The Secrets of Harry Bright Read Online Free PDF

You'll like it. I have copies of every police report here." Victor Watson tapped his desk drawer. "You can read them at your leisure and do some investigating during a hell of a nice vacation. Your lieutenant said it wouldn't be a problem."
    "This isn't sensible."
    "You're the best man available to me at this time and that is the God's truth."
    "How'd you meet my lieutenant?"
    "I help sponsor the police Olympics and the police---
    celebrity golf tournament, and I intend to back your chief if he decides to retire and run for mayor. I was given an introduction by an assistant chief."
    "What else do you know about me?"
    "I know about your boy."
    "Goddamn!" Sidney Blackpool said, shocked to see how much he was sweating from the swell time he was having with all the free drinks and the promise of a golf vacation.
    "While we were talking about my boy your lieutenant said you'd lost your boy too, in a surfing accident."
    "My lieutenant's got a big mouth."
    "It's another omen! It's more than that. Helping me might help you. Father to father. My justice might in some small way . .
    "You already said you don't want justice. Look, Mister Watson, my kid's been dead fourteen months. I'm nearly past the crazies. I don't need this father to father bullshit."
    "If I could buy the right kind of help I would. For the first time in years I need something desperately and it's not for sale. I feel totally helpless. It's an awful thing for a man like me to be helpless. Listen, you've got your twenty years in, right?"
    "Twenty-one."
    "You could retire from police work if you could afford it, but you can't live on the pension, right? You probably have an ex-wife to pay?"
    "No, the bitch did me a good turn. She remarried a few years ago."
    "Other kids?"
    "A daughter seventeen. Lives with her mother."
    "I'm just winging it, Sid. You see, I don't know much about you, only what I need to. So I figure you'd probably love to leave the street garbage but you can't live on the pension without working, right? Do you know Deputy Chief Phil Jenks?"
    "He retired a few years back. I knew of him."
    "He's head of security for Watson Industries. He's also a security adviser to three cellular-mobile-phone cornpanies I'm associated with in San Francisco and San Diego and Denver. I pay him ninety thousand a year." :That s very nice for him."
    I was getting ready to raise his salary to an even hundred when he had a serious heart attack last month. Seems like we'll have to replace him. We're looking for a younger man this time. A retired law officer, of course. We prefer a single man who doesn't mind traveling to some pretty nice cities."
    "I don't know a goddamn thing about computer hardware, Mister Watson."
    "You know about thieves, don't you? A thief's a thief. What else's to know? Sid, if you bring me what I need from the desert, you'll have all the qualifications I could ever want. With Phil Jenks I signed a play or pay deal, as they say in my wife's business. If he didn't like the job, he could quit and I had to pay a year's salary. Call Phil Jenks. I'll give you his number. Ask him how he liked the job. He's a golfer too. We've got corporate memberships in country clubs in San Diego, San Francisco and Denver. We've got season's tickets to Lakers games and . . ."
    "Yeah, yeah, I get it," Sidney Blackpool said. "And right now I got a Kareem Abdul Jabbar migraine."
    "Call me tomorrow, Sid," Victor Watson said, opening the door for the detective. "Remember, if nothing ever comes of it you still got yourself a nice golf vacation in Palm Springs, all expenses paid. And I mean all."
    "Nothing could ever come a something like this," the detective said.
    "Omens, Sid." Victor Watson's voice was as hollow as his eyes under the track lights. "Maybe we're linked, you and me. Because we understand it."
    "It?"
    "The ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons. Now we understand it. I got to have a payoff, Sid. ,Some kind of payoff for all . . . this . . . fucking . . .