Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“Let’s go, Sidney,” Otto said. “Now. Let’s go, now !”

As they were walking away, they heard Coy Brickman turning the radio to the Palm Springs station where Fred Astaire was singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

“Hey, it’s Fred,” they heard Coy Brickman say to Harry Bright. “Pipes aren’t quite as good as old Harry Bright’s, but not so bad for a hoofer.”

Otto Stringer took one last glance and saw the tall cop leaning over Harry Bright, gently dabbing the saliva from the strong cleft chin of the dying man.

“The world won’t be the same when old Fred’s gone, will it, Harry?” Coy Brickman asked Harry Bright, while Fred Astaire sang it as only he could.

There was no conversation on the ride back to the hotel. When they got to their suite, Otto went into his bedroom and came back with the expense money, throwing it on the coffee table. “Are you going home with me tomorrow?” he asked.

Sidney Blackpool picked up the telephone and said, “I’m calling Victor Watson. I’ll do what he wants me to do.”

When he reached Victor Watson’s Bel-Air residence the call was answered by a housekeeper and then Victor Watson came on the line and said, “Sidney? Have you discovered something?”

“Mister Watson,” Sidney Blackpool said, “I know how your boy died. But I can never prove anything in a court of law.”

Victor Watson merely said, “I’ll meet you at my Palm Springs home at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Thank you, Sidney. Thank you!”

After Sidney Blackpool hung up, Otto said, “Give him my President McKinleys. Or keep them yourself. I’m catching a bus to L.A. first thing in the morning. I’ll pick up my golf clubs when I see you at work on Monday.”

“Why don’t you stay, Otto? Why go home? What’s the point? What’re you trying to prove?”

“There’s nothing to prove,” Otto said. “I don’t wanna be there when you tell him about Harry Bright. It might make me feel more putrid than I do now.”

“I want that job, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I want a new life. If you can’t understand that, I’m sorry.”

“I hope you get what you want,” Otto Stringer said.

Otto went straight to bed without eating. Sidney Blackpool had no thought of food. He spent the evening planning the best way possible to tell Victor Watson how his son was shot by a drunken cop named Harry Bright in an act of mercy. He hoped he could leave Coy Brickman totally out of the story.

Harry Bright’s taped voice was haunting him. There was a time after Tommy Blackpool’s death when he craved to hear his son’s voice once more. But their home movies were without sound. Once he had tried watching a home movie. He never got past the first reel.

At one time in his life he’d foolishly yearned for his son to be more like him . Now, if he had a soul he’d give it just for his son to be .

It took him two hours and a lot of Johnnie Walker Black before he could fall asleep. Before he did, it came more fiercely than it had in a very long time: the memory of Tommy Blackpool. The last time his father saw him alive.

Sidney Blackpool held his hands over his eyes as he lay in the dark but that wouldn’t stop the memory. Nothing would stop it once it started to come. Someday, if he were ever to smoke his.38, it would be to stop it, that memory.

Lorie had come to Sidney Blackpool’s house to pick up both children. Tommy was into drugs heavily by then and Sidney Blackpool had found hash in his room and was confronting the boy in front of his ex-wife. During the argument Tommy had cursed both parents, and Sidney Blackpool had exploded. The father grabbed the son by the shirt and said, “You miserable little son of a bitch! You little bastard. I’ll kill you!” And he’d punched Tommy twice and knocked the boy over the kitchen table, causing Lorie to start screaming when glass shattered and blood from Tommy’s nose spattered on the white vinyl floor.

The boy’s mother threw herself between father and son and Tommy cried obscenities and ran through the house, his blood dripping on the carpet before he was out the door and gone.

They discovered later that he’d spent the night with a neighborhood friend. The next morning he was truant from school. He was drowned that day by the huge swells while surfing in the cold winter twilight.

After the image of Tommy running bloody through the house finally faded, Sidney Blackpool said, “Oh, Tommy!” It was all he could say. This was his secret. Victor Watson had his and Harry Bright had his.

He had the dream that night. In the dream Tommy Blackpool at the age of twelve was watching a football game on television, displaying that special sort of chuckling grin of his. In the dream Sidney Blackpool was still with his wife, Lorie, and he took her aside and made her promise not to tell the wondrous new secret: that he had willed Tommy back! At least his essence. But only for them to know.

As always, the dream ended when she said, “Sid, we can enjoy him forever now! But you mustn’t tell him he’s going to die when he’s eighteen! You mustn’t tell him!”

“Oh, no! I’ll never tell him that!” he said to his wife in the dream. “Because now he loves me. And … and now he forgives me. My boy forgives me!”

As always, he woke up sobbing, and smothering in his pillow.

For once, his partner was up first. In fact, when Sidney Blackpool dragged himself out of bed with a headache almost bad enough to make him fear a stroke, he was surprised to see that Otto Stringer had gone. He looked at his watch and saw it was after nine, the latest he’d slept since arriving. He showered, shaved and stared at his swollen jaw. His face was done in desert pastels. He ate a light breakfast in the suite and vomited it back up almost immediately.

He checked out of the hotel at 1:00 P.M. and walked the boulevards of Palm Springs until 2:30 P.M. Then he drove to the Watson home.

When Harlan Penrod admitted him and saw his damaged face he said, “My gosh! What happened to you? Mister Watson called and said he was coming to meet you. Did you get Terry Kinsale? Is he the one who …”

“No, he’s not, Harlan,” Sidney Blackpool said. “How about getting me some coffee.”

“Sure, but tell me who …”

“Don’t ask me any questions, Harlan. I’ll tell it to Mister Watson. Jack was his kid. Ask him .”

“But …”

“Don’t ask me a single question.”

“Okay. Except how do you like your coffee?”

Victor Watson arrived from Palm Springs Airport by taxi. He wasn’t even in the house long enough to shake hands with Sidney Blackpool before he said, “Harlan, take the car down and gas it up, will you?”

“It’s full, Mister Watson.” Harlan said, “Can I get …”

“Go to a movie, Harlan. Come back at six o’clock. Please.”

“Sure, Mister Watson,” the houseboy said, looking at the grim set of Sidney Blackpool’s mouth.

“Look at you, Sidney!” Victor Watson said. “What happened?”

“Cactus,” Sidney Blackpool said. “The desert’s full a dangers for guys like me.”

“Tell all of it, Sid. All of it.”

They went into the study and Victor Watson sat behind his desk while the detective sat across the room on a sofa.

Sidney Blackpool told almost all of it. There was nothing to gain by naming Coy Brickman. He told Victor Watson about Terry Kinsale, and about his driving Jack Watson’s Porsche, and about the gun that was missing and which no doubt was the weapon used to kill Jack during a misguided act of mercy by a sick drunken cop. He protected Coy Brickman by implying that Harry Bright probably disposed of the gun himself.