Copp On Ice, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series)

  COPP ON ICE

  Don Pendleton

  A Joe Copp, Private Eye Novel

  by the creator of

  The Executioner: Mack Bolan Series

  Reviews of Don Pendleton’s Joe Copp, Private Eye Series

  Kirkus Reviews: “Pendleton is the master.”

  Publishers Weekly: “Reads like an express train...a throwback to the vintage Spillane years...Pendleton knows how to keep us turning pages.”

  St. Petersburg Times: “Pendleton has a great new character in Copp. His style is fresh, the pace is brisk, and there are enough twists to please any mystery fan.”

  Library Journal: “Pendleton, author of the long-running paperback Executioner series, shows in his first hardcover that hardboiled writing can be insightful as well as action-packed.”

  Milwaukee Sentinel: “Pendleton is a master of action and dialog and ‘Copp’ is a taut detective story.”

  Booklist: “Action filled...Copp is a likable tough guy...An exciting, satisfying read.”

  Flint Journal: “Pendleton proves again he is the equal of Mickey Spillane when it comes to the hard-boiled mystery.”

  ALA Booklist: “This is the real thing, the hardcover debut of the author of the perennially popular ‘Executioner series’...the charm of the Executioner books.”

  Books by Don Pendleton

  Fiction

  The Executioner, Mack Bolan Series

  The Joe Copp Mystery Series

  Ashton Ford Mystery Series

  Fiction with Linda Pendleton

  Roulette

  Comics by Don and Linda Pendleton

  The Executioner, War Against the Mafia

  Nonfiction Books by Don Pendleton

  A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet

  Nonfiction Books by Don and Linda Pendleton

  To Dance With Angels

  Whispers From the Soul

  The Metaphysics of the Novel

  The Cosmic Breath

  Copp on Ice

  Copyright © 1991 by Don Pendleton, All rights reserved.

  Published with permission of Linda Pendleton.

  First Kindle Edition, February 2010.

  ISBN: 1-55611-235-1

  Donald I. Fine, Inc. First Printing Hardcover, 1991.

  First HarperPaperbacks printing: August 1992

  BackinPrint/iUniverse Edition, 2000.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Linda Pendleton and Judy Bullard

  For Jay and Lillie, who know how to take charge and are doing so. Keep on.

  dp

  "They who are of the opinion that Money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for Money."

  —George Savile, Marquess of Halifax

  "I regard sex as the central problem of life."

  —Havelock Ellis, Psychologist

  "If it were not for money and sex, we would not need cops."

  —Joe Copp, American Private Investigator

  COPP ON ICE

  CHAPTER ONE

  She was very pretty, with long golden hair and a dazzling smile, tall—about five-ten—beautifully tanned and outfitted in a tight denim skirt and silken blouse unbuttoned to an enticingly shiny decolletage—very graceful in her movements. I figured "dancer or athlete" in my instant appraisal. It's my business to appraise people, all kinds of people—not just beautiful women—so it's like a conditioned response for me to get a size on people in that first look. Not that I'm always right, but usually close enough.

  I did not have this one sized, however, in the Most Important Perspective. That MIP tries to differentiate between friend and foe, danger and pleasure, truth and fiction. I saw only a very attractive woman—maybe a dancer or athlete—approaching with a dazzling smile as I wrestled a few sacks of groceries into my car outside the supermarket. It seemed that she intended to accost me. I admit that I am readily accostable in such circumstances, especially so in the warm sunlight of a beautiful day at a peaceful shopping center, and of course I had no idea...

  "Aren't you Joe Copp?" she asked me in an interestingly accosting voice from about two paces out.

  I have never tried to deny it. But then I am also no celebrity. I was doing a quick scan of memory and finding nothing familiar there as I closed the car door and turned to meet that greeting. "That's me. Have we met, I hope?"

  Her smile instantly lost its dazzle then vanished completely. Out of the corner of an eye I saw a car moving slowly toward me along the traffic lane in a way that definitely registered a negative on my MIP scale while the blonde assaulted it from the front. She ripped her blouse open with a quick jerk that sent suddenly unfettered boobs into a freedom dance, let out a shriek, and flung herself onto me. Hell, I was trying to push her away but it must have looked like just the opposite—and, of course, that was the intention.

  This is a very popular shopping center. There were people all around. I'm surprised I didn't get mobbed, then and there. Maybe I would have, because I couldn't get her off and she was raising a hell of a ruckus. I'm thinking, "Jesus ..." when this car swerves in alongside and two big guys jump out. They're cops, I know they're cops because I've been a cop all my life and I know a cop when I see one, no matter how he's dressed. I'm trying to tell them that the thing is not the way it looks—will they please take this crazy woman off me? But they just put me in an armlock while the blonde is still trying to knee me. Next thing I know, I'm in handcuffs and being stuffed into the back seat of their car while one of the cops is talking to the woman. A crowd has gathered and I am getting curious looks from every quarter.

  There is not time for much of that, though, because very quickly—entirely too quickly—both cops are in the car and we are driving away.

  I knew already—or suspected very strongly—that it was a setup. I was being hustled. But why? The guy at the wheel kept giving me glances through the rearview mirror. The other sat sidewise in the front seat and kept me fixed with a hard stare. I didn't intend to play that game. After a couple of blocks, I said, "Police station's the other way, guys."

  "Shut up," said Sidewise.

  "Get screwed," I said back. "You've no intention of booking me so let's get it settled quick. A gallon of ice cream is melting on my groceries. So give me the message while you're taking me back to my car."

  The driver swerved abruptly toward the curb, stopped the car, swiveled about to give me a long, hard stare before telling me, "You'll fucking walk back to your car, asshole. This's no taxi service."

  "Maybe you'd better tell me what it is, then."

  His partner showed me a thin smile, said, "Maybe we'd better take you out to the gravel pit and teach you some humility."

  These are both big guys. I'm six-three and way beyond two hundred pounds, but these guys were bigger. Of course, size advantage is mainly in the mind. My Judo master is roughly the height and weight of an average American ten-year-old, he's seventy-five years old, and he'd already taught me a lot of humility.

  "I'm humble enough," I told these guys. "Forget the gravel pit. The point is made. I'm vulnerable. Any one of you guys can get my license any time you want it. I understand. So who's mad at me now?"

  The guy at the wheel smiled suddenly and told me, "Nothing personal, Joe. Hey, we respect you. That's the whole point. We respect you enough to tell you in advance, see. There's enough trouble in Brighton already. A celebrity-typ
e P.I. nosing around will just muck things up even worse."

  I'd been called many different kinds of private cop but never that one. I said, "Thanks for the casting but we're a long way from Brighton right now and I probably don't see the town twice a year. So thanks. I can safely assure you that I will not be nosing around any time soon."

  "That's good, because if we were in Brighton right now you'd be on your way to the dungeon right now. Anything can happen to a guy, any time. Right? Like right out in front of the grocery store. Never know. It sometimes comes from nowhere. Blam! You're in the pokey. Never knew what hit you."

  I tried to smile as I replied, "Two big shiny jugs hit me, pal. Give the lady my regards. Where does she work? Maybe I'd like to see more of what she's got."

  "Nah, you wouldn't. Lila wears handcuffs on her belt and a sap in her panties."

  "So you're telling me where she works. Same place you work."

  "Sidewise" produced an ID and held it up for my inspection. Brighton Police Department. "We're just trying to take care of business, Joe. You know the routine. Just don't get caught up in it."

  I said, "Yeah ... you do have problems in Brighton."

  So they did. Hardly anyone living in Southern California could have escaped notice of that. Something new in the press almost daily for months. Mayor murdered with a prostitute in a sleazy motel. Chief of Police fired amid rumors of rampant corruption in his department. City Attorney resigned. City Administrator resigned, recall petitions being circulated to remove councilmen, political turmoil in every area of city government—it had been a mess for a long time. It's one of the old foothills cities at the eastern edge of the Los Angeles basin, sleepy little village for most of its life before the population boom sent the big city developers scurrying for virgin lands to convert into housing tracts. Now even these relatively remote areas are bursting at the seams and struggling for stability in the face of continuing pressures for further development. When I first came south a mere ten years ago, Brighton had a population of about thirty thousand. Now it's close to a hundred thousand. And, yeah, hurting.

  I told my new pals from Brighton, "I have no clients in your town. So I don't know why you guys drove all the way over here to tell me your troubles. Not that I don't sympathize. I simply have no interest there. So. . . my ice cream."

  "Can't do that yet," Sidewise told me.

  "When can you?"

  "When you tell us who your client is."

  I tried to spread my hands in a gesture of innocence, and was reminded that they were still cuffed behind me. "I'm working two cases right now," I confided. "One is for a public defender in Pomona who thinks his client is innocent on a drugs-related murder charge and hopes I can produce evidence that he is. He's guilty as sin but you guys would have no interest. The other case is an insurance scam, nothing to do with the problems in Brighton. Now can we rescue my groceries?"

  "Why are you lying to us, Joe?" asked the guy at the wheel, in a friendly tone. "We know you've been retained. Our information is solid. So why are you treating us this way?"

  "Maybe it's these cuffs," I replied in the same friendly

  tone. "I don't think well with my hands behind my back."

  "Oh, shit!" Sidewise exclaimed. "Forgot all about that!" He slid outside, opened my door and pulled me out, spun me around and pushed my head onto the roof, took off the cuffs, hit me in the small of the back with a knee and took me in a choke-hold, spun me out onto the sidewalk and kicked me in the side as I was going down.

  He was back inside the car and it was moving away before I raised my head off the cement.

  I wasn't mad. I was thankful that it came out so easy. Had a couple of sore spots and a somewhat shaken sense of dignity, but all in all... not so bad, not so mad.

  The mad would come later, after I'd had awhile to think about it.

  I hoofed it on back to the supermarket, got in my car, and got the hell away from there. I live only five minutes away, in the hills overlooking the urban sprawl known as the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, east of Los Angeles. Brighton is about twenty minutes farther east, toward San Bernardino. I'd really had no interest in that town, never had, never expected I would.

  But now I did.

  Those guys could not have done a better job if they'd been trying to lure me there. I may have told you that I've been a cop all my adult life. A public cop for more than fifteen years, with some damned big departments—San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments. Worked it all, did it all—traffic, burglary, vice, narcotics, homicide, SWAT—learned it all but never really got comfortable with the politics that go with it, finally decided to do my own thing my own way, went private, pick my own jobs now and make my own way. It's not always fun, not always challenging, and it's never

  secure. But it's my life and I'm in charge of it, and I like it that way.

  Never expected to be in charge of a department. The mere suggestion of any such possibility would be a laugher, for sure.

  I had told those Brighton cops the truth. I had not been retained to do anything in or concerning their town. But they'd set me up for it, sensitized me to it. So when the new city administrator for Brighton called me at home that night and offered me the job, I took it without thinking twice.

  Not a retainer, no. A job. He wanted me to take a temporary appointment as Chief of the Brighton Police Department.

  I took it.

  And then I laughed. Which shows how dumb I can be sometimes.

  Chapter Two

  Carl Garcia is a quality guy. We'd never been what you'd call friends, exactly—not in the sense of visiting in each other's homes or hitting the town together, hadn't been anything like that. But I guess we'd always liked and respected each other, and a friendship like that can sometimes be more compelling than the other kind.

  We met in San Francisco while I was on the force there and he was a civilian police administrator. Within that year I was walking out the door and heading south in a graceful exit to join LAPD with my good record intact, thanks to a courageous stand by the good Garcia when all around him were howling for my scalp. I think that cost him, though he never said anything about it, because he was out the door himself a few months later and working for one of the smaller Bay Area cities in a similar capacity. That usually means smaller pay—so, yeah, it cost him.

  We hadn't actually made an effort to keep in touch across the years—wasn't that kind of friendship—but circumstances kept us crossing paths now and then during the course of business. He'd moved around some too. That can happen to a quality guy who won't play the games some would demand of him. Somewhere in those years he'd picked up a master's degree in government administration; last I'd heard of him, I was with L.A. County and he was City Manager for one of the inland Northern California towns. I sent announcements around to everyone I've ever known when I set up my own shop as a cop for hire, so of course I sent one to Garcia, too, but never knew if he'd received it because we'd been out of touch for a couple of years.

  You can imagine my surprise, then, when Carl called me that Friday evening from the Brighton city hall and offered me a job. Temporary job, he hastened to point out, good for probably no more than seventy-two hours, or until the city council could bury their own differences long enough to get together and shoot down the appointment. And of course they would. Candidates for a job like this are screened very carefully, qualifications weighed and re- weighed, salaries negotiated and all that. They'd shoot it down.

  But there was big trouble in Brighton, for sure. Carl had been hired by the council just a few days earlier. His predecessor had resigned at the height of a political firestorm which also took the police chiefs job, one week after the death of the city's mayor. I'd never known Carl Garcia to be afraid of anything but he sounded nervous and maybe even a bit scared. "I have to emphasize, Joe, that you'll be walking into a pressure cooker that no man in his right mind would want to contend with. And it could be dangerous. The whole thing
here is thoroughly rotten. I'm actually afraid of the cops here, and I believe a couple of the councilmen are certifiably insane."

  "Why hire me," I managed to ask, "when you know I'll be fired almost immediately?"

  "Well, I guess you must know that I'll expect you to come over here and kick some asses into line in your usual direct approach to problem-solving. I—"

  "You know that I've gone private."

  "Yes. I received your announcement. Took awhile because you sent it to the wrong place. By the time it caught up with me it was too late to send congratulations, so what the hell, congratulations I guess if that's the way you want it. I'm not asking you to give anything up. It's just that I can't call a private eye in here to kick ass in the police department—not as a private eye, that is. You've always been a lightning rod, Joe. I figure you'll draw enough lightning over the weekend to at least get a feeling for who can and cannot be trusted in this town. Just give me a handle, even a very short one."

  "Who's running the department at the moment?"

  "I am," he said ruefully.

  "You don't have an acting chief?"

  "They're all Indians here, Joe; no chiefs."

  I didn't like the sound of that. "I couldn't go along with a sham appointment," I told him.

  "Neither could I," Garcia assured me. "It's strictly legal. I get to run the city until the council unleashes veto power. They're so disorganized it will take them awhile to do that. If I want you to run the PD, then by God you'll run it your way until someone yanks both of us out. Will you do it?"

  "You want me to kick ass."

  "That's what I want, yes."