The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “I need the Schick Shadel Hospital,” Otto said.

  The detectives managed to find space in the center of the dark saloon, and each began scanning the crowd. It was a pub crowd, an eclectic mix of professional, businessman and working stiff, with a few marines and bikers mixed in. And there were lots of young blonds, most of whom wouldn’t accommodate them by turning for a full face look. A cheering group caused Otto to slouch over to a table where seven men were literally sitting on each other’s laps. There was a race in progress. The entries in the race were little plastic windup toys that hopped from one end of the table to the other. All the entries were realistic plastic penises. Each one wore the markings and colors of the owner. Blue ribbons, paper valentines, tiny photos of a lover, all adorned the jolly peckers.

  “Well, at least this reminds me a Hollywood,” Otto said to Sidney Blackpool. “Now if I see Sirhan Sirhan and a William Morris agent arm in arm with the Hillside Stranglers, and they’re all talking a development deal, I’ll know I’m home.”

  A man in his seventies with a mournful face and sagging jowls stared hopefully at a lad with an amused smile who leaned against the wall. The young man was dressed in an oversized street-urchin tunic and winked at the elderly man who mouthed the words of the song coming from the Palm Springs station. It was Marlene Dietrich singing “Falling in Love Again” from The Blue Angel.

  “He even looks like Dietrich,” Sidney Blackpool observed.

  “Her voice is probably a lot deeper,” Otto whispered. “This ain’t gonna work cause I’m about to faint. And if I faint I’m scared I might wake up at the Honeymoon Motel in a slave bracelet and a tutu. They got more fruits around here than an English boarding school.”

  “We gotta give it an hour,” Sidney Blackpool said. “This could be the break.”

  “I know, I know,” Otto said. “I’m just getting all these bad feelings about this whole case. This ain’t a regular investigation. Something very weird’s going on and it ain’t just in this saloon.”

  “You feel it too,” Sidney Blackpool said. And that surprised him. Otto was not the lost father of a lost son. Otto was just a twice-divorced, sixteen-year cop suffering from mid-life crisis and police burnout. Otto was just a run-of-the-mill big-city detective.

  They waited for an hour and were about to leave when Otto said, “Sidney!” grabbing his partner like a beat cop grabs a drunk. “It’s him!”

  The young man was into the Calvin Klein, Santa Monica Boulevard, chic marine, gay fantasy look. That is, his white cotton T-shirt was not bought at Penney’s. The jeans were not Levi Strauss. The leather flying jacket was not U.S. Air Force issue. His haircut resembled a marine buzz but with decorator highlights. Both cops immediately looked behind him for the buyer of the fantasy duds, but the young man was alone.

  The kid obviously didn’t know whom he was to meet, and kept himself prominently in view near the center of the barroom so that the emissary of the forgotten sugar daddy with the Rolex could spot him.

  Terry Kinsale looked at his non-Rolex, then glanced nervously about the bar. Sidney Blackpool walked up behind him and said, “Hi, Terry. It’s me, Sid.”

  “Sid?” He had taffy-colored hair and tight little ears. He was taller than the detectives and looked as fit as a tennis pro. It would be very hard for two over-the-hill cops to handle this kid in this environment, and both knew it.

  “Phil asked me to give you the Rolex, Terry.”

  “Have we met?” the kid asked, studying Sidney Blackpool.

  “You don’t remember, Terry?” the detective said. “That hurts a little bit.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I should remember but …”

  “You were with Phil when I met you at his house in Palm Springs.”

  “Phil …” Terry Kinsale needed lots of help with this one. He looked hopefully at Sidney Blackpool.

  “This is my friend, Otto,” the detective said, as his partner shouldered through a mob of newcomers who were pressing close enough to crack ribs.

  “Hi, Terry,” Otto said. “I heard all about you. Wait’ll you see the Rolex. Sidney, let’s get outta here unless the oxygen masks are gonna drop real soon. I can hardly breathe.”

  “Okay. Let’s go, Terry.”

  “To where?” the kid asked, but he followed them. “Where’s the watch?”

  “At Phil’s. He lives over near the tennis club. Don’t you remember?

  “Is he there?”

  “Phil got married,” Otto said. “To a girl?’

  “Yeah,” Otto said. “That Phil’s a caution. He won’t be able to see you no more, but he did want you to have something to remember him by.”

  “Sure, I think I remember Phil now!” the kid said, knocking himself on the side of the head. “Sorry I forgot. Tell the truth, I just got myself cleaned up. I was pretty heavy into drugs the past year.”

  “Booze is bad enough, I can tell you,” Otto said, sincerely.

  The young man looked disappointed upon seeing Sidney Blackpool’s Toyota. Phil and the Rolex apparently made him expect a richer emissary with new prospects.

  Otto squeezed into the backseat, allowing Terry Kinsale to sit in front. Sidney Blackpool drove toward Palm Springs, not knowing exactly where the police department was, except that it was close to the airport.

  When the detective followed an airport road sign the kid said, “Hey, this ain’t the way to the tennis club! You’re going the wrong way!”

  Otto reached over the front seat with his police badge in his left hand. With his right, he began a pat down. “Just relax, boy,” he said. “We’re Los Angeles police officers and we wanna talk to you.”

  “Police! Hey, wait a minute!”

  “Freeze, or you’re going to sleep for a while,” Otto said, getting a loose choke hold around Terry Kinsale, while Sidney Blackpool speeded up the car to discourage thoughts of jumping.

  Sidney Blackpool helped pat him down with his right hand, driving with his left.

  “What’s this about?” Terry Kinsale said. “What’s this about?”

  Sidney Blackpool found the police station easily enough. He pulled into the parking lot and stopped, turning off the engine and lights.

  Otto said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against …”

  “Hey, I don’t care about that!” the kid yelled. “I wanna know what you think I did!”

  “Quiet down, son,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ll tell you all that in a few minutes.”

  Otto took his arm from Terry Kinsale’s neck and continued the rights advisement with his hand on the door lock. Terry Kinsale slumped dejectedly.

  He responded to all the required questions about constitutional rights and lawyers, and then he said, “I got nothing to hide, sir. I just wanna get this over with, whatever it is. In fact, I was gonna come in here to the police station to register as a hotel worker. I just got a job as a bellman. I don’t do drugs no more and I got a new apartment and a new roommate. I got nothing to hide.”

  “Let’s go inside, Sidney,” Otto said.

  “Just a few questions first,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Let’s talk for a minute. Tell us, Terry, when did you first meet Jack Watson?”

  “Is this about Jack? Wow!” the kid said. “I thought maybe somebody I did dope with last year was, you know, a narc or something. That’s what I thought this was about. Like, maybe some old deal where I sold a couple joints to some guy?”

  The kid was so relieved that he looked happy, which made both cops very unhappy.

  “I shoulda called the police about Jack soon as I heard he was killed. But it ain’t a crime that I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about his death. I was more shocked than anybody.”

  “Where’d you meet him?” Otto asked.

  “At a disco.”

  “A gay disco?”

  “A straight disco. I ain’t gay.”

  “Of course not,” Otto said.

  “No, really. I needed money
last year. I did what I had to do to make money. But I ain’t gay.”

  “Okay, so you met Jack. How’d it happen?”

  “Just talking at the bar. About which girls looked good, and like that. He was my age. Nice guy. College type. He drove me home that night. We became friends.”

  “Did he do drugs with you?” Otto asked.

  “He wasn’t a druggie. Maybe smoked a little grass.”

  “How about crystal?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

  “Not Jack. I did crystal, I admit. Snorted it. I didn’t shoot it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Used to know this biker up in Mineral Springs. Name a Bigfoot. I called him when I wanted crystal.”

  “How long did you know Jack?”

  “About six months. Till he died. I was shocked, and that’s no lie.”

  “How often did you see him?”

  “About two, three weekends a month.”

  “Every time he came to Palm Springs?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did you ever sleep at his house?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever sleep at your house?”

  “Not all night. No.”

  “Boy, I got a headache,” Otto said. “And I’m about to puke all over your pretty jacket. And I’m also about to book you for murder and let the Palm Springs cops sort it out. Now don’t fuck with us! You and Jack were lovers, right?”

  “Not lovers. I’m not gay.”

  “You had … experiences together,” Sidney Blackpool said, double-teaming him with the Mutt and Jeff routine.

  “I guess so,” the kid said.

  “Did he talk about his fiancée?”

  “He didn’t wanna get married. His family was pushing him. His father’s a very strong guy, he told me.”

  “How much did Jack like you?” Otto asked.

  The kid hesitated for a second and stopped looking at his hands and turned to Sidney Blackpool, saying, “Lots more than I liked him. Man, I was running wild at that time. Jack was a serious guy. He had so many problems with his dad and his wedding plans that … I could see Jack and me could never go nowhere. It’d just be a lotta trouble for me, and I didn’t wanna, you know, tangle with his dad. But he … Jack liked me a lot. He was always calling me from college.” Then the kid stifled a sob and said, “And I liked him too. Jack was a good friend. I’d never hurt him.”

  “Tell us about the night Jack was killed,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “About the night he was killed?”

  “Son, I’m feeling more dangerous than an Arab with a truck full a dynamite,” Otto said in the kid’s ear. “My … patience is gone. You were in his Porsche that night!”

  “You know about that?” the kid said, and this time he did sob. “That’s why I left Palm Springs! I was scared something like this’d happen. I was in his car but he wasn’t. I don’t know what happened to him out in that canyon.”

  “Why’d you have Jack’s car?”

  “I lied to him. He told me his housekeeper was outta town that night. He wanted me to spend the night with him.”

  “Keep going, Terry,” Sidney Blackpool urged.

  “I went over there to his house and told him I had to pick up my sister at the airport. I told him she came into town like all of a sudden and I needed to borrow his car. I said I’d take her to a hotel and come back and sleep … and, you know, spend the night at his house. He gave me the keys to the Porsche. Told me he’d be waiting. I never saw him again.”

  “Then what’d you do?” Otto asked.

  “well …”

  “Go on, Terry,” Sidney Blackpool said gently.

  “I wanted to show off the car to somebody.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “To some guy I knew. He was in town on a two-day pass. Some marine I’d met in a … gay bar. I liked him better than anyone. He was my best friend. You know what? Now all I can remember is his name was Ken. That’s what crystal does to you when you use as much as I did in those days.”

  “So what’d you and Ken do?”

  “We went to score some meth. I called Bigfoot but got no answer. So I went ahead and drove on up there to his house in Solitaire Canyon. We got there just when he was coming home from somewheres and he said he didn’t have no crystal. But he goes, ‘You guys sit in your car down at the end a the gravel road and wait.’ But pretty soon this other biker comes up. This huge black guy. He had a shotgun! He told us if we didn’t get out he was gonna kill us and feed us to his dogs. We went real fast.”

  “Keep going. You’re doing just right,” Otto said.

  “I can’t go no further. That’s it. I drove Ken back to my place and I took the car to Jack’s. He wasn’t home so I parked it in front and put the keys in his bedroom.”

  “Now how the hell did you manage that?” Otto asked.

  “I had the house keys on his key ring. In fact he told me that, you know, when I came back I should just come right in and …”

  “And what?”

  “And like … get ready for bed because he’d be … already in bed. Only he wasn’t there. And then I looked in the garage and his dad’s car was gone. That Rolls he always said he hated. I figured he was out looking for me.”

  “Think very carefully,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Did Jack know you sometimes bought meth up there in Solitaire Canyon?”

  “I don’t have to think about it. He knew because he went up there with me the second time I scored. He drove me up in his Porsche.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t a doper.”

  “He wasn’t! But I begged him to drive me. I told him if he took me just once and loaned me the money for the crystal, like, I’d go to a de-tox center and clean up and never do it no more. Just like every doper says.”

  “And that was how long before he died?”

  “Maybe three weeks.”

  “Did he know you hadn’t cleaned up?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

  “He knew but he didn’t wanna know. He pretended to believe me. It was all make-believe, the way we were with each other. Just make-believe.”

  “Wait a minute,” Otto said.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing. Go ahead with the story,” Otto said.

  “That’s the end a my story. I walked from the Watson house in Las Palmas to the gay bar where I left Ken. And we spent the night together. I read about Jack a couple days later.”

  “And what’d you think?”

  “I thought he must a went looking for me in the Rolls and maybe some biker shot him and drove his car off the canyon. They all have guns. They’re all crazy cranked-out animals!”

  “And yet you didn’t call the Palm Springs police?” Otto asked.

  “They started investigating the Cobras soon as the kidnapping stuff blew over! And they said on television a few days after Jack died that the F.B.I. was getting outta the case and the bikers were the best bet. What more could I tell them?”

  “You coulda told them about the guy you scored from. About Bigfoot. Maybe he went to Bigfoot’s looking for you and got wasted. You coulda told them that,” Otto said.

  “I was scared! I didn’t wanna get mixed up in a murder with the Cobras or anybody else!”

  “How about the reward?”

  “What reward?”

  “You didn’t know Mister Watson posted a reward?”

  “When?”

  “About a week after the body was found. After the F.B.I. pulled out.”

  “I was gone then. I went to Miami Beach for a couple months and worked in a hotel. Then I came back to California and got a job in La Jolla. I didn’t hear. How much?”

  “Fifty grand,” Otto said.

  “Fifty … let’s go!” the kid cried.

  “Where?”

  “Let’s go inside! I wanna make a statement! I want my name down in the police file! If it’s Bigfoot, I deserve the reward! Let’s go!”

  Otto Stringer sat back in the seat and held his throbbing head. Sid
ney Blackpool just lit a cigarette and stared out the side window at the police parking lot. Terry Kinsale jumped out of the Toyota, anxious to get on the money list. He had lost his fear of Cobras and homicide cops.

  “Come here, Terry,” Sidney Blackpool said. “What time was it when you were up in that canyon, where the big black biker scared you off?”

  “I don’t know. That was over a year ago.”

  “Try to think,” Sidney Blackpool said wearily. “What time did you say your sister’s plane was coming in when you lied to Jack?”

  “Ten o’clock. I remember saying ten o’clock.”

  “So you got the car at what time then?”

  “Maybe nine-fifteen.”

  “And you cruised the boulevard and you went to the gay bar and found your marine. How much time did that take?”

  “Maybe an hour and a half.”

  “What’d you and the marine do then?”

  “We sat in the parking lot for a little bit. We decided to score the crystal. I called Bigfoot and didn’t get no answer so …”

  “How long did that take?”

  “Fifteen minutes maybe.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we drove to Mineral Springs.”

  “So you got to Mineral Springs about midnight or later?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You didn’t happen to see a burning Rolls-Royce anywhere off to the left of the canyon when you drove up the hill?”

  “You kidding?”

  “Okay. So sometime after you left the canyon, Jack Watson was up there looking for you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Get back in the car, Terry. I’ll drive you home.”

  “I wanna go inside! I wanna make my statement and …”

  “I’ll pass it on tomorrow,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Bigfoot didn’t shoot anybody. He was with a very good alibi witness about that time.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He was with the big black biker.”

  “Maybe they both did it!”

  “The black guy reported you to the police a few days after the car was found. You’re pointing at each other. Now get in the car and I’ll take you home.”

  The young man walked dejectedly to the Toyota, got in and slammed the door. “I want that reward if those bikers got anything to do with it!” he said. “I wanna start a new life!”