Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (12 page)

      
"But you're only twenty-three," I point out.

      
"Big deal. You can get it at fourteen if you're built right.
   
Now, especially, if you think right."

      
"What do you mean?"

      
"Well, now you don't make the tryouts unless you first sign up with George or Linda."

      
I am not enjoying this conversation.

      
I ask
Tawney
/Sandra, "Did you sign up?"

      
She drops the gaze. "I've had a few weekends here and there."

      
"Any in Hawaii?"

      
She shakes the head. "All local."

      
"Any involving Jim Davitsky?"

      
"No. I just heard the name, that's all."

      
"Ever hear Gil drop that name?"

      
She gives me another curious look. "Not that I remember."

      
"But Juanita was complaining—"

      
"Her roommate was having some kind of trouble with this guy."

      
"Was Maria part of this talent pool operation?"

      
“I guess so.”

      
"But she never worked at New Frontier."

      
"No."

      
"Did Tanner know about your talent pool?"

      
"Of course he knew. He was part of it."

      
"Part of it," I echo.

      
"Security part."

      
"Security for who?"

      
"For everybody. All of it. Nobody could get busted or get in trouble with Gil's men on the job."

      
"How many men did Gil have?"

      
"Quite a few."

      
"All of them cops."

      
"I don't think all of them were real cops."

      
"Okay. Anything else you'd like to tell me?"

      
She smiles wanly. "Yes. I'd love to tell you it's all a bad dream. I'm going to wake up in a little while and I'm still eighteen and just now starting to plan my life."

      
"It's not too late to do that, kid."

      
"I feel so dirty."

      
"It washes off."

      
"It will kill my dad."

      
"He might surprise you. Would you like to go with me, now, to talk to the sheriff?"

      
She shakes her head. "I'll have to think about that. Are you going to turn me in?"

      
"No. But I'll feel terrible, kid, if you end up dead like the others."

      
"He is a psycho, isn't he."

      
"Worse than that, I'm afraid."

      
"How can you get worse than that?"

      
"Tanner gave you the answer to that," I remind her.

      
"A licensed psycho," she remembers with a shiver.

      
"Afraid so."

      
"What kind of world is this?"

      
"We made it, kid. All of us. We made it."

      
I don't know if she believed or understood that.

      
But I understood it, and I believed it.

      
One of the old Greeks, one of those early philosophers, said that a people have the government they deserve.

He was talking, I guess, about tyrants and that sort of thing—and he was talking about the country they deserve, too. Well, we're a government of and by the people.

      
And we've made this sucker what it is, you and I. We did it to ourselves, pal. And we've got nobody but ourselves to blame for afflictions like the Jim
Davitskys
.

      
I felt like I had an answer for the
Davitskys
among us.

What was giving me trouble, at the moment, was the bewitching Belinda. I had no answers whatever for that one. But I damned sure meant to find some.

Chapter Seventeen

IT WOULD BE a severe understatement for me to say that I was disappointed in the way this case was turning. The only one of the princ1pals I really cared about and wanted to bring through smelling like a rose was instead smelling more and more period with every new development.

      
I refer, of course, to the bewitching Belinda.

      
I really did not care, now, to learn any more

about the lady.

      
And I damned near walked away from the whole thing, right there outside Sandra's house.

      
I did not, after all, have a client, and it was now obvious that I was not going to have a client in this case. This case? What case? I had no case. What I had it seemed, was a passel of whores and their pimps, and somebody was knocking them off. Whoopee. Meanwhile I was out two hundred bucks in expenses.

      
But I couldn't let it go.

      
I'm too selfish. Just couldn't stand to think of some strutting savage getting away with this kind of stuff. I mean, I live here too, you know. It's the only damned place I've got. Give it back to the savages, where am I going to sleep tonight? In a cave?

      
Besides, I had not given up entirely on Linda.

      
Whatever, I could not walk away from it.

      
So instead I went back to Ed Jones's town- house. It was a few minutes past noon when I got there. Half a dozen preschoolers were playing in the street. A little boy of about three was riding a stick-horse. He pulled a toy gun on me and I raised my hands but the little shit shot me anyway.

      
I said to myself bullshit, I'm not falling down for you, kid; you shot me with my hands in the air, what kind of game is this?

      
I went on up to Jones's front door and was confronted with the same game played on a different stage. Ed wasn't home but his expectant wife was, and evidently he'd beaten her since the last time I was there. She had a black eye and a split lip, bruises on the throat, bruises on the arms; dress torn half off of her; I would not have been surprised to find footprints on her swollen belly.

      
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.