Copp In Deep, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (6 page)

Chapter Nine

Gina had returned
an empty gun. I wondered if she had been afraid to hand me a loaded one or if she just hadn't liked carrying it around that way. There had been no mention of my abandonment in the mountains or her later forced entry into my home when obviously she'd thought me dead, no hint of apology, no attempt to explain anything. Nevertheless I went away feeling a bit better about the whole thing. She had kissed me, after all, and she seemed to be assuming that we were still playing on the same team.

So I felt a little better about it all, yeah, but not for long because I picked up a tail right outside the joint and I couldn't shake it after four turns and a run along Santa Monica in heavy traffic. Never got close enough for any kind of identification but just hung back there very expertly and went everywhere I went, so I figured it was purely a surveillance tail even if they were cops. The most disturbing question I had about it was not so much

concerned with intentions as with origins: who were they?—why were they following me?—where and how had they gotten onto me?

Were these the same guys who'd been staking out my house, and had they somehow tracked me over here? Or had someone been watching
Cherche's
place? Or had they been alerted to my presence there from inside? I had stayed and talked with
Cherche
for about ten minutes after "Angelique" had been excused. Time enough, yeah.
Dammit
. I had to get some things settled.

So I found a coffee shop with off-street parking and watched the rearview carefully as I pulled in, saw the tail go immediately to the curb half a block to the rear. I parked where they could see me without too much strain, locked up, went inside and had some pie and coffee, then used the pay phone to call Tom Chase's home number.

I got his wife, Miriam, very uptight and not at all friendly. "What the hell are they doing to Tom?" I asked her, merely trying to verify that he had indeed been arrested.

"Nothing compared to what I'm going to do to him," was the angry reply. "Are you mixed up in this?"

I said, "God, I hope not. What is he charged with?"

She virtually spat it back at me: "Espionage."

"That's heavy," I said. "Does he have a lawyer?"

"I don't know about him, but I've sure got one!" she replied.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm filing for divorce, that's what it means. You should see the stuff they found in his car. Has he always been a pervert? Honestly, I've been married to a total stranger. I never knew this man! Have you known about this?"

I told her, "I don't know what you're talking about, Miriam. I doubt that you do either. Don't be hasty about—"

"Well what can I expect! Of course you'll defend him! You're exactly alike! All of you cops are the same! Don't call here anymore, Joe!"

She hung up in my ear but I didn't really mind. Miriam had always been an asshole in my book. Never could understand how Tom would put up with her, let alone kowtow to that kind of bitchiness. I always sort of thought that she was the main reason why Tom and I had drifted so far apart. She'd never liked me either, probably raised hell with him every time we got together.

So, what the hell, at least I was finding some reference in reality. It had not all been lies. Apparently Tom was indeed in custody and in deep trouble. I didn't know what to make of the "pervert" stuff but I figured it wouldn't take much to make a pervert of anyone in Miriam's eyes. I remembered how upset Tom had been over the possibility that she would learn of his involvement with another woman in the case and . . .

And what? That he'd been led along, suckered and fatally compromised by that woman? Was that what was happening to me?

I needed a bit more reference with reality.

So I left some money on the counter and went out through the kitchen, circled the block on foot, came up behind the tail car. Different car, yeah, and different guys. I shattered the window on the passenger side with the butt of the S&W, pulled the guy through the opening and bounced him off the sidewalk, almost had
ahold
of the other one but he'd kicked the starter damn quick and was screeching away from there while I was reaching in for him. I had to disengage cleanly or get my arms ripped off so I stepped away and let him go.

Had what I needed, anyway—someone to identify. This one was bloodied and groggy, harmless looking, total stranger. I helped him to his feet and hustled him up the street, pushed him into the van while onlookers gawked, got the hell away from there. The guy was groaning and dabbing at facial cuts with a handkerchief while I careened around the streets looking for another place to stop and interrogate. Found a deserted parking lot beside a bank several blocks over, opted for that.

I pushed the guy hard against the door on his side, wedged his head between the dash and the windshield, invited him to tell me all about it. Didn't take him long to decide that might be the most intelligent thing to do, but what he told me did not make me much happier about the reality we were referencing.

Seems that he worked for
PowerTron
as a security officer. Tom Chase was his boss but there were several layers of management between them, didn't know Chase personally, didn't know anything about his trouble with the feds. Didn't know
Cherche
LaFemme
, didn't know any Gina
Terrabona
and had never heard the name before, had also never heard of Nicholas
Gudgaloff
.

I gave the guy some breathing room and handed him a first aid kit. Things got almost chummy after that. He treated his cuts while we continued getting acquainted.

"What is your interest in Joe
Copp
?"

"Never heard of him either."

"So why were you tailing him?"

"Oh!—is that you? My God, are you a cop? I didn't know . . ."

"Tell me about the tail."

"This is like moonlighting. I work for
PowerTron
but this is extra, personal work for Mr. Putnam."

I had to challenge the guy. "Who is Putnam?"

"He's the executive vice-president of the company."

"So how does personal work for Putnam put you on my tail?"

"They just gave us the description of the van and said we should keep tabs on it."

"When was this?"

"This was at six o'clock tonight."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Not you, the van. They sent us to the address in Beverly Hills, said look for it then stay with it. We saw it going in and we stayed with it."

"You were keeping a log or something?"

"Yeah."

"Time in, time out?"

"That's right."

"You keep saying 'they.' They who?"

"Well . . . dispatch. Whoever is dispatching."

"You said this was personal work for Putnam."

"Right. I didn't mean official
PowerTron
dispatch. I don't talk to Putnam directly but . . ."

"So where is it dispatched from?"

"His house, maybe, I don't know. We have a radio in the car."

"
PowerTron
car?"

"Yeah."

"How many people involved in this?"

"What do you mean?"

"How many like you working directly for Putnam?"

"Oh. I don't know. Quite a few, I think."

"How many people in
PowerTron
security?"

"It's a big department. Several hundred, I guess, just at my plant. I mean, you know, it's three shifts plus all the clerical and administrative."

"So we're talking about a small army, if you put them all together from all the plants in the area."

"Probably a thousand people, yeah."

"Tom Chase headed all that?"

"Yes, he's director of security for the whole division."

"He's in jail."

"No!"

"Oh yeah. The feds took him in last night. Charged with espionage."

      
"Espionage!?"

"Yeah. How does that cut with you?"

"My God! I guess that explains why . . ."

"Why what?"

"Why Mr. Putnam took direct control of security."

"But you seemed to think you've been moonlighting."

"Well that's the way they made it sound, swore us to secrecy and all that, but . . ."

"But now you're seeing it differently."

"Yeah. God, what a bomb this is!"

I was beginning to see the faint dimensions of something far bigger than Chase himself had hinted at when I was recruited into the mess. And no comfort whatever for either Tom or myself.

As for Gina . . .

I did not want to think about Gina.

I took the guy back to the coffee shop and let him out. Didn't seem to be at all mad at me, even wished me good luck. I watched him inside, saw him head straight for the telephone. There was only one way in and out of the parking lot, so I circled the block and came back up the street, went to the curb at almost exactly the same spot the other guys had used to wait for me, had the place in good view.

It was a short wait. The same car came back from the opposite direction and made a left turn into the coffee shop lot. My pigeon came out immediately and entered the car, they went around the loop and came onto the street toward me. There was a lot of gabbing and arm waving as they went past totally absorbed in each other. I gave them a block then did a U-
ey
and fell in behind.

They led me straight to Pasadena via Coldwater Canyon and the Ventura freeway, took about thirty minutes because it was not nine o'clock yet and traffic was still pretty heavy, took another ten minutes straight up Lake through Pasadena and Altadena into the high hills, so it was almost exactly nine when I cut the tail and reached for my briefcase to get Putnam's precise address. They could be headed nowhere else, and I didn't want to push my luck into those darkened hills with hardly any other traffic moving through.

So I gave the moonlighters five minutes then went on under my own lead.

It was a big joint, two storied with maybe an acre or two of grounds, gated entrance, circular drive, ablaze with lights everywhere. I left the van a block away and went back on foot, carrying the reloaded S&W in shoulder harness and a small backup pistol in the boot.

The car I'd been following was nowhere in sight. That should have told me something but I guess I was too
focussed
on slipping into the place unobserved. Two other cars were parked in front of a large garage and a third was standing under a portico at the entrance to the house. There were lights everywhere but no sign of human presence. I pushed the gate open and walked up the drive. Something got me to quivering because I had the S&W in hand as I went up the steps to the house. The front door was ajar. I went in, expecting and almost

hoping to be challenged at any moment but there seemed to be no one at home.

I was wrong.