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

by Don Pendleton

  Yeah. Yeah. We should have. She brushed my cheek with her lips as she said goodbye, then she went back upstairs and left me at the kitchen table with nothing but my thoughts and tumbling emotions.

  It was four o'clock on Saturday morning, and I had to

  go invade another day in a darkness more abysmal than ever, without even an illusion to light the way.

  Big bad Joe, Copp For Hire, married to his job and to hell with everything else. And every one else, it seemed.

  I was not that different, I decided, from the judge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It’s not that far down into Ontario and it's a quick trip that time of morning. I made it in less than ten minutes and found the address from my copy of the cast file without difficulty—a small streetside apartment building near downtown, old but decent. The number I wanted was on the third flight up and Johnny Lunceford responded fairly quickly to the insistent pressure on the doorbell button.

  He cracked the door with two safety chains still in place, reacted dumbly to my presence there, then sleepily told me, "Shit, man, I've got a pregnant wife. What are you doing here this time of night?"

  "Justice never sleeps, Johnny," I replied. "Do I kick the door down, come in there and talk in your pregnant wife's face, or would you rather do it out here?"

  No decision to it. He said, "Just a minute," and closed the door. Guess he went in to say something to his wife, he was gone less than a minute then joined me in the hallway wrapped in a bulky robe. "Jesus! What do you want?"

  "I want it straight this time," I told him. "Off the top.

  Alfie didn't come to you for sanctuary and you didn't get him the La Mancha role. So let's start again from there."

  The guy had a desperate, trapped look about him, a frightened look, but that quickly gave way to bravado, defiance. "You're not a real cop! Where do you get off coming in here talking to me like that? Scare the shit out of my wife, she's going to have a baby, where do you get off?"

  I showed him where, hoisted him two feet off the floor, let him drop. His knees buckled and he would have fallen onto his face if I hadn't been there to catch him and put him back on his feet—but not entirely on his feet. "I didn't want to get mean with you, Johnny," I told him. "I think you're a nice kid caught up in a hellish nightmare, but I can't let that get in my way now. Either we talk like friends or we talk mean, and I leave that up to you."

  Again, no decision required. "Okay okay," he said quickly. "Let's talk friendly."

  I told him, "I already gave you your cue, kid."

  "We were in college together. That's true. I left two years ahead of him, that's true, had no further contact with him. Never really liked him. So it bombed me out of my skull when he turned up at East Foothills. Sort of bombed him too. He took me aside and said, 'Please don't tell anyone my real name. I'm on a case and I'm under cover.' I said okay. That's how it started."

  "What kind of case?"

  "He wouldn't say. I guessed narcotics. Then later we put together the story I told you."

  "How much later?"

  "Couple of weeks, I guess."

  "He was already next to Judith White?"

  "Sure. She brought him in to replace Greg Houston."

  "She brought him in?"

  "That's the way I saw it."

  "And he was staying with her at the time?"

  "I think so, yes."

  “You ever hear of a guy called Jimmy DiCenza?"

  "I don't think so. Oh! That's the guy that's on trial. Judith's father is hearing that case."

  I said, "No, Jimmy is the son. He's a producer, sort of—packager and promoter. You never heard of Jimmy?"

  "Uh ... I don't think so. Well, maybe ... I don't know. Last year when I was doing South Pacific with Judith, there was this guy...sort of hanging around on and off. Italian. I think he was a producer."

  "But you never heard Alfie mention that name."

  "No."

  "Tell me about Elaine Suzanne."

  "Her real name is Elaine Somoza. Very strange girl. Talented but strange. Had a thing for Alfie." He laughed quietly. "All the women get a thing for Alfie. He never knows they're alive."

  I told him, "Just before she was killed, Elaine told me that she and Craig had been secretly married."

  "You said that before but I don't know. Sounds like disinformation. Alfie was good at that. Tell enough lies, no one will ever know the truth."

  "Yeah, tell me about it," I replied. "Why would someone want Elaine dead?"

  "Same reason, I guess, they wanted Alfie dead."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Well. . ." Lunceford scratched his nose and thought about it, then replied, "Maybe he was telling the truth about being undercover."

  "And all the other crap?—the lies?"

  "Disinformation," he said with a sigh.

  "You honestly don't know what he was trying to pull together the other night?"

  "I honestly don't. I stayed away from it. Hell, I couldn't— I've got a kid on the way."

  "Did you get to know Larry Dobbs and Jack Harney?"

  "Not much. I stayed away from that too. Alfie first told me they were chasing him, then he told me they were his bodyguards—shit, then he came up with this crap that they were going to back a national road company."

  "You didn't buy that?"

  He gave a little shrug and said, "It would've been nice."

  "Would you have gone on the road with them?"

  "Sure. Chance like that comes all too seldom. But I guess I never really bought the whole ticket."

  "Answer me this. Did you feel that Alfie, at any time, really thought that he was going to put this show on the road?"

  Lunceford frowned and did a little stage posture with one foot in front of the other and a hand on the hip. Then he reversed the whole posture and gave me a frustrated look. "That guy," he said disgustedly, "was never committed to anything like this. He goofed off in college and I guess he goofed off after he left college. He had absolutely no professional experience as an actor. So why did Judith bring him in here?"

  I said, "I guess I better find out why."

  I thanked the impossible dreamer and sent him back to bed with his pregnant wife.

  Then I resumed my own quest for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  But that impossible goal was still a long way off.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I went back by the hotel and retrieved Lahey's notebook, then took it over to the allnight coffee shop and searched it for information. Lahey had been a good cop and he'd conducted a textbook investigation. One of the last things he'd told me was that he was following a lead—and the only clue I had to that was the blood-stained notebook that I’D lifted from his dead body.

  It was rather cryptic, as these things usually are, jottings in a personal shorthand which no stenographer could decipher—but maybe another cop could—and I saw something in there that sent me back to the apartment complex where all the killings had gone down, all but Lahey's, and he was dead only because the others were dead.

  I got the manager out of bed and looked at her records. The apartment in which Craig/Alfie was killed had been rented barely two months earlier by a Mary Todd Bernson, first month's rent paid in cash and the next by a postal money order received in the mail. The manager could not remember Mary Todd Bernson and she could not recognize any of the pictures from my cast file.

  So I roused the neighbors on both sides and showed them the pictures. Lady on the east side picked out Craig Maan, told me: "This one, I think, I've seen a couple of times, maybe three or four times, always at night. I thought that he was probably her son."

  "Who's son?"

  "The son of the lady who lived there. Didn't see much of her either, but I would say she was older, an older person, older than this young man."

  "Did you ever talk to her?"

  "No. I don't believe she was home much."

  I had an idea, asked her: "Did you e
ver see her alone or was the son always here when she was here?"

  She reflected on that, then told me, "You know, I just don't know. Come to think of it, I guess when I saw one I always saw the other very soon afterward."

  "Did you ever see them together at the same time?"

  Another reflection, then: "I don't think I ever did. But now I remember ... a young woman was here once too. Oh, I would say, maybe last week sometime. Very pretty."

  "You saw her go into the apartment?"

  "No, I saw her coming out one night."

  I thanked the lady and went on my way. Didn't know what I had, exactly, but knew that I had something I didn't have before.

  That apartment 3H had not had a real tenant those past two months. It was a place for people to meet in secret, a blind. But I still did not know yet how to factor that information into what I thought I knew about this case. I simply had to keep on struggling, and I knew where to go next.

  At five o'clock on a weekday morning you could expect to spend maybe a couple of hours of freeway time between

  my neck of the woods and Studio City, so I was glad it was Saturday; I made it in about forty minutes and reached the top of Coldwater Canyon at just past five-thirty. Wasn't quite daylight yet and the traffic in that area was almost non-existent.

  Jimmy's cliffside joint lay brooding in the pre-dawn silence with only two small nightlights to break the darkness. I rolled to a stop in the half-moon drive with my engine off, quietly left the car and pulled the riot gun out of the trunk, scaled a wall and on up onto the roof of the house—over the top, so to speak, because the other side of that wall was a void everywhere except the area in which the house hung on steel beams projecting from the side of the cliff.

  Didn't really know what kind of security Jimmy enjoyed and didn't particularly give a damn. I did know that the big double doors up front were three inches thick and featured kickbolts anchoring them to the cement floor— I'd checked that out when I was there earlier—so I was going for a softer point of entry. I remembered also that his fancy playboy bedroom that was probably copied from the Playboy Mansion itself featured a curving glass wall at the back of the house with sliding doors opening onto the garden patio.

  I wanted to jar the guy awake and go for a bit of startled honesty, if honesty was possible with this guy—didn't want to give him any recovery-makeup moments—so I swung down off the flat rear roof onto the patio and immediately let go three quick rounds from the riot gun into the ceiling of his bedroom.

  There were yards of glass and draperies in between, of course, but the draperies parted without any argument and the glass came raining down with a jangling roar, followed

  instantly by the whooping siren of a burglar alarm. An excited female voice inside immediately yelped, "Earthquake!" as I moved through the wreckage of the window. A bedside lamp flashed on to reveal three rudely awakened individuals galvanized by fear and struggling to get off the bed—Jimmy, sure, typically sandwiched between two naked sexpots—but tangled in the bedcovers as well as one another and having a rather undignified time with it.

  Then Jimmy saw me and knew it was not an earthquake, but it may as well have been for his peace of mind. He spluttered, "What?—what... ?" and rolled his eyes up and tried to take cover behind one of the women.

  I tossed the riot gun onto the patio then grabbed Jimmy and tossed him out behind it. He bounced hard off the decking and rolled across several feet of broken glass, instantly began bleeding from numerous small cuts and looked up at me with doomsday eyes as I caught up with him. He cried, "Joe! What the hell, Joe?"

  "That's where you're headed, pal," I told him as I picked him up again and heaved him into the pool, then I grabbed a long-handled cleaning net and met him with it as he surfaced, following from the side of the pool and poking him with the metal handle to keep him treading water at the deep end until he was in total panic and utterly exhausted. Didn't take long; Jimmy hadn't kept himself in very good shape.

  Meanwhile the alarm was still whooping and I guess the girls had snatched some clothing up and run away. Just as Jimmy was about to go down for the final count I heard a car gun away out front and saw the headlights flash against the cliff as it spun onto the roadway. I dropped the cleaning tool into the pool and told Jimmy, "Okay, hit the steps," and I met him there.

  Poor guy was totally out of breath, shaking in terror or exhaustion or maybe both and still bleeding all over but I felt that I had to go for the big score and it had to be quick, so I picked him up by both ankles, went to the rail and hung him out to dry—several hundred feet above the canyon floor.

  Maybe that was unnecessary because there was no fight in this guy. He gasped, "Jesus, Joe, don't do this. I'm all wet, you're gonna lose me."

  I said, "Well see how long I can hang on. How quick is your memory? I'm giving you two names. You decide which one you like best then talk to me about it—Alfred Johansen and Craig Maan—which do you like, Jimmy?"

  Guy had a great memory, quick one too. "Craig was sent by Dom Pergano." Pergano was one of the family's legal eagles. "Vin wanted him stashed for awhile."

  "Stashed where? For what?"

  "That's what I wondered," Jimmy panted. "Kid had been doing gay shows back east somewhere. I got no gay shows."

  "What kind of gay shows?"

  "Uh, female impersonators, I guess."

  "So why'd you send him to Judith?"

  "Dom suggested it. Said the kid had done some musical theater. Uh, blood's going to my head, Joe. Gettin' dizzy."

  "You were born dizzy," I told him. "Dom knew all about Judith, then."

  "I guess I'd mentioned her. He said I should put Craig with Judith until Vin needed him."

  "Until Vin needed him?"

  "That's right."

  "Needed him for what?"

  "Jesus, I'm blacking out! I'm going to faint!"

  "For what?" I insisted.

  "I don't know for what!" Jimmy screamed. "Come on, Joel Come onl"

  "So why'd they hit 'im?"

  "Did they? Jesus! I didn't know! I swear!"

  I dropped one leg and the poor guy damn near had a heart attack on me but it was no time for pity. "Why'd they hit 'im, Jimmy?"

  "He was FBI!" I was told by a totally terrified man.

  "Come on. He wasn't old enough."

  "Old enough to tell tales," Jimmy whispered.

  The burglar alarm was still doing its thing and I have to admit that I'd lost all taste for this exercise. I swung the little mobster back onto his patio and dropped him there. He grunted, "Jesus, I'm bleeding all over."

  "Be glad," I told him and left him there, retrieved my riot gun and went out through the house, got into my car and quickly put the scene behind me. I heard a distant police siren and saw the flashing lights winding up from Studio City so I went the other way, over the top and into Beverly Hills.

  And since I was so close, anyway, I jogged on over to the Wilshire highrise district of West L.A. for a call on the judge in the case.

  Female impersonator?—FBI informer?

  I was beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but didn't know if I wanted to come into that or not. But there was only one damned way left to go. So on I went.

  I showed the doorman a hundred dollar bill and the cast pictures, asked him, "Ever see any of these come in here?"

  He picked the man of La Mancha and said, "This one,

  I guess, but it was quite awhile ago. Used to come in a lot."

  "Do you know Judge White when you see him?"

  "Yes, sir. Did you know there's blood all over your suit, sir?"

  I showed him my badge and told him, "I got it honestly. Did you ever see Judge White with this man?"

  "Not that I recall. I work midnight to eight. I usually see the judge in the mornings when he's leaving for work. But I saw him tonight. He came in—oh, I guess it must have been around three o'clock."

  I tapped the photo. "When did you usually see this guy?"

&nb
sp; "Usually in the middle of the night, sir. But not tonight. I haven't seen him since..."

  "Coming and going?"

  "That's right. But that's been, uh, probably a couple of months ago. I haven't seen him lately."

  I surrendered the hundred bucks and went on up, hit the judge's doorbell several times but got no response, picked the lock and let myself in.

  The entire apartment seemed to be in darkness except for a small lamp in the foyer casting muted light halfway into the living room. Judith sat in there in the semi- darkness, slumped onto a large leather recliner and obviously in a very down mood.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked unemotionally.

  "Looking for the light," I told her. "Go tell him I'm here."

  "The judge is not in," she said in a muffled voice.

  "Doorman says he is."

  "Well, he went out again."

  "So what are you doing, Judith?"

  "Just thinking."

  "Should've started that a long time ago," I said. "I just came from a heart to heart talk with Jimmy DiCenza. He told me some wild things. I wish you'd been the one who told me, kid."

  “Told you what?"

  "You never wondered why he sent Craig to you?"

  She made an empty gesture with her hand as she replied, "Life is too complicated, Joe. We never know who to believe or what to believe, never know what's right and what's not. I stopped wondering long ago. And I'm not ashamed of anything I've ever done. What's your problem?"

  I told her, "I'm not here to shame you. But I'd sure like to hear your version of the truth."

  She showed me a sad little smile and asked, “The truth about what?"

  "Who is Mary Todd Bemson?"

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "I picked it up. Who is she?"

  A tear popped out of her eye and she replied, "Mary Todd Bernson was my mother."

  "Maiden name."

  "Yes."

  "Did you know that Craig came to. you by way of Vincent DiCenza?"

  She sighed. “I’ve considered the possibility. Especially since... all this craziness began."

  "Did he steal money from you?"