Cold War Copa

by Phil Swann

  “Wait here, Mr. Callaway.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, more than a little irritated.

  A minute went by, and I patiently waited. Five minutes went by, and I patiently waited, but after nearly fifteen minutes, my patience was spent. I stood up. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on? Anybody? I’ve been sitting here for—”

  “Sit down, Mr. Callaway,” Captain White said, coming back into the room.

  “Where’s Clegg? I thought you were getting Clegg.”

  “Mr. Callaway, here’s the situation. We have no record on anyone named Lydia Starr being murdered in the past two nights. We have no record of anyone named Ken Baldwin being involved. Furthermore, we have no record of you filing any such report. In short, Mr. Callaway, nobody here knows what the Sam Hill you’re talking about.”

  “This is crazy,” I yelled, jumping back up. “There is someone, his name is Clegg. He knows all about it. Not to mention the swarm of other cops who were at Ken’s house two nights ago.”

  “Mr. Callaway, there is no one, anywhere, in any position in any department on the Las Vegas Police force by the name of Clegg.”

  “What?” I replied.

  “You heard me, there is no one at LVPD named Clegg. No Officer Clegg, no Detective Clegg, no Captain Clegg, not even a secretary by that name.”

  “But, this can’t…I mean…I called him. I have his card right here.”

  “Let me see that,” White said, taking the card. “There’s no name on this card, and this number isn’t to any phone line here.”

  I fell back into the chair. It’s amazing how quickly one’s body temperature can change. A chill swept through me.

  Detective Barnard returned and handed White a note.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the detective answered.

  “What is that?” I asked. “Tell me.”

  “Mr. Callaway, we just had a patrol car roll up on a house owned by a Ken Baldwin in Paradise Estates.”

  “And?”

  “And they found Mr. Baldwin inside. Dead. It appears to be a suicide.”

  Chapter 8

  Given my age, I’m something of an odd bird insomuch as I don’t care for rock ’n’ roll music. I don’t despise it like many of my jazz brethren; it’s just not my preferred tonic of choice. Having said that, it was a current popular ditty by those four lads from England I was humming as Captain White and Detective Barnard ushered me down the cold concrete corridor of the Clark County morgue. The song was called “Help!”

  I don’t care how irrational the fear, I stand by the statement dead people are creepy, and dead people in morgues are even creepier. Furthermore, given the fact I didn’t believe for one instant Ken had committed suicide, dead people who’ve been murdered and are lying in a morgue for me to positively identify are the creepiest.

  It was all very clinical…and white. I was taken into a brightly lit room with a white floor, surrounded by white walls, where a corpse lay on a table under a white sheet. I took a breath and held it as an older man with white hair wearing a white lab coat pulled back the shroud. The figure was white, and I don’t mean Caucasian. I mean white, like a chicken that had just been pulled from the freezer. That, and the fact he wasn’t wearing his horn-rimmed glasses made Ken nearly unrecognizable. But it was him. He looked small and cold and very, very white, but it was him. I glanced at Captain White—of course that was his name—and nodded. White nodded to Detective Barnard, who nodded to the coroner. Ken’s head was covered, and I was escorted out of the room. I fell into a chair in the waiting area and put my face in my hands.

  “You okay?” Barnard asked.

  “I didn’t see a bullet hole,” I mumbled through my palms.

  “There is no bullet hole,” Barnard said. “He hanged himself in the shower.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I replied.

  “I’m afraid he did, Mr. Callaway,” White responded, stepping up beside Barnard.

  I looked up. “He might have died from hanging, but he didn’t do it to himself. I saw Ken last night. He was upset, but he wasn’t suicidal. In fact, he was exactly the opposite of suicidal. Ken was doing everything he could to keep from being killed. No, something else is going on. I found Lydia dead in Ken’s swimming pool, I called you guys, only it wasn’t you guys who showed up, it was a guy named Clegg and some other people. I’m telling you, something’s not right. Ken didn’t commit suicide.”

  “You’re a musician, is that correct, Mr. Callaway?” White asked.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So maybe you’ve been smoking or popping something funny lately? Something perhaps you’re not used to? Maybe you saw some things that—”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, coming out of my chair.

  “Look, we’re not vice. We’re not here to bust you. Detective Barnard, tell Mr. Callaway about that fella we had in a few nights ago.”

  Barnard smiled. “This guy came in who swore he’d just had a gunfight with Jessie James. Turns out he was watering his neighbor’s tree all night.”

  White said, “If you just tell us the truth, we can all—”

  “I don’t use dope,” I yelled. “And I wasn’t hallucinating. I saw what I saw, and I called the police. Lydia’s dead. Go to the Sands, they’ll—”

  “We contacted the Sands,” Barnard interrupted. “Miss Starr quit her job a couple of nights ago.”

  I threw up my arms. “She didn’t quit, she was killed.”

  “Told them she was moving out of the area,” Barnard added.

  “After three years, she just up and quits. Does that sound normal to you?”

  White answered, “Showgirls come and go in this town all the time, Mr. Callaway. You know that.”

  “Lydia wasn’t just a showgirl, she was a Copa Girl. This is unbelievable. What about Ken telling me he was being—”

  Captain White stopped me. “I know, I know, you told us, KGB, top secret projects, a desert pick-up location. I remember.” He stroked his mustache and took a seat in the chair next to me. “Sit down, Mr. Callaway, let me ask you something.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for a heart to heart…

  “Sit, Callaway,” Barnard ordered.

  …but I sat down anyway.

  “Let’s forget, just for a moment, about whether Miss Starr is dead or not, or if you found her body or not, okay? Let’s just—”

  “She is and I did,” I blurted.

  “Yes, but just for a moment, let’s put that aside. Okay?”

  I surrendered back into the chair.

  “Thank you.” White took out a roll of mints and offered me one.

  I declined.

  “Listen, Mr. Callaway,” he said, popping one into his mouth, “you seem like a reasonable young man. You said you’re originally from Indiana, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “My people are from Ohio. Good, solid, Midwestern folk, our people. Not like some of these crazies out here. Folks where we’re from are clear-headed and have their feet firmly planted, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Sure, we do. So, I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer me using that solid, clear-headed, Midwestern brain of yours. Do you really believe your friend was being hunted by Russian spies? Do you really believe that, Mr. Callaway?”

  I looked at Captain White for a long moment before answering. “Captain…there’s so many things I can’t explain.”

  White nodded. “Then maybe we can clear some of those things up for you. Here’s what we think happened. We believe Mr. Baldwin became obsessed with Miss Starr after that date you set the two of them up on. When Miss Starr didn’t reciprocate his feelings, Mr. Baldwin got upset.”

  “No,” I said, “that’s not true. I asked Lydia if Ken was bothering her, and she said he wasn’t.”

  “She probably just wanted to keep you out of it.” Keeping his eyes locked on mine, White extended his arm toward the detective. Barnard reached
into his jacket, pulled out some papers, and handed them to him. “We’ve spent the last few hours investigating Mr. Baldwin and Miss Starr. This is a sampling of what we’ve come up with so far.” He handed me a single sheet. “This is a police report Miss Starr filed with the department two weeks ago. Detective Barnard just found it. It appears Baldwin was harassing her. Since there was no physical contact, there wasn’t much we could do, so the report got filed. I suspect this has a lot to do with her sudden departure from Las Vegas.”

  I looked at the paper, unable to comprehend what I was reading. “Ken wasn’t…he never would have—”

  “People change when they’re under stress, Mr. Callaway,” White said.

  “What kind of stress?”

  Barnard answered, “Mr. Baldwin was fired from his job at Lockheed three months ago. They said he’d become a distraction, blowing up over nothing, showing up late, things like that.”

  White held up some other papers. “We’ve just turned these up too. They’re job applications Baldwin has put in all over town. He was unemployed and out of money.”

  “No, no, he gave me a check last night and said there was plenty—”

  “And had you tried to cash it, you would have been told the account was empty.”

  Barnard added, “Baldwin was broke and in debt to his eyeballs.”

  “But, what about…” I stopped because I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  White said, “No job. No money. In debt. We think the rebuff from Miss Starr pushed him over the edge. Now I ask you, Mr. Callaway, doesn’t that make more sense than him being killed by secret agents from a foreign government? Well, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer. What could I say? Of course it made more sense.

  “There’s also this,” White said, handing me another piece of paper.

  It only took a quick glance for me to know what it was. It had five typed words on it, but they were five words that said everything: I can’t take it anymore.

  “It was on the bed,” White said, taking the paper back before I dropped it.

  “But what about those guys pretending to be cops? What was that all about?”

  Barnard asked, “You tell us. Do you have any unfinished business with…let’s say, a less than reputable crowd here in Las Vegas?”

  White added, “To put it bluntly: you owe anybody, Trip?”

  Captain White using my first name caught me off guard. I hung my head.

  “That’s what we thought,” he said, standing up.

  “Lydia’s dead,” I shouted. “I saw her. And none of this explains who those cops were who showed up at Ken’s house after I found her body. Or who the guy named Clegg is. I’m not making this up. You guys have to believe me. I found Lydia’s—”

  “What would you have us do, young man?” Captain White snapped back, raising his voice for the first time. “There’s no body, no murder scene, and no police report. Oh, and that phone number on the business card? It’s to a disconnected line. In short, Mr. Callaway, we have nothing to suggest anything criminal has occurred. What we do have, however, is a distraught man who reached the end of his rope, literally, and a showgirl who quit her job and left town. We’ll try to find Miss Starr, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. She’s not wanted for any crime, and she could’ve gone anywhere, as is her right. This is America, people get to come and go as they please. We follow the evidence, Mr. Callaway, and the evidence says Mr. Baldwin killed himself, and Miss Starr simply moved away. Case closed.”

  Chapter 9

  Case closed, my eye.

  True, I couldn’t explain the suicide note or Ken losing his job or Lydia quitting hers. Nor did I have an explanation to why Lydia filed a police complaint against Ken. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was Lydia was dead, I found her body, I called the police, and some guy named Clegg showed up and questioned me. It wasn’t some Mary Jane induced hallucination. Neither were the two goons in the black Caddy who I knew had nothing to do with my debt to Fat Tony. To me, the evidence said Ken was murdered, just like Lydia. Furthermore, the way everyone around me suddenly seemed to be dropping like the New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square, I had a bad feeling I could be next.

  That’s what I was thinking when Detective Barnard dropped me off in front of the bank where I’d left my car that morning. Three parking tickets were under the wiper, but Barnard promised he’d take care of them.

  “It’s the least we can do,” he said. I think I heard him chuckle as I got out.

  Driving back to my apartment, I spent more time looking in the rearview mirror than I did at the road in front of me—a driving procedure I wouldn’t recommend given I nearly ran head-on into two buses and a telephone pole. I never spotted the black Caddy but knew that meant nothing. If Square Head and Tonto were following me, it’s possible I’d never know it. A less than comforting thought as I whipped into my parking space and scurried like a frightened kitten up to apartment E.

  As to what happened next, I’ll attempt to paint the picture for you as best I can, but in all candor, my memory of the moment is still a bit sketchy, probably due to suffering a case of temporary shock. I unlocked the door to my apartment, took two steps in, and froze. It was as if a tornado, an earthquake, and a bulldozer all decided to have a party at Trip’s place. Everything in the kitchen was a pile of wreckage on the counter. The pillows on my couch were tossed off and slashed open. All the lamps were knocked over, all the chairs turned upside down, and my impressive record collection, once painstakingly categorized and neatly alphabetized on the shelf, was scattered across the floor. But worst of all, and the thing that made my blood boil, was my beloved record player, the one Pop had given to me on my twelfth birthday, was smashed to bits. I have to say that’s probably the moment everything inside me changed. The instant when your cheerful protagonist became considerably less cheerful and decidedly more proactive. A line had been crossed. A despicable act of vandalism had befallen me, and someone had to pay. Was I unnerved by the brazen disregard for the sanctity of my home? Of course. Scared? Sure, a bit. But mostly, I was just incensed. A well of anger bubbled up from within me like I’d never felt before, and I wanted to hit something, or somebody, as hard as I could. They broke my record player!

  I didn’t jump in and start cleaning up. I didn’t call the police, either. White and Barnard already considered me a double order of California fruit salad and would most likely believe I had ransacked the apartment myself in order to make my story about Ken and Lydia more believable. Besides, at this point, I wasn’t sure who I could trust—least of all the police. No, in that terrible moment, standing among the rubble of what was once my life, I realized I was on my own and knew what I had to do. I dug around until I found a piece of paper and a pen, returned a chair upright at the kitchen table, sat down, and went to work.

  When I was a kid, I was terrible at math. English, no problem. History, loved it. But math? This was strange given I was fluent in the language of music from an early age, and as anybody will tell you, music is math. But for me, the translation didn’t translate. Pop, on the other hand, though just a simple farmer with no musical ability whatsoever—one hundred percent of my artistic gifts come from the Binghamton side of the family, not the Callaway side—was a math whiz. This came in handy for a man who ran a small Indiana farm and needed to calculate blah blah into yah yah from year-to-year while accounting for drought, plague, and pestilence. So, in an effort to keep from spending the rest of my life in seventh grade, I turned to Pop one fateful night to teach me once and for all how fast that stupid eastbound train from Chicago would have to go to meet up in Cleveland with that even stupider westbound train from New York. I don’t remember the answer to the question, but I’ve never forgotten his advice for solving the problem: take it one step at a time.

  With pen in hand, I went back to when and where the nightmare I was living all began and wrote down: I found Lydia’s body in Ken’s swimming pool. I thought for a moment and then realized that wa
sn’t true. It actually started with Lydia telling me backstage at the Sands she needed to talk to me about my friend Kenny. So I wrote down: What did Lydia need to talk to me about? Was it that Ken was harassing her and she needed me to speak to him? Unlikely, given I asked her point blank if Ken was bothering her and she said no. Actually, I remembered her exact words as being, “No, nothing like that.” I then considered the possibility she wanted to tell me she was quitting her job and moving away. But that didn’t wash either, for several reasons. One, she specifically said she needed to talk to me about Ken. Two, if she was going somewhere, she could have just told me right then and there. And three, if she was moving on, wouldn’t she have let one of her fellow Copa Girls know her plans? Like Suzy, for instance.

  And that’s when it came to me—still so amazed how my brain works sometimes. Remember Suzy? The little redheaded firecracker with dastardly green eyes? Remember her telling me Lydia must have had a hot date because she vamoosed right after our second show without even taking off her makeup? She lost her costume, threw on a blue dress, and made tracks, I think is how Suzy put it. Why did Lydia have to leave in such a hurry? Who was she meeting? Was it Ken? Or somebody else?

  I put it all down on paper and added: went home, fell asleep, next day drove out to Ken’s house where I found Lydia’s body in the swimming pool. Then I realized I’d forgotten something again. While driving to Ken’s house, I was followed by a black Cadillac, which at the time I believed to be Fat Tony’s boys. I jotted down: Why were Square Head and Tonto following me then? I sat back and considered the problem. There was no way they could’ve known I was going to Ken’s house because I didn’t even know I was going there until I woke up that day. What did they want from me? Why were they following me? I rubbed my eyes and then scribbled: Entered Ken’s house, found Lydia’s body, called the police, and waited. And that’s when the wheels really came off the wagon.

  I know I called the police because they showed up. But they weren’t actually the police. They were people pretending to be the police, including some guy named Clegg. How does that happen? How do you dial a number but get connected to somebody else? Then I remembered I didn’t actually dial the number to the Las Vegas police department. I dialed zero and asked the operator to get me the police. What if the operator wasn’t an operator? What if it was someone pretending to be an operator? But how does that happen? The westbound train and the eastbound train were suddenly heading north and south, and I was completely lost. One step at a time, I could hear Pop’s voice saying. I needed to stay focused on Lydia. What did she want to talk to me about? Why did she go to Ken’s house? And finally, did she really quit her job? To get some answers, I knew where I had to go.