The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Oh, what’s the use!” Harlan said, draining his martini. “If you don’t know who Vera Lynn is, England’s finished. You might as well tell me Margaret Thatcher’s gonna mud-wrestle in Soho.”

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Yes, good night, or good morning, as the case may be.”

  Harlan hung up and mixed himself another Bombay bomber.

  He was surprised to hear the gate buzzer. Probably that bitch, Freddie. He said he’d never see Freddie again but … Harlan went to the intercom and pushed the button.

  “Yes, may I help you?” he said sweetly.

  “It’s Blackpool and Stringer,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Can we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Can we talk? Can we talk?” Harlan cried, sounding like Joan Rivers. “Just walk in the gate when you hear the buzzer, gentlemen.”

  Harlan Penrod was framed dramatically in the doorway when the detectives approached the house through the cactus garden. He was wearing a white guayabera shirt, a blue-silk ascot, white slacks and white deck shoes.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Sidney Blackpool said as Harlan stepped back and welcomed them with a flourish and his palm-down handshake.

  “Not at all,” Harlan said. “I was just calling London and the fools frustrated me no end.”

  “London, huh,” Otto said. “England?”

  “Oh, yes. I often call England, I’ve tried several times to get a message to Vera Lynn. They’re very nice, the people at Buckingham Palace who take the messages. I forgot how early it is there. It’s tomorrow actually. I should call later. I’ve called President Nixon in Peking. I called President Ford in Korea and, let’s see, I also called President Reagan in Peking. I wish he’d go to Moscow. I’d love to call him there.”

  “And they talk to you?”

  “Would you like a drink?” Harlan asked. “No, they don’t talk to me, but do you know how impressed the aides are to get overseas calls from Palm Springs? I’ve talked to Secret Service men lots and lots of times. They’ve always taken my messages for the presidents. I never called President Carter. I don’t like Democrats in general. Is either of you a Democrat? I apologize if you are.”

  “Cops’re all Republicans,” Otto said. “Capital-punishment buffs. Pro death, remember?”

  “Can’t I get you a drink? I’m so glad you dropped by!”

  “Mister Penrod,” Sidney Blackpool began.

  “Harlan.”

  “Harlan.”

  “How do you like Palm Springs so far?” Harlan interrupted. “Bet you haven’t seen any movie stars, but they’re here, I promise you. James Caan, Sonny Bono, George Peppard, Mitzi Gaynor, the Gabors. They all live fairly close to here. Gosh, we used to have Elvis Presley and Red Skelton and William Holden, and right close by, the chairperson of the board.”

  “Who’s that?” Otto asked.

  “Liberace. And of course everyone knows about old ski nose and blue eyes. We’ve named streets after them.”

  Otto’s stomach growled fiercely and Harlan said, “That reminds me, Rin Tin Tin visited Palm Springs in the old days. Are you hungry?”

  “So hungry I can’t think,” Otto said. “I just tried to eat a bowl a chili but there was a pair a spiders doing synchronized swimming in it.”

  “Let me fix you some sandwiches and we’ll have a nice talk.”

  “Tell you what, Harlan,” said Sidney Blackpool impulsively, “this is turning into an all-work no-play vacation. How about coming to our hotel? We’ll have a meal in the dining room and send you home in a taxi afterward.”

  “Oh, what a wonderful idea!” Harlan cried, fussing with his ascot and putting the martini on a cocktail table next to a love seat. “All work and no play makes …”

  “For a bent putter,” Otto said. “Tomorrow we play golf, Sidney.”

  “Just let me freshen up,” Harlan said. “I’ll be with you in a jiff!”

  “It’ll turn into a vacation tomorrow,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  After Harlan was gone, Otto said, “He’s probably in there putting sheep cells on his skin or giving himself an egg-white facial. You know, I could be back in L.A. watching the news. This is about as exciting as seeing the greengrocer cleaning his pomegranates seed by fucking seed.”

  “We’ll play golf tomorrow,” Sidney Blackpool promised.

  “Let us make haste, gentlemen!” Harlan Penrod whisked into the room, resplendent in a red ascot.

  After setting the alarm and locking the front door they were off.

  The hotel was bustling by ten o’clock when they were seated in the dining room.

  “A light supper, gentlemen?” the captain asked, handing the wine list to Otto Stringer.

  “A complete dinner,” Otto said. After the three had placed their cocktail order, he said, “Sidney, if you didn’t feed me tonight, you’d wake up in the morning and find a dead jackrabbit in my bed. I was getting wild.”

  “Really?” Harlan batted his eyes in delight, causing Otto to roll his in exasperation.

  “We wanted to talk to you about Jack Watson’s car,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Sure,” said Harlan. “By the way, Barry Manilow lives here, and of course Gene Autry, and …”

  “Where was the car parked when Jack disappeared? The Porsche, I mean.”

  “Let’s see, the police found it parked and locked in front.”

  “Outside the gates? In the street?”

  “Yes. Do you see that man over there? The guy in the tacky silk suit with the big cigar and flashy diamonds?”

  “What about him?”

  “He bought a nightclub in town. Claims to be an East Indian prince. Sure. He just reeks of olive oil and goat cheese. A Syrian from Vegas. Lives in Tuscany Canyon with ten huge watchdogs that eat third-world gardeners. I heard they found a skeleton in his yard with nothing left but a few tacos hanging from a rib cage.”

  “Some mixed appetizers,” Otto said to the waiter. “And I want rare prime rib, the King Henry the Eighth cut or whatever you call it here. And a bottle of, let’s see, number twenty-seven looks like a vintage French red.”

  “That’s French white, sir,” the waiter said.

  “Aw, screw it. You pick it. Make sure it’s at least fifty bucks a bottle.”

  “Very good,” the waiter said.

  Sidney Blackpool ordered a Cobb salad and Harlan had a bowl of leek soup and a veal chop.

  “I’ve been trying to lose a few pounds,” he said to Otto.

  “You’re in pretty good shape for your age,” Otto said, and Harlan looked as though he could slap Otto’s face.

  “Harlan, did Jack Watson ever park his car in the street at night?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

  “Once in a while.”

  “Really? A car worth forty grand on those dark streets? Must have a few auto thefts around there.”

  “A Porsche Nine-eleven’s worth more than that,” Harlan said. “And this is a transient town. He didn’t do it very often.”

  “How often?”

  “Maybe only a few times. When he came home very late.”

  “What’s very late?”

  “When it wasn’t dark anymore.”

  “He came home at dawn? Where would he go all night? This isn’t a late town.”

  “This is an early town,” Harlan said, draining the Bombay martini and smiling demurely when Otto signaled for another round. “Maybe two hundred and fifty thousand people come to this valley in season, but in the summer it’s a very small town with a small-town mentality. Have you listened to the commercials on radio and T.V.? I heard a girl today announce the bill at the multiple cinema. ‘In TheATER One,’ she says, ‘is I’m a douche.’ I thought it was a porn flick till I realized the poor thing was trying to say Amadeus. Oh, I miss the big city sometimes, but I’d never go back to L.A. When Mister Watson asked me if I’d accept the wages he offered, I countered by dropping on my knees. You can keep Hollywood.”

  “About the car,” Sidney Blackpool said, as the
second round of drinks arrived.

  “Cheers, dears!” Harlan cried, lifting his martini.

  “He’d come home at dawn sometimes? Where would he spend the night?”

  “Sergeant, he was a gorgeous young rich boy. He could spend the night anywhere he wanted. I’m sure he loved his fiancée but he was young.”

  “How long had he been engaged to his girlfriend?”

  “Not long. Three, four months, I think. Her family and his were very good friends, but I’m sure he loved her. He wouldn’t do everything his father wished.”

  “Okay, so sometimes he came home at dawn or close to it, and he wouldn’t bother to pull in and block the driveway with the Porsche. He’d park outside and come in through the walk-in gate, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, if his car was parked in front of the house and locked, were the keys to his Porsche found on his body?”

  “No. As I recall, his keys were in his bedroom where he always kept them.”

  “Okay, Harlan, then it’s very unlikely that he was forced to drive the Rolls from the house, or forced to leave the house in any fashion. An intruder wouldn’t pull the Porsche out of the garage, park it in front, lock it up and return the keys to Jack’s bedroom, now would he?”

  “I guess not,” Harlan said.

  “Didn’t you think the same thing on the day Jack was discovered missing? I mean, didn’t you tell the F.B.I. and the Palm Springs police that it was likely that Jack parked in front that night so he could drive the Rolls out later? And wouldn’t that just about rule out any notion that he was snatched from the house?”

  “I was so confused back then! Mister Watson just sort of took over from everybody. Do you know how forceful a man he is? He was running around with one of those cordless phones his company makes, and, I don’t know, it was like the red-phone syndrome: Get me Washington! He told the F.B.I. men right in front of me that his boy was kidnapped out of the house and I still can’t say he wasn’t. Like I said, Jack hated to drive the Rolls-Royce.”

  “Is it that Victor Watson wouldn’t even consider the possibility that his son might drive the Rolls up to a canyon in Mineral Springs of his own volition?”

  “Maybe that’s it. And I still don’t know that he would. What would Jack be doing in a place like that?”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know what to think.” Harlan dabbed his eyes with a dinner napkin. “He was like my son, that boy. He and his dad argued sometimes, and he’d talk to me about it later. I think he hated it, being dependent on his dad all the time. He used to call him da-da, but not to his face. And he used to say things to me like ‘Well, guess I’ll go ask Daddy Warbucks for my allowance.’ My impression is that when he finished his education he was never again going to take money from his father.”

  The waiter arrived with samples of mozzarella marinara, coquilles St. Jacques and lox with capers. Sidney Blackpool tried the mozzarella, Harlan tasted the scallops, Otto ate what was left.

  They had three bottles of wine during the meal and Otto insisted on champagne and cherries jubilee for dessert because, as Otto put it, “Who ever heard of eating cherries jubilee without champagne?”

  Harlan was bagged by then, but was still regaling them with Palm Springs lore. “And Steve McQueen lived up on Southridge by William Holden and Bob Hope. And Truman Capote lived in Las Palmas, and Kirk Douglas, and there’re so many more!”

  By now, Otto was nearly as bombed as Harlan who was weaving in his chair. The dining room maître d’ kept looking at them and at his wristwatch. Two other tables were occupied by quieter drunks who looked like they might be leaving soon.

  “Tell me, Harlan, how’d you get to know so much about this town?” Otto asked.

  “Small-town gossip. You just hang around the bars and pretty soon you know everything. In Palm Springs there’s only a population of thirty thousand who own homes and pay taxes and lots of them’re rich people who aren’t around much. You should see these bars. They’re nothing like Hollywood.” Reconsidering that, he said, “Well, they’re something like Hollywood. We have lots of wanna-be cowboys driving around in Datsun pickups looking very butch but just reeking of Pierre Cardin. Do you know this is the only place where you can go into a bar that’s frequented by the cowboy and hard-hat set along with wetbacks from Sonora? And they get along okay. When it’s one hundred and twenty degrees outside I think people start to tolerate each other. It’s us against the desert. But we also have our slums. Only town in the valley without a slum is Rancho Mirage. Do you know how many celebrities live in the country clubs in Rancho Mirage?”

  “I’m getting sleepy,” Otto said. “My lips’re getting numb.”

  “Where do you suppose Jack Watson would go on his nights out, Harlan?” Sidney Blackpool asked.

  “We have half a dozen discos in town now. Lots of airline stews and girls from Newport Beach come in for the weekends. Jack’d probably go to a disco. I never saw him dance but I know he’d be good. He’d never be out there on the street at two A.M. suffering from disco heartbreak, I can tell you. Jack could have any girl he wanted. You know why I say that?”

  “Why?” Sidney Blackpool asked, while Otto tried to catch the eye of the cocktail waitress who was still working the busy cocktail lounge as well as serving the drunks left in the dining room.

  “There’re other kids with curly black hair and eyes like Paul Newman, but he had more.”

  Something troubled Sidney Blackpool suddenly. He felt a shadow, then a shiver. He wasn’t sober enough to put it all together just now.

  “Jack had a quality that very few twenty-two-year-olds can match. Jack was nice. He was a nice human being. Yes, I think he dearly wanted to be independent of his father someday. He was special.”

  “I hear that young people hang around Palm Springs all hours a the night,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Did Jack do that?”

  “Do you know who hang around? Teens and marines from Twentynine Palms. These macho boys who spend all day learning how to drop napalm on rice paddies and kill with their bare hands come to Palm Springs for the weekend. No hair, no money, in their jacked-up Camaros with rebel flags on them, and a can of Skoal in their back pocket. They’ve got nothing to do but get in fights. Do you think Jack would be roaming the streets with those people?”

  “How much did he drink?”

  “Like any college kid.”

  “Did he do drugs?”

  “I’m sure he smoked a number once in a while. I don’t think he did coke, but I have to tell you it is the most abused substance in Palm Springs. I see waiters and waitresses running in and out of the rest room all night, stuffing it up their noses at a hundred and twenty dollars a gram.”

  Just then the cocktail waitress came by with the check for Otto. He leered at her cleavage, signed the check and wrote on a cocktail napkin: “Please help me escape! I am being held hostage by terminally boring people! I am a wealthy man!”

  She giggled and thanked Otto for writing in a 30 percent tip, after which she sashayed back to the cocktail lounge.

  “It’s hard to believe I’m almost old enough to be her daddy,” Otto sighed. “I may not survive this birthday.”

  “Well, I guess it’s time to go to bed,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “So soon?” Harlan said. “I could talk for hours.”

  “I want you to call me here if you think of anything else about the Watson case,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Try to remember if he ever talked about any girl he may’ve met here. Did he ever bring a local friend to the house?”

  “Not while I worked for the family.”

  “I guess that’s it then. We’ll see …” Suddenly it clicked, the reference to Paul Newman’s blue eyes. Newman had a son with whom he no doubt had a turbulent relationship. He’d lost that son. Paul Newman knew what Victor Watson and Sidney Blackpool knew, about fathers and sons.

  “Something wrong?” Harlan asked.

  “I just thought
of a guy … It’s nothing. Now I’m gonna put you in a cab.”

  “Gosh, I wish we didn’t have to go so early. I was just … oh, my Lord!”

  “What is it?”

  “Look at that!”

  Three men had walked into the dining room and were having a short conversation with the maître d’ whose grin registered about $200 on the gratuity scale as he led them to a table in the corner.

  The man in the lead could’ve been thirty years old or sixty. His hair was done in a henna perm, and his transparent flesh was stretched so tight across his cheeks and mouth that he could barely smile. He had Jean Harlow eyebrows, and dressed like Oscar Wilde complete with carnation. He was followed closely by two handsome young Japanese in matching double-breasted red blazers, white pants and red loafers without socks.

  “Do you know who that is?” Harlan whispered. “My Lord, ever since Betty Ford got her face-lift everybody’s coming to Palm Springs for a cut and stitch. Look at that job! I mean, last time I saw him he could pack his rainbow undies in his eye bags. I mean, you talk about eyes by Louis Vuitton!”

  “Who is he?” Otto was getting interested.

  “And those little pals, calls them his aides-de-camp. Sure. I know a massage-parlor duo when I see one. Some day hell be giving palimony to those little harbor bombers.”

  “Who is he?” Otto wanted to know.

  “That man,” Harlan said, “is the last of a famous German family who kept Hitler’s war machine going. In his father’s factories slaves were hanged from the rafters when their output wasn’t sufficient. In nineteen thirty-nine his family was as powerful as the Rothschilds. Now he spends his life in a bikini with a tan line that touches.”

  “He looks like a Vincent Price movie,” Otto said.

  “Palm Springs is a larger version of Harry’s Bar,” Harlan declared proudly. “You can watch the whole world pass by. Gentlemen, he is living proof of a design in the universe. From the battleship Bismarck to the good ship Lollipop in a single generation. That’s the way a dynasty ends-not with a bang, but a giggle.”

  CHAPTER 10

  THE WALL