The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  The first hole was a five par, 483 yarder, which shouldn’t have caused too many problems. Otto was allowed to place his ball 200 yards out, near the drives hit by his playing partners.

  “Now, Otto,” Archie said. “There ain’t nobody watching you so just step up there and look around at the mountains and smell the flowers and think how lucky you are that God gave you this happy day. Just say this to yourself: Aw, fuck it! And if I can’t fuck it, I’ll cover it with chocolate like old Mary See!”

  So Otto stepped up and addressed the ball, letting his arms and forearms and wrists and hands and hips and legs go limp, and thought, “Fuck it or cover it with chocolate.” And he let er fly and heard a dull thunk.

  “Where is it?” Otto asked, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Did it come down yet?”

  “Worm burner,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Bug fucker,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “Not real bad though. You got maybe thirty yards.”

  Archie laid into his shot with a three wood, and his short backswing put it out there nearly 200 yards, leaving him a pitch to the green.

  Sidney Blackpool hit his three wood farther but drew it too much and faced a tricky wedge shot.

  Otto incinerated a battalion of worms and ravished a bunch of bugs before finishing the first hole. In fact, when he landed in the trap on the right side he had his worst moment. Sidney Blackpool and Archie Rosenkrantz both dumped their third shots into the trap on the left, making it three on the beach and everyone moaning.

  Archie blasted his out nicely and it landed twenty-five feet past the pin while Otto stared at his own sand shot and felt his sphincter tighten.

  “Nice out,” Otto said enviously.

  Sidney Blackpool took a bit too much sand but got away with it and his ball landed on the green and took a good roll thirty feet short of the flag. Otto felt his sphincter get tighter.

  “Nice out,” Otto said enviously.

  Then it was his turn. Otto lowered that wedge until it just brushed the sand two inches behind that ball and tried to ignore Renfield’s demented cackle.

  Otto made a solemn vow that he was going to let his entire body relax no matter what happened to the sand shot. And he succeeded. He let his entire body go utterly limp and loose. He was sooo slow. He was sooo loose that he farted.

  “Nice out,” Archie Rosenkrantz said enviously.

  All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Otto started to get better after checking in with a slick seven on the four-par third hole.

  After five holes Archie said, “You got a full house, Otto: three nines and a pair a sevens.”

  On the four-par number six Otto actually sank his second putt for a bogey five. “Fever!” Otto cried. “Gimme a fever!”

  “Five for Otto!” Archie said, writing his score on the steering-wheel card holder. “Now you’re cooking, kiddo. You finally stopped looking like Gary Gilmore with a target pinned to his shirt.”

  “I got a five,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “No blood,” Archie said. “We tied on that one.”

  “Otto, let’s give you the honors.”

  Otto Stringer was so stoked from his bogey that he let it fly, but got under the ball. It was a 200-yard tee shot. Straight up.

  “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” Otto wanted to know.

  “Fair catch,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “No run back on that one.”

  By the time they reached the sixteenth hole, Otto had transferred his clubs onto the golf cart driven by Archie Rosenkrantz. Archie had told them that he was the father of two psychiatrists and Otto figured he might be able to help his golf swing.

  “See, Archie,” Otto said while they waited for a twosome who were lost in the eucalyptus trees. “It’s like I got no muscle memory. My golfing muscles’re forty years old and they already got Alzheimer’s disease.”

  “It’s the muscle in your head’s the problem, Otto,” Archie said, lighting a fresh Havana since the old one looked like spinach. “The toughest six inches in golf is between your ears, right? You take it too serious. I wanna see you loosey goosey up there on the eighteenth tee.”

  “It could be my basal ganglia,” Otto offered. “That’s what allows you to ride a bike or swing a golf club without thinking.”

  “L.T.F.F., Otto.”

  The eighteenth was a beauty, 522 yards looking right at the new clubhouse, which was framed by San Jacinto Peak. The fairway was lined by trees: pepper, palm, pine, willow, olive and rows of eucalyptus. There was flowing oleander on the right, which made Otto tense. He didn’t want to fade into the bushes.

  “I slice into that stuff I may as well eat some and die,” Otto said to Archie.

  “Now you ain’t gonna slice, Otto,” Archie said soothingly. “Straight back and through and easy.”

  “And look at all that eucalyptus!” Otto said. “Enough to feed every koala in Australia.”

  “Now stop those negative thoughts, Otto,” Archie said, while Sidney Blackpool sat with his feet up on the empty seat in his golf cart, looking at a smear of sunlight on the side of the mountain.

  “I sure wanna finish strong,” Otto said. “But what if I duck hook like I did on number three? Sometimes I lose my banana slice and find a duck hook. I might duck hook right into that house on the left.”

  Then Otto looked curiously at the fenced property beside the fairway. It was totally enclosed, with security lights all the way around. There was a sign on one gate that said: “Never mind the dog. Beware of the owner.” There was an American flag flying to indicate that the owner was in residence.

  Otto made the mistake of asking who lived there, after which his golf swing was doomed.

  Sidney Blackpool was startled when Otto ran to his golf cart and shook him by the shoulder.

  “Sidney!” Otto cried. “Do you know who lives over there? Him! Him!”

  “Whom? Whom?”

  “The Boss!”

  “Bruce Springsteen?”

  “The boss of bosses!”

  “Don Corleone?”

  “The chairman of the board!”

  “Armand Hammer or Lee Iacocca?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Ol’ blue eyes himself!”

  “Yeah?” Even Sidney Blackpool looked a bit impressed. “I thought his house might be a little more grand.”

  “Whaddaya want? The guy’s from Hoboken.”

  “Well, he’s not gonna ask us in,” Sidney Blackpool said. “So let’s tee er up and get to the nineteenth where we can all kick our golf anxiety.”

  Archie Rosenkrantz, who was studying Otto’s now bulging eyeballs, whispered sadly, “Otto’s gonna kick anxiety about when Hugh Hefner kicks silk pajamas.”

  Otto turned toward the house three times even before he stuck a tee in the ground. He could almost hear a voice singing, “ ‘Strangers in the niiiight!’ ”

  “There ain’t nobody watching you!” Archie said nervously.

  “Ol’ blue eyes don’t scare me!” Otto said courageously.

  “Scoobie doobie doo, you putz!” Renfield said merrily.

  Otto Stringer jerked the Top-Flite dead left. It caromed off Sidney Blackpool’s golf cart and ricocheted back into the shin of Archie Rosenkrantz who couldn’t duck as fast as the younger men.

  “Oh, my God!” Otto wailed. “I’m as useless as Ronald Reagan’s right ear!”

  Archie Rosenkrantz limped it off for a moment before saying, “Tell you what, Otto. Let’s go to the bar and shmooz. I ain’t never been much for blood sports.”

  After they changed shoes, Otto headed back to the lobby to check the membership roster for celebrities. When he found Archie and Sidney Blackpool in the bar, he said, “Does Gregory Peck come here?”

  “Naw,” Archie said. “He might’ve when the club was new. No more.”

  “Saw the chairman’s name,” Otto said.

  “He don’t play golf,” said Archie. “Maybe eats in the dining room once in a while. I think he got mad cause someone told him not to bring Spiro Agne
w around no more.”

  “So who else you got here?” Otto asked. “Lots a people whose names begin with R-O-S-E-N and G-O-L-D,” Archie said. “Let’s get you a drink.”

  They put away the first cocktail before the bartender had time to ring up the check for Archie to sign. “Hey, kid,” he said to the bartender, “only one ice cube. Whaddaya think this is, a club for the goyim? You wanna work Thunderbird or Eldorado maybe?”

  The bartender grinned and dumped two ice cubes, pouring more bourbon.

  “Less ice than this scuttled the Titanic,” said Archie.

  “This a Jewish club?” Otto asked.

  “Whaddaya think, kid?” said Archie. “Do I look like Henry Cabot Lodge? This club was built by Jews when they wouldn’t let em in Thunderbird. I heard they even turned down Jack Benny. Nowadays they might keep a few Jews but they ain’t allowed to drop kippers on the greens and they gotta tie building blocks to their foreskins till they stretch. Gotta drop their drawers before they even get on the driving range, I hear.”

  “I thought if you just had enough dough, you were like the big monkey, go anywhere you want.”

  “You got a lot to learn, kid. Where do you guys belong anyway?”

  “Well, we don’t actually belong to a club exactly.”

  “We’re cops from L.A.P.D.,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Yeah?” Archie said. “I played a few games with two a your deputy chiefs one time. Over at Hillcrest.”

  “Is it nice as this?”

  “Sure. Gimme your business card,” Archie said. “I’ll have you over some time.”

  “No movie stars around here, huh?” Otto was checking out the people coming from lunch.

  “Maybe see Lucille Ball. Her husband’s a good golfer.”

  “They live here?” Otto asked.

  “Naw, they live in Thunderbird.”

  “Why doesn’t he belong to Thunderbird?”

  “He’s a Jew. He lives there, but he’s a member a this club.”

  “Look here, Archie,” Otto said, “we play in Griffith Park with a bunch a cops. Among em there’s two Mexicans, a brother, and a Jew. Now, you tell me if we all win the California lottery we can’t join a fancy country club together?”

  “People say they wanna be with their own kind, kiddo,” Archie said.

  “But they’re cops. They are my kind!” said Otto.

  “You little mensch,” Archie said. “If you could figure out a golf swing that quick you’d be the best fat golfer since Billy Casper.”

  Otto was truly amazed. “A few million bucks can’t get a leg over the wall if you’re not the same kind?”

  “Easier to get a leg over the Berlin Wall,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “Heading west. How about another drink, kiddo? With one ice cube.”

  CHAPTER 11

  GARGOYLES

  By the time they were on their way back to the hotel Otto felt like he needed a piña colada and a soak in the spa and maybe a nap before contemplating the recent disaster.

  “Sure was a beautiful place,” Sidney Blackpool said, trying to make conversation.

  “I don’t wanna talk about golf.”

  “Otto, it was you that said I take golf too …”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “It’s only a game, Otto.”

  “Like firewalking’s a game. Or playing chicken with Andrei Gromyko. Like a game of twenty questions in an Iranian jail.”

  “At least we met somebody.”

  “I like Archie fine. The people treated us nice. The country club’s beautiful. Now pull over to the curb and park.”

  “What for?”

  “I wanna toss my sticks down the sewer.”

  “So you were a slight failure at golf.”

  “Like Charlie Manson was a slight failure at parole.”

  “Wait till we get back and have a couple drinks. You’ll feel different.”

  “I feel like a brain tumor. They should stick me in a jar for study by future generations.”

  “Maybe you should get a massage.”

  “What’s the use. I probably couldn’t even hit the massage table with my ass.”

  “Have it on the floor. Call a masseuse up to the suite.”

  “That don’t sound like too bad an idea,” Otto had to admit.

  When they got back to the suite the message light on the phone was blinking, so Sidney Blackpool called the operator. The message was from Harlan Penrod.

  “Probably wants another date tonight,” Otto said. “He’s more ready for adoption than Oliver Twist.”

  Harlan Penrod answered by saying, “Hellooooo. The Watson residence. May I help you?”

  “This is Sidney Blackpool, Harlan.”

  “My favorite sergeant since Gary Cooper!” Harlan twittered. “Do I have some news for you!”

  “What is it?”

  “I rummaged through all of Jack’s things and found something stuck in a textbook with school papers and other junk. I don’t imagine the police saw it.”

  “What was it?”

  “A picture of Jack and a girl.”

  “So?”

  “The background’s a swimming pool here in Palm Springs! I recognize it because I used to have a friend who stayed there when he was in town. The reason I know that stupid pool is because one night we got in a fight and he tossed me in and I banged my head on the handrail that’s in the picture. I lost all my clothes and a new pair of shoes and a wristwatch.”

  “Is that all? I mean, a picture of Jack in a hotel pool with a girl?”

  “Well, isn’t that something?”

  “Yeah, it’s worth a look.”

  “Maybe she was some girl from college, maybe not. At least we can check it out.”

  “Okay, Harlan. You gonna be home this evening?”

  “You bet!” Harlan cried. “Do I dress casual or do we try to fit in with the hotel guests? Lots of Vegas hotel workers use that place. Shall I go more for the dated disco king, or trash Vegas flash?”

  “Use your own judgment,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ll be by in a couple a hours.”

  When he hung up, Sidney Blackpool said to Otto, “Can you put off the massage for a while? Harlan’s got a picture of Jack Watson and a girl. I think he wants to sign on as our secret agent.”

  “Haven’t I had enough tragedy for one day?” Otto groaned, flopping down on the sofa. “I feel like the paddock at Santa Anita-all tromped on and covered with shit.”

  “Harlan’s one of our only links to Jack Watson. We can’t afford to make him mad at us.”

  “Do you think the guy with the deerstalker at Two twenty-one B Baker Street woulda stayed in business if he had to humor the Harlan Penrods of this world? I don’t know, maybe I’ll never be a corpse cop. I know I’ll never be a golfer.”

  “You’re on your way to being both, my boy. Take a little rest. I’ll send for some drinks.”

  Harlan Penrod was already waiting when at 6:30 P.M. they pulled up in front of the Watson home. “Sam Spade Junior,” Otto said.

  Harlan wasn’t dressed like Sam Spade but he did have a Burberry trenchcoat over his shoulder and it wasn’t raining. Otto didn’t comment, but rolled his eyes at Sidney Blackpool who, like Otto, was still dressed as a resort golfer.

  “Here it is!” Harlan hopped into the backseat of the Toyota with a small flashlight, which he shone on the photo.

  “I see you came prepared,” Otto said. “Hope you’re carrying a piece. We weren’t expecting that much trouble on this case and we left our iron in L.A.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” Harlan said. “Just Jack’s type. His fiancée’s a blonde like that. Tall like him and leggy.”

  “About all we can do is drop by the hotel and see if anybody at the registration desk might recognize her. Or maybe the cocktail girls who work around the pool.”

  “Boys,” Harlan said. “That hotel uses pool boys and waiters.”

  “Maybe it’ll turn out she was with the other kid,” Sid
ney Blackpool said, pointing at a second young man.

  In the photo, Jack Watson had a girl around the waist and was about to dunk her under. A blond, broad-shouldered young man had her by the feet and was almost out of frame. All three were laughing into the camera.

  “Fine-looking boy, all right,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “A very foxy young lady,” Otto said.

  “Lucky girl,” Harlan remarked. “Two beautiful boys.”

  “Well, it’s all we got to start with,” Sidney Blackpool said, as he drove the Toyota toward Palm Canyon Drive.

  “They didn’t start with much in The Maltese Falcon,” Harlan remarked.

  “I told you, Sidney,” Otto muttered, while Harlan’s eyes glistened like desert stars.

  The hotel wasn’t exactly as upmarket as they would’ve expected. But then, they figured the girl in the photo could just as easily have been an airline stew or a teacher from Orange County or a tourist from Alberta whom Jack Watson met in some night spot.

  There were two pairs of men sitting in the lobby enjoying a cocktail before dinner, and another pair of men breezed through on their way to the dining room. A man and a woman were checking in and had the front desk occupied, so the detectives and Harlan Penrod strolled out by the swimming pool. Another pair of men sat with their feet in the water and sipped mai tais, chatting with the waiter who was dressed in a white shirt and black pants with a red bow tie and red cummerbund. There were a man and woman watching a candlelit game of backgammon being played by yet another pair of men at a poolside cocktail table.

  “Harlan,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Is this a gay hotel?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Is it a mixed hotel?”

  “You might say that,” Harlan nodded. “Did you think it odd that Jack was at a mixed hotel?” Otto asked.

  “Of course not. There’s often a price break at mixed places. Maybe she’s some secretary from Culver City who couldn’t afford a more upscale hotel.”

  “Okay, let’s check with the front desk,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  They showed the picture to everyone working in the lobby and pool area: front desk, bellmen, waiters. Nobody had ever seen the laughing blond girl in the photo, even though it was clearly the hotel pool in which she frolicked. Nor did anyone recognize Jack Watson or the other lad. Harlan Penrod was looking dejected, figuring they were about to take him home, when the valet-parking boy in a blue golf shirt, white shorts and white tennis shoes came running in from the parking lot.