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  The tipster had seen too many cop movies, because he pretended not to have heard Buster. He looked past both cops, then walked toward the west side of the pier away from the blazing sun. When he was gazing toward Catalina, with a detective on either side of him, he said, “Let’s make a deal.”

  “You’re tuned to the wrong channel,” Winnie informed him. “We don’t make deals.”

  “My name’s Harvey Devlin,” he said. “I’ve been indicted for a misunderstanding. Involves junk bonds. I’m a broker.”

  “If it’s a mistake, what kind a deal you lookin for?” Buster asked.

  “My lawyer thinks I’m sure to be convicted for some sort of fraud. All I want is someone to put in a word for me with the judge when I’m sentenced. I think I’ve already decided to plead guilty and not have a trial.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t know much about junk bonds,” Winnie said. “And anyway …”

  “You know about murder,” the bond broker said, turning to look at them.

  Buster moved closer. “So whaddaya wanna tell us about murder?”

  “What’s the crime when somebody offers you money to kill someone? Conspiracy?”

  “Maybe,” Winnie said. “Probably soliciting murder. Easier to prove.”

  “Okay,” the broker said, and he looked both ways and then down the pier toward the beach. He had seen too many movies! “There’s a doctor that lives on Lido Isle. Out by the end in one of the bigger houses. Cosmetic surgeon with three offices. Done some business with me in the past, and one time we scored pretty big with high yield bonds. So, I did some bragging one time. Said I could arrange anything he ever wanted, from broads to murder. He took me seriously. Wants me to arrange a hit on his wife.”

  Buster asked: “Why’s he want her dead?”

  “Who knows? Money has to be part of it. Always is. Around here anyway.”

  “So if, and I’m saying if, our boss and the D.A.’s office was interested, would you agree to wear a wire and go to your doctor pal and let us record his statements while he offers to hire a hit on his old lady?”

  “I’ll do it!” the bond broker said. “But it’s not going to be easy. When he first mentioned it to me he made me pull up my shirt and even ran his hand inside my belt and down my legs. He frisked me pretty good. I’ve seen part of his portfolio, which is worth about fifteen mil. He’s not stupid.”

  “It can be done without a wire,” Buster said. “But it’s not as easy. We’d have to rely on your testimony.”

  “I’m willing to testify, and I think he’ll hand me the payoff money on the spot. Soon as I give him the IUD.”

  “What IUD?” asked Winnie.

  “Hers. That’s what he wants as proof. I’m supposed to hire a guy to fly to Aspen where she summers. And do the job and remove her IUD and bring it back as proof. He doesn’t want a Polaroid of her dead body, or her wedding ring, or any other goddamn thing. Not even a newspaper report that she’s dead is enough to make him happy! He wants her IUD. Says he’ll pay me on the spot.”

  “How’ll he know it’s hers?” Winnie asked.

  “He put it in. Maybe he marked it or knows the brand. The guy’s a little weird. Anyway, he wants her IUD as proof she’s dead.”

  “Just a sentimental old fool, ain’t he?” said Buster.

  While they took down all of the pertinent information that afternoon on Balboa Pier, and the sun was powering its way westward, a sea gull wheeled and shrieked and dove toward a bait box on the west side of the pier. An Asian fisherman yelled at the gull and chased it just as the bird was getting airborne with his booty. The frustrated gull dropped the fish along with a load of guano. It plopped on Winnie’s right shoulder.

  “I hope this ain’t an omen,” Buster said.

  The deal was to go down in four days. The bond broker’s imaginary hit man was to fly to Aspen that weekend with expense money supplied by the broker, along with instructions as to the wife’s habits and living arrangements. She was to be strangled when she answered the telephone in her bedroom at nine P.M. on Saturday, when he usually placed a call just to make sure she wasn’t out at a disco. The broker’s hit man was to enter with a key supplied by the doctor, and leave the door unlocked when he departed, as though she’d forgotten to lock it.

  The broker middleman was instructed as to removal of an IUD, and agreed to have his man do his best to rape her, either before or after the murder, whichever was easier for him to accomplish. This to supply a better motive for murder. And then the killer was to fly back to John Wayne Airport.

  When the bond broker said that he didn’t know if his man could commit rape either on the dead or soon to be, the doctor said, “Just offer him an extra thousand. He’ll get an erection.”

  The police in Colorado, and the doctor’s wife, were alerted. Everything was arranged for the Saturday night payoff on Lido Isle. The intended victim had had her IUD removed, and as an ironic gesture, had put it in a Tiffany jewel box for presenting to her husband. The box was express-mailed to the Newport Beach Police Department.

  The only thing that went wrong was that the doctor changed the deal to Friday and nobody was ready. The bond broker finally located Winnie at his home number, after trying unsuccessfully to reach him for six hours on Winnie’s day off, telling him that the doctor’s wife had to be killed that night or all bets were off. This caused Winnie to phone Buster at home, speed to the station, pick up the Tiffany box, and meet with the bond broker at a bar on Lido peninsula. They were twelve minutes late getting the bond dealer and the Tiffany box to the one A.M. rendezvous at the four-million-dollar waterfront home on Lido Isle. And they had no backup team.

  The bond broker was inside for less than fifteen minutes. When he came out so quickly, Winnie and Buster figured the doctor hadn’t taken the bait. They followed the broker, who drove to the Lido Isle bridge, as instructed. There, the broker parked his Jaguar XJ-S and waited for the detective car to pull in behind him.

  The cops were astonished when the broker dumped several stacks of currency into Buster’s lap. Then he said, “I did my part. I’m trusting you to blow in the D.A.’s ear for me.”

  Winnie remembered that Buster couldn’t take his eyes off the bucks, and Winnie finally had to say, “Let’s go pop the doc.”

  When they barged into the house, guns drawn, the first thing the doctor said was, “I beg you, gentlemen! Let’s be reasonable!”

  He was dressed in a maroon silk robe and wore monogrammed velvet slippers, blue ones with a gold crest on each toe. He had his hands up facing drawn guns, but he didn’t look terrified, just disappointed.

  Winnie said, “Let’s go in the bedroom and get dressed, Doctor. I have to advise you that you have the right to remain silent …”

  Five minutes later, both cops had holstered their guns and were letting the doctor get ready. They walked him to drawers and closets to retrieve clothing: underwear, a golf shirt, matching slacks and sweater, tasseled loafers. He looked like he was going out for eighteen holes instead of to the slam.

  When he was completely dressed, he went to the dresser and smoothed back his pearl-gray hair with a silver-inlaid brush in each hand. Then he turned and said, “Gentlemen, can we negotiate?”

  “We got nothing to trade,” Winnie said.

  “And neither do you, Doc,” Buster said.

  “Please, gentlemen, may I?” He turned and went to a wall safe inside a huge walk-in closet filled with business suits and shoes. He began turning the dials. Winnie started to say something, but Buster was interested.

  When the surgeon gave the tumbler the final turn and the lock clicked open, Winnie drew his two-inch stainless steel revolver and put the muzzle of the gun on the bone behind the doctor’s left ear.

  “I don’t think there’s a piece in there, partner,” Buster said to Winnie.

  “I assure you there’s not,” the doctor said reasonably, as though he was used to people tapping on his skull with a Smith & Wesson.

  Winnie shined hi
s light in the safe and watched in amazement as the doctor removed stacks of money. One-hundred-dollar bills. Twenty-one stacks. He had an armload when he finished cleaning out the safe. He calmly turned and walked to the king-sized bed and dropped the money on it.

  Then he said, “I want you to know that I’m not attempting to bribe you. One felony crime is quite enough.”

  “What are you attempting to do?” Winnie asked.

  “I’m protecting myself from burglary,” the doctor said. “You’re taking me to jail and someone might break into my house and ransack my safe. I was hoping you might … safeguard this money. You could hold it wherever you like.”

  “Maybe you better put it back in the safe,” Winnie said. “And set your burglar alarm.”

  “There must be a hundred thou here,” Buster said. He walked toward the bed like a priest to an altar. Reverently, was how Winnie remembered it.

  “There must be two hundred and ten thousand,” the doctor said. “But I can make four times that much in the next six or eight months if I don’t lose my license.”

  “You asking us to go outside and ice the junkman?” Winnie asked.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your pal, the junk bond broker. You obviously know he’s working with us. You want us to cap him and dump him in the bay?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” the doctor said, smiling ironically. “He’s set me up.”

  “You’ve set yourself up,” Winnie said.

  “What’s the nature of my crime?”

  “Soliciting murder,” Buster said.

  “Ridiculous. I imagine that that’s a very technical and complicated charge. I mean, my word against his, isn’t it? And I certainly haven’t admitted anything to you, have I? I admit I paid him twenty-five thousand. I owed it for a bond deal he did for me. That gentleman has a very shady reputation in the market. As for me, I’ve never even gotten a traffic ticket. He’s trying to blackmail me.”

  Winnie looked up sharply when Buster, still staring at the pile of money, said, “That’s a lot a Ben Franklins.”

  Winnie said, “Yeah, well, we’re wasting time, so let’s take the doc and …”

  “Tell me, Doctor,” Buster said, “how you gonna continue your plastic surgery practice after we bust you? I mean, you gonna still be able to cut and stitch after the state jerks your license off the wall?”

  “It takes a severe episode of ethical misconduct or moral turpitude for a physician to lose his license in this state,” the doctor said. “I don’t think merely an arrest or even an indictment would justify it.”

  “How about a conviction?” Winnie said.

  The doctor shrugged and said, “Easier said than done. Soliciting murder? I don’t know why he’d say such a thing. But I would imagine that your reports could be a little vague and weak. I know your informer lacks credibility given his reputation. And your personal assessment of his credibility, well, I imagine that if you believed my story you’d write your reports a certain way, and inform the district attorney that the case is probably untenable. If those things come to pass, I probably wouldn’t even be brought to trial. And I’d certainly never be convicted of anything. What do you think?”

  It was Buster, not Winnie, who drew the handcuffs and said, “Time to hook you up,” cuffing the doctor’s hands behind his back. “Siddown on the bed next to the Ben Franklins.”

  Then he turned to Winnie and said, “I wanna talk to you, pardner.”

  He walked Winnie to the doorway leading to the staircase, where they could watch the handcuffed surgeon and still talk. Buster stared at Winnie for a second without speaking. Then he said, “He didn’t offer us a bribe.”

  “The implication is there.”

  “The implication is that we can have it all. All two hundred and ten thou. This guy wants to keep his life-style going. This guy …”

  “Is a bag a pus!” Winnie said. “But since he didn’t really offer us anything directly, let’s just let him tuck his Franklins back in the safe and take him on down and book him for soliciting his wife’s murder. ’Cause he’s getting me so mad I might jist kick him down the fuckin staircase and I think maybe that’s polished granite down there at the bottom in the entry hall and it looks real hard.”

  “But he’s right, Win! We might not be able to make a case against him no matter how hard we try. He’s right about our bond broker. That guy’s a bigger hemorrhoid than this croaker here.”

  “Let’s get the money back in the safe and book this maggot,” Winnie said. “I gotta check out Spoon’s new waitress. I’m sure you got something to do too, don’t you, Buster?”

  Buster stared at his partner for several seconds. Sweat was beading on Buster’s forehead, and Winnie felt his own flesh getting cold and clammy. Then Buster showed his “this-is-just-a-shuck” gleaming white grin. And his violet eyes stopped throwing sparks, and he said, “Sure. I guess we’d never be able to make a case for attempted bribery even if we did pretend to go along with him. That’s what I was thinking we could do, pretend to go along.”

  When they got back inside, Buster was all business. He said, “Okay, Doc, on your feet. You’re gonna witness us puttin your money back and I’m gonna let you set the lock and the alarm. Don’t wanna get accused of not protectin your goods. It’s a shame but I think you’re gonna get your knife taken away. Goddamn Gold Coast tragedy, ain’t it, Doc?”

  For the first time the surgeon looked worried. A tear even formed in his left eye, which made Winnie Farlowe very happy.

  When Winnie finished his story, Tess, who had stood motionless in the shadows the entire time, stepped out into the moonlight.

  “What happened to the doctor?” she asked.

  “Did about ten months,” Winnie said.

  “And the license?”

  “Probably in some other state where they need a guy who’s real hot at sucking out all those pizzas topped with buffalo steak and macadamia nuts.”

  “So you think your friend Buster was on the verge of accepting the money if you’d gone along?”

  “I don’t wanna think so,” Winnie said. “Buster was a good friend. Still is. And a good cop when he wants to be. I don’t like to think he could do business with that sociopathic doctor.”

  “So it appears you’ll live your life as a poor man, Winnie Farlowe,” she said.

  “Guess so,” Winnie said. “Must be written in my genes somewhere. Kismet. Winnie Farlowe’s a …”

  “Straight-ahead guy,” she said, sliding the spaghetti strap chemise off her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor.

  He could see her glasses flash in the moonlight. She took two steps and leaped into bed playfully. She rolled on top of Winnie and took his face in her hands.

  “So am I through after tonight?” he asked. “You dumping me or what?”

  “What the hell makes you think that?”

  “I can’t afford to take you out even for hamburgers except maybe on Thursday night when they drop the price at this joint I know.”

  “So if you’re that broke with no job and no prospects, what do you plan to do about it?”

  Winnie looked up to her, then enveloped her bare torso in his arms, tracing the valley between those health club back muscles. He kissed her shoulder for a moment, thought it over and said, “I dunno. I just don’t know.”

  “You may just have to depend on the kindness of strangers,” Tess Binder said.

  9

  Oasis

  At ten o’clock the next morning, having had a swim and eggs Benedict with Tess Binder at her club, Winnie was back in his apartment trying to put together a suitable wardrobe for a desert weekend. Tess had said she’d pick him up at noon and that he “shouldn’t ask questions.”

  She wasn’t dumping him. She wanted more of what he offered, whatever the hell that was. She said he was funny. She said he made her feel more like a woman. She wasn’t tired of him. Not yet!

  Winnie was tuning the radio on an L.A. jazz station when there was a knock at
the door. He opened it to find Buster Wiles and a huge young cop named Hadley, a rookie he knew only slightly. They were wearing tan shorts and white sneakers with their tan uniform shirts and Sam Browne belts: the outfit of the police department’s beach patrol.

  “I don’t believe it,” Winnie said to Buster. “You?”

  Buster drew out a little towel he’d tucked inside his Sam Browne, mopped his neck and grinned. “Easter week, baby. They need some big beef out here to bust all these Newport Beach felonies.”

  Winnie knew that “felonies” meant writing beer tickets, citations for drinking in public around the Fun Zone and the piers. During Easter week the town’s population of seventy thousand could double, with twenty to thirty college and high school kids crammed into every available rental. Not to mention tens of thousands of day-trippers.

  “Peninsula looks like Calcutta already,” Hadley said. “Million beer cans on the beach.” The young cop had the cylindrical legs of a juvenile elephant, and a back you could shoot snooker on.

  “Like a war zone,” Buster said. “They’re tryin to reinvent the South Bronx with white people.”

  “I didn’t think you’d really leave narcotics,” Winnie said.

  “I told ya I’m through puttin myself in situations where some cretin can spit slugs at me with an Uzi on full auto. Beach patrol, baby. Six miles a tits ’n ass. I mighta had a shot at being a trash cop—pardon me, an environmental services coordinator—but I figure litterbugs in progress’re harder to catch than bank robbers. So I managed to slide into the beach patrol. You should see the new four-wheeler the other team uses for sand safaris. When Hadley’s drivin, he digs those foot-deep trenches around anything bigger’n a thirty-four B cup. Needs a coolie with a shovel fillin in behind him.”