“I hate poor-mouthing! Gimme your phone number so I can call in a pledge!” yelled Beavertail Bigelow from his seat by the jukebox, causing all the cops to glare at the desert rat for his heartless ways.
“Least police work’s steady and gives you a regular paycheck,” O. A. Jones said, pissing off everybody for looking on the bright side. “I know a cop in Orange County quit to become a movie star and doesn’t make five hundred bucks a year. He’ll spend his old age broke and senile, yodeling his heart out like Johnny Weissmuller in the actors’ rest home.”
“You hear about Selma Mobley, that bubble-assed female cop in Palm Springs?” Nathan Hale Wilson asked. “She’s marrying her lieutenant.”
“I just love cop weddings,” Prankster Frank observed. “They’re about as safe as a San Francisco bathhouse.”
“Oughtta give them his-and-hers saps for those special family disputes,” said O. A. Jones.
“Well, they’re both cops,” Pigasus, the sheriffs chopper pilot, noted. “They oughtta understand each other.”
“Like Snoopy and Cujo’re both dogs,” said Dustin Hoffman, the fingerprint man. “He’s Snoopy, the poor fucker.”
Sidney Blackpool looked around the bar and at first the only black man he saw was Choo Choo Chester. He was making a serious move on a masseuse from a hotel in Rancho Mirage, but she wasn’t treating his complaints about his wife with too much sympathy.
“So how’d you meet your wife?” the girl asked.
“I bought a couple dances with her,” Chester whined. “It was all a mistake!”
“You gonna dump her or what?”
“I can’t,” Chester moaned. “She’s expecting a kid in three months!”
“Really, honey?” the masseuse said. “Is it yours?”
Hoping he might have a chance to steal the masseuse right out from under Chester, Prankster Frank sidled up on her left side and whispered, “Baby, you got a body any eighteen-year-old would want.”
“Yeah,” said the sulky masseuse. “So send me an eighteen-year-old and maybe I’ll loan it to him.”
“You’re about as exciting as a wet dream,” Prankster Frank sneered, moving back down the bar to greener pastures.
“Don’t plan to end up in my diary, funnel-face,” said the masseuse.
J. Edgar Gomez tried to avert a brawl by yelling, “Who wants another round? I’m extending happy hour fifteen minutes!” It brought a chorus of cheers and hoorahs. When people started getting surly, J. Edgar knew to ease them into the next stage.
Sidney Blackpool started searching for another black face, one that rested on a much bigger body. Then he saw him, away from the cops, on the side of the saloon occupied by civilians. He was two tables from Beavertail Bigelow. He was alone. It was the president of the local chapter of Cobras, Billy Hightower.
Sidney Blackpool and Otto Stringer both ordered a drink and a bowl of J. Edgar’s infamous chili, and this time there was nothing still alive in the bowl. They could have had a table alone near the John Wayne mural, but walked to the side of the saloon where Billy Hightower sat nursing a double vodka, silently watching the revelry.
“Can we join you?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
Billy Hightower studied both men, and then looked toward the table on the other side of the room, then back at the detectives.
“I’m Blackpool. He’s Stringer. We’re dicks from Hollywood Division, L.A.P.D.”
That was enough to make Billy Hightower curious, so he nodded at the empty chairs and they sat. Otto started spooning through the chili for dead bodies.
“Buy you a drink?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
“I got a drink,” said Billy Hightower.
“We’re working on the Watson homicide,” Sidney Blackpool said, sipping at his Scotch. “The Palm Springs kid they found in the Rolls?”
“Little off your beat, ain’t it?” Billy Hightower said, toying with the double shot of vodka. Up close he looked like a real boozer and Sidney Blackpool had to resist a policeman’s urge to glance at the biker’s enormous forearms for meth tracks.
“We have some information that the Watson kid might’ve been in Hollywood the day he was killed,” Sidney Blackpool said. “That’s how we got involved.”
Billy Hightower looked from one man to the other, then at Otto’s brown gruel. “It ain’t Hollywood, but it ain’t bad,” he said. “Microscopic animals can’t live in it.”
“Hollywood ain’t Hollywood, neither,” Otto shrugged, and he tried a spoonful. It wasn’t bad!
“Hear you used to be on the job,” Sidney Blackpool said. “San Bernardino County sheriffs, was it?”
“Uh-huh,” Billy Hightower said.
“Hear you were in Vietnam,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Served my country and served my county,” Billy Hightower said. “They gonna do a cop benefit for me or what?”
“We asked around about you cause we got a little something on the Watson case. Maybe.”
Billy Hightower watched Sidney Blackpool’s hand reaching into his pocket, the way a cop watches hand movements, the way a crank-dealing outlaw biker would surely watch sudden hand movements. His muscles tightened and relaxed when he realized there could be no threat.
“Just on the remote chance that this kid might’ve come up to the canyons to score some drugs,” Sidney Blackpool said, pushing the picture across to Billy Hightower.
The biker picked up the photo and held it toward the dim light from a shaded wall sconce. Then he lit a match and examined the snapshot more closely. Then for the first time he smiled, displaying large broken teeth.
“So, my tip might work out after all?” he said.
“Your tip?” Otto said, chewing up a mouthful of chili beans.
“Yeah, this is the guy I called in about.”
“The Watson kid?” Sidney Blackpool said, pointing at the picture.
“No, his picture was in the papers. The other kid. This kid.” He pointed a thick scarred forefinger at Terry Kinsale.
“I’m not following,” Sidney Blackpool said. “You musta got this picture from Palm Springs P.D., right?”
“No,” Sidney Blackpool said. “This is a lead we’re developing independent of Palm Springs P.D.”
“Guddamnit!” Billy Hightower whispered. “What is this shit? I gave up this dude three days after they found the body. Soon’s I read about the old man posting a fifty-thousand-dollar reward! If this kid’s the one that smoked Watson, that reward’s mine, guddamnit!”
Sidney Blackpool felt his heart jump. Even Otto Stringer paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth.
“You help us and if this kid’s our man, you’ll be in line for Watson’s reward,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“I want your word on that, man,” Billy Hightower said.
“You got it. I’ll put it in writing if you want.”
“Was that your Toyota out in the canyon tonight?” the biker asked.
“Yeah.”
“Gimme thirty minutes and then drive back to that spot,” Billy Hightower said. “I’ll send someone to meet you and drive you up the hill to my house. We’ll talk on my turf, not yours.”
“Okay,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“That money’s mine,” Billy Hightower said. “You unnerstand what I’m sayin?”
When he stood, the biker was even bigger than he seemed. He crossed the saloon with six boot-crashing steps and was out the door before Otto had his last bite swallowed.
“We gotta go back out there,” Sidney Blackpool said to his partner who nodded unhappily but didn’t comment.
They hadn’t noticed when Anemic Annie and Ruth the Sleuth entered the bar and selected a 1950’s tune on the jukebox, one that J. Edgar Gomez tolerated because it was old enough. The record started spinning just as Ruth’s husky voice boomed over the din, amplified by a police bullhorn that scared the hell out of everybody.
“Ladies, gentlemen and others!” Ruth announced on the bullhorn. “The Eleven Ninety-nine Club is proud to present the one and only-Elfis himselfis!”