The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “I’d like to show you a picture of a girl,” Harlan said, and Otto smirked at Sidney Blackpool in that Harlan was now directing the investigation.

  “That’s our pool,” the kid said.

  “The girl was probably a guest,” Harlan said. “Ever see her?”

  “No,” the kid said, “but I know the guy.”

  “You know the guy?”

  “He worked here.”

  “Jack Watson worked here?” Otto pointed at the photo.

  “Not the guy with black hair,” the boy said. “The other guy. The blond guy holding the girl’s feet. His name’s Terry something. He was a parking attendant for a week maybe. Worked nights when I was on days.”

  Five minutes later, the detectives and Harlan Penrod were in the hotel office with the night manager who was digging through the employee files, saying, “Well, we shouldn’t have too much trouble, Sergeant. Hotel employees in this town have to have police identification cards. We send our people to the police when we hire them and they get their pictures and fingerprints taken. Everyone who might have access to rooms, that is: maids, bellmen, even valet parkers.”

  “Our first real lead!” Harlan said, looking as though he’d just found the elusive bird from Malta.

  The young man’s name was Terry Kinsale. He’d given an address in Cathedral City and a local telephone number. He listed his permanent address as Phoenix, Arizona, with a Phoenix telephone number in case of emergency. A sister, Joan Kinsale, was the person to contact.

  The detectives and Harlan Penrod took down the information, thanked the night manager and headed back to the front where the parking boy had the Toyota waiting.

  Sidney Blackpool said, “You did good,” and tipped the kid twenty bucks. They were off to the address given by Terry Kinsale.

  “I don’t know about that address,” Harlan said. “Highway One eleven isn’t a residential zone. Unless maybe it’s a motel, or he lives upstairs of a store or something.”

  It was neither. It was a bar. A gay bar close by two other gay bars.

  “Maybe the name’s bogus,” Otto said.

  “He wouldn’t a been able to keep the job if he had a rap sheet,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Palm Springs P.D. mugged and printed him.”

  “Hey, how about letting me go in alone?” Harlan suggested. “I can show the picture to the bartender and customers. Nobody’s gonna get hicky about me.”

  “Hinky is the word they always use on the cop shows,” Otto said.

  “Yeah, nobody’s gonna get hinky about me. They’ll tell me if they know Terry.”

  “Here’s a twenty for some drinks,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ll be waiting across the street at the other bar.”

  “Don’t get caught cruising!” Harlan said with a naughty smile.

  “Hurry up for crying out loud, Harlan!” said Otto. “I’m getting hungry.”

  After the houseboy was gone, Otto said, “We really going in that saloon?”

  “You wanna wait at the gas station?”

  “One drink I’ll catch AIDS, my luck,” Otto said. “And my lip’ll rot off like a leper on Molokai.”

  “It’s not that kind a disease, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said as they parked on Highway 111.

  The saloon was empty except for a pair of middle-aged men sitting at the far end of the bar bickering about something. The bartender looked about as swishy as Rocky Marciano. His face was a pink-and-white mass of old lumpy tissue.

  “Jesus,” Otto whispered after he took their drink order. “Know what I saw shining there on the top of his face? Eyes. He’s got two of them back in there somewhere.”

  “Lemme have all the quarters and dimes you can spare,” Sidney Blackpool said to the bartender, putting a twenty on the bar. “I gotta make a long-distance call.”

  “Whadda we doing, Sidney, calling Buckingham Palace? This turned into the search for Vera Lynn?”

  “I may as well call Terry Kinsale’s sister in Phoenix while Harlan’s doing his sleuthing. I’ll use the phone booth next door at the gas station.”

  “You leaving me here alone?”

  “Say hello to Mister Goodbar if he drops by.”

  “Hurry back, will ya?” Otto said, inspecting the lip of his bucket glass before sipping the booze.

  “Is Terry all right? Was it an accident?” Joan Kinsale asked, after Sidney Blackpool identified himself.

  “I’m sure he’s okay. We’re trying to find him,” the detective said. “We’re working on the murder of Jack Watson and thought you or Terry might be able to help us.”

  She waited several beats and then the young woman said, “Who?”

  “Jack Watson.”

  “Watson?” she said. “Was that his last name? You mean Terry’s friend Jack? The good-looking guy with black curly hair?”

  “The one with you in the hotel swimming pool,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We have a snapshot of the three a you. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “He’s dead?” Joan Kinsale said. “When?”

  “A year ago June. He was found shot to death in his car.”

  “Terry never mentioned it! But I’ve only heard from him a few times since then. I met Jack when I went to visit Terry for a few days.”

  “Did you ever date Jack?”

  “No, he was Terry’s friend.”

  “Is Terry gay?” the detective asked abruptly.

  “Well, I don’t think so. Not really,” the young woman answered. “He was a little … confused about himself.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “La Jolla. At least he was last time he wrote. Hoping to work at a hotel, he said. No real mailing address. He’s a bit immature, but a really good kid. Everyone likes him.”

  “He ever been in trouble with the law?”

  “Never that I know of.”

  “He use drugs?”

  “Not that I know of. I mean, maybe he smokes a little grass like everybody else.”

  “When did he leave Palm Springs?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Over a year ago, I guess.”

  “If he calls or writes I’d like to talk to him,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m going to give you my office number. They can reach me.”

  Meanwhile, Otto Stringer finished his second drink and was trying to avoid eye contact with a Harlan Penrod lookalike, this one with his own hair, who sat at Otto’s end of the bar nursing a virgin margarita while an Anthony Newley oldie played on the Palm Springs radio station.

  He managed to look directly into Otto’s eyes as he sang it with Tony: “ ‘This is the moment! My destiny calls me!’ ”

  Otto’s eyes slid back in his skull and he ordered another double, AIDS or not, just as Harlan came bubbling into the saloon.

  “I’m onto something!” he whispered breathlessly to Otto.

  “So’s he,” Otto said, pointing to the lip-syncher. “Angel dust maybe. So how’s the life of a secret agent?”

  “Terry Kinsale’s been away and now he’s back in town! He was in the bar Saturday night!”

  In a few minutes Sidney Blackpool returned and began comparing notes with Harlan while Otto’s admirer gave up and started singing to a bogus cowboy in dirty jeans who ordered two beers the moment he sat down.

  “We’ll check with Palm Springs P.D. tomorrow and see if Terry Kinsale’s trying to register for hotel work. Meantime, let’s keep it very quiet, Harlan. He left Palm Springs about the time Jack was killed so this could turn into something.”

  “I think I might die of excitement!” Harlan cried. “But I’ll keep it on the q.t. Where’re we going now?”

  “Otto and I have to go back to Mineral Springs.”

  “We do?” Otto said.

  “Good. I’ve never been up there!” Harlan said.

  “Uh, Harlan, how about you hanging around the gay bars tonight? Ask around about Terry. You might come up with something.”

  “I’ll bet,” Otto muttered

  “You might even come up with Terry,
” Sidney Blackpool said. “Here, this should be enough.” He handed the houseboy four twenty-dollar bills. “You can cab it home afterward.”

  “Okay,” Harlan said, “but let me know tomorrow what we’re working. I would’ve dressed a little less butch if I knew we were coming out here.”

  “Call you tomorrow,” Sidney Blackpool said, as they left Harlan to finish his drink at the bar.

  “So why’re we going to Mineral Springs again tonight?” Otto wanted to know as they drove away.

  “So we can look at it at night. I mean really look at it.”

  “A little town like that? What’s to look at?”

  “I wanna see the road Jack Watson took for his last ride. I wanna see how it looks at night.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “We might get an idea.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any other way to work a whodunit homicide. It’s the way I was trained.”

  “You know, Sidney, I don’t think I’ll ever make a good corpse cop. Maybe you oughtta bounce me over to the robbery detail or something.”

  “You’ll be a corpse cop and a twelve handicapper before I’m finished with you, Otto.”

  “ ‘This is the moment!’ ” Otto suddenly sang. “ ‘My destiny calls me!’ ”

  “That’s the spirit, kiddo,” Sidney Blackpool said, à la Archie Rosenkrantz. “Golf’s a mystery but murder isn’t. You look at a whodunit the way you look at the desert. This desert changes from one minute to the next. Same with a whodunit. But you gotta be able to see it.”

  “Hope I don’t get the spider in my chili tonight,” Otto said. “Looks like we’re dining at the Eleven Ninety-nine Club.”

  Twenty million years ago the Coachella Valley was created by fault action, and today the huge San Andreas Fault runs along the mountains on the north side of the valley. Mount San Jacinto and the Santa Rosas, which partly shelter this valley, are much younger than the neighboring San Bernardino Mountains, less rounded, more dramatic and impressive to the human eye. The bottom of the Salton Sea is 273 feet below sea level, only a few feet higher than Death Valley. In the daylight this desert valley seems lifeless and inhospitable. But the desert at night is quite another story.

  The Santa Rosas are home for 650 bighorns. There are birds as huge as the turkey vulture soaring over open country. There is the great horned owl glowering forever like the boss ayatollah, and there’s the spotted skunk, which can fire its scent while doing a handstand like an Olympian. There is an occasional lion sighted in this country and packs of coyotes everywhere. There are diamond-backs more than six feet in length.

  And there are smaller, more secret night prowlers, the kit fox for one, no larger than a house cat. And kangaroo rats, as cute as chipmunks, with large white tails used for balance as they hop. There are leaf-nosed bats flitting like shadows on the desert floor in the moonlight. There are black widows, scorpions, cockroaches as big as locusts, and 340 species of birds. The desert at night is not at all lifeless. But it can be inhospitable, especially to detectives from Hollywood.

  Sidney Blackpool drove as far as was comfortable into Solitaire Canyon on the main asphalt road. Then he took a flashlight from the glove box and led Otto on foot toward the smaller canyon where the Watson car was found.

  “You didn’t happen to stick an off-duty gun under the seat a your car when we left L.A., did you, Sidney?” Otto asked hopefully.

  “Didn’t think we’d be up against too much physical danger on the links,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “This freaking place’s spooky,” Otto said. “Listen to the wind howl. When it really blows I bet it could turtle the Queen Mary.”

  “It sounds like surf crashing against the rocks,” Sidney Blackpool said. Then he switched off his flashlight and gazed up the canyon toward the lights in the shacks and cottages occupied by outlaw bikers.

  Smoke trees clawed wispily at the wind. On the rocky slope a tree of vertical whips cracked out from the hillside. It was twelve feet tall and the branches floated and wavered in the moaning wind as though it were underwater. All around them were twisted tormented shapes of desert plants and trees, gargoyle shadows. And there were banshee laughs and screams of nocturnal creatures killing and being killed on this perfect November night. Neither detective knew for sure if the demented sounds were made by animals or by those who lived on the road above in the shacks where the lamps flickered in utter darkness.

  “Listen!” Sidney Blackpool said.

  Under a desert willow that would soon have flowers of rose and lavender, they heard the melody of a burrowing owl living in an abandoned coyote den: COO-COO-COOOOOOO.

  Then as Sidney Blackpool stepped closer in the darkness, the owl felt threatened and cried “KAK KAK KAK!”

  Sidney Blackpool stepped yet closer and the owl imitated the buzz of an angry diamondback.

  And two city boys turned tail, hotfooting it toward the road.

  “Kee-rist!” Otto cried.

  “Was that what I thought it was?”

  “What the hell you think it was?”

  “Well, I was reading in the tourist guide that desert creatures can imitate rattlesnakes. It could’ve been a desert impressionist.”

  “A hog’s ass could be kosher, but I don’t think so! And I don’t wanna catch his act again, even if it was Rich Little! Now let’s get out of this freaking place before we get gobbled by buzzards or something.”

  Then they heard it coming: a motorcycle. A Harley came thundering down the dirt road from the shacks at a speed that seemed impossible at night. The driver was obviously very sure of himself or didn’t give a damn.

  Instead of going out the main road, he turned the bike back into the canyon, back by a stand of strange shaggy trees. He stopped the bike and got off. He stood for a moment and peered around in the light from the Harley’s headlight.

  “I got a feeling,” Sidney Blackpool said quietly.

  “You got a feeling what?” Otto whispered.

  “That he’s looking in the very spot where the Watson car was found. I bet it was down in those trees.”

  “My neck hair’s doing the boogaloo and the freak-a-deek,” Otto whispered. “Let’s make a run for the car.”

  “Let’s duck behind the rocks and watch him.”

  “He might catch us and think we’re cops!”

  “We are cops, Otto.”

  “I’m losing my fucking mind! I mean he might think we’re local dope cops. He might shoot first and apologize later after he finds out we’re only harmless homicide dicks from Hollywood … who don’t even have a nine iron to defend themselves with!”

  The biker gave up looking and got back on the Harley, digging it into the sand, which made him get off and rock it out. He was a very big man, that much was certain even at a distance.

  “Too late to run now,” Otto breathed. “Here he comes.”

  The Harley growled toward them at a much slower pace. Then the driver spotted the Toyota far down the road and made straight for it. Both detectives peered over the rocks as he passed, but he punched it and kicked up a dust cloud. They could see his silhouette stop beside the Toyota as he peeked inside for a moment. Then he was off and heading toward the main highway and Mineral Springs.

  As they were walking back toward the car, Otto said, “Sidney, I really want you to get the job with Watson and all, but maybe I don’t want it as much as you want me to want it. I mean, when that biker was jamming by I was maybe two inches from a spiny plant shaped like something that hangs over the top of a French church. One more foot sideways and I’d have more harpoons in me than Moby Dick. Are you listening to me, Sidney? I’m forty years old. I should be an awning salesman in Van Nuys. Now I need some maxi pads. I can’t take this kind a fun no more. Are you listening to me, Sidney?”

  Sidney Blackpool shone the flashlight back down the dirt road toward the stand of shaggy trees. �
��Otto,” he said, “if you were driving a big car out here at night and you wanted to get to that row a shacks up on the canyon wall, you could easily get confused. The road that goes off left toward the houses crosses the other road. Did you notice how it crossed back there where we heard the owl?”

  “You ain’t been listening to me,” Otto said.

  “So it’d be easy to get on the wrong one and keep climbing and not realize you were going the wrong way till maybe the condition of the dirt road gave you a hint. And then it’d be very hard to get a big Rolls-Royce turned around on that trail.”

  “So?”

  “I was wondering. The Palm Springs lieutenant said at first they thought it was an accident. I can see why.”

  “Listen, Sidney. We already discovered that the Watson kid was probably A.C.D.C. Now’re you saying this is a gay version of Chappaquiddick? If so, you got two problems: he was alone when he went over the canyon and he was shot through the head.”

  “I was wondering if the killer shot him and drove him up here maybe trying to go to one a those shacks. And then got himself turned around and … no, that doesn’t work. I forgot the kid was belted in the driver’s seat. Goddamnit, nothing works! It doesn’t make sense no matter how you figure it.”

  “It makes sense only one way, the way it’s been figured all along. The kid was shot. He was driven up here by the killer or killers. He was strapped behind the wheel, but I don’t know why. The car was torched and pushed over the canyon into all that desert shrubbery and it wasn’t found for a couple days. Period.”

  “But there’re so many better places to dump a car with a body in it. Less risky than dealing with a big Rolls up there on that skinny dirt road. I just can’t work it out to have it make sense.”

  “Let’s go over to the Eleven Ninety-nine and eat some grease,” Otto said. “Couple drinks it won’t matter so much to ya.”

  Sidney Blackpool stared up at the canyon wall and listened to the chirp and chatter of desert birds and insects and the yapping of a young coyote loping along a ridge, and beneath it all was the relentless moaning of the wind. He said, “Murder should make sense on some level even if the killer’s nuts.”