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

by Don Pendleton

  The door was ajar and I could hear her crying from the porch so I went on in. She lay curled on the couch; gave me a startled look as I went through looking for Jones. I didn't find him, needless to say, and I guess it's a good thing because I would have killed the sumbitch with my bare hands if I'd found him there.

  I stopped off in the bathroom and wet a towel, found some disinfectant, carried it back to the couch and went to work on her hurts. She'd stopped crying; seemed very embarrassed by the whole thing. Why are battered wives always embarrassed for their pricks? I'll never understand it; and here's one for you judges: it ought to be justifiable homicide to catch the sumbitch in his sleep and blow him away. I would never collar a woman for a crime like that. I would look the other way and smile all the way home.

  Well, I was smiling this time, too, but it could not have been a very good smile. She kept assuring me that she was okay but I went on with my business and cleaned her up, checked her belly, insisted she get up and show me she could walk without staggering.

  Her name, by the way, was Inga, and Inga was a hell of a woman. Something else I don't understand is why these great women so often seem to end up with the class pricks. I'll never understand it. Guess I don't want to understand it. I am fighting like hell becoming a total cynic but I think I've almost lost that fight.

  Anyway, that's the way I was feeling there with Inga.

  She told me that Ed came home around six o'clock. His left hand was bandaged and his clothes were torn and dirty. He was driving a car she'd never seen before. He refused breakfast, took a shower and shaved, would not answer any questions, lay down with the alarm clock and slept until ten o'clock; got up, got dressed and left before ten-thirty.

  She gave him my message as he was leaving. He came back in and beat her up when she had the nerve to ask what was going on with him.

  I told Inga I was going to bust the guy. I told her the whole rotten story as I knew it. She did not seem surprised at any of it.

  And she did not try to beg me off.

  Instead she told me, "I wish to go home for my baby."

  So I told her, "Today would be a great time for it."

  "I have been thinking of it," she replied.

  So I said, "Pack a bag." I snared the telephone. "You want Lufthansa?"

  She showed me a smile. "I have no money."

  I said, "Who needs money?"—and called information for the number.

  Twenty minutes later we were on our way to LAX. She was traveling light; most of what she put in the bag were things she'd made for the baby. She owned only one other maternity outfit beside the one her husband had torn off of her, and she was wearing it. She showed me her smile as she was packing that bag and told me, "I came without. I go home the same way."

  I put her on the three o'clock flight and told her, "You're not going home without, kid. You've got guts and dignity."

  She said, "Thank you, Joe," and gave me a warm kiss good-by.

  I was out another seven hundred bucks, thanks to my groaning Visa card. But what the hell. I was going to nail that lady's husband —that unborn baby's father. Not that I was trying to buy off my conscience. I have no conscience where people like Ed Jones are concerned.

  But I was just as happy to have the lady and the baby out of the line of fire that I was sure was coming.

  While I was at LAX I decided to shop around for flights to Hawaii. I went on down to American for the first try and made my score there. Told the guy at the ticket counter that I had some papers for Supervisor Davitsky but couldn't remember the flight number. He obligingly punched it up and gave me a four-thirty flight to Honolulu.

  It was already past three so I went up to the gate area and killed forty minutes over a very expensive dinner at the cafeteria. Could have dined at Chasen's for that tab. But the food was okay and I was starving and it was a good way to wait out the clock.

  I wanted to eyeball the guy.

  After dinner I bought a copy of Penthouse and a large manila envelope from the newstand, put the magazine in the envelope and wrote Davitsky's name on it, took it to the check-in counter and asked the agent to please be sure that the supervisor received this important package before he boarded the plane.

  The guy said sure thing and made a note on the seating chart.

  I found a seat in the lounge with an unobstructed view and settled into the wait with a cigarette.

  I had the guy spotted even before he picked up the envelope.

  I mean, you know, he just looked big deal.

  About six feet tall, sort of rangy—maybe a hundred and seventy pounds—fortyish, clothed by Gucci, I guessed, certainly the shoes were Italian leather: not a bad looking guy if you were not looking for bad, which I was.

  Two guys came in with him. One went to the check-in for the boarding pass while the other bent an ear to a stream of words. The one returned with the envelope and two boarding passes, turned the whole thing over to the Gucci. There was some discussion obviously centering on the envelope. Davitsky finally opened it, took out the Penthouse, laughed and looked around as though to see who was playing the gag on him; returned the magazine to the envelope and slid it under his arm.

  The three stood there in their little circle talking without a break in the flow until the flight was on final call. I was playing a little game with myself over which one of the other guys would board with Davitsky.

  As it turned out, the game was on me.

  Ed Jones sauntered into that circle as the final call was going down. Davitsky handed him a ticket envelope and a boarding pass, shook hands with the other two, then he and Jones strolled to the boarding gate.

  There I sat with my hardware stashed in my car.

  Jones was no doubt wearing his. A public badge will get you through the weapons check. A private one will not, which is why I was not wearing mine.

  Uppermost in my mind, of course, was the idea that "Mom" must know for damn sure by now that someone had played a telephone game in the middle of the night; but still he was going on to Honolulu.

  So I what-the-helled it and hurried over to the check-in and gave the guy a stock urgency pitch. He took me to the gate and passed me on to the boss stewardess, a pretty woman with a patient smile who no doubt had handled many last-minute no-ticket passengers. She took my Visa card and sent me on inside. It was a DC-10. I caught a glimpse of Davitsky and Jones seating themselves in the First Class cabin. I went the other way, of course, toward the tail, where I planned to remain until we reached the Fiftieth state.

  Don't ask what I was doing there.

  I did not know myself, at the time.

  It just seemed that my "case" was moving to Hawaii. And I could see no point whatever to my remaining behind.

  So, what the hell.

  Aloha.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A DC-10 IS one big airplane. When you think about it, you wonder how the damned thing gets off the ground. Guess I never really understood the principles of flight—and I also guess, when you get right down to it, that I don't want to understand. Some things are better just taken on faith. For me, airplanes and flying fit that category. Probably wouldn't bother me at all if I was sitting up there flying the sucker myself; assuming, of course, that I knew how. I don't like to feel helpless in any situation. Like even in a car. I want to be the guy with the hand on the wheel and the foot on the accelerator. On a packed freeway, of course, hurtling along within a tight clump of speeding vehicles, that in-charge feeling is probably ninety-nine percent sheer illusion. But at least there is comfort in the illusion. All you get on one of these big airplanes is a feeling of total dependency on other people's competence. You can't even see the guy who's flying it; hell, if you're back in the tail, he's a block away. I even have to assume that somebody is flying this sucker. Could be a machine up there flying this machine, so far as I knew.

  As I started to say, the DC-10 is a big machine, so I had no particular worry about encountering Davitsky or Jones while we were in the ai
r. All the seats were not filled but there were still, I figured, more than three hundred people aboard, and just about all of those were seated between me and those two. Also, the First Class cabin, as usual, was draped off from the other cabins while in flight.

  I had the very last window seat and nobody was assigned to the aisle seat beside me— which was good because my body does not fit well into these tight spaces. Soon as we were airborne I pulled down the window shade, pulled a blanket up over my head and went to sleep. It had, after all, been an eventful twenty- four hours with damned little sleepytime. It was a five-hour flight, and I slept all the way.

  One nice thing about jetting west is that you can pick up five hours of sleep while the clock ticks off only three. We landed at seven- thirty on the dot, Honolulu time. I was among the last to leave the plane, though. Did not want to tip my hand at this stage of things and felt pretty well assured that I knew where these guys were headed.

  However, I did pick up a little bonus inside the terminal.

  Davitsky and Jones were standing off to the side of the swirl of deplaning passengers, obviously waiting for something. They were not looking my way. I stepped off to the other side and lit a cigarette—which is usually the first thing I do when I come out of an airplane. It was then I spotted the bewitching Belinda. She was walking fast and looking anxious; late for the pickup, no doubt.

  No doubt was right. She spotted my turkeys and went straight for them. I winced as she seemed to hug Davitsky, then watched as he introduced her to Ed Jones. Jones shook her hand and said something in deadpan. She said something back, semi-deadpan. I said to myself okay, damn it, and watched them walk away.

  I was going to tag along at a distance but then I got another bonus.

  My pal Billy Inyoko materialized from out of the crowd and put an arm on me. First time I'd seen him in the flesh in a long time but it could have been yesterday for all he'd changed.

  Let's get it into the record, here. Billy is a fourth-generation islander and a one hundred percent American—one hundred ten percent American cop. No Mr. Moto here, understand; no inscrutable oriental. One of my suits would probably come apart and make three for him, but the size of a man has to do with a lot more than physical dimensions. This guy was very large in my respect.

  He said to me in an almost chiding tone, "If you'd told me you were coming I'd have arranged a lei reception for you."

  I replied, "Yeah, well, I didn't tell myself until I saw those buzzards getting on the plane together. Did you eyeball them?"

  "Davitsky and friend, yes," he said. We were following along far to the rear of the passenger flow. "Who is this friend?"

  I told Billy who is the friend, and I'd told him all I knew about the guy by the time we got outside. We stood in the crowd and watched while the three subjects climbed into a waiting limousine and took off. Another car rolled smoothly to the curb and a door flew open in front of us. Billy pushed me toward it.

  We got in; Billy introduced me to the driver—guy named Howie, which is purely a phonetic spelling because the guy is Hawaiian and I don't know from all those vowels in the lingo—and we took off in pursuit of the limo.

  I reminded my pal, "Thought this island was too small for a tangle with our politicos. So how come you're here to greet the man?"

  He in turn reminded me, "I'm a cop."

  "You were a cop last time I talked to you, few hours ago."

  "But that was before I found an angle on all this."

  "What angle?"

  He showed me a tight smile. "String of unsolved murders, Joe."

  "How long's the string?"

  "Long enough maybe to stretch from Los Angeles to Honolulu."

  "That long."

  "Yeah."

  I asked, "Starting when?"

  "Starting nearly a year ago. There have been four deaths with similar patterns. Last one was about a month ago."

  "What's the angle on Davitsky?"

  He gave me an oblique smile. "He was on the island for every one."

  "Yeah, that's an angle."

  "Or a coincidence. But I have to check it out. Right?"

  "Right."

  He said, "This boy Jones ... how long with Davitsky?"

  "Not that long, I think. He was in Germany until six months ago."

  "Your deaths on the mainland," Billy said. "All young girls?"

  "Them, too, but also a gay bartender pimp and a kinky cop. It started as girls."

  Billy nodded, then told me, "We seem to have a serial killer on our island, Joe. Either that or we've got one of yours who comes here for his kick."

  I asked, "How high the kick?"

  "High as it goes, I guess. It's the sadistic sex routine. All our girls died very hard."

  "Ritualistic sadism?"

  "Coroner thinks so. One of them was pretty badly decomposed and the sharks had been at her before she washed up. But on the other three he points to evidence of wrist and ankle clamps, other types of restraint devices. All of them had their sex organs practically ripped out of them."

  "You've got a sick one."

  "Maybe we've both got a sick one—maybe the same one. If yours is mine, Joe, you've got yourself a really terminally sick son of a bitch, let me tell you. Wait 'til you see these girls."

  I told him, "I don't want to see your girls, pal. Have enough trouble sleeping as it is most nights. What do you have to tell me about Linda Shelton?"

  "Nothing much. Came in like you said. Rented a car and drove out to Davitsky's place. Stayed inside the whole time until she came back for Davitsky."

  "What kind of place does he have out there?"

  "Big joint. Estate. Several acres."

  "On the water?"

  "Sure. Boat docks. Helicopter pad. Very swank."

  "Service staff?"

  "That's one of the oddities," Billy said thoughtfully. "Just an old couple there, like caretakers—live in a garage apartment, I take it. You'd think a multimillion dollar joint like that would rate a couple of maids, if nothing else."

  I said, "Well, if you bring your own maids with you . . . and you have a need for privacy . . . and if you want to keep your dungeons off limits—"

  "I don't want to find anything like that out there, Joe."

  "Does that mean you're going looking?"

  He gave me a sharp glance, settled back into his seat. "Of course I'm not. You are going looking."

  Fancy that. It was exactly what I had in mind. But I was feeling a trace of discomfort with what Billy Inyoko might have in his.

  Chapter Nineteen

  OUR FIFTIETH STATE has a rather unique political setup. There are only two levels of local government, state and county. Honolulu itself is both city and county, coextensive to include the entire island of Oahu. It may surprise you, as it did me, that Honolulu is now ranked as the eleventh largest U.S. city, with a population close to a million. There is no municipal government, however.

  Southern California could maybe take a lesson here. Because there is only one police department for the entire island. Police-wise, there is but one level of government; there are no state police, Jack Lord and Hawaii-Five-0 notwithstanding. So there are no jurisdictional lines and/or political squabbling over police responsibilities. The Honolulu department polices the whole island, and they do it quite well.

  I give you that little bit of background just in case you are wondering about Billy's reach beyond Diamond Head. It's like telling an L.A. city cop to go make a collar in Santa Monica or Glendale. He can't do it, not legally, which causes a bunch of problems in an area where invisible political lines create artificial distinctions for law enforcement. But that kind of problem does not exist on Oahu.

  It must have been a twenty-five- to thirty- minute run from the airport to Davitsky's home away from home. Diamond Head, in case you've never been there, is that majestic headland rising to the southeast of Waikiki Beach that you see on all the postcards. Actually it is the cratered remains of an extinct volcano that blew its
head off in prehistoric times. It also marks a corner of the island. Go on around Diamond Head and you start heading slightly northerly for the first time since leaving Honolulu International. It is a very picturesque area—the Kahala coast—and quite a relief from the highrise jumble at Waikiki. There are also some fine homes in the area, of which Davitsky's was probably not the finest nor even the most impressive.

  It was impressive enough, however.

  A beautifully rolling lawn with flowering tropical shrubberies and trees behind white walls provided a pleasing framework for the rambling low-profile residence. Two smaller but similar buildings nestled close by, the whole thing seemingly connected by covered walkways and further laced together by whatever they call a patio in Hawaii—lanai, maybe? Whatever, it was a nice effect as viewed through Howie's binoculars.

  The limo dropped the subjects and headed back toward town, so I figured it for a hire and Billy confirmed that. Two other cars were standing outside the garages. One of them, according to my astute Honolulu colleague, was registered in the state to Davitsky and the other had been rented at the airport by Linda Shelton on her arrival earlier.

  We watched the three inside. There was no evidence that anyone else was present there.

  My hosts then took me on to a swank hotel nearby, not your standard digs for the budget vacation, but what the hell, I'd already shot my budget for the next two months; what did it matter. But it turns out that Billy has a friend in management there, so I got visiting-head-of-state treatment at a rate that had to be pure honorarium. Didn't even seem to matter that I checked in without luggage; Billy took care of the formalities and handed me my key.

  He also handed me the keys and claim check to a car and a validated temporary permit to carry a gun. Which was great except I had no gun to carry. Billy told me to look in the glove box and he also asked that I conduct my visit with all possible discretion and decorum. I promised to do that, and I promised also to keep him informed of all developments.

  Then he left me to my own devices.