Joseph Wambaugh: The Secrets of Harry Bright

Sidney Blackpool was never comfortable walking past Secret Service agents, but had had several occasions to do so in the past twenty-one years when bigshot politicians came to town. Like most policemen he didn’t think that Secret Service agents were real cops, so he wasn’t altogether relaxed when he had to stroll by with a Smith amp; Wesson under his coat. Regular cops could spot a plainclothes dick in a minute, but he always feared that one of these guys might eyeball the gun bulge and give him a John Hinckley brain massage with the butt of an Uzi before he could identify himself.

They didn’t call him Black Sid for any reason related to his appearance. In fact, his hair was sandy brown and gray mottled, and his eyes were pale green, and he had the kind of freckled flesh that seemed to invite a keratosis every time he played a round of golf without sunscreen lotion.

“A skin-doctors dream,” his dermatologist told him. “Keep it up, and by the time you’re forty-five you’ll progress from something that sounds ugly, like keratosis, to something that sounds pretty, like melanoma.”

People always asked if he got his nickname from being a Dirty Harry, black-glove cop, and he’d explain that policemen love monickers and when your name is Sidney Blackpool you just naturally become Black Sid. What he didn’t tell them was that “Black Sid” reflected his cynical demeanor, a look that said doomsday couldn’t come soon enough. Nor did he say that he drank lots more than his share of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch-ergo, Black Sid.

Sidney Blackpool was not kept waiting by the foxy secretary at an art nouveau desk shaped like an oil spill. She certainly had no trouble spotting him for a cop, and asked, “Sergeant Blackpool?” the second he entered the office.

The detective was about to make himself comfortable and maybe see if she was as friendly as she looked when she said, “Oh, you don’t have to wait. Mister Watson’s expecting you.”

Victor Watson’s office was not quite as overdone as the palace at Versailles but it did have a Louis XV parquet floor. And there were terra-cotta urns and Chinese pots on that floor, and Italian rococo mirrors, and a J.M.W. Turner oil painting on the wall, and polished granite tabletops, and a lacquered desk, if it was a desk, that looked like one of those ten-thousand-dollar numbers that’re supposed to combine form and function but look like an organ pulled from the belly of a dinosaur.

Sidney Blackpool was looking for Victor Watson in all this loopy art mix when a voice from the adjoining salon said, “In here, Sergeant Blackpool.”

The smaller room was a sudden relief. It was orderly with nubby upholstery and wood, real wood, and rough tactile accents. It was a man’s room, and the desk top of polished granite reflected the pupils and irises of the suntanned smiling man behind it.

“Doesn’t that office make you want to puke?” Victor Watson said.

“Who designed it, Busby Berkeley?” the detective said dryly.

“My wife did, I’m afraid.”

“She only forgot a singing waterfall,” Sidney Blackpool said, shaking hands with the older man and being beckoned toward the camel sofa.

Everyone knew who the “wife” was even if they’d never heard of Victor Watson. She was at one time a top star of feature films and was now experiencing a comeback as a nighttime soap opera killer-bitch.

There were two crystal tumblers and an ice bucket on the simple oak cocktail table, but there was nothing simple about the Ming-dynasty figural group resting beside a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.

Victor Watson looked at his wristwatch, Patek Phillipe of course, and said, “Late enough for a drink, Sergeant? You’re almost off duty.”

“I don’t worry about duty,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Only about my liver. Four o’clock’s late enough.”

Victor Watson sat beside the detective and poured three fingers of Scotch into each tumbler, then added two ice cubes to both drinks. He was so tanned that his crow’s-feet crinkled dead white when he smiled, as chalky white as his hair. His hands were delicate and they too were covered with white hairs.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you resent being sent over here to humor some millionaire about a seventeen-month-old murder case?”

“Not as long as he buys the drinks, Mister Watson,” Sidney Blackpool said, eyeing the older man over the edge of the glass.

Victor Watson shifted his weight on the sofa, adjusting the crease in his Nino Cerruti pleated pants as he did so. His outfit included a brocade vest, which was back in style (at least in Beverly Hills and its environs) after a fifty-year absence, and kiltie Italian slip-on loafers.

Then he saw the detective’s cynical green eyes looking him over and said, “When I’m in my downtown offices in the financial district, I don’t wear clothes from a Paris boutique.”

Sidney Blackpool managed a halfhearted smile and continued to drink without comment. So far the guy had apologized for his wife’s goofy taste and his frog clothes designer. Still, he was paying for the drinks.

As though he read the detective’s mind, Victor Watson freshened the drink and said, “You’re not about to ask me how I knew you drink Johnnie Walker Black, are you?”

Victor Watson chuckled and those polished granite eyes got a bit less riveting. “A childish trick I know, but things like that impress the idiots around this town. I asked your lieutenant when I called your office, and he asked your partner.”

“My partner’s on vacation. Won’t be back for a couple a weeks.”

“Of course, I was told that. He must’ve asked somebody in your office.”

“It’s okay with me,” Sidney Blackpool said, and the Scotch was warming his belly and throat and if this kept up he might start to tolerate this guy.

“How old’re you, Sergeant?” Victor Watson asked.

“Forty-two.”

“I’m only fifty-nine years old and you thought I was sixty-nine.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s okay; I know how I look. Life hasn’t always been so nice to me. When I was nineteen I spent two days as a guest of your department. I was selling sandwiches from the back of a truck to the garment workers downtown and I got a few tickets for being parked in a red zone. I couldn’t afford to pay them and one day one of your motor cops ran a make on me and put me in jail. The judge told me fifty dollars or three days. I didn’t have fifty dollars. That Lincoln Heights was one shitty jail. I got in three fights to save my virtue.”

“Did you save it?”

“For a while,” he said. “Then I married my present wife and backed one of her movies and got myself gang-banged every day by the studio goniffs .”

Sidney Blackpool caught himself guzzling, which was what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do the last time he failed to quit drinking. Well, shit, if you have to listen to some industrialist’s life story …

“Help yourself,” Victor Watson said, and the detective poured generously.

“People think I made my money in land development,” Victor Watson continued, sipping with restraint. “High tech is where I hit it big. I have a tenth-grade education but I can sell anything: rags, cars, junk, land. You name it, I can sell it.”

By now, Sidney Blackpool was drifting. The sun was filtering in the windows from the west, and twelve-year-old Johnnie Walker was making fifty-nine-year-old Victor Watson seem like an old pal.

“Fame is what works around these parts,” Victor Watson continued. “Lots of guys who make Forbes magazine get snubbed by every snotty maître d’ in town. If you want to be where it’s at you have two choices: buy a sports franchise, which is the second crappiest business in the world, or get into movies, which is the most crappy. I discovered a third way and married a famous movie star. We get the tables in her name. My picture gets taken when I’m with her. I go to parties because of her. Now I can go anywhere I want and eat cold potato soup and everyone knows me. Do you play golf?”