The Secrets of Harry Bright (18 page)

"Make it two bottles!" the young cop yelled, happy for a bargain.

"Jesus Christ!" Prankster Frank cried. "A spider just did a Greg Louganis in my chili!"

"That's a dirty lie!" J. Edgar Gomez said, but someone had turned up the jukebox and Ethel Merman was screaming about show business louder than any live voice in the saloon.

"Knock that off or I'll eighty-six ya!" J. Edgar Gomez suddenly warned Prankster Frank, Nathan Hale Wilson and the Palm Springs fingerprinter, Dustin Hoffman, who were all holding up cocktail napkins with scores of "9.9, 9.8, and 9.8" written in lipstick at the diving spider who was swimming for his life.

Just as Otto was about to suggest that
O. A.
Jones wasn't going to make it, a young cop with fluffy blond hair tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Sergeant Blackpool?"

"I'm Stringer," Otto said. "He's Blackpool."

"I'm
O. A.
Jones," the kid said.

Sidney Blackpool stared at him. He did look like a surfer.

"Sorry I'm so late," he said. "Sergeant Brickman sent me out to Solitaire Canyon, out to where I found the Watson car. Told me to go over the area one more time to see if there was anything we missed. He said since you guys from Hollywood were coming we oughtta take one last look."

"For what?"

"That's what I asked. For what? He said he'd just like me to go over the area one last time for anything that didn't belong. He was out there with me for a while, and when he went to the station he told me to give it a try fo
r a
n hour."

"Funny he didn't mention it," Sidney Blackpool said to Otto. "He never said you were gonna be late because you were out there."

"Sometimes us small-town boys don't like to look like we're intimidated by you big-city guys."
O. A.
Jones grinned. "He probably didn't wanna say that we'd be real embarrassed if you lucked onto something the wind uncovered after all these months."

"Let's go somewhere we can talk," Sidney Blackpool said. "Got your drink?"

The young cop hoisted a beer bottle and they gave up their bar seats to the delight of Oleg Gridley. The midget darted around the legs of two women and crawled up on the vacant stool before Portia Cassidy could escape.

"You hold that beer bottle like an Olympic torch!" Oleg said passionately.

"E
. T
., go home," she said.

When the detectives finally found a semi-quiet corner in the saloon, Sidney Blackpool said, "Tell us about your call to Palm Springs P
. D
. today. We're checking out a possible Hollywood connection to the death of Jack Watson."

"Okay,"
O. A.
Jones said. "I was in here last night with a couple a guys and one a them said something about `I believe.' Not even sure now what he was talking about. He just said 'I believe.' And it clicked something in my head."

"What's that?" Otto asked.

"Well, when I was lost out there in the desert and heard that guy singing and playing the banjo, I really couldn't say at first what the song was. It seemed like something with 'pretend' in it. The Palm Springs detectives played this old record for me. Nat King Cole. I'd never heard him before."

"You never heard Nat Cole?" said Otto.

mighta, I'm not sure," the young cop said.

Otto rolled his eyes and felt old. As old as murder. "Now you've changed your mind?"

"Well, it's bothered me a lot for several months. See, I started tuning in these hokey Palm Springs stations to listen for old songs. I started doubting that it was 'Pretend.' The voice was . . . well, I tried to tell them. It was like a thin quivery voice. Like you'd hear in old movies about the nineteen-thirties or something."

You were uncertain if it was a live voice or a radio voice or a taped voice?"

"I still can't say for sure. Like, I can't even say if it was a car engine or a truck engine or a bike engine. I was in real bad shape that day in the desert."

"Okay, about last night," Otto said. "Have you ever heard the song 'I Believe'?"

"Today," the cop nodded. "I went to a record store in Palm Springs and found it. Frankie Laine. I bought it and played it. He's pretty good."

"And?"

"And . . . well, I think it's the song but not the voice. At least it was something about believing. Somebody 'believes.' Something like that. I don't know why I ever thought it was 'Pretend.' It's very mixed up in my mind. Well, that's it. I guess it won't help but I wanted the dicks in Palm Springs to know. Now they know. Now you know."

"It's good you're so diligent," Sidney Blackpool said. "Can we buy you a drink?"

"Like to, but I got this girl over there by the dance floor. She promised me a dance."

"Got it," Sidney Blackpool nodded. "You still surf?" "Heard I was a surfer, huh?" The young cop grinned.

"I must be famous. The Desert Surfer they call me." "Ever surf the Wedge at Newport?"

"Yeah! How'd you know about the Wedge?"

"I used to watch surfers at one time."
,
"Maybe I shoulda stayed in Laguna. "
O. A.
Jones shrugged. "Well, I'll call you if anything jells in my head about the music. Know what? I'm starting to like old songs. Hanging around here and all, and listening for that kind a voice I heard." Then he added, "An old kind a voice, you know?"

"An old man's voice?"

"No, I don't mean that. An old style a voice. I'll listen to the Palm Springs stations and try to get you a singer'
s n
ame who had that kind a style. If I do I'll tell Chief Pedroza and he can give you a ring."

"Take care, son," Sidney Blackpool said.

As they were leaving the Eleven Ninety-nine Club for the boozy ride back to their hotel suite, they heard Bitch Cassidy tell Oleg Gridley that she'd like to stuff him in her microwave, causing the lovesick midget to cry out desperately: "Why do you do this to me, Portia? Why do you treat me like I butt-fucked Bambi?"

Chapter
9

"ANOTHER FUN-FILLED EVENING IN THE DESERT RESORT," Otto moaned during the ride back from Mineral Springs. This is about as much fun as a month in Gdansk."

"That sergeant, that Coy Brickman's a strange guy, isn't he?"

"Strange, yeah. I don't like guys that only blink their eyes every other Tuesday. He looks as warm as the ace of spades. Goddamn, this desert's black at night!"

"But look at the stars. Baskets of them. When was the last time you saw that in L
. A
.?"

"When those Samoan stevedores played Ping-Pong with my head. Let's go to the hotel and meet some women . That broad in the Eleven Ninety-nine scared me to death. She had veins on her veins. She looked like the monster that ate Akron. She even had pimples on her teeth. And she was talking to the midget about AIDS! Do you know they're gonna put in a resort hotel for AIDS victims in Palm Springs?"

"That's a last resort," Sidney Blackpool said. "I'd like to stop by the Watson house one more time. I got a question about Jack Watson's Porsche and I can't find the answer in the Palm Springs police report.

"After hearing about AIDS, we gotta go see Harlan Penrod? Keerist, I don't even wanna think about AIDS. Straight people can get it too, ya know. I used to worry about crabs when I'd meet a broad in a gin mill. The thought a AIDS makes the hair on my crabs stand on end! But if we gotta see him I'd rather do it tonight and get it over with. So what about the Porsche?"

"The Watson kid's Porsche was at the house when they found him missing."

"Of course."

"Did you peek in that garage? Big house, small garage. There were three rooms of old furniture and a dune buggy and Oriental rugs and their new Mercedes in there."

"So?"

"So, after they parked the Rolls in the garage, there'd be no room for a Porsche."

"So?"

"That driveway turns. If you park a Porsche or anything else in the driveway, you'd have to back it up and get it out a the way to get at the Rolls."

"So?"

"So nothing, except if there was a kidnapper, did he move the Porsche out? If so, where'd he put it? Or was it maybe parked in the street by Jack Watson that night?"

"Since there's no mention in the reports I imagine it was parked in the street by the Watson kid before he went to bed."

"Remember what Harlan Penrod said about the Las Palmas area? About how dark it is?"

"Yeah."

"I heard a couple a Palm Springs cops in the bar saying that when local folks hear a splash in the swimming pool at night, it's either a raccoon, or a cop falling in chasing a prowler."

"What's that got to do with the Porsche?"

"Would you park a Porsche Nine-eleven on a street that dark and secluded?"

"Not if I wanted to keep the car stereo. Not to mention what it's attached to."

"That's what I wanna talk to Harlan Penrod about.

The more I think about it, I wonder if Jack Watson drove the Rolls out to Mineral Springs of his own free will." And if he did, what would that prove?"

"Not a thing, maybe."

:Has ten grand made you this diligent?"

We 11 have plenty a time for golf, Otto," Sidney Blackpool said.

"Wake me when we get there." Otto scooted down in the seat and adjusted the radio volume. "Rolls-Royces, Porsches, how do I know what rich people do with their wheels? I just wish I could buy a Camaro Z-twenty-eight like a twenty-two-year-old cop. Trouble with working homicide is these whodunits. Least when I worked narcotics we usually knew whodunit, it was just how do we catch him with it. Whodunits make me sleepy."

While Otto dozed during the ride back to Palm Springs under a glittering desert sky, Sidney Blackpool thought of how ten thousand dollars did not make him so diligent. But one hundred thousand dollars a year, and a clean job with Watson Industries with all privileges and perks attached thereto, that made him more diligent than he thought he could still be. He didn't believe there was a chance of an outsider clearing this homicide, but if he went through the motions with sufficient zeal Watson might be impressed.

Victor Watson would need a new director of security whether or not he ever learned who killed his boy. So what if the detective came back from Palm Springs with little more than a golfer's tan? After twenty-one years of blowing bureaucratic smoke as a Los Angeles civil servant he ought to be able to compile a report to make a neurotic millionaire think that he'd made a run at it. Watson was no fool, but overwhelming grief softens up the brain's left hemisphere, oh yes, it does.

Suddenly he noticed that Hildegarde was singing, " 'I'll always be near you, wherever you are. Each night in every prayer .. .

That lets me out, Sidney Blackpool thought. He used to pray as a reflex action. Those millions of little incantations they drill into you in Catholic grammar schools. A
prayer for every occasion. He stopped that long before he lost Tommy, but he still went to mass in those days just to have something to do together with his children. He wondered if that ritual made them closer or drove them farther apart during those last few years when Tommy and Barb lived with their mother and Sidney Blackpool got them only on weekends. Of course adolescents want to be in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods, with their friends and not with their old man on weekends.

What was it Watson said about the bad times? You only remember the bad times. Sidney Blackpool had a thousand bad times to remember after the boy started cutting classes and doing pot and hash and Ludes with the other surfers. Like the time he went to the beach in Santa Monica on a winter day and caught Tommy riding four-foot swells, so loaded he'd left his new wet suit on the beach and didn't even know he was blue from the cold. That one had ended with Tommy shoving his father and running off while a bunch of beach bums threw beer cans and forced the detective to retreat to his car. Tommy was missing for ten days.

Why does a father of a dead son think only of those times? The night dreams were never like that. The night dreams were sometimes wonderful, so wonderful he would awake sobbing into a damp pillow. Too many of those wonderful dreams could kill a man, he was convinced.

The recurring dream hardly varied at all. His former wife, Lorie, and his daughter, Barb, would be playing Scrabble on the floor of the living room, and Tommy, at age twelve, would be watching a football game on television in the den, showing his special sort of chuckling grin whenever the U
. S. C
. band struck up their "Conquest" theme after scoring a touchdown.

In the dream Sidney Blackpool would take his wife aside privately and make her promise not to tell the secret. The secret was that they had re-created Tommy at the most wonderful time, before the rebellion and the misery of adolescence and drugs. The dream was strange in that it was understood that somehow they had willed him back to them, but the dream was unclear as to whethe
r h
e was alive as far as anyone else was concerned, or even if Barb was aware.