Copp In Deep, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series)

by Don Pendleton

  COPP IN DEEP

  Don Pendleton

  A Joe Copp, Private Eye Novel

  by the creator of

  The Executioner: Mack Bolan Series

  Reviews of Don Pendleton’s Joe Copp, Private Eye Series

  St. Petersburg Times: “Pendleton has a great new character in Copp. His style is fresh, the pace is brisk, and there are enough twists to please any mystery fan.”

  Library Journal: “Pendleton, author of the long-running paperback Executioner series, shows in his first hardcover that hardboiled writing can be insightful as well as action-packed.”

  Milwaukee Sentinel: “Pendleton is a master of action and dialog and ‘Copp’ is a taut detective story.”

  Booklist: “Action filled...Copp is a likable tough guy...An exciting, satisfying read.”

  Flint Journal: “Pendleton proves again he is the equal of Mickey Spillane when it comes to the hard-boiled mystery.”

  ALA Booklist: “This is the real thing, the hardcover debut of the author of the perennially popular ‘Executioner series’...the charm of the Executioner books.”

  Arkansas Gazette: “Intriguing...believable.. Pendleton’s got a good story to tell.”

  Books by Don Pendleton

  Fiction

  The Executioner, Mack Bolan Series

  The Joe Copp Mystery Series

  Ashton Ford Mystery Series

  Fiction with Linda Pendleton

  Roulette

  Comics by Don and Linda Pendleton

  The Executioner, War Against the Mafia

  Nonfiction Books by Don Pendleton

  A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet

  Nonfiction Books by Don and Linda Pendleton

  To Dance With Angels

  Whispers From the Soul

  The Metaphysics of the Novel

  The Cosmic Breath

  Copp in Deep

  Copyright © 1989 by Don Pendleton, All rights reserved.

  Published with permission of Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.

  First Kindle Edition, 2010

  ISBN: 1-55611-141X

  First Printing Published by Donald I Fine, Inc., 1989.

  First HarperPaperbacks Printing: May 1991

  Back in Print Edition, iUniverse, 2000

  Kindle Edition, 2010

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Linda Pendleton and Judy Bullard

  For Linda—

  who keeps reminding me

  how sweet life can be . . .

  and proves it day by day.

  COPP IN DEEP

  Chapter One

  He looked seven feet tall and at least half that wide, lean and mean with nasty eyes and cruel lips, a fist the size of my head—and I knew that this guy was going to give me more trouble than I could afford at such an embarrassing moment. So I let him get just close enough for a little pop with the stun gun. That changed his intentions, but only for a moment. He stood there at the corner of the desk like Frankenstein with rigor mortis, trying to shake it off, and I could see the control settling back into those murderous eyes so I gave him a few more volts. That one did it. He went down like a tall tree in the forest and took everything on the desk with him. But alarms were ringing all over the joint by now and I knew that I was in for a hell of a time. The Dobermans would be turned loose and the whole building sealed like a tomb before I could even get moving. There was only one way out, and it was not a very cheerful way, but I took it. I heaved a chair through that second story window and went out close behind it without even looking first. Whatever was out there could be no worse than what was waiting for me inside. I was in the dumbest place in the world and probably for a dumb reason—a KGB headquarters, for God's sake—so it would serve me right to meet a dumb fate.

  Don't wonder why a small-time private cop was burglarizing a Soviet consulate in the small of the night and playing commandoes with their KGB; I had enough wonder for all of us, and I still don't know what possessed me to get into something like that. Well, okay, maybe I do know, but it's going to take a while to explain it in a believable way—and maybe I can't even do that if you are one of those who think that glasnost and perestroika mean that the Russian bear is really only a playful cub with lovable intentions.

  I can tell you firsthand that it ain't so, and I have the scars to prove it—but I guess I'd better just give you the whole story and let you decide for yourself. Just don't fault my literary style, as some have already done. Understand right up front that I'm a cop, I've always been a cop, I was even born a Copp—I think like a cop, eat like one, love like one—so okay, I write like a cop, that is what you are going to get here. I'll try not to offend anyone's literary sensibilities but I can give it to you only the way it came at me and I wouldn't bother telling you about it if it was not a really wild story.

  It's about spies and counterspies, cops and robbers, patriots and traitors, driven men and fascinating women, booze and sex and drugs and pornography,

  greed and avarice and the selling of a country, politics and corruption and murder, heroism and cowardice— life behind the scenes, as it comes to play in the USA of today—and we'll try to sort it all out the way I had to as I experienced it: Joe Copp in deep shit.

  Ready for that? Okay. Welcome to my shitty world. Here's the way it started . . .

  Tom Chase called me at home late on Sunday night and I knew he was in trouble just by the way he spoke my name. Tom and I were partners years ago when we were both with LAPD, so of course we'd been through a lot together and I still considered him a close friend although we hadn't seen each other face to face for several years and even the phone calls were not that frequent. You know how it is when people go separate ways in life. You mean to keep in touch but you get so caught up in mere survival that the finer things just sort of slip away from you and sometimes it just seems impossible to do all the things that need doing, like keeping in touch with old friends even when it's inconvenient to do so.

  Tom had left the department about the same time I did, he into the private sector as a security consultant and me still trying to find some place to be a cop the way I believe it should be done. I spent five years strait- jacketed with the sheriffs department while Tom went on to ever bigger and better things. At the time this all started, he was chief of security for one of the big defense contractors and we had been totally out of touch

  for about a year. The last time I'd talked to him, in fact, was the day I opened my agency and he called to wish me well.

  This time I knew it was no casual call. Tom has always been cool and unflappable on the surface but he gets a telltale little stricture of the vocal chords when he's uptight about something. That's how I knew he was in trouble the minute I picked up the phone.

  "Joe?"

  "Kiss my ass, I can't believe it, but it sounds like Missing Tom Chase. It's a hell of a time to call, pal."

  "I know. I'm sorry. Are you alone?"

  I looked regretfully at the vacant pillow beside me as I replied, " 'Fraid so."

  "I need to talk to you, Joe. Seriously. Listen, I'm just at the bottom of your hill, corner of Sierra Madre. I—"

  "Great, come on up. I'll put the coffee on."

  "No. I think I shouldn't. I could be under surveillance. Could you meet me down here?"

  I was coming wide awake now and reaching for a cigarette. Trying to quit
, but . . . "Okay. Where?"

  "Self-serve gas station on the southwest corner. You still driving the old Cad?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. Pull in to a pump and start filling up. I'll find you."

  "Look for me in five minutes," I told him, and got moving immediately.

  I actually made it in about four, dressed sloppily but quickly in a sweat suit and sneakers. It was a 24-hour combination gas station and convenience store which I use frequently, and I'd just placed the nozzle in the fill-tube of my car when a white Chrysler pulled in at the opposite side of the pump. Tom delayed a moment inside his car, opening and closing a couple of doors and fiddling with something in the glove box, then he got out of the Chrysler and walked past me without a glance my way as he went to the cashier's window to pre-pay his purchase.

  I was still playing with my nozzle when he returned and began playing with his. He made an affable small- talk comment about the price of gas and we jawed on for a moment the way strangers will at a gas pump, then he declared in a voice I could barely hear, "I'm putting you on a thousand a day plus expenses but it's strictly under the table and it's just between you'n me. The package is under your car, driver's side. Don't call or try to see me, and don't mention my name to anyone. I'll contact you for reports and further instructions. Don't let me down, Joe. This is really heavy."

  I hung up my nozzle, got back in the Cad, reached down and pulled in a nine-by-twelve manila envelope, and took off without a backward glance—and I didn't look inside the envelope until I was sitting at my own kitchen table with freshly brewed coffee in hand.

  Even that initial look seemed like pretty heavy stuff, yeah. For starters, there were copies of several classified documents in that envelope. One of them outlined the loose parameters of an FBI "sting" operation that had been in place for several months in the local area, involving the sale of military secrets by civilian employees of government contractors—of which there are many in the Los Angeles area.

  Another classified document seemed to be an informal report from an unidentified FBI informant having to do with the movements and activities of several high executives of Tom's company.

  A third document was an official FBI history and profile of Tom Chase himself, several pages in length.

  There was other stuff—glossy black-and-white photos and brief biographical sketches of the same men named in the FBI report—another envelope containing fifty $100 bills—and a complete roster of management- level personnel at Tom's company.

  I was staring gloomily at the stack of money when the phone rang and again Tom Chase was in my ear.

  "Had time to look it over?" he asked without chummy preamble.

  I said, "Yeah. It's out of my league, pal. What the hell am I supposed—?"

  "Joe," he cut in urgently, "I've got no one else to turn to. I think I'm being watched night and day and I don't even know who my friends are anymore. I think they've got a mole in my own office. Worse, I'm afraid I may even have some kinky executives on my hands and I don't know how high it goes so I don't know who to take it to. They—"

  "Take it to the feds," I suggested. "That's where it belongs."

  "It's already there," he said, "and that's what is

  driving me wild. I think we've got some kinky feds here too!"

  I said, "Well hell, Tom . . ."

  "No, I mean it. I think this sting may have turned into a coverup looking for patsies. Guess who is shaping up as Patsy Number One."

  I said, "If you're clean, Tom . . ."

  "Don't give me that," he said in a voice almost totally shut down. "You know damn well I'm clean. Look, I want to hire you. The five grand is a retainer and—"

  "You don't have to—"

  "No, bullshit, I do have to, and I'll get it all back from the company once we clear it up. I want you to drop anything else you might be doing and get right onto this, the Joe Copp way. You know what I mean. Damn the torpedoes and don't worry about sensitive toes. Go wherever you have to go and do whatever you have to do but, goddammit, find out exactly what is going on with these people and do it quick."

  I tried to get out of it. I really did. I told my partner, "I don't even know where to start, pal."

  "Start at the Russian consulate."

  "Oh sure."

  "The KGB station chief there is a guy named Gud- galoff." He spelled it, then told me, "He's their top man in the region. Even the consul general at San Francisco reports to him. A tight network of agents work out of this office, some in the local émigré community and a few operating in the highest circles in this town. I'm

  talking high society and high finance, high government, all of it. If you could get a list of those people . . ."

  I said, "Sure," but meant, "no way."

  Tom took it both ways and assured me, "You can if anyone can, so . . ."

  "What good would a list do you?" I wondered, still thinking about it.

  "Someone on that list could be right here in my own company, in a very high position."

  "I see," I said, but I didn't see anything. "How do you know all this stuff, pal?"

  "It's my business to know it."

  "You have a working liaison with the local FBI people?"

  "Sure."

  "Wouldn't they be interested in such a list?"

  "Sure, but . . ."

  "But you don't trust them."

  "Let's just say I don't know who to trust." There was a long silence, then: "Joe . . ."

  "I'm here."

  "I'm not all that clean, I guess. I mean morally, yeah, I'm clean as a whistle . . . but technically, uh, I think I may have been used without realizing it. I may have passed some stuff."

  I growled, "Jesus, Tom . . ."

  "I know. I should've known, but how could I know? How would anyone know? I think maybe I was set up."

  'To take a fall?"

  "To take the fall, yeah. Now I don't know which way to turn. And it gets really sticky because . . ."

  "Because?"

  "Miriam."

  That is his wife. Nice girl. Never really got to know her well because he married her just before he left the department and, as I've said, we had not been really close since that time.

  "What are you saying, Tom?"

  "Maybe I was set up by a woman."

  So now I got it. I sighed and told him, "Call me again in the morning. I'll skull it, and if I think I can do anything to earn your money . . ."

  "Forget that, Joe," he said urgently. "The money doesn't mean a thing. I'm getting strung up here, pal."

  When an old friend puts it that way . . .

  I sighed again and told him, "Call me at eight."

  He did, and I agreed to look into it, and that is how I came to be in the Russian consulate on that Tuesday night with Ivan the Terrible breathing fire on my neck.

  But that was just the beginning.

  So far I was into it only about ankle deep. Before I could begin to comprehend that small depth, I would be into it clear to the chin and sinking fast.

  Chapter Two

  Actually I did not start at the consulate. I spent most of Monday doing a make on Tom's company and its key executives in the area. Wasn't all that difficult because it is one of the largest outfits in the industry, a major force in that "military- industrial complex" that President Eisenhower used to be so worried about. Eisenhower must be spinning in his grave these days because the largest defense budget during his years in office was under fifty billion dollars, according to the figures I found, and the recent build-up under Reagan already exceeds a trillion bucks. A trillion is a very big number, you know. To get there, you start by counting to a thousand a thousand times. That only gets you a million. Then it takes a thousand millions to get to a billion and another thousand billions to get you a trillion. That's a damn lot of money. For the average working stiff in this country who's dragging down around thirty grand a year, he'd have to work thirty three million years to get there. Even if you earned a million a year it wou
ld take a million years to reach a trillion dollars. See, you can't get there. But our government gets there every year or two, and much of that goes to the defense contractors.

  I give you that because there is a rule that says that big bucks always attract big crimes and I want to be sure that you are with me on this. It may not be true that every man has his price but I'd have to bet that most of us do. There's the joke about a guy who crashes this big society party in Washington and right away he's dancing with the hostess, this top socialite. He asks her if she'd go to bed with him for a million dollars. She laughs, takes it as a joke, and says of course she would. So he keeps whittling her down—would she do it for a thousand, for a hundred and so on. Finally she tires of the joke at fifty bucks and indignantly replies, "Young man, just what do you think I am!" So he tells her, "Madam, we've already established what you are. Now we're just dickering about price."

  See? As the price goes up, morals go down. Take it from a cop with eighteen years on the streets, that's a rule. And I was looking for something that would explain why things had become so bad in this country that our FBI had to set up floating sting operations to find people willing to sell our vital secrets to potential enemies. As the socialite was a whore, see, these people are traitors—just waiting for a price.

  A trillion bucks, I guess, would bring a lot of them out of the woodwork—whores and traitors alike—and the hell of it is that many of these could be people you'd

  never suspect to go that way. I was looking for a handle to the thing, trying to get a policeman's feel for the forces that convert loyal citizens into traitors, and that trillion bucks in the defense budget seemed to be a good enough place to start, with Tom's employer at the focal point. Not that there is a direct link between the defense budget and the price of a traitor, but with that much money in play you have to know that all the human frailties are going to be put to the test as the pie is being cut.