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

by Don Pendleton

  "Yes."

  "Where is your room?"

  She looked to the other direction.

  "Near the kitchen?"

  "Yes."

  "You were a knockout Thursday night."

  She put a questioning hand to her breast. "Knockout?"

  "You, beautiful. Muy guapa."

  Color flooded into her cheekbones and her eyes went to the floor. Great eyes. You've maybe noticed that I have a thing about eyes. This kid had it, all of it. . . "Sorry, didn't mean to embarrass you."

  "I must dress as I am told."

  I said, "It's okay with me. I meant it. You looked great."

  She gave me the damnedest coquette look and said very softly, "Gracias."

  "Like your job?"

  "Yes."

  "Get along with Mrs. Wiseman okay?"

  "Yes."

  "And Hulda?"

  "Yes."

  "Even when they hit on you?"

  "Hit? No. Never hit."

  "I meant . . . never mind. I'd like to see Hulda's room."

  She led me to it, through the gym and the bath obviously shared with the lady of the house—a large room at the rear, surprisingly feminine and subtly attractive.

  "Do you have a name?"

  "My name is Carmencita."

  "Could you get me something to drink?"

  "Coke? Whiskey?"

  "Coke is fine. In a glass, please. With ice. And could you bring some extra ice?"

  "Extra?"

  "In a towel."

  She gave me a puzzled look but went to fill the request.

  I immediately violated Hulda's privacy, figuring she didn't need it anymore anyway.

  The clothing, like the room, was surprisingly feminine, and the intimate apparel was even more so. Not a lot of it, but what was there was Rodeo Drive quality and tastefully attractive. The cop who had searched ahead of me had obviously been in a hurry. The only drawers that looked disturbed were the deeper ones with layers of clothing; in these the stuff had been tossed about some and obviously displaced. In a shallower drawer a small photo album lay concealed and probably unnoticed beneath bundles of athletic socks.

  The cop must have hurried right past that drawer without feeling for treasures below. I did not, and I came up with treasures indeed, I hoped.

  Most of the photos showed scenes and people that meant nothing, five did. There was one of Hulda and her smiling mother, Edda—a fairly recent Polaroid taken in the kitchen of the Bel Air cottage. Another showed Edda barely in the picture and looking rather wistfully toward a man in a wheelchair, and the man looking into the camera. Still another had the man in the wheelchair and Justine Wiseman on his lap, both smiling into the camera. The other two were variations on the same subjects. All five were Polaroids and seemed to have been taken at about the same time.

  I noticed that five of the plastic envelopes in the series were empty. Seemed to me that Polaroid film packs come ten shots to the pack. I wondered if someone had removed five of the shots from that album, and, if so, why.

  Anyway I lifted the other five and put the album back.

  Carmencita returned with a tray. I sat on the bed and made an ice necklace with the towel, draped it around the back of my head, which was hurting. The kid made sympathy noises and moved around to kneel behind me and help with the application.

  So I sat there and let her do it, sipped coke and thought unacceptable thoughts while the kid ministered to my hurts.

  After a moment she said, "I understand now what is mean by hit on. Hulda, yes. Mrs. Wiseman, no. Mrs. Wiseman tell Hulda, 'Leave the maid alone.' So she did. But sometimes . . ."

  "Sometimes she didn't."

  "Yes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and see Hulda at my door, and she calls my name. I do not answer, and she goes away."

  I told her, "Love is hard all over ... look how tough it gets in the usual ways, think how much worse it must get for the other ones."

  She replied, "Yes. I see this many times here. It is sad. Is it sad?"

  "Yeah, kid, it's very sad."

  We had become pals.

  I reminded her, "The party Thursday night. Jueves noche. You were Frenchy frilly. Ooh-la-la."

  She giggled softly, nodded.

  "There were two men here. Hombres."

  "Yes. And you."

  "And me, yes. One wore a dog collar."

  "Roberto."

  "Roberto? Not Alberto?"

  "No, Roberto. He is much here. He is known to Mrs. Wiseman."

  "Know his full name?"

  "No."

  "Know where he lives?"

  "No. I think he—"

  "It's important, muy importa."

  "I think maybe he too is a friend of Mr. Franklin."

  "Franklin? Did he come around here much?"

  "No, not since—oh, maybe—yes, he is here."

  "Socially?"

  "Sometimes, yes. He is a good friend with Serior Wiseman. No?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Roberto I think works for Mr. Franklin. He is, what you say?—handyman?"

  "And he comes here socially with his boss?"

  "Oh no, socially no." She giggled again. "For the parties, yes, but socially no." She touched the crown of my head lightly with delicate fingers. "Is better now?"

  "A thousand times better. I stood up and gave her my hand, helped her off the bed, then went in and shook down Justine's room and found a few more treasures—I hoped.

  Carmencita was standing at Hulda's window with a solemn face when I went back to her.

  I asked, "Do you have any people in the area?"

  "People?"

  "Familia."

  "Oh yes, I have an uncle."

  "Where?"

  "He lives in Baldwin Park."

  "You're in luck. That's on my way. Get your things, I'm taking you home."

  "Oh no, Senora Wiseman returns tomorrow—"

  "Great. If she does, then you can return the day after tomorrow. But I can't leave you here, kid. You're so much raw meat."

  "Por que?"

  "Raw meat. Like Hulda." Her eyes became very large. "Maybe. Don't get scared, just cautious. And now go get your things."

  She walked out of there very slowly, looking over her shoulder at me as though hoping I would call her back.

  I couldn't do that.

  I knew how she felt. Probably supporting a whole extended family in Mexico from her salary as a maid for the rich and famous. Not that the bread came so heavy here, not even from the rich and famous, but because so very little went so very far down there. But I couldn't cancel the order because that might be the same as cancelling the kid, and she was much too good to waste.

  She came back with a cardboard suitcase and I

  took her home to Uncle Francisco in Baldwin Park. A considerable contrast to San Marino. Hellish conditions.

  It was not that far out of my way, in more ways than one ... I was already halfway to hell myself.

  I pulled up at the guard shack and killed the engine, dropped the keys into the guy's hand. He gave me a look and asked, "What's this?"

  I flashed the ID at him. "Returning Cassidy's car."

  "Cassidy died yesterday."

  I said, "That's why the delivery service. It's a studio car."

  "Well don't leave it here."

  "Where do you want it?"

  He gave me back the keys and told me how to find the security building. "Leave it around back."

  "Whatever you say," I told him, and meant it because that was where I'd wanted to go all along and I didn't have a card to actuate the employee gate.

  He made note of the license tag. "Just leave the keys in it. I'll report it. Unless you want me to sign a—"

  I smiled and waved him away. He smiled back and waved me on through.

  I put the car in a security slot behind the building and let myself into the office using Cassidy's keys. All was neat and clean in there, silent, abandoned. I sat at the desk and went through drawers, hoping I was
ahead of the cops on this one, but found nothing that meant anything to me.

  A small combination safe with correspondence stacked on top of it sat beside the desk. It was locked.

  The correspondence was routine stuff, some of it very old. I sympathized with Cassidy's filing system: just leave the stuff where you can see it, then you'll never have a problem finding it. These letters had been scattered all over the top of the desk the last time I'd been in there.

  I pulled out desk drawers one by one again and explored their undersides by touch, scored on the third try and pulled off a small index card taped to it. It was the combination.

  I found some treasure in the safe, but it was going to take a while to put it together in any meaningful pattern. It was all neatly boxed and ready to go so I took it and went, left everything else the way I'd found it.

  I exited via the automatic gates on the employee lot, didn't need a card to get out, could hardly wait to find somewhere cool and go through the treasure trove at a leisurely pace.

  There was a videocassette in that box, Xerox copies of various legal documents, package of still photographs, a small spiral notebook crammed with cryptic notations in some personal brand of shorthand and a complete medical history on Bernard Wiseman.

  I figured it was Cassidy's case file.

  And I surely wanted to know what Butch had known that got him killed.

  I did not find it in such precise terms. But I found the pointers, and for the moment the pointers were enough.

  I found, for example, evidence to suggest that Wiseman had been doing illicit business of some sort with NuCal Designs, paying them on studio vouchers for services that had never been performed.

  I found also that NuCal was involved in more than costume design. They also did graphic design and special effects. I already knew that one of the dead partners had been a respected film editor. Now I learned that the other one had been a freelance acting coach specializing in dialogue training, which usually meant emphasis on foreign and regional speech, accents and the like. Cassidy also believed that the background operation was pirating porno flicks for bootleg videocassette sales out the back door, lately a booming enterprise in the area. Nickel- and-dime stuff, to be sure, but those fives and tens add up.

  Wiseman had a piece of the action.

  So did his wife, Justine.

  One of the legal papers in the file was a separate agreement between the Wisemans and the official partners in NuCal broadly spelling out the business arrangements. The Wisemans jointly held a one-third interest.

  There was also an interesting angle on Justine herself. Apparently Wiseman had hired a private dick to spy on her shortly after their breakup. The packet of photos was a pictorial backup to the dick's pithy summary: "Subject exhibits an unrestrained sexual appetite, appears to be sexually addicted."

  Who isn't sexually addicted to one degree or another, to one thing or another, but it's one of the new buzzwords in psychiatry, and the meaning was quite clear. Wiseman had been gathering evidence to fight his wife in court.

  As for Bernie's medical file—I had to swallow hard on that one because I'd already decided that he'd faked the accident in Mexico. This record started in Mexico and it gave a blow-by-blow description of all the damage sustained in that accident, complete with X rays and sonograms, a follow-up with local doctors confirming the Mexican prognosis: the patient would never walk again.

  I got all that in the quick scan.

  I needed time to study it all more closely, to skull the thing a bit, but figured I didn't have that kind of time up front.

  By my educated guess a few too many people were still alive and the clock was running down on them. Besides, I'd reached full heat.

  So I went back to Glendale, one more time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It was nearly midnight when I reached the hills of Franklin's neighborhood. His house was dark except for patio lights. A small sports car stood in the drive, an MG I thought. Two guys were standing alongside and putting things in it when I drove up.

  I blocked the drive broadside and hit the pavement, gun in hand.

  "Uh uh," I said, because they'd taken one look at me and apparently had decided to run.

  Both were mid-twenties, handsome and well built. Well built all over, I knew, because I'd seen them both before, naked.

  "Taking off?" I asked Roberto.

  He was in a sweat, eyes on the gun in my hand, frozen. Same guy, yeah, who'd parked a limo at my office door and told me, "Mr. Moore would like to talk to you."

  This time the poise was gone. "Yeah, uh—we, we're just leaving. Charlie's not here—"

  "Not looking for Charlie here, pal. Looking for you."

  The other one quickly told me, "Hey, I got nothing in this. I don't know what the beef is but—"

  "Haven't I seen you at Chippendale's?" I asked him, only kidding of course.

  He said, "No, you saw me at San Marino the other night."

  "Right," I said, dramatically cocking a finger at him. "You were trying to get between a couple of Siamese sisters. How did it turn out?"

  He actually giggled and gave a quick look at his partner. "Only way it can when I'm not writing the script. How'd yours turn?"

  I told him, "Wrote my own script and put her on her ass."

  He laughed. "I wanted to stay and see that."

  The other one said, "Tony, shut up," then asked me, "What do you want?"

  "I want you to make me a bomb."

  He stared at me very soberly for a long moment. "I don't know how to make a bomb."

  "Sure you do. Anyway, I brought you the book." I flipped it out of my coat—one of those mimeographed paperbacks from an underground press—showed it to him, put it back. "Justine loaned it to me."

  "I never saw that before, I don't know what you're talking about—"

  "Let's go take a look at your workshop. Maybe that will revive your memory."

  He said, "Listen—"

  "You listen. The whole thing is nailed and the cops

  are probably on their way here right now. You can stonewall it clear into the gas chamber for all I care. We can just stand here and wait for them or—"

  "What the hell is this?" the other one yelled.

  Roberto said, "Shut up, Tony."

  I said, "Yeah, Tony, shut up. This guy doesn't care about your neck. I'd say his interest ends at your ass."

  "Bull," said Tony. "He's never had my ass. I don't use it that way. I just want it very clear that I don't know from nothing here, I got no part of it."

  I told him, "Maybe you didn't write the script, pal, but you've sure got a part in it. How are you with death scenes?"

  Tony looked to Roberto again. "What's he talking about?"

  "Shut up," said the part-time chauffeur.

  "Yeah," I said, "let's all shut up and just stand here and wait. It's okay. I don't know about you two, but I've got all night. Nice view up here, isn't it."

  "I wanta know, what death scenes?"

  "It's a big cast," I told the curious Tony. "Everybody dies in the end. All the dumb ones die. Like Roberto and you. Only the stars survive, as usual."

  Roberto was beginning to crumble. A siren sounded in the distance, probably down on the freeway, nothing to do with us but he couldn't be sure of that.

  Tony grabbed him by the arm. "What's he talking about, Robbie? Did you build a bomb for somebody? Dammit, I told you—"

  "Shut up," Roberto screeched.

  I shoved him toward the gate to the patio, shoved the other one too, told them both, "Let's go find the lab."

  "All right, wait," Roberto wailed. "What do you want?"

  "I want my ass back," I told him.

  "Okay, I drove the car. But I didn't wire it."

  "Who did?"

  "I don't know, I guess Albert did. We just changed places for a while, that's all. And that's all I know about it."

  "Why change?"

  "I wasn't told why. I just drove the man to the me
eting with you."

  "That was Monday. What about Tuesday?"

  "Okay, I had the car for only a few minutes Tuesday. Just long enough to meet you and pick up the film. We changed off after that and I took the other limo back to the lot."

  "What lot?"

  "The studio lot."

  "Who else was in the limo when you took it back to the studio?"

  "Nobody else."

  "Where was the man?"

  "He was in the other limo."

  "All that time?"

  "Well, no, not all that time I had it. We were changing around back and forth."

  "Why?"

  "Hell, I don't know why. They just didn't want you to know who you were dealing with, I guess."

  "Why the big shell game with the cars?"

  "I don't . . . same reason, I guess."

  "Where was the wheelchair?"

  "What wheelchair?"

  "What wheelchair do you think?"

  "I don't know. It was in the limo, last I saw it."

  "Which limo?"

  "For God's sake, what difference does it make?"

  "A lot, because the one limo was designed for the wheelchair and the other wasn't. So where did you last see it?"

  He seemed to be trying to remember, finally said, "I think it was in the studio limo because I remember Albert carrying him. I know at least once I saw Albert carrying him between the cars."

  "Go back to Monday," I said. "You drove the man and the lady out to my place."

  "I told you that."

  "Same man?"

  "Well, sure."

  "Who was the lady?"

  "She looked like Mrs. Wiseman."

  "Looked like?"

  "Well, yes, but not exactly."

  "Don't play with me. I might look sweet but you know what they say about looks ..."

  "I'm not playing with you. And you don't look sweet to me."

  "No? I'm destroyed. This is my sweet face. How long you been with Franklin?"

  "A couple of months."

  "Then you never met his wife?"

  "Didn't know he had one." He looked a bit hurt.

  "How much do you know about Franklin?"

  "Not much. Nice guy, pays well, doesn't ask for much."

  "Ever wonder why you're around?"

  "I know why I'm around. He likes me."

  "Wonderful. I like you too. Would that make you want to blow up something for me?"

  He cast a wise look at his pal as he replied, "Depends on what you want blown and how big it is."