Then I went back to that flower bed and picked up the key ring. It had four keys on it, two of which carried a Ford logo. Six Fords were parked out there. I scored on the fourth try, an old Thunderbird; found the registration and other ID in the glove box. Her name was Juanita Valdez. She would have turned twenty in a week, and she had lived about five minutes away from where I stood.
I jotted down the address and returned the registration to its neat little repository, then locked the car and went to my own.
Apparently she'd lived very modestly, as most kids her age are required to unless they have help from affluent parents. The car was old and the apartment building was older. It was not a security building, sat right on the street in a low-rent area, had no off-street parking for the tenants.
I had a creepy feeling as I cruised past the entrance but I didn't know if that was caused by the building or by a glimpse I had of a dark car rounding the corner at the next intersection. I opted for the latter and got down there as quickly as I could in four o'clock traffic. Saw nothing there to induce quivers so went on around the block and found a parking place, went into Juanita's building. Main entrance was not even locked, though it was equipped for it. I tried the keys just for the hell of it and, yeah, one of them fit.
It was a three-story walkup. The number I was looking for was at the top, rear. This door was locked and I had the key—but, damn, I also had a return of that creepy feeling as I let myself inside.
Good enough reason for that.
The place was a wreck. Furniture turned upside down, cushions slashed, litter everywhere. I waded through that to the kitchen for more of the same, then into a small bedroom for even worse.
But the real booby prize was waiting for me in the bathroom.
She was probably roughly the same age as Juanita, almost as pretty, just as dead.
She wore open-crotch pantyhose and nothing else. She'd been hogtied, gagged, worked over and strangled with a G-string, probably her own.
And I wondered what the hell I'd stumbled into here, on the hard side.
Chapter Three
IN MY BUSINESS, you either develop a neutral stomach or it retires you early. Mine went neutral a long time ago and it had worked on nothing since breakfast, so I was hungry as hell when I headed back to the office. I'd spent most of an hour going through the mess in that demolished apartment; found and pocketed a few small interesting items but left everything else exactly as I'd encountered it and quietly got away from there.
But I was hungry. May sound callous, considering the moment, but a neutral stomach does not recognize such moments and mine was clamoring for me to send something down. Anything. I have no gourmet tastes. I stand six-three, as I said, and weigh two-sixty but I do not eat ritually or fancily. I just send something down when the belly demands. I also do not have much body fat. The frame is big and the bones are heavy. I try to do an hour a day on the track to stay in tune and maybe that much a week with my judo master to keep the black belt and the humility intact. Humility, yeah. My master is seventy-five and weighs about a hundred pounds. I have yet to beat his ass, or even to come close.
Anyway, the stomach was yelling at me so I pulled into a coffee shop two blocks from the office and had a quick dinner. I didn't get back 'til about six. Two detectives were waiting for me in an official car parked right beside my door. I knew one of them. Too well.
L.A. County provides police services on a contract basis to some of the smaller municipalities, like mine, that cluster about the big city. Police jurisdictions can be a nightmare in this area, with so many towns and cities jostling one another in crazy-quilt patterns and with no clear demarcation between them. I mean, you can drive along one avenue for five minutes and pass through wedges of half a dozen different municipalities. So things could be a lot worse than they are if each of those towns insisted on maintaining their own police departments. My city council did it the smart way. Turned it all over to the sheriff and let him juggle payrolls and health plans and pension plans and political infighting. We pay an annual fee for the service.
By and large, the service is good. But like all big government departments, "by and large" covers a lot of not so good.
Gil Tanner was not so good. Sloppy soft, beer belly, a guy who'd long ago lost pride in his profession and in himself; liar, cheat, manipulator, sleazebag. All in all not a character to inspire confidence in the law. Scared hell out of me, in fact, any time I thought about a jerk like this walking around with a badge and a gun.
So that was who was waiting for me. Along with a younger version probably already well along that same road; mean-looking little prick, the kind who'd drag a collar into an alley and beat the shit out of him with a baton just for kicks.
Don't tell me it's pure accident that cops like these gravitate to beats like this one. Somebody up there knows what they are and does not want ever to have to look on them. Why the hell can't these departments police themselves instead of just shoveling the shit aside until something shockingly rotten makes them look?
Which was what was running in my mind when I spotted those two. But it started off amiably enough. Tanner opened his door and swiveled about with his feet on the pavement as I walked up.
He said, "Joe, you old shitbag, long time no see. How's it going with private enterprise?"
I lit a cigarette before I met his gaze and replied to that. "I don't know where it's going," I told him. "Sure as hell isn't coming my way. You assigned to the hit-and-run?"
He balled his fist and made what was intended as a humorous honking noise into it; a raspberry with gesture. "Belongs with the fucking traffic detail. Run our asses up and down this pike all day long on this asshole stuff." He jerked a thumb. "Meet my partner, Ed Jones. Just came over from the reserves. I'm breaking him in."
I waved to the little prick and he waved back without much enthusiasm.
I said to Tanner, "Must be special material if they gave him to you." That has a double meaning, you know. Probably was not lost on Tanner. He's a sleaze, sure, but a smart one. I was sure, too, that he'd already filled Jones in on the kind of horse's ass I am because the guy had not yet learned to be as two-faced as Tanner; he'd been giving me a solemn inspection the whole time, probably wondering how many raps of the baton it would take to send me to my knees. I was looking straight at the kid as I added, "Looks to me like a guy who'll have no trouble at all soaking up every rotten trick in your sleazy bag."
Tanner decided to take that as a compliment. For the moment, anyway. He laughed nastily and told me, "Well, we make 'em or break 'em around here. But you know all about that, don't you, ex-Sergeant Copp." He put heavy stress on that ex, as though I would not get his meaning without it.
I said quietly, "Yeah, it's a great force, Tanner. What can I do for it this evening?"
"What was your business with the Valdez girl?"
"That her name?"
"Cut the shit. Tell me about er."
I showed him both palms as I replied, "You have her name. That's more than I had. I eyeballed it, yeah, or part of it. Heard the tires screeching—not braking, accelerating— heard the hit. Looked out the window in time to see her fly by. Black sedan. Gave the report to your traffic boys."
"You called it in, too."
"Sure. Wouldn't you? The kid was lying there all broken and bleeding. No ... that's an unfair question, isn't it. Maybe you wouldn't. How'd you work the call, Tanner? Write up your report from the traffic investigation?"
I must have been right on target. He moved too quick to cover it. "You know we can't work them all at once, and I haven't filed my report yet. You reading this as a deliberate hit?"
"You want to quote an ex-sergeant?"
"Maybe."
I sucked on my cigarette, dropped it, stepped on it. "It sounded that way, yeah."
Jones had stepped out of the vehicle and come around to join the parley. He said to me, "We'll bust your ass quicker than you can cover it if you play games with us, Copp. This old-s
oldier bullshit doesn't buy you a thing."
I looked from him to Tanner, and I guess that "hideous smile" I've heard others talk about joined me in the look. It sent Tanner leaning away from me; he spoke from the deep interior of the car. "Shut up, Ed," he growled; to me: "He's frisky, Joe—forget it."
I said to the frisky recruit, "Little unusual to come straight from reserve to detective squad, isn't it?"
But the prick suddenly was not looking directly at me. Probably thought I was addressing his partner, and was content with the thought. Tanner answered for him, anyway. "You know how it goes, Joe. Feast to famine. Right now it's famine. So Ed got lucky. He's doing good, really good."
I said, "With that mouth, he'd better do better than that."
It became a laugher.
We stood and jawed for a few minutes. Never again returned to the investigation. As soon as it was graceful to withdraw, they did.
But you can see, can't you, why I did not volunteer any information to those guys. I mean, there's a limit to how far you want to go with guys like those. I actually had never meant to conceal anything from the official investigation. Why would I want to do that? It just worked out that way because of the circumstances.
I'm sure I would have gone straight downtown and laid the whole thing on the appropriate desk before the night was over. Nobody would have faulted me if I'd done that. We're talking about a few hours here.
I could have been downtown by eight o'clock easy.
Would have been there, too.
But I walked into my office and found deja vu.
Some son of a bitch—or some sons of bitches— had gone in there and torn the whole place apart, emptied all my files onto the floor, turned out every drawer, slashed all my beautiful leather-upholstered furniture—I mean pure leather, the real stuff—even bashed into the hollow core of the door to the washroom.
They say I have a truly hideous smile when I am upset.
I must have been smiling like Long John Silver himself when I went out of there and set sail for the New Frontier.
Chapter Four
IT'S A LOW-SLUNG building occupying the corner of a busy intersection up in the foothills. Like I said earlier, a county area. That does not mean it is in the country. The patchwork of communities I was talking about do not always come together at neat boundaries. Sometimes there is a narrow buffer zone between the incorporated areas. Sp these unincorporated wedges or slices are governed directly by the county board of supervisors. In L.A. these are your traditional free-trade zones—which means that most anything goes, so long as it doesn't get too flagrant.
The New Frontier was pretty damned flagrant.
Big place. Legal capacity of probably several hundred patrons. Open from ten in the morning 'til two in the morning seven days a week. Gold mine. Kind of joint where the parking lot always seems to have as many pickup trucks as passenger vehicles. And you don't see Pierre Cardin or Gucci fashions in there. You do see a lot of dirty jeans and cowboy boots. But the owners are smart. They police themselves. Bouncers are probably their heaviest payroll.
All of the girls double as cocktail waitresses and dancers, take turns on stage—and of course the stage runs everywhere; it's ^actually the bar, sort of star shaped; most of the seating is there. So the girls work you from both sides; as bare-assed dancers directly above your head and as technically bare-assed waitresses at floor level. I would have to say that it is all prime. The amateur night, held once a week, is actually a showcase for hopefuls trying out for jobs—auditions, if you will—and from what I hear the line never ends so I guess the management can be choosy.
It was only about seven o'clock when I blew in there, but the parking lot was already half- filled. The place was a dark hole. It would be fair to say that all the lighting there was came from above the stages, and that was mostly blue. Twenty or so girls were wandering about in various degrees of undress and pushing the drinks. One total nude was gathering up discarded bits of fluff and money from the stage and making her exit while an unseen emcee was announcing the next dancer, "the bewitching Belinda." Canned music with a throbbing disco beat catapulted the bewitcher on stage dressed in cowboy boots and hat and nothing else.
I stood just inside the door for a moment letting my eyes adjust to the lighting; turned away two girls who wanted to seat me, which brought a bouncer over damn quick.
"You'll have to be seated if you wanta stay. Two-drink minimum."
"Mind if I wait 'til I can see the seats?"
"The girls know where they are. Come on in and party. You can't stand here in the door."
"Actually I came to see George."
"Thought you wanted to see the seats."
"That, too, yeah."
Belinda had just thrown a leg over a patron's shoulder and was playfully riding it like a bronc, waving her hat overhead and yelling wa-hoo.
"George who?"
"She's something else, isn't she."
"No freebie looks, pal. Either come on in or turn around."
"George the bartender. He's working tonight, isn't he?"
"Sit down and order. I'll send him over. But the girls are better."
I said ha-ha and let a harem girl lead me away. She sat me down squarely in front of Belinda, who by now was kicking off her boots and moving into overdrive. It looked as though I had been chosen for her next prop; she bumped in and wiggled her crotch at my face but I leaned back and caught her eye. She caught the uh-uh in mine and moved on down the line to pull another guy's face into her belly.
The girl who had seated me leaned into my arm and massaged my back with a practiced hand as she invited me to relax and have fun and what was I drinking. One of the unspoken but unbreakable rules in these joints: the girls can touch you anywhere with anything but you keep your own hands off of everything. I have found the whole scene to be an exercise in frustration but I guess a lot of guys don't mind the teasing.
I ordered a Jack Daniels and George; received two Jack Daniels and no George about thirty seconds later. Another unspoken and strongly observed rule: move the drinks and move them fast. Turns out here that booze from the well and even a beer costs you three bucks per, but four-fifty gets you a name brand, Jack Daniels or whatever. I gave the harem girl a ten and she returned a single, but slowly; I told her what the hell to keep it and asked again about George.
She said George didn't know me but I told her I knew Juanita and I had a message from her for George.
So a minute later I get George.
George is about twenty-five. George is a flaming gay. I get a whole new insight now into the little joke at the door with the bouncer. But he seems a nice enough guy.
"Terry said you have a message from Juanita. Is she sick?"
"About as sick as you can get, yeah. She won't be coming in tonight."
"These girls, these girls. So unreliable. They're driving me crazy."
"You the keeper of the harem, or something?"
He has a good laugh. "I'm the duty eunuch, yes. I do their scheduling. So what's wrong with Juanita this time?"
"Broken bones. Compound fractures, both arms, both legs. Also lost her face and probably several vital organs."
"You are not being very funny."
"Don't intend to be. Juanita is dead."
"Good lord!"
"She was killed outside my office today. Came to me for help. Didn't give her any. Should have. I am upset about that. Very upset."
"Who are you?"
I handed him a card. "Who's the guy?"
He examined the card, softly asked. "What guy?
"The one that's been bugging her. You told her a cop."
"I told her nothing of the kind."
"Sure you did. Who's the guy?"
"I told her I thought I had seen the man before. In some kind of uniform. A security guard. A policeman. Something like that. Why in the world did she go to you about this?"
"Because she was scared out of her skull, that's why. With good reason, as i
t turns out. Who's the guy, George?"
"I told you I don't know."
"Think again. Harder."
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This is a place of business and I have work to do."
I produced a pad and pencil, handed it to him. "Address and phone number, please. Catch you tomorrow."
All this, you know, was under very difficult circumstances. The music was very loud. Patrons were hooting and yelling now and again when Belinda did something especially imaginative. The lighting was terrible to start and getting worse all the time, going now to strobes sequenced to the beat.
George refused the pad and pencil. He pivoted about and walked away.
I went after him, about three paces to the rear and lurching just a bit with maybe a touch of vertigo from the strobes. Ever been in one of those? There's a very unreal quality, everything you can see all weird and slo-mo, the damned "music" flaying away at you.
With all that, though, George must have been able to get off a high-sign to the bouncers because I suddenly had two of them sandwiching me and herding me toward the door.
Please understand. I didn't go in there for trouble. I can get a bit single-minded, though, at times. I guess this was one of those times. I was pissed, understand. Pissed at myself because a cute kid died after sort of hiring me to look after her. Pissed at sleazy cops. Pissed at perverts who enjoy carving on cute kids and beautiful furniture. Pissed at the whole situation, I guess.
But I was not pissed at those guys for doing their job.
So I set them down gently and went on to put the collar on George. I had to haul him over from the back side of a high-production bar, though, and I guess it spilled some bottles and broke some glasses.
Which brought more bouncers. Four more.
So we broke up a lot more stuff.
Then I dragged George outside and gave him another crack at the memory cells in clear air.
That seemed to help.
"Honestly, I don't know his name," he gasped from two feet above my head. "I just remember something about ... he was a reserve deputy, or something."
Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 2
