The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “He might shoot.”

  “I’m not gonna give him a chance. Soon as he’s inside Harry Bright’s place, I’m gonna announce our presence and tell him the ball game’s over and he might as well come out and talk.”

  “Wonderful!” Otto said, looking down. “This fucking Colt’s not loaded!”

  “Paco should be here any minute,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I just hope he doesn’t pull up at the same time Brickman does, and spook him.”

  “This is an evil fucking case,” Otto said, hefting a flashlight and an empty gun.

  A car turned into the dark street and drove to the end of the cul-de-sac. It was not a police car. There were two kids in it. The car made a U-turn and headed back to the main road. The detectives could hear the coyote voices growing faint. That hunt had passed them by.

  There were other night sounds: the trill of insects, the hoots and chirps and whoops, and the demented yapping in the desert at night. A shaggy tamarisk tree behind Otto started rattling in the moaning wind and scared the hell out of him. He looked fearfully at the gargoyle shapes behind him in the desert, and up at the glittering gems whirling in the pure black air. He thought of bloated buzzards with ugly naked heads, and of writhing deadly serpents that rattled like the trees.

  Sidney Blackpool thought he heard a scrape. At first he believed it was in front of the mobile home. He crept around and looked at the street. Nothing. He was walking back past the door and on impulse gave the knob a turn. It was unlocked!

  The idea of it only half registered. His brain needed a second to signal the potential danger. The man in the mobile home didn’t need a full second. He was crouched and had been ready to escape for several minutes. He kicked that door the instant Sidney Blackpool turned the knob. The door smashed into the side of the detective’s face, jolting him backward. He fought for his feet like a man falling down a flight of stairs. When he landed in the desert garden he didn’t even feel the spines of the jumping cholla cactus.

  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 with the 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.”

  “I 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 the little 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 guess 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 telev
ision 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 silent movie 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

  MAKE BELIEVE

  “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 inches 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.”

  “I 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 were shiny 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 Brickman 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, did 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 Blackpool said.

  “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?”

  “You answer a hypothetical and I’ll answer your hypothetical,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Okay,” said Coy Brickman.

  “Hypothetically, give me a situation where a guy like Harry Bright could murder a Palm Springs kid when the kid was out where he shouldn’t be. What could the kid’ve seen that’d make a cop murder him?”

  “Drinking on duty?”
<
br />   “Don’t fuck with us too much, Brickman,” Otto said. “You already won but don’t fuck with us.”

  “What’s there to win around here anyway?” Coy Brickman’s face was darkening now. “All I can think of is maybe fifty grand from Daddy Watson if you guys hang something on some poor bastard like Harry Bright.”

  “Okay,” Otto said. “Keep all this hypothetical. What could the kid’ve seen in the canyon that’d make Harry Bright smoke him?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Then, in a hypothetical, why would the kid be murdered?” Otto asked. “Give me something Victor Watson might buy.”

  “You want a fifty-thousand-dollar story?” Coy Brickman asked. “Is that what you want?” The cop sat down on the sofa directly across from Sidney Blackpool and said, “You tell me. If that’s what you want.”

  “Yeah, I want a story,” Sidney Blackpool said hoarsely. “A story he’d buy for a lot of money.”

  “Now, that’s different,” Coy Brickman said, riveting Sidney Blackpool with his gray eyes. “I got lots of imagination. Let’s see, how about this: the Watson kid drove daddy’s Rolls up the canyon to maybe score some crank. You want another reason, I’m lost. I can’t think of another reason for him to be up there.”

  “So far so good,” Otto said.

  “It’s a treacherous drive up there. Most guys do it on bikes or in off-road vehicles. If you take a wrong turn you end up on the windy side of the canyon. It blows like a hurricane over there and the road narrows to nothing. When you see that, you got a chance to back up and turn around, but it’d be real tricky to do in a big Rolls-Royce. I think it’d be awful easy to slip on over the canyon and fall maybe eighty or a hundred feet down on the rocks by the tamarisk trees. And those trees could hide anything unless someone happened by.”

  “So far old man Watson might buy that much,” Otto said.

  “Well, for fifty grand I’d have to spin a tall tale,” Coy Brickman said. “How about one about this old cop who gets drunk out there in the canyons. Maybe a cop that lives in a place full of photos of what he’s lost. Ever know a guy that’s lost everything, Blackpool?”