The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 16

It was the most fitful night’s sleep yet. He didn’t think he’d dreamed because he didn’t think he’d been asleep long enough. Sidney Blackpool got up at dawn, exhausted. He was too nauseated to eat but managed three cups of coffee from room service. He called Mineral Springs P.D. and disguised his voice when Anemic Annie answered. He reached Officer O. A. Jones just before the surfer cop was to hit the bricks. The detective said: “This is Blackpool. Go to a music store or call a radio station. Listen to an old song called ‘Make Believe.’ Do it for me today. And don’t mention it to a soul. I’ll be in touch.”

As usual, Otto slept until called. When he’d had his shower and shave he came into the sitting room and said, “Sidney, I don’t think I’m up to another day on the links. It’s too hard on my head. Except for where Fiona beat on me, my body feels okay, but my brain’s all bruised. I was picking fights yesterday. I ain’t country-club material.”

“We aren’t playing golf today.”

“I suppose we’re going to Mineral Springs.”

“Uh-huh,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ve run outta rope and nobody’s hanged himself. I figure today we have a private talk with Paco Pedroza and maybe with Coy Brickman.”

“And also Palm Springs P.D. to let them in on our fun-filled week?”

“Maybe we’ll even go visit Sergeant Harry Bright. Let’s see what shape he’s really in.”

“How’d you do with his wife?”

“His ex-wife. I got a cassette of Harry Bright playing a uke and singing old songs.”

“And?”

“ ‘Make Believe’ ’s not on it. There must be another one. Coy Brickman called her and asked to borrow it. We’re making him nervous. He’s starting to worry that O. A. Jones might get it right. We’re getting to him, Otto.”

“And Harry Bright?”

“He’s gotta be in on it somehow. One a those two sergeants returned to the burning car.”

“In on what?”

“I don’t know what. They killed him. Or one a them did and the other’s an accessory. Or the whole damn town’s in on it. I just don’t know.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe today we’ll find out.”

“Can I have breakfast first?”

“Eat a big one. This’s gotta be the last workday, one way or the other. We’re outta rope.”

“Thank God,” Otto said. “I wanna lay by the pool just one afternoon and then I wanna go home. I’m getting so crazy I’m starting to miss all the Ewoks on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“I really don’t see any reason why we can’t go for that today,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Lay out by the pool? Soak in the spa?”

“Let’s do it,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Tell you the truth, I gotta relax and think. I’ve been needing a drink in my hand every step a the way and that’s no good.”

“Did you lay his wife, Sidney?” Otto asked. “Harry Bright’s wife?”

“His ex-wife.”

“That answers it.”

“What difference does it make one way or the other?”

“I dunno, Sidney,” Otto said. “This whole case stinks like a burnt corpse. I just wish you wouldn’t a laid Harry Bright’s wife.”

“Ex-wife, goddamnit!”

“Let’s go swimming,” Otto said.

It wasn’t such a bad day. All in all, it was probably the best of their desert vacation. Sidney Blackpool slept on a poolside lounge chair, and when the sun got too hot he moved under an umbrella and slept some more. Otto got a mild sunburn but enjoyed himself enormously by doing belly flops and squeaking like a porpoise, which tickled a couple of divorced telephone operators from Van Nuys. He thought they were cute, and didn’t even care that they weren’t rich. In fact, he bought them drinks, and made a tentative date with both of them for 8:00 P.M. in the hotel dining room.

Otto was starting to get his head straightened out. The mountains never looked more beautiful to him. The sky was dappled by hairy white clouds that seemed to skim the peak over the tram as they scudded by in the desert breeze. The Shadow Mountains shimmered in sparkling light. Against his better judgment, he introduced the telephone operators to piña coladas and mai tais, and bought them lunch at poolside. He was hoping that his partner might sleep away the entire afternoon.

At 3:00 P.M. Sidney Blackpool awakened, swam a few lengths of the hotel pool, looked toward Otto and started for the room.

“That’s my business partner, girls,” Otto said.

“You won’t stand us up tonight, will ya, Otto?” the older one asked.

“If I don’t show up tonight, it may be somebody’s murdered me,” said Otto, and the girls giggled like hell and sucked on the piña colada.

At 4:00 P.M. they were halfway to Mineral Springs. “What’d Chief Pedroza say about this meeting?” Otto asked, breaking the silence.

“Nothing. Just okay.”

“What’d he say when you said it was confidential and private?”

“Same answer.”

“What’d you say when he said he’d like to meet us down in the oasis picnic ground? Did you ask if we should bring the potata salad?”

“I said okay. Just okay. This is a small town. He knows we been nosing around. He might be getting a feeling that we’re onto something. He might even be getting a feeling that Coy Brickman’s acting nervous for some reason or other.”

“He might even be getting nervous himself, Sidney,” Otto said. “Whatever’s going on he might be part of.”

“I thought a that,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’re all getting nervous.”

“We’re a long way from Hollywood, Sidney. In lots a ways. We’re gonna meet a desert cop out in a lonely picnic ground after dark which makes it only a little bit less risky than a picnic in Central Park. And maybe he knows a whole lot about Jack Watson’s death. And we ain’t so much as got a slingshot between us and nobody in the whole fucking world knows we’re there. We could be the next ones they find in a burned car in Solitaire Canyon. Tell me you thought a all that.”

“I thought a all that.”

“Tell me why we’re meeting him out there.”

“He insisted. Said no one would see us.”

“Tell me you ain’t a bit worried,” Otto said. “About Coy Brickman or somebody blowing your face off.”

How could he tell Otto? He really wasn’t afraid anymore. Tommy did it. He could do it. How could he tell something like that to Otto? Sidney Blackpool was silent.

“Shit,” Otto said, and didn’t speak for the remainder of the ride to Mineral Springs.

Paco wasn’t there. They parked back beneath the date palms, back where the oasis picnic ground settled in against the foothills and was protected from the wind. The night wind had arrived early. But the wind wasn’t moaning yet, only whispering. Somehow the whispering wind seemed more ominous than the moaning wind. They watched dust devils off in the canyon. The desert dervishes would run and twirl, and after a sudden gust, would suddenly change course or explode in a spray of sand when crosscurrents collided. The longer they sat looking for Paco, the longer the shadows became, and the worse this idea seemed: waiting out there for potentially murderous cops. Unarmed.

“We shoulda stopped at a gun store and bought a fucking piece,” Otto said. “We shoulda borrowed a gun from Palm Springs P.D. This is like snorkeling in Australia with a pocketful a hamburger!”

“Don’t turn your imagination loose,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Paco’s not a murderer.”

“One a his good pals might be. Coy Brickman might just decide to blink for the first time this year. In order to sight down a gun barrel and blow us away.”

“He might. But we gotta trust Paco. We gotta trust somebody.”

“Why? You never did before.”

“It’s the only chance to figure it out. This goddamn case! It’s our only chance.”

“Do you want the job that bad, Sidney? The job with Watson? You wanna get out that bad?”

“I want it more than anything,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“More than your life, it may turn out,” said Otto.

He was thirty minutes late. Shadows advance perceptibly in the desert foothills. A last saber of light slashed across the mountains, and then darkness. He had to use his headlights when he entered the picnic ground. Sidney Blackpool turned his lights on and off again. Paco was driving a Mineral Springs patrol car. He parked beside them and waved them over.

Sidney Blackpool got in the front seat beside Paco. Otto Stringer just stood next to the car on the passenger side, looking at the shotgun in the rack. He couldn’t see if Paco was wearing a handgun under his aloha shirt.

“Since you wanted it private, how’s this?” Paco Pedroza said. He didn’t have the twinkle in his eye, nor the mischief in his voice. Not this time.

“We been doing a lotta work on the Watson case,” Sidney Blackpool said. Otto scanned the ridge for a hint of twilight on a gun barrel, but there was almost no light at all.

“This is a real small town,” Paco said. “I know you been around the Eleven Ninety-nine, and up in Solitaire Canyon, and over by Shaky Jim’s. I even got a rumor you had a little talk with O. A. Jones the other day.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No, I didn’t ask him. I figured if I oughtta know, he’d tell me. See, I trust my men. All the way.”

And this made Otto very nervous. Paco didn’t sound like the jovial small-town cop. Not at all.

“We haven’t known who to trust,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m sorry if we overstepped our authority.”

“You did,” Paco said. “If the situation was reversed, I’d a come to you and laid it out.”

“But it might involve one a your men. Or more.”

“All the more reason to come and tell me about it. I think you owed me that much professional courtesy. But that’s another story. Let’s hear it now, if you’re ready to spill it.”

“I could take up a couple hours of your time, Chief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “But the bottom line is we traced a rare ukulele found in Solitaire Canyon. Back to Coy Brickman and Harry Bright. Brickman bought it, maybe as a gift for Harry Bright, and Harry Bright recorded songs on cassettes for his own amusement.”

“I saw that uke,” Paco said. “It was used by Bernice Suggs to smack her old man on the gourd. It really got around, that old uke.”

“Coy Brickman didn’t know about that, did he?” Otto interjected.

“He wasn’t there that day. I never mentioned it.”

“That’s a relief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Then he doesn’t know we’re close.”

“To what?”

“To proving that Coy Brickman and/or Harry Bright had something to do with murdering Jack Watson.”

“And why in the hell would Coy Brickman or Harry Bright wanna kill the Watson kid, can you tell me?” Paco Pedroza had an edge to his voice.

“I don’t know, Chief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’d give a whole lot to work out that one. But I think one or both a your sergeants drove back to the scene of the burned car in Solitaire Canyon just before O. A. Jones was found that day last year. It was Harry Bright that O. A. Jones heard singing. Rather, it was Harry Bright’s voice on a car cassette player.”

“Well, that’s real interesting,” Paco said. “But you got a couple problems. For one, Harry Bright was off duty at home that afternoon so he wasn’t driving around Solitaire Canyon when that chopper found Jones.”

“How do you know that?”

“I personally went over to his mobile home to borrow his four-wheel-drive pickup. We needed every off-road vehicle we could locate when we were trying to find that frigging surfer cop.”

“Did the pickup have a cassette player in it?”

“I think so,” Paco said. “Harry liked music. I knew he sang a little. I didn’t know Coy bought him a uke, but it don’t surprise me.”

“What’d you do with Harry Bright’s pickup?”

“I had one a my guys use it to drive around the desert and search for the dummy’s patrol car.”

“Who used the truck?”

Paco lost a little of his impatience and started rubbing his mouth. Then, with his hand still touching his lip, he said, “It could a been Coy Brickman. I can’t say for sure. I was sending guys all over the frigging place that day. But what’s that prove?”

“Now I know it was Coy Brickman!” Sidney Blackpool said. “It proves he drove right to the place where the Rolls was buried in the tamarisk trees. He came back and he didn’t report a thing about the Rolls.”

“Maybe he didn’t see it.”

“He had to’ve been parked right there. I believe O. A. Jones is gonna hear Harry Bright’s cassette and say that’s the voice he heard that day.”

“This is evidence of murder?” Paco said. “Don’t need too much evidence in L.A. these days.”

“There’s more,” Sidney Blackpool said. “The Cobra boss, Billy Hightower, he personally told Harry Bright that he saw Jack Watson’s good pal, a guy named Terry Kinsale, up in Solitaire Canyon in Watson’s Porsche. He was trying to buy some crank the night a the murder. Did Harry Bright ever mention that to you?” No.

“He didn’t mention it to Palm Springs P.D. either. He didn’t mention it to anybody. A mental lapse maybe?”

“There has to be an explanation,” Paco said. “Maybe he did notify somebody at Palm Springs P.D. and they lost the information. We could clear it up if we could talk to Harry Bright.” Then Paco chewed on it for a second and said, “Did you run it down? That particular lead?”

“Yeah,” Sidney Blackpool said. “It didn’t pan out. Terry knows nothing. But the point is, Harry Bright didn’t pass on the tip. I think Harry Bright wanted them to keep thinking Watson was killed by kidnappers, or bikers, or your everyday opportunist thugs. I don’t think Coy Brickman or Harry Bright wanted Palm Springs P.D. to run out of hoodlums and start looking for …”

“For what?”

“For your sergeants.”

“Why? Why would Coy Brickman or Harry Bright ice that kid? Gimme some motive!”

“I don’t know.”

Paco Pedroza sighed in exasperation and said, “This ain’t getting nowhere. So whaddaya want from me now?”

“I wanna play a cassette for O. A. Jones. If it’s the singing voice he heard that day, I wanna call Palm Springs P.D. and see how they care to handle the next move.”

“Which is?”

“A ballistics test on Coy Brickman’s gun. And Harry Bright’s. The slug they got from the Watson kid’s head wasn’t as smashed as it might’ve been. There’s a chance. Just a chance of a make.”

“Let’s go to the station,” Paco said.

“Where’s Coy Brickman today?” Otto asked.

“He’s working swing shift. He’ll be on duty in about forty-five minutes. You can have O. A. Jones right now.”

“Let’s do it,” Sidney Blackpool said.

Anemic Annie knew something was up when Paco came storming in the front door and said, “Annie, call O. A. Jones in here. Code two.”

A few minutes later she saw the Hollywood detectives enter, looking every bit as grim as Paco Pedroza. When they entered Paco’s office he slammed the door, which was something he did only when he was about to give one of his cops a royal ass chewing. Anemic Annie knew that something was up, all right.

After she reached O. A. Jones on the radio, the telephone rang. She answered it and told the caller that Sergeant Coy Brickman wouldn’t be in for half an hour at least. The caller left a message that she jotted down and tossed in the sergeant’s incoming basket. The call was from a pawnbroker.

O. A. Jones didn’t look very happy when he entered the chief’s office. There was a Sony cassette player sitting on the chief’s desk. The young cop got scared, thinking that they wanted to record a statement from him.

Then Sidney Blackpool said, “Sit down. I want you to hear a few songs.”

The kid looked relieved, and said, “Is it ‘Make Believe’? I heard it. I’m positive that was the song. You don’t need to …”

“We think we have a voice that might sound familiar,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“The killer’s voice? How …”

“Just sit down, son,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Let’s listen.”

Paco punched the play button and the three men watched the young cop. Halfway through the first song, O. A. Jones started to say something, thought better, and sat back. But he didn’t relax from that instant. He sat rigid and didn’t twitch. Sidney Blackpool knew that he’d recognized his sergeant’s voice.

When Harry Bright introduced “I’ll Be Seeing You” in his speaking voice, O. A. Jones still didn’t move a muscle.

When the last song was played, Sidney Blackpool said, “Well?”

O. A. Jones looked at the detective. Then at Otto Stringer. He looked at Paco Pedroza, then back to Sidney Blackpool. He said, “I ain’t sure.”

“What?”

“Sergeant Bright,” O. A. Jones said. “I … he sings sorta like the guy. I mean, it’s old-fashioned, his style and all, but

“Could it be him?”

O. A. Jones looked at the chief of police again, and Paco said, “You gotta tell the truth, boy. This ain’t no time for wrongheaded loyalty. But it’s gotta be the absolute truth.”

“Okay, then,” O. A. Jones said, facing Sidney Blackpool, who was so tense he was about to come out of the chair.

“It was Harry Bright!” the detective said.

“No, I can’t say that.”

“What?”

“I cant, Sarge! I had heatstroke almost. It’s been a long time now. I been listening to so many singers and so many songs now, I can’t say that.”

“What if he was singing ‘Make Believe’?” Sidney Blackpool was desperate. “Would that make a difference? If I could find a cassette with Harry Bright singing ‘Make Believe,’ would you be able to say for sure?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” O. A. Jones said. “I got a good imagination. I can think of Harry Bright’s voice doing ‘Make Believe.’ But I still can’t say for sure.”

“Because he’s your sergeant!”

“No, sir,” O. A. Jones said. “Because it’s too … important. I gotta be sure beyond a reasonable doubt here. Maybe I gotta be sure way past a reasonable doubt before I can say in my heart that I heard Harry Bright’s voice out there that day. I just ain’t able to say it.”

“Goddamn it! You know that was Harry Bright!” Sidney Blackpool leaped to his feet.

Paco Pedroza came forward in his chair. Otto Stringer stopped leaning against the wall. O. A. Jones was startled.

“Easy, Sidney,” Otto said.

“That’ll be all, Jones,” said Paco. “You can go back in the field now.”

“I’m sorry, Sarge,” O. A. Jones said to Sidney Blackpool, who sat back down, pale with rage, gripping the arms of the chair. The young cop couldn’t get out fast enough.

When Otto closed the door Paco Pedroza leaned his elbows on his desk and spoke with a trembling voice: “Who do you think you are? You come into my town and try to intimidate my policeman in my station house? Who in the fuck you think you are?”

“Listen, Chief,” Otto said. “This case’s gotten outta hand. Sidney just …”

“This case should be in the hands a Palm Springs P.D.,” Paco Pedroza said. “That is, if you guys had some startling new evidence. But so far, all I hear is, you proved Harry Bright can sing. Which I already knew. And that a ukulele Coy probably gave him was found in Solitaire Canyon.”

“That is a bit unusual, Chief,” Otto said, trying to reduce the level of tension in the room.

“It might be to some hotshot gangbusters from the big city, trying to push people around without knowing what the fuck they’re talking about. Maybe if you’da asked me, maybe if you’da behaved like professionals, I coulda explained all this in the beginning.”

Then Sidney Blackpool spoke. The color was back in his face when he said, “Go ahead, Chief. Explain it.”

“I knew Harry Bright slept it off in Solitaire Canyon on the graveyard shift, for chrissake,” Paco said. “There ain’t no secrets in a little town like this. I don’t stand for my guys being drunk on duty. Not normally, but … well, Harry’s gonna be fifty years old next month. I had every intention a dealing with it then. I was gonna take Harry and buy him a gold watch and throw a big party and kiss him on both cheeks. Then I was gonna ask him to retire, effective on his fiftieth birthday when he’d have the pension earned. Except he had the stroke last March.”

“What about Solitaire Canyon?” Otto asked quietly.

“It don’t surprise me that Harry mighta lost his uke out there some night when he was drunk on duty. Look, he wasn’t always a drunk. But … well, it gradually got worse. The booze, I mean. I sorta looked the other way with Harry Bright when I woulda fired anybody else. I don’t doubt that Harry mighta been out there drunk and singing his heart out like some old coyote. And he mighta put the uke on the roof a the police car, and when he drove off in the morning it probably fell off and got covered by blowing sand. That’s a logical explanation.”

“And how about the singer O. A. Jones heard?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I heard O. A. Jones say he wasn’t sure it was Harry Bright’s voice. That’s what I heard. But to satisfy you I’m gonna bring Coy Brickman in here and we’re gonna ask him if he drove Harry Bright’s pickup truck into Solitaire Canyon on the afternoon the death car was found.”

“I don’t expect him to confess to it,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Listen, Blackpool,” Paco said, pointing his finger at the detective’s face, “I’m gonna go you one better. I’m gonna ask Coy Brickman in your presence to give me his service revolver for a ballistics check. And Harry’s too. I know I ain’t got no call to do that, but poor Harry don’t know what’s going on so it can’t hurt too much.” Then Paco stopped and looked at Otto Stringer and Sidney Blackpool and said, “There’ll be something to gain from it when it’s over. I’ll gain the pleasure a telling you two that my guys ain’t killers. Then I’ll personally point you to the city limits.”

“That’s more than fair,” Otto said. Then he glanced at Sidney Blackpool, who was staring at the wall. Otto said, “You got every right to be mad, Chief. The way we handled this case.”

Paco stood up and paced back and forth behind his chair, and pulled his underwear out of his ass, and mumbled a few times before sitting back down. He was not a man who could sustain anger.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Maybe I’m being a little hard-nosed. So listen to me. I wanna tell you a couple things about Harry Bright.”

“I’d like to hear them,” Otto said, taking an empty chair while Sidney Blackpool lit a cigarette.

“You already know that Harry and Coy worked together at San Diego P.D. years ago,” Paco began. “Harry broke Coy in as a young cop. Maybe Harry put his ass on the line once or twice for Coy, you know how that goes. Well, some years back, old Harry’s wife got sick and tired a shopping at Fedco or whatever. She was a dynamite blonde and she met a rich guy and it was adios to Harry and to her son, Danny.

“So Harry Bright deals with it as best he can because he’s crazy about the broad. And he’s always the optimist. And he thinks she ain’t really gonna like living at Thunderbird and in Hawaii and doing her Christmas shopping in Paris. Harry, he looks at Danny and says, this is the thing of value, right here. Patsy’ll see it someday and she’ll come back to us. That’s Harry Bright as he was then.

“Well, everybody except Harry knows she ain’t coming back. And pretty soon Danny grows up and maybe there’s guys that love their kids more than Harry did, but maybe there ain’t. And Danny’s a good student but he’s a great linebacker and he gets a football scholarship and he’s off to Cal. Then one day in nineteen seventy-eight, Danny’s coming back to San Diego from college because an old pal from his high-school team got hurt in a car wreck and might not pull through. Danny was on the PSA flight that went down with a hundred forty-four people.”

Paco Pedroza stopped, stood up behind his chair and looked out the window at the desert night. He stood with his hands behind his back and said, “Sometimes policemen get an extra bad break in life by being at places other people ain’t. Harry was where he would never a been able to go if he wasn’t a cop. He was gonna meet the plane that morning, and when the news flash came over the radio, Harry Bright was on his way to the crash.

“Harry hung his badge on his civilian shirt and got through all the first roadblocks and was one a the first cops on the scene. That’s where Coy Brickman comes in. Because what happened next I never woulda known if Coy hadn’t told me. Coy was on duty a couple miles away when the dispatcher started sending units code three to the crash site. It was … well … unbelievable. After seeing all kinds a things he didn’t think was possible, Coy was roaming around wiping black smoke from his face and trying to get hysterical people rounded up and away from the area. Then he spotted two cops he didn’t know. They were standing in the middle of what looked like little Hiroshima and laughing. I mean, screaming their heads off.

“Coy goes over to these guys and thinks maybe they’re off their nut. He even sees a newsie snap a picture a these weird cops. He asked what’s so funny because he needs a chuckle more than any time in his whole life. They point to this guy over across the street. He’s kneeling down looking at something. They say they had to laugh, cry, or throw up.

“Coy goes over to the guy and it’s an old patrol partner he ain’t seen in a few years. It’s Harry Bright. That’s when he sees what Harry’s examining.

“It was a face. Not a head. Just a face. There were lots a strange things happened with human bodies that day. This was a face only. Laying on the ground like an upside-down dish. Coy Brickman said it was a young face. Looked like a young man, but Coy wasn’t sure. He said you’d be amazed how you can’t be sure when you remove a face from everything around it. But it was hardly busted up, that face. Just laying there looking at him.”

“Jesus!” Otto said. “It wasn’t … don’t tell us it was …”

“We don’t know for sure,” Paco said, looking at Sidney Blackpool. “Nobody ever asked Harry Bright. Not even Coy Brickman could ever ask Harry Bright that question. But it was somebody’s son, wasn’t it? Maybe it really ain’t relevant if Harry Bright, with a hundred and forty-four to one shot, found a certain face at the crash scene. Maybe the question’s just irrelevant. It was somebody’s face. Somebody’s son’s face.

“Anyways,” Paco sighed, “Harry buried Danny or whatever pieces of a human being they think is Danny, and he tries to cope, but he don’t have much success. In fact, I bet Harry had lots a notions to kiss the old thirty-eight-caliber crucifix. He couldn’t stand the house, the neighborhood, the reminders of all he lost.

“Then Harry heard that Mineral Springs is gonna stop contracting with the county sheriff and form its own police department. He read where I’d been appointed chief and was looking for an experienced sergeant and he called me for an interview.

“Now I look at Harry Bright and I don’t see any booze-busted veins in that forty-four-year-old nose, but I waffle about whether I should waive the age requirement and hire this old guy. I check with San Diego P.D. and I find out this is a first-rate street cop and a first-rate supervisor, and you know the two don’t always go hand in hand. So I hired Harry Bright and it didn’t take me too long to figure out why Harry wanted to finish his police career out here. I learned that his ex-wife lives in Thunderbird, and that the torch he carries for her is big enough for the Olympic games.

“Well, I know people who’ve lost a lot in this world, but Harry Bright, he lost everything. So okay, I looked the other way the past few years when I could see Harry was drinking more and more. I was gonna ask him to retire next month. That’s the God’s truth.”

Paco sat down and stared at his hands. “I didn’t like knowing he was getting bombed and sleeping in a police car in Solitaire Canyon, but I played dumb, All my cops knew about it, and they all protected him. Everyone a them, not just Coy Brickman. I wanted to come down hard on him when I’d see him all trembly and boozy in the morning. But every time I tried, I thought a that day in San Diego. The man kneeling on the ground with the secret he was gonna take to the grave. A secret that’s irrelevant. That face belonged to somebody’s son and I guess Harry figured that out too.

“Anyways, I excused Harry Bright when I wouldn’t excuse nobody else, Now I tell you guys one thing: we’re gonna go through with this ballistics check even though there’s not one shred a motive for Harry Bright or Coy Brickman to’ve murdered that Watson kid. I’ll do it, but I can tell you for sure, Coy Brickman and Harry Bright, neither one could ever murder anybody.”

“He should be coming in soon,” Otto said. “How do we get to Harry Bright’s mobile home? We have the general location but don’t know where the street is.”

“Take the main drag two blocks before you get to the oasis picnic ground. Turn left on Jackrabbit Road. Last mobile home at the end a the street. Coy has a key to Harry’s place and we keep another at the front desk. The whole department watches after Harry’s property.”

There was a knock at the door and Anemic Annie came rushing in. “Chief,” she said. “There’s a sheriff’s unit in pursuit on the highway! And one of our units joined in!”

“Who is it?”

“Maynard Rivas! Sounds like they’re after a two-eleven suspect from the Seven-Eleven Store!”

“Oh, shit!” Paco said. “Where’s O. A. Jones?”

“He’s after them!”

“Where’s Wingnut?” Paco grabbed his gun from the desk and ran toward the front door of the station house. “He’s off the air!”

“Goddamnit! I’ll be back soon as I can! Annie, when Coy comes in, tell him to wait in my office!”

Paco Pedroza was gone before she yelled, “Coy’s already on the street! And I can’t reach him on the air!”

“Whaddaya mean, he’s already on the street?” Sidney Blackpool asked Annie.

“He came in and took his messages and rushed out to his unit. I can’t reach him. He’s not answering.”

As Annie went back to the radio, Sidney Blackpool and Otto looked at each other and walked out of Paco’s office. They heard Maynard Rivas break in to broadcast his location as the secondary chase car.

Then Sidney Blackpool said to Annie, “What’d Sergeant Brickman say when he left?”

“Nothing, except to ask me what time the message came in.”

“What message?”

“A pawnbroker called to ask if Coy’d been given back the ukulele that the detective had inquired about. He didn’t say which detective. I figured it was you.”

“Let’s hit it, Otto!” Sidney Blackpool yelled, rushing out the front door.

“Loan me a gun!” Otto said to Anemic Annie.

“Are you sure it’s okay, Sergeant?” she asked. “You can’t join the pursuit in a private car, and …”

“Gimme a fucking gun!” Otto bellowed, and the trembling woman quickly unlocked the drawer at the front desk and shoved a.38 Colt four-inch revolver across the counter to Otto Stringer who jammed it in his waistband and ran out of the station.

“We shouldn’t be doing this!” Otto said, as he slid into the Toyota.

“We got no choice! He knows we’re onto him. He’s either getting rid of his gun or Harry Bright’s. If it’s his gun we can’t guess where he might be. If it’s Harry Bright’s gun we know where that is.”

“Brickman might try to shoot us, Sidney!”

“We got no choice. At least, I got no choice. Want me to leave you here?”

“I’ll back you up,” Otto said without enthusiasm.

Sidney Blackpool blew through the red light and was wheeling left on Jackrabbit Road within minutes. He cut his lights and drifted toward the end of the cul-de-sac in total darkness. The street was on the edge of town. There were no sidewalks, no curbs, no sewer lines, and no streetlights.

“Where is it?” Otto asked, barely moving his lips. “Where’s Brickman’s car?”

There were only six mobile homes on the street and they were all thirty yards apart. Behind them was open desert and a view clear to the foothills. When they parked they heard the coyote packs loping down from the mountains, yapping in ecstasy as they began the night’s hunt.

“He’s not here yet,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Or he’s here and gone.”

“No, because he’d wanna find two things: Harry’s gun and the cassette with Harry’s songs. He’d need a little time. I think he’s getting rid a his gun. I think he’ll be coming along here at least to get the cassette. Even if it was his gun and not Harry’s that the kid was shot with.”

Sidney Blackpool backed in behind a mobile home that looked vacant. At the mouth of the street a dog uttered a halfhearted bark. Anyone would think that the dog was just nervous about the pack of coyotes, as well he should be.

They got out of the Toyota and walked across a grass driveway. The wind gusted and howled, and the coyote voices joined in.

They could see a woman through a kitchen window of a mobile home on the opposite side of the road. The home belonging to Harry Bright was only large enough for one bedroom. There was a telephone line and a cable T.V. hookup coming from a pole at the edge of the property.

“Otto, I’m gonna wait behind the mobile home,” Sidney Blackpool whispered. “How about you staying near the car? If he spots me or gets nervous about anything, I’d like you to turn on the headlights and make a lotta noise and run right toward us. I want him to think Paco’s with you. I don’t want him to know it’s just us two, He might fight.”

“He might shoot.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was aware of saliva turning sour in his throat. Then there were some pulsating flashes. He was aware of Otto running and falling hard and yelping in pain.

“Sidney!” Otto shouted. “Ohhhh, my hands!”

“Otto!” Sidney Blackpool sat up, feeling the stabbing in his face and neck. “Otto, you okay?”

“My hands!” Otto moaned. “I’m in cactus! Goddamn cactus!”

“Me too!” Sidney Blackpool said. “Was it him? Was it Brickman?”

Then they heard the sound of a car engine on the main road as it sped away.

“I dunno, Sidney. He was in dark clothes. Coulda been a police uniform. But I dunno. Ohhh, my fucking hands! I’m hurting!”

Both men got to their feet and Sidney Blackpool led the way to the mobile home. The door was hanging open and he reached inside, turning on the light.

“No sense worrying about prints,” he groaned. “If Brickman takes care a the place, his prints’d be everywhere anyway.”

“Maybe we just walked in on a righteous burglary,” Otto said. Then he thought that over and added, “Sure. And maybe you’re Robin Hood cause you’re carrying a quiverful. Sidney, what’re we doing in this desert?”

Otto entered the bathroom of the little mobile home. He pulled spines out of his hands and arms and dumped rubbing alcohol over the wounds while Sidney Blackpool ransacked the drawers and closets. He found a wardrobe behind the bedroom near a storage space containing a bicycle and a tire pump. In the wardrobe were six police uniforms with sergeant stripes. He remembered hearing that a desert cop needs six because of summer heat. There was a Sam Browne belt draped over a hook. The Sam Browne held an empty holster.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” he yelled, kicking the door of the wardrobe closet.

“Okay, so it’s gone,” Otto said, without being told. “Come in the kitchen and sit. Lemme pull those filthy little needles out.”

“See if there’s any kind a shoe print on the inside a that door.”

Otto heaved a sigh, walked to the door and examined it. He came back with his tweezers poised. “Nothing.”

“Son of a bitch!” Sidney Blackpool said. “That miserable fucking …”

“Hold still!” Otto said, extracting the spines from the side of his partner’s neck and face, swabbing the area with the rubbing alcohol. “Maybe we oughtta go down to Eisenhower Hospital and have them take a look. Are these freaking spines poisonous?”

“No, they’re just harmless plants,” Sidney Blackpool said, so furious he couldn’t light a cigarette.

“Calm down,” Otto said. “There’s nothing you can do. And far as harmless, there ain’t nothing in this desert that’s harmless.”

“I shoulda thought about …”

“We’re outta our element,” Otto said calmly. “There’s no sense saying what we shoulda done. Hold still. I almost got the last a those little bastards.”

When he finished, Otto put the tweezers and alcohol away and his partner sat in the kitchen trying to get his rage under control.

“I think we oughtta go home tomorrow,” Otto said.

“I think we oughtta book that fucking Brickman for murder!” Sidney Blackpool said.

“We ain’t booking nobody,” Otto said. “We got some half-baked theories and that’s all we got.”

“Let’s search the place at least.”

“For what?”

“The cassette.”

Otto leaned over his partner and with his face six inches away, said, “Give … it … up! Don’t you hear me? The tape is meaningless now. Jones can’t or won’t identify Harry Bright’s voice. The gun’s gone. Brickman’s onto the whole thing. And we ain’t never gonna know what happened. Do you understand that? Can you get it through your head? I’m outta patience, goddamnit!”

“Okay, you’re right. The cassette wouldn’t make any difference now. You’re right. I’m grasping at …”

“Sand. There ain’t even any straws to grasp at in this wasteland. Let’s go home.”

“It’s not the desert’s fault,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“It ain’t nobody’s fault, I’m starting to think,” Otto Stringer said.

Both men were resigned to failure, but with a policeman’s curiosity, each instinctively took a look around the little mobile home. Otto stepped into the tiny living room saying, “Sidney, check this out.”

Photographs. Some in photo cubes, some in gilt frames, some in wood frames. Pictures stuck in the corners of larger framed pictures. There were thirty photographs in the little room, some as large as eight by ten. They were on tables; they filled the small bookshelf; they covered the walls. Eighteen were of Danny Bright and twelve were of Patsy Bright. Harry Bright was present in four of the pictures. Otto picked up a framed family portrait when Danny was about ten years old.

“Nice-looking kid,” Otto said. “Looks just like her. She hasn’t changed much, I’ll have to say that. Of course I didn’t see her up close.”

Sidney Blackpool felt seventy years old. He walked painfully into the living room and sat in Harry Bright’s chair.

He took the picture from his partner and said, “Yeah, she’s changed. This’s Patsy Bright. This isn’t Trish Decker. She’s changed.”

“Harry Bright,” Otto said, looking at the beaming cop. It was a shot of him in the tan uniform of the San Diego police. He was holding Danny in his arms and the boy was wearing his father’s police hat. Harry Bright was a strapping, healthy-looking man.

“He looks like Harry Bright,” Otto said. “He even smiles like Harry Bright. Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Brickman rummaged through the cassettes,” Sidney Blackpool noted. “I guess he found it. We better report this to Paco Pedroza.”

There were several cassettes and records on the floor beside the television set. A cabinet door was open and there was a modest sound system inside. Two small speakers were wired to the wall over the five-foot sofa.

Otto opened another cabinet door above the television and found a videocassette recorder. He turned it on and switched on the television set. Then he punched the play button. It was an old movie. The volume was turned all the way down and Sidney Blackpool stared at a silent movie while Otto went to the telephone and asked the operator for the number of the Mineral Springs police.

The movie was The Enchanted Cottage. Sidney Blackpool remembered it vaguely. Robert Young was a soldier whose face had been disfigured by war wounds. Dorothy McGuire was a plain Jane who was neurotically shy. They fell in love and discovered that whenever they entered their little cottage a miracle happened. He was transformed into what he’d been before the war. She was turned into the lovely young woman he saw in her. In short, they were transformed into Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, two beautiful movie stars. It was a very corny movie. Nevertheless, Sidney Blackpool began watching it with interest. He turned up the volume and even listened to the dialogue.

Otto reached Anemic Annie who said that Paco was at the scene of the pursuit where the sheriffs car and the suspect’s car had crashed. Maynard Rivas had been slightly injured. She wasn’t expecting Paco back for a while.

Otto took a walk outside, careful to avoid cactus gardens, while Sidney Blackpool continued watching The Enchanted Cottage. Eventually, Otto came back inside. He was exhausted. He looked at his watch and wondered if it would be yet another night of being too late for the hotel dining room. Somehow he wanted just one more dinner in the hotel, and then he was going home to Hollywood whether his partner did or not. But one more meal in the hotel dining room would be very nice. He thought he deserved it.

Otto got himself settled on the sofa while Sidney Blackpool slouched in Harry Bright’s easy chair. Otto could see that his partner seemed enthralled with the old movie about people making believe. And people making believe made him think of Harry Bright’s song. And thinking of Harry Bright’s song made him think of Coy Brickman. And while he was thinking of Coy Brickman he heard footsteps outside the mobile home.

Then the door opened and Otto Stringer said, “I was just thinking about you.”