Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

It was okay to put down Reagan and Bush if you included Mondale and Ferraro in the same breath. Then Beavertail looked across the bar at the only black guy in the place, Choo Choo Chester, and said, “I suppose you voted for Reagan. After all, you sent Edwin Meese all those …”

“Don’t start that shit!” J. Edgar Gomez warned, his eyebrows all spiky. “That rumor’s dead and we’re sick of it! Now drink your gin and don’t cause no trouble tonight!”

So the old desert rat and the young black cop just drank their drinks and pretended to ignore each other, but everyone figured that Beavertail wasn’t through with Choo Choo Chester who was one up on him for maybe being the guy who sent Beavertail on that bus ride to nowhere.

Choo Choo Chester then started picking an argument with J. Edgar Gomez about the jukebox. The young cops were always beefing with the saloonkeeper about his choice of records.

“I don’t see why we can’t have one freakin song that was written in this century!” Choo Choo Chester moaned. “I’m sick a Harry Babbitt and Snooky Lanson. I’m sick a Frank Sinatra singin ‘Set em up, Joe.’ ”

“Maybe you kids ain’t even capable a understanding songs like ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,’ ” the saloonkeeper sighed. “What’s gonna be the memory a your youth? ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’?”

“We gotta play somethin new,” Choo Choo Chester persisted. “Shit, I might as well be a telephone operator, goin through life with a fuckin headset glued to my ears!”

It was true. Four out of the twelve cops in the saloon were wearing headphones with their ghetto blasters sitting beside them.

“What’s wrong with Van Halen or Duran Duran?” O. A. Jones argued.

“No hard rockers,” J. Edgar Gomez said.

“Okay then, Elton John. Shit, he’s an old guy.”

“No soft rockers,” J. Edgar Gomez said.

“How about The Police then?” Choo Choo Chester asked. “How can a guy like you, who gave thirty years to the law, object to a rock band called The Police?”

“Don’t try to be cute,” J. Edgar Gomez said.

“Damn, Edgar, at least get one Hall and Oates side! They’re mellow!”

“They’re scumbag rockers,” said J. Edgar Gomez.

“I suppose even the Beatles ain’t old enough yet?”

“They started this shit,” J. Edgar Gomez said. “Shoulda depth-charged their fucking yellow submarine.”

And so forth. It was virtually hopeless, but the young cops protested every night. It was pops of the thirties, forties and fifties, and a little country. J. Edgar Gomez allowed Willie Nelson because the saloonkeeper figured that Willie was into the hippie-cowboy trash because he couldn’t handle middle age. J. Edgar could understand mid-life eccentricities all right. Yet he allowed Willie Nelson’s music only after the singer recorded Stardust and did almost as good a job as Hoagy Carmichael himself.

“What’s wrong with you?” O. A. Jones said to Wingnut Bates when the jug-eared young cop came shuddering into the bar and threw his ten-dollar bill on the bar with a trembling hand.

“N-n-nothin,” said Wingnut Bates. “Except I’m gonna kill Frank Zamelli.”

“Oh yeah, when?”

“Tomorrow. Tonight if he comes in.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s been pretty dull around here.”

“I’m gonna kill him. G-g-g-g-gimme a double margarita, Edgar.”

“What’d Prankster Frank do this time?” O. A. Jones asked Wingnut as he eyed a sagging mid-lifer from No-Blood Alley who’d look like a $6,000 facelift by 1:00 A.M.

“A sn-sn-snake!” Wingnut cried.

“He put a snake in your car?”

“My l-l-l-locker,” Wingnut said.

“That’s going too far,” O. A. Jones said. “Even for Prankster Frank. Was it a king snake? Don’t tell me it was a rattler! I wouldn’t believe that!”

“R-r-r-rubber,” Wingnut Bates said, grabbing the margarita in both hands and gulping half of it down.

“Oooooooh, rubber! Well, that ain’t too bad, Wingnut. That ain’t so bad.”

“I b-b-believe I’m gonna kill him,” Wingnut said. “Jesus, I’m st-st-stuttering!”

“You sure are. Finish your drink, maybe you’ll calm down.”

“I believe!” Wingnut cried. “I believe I’m g-g-gonna …”

“What’s that?” O. A. Jones cried out.

“Keep it down!” J. Edgar growled. “Only freaking rest I get around here is when I doze standing up. Like a freaking parakeet.”

“I believe!” O. A. Jones said, running over to the jukebox, which was playing Green Eyes by Helen O’Connell. “I believe! Hey, Edgar, ain’t that a song from your time? Ain’t that one you used to have on this box?”

“What?”

“ ‘I Believe’! How’s it go?”

Without removing his cigar or opening his eyes, J. Edgar Gomez sang, “ ‘I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower groooooows!’ ”

“Yeah, that’s it!” O. A. Jones said.

“ ‘I believe that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle gloooows.’ ”

“Okay, enough!” O. A. Jones said. “That’s it! Wingnut, that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“The song I thought I heard the killer singing in the desert when I found that Watson kid fried in his car!”

“You said it was ‘Pretend.’ ”

“ ‘Pretend you’re happy when you’re bluuuuuue,’ ” J. Edgar Gomez suddenly sang. “I just loved Nat King Cole.”

“I thought it was ‘Pretend,’ ” said O. A. Jones, “but the song never did sound right when the Palm Springs dicks played it for me. I mean, I thought I heard the guy singing something about pretending. Now I think it was ‘I Believe.’ Yeah! I think that’s it!”

“That ain’t nothing like ‘Pretend,’ ” J. Edgar Gomez said, finally opening his eyes. “You been drinking too much vodka. I told you whiskey’s better for your head.”

“I know it was something about ‘believe,’ ” O. A. Jones said, wrinkling his brow.

“I can’t believe this is so important,” J. Edgar Gomez said. “And I wish you’d keep your voice quieter. Beavertail’s nodding off. Might get by without a fight tonight.”

“ ‘I Believe,’ ” O. A. Jones said. “Tomorrow I’m calling the Palm Springs dicks. I’m the only lead to the killer!”

“That don’t seem like much of a clue to me,” J. Edgar Gomez said, closing his eyes again.

“I’m calling them tomorrow,” O. A. Jones said.

“I’m killing Prankster Frank Zamelli tomorrow,” Wingnut Bates said.

“Don’t look for mercy from that son of a bitch,” Otto Stringer said, referring to their captain. “He’s the Cotton Mather of the cop world.”

“I don’t think we’ll need mercy, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Nobody’s ever gonna know about the ten grand, and even if they do, it’s expense money. No strings attached.”

“The amount, Sidney. That’s the string. In fact it’s a rope. In fact it’s a noose if our department ever hears about it.”

“Nobody’s gonna hear. Relax. Finish your tequila and tomato juice. How can you drink that stuff?”

“Like this,” Otto Stringer said, stretched out at poolside on a lounge chair at dusk.

He guzzled the tall one and waved to a waitress with a gardenia in her hair who swayed over to poolside in a persimmon muumuu, Palm Springs being big on Hawaii and exotica in general.

“Another?” she smiled, making Otto deeply regret the big four-oh and sexual extinction.

“That was de-voon, dahling,” Otto said, “but I think I’ll try another kind.”