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

  reinvigorated me or something. I had to get back into it."

  "So you called Lydia and she met you at the gate. Did you go on inside then?"

  "No. She had a visitor, in her apartment. I believe it was Kelly Murray. I believe Kelly was freaking out, and Lydia didn't want me to hear what was going on. She needed to talk to me too, though, and that's why she had me come up."

  "What did she want to talk to you about?"

  "She wanted to know how Tim Murray had died."

  "She could have gotten that from the newspaper."

  "Yes, but she wanted the real inside story. I gave it to her, as I knew it, and I had to cross my heart and hope to die three times before I could satisfy her. I was there at the gate for maybe five minutes. Then I went looking for you."

  "Why?"

  "Well, I. . . still wasn't sure about things. Okay, sure about you. I wondered if you had killed Murray, Joe."

  "Come on, why would I do that?"

  "You said you'd come to kick butts."

  "Well, sure, but I'm no executioner or vigilante."

  "How would I have known what you were? Outside of bed, I mean."

  "You'd checked me out. You told Calhoun that I would cut corners but respect the spirit of the law."

  "There you go again. I told you I have not discussed you with the councilman."

  "You did not go back to the mansion again at eleven o'clock?"

  "No."

  "You did not go inside, visit Lydia in her apartment?"

  "No."

  "Then I wonder who did. Another woman came at eleven. Lydia alerted the security guard, told him to pass her through. Who would that be?"

  "I haven't the foggiest..."

  "What was said during that final talk you had with Lydia that confirmed in your mind that Schwartzman does not exist?"

  "Lydia as much as told me so. She said that with Katz and Murray gone, there was no one now but her and she would be the next to die."

  "That's where you picked up that phrase."

  "Uh huh, it just sort of fell out, I was repeating Lydia's words. I sort of halfway believed it. About myself, I mean. Why not? They were dropping like flies all around me."

  "Did you kill a dog Friday night?"

  "Yes."

  "Why did you change your story?"

  "I don't know, except that I became confused and scared. I had already opened the gate and was about to step through when I heard the dog behind me. He was in attack mode, I knew it just from the sound of him. I had my gun in my hand. I whirled and shot him three times. Then I jumped in my car and got the hell away from there."

  "Did you tell Murray about that?"

  "No. I didn't want him to know I'd been sneaking around up there."

  "He knew you had a passkey."

  "Of course. He gave it to me a month ago."

  "Why do you think Frank Jones was killed?"

  "God, I don't know, Joe. I didn't see him that night. But something very important was going on up there Friday night. I believe now that it was a council of war."

  "Who do you think was in charge of that?"

  "Well, it was not Tim Murray. I went straight from the mansion to Helltown. He was there when I got there."

  "How many cops are involved in this?"

  "I couldn't give you numbers. But there are a lot involved, to one degree or another. That's a sex club up there, Joe. It may have started as something else, but it's definitely a sex club now. I believe they bring the girls in from Helltown. Lydia was complaining once about the high cost of some of those parties. But I think it might have started as something else."

  "Like what?"

  "Well. . . for an educated guess ... a very fancy and very elaborate sting palace, a place to wine and dine and entertain highly placed people in the drug distribution networks."

  "Also a place, maybe, to buy and sell?"

  "Why not? Or to set up buys somewhere else."

  "No, I'm thinking of a safe killing ground. I'm thinking..."

  "God, Joe!"

  "No—try this, Lila. Try it for size. You don't want to make a bust, not a legal one. You merely want to get the buyers in there with heavy bucks, and you want to bury them there, without their bucks. Have you walked those grounds good?"

  "God, Joe!"

  "We'll need a backhoe, maybe several of them. Start with the flowerbeds. We'll have to . . ."

  But I was being premature.

  Dale Boyd reminded me of that.

  The narcotics team leader stepped into view just outside my one-way window in the back yard. He was dressed for combat and outfitted for annihilation. And he was not alone. I knew all the SWAT hand signals, and I knew that he was positioning his crew for a rush of the house.

  So, what the hell.

  Nobody lives forever.

  But I sure wanted Lila to do so.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I pulled Lila out of the spa and sent her scampering to the bathroom with orders to hit the deck in there and stay there. She took a slight detour past the sofa and scooped up her purse on the run, so at least she was armed though I didn't know what good a little pistol would do her.

  I've made it a longstanding practice to keep a loaded and ready riot gun in the bedroom, it's a semi-automatic that delivers a withering pattern of double-ought buck as fast as you can pull the trigger. I snatched it off the wall and took off toward the front of the house dripping naked. It's not the way you'd want to go into combat but there are those times when you have to take it as you find it, and I knew that this was no time to be fooling around with aesthetics.

  I figured that I had one small advantage. I knew the combat zone better than the enemy did, and I knew their tactics at least as well as they did. They would stampede through the front door behind an explosive charge that

  would lay the door on the floor—at least two of them, maybe three—while one or two others tried to find a way in through the rear. Luckily, there were no other ways into this house except to blast through windows or walls, so I felt that I had to meet the charge at the most certain point of entry, then try to handle the rest where the rest would find me.

  I took up position in the shadowed hallway with an unobstructed view of the door, checked my weapon, and awaited the inevitable. It was not a long wait. I heard a click and a sizzle at the door, followed instantly by the blast of the explosive charge. Apparently they had not shaped it quite right; it blew the door askew and still hanging in place rather than flat on the floor in front of them, so it was not the cleanest entry possible. Still, they charged straight ahead and there was some momentary confusion in the doorway as they banged around in the cloud of smoke and plaster dust.

  I doubt that they ever saw me, and all I saw were shapes in motion. I let go two quick rounds that swept them back out the door. A third round finished the work on the door and it fell out behind them.

  Someone yelled out there in a voice of distress. I could hear someone running across the yard—and I thought oh shit, wondering how many more there were.

  At about that same moment the chatter of an automatic combat rifle erupted at the rear and I heard glass shattering and tinkling.

  I skipped back toward the bedroom, saw Lila standing naked in the bathroom doorway with her little snub .38 Detective Special extended and coughing. My whole back wall was gone, a guy in combat fatigues lay twisted and bleeding in the shards of glass, two more were dancing

  around the yard looking for cover while Lila blasted away at them. "I got one!" she yelled at me.

  "Stay covered!" I yelled back, and took off again toward the entryway.

  Nothing was happening there so I stepped outside, buck naked, took a quick look at the two who were noisily dying there—recognized both of them, yeah. The one had stood leaning against my office door during the Saturday meeting, with see-everything eyes taking my size. He had a hole in his throat now you could pitch a golfball through and, from the looks of it, those eyes were now trying to see somethi
ng in a totally different world. The other guy didn't have much chest left; he was a goner too.

  I had to step over them both to clear the entrance way, heard feet pounding turf just as I reached the corner of the garage, instinctively dropped to a knee and waited the millisecond it took for the guy to appear. He saw me at, I'm sure, the same time I saw him, with the only difference being in the reflexes and the fact that I was expecting him while he was not expecting me. We fired almost simultaneously but he was off-balance and not quite ready to fire; I was set and waiting, itching to fire.

  It was Big Red, Sgt. Dale Boyd, narcotics undercover team leader, and I guess he knew he was a goner even as he was pulling into the trigger of his auto. I saw it all in the eyes, even bluer than I remembered them, and it was the same look he'd given me at the PD as we parleyed only yesterday and he was telling me, "We'd rather it went the other way but. . . when it comes, it comes."

  The double-ought blast from my riot gun shredded his gun arm and sent him whirling into the ground, his stream of fire punching harmlessly into the heavens as he went. He lay there grunting while his blood soaked into my lawn,

  within spitting distance from where I knelt. I went over and disarmed him, tossed three weapons into the bushes beside the garage. Our gazes met during that. He smiled, I think, through the red beard and groaned, "Do it one more time, please."

  I growled, "Fuck you, guy, do it yourself," and I went on to the rear in support of Lila.

  That remarkable gal did not need a lot of support at the moment. She was prancing nakedly about the back lawn, bleeding a bit from a minor cut on the foot—probably picked up as she scrambled through the broken glass to get outside—otherwise doing fine, breathing a bit hard but eyes cool and the emotions under control.

  "I got another," she reported. I could see that. The guy was lying on his back in the yard, holding his hands above his face and peering intently at bloodied fingers. "How many are left?"

  "Let's check it out," I suggested. "Meet you in front. Go careful. And do not fire at a naked man."

  We set off in opposite directions to circle the house. I heard her giggle, turned back to see. Our eyes met. She said, "Dammit, Joe, we are naked."

  "Thanks for noticing," I replied, and we went on about our business, naked notwithstanding.

  But it was done.

  Lila found another guy lying at the far side, he was full of buck, apparently caught it during the rush on the doorway, no fight left in him now.

  We went inside and called the sheriffs. I put a Band-Aid on her foot. We got dressed. The L.A. sheriffs came. The paramedics came. We were in for a long set. After awhile, Captain O'Brien came, then Ralston. With Ralston came Councilman Calhoun, so I knew then who his "man" was. Some time later, the feds came.

  We sorted it all out right there.

  Then, magically—at about twelve o'clock—every one was gone. Every one, that is, except Lila and me.

  I looked at her and said, "Well, that was a short reign."

  "What was?" she asked.

  "Copp in charge," I explained. "It didn't quite get thirty-six hours."

  "That's impossible," she said. "It was longer than that."

  I said, "No, from midnight Friday until noon Sunday was all it got."

  She said, "Well, God!—Saturday afternoon was three days long! Anyway... you're still in charge as far as I'm concerned."

  "Really?"

  "Uh huh. We'll have to clean up this house. It's in a mess, now. Can you board up the bedroom? And that door—you'll have to fix that door. I'll wash it down but..."

  I said, "Wait a minute. Which one of us is in charge?"

  "You're in charge, Joe," she assured me.

  That was another piece of her disinformation, of course: Us guys are never in charge but I guess it can be a nice illusion. I went to board up the bedroom windows and pick up the broken glass. She cleaned up the mess at the entryway and then took a long soak in the spa while I labored on.

  But that is what you get when you are the Copp in charge. Of course, you get Lila, too, when the work's all done.

  I figured it was a fair push.

  Boyd did not die that time but he lost his right arm at the elbow; maybe he would lose the rest after all the murder

  indictments were handed down. The guy had killed a bunch of people over the past few years, most for profit, and it's guys like these the gas chambers were built for.

  Four others in the team survived, two of those wounded in the shootout and two more who'd been driving the getaway vans and took off when the thing went sour. The two wounded men couldn't even wait to get to the hospital to start singing; the D.A. will probably let one or both cop a plea in exchange for their cooperation in the prosecution of Boyd and the others, the others including a couple of sitting city councilmen as well as the other two who'd been in on the thing from the beginning.

  As we'd guessed, it may have started clean enough—or almost clean anyway. Katz had seen the amount of riches that were often involved in drug busts in the area, and his displeasure with the way the split usually went between the feds and the cities and counties is a matter of record in the minutes of the council meetings.

  It looks like, at first, this was what got them thinking and plotting. Linked to that was a genuine abhorrence and maybe outright hatred vis-a-vis the drug trade in general. Many of the cops shared that frame of mind, had nothing but contempt for the pushers and dealers they encountered routinely in their line of work, resented the soft treatment many were receiving in the courts, were eager and easily enlisted in what may have been perceived by many as a realistic and worthy approach to the problem.

  Whatever, it began with the decision to go it alone in the drug wars and a three million dollar appropriation for covert operations. Who knows where the idea came from to build the mansion in the heights? Maybe one of them was a James Bond fan with an appetite for the ridiculous, or maybe all of them thought it would make a splendid statement about the sophistication of a small town turned

  city almost overnight. Certainly, they threw a lot of money at the police department. It had every technological advantage a department could have, it enjoyed a pay scale far surpassing any other department in the region and a benefits package unparalleled in the state. They had a great facility and what should have been a very happy force— but it was all built upon illusion, and maybe too many of them knew that it was.

  I don't know yet exactly what to make of the video tapes Zarraza found in the locked closet of the mansion. It seems sensible to believe that the original intent with the camcorders was geared toward hard evidence during sting operations. They found hidden-camera alcoves behind one-way glass in each of the suites. So maybe it started that way. But it seems that the only evidence on those tapes was the kind that would embarrass the hell out of about fifty of Brighton's best—in compromising sexual activities, to say the least, since most of those guys have wives and a lot have kids. So maybe it was regarded as insurance against faintheartedness on the part of the troops as the intrigue deepened. I don't know, I leave that up to you—what do you think it was? Maybe it was for laughs, or maybe it was for someone's private pleasure. You decide.

  For sure, it began to go to hell in a bucket very quickly. Maybe that happened when they stopped policing the drug trade and began merely appropriating it. There is no evidence that the mansion was ever used for a genuine, legal bust. But they're digging up bodies all over the place up there and early readings on the laundry network of offshore bank accounts are pointing toward mega-bucks in ill-gotten gains, perhaps as much as a hundred million.

  What do you do with all that money if you're afraid to use it openly? It has been no secret for years now that a

  lot of narcotics cops in every region of the country have been skimming from the cash found during drug raids. Happens all the time, but they don't get caught until they begin showing conspicuous wealth, and there's the problem. Why take it if you can't spend it? And if you spend it, peop
le will notice and you'll end up in jail. Some of them apparently don't think that far—some cops are real jerks, after all—but that must have been the dilemma of the Brighton coalition, and they must have thought that they had invented the perfect solution.

  They invented Harold Schwartzman.

  Then, with the help of an executive at the local bank— who turns out to be another old crony—they set up the laundry network. Even then, it was a problem. So they bought properties—some in Baja California, some in Hawaii, some in the Caribbean islands, maybe some others that have not been found yet, certainly quite a few around Brighton—and they actually issued "stock" in Brighton Holding to all the participants. So nobody ever saw a Brighton cop buy a vacation home in Hawaii, but there was always one available. You could visit one of them at their home or search it with a warrant and you'd never find expensive wardrobes, flashy jewelry, or luxury cars—but you'd find those items waiting for whoever got a chance to travel now and then. You'd find Brighton Holding yachts at Newport, Brighton Holding condos and credit accounts at Vegas and other fun capitals—and, at home, you could visit the Schwartzman mansion at regular intervals and party for free with women who were also free.

  So why not a happy department, with all that?

  Well, you know, you cannot keep something like that going smoothly forever. The more people who are in it, the more chance for dissension and greed and whatever other excess the human expression allows.

  And, of course, it was rotten at the top.

  Give people like Katz and Murray an inch and they will grab the mile. The illusion of great wealth and power fed their other fantasies, and the fantasies alone could have brought the whole thing down.

  Maybe they did.

  Couple of items here I need to clear up.

  We got this from the cooperating narcs. Franklin Jones was gunned down in cold blood by Dale Boyd because he objected to the clandestine meeting of the "board" which had convened to decide Tim Murray's fate. It happened inside the mansion, probably while Lila was on the grounds. She would not have heard the shots because Boyd had a silencer on the pistol and the report would not have carried beyond the walls.