The Secrets of Harry Bright

CHAPTER 7

Officer Barney Wilson would’ve had an uneventful career in the Coachella Valley if he hadn’t gotten caught up in the labor movement. His career somewhat paralleled Ronald Reagan’s. That is, he was just a spear carrier until he made a speech on behalf of a colleague who was running for president of the police union. But Barney Wilson never would’ve made that speech nor any speech were it not for a desert physician who, during a routine annual physical, called the twenty-nine-year-old cop into his office and gave him the good news first. No, he didn’t have the clap as he’d feared. He could keep the same girlfriend and he wouldn’t have to make any confessions to his wife. The bad news was that he’d only have the girlfriend for two years. Ditto for the wife.

Barney Wilson stared dumbstruck at the doctor who looked mildly cranky, as though he had to take a no-pay emergency and couldn’t lay it off to the county.

“You’ve got red blood cells in your urine. Acute glomerulonephritis. Two years maybe,” the doctor said, checking the wall clock because he had a Wednesday afternoon golf date.

During the next three weeks a Coachella Valley legend was born. Barney Wilson stood up for a buddy and addressed the entire police department during a very controversial police strike. And after consuming twenty-two cans of beer in a three-hour period he said that the chief of police was a pompous asshole with all the humility of Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi and Barbra Streisand. He said to the delight of the sign-carrying cops that they ought to sabotage the chief’s hemorrhoid-alleviating whoopee cushion with gelignite, and load his cigarettes with PCP.

And since a dying man knows few limits, Officer Wilson delighted the mob of recalcitrant cops by calling the chief a plastic man who probably used Armor-all in his bathtub. At the end of the rousing speech, while all the local newshounds were snapping pictures like mad, Officer Wilson said that the chief ran his department like a banana republic, and with eyes overflowing at the thought of his imminent demise, he finished to a thunderous ovation by saying to the chief whose lieutenants recorded every word: “Give us liberty or give us death! I only regret that I have but one life to give to my union!”

From that day forward Officer Barney Wilson became known all over the Coachella Valley as Nathan Hale Wilson, and was nominated as president of the police union.

Then, to satisfy his grieving family, he went to his mom’s hematologist for a second opinion. The blood doctor asked if he’d had the flu prior to the examination when he’d gotten the Bad News. Receiving an affirmative answer, the new croaker asked if he’d taken up jogging at about the time he had the first exam, and when Nathan Hale Wilson said, yes indeedy and how long do you think I got? the physician said, “Fifty years if you take care of yourself. Lots less when the chief of police discovers you’re not a dying man.”

That afternoon, with the assurance that he was going to need a job for a very long time, Nathan Hale Wilson found himself driving up to Mineral Springs to see if Paco Pedroza could use a cop with a short-lived career in the American labor movement.

“I might give you a chance,” Paco Pedroza warned Nathan Hale Wilson that day. “But I don’t need no César Chavez around here.”

“I’m through with organized labor, Chief,” Nathan Hale Wilson promised. “I was just off my nut for a while because a that croaker I’m gonna sue.”

“That’s good,” Paco said, “cause you know that golf course down in Indian Wells? The one owned by the Teamsters Union? I heard that Jimmy Hoffa lives there. Under the sixteenth fairway.”

“I’m through with labor unions,” Nathan Hale Wilson promised. “I won’t even watch a movie with Charlton Heston or Ed Asner in it.”

“He seems like a good honest lad,” said Sergeant Harry Bright, the chief’s confidant.

“Okay, I’ll take a chance on you,” Paco Pedroza told him. “I’ll give you to my F.B.I. man to break you in.”

“F.B.I. man?”

“Full-blooded Indian. Maynard Rivas. Probably find him in the Eleven Ninety-nine Club later today. Just look for flowered wallpaper. That’ll be him. He likes loud shirts.”

“Big guy, huh?”

“Lots a room for tattoos,” Paco nodded.

Maynard Rivas grew up on the Morongo Reservation. All the Morongos had in this world was some arid desert land and a bingo parlor large enough to house the Spruce Goose.

Maynard spent his life wishing he were an Agua Caliente Indian, that band of Mission Indians who own big chunks of downtown Palm Springs. Every other square mile is theirs and the tenants pay rent that has gone through the roof in modern times. One local Indian, it was rumored, received $20,000 every ninety days. Another, it was said, got that much every month.

The Palm Springs Indians are the richest per capita in America and are no longer under the care of the Department of the Interior, which was accused of “commingling” the Indians’ trust fund. (It was awhile before the Indians were informed that “commingling” is called “stealing” in their language.) The Indians don’t pay income tax on their trust, only on their investments. Some are sophisticated and take advantage of tribal scholarships. Some would just as soon sit under a tamarisk tree forever. Some are hypes and angel-dusters.

So when tourists ask the locals, “Where do the Indians live?” the locals answer, “Wherever they want. They got the bucks.”

If only the Morongos and Agua Calientes had swapped land eighty years ago Maynard would be driving a Ferrari while they’d be pulling into gas stations for two bucks’ worth of gas saying, “I keep it light for racing.” And they’d be listening to a bunch of maniac housewives from Banning screaming “Bingo!” in their nightmares.

Maynard Rivas had always wanted to get away from the Morongo Reservation and especially the bingo parlor. It was a few miles from two life-sized statues of dinosaurs, an enormous fruit stand, and a few thousand wind turbines. Other than looking at the big lizards and windmills, there just wasn’t much to do but get drunk. He had moved to L.A. County a few years earlier and hired on as a cop.

Many of the Morongos were large, but Maynard was a jumbo Indian. A four-inch service revolver looked like a derringer in his hand.

During his rookie year he won a citation for heroism for saving the life of a phantom who’d been driving the police nuts. The phantom was one of those “radio announcers” that just pop up from time to time at police agencies everywhere. The kind that sneak into police cars if the cops leave them unlocked and unattended for five minutes and pick up the mike to talk dirty to the communications operators. This particular phantom radio announcer would just say, “Cocksucker.” That’s all. When asked to repeat his message, he sometimes would. Or sometimes he’d just say, “That is all.” Or “Over and out.” Or “Ten-four.” Or some such radio gibberish.

It was Maynard Rivas who caught the phantom announcer when he was sneaking into a sergeant’s car while the sergeant was having a jelly roll at Winchell’s. The radio announcer had hair like Harpo Marx and looked twice as dumb. The big Indian chased him into an office building and up the stairway where the phantom climbed out on the fire escape and attracted a crowd, several of them cops who yelled, “Well catch you!” But not being that dumb, he didn’t jump.

Maynard Rivas talked a construction foreman into putting him in the bucket of a crane and he was lifted up to the fire escape. Maynard confused the phantom by saying, “You don’t wanna breathe my air no more? You want me outta your face? Okay, bye-bye.”

And while the phantom radio announcer contemplated that suicide meant no more days of whispering “cocksucker” into police radio mikes, Maynard Rivas made a daring leap from the crane onto the fire escape, snatching the phantom under his arm like a football. But he wasn’t a hero for long.

What ended the big Indian’s police career in Los Angeles County was a South American fish. In fact, several of them who had no business being in America in the first place.

Maynard was providing backup to some narcs on a raid on a million-dollar house in the foothills. As it turned out, the raid netted them only two Peruvian dope dealers and an Eastern European student who was there to buy some flake. They found a very small amount of cocaine on the student who happened to be the kid of a Bulgarian diplomat. The old man had diplomatic immunity and later argued that his kids did also.

It was a very disappointing raid and six of the cops left quickly. Two uniformed cops, one of them Maynard Rivas, ended up with the three prisoners while the plainclothes narcs searched the guesthouse out back.

The smallest Peruvian looked at one uniformed cop and then at Maynard Rivas and said, “Señor, may I speak to you privately?”

Maynard Rivas, who was about three times as big as the Peruvian, wasn’t too worried about tricks, especially since all three suspects were handcuffed.

“Keep an eye on them,” he said to his partner, taking the Peruvian into the foyer.

“If joo weel take my handcuffs off, I weel locate the cocaine,” the Peruvian said.

“Oh, yeah? I look like I just walked out of a teepee, huh? You wanna tell us where the coke is, do it with the cuffs on. In fact, tell the narcs. I’m just here to baby-sit anyways.”

“They slapped my face. I weel not tell them nothing. I weel tell joo or I weel tell nobody.”

“So tell me.”

“Please, señor, my wreests! I am een much pain. Joo have searched me. I am a leetle man. Joo are a giant.”

Maynard waffled for a moment, but decided if this squirt could take Maynard Rivas, he should go back to the reservation and spend his life screaming “B ten” and “O seventy-five.”

“You and me’re gonna hold hands while you show me,” Maynard said, removing the cuffs and letting the Peruvian rub some circulation back.

“Thank joo berry much, señor,” the Peruvian said. “Please come weeth me, and I weel geev joo what joo weesh.”

It was a fish tank. But what a fish tank. It dominated the living room: a hundred-gallon, lighted, filtered aquarium housing twenty fish. They were funny-looking black fish and they had very big teeth.

“Een there,” the man whispered as his crime partner cried, “¡Silencio, cabrón!” and tried to jump up from the couch but was jerked back by Maynard’s partner.

“In there?” Maynard Rivas pointed.

“There!” the Peruvian nodded.

There was a clear plastic bag at the bottom of the tank. The cocaine was camouflaged by the white material on the tank bottom. It looked like a three-pound bag, at least.

Maynard Rivas started rolling up his sleeve, hoping to surprise the narcs who would be back in the main house in a few minutes.

“They are piranha, señor,” the Peruvian said calmly.

“Piranha!” his partner said, and he left the prisoners momentarily to step over to the huge aquarium, which was mounted at eye level on a massive credenza.

There was a tool box containing plumbing equipment beside the tank. The cops were amazed at the voracious fish swimming in frantic loops, examining the faces outside the tank with dumb savage eyes.

“Piranha!” Maynard Rivas said.

“Piranha!” his partner said.

“Monkey wrench!” the Peruvian said.

He snatched it from the tool box: a monkey wrench. He used the Jimmy Connors two-handed, off-the-feet service return. On the glass.

And then people were screaming and jumping and yelling.

“Killer fish! Killer fish!”

“Look out! Look out!”

“Watch joo feets! Joo feets!”

The piranhas were all over the floor and all over the huge Indian cop who was skating all over the floor, and the little Peruvian had himself a big.45 caliber automatic, which had been hanging on the back of the credenza, and he started for the back door.

Maynard Rivas grabbed the other Peruvian in a choke hold and put his own gun to the guy’s head, saying, “Drop your gun or I’ll shoot!”

Maynard realized how stupid that was when the little Peruvian shrugged as if to say, “Then I get to keep both shares.”

Greed got the doper. He stopped long enough to pick up the plastic bag when he should have run straight outside. He was coldcocked from behind by a sneaky narc, and he flopped on the floor beside the killer fish.

An official protest was made from the Bulgarian ambassador to the United States Secretary of State, deploring the fascist behavior of Officer Maynard Rivas who got reprimanded for improper police tactics. Maynard decided that if a Native American could be attacked and nearly killed by Peruvian dopers and nearly eaten by Brazilian fish and called a fascist by a Commie Pope-shooter, he was going back to the Coachella Valley where life was a whole lot less complicated.

But he knew he had a choice of pulling numbered balls from a wire cage or finding a local police force that wanted a good old home-boy redskin. He ended up in the office of Chief Paco Pedroza who along with Sergeant Harry Bright listened to Maynard’s life story. Paco finally said, “Can you track people in the desert and stuff like that? Real Indian stuff?”

“Chief Pedroza,” Maynard said patiently, “I can do street police work good as anybody, but if you need an injun in braids and moccasins, you better call Marlon Brando for a referral.”

“Well, you seem like a fine strong lad. I imagine you’d be a good worker,” Sergeant Harry Bright said.

“I’ll give you a go, Maynard,” Paco said. “But I wonder, could you sometimes help my wife on Thursday nights? See, she runs the bingo game at Saint Martha’s Church.”

Maynard Rivas and Nathan Hale Wilson were doing some plain old ordinary Mineral Springs police work on the morning that Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer visited the Palm Springs residence of Victor Watson.

Maynard took a radio call and asked for a backup when he realized the address of a disturbance was the home of Clyde and Bernice Suggs who, whenever they got drunk for breakfast, slugged it out by lunchtime for sure.

This particular fight was pretty much like the last except for the weapons involved. As usual, Clyde got sick and tired of Bernice’s rolling her mean little woodpecker eyes just because he put a little too much into a turkey trot he did with a seventy-five-year-old pepperpot at the Moose Lodge seniors’ dance. He told her that if she didn’t quit clicking her dentures he was going to dump his bowl of All-Bran right on her head. One thing led to another and she took the old James Cagney role and shoved a grapefruit in his face. He threw the All-Bran. At first, both were careful not to spill the jug of Sweet Lucy on the kitchen table, but things got totally out of hand when he claimed that she was a lousy lay and had been for the forty-eight years they’d been together. That really started the yelling and screaming, and pretty quick they were both tossing everything that wasn’t too heavy, and the neighbors put in the call that had become a weekly experience for the Mineral Springs P.D.

When Maynard Rivas and Nathan Hale Wilson arrived, the domestic violence was still in a semi-explosive state though both combatants were now wheezing and blowing and too exhausted to do more than slap at each other with wimpy blows. She was bigger and he was two years older so it wasn’t a mismatch, In fact, Clyde was in pretty bad shape because his tracheostomy tube nearly jumped out of his throat every time she popped him a good one.

The little guy was still trying gamely to give as good as he got, and his dirty white undershirt was dripping sweat when Maynard Rivas slipped into the living room and lifted him off his feet, while Nathan Hale Wilson carried Bernice over by her rocker where their tomcat, Jasper, sat inspecting his ass, not even remotely concerned by all this human drama.

“Break it up, Clyde!” Maynard Rivas commanded.

“Lemme go, you big asshole!” Clyde said. “This is my house!” Because of the tracheostomy he sounded like a cross between Wolfman Jack and the demon from The Exorcist.

“Not till you stop fighting,” Maynard said.

“I’ll sue you!” Clyde croaked.

“Injuns got immunity,” Maynard lied.

“The only good Indian is a …”

“Yeah, yeah, I saw all the cowboy movies,” Maynard said. “Now relax and quit squirming!”

“Make her promise first! She’ll blind-side me, the sneaky bitch!”

“Promise you won’t hit him, Bernice,” Nathan Hale Wilson ordered the old woman.

“I ain’t promising nothing!” Bernice Suggs said, still kicking. “Let him fight like a man!”

It was no use telling them they were going to jail. They knew very well that the cops wouldn’t risk the bad press Mineral Springs would get if they booked these miserable old geezers. Even though every cop in town would dearly love to toss them in the slam. They’d all been spit at, cursed, and reviled by Clyde and Bernice Suggs.

“Okay, you’ll go to the station and sit in the holding tank till you promise to behave!” Maynard said, heading for the door with Clyde tucked under his arm.

“Wait a minute, you big prick!” Clyde croaked. “Lemme go! I won’t fight no more!”

Maynard reluctantly released Clyde who hobbled stoop-shouldered over to the rocker where he punched at the tomcat who hissed but gave up the chair. Clyde sat for a spell, fussing with his trachea tube, trying to get sufficient air to make one of his long croaky speeches about the mentality of cops, especially big Indian cops and scrawny paleface cops that’re probably dumber than big Indians.

Nathan Hale Wilson made the mistake of letting Bernice go just because she stopped fighting. The old woman mumbled a few cuss words and looked as though she was going to surrender, but while the two cops were giving the tipplers their standard warning about not tolerating this disgusting behavior anymore, Bernice grabbed something from the sideboard where it rested next to the Mineral Springs penny saver.

Just as Clyde was getting ready to deliver his monologue about police mentality, Bernice swung. Clyde caught the leading edge smack behind the skull and his upper plate shot through the air, bouncing off the ample belly of Maynard Rivas. Then the fight was really on. Bernice jumped on Clyde and jerked the trachea tube out of his throat and wouldn’t let go even when the big Indian pounced on her and Nathan Hale Wilson grabbed at her crooked fingers.

“Uuuuuuuhhhhh!” Clyde croaked, while Bernice clamped onto that tube and with her one remaining eye-tooth glinting wolfishly said, “Now let’s you and me do the turkey trot, you old son of a bitch!”

Since Bernice was a touch arthritic and not as tough as she used to be, Nathan Hale Wilson got the tube out of her claws while all four wrestled on the floor.

“Let go the tube!” Maynard yelled. “He can’t breathe!”

“I’ll stuff it with cat shit!” Bernice screamed back at him until Maynard gave her such a shove she did a backward whoop-de-doo and bumped her head on the coffee table, out of action temporarily.

Twenty minutes later the two cops, uniforms dusty and torn, were at the police station with Clyde and Bernice Suggs and the weapon.

“I can’t book these people!” Paco Pedroza whispered after Clyde and Bernice were cooling their heels in the holding tank. “They’re nearly eighty years old!”

“That’s an ADW,” Nathan Hale Wilson said. “A felony. I’m sick a these old fuckers, Chief.”

“A ukulele ain’t exactly a deadly weapon,” Paco said.

“No, but jerking out his trachea tube is a pretty goddamn aggravated assault, you ask me!”

“Oh, so you wanna book Bernice and let Clyde go home, huh? He’s more acceptable?”

“He’s as acceptable as a lesion on my dick,” Nathan Hale Wilson said, with the conviction of a man who’s had a few. “But at least one a them oughtta get something outta this.”

“If they both apologize will you be satisfied?” Paco argued. “And if they promise never to do it again? Jesus, can you imagine the picture in the newspaper if we take these two down to the Indio Hilton and lock them up?”

“Okay, okay,” Nathan Hale Wilson said finally. “But don’t make us drive em back home. That’s degrading!”

“The walk’ll do em good,” Paco said. “Let em out five minutes apart. Okay with you, Maynard?”

“Okay,” the Indian said. “Which one gets the weapon?”

“Lemme see that,” Paco said. “Funny-looking ukulele. One, two, three … this one’s got eight strings. Never saw a uke with eight strings.” Then he strummed it a few times. “Wish I could play music.”

Clyde Suggs made an announcement from the holding cell: “This is the Foreign Legion for misfit cops, but Paco Pedroza sure ain’t no Beau Geste!”

“See, that’s part a the problem here,” Paco said to Maynard. “Clyde’s read a couple books in his time and thinks he married beneath him.”

Five minutes later, when Maynard Rivas was leading Clyde to the door, Paco was sitting with his feet up on his desk singing his heart out. “ ‘Ain’t she sweet!’ ” he sang, strumming away discordantly.

Maynard interrupted him. “Uh, Chief, time to give Clyde back the deadly weapon.”

“Oh, yeah,” Paco said. “Here you go, Clyde. Nice uke.”

“I bought it to serenade Bernice,” the old man croaked. “Now I’d like to stick it in her …”

“Okay, enough violence!” Paco warned.

The old man was still mighty pissed off as he trudged down the Mineral Springs main drag. He started toward the back door of the Eleven Ninety-nine Club but stopped when he thought about all the goddamn cops that hung around there. He cut through the eucalyptus trees toward the Mirage Saloon.

“I’ll have a beer,” Clyde said, when he hobbled up to the bar. “A pitcher. Will you take this for a pitcher a beer? Make it two pitchers.”

“A uke?” Ruben the bartender said. “Where’d you get it?”

“Paid fifteen bucks for it from Beavertail Bigelow,” Clyde said. “You can have it for two pitchers.”

“Okay,” the bartender said. “Looks like it’s in pretty good shape except for this dent.”

“That’s from my skull,” Clyde croaked. “I was gonna serenade Bernice with it. Now she can just watch Love Boat and go suck her tooth.”