The Secrets of Harry Bright by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

which is very common. Everybody did sliding U-turns, which is very common. Shots were fired by several units, which is very common. This one nearly turned into an intramural fire fight with cops shooting each other during the thirty-five-minute high-speed chase, and this too is fairly common.
    It was a semispectacular chase, as desert chases go. In open country they often last a very long time. It was fortunate for O. A. Jones that this one lasted all the way to a remote canyon not far from Mineral Springs where he had decided to hole up and rest because he thought h e w as hearing banjos and car engines and singing voices in the middle of nowhere.
    By the end, there was fear and pandemonium and adrenaline leaking everywhere. When Maybelle did her last sliding U-ee and crashed near a canyon road leading to O. A. Jones, the result was exactly the same as it always is in high-speed pursuits. The first thirteen cops to jump out of their cars, or point guns out the car windows, yelled thirteen conflicting orders to the suspects.
    All of the conflicting orders had one thing in common: they all ended with the word "motherfuckers."
    While all the yelling and motherfucking and gun waving was going on, a car skidded in driven by Chief Paco Pedroza. He jumped out and ran toward the lead cops hiding behind the first chase unit with handguns and shotguns pointed toward the steaming wreck.
    The loudest uniformed cop outyelled everyone. He bellowed: "You motherfucking sonofabitch cocksucker, put your hands out the window or we'll blow your fucking face dr"
    And Paco Pedroza with his badge pinned to his aloha shirt ran up yelling, "Everybody shut up! I'm in charge!"
    But the big loud cop was operating in another zone. His eyes were bulging and his face was raw meat and his shotgun was shaking, and he bellowed: "You motherfucker sonofabitch cocksucker, but your hands out the window or we'll blow your face off!
    So Paco screamed: "SHUT UP! I'LL DO THE TALKING!" which got everybody's attention.
    Then Paco, finally in command, turned his own face toward the suspects' car and his eyes were bulging and his face was raw meat and Paco yelled: "You motherfucker sonofabitch cocksucker, put your hands out the window or we'll blow your face off!'
    Maybelle complied, but Abner was lapsing into a coma from which he would not recover.
    It was over. And then, since nobody wants to admit that he was doing some very dangerous shooting, especially in case some bullets landed where they shouldn't, all the chase cars started to find reasons to leave the scen e a lmost as fast as they came in. This is also very common at the scene of high-speed chases. It's like lifting a rug in a wino hotel: they scatter like cockroaches.
    No one ever found out for sure who put all the slugs in Maybelle and Abner. Not that it mattered. Everyone agreed they deserved getting ventilated, and the cops only wished they could've dipped their ammo in cyanide since Maybelle didn't croak.
    Before the chopper pilot turned back toward Palm Springs police station where Victor Watson was now waiting with the F . B. I ., he spotted what looked like a large animal scrambling up a hillside. It was a strange animal, white on top and dark on the hindquarters. Pigasus soared in a little closer and saw that the white on top was the sunburned flesh of O. A. Jones who had foolishly removed his shirt in his delirium.
    They picked him up on the side of a little ridge. On the other side of the ridge was a trail leading into the canyon. Off the trail, down in the canyon where it had plunged sixty feet, was a burned Rolls-Royce containing the remains of Jack Watson.
    The first cop into the canyon almost gagged when he saw the charred corpse, which had been dined on by turkey vultures and coyotes. The coyotes had almost destroyed the skull with their gnawing. If they had, a bullet hole would have been impossible for the pathologists to locate. The case might have been classified as a car accident and