Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (17 page)

      
"Did he ever tell you that he was an undercover cop?"

      
"
Alfie
?"
Lunceford
laughed softly. "He's told me so many dumb damned things . . . maybe he did, I don't remember."

      
"An informer for the FBI?"

      
"I don't think so."

      
"Shortly before she died," I said, "Elaine Suzanne told me that she and Craig had been secretly married recently. Do you know anything about that?"

      
He gave me a dumb look. "Not unless..."

      
"Unless what?"

      
"Unless it was something to do with the plan. Maybe they did get married. I can see Elaine doing that, but
Alfie
... well, for some devious purpose maybe, something to do with this crazy plot he was hatching."

      
"What do you think he was really going for, Johnny?"

      
Lunceford
scratched his nose, looked at his hand, said very softly, "I think he was setting up some kind of blackmail. I believe he really got the idea in his head that he could take this show on the road. I think he was trying for Mafia money. What do you think?"

      
I told him, "If that is true, then I think he was crazy. Those people just don't play that kind of game."

      
Lunceford
sighed as he replied, "That's what I figured. And that is why I didn't want any part of it"

      
I asked, "Where had
Alfie
been living since his apartment caught fire?"

      
He snickered, looked at the bandstand then back to me. "He's never had an apartment since he came here. He's just been living from house to house as long as someone would put up with him. He even stayed with Judith for awhile."

      
I raised an eyebrow at that. "She kicked him out?"

      
"Sure. It only took her about a week to figure him out Then he moved in with Mack and Janie. You know they are really very nice people, the best. I don't know what kind of sob story he gave them but... well, they're just nice people. They took him in. The next day he put a move on Janie. She told Mack. Mack beat the shit out of him and tossed him out. He just kept moving on like that, house to house."
Lunceford
shook his head sorrowfully. "I think you're right. The guy was crazy. He was a user."

      
"Drugs?"

      
"No. People. And he could do it because he was so damned likeable. But, no, he couldn't bear to let people like him. Always had to screw it up with something dumb."

      
"Ever know him to use drugs?"

      
"Not recently. Back in college, you know, a joint now and then. Most everybody did that."

      
"Any of the other kids in the show have a drug habit?"

      
"Not that I know about. I mean, not unless someone was passing it around. Takes money, otherwise."

      
"Some people," I reminded him, "deal just enough to support a habit. You ever see anything to make you wonder about that?"

      
"No."

      
"There was a good supply of coke found in the apartment where Elaine and the three other guys were killed. Any idea where that could have come from?"

      
Lunceford
said, "I didn't know those guys very well. Elaine, yeah, long time, we worked at the Curtain Call together and before that at La Mirada Civic Opera but ... Elaine was very naive but she knew about drugs and what they do to a promising career. I can't believe she would mess around like that."

      
"But the guys ..."

      
"I wouldn't call them seriously committed to anything," he replied quietly. "Except maybe to kinky sex."

      
"They were into that."

      
"Yeah. No holds barred. I warned
Alfie
about them but ... turned out they were the only ones would put up with him. That's where he'd been staying the past few weeks."

      
"In that apartment?"

      
"That's right."

      
"Did Elaine know that?"

      
"Sure, she had to know. She lived right around the corner."

      
"In the apartment where
Alfie
was killed?"

      
"No, not that one. But in the same complex. Susan has lived there a long time. It's fairly convenient to the theater, so when someone needed an apartment she'd always steer them there. Nice place, nice area, low rent. What more can you want?"

      
I asked him, "Who lived in the apartment where
Alfie
was killed?"

      
"I really don't know," he replied. "Susan might know." I saw a thought cross his face. "Has anyone notified Judge Johansen?"

      
I said, "The sheriff probably notified him. They identified
Alfie
by his fingerprints."

      
"That wasn't necessary," he said. "I told them all about it."

      
"You did?"

      
"Yes, I told that detective, what's his name?—
Lahey
?"

      
"
Lahey
."

      
"Yeah, I told him. I just hope they notified the judge."

      
"He's really a judge?"

      
Lunceford
chuckled grimly. "I guess he is. He's on the Minnesota Supreme Court."

      
"I see," I said.

      
But I hadn't seen anything yet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The content of the room had changed somewhat during the break, people coming and going, and when the band returned to the stage it appeared that most of the
La
Mancha
cast were now present in the lounge and partying, though in a somewhat subdued manner.

"This is our usual night to howl,"
Lunceford
told me. "Not Saturday because we do two shows on Sundays and it's already short enough between curtain-down on Saturday night and curtain-up on Sunday afternoon. It's going to be kind of strange around here tonight though."

He received another introduction from the stage, shook my hand and muttered something unintelligible, then went up amid howls and whistles from his friends to sing another song.

I looked at my watch and wondered what was keeping Judith, but then the cocktail waitress came over to my table and asked me, "Are you Joe
Copp
?"

"Guilty," I confessed.

"Judith asked me to tell you that she had to run an errand." She smiled. "But I don't think you're stood up." She handed me a slip of paper with a phone number

scrawled across it. "Wants you to call her after one o'clock."

      
I took the paper and asked the waitress, "What time do you close?"

      
"Last call is one o'clock," she said.

      
"That's when the band signs off?"

      
"Well, not always on Fridays." She waved a hand to indicate the overflow crowd. "The cast from the theater comes in here to jam and entertain one another. A lot of the regulars stay for that too. So it's anybody's guess when the band goes home on Fridays. But remember, last call for drinks is one o'clock."

      
"How "bout on Tuesday nights?"

      
"No, that's just on Fridays."

      
"Did you work this past Tuesday?"

      
"Uh huh, I work Tuesday through Saturday."

      
"The band too?"

      
"Uh huh." She was growing agitated. "Sorry, I've got drinks up."

      
"Just one more. Did anything unusual happen in here Tuesday night?"

      
She laughed and told me, "Something unusual happens in here every night."

      
"Do you remember seeing Craig
Maan
in here Tuesday night?"

      
It was like I had slapped her in the face. She stared at me in speechless reaction for a moment, then spluttered, "If that's your idea of a joke...!"

      
I held up both hands and said, "Hey, no, I didn't know I was on sensitive ground. I'm investigating his murder. I just wondered—"

      
"Well, lots of luck!" She swept the room with her arm. "Here are a few of your suspects, everyone in this room!

That jerk dirtied every person he touched! Hell, no, he wasn't here Tuesday because I promised him I'd poison his next drink in this bar!"

The waitress went away with that, and I could see that she was still steaming as she picked up a tray of drinks at the bar.
 
I'd sure touched a nerve there.

The one man band was playing the intro to a show tune and
Lunceford
was sharing a microphone with the blonde, looking a little nervous and clowning with a table of kids down front while awaiting his musical cue.
 
I left money on the table and went out of there, returned to the theater, found it locked and darkened.

An errand?
 
At midnight?

There were things I needed to discuss with Judith White.
 
That was the primary cause of disappointment, but I’ll admit that also I'd been looking forward to just being with her again. I was no longer worried for her safety.
 
If her own father was no longer worried, why should I be?

Well, okay, maybe I was worried just a bit. For sure I was feeling a growing agitation, or maybe apprehension, maybe something else.

Lunceford's
characterization of
Alfie
Johansen,
aka
Craig
Maan
, had been a bit jumbled, even contradictory. Everyone had loved
Alfie
,
Lunceford
said, and yet it seemed that also everyone hated him once they got to know him.
 
The waitress's reaction had been like an exclamation point to everything
Lunceford
told me. Apparently the guy had used people, lied to them, probably conned them.
 
Judith had sort of indicated the same ambivalent feelings about the guy.
 
Yet she hadn't bothered to tell me that she'd taken him home for a week. That was personal, of course, none of my business ... but still I would have preferred that she instead of
Lunceford
had told me that.

She hadn't told me about Jimmy
DiCenza
either. Surely she had known that Jimmy was
Vin's
kid or she would have put something together about the name, especially since she'd told me that she'd kept up on the news about the trial in her father's courtroom.
 
Maybe she hadn't told me many things.
 
I decided I wanted to go up to her house. If she wasn't there, I'd wait for her.
 
But then as I was walking toward my car, which was one of only a few remaining in that area, I spotted another car that looked familiar. Looked like the car that Art
Lahey
had been driving, so I detoured that way for a closer look.
 
It was
Lahey's
car, yeah.

Lahey
was in it, sort of slumped down behind the steering wheel. There was congealed blood all around the lower half of his face, soaked into his coat and shirt, and a revolver lay across his lap. He'd been dead awhile.

I gingerly opened the door and leaned inside for a better view, saw that he'd been shot in the head or else in the mouth and the bullet had blown open the back of his skull as it tore through.
 
Didn't see any sign of the bullet lodged in the roof and there was no broken glass, but I didn't do a thorough examination, instead went around to the other side and searched the glove box but found nothing of any importance in there.

So 1 carefully lifted the matted coat front and felt inside, found a sticky leather-covered notebook in the breast pocket.
 
The revolver looked like the same one I'd left lying beside him earlier that day when he'd tried to arrest me—the one that he accused me of taking away—but a Police Positive is a very common revolver and they all look pretty much alike.

I took the notebook and left everything else exactly as it lay, wiped everything I'd touched, and got the hell away from there.

I couldn't even report it, see, and I wished like hell that I hadn't been within twenty miles of the place when it went down.

But I had.

I'd spent the entire evening there.

And so, it appeared, had
Lahey
.

You'd think that someone would have heard a gunshot—hotel security cops, someone—in that still neighborhood toward the top of the evening. But sounds can be tricky and many people are not able to discriminate between the sound of a gun and other sounds that occur in the night ... a single gunshot anyway, from within a closed car.
 
It had to have happened while I was inside the theater, judging from the condition of the corpse, and certainly no one in there would have heard it over the amplified sounds within the theater.
 
They don't use a live band but a recorded musical track, and it's pretty loud. Besides, you're just not focused on outside sounds when the show is in progress.

But someone had blown the man away probably within minutes after he'd walked away from me at the beginning of the third act.

Why?

He'd been disciplined and removed from the case, suspended from the force because of ...

Because of what?

He'd said insubordination and threatening a superior, then he'd said, "How many do you want?"

I thought he'd meant how many more reasons for his suspension and I honestly had not thought to ask.

But why blow the man away?
 
Obviously because he'd come too close to a truth that was making someone nervous. But what?

I didn't have a clue to that.
 
I hoped, though, that I would find one in the bloodstained notebook—and I decided that I would not go to Judith's right away, after all.

I went back into the lounge, instead.
 
Not to talk to anyone in particular but merely for personal comfort, to make myself as visible as possible until someone else discovered
Lahey's
body. If the gun that killed him was the same gun I'd taken away from him earlier, and if his report of the incident made it look as though I had kept the gun... well, I could be in deep shit again.

So I left my car where it stood and returned to the lounge, merely to look good.

I felt bad for
Lahey
, sure.

But I’ll have to be honest. I felt even worse for myself. And I began to feel bad for Judith again, too. Hell, I felt bad for everyone.

The impossible dream had become a
fullblown
nightmare.