The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 13

Sidney Blackpool chain smoked all the way back to the hotel. Otto had to open the window to breathe, shivering in the night air that blew through the canyons.

“Making any sense yet, Sidney?” Otto finally asked.

“I dunno. Sometimes part of it does, then it doesn’t.”

“A dope dispute? Naw, we ain’t talking big dopers. How about a straight rip-off by the Cobras? They set up the gay boys in the bar, bring them up to the canyon with a promise of low-priced crank and waylay them.”

“Why two cars then? Why was Jack Watson in the Rolls and Terry and the marine in the Porsche?”

“Yeah, and why wouldn’t Terry step up and tell his story right away if he saw somebody kill his pal? Especially after the reward was posted.”

“Maybe he was already outta town by then. Anyway, Billy Hightower says he’s sure his people didn’t do it. Billy does seem to have effective interrogation methods.”

“And what’s Harry Bright got to do with it? And why’s Coy Brickman nosing around out there now that we’re stirring things up?”

“There’s always the possibility that Terry planned the kidnap and ransom of his pal Jack with the help of Bright or Brickman,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Should call this place Urinal Springs, you ask me,” Otto said. “The whole place stinks, far as I’m concerned. It’s like the city of Gorki, closed to foreigners. And we’re foreigners, baby.”

“First thing tomorrow let’s work on the uke. We’ll call the manufacturer. See what they can tell us. I wonder how many music stores there are in this valley? Not many, probably.”

“It’s hard to imagine Harry Bright involved in a murder, ain’t it?” Otto said.

“You never even met Harry Bright.”

“You’re right. This place is making me goofy. It ain’t real hard to think a Coy Brickman icing somebody down. Those eyes a his, probably the freaking buzzards got eyes like he’s got.”

“We gotta get this connection between Harry Bright and Coy Brickman. Maybe it started back in San Diego P.D.”

“What?”

“Whatever might make one a them or both a them kill Jack Watson.”

“We’re getting real close to where I say we call Palm Springs P.D. and cut them in on this, Sidney. We coulda bought it tonight, if that creature from the black lagoon turned on us instead a Billy Hightower.”

“Another day, Otto. Let’s see how it develops after one more day.”

“One more day,” Otto sighed. “Wonder if it’s too late for room service. I think I got me a live one after all. Something in my stomach just did a two and a half forward somersault, with a full twist.”

Sidney Blackpool wasn’t able to sleep. A double shot of Johnnie Walker Black didn’t help a bit. He could hear Otto snoring in the other bedroom.

He tried the technique taught by the police department to reduce stress. He concentrated on his toes, feet and ankles, gradually working up until his shoulders and neck and jaws began to relent. Sometimes he imagined himself in a meadow or in a solitary cottage in an isolated valley. Tonight he thought of lying on a blanket under a tamarisk tree, the shaggy branches wafting like an ostrich fan as his body contour settled into the warm sand. He slept soundly until just before daybreak when he had a dream.

It was a joyous dream, a triumph, a wonder. Of course, the dream took place before Tommy died. In the dream, Sidney Blackpool was alone, ankle deep in cool sand, atop the tallest dune in the desert. Though it wasn’t particularly hot in the desert he was pouring sweat from every pore. It was morning and yet there was no sun anywhere on the horizon. The moon was translucent white, and directly overhead. There were a few clouds scudding in the wind. It was a Mineral Springs kind of moaning wind and he was being sandblasted so badly he thought his flesh might tear, but he dug his feet deeper into the sand until it gripped his ankles like concrete. He believed that nothing could blow him off the dune.

He could hear the savage ocean surf crashing against the Santa Rosas on the far side, and some of it even lapped over the top of Mount San Jacinto and splashed down toward the tram car.

Suddenly the moon was not overhead. His heart nearly stopped because he thought he’d missed his chance! Then he saw that it was hovering over the mountain peak.

Sidney Blackpool extended his arms, his body a cross buried in the sand. The sun appeared over the Santa Rosas, a fireball powering upward. When the sun was precisely atop the peak of Mount San Jacinto, he started screaming.

It wasn’t a scream of pain or rage or terror, it was a scream of absolute triumph and joy. He was holding them at bay, the sun and moon. The sun could not rise, the moon could not set. Sidney Blackpool held them powerless with his outstretched arms and his scream of triumph. Time could not advance. He was making time stand still.

Now there could be no waves crashing, no floating coffin. He would spend eternity alone in the desert screaming with his lungs and his heart. He would never see Tommy Blackpool again, but Tommy would live. This was his destiny.

No man had ever known such joy. His happiness was so great that he awoke weeping. He tried to muffle his sobs with the pillow so Otto wouldn’t hear him.

Because of the three-hour time difference between California and Pennsylvania, Sidney Blackpool was finished talking with the man at the Martin Guitar Company long before Otto came shuffling into the sitting room in his underwear, scratching his balls.

“I bet I could get rid a this blubber if I only slept thirty minutes a night like you,” Otto said to his partner who was showered, shaved and dressed, with a legal pad full of notes in front of him.

“Morning, bright eyes,” Sidney Blackpool said to Otto. “Here’s what I found out from the guitar company. It’s a very rare ukulele, called a Taro Patch. Probably made between 1915 and 1920. The old Hawaiians loved its sweet sound. Liked to play it while they watched the taro grow.”

“I need some breakfast,” Otto said. “I can’t figure out whose tongue I got in my mouth.”

“This kind of ukulele wouldn’t be found in a regular music store. It’d be the kind of antique to end up in a pawnshop. The good news is there’re only six pawnshops in this whole valley.”

“The bad news is it might not’ve been bought in this valley,” Otto said.

“That’s a possibility,” Sidney Blackpool agreed. “But look on the up side. Don’t be so morbid.”

While Otto ordered a titanic breakfast from room service, Sidney Blackpool took notes and smoked and waited anxiously for the hour when a pawnshop would open. It made him think of the dream for an instant, the yearning to manipulate Time. He got one of those shivers in his heart and swelling in the throat, but he pushed it away. He started calling before nine o’clock but pawnshop proprietors in the desert valley are in no hurry. Otto was finishing breakfast before Sidney Blackpool started making contact.

It was on his fourth call that he reached a man who said, “Yes, I know what a Taro Patch uke is. I played one nearly fifty years ago on Catalina Island. It’s a wonderful instrument.”

“I’m Sergeant Blackpool, Los Angeles Police Department. We’re investigating a crime involving a Taro Patch uke. Have you ever had one in your shop? Anytime in the last few years, if you can remember?”

“Matter a fact I had one maybe two years ago,” the pawnbroker said. “Shoulda kept it, but you can’t keep everything. Wished I’d a kept it though. Never gonna see another.”

“Would you have your records from two years ago?” Sidney Blackpool raised a fist at Otto. “I have to know about it for an important police investigation.”

“Can I call you back? I can’t remember who brought it in. Some trucker from Blythe, I think. It ain’t my fault if it was stolen. I always take identification and comply with the law.”

“Don’t worry,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m really only interested in finding out who bought it. We found it and wanna return it to its owner.”

“Well, that I can tell you soon as I look up his name. He was in uniform, I know that. A policeman. From maybe Indio P.D.”

“How about Mineral Springs P.D.?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“Could a been,” the pawnbroker said.

“Wonder if his name was Harry Bright?”

“That don’t sound familiar,” the pawnbroker said. “Lemme look it up and call you right back.”

“I’ll wait,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“I better get my ass in the shower,” Otto said. “We ain’t playing golf today.”

He hadn’t finished toweling off from the shower when he heard Sidney Blackpool say into the phone, “Yes. Yes. Okay. Thanks very much. Yes, we’ll see that he gets it back. Thanks very much.”

Otto stepped out of the bathroom saying, “Well?”

“Coy Brickman,” Sidney Blackpool said. “He bought the uke just over two years ago. That means he owned it long before the Watson murder.”

“I really don’t like this, Sidney,” Otto said. “He’s a policeman. We shouldn’t be playing this lone hand, not on this case.”

“We haven’t got a damn thing yet, Otto. Just pieces. We’ll call Palm Springs P.D. tomorrow morning one way or the other.”

“And we’ll do it before I even have my breakfast,” Otto Stringer said, looking his partner dead in the eye. “I mean it, Sidney!”

By 10:00 A.M. they were yet again on their way to Mineral Springs, causing Otto to say, “Why don’t we just get a room next door to the Eleven Ninety-nine? We could save Victor Watson a whole lotta hotel expenses, not to mention all this wear and tear on your car.”

“We gotta be careful talking to Paco Pedroza,” Sidney Blackpool said. “In fact, maybe we shouldn’t talk to him.”

“We gotta level with somebody,” Otto said. “Unless you think even the chief’s involved in this nutty case.”

“I don’t know who might be involved. First rule of homicide investigation …”

“I know, I know. Everybody’s a suspect,” Otto said. “Even an old lady in an iron lung.”

“And that reminds me,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m not ruling out Harry Bright. I wanna see him with my own eyes. Maybe he’s made a startling recovery.”

“Corpse cops,” Otto said, shaking his head. “I wonder when you’re gonna add me to the suspect list.”

“You’re right about having to trust somebody,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Let’s find that young cop, O. A. Jones. Somehow I trust that surfer.”

They didn’t want anyone in the police department to know they were in town so they parked off the main drag half a block from the station house. They had to wait only twenty minutes before O. A. Jones came cruising by, drinking a soda pop and listening to the ghetto blaster in his patrol car. Sidney Blackpool tooted and waved the young cop over.

“Follow me,” he said and made a right turn and another, before pulling to the curb.

O. A. Jones drove up behind and got out. “What’s up, Sarge?” he asked, approaching on Sidney Blackpool’s side.

“If I asked you for your help and requested you not to tell a living soul, would you do it?”

“I’m a policeman. Why not?”

“What if it was concerning another policeman? Would it make a difference?”

“You mean on my department?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Chief Pedroza know about it, whatever it is?”

“No.”

“Why’re you telling me then, and not the chief?”

“Because you already know a piece of it and nobody else does.”

“About the uke?”

“Yeah. And also because I trust you in general.”

The young cop chewed on that one for a moment and said, “Chief Pedroza gave me a job when I wasn’t welcome in Palm Springs anymore. I don’t wanna get him mad at me.”

“I promise that in a couple a days I’ll talk to the chief one way or the other. I just want you to keep this confidence. For a couple a days.”

The young cop hesitated but said, “Okay.”

“Good. Now all we really want you to do is tell us about Sergeant Brickman and Sergeant Bright. That’s all. You see, that uke belonged to Sergeant Brickman. He bought it from a pawnshop two years ago.”

“Wow!” the young cop whispered. “You don’t think he … that ain’t possible!”

“Probably not. But tell us what you know about them. Start with Sergeant Brickman.”

“Well, he used to be on San Diego P.D. So was Sergeant Bright. Harry Bright was the one recommended Coy Brickman to the chief long before I came. In fact, Sergeant Bright recommended everybody. Chief Pedroza won’t hire anyone without Harry Bright’s okay.” Then the young cop scratched his neck nervously and said, “Sarge, Coy Brickman couldn’t kidnap and kill somebody! He’s a little quiet and standoffish, but he’s a good sergeant. And Sergeant Bright? Harry Bright’s like …”

“Everyone’s daddy,” Otto said.

“Yeah, that’s right. He couldn’t be involved in any kind a crime, let alone kidnap. Let alone murder!”

“I get the feeling most people on your department were in trouble or unhappy somewhere else before coming to Mineral Springs,” Otto said.

“We all worked other departments, that’s true,” O. A. Jones said, leaning in the window now, looking furtively up and down the street.

“Did Sergeant Bright and Sergeant Brickman get in trouble in San Diego?”

“Not that I know of,” O. A. Jones said. “Sergeant Brickman once told me he got a low placement on the sergeant’s list because some deputy chief hated him. He figured he’d spend his whole career as a patrolman so he called Harry Bright who was already here. And he made the move. Far as Sergeant Bright, well, he mighta got in trouble drinking down there, I don’t know. He was way over forty years old when Chief Pedroza hired him, so our city musta waived the age requirement to get an experienced sergeant from a big city. Harry Bright’s been a heavy drinker for a long time, I think.”

“He’s a drunk, you mean,” Otto said.

“Well, you know how it is in police work. There’s a guy or two at every station. Whiskey face, whiskey voice, whiskey eyes, but they always show up to work on time. Always have a shoeshine and a pressed uniform. Always do a job. That was Sergeant Bright.” The kid wrinkled his brow, saying, “I don’t like this at all, Sarge. Harry Bright’s the best supervisor I ever met.”

“We’ve heard sometimes he’d get drunk on the graveyard shift,” Otto said. “Maybe sleep it off parked on a trail over in Solitaire Canyon. He wasn’t a saint, for chrissake.”

“Look, son,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’re not Internal Affairs headhunters trying to nail a cop for boozing on the job. We’re investigating a homicide. We need a feel for these two sergeants. You’re not being asked to be a snitch.”

“Everybody hits the hole over in Solitaire Canyon,” O. A. Jones said. “That’s where the cops around here catch a few z’s on a quiet graveyard shift. You know what it’s like trying to stay awake in a town like this when there ain’t a call for six hours? Far as him being drunk on graveyard, sure, I seen him looking awful bad at eight o’clock in the morning just before he went home. But he was always there if you called him. Harry Bright’d never let you down.”

“Know where they live?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “Bright and Brickman?”

“Here in town,” O. A. Jones said. “Harry Bright lives in the last mobile home on Jackrabbit Road. A residential cul-de-sac with about eight little mobile homes on it. There’s no one there now that he’s had his stroke. We check it a couple times every night to make sure the place is secure.”

“Who has a key?”

“Sergeant Brickman waters the plants and such. He’s keeping the place up till Harry Bright gets well, but from what I hear he ain’t never gonna get well.”

“Where’s Sergeant Brickman live?” Otto asked.

“Smoke Tree Lane. First house on your left off of Rattlesnake Road. Two-story wood frame, with blue shutters. Lives with his wife and two daughters.”

“Are they best friends?” Otto asked. “Bright and Brickman?”

“I’ll tell you how good,” O. A. Jones said. “When Sergeant Brickman’s oldest girl had a kidney disease and was on dialysis, Sergeant Bright went into the hospital and tried to give up one of his kidneys for a transplant. We heard about it from the doctor who gives us our annual physicals. Everybody got a big laugh over that one. The croakers looked at Harry and explained how he wasn’t quite a suitable donor. For one thing, Harry looked like he needed a couple organs. Like a new liver and maybe a heart, they told him. Turns out they were right about the heart. I don’t think the liver’s failed yet but it probably will. Anyway, that’s the kind a man he is. I’m telling you, Sarge, you’re following a false trail here. If that uke’s the music box I heard, there has to be an explanation.”

“Does Coy Brickman sing?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “Or play a stringed instrument? Or Harry Bright, maybe?”

“I don’t know,” O. A. Jones said. “Not around the station anyway. Maybe in the shower.”

“By the way,” Sidney Blackpool said. “You said Sergeant Brickman takes care of Harry Bright’s mobile home. Where’s Harry Bright’s relatives?”

“His ex-wife lives in one a the country clubs down in Rancho Mirage. Married to a rich guy. Chief Pedroza told me Harry had one kid, but the kid was killed. Bought it in that San Diego jet crash several years ago. A boy.”

Sidney Blackpool didn’t hear another word. His mind was racing but it had nothing to do with whatever O. A. Jones was saying. He was trying to ward off a panic attack.

“I said, is that all, Sarge? Can I go now? I better get back on the air.”

“What is it, Sidney?” Otto said. “You look like you just got a mouthful a J. Edgar’s chili.”

“It’s uh … it’s … I just had an idea. Nothing. It’s uh, nothing.”

“Well, if that’s it, then,” O. A. Jones said. “Lemme know how this goes. It’s bothering me a lot. I feel a little sick to my stomach.”

“Sure, uh … sure,” Sidney Blackpool said, feeling the sweat beading on his forehead and lip and armpits. “Yeah … uh, wait. One more thing …” He was stalling, trying to pull himself together. The cold fire was leaving his temples and neck. The panic was now just a chunk of lead in the pit of his stomach.

“What’s wrong, Sidney?” Otto was starting to look alarmed.

“It’s a … an idea. An … uh, elusive thought. You know how that happens sometimes.”

“Happens to me sometimes,” O. A. Jones said. “Déjà vu.”

“Something like that,” Sidney Blackpool said, wiping his upper lip. “One more thing comes to me now. Where’s Harry Bright being treated?”

“He was in a regular hospital for a long time,” O. A. Jones said. “Now he’s in a nursing home, a semi-hospital kind a place. Down near Indio. I drove Sergeant Brickman down there one night when we were the only two on graveyard. He visited Sergeant Bright for maybe ten minutes. I waited in the unit listening for calls. That was maybe three months ago. It’s called Desert Star Nursing Home, on Highway One eleven this side a the Indio city limit.”

“Has anyone actually seen Harry Bright lately?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “Besides Sergeant Brickman?”

“I don’t think so. He’s the representative of our department. Chief Pedroza said it’s too depressing. Harry just laying there like that, wasting away.”

“Okay, son, you can go now,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Stay in touch.”

“Did you think a what gave you the feeling?”

“what?”

“That déjà vu feeling. Did the thought come to you?”

“It will,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Be seeing you.”

Otto had to settle for two Big Macs, fries, and a milk shake. And he had to eat them on the run. Sidney Blackpool was determined to see Harry Bright with his own eyes. Neither man spoke, Otto because he was trying to eat the hamburgers while his partner pushed the Toyota seventy miles an hour down the desert highways, and Sidney Blackpool because he hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of hearing that Harry Bright had lost a son.

Sidney Blackpool knew he’d have to deal with it soon. He wanted to hold off until later when he could afford to let the fear and despair run rampant. Three A.M. would be the perfect time for such an exercise. He could even make it doubly frightening by drinking lots of booze. But he’d have to deal with it tonight: Victor Watson, Sidney Blackpool and now Harry Bright! All victims of the most outrageous of nature’s reversals. Wanderers looking for pieces of themselves. It couldn’t be just a perverse bit of chance. An omen, Victor Watson had said. But detectives don’t believe in omens, not detectives like Black Sid. He hadn’t believed in omens even when he still believed in something.

It looked more like a motel than a nursing home or hospital. It was a one-story complex of flat-roofed buildings scattered around two acres. The sign in front was neon lit. But it was tidy and probably as acceptable as a middle-income nursing home ever gets. Which is to say it looked like the kind of place that would precipitate a self-inflicted gunshot wound should Sidney Blackpool ever find himself so helplessly in need.

The detective was pulling into the nursing-home parking lot when he saw it: a Mineral Springs patrol car.

“Goddamn!” He cranked the wheel to the left and punched the accelerator.

“Coy Brickman?” Otto said.

“Must be.”

Sidney Blackpool parallel-parked the Toyota half a block down the street, hidden from view by a Salvation Army truck. Both detectives got out, walked toward the far side of the nursing home’s parking lot, stood behind a smoke tree and watched.

There were a few people coming and going in the parking lot. They saw two elderly women in wheelchairs being taken for an outing by Latino orderlies. Then they saw a blue Mercedes 450 SL pull into the lot and park beside the patrol car. A slender suntanned blonde got out. She wore a blue, yellow and gray graphic-silk chemise with blue pumps.

She was the kind who made it tough for a policeman to guess her age. Designer clothes, winter tans, hundred-dollar haircuts and tints, Mercedeses, face-lifts. Sidney Blackpool always supposed that such women were ten years older than they looked: the Alfred Hitchcock lady. She leaned against the Mercedes and smoked. She didn’t walk toward the door of the nursing home.

The detectives watched her because she didn’t fit. There weren’t any other visitors driving a Mercedes to this seedy nursing home. They watched for fifteen minutes. Then the door opened and Coy Brickman, in uniform, emerged from the building. The woman walked up to him and they shook hands.

“I’d give the rest a the ten grand to hear this little conversation,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“I’d give a couple bucks myself,” said Otto.

When Coy Brickman turned as though he were about to say good-bye, the blonde shrugged her shoulders and extended her hand again to Coy Brickman who took it for a second. Then he turned and got into the patrol unit.

“Damn!” Sidney Blackpool said. “Can you make out her license number, Otto?”

“You kidding? My eyes’re forty years old.”

“Come on, Brickman, get your ass out of that parking lot!” Sidney Blackpool muttered.

But the woman in the Mercedes drove out first and turned back on the highway toward Palm Springs. The detectives jumped in the Toyota and Sidney Blackpool started the engine and watched through the rearview mirror.

“Come on, come on!” he said.

Finally Coy Brickman drove out, turned left on the highway and cruised in the same direction as the Mercedes. “We gotta risk it, you wanna get her number,” Otto said.

Sidney Blackpool nodded. The blonde wouldn’t be the type to spot a tail, but Coy Brickman might. And she was already a quarter of a mile ahead of them. Sidney Blackpool was hanging back in the number-two lane behind a pickup truck when they got a break. Coy Brickman turned the patrol car right on Cook Street in Indian Wells, heading toward Highway 10 and Mineral Springs.

Sidney Blackpool stepped on it, blowing through a red light when there was no cross traffic coming, and caught her three signals later.

“Hope you got this Toyota well insured,” Otto said.

They got close enough for Otto to jot down her license number, then they backed off and followed the car through Indian Wells, Palm Desert, and into Rancho Mirage where she turned right.

The detectives quickly found themselves looking at a guarded kiosk and a funny-looking Indian totem bird and a sign that said THUNDERBIRD COUNTRY CLUB.

“It’s on our list!” Otto said. “Tamarisk, Thunderbird, Mission Hills. Let’s see, what the hell was the name a the member at Thunderbird we were supposed to ask for? Shit. I left all the notes in the room.”

“Think, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Let’s see. Penbroke? No. Pennypacker? No. Pennington! That’s it. Pennington at Thunderbird!”

“Good boy!” Sidney Blackpool said.

The detective pulled up to the gate and Sidney Blackpool said, “We’re Blackpool and Stringer. Mister Pennington’s arranged for a game of golf for us. I believe he left our names with the club pro.”

It took the security office a couple of minutes to make the call, then he said, “Drive right in, gentlemen. The doorman can direct you.”

“Jesus Christ, Sidney!” Otto Stringer cried as they were driving toward the clubhouse.

“What is it?”

“A former president of the United States lives here! What if we have to play a game to make our investigation look kosher? What if I’m playing golf with a freaking ex-president of the whole freaking United States?”