Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

I HAD A new funny car, a new gun, and a
newlease
on life on the hard side. It was a short-term lease. I knew that. Leases on the hard side are always short-term. Life is like that. You find a way to spend it quietly and eco-

nomically
, and the leases tend to be more enduring. Start spending it loudly and extravagantly, you never know where your next step will land you. Which I guess is why most people like it better when it's quiet and controlled. Most people, I think, prefer the predictable life. The things they are doing today are pretty much the same things they were doing yesterday and will be doing tomorrow.

      
Which is why we have cops.

      
Cops are sort of like a guarantee of the status quo. And cops usually lead more or less predictable lives themselves. They patrol the same beats day after day, become attuned to the predictable patterns and rhythms and react in predictable ways when those patterns become disturbed. That's mainly what police work is all about.

      
But crime, you see—crime is not at all that predictable. Crime is usually always a break in the pattern, or a shift in some rhythm. It is life out of control. Someone or some group decides to step outside the normal flow and start a new cycle that respects neither the status quo nor the other guy's turf. New cycles are great, of course, if they promote something better and respect other people's rights. That's progress if they do and crime if they don't.

      
But I was talking about leases on the hard side. Most cops don't stake out territory over there. They visit the hard side from time to time, sure, all of them do, but in the main their lives are as predictably routine as anyone's—often to the point of boredom enlivened only by their own imagination. I mean, think of it: just driving around aimlessly all day or all night, waiting for some pattern to break down, or endlessly shuffling papers at a desk and waiting for something interesting to break the monotony. Makes me think of a scene in an old war movie where these highly trained combat troops are going crazy with boredom waiting for the war to come their way, scared that it will but even more scared that it will not. That's what a cop's life is like, mostly, anyway.

      
But Billy
Inyoko
and his people at HPD were sort of caught between the two sides of the street. They could neither relax into the monotony of a routine gone sour or effectively invade the hard side because the patterns had become too jumbled. Like a general in the field under orders to pursue and engage the enemy but receiving conflicting signals from Washington about who the enemy is, where his jurisdiction is and how hard he can fight.

      
That was where Billy was, and I understood that.

      
But I also understood where I was, and I did not like that. I was like one of those military covert operations designed to get the job done while the politicians debated what the job should be; let's all hope they will rubber- stamp the action—but if they do not . .. well, sorry, Joe, but of course we can't acknowledge you if the thing goes sour.

So sure, I was a soldier without a flag. Billy had given me directions to the front and a clap on the back but no handshake. Go get '
em
,

      
Tiger, sure—but don't tell anybody who sent you.

      
Which is what I meant by a short-term lease.

      
It was no lease at all, actually.

      
It was only a travel permit to the hard side, with no guarantee of a safe-conduct return. If there was a lease involved, then it was to a burial plot in no-man's-land, without even a marker over the grave.

      
I knew that. Sure. I knew it. So color me stupid.

      
Because I was going for it.

      
It was nearing two o'clock when I returned to Charlie's joint on Hotel Street. Nothing had changed except the faces on the customers—a few obvious tourists but mostly young soldiers and sailors—the same pall of smoke and the jangling canned music and pretty Oriental girls everywhere. I found room at a stand-up bar and attracted about the same kind of attention I'd found earlier, the same indelicate groping and
bodyrubs
undoubtedly designed to incline the male mind and so forth toward the rooms upstairs. There was constant traffic up and down that stairway; I staked out a particular kid in navy whites and timed his reverse along that stairway. They were quick bangs; I timed this kid at shortly under five minutes. The girl he'd descended with was on her way up with another guy within a couple of minutes. Figure the mathematics of that, if you'd like, at fifty bucks a pop. Staggers the mind, almost, when you realize there are about fifty girls working that floor and all very busily.

      
I had to wonder how many joints like this Charlie had going for him, just trying to dimension the thing in my own head—and knowing, too, that the house got most of the take from the girls.

      
I turned away maybe ten invitational gropes before one came along who could handle rudimentary English. This one said her name was Li and seemed a bit older than most—pushing thirty, maybe. She was from Saigon, she said, and had always been in love with American men and their big baloney-sticks. She proved that by bending over and placing a delicate kiss on my slacks, and then guided my hand beneath her
shorty
wrap. So I fed my curiosity and allowed her to lead me up the stairway.

      
There was a long hallway at the top, going off in both directions, with small cell-like rooms opening to either side.

      
A nasty looking guy at a desk up there took my fifty, examined it and waved us on without even looking directly at me.

      
The only privacy in those "rooms" was provided by a beaded curtain at the door. Mine was even shredded a bit, so actually there was no privacy whatever unless there is some comfort to be found in semi-darkness. One small Tamp with about a ten-watt bulb provided the only lighting. I have seen closets larger than that room, and the "bed" was nothing more than a thin pad on the floor, several inches shorter and not much wider than I am.

      
I have to say that Li was very pretty, but she'd lost her spontaneity the moment my fifty hit that desk. Now she seemed tired and resigned to another tussle on the pad. Or maybe she was just glad for the quiet break. She was shucking her wrap as she moved through the beads at the door, draped it on the back of the only piece of furniture in there—a
canebottom
chair—and set a little hourglass-type timer beside the pad. "You want suck or fuck?" she asked me in a dulled voice.

      
I said, "Relax." .

      
"No time relax," she informed me. "Five minute limit." She turned over the hourglass —or the five-minute glass, I presumed. "You want suck or fuck?"

      
I asked her, "What became of all that adoration for American men?"

      
She gave me a
noncomprehending
look and sank to the pad, moved onto her back, raised the knees and spread them, clasping them in her hands. "You want give suck?"

      
I chuckled and sat on the chair.

      
She dropped the knees, rolled over, peered at me across a shiny shoulder, tiredly said, "You say."

      
"I said relax," I reminded her.

      
She replied, "Okay. Relax. Look." Then she began moving into various acrobatic positions.

      
I put a hand over there and stopped that. "You relax."

      
The kid was just trying to please. She rolled onto her back and lay still, eyes closed, but reminded me, "Five-minute limit."

      
She had the business phrases down pat but very little else to command English, I decided, but I told her anyway,
     
"I come talk Charlie."

      
She opened one eye and found me with it. "Fifty dollar talk Charlie?"

      
I showed her a grin. "Yeah. Dumb, huh. I come work Charlie. Charlie good work?"

      
She closed the eye, waited a beat, then replied, "Go away."

      
I said, "Need work Charlie."

      
"Charlie no work American men," she quietly advised me. "Charlie work China men, Viet men, China girl, Viet girl. American men dumb, huh. No work Charlie."

      
We were doing okay with the lingo, after all.

      
But the lingo was not the problem.

      
The problem was the guy at the doorway.

      
He was a big Asian; he was a bad-ass and he looked very upset. He said something angry to Li in her own tongue. She scrambled off the pad and grabbed her wrap, ran out naked.

      
I bent down and turned the hourglass over, looked up at the guy from that level and said to him, "Come work Charlie."

      
He put the muzzle of a Colt .45 against my throat, helped himself to my gun and said to me, "Cut the bullshit, guy. We've been watching you all night."

      
Fancy that. My fondest hope had just been realized.

      
I said, "Then you know why I have to talk to Charlie."

      
He said, "No, I don't know about that. But I know why Charlie needs to talk to you."

      
So okay, I could buy it to that point.

      
Okay, sure, I had to buy it. I'd already put my fifty down. On the hard side.

Chapter Twenty-five

IT TURNS OUT to be a long wait for my little talk with Charlie Han. I am seated on an uncomfortable chair in this dirty and cramped little office at the rear of the club, and time moves slowly. I do not even have room enough to straighten my legs and stretch out a bit. My back is to the wall and my knees are butted against the front of a steel desk that looks like maybe it was bombed at Pearl Harbor. It has an undisturbed layer of dust that took a long time to accumulate so I have the idea that very little business is conducted in this office; I am starting to wonder how much thicker the dust layer will get before Charlie shows up.

      
This jerk won't let me smoke.

      
He wants to know what's the matter with me, I want to endanger other people's health with my nasty habit.

      
I point out to him that five minutes inside that clubroom is equal to a lifetime of the paltry smoke from my cigarettes, but he doesn't buy the argument; I still can't smoke.

      
So I sit there fuming inside over this growingly intolerant age of ours.

      
He knows I'm fuming; gives me a sly grin; I get the idea that this guy is a reformed smoker and he is enjoying my discomfort. It is a familiar feeling; I get it often and I have lately begun to resent the hell out of it.

      
So I remind the guy about the fucking whales.

      
He says, "What about the fucking whales?"

      
I say, "Well, that's just one of the issues that mean more than this anti-smoking hysteria. How about unwed mothers?"

      
He says, "*Yeah, how 'bout them."

      
I say, "Well there's an issue more important than smoke."

      
He reminds me that they should not smoke,
  
too. Old people with emphysema should not be exposed to cigarette smoke, he tells me. I look around the office and don't see any old people or pregnant women, and I give audible

note to that observation.

      
He says yeah, but what if one should come in while I'm sitting there smoking.

      
I say, "
Okay
, I'll put it out."

      
"Damage is already done, though," he says with a shrug. "You've already loaded the air with that shit. They say secondhand smoke is more dangerous."

      
I decide I have this guy's game, now. He's as bored as I am. He's playing with my head to pass the time.

      
So I go ahead and light up anyway.

      
He raises his Colt and aims at a point midway between my eyes. I smile and put out the cigarette as I say, "Bullshit, how could it be more dangerous?"

      
"They proved it."

      
"Who the hell proved it?"

      
"Those guys in the government, that doctor, one with the beard, that general guy, the doctor general."

      
I say, "Doesn't make sense, though, does it? If secondhand is more dangerous, shouldn't nonsmokers be at higher risk?"

      
He says, "That's what I'm telling you. We are at higher risk."

      
I say, "Then wouldn't it be smart if we all took up smoking?"

      
He frowns, scratches his head. "No, see . .. if everybody stops smoking, then none of us are at risk."

      
I say, "No more cancer or heart disease?"

      
He says, "That's right. Well ... not as much."

      
I say, "Bullshit. What're we supposed to die of, then? They're rigging the figures, pal. First they use the figures to say you're at risk if you smoke. Then they conveniently forget those figures to tell you that you're at greater risk than the smoker if you don't smoke but he does in your presence. That's a covert operation, pal, and they're fucking with your head to convert non-smokers into zealous anti-smokers."

      
"Why would they do that?"

      
"To give holy cause to their annoyance. To give it to you. So you can sit there like you're doing right now and watch me squirm without feeling guilty about it."

      
He says, "Bullshit, I don't feel guilty."

      
I say, " 'Course you don't. You've got God on your side now."

      
See, this is a dumb conversation. I know it at the time. But it's the sort of thing you sometimes find yourself going through when death is looking at you. So much of life, I've discovered, is really inane. And sometimes it gets the silliest when life and death are, as they say, in the balance. Here is one man holding a gun on another man in the backroom of a whorehouse owned by a third man who

probably kills and maims without qualm, and they are discussing the pros and cons of the surgeon general's warnings about cigarette smoke.

      
It's a parallel, see, to the larger world, sort of anyway, and I can't help thinking about that, even considering my circumstances. What were the real problems facing mankind? Weren't they hunger and poverty, crime and warfare, ignorance, injustice, slavery, misery and suffering of every kind—in wholesale lots? So why were so many Americans so fired up over so many inane goddamned issues? I am sitting here in a whorehouse with maybe fifty female slaves under the roof and God knows how many pimps and killers and goons of every stripe—and we are arguing, for God's sake, the effect of secondhand cigarette smoke.

      
So I tell my captor, "You're an asshole."

      
He shrugs and tells me, "So are you, and you're a dead one if you think you're going to blow your fucking smoke at me."

      
I shrug back. "Dead is dead. We all get it. Right? You feel immortal? Think you'll live forever, with or without the fucking smoke? What
d'you
want to die of?"

      
"I want to die in bed. While I'm asleep. I just don't wake up."

      
I say, "Maybe I could arrange that for you."

      
He says, "Don't try. I always sleep with one eye open."

      
I say, "You want to die of internal causes."

      
"I really don't want to die at all," he says, "but when my time comes, yeah, I want to die internal."

      
"But not of cigarette smoke."

      
"That's right."

      
"How 'bout AIDS?"

      
His eyes jerk. "Not funny, guy."

      
I tell him, "Not meant to be funny. But if you had your choice of AIDS or smoke, which one?

      
He says, "Wise guy."

      
"Cancer?"

      
"Shut up, asshole."

      
"You've got to choose something," I tell him. "Our doctor generals have fixed it so there aren't many choices. You get your choice between cancer or heart attack, maybe stroke, if you want it internal. The difference between smoke or not smoke is a difference of a few years, maybe, but we all get it one way or another. So which one do you want? Heart attack?"

      
"I told you I'm not ready for any of that."

      
"Old, then—you want to die old."

      
"Yeah."

      
"Used up and worn out. Old isn't just a pile of birthdays, you know. Old is broken down. It's slow, withering—death by inches. Nothing works right anymore. The eyes go; the ears go, everything—"

      
"Shut up."

      
"Fuck you, you started it. Dying old is dying broken and helpless. You can't exercise your way out of that, pal; you can't medicate your way out of it or eat your way out of it; you're going to decay and die by inches if something else doesn't shortcut the process."

      
He has the Colt up again, threatening me with it. "I'm going to shortcut your process, asshole."

      
"So why the hell can't I light a cigarette?"

      
He smiles, wiggles the gun. "Because it's dangerous to my health."

      
"What you are doing right now, pal, is even more dangerous to your health. I just might decide any minute now to ram that damned thing up your nose and pull the trigger with your tongue."

      
I light my cigarette again, blow the smoke at him, put my hands behind my head.

      
He is grinning at me.

      
I blow more smoke and grin back.

      
"You're okay," he tells me.

      
"Thanks," I tell him back. "You too." I am lying. This hood is not "okay" by any standard. But it is a lying game, here on the
hardside
, and you have to respect the rules if you mean to survive it.

      
I have decided that I will survive this one.

      
And that is where I am when Charlie Han comes to get me.

      
The guy who'd been baby-sitting me was called Peter "the Saint" Fu, a native-born American and apparently one of the cadre honchos under Charlie Han. Obviously he'd gotten word on its way to Charlie even before he collared me, because he made no calls from that office. But a guy came in after we'd been cooling it there for more than an hour; just poked his head in and said, "Let's go," and the three of us went out the back way.

      
In passing, I noted that the club was closed and emptied, all its lights up bright and several guys cleaning up. It looked like Death City in there, under the lights, and smelled even worse.

      
A big dark sedan awaited us just outside. Fu pushed me into the front beside the driver and slid in beside me; the other guy used the rear door and settled in with another man already present but nearly invisible in the shadows back there. I made contact with commanding eyes in the rearview mirror and spoke to them: "Hi, Charlie. I'm Joe
Copp
."

      
The guy seated back there with him said, "Shut up," but with no particular emotion.

      
Saint Peter slipped a cassette tape into a little slit in the dashboard and slapped me playfully on the knee as he settled back beside me.

      
The tape ran for only a minute or two but I knew what it was at the opening sound. This was Saigon Li and me during our intimate moments. They'd put us into a room wired for sound—or maybe all of them were wired.

      
All listened without reaction of any kind, but when it was finished, Charlie's eyes flashed at me in the rearview and he said in a flat voice, "Come work Charlie, eh?"

      
I said, "Well, there was a bit of a language problem there. Before I forget it, though, you owe me fifty bucks—I didn't get my five minutes."