“That’s what Reagan felt like doing when he made the joke about bombing the Russians,” Sidney Blackpool said. “But getting back to Jack Watson. We have some new information that he may’ve driven to Hollywood the day he disappeared. He bought a tire at a Rolls-Royce dealership. Would you have any idea why he might’ve gone to Hollywood?”
“Hollywood? No! I’m shocked! He came to the desert that weekend because he was tired from final exams at college. His fiancée was coming. We have a Rolls dealer here in Palm Springs. Why would he go clear to Hollywood for a tire?”
“He wouldn’t,” Otto said. “He must’ve had another reason for going.”
“I have no idea why he’d drive two hours when he was here to rest. And I can’t imagine why he’d take the Rolls,”
“Why do you say that?” asked Sidney Blackpool.
“He hated the Rolls. So pretentious, he always said. Wouldn’t even ride in it. He had his own car, a Porsche Nine-eleven his mom bought him. If he was going into town for something urgent he’d drive that Porsche.”
“You sure about that?” Otto asked.
“Without a doubt. He never told his folks how he hated that Rolls but he told me lots of times. That’s why he never flew here when he’d come on weekends. He didn’t want to be stuck driving a Rolls-Royce. He always drove down to the desert so he’d have his own car to run around in.”
“Did he come here often? To rest, I mean?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
“Oh, maybe twice a month during the school year. For two or three days at a time.”
“In the police report his dad said that Jack seldom came here alone.”
“Actually, Jack came here more than they knew,” Harlan Penrod said. “His mom and dad’re very busy people and he usually told them he was staying at the fraternity house, but he’d come here. I never mentioned it because right after he died I didn’t want to say anything more than I had to.”
“Whys that?” Otto asked.
“Id only been working for the Watsons about six months at that time, and I heard Mister Watson describe Jack to the police. Such a bright, decent, hardworking student, he said, and yes, Jack was all that, but …”
“What?”
“Jack frequently came to Palm Springs to spend weekends, but never when his folks were here, and he never wanted them to know. He told me not to let on.”
“Did you ever ask him why?”
“He said his dad treated him like a kid and might snoop around.”
“Snoop around?”
“Sergeant, he was a gorgeous kid twenty-two years old! When he went out at night I imagine he ended up at a disco. I mean, he had a fiancée, sure, but lots of pretty college girls come in from San Diego and L.A. You know how it is to be twenty-two.”
Sidney Blackpool looked at Otto and said, “Anything else?”
“Did you ever think he was kidnapped from the house?” Otto asked.
“Really, no,” Harlan said, and his eyes had started to fill from talking about Jack Watson. “I mean, I know how dark it is in this neighborhood at night and how close we are to a ghetto, but everyone has all sorts of burglar alarms. And people are so careful. The old rich people, they’d rather have too much darkness than streetlights that might disturb their sleep. They don’t even want police helicopters. Everyone’s in bed at nine o’clock.”
“Rather curse the darkness, eh?” Sidney Blackpool said, standing up. “Do those infrareds still work, the ones on top of those walls?”
“I think so.”
“Do you always turn them on?”
“Oh, yes. I arm the burglar alarms inside and out before I go to bed, and whenever I’m out. Sometimes, though, it gets so lonely I’d almost welcome a burglar. If he wasn’t mean.”
“Careful, Harlan,” Otto said. “Sometimes strange bedfellows make strange bedfellows.”
CHAPTER 7
Officer Barney Wilson would’ve had an uneventful career in the Coachella Valley if he hadn’t gotten caught up in the labor movement. His career somewhat paralleled Ronald Reagan’s. That is, he was just a spear carrier until he made a speech on behalf of a colleague who was running for president of the police union. But Barney Wilson never would’ve made that speech nor any speech were it not for a desert physician who, during a routine annual physical, called the twenty-nine-year-old cop into his office and gave him the good news first. No, he didn’t have the clap as he’d feared. He could keep the same girlfriend and he wouldn’t have to make any confessions to his wife. The bad news was that he’d only have the girlfriend for two years. Ditto for the wife.
Barney Wilson stared dumbstruck at the doctor who looked mildly cranky, as though he had to take a no-pay emergency and couldn’t lay it off to the county.
“You’ve got red blood cells in your urine. Acute glomerulonephritis. Two years maybe,” the doctor said, checking the wall clock because he had a Wednesday afternoon golf date.
During the next three weeks a Coachella Valley legend was born. Barney Wilson stood up for a buddy and addressed the entire police department during a very controversial police strike. And after consuming twenty-two cans of beer in a three-hour period he said that the chief of police was a pompous asshole with all the humility of Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi and Barbra Streisand. He said to the delight of the sign-carrying cops that they ought to sabotage the chief’s hemorrhoid-alleviating whoopee cushion with gelignite, and load his cigarettes with PCP.
And since a dying man knows few limits, Officer Wilson delighted the mob of recalcitrant cops by calling the chief a plastic man who probably used Armor-all in his bathtub. At the end of the rousing speech, while all the local newshounds were snapping pictures like mad, Officer Wilson said that the chief ran his department like a banana republic, and with eyes overflowing at the thought of his imminent demise, he finished to a thunderous ovation by saying to the chief whose lieutenants recorded every word: “Give us liberty or give us death! I only regret that I have but one life to give to my union!”
From that day forward Officer Barney Wilson became known all over the Coachella Valley as Nathan Hale Wilson, and was nominated as president of the police union.
Then, to satisfy his grieving family, he went to his mom’s hematologist for a second opinion. The blood doctor asked if he’d had the flu prior to the examination when he’d gotten the Bad News. Receiving an affirmative answer, the new croaker asked if he’d taken up jogging at about the time he had the first exam, and when Nathan Hale Wilson said, yes indeedy and how long do you think I got? the physician said, “Fifty years if you take care of yourself. Lots less when the chief of police discovers you’re not a dying man.”
That afternoon, with the assurance that he was going to need a job for a very long time, Nathan Hale Wilson found himself driving up to Mineral Springs to see if Paco Pedroza could use a cop with a short-lived career in the American labor movement.
“I might give you a chance,” Paco Pedroza warned Nathan Hale Wilson that day. “But I don’t need no César Chavez around here.”
“I’m through with organized labor, Chief,” Nathan Hale Wilson promised. “I was just off my nut for a while because a that croaker I’m gonna sue.”
“That’s good,” Paco said, “cause you know that golf course down in Indian Wells? The one owned by the Teamsters Union? I heard that Jimmy Hoffa lives there. Under the sixteenth fairway.”
“I’m through with labor unions,” Nathan Hale Wilson promised. “I won’t even watch a movie with Charlton Heston or Ed Asner in it.”