Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Hollywood Bowl is nestled into the hills off
Cahuenga
Boulevard. Before they built the freeways,
Cahuenga
was the major route through the Hollywood hills and into the San Fernando Valley, following a natural canyon just west of Griffith Park. You can take
Cahuenga
all the way to Studio City, where it becomes Ventura Boulevard, the old Highway 101 and still the main street for many of the valley communities such as Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills.

Most of the through traffic these days is along the freeway routes.
Cahuenga
at midnight can be virtually deserted, especially in the Bowl area when nothing is happening at the amphitheatre. Nothing was happening that night. It's a
parklike
setting with lots of grass and picnic tables. For summer concerts many people like to come early with a picnic basket and make an evening of it. But it was very quiet around there when I rolled in for my midnight rendezvous with Guilder and, one hoped, Melissa Franklin. There's a parking lot below the Bowl in the picnic and snack bar area—now deserted and not too well lit in the vapory mists of the night. I had figured it to be that way when I set up the meet, and I had come in along the back side via
Cahuenga
from Universal City, assuming that my car was still hot and hoping to avoid contact with the law-enforcement community.

I was ten minutes early, the way I like it for this sort of thing. I put the Cad at the top of the lot, where the mists were heaviest, nose-out and free to travel with minimum restriction, then got into my gun harness and found comfort in the darkness about fifty feet away.

Had the whole place to myself for fifteen minutes. Nothing moved or showed until midnight plus five, when a police car cruised through the turnaround and went on back without stopping. Ten minutes later I was wondering if I'd come for nothing. The evening chill was settling into me and I was thinking about taking off when the Jaguar pulled in down below. It stopped just inside and sat there for a few moments, then pulled on around in a jerky, hesitant manner and stopped again on the far side.

I went to the Cad and flashed the headlights, had to do it twice before the Jaguar started moving and headed toward me. I retreated again and did not expose myself until I could see the whites of the lady's eyes. Fifteen people were dead and I had no desire to join the tally. Where was Guilder?

She pulled in beside the Cad, alone in the car and clearly nervous. I came down and rapped on the passenger side. Melissa unlocked the door and I slid in

beside her, door open and one foot outside, as before. Even scared she was delicious-looking.

      
"Keep your hands on the wheel," I told her. "I'm going to pat you down."

      
"You're going to what?"

      
But I was already doing it. She was wearing a suede jacket with jeans and T-shirt, nowhere much to conceal a weapon but I'd have been a fool to take chances. As I poked around under her and beneath the seat we said nothing and she was just sitting there woodenly. Pretty much the same as before when we sat together in her car.

      
"Okay, where's Guilder?"

      
Those large eyes didn't blink. "Where is he supposed to be?"

      
"I thought he'd want to come along and play cop like he did last time."

      
She looked away. "Sorry, he panicked."

      
"What was he looking for in my office?"

      
"Answers."

      
"To what?"

      
"To this crazy business ... I think somebody tried to kill me."

      
"You were supposed to have been in the limo when it blew?"

      
"I think so, yes. I was supposed to meet Mr. Wiseman at eight o'clock. I was a few minutes late. I got into the car and . . . and it wasn't the right car. Not the same car, I mean. And the man looked like Mr. Wiseman but it wasn't him."

      
"Wrong car, wrong man. Wrong chauffeur, too?"

      
"No . . . that's the odd part. I'm sure it was Albert. We were married for three years, I couldn't have mistaken—that was Albert."

      
"Definitely not Wiseman?"

      
"No. I mean yes. Anyway, I don't really know him all that well. I knew, though, that something was strange there. It sent chills down my back. I don't fight those feelings, I just react. Good thing I did, huh. I wasn't half a block away when . . ." She shivered. "I could feel the heat in my own car."

      
"And you kept right on running."

      
"I sure did. I was already starting to wonder about all this."

      
"All this what?"

      
"I mean, even before I came back. It just wasn't making sense anymore."

      
My data pool was getting flooded. I said, "Back from where?"

      
"What?"

      
"You said, before you came back. Back from where?"

      
"From Mexico. They sent me down there nearly a year ago. Made sense at the time, but now—well it all sounds kind of crazy. Then they called and told me about you and—"

      
"What about me?"

      
"That, you know, you were getting the films back."

      
"What films?"

      
"The old movies? And everything was going to be just fine and we could go ahead now. So—"

      
"Wait. Let me get this ... you've been in Mexico for the past year?"

      
"Almost, yes, because, well they said because—"

      
"And all the time you've been married to Franklin?"

      
"Well, yes, see, that's ... it sounds crazy, I know, but that was part of the package, the image thing. But that was all over, see, that part was over and they sent for me. We were meeting at eight o'clock and ... but the damned car blew up in my face. I was scared to death, I'm still scared to death, and I was even afraid to go to the police because it all sounds so hokey. So I called Walter Guilder. We were friends a long time ago and I knew that he was in Mr. Wiseman's security force. I really had no one else to turn to. Walter decided we needed to find out exactly what you were doing for Mr. Wiseman, and that's why we went to your office yesterday."

She'd become a wind-up talking doll and was showing no signs of winding-down. Which was okay, she was venting and that was good, talking herself back to sanity, and I was willing to let her do it—I was eager for her to do it—but we had not yet reached the rational level and I was just trying to guide her toward it.

"You see, they'd told me all about you, your background with the regular police and all, that you were this straight-arrow guy and could be depended on for discretion, that you were so thorough and had this great reputation and all, and . . ."

I'd lost track of what she was saying because my attention was distracted by movements down below. The fog was really settling in heavy and even the light standards were hardly more than faint shrouded beacons in the gloom, so the visibility had fallen rapidly. The occasional cars moving along
Cahuenga
were just dim globs of light in an ethereal background. So I didn't know exactly what I was seeing down there in the turnaround, but it seemed like a car or cars moving without lights through the fog.

I closed my door to extinguish the dome light and

put a hand on Melissa's mouth to shush her as I asked,
    
"Is Guilder down there?"

      
She said, "He thought we should come in separate cars, but he should be here by now. I think he's very nervous about all this."

      
"How good a friend is Guilder?"

      
"We met in an acting class. That's all. We just knew each other. Never dated or anything like that. Ran into each other at the studio last year and he told me he'd given up acting and liked his new work very much. So naturally I thought of him when—"

      
"Frying pan to the fire maybe, kid. Tell me something, what's the first thing to come to your mind when you hear the phrase fifty million bucks?"

      
I could not see her face too clearly now but those eyes were only inches from mine and I thought I could see something happening in there as she said, "What do you mean?"

      
"Means nothing to you?"

      
"Well sure, it means something to me. But what do you mean?"

      
"Something worth dying for, maybe. Or killing for."

      
"I don't understand."

      
Neither did I, not exactly.

      
I asked her pointblank, "Are you a whore?"

      
Eyes flashed at me across the darkness but it took a couple of beats for her to reply. "That's a hell of a thing to say."

      
"Didn't say it. Someone else did. I'm asking. Are you?"

      
"Depends on the definition, I guess," her voice suddenly weary. "I've never stood on a
streetcorner
, if that's what you mean."

      
"Were you Wiseman's woman?"

      
"No."

      
"You never lived with him, slept with him, rubbed his back, drove around town at his feet in the limo and kept him comforted?"

      
"Never did," she said quietly.

      
"You didn't come to my office with him earlier this week hiding behind sunglasses?"

      
"No, I did not."

      
"When did you get back from Mexico?"

      
"Tuesday afternoon, to meet him at eight in Hollywood."

      
"You didn't come to my office on Monday?"

      
"I told you, no. I was in Mexico Monday."

      
"Can you prove that? Airline ticket or—?"

      
"I drove up."

      
"In this car?"

      
"Yes. I left Monday morning, spent the night near Tijuana, came on in the next day."

      
"Starting where?"

      
"Baja. Mr. Wiseman has a place on the ocean near San
Quintin
. It's about a four-hundred-mile drive to Tijuana."

      
"You were staying at Wiseman's place?"

      
"Yes."

      
"Did he give you the car?"

      
"Yes. It was a wedding gift."

      
"When you married Franklin."