Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“I knew Harry Bright slept it off in Solitaire Canyon on the graveyard shift, for chrissake,” Paco said. “There ain’t no secrets in a little town like this. I don’t stand for my guys being drunk on duty. Not normally, but … well, Harry’s gonna be fifty years old next month. I had every intention a dealing with it then. I was gonna take Harry and buy him a gold watch and throw a big party and kiss him on both cheeks. Then I was gonna ask him to retire, effective on his fiftieth birthday when he’d have the pension earned. Except he had the stroke last March.”

“What about Solitaire Canyon?” Otto asked quietly.

“It don’t surprise me that Harry mighta lost his uke out there some night when he was drunk on duty. Look, he wasn’t always a drunk. But … well, it gradually got worse. The booze, I mean. I sorta looked the other way with Harry Bright when I woulda fired anybody else. I don’t doubt that Harry mighta been out there drunk and singing his heart out like some old coyote. And he mighta put the uke on the roof a the police car, and when he drove off in the morning it probably fell off and got covered by blowing sand. That’s a logical explanation.”

“And how about the singer O. A. Jones heard?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

“I heard O. A. Jones say he wasn’t sure it was Harry Bright’s voice. That’s what I heard. But to satisfy you I’m gonna bring Coy Brickman in here and we’re gonna ask him if he drove Harry Bright’s pickup truck into Solitaire Canyon on the afternoon the death car was found.”

“I don’t expect him to confess to it,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Listen, Blackpool,” Paco said, pointing his finger at the detective’s face, “I’m gonna go you one better. I’m gonna ask Coy Brickman in your presence to give me his service revolver for a ballistics check. And Harry’s too. I know I ain’t got no call to do that, but poor Harry don’t know what’s going on so it can’t hurt too much.” Then Paco stopped and looked at Otto Stringer and Sidney Blackpool and said, “There’ll be something to gain from it when it’s over. I’ll gain the pleasure a telling you two that my guys ain’t killers. Then I’ll personally point you to the city limits.”

“That’s more than fair,” Otto said. Then he glanced at Sidney Blackpool, who was staring at the wall. Otto said, “You got every right to be mad, Chief. The way we handled this case.”

Paco stood up and paced back and forth behind his chair, and pulled his underwear out of his ass, and mumbled a few times before sitting back down. He was not a man who could sustain anger.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Maybe I’m being a little hard-nosed. So listen to me. I wanna tell you a couple things about Harry Bright.”

“I’d like to hear them,” Otto said, taking an empty chair while Sidney Blackpool lit a cigarette.

“You already know that Harry and Coy worked together at San Diego P.D. years ago,” Paco began. “Harry broke Coy in as a young cop. Maybe Harry put his ass on the line once or twice for Coy, you know how that goes. Well, some years back, old Harry’s wife got sick and tired a shopping at Fedco or whatever. She was a dynamite blonde and she met a rich guy and it was adios to Harry and to her son, Danny.

“So Harry Bright deals with it as best he can because he’s crazy about the broad. And he’s always the optimist. And he thinks she ain’t really gonna like living at Thunderbird and in Hawaii and doing her Christmas shopping in Paris. Harry, he looks at Danny and says, this is the thing of value, right here. Patsy’ll see it someday and she’ll come back to us. That’s Harry Bright as he was then .

“Well, everybody except Harry knows she ain’t coming back. And pretty soon Danny grows up and maybe there’s guys that love their kids more than Harry did, but maybe there ain’t. And Danny’s a good student but he’s a great linebacker and he gets a football scholarship and he’s off to Cal. Then one day in nineteen seventy-eight, Danny’s coming back to San Diego from college because an old pal from his high-school team got hurt in a car wreck and might not pull through. Danny was on the PSA flight that went down with a hundred forty-four people.”

Paco Pedroza stopped, stood up behind his chair and looked out the window at the desert night. He stood with his hands behind his back and said, “Sometimes policemen get an extra bad break in life by being at places other people ain’t. Harry was where he would never a been able to go if he wasn’t a cop. He was gonna meet the plane that morning, and when the news flash came over the radio, Harry Bright was on his way to the crash.

“Harry hung his badge on his civilian shirt and got through all the first roadblocks and was one a the first cops on the scene. That’s where Coy Brickman comes in. Because what happened next I never woulda known if Coy hadn’t told me. Coy was on duty a couple miles away when the dispatcher started sending units code three to the crash site. It was … well … unbelievable. After seeing all kinds a things he didn’t think was possible, Coy was roaming around wiping black smoke from his face and trying to get hysterical people rounded up and away from the area. Then he spotted two cops he didn’t know. They were standing in the middle of what looked like little Hiroshima and laughing. I mean, screaming their heads off.

“Coy goes over to these guys and thinks maybe they’re off their nut. He even sees a newsie snap a picture a these weird cops. He asked what’s so funny because he needs a chuckle more than any time in his whole life. They point to this guy over across the street. He’s kneeling down looking at something. They say they had to laugh, cry, or throw up.

“Coy goes over to the guy and it’s an old patrol partner he ain’t seen in a few years. It’s Harry Bright. That’s when he sees what Harry’s examining.

“It was a face. Not a head. Just a face. There were lots a strange things happened with human bodies that day. This was a face only. Laying on the ground like an upside-down dish. Coy Brickman said it was a young face. Looked like a young man, but Coy wasn’t sure. He said you’d be amazed how you can’t be sure when you remove a face from everything around it. But it was hardly busted up, that face. Just laying there looking at him.”

“Jesus!” Otto said. “It wasn’t … don’t tell us it was …”

“We don’t know for sure,” Paco said, looking at Sidney Blackpool. “Nobody ever asked Harry Bright. Not even Coy Brickman could ever ask Harry Bright that question. But it was somebody’s son, wasn’t it? Maybe it really ain’t relevant if Harry Bright, with a hundred and forty-four to one shot, found a certain face at the crash scene. Maybe the question’s just irrelevant. It was somebody’s face. Somebody’s son’s face.

“Anyways,” Paco sighed, “Harry buried Danny or whatever pieces of a human being they think is Danny, and he tries to cope, but he don’t have much success. In fact, I bet Harry had lots a notions to kiss the old thirty-eight-caliber crucifix. He couldn’t stand the house, the neighborhood, the reminders of all he lost.

“Then Harry heard that Mineral Springs is gonna stop contracting with the county sheriff and form its own police department. He read where I’d been appointed chief and was looking for an experienced sergeant and he called me for an interview.

“Now I look at Harry Bright and I don’t see any booze-busted veins in that forty-four-year-old nose, but I waffle about whether I should waive the age requirement and hire this old guy. I check with San Diego P.D. and I find out this is a first-rate street cop and a first-rate supervisor, and you know the two don’t always go hand in hand. So I hired Harry Bright and it didn’t take me too long to figure out why Harry wanted to finish his police career out here. I learned that his ex-wife lives in Thunderbird, and that the torch he carries for her is big enough for the Olympic games.