Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

The three jokesters mumbled something to each other, finished their drinks and were preparing to leave, when Fiona turned to Otto and said, “What’s wrong with you? Why’d you say that?”

“I don’t know, Fiona,” he said truthfully. “It was the worst thing I could think of to say around here. I ain’t even a Democrat! I think I was trying to pick a fight!”

“Rum makes people crazy,” Fiona said, slurping on the empty glass with the straw. “You better go home, Otto. It was nice meeting you though. I had fun.”

“I am acting crazy!” he said. “I tell those same jokes all the time but they sound so different in a place like this!”

“Lots a people here earned their own money,” Fiona informed him. “People got a right to play golf with who they want.”

“They got a right, but their right ain’t right ,” Otto said.

“You’re drunk, Otto. You don’t make sense.”

“Maybe I oughtta go home,” he said. “You got that right,” she said, sounding like a cop. “Well, I sure enjoyed my day,” Otto said, kissing the old doll on the cheek. “You are a caution, Fiona.”

Sidney Blackpool was already waiting in front of the clubhouse by the time Otto emerged, trudging dejectedly to the bag drop.

“You look like Arnold Palmer when he took the eleven in the L.A. Open,” Sidney Blackpool said. “What happened besides you getting blitzed? Jesus, what’ve you been drinking? Your sweater’s a brown argyle. It was solid yellow when you started the day.”

“You ever try to drive a golf cart and drink two quarts a mai tais with somebody that throws more jabs than Larry Holmes?”

“Why so glum? You sick from the booze?”

“I dunno, Sidney. Back in Hollywood I’m too old. Here I’m too young. There I’m a Republican. Here I’m a Democrat. There I dream a all the things you can buy with money. Here we find out some guys in our squad room couldn’t buy in if they did have money.”

“You okay?”

“Soon as you get that job with Watson maybe you’n me can play sometime on his corporate membership. But you ain’t gonna get certain members of our Griffith Park Saturday morning boys’ club on the course.”

“How bombed are you?” Sidney Blackpool asked. “What happened in there?”

“And they’re all cops. So they are my kind!”

“I guess you’ll tell me what’s wrong in your own good time.”

“All I can say is, I wanna go home to Hollywood where life don’t make no sense at all, but at least you expect it.”

They walked into Poppa’s Place only ten minutes before Terry Kinsale was to have been there at 6:00 P.M. It was already very dark in the desert.

The happy-hour-well drinks were about the cheapest in this part of the valley and were poured by three bartenders who hardly had time to scoop up the tips. It was the noisy, intensely raucous crowd often found in busy gay bars. Sidney Blackpool made a quick head count and guessed there were two hundred men drinking. It was standing room only.

“We’ll have to split up, Otto,” he said. “No point even trying to get a drink in this mob.”

“I had enough,” Otto said morosely.

“Think you can recognize him from the picture?”

“I don’t know if I could recognize my ex-wife,” Otto said. “The second one. I know I couldn’t recognize the first one.”

“Wish we could get you some coffee.”

“I need the Schick Shadel Hospital,” Otto said.

The detectives managed to find space in the center of the dark saloon, and each began scanning the crowd. It was a pub crowd, an eclectic mix of professional, businessman and working stiff, with a few marines and bikers mixed in. And there were lots of young blonds, most of whom wouldn’t accommodate them by turning for a full face look. A cheering group caused Otto to slouch over to a table where seven men were literally sitting on each other’s laps. There was a race in progress. The entries in the race were little plastic windup toys that hopped from one end of the table to the other. All the entries were realistic plastic penises. Each one wore the markings and colors of the owner. Blue ribbons, paper valentines, tiny photos of a lover, all adorned the jolly peckers.

“Well, at least this reminds me a Hollywood,” Otto said to Sidney Blackpool. “Now if I see Sirhan Sirhan and a William Morris agent arm in arm with the Hillside Stranglers, and they’re all talking a development deal, I’ll know I’m home.”

A man in his seventies with a mournful face and sagging jowls stared hopefully at a lad with an amused smile who leaned against the wall. The young man was dressed in an oversized street-urchin tunic and winked at the elderly man who mouthed the words of the song coming from the Palm Springs station. It was Marlene Dietrich singing “Falling in Love Again” from The Blue Angel .

“He even looks like Dietrich,” Sidney Blackpool observed.

“Her voice is probably a lot deeper,” Otto whispered. “This ain’t gonna work cause I’m about to faint. And if I faint I’m scared I might wake up at the Honeymoon Motel in a slave bracelet and a tutu. They got more fruits around here than an English boarding school.”

“We gotta give it an hour,” Sidney Blackpool said. “This could be the break.”

“I know, I know,” Otto said. “I’m just getting all these bad feelings about this whole case. This ain’t a regular investigation. Something very weird’s going on and it ain’t just in this saloon.”

“You feel it too,” Sidney Blackpool said. And that surprised him. Otto was not the lost father of a lost son. Otto was just a twice-divorced, sixteen-year cop suffering from mid-life crisis and police burnout. Otto was just a run-of-the-mill big-city detective.

They waited for an hour and were about to leave when Otto said, “Sidney!” grabbing his partner like a beat cop grabs a drunk. “It’s him !”

The young man was into the Calvin Klein, Santa Monica Boulevard, chic marine, gay fantasy look. That is, his white cotton T-shirt was not bought at Penney’s. The jeans were not Levi Strauss. The leather flying jacket was not U.S. Air Force issue. His haircut resembled a marine buzz but with decorator highlights. Both cops immediately looked behind him for the buyer of the fantasy duds, but the young man was alone.

The kid obviously didn’t know whom he was to meet, and kept himself prominently in view near the center of the barroom so that the emissary of the forgotten sugar daddy with the Rolex could spot him.

Terry Kinsale looked at his non-Rolex, then glanced nervously about the bar. Sidney Blackpool walked up behind him and said, “Hi, Terry. It’s me, Sid.”

“Sid?” He had taffy-colored hair and tight little ears. He was taller than the detectives and looked as fit as a tennis pro. It would be very hard for two over-the-hill cops to handle this kid in this environment, and both knew it.

“Phil asked me to give you the Rolex, Terry.”

“Have we met?” the kid asked, studying Sidney Blackpool.

“You don’t remember, Terry?” the detective said. “That hurts a little bit.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I should remember but …”

“You were with Phil when I met you at his house in Palm Springs.”

“Phil …” Terry Kinsale needed lots of help with this one. He looked hopefully at Sidney Blackpool.

“This is my friend, Otto,” the detective said, as his partner shouldered through a mob of newcomers who were pressing close enough to crack ribs.

“Hi, Terry,” Otto said. “I heard all about you. Wait’ll you see the Rolex. Sidney, let’s get outta here unless the oxygen masks are gonna drop real soon. I can hardly breathe.”