Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series)

by Don Pendleton

"Guilder never hinted at anything like that?"

  "Not so's you'd notice."

  "You definitely feel Wiseman is still alive?"

  "Have to," he said. "Makes no sense any other way."

  "Maybe it's not supposed to make sense. Maybe Guilder—"

  "What about Guilder?"

  "Ever heard of a double-wrapper? Could the New York people have sent you to watch Wiseman, then tapped Guilder to watch you? And could he have been playing a different game the whole time?"

  "He was here when I came . . ."

  "Made from an actor," I said. "It's Tinseltown, Butch, not the streets of New York. Everyone here is an actor—the waiters, the tailors, the candlestick makers, most all of them came out to make it in pictures or television and they end up doing what they can to survive. You don't have to be smart to act, you just have to know how to get into a role and believe it's really you. Then you can make anyone believe. So what did Guilder make you believe?"

  "The son of a bitch . . ."

  "Look past the false fronts and tell me what you see, Butcher."

  He gave me one of his terrible smiles. "I think I better call New York."

  "Do that," I said. "And when you get the man on the line, ask him if he really wants you to find Bernie Wiseman."

  "I'll do that. Can I give him your regards?"

  "Give him nothing. Tell him when I find Wiseman, if I find Wiseman, I'm going to drape him around both of your necks."

  Foolish talk, Copp, as Butch was quick to point out. "Don't try to be a hero," he solemnly advised.

  "You bury heroes."

  "That's right."

  "Loan me your car."

  He dropped the keys onto the revolver. "I think maybe you'll pull it off. Mind if I just sit back and watch?"

  "You've been leaning on me all the way, haven't you?"

  He smiled. "Smart guys don't bust their ass."

  "You're the one fed the tip-lines, sicced Edgar on me."

  "Couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving guy," he said still smiling.

  "It happened to Ken Forta," I told him.

  "Who's he?"

  "An honest cop who died trying to unravel this. You pulled the trigger by remote control, meaning to or not. You fuzzied up this whole damned investigation, Cassidy, and the pieces haven't stopped settling yet. Who knows how many needless deaths are swimming in your pot. But that doesn't bother you, does it?"

  He shrugged, nudged the gun and the keys toward me. "Just don't try to be a hero."

  I was not feeling heroic at the moment. What I was feeling was fear—and I thought again of friend Nancy Parker's one-word message, and knew she was right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Cassidy's car was a Honda just like the other one, registered to UT, little silver sedan with the standard equipment and a full tank of gas—certainly no yacht but clean and capable and, one hoped, not on any hotsheets. I stopped at a 7-11 and picked up a few away-from-home necessities, then checked into a cheap Studio City motel and crashed for a few hours. I was up, bathed and shaved and on the town again before nine o'clock, went into a Denny's for their Grand Slam breakfast—pancakes and eggs, sausage and bacon, plenty of sticking power. I picked up a newspaper off the counter, thinking to catch up over coffee, caught myself staring back at me from a two-year-old photo on the front page.

  The waitress had been giving me funny looks so I put the money on the counter and took the newspaper away with me—stopped at a drugstore for some heavy sunglasses and a Raider's cap, wore them out of there and to a quiet phone booth a couple blocks away.

  I poked the number from Abe Johnson's poop sheet and got a first-ring response from Charlie Franklin—a cultured, "Yes?"

  "Top of the morning, scribbler. Joe Copp here. We need to talk."

  He sounded not pleased. "Joe, this is a—I've just been reading—you didn't tell me the police were looking for you."

  I said, "I'll straighten it out after a while. Right now I'm worried about your wife. I think she's in some real danger, we need to talk about that."

  "Listen, I don't want to get involved in anything that could be construed as aiding a fugitive, nothing like that, I'm sure you understand. I recommend that you turn yourself in and get a good lawyer. I could recommend one who—"

  "Didn't you hear? The kid's in trouble, could be terminal. Talking to me on the telephone doesn't make you a criminal. Get off it."

  ". . . What can I do for you?"

  "Not for me, for her. Verify a story she gave me. Was she in Mexico this whole past year or was she traipsing about glitterville with Bernie?"

  "I won't discuss that."

  "Don't make me come up there and shake it out of you. What does it take to get you off the fence? The girl's mangled body?"

  "Joe, please ... I am sworn to... let me—can you put her on the phone?"

  "Wish to hell I could. But I'll go for the compromise. You call around and leave messages every place you can think of. Have her get in touch with you, quick." I gave him the number of the pay telephone. "Have her call here every hour on the hour until she connects with me."

  He said, "I'll try."

  "Try hard. Her life, yours too, could depend on it."

  "I'll try—"

  I hung up, checked the time, moved Cassidy's car to the other side of the street and half a block away, slumped in the seat and waited for... developments. They came pretty much as expected and in even better time than expected. An unmarked van pulled to the curb directly opposite the phone booth thirteen minutes after the mark on my watch. A man in work clothes got out and opened the side door, set some stuff on the sidewalk, got back into the van.

  Uh huh.

  Another van set up downrange about a block, and two unremarkable cars took station at the other end, at opposite sides of the street.

  I hated to do it to the guys as much as I hate fruitless stakeouts for myself, but I needed to know. So now I knew, and since I doubted very much that there had been a tap on Franklin's phone, I was sure that sweetheart had turned me over.

  I went to his house for a stakeout that I hoped would bear better fruit. It did so twenty minutes after I took station.

  He came out in an S-class Mercedes, one of the big luxury sedans, and made straight for the Foothill Freeway, took an eastbound ramp. So did I.

  Twenty minutes later I was wondering where in the world we were headed because we'd gone clear to the end and interchanged over to I-io, still proceeding east.

  We were in Pomona, now, east even of my territory. I thought of the Ontario airport, which is international now, but we went past there, and now I was wondering just what the guy had in mind.

  Then I thought of the map I had found in the UT limo, and groaned at the possibility that Palm Springs was the destination. That's a hell of a run, out past Redlands and into honest-to-God desert country, a full hour east of Ontario.

  But that was where we were headed, crossing I-15, the route to Vegas, and keeping on bearing east. Understand that upper-crust Angelenos regard that whole area "out there" as their private little sandbox. When they speak of "the desert" they mean Palm Springs and environs, places like Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage and the whole country-club complex of exotica where nothing but sand and cactus ought to be.

  It started as a hot springs oasis for the Agua Ca- liente Indians. Agua Caliente means "hot water," and some crafty white-eyes cum desert rats had vision enough a hundred years before Disney to sink some roots there. The Colorado-Sonoran desert was one of the most dreaded stretches on the old stage route between Prescott and the coast, so what better place than Agua Caliente to establish a stage stop. Later a guy named McCallum built a genuine resort called the Palm Valley Colony—that was before the turn of the century and even before Hollywood or Beverly Hills were dreamed of. But it took both Hollywood and Beverly Hills to turn Agua Caliente into the modern desert resort that it now is, and I'm talking now not sand and sagebrush but lush tropical gardens, s
ixty eighteen-hole golf courses, 300 tennis courts, a swimming pool for every three citizens, thirty-five miles of bicycle trails and every luxurious comfort the mind can conceive.

  With all that, it's still a wasteland for me. I don't play golf or tennis, swim or lay in the sun, and I don't ride bikes in 1oo-plus temperatures. For ordinary people it's like Vegas without the casinos, and who the hell would go to Vegas if all the casinos closed?

  But I went to Palm Springs that Friday morning because my life was on the line. Edgar loomed. The boys back East . . . There was never a worry about Franklin spotting the tail because the traffic never thinned once the whole distance, it's metropolitan L.A. practically all the way, desert or not, and the big problem was just keeping the Mercedes in sight as it wove eastward through the stream of cars and trucks moving hell-bent God knows where.

  I even eyeballed Franklin through the final turn inside the Springs, then went on by because I had the number inscribed on my map. Really didn't know exactly what to expect there but I figured it had to be something worth the drive, and who knew?—maybe I'd even find a living dead man there.

  It was a country-club-style condo complex in one of the posher areas of new development; very few of these people actually lived here more than a few months out of the year, many probably didn't see the place more than once or twice a year. It was a status symbol in certain circles to have a condo in the Springs. You didn't have to use it, you could let your friends use it and talk about it to their friends, and it looked good on the financial statement.

  Please don't mind me grousing off about this sort of thing. We've got this homeless problem in L.A., you know, New York isn't the only one, thousands of indigents living on the damned sidewalks, and it burns me a little to think about all those empty condos and all the money that keeps them that way.

  I left the Honda on the downside and walked back in the noonday sun, the house number on the map now etched between my ears, but I didn't need it. The Mercedes was in the drive, the garage door was open and a pretty red Jaguar with PAID DUES plates was nestled inside.

  I hit the front door with a heavy foot and walked right in.

  Franklin turned to face me from a picture window overlooking a golf course. "Jesus Christ . . ."

  "Not even close," I said. "The name is Copp. Trot the lady out, I've come to play."

  He was caught between fight and flight, weighing both, finally opting for neither. The shoulders slumped. "She's not here."

  "Car's here."

  "Probably out on the course," he said. "Look, let's settle this and get out before she returns. She's got enough to worry about without—"

  "So why'd you come?"

  "You sent me, damn it."

  "Why didn't you just call?"

  His attention skittered away from my gaze, the hands clenched. "Go to hell, you—"

  "Jail, you mean. Didn't work, as you see. I figured you'd turn me over. But why did you? Not because you're such a law-abiding citizen. Huh?"

  "Get screwed."

  "Tch. I could give you a story treatment on that one, but why don't you give me one instead? A straight one, this time. Start with Bernie and that little accident in Mexico—"

  "Please get out of here, Copp."

  "Sorry, can't do that. Maybe you're a nice guy, I don't know. Right now, I can't care. Too many people seem to be after my ass. Start with Bernie. He faked the accident, somehow faked out the doctors, and now he thinks he's home clean. He's not. I'm here to tell you he's not. Because some very mean fellows have not been faked out. They know he's alive and they know he's got their money. They won't quit until they get it back. They'll kill you, they'll kill Melissa, and they'll kill everybody in their way until they do get it back. So maybe we should just start with the fifty mil. Let's take it home."

  "Jesus, I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Somebody around here does, so let's just sit down and get comfortable and wait for someone to get back."

  But someone was already back.

  She had come up softly behind me and placed the muzzle of a pistol at the base of my skull. I could hear the action as she pulled back the hammer and I even caught a glimpse of her through red haze as I turned and the gun boomed.

  She was tall, and tanned, and blond—raw naked and soaking wet from tub or shower, maybe pool or Jacuzzi, who cared? I just went by-by with the crazy thought that I had died with a naked living doll etched onto my retinas and the sound of gunfire in my ears, so maybe there was a God after all.

  I wasn't dead, of course. But maybe I'd have settled for that when I came out of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I woke up first in the trunk of a moving car. I was hogtied and had the taste of blood in my mouth, my eyes were matted with it dry and sticky, and I had a headache that could be described only with kettledrums and crashing cymbals. My ears rang. I welcomed the black waves that kept washing in on me.

  So I guess I was in and out a lot, or maybe it just seemed a lot or it was mixed with dreams. There were a lot of people around, in and out, and voices tumbling about, all distorted in my ringing ears. I have memories—dreams or otherwise—of bouncing along a rough road in the trunk of a car, red-fogged visions of an Indian boy and a tall blond beauty, of the doggy boy, the VW, and distorted faces I thought I should recognize but didn't.

  Maybe I actually saw a wheelchair somewhere, and I think for certain I saw the dry-wash ravine and felt myself sliding into it.

  I heard a rattler and felt myself frying in the sun; I remember a group of dark-skinned people peering down at me and another Indian boy with a sweat- band around his head, and I felt the hands that lifted me up and carried me away.

  The first lucid moment oriented me to the night sky through a window with no glass in it. I was lying on a makeshift bed. Two Indian women were sponging my body with a cool liquid. They shushed me when I tried to speak, and one of them went to get the men.

  There were three of those, one very old and obviously in charge. He smiled at me and said, "Did you decide to keep the body?"

  "Is it worth anything?" My voice was a croak.

  "Only to you, I guess. Someone tossed it away like an empty skin. But it will mend, I think it will mend and walk again."

  I said, "That's nice, I guess," and that's all I remember of that.

  I woke up next time in muted daylight, covered with a light blanket and lying facedown, my face in some sort of soft yoke. Someone was doing things to the back of my head—sponging it with a liquid, I think. Whatever, it felt good. The ringing and the drums and cymbals were gone, but my mouth tasted like I'd gone to sleep with a dead mouse in it. I heard the murmur of voices outside or in another room.

  I tried to lift my head, decided against it, but I guess the attempt provoked a response from my nurse. She moved quickly away, and again the old man came to see me.

  He helped me turn over and sit upright, then gave me water—mixed with a little whiskey, I think. "You're fine, fine. Don't worry. You are in good hands. My granddaughters make excellent medicine and they attend you night and day. Am I mistaken or do you prefer this to an emergency room and curious policemen?"

  It wasn't easy to talk but I told him, "I think you're right, grandfather. Unless there's a bullet in my head. Is there?"

  "Oh I think it missed by maybe two of your hairs. Never mind, there are plenty of hairs left and they will grow over the ditch in your scalp. Do you have dizziness?"

  Sure I had dizziness. "I appreciate what you've done, friend. But I've got to get moving as soon as I can. How soon would you say?"

  "Tomorrow. Meanwhile, do not worry."

  "What day is this?"

  "This day is Sunday."

  "Morning or evening?"

  "Morning. You have been two nights with us."

  "Am I on the reservation?"

  "Yes."

  "Don't you want to know how I got here?"

  "Oh, we brought you here. My grandson saw them drop you into the ravine. W
hy they did that to you, it is your business not mine unless you want to make it mine."

  I said, "This business you don't need, friend. And I need to take it off your doorstep. So if you'll just get my clothes and help me find my feet . . ."

  Don't get the idea that I was in a tepee. The Aguas are not poor. They still own much of the developed land in the area and have kept the best for their ownuse. Landlords to the rich, if you will. Some of the Palm Springs incorporated areas are still Indian lands.

  The kid who found me was only five years old. He and an older brother were playing and he was lying on top of a rock and scouting white-eyes when a shiny car appeared and "white people" pulled another gringo from the trunk and dropped him into a shallow ravine. I was bloody, powder-burned and I guess a scary sight to the kids, but they ran for help and the whole family responded.

  Grandfather's name was Emilio, a fine gentleman in my book. The Indians have their own style of dignity. I'll take it over the corporate jungle anytime anywhere. These people still manage to have their feet on the earth and their hands in the stars, and they say that the human being is the natural conduit between the two. They think of themselves that way, I guess—especially those who still remember the old ways. I'll never argue with it.

  The women had restored my clothes to almost good as new—even got the bloodstains out—and not an item was missing from my pockets. The gunleather was intact, pistol all cleaned and oiled, loaded and ready to fire. I had a burned groove in my lower scalp a quarter-inch wide and two inches long, clear to the bone and whittling a bit. The way Emilio described the wound when he first saw it, my gringo friends probably thought that the bullet had pierced the skull and jellied some brain tissue. They tossed me away to die, and maybe I would have anyway if the kid hadn't spotted me.

  It took me all that day to get my walking legs back. Emilio and his sons drove me into town at sundown and we found the Honda just as I had left it two days earlier. I thanked them again, we shook hands all around, they went back to the reservation.

  I was still a bit light in the head but able to return to the scene of the crime. I parked the Honda in the driveway and rang the doorbell, got no response, went around and peered through the picture window, saw no signs of life in there; went to the office and made a gentle inquiry.