The Secrets of Harry Bright (15 page)

This particular fight was pretty much like the last except for the weapons involved. As usual, Clyde got sick and tired of Bernice's rolling her mean little woodpecker eyes just because he put a little too much into a turkey trot he did with a seventy-five-year-old pepperpot at the Moose Lodge seniors' dance. He told her that if she didn't quit clicking her dentures he was going to dump his bowl of All-Bran right on her head. One thing led to another and she took the old James Cagney role and shoved a grapefruit in his face. He threw the All-Bran. At first, both were careful not to spill the jug of Sweet Lucy on the kitchen table, but things got totally out of hand when h
e c
laimed that she was a lousy lay and had been for the forty-eight years they'd been together. That really started the yelling and screaming, and pretty quick they were both tossing everything that wasn't too heavy, and the neighbors put in the call that had become a weekly experience for the Mineral Springs P
. D
.

When Maynard Rivas and Nathan Hale Wilson arrived, the domestic violence was still in a semi-explosive state though both combatants were now wheezing and blowing and too exhausted to do more than slap at each other with wimpy blows. She was bigger and he was two years older so it wasn't a mismatch. In fact, Clyde was in pretty bad shape because his tracheostomy tube nearly jumped out of his throat every time she popped him a good one.

The little guy was still trying gamely to give as good as he got, and his dirty white undershirt was dripping sweat when Maynard Rivas slipped into the living room and lifted him off his feet, while Nathan Hale Wilson carried Bernice over by her rocker where their tomcat, Jasper, sat inspecting his ass, not even remotely concerned by all this human drama.

"Break it up, Clyde!" Maynard Rivas commanded.

"Lemme go, you big asshole!" Clyde said. "This is my house!" Because of the tracheostomy he sounded like a cross between Wolfman Jack and the demon from The Exorcist .

"Not till you stop fighting," Maynard said.

"I'll sue you!" Clyde croaked.

"Injuns got immunity," Maynard lied.

"The only good Indian is a . . .

"Yeah, yeah, I saw all the cowboy movies," Maynard said. "Now relax and quit squirming!"

"Make her promise first! She'll blind-side me, the sneaky bitch!"

"Promise you won't hit him, Bernice," Nathan Hale Wilson ordered the old woman.

"I ain't promising nothing!" Bernice Suggs said, still kicking. "Let him fight like a man!"

It was no use telling them they were going to jail.

They knew very well that the cops wouldn't risk the bad press Mineral Springs would get if they booked these miserable old geezers. Even though every cop in town would dearly love to toss them in the slam. They'd all been spit at, cursed, and reviled by Clyde and Bernice Suggs.

"Okay, you'll go to the station and sit in the holding tank till you promise to behave!" Maynard said, heading for the door with Clyde tucked under his arm.

"Wait a minute, you big prick!" Clyde croaked. "Lemme go! I won't fight no more!"

Maynard reluctantly released Clyde who hobbled stoop-shouldered over to the rocker where he punched at the tomcat who hissed but gave up the chair. Clyde sat for a spell, fussing with his trachea tube, trying to get sufficient air to make one of his long croaky speeches about the mentality of cops, especially big Indian cops and scrawny paleface cops that're probably dumber than big Indians.

Nathan Hale Wilson made the mistake of letting Bernice go just because she stopped fighting. The old woman mumbled a few cuss words and looked as though she was going to surrender, but while the two cops were giving the tipplers their standard warning about not tolerating this disgusting behavior anymore, Bernice grabbed something from the sideboard where it rested next to the Mineral Springs penny saver.

Just as Clyde was getting ready to deliver his monologue about police mentality, Bernice swung. Clyde caught the leading edge smack behind the skull and his upper plate shot through the air, bouncing off the ample belly of Maynard Rivas. Then the fight was really on. Bernice jumped on Clyde and jerked the trachea tube out of his throat and wouldn't let go even when the big Indian pounced on her and Nathan Hale Wilson grabbed at her crooked fingers.

"Uuuuuuuhhhhh!" Clyde croaked, while Bernice clamped onto that tube and with her one remaining eyetooth glinting wolfishly said, "Now let's you and me do the turkey trot, you old son of a bitch!"

Since Bernice was a touch arthritic and not as toug
h a
s she used to be, Nathan Hale Wilson got the tube out of her claws while all four wrestled on the floor.

Let go the tube!" Maynard yelled. "He can't breathe!"

,, I 11 stuff it with cat shit!" Bernice screamed back at him until Maynard gave her such a shove she did a backward whoop-de-doo and bumped her head on the coffee table, out of action temporarily.

Twenty minutes later the two cops, uniforms dusty and torn, were at the police station with Clyde and Bernice Suggs and the weapon.

"I can't book these people!" Paco Pedroza whispered after Clyde and Bernice were cooling their heels in the holding tank. "They're nearly eighty years old!"

"That's an ADW," Nathan Hale Wilson said. "A felony. I'm sick a these old fuckers, Chief."

"A ukulele ain't exactly a deadly weapon," Paco said. "No, but jerking out his trachea tube is a pretty goddamn aggravated assault, you ask me!"

"Oh, so you wanna book Bernice and let Clyde go home, huh? He's more acceptable?"

"He's as acceptable as a lesion on my dick," Nathan Hale Wilson said, with the conviction of a man who's had a few. "But at least one a them oughtta get something outta this."

"If they both apologize will you be satisfied?" Paco argued. "And if they promise never to do it again? Jesus, can you imagine the picture in the newspaper if we take these two down to the Indio Hilton and lock them up?"

"Okay, okay," Nathan Hale Wilson said finally. "But don't make us drive em back home. That's degrading!"

"The walk'll do em good," Paco said. "Let em out five minutes apart. Okay with you, Maynard?"

"Okay," the Indian said. "Which one gets the weapon?"

"Lemme see that," Paco said. "Funny-looking ukulele. One, two, three . . . this one's got eight strings. Never saw a uke with eight strings." Then he strummed it a few times. "Wish I could play music.'

Clyde Suggs made an announcement from the holding cell: "This is the Foreign Legion for misfit cops, but Paco Pedroza sure ain't no Beau Geste!

"See, that's part a the problem here," Paco said to Maynard. "Clyde's read a couple books in his time and thinks he married beneath him."

Five minutes later, when Maynard Rivas was leading Clyde to the door, Paco was sitting with his feet up on his desk singing his heart out. " 'Ain't she sweet!' he sang, strumming away discordantly.

Maynard interrupted him. "Uh, Chief, time to give Clyde back the deadly weapon."

"Oh, yeah," Paco said. "Here you go, Clyde. Nice uke."

"I bought it to serenade Bernice," the old man croaked. "Now I'd like to stick it in her . . ."

"Okay, enough violence!" Paco warned.

The old man was still mighty pissed off as he trudged down the Mineral Springs main drag. He started toward the back door of the Eleven Ninety-nine Club but stopped when he thought about all the goddamn cops that hung around there. He cut through the eucalyptus trees toward the Mirage Saloon.

"I'll have a beer," Clyde said, when he hobbled up to the bar. "A pitcher.. Will you take this for a pitcher a beer? Make it two pitchers."

"A uke?" Ruben the bartender said. "Where'd you get it?"

"Paid fifteen bucks for it from Beavertail Bigelow," Clyde said. "You can have it for two pitchers."

"Okay," the bartender said. "Looks like it's in pretty good shape except for this dent."

"That's from my skull," Clyde croaked. "I was gonna serenade Bernice with it. Now she can just watch Love Boat and go suck her tooth."

Chapter
8

THE DETECTIVES COULDN'T GET AWAY FROM HARLAN PENROD until they'd had a complete tour of the Watson property, which meant a dissertation on Coachella cacti an
d d
esert flora in general. And while Otto Stringer was learning about how such spiny plants could produce such lovel
y b
lossoms, Sidney Blackpool was satisfying himself that
,
just as the Palm Springs detectives had concluded in thei
r r
eports, nobody who wasn't played by Sean Connery or
Roger Moore could defeat the infrared on the top of th
e f
ence with the old mirror trick. And if the system wa
s a
rmed, nobody could have silently forced open the electric gate as he and Otto had done. Harlan Penrod wa
s a
damant that Jack Watson was as careful as he abou
t s
etting the inside and outside alarm systems before retirin
g f
or the night. That didn't mean that he wasn't snatche
d f
rom the house, but if he was, it probably wasn't by a
n u
nknown intruder.

Instead of going to Palm Springs P
. D
., they went back to the hotel. Otto wanted to "take" brunch.

"Is this going to be part a your life now, Otto? Taking brunch?" Sidney Blackpool asked, as they left his car with the valet-parking boy.

"I'm hungry from all the good police work, Sidney," Otto said. "I think we should go to Palm Springs P
. D
. tomorrow. Maybe we oughtta play a few holes today after brunch."

"I don't think I'm ready to eat.

go up to the roo
m a
nd give the P
. D
. a call."

"You're getting too skinny, Sidney," Otto said. "Come and join me."

"I'll have dessert later," Sidney Blackpool said, leaving his partner in the hotel lobby.

When Sidney Blackpool got to their suite, he found a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and a card saying: "Hit em long and straight. Victor Watson...

He lit a cigarette and flopped down on the bed, trying not to think of Victor Watson. Ile hdn't felt sorry for anyone except himself in a long time. I e didn't wall, to start feeling sorry for some guy who probably owned his own jet and didn't bother to play golf in places Sidney Blackpool dreamed about because Watson probably enjoyed himself even more in other places. But then the detective had to admit that the man he'd met in the Century City office wasn't enjoying himself anywhere. That was an incomplete human being looking for missing pieces.

He realized that the radio was on. The housekeeper had made the beds and tidied up the suite but let the radio play. It was a Palm Springs station with music that wasn't so easy to find on the Los Angeles scene. Marlene Dietrich was singing "La Vie en Rose" and "Lili Marlene." Sidney Blackpool's parents and his older brothers listened to music like that when he was a boy. There was something about the desert. You did feel that time had regressed thirty years or more. There was something in the air, and not just the dry heat. Those mountains surrounding? Like Lost Horizon with Ronald Colman clawing his way toward the hidden valley, toward peace and longevity. But you didn't live forever in Palm Springs either, as Jack Watson discovered.

Then his heart missed a regular beat, and another, and he felt an emptiness in his chest and swelling in his throat that made it hard to swallow. He had an indescribable longing. For what? He used to think the dreams came because he kept family pictures beside the bed, but after he put them away he still dreamed. That was something else that Victor Watson had probably learned: you're afraid to be reminded and afraid not to be reminded.

Victor Watson probably learned that the first weeks after his son's death were nothing compared to what would come. The shock and horror and grief is impossible to accommodate those first weeks, as you gradually come to grasp what forever means. There is nonsense which your mind seizes upon. Should Tommy be put in the ground or cremated? As though a decision to keep Tommy's fingernails and teeth and bones intact was a meaningful one.

Yet all that was nothing like the despair that peaked eight months after Tommy was gone. When, for the first time in forty-one years of life, Sidney Blackpool had to confront this outrage, a son preceding his father to the grave. This perversion of the natural order.

He came close to the end at a police department retirement party in Chinatown. He heard a morose retired cop crying in his whiskey because he no longer had camaraderie and purpose. The cop said he couldn't enjoy things any longer and talked about looking for pieces of himself'. Sidney Blackpool could've told him a thing or two about that, about being incomplete.

But he listened and started to despise the cop. He despised him so much he found himself starting to cry. The first time ever in a public place. Of course, he had also been drinking that night. He rushed outside to the parking lot and looked not up to the smog-shrouded sky but at the lights of downtown Los Angeles.