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rage one night. We isolated him, of course, but somebody screwed up on the graveyard shift. He was taken in for a morning shower with the other court transfers. The inmates knew the guy was a cop and they got to him in the showers. Know what they did to him before anyone could stop them?”
    â€œI got a pretty good idea,” Winnie repeated, wishing the judge would stop !
    â€œWell, I guess I never forgot how he looked on that shower room floor. Bleeding like a pig and crying like a woman.”
    Winnie’s instincts told him to keep his mouth shut and let this man have his say. He thought he saw a glimmer of mercy in those ferocious black eyes.
    â€œI’m going to give you five days and suspend it. You’ll pay a fine of close to a thousand bucks and be placed on probation. That means you better not operate a boat if you’ve even walked past a saloon. And you better not appear in public in a drunken condition.” He took a sip of Evian and said, “Don’t thank me. I don’t like to be thanked.”
    Another croak. “No, sir!”
    â€œLucky you’re white. If you were black I’d catch hell for giving you a break, wouldn’t I? You treated Christmas like a seagoing Scrooge, didn’t you? With contempt. ”
    â€œI guess so, Your Honor.”
    â€œIf you get picked up for anything, anything at all related to drunkenness, you’ll do time. Do you understand me, boy?”
    â€œYes, Your Honor.”
    â€œOkay, get outta here and tell your lawyer to can that boring speech.”
    â€œYes, Your Honor,” Winnie said, walking shakily to the door.
    â€œOne more thing,” said the judge, stopping Winnie in his tracks.
    â€œSir?”
    The judge grinned. A chilling grin. Chocolate ice. “Do you know what they say in county jail when somebody farts and the other prisoners hear it?”
    â€œNo, Your Honor.”
    â€œThey say, ‘Still a virgin, huh?’ So every time you’re tempted to booze it up you think about how nice it is to hear yourself fart. Do you understand me, boy?”
    â€œYes, Your Honor.”
    Winnie’s sweaty fingers slipped right off the brass doorknob on the first try. A hairy shudder sidled up his spine like a tarantula. Still a virgin, huh?

4

    Dream Vision
    I t was still warm and balmy at five o’clock in the afternoon. That’s when Winnie got to his apartment on the Balboa peninsula, wanting a drink more than he’d ever wanted one in his life. Wanting it all the more when he pictured Judge Singleton with his James Earl Jones Voice of God, and eyes like a defendant’s bad dream.
    Winnie’s brand-new pinpoint Oxford shirt looked like a bar rag from Spoon’s Landing. He stripped it off and tossed it on the floor with the rest of the week’s laundry. He put on his old baggy Hang Tens, opened two beers, drank the first without stopping and took the other with him out on the porch, where he sniffed the brisk salt air over the peninsula. He gulped down the second beer, shivering when he thought about psychopathic inmates and soundless farts.
    Winnie shook it off, trotted down the steps to the alley behind the apartment house, then jogged barefoot across Balboa Boulevard to the beach, one block away. That block saved him about $300 a month in rent for a cramped “studio” with a daybed.
    He sprinted across the warm white sand and hit the surf without much of a shock. He figured he was greenhousing: Sheer terror followed by utter relief equals one hot body. The ocean felt like Hawaii water to him, not the cold surf of Southern California.
    Winnie plunged through the breakers, enjoying the sting as they slapped against his chest like a wooden mallet smacking fresh squid into tender steaks.
    He knew it was risky to swim out. He’d lived near the beach all his life and understood riptides and undertow, yet he was swimming right toward trouble. Daring the rip? Some surfers two