Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“You won’t stand us up tonight, will ya, Otto?” the older one asked.

“If I don’t show up tonight, it may be somebody’s murdered me,” said Otto, and the girls giggled like hell and sucked on the piña colada.

At 4:00 P.M. they were halfway to Mineral Springs. “What’d Chief Pedroza say about this meeting?” Otto asked, breaking the silence.

“Nothing. Just okay.”

“What’d he say when you said it was confidential and private?”

“Same answer.”

“What’d you say when he said he’d like to meet us down in the oasis picnic ground? Did you ask if we should bring the potata salad?”

“I said okay. Just okay. This is a small town. He knows we been nosing around. He might be getting a feeling that we’re onto something. He might even be getting a feeling that Coy Brickman’s acting nervous for some reason or other.”

“He might even be getting nervous himself, Sidney,” Otto said. “Whatever’s going on he might be part of.”

“I thought a that,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We’re all getting nervous.”

“We’re a long way from Hollywood, Sidney. In lots a ways. We’re gonna meet a desert cop out in a lonely picnic ground after dark which makes it only a little bit less risky than a picnic in Central Park. And maybe he knows a whole lot about Jack Watson’s death. And we ain’t so much as got a slingshot between us and nobody in the whole fucking world knows we’re there. We could be the next ones they find in a burned car in Solitaire Canyon. Tell me you thought a all that.”

“I thought a all that.”

“Tell me why we’re meeting him out there.”

“He insisted. Said no one would see us.”

“Tell me you ain’t a bit worried,” Otto said. “About Coy Brickman or somebody blowing your face off.”

How could he tell Otto? He really wasn’t afraid anymore. Tommy did it. He could do it. How could he tell something like that to Otto? Sidney Blackpool was silent.

“Shit,” Otto said, and didn’t speak for the remainder of the ride to Mineral Springs.

Paco wasn’t there. They parked back beneath the date palms, back where the oasis picnic ground settled in against the foothills and was protected from the wind. The night wind had arrived early. But the wind wasn’t moaning yet, only whispering. Somehow the whispering wind seemed more ominous than the moaning wind. They watched dust devils off in the canyon. The desert dervishes would run and twirl, and after a sudden gust, would suddenly change course or explode in a spray of sand when crosscurrents collided. The longer they sat looking for Paco, the longer the shadows became, and the worse this idea seemed: waiting out there for potentially murderous cops. Unarmed.

“We shoulda stopped at a gun store and bought a fucking piece,” Otto said. “We shoulda borrowed a gun from Palm Springs P.D. This is like snorkeling in Australia with a pocketful a hamburger!”

“Don’t turn your imagination loose,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Paco’s not a murderer.”

“One a his good pals might be. Coy Brickman might just decide to blink for the first time this year. In order to sight down a gun barrel and blow us away.”

“He might. But we gotta trust Paco. We gotta trust somebody.”

“Why? You never did before.”

“It’s the only chance to figure it out. This goddamn case! It’s our only chance.”

“Do you want the job that bad, Sidney? The job with Watson? You wanna get out that bad?”

“I want it more than anything ,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“More than your life, it may turn out,” said Otto.

He was thirty minutes late. Shadows advance perceptibly in the desert foothills. A last saber of light slashed across the mountains, and then darkness. He had to use his headlights when he entered the picnic ground. Sidney Blackpool turned his lights on and off again. Paco was driving a Mineral Springs patrol car. He parked beside them and waved them over.

Sidney Blackpool got in the front seat beside Paco. Otto Stringer just stood next to the car on the passenger side, looking at the shotgun in the rack. He couldn’t see if Paco was wearing a handgun under his aloha shirt.

“Since you wanted it private, how’s this?” Paco Pedroza said. He didn’t have the twinkle in his eye, nor the mischief in his voice. Not this time.

“We been doing a lotta work on the Watson case,” Sidney Blackpool said. Otto scanned the ridge for a hint of twilight on a gun barrel, but there was almost no light at all.

“This is a real small town,” Paco said. “I know you been around the Eleven Ninety-nine, and up in Solitaire Canyon, and over by Shaky Jim’s. I even got a rumor you had a little talk with O. A. Jones the other day.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No, I didn’t ask him. I figured if I oughtta know, he’d tell me. See, I trust my men. All the way.”

And this made Otto very nervous. Paco didn’t sound like the jovial small-town cop. Not at all.

“We haven’t known who to trust,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’m sorry if we overstepped our authority.”

“You did,” Paco said. “If the situation was reversed, I’d a come to you and laid it out.”

“But it might involve one a your men. Or more.”

“All the more reason to come and tell me about it. I think you owed me that much professional courtesy. But that’s another story. Let’s hear it now, if you’re ready to spill it.”

“I could take up a couple hours of your time, Chief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “But the bottom line is we traced a rare ukulele found in Solitaire Canyon. Back to Coy Brickman and Harry Bright. Brickman bought it, maybe as a gift for Harry Bright, and Harry Bright recorded songs on cassettes for his own amusement.”

“I saw that uke,” Paco said. “It was used by Bernice Suggs to smack her old man on the gourd. It really got around, that old uke.”

“Coy Brickman didn’t know about that, did he?” Otto interjected.

“He wasn’t there that day. I never mentioned it.”

“That’s a relief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Then he doesn’t know we’re close.”

“To what?”

“To proving that Coy Brickman and/or Harry Bright had something to do with murdering Jack Watson.”

“And why in the hell would Coy Brickman or Harry Bright wanna kill the Watson kid, can you tell me?” Paco Pedroza had an edge to his voice.

“I don’t know, Chief,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I’d give a whole lot to work out that one. But I think one or both a your sergeants drove back to the scene of the burned car in Solitaire Canyon just before O. A. Jones was found that day last year. It was Harry Bright that O. A. Jones heard singing. Rather, it was Harry Bright’s voice on a car cassette player.”

“Well, that’s real interesting,” Paco said. “But you got a couple problems. For one, Harry Bright was off duty at home that afternoon so he wasn’t driving around Solitaire Canyon when that chopper found Jones.”

“How do you know that?”

“I personally went over to his mobile home to borrow his four-wheel-drive pickup. We needed every off-road vehicle we could locate when we were trying to find that frigging surfer cop.”

“Did the pickup have a cassette player in it?”

“I think so,” Paco said. “Harry liked music. I knew he sang a little. I didn’t know Coy bought him a uke, but it don’t surprise me.”

“What’d you do with Harry Bright’s pickup?”

“I had one a my guys use it to drive around the desert and search for the dummy’s patrol car.”

“Who used the truck?”

Paco lost a little of his impatience and started rubbing his mouth. Then, with his hand still touching his lip, he said, “It could a been Coy Brickman. I can’t say for sure. I was sending guys all over the frigging place that day. But what’s that prove?”