Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series)

by Don Pendleton

  "Judith said you'd make yourself at home," she told me. "So if you don't need me for anything ..."

  I shooed her out, moved my car into the garage as soon as she drove away, and went back inside for an unguided tour.

  I could not find Judith's imprint anywhere except in the master bedroom. It looked like her in there. The rest of the house looked like a judge's house. I got the idea that Judith merely slept there.

  The bookshelves in the library were lined with law books, the desk in the adjoining study was massive but served no currently useful purpose except as support for a telephone and a leather desk set, all the drawers totally bare.

  I found myself wondering what the judge had in mind for this place. Retirement home? He had no clothing there or any other personal items. The upkeep, with housekeeper

  and all, must be tremendous. Granted, it would be a long commute into L.A. but...

  Another smaller desk was in Judith's bedroom and I struck some paydirt there. Her telephone was one of the hi-tech automatic type with frequently-called phone numbers stored in memory for single-digit dialing. One of the stored numbers was for "Dad—Office"—another, "Dad-Condo."

  I glanced at the clock and punched in Dad—Office. A female voice responded on the first ring: "Judge White's chambers."

  I said, "This is Joe Copp. I'm a friend of Judith's. Tell him I'm on the line."

  The judge came on line almost immediately and in a rich baritone great for the bench. "What can I do for you, Mr. Copp?"

  I told him, "There's probably not much God himself can do for me right now, Your Honor, but I think there's a great deal you can do for your daughter. Did she call you today?"

  "Yes. We spoke a short while ago. I have reassured her. We both appreciate your interest and concern but it is misdirected in this instance. Judith is in no danger whatever. If you will send me a bill, I will see that you are adequately compensated for your time."

  I could not believe my ears.

  I asked him, "Are you aware that five members of Judith's cast were murdered last night?"

  He told me, "I have spoken at some length with the sheriff of San Bernardino county. Yes, I am quite aware of the tragedies. But the culprits are behind bars and I have been assured that my daughter is in no danger whatever."

  I said, "Your Honor ... the men who are behind bars

  are two deputy marshals who are working out of your court. I can't believe that—"

  "Yes, I know all about that."

  "Then you'd best pull your head out of your ass, sir, and—"

  "Mr. Copp! I appreciate what you're trying to do but I must make it quite clear to you that your interference is neither needed, warranted nor desired. The matter is totally in hand. Do you understand me?"

  I replied, "No, Your Honor, I guess I just don't understand. If all the culprits are behind bars, how come there's an APB out on me at this very moment?"

  "From San Bernardino county?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Ill take care of that."

  "You will?"

  "Of course I will. Now go home, Mr. Copp, get some well-deserved rest, and send me a bill when you've figured it all out."

  At that, the judge hung up on me. He hadn't been exactly hostile. Call it benignly authoritative.

  Send him a bill, eh?

  For what? Figure it all out? Okay. How about ten grand apiece for two false arrests? Another ten grand for assault on my body, say five grand each for two gun ambushes, twenty grand for false imprisonment and a hundred grand for involving me with the tragic remains of five viciously murdered kids.

  Send the judge a bill?

  I gazed around at Judith's bedroom, saw a vision of her kneeling naked on the big bed, shaking her butt and taunting me with hotly demanding eyes.

  I couldn't send the judge a bill.

  I'd already taken it out in trade with the judge's daughter—or should I put that on the bill too?

  I was steamed, right.

  More than that, though, I was downright scared. Then suddenly all that melted under the realization of what that conversation with the judge had really meant.

  He'd made his peace.

  Judge White had sold out to the mob.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Okay, I was home clean, you could say. Judith was in no danger. I was in no danger and everything was being squared with the cops. Five people were dead but...What the hell?—you can't bring them back and I hadn't heard anyone begging me to make justice triumphant.

  So why couldn't I let it go? Hell I don't know why, except to say that I never could let go of things that seemed unfinished. In five years at SFPD I couldn't let go, five years at LAPD and another five with L.A. county—to "let go" was something I'd never learned how to do, never learned the politics of law enforcement. It was my "big flaw," as a captain at LAPD once told me. "If you want to advance in this department, Joe, you've got to learn to be more resilient."

  Guess I always figured that resiliency, in police work, meant the art of compromise and I never had a lot of respect for that idea. Let the lawyers compromise and make their deals, that's what they're best at anyway, but after the cop on the case has established all the facts and tied the thing into a neat bundle for prosecution. A cop

  can't be resilient and be a good cop. He can't look the other way or shrug it off or deliberately ignore the loose ends of a case, not if he wants to respect himself.

  If you can't buy that then I guess I can't explain why I was in a quiet rage following that conversation with Judge White. Wasn't mad at the judge, didn't even disrespect him for his attitude in the matter. I think I would have disrespected him more for going the other way to an extreme and proceeding against DiCenza in cold disregard for his daughter's fate. Actually, I felt a great relief for Judith's sake and, sure, for my own sake too, but something underneath was nettling the hell out of me and I couldn't shake it off.

  I drank half a pot of Gertie's coffee and raided the refrigerator, made several more phone calls from Judith's telephone, and still I couldn't shake it off.

  One of those calls was to my own lawyer. Doesn't cost me anything to call a lawyer. We have a barter deal. I help him and he helps me when the need is there, no bills are rendered, and he is one of the sharpest criminal lawyers in the area. We are also friends and I'd trust the guy with my life—I've done so on several occasions.

  I asked my lawyer, Tell me all you think you know about Judge White."

  "District Court judge?"

  That's the one."

  "He's fair. Tough, but fair. Brilliant man, actually. I've never argued before him in federal court but many times in Superior Court. What do you want to know?"

  "Is he honest?"

  "Never heard anything to the contrary. Appointed to the federal bench several years ago without any opposition that I know about. No, he's clean as far as I know."

  "Political debts?"

  "Come on, Joe, every judge has political debts. But I doubt that anyone owns him, if that's what you mean."

  "He's been on a tough case."

  "Immensely. Lots of media attention."

  "What's the courthouse gossip on that one?"

  "DiCenza will go down."

  "How hard?"

  "With White on the bench, plenty hard. We're talking maybe fifty years."

  "Which would be equal to a life sentence."

  "In his case, yes. He's sixty now and he's sick."

  "How sick?"

  "He's diabetic. High blood pressure. Various circulatory disorders. Sick enough."

  I reminded him, "There have been rumors of a deal. What about that?"

  "There are always rumors of a deal in a case like this one, Joe. DiCenza could nail a lot of people. I think maybe they're just hopeful rumors this time. Judge White has never been particularly amenable to deals in his court. That's why they call him a hanging judge. Do you have an interest in this one?"

  I said, "Maybe."

  "Anything to do with uh ... ?"


  He was referring to my kidnap-rape thing.

  I said, "Maybe."

  "You're still clean on that one though?"

  "Yeah."

  That was weird."

  I told him, "It was only the begininng of weird. Tell me something. How weird would it be for you if Judge White should turn totally around on the DiCenza thing?"

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning a deal with DiCenza."

  The line was silent for a moment while my expert thought about it, then he told me, "Let me tell you why I do not believe that will happen, Joe. Too many nervous people on the party line."

  "I didn't get that."

  "There are too many people stretching all the way from L.A. to Sacramento and on to Washington who do not want to see a deal made with DiCenza. If DiCenza talks, a lot of people will fall with him, a lot of politically important people. Those people want DiCenza to take it like a man, to go down all by himself—and that will not happen if his lawyers are able to strike a deal for a light sentence. The pressure on Judge White to strike a deal is not coming from his side of the political aisle. Do you get my meaning?"

  The pressure that counts," I replied, "is against the deal."

  That's right."

  "So why couldn't he make everybody happy and just give the guy a light sentence without a deal?"

  Too late for that. The new federal judicial guidelines are in effect in this case and the jury found the man guilty on all counts. A mandatory minimum sentence is involved there, and even that minimum would be like a life sentence for DiCenza. He cannot buy any time at all. The only deal that would mean anything for DiCenza would be a release

  on probation. Short of a major gesture on the defendant's part to cooperate with the prosecution in other cases, Judge White's hands are tied. He has to observe the guidelines. Besides..

  "Besides what?"

  "There's been talk ..."

  "About what?"

  "Well . . . speculation . . . that Judge White is next in line for a Supreme Court nomination."

  I said, "We're talking damned heavy politics now."

  "That's what we're talking," my lawyer agreed. "So I would have to say, in answer to your question, that I would regard it as intensely weird if Judge White were to step out of character in any way right now. There's a lot more at stake here, Joe, than the fate of a sick old mobster."

  That was what I thought too. I thanked my friend the lawyer for his counsel and immediately called another friend. This one works for L.A. county and we'd once been partners. He now mans a desk at one of the many sheriffs substations scattered about the county, and I'm not going to give you his name either.

  He exploded into my ear. "Joe! What the hell is going on with you?"

  I replied, "Too much, pal, much too much. Do you have an APB on me?"

  "Had one, yeah, out of San Bernardino, but I just got a cancellation a minute ago. What the hell is it?"

  "Little misunderstanding," I told him. "That's all I wanted. Thanks. Go back to your knitting."

  He said, as he hung up, "Beats the hell out of what you're doing these days, buddy."

  Maybe it did.

  I tried to call Art Lahey and was told that he was off duty.

  Off duty? Lahey was never off duty.

  I wandered about the big house and looked at the family photos that were scattered around. Judith was there from infancy, as a young ballerina of eight or nine, as a successful actress on many stages around the world, as a thoughtful young director brooding over her dinner theater.

  The late Mrs. White was everywhere too, beautiful woman with that same excited quality in the eyes as the daughter—and she'd been an actress too, apparently a quite successful actress.

  And the judge was there. Impressive, even as a young man. Tall and straight and handsome—and I could see Judith in his eyes too. The judge that commanded me, though, was a recent one—strong jaw, piercing eyes, very handsome guy in his mid-fifties, I'd say, with thick and wavy black hair, touch of silver at each temple—the kind of man you'd like to see wearing the robe of an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

  I asked him, "What have you gotten yourself into here, Judge?"

  Then I went out to find the answer to that question.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I stopped off at my place and strapped on some hardware, took some cash out of my safe, stashed a riot gun in the trunk of my car and went on to Studio City. That's on the back side of the Hollywood hills in the area referred to around there as simply "the valley," as though the San Fernando were the only valley around. It's not, of course, but it does contain a large chunk of the L.A. population and many of the Hollywood people live in that valley, so it's an understandable conceit.

  Actually, that valley has become almost as slummy as Hollywood itself but that's neither here nor there because the entire crazy patchwork quilt that is the Los Angeles basin is getting that way, with no "safe harbors" that far removed from urban decay and inner-city problems. Drugs and gangs and drive-by shootings, prostitutes and pimps and "decadent" lifestyles are everywhere the freeways travel these days. I'd worked in just about all those neighborhoods for more than ten years and I'd seen most of it happen.

  But I wasn't looking for the urban decay of Studio City. I went on up Coldwater Canyon into the hills overlooking

  the valley in the expectation that I would find the decaying remains of a small criminal empire—its headquarters, that is—still clinging tenaciously to the earth despite all the slides and fires and other natural inconveniences that plague the cliffdwellers in that area.

  The other side of the hill from that point is not Hollywood but Beverly Hills. The homes near the top are therefore very affluent diggings, and the denizens pay dearly for their perch. A hundred years ago no one in his right mind would have dreamed of building a house on the near vertical slopes of that twisting canyon, but then came architects and engineers with daring ideas and improved technologies that allowed them to suspend cantilevered mansions in thin air for adventurous and well-heeled patrons who liked the idea of living dangerously above it all. Dangerously because despite the best laid plans of engineer and architect, one or two of those architectural marvels continue to slide down the walls of Coldwater Canyon at some point during each rainy season.

  Dangerously, also, because even in the best of times the decks of many of those homes are floating several hundred feet above the floor of the canyon; one step or stagger in the wrong direction during a patio party could be the last mistake you'd ever make.

  The location I sought was one such as those.

  I hadn't been there in many years, since I was a detective working vice out of the Hollywood division, still a bit wet behind the ears and not nearly as streetwise as I thought I was. I had not gone there in an official capacity but as an invited guest at a big party. Never mind, I hadn't gone to party but to satisfy a curiosity about the host, a kid fresh out of Columbia who'd just moved out from New York and opened a strip joint on my beat. He'd also been calling himself a "producer" and his name was DiCenza—not Vincent but James, Vincent's kid—so I had an idea of what he was producing.

  He'd been in town only a couple of months when I went to the party but already he'd become a fixture in the local erotica and I just wanted a look at the guy up close.

  I had thought he was just another punk with big ideas. Without his old man backing him he would have been working an adding machine in some back room somewhere. Actually I was surprised when I met the guy. He seemed pretty sharp and very self-assured but also the guy had a certain charm, nice smile, good eyes, and he was steady enough to have earned a degree in business from Columbia. As far as I could determine at the time he'd been running a clean operation strictly within the law, more so than a lot of the sex peddlers in this town that sex built.

  I never had Victorian ideas about sex. Never even saw anything wrong with prostitution per se as long as it was kept per se, a gal and her john getti
ng together in an honest contract with no outside interests involved. As for the strip joints—what the hell?—if the guys didn't mind watered drinks and were satisfied to look and not touch, if nobody was getting ripped off and the girls weren't being unfairly exploited—why the hell should I care? Strip joints are within the law and my job was only to enforce the law, not to pass moral judgment on human nature.

  So I'd gone to Jimmy DiCenza's party out of curiosity as to why I'd been invited in the first place.

  And it was quite a party.

  About thirty sexy girls, about ten guys. The guys were all cops. The girls were all willing. And there was a promise

  of more parties with a constantly rotating female guest list. And of course there was the pitch. Nothing blatant, nothing actually incriminating, but a pitch nonetheless. Jimmy was expanding, opening a string of joints—even a couple of pizza parlors with topless waitresses—and Jimmy needed a security force to make sure that everyone behaved themselves.

  So would any of us happen to know any good cops, any real good honest and reliable and dependable cops, who would like to moonlight as Jimmy's security force? The pay was excellent and nothing rigorous would be involved, they could set their own hours and punch their own clocks, just look in every now and then and make sure everything was okay. Would we know any like that?

  Well, all ten of us were vice cops.

  I'm sad to say that some of those guys went for it. I didn't, not because I'm holy but because I knew what was going down—and because to accept the first dollar from guys like these is to sell your soul to the devil. They own you from that point, and I don't like being owned.

  Td seen Jimmy around, over the years. I'd known that he'd gone from strip joints to porno flicks and call girls and whatever else he could dip his wick into without inciting too much heat in the law—and I'd known that he'd had protection all those years.

  But I had not expected that he would remember me.

  I handed my card to a spacey-eyed sexpot at the door and told her, "Tell Jimmy he needs to see me."