Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“Okay. Let’s go, Terry.”

“To where?” the kid asked, but he followed them. “Where’s the watch?”

“At Phil’s. He lives over near the tennis club. Don’t you remember?

“Is he there?”

“Phil got married,” Otto said. “To a girl?’

“Yeah,” Otto said. “That Phil’s a caution. He won’t be able to see you no more, but he did want you to have something to remember him by.”

“Sure, I think I remember Phil now!” the kid said, knocking himself on the side of the head. “Sorry I forgot. Tell the truth, I just got myself cleaned up. I was pretty heavy into drugs the past year.”

“Booze is bad enough, I can tell you,” Otto said, sincerely.

The young man looked disappointed upon seeing Sidney Blackpool’s Toyota. Phil and the Rolex apparently made him expect a richer emissary with new prospects.

Otto squeezed into the backseat, allowing Terry Kinsale to sit in front. Sidney Blackpool drove toward Palm Springs, not knowing exactly where the police department was, except that it was close to the airport.

When the detective followed an airport road sign the kid said, “Hey, this ain’t the way to the tennis club! You’re going the wrong way!”

Otto reached over the front seat with his police badge in his left hand. With his right, he began a pat down. “Just relax, boy,” he said. “We’re Los Angeles police officers and we wanna talk to you.”

“Police! Hey, wait a minute!”

“Freeze, or you’re going to sleep for a while,” Otto said, getting a loose choke hold around Terry Kinsale, while Sidney Blackpool speeded up the car to discourage thoughts of jumping.

Sidney Blackpool helped pat him down with his right hand, driving with his left.

“What’s this about?” Terry Kinsale said. “What’s this about?”

Sidney Blackpool found the police station easily enough. He pulled into the parking lot and stopped, turning off the engine and lights.

Otto said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against …”

“Hey, I don’t care about that!” the kid yelled. “I wanna know what you think I did!”

“Quiet down, son,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’ll tell you all that in a few minutes.”

Otto took his arm from Terry Kinsale’s neck and continued the rights advisement with his hand on the door lock. Terry Kinsale slumped dejectedly.

He responded to all the required questions about constitutional rights and lawyers, and then he said, “I got nothing to hide, sir. I just wanna get this over with, whatever it is. In fact, I was gonna come in here to the police station to register as a hotel worker. I just got a job as a bellman. I don’t do drugs no more and I got a new apartment and a new roommate. I got nothing to hide.”

“Let’s go inside, Sidney,” Otto said.

“Just a few questions first,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Let’s talk for a minute. Tell us, Terry, when did you first meet Jack Watson?”

“Is this about Jack? Wow!” the kid said. “I thought maybe somebody I did dope with last year was, you know, a narc or something. That’s what I thought this was about. Like, maybe some old deal where I sold a couple joints to some guy?”

The kid was so relieved that he looked happy, which made both cops very unhappy.

“I shoulda called the police about Jack soon as I heard he was killed. But it ain’t a crime that I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about his death. I was more shocked than anybody.”

“Where’d you meet him?” Otto asked.

“At a disco.”

“A gay disco?”

“A straight disco. I ain’t gay.”

“Of course not,” Otto said.

“No, really. I needed money last year. I did what I had to do to make money. But I ain’t gay.”

“Okay, so you met Jack. How’d it happen?”

“Just talking at the bar. About which girls looked good, and like that. He was my age. Nice guy. College type. He drove me home that night. We became friends.”

“Did he do drugs with you?” Otto asked.

“He wasn’t a druggie. Maybe smoked a little grass.”

“How about crystal?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“Not Jack. I did crystal, I admit. Snorted it. I didn’t shoot it.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Used to know this biker up in Mineral Springs. Name a Bigfoot. I called him when I wanted crystal.”

“How long did you know Jack?”

“About six months. Till he died. I was shocked, and that’s no lie.”

“How often did you see him?”

“About two, three weekends a month.”

“Every time he came to Palm Springs?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you ever sleep at his house?”

“No.”

“Did he ever sleep at your house?”

“Not all night. No.”

“Boy, I got a headache,” Otto said. “And I’m about to puke all over your pretty jacket. And I’m also about to book you for murder and let the Palm Springs cops sort it out. Now don’t fuck with us! You and Jack were lovers, right?”

“Not lovers. I’m not gay.”

“You had … experiences together,” Sidney Blackpool said, double-teaming him with the Mutt and Jeff routine.

“I guess so,” the kid said.

“Did he talk about his fiancée?”

“He didn’t wanna get married. His family was pushing him. His father’s a very strong guy, he told me.”

“How much did Jack like you?” Otto asked.

The kid hesitated for a second and stopped looking at his hands and turned to Sidney Blackpool, saying, “Lots more than I liked him. Man, I was running wild at that time. Jack was a serious guy. He had so many problems with his dad and his wedding plans that … I could see Jack and me could never go nowhere. It’d just be a lotta trouble for me, and I didn’t wanna, you know, tangle with his dad. But he … Jack liked me a lot . He was always calling me from college.” Then the kid stifled a sob and said, “And I liked him too. Jack was a good friend. I’d never hurt him.”

“Tell us about the night Jack was killed,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“About the night he was killed?”

“Son, I’m feeling more dangerous than an Arab with a truck full a dynamite,” Otto said in the kid’s ear. “My … patience is gone . You were in his Porsche that night!”

“You know about that?” the kid said, and this time he did sob. “That’s why I left Palm Springs! I was scared something like this’d happen. I was in his car but he wasn’t. I don’t know what happened to him out in that canyon.”

“Why’d you have Jack’s car?”

“I lied to him. He told me his housekeeper was outta town that night. He wanted me to spend the night with him.”

“Keep going, Terry,” Sidney Blackpool urged.

“I went over there to his house and told him I had to pick up my sister at the airport. I told him she came into town like all of a sudden and I needed to borrow his car. I said I’d take her to a hotel and come back and sleep … and, you know, spend the night at his house. He gave me the keys to the Porsche. Told me he’d be waiting. I never saw him again.”

“Then what’d you do?” Otto asked.

“well …”

“Go on, Terry,” Sidney Blackpool said gently.

“I wanted to show off the car to somebody.”

“Who’s that?”

“To some guy I knew. He was in town on a two-day pass. Some marine I’d met in a … gay bar. I liked him better than anyone. He was my best friend. You know what? Now all I can remember is his name was Ken. That’s what crystal does to you when you use as much as I did in those days.”

“So what’d you and Ken do?”

“We went to score some meth. I called Bigfoot but got no answer. So I went ahead and drove on up there to his house in Solitaire Canyon. We got there just when he was coming home from somewheres and he said he didn’t have no crystal. But he goes, ‘You guys sit in your car down at the end a the gravel road and wait.’ But pretty soon this other biker comes up. This huge black guy. He had a shotgun! He told us if we didn’t get out he was gonna kill us and feed us to his dogs. We went real fast.”