrously muscled but relentlessly female aerobics devotee who diligently practiced every buns-of-steel exercise devised by instructors at the class she took five times a week. But with her thirtieth birthday approaching, Blaze imagined she saw disturbing things in the full-length mirror behind the entry door of her overpriced, one-bedroom Fashion Hills apartment: a tiny dollop of cellulite here, a minuscule sag there, where flesh used to be firm as plastic.

  With only two thousand dollars in her bank account and a net worth of no more than twenty thousand—including her yellow Mustang convertible, her modestly priced furniture, and some decent jewelry given by bucks-up clients who appreciated her talents—Blaze’s future was tenuous.

  Foremost among her talents was an ability to talk to men. Long before her shoulder-length mane became ferociously red at seventy-five dollars a pop, excluding tip, and long before her name was Blaze Duvall, she’d been able to do that very well. Because she’d always been a woman and every man she’d ever known was a child. Secondly, Blaze was a chameleon, able to adjust to any audience.

  Blaze examined her naked body in the mirror. Brown pubic hair? Who cared, now that she was no longer stripping in lighted rooms, singing bawdy telegrams off-key?

  For this evening she chose a matching set of panties and bra, pink with scalloped bands of lace. Her client, “number eight,” liked pink even though it wasn’t her best color, not with flaming hair, wide-set, shamrock-green eyes, and a dust of sandy freckles all over. But the customer was always right as long as the customer obeyed her rules.

  The doorbell. Blaze checked the time on her gold Rolex and put on her blue terry robe. She squinted through the peeper in gloomy twilight at a spindly blonde, who knew she was being observed.

  “Hi, Blaze!” said Dawn Coyote, whose true name was no more Dawn Coyote than hers was Blaze Duvall. The San Diego police and Dawn’s mother also knew her as Jane Kelly.

  Dawn entered the apartment in her street costume: see-through cobweb of a red blouse, shiny black leather skirt, red spike heels. She was way past lean now, bones knobbing out at the wrists, knees, and ankles. Mournful blue eyes peered out under ragged putty-colored bangs that might as well have been cut with pruning shears.

  Blaze was mad. “I told you don’t come here when you’re working! You’re gonna bring cops here one of these days. How do you know Vice isn’t following you?”

  Dawn rushed past her, wobbling on the spikes, heading straight for the tiny kitchen, saying, “They ain’t, Blaze. They ain’t.”

  Dawn Coyote had lisped ever since she got her tongue pierced, finding it hard to wrap it around sibilants what with the zircon stud getting in the way. She tore open a bag of M&M’s and popped a few in her mouth.

  Blaze watched Dawn pulling up the sleeves of the red polyester blouse, examining the tracks where she slammed her speedballs, a mixture of powdered cocaine and Mexican tar heroin.

  “Girl, don’t you dare shoot up in my home!” Blaze said.

  “I ain’t, Blaze!” Dawn lisped. “I’m jist putting some vitamins on, is all. Works better than cream. But, like, I
gotta put it on right after I shoot up.”

  The young woman’s bony hand trembled as she squeezed liquid from a plastic bottle and dabbed it on her inner forearm. Then she put the bottle away and started scratching. First her ass, then her underarms, then below her tiny tits. Then she backed against the fridge and scratched herself on the chrome door-pull.

  Disgusted, Blaze said, “You were better off tweaking. Your color’s all leached out. Your beautiful skin is wrecked. You’re gonna look forty when you’re thirty if you don’t get off those speedballs.”

  “I’m getting off,” Dawn promised, as she always did. “Soon as I dump Oliver.”

  “I’m sick of warning you about that pimp. You better shine him now.”

  “Kin you loan me a hundred, Blaze? I got me a two-hundred-dollar date Saturday night.”

  “Why don’t you get it from Oliver?”

  “He’s all pissy these days. Won’t give me nothin’ hardly. I’m gonna go to L.A., see my sister. Might jist stay there.” Then she paused and said, “Got any gum?”

  Blaze opened the kitchen cabinet and gave Dawn a pack of Juicy Fruit, saying, “Here, this flavor works best.”

  “Ever try bubble gum?” Dawn asked, biting open the pack. “Some girls say bubble gum works best.”

  “What’re you gonna do with the baby?”

  The sallow, sniffling girl jammed two sticks in her mouth and began chewing painfully.

  “My sister’ll help me with Billy. She wouldn’t if he was Oliver’s baby. She goes, ‘Long as he ain’t half nigger I’ll take him.’ Lucky for him he ain’t.”

  “Wait here.” Blaze disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Dawn was her friend, but a junkie’s a junkie. She retrieved a roll of bills from inside a knitted ski cap at the top of the closet and counted out five twenties. When she returned, she found Dawn unbuttoning the polyester blouse and displaying her bare torso before the full-length mirror.

  “Whadda ya think, Blaze? Oliver says the johns’ll pay jist to look at this!”