Copp On Ice, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series)

by Don Pendleton

  "I like you better with your hair down," I told her. "And, uh, I didn't mind what you held against me."

  She actually blushed, started to say something but changed her mind and went on out. I followed her to the door just to see that walk again, but immediately the walk became a run and I joined it.

  Two loud gunshots had come from directly outside, and everyone in there was running toward the sound.

  Someone yelled, "Call the paramedics!" just as I stepped outside. There was a lot of confusion in the vehicle yard, uniformed cops milling about and a sergeant shouting orders.

  Taxidriver and Sidewise were slumped in the same car they'd taken me for a ride in earlier.

  Each had a bubbling bullet hole in the forehead.

  Good cops? Maybe. Maybe not.

  Dead cops, for sure.

  The first bolt of lightning had struck already.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The difference can be wafer thin between a good police department and a bad one, hardly noticeable at all from the outside because of the procedures and protocols that have evolved to produce the modern police machine. Even a terribly bad department can look like a good one if what you are looking at is the machine itself. If it's modern, it's a good machine.

  This one was entirely modern, having been built almost entirely over the past decade with all the proper materials in place. It was not that these people did not know how to police; the problem was that they had lately lost the will to do so.

  In the immediate aftermath of the execution-style slaying of two of its officers right outside its doors, this department at least momentarily regained that will, the machine hummed, and all the right things happened as if by magic. I was witness to admirable efficiency. The scene was secured, order restored and evidence preserved, the proper teams assembled and the investigation launched with all the smoothness I'd ever seen anywhere—and yet this was a department in shock. You could see it in the faces and feel it in the surrounding atmosphere as trained responses took over to guide stunned officers in their duties.

  All that should have been done was being done, and well. This is the way it works when it's working right; there is nothing for a chief to do when all the Indians are doing their parts. Police chiefs are largely administrators, which is largely why I'd never had any ambition to run a department. I'm a cop and I always loved the work itself, not the administration of it.

  I'm trying to explain why I was not directly involved in the official investigation of the murders on my front porch. The machine was humming, and there is no place in the machine for an administrator. I could see that it was humming and that the best thing for me to do was to stand clear and let it hum. I'd sized it all up in a single look anyway. The victims had been among the last to leave the midnight meeting. They were not on duty, not even assigned to the same units. The car in which they'd died was the only unofficial vehicle in the yard. It was Taxidriver's personal car, registered to him. The key was in the ignition, engine idling in parking gear. Each victim had been shot once in the head at close range.

  My personal, snap conclusion was that they had been waiting out there for a third party when someone familiar and trusted had approached and fired without warning. Their weapons were undisturbed in their holsters and one of the detectives had been smoking a cigarette when he died. I could leave it to the machine to develop all the hard facts and work out an official theory of the crimes. What was left for me were gut feelings and a personal theory which I had to deal with by myself and for myself.

  Possibly those guys had died as a direct result of the little roust they'd pulled on me earlier that day. I felt that I had to look at it that way. The machine itself would be looking at the alternative explanations: grudge killing, random violence, whatever. I was not there to solve incidental crimes; I was there to discover why the city of Brighton was falling apart, what was wrong inside the police department, and who would have reason to try to intimidate the new city administrator.

  I figured that the best way to accomplish my personal objectives would be to follow up on the angle arising from the hostile actions by and against the two dead detectives. Who'd sicced them on me? Why? And were the answers related to their own deaths?

  So I followed Detective Turner when she left there that night. What the hell, why not? She was the only visible link I had, and there was no compelling reason whatever to believe anything she'd told me during that interview in my office moments before her erstwhile partners were gunned down in the very shadow of that office.

  There was another thought too.

  Maybe she was in danger herself.

  She was an easy tail, driving a jeep-type vehicle with distinctive lights and high profile.

  I was in the unmarked official car reserved for the chief and I kept well back, giving her plenty of play, secure in the idea that I could keep her in sight and well within closing range at that time of night without giving away the tail.

  The older sections of Brighton have narrow, tree-lined streets with few thoroughfares and a stop sign at virtually every intersection, inspiring me to get almost too cute with

  my footwork. I started turning off the track to run a parallel street every other block or so, pacing my speed to hers and checking her through the intersections from the parallel course—which was okay except that I was not that familiar with the territory and we hit the big east-west boulevard. Foothill, which marks the beginning of the spread of the city into the higher elevations, while I was running parallel.

  The street plan changes at that point so I could have lost her if she'd squirted across Foothill and into the maze of new development. The intersections up there are sometimes half a mile apart and separated by intricate patterns of odd-shaped subdivisions with circular streets and cul- de-sacs enough to drive you batty; you don't want to venture into those areas at night without a guide.

  I got lucky. She'd pulled into a donut shop on Foothill. A police cruiser was parked there also, two uniformed officers were seated inside, and Turner was standing at the table conversing with them when I eased past.

  I went on down to a 7-Eleven just beyond the donut shop and waited for her there. It was a short wait, only a couple of minutes, then she barreled east right past me along Foothill. Even at that time of night the traffic along that boulevard is respectable, which made it easier to tag closer to the jeep without fear of discovery.

  Used to be, back before the freeways were built, that section of Foothill was the famous Route 66 immortalized in song, the main passage in and out of Los Angeles for folks back east wherever. Still has a few small motels and eateries but mostly now the old boulevard has been caught up in the development fever and offers an almost endless array of upscale shopping centers and other commercial establishments, glitzy restaurants, fast food joints, service

  stations and all the other requirements of a bustling population center.

  Generally, the homes above Foothill are priced in the three to four hundred thousand dollar range, those south of the boulevard beginning to age and give way to apartment complexes and other lower-range alternatives which tend to present the larger police problem for such a city.

  Brighton even has its own version of the barrio. It also has a redlight district, drive-by shootings—mostly the result of gang activity—and an adjacent unincorporated section where anything goes and usually does.

  To the people located north of Foothill, though, all of that is out of sight and largely out of mind, and north is where most of the people and practically all of the influential people of Brighton live. A three hundred thousand dollar home can be hard to swing on a cop's salary, so I doubt that many of the cops in this town live north; I suspect that most of them live somewhere outside of Brighton.

  I had no idea where Turner was leading me, of course, but I'd assumed that she was headed homeward and I wanted a look at where she lived and how she lived, so I was a bit surprised when she eventually swung north and began climbing into a ritzy area abov
e Foothill. But now I had to lay back too much and play games with my headlamps, and I could not always keep her insight in the tumble of hills, curves, and switchbacks. Finally I lost her entirely, had to rely on my prowling instincts, found her car five minutes later tucked onto a hillside drive below a veritable mansion.

  Forget three or four hundred thousand; this one was a cool mil at market bottom, and it was blazing with lights at two a.m. I knew she could not live there, unless Daddy was a millionaire. Looked like three levels of mostly glass front, overlooking the valley like some baronial estate, walled grounds with security decals on the gates and conspicuous Guard Dog warning signs. I jotted the address and cruised on by, parked around the next curve and hiked back for a closer look.

  The jeep was parked outside the gates. There was also a pedestrian gate equipped with a CCTV-Intercom device. I kept out of camera range, couldn't see anything anyway. Wondered, too, about Guard Dog. Not for long. Didn't see him but heard his presence just beyond the gate, a deepthroated growling, then heard a handler shushing him.

  I went on back to my car, turned around and re-parked where I could keep the driveway in view, waited. Again, not long. I'd been on the scene for about ten minutes when three quick gunshots broke the peace up there. Sounded like a handgun and almost certainly on the grounds, not within the mansion.

  Before I could react, the jeep backed out of the drive and headed down the hill with its lights off. I went after it, heard yelling and cussing followed immediately by alarm sirens as I passed the driveway, turned on my headlamps then and tried to close on the jeep.

  Didn't even find the jeep.

  A police cruiser tore past me wailing and flashing as I approached the boulevard. Quick response. Turned on my radio, then, and tried to catch the play but there was no play. So I picked up the mike and checked in. "This is Copp. What's the play above Foothill?"

  A female dispatcher responded, "Gunfire report, Chief, Ellenmount area. I've dispatched a patrol unit to check it out."

  "Back 'em up," I ordered. "The disturbance is at 726 Craggy Lane."

  "Got that," responded a cool male voice. "Unit four- oh-one responding."

  "Beware of guard dog," I told him.

  "Ten-four."

  I waited while another unit was dispatched to the scene, then I requested a spot on the jeep, gave the license number. The dispatcher replied, "That's, uh, a restricted."

  I said, "Right. I just want a location spot."

  Another car checked in: "She just passed me on Montezuma, headed into Helltown."

  "Helltown?"

  "Zone Four." the dispatcher explained.

  Zone Four or Forty made no difference to me, I was a stranger in town, but you have to be careful what you say on a police radio these days. Anyway, I could guess about Helltown—a place where anything goes, and usually does, a place outside the jurisdiction of the Brighton PD.

  I could leave it to the police machine to determine who had shot at what, and why. I wanted to know why Lila Boobs had run from that shooting and gone from the sublime to the ridiculous—the mountainside to the cesspool.

  So I went to Helltown too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A city, you know, is legally defined by its geographical boundaries as a political subdivision of a county, and a county is usually regarded as a political entity that is composed of cities, towns, villages and rural areas. The latter distinction does not always hold true, of course. The county of San Francisco, for example, contains nothing whatever outside the city of San Francisco. Some years back the city of Indianapolis extended its political boundaries to include the entire county of Marion and the two governments merged to form a single entity.

  The Los Angeles metropolitan area involves more than thirteen million residents, no less than five counties, and hundreds of cities. I meet people all the time who do not know which county they live in, and there are even those who are confused about which city they live in. Some do not even live within a city and are not aware of that. There is a blending and homogeneity within this area that blurs political distinctions for those who are not politically minded, as well as for some who are very much so.

  You can live in a highly developed section of Glendora, for example, that is almost indistinguishable from most other neighborhoods in that city—and your neighbor across the street is in the same neighborhood as you but he lives in Azusa, and most of the neighborhoods in Azusa are virtually indistinguishable from yours. You'll find in both towns the same names for theaters, supermarkets, drugstores, department stores, restaurants, and what have you. You will even find common streets which move serenely from city to city without changing names.

  Start in Azusa on Foothill Boulevard and drive east to San Bernardino—a distance of some thirty-five miles— and you will pass through the cities of Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona, Claremont, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Rialto as well as Brighton without ever touching a rural area and with virtually the same street scene from beginning to end.

  But you have passed through a lot of police jurisdictions and you have briefly encountered several unincorporated zones between cities, some in Los Angeles County and some in San Bernardino County. The unincorporated zones are policed—well, sort of—by the respective county sheriffs departments.

  "Helltown" is one such zone, and it represents the worse result of conflicting political and jurisdictional responsibilities. None of the neighboring cities want any piece of Helltown, and of course Helltown does not desire any notice by those cities. There are no zoning or development restrictions, no police presence of any consequence, and of course no local government interference whatever. You can drive through Helltown in twenty seconds flat—it's just a narrow strip of boulevard separating two cities—or you could get stuck there for the rest of your life, which can be very short in that strip.

  I'd never worked in this area—L.A. County ends at Claremont, a few miles west—but I'd spent off-duty time there now and then just to catch the color. There's plenty of color, if you don't care what you catch. It's a tumble of sleazy, room-by-the-hour motels, porno shops, saloons, nudie dives and liquor stores—yet the briskest business going down at any time of night or day is along the curbs and sidewalks where you can catch anything from rock cocaine to AIDS and syphilis without even getting out of your car.

  All I wanted to catch, this time, was a gorgeous female vice cop who'd helped set me up for a fall even before I knew what I was falling into. And I caught her there, yeah, all the while wishing that I had not.

  I looked for the jeep and found her in a joint calling itself The Dee-light Zone, a whiskey and pizza emporium featuring topless (and largely bottomless) waitresses and two naked girls in a cage suspended above the bar who, one would have thought, were crazy in love with each other. I wondered how boring it must get for those kids to stand there and paw each other all night long, but they didn't seem to have reached that point yet.

  There were other cages to the rear, bathed in flickering blue light and offering opportunities for patrons who could afford it and loved to be teased to "Cage Up" with a naked kid of their choice—the sex is facsimile rather than the real thing, but for some I guess it's sex enough for the moment. Joints like these learned long ago that they're better off policing themselves. House rules are usually strictly en-

  forced by brawny bouncers with ever-watchful eyes and eager instincts, so the action usually stays within the legal limit.

  Things were winding down in The Dee-light Zone when I got there, thanks to the two o'clock liquor curfew. Not even a joint like this one—especially a joint like this one—is willing to flout the liquor laws—because a suspended license is the quickest way to shut them down. So they typically announce a "last call" at the bar at about one-thirty. You can stack your drinks then if you want but it all has to be down the gullet by two, at which time all unfinished drinks are whisked away and you are stuck with non-alcoholic beverages and whatever food may be available, if the house rema
ins open. This house never closed, it just shifted gears a bit during the dry hours.

  So the bar was dry when I got there but the pizzas were still coming out of the kitchen. There was a sign behind the bar promising "Breakfast From 4 a.m." for the all-nighters and/or early risers, but no booze between two and six.

  Place was still about half full, thirty to forty patrons, probably almost that many employees if you count bouncers and all. Seemed to be a hangout of sorts, much talk back and forth between tables as though everyone knew everyone else, and certainly the technically naked waitresses seemed at home and comfortable with the patrons, making a lot of eye and body contact whenever circumstances allowed.

  Detective Turner sat in a booth along the back wall with a man of about fifty. Solid looking guy, casually dressed but very neat. They were sipping coffees and the conversation was very sober. I grabbed a chair and placed it at the end of their table, sat down with a smile, said, "Got here as fast as I could."

  I could read nothing in Turner's face—not surprise, not joy, not sorrow, not anything. She was a total blank. The guy looked from her to me, put a spoon in his coffee and stirred it as he asked, "Who the hell are you?"

  "Here, I'm nobody," I replied, still smiling. "Two blocks west I'm the chief of police."

  He spilled it in two soft words, delivered without feeling: "Joe Copp."

  "That's the one. Which one are you?"

  He was a blank too. "I'm Tim Murray."

  "Ex-chief of police," I acknowledged quietly, hoping my surprise wasn't showing.

  He replied, "That's the one."

  I looked at Turner. "That was a quick run from Craggy Lane."

  I got a flare there. A nostril quivered as she replied, "What were you doing on Craggy Lane, Chief?"

  "Keeping an eye on you," I told her soberly.