Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

The idea of it only half registered. His brain needed a second to signal the potential danger. The man in the mobile home didn’t need a full second. He was crouched and had been ready to escape for several minutes. He kicked that door the instant Sidney Blackpool turned the knob. The door smashed into the side of the detective’s face, jolting him backward. He fought for his feet like a man falling down a flight of stairs. When he landed in the desert garden he didn’t even feel the spines of the jumping cholla cactus.

He was aware of saliva turning sour in his throat. Then there were some pulsating flashes. He was aware of Otto running and falling hard and yelping in pain.

“Sidney!” Otto shouted. “Ohhhh, my hands!”

“Otto!” Sidney Blackpool sat up, feeling the stabbing in his face and neck. “Otto, you okay?”

“My hands!” Otto moaned. “I’m in cactus! Goddamn cactus!”

“Me too!” Sidney Blackpool said. “Was it him? Was it Brickman?”

Then they heard the sound of a car engine on the main road as it sped away.

“I dunno, Sidney. He was in dark clothes. Coulda been a police uniform. But I dunno. Ohhh, my fucking hands! I’m hurting !”

Both men got to their feet and Sidney Blackpool led the way to the mobile home. The door was hanging open and he reached inside, turning on the light.

“No sense worrying about prints,” he groaned. “If Brickman takes care a the place, his prints’d be everywhere anyway.”

“Maybe we just walked in on a righteous burglary,” Otto said. Then he thought that over and added, “Sure. And maybe you’re Robin Hood cause you’re carrying a quiverful. Sidney, what’re we doing in this desert?”

Otto entered the bathroom of the little mobile home. He pulled spines out of his hands and arms and dumped rubbing alcohol over the wounds while Sidney Blackpool ransacked the drawers and closets. He found a wardrobe behind the bedroom near a storage space containing a bicycle and a tire pump. In the wardrobe were six police uniforms with sergeant stripes. He remembered hearing that a desert cop needs six because of summer heat. There was a Sam Browne belt draped over a hook. The Sam Browne held an empty holster.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” he yelled, kicking the door of the wardrobe closet.

“Okay, so it’s gone,” Otto said, without being told. “Come in the kitchen and sit. Lemme pull those filthy little needles out.”

“See if there’s any kind a shoe print on the inside a that door.”

Otto heaved a sigh, walked to the door and examined it. He came back with his tweezers poised. “Nothing.”

“Son of a bitch!” Sidney Blackpool said. “That miserable fucking …”

“Hold still!” Otto said, extracting the spines from the side of his partner’s neck and face, swabbing the area with the rubbing alcohol. “Maybe we oughtta go down to Eisenhower Hospital and have them take a look. Are these freaking spines poisonous?”

“No, they’re just harmless plants,” Sidney Blackpool said, so furious he couldn’t light a cigarette.

“Calm down,” Otto said. “There’s nothing you can do. And far as harmless, there ain’t nothing in this desert that’s harmless.”

“I shoulda thought about …”

“We’re outta our element,” Otto said calmly. “There’s no sense saying what we shoulda done. Hold still. I almost got the last a those little bastards.”

When he finished, Otto put the tweezers and alcohol away and his partner sat in the kitchen trying to get his rage under control.

“I think we oughtta go home tomorrow,” Otto said.

“I think we oughtta book that fucking Brickman for murder!” Sidney Blackpool said.

“We ain’t booking nobody,” Otto said. “We got some half-baked theories and that’s all we got.”

“Let’s search the place at least.”

“For what?”

“The cassette.”

Otto leaned over his partner and with his face six inches away, said, “Give … it … up ! Don’t you hear me? The tape is meaningless now. Jones can’t or won’t identify Harry Bright’s voice. The gun’s gone . Brickman’s onto the whole thing. And we ain’t never gonna know what happened. Do you understand that? Can you get it through your head? I’m outta patience, goddamnit!”

“Okay, you’re right. The cassette wouldn’t make any difference now. You’re right. I’m grasping at …”

“ Sand . There ain’t even any straws to grasp at in this wasteland. Let’s go home.”

“It’s not the desert’s fault,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“It ain’t nobody’s fault, I’m starting to think,” Otto Stringer said.

Both men were resigned to failure, but with a policeman’s curiosity, each instinctively took a look around the little mobile home. Otto stepped into the tiny living room saying, “Sidney, check this out.”

Photographs. Some in photo cubes, some in gilt frames, some in wood frames. Pictures stuck in the corners of larger framed pictures. There were thirty photographs in the little room, some as large as eight by ten. They were on tables; they filled the small bookshelf; they covered the walls. Eighteen were of Danny Bright and twelve were of Patsy Bright. Harry Bright was present in four of the pictures. Otto picked up a framed family portrait when Danny was about ten years old.

“Nice-looking kid,” Otto said. “Looks just like her. She hasn’t changed much, I’ll have to say that. Of course I didn’t see her up close.”

Sidney Blackpool felt seventy years old. He walked painfully into the living room and sat in Harry Bright’s chair.

He took the picture from his partner and said, “Yeah, she’s changed. This’s Patsy Bright. This isn’t Trish Decker. She’s changed.”

“Harry Bright,” Otto said, looking at the beaming cop. It was a shot of him in the tan uniform of the San Diego police. He was holding Danny in his arms and the boy was wearing his father’s police hat. Harry Bright was a strapping, healthy-looking man.

“He looks like Harry Bright,” Otto said. “He even smiles like Harry Bright. Now let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Brickman rummaged through the cassettes,” Sidney Blackpool noted. “I guess he found it. We better report this to Paco Pedroza.”

There were several cassettes and records on the floor beside the television set. A cabinet door was open and there was a modest sound system inside. Two small speakers were wired to the wall over the five-foot sofa.

Otto opened another cabinet door above the television and found a videocassette recorder. He turned it on and switched on the television set. Then he punched the play button. It was an old movie. The volume was turned all the way down and Sidney Blackpool stared at a silent movie while Otto went to the telephone and asked the operator for the number of the Mineral Springs police.

The movie was The Enchanted Cottage . Sidney Blackpool remembered it vaguely. Robert Young was a soldier whose face had been disfigured by war wounds. Dorothy McGuire was a plain Jane who was neurotically shy. They fell in love and discovered that whenever they entered their little cottage a miracle happened. He was transformed into what he’d been before the war. She was turned into the lovely young woman he saw in her. In short, they were transformed into Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, two beautiful movie stars. It was a very corny movie. Nevertheless, Sidney Blackpool began watching it with interest. He turned up the volume and even listened to the dialogue.

Otto reached Anemic Annie who said that Paco was at the scene of the pursuit where the sheriffs car and the suspect’s car had crashed. Maynard Rivas had been slightly injured. She wasn’t expecting Paco back for a while.