The Secrets of Harry Bright (40 page)

He was aware of saliva turning sour in his throat. Then there were some pulsating flashes. He was aware of Otto running and falling hard and yelping in pain.

"Sidney!" Otto shouted. "Ohhhh, my hands!"

"Otto!" Sidney Blackpool sat up, feeling the stabbing in his face and neck. "Otto, you okay?"

"My hands!" Otto moaned. "I'm in cactus! Goddamn cactus!"

"Me too!" Sidney Blackpool said. "Was it him? Was it Brickman?"

Then they heard the sound of a car engine on the main road as it sped away.

"I dunno, Sidney. He was in dark clothes. Coulda been a police uniform. But I dunno. Ohhh, my fucking hands! I m hurting!"

Both men got to their feet and Sidney Blackpool led the way to the mobile home. The door was hanging open and he reached inside, turning on the light.

No sense worrying about prints," he groaned. "If Brickman takes care a the place, his prints'd be everywhere anyway."

"Maybe we just walked in on a righteous burglary," Otto said. Then he thought that over and added, "Sure. And maybe you're Robin Hood cause you're carrying a quiverful. Sidney, what're we doing in this desert?"

Otto entered the bathroom of the little mobile home. He pulled spines out of his hands and arms and dumped rubbing alcohol over the wounds while Sidney Blackpool ransacked the drawers and closets. He found a wardrobe behind the bedroom near a storage space containing a bicycle and a tire pump. In the wardrobe were six police uniforms with sergeant stripes. He remembered hearing that a desert cop needs six because of summer heat. There was a Sam Browne belt draped over a hook. The Sam Browne held an empty holster.

"Goddamn son of a bitch!" he yelled, kicking the door of the wardrobe closet.

"Okay, so it's gone," Otto said, without being told. "Come in the kitchen and sit. Lemme pull those filthy little needles out."

"See if there's any kind a shoe print on the inside a that door."

Otto heaved a sigh, walked to the door and examined it. He came back with his tweezers poised. "Nothing."

"Son of a bitch!" Sidney Blackpool said. "That miserable fucking . .

"Hold still!" Otto said, extracting the spines from the side of his partner's neck and face, swabbing the area wit
h t
he rubbing alcohol. "Maybe we oughtta go down to Eisenhower Hospital and have them take a look. Are these freaking spines poisonous?"

"No, they're just harmless plants," Sidney Blackpool said, so furious he couldn't light a cigarette.

"Calm down," Otto said. "There's nothing you can do. And far as harmless, there ain't nothing in this desert that's harmless."

shoulda thought about . .

"We're outta our element," Otto said calmly. "There's no sense saying what we shoulda done. Hold still. I almost got the last a those little bastards."

When he finished, Otto put the tweezers and alcohol away and his partner sat in the kitchen trying to get his rage under control.

"I think we oughtta go home tomorrow," Otto said. "I think we oughtta book that fucking Brickman for murder!" Sidney Blackpool said.

"We ain't booking nobody," Otto said. "We got some half-baked theories and that's all we got."

"Let's search the place at least."

"For what?"

"The cassette."

Otto leaned over his partner and with his face six inches away, said, "Give . . . it . . . up! Don't you hear me? The tape is meaningless now. Jones can't or won't identify Harry Bright's voice. The gun's gone. Brickman's onto the whole thing. And we ain't never gonna know what happened. Do you understand that? Can you get it through your head? I'm outta patience, goddamnit!"

"Okay, you're right. The cassette wouldn't make any difference now. You're right. I'm grasping at . . ."

"Sand. There ain't even any straws to grasp at in this wasteland. Let's go home."

"It's not the desert's fault," Sidney Blackpool said. "It ain't nobody's fault, I'm starting to think," Otto Stringer said.

Both men were resigned to failure, but with a policeman's curiosity, each instinctively took a look around th
e l
ittle mobile home. Otto stepped into the tiny living room saying, "Sidney, check this out."

Photographs. Some in photo cubes, some in gilt frames, some in wood frames. Pictures stuck in the corners of larger framed pictures. There were thirty photographs in the little room, some as large as eight by ten. They were on tables; they filled the small bookshelf; they covered the walls. Eighteen were of Danny Bright and twelve were of Patsy Bright. Harry Bright was present in four of the pictures. Otto picked up a framed family portrait when Danny was about ten years old.

"Nice-looking kid," Otto said. "Looks just like her. She hasn't changed much, I'll have to say that. Of course I didn't see her up close."

Sidney Blackpool felt seventy years old. He walked painfully into the living room and sat in Harry Bright's chair.

He took the picture from his partner and said, "Yeah, she's changed. This's Patsy Bright. This isn't Trish Decker. She's changed."

"Harry Bright," Otto said, looking at the beaming cop. It was a shot of him in the tan uniform of the San Diego police. He was holding Danny in his arms and the boy was wearing his father's police hat. Harry Bright was a strapping, healthy-looking man.

"He looks like Harry Bright," Otto said. "He even smiles like Harry Bright. Now let's get the fuck outta here."

"Brickman rummaged through the cassettes," Sidney Blackpool noted. "I' uess he found it. We better report this to Paco Pedroza.

There were several cassettes and records on the floor beside the television set. A cabinet door was open and there was a modest sound system inside. Two small speakers were wired to the wall over the five-foot sofa.

Otto opened another cabinet door above the television and found a videocassette recorder. He turned it on and switched on the television set. Then he punched the play button. It was an old movie. The volume was turned all the way down and Sidney Blackpool stared at a silen
t m
ovie while Otto went to the telephone and asked the operator for the number of the Mineral Springs police.

The movie was The Enchanted Cottage. Sidney Blackpool remembered it vaguely. Robert Young was a soldier whose face had been disfigured by war wounds. Dorothy McGuire was a plain Jane who was neurotically shy. They fell in love and discovered that whenever they entered their little cottage a miracle happened. He was transformed into what he'd been before the war. She was turned into the lovely young woman he saw in her. In short, they were transformed into Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, two beautiful movie stars. It was a very corny movie. Nevertheless, Sidney Blackpool began watching it with interest. He turned up the volume and even listened to the dialogue.

Otto reached Anemic Annie who said that Paco was at the scene of the pursuit where the sheriffs car and the suspect's car had crashed. Maynard Rivas had been slightly injured. She wasn't expecting Paco back for a while.

Otto took a walk outside, careful to avoid cactus gardens, while Sidney Blackpool continued watching The Enchanted Cottage . Eventually, Otto came back inside. He was exhausted. He looked at his watch and wondered if it would be yet another night of being too late for the hotel dining room. Somehow he wanted just one more dinner in the hotel, and then he was going home to Hollywood whether his partner did or not. But one more meal in the hotel dining room would be very nice. He thought he deserved it.

Otto got himself settled on the sofa while Sidney Blackpool slouched in Harry Bright's easy chair. Otto could see that his partner seemed enthralled with the old movie about people making believe. And people making believe made him think of Harry Bright's song. And thinking of Harry Bright's song made him think of Coy Brickman. And while he was thinking of Coy Brickman he heard footsteps outside the mobile home.

Then the door opened and Otto Stringer said, "I was just thinking about you."

Chapter
17

"PACO TOLD ME TO COME GET YOU GUYS," COY BRICKMAN said. "He figured you'd be here after Annie told him you borrowed a gun to maybe protect you from coyotes. Night shooting in the desert can be tricky."

"You son of a bitch," Sidney Blackpool said, starting to get out of the easy chair until Otto laid his hand on his partner's shoulder.

Otto switched off the videocassette recorder, and Coy Brickman, pretending he hadn't heard Sidney Blackpool, said, "Watching The Enchanted Cottage, huh? That's Harry's favorite movie. Musta seen it a hundred times. I even had to sit through it myself a couple times when Harry was drunk. What happened to your face, Blackpool?"

Sidney Blackpool's jaw was puffy and turning purple from ear to chin. In a swatch, six finches long and an inch wide, were a dozen clotted pinpricks where the barbs had been extracted.

"Sidney fell down," Otto said. "I fell down too. City boys don't belong in the desert."

coulda told you that," Coy Brickman said, staring at Sidney Blackpool with those unblinking gray eyes. Otto looked at Coy Brickman's shoes, but they wer
e s
hiny and clean. He'd had time to brush them. His blue uniform pants were also dust free. His thinning auburn hair was freshly combed. In fact, he looked as though he was ready for inspection, which in a sense he was, Otto realized.

"How'd the door get that crack in it?" Coy Brickman asked. "And how'd you guys get in here? Paco give you a key?"

"Don't push, Brickman," Sidney Blackpool said. "Not too much."

"What're you talking about." Coy Brickman's question wasn't a question at all. "I was told by Paco that you guys have some cockamamy theory about Harry Bright and me smoking the Watson kid. He says you want a ballistics check on our guns."

Then Coy Brickman scared Otto by whipping his revolver from the holster while staring at Sidney Blackpool. He offered the gun butt first. "Careful, it's loaded," he said.

"Fuck you," Sidney Blackpool said, not touching it. "You don't want it? Change your mind?"

"You wouldn't. happen to know where Harry Bright's gun is?" Otto asked.

"Sure," Coy i3rickman said, with what passed for a smile. "It's back here." He walked to the wardrobe, opened it, and said without emotion, "It's gone."

"Whaddaya know," Otto said.

"You say you found the place unlocked?"

"We didn't say that," Otto said.

"Well, (lid you?

"Yeah," Otto said. "We found the place unlocked."

"Then the gun musta been stolen. I told Paco that Harry's keys shouldn't be kept around the station. Too many people come here. The plumber came a couple times. The cleaning lady comes every two weeks. A window washer came and . . ."

-No telling who left the door unlocked," Otto said. "That's right," said Coy Brickman. "Looks like nothing else was taken."

Then for the first time Sidney Blackpool spoke to Coy
Brickman in other than profanity. He said, "Another thing was taken.

"What's that, Blackpool?" Coy Brickman asked, turning those unblinking eyes on the detective.

A cassette. With Harry Bright singing some songs. One a them is a song called 'Make Believe.'

"Yeah," Coy Brickman said. "Paco just told me all about that piece a business. So did
O. A.
Jones. Saw him a little while ago. You been spinning your wheels all over the desert trying to trace a uke and find a cassette? All you had to do was ask me. I bought that uke for Harry's birthday, and I have the tape. I play it for him from time to time."

"You play it for him?" Otto said.

"Sure. I play him lots a music. Harry loves music. You can't be sure if he can understand it now, but I believe he can. Do you know what an intracerebral stroke can do to a man?"

"Maybe we oughtta see what it can do," Sidney Blackpool said. Now he and Coy Brickman were staring at each other with such fury that Otto stepped between and lit his partner's cigarette.

"You wanna see Harry Bright?" Coy Brickman said. "Sure. I'll ask Paco if I can go down to the nursing home tonight. I think he won't mind. He'd probably like you to satisfy yourself. I know I would. So we can see you out of our little city."

"Just for the record," Otto said, "I don't suppose you were up in Solitaire Canyon the day the Watson car was found."

"Heavens no," Coy Brickman said. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"And I don't suppose you knew Harry was given a potentially important tip by Billy Hightower a couple days after that?"

"Harry? No, he didn't tell me anything about Billy Hightower."

"I'd like to ask Harry Bright myself," Sidney Blackpoo
l s
aid.

"Well, why don't we go see him then?" said Coy
Brickman. "You can ask him anything you want. Now how about you guys answering a question for me."

"And what's that?" Otto asked.

"What prompted all this hard-core sleuthing we been seeing? I mean, this is a Palm Springs case all the way. Most detectives I ever knew were always trying to figure out how to give their cases to another jurisdiction, and here you guys are trying to take a case away from Palm Springs. Now I just can't help wondering if maybe Victor Watson said he'd like to give you boys that fifty-grand reward if you came up with something. Could that be what's happening here?"