A few minutes later the houseboy came padding in barefoot. He wore a peppermint-green kimono with enormous sleeves and a silk-screen flying crane on the back. He was about sixty years old and now wore a strawberry-blond toupee slightly askew.
“Golly you scared me!” he said, extending a hand palm down to Sidney Blackpool.
After shaking hands with both detectives, he smiled and said, “My gosh! When that shower curtain came swishing back I expected to see Anthony Perkins standing there in drag! I was so disappointed! Would you like coffee or a drink or something?”
“No, thanks, Mister Penrod,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Sorry to meet you this way.”
“It’s okay,” the little man said. “And please call me Harlan. Everyone does. I can see how you’d get suspicious, being cops and all. Pardon me, policemen, I mean.”
“Cops is fine,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Really? On Dragnet Jack Webb always said you didn’t like to be called cops.”
“Jack Webb wasn’t a cop,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Well, sit for goodness’ sake,” said Harlan Penrod. “I must look a fright.” And after touching his toupee he realized he did. “Oh gosh,” he said, trying to tug it into place subtly. “I was just clipping my nails when you pulled the curtain back. The blood? Well, I was reading the L.A. Times and cutting a peach and oh, I just get so mad reading about Rose Bird and her California Supreme Court. We keep voting for the death penalty and they keep fixing it so these killers stay alive. I was so mad at Rose Bird I sliced my finger instead of the peach!”
“We just stopped by to acquaint ourselves with the house and ask a few questions.” Sidney Blackpool glanced at Otto who knew that he was thinking, If we can think of what question to ask in a seventeen-month-old homicide.
“We wouldn’t have to put up with Rose Bird if that so-called governor Jerry Brown hadn’t appointed her,” Harlan Penrod said. “Did you see the portrait of him they hung in the state capital? I mean, did the artist ever capture that repressed reclusive paranoid? In another life Jerry Brown was Emily Dickinson. I only wish we could get rid of Rose Bird and the rest of Jerry Brown’s supreme court. I think just like a cop. I’m all for death!”
“We’re awful sorry to disturb you like this, but …”
“Oh, you’re not disturbing me. Do you know how lonely it gels here? Mister and Mrs. Watson never come anymore since Jack died. Gosh, unless they let some friends use the place for a weekend I don’t see anybody. Do you know how lonesome it gets in a house like this all by yourself?”
“Are you allowed to have friends come over?” Otto asked, his arms on the back of the sofa as he admired all the museum pieces that Sidney Blackpool hated.
“Golly yes. Mister and Mrs. Watson are very nice to work for. And of course the property keeps me busy-enough. I’m not that young anymore.” Harlan Penrod took a sneaky little tug on his toup when he said that, but still wasn’t satisfied that it was centered. “This is a good job, believe me. I’m not complaining. I just miss having people here to take care of and cook for. Hey! When Mister Watson called, he said that you two gentlemen might be here for a week. Would you like me to cook a dinner for you?”
“Well, I don’t think so,” Sidney Blackpool said. “We have our hotel and …”
“Oh, it’s no trouble! I’d just love to. My training was originally as a chef, you know. What do you like? I could fix you anything. I have carte blanche at Jurgensen’s Market. You could invite your wives. Did you bring them along?”
“We’re not married,” Otto said. “Both divorced.”
“Really!” Harlan Penrod cried. “Oh, you must come to dinner!”
“Well, maybe later in the week,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Now about the murder.”
“Are you going to solve it? I mean, do you have some new clues?”
“Not really,” Otto said. “We’re just gonna go over the old clues. Except there ain’t any.”
“I know,” Harlan Penrod nodded, wrapping his kimono modestly around his bony knees. “I was wondering why two detectives came clear from Hollywood. I know you got lots of cases to work on there.”
“We got cases by the gross, by the pound, by the case,” Otto said. “Were sort a doing a favor for Mister Watson. Just taking another look.”
“Jack was such a beautiful boy,” Harlan Penrod said. “He was so sensitive, so intelligent, so … kind, you know? He was at the age where kids can be fresh and know-it-all, last year of college and all that. But not Jack. He was basically such a sweet person.”
“To you?” Otto asked.
“Golly yes,” Harlan Penrod said. “He was so … comfortable to be around. He liked people and was concerned about them. I think he cared about me, I really do. Like a family member, not just an employee.”
“The police report says you were out of town the night he disappeared,” Otto said, going through the motions of a homicide follow-up.
“Yes, to L.A. I’ve hated myself for not being here. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought of it.”
“Why’d you go to L.A.?”
“Well, I never admitted it to the Palm Springs detectives, but after all this time I guess it doesn’t make any difference. I had to testify in a criminal trial and I didn’t want Mister Watson to know. It was soooooo lurid.”
“A criminal trial?” Otto cocked an eyebrow at Sidney Blackpool. “Were you involved in a crime?”
“Gosh no! I was sort of a witness. Oh, it was awful!” Harlan Penrod jumped up and took several little steps over to the bar where he poured himself some orange juice from a pitcher. “Care for some juice? Fresh-squeezed.”
“No, thanks,” Otto said, while Sidney Blackpool shook his head and spied the bottle on the bar shelf-Johnnie Walker Black.
“Well,” Harlan Penrod said, returning to the sofa and crossing his legs after making sure the kimono didn’t flop open. “I actually left Hollywood and came to live in the desert because of that terrible business. You see, I used to work for one of the sound studios on Santa Monica where people with no talent whatsoever go to cut records. Oh, it was so sad. All these young boys and girls with hopes and dreams. Little rock bands with some awful song they wrote. Hopes and dreams. I was so depressed all the time.”
Sidney Blackpool looked at his watch and Otto said, “We, uh, have an appointment in a little while.”
“Do you?” Harlan Penrod was crestfallen. “Anyway, one day in the studio when they were doing a sound mix, my boss who was oh so nelly got in a terrible row with his boyfriend, this person named Godfrey Parker, a bitch if there ever was one. They were almost slapping each other’s face when I went home. And the next day they found my boss. Oh, it was unspeakable!”
“What happened?” Otto was getting caught up in Harlan Penrod’s narrative.
“It was a typical queen murder,” Harlan said. “I remember one in my apartment building. A closet queen cut his lover to pieces. When the cops came they found all these trash bags in the apartment. ‘He’s in this one,’ a cop would yell. ‘He’s in this one too,’ another cop would holler. Oh, it was awful. The best part of him was found in an alligator bag!”
“But back to the sound studio,” Otto said, pouring himself some orange juice after all.
“Yes, well, the police came the next morning after the janitor called and they found my boss lying dead right there in the studio. With a studio microphone … oh, this is awful … sticking two feet out of his rectum!”
“That’s pretty gruesome, all right,” Otto said.
“And Godfrey had turned up the volume full blast! He was a fiend! And those cops that came that morning, do you know what they said?”
“Can’t imagine,” said Sidney Blackpool.
“The first one said, ‘Well, I know who the deceased must be.’ And then he named that T.V. reporter on Channel Seven? You know, the one that’s always doing exposés on the L.A.P.D. And the policeman said, ‘The suspect’s one of us. Some cop finally did what we’ve all been threatening to do.’ Well, they had to cut the mike pole out of him with a bolt cutter!”