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

by Don Pendleton

  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.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I HAVE A friend on the Honolulu Police Department. Met him at a cop convention years ago in San Francisco and we had some laughs together. Have a lot in common. His name is Billy Inyoko. Japanese. Billy and I have kept in touch over the years but we have not spent a lot of time together. We are telephone friends. We exchange favors. I was a bit short on the exchange because the islands get a lot of our bad asses while theirs tend to stay closer to home.

  So I was not at all reluctant to call Billy at that hour of the morning, only a couple of hours past midnight on Oahu. I caught him at home with one foot in bed and told him about

  Linda. Well, not everything about Linda, but I gave him an inch-by-inch description and her flight number and asked him to look in on her arrival and get a line on her whereabouts when she settled in somewhere.

  Billy sounded a little tired but he assured me that he would do that. We jawed for a couple of minutes about other things and then I casually mentioned Jim Davitsky. He knew the name.

  "One of your esteemed politicians," he remarked.

  I said, "Yeah. Know the guy?"

  "By reputation, mainly. He's got a place out near Diamond Head. Comes over from time to time. Does a lot of entertaining. Mostly political. Came the last time with a group of congressmen from Washington. We get security assignments out there from time to time."

  I casually inquired, "Ever get the White House bunch out there?"

  "Not the main man, no, not yet."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means he does get the White House bunch. In dribbles and drabbles. Yeah, we get a lot of action from your man Davitsky"

  I told him, "Keep the head up. You might be getting a lot more. This woman could be headed there."

  "She'll be in fine company."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means a lot of women head there every time Davitsky does."

  "That way, eh?"

  "Oh yes indeed, very much that way."

  I said, "Matter of fact, Billy, I have some inside poop tha
t Davitsky might be coming over your way later today. You might, uh, keep an eye on him too."

  "Sorry, pal."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means that the favors end where my chin begins."

  "That way, eh?"

  "It's a small island, Joe."

  I told him, "Message received. I'll still appreciate a line on the woman, Billy."

  "You'll have one."

  I thanked him and we said good-by.

  I then shook down the hotel suite, looking for anything, found nothing. I made some coffee and drank it, had a fruit snack, checked out at five A.M.

  Had to get moving.

  I was expecting a sunrise service at my place.

  And I did not want to miss any of the festivities.

  I knew these guys, but barely. All three of them. Detectives. Clones, more or less, of Gil Tanner. But only one, I think, was San Gabriel Division. They were waiting for me in my driveway.

  I do not live in a neighborhood, exactly. Only four homes are built along that particular ridge. Each has a two-acre lot, and each is landscaped for privacy. My neighbors have horses. I hate horses, and I especially hate the flies that keep them company. You might find this surprising but I do a lot of gardening. It's my way to relax.

  Anyway, I have privacy there. I can walk all around my place bare-assed and the neighbors would never know unless they went out of their way to keep tabs on me.

  But nobody keeps tabs, up there.

  It's a tabless society, up there in the hills, and we like it that way.

  Well... most of the time we like it that way.

  I was not so sure about this time.

  These guys were really pissed at me. Like disturbed hornets. Or an Apache war party.

  I got out of my car and leaned back against the roof, lit a cigarette, said, "I'll tell you guys why I sent for you."

  "Do that," growled Vince Garbanzo. We called him Beans.

  They were standing in an arc, an arm's length apart at about three paces out. Flanking Garbanzo were Frank Cruz and Tony Dilivetti. None of these guys was soft like Tanner. They were bad-asses and enjoyed it. Dilivetti held a baton.

  "You're going out of business," I told them.

  Dilivetti scratched his head with the tip of the baton and said, "Do tell."

  I said, "Well, technically, you're already out of business."

  "I think it's the other way around," said Garbanzo. "We don't need your kind in the valley. We figure it's time you're moving on."

  "How far would you like me to move?" I inquired. "Six feet? Straight down? Like Tanner?"

  That gave a pause. They exchanged glances. Dilivetti asked, "What's that about Tanner?"

  "Someone prepared him for the move. Put a hole the size of a baseball in his skull to cinch the deal. You boys know nothing about that?"

  "When was this?" Garbanzo asked.

  I sighed. "Little while ago. Changes nothing, though. Except to point the way. Good-by, boys. It has not been nice knowing you. I want your asses moving and I don't want them stopping within smelling distance. You fold up your tents and you steal away, a long ways away, or else I'm—"

  Dilivetti took a step forward with the baton at combat stance. Garbanzo put an arm on him, said, "Wait, Tony"; said to me, "What's your interest, Joe?"

  "Call it the stars and stripes forever. I still believe in the Constitution, human rights, all that stale, corny old stuff."

  Cruz uttered his first words. "Get this guy. The original hard-ass. I never saw you bleed for anybody, hotshot. Where do you get off laying that rap on us?"

  I told him, "I get off where guys like you get on, Cruz. Now back off. Go back to your barrio and work your scams on the sad devils whose backs lifted you up here. Maybe one of them will decide who the real enemy is and show you the way home. I got no respect at all for an Indian who eats other Indians. Get your rotten ass off my turf, Geronimo. You're over fertilizing it."

  What did it take to get these guys fighting mad?

  Cruz just blinked at me.

  I took a drag from my cigarette and told Garbanzo, "Let go the Dago, Beans. He wants to play."

  Garbanzo did, then, and Dilivetti did.

  He came at me with the baton.

  I used it to lever him off the side and over the car.

  He hit the hedges at the other side of the drive.

  By this time, though, I was in a sandwich between Garbanzo and Cruz, and Cruz was going for my balls.

  I gave him his own, instead, and hoisted him by them into Garbanzo's face.

  They both tumbled down, with Cruz howling.

  I stepped on his face because I cannot bear to hear a grown man cry.

  Then I took a ground-level charge from Garbanzo and diverted it into the side of the Cad.

  He hit like a Ram in the rutting season; went down; stayed down.

  But now I had Dilivetti again.

  His face was like oozing hamburger from the thorny hedges but the eyes were pure crazy.

  This time he came with gun in hand but in his rage had neglected to thumb the safety. I beat him to it and crunched the arm apart with the back of the elbow across my chest.

  He screamed and fell to both knees. A bone was protruding from the sleeve of his jacket.

  Cruz was still squirming around the ground, moaning.

  I picked him up and tossed him into their car, did the same for Garbanzo.

  Dilivetti stopped groaning long enough to tell me it had all been a mistake.

  I agreed with that and suggested that he get in the car and drive the mistake elsewhere.

  He was bloody and hurting, but somehow he managed to do that.

  I watched the carload of mistakes lurch out of my drive, and I felt good and I felt bad.

  Good because all of us cousins to the apes take a certain satisfaction in a good fight well-fought.

  Bad because I knew that those guys were not the answer to my real problems of the moment.

  And because I knew that my real fight had only just begun.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I STUDIED THE mess in my bedroom for several minutes before I started cleaning it up.

  The whole thing with Linda Shelton was out of focus.

  If I was buying Davitsky as my villain and Ed Jones his henchman, for whatever reason, and if by some hook or crook Linda was in their camp, then her place in the puzzle was fuzzy as hell.

  Why the attempts on her life? Or were they?

  Why the frame with the gun in the death of George the bartender? Or was it?

  Could Jones have gone after Linda without realizing that he was subjecting her to friendly fire? Possibly, sure; but, if so, then how loose was this thing?

  The shotgun attack on my bedroom seemed for real enough. But as I was standing there in the debris and studying the angles, nothing was for sure. The fire had actually come nowhere near the spa.

  Let's say, okay; the first round was purely in the dark because he was working with one-way glass. After that first round, though—and there must have been eight to ten more—he was like standing at a shooting gallery at the county fair, firing at point-blank range with nothing to distract or interfere. Why was all that fire so ineffective? Intentionally so?

  The little duel with the cars on the mountainside seemed in retrospect just as half-hearted.

  So what the hell was it all about?

  Or could it be—could it possibly be?—that Linda was striding through this whole thing a total innocent? Did it make her guilty of anything at all, the mere fact that she was on friendly relations with a powerful politician?

  And if so, had she—and this worried the hell out of me—had she then jumped from the frying pan into the fire by turning to Davitsky for aid and comfort at an especially troubled time? He was powerful, no question. Women,

  including smart women like Linda, were known to go for that.

  I was going crazy inside my head.

  I did not know that Jim Davitsky was dirty. I did
not know that Ed Jones was anything but a hot dog looking for some relish.

  I did not know a goddamned thing.

  Which was what was driving me crazy.

  So I turned to a problem I could do something about. I cleaned up my bedroom. Then I brought in some leftover paneling I'd been storing in the garage and used it to patch the shattered window.

  I was feeling a little better after that. So I went to the kitchen and built some breakfast, ate it quickly, then went to the living room to sit in an easy chair with a riot gun across my lap to catch a few winks.

  I slept for two hours like that.

  Then I showered and shaved and put on some fresh clothing that did not smell like death, and went downtown.

  I got to the county offices at precisely nine o'clock and found Edna Sorenson at nine-oh- one.

  We went into a little conference room. She brought coffee to keep me busy while she rounded up the necessary people. These were all ladies, three of them plus Edna, and we had a nice informal gossipy conversation.

  I assured one and all right up front that I intended to use in any way possible any and all scraps of information I could take away from there; I also pledged on Edna's friendship that I would protect my sources into the grave.

  I heard some interesting things.

  Put any of those ladies on a witness stand and they could not have told you much. Most of it was hearsay, rumor, gossip. But I was not interested in the technicalities and I was not trying to build evidence. I was trying to work toward an understanding of the situation I was in; trying to dispel the crazies.

  I did gain quite a bit in the way of understanding. But I did not dispel any crazies.

  I was out of there at nine-thirty and streaking toward the San Gabriel foothills; as good, that is, as you can streak on a Thursday morning downtown. But I was on the Foothills Freeway before ten o'clock and I reached the New Frontier about fifteen minutes after ten.