Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“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.