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

by Don Pendleton

  They had no Franklin in their complex, no Wiseman or Moore; I could get that much but no cross-reference by number, that was a no-no.

  I didn't want to push my luck so I got the hell out. I still felt poorly and wanted the soft touch and gentle hands of an understanding woman; I wanted the sanctuary of Nancy Parker's apartment.

  The drive back to L.A. was practically a meditation, punctuated by mental kicks in the ass and a growingly cynical attitude towards the human situation, the gringo humans anyway. But I knew I'd never make it as an Indian, the genes just aren't there, and besides I hate the fucking desert. Face it, I like where people are, great hordes of people all butting and shoving against one another, competing for the buck and for standing room on a growingly crowded planet—it's what I was born to.

  I finally admitted to myself that I like it, and that by God nobody was going to shove me off of my turf. I lost my fear, in that moment of honesty, because I suddenly realized who I am.

  I'm Joe Copp, by God I'm big and I'm mean and I can take care of business with the best of them. I'm just as smart and just as capable as any son of a bitch when I'm in my own, and I'm in my own when I'm doing what I know is right.

  No son of a bitch is going to bleed my friends. Not as long as I have breath in the lungs and fire in the head.

  I'm bad Joe Copp and I'm burning all over with the need to take it back to those of sonofbitches.

  Fuck sanctuary, I wanted blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It required some fancy footwork but I ran down Abe Johnson's home address and presented myself to him at ten o'clock that night.

  He stood framed in his open doorway, a big powerful-looking man with commanding shoulders that nearly filled the opening. He grabbed me and pulled me inside. "For God's sake, man, what are you doing here?"

  I said, "Sorry to bring it home to you, Abe, but we've just got to talk."

  I don't know how many emotions washed over that big black face as he stood there contemplating a fugitive in his living room. It was a modest ranch style in one of the newer subdivisions in the north valley, comfortably furnished and neat as a pin except for a kid's toy here and there. A playpen occupied the center of the room and a television murmured at us from somewhere out of view.

  A child's voice yelled from the back. "Mummy ..."

  I said, "God, Abe, I'm really sorry but—"

  Angela came into the room and relieved the awkwardness. She looked great in a lounge robe and white socks, a bit thicker in the middle than I remembered but just as pretty. She said, "Abe—" then saw me and caught herself. "The kids want you to tuck them in."

  He gave me a grim look and patted his wife's arm as he left the room.

  I said, "You look great, Angie."

  "Can't say the same for you, Joe. You look as usual. How long since you've been to bed? For sleeping, I mean."

  That was a shot. I took it with a smile. "I'm really happy for you, mummy."

  She smiled back. "I'm plenty happy enough for myself, but thanks. They're great kids."

  "Have to be."

  She came over and hugged me at the arms. "Joe, Joe—what's going to become of you? Still chasing dragons and tilting at windmills. Aren't you getting a little old for that kind of stuff?"

  It had been a lot of years, but at that moment they were all wiped away. I kissed her forehead and she raised a hand to the back of my neck like she used to do. I winced and pulled away from that. She quickly dropped the hand. "My God, what's that you've got back there?"

  "Small hurt," I told her. "It's healing."

  Abe was back. He came over and pulled me around, checked out the damage.

  "Headshot," I muttered. "Got lucky. It went around instead of through."

  He said, "You need to get that to a doctor."

  "It's been to the best," I assured him.

  "Why isn't it bandaged?"

  "It is bandaged. Nature's way, they said. Never mind that. We've got to talk."

  "I'll put on some coffee," Angela said, and left us alone.

  Abe asked me in a quietly furious voice, "How could you bring this here, Joe?"

  "Had no place else to take it, Abe."

  He took me back to the eat-in kitchen and we sat and stared at each other across the table while Angela banged around with a coffeepot. Presently he said, "Okay, start talking."

  "You first," I said. "How'd you make out after that dumb-ass stunt on the telephone?"

  "I've been reassigned," he replied soberly. "Community relations." He smiled, at something on my face, I guess, and added, "Pending a full review. It's okay, I think of it as a vacation. I'll be on sane hours for a while and maybe I'll get reacquainted with my kids. Now you."

  "Still you. What's happening with the case?"

  "I told you. I'm reassigned. Don't know and don't really care what's happening with the case."

  Angela plugged in the coffeepot and left in response to another summons from the kids' bedroom. Abe's eyes followed her out, then he turned to me. "That's a good woman, Joe. We have her in common, you and me, both loved by Angela. Why does something like that always seem to drive men apart instead of bringing them closer together?"

  I said, "I feel as close to you as any man I've ever known, and I don't really know you. And you went overboard for me, pal, without being asked. So I guess the logic doesn't apply to us."

  "Sure it does. I don't really know you either, and I'm not even sure I like you. I don't like to look at you and get a picture of Angela lying in your arms. But I love her, and so I honor her love for others. I just want you to know, that's where you stand with me. Anything you get from me, you get because of Angela."

  She came back in at that moment, caught us staring at each other and picked up on the feelings there, I guess. "You guys talking about me?"

  Abe told her, "Now don't you have a high opinion of yourself . . . why would us two cops be discussing a tired old housewife going into middle-age spread?"

  She made a mock swing at him and said from the doorway, "Watch the coffee. I'm watching TV."

  He blew her a kiss, and that big beautiful smile faded as he turned back to me. "What I'm telling you, man, is that you're still affecting her life. So just how do you want me to play it?"

  I stood up. "You've played it enough. I appreciate it, whatever the reason."

  "Use the back door," he said.

  He went out with me and we stood in the darkness back there. He told me, "They're still dying, Joe. That man Cassidy was blown out of his bed Saturday morning. Today they fished a body out of the Hollywood reservoir and it's been identified as a woman who worked for Justine Wiseman. Maybe Mrs. Wiseman is dead somewhere, too, because she's disappeared without a trace. What the hell is going on here?"

  I replied, "You just said it, without a trace. That's what they're doing, removing all traces."

  "What who is doing?"

  "They. I don't have a real make on they yet. Is the dead woman a young Mexican girl?"

  "No, a physical-fitness coach. She lived with—"

  "Viking Woman," I said.

  "Her name was Hulda Swenson. She lived with Justine Wiseman. Her mother was Bernie Wiseman's housekeeper."

  My new wound was beginning to throb again. I told Abe: "I think Wiseman's still alive. I also think he stole fifty million from his company. I think Charlie and Melissa Franklin somehow helped him set it up. I don't think he had an accident in Mexico. I don't think he needs a wheelchair. I don't know who died in that blast, but I think the evidence was rigged. I think they rigged me into it partly to confuse the picture further. I think they headshot all those people as further confusion. To make it look like mob executions. People back East pulling strings, etcetera. I found a condo in Palm Springs where someone's been lying low. That's where I got shot. They thought I was dead or dying and dumped me in a desert ravine. That was Friday. Some Indians found me and doctored me. I knew from nothing until today."

  "What's the address of that condo?" />
  I handed it to him on a slip of paper already made out. "I'm too hot to run a make. I thought maybe you could do that. Also try to get a line on a place down near San Quintin in Baja, supposedly owned or maybe leased by Wiseman. Melissa Franklin told me she spent the whole past year down there but I don't know, I sniff more staged confusion there. Charlie Franklin is deep into this, I don't know how dirty but certainly deep inside of it. He's the one led me to Palm Springs. There's another guy, posed as Wiseman's chauffeur the day they came out to my place. He's about the same general description as Albert Moore. I saw him at Justine's place on Thursday night, playing sex games for a party of gay women. If you've got another John Doe with a tag on the toe, you might try that connection—I'd say he's a hot candidate for it."

  He commented, "You've been a busy boy."

  I handed him another slip of paper. "These are license tags I jotted down in Justine's driveway Thursday night. The way they all ran, I'd guess a little discreet pressure would produce quick cooperation. Most of these women are probably married to important men who would shit and go blind if the truth came out."

  "This was a gay party?"

  "Yeah, your physical culturist acted like head dyke around there. I think probably Justine can go either way and switches with opportunity and mood. She's tough as nails, so—"

  "Tell me about it," Johnson said.

  I said, "That's all I have. Oh ... Butch Cassidy told me early Friday morning that his sponsors in New York were eager to make a deal with Wiseman to get their money back. He made it sound like forgive and forget."

  "His sponsors are syndicate people?"

  "Sounds like, yeah. This Klein is, I gather, their financial minister. But I don't think they're actively behind any of what's going down out here. Cassidy told me that he'd been watching Wiseman for a year, that he finally nailed the evidence—a secret set of books—and took it East just a week ago—well, a week ago when he told me. According to Cassidy their reaction was to play it cool, find the money first. What would happen next is not too hard to figure out, but somehow I think the bloodletting is mostly Wiseman's fancy footwork erasing the tracks and confusing the picture. Remember, he's a bright boy.

  He's obviously been playing footsie with these fellows for years—maybe even before he came out from New York—so he must know the rules of play. I think it's significant, though, that the hell all started coming down after Cassidy busted the play."

  "You should have stayed with the force, Joe," Abe said.

  "I never fit into that. Ask Angela, she knows what a jerk I am."

  "She told me," he said.

  "It's why she left me. Told me that cowboys make lousy lovers and even lousier husbands."

  "You're not a cowboy."

  "Sure I am. Don't disillusion me."

  I shook his hand, asked him to make my good-by to Angela. He told me: "Hang onto your ass, Zorro. Keep in touch. I'll try to feed you."

  "Forget it, I just fed you. Now I'm finished feeding. I'm going for blood."

  "Carefully."

  Sure. And I knew just where I wanted to start.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I needed no fancy footwork to find this guy. He lived the same place he had lived for thirty years, one of the charming old homes in the foothill college community of Claremont, lived there as a kid and inherited the place when his folks died. Never married, never had a girl as far as I knew—Edgar had always been a strange man with strange ways and weird friends. I had played poker a couple of times in this house, went back the second time out of sheer charity, never knew anyone else who went back more than once.

  He's not much good at anything, Edgar isn't, except department politics. For that, he's a natural—kind of guy who laughs only at the discomfort of others and sneers at every man's success. A weird little prick and I'd always despised his guts.

  The feeling, of course, was entirely mutual, which

  didn't make me special. Edgar, I think, despised everybody.

  He answered the bell with the door on a security chain, showed only his nose to ask, "Who's there?"

  "It's Joe Copp."

  He bounced it off the chain and came out in his stocking feet and pants, nothing else except his service revolver leading the way.

  Edgar had never been hard, but now it was ridiculous. A couple years younger than me, about five-ten and one-seventy to one-eighty, too much beer and too much television over too many years had given him a potbelly and sagging tits. He was near bald, too, and looked fifty years old if a day.

  I told him the truth: "You look like shit, Edgar."

  "Shut up." He jabbed the gun at me. "Against the wall. You're under arrest."

  "Big deal."

  He was fumbling at his hip pocket for a pair of cuffs, too anxious for the collar, when I kneed him in the groin and took his pistol.

  He fell back into the house, curled up like a fetus. I closed the door and unloaded his pistol, tossed it into a chair, threw the bullets to the other side of the room. I picked him up by his belt and deposited him on the couch. "Learn a little humility."

  "Rotten—"

  "Look who's calling what rotten, the guy who went to bed with Butch Cassidy. Shall we call you Sundance now, prick?"

  "You're crazy."

  "You're the one that's crazy, going to bed with a guy like that. He's mob-connected all the way. You're lucky someone blew him out of his skin, else he'd have his hooks in you the rest of your life. What a dumbo you are."

  I almost literally had the opponent by the balls. I prodded a fat buttock with my knee. "It was a setup going in, wasn't it?—and I played right into it. Actually I'm the dumbo, you're the smart one, I'm the fool who's got cops chasing his ass. I don't like that, Edgar. I resent that."

  "Joe, I didn't set you up. I already had the video when the guy came to me. Hey, he worked for Wiseman and he said the guy was still alive. He said L.A. was booting it, and he offered to work with me to straighten it out."

  "He was your tipster?"

  "Well, yeah, but ... it made sense. And we heard your name mentioned a couple of times on the audio side of the tape."

  "Mentioned how?"

  "Copp, just Copp."

  "Did they spell it for you, Edgar?"

  "It could've been either way. I had to take the worst case."

  "Or the best for you?"

  "Cassidy suggested we put the pressure on you and see which way you ran."

  "So, of course, you being such a cooperative officer of the law, you reluctantly took the advice of a security sister from the private sector to put the screws to a former officer—"

  "Okay, so I didn't mind it all that much. But I didn't set you up—"

  "You knew damned well I hadn't committed any crime—"

  "I knew nothing. What the hell, you've been out of

  the department a long time. How the hell do I know what you're up to these days?"

  "My worst enemies could tell you."

  "Joe, I didn't set you up."

  I toed him in the butt. "Where has your investigation taken you?"

  "Guess it's sort of stalled."

  "I guess it is. And the bodies are still falling while you help play helter-skelter in a chase for an innocent. Namely me ..."

  "It was L.A. put out the APB. I tried to tell 'em—"

  "Tried to tell 'em what?"

  "That you'd come home."

  "You dumb ass, the last time I went home I found Forta and Rodriguez decorating with their own blood. What do you think we're doing here? You think all of this was designed in heaven to get you a shitface promotion? Damn near two dozen people are dead. I've been conked and headshot myself, and that's only the easiest part. Why are you lounging around watching television and drinking beer when two of your deputies are fresh in their graves? Why aren't you out there looking for the reason? Where was your great victory just now when you thought you were going to put the cuffs on me? The cop that caught terrible Joe Copp? Big deal. I haven't killed anybo
dy, I haven't plotted against anybody. You know it as well as I know it. So what kind of dumbshit games are we playing here, Edgar? Damn you, tell me."

  The guy actually started to shake. Whether from pain or rage I couldn't say, but it was all I was going to get from him, so I got the hell out.

  At least he was a good warm-up for the night I had in mind.

  She couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, maybe less, with one of those dreamshine complexions without cosmetics and frightened eyes. Or maybe she just looked that way when I was around.

  "No hay nadie aqui," she told me at the door, then repeated it in tremulous English: "There is no one here."

  I believed she comprehended the lingo better than she sometimes let on, a natural defense.

  I went on in. "You're here." She didn't react to that so I tried it in her lingo, though I have a bad time with Spanish syntax. "Aqui usted."

  She showed me an almost smile. "Si, por . . . and that's all I got of that so I decided I'd better quit showing off and stick to English.

  "Let me see your Green Card," I said, a dirty trick because I well knew she could not produce one. L.A. is overrun with illegals and she fit the profile.

  Of course she just gave me the patented blank look that all the border smugglers must teach to their illegals. It can cover many embarrassing moments.

  I told her, "Forget it, I'm kidding, it's okay."

  "Okay?"

  "Yeah, comprende? No card, okay."

  "No card okay."

  "You got it."

  She showed me a dazzling smile. "Gracias."

  "Nada. Where's your boss?"

  She pumped her shoulders. "Boss leave Friday, say back Monday. Police come today, say—"

  "They tell you about Hulda?"

  "Yes."

  "Did they come in and search?"

  "Search? Yes. Her room."

  "Where is that?"

  She looked toward the gym. "There."

  "Next to Mrs. Wiseman's rooms?"