Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (2 page)

CHAPTER
TWO

The local cops were on the scene that night almost before I could brush the powdered cement off my clothing. I played it dumb and told them nothing about the mysterious meeting in the hotel lounge, told '
em
I thought maybe I'd surprised kids trying to pilfer from the parked cars and they bought the story for the moment. Still, that took some time so it was nearly five o'clock before I got home. I keep an office in my bedroom and the big bed was very inviting but I paused beside the answering machine as a conditioned reflex that can't be avoided any time I've been away.

There were two new messages, recorded about twenty minutes apart. The first was from a Minnesota area code and urgently requested that I call back at the earliest moment, no name given. The other message was delivered in the whispery voice I'd already heard twice before, and all it said was: "Sorry for the quick exit but you forced it. I'm glad you didn't get shot. Get to work but be very careful and please be discreet.
 
I’ll call again tonight."

I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, wondering about the strange-quotient of the night's events. If the gunplay had been merely a ploy to guarantee my

interest, then the player was either a hell of a good pistol shot with a lot of self-confidence or a hopeless asshole who got lucky and didn't kill anyone with his dumb game. All six shots had been no more than an inch off the target. On the other hand... and what about the second dumb phone call? What was I supposed to get to work on?—and how more indiscreet can you get than six pistol shots in a theater parking lot at three
a.m.?

I undressed and sat on the bed to return the call from Minnesota. I got an answer on the first ring from an older masculine voice with a definite
midwestem
sound to it. This is Roger Johansen. Thank you for calling, Mr.
Copp
."

I casually inquired, "How'd you know it was me?"

An embarrassed little laugh preceded the explanation. "This is a pay phone. Didn't want my wife to hear any of this and get her hopes up again for nothing."

"Hopes for what?" I asked, wondering how long the guy had been prepared to stand at a public phone and wait for a call from a stranger two thousand miles away.

"Our son has been missing for more than six months now. Not a word from him and we've had no idea where he is. I had a call last night from California, a very mysterious call that sounded like one of these computerized voices. I was told that my son is in Southern California and that you could find him for me. Do you know anything about that?"

He sounded like a decent man. I sighed as I told him, "There are ten thousand missing kids from the
midwest
in Southern California today, Mr. Johansen, and another ten thousand will be arriving shortly. I don't know how you got my name but I don't do that kind of work."

"Then you are not the one who called me?"

      
"Absolutely not," I said.

      
"Well, this is very puzzling. I hope it is not just another cruel hoax. The inference was that you already know something about my son and perhaps could put me in touch with him."

      
I said, "Sorry."

      
"I don't understand the mentality of anyone who would do something like this."

      
"Me either," I assured him—then I had a second thought. "How old is your son, Mr. Johansen?"

      
"He's barely twenty-one. Dropped out of school in Chicago earlier this year and simply vanished. We haven't heard a word."

      
"Were you estranged before that?"

      
"Somewhat, yes. I've been paying for a degree in chemical engineering. We found out at the beginning of his senior year that he's actually majoring—or was—in theater arts. Things became a bit sticky after that."

      
To myself I said, "Uh oh."

      
To the worried father I said, "Send me a package, Mr. Johansen." I gave him the address and asked for recent photographs, names and addresses of known friends, a personality profile and any other items he could quickly lay hands on. "Send it by overnight mail," I added.

      
"Then you do know something."

      
"I might. Might not. But it's worth a shot to me if it's worth a hundred an hour plus expenses to you. Send me a five hundred dollar retainer and I’ll bill you for the rest."

      
"I'm not a rich man, Mr.
Copp
. How much will this cost?"

      
"That will be up to you," I told him. "I’ll report daily and you can tell me when to stop."

"I understand. And I’ll get the package off to you right away. "

I put the phone down and immediately rolled between the sheets. There was probably no connection between the man in Minnesota and a whispery voice in the dark, I told my waning consciousness, and I wouldn't charge the man or fan false hopes unless a connection did develop very quickly.

On the other hand...

I went to sleep on that other hand, and I must have been very deeply asleep because it seemed like no more than an instant later—though the bedside clock was showing a few minutes past eight—when a very insistent finger on the back doorbell rousted me. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and cinched it about my waist, then staggered to the door and opened it.

Two guys flashing federal credentials pushed inside and closed the door.

I said, "Shit!" and staggered on to the kitchen to put the coffee pot on.

I've had enough experience with feds to know that they are never quick to leave. I think they're all frustrated lawyers because they love to talk like they're examining a hostile witness in court, and they love to catch you in a lie before they get to the point of the examination.

So I put the damn coffee on and settled in as comfortably as possible dressed in a damp towel.

Meanwhile one of the feds is regarding me with a blank stare from the doorway and I guess the other is looking about the house—for what I really didn't care.

I'd placed three coffee cups on the table and pulled out a couple of chairs in an inviting fashion. They both joined

me at the table a couple of minutes before the coffee was ready. We just sat there and looked at each other—both sides, I guess, waiting for the other to speak first.

      
Hell, I'd played those dumb games myself. I could wait. I did, until I poured the coffee, then I told them, "It's on the house."

      
These two guys looked like twin brothers. Dressed alike, combed their hair alike, even wore the same expression on their faces. The one to my left said, "Thanks, I really need this."

      
The one on my right winked at me and sampled his coffee with cautious lips. I winked back and poured down half a cup just for show and tried to hold back the tears as it scalded my throat clear to the esophagus.

      
"You're a tough guy, Joseph
Copp
," said Left with a little smile.

      
I shrugged and tested the voice with a weak, "It's a tough business."

      
Right chuckled softly and said, "I though
P.I.'s
hid in closets and snapped pictures of cheating wives."

      
I chuckled too and replied, "You think that's not tough?"

      
Left said, "He's not that kind of P.I. Are you, Joe?"

      
"Whatever pays the bills," I replied pleasantly, lying in my teeth. I do not do divorce cases, I do not do insurance cases, I do not do missing kids or irresponsible fathers or any kind of civil court stuff. I usually do what I damn well choose to do, and sometimes the bills don't get paid.

      
"What's paying your bills these days?" asked Right.

      
"Maybe I'm paid up a couple months ahead. Maybe I'm on vacation. Maybe you've got no right to ask. Did you show me your search warrant? I don't recall asking you guys inside."

      
"He's right," Left said chidingly to the other. "You can't ask a man in Joe's position to violate the sacred trust of his clients." He took a pull at his coffee. "Not even if it's going to save him a whole lot of trouble."

      
"Not even if it loses him his license," agreed the other in mock serious tones.

      
These guys weren't acting like any FBI people I ever knew. I told them, "I think I forgot to look closely at your credentials. Could I see them again, please."

      
Left smiled and stood up, went to the door, called back over his shoulder to the other, "Show the man your credentials, Larry."

      
I saw it coming out of right field but not soon enough to evade it, a haymaker with a pistol held flat in the palm of the hand. It crashed into the side of my head and sent me rolling across the floor. I would probably still be rolling if the wall hadn't been there, and I couldn't see very well with all those fireworks blazing through my skull but I heard Mr. Right okay as he bid adieu.

      
"Get smart for once in your life, Joe. Stay out of things that don't concern you."

      
His ass I would.

      
I knew now that I had myself a case.

      
So did those guys, and I was going to be all over their case ... if I could just get my feet under me once again.

      
They were feds, all right.

      
But not FBI.

      
Those guys were deputy United States marshals, and I knew it even before I passed out, the briefly-flashed and quickly-glimpsed credentials flaring up out of the memory and leading me into
beddie
-bye.

      
This time I dreamed, and it wasn't of Jeannie. It was a

make-work dream, one of those problem-solving exercises that the right brain loves to frustrate us with, and it made no more damn sense than anything else that night.

But even in the darkness of the dream I knew that I had myself a red meat case. And I was going to eat some, if I could just find my feet again.

CHAPTER
THREE

I woke up the second time that morning in my own bed again with a headache to end them all and dried blood in my nostrils, a naked woman lying beside me. She was very pretty but a total stranger and it took a moment for me to clear the
fuzzies
from my head and comprehend the situation. Not that I've never awakened beside a strange woman but this one's wrists were handcuffed to her ankles—picture that, if you can, left wrist to left ankle and ditto the other side for a highly vulnerable configuration— and her mouth was taped, eyes bulging in terror. The sweet-sickening odor of chloroform hung faintly in the air and someone was trying to break down my back door, which opens directly into the bedroom.

      
I was trying to assure my uninvited bed partner that things were not as they seemed when the door gave and two uniformed county cops entered with guns drawn.

      
So what the hell. It was a setup, sure, but how was I going to convince anyone of that? Those bastards had gone out and snatched a woman off the street somewhere, chloroformed her and put her in my bed trussed for
Sadian

delights while I snoozed under a light concussion, then tipped the cops.

They'd even used my handcuffs and the victim had not seen her abductors. She'd been grabbed from behind and knew nothing else until she awoke in my bed.

I was booked on charges of kidnap, assault and attempted rape and it was late that night before my lawyer could spring me. By then it was too late and I was feeling too sick to do anything else so I went home, repaired my door, and went to bed. Didn't even check my answering machine. I hadn't eaten anything all day—didn't feel like I could—and I’ll have to say that I felt something like a whipped dog.

But don't get me wrong. Someone had shown me their power, sure, and I had to respect it. I am not, after all, Don Quixote so had never felt tempted to go out and fight with dragons. Didn't even have any impossible dreams. I guess what I am is a realist. But this thing had become intensely personal. I was no longer casually curious about the people in
La
Mancha
, I was now ragingly curious about the march of intrigue that had seen me shot at, bullied by federal officers, then setup on very serious criminal charges.

Beside being a realist I am also a pretty well trained cop. I knew that I could not allow myself to start thinking like a victim. What had happened to me was purely incidental to whatever else was going down. I had to become the cop in the case. Hell, I
had
to. Otherwise I was just another victim, and
victimhood
is not a comfortable state with me.

So I wasn't giving up anything.

When I went home and took to my bed that night, I was actually girding for war.

And it's a good thing I slept well because I would not be doing it again until the war was over.

      
Strange thing about police work, even private work—you can go for months in the most boring routine imaginable, then suddenly the job can explode all over you without warning and you find yourself barely able to keep pace with it. In a matter of—what?—eight hours or so?—I had gone from yawning routine to battered jeopardy and still not even understanding what for. And I was still in the dark after another twelve to fourteen hours of humiliating and dehumanizing "legal process" which certainly had been designed to encourage me to remain in the dark forever where this case was concerned.

What
case?

See?—it was even that dark. I didn't know what the hell was going down. It was fairly obvious, though, that it was very important to someone. Important enough, for sure, for someone to go to a lot of trouble to keep me out of it.

So the next morning I used my private little
jiffy
printing press to make a business card identifying me as a representative of Actors Equity Association and I paid an official visit to the East Foothills Dinner Theater to check their equity waiver status. The waiver is a special dispensation to small theater groups allowing them to pay less than scale.

I discovered that although the theater occupies hotel property it is independently managed by another group, none of whom were present at that time of the morning. The office wasn't even open but I found a beautiful gal

in one of the back rooms who introduced herself as the director of the current play. She could not have been older than thirty and had the lithe, graceful body of a professional dancer, dark eyes that flashed with warmth and intelligence, and a very winning smile. Her name, she said, was Judith White.

My bogus card produced a soft frown, however, and an impatient toss of the pretty head as she complained, "Isn't twice in one month something like harassment?"

I frowned back and muttered something apologetic about overlapping responsibilities. Td just like a quick scan of your players," I added, "then I’ll be on my way."

"This could all be moot in a few days anyway," she said, still resisting. "A new producer is coming in to package this show for a national tour."

"You're not closing the theater."

"Oh no, of course not. We're casting the next show right now." She glanced at her watch. "Well, in about ten minutes the tryouts start. You've really caught me at a bad time."

I said, "Just show me the file and IH be out of your hair in five minutes."

She did even better than that. She handed me a bulging
expando
file, murmured "Excuse me" and left me standing there with it while she went on stage to greet a few early arrivals. The
expando
was labeled
Man of La
Mancha
— Cast File
and contained a sheaf of resumes complete with photos.

I didn't go through it there, just took it down the street to a
QuikPrint
and copied it on a self-serve machine. I was gone no more than fifteen minutes, left the file on her desk

and let myself out again. Meanwhile the theater had filled up with hopefuls and the beautiful lady director was totally absorbed in casting the next play, probably wouldn't even remember that I'd been there.

I didn't know what I was looking for, you understand, didn't know that I would recognize it if I saw it. But you have to begin an investigation somewhere. I figured this was as good a place as any, in the dark, so I took the copied file home for a close study.

I'd forgotten entirely about the man in Minnesota so I was a little surprised to find the Federal Express package at my door. I scooped it up and took it inside but it was not very high on my list of priorities at the moment so I just dropped it on my desk for a later look.

What I was hoping to find, very quickly, was the identity of my mysterious "client" in the La
Mancha
case. She'd said "we took up a collection" which would mean, it would seem, that I had more than one client—but the whisperer was my contact and I wanted a look at the entire cast on the off-chance that I would find something familiar or recognizable before another contact. There had been two more messages waiting for me when I returned home from jail the night before. I knew that because I had checked the machine before leaving home that morning and decided to listen to them later; a third had been recorded while I was out gathering the cast file.

I studied the file for an hour and a half—it's a big cast- memorizing names and connecting them to career histories and photographs, then I listened to the messages.

One was from Minnesota. The package was on the way. Hooray.

      
The other two were from the whisperer.

      
One said, "When are you going to get to work? I expected to see you in the audience tonight." That's all.

      
The other, recorded at nine o'clock that morning, which is about the time I invaded La
Mancha
, said: "It's too late. They're playing for keeps. Forget it. Keep the money. Good luck to you."

      
Good luck, yeah.

      
I'm up for kidnap and attempted rape, so forget it and good luck.

      
I opened the package from Minnesota.

      
Didn't recognize the name, but the photo was sure familiar. I'd just memorized that face from the cast file— darker hair, darker skin, but all the planes and angles were the same.

      
"Someone is trying to kill our star," the whisperer had said to me in the darkened lounge.

      
The folks in Minnesota would be very worried to hear that.

      
I still had at least one client, it seemed, and I figured it was time for me to meet the man of La
Mancha
.