Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (20 page)

      
"Yes I am."

      
"What about your theater?"

      
"I know people who would love to take it over for me for awhile."

      
"I am not a rich man, Judy."

      
"That's okay. I'm a rich woman."

      
"So I've been told. How rich?"

      
"Rich enough."

      
"Is your dad rich?"

      
She blinked at that. "You're still digging."

      
"Is he?"

      
She blinked again. "No, but he does okay."

      
"Why isn't he rich?"

      
"Because he had a premarital agreement drawn up before he married my mother. Didn't want to be tainted by her money. Damn him!"

      
"Why damn him, Judith?"

      
"She gave him everything, her career, her fortune, her adoration, she gave him everything."

      
"And what did he give her in return?"

      
"He gave her the judge," she said quietly.

      
"I see," I said.

      
"And he gave her cancer."

      
"It's not contagious, kid."

      
"Oh yes it is. The emptiness is. You have to fill emptiness with something. My mother filled it with cancer."

      
"You inherited her money?"

      
"Yes."

      
"And her emptiness?"

      
"I guess so."

      
"Are we going for the cancer now?"

      
She looked at me, almost cried, said, "
Dammit
, Joe."

      
"Did Craig ever meet your dad?"

      
"Go to hell, will you."

      
I said, "Maybe you took after your dad, after all."

      
She said, "Okay, he met him."

      
"When?"

      
"Way back at the beginning. The day I ran him off."

      
"Tell me about it."

      
"There's nothing to tell. Dad and I had a dinner date. He was in the midst of the
DiCenza
trial but dinner together twice a month in this family is religion. The show was still a bit wobbly. Craig had played Cervantes in college but he really did not know the role that well and he was struggling with it, so I was struggling too. I was working with Craig, trying to—well, anyway, I took time away and had dinner with Dad. At the hotel. I'd left Craig at the theater. He crashed our dinner."

      
"Just like that."

      
"Yes. Did the whole act, you know—surprise, surprise, didn't know you were eating here, that sort of thing. Of course I had to introduce him to my dad."

      
"And?"

      
"And nothing. They sat and talked law. I was surprised that Craig knew so much about it. He said that he used to enjoy long after-dinner conversations with Judge Johansen, Johnny's dad."

      
"How'd they get along?—Craig and your dad?"

      
"They got along fine. But I was fuming."

      
"Why?"

      
"Maybe because I hate to be crashed in on. Maybe because I already knew that Craig was a rat and I was

suspicious."

      
"Suspicious of what?"

      
"I don't know. I had already become uneasy about Craig's interest in dad. And I had already refused several times to introduce them."

      
"What were you afraid of?"

      
"I wasn't afraid of anything. Just hate to be used."

      
"You weren't afraid that Craig might say something to your dad that would embarrass you?"

      
"Well... I don't know. Maybe so."

      
"Did Craig know Jimmy
DiCenza
?"

      
She gave me a long, searching look before responding to that. "So you have been talking to a lot of people."

      
"You knew that Vincent
DiCenza
was Jimmy's old man."

      
"Of course I knew." A tear popped out of one eye and slid down her nose. She dabbed at it with her napkin, said, "Joe ... you'd better stop there."

      
"Can't stop there, kid," I replied as gently as I could. "The truth will out. Let's do it now, before someone beats us to it."

      
She said, "It's not very pretty."

      
"Life often isn't. That doesn't mean we have to hide it. Usually it's best to just confront it. Save a lot of anxieties

that way, and usually the anxieties are worse than anything else. Tell me about you and Jimmy."

      
"I was in one of his shows," she said quietly. "Long time ago. A lifetime ago."

      
"You're not that old."

      
"You get old quick in this business. One day can equal an ordinary lifetime. I didn't want to be ordinary. And I'd promised my mom that I'd pick up where she left off." Judith dabbed at her eyes again. "I tried. Just couldn't take it anymore. Jimmy was ..."

      
"What?"

      
"Exciting, I guess. And I hadn't gotten old yet. He booked me on the Japanese circuit. Found out very quick that I was not over there just to dance."

      
"So what'd you do?"

      
"I danced. With Japanese businessmen. And afterward I danced in their beds."

      
"Why?"

      
She raised a hand and dropped it in a "what the hell" gesture. "Seemed the only thing to do. I told you to leave it alone, Joe."

      
"Told you I couldn't. Neither can you. That was then. This is now. It wasn't for the money. You didn't need that. So why?"

      
"Would you be shocked if I told you that I rather enjoyed it?"

      
"Not necessarily."

      
"Well, sometimes I did. The Japanese can be very charming with Western women, very gallant, entirely flattering. And these were not shopkeepers. They were the movers and shakers in that country."

      
"Politicians too?"

      
"Possibly. I never asked."

      
"You and Jimmy still on good terms?"

      
"No reason not to be. He was always a gentleman with me. I never tied him in with anything actually criminal, and I'd never heard of Vincent
DiCenza
until he entered my dad's courtroom."

      
"Jimmy tells me that you send him girls."

      
"Jimmy is mistaken. I refer talent to him when it seems appropriate."

      
"For his Japanese circuit."

      
"Or whatever. He packages and books, and a kid can actually make a good living with Jimmy."

      
"And grow old quickly," I suggested.

      
She sighed. "That too. But I don't try to make those decisions for people."

      
"People," I suggested, "like Susan Baker and Elaine Suzanne."

      
"I am more discriminating than that," she said.

      
"Jimmy isn't. I've seen his
indiscriminations
."

      
"I am. I wouldn't refer flakes like those two. Are you enjoying this, Joe?"

      
"Not a lot," I said.

      
"Are you finished, then?"

      
"Not quite. You still owe me one. Did Craig know Jimmy
DiCenza
?"

      
She stared at me for a long time, then said, "We should have gone away, Joe."

      
Yeah. Yeah. We should have. She brushed my cheek with her lips as she said goodbye, then she went back upstairs and left me at the kitchen table with nothing but my thoughts and tumbling emotions.

      
It was four o'clock on Saturday morning, and I had to

go invade another day in a darkness more abysmal than ever, without even an illusion to light the way.

      
Big bad Joe,
Copp
For Hire, married to his job and to hell with everything else. And every
one
else, it seemed.

      
I was not that different, I decided, from the judge.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It’s not that far down into Ontario and it's a quick trip that time of morning. I made it in less than ten minutes and found the address from my copy of the cast file without difficulty—a small
streetside
apartment building near downtown, old but decent. The number I wanted was on the third flight up and Johnny
Lunceford
responded fairly quickly to the insistent pressure on the doorbell button.

He cracked the door with two safety chains still in place, reacted dumbly to my presence there, then sleepily told me, "Shit, man, I've got a pregnant wife. What are you doing here this time of night?"

"Justice never sleeps, Johnny," I replied. "Do I kick the door down, come in there and talk in your pregnant wife's face, or would you rather do it out here?"

No decision to it. He said, "Just a minute," and closed the door. Guess he went in to say something to his wife, he was gone less than a minute then joined me in the hallway wrapped in a bulky robe. "Jesus! What do you want?"

"I want it straight this time," I told him. "Off the top.

Alfie
didn't come to you for sanctuary and you didn't get him the
La
Mancha
role. So let's start again from there."

The guy had a desperate, trapped look about him, a frightened look, but that quickly gave way to bravado, defiance. "You're not a real cop! Where do you get off coming in here talking to me like that? Scare the shit out of my wife, she's going to have a baby, where do you get off?"

I showed him where, hoisted him two feet off the floor, let him drop. His knees buckled and he would have fallen onto his face if I hadn't been there to catch him and put him back on his feet—but not entirely on his feet. "I didn't want to get mean with you, Johnny," I told him. "I think you're a nice kid caught up in a hellish nightmare, but I can't let that get in my way now. Either we talk like friends or we talk mean, and I leave that up to you."

Again, no decision required. "Okay
okay
," he said quickly. "Let's talk friendly."

I told him, "I already gave you your cue, kid."

"We were in college together. That's true. I left two years ahead of him, that's true, had no further contact with him. Never really liked him. So it bombed me out of my skull when he turned up at East Foothills. Sort of bombed him too. He took me aside and said, 'Please don't tell anyone my real name. I'm on a case and I'm under cover.' I said okay. That's how it started."

"What kind of case?"

"He wouldn't say. I guessed narcotics. Then later we put together the story I told you."

"How much later?"

"Couple of weeks, I guess."

      
"He was already next to Judith White?"

      
"Sure. She brought him in to replace Greg Houston."

      
"She brought him in?"

      
"That's the way I saw it."

      
"And he was staying with her at the time?"

      
"I think so, yes."

      
“You ever hear of a guy called Jimmy
DiCenza
?"

      
"I don't think so. Oh! That's the guy that's on trial. Judith's father is hearing that case."

      
I said, "No, Jimmy is the son. He's a producer, sort of—packager and promoter. You never heard of Jimmy?"

      
"Uh ... I don't think so. Well, maybe ... I don't know. Last year when I was doing
South Pacific
with Judith, there was this guy...sort of hanging around on and off. Italian. I think he was a producer."

      
"But you never heard
Alfie
mention that name."

      
"No."

      
"Tell me about Elaine Suzanne."

"Her real name is Elaine Somoza. Very strange girl. Talented but strange. Had a thing for
Alfie
." He laughed quietly. "All the women get a thing for
Alfie
. He never knows they're alive."

      
I told him, "Just before she was killed, Elaine told me that she and Craig had been secretly married."

      
"You said that before but I don't know. Sounds like disinformation.
Alfie
was good at that. Tell enough lies, no one will ever know the truth."

      
"Yeah, tell me about it," I replied. "Why would someone want Elaine dead?"

      
"Same reason, I guess, they wanted
Alfie
dead."

      
"And what would that be?"

      
"Well. . ."
Lunceford
scratched his nose and thought about it, then replied, "Maybe he was telling the truth about being undercover."

      
"And all the other crap?—the lies?"

      
"Disinformation," he said with a sigh.

      
"You honestly don't know what he was trying to pull together the other night?"

      
"I honestly
 
don't. I stayed away from it. Hell, I couldn't— I've got a kid on the way."

      
"Did you get to know Larry Dobbs and Jack Harney?"

      
"Not much. I stayed away from that too.
Alfie
first told me they were chasing him, then he told me they were his bodyguards—shit, then he came up with this crap that they were going to back a national road company."

      
"You didn't buy that?"

      
He gave a little shrug and said, "It would've been nice."

      
"Would you have gone on the road with them?"

      
"Sure. Chance like that comes all too seldom. But I guess I never really bought the whole ticket."

      
"Answer me this. Did you feel that
Alfie
, at any time, really thought that he was going to put this show on the road?"

      
Lunceford
frowned and did a little stage posture with one foot in front of the other and a hand on the hip. Then he reversed the whole posture and gave me a frustrated look. "That guy," he said disgustedly, "was never committed to anything like this. He goofed off in college and I guess he goofed off after he left college. He had absolutely no professional experience as an actor. So why did Judith bring him in here?"

      
I said, "I guess I better find out why."

      
I thanked the impossible dreamer and sent him back to bed with his pregnant wife.

      
Then I resumed my own quest for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

      
But that impossible goal was still a long way off.