The Secrets of Harry Bright

by Joseph Wambaugh

  O. A. Jones didn’t look very happy when he entered the chief’s office. There was a Sony cassette player sitting on the chief’s desk. The young cop got scared, thinking that they wanted to record a statement from him.

  Then Sidney Blackpool said, “Sit down. I want you to hear a few songs.”

  The kid looked relieved, and said, “Is it ‘Make Believe’? I heard it. I’m positive that was the song. You don’t need to …”

  “We think we have a voice that might sound familiar,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “The killer’s voice? How …”

  “Just sit down, son,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Let’s listen.”

  Paco punched the play button and the three men watched the young cop. Halfway through the first song, O. A. Jones started to say something, thought better, and sat back. But he didn’t relax from that instant. He sat rigid and didn’t twitch. Sidney Blackpool knew that he’d recognized his sergeant’s voice.

  When Harry Bright introduced “I’ll Be Seeing You” in his speaking voice, O. A. Jones still didn’t move a muscle.

  When the last song was played, Sidney Blackpool said, “Well?”

  O. A. Jones looked at the detective. Then at Otto Stringer. He looked at Paco Pedroza, then back to Sidney Blackpool. He said, “I ain’t sure.”

  “What?”

  “Sergeant Bright,” O. A. Jones said. “I … he sings sorta like the guy. I mean, it’s old-fashioned, his style and all, but

  “Could it be him?”

  O. A. Jones looked at the chief of police again, and Paco said, “You gotta tell the truth, boy. This ain’t no time for wrongheaded loyalty. But it’s gotta be the absolute truth.”

  “Okay, then,” O. A. Jones said, facing Sidney Blackpool, who was so tense he was about to come out of the chair.

  “It was Harry Bright!” the detective said.

  “No, I can’t say that.”

  “What?”

  “I cant, Sarge! I had heatstroke almost. It’s been a long time now. I been listening to so many singers and so many songs now, I can’t say that.”

  “What if he was singing ‘Make Believe’?” Sidney Blackpool was desperate. “Would that make a difference? If I could find a cassette with Harry Bright singing ‘Make Believe,’ would you be able to say for sure?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” O. A. Jones said. “I got a good imagination. I can think of Harry Bright’s voice doing ‘Make Believe.’ But I still can’t say for sure.”

  “Because he’s your sergeant!”

  “No, sir,” O. A. Jones said. “Because it’s too … important. I gotta be sure beyond a reasonable doubt here. Maybe I gotta be sure way past a reasonable doubt before I can say in my heart that I heard Harry Bright’s voice out there that day. I just ain’t able to say it.”

  “Goddamn it! You know that was Harry Bright!” Sidney Blackpool leaped to his feet.

  Paco Pedroza came forward in his chair. Otto Stringer stopped leaning against the wall. O. A. Jones was startled.

  “Easy, Sidney,” Otto said.

  “That’ll be all, Jones,” said Paco. “You can go back in the field now.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarge,” O. A. Jones said to Sidney Blackpool, who sat back down, pale with rage, gripping the arms of the chair. The young cop couldn’t get out fast enough.

  When Otto closed the door Paco Pedroza leaned his elbows on his desk and spoke with a trembling voice: “Who do you think you are? You come into my town and try to intimidate my policeman in my station house? Who in the fuck you think you are?”

  “Listen, Chief,” Otto said. “This case’s gotten outta hand. Sidney just …”

  “This case should be in the hands a Palm Springs P.D.,” Paco Pedroza said. “That is, if you guys had some startling new evidence. But so far, all I hear is, you proved Harry Bright can sing. Which I already knew. And that a ukulele Coy probably gave him was found in Solitaire Canyon.”

  “That is a bit unusual, Chief,” Otto said, trying to reduce the level of tension in the room.

  “It might be to some hotshot gangbusters from the big city, trying to push people around without knowing what the fuck they’re talking about. Maybe if you’da asked me, maybe if you’da behaved like professionals, I coulda explained all this in the beginning.”

  Then Sidney Blackpool spoke. The color was back in his face when he said, “Go ahead, Chief. Explain it.”

  “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 so
on 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.

  “Well, I know people who’ve lost a lot in this world, but Harry Bright, he lost everything. So okay, I looked the other way the past few years when I could see Harry was drinking more and more. I was gonna ask him to retire next month. That’s the God’s truth.”

  Paco sat down and stared at his hands. “I didn’t like knowing he was getting bombed and sleeping in a police car in Solitaire Canyon, but I played dumb, All my cops knew about it, and they all protected him. Everyone a them, not just Coy Brickman. I wanted to come down hard on him when I’d see him all trembly and boozy in the morning. But every time I tried, I thought a that day in San Diego. The man kneeling on the ground with the secret he was gonna take to the grave. A secret that’s irrelevant. That face belonged to somebody’s son and I guess Harry figured that out too.

  “Anyways, I excused Harry Bright when I wouldn’t excuse nobody else, Now I tell you guys one thing: we’re gonna go through with this ballistics check even though there’s not one shred a motive for Harry Bright or Coy Brickman to’ve murdered that Watson kid. I’ll do it, but I can tell you for sure, Coy Brickman and Harry Bright, neither one could ever murder anybody.”

  “He should be coming in soon,” Otto said. “How do we get to Harry Bright’s mobile home? We have the general location but don’t know where the street is.”

  “Take the main drag two blocks before you get to the oasis picnic ground. Turn left on Jackrabbit Road. Last mobile home at the end a the street. Coy has a key to Harry’s place and we keep another at the front desk. The whole department watches after Harry’s property.”

  There was a knock at the door and Anemic Annie came rushing in. “Chief,” she said. “There’s a sheriff’s unit in pursuit on the highway! And one of our units joined in!”

  “Who is it?”

  “Maynard Rivas! Sounds like they’re after a two-eleven suspect from the Seven-Eleven Store!”

  “Oh, shit!” Paco said. “Where’s O. A. Jones?”

  “He’s after them!”

  “Where’s Wingnut?” Paco grabbed his gun from the desk and ran toward the front door of the station house. “He’s off the air!”

  “Goddamnit! I’ll be back soon as I can! Annie, when Coy comes in, tell him to wait in my office!”

  Paco Pedroza was gone before she yelled, “Coy’s already on the street! And I can’t reach him on the air!”

  “Whaddaya mean, he’s already on the street?” Sidney Blackpool asked Annie.

  “He came in and took his messages and rushed out to his unit. I can’t reach him. He’s not answering.”

  As Annie went back to the radio, Sidney Blackpool and Otto looked at each other and walked out of Paco’s office. They heard Maynard Rivas break in to broadcast his location as the secondary chase car.

  Then Sidney Blackpool said to Annie, “What’d Sergeant Brickman say when he left?”

  “Nothing, except to ask me what time the message came in.”

  “What message?”

  “A pawnbroker called to ask if Coy’d been given back the ukulele that the detective had inquired about. He didn’t say which detective. I figured it was you.”

  “Let’s hit it, Otto!” Sidney Blackpool yelled, rushing out the front door.

  “Loan me a gun!” Otto said to Anemic Annie.

  “Are you sure it’s okay, Sergeant?” she asked. “You can’t join the pursuit in a private car, and …”

  “Gimme a fucking gun!” Otto bellowed, and the trembling woman quickly unlocked the drawer at the front desk and shoved a.38 Colt four-inch revolver across the counter to Otto Stringer who jammed it in his waistband and ran out of the station.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this!” Otto said, as he slid into the Toyota.

  “We got no choice! He knows we’re onto him. He’s either getting rid of his gun or Harry Bright’s. If it’s his gun we can’t guess where he might be. If it’s Harry Bright’s gun we know where that is.”

  “Brickman might try to shoot us, Sidne
y!”

  “We got no choice. At least, I got no choice. Want me to leave you here?”

  “I’ll back you up,” Otto said without enthusiasm.

  Sidney Blackpool blew through the red light and was wheeling left on Jackrabbit Road within minutes. He cut his lights and drifted toward the end of the cul-de-sac in total darkness. The street was on the edge of town. There were no sidewalks, no curbs, no sewer lines, and no streetlights.

  “Where is it?” Otto asked, barely moving his lips. “Where’s Brickman’s car?”

  There were only six mobile homes on the street and they were all thirty yards apart. Behind them was open desert and a view clear to the foothills. When they parked they heard the coyote packs loping down from the mountains, yapping in ecstasy as they began the night’s hunt.

  “He’s not here yet,” Sidney Blackpool said.

  “Or he’s here and gone.”

  “No, because he’d wanna find two things: Harry’s gun and the cassette with Harry’s songs. He’d need a little time. I think he’s getting rid a his gun. I think he’ll be coming along here at least to get the cassette. Even if it was his gun and not Harry’s that the kid was shot with.”

  Sidney Blackpool backed in behind a mobile home that looked vacant. At the mouth of the street a dog uttered a halfhearted bark. Anyone would think that the dog was just nervous about the pack of coyotes, as well he should be.

  They got out of the Toyota and walked across a grass driveway. The wind gusted and howled, and the coyote voices joined in.

  They could see a woman through a kitchen window of a mobile home on the opposite side of the road. The home belonging to Harry Bright was only large enough for one bedroom. There was a telephone line and a cable T.V. hookup coming from a pole at the edge of the property.

  “Otto, I’m gonna wait behind the mobile home,” Sidney Blackpool whispered. “How about you staying near the car? If he spots me or gets nervous about anything, I’d like you to turn on the headlights and make a lotta noise and run right toward us. I want him to think Paco’s with you. I don’t want him to know it’s just us two, He might fight.”