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

by Don Pendleton

All this is standard surveillance routine. I wasn't trying to be cute. This is the way it's done, easy as pie. After the setups I sit up front in comfort with the remotes and anyone passing by or even looking in wouldn't know what is going on there.

  The van itself is never a problem, either. Magnetic decals go on and off in a whisk, and I have several different sets. For this job, in a business environment, I used Southland Communications, suggesting a private telephone outfit—of which, now, there are many in this area. The meter maids tend to look the other way if it's a public-utility-type vehicle at the curb, and actually the utility vans are becoming as common as taxicabs in today's complex urban environments and so they seldom raise an eyebrow in any setting.

  I had only two subjects during the first hour—both store employees—none at all the second hour and only four across the balance of the morning.

  Quite a yawn. The client wanted a log—he'd even provided the forms for it—showing the precise time at which each frame of film was exposed. My camera does that automatically, actually imprinting the time of exposure on the film itself, so I scrawled "See Film" across the printed form and put it back in the envelope. Once the telephoto lens was focused on the setup mark, all I had to do was sit there in my captain's seat and press the remote shutter button at the appropriate times. The video took care of itself; all I had to do was change the tape a few times and I lost nothing during those brief episodes.

  It was not my idea of a fun day. There was a bit of a flurry during the lunch hour, but by two o'clock— halfway through the surveillance period—I had pushed the button on a total of four men and ten women, none of them especially remarkable or memorable. I did not push it again until a few seconds past six as the employees were locking up and departing.

  It had been a totally uneventful and crashingly boring day, all that I had expected it to be.

  I delivered the exposed film per the printed instructions, passing it off to the same uniformed chauffeur of the same limousine at the corner of Melrose and La Brea at precisely ten minutes past the hour. He was alone in the car and acknowledged the delivery with nothing but a grin as he eased on around the corner with the film in his lap.

  I went on up the street and found a pancake house for some quick food—I'd had nothing but a dry sandwich all day—and I was sitting there within five minutes of the job when the whole area came alive with sirens and the heavy rumble of firefighting equipment. It was now nearly seven o'clock and I was dawdling over coffee, content to kill some time and allow the early evening traffic to relax a bit before heading home.

  But all the noise and a glow in the sky coaxed me back onto the streets and flowing with it back toward the scene of the day's activities. I could not get within two blocks of it. I did learn that there had been a massive explosion and that a whole row of buildings were burning. By the time I worked my way to the barricades on foot, it appeared that half the city's firefighters and ambulances were on the scene and still the sirens were howling in.

  I satisfied myself that NuCal Designs was indeed at the heart of that conflagration and I even had a few words with a fire captain and a guy from arson, enough to produce a bit of nausea in the pit of my stomach. These guys were talking bomb, numerous casualties.

  I returned to the valley and went to work on my videotapes. I had ten hours of mostly nothing on those tapes, compressible to about fifteen minutes of meaningful activity, but there also could be useful peripheral activity—both video and audio—and I wanted to see if the impersonal staring eye of that camera had recorded anything that my own glazed- over eyes had missed.

  I have a pretty neat video-processing lab, thanks to a client who couldn't afford my tab but wanted to show his appreciation and was no longer into the video game anyway, so passed his toys on in lieu of cash. I don't normally barter for services, but I have to say that I came out on the better end of that deal. I can edit, mix, combine, amplify and copy at high speed, add text and all sorts of special effects—just about anything the pros can do—and I do make good use of this equipment. I keep it at home because there's more room there, but it is part of my business inventory.

  Still, it was close onto midnight before I'd satisfied myself that there was nothing obviously hot on those tapes. Two different subjects had carried small packages into NuCal Designs but both were women and both had carried similar packages out with them. There was nothing else of any real interest on the tapes. I copied the pieces I wanted and took the original tapes over to the sheriffs station and left them along with an explanatory note for a friend in the detective division, Ken Forta. Used to work with the guy, and we keep in touch.

  In case you're wondering about confidentiality and the client relationship, forget it. All that goes out the window in a situation like this. Besides, I was already beginning to feel that I had been used somehow and maybe compromised, somehow, by this "client" who undoubtedly had come to me under a false name in a hired limousine. I had taken the precaution of noting the license tag on that boat—it's an easy one: Star 5, and I left that for Forta too.

  I didn't really know what to think about any of it. I just felt vaguely uneasy and was taking some precautions to help keep myself clean in the matter, whatever the matter was.

  There was nothing but a formless worry in my own gut to connect my surveillance of the day with the explosion and fire that followed. It could be coincidence, even if it did turn out that the building had indeed been bombed. Moore's "trap" could be as innocent as he claimed, and maybe the guy would check out clean.

  I was pulled out of bed by a call from Forta at seven the next morning. He told me that Star 5 was the property of Starway Limousines of Hollywood—and when had I last seen that car?

  I told him.

  He said, "That's very interesting."

  "What's so interesting?"

  "The vehicle was destroyed by a car-bomb at about eight o'clock last night," he informed me as only a cop can do when he's speaking for effect. "So were its two occupants."

  "Really."

  "Uh huh. The boss wants words with you, Joe. Come on in."

  So of course I went on in. I was involved, it seemed, in something considerably less benign than a disinformation campaign. Could I even be regarded as an accessory to murder?

  If so I could stop worrying about the financial- security angle. The state takes full care of all us stupid folk.

  I didn't know what I'd done, for whom or to what effect. And I was scared to find out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had a rough two hours with the county of Los Angeles. Forta's boss is not what most of us would call a nice guy. He's vain, self-important, politically ambitious. We had equal rank when I was with the county, but even then he was commanding a desk downtown and we had occasion to butt heads a few times. Now he's a division commander—but I'm not going to say which one and I'm not even going to call the guy by his real name; he's the kind that would sue me. Let's just call him Edgar.

  I met Forta at the substation and we went downtown in his car. Edgar had a hard-on for LAPD. He'll never pass up an opportunity to embarrass them in any small way, and he near trembles like with passion over a chance to upstage them. I think this all started when Daryl Gates, the L. A. chief, snubbed Edgar at a joint press conference some years back. That is how small this guy is.

  Anyway, I tumbled real quick to his movement with me. My office is located in an area that is under the direct jurisdiction of the sheriffs department; my town contracts the services from the county. The two bombing incidents—which right now were the hottest items in town—occurred in LAPD jurisdiction. My possible involvement in the bombings opened the door for Edgar to launch an independent investigation.

  This guy was in hot pursuit for my butt and I knew it. He wanted to at least establish a reasonable basis for an interest in the case, one that he could sell upstairs.

  So, as I said, I had a rough two hours.

  Edgar knew that I had not consciously conspired to kill, maim or
inflame in Hollywood. But he did want to entertain the notion, and he's clever enough to put together a few little inconsistencies to make it look like maybe I had.

  Why, for example, should someone pay me thirteen hundred dollars to take fourteen snapshots of a building he was going to burn down that same evening?

  Obviously, I replied, the two events are not connected.

  Then why did I elect to betray confidentiality and turn my evidence over if I had not thought there was a connection?

  Because I had thought that possibly the camera could have picked up something that would lead to the identity of the bomber, so I wanted to make it available for close scrutiny.

  Why had I not turned the tape over to my client?

  Because the client had not contracted for the tape. He'd asked for stills. He got the stills.

  Well, if the client had not contracted the tape, why had I gone to all that trouble to create the tape?

  It was no trouble at all. The equipment was right there. I used it.

  To what end?

  For my own records. (Weak, weak.)

  Do I always keep such records?

  Not always.

  So why this time?

  Well, I really knew nothing about the client, and he was acting mysterious and didn't even want me to see my own pictures . . . No, that's not right, a lot of afterthought is coloring this—I had nothing like that in mind at the time—it was just a backup, that's all, a backup in case the other equipment went haywire.

  But I'd just said that I don't always use backup systems.

  I'd just said no such damned thing. What I said is that I don't always keep a videotape record. Back off. I think it should be very obvious why I brought in this tape. Now if you can't see the obvious then give me back my damned tape. I didn't come in here to . . .

  Sure, I played right into his arrogant little hands. He pushed my buttons and I reacted the way he knew I would. Now he's got a belligerent suspect in hand and he's beginning to squeeze.

  If I'd completed the assignment at six o'clock and delivered the film a few minutes later, how is it that I was still on the scene when the building blew at seven o'clock?

  Had I actually placed the film in the chauffeur's hand at the corner of Melrose and La Brea?—or didn't I in fact get into the limo at that point for another meeting with my client? And was there really any film, after all?

  Could I verify my whereabouts during the two hours between six o'clock, when I completed the assignment, and eight o'clock, when the limousine exploded and killed its two occupants?

  Did I in fact shoot that video on the day in question, or was it shot at some prior time to check out the movements in and around that doomed building?

  Could I offer any explanation for why my client was killed in a second bombing even before the flames from the first had subsided?—and would I consider that a deliberate act of murder or as an ironic accident?

  And would I, finally, keep myself available for further questions in the matter?

  I told the guy to go to hell and went out of there in a rage. Forta was sympathetic, but after we'd returned to his car he pointed out, "He did ask some valid questions there, Joe."

  I had to admit that was true.

  I also knew that I was lucky to walk out of there with my license intact. It takes a full hearing to revoke it entirely—and some very good evidence of criminality or "malfeasance" to make it stick—but any department anywhere in the state can temporarily suspend a license in their jurisdiction, pending formal charges.

  I told Ken Forta, "Valid questions, sure, but the guy already knows the answers. He just wants to stand on my nose to reach into Daryl's cookie jar, and you know it as well as I do. I asked you to convey that tape to LAPD, Ken. Why didn't you do it?"

  "I did, after I made a copy for the boss. I've been up all night on this thing. It's going to be a hot potato, make no mistake about it, especially once the facts are made public."

  "What facts are those?"

  "Well, I mean, you know, the true identity of your client."

  I was getting the tickles at the back of the neck. "What true identity is that?"

  "Well, I just meant—I figured you knew—one of the men who died in the limousine—you didn't know that?"

  "Know what?"

  "It was Bernie Wiseman."

  "What Bernie Wiseman?! The guy at—?"

  "The president at United Talents, yeah. That Bernie Wiseman. You didn't know? Joe, I figured you were just standing on confidentiality. You really didn't know?"

  Of course not. I really did not know a thing. I was just a hungry jerk hired by the wonder boy of motion pictures to close a trap on his enemies, and the trap had closed on him—maybe me, too—before I could even know who I was looking for.

  United Talents under Wiseman had scored box- office smash after smash and was moving in on the network and pay-television markets.

  Wiseman had just survived an inside power play to oust him as head of the studio. He'd been reconfirmed by his board of directors and given an even stronger hand in his stated determination to dominate the entertainment industry, and he'd been the talk of the town for weeks.

  All that, of course, was strictly outside my league so I knew nothing but the name and the talk.

  So how was I supposed to recognize the guy when he came calling in a rented limo and a false identity?

  It would take a while to quiet my head and try to pull the pieces together.

  As it turned out, I did not have that kind of time. I'd been written into a crazy Hollywood script as an entirely expendable character. I would have to awaken to that truth very soon ... or burn with it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Forta took me on over to the city of Los Angeles and introduced me to Abe Johnson, the guy in charge of the investigation for LAPD. Johnson gave me an enthusiastic handshake and acted like we were old friends too long parted. I couldn't remember him. He asked, "How does it feel to run naked through the wild and woolly jungle with no paydays and no benefit package?"

  "Wild and woolly..." I said, trying to place the guy. I was with the city for a while, some years back, and I was sure I'd never worked with the guy; my memory is not that bad. Johnson is black and a native of Arkansas, big guy with an engaging smile and interested eyes. LAPD does not hire upper ranks from outside the department, they promote from within. I approve of that. You don't make lieutenant quickly at LAPD, so I knew that the guy had been around for a while. Maybe we'd met once at a departmental social, a picnic or ballgame. Whatever, I liked this cop right off.

  He said, "Thanks for the tape, Joe. The lab boys have been scrutinizing it all day."

  "Anything yet?"

  "Some interesting murmurs now and then on the soundtrack."

  "Well, you're ahead of me there. I didn't take time to screen the audio, just ran a quick scan and picked off the video subjects for my own file before surrendering the tape. What kind of murmurs?"

  "Oh, very angry sounds—from the interior of the shop, we presume. What kind of mike were you using?"

  "Directional barrels. So the audio pickup was directly off the shop windows."

  "They'd rattle from either direction though, wouldn't they."

  "Yeah, but differently. Your technicians will be able to tell the difference. It's subtle but—"

  "Well, we thank you for the tape. It could mean a lot. We got another break, too, a lead on a young woman who apparently was involved."

  I had a quick mental picture of long legs and impenetrable sunglasses. I pulled out a chair and sat down and told all to Abe Johnson.

  He jotted notes as I talked, nodding his head in agreement with certain information that seemed to coincide with something else he already had, but no questions and no interruptions until I'd told what I had. Then he told me what he had. I was liking the guy more and more.

  "That ties pretty well. Your blond is probably the same woman we're looking for. Her name is Melissa

  Franklin. She's an a
ctress and she's been seen a lot recently with Wiseman."

  "How did you tie her in?"

  "She was observed by one of our traffic units getting out of the limousine just moments before it exploded. She moved to another vehicle that was parked at the curb just behind the limousine. The kids on traffic detail would never miss one like this. Our boy watched her pull away and even noted the license plate on her car. He was half a block down the street and right behind her when the limousine blew. She kept right on going but he doubled back immediately to cover the trouble."

  "But he had her tags."

  "He had 'em—we love these personalized tags, you know. They stay in the mind."

  "I'd like to meet the lady."

  "Don't worry, you will. Soon as we run her down. Hasn't lived at her DMV address for more than six months. Wiseman's place is in Bel Air, and apparently he lived alone. The housekeeper knows Melissa Franklin but not much about her. But we'll run her down."

  I glanced at Ken Forta as I asked Johnson, "Is there any question about the car bomb? Could it have been accidental?"

  "We wondered about that after we got your report—but the explosives were fixed to the frame of the vehicle and wired to a timer. It blew straight up through the floorboards, the gas tank exploded too. Made a mess, Joe. We were lucky to get ID on the victims."

  "How good is that ID?"

  "Good enough. Wiseman had hired the car for the

  day but he took it as your same Albert Moore. That corroborates your report. He wanted to pay cash but he also wanted to use his own driver, so the agency insisted on a cash or credit security deposit equal to the replacement value of the vehicle. So the guy calling himself Albert Moore shows up with a credit bond drawn on United Talents under the signature of Bernard Wiseman. In other words, the studio is guaranteeing the security of the vehicle but it's checked out to Albert Moore."

  "And the driver?"

  "The driver is Albert Moore. We've verified his chauffeur's permit with DMV."

  "No—you see, Abe—Albert Moore is—"

  "I know, I know." Johnson waved me off. "But there really is an Albert Moore—or was—and he really was a chauffeur on United Talents' payroll, drove a limo every day almost identical to the Starway vehicle. Moore rented the limo and United Talents guaranteed the security. Maybe it sounds too cutesy but it would work to keep Wiseman's name out of the record if things had gone okay. So what do you think was going on, Joe? Why did Wiseman go to all that trouble to conceal his identity?"