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

by Don Pendleton

  I hit the brakes but I was only doing about twenty so I guess he had a tolerable enough landing. He was off the pavement and running by the time I could look back.

  And that was the last time I saw my old pal Tom Chase alive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sure, I knew I'd done something really stupid. I'm | not trying to alibi it when I say that I was simply playing the ear, taking it as it came, improvising as I went along. Hadn't known it was an FBI safe house when I went busting in there, had no particular plan in mind; from that point on, though, it was sheer stupidity.

  Of course, I hadn't expected it to work out the way it did, either. I'd been wanting a crack at Tom Chase for a couple of days, thinking he could fill in some gaps for me. When I saw him standing there in that bedroom in Brentwood Park, it was like instant gratification and I simply seized the moment. Meant to take him back after we'd had our talk.

  But now I was really into it.

  What I had done, in essence, was to break a prisoner out of federal detention.

  In a larger sense, I had kidnapped a prisoner from protective custody and exposed him to the very danger

  from which he was being protected. I had also assaulted a federal agent and interfered with due process.

  I was sure that Browning would be able to think of several other charges, if those were not enough to inspire the judge to revoke my bail and maybe even order it forfeited. So I was not worried only for myself. I had to think about Cherche, too, and where a forfeiture would leave her.

  So yeah, I was kicking my own ass up and down the streets as I cruised around hoping to find Tom Chase and take him back to where he belonged. Maybe then Browning would not be mad enough to throw the book at me.

  But I did not find even a sniff of Tom, not until it was too late. I'd been cruising for fifteen minutes, back and forth across the area, and had decided to give it up when I spotted a crowd of people and the telltale red and blue flashers of a police cruiser at the next intersection. This was on Santa Monica Boulevard just outside the L.A. city limits, at a small cross street. The crowd was gathered outside a smoke shop at the corner. A patrolman was trying to handle the crowd. I could hear sirens approaching in the distance, and I had that sinking feeling in the gut that I already knew what was attracting that crowd.

  I double-parked behind the cruiser and joined the onlookers, pushed my way inside. The gut had known, yeah. Tom Chase lay there oozing blood from about forty holes. An ambulance screamed in with several more police cars in tow. But it was all over, pal. It was all over. And it was my damned fault.

  They talk about a guy's life flashing in front of his eyes as he's about to die. That happened to me, standing there in that crowd over my old pal's body, but it wasn't my life that flashed, it was his, and ours together. That flash contained all the lousy patrols and stake-outs, shoot-outs, drinking bouts, locker room jokes, the good times and the bad times, the dreams and the fears of two young cops on mean streets together. It was all there in a single flash, yeah, and I wanted to just sit down on the Goddamned curb and cry.

  But there was no place on the curb to sit and I guess I never learned how to cry like a man in public. The cops had arrived in force, too, and were taking control of the situation. I allowed myself to be shoved back against the front of the smoke shop and I just stood there for a couple of minutes, too stunned and stupid to think or act, but then my policeman's brain began to assert itself as I overheard one of the cops talking to a witness.

  It was the proprietor of the smoke shop, an old man with excitement in the voice, and apparently he'd seen it all and more. "He come busting in just as I was opening the shop. He was all out of breath, panting like he'd been running a long way, wanted to use the telephone. Flashed a badge, see, and grabbed the telephone. Talked to someone for just a second, didn't say more than three words—just gave the corner here, I think— then went to stand just inside the door, watching the street. Stood there for about five minutes and I was getting damn nervous about it. I didn't really see that badge good. Any jerk can buy a badge. But then this car came along and I guess he saw it coming. He turned and waved at me and said thanks, and went out to meet the car at the curb. They shot him from the car as he was walking toward it. They shot him with a machine gun from the car. Was he really a policeman?"

  Had been, yeah, a long time ago . . . damned good policeman.

  I had to get away from there. Anywhere, just away. So I went away. And had a good cry in private. I think it was for both of us, Tom and me.

  I called Browning and broke the news to him myself. Took a while to reach him. He was out of the office but they relayed the call via mobile service and I caught him in his car. He said not a word in reaction for a good ten seconds, then all he said was, "Well that's beautiful, just beautiful."

  I said, "Yeah."

  He asked me, in a curiously controlled voice, "What time did you lift him out of there, Joe?"

  "From the safe house? It was about ten minutes after you left me. Why?"

  I guess he'd been reading the emotion in my voice, because he said to me, "Don't beat yourself up over this. You didn't shorten his life any. You extended it."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Where are you now?"

  "I'm in Santa Monica. What do you mean by—?"

  "I'm at the safe house. Come on back."

  I was thinking about it when he broke the silence o say, "It's okay. Come on over. Want you to see this."

  "Okay," I replied. "I'm about fifteen minutes away."

  "I'll be here," he assured me.

  I couldn't figure it Just couldn't figure it. But I drove jack to Brentwood Park. And then, yeah, I stopped beating up on myself just a little.

  I could not get within two blocks of the place by car. Streets were filled with firefighting equipment and a lot of hell was still going down, throughout that neighbor- hood. Browning must have passed the word to admit me through the periphery containment because I was passed right on through on my name alone.

  It had appeared from a distance that the entire neighborhood was on fire but it turned out to be only three houses involved in addition to the safe house, and he firemen had knocked down the blaze in all but one when I arrived.

  There was a black hole in the ground where the safe house had been. Charred rubble was flung all over the area. I found Browning talking to a fire captain. He ex- used himself and came over to join me while I just stood there gaping at that hole in the ground.

  "Looks nuked," I commented.

  "Had to be a hell of a charge," the fed agreed. Someone really wanted it to blow."

  "When did it happen?"

  "It blew at seven o'clock. That must be very close to the time you were here."

  I asked him, "What time did you leave the restaurant?"

  "It was six-forty."

  "Very close, yeah," I said. "I came straight bad here, so that's about six forty-five. I wasn't here five minutes. But close enough, for sure." A thought hit me so I expressed it. "One of your agents was here when I left. He was unconscious. Have you found . . . ?"

  "We've found nothing yet. Just one agent?"

  I said, "Just one, yeah."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. Guy about average height, thirtyish brown curly hair, wore a big six-shooter in shoulder harness."

  Browning said, "Uh-huh. Only one?"

  I said it again. "Only one, yeah."

  He sighed deeply and said, "Let's get away from here."

  The fed gave me a ride to my car, then I followed him to the same restaurant where we'd talked before We had coffee and talked some more. He turned out t be an okay guy, it seemed. The barriers of officialdom were down and we just talked like men. I explained how I had blundered into the safe house looking for anything and nothing, how surprised I'd been to find Tom there and why I took him out of there. And I gave it to him straight, the gist of the whole dialogue with Tom, the

  curious bit about Frank Dostel
l, Tom's dash from the car and my attempt to get him back.

  Browning did not act surprised at any of it.

  When I told him about the shooting in Santa Monica, he just nodded and said, "That's twice. I'll alert the Santa Monica police to check for a ballistics match with the freeway shooting. That could prove interesting."

  I asked him, "What kind of gun was it, the freeway hit?"

  "Uzi," he replied pithily.

  "Well, that narrows it down. There are only about a million of those in this town."

  "We need only one," he said.

  I liked the way he said "we," so I told him, "I feel like a jerk about all this, Browning, but I'll try to set it right. What can I do to make your job easier?"

  "You can go back to jail," he said soberly.

  "Other than that," I said.

  "Just keep doing what you're doing."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. But I won't have it on my conscience."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning you are a lightning rod, Joe. You'll likely end up in a grave beside your friend, Chase. But while you're with us, things do happen. I'm content for now to watch it happen."

  "Like that, eh?"

  "Exactly like that."

  "You won't revoke my bail."

  He sighed. "No. I should. And I should throw your

  key away. That would be doing you a favor. But I'm all out of favors for a while." He stood up, picked up both tickets, said, "The coffee is on me, but don't try to make it a habit."

  "Will you be taking a look at Tom now?"

  "Yes. Want to tag along?"

  I waved it off, said, "Thanks. I already did my requiem."

  "Whose china closet?" he asked lightly, "are you contemplating now?"

  "Maybe my own," I replied.

  "Your own?"

  I nodded my head, offering no further explanation.

  The fed said, "Don't get too wild," and walked away.

  I think all the "wild" had left me, at that point.

  That, I could understand.

  But I wasn't sure I understood why Special Agent Browning was being so damned nice to me.

  Unless, of course, I could simply take him at his word and he was not being nice in the deeper sense.

  Or unless he had blown up his own safe house.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Two large inconsistencies were gnawing at me as I went back to Beverly Hills that morning, one squarely in the front of the head and the other somewhat buried in the twisting memory of those past twenty-four hours.

  The one up front had to do with Toni.

  And it had to do with Nicky.

  They'd been together, went to Malibu to find Frank Dostell. Shortly thereafter, according to Nicky's version of the events, Toni asked him to drop her at a house in Brentwood Park. He told me that she appeared to "admit herself." He watched her go inside, then he left. A couple of hours later, Toni shows up in Beverly Hills bleeding from a beating at unknown hands.

  So far, okay.

  I had been focussed by rage, intent on discovering what actually happened to Toni, and I'd been inclined to take things at face value.

  But then that whole thing falls apart when that

  house in Brentwood Park is revealed as an FBI safe house. A safe house is a sort of secret jail where the feds keep important witnesses who could drop dead before telling their stories to judge and jury. It is all strictly legal under the Federal Witness Protection Act but it is carried out under great secrecy and with extraordinary precautions.

  So how the hell could Toni have known about the house in Brentwood Park?

  And if she had known about it—which would seem to suggest some tie-in with the FBI—why would she then endanger it by asking an agent of the KGB to take her there?

  See?—it made no sense.

  On the other hand, Nicky himself had sent me there. If not via Toni, then how had he known about it? And if he'd known that it was a safe house, why did he tip his hand by sending me there?

  Made no sense.

  Unless . . .

  Unless, of course, he'd known that the joint was wired to blow at seven o'clock and he'd hoped to include me in those festivities.

  That brings up something else, see.

  I had told Browning during our first tete-a-tete that Nicky told me that he'd dropped Toni at Browning's house at two o'clock. At the moment, of course, I was assuming that the Brentwood Park address was where Browning lived. But Browning should have tumbled right away that I was talking about the Brentwood

  house, that I'd staked it out and followed him from there—otherwise how could I be sitting there talking to him over breakfast in a restaurant five minutes away?

  But I got no rise from Browning over that info. I was telling him in essence that both Nicky and Toni had been outside that safe house a few short hours earlier. Why didn't that trouble him? Maybe it had—but if it had, he was damned good at covering his feelings—and why hadn't he moved immediately to safeguard his prisoner? If that had been me, I would have had a flying squad over there and moving that prisoner in the wink of an eye.

  Why hadn't Browning done that?

  See?—there were these troubling inconsistencies.

  The other began working its way clear of the gray matter while I was mulling those.

  The other had to do with Browning also.

  So I called my friend at LAPD and checked it out.

  I asked him, "Were you able to get any good ballistics evidence on that freeway shooting?"

  He wasn't exactly friendly but not hostile either, had to go look it up, came back to tell me, "We got some pretty good ones, yeah, very little deformation. Steel- jacketed hardpoints, nine millimeter."

  "Any conclusions as to the type of weapon that fired them?"

  "You know better than that, Joe."

  I knew better than that, yeah.

  But when I'd asked Browning about it, he came right back with, "Uzi."

  Of course he could have put it together as an educated guess, but it hadn't come out that way and I couldn't figure Browning as a sloppy thinker. The Uzi is not the only nine millimeter submachine gun. But it had just popped out: "Uzi."

  It was a bother, yeah.

  I still could not distinguish friend from foe.

  The old mansion was quiet and sleepy at ten a.m. The maid buzzed me through and met me at the front door, took me through to the pool area, parked me at a patio table and quickly produced Danish, orange juice, and a silver pot of coffee.

  I hadn't touched any of that except for an experimental sip of orange juice when the "secretary," the tall blonde identified as Alexandra, came out to greet me. She was dressed for aerobics, legwarmers and the whole bit, and a large white towel was draped about her shoulders. Makeup she did not need, and none was in evidence as she dropped gracefully onto a chair opposite me and dazzled me with a smile.

  "You're early," she informed me. "This is like the middle of the night for most of us here."

  "But not you."

  "We try to stagger the hours so that someone is always around and alert. I am usually in bed by two a.m., so I'm up earlier too." She was blotting herself with the towel, showed me a sort of embarrassed smile, apologized for her sweat. "I try to start my day with a good

  workout and I usually take a swim to cool down. Join me?"

  I said, "Thanks, no. I already had my cooldown. When does the rest of the household begin to stir?"

  "Never before noon. Usually about two. Cherche for sure is good for two."

  "Did you hear about the excitement last night?"

  "We have excitement every night," she said with a smile. "Was there something out of the ordinary?"

  "Maybe not," I replied.

  I suddenly felt very tired. It was Friday, and the weight of the week was bearing down on me. I'd been chased by dogs, seduced, kidnapped, shot at, set up, set down, booked on murder charges, jailed, played with by the FBI, the KGB, maybe the CIA and God knew who else; I'd
been wooed, betrayed, misled, tricked—and I'd seen an old friend die. Through it all I had slept maybe eight hours, had eaten hardly anything, and had smoked not a single damned cigarette.

  Now this gorgeous blonde who could make a fortune posing for cameras was sitting two feet away in the dazzling sunshine and taking off her clothes with a smile right before my eyes and inviting me to join her in the pool.

  I felt two hundred and sixty years old and incapable of even toddling over to that pool, let alone frolicking in it with a nude bunny—yet that stupid, blind, unreasoning male part of me that responds to such stimuli was responding as usual.

  She was saying, "This could be a good day, Joe, until two o'clock," and she was skinning the tights down from the shoulders, twisting and turning in the chair to get free of them, with only now and then coverage from the towel.

  I said, "It's a terrible day, Alex. I just saw a friend off to the morgue."

  "All the more reason to lighten up," she told me, free and clear now and coming off the chair.

  I had to close my eyes to shut that out. I heard her giggle in a very ladylike way, then I heard the splash as she entered the pool.

  Closing the eyes had been a mistake.

  They did not want to open again, and I drifted in a kind of twilight sleep full of lazy hallucinations while remaining vaguely aware of my physical surroundings. I knew when Alexandra returned to the table but I did not see her, and I heard female voices in quiet discussion without comprehending the words. Some time later I knew that I was on my feet and moving with assistance, and then someone was undressing me and putting me to bed, but the reality of the physical world was confused and lost in the swirling fogs of a waning consciousness and I was powerless to bring the focus in. So I merely surrendered to it. I remember thinking that maybe death was something like this. I think maybe I even confused the experience with death and, funny thing, I didn't even mind.

  I was never one for nightmares but I guess I came as close to one as I'd ever been during that brief sleep. I

  dreamed that I was in hell. Satan was taunting me with still-frame scenes from my life on earth—but they were not bad scenes, they were good ones. My hands were tied over my head and I was suspended by a rope in a big wooden vat bubbling with decomposing excrement and vile sewage. I was up to my chin in it. Tom Chase came floating by and he looked at me pleadingly but I couldn't make a move toward him. Toni was there somewhere with her banged up face but I could never get a clear look at her as she bobbed around with the bubbles surrounding her. There were other faces in that mess, too, but I recognized none of them. Meanwhile Satan is showing me all these happy scenes and telling me what I jerk I'd been all my life. Once, there, he looked just like Nicky—another time like Browning— but the faces kept changing off and I knew that Satan was very confused about his own identity.