Shenks said, "We'd like you to understand right up front, Joe, that we are familiar with your excellent background in police work. We'd like this to be a friendly meeting between professionals."
I said, "Then let's call it that."
There followed a brief silence, then Osterman told me, "We've come to deliver a formal apology on behalf of the bureau. We simply do not work that way and we want you to understand that. The entire bureau is embarrassed over the matter."
I said, "I understand. So am I. But just so I'm clear on the matter we're discussing..."
"Your arrest on false charges," Shenks explained in a flat voice.
I said, "Okay."
"The entire incident has been erased from the record," Osterman said. "The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has been fully apprised of the unfortunate circumstances. They are cooperating. The incident did not occur."
"That's nice," I said.
Shenks added, "You can bill the bureau for your time and inconvenience, any reasonable amount. Is that fair?"
I said, "Sounds fair, sure. How'd this happen so quick?"
The agents exchanged glances. Osterman took it. "Well, as soon as it was brought to our attention ..."
Shenks: "Naturally the bureau moved quickly to correct the matter and set the record straight."
I said, "But I brought it to your attention less than an hour ago."
Shenks: "The action was under review before that."
I wanted to get it straight. "Before I yelled."
"Right."
"And you guys beat me back here."
"Actually we were already on the way."
"So you do know about my visit downtown today."
They exchanged glances again.
"That's right," said Osterman.
"But you haven't asked about Minnesota."
Another conference of eyes only, then Osterman replied, "We were already here when we got the call from downtown, Joe."
"They didn't mention Minnesota."
"No. Is it important?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not." I took the Federal Express airbill off the envelope from Minnesota and handed it over. Those airbills show the name, address, and phone number of the sender. "I sent this guy a picture of the La Mancha cast."
Shenks: "La Mancha?"
"The play."
"Oh. Right."
"You guys don't know anything about that, do you."
Osterman explained: "It's a sensitive case, Joe. You know how that goes. Sometimes the left hand is not privileged to know what the right hand is doing."
"And you guys are on the left hand."
He smiled. "There are both left and right hand aspects of delicate cases like these. But we'll see that your information gets to the proper hand."
"That would be Dobbs and Harney?"
"We can't answer that," Shenks put in quietly.
Osterman quickly added, "But we do appreciate your cooperation, Joe. Are we all clear now?"
I said, "Let's make sure. What you came to tell me is that Dobbs and Hamey overreacted to my interest in the case and did something dumb which the bureau overrode when you got wind of it."
Another exchange of glances. "That's about it."
"So why didn't Dobbs and Harney themselves come to square it with me?"
Osterman: "That seemed inappropriate."
Shenks: "You might question their good faith."
I said, "Right, I might at that. I also might break their faces."
Nobody laughed.
I said, "But of course it's a politically sensitive case."
"Uh ... yes," said Shenks.
"You guys want me to just send a bill and forget it."
"The bureau hopes that you will."
"And butt out."
Osterman showed a thin smile and replied, "As the responsibly professional thing to do, yes, that would be best for all concerned."
"Suppose I don't go along with that. I can still send my bill?"
Shenks chuckled and said to Osterman, "I think he misunderstood the message."
Osterman was not laughing. He looked at me soberly as he told me, "You have no choice in that, Joe. You will butt out."
"Or ... ?"
"Or you haven't seen the beginning of inconvenience," said Osterman.
"It's like that, eh?"
"I'm afraid so, if you insist on making it like that."
I was beginning to revise my reading of these guys.
Proper, sure, and by the book. But cold as ice beneath that easy surface. I said, "So you're not really apologizing for anything. You're just trying to give me a graceful exit. You couldn't make it stick anyway—and you never intended to, did you. Your cowboys paid a woman to help them stage that little scene in my bed rather than dirty their hands with an actual kidnap. Or maybe they used one of their own undercover people. Either way, you'd never want to take that act into a courtroom, would you."
Osterman showed me a thin, cold smile. "What do you want, Joe?"
"Maybe I want a bouquet instead of a brickbat. And maybe also I just want to exercise my constitutional rights as a citizen and businessman."
The special agents looked at each other then stood up abruptly to leave. "It's all a matter of perception," Shenks said. "You've been offered a bouquet whether you know it or not."
"I could sue you all, you know," I mildly reminded them as I followed them to the front door.
Osterman looked back at me as he stepped outside. "Dead men don't sue, Joe," he said quietly.
I stood in the open doorway and watched them get into their car and drive away.
So I'd been warned.
Okay.
Respectful and by the book, I'd been warned. Somehow it was a lot more chilling that way.
CHAPTER SIX
See, it was a very untidy package with loose ends sticking out all around and more contradictory than resonant. You naturally try to draw some kind of scenario when you're in the dark and possessed of only a few hard facts, but the scenario that was presenting itself still made very little sense to me.
I could accept right off the top Dobbs and Harney as a hotshot team of marshals protecting an important witness in some past or pending sensitive federal case. U.S. Marshals and their deputies are primarily officers and instruments of the federal district court, the court of appeals, and what is now called the Court of International Trade. They are considered to be national police officers and they have all the statutory powers of any lawman anywhere. They can seize property, arrest without a warrant, take prisoners anywhere in their district and remand those prisoners to jailers on their own authority. What's more, they can take them out of jail the same way. But you don't hear much about the marshals. They cut a low profile in the legal processes of this nation—but they are there, always there, and they have awesome powers
when you think about it. A recent law modernized them as the U.S. Marshals Service, a bureau under the attorney- general, with their own director appointed by the president, but they still operate as marshals of the federal courts.
I had thought that the FBI had primary responsibility for the witness protection program. But I could also see how the marshals could be involved. It is their primary role and mission to provide for the security and to obey, execute, and enforce all orders of the federal courts. That could cover a lot, and it could mean overlapping responsibilities with the FBI. So there could be some scrambling there.
But even taking that at face value, it was hard to reconcile the other facts. The most logical scenario gave me a mystery person under federal protection for some sensitive reason and with the marshals involved in it. Since I had blundered into it, and since life had become very harsh for me since my meeting with a prospective client from the dinner theater, then the logic pointed to someone involved in the theater as the mysterious protectee. Doesn't take a genius to get to that point.
But the scenario also would seem to fall apart at that point.
If you want to hide somebody,
would you put them on a stage in public view?
I wouldn't.
Of course, I’m no genius. If you give the guy a new identity and a totally new history, if you change the way he looks just a bit, then further camouflage him behind greasepaint and art gum, then bury him in a small community theater at the edge of a sprawling metropolis ... well
okay, maybe that would make some sense. Maybe he'd be as safe from detection there as anywhere.
Of course, though ... if the guy turned out to have a really splendid talent, and the show began drawing attention from outside that small community, and if people started coming forward with offers to take that show on the road as a major production—could sudden fame be far behind? How safe then?
So maybe the package was not as sloppy as it seemed.
Maybe...
Well look at it this way. The protectee is the one who made this show sensational enough to attract investors. Now he's in a quandry. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. If he quits the show and looks for somewhere else to hide, will the moment ever come again?
Suppose he can't turn away from that opportunity. Maybe he even feels an obligation to the other players. If he walks away, so will the investors. More than one impossible dream would be smashed. So he cannot turn away. He calls his official watchdogs and tells them of his decision.
Now they panic.
Why?
Because they still want something from this guy. They need him for something hot, politically sensitive. Maybe a federal court has ordered that this crucial witness be given full protection and produced at some future date. "Produced" could be a key word there, where Dobbs and Harney were concerned. But they can't budge the kid's decision to jeopardize all that.
So what now? Try to scare him back into line? Give him
a little taste of mortality?—a little fear?—a reason to think again?
I could easily see Dobbs and Harney as cowboys, like U.S. Marshals of the old wild west, virtually autonomous and committed to their job.
Wouldn't be too hard to engineer a few suspicious "accidents" that are near misses. Shake the guy up. Make him come running back for protection.
Something like that could work, sure.
As a scenario, okay—marginally okay. The package is not so sloppy now.
Until someone else gets worried.
Someone who wants to tour the nation with a hit show, maybe several someones.
So then enter Joe Copp, onto a scene that is already under the watchful eyes of the cowboys. Maybe the whisperer's phone was under a federal tap. Maybe they had me coming in and were resolved to guide me through a revolving door and right back outside again.
That could explain the gunshots in the parking lot and the follow-up visit at my home. They didn't like the sound of me there so took the discouragement a step farther and tried to give me something more important to think about.
Stretched just a wee far, it could also explain the telephone call from Minnesota. A diversion, maybe, designed to suck me away into some quick and false resolution that would pad my wallet and satisfy my curiosity.
But they went too far, and that worried someone higher up or caused discomfort at the overlap. In that connection, I had to think that Shenks and Osterman had been dispatched after my visit to the FBI, although of course it was possible that they'd been telling the truth and it was just a coincidence that I'd already gone in on my own.
Whatever, the FBI was definitely interested and no doubt strongly involved—but what did that tell me?
And what if the Minnesota angle had not been engineered by the watchdogs themselves? Who turned Roger Johansen onto me? What if there is no Roger Johansen?
I talked to one, sure, but so far he is just a voice on a long-distance telephone connection, and I had only his word that the man in the photograph he sent me was his son Alfred.
So maybe "Roger Johansen" is a hit man looking for another kind of connection.
But how'd he get to me?
I had to skull this thing. Had to bring the loose ends together. I was like a blind man tapping his way through the darkness and it was driving me nuts. That is why I went back to the dinner theater. I had to know, see. I simply had to know. Then maybe I could make an intelligent decision about what I wanted to do with it.
Man of La Mancha is only very loosely adapted from the Cervantes novel, Don Quixote. Actually it's sort of a twist on Cervantes himself who has been thrown in prison during the Spanish Inquisition and he tells the Quixote story to his fellow prisoners to entertain and uplift them. So the title role is a mixture of both Cervantes and the fictional Quixote as the author becomes the character in acting out the story.
It's, you know, a bit fanciful but damned good theater. The entire play takes place in this Spanish prison. Most of the characters are male and they're all dressed in rags
except the lead who, by some device, has this old theatrical trunk packed with costumes which he wears at various points in the story. There are only three female roles identified in the playbook I saw, which would seem to narrow the field of possible whisperers if mine had told the truth, but this particular production also used an offstage chorus to help Cervantes musically with his story, and there were four women in that group.
As I think I mentioned earlier, I'd already seen this production at this theater a couple of months earlier—but I wanted to see it again, now, from the top and with directed attention upon the players individually and the way they interacted with one another. You can learn a lot that way, by just watching people and checking interactions.
I didn't pay, this time. It's a thirty dollar tab with dinner and I did not want to be confined to a table anyway. The theater is set up Las Vegas style with none of the seats actually facing the stage, unless you can snare one of the VIP booths at the rear. This one is particularly nice, strictly class, with waiters in tuxedos and excellent food, probably holds several hundred people, has a large stage with curtains and all like any regular theater, not one of those intimate "in the round" setups.
I showed my badge at the maitre d' podium out front and told the guy the absolute truth to get inside without paying. Most people never look closely at a badge, I don't know why unless the symbol is just so confronting and they're immediately impressed by it. It flustered the guy at the podium. I laid it out there for him to look at but his eyes bounced away instantly. I told him, "I need to just
stand at the rear and observe for awhile. You understand, I’ll be as unobtrusive as possible."
He even brought a stool and offered me coffee but I turned both down. "Are you investigating the accidents?" he whispered.
I just gave him a knowing look. He winked and went on about his business.
They serve dinner before the show and usually dessert during intermission. The waiters and busboys were still clearing the dinner tables when I arrived, which was a few minutes past the scheduled curtain time, and the show had not begun. I could sense a lot of movement behind the curtain and a moment later it was announced that the tide role would be played during this performance by Johnny Lunceford so I immediately went back to find out what was going on.
Chaos was going on, back there.
Apparently the lead was not the only one who'd missed the curtain. Several others were missing also and Judith White was busily reassigning roles and moving people about. They got it together rather quickly, I thought. I watched from the wing until the curtain went up, then went on backstage for a word with the beautiful director.
She was beside herself.
I asked, "What's going on?"
She asked, "Who the hell are you?"
I replied, "You know who I am," and handed over the money envelope.
She said, "What the hell is this? Go away. How'd you get back here? We're trying to put on a show here, sir."
I asked, "Where's Craig?"
"If I knew, I'd kill him. Will you get away and leave me alone!" She flung the envelope at me. It hit my shoulder and spille
d the big bills at our feet. "My God!" she squealed.
I was attracting a lot of attention. Angry looking people were moving toward me, and among them I spotted my old pals Dobbs and Harney. They wore tuxes like the waiters out front and they were bearing down on me with malice aforethought.
So I left the money where it lay and went out quickly across the other wing.
The house was full, the show was on, and everyone appeared to be having a great time. Didn't want to spoil any of that. I went on outside, lit a cigarette, and awaited the inevitable.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I stand six-three and tip the scales well beyond the two hundred mark, so I'm no lightweight in ordinary company. I was not in ordinary company this time, though. These two were no taller than me but they were big, just big all over, with probably not ten pounds of body fat between them.
"Dobbs and Harney, I presume," I said softly as they scowlingly approached me just outside the theater.
The one I'd heard called Larry threw the first and only punch. I went under it and held onto the arm, stepped into it and levered the elbow into my chest. He froze under the sudden pressure, knowing what could happen next. I told his partner, "Back off, or I’ll hand you his forearm."
"Believe it, Jack!" Larry grunted.
The other guy held up both hands at shoulder level and took a step backward, chuckled coldly and said, "I'd say it's a mess either way. You let go, hell kill you. You don't, I’ll kill you."
"Let's just talk about it and not kill anybody," I suggested. "Maybe we have a common cause that needs to be explored first."
I released the guy and pushed him away in the same movement. He rubbed the elbow and turned a respectful eye on me, then said to the other, "Let's listen."
"Other way around," I corrected him. I’ve already taken all the lumps I intend to take from you two. Maybe I can respect it if I know why, but not this way. So why don't you explain it to me. First, which is Dobbs and which is Harney?"
Larry grimaced and replied, I’m Dobbs."
So the other was Jack Harney. He was carefully lighting a cigarette and coolly checking me out over the flame from his lighter. "Don't give this jerk too much comfort," he growled to his partner.
Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 3