You were uncertain if it was a live voice or a radio voice or a taped voice?"
"I still can't say for sure. Like, I can't even say if it was a car engine or a truck engine or a bike engine. I was in real bad shape that day in the desert."
"Okay, about last night," Otto said. "Have you ever heard the song 'I Believe'?"
"Today," the cop nodded. "I went to a record store in Palm Springs and found it. Frankie Laine. I bought it and played it. He's pretty good."
"And?"
"And . . . well, I think it's the song but not the voice. At least it was something about believing. Somebody 'believes.' Something like that. I don't know why I ever thought it was 'Pretend.' It's very mixed up in my mind. Well, that's it. I guess it won't help but I wanted the dicks in Palm Springs to know. Now they know. Now you know."
"It's good you're so diligent," Sidney Blackpool said. "Can we buy you a drink?"
"Like to, but I got this girl over there by the dance floor. She promised me a dance."
"Got it," Sidney Blackpool nodded. "You still surf?" "Heard I was a surfer, huh?" The young cop grinned.
"I must be famous. The Desert Surfer they call me." "Ever surf the Wedge at Newport?"
"Yeah! How'd you know about the Wedge?"
"I used to watch surfers at one time." , "Maybe I shoulda stayed in Laguna. " O. A. Jones shrugged. "Well, I'll call you if anything jells in my head about the music. Know what? I'm starting to like old songs. Hanging around here and all, and listening for that kind a voice I heard." Then he added, "An old kind a voice, you know?"
"An old man's voice?"
"No, I don't mean that. An old style a voice. I'll listen to the Palm Springs stations and try to get you a singer's name who had that kind a style. If I do I'll tell Chief Pedroza and he can give you a ring."
"Take care, son," Sidney Blackpool said.
As they were leaving the Eleven Ninety-nine Club for the boozy ride back to their hotel suite, they heard Bitch Cassidy tell Oleg Gridley that she'd like to stuff him in her microwave, causing the lovesick midget to cry out desperately: "Why do you do this to me, Portia? Why do you treat me like I butt-fucked Bambi?"
Chapter 9
THE BISMARCK
-ANOTHER FUN-FILLED EVENING IN THE DESERT RESORT," Otto moaned during the ride back from Mineral Springs. This is about as much fun as a month in Gdansk."
"That sergeant, that Coy Brickman's a strange guy, isn't he?"
"Strange, yeah. I don't like guys that only blink their eyes every other Tuesday. He looks as warm as the ace of spades. Goddamn, this desert's black at night!"
"But look at the stars. Baskets of them. When was the last time you saw that in L. A.?"
"When those Samoan stevedores played Ping-Pong with my head. Let's go to the hotel and meet some women . That broad in the Eleven Ninety-nine scared me to death. She had veins on her veins. She looked like the monster that ate Akron. She even had pimples on her teeth. And she was talking to the midget about AIDS! Do you know they're gonna put in a resort hotel for AIDS victims in Palm Springs?"
"That's a last resort," Sidney Blackpool said. "I'd like to stop by the Watson house one more time. I got a question about Jack Watson's Porsche and I can't find the answer in the Palm Springs police report.
"After hearing about AIDS, we gotta go see Harlan Penrod? Keerist, I don't even wanna think about AIDS. Straight people can get it too, ya know. I used to worry about crabs when I'd meet a broad in a gin mill. The thought a AIDS makes the hair on my crabs stand on end! But if we gotta see him I'd rather do it tonight and get it over with. So what about the Porsche?"
"The Watson kid's Porsche was at the house when they found him missing."
"Of course."
"Did you peek in that garage? Big house, small garage. There were three rooms of old furniture and a dune buggy and Oriental rugs and their new Mercedes in there."
"So?"
"So, after they parked the Rolls in the garage, there'd be no room for a Porsche."
"So?"
"That driveway turns. If you park a Porsche or anything else in the driveway, you'd have to back it up and get it out a the way to get at the Rolls."
"So?"
"So nothing, except if there was a kidnapper, did he move the Porsche out? If so, where'd he put it? Or was it maybe parked in the street by Jack Watson that night?"
"Since there's no mention in the reports I imagine it was parked in the street by the Watson kid before he went to bed."
"Remember what Harlan Penrod said about the Las Palmas area? About how dark it is?"
"Yeah."
"I heard a couple a Palm Springs cops in the bar saying that when local folks hear a splash in the swimming pool at night, it's either a raccoon, or a cop falling in chasing a prowler."
"What's that got to do with the Porsche?"
"Would you park a Porsche Nine-eleven on a street that dark and secluded?"
"Not if I wanted to keep the car stereo. Not to mention what it's attached to."
"That's what I wanna talk to Harlan Penrod about.
The more I think about it, I wonder if Jack Watson drove the Rolls out to Mineral Springs of his own free will." And if he did, what would that prove?"
"Not a thing, maybe."
:Has ten grand made you this diligent?"
We 11 have plenty a time for golf, Otto," Sidney Blackpool said.
"Wake me when we get there." Otto scooted down in the seat and adjusted the radio volume. "Rolls-Royces, Porsches, how do I know what rich people do with their wheels? I just wish I could buy a Camaro Z-twenty-eight like a twenty-two-year-old cop. Trouble with working homicide is these whodunits. Least when I worked narcotics we usually knew whodunit, it was just how do we catch him with it. Whodunits make me sleepy."
While Otto dozed during the ride back to Palm Springs under a glittering desert sky, Sidney Blackpool thought of how ten thousand dollars did not make him so diligent. But one hundred thousand dollars a year, and a clean job with Watson Industries with all privileges and perks attached thereto, that made him more diligent than he thought he could still be. He didn't believe there was a chance of an outsider clearing this homicide, but if he went through the motions with sufficient zeal Watson might be impressed.
Victor Watson would need a new director of security whether or not he ever learned who killed his boy. So what if the detective came back from Palm Springs with little more than a golfer's tan? After twenty-one years of blowing bureaucratic smoke as a Los Angeles civil servant he ought to be able to compile a report to make a neurotic millionaire think that he'd made a run at it. Watson was no fool, but overwhelming grief softens up the brain's left hemisphere, oh yes, it does.
Suddenly he noticed that Hildegarde was singing, " 'I'll always be near you, wherever you are. Each night in every prayer .. .
That lets me out, Sidney Blackpool thought. He used to pray as a reflex action. Those millions of little incantations they drill into you in Catholic grammar schools. A prayer for every occasion. He stopped that long before he lost Tommy, but he still went to mass in those days just to have something to do together with his children. He wondered if that ritual made them closer or drove them farther apart during those last few years when Tommy and Barb lived with their mother and Sidney Blackpool got them only on weekends. Of course adolescents want to be in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods, with their friends and not with their old man on weekends.
What was it Watson said about the bad times? You only remember the bad times. Sidney Blackpool had a thousand bad times to remember after the boy started cutting classes and doing pot and hash and Ludes with the other surfers. Like the time he went to the beach in Santa Monica on a winter day and caught Tommy riding four-foot swells, so loaded he'd left his new wet suit on the beach and didn't even know he was blue from the cold. That one had ended with Tommy shoving his father and running off while a bunch of beach bums threw beer cans and forced the detective to retreat to his car. Tommy was mis
sing for ten days.
Why does a father of a dead son think only of those times? The night dreams were never like that. The night dreams were sometimes wonderful, so wonderful he would awake sobbing into a damp pillow. Too many of those wonderful dreams could kill a man, he was convinced.
The recurring dream hardly varied at all. His former wife, Lorie, and his daughter, Barb, would be playing Scrabble on the floor of the living room, and Tommy, at age twelve, would be watching a football game on television in the den, showing his special sort of chuckling grin whenever the U. S. C. band struck up their "Conquest" theme after scoring a touchdown.
In the dream Sidney Blackpool would take his wife aside privately and make her promise not to tell the secret. The secret was that they had re-created Tommy at the most wonderful time, before the rebellion and the misery of adolescence and drugs. The dream was strange in that it was understood that somehow they had willed him back to them, but the dream was unclear as to whether he was alive as far as anyone else was concerned, or even if Barb was aware.
The dream was so incredibly joyous he never wanted it to end, but of course it always did and he was powerless to change the ending. The dream was over when his wife would say, "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!"
It was so contradictory and irrational that it made perfect sense to Sidney Blackpool. And in the dream he'd always say to her, "Oh, no! I'll never tell him that. Because he loves me. And . . . and now he forgives me. My boy forgives me!"
And then he would wake up sobbing and smothering in the pillow. It was always the same and he dealt with it the same. He would take four aspirins and half a tumbler of Johnnie Walker, which would be hard to hold with both trembling hands.
" 'Just close your eyes . . . and I'll be there,' " Hildegarde sang. " 'If you call I'll hear you, no matter how far. Just close your eyes and I'll be theeeere.'
"Damn! Goddamn!" Sidney Blackpool said.
"What happened?" Otto bolted upright.
"We, uh, almost hit a . . . jackrabbit," Sidney Blackpool said.
"This is one dark neighborhood," Otto said, as his partner parked in front of the huge wall of oleander and cut the engine.
And while the detectives were locking the doors of Sidney Blackpool's Toyota, a tipsy Harlan Penrod was mad as hell because a British telephone operator was trying to explain that it was too early in London to be connecting him with anyone at Buckingham Palace.
"Well, aren't they up with the baby?" he demanded. "What kind of parents are they?"
"I'm very sorry, madam," the operator said, making Harlan drop his voice an octave or two.
"I'm not a madam, nor do I live in a place where madams reside," he said.
"I beg your pardon, sir," the operator said. "Will that be all then?"
"I'll call later," Harlan warned. And then he added, "Do you by chance know if Vera Lynn is listed in the London directory?"
"Lynn? How is it spelled?"
"Vera Lynn! Vera Lynn!" Harlan cried. "She's only the greatest singer England ever produced! She's a personal friend of the Queen Mother, for crying out loud! How old are you, anyway?"
"Would you care to speak to my superior, sir?" the operator asked.
"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 batt
ed 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?"
The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985) Page 13