Yeah. The clear air helped a lot.
Didn't do much for my mad, though. Well ... maybe it did focus it just a bit.
I went away from there looking for a hot dog who loved to play cop enough to do it for free and enjoyed cruising around in a TransAm with flame decals—a little prick, probably, who enjoyed the official privilege of throwing his weight around and terrorizing people who couldn't fight back.
I knew where to look, yeah.
Chapter Five
IT WAS A typical Wednesday evening at the substation. The deputy on the desk was Charlie Hall. Never had any problems with Charlie. Good cop, did his job and collected his pay, spent most of his free time with Big Brothers and Pony League and Little League and every other kid thing he could spread himself onto. Must have been about due for retirement but I knew he'd never walk out on his own; they'd have to carry him away kicking and screaming. Some cops go a little crazy with the stress. Cops like Charlie just mellow into it and divert the stress into positive outlets.
He looked up with a delighted grin. "Joe! How you doing?"
I assured him I was doing fine but I'm sure he knew by the ripped jacket and the mouse under the eye that I was doing the same as usual.
We small-talked for a moment, then I asked him, "Who is this new cop on the block, Ed Jones?"
Charlie gave me a smile and a wink. "You mean Buck Jones."
I growled, "Buck always wore a white hat. I believe this guy qualifies for a different color."
Charlie kept right on smiling. "Don't ever turn your back on him, Joe."
"He's riding with Tanner. They should have a lot of fun keeping each other in sight."
He chuckled. "I rode with Tanner once. One whole miserable week. But don't give the guy all black marks, eh? He's a smart cop."
"Too smart," I said. I was craning for a look at Charlie's log. "Who answered the call on the Valdez homicide?"
He tightened just a bit. "You chasing ambulances now, Joe?"
"Not hearses, for sure," I told him, then sat down and lit a cigarette. "If Tanner's working swing, how come he got Valdez? That should have come in on day watch."
"Joe. When are you going to give up those goddamned cigarettes? They cause heart disease, emphysema, cancer—they'll even make you impotent."
I said, "I never heard that."
"Heard what?"
"Impotent."
"Oh yeah. Anything that needs good blood circulation to function properly. Nicotine constricts the blood vessels. Been having trouble lately getting it up?"
"Getting it down," I said. "How come Tanner?"
He glanced at his log, sighed, took a deep breath. "Joe, you're not with the department anymore. I can't talk official with you."
I said, " Bullshit."
He said, "Actually the call came down just right before shift-change."
"And?"
"And we're spread thin right now. Would've had to dispatch a car from one of the other districts, and they're all thin too right now."
I said, "Charlie, I can't believe you just sat on this waiting for the new watch to get on board."
"Didn't say I did that, Joe, did I? Actually Tanner called in and said that he was on it."
"He wasn't dispatched."
"No. Said he was in the neighborhood and in touch with the traffic detail. So I logged him in."
I said, "Great. The sleazebag never showed. Not until some time around six o'clock."
Charlie said, "Couldn't be. Traffic detail released and departed shortly after four."
I said, "That's right. And they made a carbon of their report for Tanner. He never showed, Charlie."
"Couldn't be, Joe."
"Okay, it couldn't be but it is. Where can I find him?"
"You mean right now?"
"I mean right now, yeah."
"Go home. Take a shower. Change clothes, at least.
Talk to him tomorrow."
"Now, Charlie."
"Right now, huh."
"You got it."
He sighed, turned to his console and did some things with the buttons, came back to me with, "He's on a private call."
I blew smoke at him. "What do you mean, private call?"
"You know. Moonlight call."
I said, "Wait. Cop for hire doesn't do it when the cop's already on watch. Give me that again, just so I have you clearly."
Charlie frowned, took a couple of breaths. "Some of the guys nowadays, Joe, on a slow nightwatch, take private calls to relieve the boredom."
"Bullshit on the boredom. If they take them, it's to relieve the financial statement. I can't believe things have got that loose."
"Lots of things are loose," he said with a tired smile, "since you were here. I didn't make the game, Joe. I just sit here and watch it."
I gave my hideous smile, I think, and asked, "Where is he?"
"Officially, I don't know."
"Unofficially?"
"His call came from this joint up above foothills. He signed down for thirty minutes."
"When?"
"Just about thirty minutes ago."
"New Frontier, right?"
"You were always a jump ahead, Joe."
At the moment I was feeling a few jumps behind. I thanked my pal Charlie and headed for the door. But he called me back before I could get there. Something was working on the console. He'd put on the headset and was taking something down; took a moment to tell me from the corner of his mouth, "If you're headed that way, change your mind. Tanner just requested backup units. We've got a shooting at New Frontier."
I was not about to change my mind.
I was pounding along the hard side at full- tilt, and I knew it. I think I'd known it since late that afternoon. There was no turning back now. George, the bartender and duty eunuch, lay sprawled on the tarmac outside the joint with two ugly bullet wounds in his face.
An ambulance and a couple of squad cars were there and the uniformed cops had their hands full with crowd control. I brushed right on past them and went to stand over the victim alongside Tanner. The paramedics already knew that they were wasting their time there but they were observing the routine just the same and preparing for transport. I caught a glimpse of Jones poking around inside the cab of a sporty Toyota pickup as Tanner said to me, "Satisfied now, asshole?"
"Satisfied with what? He was alive and breathing last I saw him."
"Heard you roughed him up pretty'good."
"Heard wrong. Didn't even muss his hair. Who did?"
"Figured maybe you could tell me who did," Tanner said with a nasty smile.
"Figure again."
He produced a vinyl evidence bag and held it in front of my eyes. A snub .35 pistol was in there, typical Saturday-night special. "Look familiar?" he asked me.
"Yeah. I've seen a thousand just like it."
"This one," he told me, "has had the serial number removed. It also has been fired recently and there are two empty cartridges in the cylinder."
"Neat," I said. "Convenient. Where'd you get it?"
"Ed found it in that pickup over there."
"Yeah, that's really neat," I said.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"You know what the hell I mean by that."
I left him standing there and returned through the police line to my car. One of the bouncers I'd encountered earlier was standing there looking at it as I walked up. He looked at me and I looked at him. He sort of half-smiled; said, "You're a cop. Sorry. I didn't know."
I said, "You still don't know," and got in the car.
He walked away while I lit a cigarette. Before I could kick the engine over, though, the door on the passenger side opened and a very cute person slid in beside me. It was Belinda Buckaroo.
I said hi and she said hi.
Then I said, "Where are we going?"
And she replied, "Wherever you want to go. Just do it quickly, please."
I asked why and she told me why.
"That's my car tho
se cops are tearing apart," she said.
"The Toyota pickup?"
"That's the one."
So yeah, we went on along the hard side together, at full-tilt. I've had better company. But not very often and maybe only a shade better.
"Why me?" I asked her, a mile down the pike.
"You're the guy that tore up the club, aren't you?
I said, "Well, I had some help."
"I know who you are," she told me. "I know all about you. I recommended you to Juanita."
"Juanita is dead," I told her.
"I know about that too," she said, face tight. "George told me."
"When did he do that?"
"Just about sixty seconds," she said, "before he got out of my car and got his head blown off."
"The Toyota pickup."
"That's the one," she told me again.
The hard side, yeah. There are those times when you simply cannot avoid it. And there are times when you don't want to.
Chapter Six
HER NAME WAS really Linda Shelton, age twenty- five, blond all over and beautiful all over the full five feet and ten inches—and she was working her way through college. Actually. I know; you get that from all of them, hookers and all; in this case it was true. You just knew it was true without even having to question it. Bright, sharp, well-spoken and poised; I probably would have believed it if she'd told me she was on sabbatical from a nunnery.
She took Belinda because it was alliterative with bewitching and because you played the theatrical games even at this level of theater.
She had these great eyes, you know. Very expressive. All sparkly and dancing when she was excited; snap, crackle and pop when mad; smoky and mysterious when feeling amorous. But I'm getting ahead of it here.
I took her to my place because it made no sense to take her anywhere else. I have a nice place. Surprises a lot of people. But I always tended to put my money in my home. Home is where you become yourself, you know. Whoever you are, whatever your dreams, your home tells you who you are and what you think of yourself. That's my theory, anyway. I know a lot of people who never found that out. They think they find themselves at work, or at play, or off chasing the dream whatever it is. Not true. You find yourself where you live. Looked at your place lately? Look at it. It'll tell you damn quick who you are, if you really want to know.
Linda knew that, I think. She began looking at me through different eyes the minute we got there. "This is really nice, Joe," she said as I escorted her through the Grecian entry-way. It's a colonnade, but sort of on the mini-side, with diffused lighting. Variety of potted plants to take away the starkness of the marble look.
Bought the place five years ago. Started buying, of course. If I stay lucky I just might live long enough to finish buying it. Not many people, I think, look at it that way these days.
Like buying a car. Never expect to pay it off. Just keep trading it off. My car I paid off two years ago. Still runs good; looks okay. My place will still look okay twenty years from now, too, and I'll own the sumbitch.
I've got a split-level entry inside, four steps in Italian tile that lift you to the reception hall. Off to the left and down again is the kitchen and all the utility space; off to the right and up again is the living and partying space. A single bedroom takes up the whole back area—why would I need more than one?—but it's more than a bedroom, actually. I've got a spa back there and a small workout gym. One corner is my home office. Whole thing overlooks the San Gabriel Valley and half of the communities in the area.
Linda seemed to love it. And I was getting a bit instant-smitten with Linda.
After the proud tour we returned to the kitchen and I put the coffee on. She kicked off her shoes and pulled both feet into the chair with her and sat there glowing at me.
I said, "Well."
She shook her head, kind of wonderingly.
I asked, "Do I intimidate you?"
"Should you?"
I shrugged. "I get it all the time. This may surprise you. But women often find me a little scary."
She laughed softly. "Surprises hell out of me, Joe."
I told her, "I suppose you intimidate a lot of guys."
She gave me a look of mock horror. "Please. You're messing with my livelihood there."
I said, "Tell me about that."
"About my livelihood? Woke up at age twenty and realized I was headed absolutely nowhere. Signed up for night classes at Citrus and struggled along that way until it dawned on me that I would get my degree when I am forty. So I found night work and became a full-time student."
"And now you're a graduate student."
"By golly, I think he's got it."
"What're you going for?"
"A Ph.D. in behavioral psychology."
"Why?"
"Because I find people fascinating, and because a wise man once told me that every life should be lived with fascination."
I said, "Damned few are."
She said, "Maybe that's why we need behavioral psychologists."
I asked her, "Do you use what you've learned in your present work?"
She smiled, looked down at her body. "I use everything I can find."
I told her, "I'm not being nosy for personal reasons. I'm reaching for some understanding here. How's the money at the New Frontier?"
"Money's great," she replied soberly. "I've cut back to a twenty-hour week and I still do okay."
I needed a better handle than that. "How great is okay?"
"Great enough."
"Look, I don't want to be indelicate but I need a picture here."
She looked at her hand and picked at a long tapered fingernail as she replied, "A smart girl can clean up there, Joe. I don't mean that she has to sell anything more than voyeurism." She raised those great eyes into an electric contact with mine. "I average a couple hundred in tips for a four-hour shift."
I whistled softly. "But you're smart."
The eyes fell. "No. Juanita doubled that, easy."
"By being smart."
"By doing what she figured she had to do. Look ... a guy drops in on his way home from work for a couple of expensive beers and a cheap thrill. He might toss a dollar bill onto the runway and he might not. Another guy comes in because there's simply no place else he can get the kind of attention he finds there. He's lonely; he's probably shy and maybe unattractive, and he's desperate for attention.
47
He discovers that he gets special attention if he's laying a five out there to attract the girl. And very special attention for a ten or a twenty. The girl might even put her fanny in his face and take his picture while she's dancing along."
"See many of those kind of guys?"
"Oh yes. I had a sweet old man used to come in every Tuesday night and lay down a hundred-dollar bill for me. I started giving them back to him, when I could. Juanita would not have dreamed of giving it back. She would have worked that little man for every dollar he had. But as I said, she figured she had to. Most of her money went to her family in Mexico. She was supporting about twelve of them."
"You said give it back when you could. When couldn't you?"
"Takes a bit of discretion, Joe. We are not working just for ourselves, you know."
I waited.
"You think the management would be content with three-dollar drinks while the girls are walking out with all that money? The house gets half."
"That's shitty—"
"No, it's business. Everybody is in business to make money. You know that, Joe."
"So this two bills a night you're taking home represents only half your actual take."
"Forty percent. I said the house gets half. Another ten percent goes into the kitty for the rest of the help. Bartenders, bouncers, like that."
"A guy gives you a tip because he likes you, not the rotgut he's drinking."
"Yes, but the guy wouldn't have that chance to like me unless someone else was paying the rent and providing the support facilities. They have quite
a payroll there, Joe."
"Bouncers alone," I said sourly, "yeah."
"Speaking of which, ..." she said, giving me a warm once-over, "you really walk pretty tall, don't you."
I hung my head in exaggerated false modesty. "Forgot myself." But I really appreciated that admiring look. I quickly added—not just to change the subject but because I really wanted to get the picture—"So if you have to split the take, I gather there is something beyond an honor system to police that take."
"We're out there stark naked, after all, when the dance is done. Where could we hide it? Besides, there are eyes everywhere."
"You said smart girls, though."
"Yes. Well. Where there's a will there's usually a way, isn't there?"
I guessed it and said it: "And Juanita was knocking down."
She shook her head. "I don't know about that."
"But you told me you sometimes managed to get the little man's bill back to him. How'd you manage?"
She blushed. Actually blushed. "Well ...," she said, then laughed softly.
"So it can be concealed, even stark naked."
"A single bill is easy enough," she said, the color still hanging in there. "Especially if you're a little damp at the time. Have to gather up your costume too, you know. You can make the switch."
I grinned. "I couldn't, no. So you get a little damp sometimes?"
"Damn it, Joe. Back off."
But I kept on. "If a single bill is easy, how much is tough?"
She relented, grinned back in spite of the embarrassment. "They caught a girl last month with her vagina stuffed full."
"Of money?"
"Over two hundred dollars in twenties."
"What'd they do to the girl with the money liner?"
"They fired her."
"Uh huh. Who was bugging Juanita?"
"Had nothing to do with any of that. I never heard anything about Juanita trying to cheat the house. This was totally different."
"Who was it?"
"That cop."
"Which cop?"
"The young one that was tearing up my car.
"You're sure?"
She nodded her head. "Dead sure."
I winced. "Poor choice of words, Miss Future Ph.D. Wish you hadn't put it just that way."
Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 3