The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Sidney Blackpool lit a cigarette and straddled his chair and looked away. Then he said, "Okay, Otto, you're right. I did figure from the git-go that Watson cooked up the Hollywood connection, but I went along. And not just for a fun-filled week in Palm Springs."

  "So far, we ain't having much fun. We're working."

  Sidney Blackpool took a big hit on the cigarette and blew a cloud through his nose, saying, "I didn't know he'd give us ten thousand, but that's not what's making me take a run at this case. Watson offered me a job if I could impress him."

  "What job?"

  "Security director for Watson Industries. Hundred grand a year. Travel. Country-club privileges. Perks. I won't be super rich but I can live rich."

  "Every cop's hope and dream," Otto whistled. "How to turn twenty years of shit into sunshine."

  "It's the first thing I've been a little stoked about in a long time, Otto. It's something to . . . go for."

  "Go for? I'd kill for it. You shoulda told me." "Sorry, partner."

  "So now I know, let's forget the golf. I'll work all week if that's the payoff for you. I can always play golf in Griffith Park. "

  Sidney Blackpool grinned and said, "Thanks, but guess what?"

  "What?"

  "We're gonna hit the links today."

  All right!" Otto said. "Which course?"

  You pick it. We got three to choose from."

  "Eeny meeny miny Tamarisk! Let's go play Tamarisk Country Club."

  "Kay by me," Sidney Blackpool said. "Hey, guess what I saw out in the desert?"

  "What?"

  "A bird I saw in the desert magazine. A butcher-bird they call it. It impales mice and lizards on thorns and barbed wire, then eats them. Beautiful songbird. Teal-colored back. Gray cap, black mask, wings silver gray like a Mercedes. With white pinstriping. A gorgeous deadly little songbird. Reminded me a my ex-wife."

  "Sidney, puh-leese!" Otto said. "You promised not to get so morbid!"

  The clubhouse at Tamarisk was brand-new but the golf course was old. Along with Thunderbird Country Club, it was the oldest posh club in the desert. The detectives weren't certain what to do, but started lugging their own clubs until a kid saw them and took their golf bags, directing them to the locker room where they changed shoes.

  The new clubhouse was perfect for the desert: lots of glass and space, decorated in desert pastels. There was a membership roster on the wall inside the lobby. Otto saw Gregory Peck's name and began getting panicky. He half expected to run into Yoko Ono.

  Although he'd played an occasional game of golf over the years, Otto had never really gotten interested in the game until he started working with Sidney Blackpool, a pretty good golfer. In their months together, Sidney Blackpool had managed to get them some play at a few of the second-line private clubs in Los Angeles County, which were goat tracks compared to the manicured perfection of the desert country clubs.

  "Oh, my God, Sidney!" Otto said when they were standing with the club pro looking at the eighteenth green. "I never seen anything like this. It's . . . It's . . . I used to date a girl with a pussy like that!"

  "Green?" said the club pro.

  "Velvet," Otto said. "It looks like velvet around that pin. And look at the fairways, not a blemish. Do you use Clearasil on them, or what?"

  "Have fun, fellas," the pro said. "You'll make a threesome with Mister Rosenkrantz. He's on the first tee warming uy."

  "Thanks much," Sidney Blackpool said, needing to take Otto's elbow to get him away from the eighteenth green. The boy already had their clubs loaded on an electric golf cart and was wiping down their woods.

  "Do we tip the kid or what?" Otto whispered.

  "After we're through," Sidney Blackpool said.

  "Do we pay green fees or what? Is ten grand enough for green fees?"

  "Relax. Victor Watson took care a everything," Sidney Blackpool said. "Imagine what it'd be like working for a guy like him."

  "Imagine what it'd be like living in a place like this, Sidney. I gotta find me a rich woman in this town!"

  The man waiting on the first tee was about sixty-five years old and fatter than Otto Stringer, but stood only about five feet six. He wore a floppy golf cap that came to the top of his ears and plastic-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He smoked a cigar that was bigger than a twelve-ounce sap.

  "You must be Mister Guildenstern," Otto said, sticking out his hand.

  "I'm the other one," the man said. "Rosenkrantz with a K. Glad to know you boys."

  "He's Sidney Blackpool and I'm Otto Stringer. Thanks for letting us play."

  "Glad to do a favor for friends a Victor Watson," he said. "Call me Archie. What's your handicap?"

  "He's about a twelve," Otto said. "Me, I'm a beginner. Thirty handicap oughtta do it."

  "Last guy told me that beat me like a whorehouse rug," Archie Rosenkrantz said. "So I give you fifteen strokes. Sidney, you give me three. How about we play for twenty bucks four ways. Front, back, automatic press on the back and totals."

  "Sounds okay," Sidney Blackpool said. "You go ahead and show us the way, Archie."

  While Archie Rosenkrantz was getting himself ready on the first tee, Otto felt the panic bubbling. He whispered to his partner, "Did you trade President McKinley for a whole bunch a Andrew Jacksons? We never played for more than two bucks at Griffith Park!"

  "We got money, don't worry," his partner whispered back.

  Just then, a mixed foursome drove up in two custom golf carts and parked at the tee. One golf cart was Chinese red, built to resemble a baby Rolls-Royce. The man driving was older than George Burns. The girl in Ultrasuede was younger than Brooke Shields. Otto felt eight eyes on him. Disapproving eyes, he figured. He was sure they knew he was a Griffith Park hacker.

  Then Otto heard a sound that reminded him of the Samoan's hand colliding with his skull. Fat old guy, my ass! The freaking ball rocketed out there 220 yards. Dead straight .

  "Can we just pay you now and get it over with?" Sidney Blackpool asked, as he stepped up and stuck a tee in the ground.

  "Lucky shot," Archie said, puffing on the Havana.

  Otto kept glancing behind him at the clubhouse. He just knew there must be fifty people looking out through the tinted glass. He held his breath for twenty seconds and blew it out. He flexed his fists, forearms and biceps, then relaxed them. When he'd whiff at Griffith Park to the delight of some plumber, it was no big deal. But in this place?

  Sidney Blackpool smacked it as hard as Archie Rosenkrantz, and being younger and more limber, he got an extra fifteen yards out of it. The ball faded but settled on the right side of the fairway.

  "You ain't so bad yourself, kid," Archie said, chewing the cigar to bits. "I ain't gonna get fat on you boys, I can "

  see.

  Otto was starting to feel all wrong. His lime-green doubleknits suddenly bit at his crotch. His argyle sweater chafed his armpits. His golf shoes seemed to be rubbing blisters on his ankles though he hadn't walked twenty feet. Even his goddamn Ben Hogan cap was too tight. He was a wreck.

  Otto took a practice swing and sent a thirteen-inch slab of Tamarisk flying twenty yards. He ran off the tee and retrieved the chunk of turf while Archie Rosenkrantz puffed on the Havana and said, "There's an eighty-year-old member here wears a toup looks just like that divot, cept his is orange. Don't be scared, kid. Just kick back and L. T. F. F."

  "What's L. T. F. F. ?" Otto asked, feeling his jaws going tight.

  "Let the fucker fly," Archie said.

  But suddenly Otto's golf gremlin showed up! His fear gremlin looked like Renfield, that giggling little fly eater in the old movie who leads you to your room in the west tower and tells you to ignore that flapping outside the window because it's just some old drag queen from Bucharest and if you give him a peek at your bare bum and some warm milk with a Tollhouse cookie he'll flutter on home. Sure

  "Let the flicker fly," said Otto bravely.

  "Heh heh heh," said Renfield, crunching on a blood
-bloated horsefly as big as a pistachio.

  Otto let the fucker fly all right.

  "That wouldn't be bad distance," Archie said, "if that was the ball instead a the club."

  "I can't understand it!" Otto cried, looking over his shoulder at the mixed foursome who were getting a real bang out of the gifted athlete on the first tee.

  Sidney Blackpool trotted out to retrieve the graphite driver and Archie said, "Tell you what, son, let's call off the ,bets. This frigging game's got enough stress built in. Let s just go out and have some fun, enjoy the day, have a laugh or two and a drink later."

  "Okay by me," Sidney Blackpool said, handing Otto his driver.

  Otto told himself it'd be easy now. The pressure was off. Except that the women in the mixed foursome were whispering, and Otto's ears were the color of the pink argyles on his tummy Still, he forced himself to move that club low and slow. He took it back slower than Don January ever thought of doing. He was feeling loose and dreamy. He was s000 slow. He was s000 relaxed he just might fall asleep. Except that just as he got that club past horizontal, Renfield said, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself. Heh heh hee heeeee!" Otto knew that hovering rodent outside the window only had the face of Bela fucking Lugosi!

  Otto gave it a Reggie Jackson fast-ball swing. With the same result. He whiffed that baby so bad he torqued like a licorice twist and found his head looking straight behind him like a cockatoo. Right at the two women in the mixed foursome who were beaming like two stews on Aloha Airlines: "Welcome to paradise, stranger!"

  "So I lied," Renfield shrugged, his teeth full of flies.

  Archie Rosenkrantz almost lost his cigar. "Did I hear a growl?" he cried. "Lon Chaney needed a full moon to lunge like that!"

  "Let's forget the first tee," Sidney Blackpool suggested. "Otto'll settle down after we get out on the fairway."

  "Palm Springs ain't heard a bigger swish since Liberace came to town," Archie said. "Okay, let's move along. My varicose veins're breakdancing."

  The first hole was a five par, 483 yarder, which shouldn't have caused too many problems. Otto was allowed to place his ball 200 yards out, near the drives hit by his playing partners.

  "Now, Otto," Archie said. "There ain't nobody watching you so just step up there and look around at the mountains and smell the flowers and think how lucky you are that God gave you this happy day. Just say this to yourself: Aw, fuck it! And if I can't fuck it, I'll cover it with chocolate like old Mary See!"

  So Otto stepped up and addressed the ball, letting his arms and forearms and wrists and hands and hips and legs go limp, and thought, "Fuck it or cover it with chocolate." And he let er fly and heard a dull thunk.

  "Where is it?" Otto asked, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Did it come down yet?"

  "Worm burner," Sidney Blackpool said.

  "Bug fucker," Archie Rosenkrantz said. "Not real bad though. You got maybe thirty yards."

  Archie laid into his shot with a three wood, and his short backswing put it out there nearly 200 yards, leaving him a pitch to the green.

  Sidney Blackpool hit his three wood farther but drew it too much and faced a tricky wedge shot.

  Otto incinerated a battalion of worms and ravished a bunch of bugs before finishing the first hole. In fact, when he landed in the trap on the right side he had his worst moment. Sidney Blackpool and Archie Rosenkrantz both dumped their third shots into the trap on the left, making it three on the beach and everyone moaning.

  Archie blasted his out nicely and it landed twenty-five feet past the pin while Otto stared at his own sand shot and felt his sphincter tighten.

  "Nice out," Otto said enviously.

  Sidney Blackpool took a bit too much sand but got away with it and his ball landed on the green and took a good roll thirty feet short of the flag. Otto felt his sphincter get tighter.

  "Nice out," Otto said enviously.

  Then it was his turn. Otto lowered that wedge until it just brushed the sand two inches behind that ball and tried to ignore Renfield's demented cackle.

  Otto made a solemn vow that he was going to let his entire body relax no matter what happened to the sand shot. And he succeeded. He let his entire body go utterly limp and loose. He was s000 slow. He was s000 loose that he farted.

  "Nice out," Archie Rosenkrantz said enviously.

  All in all it wasn't a bad day. Otto started to get better after checking in with a slick seven on the four-par third hole.

  After five holes Archie said, "You got a full house, Otto: three nines and a pair a sevens."

  On the four-par number six Otto actually sank his second putt for a bogey five. "Fever!" Otto cried. "Gimme a fever!"

  "Five for Otto!" Archie said, writing his score on the steering-wheel card holder. "Now you're cooking, kiddo. You finally stopped looking like Gary Gilmore with a target pinned to his shirt."

  "I got a five," Sidney Blackpool said.

  "No blood," Archie said. "We tied on that one." "Otto, let's give you the honors."

  Otto Stringer was so stoked from his bogey that he let it fly, but got under the ball. It was a 200-yard tee shot. Straight up.

  "Where'd it go? Where'd it go?" Otto wanted to know.

  "Fair catch," Archie Rosenkrantz said. "No run back on that one."

  By the time they reached the sixteenth hole, Otto had transferred his clubs onto the golf cart driven by Archie Rosenkrantz. Archie had told them that he was the father of two psychiatrists and Otto figured he might be able to help his golf swing.

  "See, Archie," Otto said while they waited for a twosome who were lost in the eucalyptus trees. "It's like I got no muscle memory. My golfing muscles're forty years old and they already got Alzheimer's disease."

  "It's the muscle in your head's the problem, Otto," Archie said, lighting a fresh Havana since the old one looked like spinach. "The toughest six inches in golf is between your ears, right? You take it too serious. I wanna see you loosey goosey up there on the eighteenth tee.

  "It could be my basal ganglia," Otto offered. "That's what allows you to ride a bike or swing a golf club without thinking."

  "L. T. F. F. , Otto. "

  The eighteenth was a beauty, 522 yards looking right at the new clubhouse, which was framed by San Jacinto Peak. The fairway was lined by trees: pepper, palm, pine, willow, olive and rows of eucalyptus. There was flowing oleander on the right, which made Otto tense. He didn't want to fade into the bushes.

  "I slice into that stuff I may as well eat some and die," Otto said to Archie.

  "Now you ain't gonna slice, Otto," Archie said soothingly. "Straight back and through and easy."

  "And look at all that eucalyptus!" Otto said. "Enough to feed every koala in Australia."

  "Now stop those negative thoughts, Otto," Archie said, while Sidney Blackpool sat with his feet up on the empty seat in his golf cart, looking at a smear of sunlight on the side of the mountain.

  "I sure wanna finish strong," Otto said. "But what if I duck hook like I did on number three? Sometimes I lose my banana slice and find a duck hook. I might duck hook right into that house on the left."

  Then Otto looked curiously at the fenced property beside the fairway. It was totally enclosed, with security lights all the way around. There was a sign on one gate that said: "Never mind the dog. Beware of the owner." There was an American flag flying to indicate that the owner was in residence.

  Otto made the mistake of asking who lived there, after which his golf swing was doomed.

  Sidney Blackpool was startled when Otto ran to his golf cart and shook him by the shoulder.

  "Sidney!" Otto cried. "Do you know who lives over there? Him! Him!"

  "Whom? Whom?"

  "The Boss!"

  "Bruce Springsteen?"

  "The boss of bosses!"

  "Don Corleone?"

  "The chairman of the board!"

  "Armand Hammer or Lee Iacocca?"

  "Don't be stupid. 01' blue eyes himself!"

  -Yeah?" Even Sidney Bla
ckpool looked a bit impressed. "I thought his house might be a little more grand."

  "Whaddaya want? The guy's from Hoboken."

  "Well, he's not gonna ask us in," Sidney Blackpool said. 'So let's tee er up and get to the nineteenth where we can all kick our golf anxiety."

  Archie Rosenkrantz, who was studying Otto's now bulging eyeballs, whispered sadly, "Otto's gonna kick anxiety about when Hugh Hefner kicks silk pajamas."

  Otto turned toward the house three times even before he stuck a tee in the ground. He could almost hear a voice singing, " 'Strangers in the niiiight('

  -There ain't nobody watching you!" Archie said nervously.

  "01' blue eyes don't scare me!" Otto said courageously.

  "Scoobie doobie doo, you putz!" Renfield said merrily.

  Otto Stringer jerked the Top-Flite dead left. It caromed off Sidney Blackpool's golf cart and ricocheted back into the shin of Archie Rosenkrantz who couldn't duck as fast as the younger men.

  "Oh, my God!" Otto wailed. "I'm as useless as Ronald Reagan's right ear!"

  Archie Rosenkrantz limped it off for a moment before saying, "Tell you what, Otto. Let's go to the bar and shmooz. I ain't never been much for blood sports."

  After they changed shoes, Otto headed back to the lobby to check the membership roster for celebrities. When he found Archie and Sidney Blackpool in the bar, he said, "Does Gregory Peck come here?"'

  "Naw," Archie said. "He might've when the club was new. No more."

  "Saw the chairman's name," Otto said.

  "He don't play golf," said Archie. "Maybe eats in the dining room once in a while. I think he got mad cause someone told him not to bring Spiro Agnew around no more.

  "So who else you got here?" Otto asked.

  "Lots a people whose names begin with R-O-S-E-N and G-O-L-D," Archie said. "Let's get you a drink."

  They put away the first cocktail before the bartender had time to ring up the check for Archie to sign. "Hey, kid," he said to the bartender, "only one ice cube. Whaddaya think this is, a club for the goyim? You wanna work Thunderbird or Eldorado maybe?"