I gibed back with a smile, "That could apply to every man in this room. So what's new in your world?"
Griffith chuckled as he replied, "Same old, same old. Who tried to take your head off?"
Molly's patch job had fallen apart in the shower. I had tried to glue it back together but one end kept waving in the breeze every time I moved, so I ripped the whole thing off and tossed it into a wastebasket. I asked him, "Why do I have the feeling that you already have the answer to that?"
He grinned and said to the group at large, "Copp has always been good for a laugh when things get boring."
But no one else seemed to be laughing and certainly there was no hint of boredom in this particular crowd. Two of these guys were showing almost open contempt for my inclusion in this group. That was not particularly surprising. As a private eye I had long since been aware of open hostility from cops as soon as they knew my history. Which is not to be taken personally; very often cops from different official quarters do not get along well even with one another. I usually try to put the disrespect in perspective and try to take no offense. That can be difficult at times. I had this group pretty well sized up the moment I walked in there. To some cops, a private eye is scum, no matter how you may prove them wrong. I stopped trying long ago.
Chief Terry said, almost as though to lighten up an overcharged atmosphere, "I want it known right up front here that this guy saved my butt yesterday afternoon, so I expect him to be accorded all the respect that I demand for myself. If anybody here can't handle that, there's the door."
I took it by that comment that Terry had been getting some static about me from these guys.
One of the sheriff's people, a guy named Armstrong, was trying to put a good face on the discussion. He smiled at Terry and said, "I have no problem with that."
Another cop said, "Me neither."
At least no one got up and walked out.
But it seemed that the conference had sputtered to an end. I had the feeling that these people had come just to get a day out of the office anyway; and it would probably look good in the political arena. What could these guys accomplish, after all, except to embellish public relations between police agencies. The individual patrolman or detective out on the streets is the man who makes the crucial difference every time, not the brass. At the bottom line, police work usually comes down to an individual cop on the beat face-to-face with a criminal. You cannot get more basic than that, and the individual cop has to know that he cannot depend on anyone except himself in a moment of crisis. Any cop who forgets that is in extreme jeopardy. There are a lot of badass people out on these streets—anywhere, everywhere.
I stepped outside for a breath of air as the meeting broke up. Griffith came out and shook my hand again. He said, "Terry there is a good man. He seems to be in your corner at the moment but don't give this guy too much slack. Watch yourself, Joe."
I said, "Thanks. I always try to keep my back to the wall but I have seen this guy under fire and I respect him. Beyond that, yeah, I hardly know the man. Were you trying to tell me something I ought to know?"
He chuckled and lowered his voice as he replied, "I just said it."
I said, "No, I think you didn't."
"How long since you've been to Tahoe?"
"Is that a suggestion?"
"I've heard things. Maybe you should."
I said, "Thanks, it's on my schedule."
He showed me a cryptic smile and went on.
So what the hell was that about? Some of these people often end up a bit paranoid, so I was not particularly impressed by the apparent warning.
But a jaunt to Tahoe was definitely looming larger in
my immediate future. If, that is, I had any future left.
For the moment, however, I wanted a private conversation with John Terry regarding his old pal, Harley Sanford.
I had to call it that way.
The guy had simply been too tolerant of his leading citizen's possible involvement in the violence of yesterday.
Terry met me outside and said, "Let's go find some breakfast."
When we got into his car I asked him, "What was so hot on your mind when you called me a while ago?"
"No, you first. What's this about Harley?"
I told him, "I gave it to you. He was in my bed when I got home last night. I figured he would keep until morning. He didn't."
"So what was on his mind?"
"He seemed stunned that he might be a murder suspect. He was confused and scared. He didn't admit to anything but he also didn't deny anything."
"That sounds typically Harley. But what was your sensing of what he said?"
I said, "My sensing was that the guy was scared out of his skull. Where are we going?"
We were moving slowly along Old Mammoth Road. The Chief replied, "They have a good breakfast at The Swiss Cafe. It's just down the street. Like waffles?"
"Whatever," I said. "What is your startling news about Sanford? You said something on the phone about him having a busy night. What was that?"
"Waffles first," he said.
I could tell that he wasn't just stalling me but was working at something inside his own head. I allowed him to nurse it until we were seated in the restaurant. But that took a while too. This guy had a lot of friends. We had to run the gamut of interested queries on the big news around town, and he was not one to be churlish with the local folks. As soon as we got that all settled down and breakfast ordered, he told me, "I talked to Harley last night, too. He said that someone had been trying to kill him and that he was afraid to show himself until I could guarantee his safety."
"What time was that?"
"That was close to midnight. I tried to convince him that we needed to straighten out his problems but he was hitting me about the same way he was hitting you, from what you told me."
I said, "Well, maybe I'm nuts but I really felt that the guy didn't know anything about the shootings. He was in a hell of a sweat. He was crying. I went in the other room to give him a chance to pull it together. When I came back he was bundled into bed again. I figured, what the hell, the guy would keep through the night. I was pretty well bombed out, myself. I've been wondering all morning why I didn't call you on the spot. But I can tell you this much, I felt no fear of this guy. I don't often tuck myself into bed with a murderer just down the hall from me. I've had to rethink this whole scenario. I can tell you this—"
I did not get the chance to tell him "this," whatever it was.
Terry's beeper summoned him at that point.
He excused himself and went to the telephone in the lobby.
I got about three good bites of a gorgeous Belgian waffle before he returned, with all illusions of a leisurely breakfast gone for sure.
"Let's go," he said urgently. "I'll tell you about it in the car."
It was not done, yet, in Mammoth.
Harley Sanford was dead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The body was lying just off the third green on the golf course. It had been there awhile, crumpled facedown near the top of a shallow sand trap. He'd been shot in the head and had apparently rolled down a hill into the bunker from a few yards above.
A revolver lay beside the body.
A note tucked inside a pocket of his pants appeared to be a suicide message.
The note said, simply, "I'm just too tired," and was unsigned.
Chief Terry had tears in his eyes. He said quietly, "That poor woman. Now she has another to bury."
That was exactly what he said, with no apparent concern for Harley himself. People do not always say precisely what is in their minds at such a time, but it struck me a little odd that all the sympathy had gone to the widow and none for the victim. But it was also no time to split hairs.
I told him, "I want to go with you to notify Janice."
He said, "Let's go right now, before she can hear it from someone else."
Other officers were on the scene. We left immediately,
and Terry was still brushing moisture from his cheeks as we sped away.
I was not buying this as a suicide. Not yet, anyway, and certainly not until all the other shootings had been reasonably explained. I wanted to try to find out where Sanford had been during the long hours since Cindy Morgan's death. If it could be shown that Harley Sanford had indeed been guilty of the murder of Cindy and/or the attempted murder of Arthur Douglas, then maybe something could be built of a suicide theory. At the moment, I was not buying it.
And I knew for sure, now, that I would have to make that trip to Lake Tahoe as soon as possible. There was no way to avoid the implications of a string of violence that probably began at least as early as the questionable death of Martha's first husband, George Kaufman.
I had to consider my own shooting, in L.A., as another link in the chain of violence, which had intensified dramatically after my return to the area, and of course that included also the Los Angeles shooting of Martha. All of the violence that had erupted around this family over the past couple of years had to be connected in some weave of cause and effect.
Sanford's connection to a criminal element was beyond question. "Sammy and Clifford," the small-time hoods who invaded Martha's apartment, acting on Sanford's orders by his own admission, makes that connection quite clear. That same or a similar connection certainly had figured in the torching of the Kaufman Gallery—but how, why, for what effect?
And of course I had to believe that somehow it was all tied into the mysterious safety-deposit key that Martha had worn to her death. As an initial item of business, I would need to find what lay inside that box.
The criminal connection undoubtedly figured strongly in much of the intrigue of the past twenty-four hours or so, and probably from the beginning.
Who else would have killed Martha Kaufman and tried to kill me, either directly or indirectly? Who else had wanted to kill Arthur Douglas, twice? Who else had killed Cindy Morgan and who else had attacked an airplane and tried to snuff out three lives in a single stroke? And finally, now, what was really behind the death of Harley Sanford? Events such as these do not occur in a vacuum; it would be ridiculous for any cop to conclude that these were no more than a series of random events.
So, yes, I had to look into the Tahoe connection, if only to satisfy myself that nothing was there to account for all this violence.
And, of course, there had been the almost cryptic warning by Griffith following the meeting in Terry's office. Maybe he had just been shooting in the dark, as cops often do, but it could have been more than that.
So Tahoe was definitely on my schedule.
Not right away, though.
Someone had just tried to kill Janice Sanford again, this time with a heavy overdose of a narcotic drug.
The count was getting furious. And so was I.
The paramedics worked with a professional and swift calm to stabilize the O.D. victim. You can't say too much about these people, who often are the only difference between life and death, and who are paid far too little for their efforts. Janice was quickly stabilized and en route to the hospital within minutes. I rode in the ambulance with her while Chief Terry stayed behind to await his investigating officers and see to the police reports. As I jumped into the ambulance, Terry showed me a dour grimace and growled, "This has gone too far, bud. We've got to put a cap on this crap!"
"Show me how," I growled back.
It was a quick run in to the hospital. Janice had been semiconscious the whole while but not lucid enough to explain the circumstances except to say that "they" had injected her "full of drugs." We had found her in a bathrobe staggering along the drive beside her house, apparently trying to get into her car. While waiting for the paramedics, Terry had discovered that her telephone line had been cut. Only her indomitable will had kept her functional and attempting to find help.
Both Terry and I felt that only our fortuitous visit to notify Janice of her husband's death had foiled the attempt on her life. Maybe this is a hell of a way to put it, but Janice was alive only because her husband was not.
I stood by in the emergency waiting room while the medics attended her. Terry arrived as I was being briefed by the attending physician. Janice was then out of danger. We also discussed Harley's death. The doctor advised that Janice not be told about that at this time.
Janice's condition seemed to relieve the chief of considerable anxiety, but he was mad as hell. So was I. I had known these people so very briefly, and I could not say that I had even liked Harley Sanford, but I was definitely taking the whole thing personally and I knew that Terry was too, even if his earlier reaction to Harley's death had seemed to be more centered on Janice's pain then on the death of an old friend.
The Chief and I went in for a brief visit with the patient. We stayed only a moment because she was in no condition to explain what had happened to her. She did not even ask about her husband but she did ask about Tom Lancer. She was receiving good care and seemed to be okay, so we left her and went to look in on the other victims.
Arthur Douglas had taken a "turn for the worse" and we were not allowed to question him. Terry left instructions that he wanted to speak with his officer at the first reasonable opportunity.
This small hospital seemed to be developing a "police wing" to accommodate the rash of crime victims. Douglas had remained in the intensive care ward under constant police guard, which was straining the capabilities of this limited police department. As an added precaution, both Janice and Tom Lancer were being cared for in rooms adjacent to the other victim to enable the police guard to keep tabs on all three.
It was shortly before eleven o'clock. Lancer was not in his room at the moment, receiving some kind of follow-up treatment for his arm wound preparatory to his release from the hospital. Terry was in a sweat to get back to his office so I suggested that he go on without me. I wanted a shot at Lancer on my own, anyway.
I followed the Chief outside and spoke to him through his car window as he was firing up. I asked him, "What did you learn about the shooters at the airport?"
"More or less what we expected to find," he replied. "These guys were professionals, like the other two here at the hospital yesterday. These two even advertised in a magazine."
"That's a bit different approach."
"Not anymore."
"Little bit different pedigree, though."
"The mobs come in all shapes and sizes now," he reminded me. "There are even Asian gangs working territories around the country now."
"These weren't Asians."
"I didn't say they were. The effect is the same. I think it's worse now than ever before. I don't know about you, bud, but I am sick and tired of these people coming in here and shooting up my town."
I said, "Sure, tell me about it. All it means is that it can happen here as easy as in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. A few lousy bucks will buy your dirty work anywhere these days. So Mammoth has come of age, that's all. You don't have to like it, but... "
"Bullshit. I'll never like it and I'll never go for it. Take book on that."
"Where'd these guys come from?"
"Believe it or not, they came from a little town in Texas. The Jeep was stolen from a military installation out of Hawthorne."
"Where's that?"
"It's in Nevada, dammit."
"Near Tahoe?"
"Not really. It's just northeast of here, out in the middle of nowhere."
"Casino action?"
"Has a couple of small casinos but the ammunition depot is the lifeblood there. Is that the end of your interrogation?"
I said, "Hey, pal, don't get testy with me. I'm on your team."
"I know, I know," he growled, and went on without further comment or apology.
He was getting pissed, yeah. But that did not change anything and it did not fix anything.
I wanted that talk with Tom Lancer. And then I wanted to look in on the action at Tahoe. Sure, I knew that it could not change or fix anything but I was piss
ed, too.
Lancer had been reexamined and fitted with a new dressing when I returned to his hospital room. He had gotten lucky with no vital wound from the gunshot. Loss of blood had been the most dangerous effect, and Janice's quick work with a pressure bandage had undoubtedly minimized the damage. He was getting ready to go home when I found him.
He lived alone in a section convenient to the airport, near Lake Crowley. He showed me a smile and asked, "Can I get a ride home?"
I said, "Sure, I've wanted a chance to talk to you anyway. My van is over at the police station. How soon can you leave?"
"They're checking me out now. Probably five minutes."
"Hang tight," I told him. "I'll go get the van. Meet me out front."
The pilot replied, "The talk all over the hospital is about their shooting here yesterday. Lot of nice things said about you, Joe. The business at the airport last night is hardly more than a footnote around here."
I said, "That's only because they were not personally involved in that one. It's hardly a footnote, pal."
"I hear that. It'll never be a footnote to me."
I hoofed it on down to the P.D. and picked up my van from the parking lot without bothering to check in. I noticed that Chief Terry's car was not in his parking space.
Lancer was waiting for me outside the hospital entrance. "Good timing," he said.
He looked none the worse for his adventure other than a bandaged arm supported by a sling. His color was good and he looked well considering the circumstances of his night.
That changed almost immediately after we departed the hospital area. I asked him, "Did you see Janice at the hospital?"
He replied with an almost startled smile. "Well, no, I hardly expected to see her."
I said, "No, you've missed my meaning. Someone tried to kill her this morning after the incident at the plane."
Copp In Shock, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 11