The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 11

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,” Sidney 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.

“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.”

“There’s not a cause for every effect,” Otto said. “Life’s a crap game.”

“Partner,” said Sidney Blackpool, “you have to make believe there’s cause and effect at work or you’ll never solve a whodunit.”

“Sidney, I realize an old corpse cop like you has instincts about dead bodies. Just like the buzzards and coyotes and scavengers around these parts. But if you don’t get me fed soon, I’ll be the second cadaver they pull outta Solitaire Canyon.”

“Let’s go get some grease,” Sidney Blackpool said.

At about the time that Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer were in the desert getting faked out of their loafers by a foxy owl, Prankster Frank Zamelli was patrolling the outskirts of Mineral Springs so bored he could spit. He was teamed up with Maynard Rivas but couldn’t get the big Indian cop to go along with anything.

“I’m depressed, Maynard,” he said. “What say we drive by the exterminator’s store, steal the big statue of the Terminix bug and sneak it into the Mineral Water Hotel. Then we could call the maid and say, ‘Come quick! We got a big roach in our room!’ ”

“Paco said no more pranks. You’re starting to wear him down a little bit.”

“But I’m depressed!” Prankster Frank griped as the Indian cruised the main drag watching Beavertail Bigelow staggering against the red light, heading for the Eleven Ninety-nine.

“Good thing Beavertail don’t drive no more,” Maynard Rivas said.

Just then O. A. Jones came blasting by on his way to the station after having booked a drunk driver down at the county slam in Indio. He was trying to get to the Eleven Ninety-nine before the first gaggle of manicurists went home to dinner.

“There he goes,” the Indian said, “taking his end-of-shift O. A. Jones Memorial Roller Coaster Ride. Only thing can stop that guy is a high curb.”

“I’m depressed,” Prankster Frank said again. “You wouldn’t wanna borrow J. Edgar’s catamaran, would ya? We could raise the sails and haul it to the hotel swimming pool. Then we could call J. Edgar and …”

“The possum gag was enough for one night,” Maynard Rivas said. “We’ll be lucky we don’t get beefed over that one.”

“It was worth it,” Prankster Frank said.

He was referring to a call earlier in the evening at No-Blood Alley where one of the old dolls was in a tizzy because an opossum had gotten into her mobile home. Upon spotting the animal she immediately went flying out the door but her cat didn’t make it. When the cops got there the terrible yowling of the cat and hissing of the opossum had died to a dreadful silence.

“Officers,” the old dame wept. “Millie’s inside. The possum probably killed her!”

“Who’s Millie?” Prankster Frank asked.

“My cat!”

Prankster Frank and Maynard Rivas drew their sticks knowing that an opossum can have a nasty temper when riled. Both had worked the desert long enough not to be fooled by any possum-playing either. The little bastards would lie there belly up with tongue lolling and eyes staring as unblinking as Sergeant Coy Brickman’s, and the second you got close they’d come up like a furry knuckleball. Both cops had their clubs cocked and ready.

Prankster Frank crept into the bedroom of the mobile home and heard the soft mewing behind the bed. He’d never heard of an opossum killing a cat but you never knew. The mewing got rhythmic and louder. He crept in after waving Maynard Rivas to stand still. He peeked behind the bed and caught them in the flashlight beam. It was the same as many other sneaks and peeks in his police career, exactly the same.

The opossum had that spotted tabby pressed against the wall and was humping for all he was worth. In fact, Prankster Frank hadn’t seen such a hosing since Johnny Holmes stopped doing porn flicks. He switched off the light, turned and walked back outside with Maynard Rivas.

“Just leave the door open and wait a while,” he told the distraught old dame. “He’ll be through in a few minutes. Of course they might want a cigarette after.”

When the cop told her what was going on in her bedroom, she got mad and said she didn’t like the way he was making light of a tragedy, and she was calling Paco Pedroza about his unprofessional demeanor first thing in the morning.

Afterward, Maynard Rivas asked Prankster Frank if he had to make the crack about the cigarette.

“Maynard, when you get a chance for a line you gotta deliver the line,” said Prankster Frank.

“If you’re Johnny Carson,” the big Indian said. “I don’t want another lecture from Paco. He already said he didn’t appreciate you getting Choo Choo Chester to do his Stevie Wonder smile-and-head-roll when he was jerkin off that rubber dildo in the locker room.”

“I thought it was a panic,” Prankster Frank said. “Old Chester going ‘Ain’t it wooooonderful’ while he’s loping that old rubber donkey!”

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t a sent Anemic Annie in there on a phony errand. Poor old broad.”

“I’m soooorry,” Prankster Frank said. “Hey, tell you what! Let’s drive by Shaky Jim’s just one time! Just one lightweight prank and I’ll call it a night and go to sleep or something.”

“Okay,” Maynard Rivas sighed, pressing the accelerator and heading for the outskirts of Mineral Springs.

There were a few houses scattered in the path of the wind funnel, houses unprotected by eucalyptus. The residents, who got in there for very low rent, usually called it a wrap after one winter of living in the gales. Not so Shaky Jim. He wanted to be out of town but he was afraid of the crank dealers in the canyons. He settled for the wind, but he always had nightmares of being blown, like Dorothy and Toto, clear into another county.

Shaky Jim had lots of fears. He feared that if he got arrested one more time for dealing pot, the cops might contact the welfare people and try to cut off his monthly checks. Knowing this, Prankster Frank liked to cruise down the highway and suddenly whip into Shaky Jim’s driveway. He’d jump on the brakes so hard he’d go into a locked skid, and start yelling and slamming all four doors of the police car like it was the biggest dope raid since the French Connection. After which, Shaky Jim would invariably run to his stash and flush it all-maybe $500 worth of grass, which was all he could afford to deal at one time-thereby clogging his pipes. The local Roto-Rooter man just loved Prankster Frank who had brought him lots of business since joining the Mineral Springs P.D.

Prankster Frank and Maynard Rivas were out there on the highway terrorizing Shaky Jim when Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer came driving by. The detectives looked curiously at the Mineral Springs patrol car, which did a wheelie in the driveway of a lonely house, after which two uniformed cops started slamming car doors and yelling commands in different voices and languages.

“Hands up!” Prankster Frank yelled.

“Más arriba!” Maynard hollered.

“Dung lai!” Frank bellowed, calling on his memories of Vietnam.

And so forth. They yelled nonsense and any gibberish that came to mind and then jumped back in the car ready to do a U-ee and scorch back toward Mineral Springs, except that Sidney Blackpool got out of his Toyota and waved them down.

“Were on a hot call!” Prankster Frank said, figuring a lost tourist needed directions. “We gotta go!”

“Were Blackpool and Stringer from L.A.P.D.” The detective showed them his badge.

“Oh, yeah,” Prankster Frank said, and Maynard cut the engine. “You were in the Eleven Ninety-nine the other night. Heard all about you.”

As he was satisfying the curiosity of the detectives as to what the hell the performance they’d witnessed was all about, Shaky Jim came shaking out of the house in his undershirt and bare feet with his hands high in the air, hands all green from processing pot.

He was younger than Harlan Penrod but not by much. He was smoking a cigarette, or rather, one dangled from his trembling lips.

“I can’t take it no more!” he cried. “I’m moving away. I can’t take it no more!”

“ ‘Shoot if you must this old gray head!’ ” Prankster Frank said. “He gets real dramatic sometimes.”

“I quit! I had enough!” Shaky Jim cried. “I’m moving to Sun City. You can just go wreck Billy Hightower’s business. You ain’t gonna have me to kick around no more.”

Shaky Jim stood like that in the beam of the headlights while the detectives looked on in amazement.

“I think maybe you guys went a little too far,” Otto said. “He’s quoting Richard Nixon.”

“Who’s Billy Hightower?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“A biker lives up in Solitaire Canyon. President of the local chapter of an outlaw motorcycle gang that does nothing but cook methamphetamine and ride their choppers and hogs all over the desert.”

“Why don’t ya never bust Billy Hightower?” Shaky Jim wailed. “He deals more in a week than I made all year. You let the spook slide just cause he was one a you.”

“What’s he babbling about?” Otto asked.

“Billy Hightower’s an ex-cop,” Maynard Rivas explained. “San Bernardino sheriffs, I think. He was fired for knocking his captain into a punch bowl or something at some kind a cop party. He’s a Nam vet like most a the bikers in the gang. A crank dealer. I never heard a any those lowlifes having the class to deal real big. Crystal’s their thing. A lowlife drug.”

“Yes, he does!” Shaky Jim said, approaching the patrol car with his arms still in the air. “Billy Hightower deals big to kids from down Palm Springs. You never bust Billy cause he’s one a your own!”

“Go back to bed, Jim,” Prankster Frank said. “You’re spoiling my prank with all this hollering.”

While Shaky Jim trembled back toward the house, Sidney Blackpool looked up the canyon to the lights twinkling by the dirt roads on the plateau. “Think he’s smoking it or what? I mean, about Hightower dealing to Palm Springs kids?”

“I never heard it,” Maynard Rivas said. “But you never know about Billy. He’s got a little more class than the rednecks he runs with.”

“A brother running with redneck bikers?” Otto said. “An ex-cop to boot?”

“That’s why they like him,” Prankster Frank said. “He knows police work. Also, he can beat the living shit outta any two of them at once. He’s got more redneck admirers than any spade this side a Charlie Pride.”

“He ever come into town?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“Every night just about,” Maynard Rivas said. “Remember the other night at the Eleven Ninety-nine? That dude sporting his colors?”

“Colors?”

“His bike jacket with the Cobras logo on the back. That big mean-looking motherfucker in the corner was Billy Hightower.”

“He drinks in a cop bar?”

“Guess he still likes to pretend,” Maynard Rivas said. “Maybe he’s snooping. Anyway, he behaves himself and don’t bother nobody and nobody bothers him. Course none a us ever sit with him or talk with him or anything. Except Sergeant Harry Bright. He used to always buy Billy a drink. Harry Bright’d see some good in a sidewinder if it had him by the nuts. Harry Bright had a stroke. Ain’t around no more.”

“So we heard,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Back in Solitaire Canyon over to the right there’s a bunch a shaggy trees. Just past the fork in the road, I mean. Was the Watson car found there?”

“Those’re tamarisk trees,” Maynard Rivas said. “Big ol dirty things. They shoot em on sight down the other end a the valley. Yeah, that’s where they found the car all right.”

“We saw a biker out there tonight nosing around,” Otto Stringer said.

“Could be he was dumping a load a drug garbage,” Maynard Rivas said. “There’s always a lot a syringes laying around below those shacks and I don’t think there’s a diabetic up there.”

“Awful dark in the desert at night,” Prankster Frank warned. “I knew a local cop shot his own car to death chasing a burglar. That’s almost suicide, I guess.”

“We gotta go now,” Maynard Rivas said. “Better stay out a the desert at night or that Toyota’s gonna have more dimples than Kirk Douglas.”