Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

DIFFERENT PEOPLE GO into police work for different reasons. Some come into it with a lot of idealism; think they can make a difference in an indifferent world. I know I felt that way. But the thing that really tipped me into it instead of into some other line of work was my love for a man who unofficially took me under his wing when I was ten years old.

      
My dad was killed in an automobile accident. My mom took over as provider and I became a latchkey kid. Guess I could have gone any way, at that time. But Hank Greer was a neighbor and he was a cop. Had three daughters, no son. Hank was the kind of man who needs a son, and there I was in need, like they say, of a male role model.

      
He took me fishing and hunting and got me interested in sports. I idolized the man. My mom started going a little haywire when I was in junior high, started hanging out in bars and bringing home a constantly changing lineup of jerks to sleep with. Don't hold that against her, now; she had no bed of roses, and I guess you reach for what's there when the desperation gets to you. Of course I didn't have that kind of understanding at the time, and it bothered me all to hell.

      
Well, the less she mothered the more Hank fathered. I moved in with his family when I was sixteen. Don't know to this day whatever became of my mom. She just sort of drifted away. I think maybe she finally died of her broken heart, but I've never really tried to find out. Probably afraid of the truth.

      
Anyway, things were fine with my surrogate family. I played big brother to the girls, an oversized eager puppy to the mother, and a good buddy to the father. Made all-state linebacker my last two years in high school and was offered scholarships at Cal and Stanford. Turned them down, and that made Hank sick. But I wanted to be like him, and I couldn't see waiting through four years of college to start.

      
So I enrolled in a local junior college and took courses in criminology and police procedures, aiming toward the police academy. Got there, too, soon as I met the age requirement.

      
One week after my graduation from the Police Academy Hank was killed in a shootout during a drug bust. It came out a short while later that he had been criminally involved with the guy who killed him. That hurt, yeah. Hurt like hell. I wouldn't buy it until the facts were simply too plain to buy anything else. But I was not downed by that. I think it just firmed up my own resolve to be the best damned cop in town—and I knew what a good cop was supposed to be.

      
It has put me through a lot of trouble, though, that ideal. And I finally just gave it up, but not the way some guys do. I mean, I did not give in to the system. I moved outside the system and tried to become the best damned private cop in town. Not that it is all that impossible to be a good cop within the system. Many guys make it through just fine. It's a matter of timing, circumstance and personality. Mine all seemed to be wrong most of the time. I was a square peg in a round hole, and that was uncomfortable all the way.

      
But I do know a lot of guys who are fine cops doing a fine job of law enforcement, and there's nobody hanging all over their backs while they're doing it. I think maybe my problem is that I'm just too damn visible. You can't look the other way when I am headed your way. Which makes for confrontations, and I mostly seem to come down on the unpopular side of an issue.

      
So maybe I'm a jerk.

      
I am a jerk. I could be making a bundle if I just hired myself out to anybody for anything. But, see, I never started out to make a bundle. I'm content to make a living, with my principles, such as they are, intact.

      
I started out to talk about the reasons why people go into police work. I gave you one, idealism, and believe it or not a lot of people can be counted in that group. Some, though, go into it strictly as a practical matter. Beats pumping gas or running a delivery route. Pay has gotten quite respectable, too, plus all the health and pension benefits. Besides all that, there's a certain dignity to being a cop. Guys who go into it for practical reasons can go any of three ways: they can be good cops, or bad or so-so. Many in this class are just so-so. Some others go into it because they have this idea that it's exciting and glamorous work. They usually don't stay with it, but those who do stay come down to earth damned quick, and some develop into damned fine cops.

      
But there's another class of cop that I am getting at here. This guy is a natural asshole. He is not worth much of a shit for anything because he is essentially a bad ass and would be behind bars except for the badge. This guy is a natural bully, and a natural bully is really a cowardly asshole looking for easy victims to elevate his own putrid image of himself. This guy would have been one of Hitler's early
brownshirts
and later a concentration-camp commando. You would never find him leading troops into combat, because combat is dangerous and this asshole is not looking for dangerous honors, he is looking for easy victories.

      
If you should meet up with this asshole wearing a badge, look out. He will cut you down to his own size in any way he can, and he wears the badge solely as a means of doing just that.

      
They look for guys like this during the screening of police candidates, but somehow a few always manage to slip through. Some of them manage to evade official detection for a hell of a long time—sometimes for an entire police career—and some of them even reach high rank. Then you've really got a problem, and I have had those kinds of problems.

      
One of these guys in a department is bad

news enough. Several are scary. Get them together as a team and you've got yourself a full-blown nightmare.

      
So what I am trying to tell you is that we had ourselves a full-blown nightmare in the San Gabriel Valley.

      
I was not certain at this point just how strongly the nightmare figured in my particular problems of the moment, but I felt sure it was there.

      
I needed to find out just how much it figured. And I intended to find out very damned quick.

      
It was a small office suite in an industrial complex housing also a number of hi-tech outfits and various service facilities numbering maybe a hundred different companies.

      
The decal on the door read:
Security Masters Unlimited.

      
The lights were on and I could see a guy seated behind a desk as I drove by. A van parked directly in front bore the same decal as the one on the office door.

      
I parked a bit up-range and watched the door for ten minutes.

      
Nothing went in or out. It was almost three o'clock. Only one other company in the complex was showing any signs of activity at that moment, a computer outfit that was receiving merchandise at a small loading dock at the far side.

      
I left the car and gave the area a quick feel on foot, then went calling on Security Masters.

      
The glass door was locked.

      
I rapped on it, and the guy looked up from the desk. He seemed a bit bored, more than a bit sleepy.

      
I opened my coat and let him get a look at the hardware as I placed my ID wallet against the glass.

      
He hurriedly stumbled to his feet and came over, unlocked the door without even a glance at the ID and swung it open. Which was dumb.

      
I moved with the door and pushed it into his face.

He went down without a sound and made no move to get back up. I walked around him on my way to the desk, pulled out all the drawers and dropped everything onto the floor. Not looking for anything in particular; just
titting
for tat.

      
The door to an inner office was locked. I kicked it open. Actually there were two offices back there, connected by a narrow hallway. Each contained a desk and a filing cabinet. Everything was locked up.

      
I went out and checked the guy on the floor. He was still out. I found no keys on him but I did find a wallet with forty bucks and a reserve deputy ID. I left it lying on his chest and went out to the car, brought back a tire tool, went to work on the locks in the inner offices.

      
They popped open with hardly any leverage at all.

      
And, yeah, I found some goodies back there.

      
Not spectacular goodies but good-enough goodies.

      
Good enough to maybe put the whole rotten operation out of business for good.

      
I wrote a note and folded it into the unconscious guy's hand, then gathered up my goodies and went away.

      
All the note said was: "Security Masters, my ass." And I knew I didn't need to sign it.

      
I was going to have those guys all over my back before the sun rose.

      
I hoped so, anyway.

Chapter Thirteen

I WAS GETTING the feeling that I was involved in two separate and distinct problems here—or else two problems with tenuous linkage between them.

      
I could not shake from my mind the picture of Tanner's face during my visit to his condo and the stunned look it was wearing when I started linking Jim Davitsky and Ed Jones to the killings. The more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder if I had jumped too quickly into Tanner's face.

      
Davitsky, now, yeah—that was pretty much on the edge, too. So okay, he had a creep for a nephew but maybe he didn't know that. To use your political influence to help a relative get a job is one item. To use that relative for murder is another entirely. It takes a large jump to connect those two items. A fragment of gossip about a possible link between Davitsky and some unnamed strip joints is an item. Davitsky linked specifically to the New Frontier is another item. Again, connect them at your own risk. And keep in mind we're leaping about with a guy who takes dinner with the president from time to time.

      
And I had taken some damn big jumps there. The mind automatically works that way, of course. But you are supposed to audit that sort of thing, make sure it makes sense before you go around kicking doors down and getting into the face of another guy who is linked nowhere except to the creep in an official police relationship. We do not always get a choice of partners.

      
Granted, Tanner himself was a creep. But that was one item. Jones the creep was another. I was having trouble trying to find a bridge between the two. And all because of the look on the older creep's face when I laid it on him.

      
Something was not ringing together there.

      
So I went back to Tanner's place.

      
It was shortly past three o'clock. Roughly forty minutes had elapsed since my earlier visit. Time enough for the guy to get himself together in reaction to that visit. But his door was still lying on the floor inside the apartment. The lights were on. Tanner was still in his underwear. And he had a hole in his head big enough to put your hand into. The old security cop was lying curled in a corner, ditto.

      
I went on through, looking for the cute kid.

      
Did not find her, which was a relief. But I did find propped up on the dresser in the bedroom a glossy eight-by-ten nude photo of her in an erotic pose. It was inscribed in a flowing scrawl: "To Gil Honey—In Case You Forget What It Looks Like." It was signed “
Tawney
.”

      
I folded the photo and put it in my pocket, poked around for a few minutes more but found nothing of interest; got the hell out of there.

      
I swung past the townhouses, saw the same light in the window, then went on straight to Covina and the hotel and maybe the key to this whole hairy case.

      
Don't mind telling you that I was coming just a bit unglued at this point. I even began wondering if maybe I were the key I mean, look at it. Juanita comes to me and gets killed moments later. I rush over to her house an hour later and find her roommate freshly dead. Then I hit her place of employment and the bartender is killed. I hook up with Linda and there are two attempts on her life. So I go rattle Tanner, and now Tanner was dead. I had to figure the old night watchman as an incidental death, but he was still dead and I had touched him.

      
So, hell, I was counting five corpses and a sixth near-miss. In—what?—twelve hours or so?

      
I hit the hotel at about three-thirty and left the car up-front beneath the portico, went through the lobby and across the courtyard. Two women were sitting beside the pool in quiet conversation and sipping canned Cokes. There was no other sign of life, pretty much what you should expect at that hour of the night, but I felt creepy. Those courtyards are lighted but not enough to be intrusive. I found myself jumping at shadows.

      
I stood there for a minute outside the room with my hand on the doorknob just going for vibes. Didn't get any but still felt creepy. There was no show of light through the window but of course the drapes were closed. I rapped lightly on the door, then tried the key. Opened right up for me. I knew right there that the suite was empty. If she'd been in there, the safety latch would have been in place. It was not, so she was not.

      
I went in anyway and closed the door before I hit the lights. Everything looked pretty much as I'd last seen it. Except for the note. It was wedged into the refrigerator door.

      
Joe—thanks for everything but I just can't

      
take this. I'm going out of town for a few

      
days. You're fired.

      
                                   
—Belinda

      
Belinda, mind you.

      
Fired?

      
Five people were dead!

      
Fired, my ass.

      
I went back to the lobby and showed my key to the night clerk. Some of these newer hotels have the jazzy telephone equipment that keeps a record of your calls and even prints the numbers called onto your bill.

      
I crossed my fingers for luck and told the guy that I'd made an important call earlier but now I'd lost the number and needed to call it again. He said no problem and I said gee thanks and he pushes a button and gives me the whole printout of calls from my room.

      
Seven of them. Three to the same number. All within the first thirty minutes we'd been registered there.

      
I looked closely at the timing and decided that "Mom" must really have been worried if it took three calls to reassure her. Put the list in my pocket and returned to the suite; dialed Mom.

      
I got a sleepy male voice: "Yes?"

      
I said, "Mom?"

      
It said, "Who is this?"

      
I said, " Sorry, wrong number," and hung up.

      
Then I went along the list of other numbers. Got three airlines and Airport Express.

      
None of the airlines would cooperate in a confirmation of space for Linda Shelton when I could not tell them where Linda was spacing to.

      
Airport Express was a bit more helpful. I found a sympathetic ear. Told the dispatcher that my wife had run away and I did not know what name she was using but I knew she'd left the hotel in one of their vans.

      
He picked it up right quick; said yes, they'd made a pickup at my hotel at twelve forty-five that morning and took the fare to American Airlines at LAX for the three A.M. flight to Honolulu.

      
I thanked that sympathetic ear very much, hung up, chewed it for a couple of minutes, decided to call Mom again.

      
She still had a male voice and it was even more irritable in the pickup.

      
I said, "It's me. Did she get off to Honolulu okay?"

Mom sleepily replied, "Guess so. She called from the airport, said she was clear."

      
I asked, "Are you going over?"

      
Mom wondered, "Think I should?"

      
I replied, "It's up to you. But things are heating up."

Mom sighed and told me, "I have some very important meetings scheduled for tomorrow. Well... maybe I can work around that. Really think I should go?"

      
I said, "It's up to you. Me, I'd go."

      
Mom asked, "You getting a cold? You sound hoarse." Mom laughed in advance of the joke. "Maybe you should go for me. Aloha would do you good."

      
I did not laugh. I said, "That wouldn't help you much, would it. Speaking of that—"

      
Mom came right back with: "I know, I know. Don't worry about it. You'll be properly taken care of. Just don't let this thing spill over."

      
I said, "Well, it is already spilling like crazy."

      
"I know, I know. But let's contain it all we can. Tell you what. I'll go to Honolulu. I'll book a flight for tomorrow afternoon. I'll be back on Monday. And I want to come back to a well-contained situation. Think you can handle that?"

      
"I'll handle it."

      
The guy chuckled, said, "Take care of that cold," and hung up.

      
I put down the phone and stared at it for a long moment.

      
I had never spoken to the man before; would not know him if I was sitting across the table from him; but I had the most certain feeling that "Mom" was Jim Davitsky.

      
Which was okay.

      
But my heart was squeezing for Linda. Okay, it was squeezing on my own behalf, too. We do not always enjoy the truths we find, as I had learned a long time ago.