The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Otto suddenly changed the subject saying, “Wish I hadn’t buffaloed-up like this. If I was still in uniform, I’d need the jaws of life to remove my Sam Browne. Think I’d look funny in golf knickers?”

  “No funnier’n Pavarotti or Tip O’Neill,” Sidney Blackpool said, turning the radio to an easy-listening station and adjusting the volume just enough to give Otto some competition.

  “You’re thin and you still got hair. It ain’t fair, middle age.”

  “You got several hundred left,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ll get you a toup in Palm Springs.”

  “Marry a rich broad, I could afford a weave.”

  Sidney Blackpool had been teamed with Otto Stringer for only two months and liked him fine except he figured he might have to buy a pair of earmuffs from a TWA mechanic in order to cope.

  “Did you get … philosophical about turning forty, Sidney?” Otto asked.

  “No,” Sidney Blackpool said. He was still forty years old when he last saw Tommy. Sidney Blackpool stopped fearing middle age after that. In fact, he feared nothing.

  “I’m getting that way,” Otto mused. “I think I’m old enough to settle down with a nice ugly rich broad. Wonder if Yoko Ono goes to Palm Springs. I got this fantasy I’d like to skizzle old Yoko in a strawberry field. Tribute to the Beatles, sort of.”

  “That’s very philosophical, all right,” Sidney Blackpool said, kicking the Toyota into fifth and getting a bit less cynical about the vacation. Maybe he could straighten out the duck hook that was wrecking his tee shots lately.

  The hotel was as good as the town had to offer. In the lobby was a tiled fountain with blue and red lights under the water. There was lots of rattan and wicker, and white ceiling fans. The hotel had a baby grand in the bar and ersatz Mexican arches over the balcony and Formica cocktail tables and more hanging ferns than Hawaii. In short, it was just ugly enough to make Otto Stringer say it was absolutely mah-velous.

  While they registered and were waiting for a bellman, Otto ran to a wicker throne chair, put on his sunglasses and said, “Quick! Who am I?”

  “I dunno,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Who are you?”

  “Reverend Jim Jones, dummy!”

  “He shot himself,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Don’t be morbid, Sidney,” said Otto.

  It was a friendly hotel like most in the desert, and like most it looked as though it was designed in the 1950’s, a lousy decade for architecture, but for most desert rats the last decade that was ever worth a damn. This desert attitude was reflected in many ways. When all the tourists went home to Chicago and Canada and Beverly Hills, the desert residents settled back into the Eisenhower era. Though only two hours from L.A. it was definitely not a town for nouvelle pizza topped with Dijon mustard and truffles.

  A man at the registration desk said, “Oh, Mister Blackpool and Mister Stringer? I have a package for you.”

  He disappeared for a moment and came back with a manila envelope that was sealed and taped shut. He handed it to Otto who grinned and winked at Sidney Blackpool. It had to be the money. Victor Watson’s secretary had promised that all hotel expenses and golf arrangements were being taken care of by her and that some “expense money” would be awaiting them in the hotel safe.

  There was the usual Palm Springs mix in the lobby. Conventioneers from Iowa wearing sport jackets that looked battery operated, a William Morris junior agent in for the weekend with his Indiana Jones leather jacket and a copy of Rolling Stone, and several ex-leg breakers from Las Vegas with cigars and diamonds and not a button nose in the bunch. There were also two hookers working the early shift who were pretending to be interested in going for a swim but were flying around the conventioneers like turkey vultures.

  While they were following the bellman up one of two swooping stairways, Otto said, “I used to hear that Palm Springs is where rich Jews go to die.”

  “Yeah, if they can’t stand Cubans and Haitians.”

  “I could die here,” Otto said.

  “Doesn’t matter where you die,” Sidney Blackpool said. “It’s when that matters. And sometimes that doesn’t matter.”

  “Try not to be morbid, Sidney,” Otto said. “Hey, I think I just saw Farrah Fawcett in the lobby!”

  Their suite, which was composed of two bedrooms and two baths, thrilled Otto who tipped the bellman a five in a fit of extravagance. There was an ice bucket waiting, a bottle of pretty good California wine, and a fruit basket, compliments of the manager.

  Sidney Blackpool was testing his king-size bed when Otto came running in through the connecting door, his rosy cheeks gone white.

  “What’s the matter, too much luxury for your little heart to bear?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

  “Sidney!” Otto cried. “Whaddaya think Watson’s giving us for expenses? I mean for a week’s expenses?”

  “Five hundred?” Sidney Blackpool shrugged. “I mean, food and drink here at the hotel’re comp’d so …”

  Otto turned the manila envelope upside down and they fell out on the bed. Twenty of them: five-hundred-dollar bills.

  “I didn’t even know whose picture was on one!” Otto whispered. “Hello President McKinley!”

  “He said we might have to pay for some information, but …”

  “We can’t keep it, Sidney.”

  “Why can’t we?”

  “Ten thou? I don’t have my goddamn pension secured yet! Four years to go, baby.”

  “We’re not being bribed, for chrissake.”

  “Okay, we gotta make a ledger and keep track a every dollar. If we get any leads and pay snitches we gotta keep track.”

  “Are you crazy? We came here to play golf. The investigation’s bullshit!”

  “I know, I know! We gotta give him back at least nine grand. Damn, I got Hershey squirts in my shorts!”

  “I’m impressed by the money, Otto. I mean really impressed. I never had ten grand at one time but …”

  “Okay, okay, but you got a lock on your pension. I don’t. Let’s give him back eight grand. Two we can justify for a week’s expenses. Buying drinks for cops, and buying snitch information, and like that.”

  “Let’s just think about it,” Sidney Blackpool said. “What’s ten K to a guy like Watson? In his office he had more than that invested in a freaking desk that looked like a piece a rotten liver.”

  “Okay, okay, we give back six grand,” Otto said. “I can live with that.”

  “Let’s run down to the bar and get a drink,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I need a Johnnie Walker.”

  “Run down to the bar?” Otto cried incredulously. “Call room service! We don’t have to run anywheres. Shit, I don’t see how we could spend ten grand if we tried. Maybe five. I wonder how much a massage costs in a place like this. I wonder how much you should tip for a massage? I wonder if we could spend that even if we was to try. Maybe seven. Maybe we could justify keeping seven. If we tried. Wait a minute! Didn’t somebody shoot poor old fucking McKinley?”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE BELIEVER

  He’d been called Wingnut since grammar school. The reason was obvious: his ears. Willard Bates looked like a wingnut all right, or like a VW bug with the doors open. For thirteen months he was a cop in Orange County and had nothing but grief, and thought about giving up police work altogether.

  Big problems for Wingnut Bates started there in Orange County two weeks after he finished police training. One afternoon he was driving his patrol car by Disneyland with his training officer riding shotgun. His partner, Ned Grogan, happened to be eyeballing a little cupcake in the crosswalk who was dressed in shorts and a “Kiss” T-shirt for her day in the magic kingdom when suddenly she almost got kissed by a Lincoln with New York plates. It failed to brake for pedestrians and blew by at forty miles an hour.

  Wingnut punched it on the amber light and sailed through a six-lane intersection after the New York Lincoln. His partner tightened his seat belt and said, “Easy, kid. This is only a traffic tic
ket.”

  Wingnut managed to catch the car since the driver was weaving from lane number one to number two and back again even though there were no cars directly in front of him.

  “A deuce,” Ned Grogan griped. “I don’t wanna book a deuce right now. I wanna go get a hot pastrami.”

  He was a deuce all right, so drunk he didn’t see the gumball lights behind and didn’t hear Wingnut toot his horn for a pullover. Wingnut had to blast the siren in the drunk’s ear before the Lincoln made a lurching stop against the curb.

  Wingnut had never booked a drunk driver up to then. He was anxious to give his first field sobriety test and was trying to remember all the instructions without checking his notebook. But Ned Grogan preempted his act.

  “Over there,” Ned Grogan said to the middle-aged tourist who staggered out of the Lincoln. “On the sidewalk before you get killed by another drunk.”

  “Marvin Waterhouse,” the drunk said, trying to shake hands with Ned Grogan. “Hope I wasn’t speeding, Officer. Get a little confused on these California highways. Not like back home.”

  “May I see your license, please?” Wingnut asked, and Marvin Waterhouse looked at the young cop’s freckled nose and said, “You a real cop, sonny?”

  “Just give him the license, Marvin,” Ned Grogan sighed. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “Sure, sure,” Marvin Waterhouse said, making Ned Grogan step back from the blast of 80-proof bourbon. “Was I speeding? I’m very sorry.”

  As Wingnut was about to get into the drunk test, Ned Grogan said, “Look, Marvin, you know and we know you’re too drunk to drive or walk.”

  “I don’t think I’m …”

  “Don’t jive me, Marvin, I’m about to give you a break.”

  “Yes, sir.” Marvin Waterhouse was no fool. “Whatever you say, Officer.”

  “Where’s your hotel?”

  “I’m at the Disneyland,” Marvin Waterhouse said.

  “Okay, now there’s a taxi stand across the street. I want you to lock up your car and get in a cab and go back to the hotel and go to bed. Will you promise me you’ll do that, Marvin?”

  “Yes, sir!” Marvin Waterhouse said. “Right this second.”

  Wingnut was disappointed, but it wasn’t the first time he’d lost an arrest when Ned Grogan wanted a pastrami or an enchilada or something. Wingnut figured his partner’d eat a stray dog.

  As Marvin Waterhouse was starting to stagger into the crosswalk, Wingnut grabbed his elbow and said, “I better help you.”

  Ned Grogan stayed on the far side of the crowded intersection and watched across six lanes of Disneyland traffic as Wingnut Bates, looking like a gun-toting Boy Scout, steered the New York tourist toward the taxi stand.

  And then Marvin Waterhouse made a mistake that lots of easterners make when they come out west for the first time. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill and tucked it inside Wingnut’s Sam Browne belt.

  It happened so fast that Marvin Waterhouse was half inside the cab when Wingnut looked at the money. The street was packed with cars and pedestrians, but nobody noticed Marvin’s gesture of New York gratitude. Except that Wingnut Bates felt a thousand eyes. The guy thought he was a grafter! He’d just been fucking bribed!

  “We don’t do things like this!” Wingnut Bates cried, leaping toward the cab. “You can’t …”

  It was too late. The door was slammed by Marvin Waterhouse and the cabbie drove off.

  “HE BRIBED ME!” Wingnut screamed across the traffic noise to Ned Grogan who was trying to figure out if his rookie partner had gone crackers in the heat.

  “What?” Ned Grogan yelled.

  “I BEEN BRIBED!” Wingnut Bates screamed, running after the taxi, which had crossed the intersection but was stopped by traffic trying to get into the Disneyland parking lot.

  “Wingnut, come back here!” Ned Grogan hollered, but Wingnut was hotfooting across the intersection trying to remember the penal-code section for bribing a public officer. He nearly caused two collisions as cars mashed on their brakes to avoid killing a uniformed cop.

  Ned Grogan was caught on the wrong side of the six-lane intersection with the light timed to accommodate the Disneyland flow. The cop jumped into the patrol unit planning to spin a U-ee and shoot through the traffic, except that the second he pulled out into the lane his patrol unit was clipped by a tourist from Duluth, giving him a whiplash that put him off duty for a week. Ned Grogan managed to drag himself out of the wrecked patrol unit and saw to his horror that a huge crowd had gathered a block north and he could guess why. He picked up the radio and asked for help.

  When Wingnut caught the taxi, the driver was startled. Marvin Waterhouse was very startled.

  Wingnut came puffing up and jerked open the door. “We don’t do this!” he panted. “If I thought you had criminal intent I’d book you!”

  “What’s wrong with you, kid?” Marvin Waterhouse was astonished. “Take it! I want you to buy a drink after work!”

  “I’m not taking your money, mister,” Wingnut cried.

  “Well, I don’t want it. Give it to a cop charity!” Marvin Waterhouse said stubbornly.

  “You take it!”

  “I ain’t taking it!” Marvin Waterhouse said.

  Wingnut tried to shove the crumpled twenty into Marvin Waterhouse’s shirt pocket, but the drunk, on his own turf more or less, got belligerent. “Keep your hands off me!” he bellowed. “I ain’t taking nothing.”

  By the time the first police car arrived at the scene, Marvin Waterhouse and Wingnut Bates were rolling around in the gutter in an all-out donnybrook. A crowd of about sixty people was watching, among them a couple of tanked-up ironworkers who didn’t like seeing a young cop beating on some middle-aged guy with tattoos. The hard hats started mouthing off and one thing led to another.

  When it was over, Marvin Waterhouse and the two ironworkers went to jail for battery on a police officer. The miserable taxi driver lost a day’s pay sitting at the police station dictating statements. Wingnut Bates’s patrol car had to be towed to the garage and Ned Grogan had to be towed to the hospital for X rays and a neck brace.

  The last thing Ned Grogan said as he was being hauled away by paramedics was “Tell Wingnut it was a real honor to witness such a display of law-enforcement integrity. I’m so proud. And tell the little jug-eared fuck, he better be ready to draw soon as I’m on my feet cause when I see him he’s gonna have about as much chance as a Bonwit Teller in Bangladesh.”

  The incident with Marvin Waterhouse made the vice sergeant notice Wingnut Bates. He noticed that Wingnut looked as coplike as Alfalfa in The Little Rascals. Therefore he’d make an excellent undercover operator during the height of the tourist season when they were getting complaints of hugger-mugger whores roiling the out-of-towners, a bad thing in a town that boasted Disneyland.

  When he asked Wingnut Bates if he’d like a temporary vice assignment the rookie jumped at it, especially since Ned Grogan would be coming back to duty soon and Wingnut was feeling as secure as a U-2 flight over Kamchatka, or the U.S. Football League.

  Wingnut thought he was going to like being a vice cop, but they started playing tricks on him right away as vice cops are wont to do. For his first assignment he was told by a pair of older cops that he was going to operate a notorious call girl who posed as an outcall masseuse. She advertised in underground newspapers in a classified ad that said: “If you want me, call the number in this ad and tell me what you want and how much it means to you. Be specific, darling.”

  The reason for the admonition to be specific was that the girl didn’t want any calls from vice cops, and like all hookers she was better acquainted with case law on entrapment than most Orange County lawyers. Any cop who phoned got a recorded message repeating the admonition and asking for a call-back number. The hooker would only then make the call and discuss the transaction. She did most of her business with male tourists so they didn’t mind leaving the telephone numbers of hotel rooms.

&nbs
p; Wingnut was told that they wanted the hooker to become acquainted with his telephone voice so there would be no problem when he showed up later at the rendezvous. He was told by the other cops that he was to get on the telephone and read a carefully worded script.

  After reading the vice cops’ message, Wingnut Bates said, “But isn’t that entrapment, saying stuff like this to a hooker?”

  “Noooo problem,” the vice cops told him. “The laws on entrapment are constantly changing. Just say exactly what’s in the script.”

  So, while Wingnut rehearsed his lines in the squad room until all three vice cops agreed that he had it just right, one of them dialed the hooker’s number. Only it wasn’t the hooker’s number. It was Wingnut’s home number. The vice cop waited until Wingnut’s new bride answered and then said, “Just a second,” into the phone. Only it wasn’t Wingnut’s new bride. It was her mother, Eunice, who didn’t think much of her Penny marrying a cop when she’d had an offer from a Costa Mesa dentist with some prospects in life.

  When Eunice said, “Who is this?” the phone was handed to Wingnut Bates, who delivered his lines. He said, “Hello, lover-buns. Yes, I got your message and yes, I want you to sit on my nose and yes, fifty bucks is ooo-kay! Just talking to you I got me a woody bigger’n a thirty-eight-ounce Louisville slugger!”

  And then Wingnut Bates heard his mother-in-law scream, “Willard! Willard! Have you gone crazy?”

  That was the kind of thing that happened to new vice cops. Once he was operating a complaint about wienie waggers inside a movie house adjoining a dirty bookstore that was disturbingly close to Disneyland. The cinema was showing Doing Debbie Dirty, which starred a surprisingly hot-looking porn star with a supporting cast of thirty-seven guys. They put Wingnut down in the front row with instructions to come running toward the back of the theater if they gave a signal. A signal meant they’d caught some guy milking the anaconda. They also told him they hoped he’d worn a jockstrap because it would be very unprofessional if he were to grow a woody watching Debbie being done dirty.