The Secrets of Harry Bright Read Free Page A

as well stick a blow dryer in his mouth as drink a fifth of gin and start trucking across the desert, he thought. Then he decided that if he had lots of money like Johnny Cash and Liz Taylor and Liza Minnelli and all the othe r r ich cocksuckers that came to the desert to get cured at the Eisenhower de-tox clinic, he wouldn't be out here at the crack of dawn staggering around. He was only in this goddamn pickle because he was poor.
    Beavertail was now about tired enough to accept help even from a cop if he spotted one, but he figured they were all sleeping in their patrol cars somewhere, the lazy pricks. He had to pull himself together and take a breather, so he wobbled toward a honeypod mesquite, the shade tree of the desert. It was about thirty feet tall, a dramatic species with rounded crown and rough-textured bark.
    He scared a roadrunner who leaped from behind a spray of desert lavender and zoomed off, his topknot fluttering. The scented flowers and strong mint aroma attracted swarms of bees, but this one was beeless at the moment so Beavertail squatted beside it, careful not to disturb a large jumping cholla. The slightest touch of the cactus' joints will shoot you full of barbs, yet birds nest in it. Another desert mystery.
    As Beavertail squatted like a Morongo Indian, getting crankier by the minute, he spotted a banded gecko lizard doing a few pushups on a little sand drift. The gecko shot Beavertail Bigelow a mean little glare and tossed off about five more pushups for effect. The "pushup" movement is thought to be a display of territorial dominance, and this four-inch reptile was so full of anxiety he was into his third set.
    Suddenly, the lizard took a bluff step toward Beavertail Bigelow and squeezed out three more pushups, though by now his little tongue was lolling from exhaustion and his eyes were sliding back in his skull.
    Beavertail got very curious. The desert rat creaked to his feet and braced the lizard like a gunslinger. "You ain't no fringe-toed, you little cocksucker," Beavertail told the gecko. "I can kick your ass and who cares?"
    With that, Beavertail Bigelow tried to give the gecko a swift kick, but since his brain cells were firing at random he only kicked desert air. Beavertail sailed over the sand drift, landing flat on his bony spine. He let out a yelp and was answered by a musical plink. He thought at first tha t t he sound was a spinal disk blowing, so he gingerly pulled himself to a sitting position.
    He figured the little cocksucker lizard had jammed on home until he saw what the lizard had been guarding. The asshole was home! He'd been living inside his treasure, which was now the property of Beavertail Bigelow by virtue of superior size. It was a funny-looking ukulele.
    Beavertail picked it up, dusted it off and saw that it was in one piece. How the hell did it get here? Fell off a passing truck probably. He could clean it up and take it to a pawnshop he knew in Cathedral City, where there were no cathedrals but lots of secondhand joints and so many gay bars that desert barflies would say, "Are you married, fella, or do you live in Cathedral City?"
    When at a later time, lawmen would reflect upon how a notorious Palm Springs murder case was methodically deciphered by seemingly random discoveries, they would find undeniable that a growing evidence chain was forged by a very macho lizard.

    Chapter 2

THE PAYOFF
    PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN HAD NOT YET ARRIVED AT the Century Plaza Hotel to await election results, but hal f a block away on Avenue of the Stars, Sidney Blackpoo l w as making a call at an office suite when he saw two me n s tanding beside a limousine. They wore three-piece suit s a nd button-down shirts and striped neckties and shin y w ingtips, but despite the duds they didn't have the gee-whiz look of a George Bush preppie. For one thing thei r a rms hung funny and they both looked about as light-hearted as Jack Nicklaus lining up a putt on the eighteenth.
    Sidney Blackpool was