Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) (15 page)

      
"I'll do that. Can I give him your regards?"

      
"Give him nothing. Tell him when I find Wiseman, if I find Wiseman, I'm going to drape him around both of your necks."

      
Foolish talk,
Copp
, as Butch was quick to point out.
    
"Don't try to be a hero," he solemnly advised.

      
"You bury heroes."

      
"That's right."

      
"Loan me your car."

      
He dropped the keys onto the revolver. "I think maybe you'll pull it off. Mind if I just sit back and watch?"

      
"You've been leaning on me all the way, haven't you?"

      
He smiled. "Smart guys don't bust their ass."

      
"You're the one fed the tip-lines,
sicced
Edgar on me."

      
"Couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving guy," he said still smiling.

"It happened to Ken
Forta
," I told him.

"Who's he?"

"An honest cop who died trying to unravel this. You pulled the trigger by remote control, meaning to or not. You
fuzzied
up this whole damned investigation, Cassidy, and the pieces haven't stopped settling yet. Who knows how many needless deaths are swimming in your pot. But that doesn't bother you, does it?"

He shrugged, nudged the gun and the keys toward me. "Just don't try to be a hero."

I was not feeling heroic at the moment. What I was feeling was
fear
—and I thought again of friend Nancy Parker's one-word message, and knew she was right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cassidy's car was a Honda just like the other one, registered to UT, little silver sedan with the standard equipment and a full tank of gas—certainly no yacht but clean and capable and, one hoped, not on any
hotsheets
. I stopped at a 7-11 and picked up a few away-from-home necessities, then checked into a cheap Studio City motel and crashed for a few hours. I was up, bathed and shaved and on the town again before nine o'clock, went into a Denny's for their Grand Slam breakfast—pancakes and eggs, sausage and bacon, plenty of sticking power. I picked up a newspaper off the counter, thinking to catch up over coffee, caught myself staring back at me from a two-year-old photo on the front page.

The waitress had been giving me funny looks so I put the money on the counter and took the newspaper away with me—stopped at a drugstore for some heavy sunglasses and a Raider's cap, wore them out of there and to a quiet phone booth a couple blocks away.

I poked the number from Abe Johnson's poop sheet and got a first-ring response from Charlie Franklin—a cultured, "Yes?"

"Top of the morning, scribbler. Joe
Copp
here. We need to talk."

He sounded not pleased. "Joe, this is a—I've just been reading—you didn't tell me the police were looking for you."

I said, "I'll straighten it out after a while. Right now I'm worried about your wife. I think she's in some real danger, we need to talk about that."

"Listen, I don't want to get involved in anything that could be construed as aiding a fugitive, nothing like that, I'm sure you understand. I recommend that you turn yourself in and get a good lawyer. I could recommend one who—"

"Didn't you hear? The kid's in trouble, could be terminal. Talking to me on the telephone doesn't make you a criminal. Get off it."

". . . What can I do for you?"

"Not for me, for her. Verify a story she gave me. Was she in Mexico this whole past year or was she traipsing about
glitterville
with Bernie?"

"I won't discuss that."

"Don't make me come up there and shake it out of you. What does it take to get you off the fence? The girl's mangled body?"

"Joe, please ... I am sworn to... let me—can you put her on the phone?"

"Wish to hell I could. But I'll go for the compromise. You call around and leave messages every place you can think of. Have her get in touch with you, quick." I gave him the number of the pay telephone. "Have her call here every hour on the hour until she connects with me."

He said, "I'll try."

"Try hard. Her life, yours too, could depend on it."

"I'll try—"

I hung up, checked the time, moved Cassidy's car to the other side of the street and half a block away, slumped in the seat and waited for... developments. They came pretty much as expected and in even better time than expected. An unmarked van pulled to the curb directly opposite the phone booth thirteen minutes after the mark on my watch. A man in work clothes got out and opened the side door, set some stuff on the sidewalk, got back into the van.

Uh huh.

Another van set up downrange about a block, and two unremarkable cars took station at the other end, at opposite sides of the street.

I hated to do it to the guys as much as I hate fruitless stakeouts for myself, but I needed to know. So now I knew, and since I doubted very much that there had been a tap on Franklin's phone, I was sure that sweetheart had turned me over.

I went to his house for a stakeout that I hoped would bear better fruit. It did so twenty minutes after I took station.

He came out in an S-class Mercedes, one of the big luxury sedans, and made straight for the Foothill Freeway, took an eastbound ramp. So did I.

Twenty minutes later I was wondering where in the world we were headed because we'd gone clear to the end and interchanged over to I-
io
, still proceeding east.

We were in Pomona, now, east even of my territory. I thought of the Ontario airport, which is international now, but we went past there, and now I was wondering just what the guy had in mind.

Then I thought of the map I had found in the UT limo, and groaned at the possibility that Palm Springs was the destination. That's a hell of a run, out past Redlands and into honest-to-God desert country, a full hour east of Ontario.

But that was where we were headed, crossing I-15, the route to Vegas, and keeping on bearing east. Understand that upper-crust
Angelenos
regard that whole area "out there" as their private little sandbox. When they speak of "the desert" they mean Palm Springs and environs, places like Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage and the whole country-club complex of exotica where nothing but sand and cactus ought to be.

It started as a hot springs oasis for the
Agua
Ca-
liente
Indians.
Agua
Caliente
means "hot water," and some crafty white-eyes cum desert rats had vision enough a hundred years before Disney to sink some roots there. The Colorado-
Sonoran
desert was one of the most dreaded stretches on the old stage route between Prescott and the coast, so what better place than
Agua
Caliente
to establish a stage stop. Later a guy named McCallum built a genuine resort called the Palm Valley Colony—that was before the turn of the century and even before Hollywood or Beverly Hills were dreamed of. But it took both Hollywood and Beverly Hills to turn
Agua
Caliente
into the modern desert resort that it now is, and I'm talking now not sand and sagebrush but lush tropical gardens, sixty eighteen-hole golf courses, 300 tennis courts, a swimming pool for every three citizens, thirty-five miles of bicycle trails and every luxurious comfort the mind can conceive.

With all that, it's still a wasteland for me. I don't play golf or tennis, swim or lay in the sun, and I don't ride bikes in 1oo-plus temperatures. For ordinary people it's like Vegas without the casinos, and who the hell would go to Vegas if all the casinos closed?

But I went to Palm Springs that Friday morning because my life was on the line. Edgar loomed. The boys back East . . . There was never a worry about Franklin spotting the tail because the traffic never thinned once the whole distance, it's metropolitan L.A. practically all the way, desert or not, and the big problem was just keeping the Mercedes in sight as it wove eastward through the stream of cars and trucks moving hell-bent God knows where.

I even eyeballed Franklin through the final turn inside the Springs, then went on by because I had the number inscribed on my map. Really didn't know exactly what to expect there but I figured it had to be something worth the drive, and who knew?—maybe I'd even find a living dead man there.

It was a country-club-style condo complex in one of the
posher
areas of new development; very few of these people actually lived here more than a few months out of the year, many probably didn't see the place more than once or twice a year. It was a status symbol in certain circles to have a condo in the Springs. You didn't have to use it, you could let your friends use it and talk about it to their friends, and it looked good on the financial statement.

Please don't mind me grousing off about this sort of thing. We've got this homeless problem in L.A., you know, New York isn't the only one, thousands of indigents living on the damned sidewalks, and it burns me a little to think about all those empty condos and all the money that keeps them that way.

      
I left the Honda on the downside and walked back in the noonday sun, the house number on the map now etched between my ears, but I didn't need it. The Mercedes was in the drive, the garage door was open and a pretty red Jaguar with PAID DUES plates was nestled inside.

      
I hit the front door with a heavy foot and walked right in.

      
Franklin turned to face me from a picture window overlooking a golf course. "Jesus Christ . . ."

      
"Not even close," I said. "The name is
Copp
. Trot the lady out, I've come to play."

      
He was caught between fight and flight, weighing both, finally opting for neither. The shoulders slumped.
    
"She's not here."

      
"Car's here."

      
"Probably out on the course," he said. "Look, let's settle this and get out before she returns. She's got enough to worry about without—"

      
"So why'd you come?"

      
"You sent me, damn it."

      
"Why didn't you just call?"

      
His attention skittered away from my gaze, the hands clenched. "Go to hell, you—"

      
"Jail, you mean. Didn't work, as you see. I figured you'd turn me over. But why did you? Not because you're such a law-abiding citizen. Huh?"

      
"Get screwed."

      
"
Tch
. I could give you a story treatment on that one, but why don't you give me one instead? A straight one, this time. Start with Bernie and that little accident in Mexico—"

"Please get out of here,
Copp
."

"Sorry, can't do that. Maybe you're a nice guy, I don't know. Right now, I can't care. Too many people seem to be after my ass. Start with Bernie. He faked the accident, somehow faked out the doctors, and now he thinks he's home clean. He's not. I'm here to tell you he's not. Because some very mean fellows have not been faked out. They know he's alive and they know he's got their money. They won't quit until they get it back. They'll kill you, they'll kill Melissa, and they'll kill everybody in their way until they do get it back. So maybe we should just start with the fifty mil. Let's take it home."

"Jesus, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Somebody around here does, so let's just sit down and get comfortable and wait for someone to get back."

But someone was already back.

She had come up softly behind me and placed the muzzle of a pistol at the base of my skull. I could hear the action as she pulled back the hammer and I even caught a glimpse of her through red haze as I turned and the gun boomed.

She was tall, and tanned, and blond—raw naked and soaking wet from tub or shower, maybe pool or Jacuzzi, who cared? I just went by-by with the crazy thought that I had died with a naked living doll etched onto my retinas and the sound of gunfire in my ears, so maybe there was a God after all.

I wasn't dead, of course. But maybe I'd have settled for that when I came out of it.