“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?”
“Maybe only a few times. When he came home very late.”
“What’s very late?”
“When it wasn’t dark anymore.”
“He came home at dawn? Where would he go all night? This isn’t a late town.”
“This is an early town,” Harlan said, draining the Bombay martini and smiling demurely when Otto signaled for another round. “Maybe two hundred and fifty thousand people come to this valley in season, but in the summer it’s a very small town with a small-town mentality. Have you listened to the commercials on radio and T.V.? I heard a girl today announce the bill at the multiple cinema. ‘In TheATER One,’ she says, ‘is I’m a douche.’ I thought it was a porn flick till I realized the poor thing was trying to say Amadeus. Oh, I miss the big city sometimes, but I’d never go back to L.A. When Mister Watson asked me if I’d accept the wages he offered, I countered by dropping on my knees. You can keep Hollywood.”
“About the car,” Sidney Blackpool said, as the second round of drinks arrived.
“Cheers, dears!” Harlan cried, lifting his martini.
“He’d come home at dawn sometimes? Where would he spend the night?”
“Sergeant, he was a gorgeous young rich boy. He could spend the night anywhere he wanted. I’m sure he loved his fiancée but he was young.”
“How long had he been engaged to his girlfriend?”
“Not long. Three, four months, I think. Her family and his were very good friends, but I’m sure he loved her. He wouldn’t do everything his father wished.”
“Okay, so sometimes he came home at dawn or close to it, and he wouldn’t bother to pull in and block the driveway with the Porsche. He’d park outside and come in through the walk-in gate, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, if his car was parked in front of the house and locked, were the keys to his Porsche found on his body?”
“No. As I recall, his keys were in his bedroom where he always kept them.”
“Okay, Harlan, then it’s very unlikely that he was forced to drive the Rolls from the house, or forced to leave the house in any fashion. An intruder wouldn’t pull the Porsche out of the garage, park it in front, lock it up and return the keys to Jack’s bedroom, now would he?”
“I guess not,” Harlan said.
“Didn’t you think the same thing on the day Jack was discovered missing? I mean, didn’t you tell the F.B.I. and the Palm Springs police that it was likely that Jack parked in front that night so he could drive the Rolls out later? And wouldn’t that just about rule out any notion that he was snatched from the house?”
“I was so confused back then! Mister Watson just sort of took over from everybody. Do you know how forceful a man he is? He was running around with one of those cordless phones his company makes, and, I don’t know, it was like the red-phone syndrome: Get me Washington! He told the F.B.I. men right in front of me that his boy was kidnapped out of the house and I still can’t say he wasn’t. Like I said, Jack hated to drive the Rolls-Royce.”
“Is it that Victor Watson wouldn’t even consider the possibility that his son might drive the Rolls up to a canyon in Mineral Springs of his own volition?”
“Maybe that’s it. And I still don’t know that he would. What would Jack be doing in a place like that?”
“What’s your opinion?”
“Gosh, I don’t know what to think.” Harlan dabbed his eyes with a dinner napkin. “He was like my son, that boy. He and his dad argued sometimes, and he’d talk to me about it later. I think he hated it, being dependent on his dad all the time. He used to call him da-da, but not to his face. And he used to say things to me like ‘Well, guess I’ll go ask Daddy Warbucks for my allowance.’ My impression is that when he finished his education he was never again going to take money from his father.”
The waiter arrived with samples of mozzarella marinara, coquilles St. Jacques and lox with capers. Sidney Blackpool tried the mozzarella, Harlan tasted the scallops, Otto ate what was left.
They had three bottles of wine during the meal and Otto insisted on champagne and cherries jubilee for dessert because, as Otto put it, “Who ever heard of eating cherries jubilee without champagne?”
Harlan was bagged by then, but was still regaling them with Palm Springs lore. “And Steve McQueen lived up on Southridge by William Holden and Bob Hope. And Truman Capote lived in Las Palmas, and Kirk Douglas, and there’re so many more!”
By now, Otto was nearly as bombed as Harlan who was weaving in his chair. The dining room maître d’ kept looking at them and at his wristwatch. Two other tables were occupied by quieter drunks who looked like they might be leaving soon.
“Tell me, Harlan, how’d you get to know so much about this town?” Otto asked.
“Small-town gossip. You just hang around the bars and pretty soon you know everything. In Palm Springs there’s only a population of thirty thousand who own homes and pay taxes and lots of them’re rich people who aren’t around much. You should see these bars. They’re nothing like Hollywood.” Reconsidering that, he said, “Well, they’re something like Hollywood. We have lots of wanna-be cowboys driving around in Datsun pickups looking very butch but just reeking of Pierre Cardin. Do you know this is the only place where you can go into a bar that’s frequented by the cowboy and hard-hat set along with wetbacks from Sonora? And they get along okay. When it’s one hundred and twenty degrees outside I think people start to tolerate each other. It’s us against the desert. But we also have our slums. Only town in the valley without a slum is Rancho Mirage. Do you know how many celebrities live in the country clubs in Rancho Mirage?”
“I’m getting sleepy,” Otto said. “My lips’re getting numb.”
“Where do you suppose Jack Watson would go on his nights out, Harlan?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
“We have half a dozen discos in town now. Lots of airline stews and girls from Newport Beach come in for the weekends. Jack’d probably go to a disco. I never saw him dance but I know he’d be good. He’d never be out there on the street at two A.M. suffering from disco heartbreak, I can tell you. Jack could have any girl he wanted. You know why I say that?”
“Why?” Sidney Blackpool asked, while Otto tried to catch the eye of the cocktail waitress who was still working the busy cocktail lounge as well as serving the drunks left in the dining room.
“There’re other kids with curly black hair and eyes like Paul Newman, but he had more.”
Something troubled Sidney Blackpool suddenly. He felt a shadow, then a shiver. He wasn’t sober enough to put it all together just now.
“Jack had a quality that very few twenty-two-year-olds can match. Jack was nice. He was a nice human being. Yes, I think he dearly wanted to be independent of his father someday. He was special.”
“I hear that young people hang around Palm Springs all hours a the night,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Did Jack do that?”