Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series)

by Don Pendleton

  An errand? At midnight?

  There were things I needed to discuss with Judith White. That was the primary cause of disappointment, but I’ll admit that also I'd been looking forward to just being with her again. I was no longer worried for her safety. If her own father was no longer worried, why should I be?

  Well, okay, maybe I was worried just a bit. For sure I was feeling a growing agitation, or maybe apprehension, maybe something else.

  Lunceford's characterization of Alfie Johansen, aka Craig Maan, had been a bit jumbled, even contradictory. Everyone had loved Alfie, Lunceford said, and yet it seemed that also everyone hated him once they got to know him. The waitress's reaction had been like an exclamation point to everything Lunceford told me. Apparently the guy had used people, lied to them, probably conned them. Judith had sort of indicated the same ambivalent feelings about the guy. Yet she hadn't bothered to tell me that she'd taken him home for a week. That was personal, of course, none of my business ... but still I would have preferred that she instead of Lunceford had told me that.

  She hadn't told me about Jimmy DiCenza either. Surely she had known that Jimmy was Vin's kid or she would have put something together about the name, especially since she'd told me that she'd kept up on the news about the trial in her father's courtroom. Maybe she hadn't told me many things. I decided I wanted to go up to her house. If she wasn't there, I'd wait for her. But then as I was walking toward my car, which was one of only a few remaining in that area, I spotted another car that looked familiar. Looked like the car that Art Lahey had been driving, so I detoured that way for a closer look. It was Lahey's car, yeah.

  Lahey was in it, sort of slumped down behind the steering wheel. There was congealed blood all around the lower half of his face, soaked into his coat and shirt, and a revolver lay across his lap. He'd been dead awhile.

  I gingerly opened the door and leaned inside for a better view, saw that he'd been shot in the head or else in the mouth and the bullet had blown open the back of his skull as it tore through. Didn't see any sign of the bullet lodged in the roof and there was no broken glass, but I didn't do a thorough examination, instead went around to the other side and searched the glove box but found nothing of any importance in there.

  So 1 carefully lifted the matted coat front and felt inside, found a sticky leather-covered notebook in the breast pocket. The revolver looked like the same one I'd left lying beside him earlier that day when he'd tried to arrest me—the one that he accused me of taking away—but a Police Positive is a very common revolver and they all look pretty much alike.

  I took the notebook and left everything else exactly as it lay, wiped everything I'd touched, and got the hell away from there.

  I couldn't even report it, see, and I wished like hell that I hadn't been within twenty miles of the place when it went down.

  But I had.

  I'd spent the entire evening there.

  And so, it appeared, had Lahey.

  You'd think that someone would have heard a gunshot—hotel security cops, someone—in that still neighborhood toward the top of the evening. But sounds can be tricky and many people are not able to discriminate between the sound of a gun and other sounds that occur in the night ... a single gunshot anyway, from within a closed car. It had to have happened while I was inside the theater, judging from the condition of the corpse, and certainly no one in there would have heard it over the amplified sounds within the theater. They don't use a live band but a recorded musical track, and it's pretty loud. Besides, you're just not focused on outside sounds when the show is in progress.

  But someone had blown the man away probably within minutes after he'd walked away from me at the beginning of the third act.

  Why?

  He'd been disciplined and removed from the case, suspended from the force because of ...

  Because of what?

  He'd said insubordination and threatening a superior, then he'd said, "How many do you want?"

  I thought he'd meant how many more reasons for his suspension and I honestly had not thought to ask.

  But why blow the man away? Obviously because he'd come too close to a truth that was making someone nervous. But what?

  I didn't have a clue to that. I hoped, though, that I would find one in the bloodstained notebook—and I decided that I would not go to Judith's right away, after all.

  I went back into the lounge, instead. Not to talk to anyone in particular but merely for personal comfort, to make myself as visible as possible until someone else discovered Lahey's body. If the gun that killed him was the same gun I'd taken away from him earlier, and if his report of the incident made it look as though I had kept the gun... well, I could be in deep shit again.

  So I left my car where it stood and returned to the lounge, merely to look good.

  I felt bad for Lahey, sure.

  But I’ll have to be honest. I felt even worse for myself. And I began to feel bad for Judith again, too. Hell, I felt bad for everyone.

  The impossible dream had become a fullblown nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I was in a lousy mood when I went back into the lounge. My absence had not taken many ticks off the clock, probably no one had noticed it. My coffee and the money I'd laid down was still on the table and the place was still standing-room-only. Since no one had grabbed the table, the presumption must have been that I'd gone to the men's room or whatever. Lunceford was still on stage with The Show Band and they were concluding a rousing trio performance of a number from Chorus Line.

  So much can occur between the ticks of a clock. Not in real time, especially, but in mental time. Lahey had been dead quite awhile. That murder had occurred in real time, my perception of it in mental time—and a lot had been happening inside my mind ever since. Guess I was reorganizing the case file, re-comparing the bits and pieces of data and looking at them in a different light, changing the focus of the police mind.

  That sort of thing happens spontaneously, it is not a consciously directed activity but an eruption from the underbrain where all the bits and pieces had been stewing and bubbling and trying to fit themselves into a meaningful pattern. I have been told that the underbrain works that way, that it doesn't reason in a linear movement as the conscious brain reasons but that it gathers all the mental perceptions like in a big pot and organizes them cubicly into a three-dimensional continuum. Feed it enough data and it will inevitably come up with the true picture, because that is its function, that's the way it works, but then it's up to the linear mind to bring the picture forward into consciousness and that is where we usually get stupid, in that process of converting the cubic reality to a linear one—it's a process of interpretation and sometimes we get the effect ahead of the cause or else we lose one or the other entirely—but it's all still there in the underbrain and the pressure down there keeps increasing until we get it right in consciousness.

  I don't know if that is true or not but I have seen evidence that the police mind seems to work that way, and I have seen my own mind take a sudden leap from stupidity to knowledge, just like that, in a flash, and then wonder why I had not seen the picture that way all the while.

  Something like that was trying to happen as I sat in the lounge that night with my coffee and my thoughts, and I was aware that it was trying to happen—as though two of me were sitting there trying to communicate with each other but not quite getting through.

  Then Susan Baker came in and sat down beside me, and the pressure suddenly became intense.

  We just sat there for a minute or two, neither acknowledging the presence of the other. Lunceford came down off the stage and joined a group of cast members up front. The band struck up a number on their own and the blonde promised one and all that the party had only just begun. I lit a cigarette, offered one to Susan, she declined. Guess that broke the ice.

  She wrinkled her nose at the cigarette smoke and told me, "You should try to become drug-free."

  I said, "Never looked at
it that way, I guess. I think about cancer."

  "You don't have to get cancer," she said soberly. There was still a touch of hoarseness in her voice. "But you should try to control your own body. Don't let it order you around like that."

  I looked at the cigarette, thought about it, put it out. "You control yours, I guess," I said, looking at her admiringly. "Doing a pretty good job. Except with the throat."

  She made a face at me, said, "I've been working on that."

  The waitress came by, checked my cup and refilled it, looked at Susan. Susan ordered water, no ice. The waitress walked away with a sour face.

  "Check yourself out of the hospital?"

  She was working at her hair, trying to tie the cascading flow into a loose bun at the shoulders. "No reason not to," she replied. "I'm fine now. Besides, I couldn't afford it. Thanks for the money. I used it to bail myself out of there. No insurance."

  I said, "You'd probably be better off there for awhile, insurance or no. This thing isn't settled yet, Susan."

  "I know," she said lightly. She gave up on the hair, allowed it to go back into freefall. "I'm not afraid to die. Death is an illusion anyway. I just want to make sure— when it's my time, I don't want it to be like I haven't lived."

  "Do you feel that you may be dying soon?"

  "There's always that possibility, isn't there. Were you born with a guarantee?"

  I chuckled, said, "No one ever showed it to me."

  "You're nice," she told me. "I just wanted to say thanks. And I'm sorry I yelled at you today."

  The waitress brought the water, moved quickly on without a word.

  "How nice am I?"

  She smiled. "Nice enough."

  "Nice enough," I said, "to be in big trouble."

  "You created that for yourself," she told me.

  I said, "Like hell I did. Someone very cleverly created it for me. I think you know who. I think you know why. So if you really want to thank me..."

  Such a beautiful girl. She sighed, did some stretches above her head, said something I didn't hear. The noise level in there was rather high.

  "Didn't hear that," I told her.

  She placed a small hand on my thigh, bent forward to look intently into my eyes and said to me, "Can we get out of here?"

  "Not right away," I said.

  "We can't talk in here with all this noise."

  "We could try. I can't leave right now."

  She showed me a pout, asked, "What do you want to know?"

  "Did you know what was going down last night?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Were you in that apartment next door to you?"

  "I've been in there, sure. But not last night. Elaine was supposed to bring you to my place."

  "For what?"

  She shook her head. "I didn't understand that part of it. I was just told that Elaine would bring you there and I was supposed to keep you there until..."

  "Until what?"

  "Until Craig sent for you, I guess."

  "Was it planned that Craig would walk off just before the curtain?"

  "I guess so, yes."

  "Why?"

  "Well... as I understood it... it all had to be done last night. The show is scheduled to close next week and time was of the essence."

  "All what had to be done last night?"

  "It all had to be settled. And Craig had to have some time to... do whatever he had to do, I guess."

  "And your part?"

  She gave me half a smile, a very seductive one. "All I had to do was keep you entertained."

  "Until Craig sent for me."

  "As I understood it, yes."

  "But the plan backfired."

  "I guess it did. Craig is dead, isn't he."

  "What was I supposed to do? Where did I fit into the plan?"

  She shrugged and replied, "You're a detective, aren't you. I guess you were supposed to do what detectives do."

  I smiled grimly. "Jump out of a closet or something?"

  "Maybe."

  "The guys next door were all set up with a video camera. Who was supposed to be the victim? Not me."

  "Oh no, not you," she assured me. "But I don't know

  who..."

  "A blackmail scheme."

  She said, "If you choose to look at it that way."

  "What other way could you look at it?"

  "Karma," she said with another half-smile.

  "I thought karma is God's business," I replied.

  "Well, who is God?" she asked teasingly.

  "Not Craig, surely."

  "In a way, sure. You're God. I’m God. We're all God."

  I said, "Then God is kind of screwed up, isn't he."

  She tossed her head and replied, "It just seems that way sometimes. Look, Joe, this is just an act. It's all an act."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This play was cast before we were even born. We tried out for the parts and won the roles and came down here to put them on the stage. You could remember that if you tried."

  I tried, but I couldn't remember any of it. I told her so, and I asked her, "Do you remember what happens to me at the end?"

  She said, "You're patronizing me. I don't like that."

  I said, "No, I believe you are patronizing me."

  "I'm not," she replied solemnly. "Look, we've all been together before, many times. That's the way it works, and we're trying to work out the karma that is between us. Why do you think we all got together this way?"

  "It's the damned freeways," I told her. "Gridlock in the city. Speaking of that, who rents the apartment where Craig was killed?"

  She showed me a blank face. "Where was he killed?"

  I whipped out my notes, flipped through them in the dim light of the lounge, told her, "Your complex, number 3H. Who lives there?"

  "That must be..."

  "Who?"

  "You'd better ask Judith White."

  "Why should I do that?"

  "Judith lived in the same complex once upon a time. I guess before she moved back in with her dad. She's the one who sent me there. The owners don't stand on formality the way some places do. You just pay your rent and move in, there's no first and last, no deposits, and nobody bothers you. It's ideal for people in our business."

  "What do you think of Judith?"

  "She's okay, I guess. A bit prim. Nothing wrong with her a little poverty wouldn't cure. Judith doesn't know what it's like down in the trenches. Born rich and that makes a bitch—and that's no pitch." Susan laughed, and it had a touch of bitterness. "But it's her karma."

  "How rich?" I wanted to know.

  "Old money on her mother's side. Judith inherited quite a lot. She owns that house."

  "What house?"

  "The house she kicked her dad out of."

  I didn't know how to respond to that. While I was thinking about it, Susan added, "And of course she owns the theater."

  "What theater?" I asked stupidly.

  "The dinner theater. Not the building, that's hotel property, but she leases it. She owns the damned theater."

  Well, I didn't know how to respond to that either. And Susan was apparently getting bored with me. She said, "Look, you stay as long as you like but I've got to get out of here. Can't stand this smoke in here. This is your last chance. I'm leaving."

  I sighed and said, "Goodnight, Susan."

  But I felt more like saying "good grief" and, yeah, I felt a bit like Charlie Brown—I just couldn't seem to get this one right.

  One by one and two by two the cast of La Mancha got up and did their numbers with the band while I sat in a near stupor from the tug of war inside my brain. Trying to make sense of it, dammit. Trying to make sense of...

  Too many issues that may or may not be related were clouding the picture, I was sure of that. What did I have? I had the Mafia, for Christ's sake, I had United States Marshals and the FBI, I had a nationally sensitive trial and the Witness Protection Program, nervous politicians and compromised co
ps—a dead cop now—a rich judge's rich daughter and Jimmy DiCenza and the Minnesota Supreme Court—good grief, Charlie Brown, I had a pot running over, and buried in all that I had a bunch of talented kids with impossible dreams and maybe a bit too much reach for the grasp.

  I took a leaf from Susan's book and decided to control my own body, ordered the brain to get off its ass and do its work, and I even tried to remember things I'd never known that I knew.

  But none of it was working, not in full light, and I knew that I had to do better than that before the sheriffs came knocking at my door again.

  I knew, too, that the sheriffs could be coming fearsome quick now. From somewhere outside my dark gloom I heard sirens clattering about the premises and everybody in the room heard them too. The band took another "short break" and went down to converse soberly with their friends in the audience. The bartender closed the bar and shortly thereafter a waiter came in from one of the banquet rooms at the far side of the building to announce to the hushed room, "There are cops all over out there. They've found another murder. Some guy got shot in his car."

  Several patrons got up and left immediately but the gang from La Mancha seemed to be huddling even closer now. I fingered the bloodstained notebook inside my coat pocket and wondered if I should try to stash it somewhere, went to the men's room and concealed it behind a towel rack, got back to my table just a few steps ahead of the sheriffs.

  We were in for a long one, I knew that. They went from table to table, taking down names and checking IDs, asking the same questions table by table. I showed them my driver license and told them I'd been on the premises all evening, hadn't heard or seen anything unusual or suspicious. Thought I'd gotten away with it until a sergeant came over a few minutes later and asked me, "Aren't you Joe Copp, the private investigator?"

  I admitted it.

  He told me, "Captain Waring would like some words with you."

  I asked, "Where is he?"

  "At the murder scene. Come on. Let's go."

  Well, so what the hell, I was moving up in the world. You don't usually get a captain responding to a homicide. This, of course, was not your ordinary homicide—this was one of their own, suspended or not.