Golden Orange by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

the club looked like Cambodian refugees because Morton liked them thin.
    The brunch itself was so uninspired, everyone was bitching. The Arts Society had the gall to serve Belgian waffles, which anyone could get at Denny’s all day. The fact that these waffles were served with strawberries and cream and cold curried chicken made matters worse. That combination had been déclassé for ten years. And the domestic champagne was simply undrinkable.
    Everyone just knew that something as trite as Norwegian salmon poached in a tarragon beurre blanc would be next, and they were right! They could at least have served something simple and light, maybe some grilled trout with braised fennel. The Golden Orange hadn’t seen such sneers and eye rolling since a consortium headed by eastern Jews had moved in on the biggest land development in the area.
    The whispered reminder that the proceeds from the fashion show and champagne brunch were for “the arts” impressed no one. When you’re limited to a thousand calories a day, you’d better be offered more than waffles and lox. Most of the hot mommas managed only a few forkfuls of watercress and shiitake mushrooms.
    There were, however, a lot of happy Mexican busboys and dishwashers who later loaded up on leftovers and guzzled champagne from opened bottles. Though most of them agreed with the hot mommas that the bubbly wasn’t much. Couldn’t touch Dos Equis, Corona, or any beer from Baja.
    After Tess got home that afternoon, she poured herself a diet cola and sat barefoot on her patio, on the ghetto side of the island, facing Pacific Coast Highway. She promised herself she’d never go to another fashion show unless she could afford any silly goddamn piece of New York or Paris or Tokyo trash that struck her fancy. Tess Binder had never felt so poor.
    Valium calmed her sufficiently to pick up the telephone.

    The ten o’clock news had already dealt with the shoot-out in Laguna Beach by the time Buster Wiles arrived at Spoon’s Landing. It was the first fatal shooting involving Newport Beach policemen in more than ten years.
    Guppy Stover lifted her old gray head from her folded arms and greeted him with, “Hey, I saw you on TV. Goddamn killer!” Then she yawned and shut her eyes.
    Knowing how Buster counted calories, Spoon put a glass of light beer on the bar, but Buster said, “We been shootin people all day and whadda I get? Light beer?” Buster was trying to look jaunty but his hands were shaking. “Gimme a Wild Turkey,” he said. “Neat.”
    Winnie Farlowe spotted Buster from his table across the saloon where he’d been watching the Lakers on the big screen. Winnie got up and joined the big cop at the bar.
    â€œSaw your little trauma drama on the news,” Winnie said. “What the hell you doing down there in Laguna anyways?”
    â€œMan, you got off the job just in time,” Buster said. “Guy had an Uzi! I was looking up at death !”
    Guppy Stover popped up again, smoothing her trademark evening gloves and adjusting her red velvet hair ribbon. “What’d it look like?” she asked Buster. “Death?”
    â€œAn Uzi,” Buster said to his drink. “Looks like an Uzi.”
    Unable to visualize an Uzi, Guppy closed her eyes again. Bored and drunk.
    Buster Wiles bared his shockingly white teeth and squinted through one heavily lashed violet eye when he held Spoon’s bucket glass up to the light. Satisfied that it was moderately clean, he settled onto the barstool and reached under his L.A. Raiders warm-up jacket to adjust the ride of his shoulder holster.
    He was forty-four, but still had the iron-pumping build he’d cultivated when he won the surfing competition in Huntington Beach in 1966 before going to Nam. And he’d lost very little of his coppery mane to middle age. The present-day surfers said that Buster wasn’t too hot on a board anymore, but