Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (15 page)

      
I replied with another crooked smile. "A promise that you’ll never see my stiff ass around here again."

      
"Hey, you got the wrong idea, Joe. It's not that I don't

like to see you. But you always insult my women and you make me feel bad. I want you to fuck one of my women, man."

      
"You want to watch,
Cholly
?"

      
He laughed, and then the telephone receiver rattled some more. He rattled back, looking at me all the while, then said to me, "He don't handle much powder over there, like I said. No big guys. But he's been delivering a bag a night for the past few weeks to the same place."

      
"What place is that?"

      
Another exchange across the telephone, then: "You know that stage show at that hotel out there?"

      
"Dinner theater," I said tightly.

      
"Sure, that's the one."

      
"Stage door delivery?"

      
Cholly
put the question to the telephone then relayed the answer to me. "Just outside. She meets him in the parking lot."

      
"She?"

      
"Classy looking Anglo woman."
Cholly
laughed. "Probably the kind you'd fuck while I watched. But she's got a hundred dollar a night nose just the same."

      
"Blonde or brunette?"

      
Another telephone rattle, then: "He don't know, man. She always has this, uh,
whattaya
call shawl thing wrapped around her head."

      
"Spanish shawl."

      
"Yeah, yeah, like that."

      
Yeah, sure, like the women of La
Mancha
wear.

      
I thanked the
druglord
of the east side and went away from there.

      
Hundred dollar a night nose, maybe.

Then again, maybe it was just another weave in the web that had been building since at least two weeks earlier when someone walked into my gym with a Polaroid camera and snapped me in the buff. Maybe the hundred dollar a night buy was no more than a cautious stockpiling of stage props being assembled for a one night stand starring none other than the
Copp
for Hire.

How had Susan Baker put it? I wouldn't follow the script?

I knew what I had to do. I had to find that script.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I had not forgotten the Minnesota connection either and I was resolved to explore that side of the web at the first opportunity. That is partly why I went on to the theater that evening, but also I wanted words with the judge's daughter and we sort of had a date anyway for after the show.

I had not expected to run into Art
Lahey
there, though. I guess he must have been sitting outside waiting for me to show because he came in almost on my heels and joined me at the darkened back wall of the theater. I'd arrived near the end of Act II in the middle of
Lunceford's
"Impossible Dream" number. I thought the guy was damned good. In fact, I think he was better than the guy he'd been understudying, more fire in the eyes or something and a bit more feeling in the voice, but what do I know.

I said as much to
Lahey
when he came alongside and he jumped me immediately. "Thought you hadn't seen Craig
Maan
in the role. You told me he cut out before the curtain went up."

"That time, yeah," I agreed. "But I saw the show awhile back."

      
"You didn't tell me that."

      
"Didn't think it would be important to tell you that."

      
"I guess there are a lot of things not important enough to tell me," he gibed.

      
The curtain came down for intermission at that point. The applause from the audience was enthusiastic but many of the oldsters were already out of their chairs and moving toward the rest rooms.
Lahey
took my elbow and steered me outside.

      
He lit a cigarette so I did one too and we strolled on across the patio for another thirty feet or so before
Lahey
spoke again. "Just so you’ll know where we stand," he told me in a quietly sober voice, "I'm off the case."

      
I said, "Congratulations. But why?"

      
"I'm on suspension," he growled.

      
"For what?"

      
"Insubordination, threatening a superior, how many more do you want?"

      
"That'll do," I told him. "Welcome to the club. One of those too many is what drove me into the private sector. So what are you looking for now?—absolution?"

      
Lahey
took a seat on a bench and grinned up at me as he said, "To tell the truth, I came down here with half the intention of kicking your teeth in. But that would be like kicking the whipped dog, wouldn't it. I watched you walk in there awhile ago and all the anger melted. You're as fucked up as I am, aren't you."

      
I sat down beside him, took a deep breath and let it all out, told him with no wind at all behind it, "I was set up coming into this thing, Art. You were not. So maybe you
    
Should tell me what has been going down here."

      
He said, "All I know for sure is that your friends Dobbs

and Harney were all ready to be nailed to the wall and I had the hammer. My boss took the hammer out of my hand . . . and I guess I took too much exception to that. Anyway, there is no case now. Your feds were released on a habeas corpus handed down by the Central District Court of California and so was a locker full of evidence."

      
I coughed on my cigarette, gave him a long hard scrutiny, then asked, "What evidence?"

      
"The clothing that Craig
Maan
wore out of here last night, bloodstained, and a video cassette that shows Dobbs and Harney busting into the second apartment."

      
I dropped the cigarette and ground it into the flagstones under my foot. I was very surprised at how calm
    
I felt. "Where'd you find the clothing?"

      
"In their room here at the hotel."

      
"Who's room?"

      
"Larry Dobbs and Jack Harney. They've been registered here for the past two weeks. You didn't know that?"

      
I shook my head. "Guess I thought—I've been flat on my ass, Art. These people have had me chasing my own shadow. I'm ashamed to say that but it's true. What's that about a video tape? The one that was ... ?"

      
"Yeah. It was a new tape, had only about twenty minutes recording time on it.
 
Shows all the victims except the first one and shows them all alive and well and having fun.
 
Then the camera pans to show your feds breaking through the door, this Elaine Suzanne in tow, and an abrupt end to the recording."

      
"That was supposed to be me," I declared in a hollow voice.

      
"What do you mean?"

      
"The way it was scripted.
 
Elaine was supposed to have

taken me there. Instead, she took me to the other apartment.
 
I don't know why unless she just got confused and blew it.
 
And it knocked her out to see Craig sitting there with his throat slashed. That wasn't in the script.''

"What's this script?"

"I talked to Susan Baker today at the hospital, after they moved her from the security ward.
 
She let something slip but then caught herself and clammed up. Said enough though to give me the idea that some big plan came to fruition up there last night.
 
I think it was some kind of a scam, but it backfired on them."
 
I gave the cop a long, hard look. "Hate to tell you this, pal, but I think you went down for nothing. I don't think Dobbs and Harney did that to those kids."

"Yeah, so you said already,"
Lahey
replied sourly. "But I didn't go down for nothing. I went down for a principle. Five people were viciously murdered in my jurisdiction last night. Whether those two did it or not—and I was only about fifty-one percent convinced that they did—I think those guys know who did it. If I could have kept the pressure on them, the truth would have come out sooner or later. Now I have the feeling that well never know."

I asked, "That the same reason you came after me?"

"Something like that, yeah," he replied soberly.

"At fifty-one percent?"

Lahey
sighed. "It would've been worth it at ten percent."

"For you, maybe," I growled. "How the hell am I supposed to make a living if you guys keep coming at me on a ten percent hunch?"

He said, "It was more than a hunch, Joe. I had the snapshot. I had your prior involvement with the victim right out in public. I had the most ridiculous God damned

story any P.I. ever told and not a shadow of a client. I had-"

      
"I explained that."

      
“That's what I mean by ridiculous. Do you have a client?"

      
"Two," I said. "It turns out that Susan Baker was my client. I returned her retainer today. Then there's a guy in Minnesota, this Johansen. Did I tell you that he's a judge?"

Lahey
showed me a spooky look and replied, "Did I tell you that Craig
Maan's
real name is Johansen?"

      
Well, that stopped me, but only for half a breath. "No, I thought so too at first because I had this photo . . . but there was a switch, see, and I don't have that worked out yet. Something in the script, maybe, but Johnny
Lunceford
is the real Johansen."

      
Lahey
said, "No, that's not right.
Lunceford's
real name is
Lunceford
.
Maan's
real name is Johansen. I've got fingerprint identification to prove it. Also, Johansen has worked as a paid informer for the FBI. I've got that too, it's in the paperwork served by the District Court."

      
I said, "Now wait a minute,
dammit
..."

      
I'd suddenly become aware that a sweet little lady of about eighty was listening to our conversation with rapt attention. I don't know how long she'd been there but she gave me a smile of pure joy and said, "That is positively fascinating!
 
Is it the next play?"

      
I looked at
Lahey
, looked back at the sweet little lady and told her, "Gosh, ma'am, I hope not."

      
But maybe it was.