The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 12

There were two women employed by the Mineral Springs Police Department, but only one was a sworn law officer. Ruth Kosko, the department’s sole detective, was known of course as Ruth the Sleuth. The other woman was Paco’s secretary, record clerk and radio operator, Annie Paskewicz, called Anemic Annie from the days when she worked for the crime lab in San Diego, drawing blood from arrestees suspected of being under the influence of drugs.

There seemed to be someone like Anemic Annie in crime labs and county morgues everywhere. She was pallid in winter and summer, not albino white but close, and she’d formerly spent her days drawing and analyzing blood while seeming to have none of her own. Anemic Annie always wore sensible shoes that made clunky footsteps like Boris Karloff, and she was yet another law-enforcement burnout, biding her time for a pension. It was because of her ravaged nerves that she’d left her job in San Diego and come to Mineral Springs. She’d gotten so nervous in mid-life that she couldn’t make a clean hit anymore.

Once when they brought in a junkie for a blood sample, Annie broke the Guinness world record for misses with a syringe. She made twenty-six straight attempts to hit a vein without success. The horsed-out junkie started yelling and screaming about Annie poking more holes than the Three Musketeers, and the narcs who’d arrested the hype decided that Annie’s antics would be deemed cruel and unusual punishment so they had to let the guy go.

People started spreading rumors that poor Annie carried her syringe at port arms. They claimed she had pulled out bone marrow during that world-record performance. Cops said that she had to work nights, and never ate garlic, and slept in a box of dirt with a lid. People warned if you owned her favorite flavor, type AB, not to get your neck too close or you’d be sporting the world’s biggest hickey.

Finally she got sick of it and telephoned a cop she used to know in San Diego who was working as a sergeant at a little police department in the Coachella Valley. An interview was arranged during which Sergeant Harry Bright said, “Paco, you’ll never find a harder-working woman than Annie here.”

Anemic Annie gave up orchids in San Diego for a cactus garden in Mineral Springs, and found that if she wore a big straw hat and long skirts, her pale skin did okay in the dry heat. She was generally much happier than when she was bloodletting down south.

On the evening that Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer were getting the crap scared out of them in the desert, Anemic Annie and Ruth the Sleuth were commiserating at the Mirage Saloon, neither wanting to drink at the Eleven Ninety-nine Club because of all the chauvinist pigs that hung around there. But both knew if they wanted to score with some young hunking cop they had little choice in Mineral Springs other than to boogie over there in the shank of the night.

Ruth the Sleuth was in a snit because she’d worked Mineral Springs for over two years and despite all her sleuthing hadn’t solved a single whodunit homicide. Of course there hadn’t been a whodunit homicide in Mineral Springs during the two years, but Ruth couldn’t hold her bourbon and wouldn’t be mollified.

She said to Anemic Annie, “I bet I could’ve done something by now with the Watson case. They found the body in our town and Palm Springs P.D. never even asked me to come in on the investigation. And now two dicks from Hollywood show up and they don’t ask me either.”

“I wish Gerry Ferraro had got elected,” Anemic Annie griped. “Then they’d treat us different, the bastards.”

They both knew that they’d better leave that kind of talk outside if they eventually sauntered over to the Eleven Ninety-nine to search for a big hunk.

Ruth the Sleuth was a burly young woman, and thus had some appeal to the midget Oleg Gridley who was sitting morosely at the end of the bar, his chin just above bar level where he cried in his beer over Bitch Cassidy, but despaired of winning her heart.

“Harry Bright was the only human being in this sexist organization,” Ruth the Sleuth griped. “Probably replace poor old Harry with another Prankster Frank or something.”

“I’d like to stick a needle in Prankster Frank’s frigging arm and suck him dry,” Anemic Annie said to her fourth Tom Collins, making Ruth the Sleuth wonder if the vampire rumors had some substance.

“I’d like to stick Portia Cassidy’s little pink rose with anything that’d make her love me!” Oleg Gridley cried boozily from his end of the bar.

“You got awful big ears for a teeny guy,” Ruth said. “Whadda we gotta do for some privacy around here?”

“You think men treat you bad?” Oleg wailed, nearly drunk enough for a crying jag. “That’s cause they’re bigger’n you. Everybody’s bigger’n me. Your left tit’s bigger’n my ass!”

“You oughtta clean up your act, Oleg,” Ruth advised, as boozy as the midget. “You get drunk’n you always start talking like a disgusting scum-sucking little creep. That’s why Portia Cassidy hates your disgusting little guts.”

“I just don’t understand the female sex,” Oleg moaned. “I do everything for women and I can’t get love!”

“So get rid of your collection of revolting sex aids you’re always bragging about,” said Anemic Annie.

“I’d do almost anything,” said Oleg Gridley. “I wouldn’t give up my genuine oak chastity belt with the glory hole drilled in it. That’s an antique!”

“Lemme think about your problem,” Ruth the Sleuth said, tapping on the glass with her pencil. Then she looked behind the bar, made a sleuthlike note or two, and grinned at the midget.

“Elementary, my dear Oleg,” she said. “I can help you score with Portia Cassidy.”

“You can, Ruth?” the midget cried. “Oh, I’d be so happy! I’d do anything for you! I’d even put you in the Wamsutta wonderland of my little trundle bed! I’d show you my blow-up donkey with the life-size …”

“Knock that shit off Oleg!” Ruth barked. “That’s your problem, you rotten little slime bucket!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. So what can you do for me?”

“Well,” Ruth said, “you got only one thing going for you, far as I can see.”

“What’s that? My auto-parts store? I made fifty grand last year.”

“Okay, you got two things going for you. You’re rich and you’re pretty cute-looking.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, you’re pretty frigging cute,” Anemic Annie also had to admit, and now she was slurring as badly as Ruth the Sleuth.

“Gee, Annie, I only do the deed of darkness with real big girls,” Oleg apologized. “Rut what’s a little fellatio among friends. Can you put your feet behind your ears?”

“Here’s my plan, you maggot-mouth,” Ruth interrupted, looking behind the bar at the eight-string ukulele that Ruben the bartender had propped up by the cash register. “That uke gives me an idea.”

“What’s the idea, Ruth?” Oleg cried. “Stop teasing me!”

“We’re gonna change your act. What kinda clothes you got at home? Annie, you can help. We’re gonna need to borrow a hairpiece from Edna’s Salon before she closes. We’re gonna make Oleg into somebody Portia can’t resist.”

“We are?” the midget squealed in delight.

And though she could never have guessed it, Ruth the Sleuth had taken a significant step toward her consuming ambition of solving a whodunit homicide.

By the time Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer got to the Eleven Ninety-nine Club, the walls were starting to vibrate. It sounded like someone was lobbing mortars from the top of the mesa and they were landing short, thumping steadily.

“Must be payday,” Otto observed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and J. Edgar won’t have no chili left.”

When they got inside, Wingnut Bates was standing at the bar hoisting his third margarita, complaining about a citizen who was threatening to sue him.

“She said she’s suing me and the city for eighty million dollars!” Wingnut wailed. “I shot her dog in the foot is all. Just as he came to the end of his chain which I didn’t see. All I saw was teeth that don’t let go till you cut the head off!”

“I know that broad,” Nathan Hale Wilson commiserated. “She’s one a those loonies from the Animal Liberation Front. Brought a stray inta the station and says, ‘What’ll you do with this poor little thing, Officer!’ ‘Grind it up and feed it to the other dogs,’ I says. She threatened to sue me, for chrissake!”

“That’s what police work’s come to,” J. Edgar Gomez observed. “Every time a cop cranks on the cuffs too tight some guy shows up in court with a surgical collar, a body cast, and F. Lee Bailey.”

“We don’t get paid enough to put up with lawsuits on top a everything else,” Maynard Rivas groused. “If I was the right brand a Indian I’d walk away from this shit in a minute. If I was an Agua Caliente I’d drive a Ferrari instead of a five-year-old Ford pickup with a transmission whinyer than John McEnroe.”

“I hate poor-mouthing! Gimme your phone number so I can call in a pledge!” yelled Beavertail Bigelow from his seat by the jukebox, causing all the cops to glare at the desert rat for his heartless ways.

“Least police work’s steady and gives you a regular paycheck,” O. A. Jones said, pissing off everybody for looking on the bright side. “I know a cop in Orange County quit to become a movie star and doesn’t make five hundred bucks a year. He’ll spend his old age broke and senile, yodeling his heart out like Johnny Weissmuller in the actors’ rest home.”

“You hear about Selma Mobley, that bubble-assed female cop in Palm Springs?” Nathan Hale Wilson asked. “She’s marrying her lieutenant.”

“I just love cop weddings,” Prankster Frank observed. “They’re about as safe as a San Francisco bathhouse.”

“Oughtta give them his-and-hers saps for those special family disputes,” said O. A. Jones.

“Well, they’re both cops,” Pigasus, the sheriffs chopper pilot, noted. “They oughtta understand each other.”

“Like Snoopy and Cujo’re both dogs,” said Dustin Hoffman, the fingerprint man. “He’s Snoopy, the poor fucker.”

Sidney Blackpool looked around the bar and at first the only black man he saw was Choo Choo Chester. He was making a serious move on a masseuse from a hotel in Rancho Mirage, but she wasn’t treating his complaints about his wife with too much sympathy.

“So how’d you meet your wife?” the girl asked.

“I bought a couple dances with her,” Chester whined. “It was all a mistake!”

“You gonna dump her or what?”

“I can’t,” Chester moaned. “She’s expecting a kid in three months!”

“Really, honey?” the masseuse said. “Is it yours?”

Hoping he might have a chance to steal the masseuse right out from under Chester, Prankster Frank sidled up on her left side and whispered, “Baby, you got a body any eighteen-year-old would want.”

“Yeah,” said the sulky masseuse. “So send me an eighteen-year-old and maybe I’ll loan it to him.”

“You’re about as exciting as a wet dream,” Prankster Frank sneered, moving back down the bar to greener pastures.

“Don’t plan to end up in my diary, funnel-face,” said the masseuse.

J. Edgar Gomez tried to avert a brawl by yelling, “Who wants another round? I’m extending happy hour fifteen minutes!” It brought a chorus of cheers and hoorahs. When people started getting surly, J. Edgar knew to ease them into the next stage.

Sidney Blackpool started searching for another black face, one that rested on a much bigger body. Then he saw him, away from the cops, on the side of the saloon occupied by civilians. He was two tables from Beavertail Bigelow. He was alone. It was the president of the local chapter of Cobras, Billy Hightower.

Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer both ordered a drink and a bowl of J. Edgar’s infamous chili, and this time there was nothing still alive in the bowl. They could have had a table alone near the John Wayne mural, but walked to the side of the saloon where Billy Hightower sat nursing a double vodka, silently watching the revelry.

“Can we join you?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

Billy Hightower studied both men, and then looked toward the table on the other side of the room, then back at the detectives.

“I’m Blackpool. He’s Stringer. We’re dicks from Hollywood Division, L.A.P.D.”

That was enough to make Billy Hightower curious, so he nodded at the empty chairs and they sat. Otto started spooning through the chili for dead bodies.

“Buy you a drink?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I got a drink,” said Billy Hightower.

“We’re working on the Watson homicide,” Sidney Blackpool said, sipping at his Scotch. “The Palm Springs kid they found in the Rolls?”

“Little off your beat, ain’t it?” Billy Hightower said, toying with the double shot of vodka. Up close he looked like a real boozer and Sidney Blackpool had to resist a policeman’s urge to glance at the biker’s enormous forearms for meth tracks.

“We have some information that the Watson kid might’ve been in Hollywood the day he was killed,” Sidney Blackpool said. “That’s how we got involved.”

Billy Hightower looked from one man to the other, then at Otto’s brown gruel. “It ain’t Hollywood, but it ain’t bad,” he said. “Microscopic animals can’t live in it.”

“Hollywood ain’t Hollywood, neither,” Otto shrugged, and he tried a spoonful. It wasn’t bad!

“Hear you used to be on the job,” Sidney Blackpool said. “San Bernardino County sheriffs, was it?”

“Uh-huh,” Billy Hightower said.

“Hear you were in Vietnam,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Served my country and served my county,” Billy Hightower said. “They gonna do a cop benefit for me or what?”

“We asked around about you cause we got a little something on the Watson case. Maybe.”

Billy Hightower watched Sidney Blackpool’s hand reaching into his pocket, the way a cop watches hand movements, the way a crank-dealing outlaw biker would surely watch sudden hand movements. His muscles tightened and relaxed when he realized there could be no threat.

“Just on the remote chance that this kid might’ve come up to the canyons to score some drugs,” Sidney Blackpool said, pushing the picture across to Billy Hightower.

The biker picked up the photo and held it toward the dim light from a shaded wall sconce. Then he lit a match and examined the snapshot more closely. Then for the first time he smiled, displaying large broken teeth.

“So, my tip might work out after all?” he said.

“Your tip?” Otto said, chewing up a mouthful of chili beans.

“Yeah, this is the guy I called in about.”

“The Watson kid?” Sidney Blackpool said, pointing at the picture.

“No, his picture was in the papers. The other kid. This kid.” He pointed a thick scarred forefinger at Terry Kinsale.

“I’m not following,” Sidney Blackpool said. “You musta got this picture from Palm Springs P.D., right?”

“No,” Sidney Blackpool said. “This is a lead we’re developing independent of Palm Springs P.D.”

“Guddamnit!” Billy Hightower whispered. “What is this shit? I gave up this dude three days after they found the body. Soon’s I read about the old man posting a fifty-thousand-dollar reward! If this kid’s the one that smoked Watson, that reward’s mine, guddamnit!”

Sidney Blackpool felt his heart jump. Even Otto Stringer paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

“You help us and if this kid’s our man, you’ll be in line for Watson’s reward,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“I want your word on that, man,” Billy Hightower said.

“You got it. I’ll put it in writing if you want.”

“Was that your Toyota out in the canyon tonight?” the biker asked.

“Yeah.”

“Gimme thirty minutes and then drive back to that spot,” Billy Hightower said. “I’ll send someone to meet you and drive you up the hill to my house. We’ll talk on my turf, not yours.”

“Okay,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“That money’s mine,” Billy Hightower said. “You unnerstand what I’m sayin?”

When he stood, the biker was even bigger than he seemed. He crossed the saloon with six boot-crashing steps and was out the door before Otto had his last bite swallowed.

“We gotta go back out there,” Sidney Blackpool said to his partner who nodded unhappily but didn’t comment.

They hadn’t noticed when Anemic Annie and Ruth the Sleuth entered the bar and selected a 1950’s tune on the jukebox, one that J. Edgar Gomez tolerated because it was old enough. The record started spinning just as Ruth’s husky voice boomed over the din, amplified by a police bullhorn that scared the hell out of everybody.

“Ladies, gentlemen and others!” Ruth announced on the bullhorn. “The Eleven Ninety-nine Club is proud to present the one and only-Elfis himselfis!”

When the first beats of Elvis Presley singing “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog” crashed out of the jukebox, Anemic Annie threw open the front door and Oleg Gridley waddled in.

He was wearing a white satin shirt with collars bigger than his head, a remnant from his disco days. He was wearing the tightest pants he could find from when he still weighed seventy-five pounds and hadn’t ballooned up to eighty-three. He had on a drum majorette’s sequined boots that Annie had borrowed from the daughter of a hairdresser at Edna’s Salon, and on his head was a black pompadour wig with sideburns drawn in black mascara over half his face.

He carried what looked like a midget-sized eight-string guitar but was actually a ukulele borrowed from Ruben, the bartender at the Mirage Saloon.

“ ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,’ ” Elvis sang while Elfis himselfis lip-synched the words, driving the crowd mad with delight.

Oleg Gridley had all the moves. He did a bump. He did a grind. He’d turned his back to the raucous crowd and shook his booty. He was, to Portia Cassidy, adorable.

“This, ladies and gentlemen,” Ruth bellowed over the horn, “is show business!”

Bitch Cassidy jumped off the bar stool and wildly applauded her relentless suitor.

Toward the end of his number, Oleg Gridley parted the crowd and waddled right up to Bitch Cassidy showing her the best miniature Elvis impression the Coachella Valley was ever likely to see.

He lip-synched, “ ‘You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of miiiine!’ ”

And Portia Cassidy nearly swooned right on top of the midget. Ruth the Sleuth was so proud.

The detectives had to sit through one more lip-synched Elvis classic. Oleg stood on a bar stool and “sang”

“Love Me Tender” to Bitch Cassidy who was drunk enough to get all teary-eyed, resigning herself to a midget in her bed.

Only Beavertail Bigelow, drunk and surly as usual, didn’t get a bang out of Oleg’s performance. In fact, he looked downright mad. He staggered out of his chair while the crowd was screaming “Encore!” and demanding a curtain call. He strode right up to the midget and accused him of larceny: “That’s Clyde Suggs’ uke! Where’d you get that uke, you little thug?”

“Get away from me less you want it in your hat!” Oleg warned. “They don’t serve Beefeater highballs in the intensive-care unit!”

“He stole this uke from Clyde Suggs,” Beavertail announced to the crowd, who lost interest since Beavertail was obviously in his fight-picking mode, and in these parts that was as predictable as big wind.

“I found this uke out in Solitaire Canyon,” Beavertail Bigelow accused. “I sold this uke to Clyde Suggs.”

Of course, by now nobody in the saloon was even listening to all this bullshit. Everyone had returned to drinking, dancing, griping, lechering. Except for Officer O. A. Jones, who gave up trying to seduce a Palm Desert bankteller and approached the surly desert rat.

“Where in Solitaire Canyon did you find it, Beavertail?” O. A. Jones asked.

“By the road that goes up the hill. Past the fork.”

“Can I see that, Oleg?” O. A. Jones asked the angry midget who said, “Sure. I don’t know what this rat’s talking about. We borrowed it from Ruben over at the Mirage Saloon. Ruth and Annie were with me.”

“Then he stole it from Clyde Suggs,” Beavertail said, looking for justice somewhere in this miserable fucking world.

“Why don’t you go back to your table, Beavertail,” O. A. Jones said. “I’ll take over this big larceny investigation.”

“Probably let that rich pygmy bribe you outta doing your duty,” Beavertail complained, but did as he was told.

“Be right back,” O. A. Jones said to Oleg Gridley, who was now snuggled up to Portia Cassidy, basking in all the attention, wondering how he could drink the freebies that were being bought by his admiring public.

“See, you don’t have to be an evil disgusting pervert when you put your mind to it,” Portia Cassidy cooed to the now popular midget. “You can be awful sweet and nice.”

“Portia,” Oleg said somberly. “I do have a confession to make. I got a real ugly dingus. One night last year Maxine Farble slammed the window on it when I was sneaking outta her bedroom cause her old man came home early. And the biggest woody I ever get might look to you like a belly button.”

“Size and beauty ain’t important,” said Bitch Cassidy, nuzzling up to the brand-new celebrity, Elfis himselfis. “I don’t care if you gotta jerk off with tweezers.”

Sidney Blackpool was about to tell Otto Stringer that they could get started for the canyon when he looked up and saw the surfer cop holding a ukulele.

“This might be the banjo,” O. A. Jones said.

It took ten minutes to trace enough of the Mineral Springs ukulele odyssey to get an idea that this could indeed be the stringed instrument heard by O. A. Jones one day last year when he discovered the burned corpse of Jack Watson.

“It sounded like a banjo,” the young cop explained.

“It’s a strange-looking uke,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Wish I knew something about ukes. Eight strings. What would a regular uke have?”

“Four, I think,” Otto said.

“Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the case,” O. A. Jones said. “Maybe somebody just lost a uke sometime, back there in the canyon.”

“It’s at least worth checking out,” Sidney Blackpool said.

It was a finely made old instrument. There was a maker’s tag on the head of the ukulele that read C.F. MARTIN amp; CO., NAZARETH, PA. Sidney Blackpool recorded that information in his notebook.

“Tell you what,” he said to O. A. Jones. “Let’s keep an evidence chain intact in case this amounts to something. You hold on to this uke personally. Tell the bartender at the Mirage Saloon you’re going to borrow it for a couple days.”

“I better call Palm Springs detectives tomorrow,” O. A. Jones said.

“Don’t do that … yet,” Sidney Blackpool said, and this caused Otto to do a take. “The detective that worked on the case’s outta town. Don’t tell anyone about this. I’ll make a few calls and if it seems promising I’ll notify Palm Springs. We can book it down there as evidence if and when the time comes. Okay?”

“Okay.” O. A. Jones shrugged, strumming the uke a few times. “Maybe I oughtta try this out on that sexy little bank teller who keeps shining me on. It worked for Oleg.”

“I’ll contact you in a couple days about the uke,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Remember, don’t talk about it to anyone.”

“By the way,” the surfer cop said, “I heard an old-time singer on the Palm Springs station that sounds like the voice I heard that day. Guy named Rudy Vallee.”

Suddenly, Maynard Rivas who had been almost into a crying jag because so many scum buckets were suing cops these days came very close to his first Indian war whoop. “There’s a cricket in my chili!” he screamed at J. Edgar Gomez.

“That’s a dirty lie!” the saloonkeeper yelled back, up to his elbows in slimy water at the bar sink. “There ain’t no crickets in my freaking chili!”

“It’s got a big ugly mouth, a wimpy body, and hops around like a speed freak!” cried the outraged Indian. “It’s either a cricket or Mick Jagger!”

“Lies! Lies!” J. Edgar Gomez hollered.

“My whole life’s nothin but crickets in my chili! Well, I had enough! I’m hirin me a ruthless Jew tomorra morning. I’m gonna own this fuckin joint!” the Indian promised.

They were halfway out the highway toward Solitaire Canyon before Otto spoke. “I don’t like this, Sidney.”

“I’m not fond a driving out here myself, but …”

“I don’t like the way we’re going about this.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“This is a Palm Springs homicide all the way. If that uke has anything to do with it, they should be told. I don’t like withholding evidence. It makes me real nervous.”

“We’re not withholding evidence. This might not even be evidence.”

“That’s not for us to determine. It’s for them to determine. It’s their case.”

“Damn it, Otto, their detective isn’t even in town now. We can check it out. No harm done.”

“We could also keep them informed a what we’re doing, yet we haven’t set foot in their police station.”

“We will if and when the time comes, Otto.”

“This is what the feds used to do to us all the time,” Otto said. “They’d keep us in the dark and try to steal the glory.”

“I’m not doing it for glory, Otto.”

“I know, Sidney,” Otto said, looking out the window at the desert landscape sailing by in the headlight wash. “You’re doing it for money.”

“For the job. I want that job.”

“I’ll play along,” Otto said, “but if this case starts developing any further, I wanna go down to Palm Springs P.D. and tell them everything we’ve learned. I don’t have my pension in the bag yet. I wanna protect my job.”

“Fair enough, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

The asphalt road seemed darker, if that was possible. The moon looked smaller but there were more stars glittering. The moaning wind sometimes shrieked. They drove farther down the asphalt road and saw a large shape on a dirt road to the right. A van was parked in the darkness with its lights out. The van flashed its lights on and off when the detectives got close.

“Must be our ride,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“This is about as safe as the Khyber Pass,” Otto said. “Or a Mexican wedding.”

Sidney Blackpool turned onto the dirt road just past the fork, parked, and locked the Toyota. Otto took the flashlight from the glove box and they waited for the four-wheel-drive van to pull out from the trail where it waited. The van moved forward slowly with the high beam blinding the detectives. Satisfied, the driver dimmed the lights, pulled up to the two men, leaned across and unlocked the door.

“One a you jump in the back,” she said.

The driver was a young woman in her late twenties. Her hair could make a home for three chipmunks and a kangaroo rat. She wore a dirty tank top and a biker’s jacket with the Cobra colors across the back. She looked like a girl who could be working at any lunch counter in the Coachella Valley, and may have been, before being “adopted” by outlaw bikers. She was a pretty girl in a life where they grow old before they grow up, if they ever do.

“My name’s Gina,” she said. “I’ll take you guys to Billy’s.”

Gina didn’t talk during the five-minute ride up the hill. Not until the asphalt was gone and they were on a gravel road that forked left. They passed six houses on the way, every one with a noisy watchdog. The gravel road veered close to the edge of the canyon. There was a small stucco house perched too near the brink, especially for flash-flood country.

“That’s where Billy lives,” she said.

“You live with Billy?” Otto asked.

“I live over yonder, the other side a the canyon,” she said. “Men my old man.”

“He a Cobra?”

“Everybody’s a Cobra. Everybody in my life,” she said.

“Who does Billy live with?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“Whoever’s around,” Gina said, carefully watching the gravel road, which was partially washed away where it looped into a turnabout in front of Billy Hightower’s hillside lair.

Billy Hightower opened the door when the van parked in front, nearly obliterating the backlight with his bulk. He’d removed his Cobra jacket and it was plain that his massive body was going to fat. But he still cut a very impressive figure.

Sidney Blackpool led, and Otto followed behind Gina. Billy Hightower showed his fractured teeth when the detectives entered the little house.

“This ain’t Hollywood neither,” he grinned, “but it’s all mine and paid for. Wanna drink? I got vodka and beer.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Me too,” said Otto.

The detectives sat on a velveteen sofa that no doubt had had a color at one time. There were grease smudges everywhere. Outlaw bikers had left their tracks where they walked, sat, lay. The carpet was uniformly stained by engine grease.

Another thing stained by engine grease was the dirty yellow tank top worn by the girl. The cotton was stretched tight by her big arrogant breasts. She helped Billy get the beer and examined the two detectives in a curious friendly way.

Then she said, “Billy, I’m a mess. Mind if I take a shower? Ours ain’t been workin for a week now and Shamu won’t fix it.”

“Help yourself, babe,” Billy Hightower said, and seemed amused when Gina stripped off the tank top in front of the men.

“Way you can tell a biker momma is her tits’re dirty,” Gina said to the detectives. “From hangin against a guy’s back all day. Just look at my shirt!”

Of course she knew that the detectives weren’t looking at her shirt, which she pretended to be inspecting. They were looking at her breasts, especially the right one, which was decorated by a tattoo of a bearded biker on a Harley. Her right nipple was the bike’s headlight.

“You might get a fifty-grand endorsement from Harley Davidson if they got to see that,” Otto said.

The girl smiled saucily and winked.

“Speaking a fifty grand …” Billy Hightower began, then turned to the girl. “Go take a shower, momma. We gotta talk bidness.”

When they could hear the shower running, Billy Hightower chuckled and said, “She’s real proud a that tattoo. Jist gotta show everybody.”

“Her old man gonna mind her in your shower?” Otto asked, sipping the beer.

“We ain’t possessive out here,” Billy Hightower said. “We left all that back where we came from. Here we share and share alike.”

“After you left police work …” Sidney Blackpool began, but was interrupted by the biker.

“After they fired me.”

“After they fired you, what made you come out here?”

“I jist drifted with the wind.”

“But why a motorcycle club?”

“Because they wanted me,” said Billy Hightower.

“And you ended up president a your chapter.”

“Ain’t that some success story,” Billy Hightower said, draining his beer and thumping into the tiny kitchen to get another. When he returned he said, “They ain’t so bad, these redneck motherfuckers. Jist like most a the guys I was in Nam with. I showed em how to act with cops when they get in a stop and frisk. I taught em a few things about probable cause, and search and seizure. And also, I beat the fuck outta their baddest dudes till they came to love me. Everybody needs a daddy.”

“What about the rumor a you dealing to Palm Springs kids, Billy?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I wish it was true,” said Billy Hightower. “Only thing gets dealt outta these canyons is crystal, and it stays local. I ain’t sayin nothin everybody don’t already know. Nearly every shack up here’s a speed lab. Ain’t nobody gonna get rich manufacturin crank but it ain’t too bad a life.”

“How much is crystal going for out here?” Otto asked.

“Bout sixty-five hunnerd for half a pound a meth plus half a pound a cut. Trouble is, all these jackoff Cobras get hooked behind this shit. Better’n junk, they say. You don’t zombie out for three hours, they say. You kin change the engine on your bike, you kin paint the kitchen, you kin bone your old lady twice. But they never get that job finished when they’re cranked out.”

“You ever shoot speed?” Otto asked.

“Not like these rednecks around here. All these crankers’ll tell you they toot it. Bullshit. They mainline it. I think they oughtta make it legal, though. You wanna reduce taxes? This’d be better’n a state lottery. We buy the makins under the table from legit pharmaceutical houses. When I was a cop I wish I knew what I know now. I coulda retired to Acapulco.”

“Good profit margin?” Otto was still a narc at heart.

“Damn right. Red phosphorus is legal to buy and hydriodic acid too. An idiot could brew it. Then somebody’s always makin it easier for us. The Germans came up with ephedrine, their biggest chemical discovery since Zyklon B. Almost wiped out the Jews with that one. They’re gonna git the rednecks with this one. You use ephedrine and one hydrogen atom and you get meth real easy.”

“Where the hell do you buy a hydrogen atom?” Otto wondered.

“Anyways, I’d rather deal snort,” Billy Hightower said. “You get thirty percent more a gram, and a nicer clientele. But it’s jist too hard for guys like us to get it at a price. So you heard there’s Palm Springs youngsters bein dealt to by Billy Hightower? I ain’t never dealt to juveniles. And that brings me to the subject a this meeting, genlemen. That young dude in the picture you showed me.”

“His name’s Terry Kinsale,” Otto said.

“I don’t know no names a people that buy crystal, but I don’t forget faces. I saw that kid twice, once in a bar down in Cathedral City, once up on this hill the night the Watson kid disappeared. And I reported that fact to the police. So it’s me that should get a reward if he’s the one that iced Jack Watson.”

“How’d you meet him?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I went with one a my guys on a run one night. Delivered an ounce a crystal to some sissies at this gay bar on Highway One eleven. This kid was one a the guys that took delivery.”

“Did he pay you the money?”

“Naw, his sugar daddy did.”

“Who was the sugar daddy?”

“Jist some faggot. My man knew him so it was okay. Some local sissy with lots a green and a thing for pretty young boys like this guy Terry. Terry said he’d like to do business with us from time to time. Said he liked to mix speed with other stuff. His funeral, I figgered.”

“Then you saw him on the night a the murder?”

“There was a little too much bidness goin on at the time to suit me. Too many a those Cat City dudes comin up here to score. I told my people it had to stop, that we’d go down there to do the transactions. But we got this one Cobra, he does real good for hisself down there in the gay bars. Good-lookin dude all covered with leather and flyin his colors, he thrills the shit outta all the sissies and they buy him lots a drinks. That night he wanted an ounce a crank from my stash, but I wouldn’t give it up. He said he had a customer waitin down where the asphalt road runs out. I didn’t like the sound a the whole thing so I walked down there with a shotgun to check it out. It was this guy Terry and another dude.”

“Not Watson?” Otto asked.

“Naw, a jarhead from Twennynine Palms. A freckle-nose skinhead marine shakin in his twenny-dollar shoes. I recognized Terry from the other time.”

“Did you sell them the crank?”

“I told em to get the fuck outta here and don’t ever come up in my hills again or I’d feed their ass to my dog.”

“Whaddaya think he was doing with the marine?” Otto asked.

“Whadda you think?” Billy Hightower said. “He was scorin some crank to get the kid loaded so he could fuck him. What else you do with a nineteen-year-old marine?”

“So after you read about them finding the Watson car down on the other side a the canyon, what’d you think?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I worried it was one a my guys that shot him. Man, we don’t need that kind a heat up here. I’m tryin to get these rednecks organized into some legit bidnesses. Look at the Hell’s Angels. They’re makin toy runs for the poor every Christmas. Pretty soon there’s gonna be Hell’s Angels teddy bears and Hell’s Angels Cabbage Patchers. We can learn from them, I tell my people. Then I fronted them off about the Watson kid. I interrogated em one by one. And I scared the fuck outta the ones that scare easy. I got nothin. Nothin at all. I know none a my people shot the kid. So I think, okay, how about the sissy and the marine? Terry was up on the hill that night. But I also think, well, maybe he’s got nothin to do with it. Maybe some righteous kidnapper snatched the Watson kid and somethin went wrong and they shot him and jist picked our canyon because it was on their way home to Vegas. So I don’t worry about it for a few days.”

“Then what?”

“Then Watson comes on T.V. and offers a fifty-grand reward. Then I say, fuck it, Terry’s a long shot, but for fifty grand you take a long shot. That’s when I made the call.”

“You called Palm Springs P.D.?”

“I don’t know em so I don’t trust em. I called somebody I trust and told him about Terry, and his car, and the gay bar where I met him.”

“What kind a car was it?” Otto asked.

“A Porsche Nine-eleven,” Billy Hightower said. “Black on black. I figured it belonged to one a Terry’s sugar daddies.”

Sidney Blackpool looked at Otto who’d been a cop long enough to play it like aces wired. He sipped his beer and said calmly, “Who was the cop you trusted? Who’d you tell all this to?”

“Only one cop I do trust. Harry Bright over at Mineral Springs P.D. Now I’m trustin you guys cause it’s my on’y chance for the reward.”

“Why’d you trust Harry Bright?” Otto asked.

Billy Hightower smiled and said, “You ever met Harry Bright you wouldn’t ask. If I worked for a guy like that when I was on the job I’d still be on the job. He’s a cop’s cop and he’s a good guy. To this day he’s the only cop ever walked over and sat down and bought me a drink in the Eleven Ninety-nine Club. Till you guys did it tonight. They all think I’m some kind a killer-freak dope fiend or somethin. I met Harry when I first joined the Cobras. He even tried to get me on Mineral Springs P.D. when it was first formed, but you don’t get hired after you put a police captain in jaw wires and plastic surgery. Whether the motherfucker deserved it or not. I spent lots a time with Harry Bright the last six years. Lots a drinks, good cop stories and laughs. Jist him and me.”

“Where? At the Eleven Ninety-nine?”

“I wouldn’t do that to Harry,” Billy Hightower said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want the others to see him bein too friendly with a guy like me. He had his career. He was too close to a pension to get it fucked up. When Harry’d wanna sit with me in the saloon I’d make some excuse and leave. Jist to protect him from any trouble. I’d visit with Harry right here.”

“In this house?”

“Right in this house. Some nights when the graveyard shift needed a sergeant, or one a their guys was sick and Harry had to cover, he’d come up here and talk to me. Park his unit down the road and stroll right on in, in full uniform. One night, I had a guy here almost had a heart attack seein Harry walkin up the road with his five-cell flashlight. We’d sit’n drink, Harry and me. He always drank way too much. I worried more about his job than he did. Sometimes he’d get so tanked he’d sleep in his patrol unit right down where you met Gina.”

“How old a man’s Harry Bright?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I happen to know cause he’s eligible for retirement this Christmas. They’re on the state pension. Two percent a year and go out at fifty years. Harry’ll be fifty years old in December. Poor Harry. He ain’t gonna know it when he does get that pension.”

“When’d he have his stroke?” Otto asked.

“Last March, I think it was,” Billy Hightower said. “I went to see him twice in the hospital. I even cleaned up and wore a suit so I wouldn’t panic the little candy stripers. I couldn’t stand to see him like that. Harry was a big ol corn-beef daddy cop. Like the daddy you always wanted instead a the motherfucker you ended up with. Harry was everybody’s old man on that police force. Paco’s the boss but Harry’s the daddy and Paco listens to him. And now I wanna know somethin from you.”

“Anything we can tell you,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Where’d you get that kid’s picture?”

“From Victor Watson’s house. The houseboy found it and gave it to us in the hopes it might be a lead we could develop.”

“You mean to tell me, in all the reports and follow-ups, there ain’t no mention a me or my tip on that kid Terry?”

“Well there might be,” Sidney Blackpool lied. “We haven’t seen everything. Maybe the Palm Springs homicide dicks just put that in a separate file we haven’t seen. You know how dicks carry notes hanging outta every pocket.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t believe Harry Bright wouldn’t a told them about it. He was too good a cop to ignore a tip like that. So I want you to run this down and get back to me about it. If that kid’s involved in this I got a right to the bread.”

“Okay,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Too bad we can’t talk to Harry Bright.”

“Nobody’s ever gonna talk to Harry again,” the biker said. “Last time I saw him he looked real bad and I heard he’s deteriorated since then. Jist stares straight ahead. Don’t even respond with blinks they tell me. I can’t stand to see Harry Bright like that.”

“Who knows him best?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “I mean, besides his family?”

“Harry ain’t got no family,” Billy Hightower said. “Lives alone in a little mobile home over the other side a Mineral Springs. Always invited me to visit him, but I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want him to be seen with me. Told him I’d come for supper the first week after he had a lock on his pension. Then I wouldn’t give a shit what people said to the mayor or the district attorney. He lived all alone. Divorced.”

“Who knows him best?” Otto asked.

“That’s easy,” said Billy Hightower. “The other sergeant. Coy Brickman knows Harry best. He used to work with Harry at San Diego P.D. years ago. He’s Harry’s best friend, far as I know.”

“One other thing,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Earlier tonight we saw you drive your bike down toward the tamarisk trees where they found the Watson car. Why’d you do that?”

“The other day I saw that young cop O. A. Jones nosin around the canyon. I got curious if there was somethin new after all this time. Then today before it got dark, I was comin in from the post office and I saw another cop back there goin over the place. It looked like Coy Brickman, and I think, what is this shit? Then tonight I see your Toyota back there. I already heard all about you from the other night at the Eleven Ninety-nine.”

“You don’t miss much, Billy.” Sidney Blackpool grinned.

“Mineral Springs ain’t much, man. We reduced the size a our world considerably.”

Suddenly they heard footsteps on the gravel outside and Billy Hightower held a thick finger up to his lips. He tensed, and then smiled and said, “Come on in, Shamu, you clumsy motherfucker, before somebody shoots you down like a coyote.”

The door opened and a man entered who was just a little shorter than Billy Hightower. He weighed less than a tractor. He wore a Greek sailor’s cap over black hair that could scour every griddle in the House of Pancakes. A gray-streaked black beard exploded from a grimy face studded with blackheads. He wore the inevitable boots and filthy denim. His belt buckle was turquoise and silver, about the size of a turkey platter. He wore turquoise and silver Indian rings on six fingers so scarred and battered they looked like chunks of jagged coral. And he was drunk. Mean drunk with a wired look as though he’d been mixing booze and crank.

“Where’s Gina?” he said, glaring at the two detectives.

“Takin a shower,” Billy Hightower said.

“In here, baby!” Gina yelled from the bathroom. “I washed my hair! I’ll be right out!”

“What the fuck these porkers doin? Gina told me you sent her to bring em up here!”

“They ain’t dope cops,” Billy Hightower said. “They’re workin on that murder where the Rolls was dumped in the canyon.”

“Cops is cops,” Shamu said, and he lurched sideways when he tried to lean on the doorjamb. “They all smell the same.”

“Gina!” Billy Hightower yelled. “Come on out here and get Shamu home to bed. He ain’t in a good mood tonight. How bout a beer, brother?”

“You got no right to bring em up here,” Shamu said, and now he was glaring at Billy Hightower, his lip sullen and drooping.

“I use my own judgment,” Billy Hightower said, his voice as soft and cool as a prison yard. “I’m the president.”

“You’re a smart-mouth fuckin nigger that’s jist gettin too big for your boots is what you are,” Shamu said. “Where’s my woman?”

“She ain’t your woman, brother,” Billy Hightower said. “She’s her woman. She can do what she wants on this hill. With anybody she wants to do it with. Remember the rules.”

“GINA!” Shamu bellowed, as Otto waited for the windows to shatter.

Otto was one unhappy Hollywood detective a long way from home. Shamu looked like one of those Cossacks who only drank champagne so they could eat the glass.

The girl came out fully clothed, drying hair that now looked sandy instead of mousy brown.

“Get your ass home, you cunt!” the boozy giant said. “I din’t tell you to come over here’n jump outta your clothes.”

“I’m comin Shamu, just lemme get …”

He hit her so hard with his open palm that her body jerked sideways and knocked over a table lamp before thudding to the floor beside the sofa. She lay there weeping.

“You jist insulted me,” Billy Hightower said, standing up very slowly. “You jist used violence in my house on one a my guests. You broke the rules.”

The bearded behemoth looked as though he wasn’t mad anymore. He started to giggle, as though he was suddenly in a wonderful mood. He lowered his head and charged. The crash of bodies sent nearly six hundred combined pounds of outlaw flesh hurtling into the tiny kitchen, collapsing the table like a shoe box.

Both detectives leaped up and started to come to Billy Hightower’s aid, but in the hug of Shamu, and writhing in pain, he yelled, “STAY OUTTA THIS!”

Then the two bikers, grunting like grizzlies, staggered back into the living room where Shamu braced against the wall and got Billy Hightower in a very good choke hold.

“Jist … jist … like … like the cops do it!” he grinned, as he applied the forearm and bicep to Billy Hightower’s throat, pinching the carotid artery.

Sidney Blackpool was making a move to use a kitchen chair on Shamu’s skull when Billy Hightower took three short strangling breaths, puffed his cheeks, dropped his chin and clamped down on Shamu’s hairy forearm with those huge broken teeth.

It took perhaps three seconds, but then Shamu began howling. He leaped away from Billy Hightower as if the Cobra leader was on fire. Billy Hightower, with Shamu’s blood dripping down his chin, fell back against the wall wheezing and holding his throat.

“MY ARM. LOOK AT MY FUCKIN ARM!” the bearded biker roared.

There was a flap of skin and muscle hanging loose, and Otto Stringer thought he could see a tendon wriggling like a nightcrawler. Shamu was still staring in shock and pain at his ravaged arm when Billy Hightower drove his fist straight in like a saber thrust. He hit Shamu in the solar plexus and the giant crashed back against the wall blowing like an elephant. Then Billy Hightower did it again. The same shot in the same spot and Shamu’s head shuddered and his teeth cracked shut like a trap and he genuflected. Then Billy Hightower stepped back and affected a grin with black blood-flecked lips and said, “Don’t … don’t never try to choke out a … a hard-core street cop!” Then he added, “I gotta … gotta mark you for this. Sorry, my man.”

He took a step and kicked the giant in the side of the face with his boot. Shamu hit the floor like an anvil. Sounding like one lung had collapsed and the other was going.

“Shamu!” Gina cried, running to the fallen giant. “Baby, baby!”

“You guys better go now,” Billy Hightower said. “I kin handle this.”

There wasn’t anything to say so they didn’t try. Sidney Blackpool and Otto righted some of the overturned furniture as Shamu rolled over on his stomach. Attempting to kneel. Attempting to breathe.

“I kin do that,” Billy Hightower said when Otto plugged in the lamp and put it back on the table.

The bearded biker was now braying in pain and sobbing, “Gina! Gina! I hurt!”

“I know, baby!” she said. “I know.” Then she said, “Billy, help me get Shamu outside.”

Billy Hightower grabbed Shamu around the belt, saying, “Okay. It’s okay. I got ya. You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry, Billy,” Shamu blubbered.

“I know,” Billy Hightower nodded. “We jist gonna forgit all about it tomorra.”

That was the last the detectives saw of them, the troglodyte and the tattooed girl, hobbling down the road to their shack where the shower didn’t work but wasn’t needed very often.

The detectives were standing in the darkness when Billy Hightower said, “Kin you walk back to your car? I ain’t feelin too good.”

“You oughtta go to a doctor,” Otto said.

The outlaw biker shuffled bent and wounded toward the door. He turned and watched the detectives walking down the gravel road. It obviously hurt to speak but he said, “I … I didn’t mind talkin to you guys tonight. Maybe some time we could …” Then he thought it over and shook his head and started to shut the door. But at the last second, just before it closed, he said, “This ain’t a bad life. These people, they want me.”