Then he saw another cop stagger out of the party heading for a car he shouldn’t have been driving, and he scared the man by yelling: “Why you? Why you, you son of a bitch? And why me?”
Then Sidney Blackpool for the first time did look up (childhood training perhaps) and he shouted, “Okay, that’s enough. I’ve had enough now. That’s it. I’ve had enough!”
He knew he was very close then. He used to sit alone in the night, cold sober sometimes, and indulge dangerous fantasies. The setting of all fantasies preceded the day in 1983 when Tommy died. He could somehow stop the event from happening, in the fantasies.
And sometimes he indulged in daydreams set in the present. He’d receive an urgent call from his ex-wife saying, “Sid! Sid! It’s a miracle! Tommy’s alive! It wasn’t his body they pulled from the surf! It was a mistake and Tommy’s been in Mexico all this time and …”
It was so absurd and pathetic and shameful that he was never able to indulge that one to the end. He didn’t will it, but the fantasy came. After the night in Chinatown he knew that if he let this continue he would die. He read that it most often happened on a Monday, on the fifth day of the month, and in the spring. He decided that since something had ruthlessly reversed the natural order of things in his life, he would perversely defy statistical probability. He came very very close one Saturday night in September, the twenty-second day of the month. Only thinking of his daughter, Barb, at the last moment saved him from smoking it.
Sidney Blackpool sat up in the hotel bed, cursed himself, hated himself, and dialed the Palm Springs P.D. asking for the homicide investigator named on the reports.
“Finney’s not here,” the telephone voice said. “This is Lieutenant Sanders. Can I help you?”
“Sid Blackpool, Lieutenant. I think your boss was told we were coming?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about Finney. His mother’s real sick and he took off yesterday for Minnesota.”
“When’s he coming back?”
“Depends on her.”
“Can anybody else talk about the Watson case?”
“I guess I can. You have copies of the reports, I understand. Not too much to add.”
“The reports said you checked out all the radio stations in the desert about that singing voice.”
“Finney even checked stations in L.A., Vegas and San Diego in case it was some high-powered radio heard by the Mineral Springs cop. Nobody played ‘Pretend’ at that time of day. And no singer ever recorded ‘Pretend’ with only a banjo behind him, far as we know. So Jones either heard a live voice or a tape. He was damn near into heat stroke so we can’t be sure.”
“If it was a live voice it’s kinda bizarre.”
“Kinda morbid. If it was live it means the guy that killed the kid came back and sang a little requiem over the corpse.”
“Are you sure the car was actually torched? I mean, it did crash down a canyon.”
“No, we’re not positive. The gas tank was ruptured by the crash. That car could a caught fire on its own. In fact, if it wasn’t for that thirty-eight hollow-point slug in the skull, we had nothing but a fatal traffic accident. The kid drove off a dark canyon trail where he never shoulda been without a four-wheel-drive vehicle. His car caught fire and he died a crispy critter. Period.”
“Too bad there wasn’t a gun found at the scene,” Sidney Blackpool said. “You coulda maybe figured it to be a suicide where the car rolled off the hill after the kid shot himself.”
“No gun,” the lieutenant said. “And a very bad angle for a right-handed suicide.”
“About how many people live in those canyons?”
“No people. About sixty dirtbag methamphetamine dealers. No Homo sapiens allowed in Solitaire Canyon. They cook up speed in those shacks, but it’s almost impossible to get probable cause to bust them. Even if you have a warrant, they can see you coming for two miles and bury the evidence in holes they dig. Lots a those bikers are Vietnam vets. They’re a chapter of the Cobras motorcycle gang.”
“Any chance he drove up there because he wanted to?”
“Not much chance,” the lieutenant said. “He seldom drove the Rolls. In fact, I was surprised to get the call from Watson saying the kid drove the Rolls to Hollywood. He wasn’t a speed user. And not that it was productive, but we did question every crank dealer and desert rat living around that particular canyon. All negative. We have this crime-stoppers program where citizens donate reward money. Better known on the streets as dial-a-snitch or burn-a-buddy. And after Victor Watson offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward I think lots a cranked-out bikers’d roll over on each other if they knew anything. We got nothing. All we know is Watsons car went over the canyon and caught fire. He was pinned in the wreckage. Turns out he was shot in the head before he got cooked, lucky for him.”
“Of course no chance to dust for prints in a burned wreck.”
“We got a very diligent fingerprint man. Name is Hoffman. He dusts everything. He even dusted the dust. Once he dusted an assault victim’s tits, which bought him a three-day suspension. We call him Dustin Hoffman. He got nothing.”
“And then a freak came back a few days after the murder and sang ‘Pretend.’ ”
“That’s about it. The singer mighta been some prospector or nature lover. Or even a speed head who was just out for a stroll in the canyons after shooting his arms full a crystal. Officer Jones mighta just heard an innocent bystander.”
“Could be,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“But we doubt it.”
“Why’s that?”
“In those canyons there’s no such thing. Everybody that lives there’s a not so innocent bystander. The Mineral Springs cop probably heard the killer all right.”
“Returning to sing a requiem?”
“Maybe to look for something he lost.”
Sidney Blackpool gave the Palm Springs lieutenant his telephone number and said good-bye, took two aspirins, rinsed his face and lit a cigarette. He was entering the dining room where Otto was still working on his brunch when the bell captain came in.
“Mister Blackpool?”
“Yeah.”
“The front desk just took a call for you from the Palm Springs police.”
“I just hung up.” Sidney Blackpool shrugged to Otto who was leering at a huge wedge of coconut-cream pie.
“Have a bite first,” Otto said.
“Lemme go see what it is.”
While Sidney Blackpool was gone, Otto not only ate the pie but asked the waiter if he thought a piña colada would be too rich as an after-brunch drink. When his partner returned, Otto was leaning back in the chair, his belly pressing the table, sucking a tall coconut and vodka special with a little parasol stuck in a wedge of orange.
“This is the life, Sidney,” he said with three rapid-fire belches.
“Guess what?” Sidney Blackpool said. “That was the Palm Springs lieutenant. They got a call earlier this morning that he just learned about. The Mineral Springs cop who found the body called to say he’s decided the song the suspect sang wasn’t ‘Pretend.’ It was ‘I Believe.’ ”
“Not sure I know that one.”
“You’d know it if you heard it. A Frankie Laine hit. You’re old enough.”
“Thank you very much, Sidney. You’re so kind to remind me.”
“Anyway, whaddaya think a that? The very day we get on the case, they receive the first piece a new information they’ve gotten in over a year.”
“Sidney, it can’t make any possible difference what the lunatic was singing. If in fact that was the killer returning to the scene a the crime like in Agatha Christie.”
“I know, but it’s the coincidence of it. It seems like more than a coincidence. We come here and something happens. After all this time.”