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

  Another flare. "You were behind me?"

  "All the way up, all the way down—yeah. Who fired those shots?"

  "I did."

  "Why?"

  "Self-defense. I warned them, tie the dog or he's a dead dog."

  "You were there in an official capacity?"

  Thoughtful pause, then: "No."

  "Want to tell me about it?"

  "No."

  I looked at Murray. "Do you know what we're talking about?"

  He replied, "Craggy Lane, I'd say Harold Schwartz- man's place." He smiled faintly at Turner. "You shot one of his Dobermans?"

  She shrugged.

  I asked Murray, "Who is Schwartzman?"

  "Very rich man. Owns maybe half of Helltown. Owns this place. Owns me too, now, I guess. I run this place for him."

  "Why?"

  "Man has to eat, pay his bills. I didn't even get severance, not anything. Looks like I'll have some legal expenses coming up somewhere down the line. Couple of councilmen want blood from me."

  "How much blood?"

  "Enough that I'll need a damned good lawyer. Know one?"

  "Don't you?"

  He smiled, shook his head. "City Attorney always advised me."

  "I hear he resigned. Over this?"

  The ex-chief nodded. "A certain member of the council demanded that he bring criminal charges. City Attorney knew it was nothing but a vendetta. But the pressure was on, and he refused to go along with it."

  "Why the vendetta?"

  "Couple of my officers busted this councilman's spoiled brat last year. Kid was dealing crack and dust in the high school. Father appealed to me, wanted us to look the other way. Couldn't do that. Got 'im off anyway. Bought himself a judge, I suspect."

  "Which councilman is this?"

  Murray sighed, played with his coffee, replied, "Look it up. You'll hear other things too. Don't believe it all. How long d'you think you'll last at that desk?"

  "No longer than Monday," I admitted.

  "Uh huh. So why'd you come?"

  "I was asked to come."

  "I'm asked to do lots of things. Doesn't mean I have to do them. Why'd you come?"

  I showed him a faint smile. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned."

  "That's what I figured. I've heard about you, Joe. Maybe too much. And maybe it's not all true. If I was you, I wouldn't wait 'til Monday."

  "If I was you," I countered, "I wouldn't be running a dive in Helltown."

  "Well... wait and see where you land, then make those decisions. I have kids in college. I have a mortgage, too damned many credit cards, and I have a wife who cannot tolerate public humiliation."

  "But then you have Delilah," I suggested.

  He frowned, and she glared, and I apologized. "Sorry. That's out of line. Even in a murder case."

  "Who was murdered?"

  I shot a quick glance at Turner, then said to Murray, "You didn't hear?"

  He looked her way too. She told him, in a very small voice, "I hadn't gotten to that."

  I told her, "It's the news of the night. Why hadn't you. gotten to it?"

  She said, "I'm not on duty right now, Chief, and I am not even in your jurisdiction right now. So why don't you save the interrogation until later?"

  "That's not what I'd call it, Turner. What kind of cop are you? What kind of woman? You hightail it to Craggy Lane before there's time to get tags on the victims' toes, then shoot a dog and dash down here for Smalltalk with your ex-boss—and that's why you hadn't gotten to it? Come on, give it a break! You're not on duty? The hell you're not on duty!"

  "What's this all about?" Murray asked worriedly.

  "I made a jerk out of myself this afternoon," Turner told him in a voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Manning and Peterson set me up to help them discourage a certain private detective from nosing around the problems in Brighton. A few hours later I'm called in with the rest of the department to meet our new chief, and it's the same certain private detective we rousted. I tried to explain it but apparently he is a very unforgiving man and now he's trying to roust me back."

  I said, "That's bullshit and you know it's bullshit. I'm not here to play games or footsies with you or anyone, and I didn't tail you tonight to embarrass or harass you. Has it occurred to you. Detective Turner, that the same shooter who found Manning and Peterson could be laying his sights on you too?"

  She responded to that only with the eyes, and they seemed a bit squelched—maybe by fear or anxiety, maybe by something else.

  Murray cried, "What are you saying? Manning and Peterson have been .. . ?"

  "Yeah," I said soberly, "yeah, they have been. Who's next on the list? What the hell is going down here, Chief?"

  It was like he hadn't heard me. "Oh my God," he groaned.

  I asked, "Were the four of you involved in something?"

  He responded to that one, raised his hand slightly above the head and made a sign in the air. A big, mean-looking Mexican was at my side instantly. Murray instructed him, "Show the gentleman where the door is, Billy."

  I pushed Billy away and allowed him to see the immediate future in my eyes. "I know where it's at," I told him.

  "Show the gentleman," from Murray.

  Turner stirred and came to my defense. "I'll show him,"

  she said quickly. She had to brush past me to get out of the booth.

  Murray growled, "It's okay, Lila. Sit down." She said, "No, I'll..."

  We walked out arm in arm, and she whispered to me as we cleared the door, "Well, now that was really dumb!" Maybe so, but it was only the beginning of dumb.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Right up to the last moment, there, I'd been developing a good feeling about Tim Murray. Now I wasn't so sure, and I wanted to talk to Detective Turner about that but she was not overly receptive to my conversation or to my presence in her off-duty life. "Let's find some quiet place to talk," I suggested as we walked through the parking lot outside The Dee-light Zone.

  "I've got day shift tomorrow," she said pointedly. "Maybe you can function without sleep but everyone else can't."

  "You've been doing okay so far," I reminded her, glancing at my watch. "Night's shot already anyway. Why did Murray throw me out?"

  "Same reason as me, probably," she replied with a tired grimace. "I'm throwing you out too. It's a rule I have. Chief. I don't fraternize with the brass off-duty."

  "You were fraternizing with Murray."

  "Not exactly. The rule doesn't apply to him now anyway."

  "What exactly, then?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What was the nature of your business in there tonight?"

  "I don't have to answer that. I'm not going to answer it. Goodnight, now. I'm going home."

  I leaned into the car door to prevent her from opening it, said, "Murray seemed to take it hard, the news about Manning and Peterson."

  "Why shouldn't he? They were his officers for quite a few years. What'd you expect, just laying it on him that way? I was about to tell him with some sensitivity when you came in and pre-empted me."

  "I thought he overreacted."

  "That's not how I saw it," she said. "Can I go home now?"

  "You didn't come here just to tell him that," I decided. "You came for information before you laid it on him. Are you working homicide now, Detective?"

  She just glared at me, said nothing.

  "Is that also why you went to Schwartzman's home? What was his connection with the dead officers?"

  She sighed heavily, showed me a defeated smile, replied, "Look, some strange things have been happening lately. I've been very confused about some of it. I'm just trying to sort it out, that's all. I'm still numb from. .. well, I knew those guys pretty well too. Chief Murray did not overreact to the news. They were good cops, maybe a bit flashy at times, but good cops and good friends."

  "That's why you were so anxious to snitch on them."

  It was like I'd slapped her. "That is a hell of a way to put it! What's to snitch? You
knew who we were and you knew what we'd done. I was just trying to give you some perspective."

  "Thanks for the thought," I said drily. "I already had the perspective. Someone didn't want me coming to Brighton. Who? Why? That's what I need to know. Why should I be that much a threat to anyone? Can you give me that perspective, Turner?"

  She was still hot under the collar but didn't seem to know exactly how to vent it. "Why the hell don't you just call me Lila, like everyone else?"

  "Doesn't change the questions, kid," I replied.

  "Doesn't change the answers either," she said. "Take your hand off the door, please. I really must go now. I log in at eight o'clock. Catch me then if you wish to continue this examination."

  "What examination?" I growled, but I opened the car door and closed it behind her after she slid inside.

  She lowered her window and said tightly, "Don't follow me, please."

  "Lila Boobs," I said.

  "What?"

  "That's what I've been calling you to myself all night. So maybe it fits better than anything else, at least until you've leveled with me. We started off bad, kid. So let's forget the chiefs and Indians stuff, it never wore with me anyway, and I don't want it getting in the way of direct communications. Whatever game this is, it's being played for keeps. You go home and mourn your dead partners if you want to, but save a little grief for yourself too because you're in this thing as deep as they were and I don't think you're heavy enough to handle it alone. When that sinks in on you, give me a call."

  "Where would I reach you?" she inquired soberly.

  "I'll be camping in my office until they throw me out."

  She smiled suddenly, a genuine smile, said, "Lila Boobs, huh?" and drove away.

  I realized that it was the first real smile I'd seen on that pretty face. And I decided that maybe I'd gotten my message through to her.

  I just hoped it wasn't too late.

  It was, it seemed, a tad too late for me. Billy Boy and two of his pals emerged from the shadows of the building and leaned against my car, daring me to pass. I asked them, "You boys sure you want to play?"

  Billy spoke for them. "Mr. Murray wants to make sure you get safely off the property. We just came out to make

  sure.”

  Sure they did.

  I said, "Move away from the car."

  "This your car?"

  "Belongs to the City of Brighton. I'd hate to see it get dented by someone's head. So move away."

  "City of Brighton's back there," Billy said, jerking his thumb in the wrong direction. "Sure you're not lost? We could help you find it."

  "You'd better find yourself first, pal."

  "I think you got a flat tire."

  The guy was a prophet. I did not have a flat tire, until he said it. Then one of his pals produced a switchblade and very deliberately inserted it into the sidewall of a rear tire, all the while smiling at me with a self-satisfied leer.

  I said, "Gee, I wish you hadn't done that," and then I kicked his balls into orbit while he was still bent over the wheel of the car. The leer turned abruptly into a very sick grimace and the guy fell over onto his side, moaning.

  Life can be that way, you know. Go looking for trouble, you usually find it. I don't carry my black belt around with

  me, and I don't usually go around looking for someone to practice on... but it's okay, someone always comes looking for a go sooner or later, you just have to be patient.

  Billy's other pal scooped up the switchblade and danced toward me in an improvised and badly executed Kung Fu shuffle, waving the knife in front of him like a Benihana chef as Billy himself warily circled the other way. I hit the chef with another kick at mid-shuffle. It caught him just the way I'd hoped it would, off balance and struggling with the choreography, sent him flying headlong against the building hard enough to rattle it.

  Billy stopped circling, held both hands out at shoulder level and said, "Hey, wait, there's been a misunderstanding."

  "I think so," I agreed.

  "You have a spare?"

  I threw him the keys. "Look and see."

  The guy at the wall was lying in an unconscious heap. The other had begun to lose his stomach. Billy opened the trunk and looked inside, announced, "Oh yeah, right, we're in luck. I'll change it for you."

  I said, "That's damn nice of you, Billy."

  He huffed and puffed with the jack, changed the tire in what I would regard as record time, neatly stowed the flat and gently closed the trunk, laid the keys on it as he gave me a smile and said, "Good as new."

  "Not quite," I corrected him. "Your pal owes the City of Brighton fifty bucks for a new tire. Can't patch a side- wall."

  "That's right," Billy said agreeably, "you can't." He leaned over the groaning man and wrestled his wallet free, counted out forty dollars in fives and tens, added a ten from his own wallet and placed the wad under the keys. "There you go."

  "Move the trash out of my way," I requested.

  He said, "Oh, sure," and dragged the groaning man clear.

  I claimed my keys and the fifty bucks, got in the car and got out of there.

  Tim Murray was standing just outside the door to the club as I swung past. I waved at him. He waved back, but a bit uncertainly.

  Why the hell, I wondered, had he put those guys on me? Not out of grief for Manning and Peterson, for sure.

  So why?

  The Copp in charge would need to find out why... and damned quick.

  So I went straight back to 726 Craggy Lane.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Though I had been absent for nearly an hour, I arrived back on the scene at 726 Craggy Lane in the midst of a growing police presence, which seemed a bit odd. A police line had been marked and the street secured a hundred or so yards south of the property, a half-dozen or so uniformed cops on hand and conducting activities on the street, two ambulances in the drive and a swarm of plainclothes cops on the floodlit grounds.

  Pappy McGuire stepped forward to greet me. "Dispatch said you were on top of this," he complained. "Where've you been?"

  "Out and about," I replied, still trying to get a feel for the situation. "Isn't this a heavy response for a dog?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," McGuire growled.

  "So maybe I'm not on top of it. What's the story here?"

  "They had a prowler. This joint is a fortress, you know, security devices all over the place. Also a twenty-four-hour guard force. One of the guards is dead."

  I said, "Well, shit."

  He said, "Shot three times in the chest. What were you saying about a dog?"

  "I was told that a dog had been shot."

  "You were told?"

  "By the shooter." I told him the story, wondering how much of it he already knew anyway. It certainly was no secret that I'd requested a spot on Lila Turner's car moments after the shooting. Thinking back on it, though, it occurred to me then that Turner had not actually said that she'd shot a dog, not even in response to a direct question from Murray, she'd merely created the impression that she'd done so as an explanation of the shooting.

  Now I had to wonder about it, and I said to McGuire, "Three bullets in the chest, eh?"

  "Why would Turner tell you something like that?"

  "You know her better than I do," I replied suggestively.

  "Right, and I just can't hear her saying it. I also can't see her pumping three bullets into someone and then leaving the scene without calling it in. Anyone else hear this story?"

  "Tim Murray heard it," I told him.

  "What does Murray have to do with it?"

  "I followed her to a joint in Helltown, the Delight Zone or whatever. Told me he's managing the place now. We sat and talked, the three of us. He heard the story just before he tossed me out."

  "He tossed you out?"

  "Symbolically, yeah. Turner walked me outside. I put her in her car and said goodnight. Said she was going home. Why don't you check that out?"

  McGuire said, "Yea
h..." and went off to find a telephone.

  I nosed around and watched the homicide team at work, took a look at the victim, went back down by the vehicle gate to run some mental calculations, decided the timing was off a bit or else my memory of it was off. The body of the guard lay where it had fallen, twenty paces uprange toward the house from the gate, yet I'd heard Lila starting her jeep almost immediately after the shots sounded, hadn't even had time to get out of my car before she backed clear and went down the hill.

  Time in the mind can be tricky. But if my memory of it was accurate, Turner would need to have been standing nearly alongside the jeep, which was outside the gate, when those shots were fired. And the angle was wrong for that. She could not have even seen the man from outside the gate.

  The homicide lieutenant in charge at the scene, guy named Ramirez, told me that Schwartzman was not at home and that so far he'd not been located. Four domestic employees, all young women, lived in the house and were then being questioned by a member of the homicide team. A gardener lived in a cottage on the property, and he was being questioned. No one else was on the premises.

  I asked about the dog.

  Ramirez told me there were two dogs in a kennel near the gardener's cottage; both appeared hale and hearty, mean as hell.

  No dead dog?

  No dead dog, no.

  I went inside the mansion, then, and took the measure of that. Some measure. Art treasures all over the place. Full-scale ballroom, complete with bar and bandstand, study, library, rec room—a kitchen capable of state banquets. Who was this guy Schwartzman? I'd never heard of him until that night. Upstairs and upstairs again were

  bedrooms all made up as master suites with Jacuzzis and the works.

  I had no right to poke around that way, I knew it but did it anyway. Schwartzman's personal suite was fit for a monarch, his clothes closet as large as my own bedroom at home and I'd always prided myself on its size, maybe a hundred suits and that many pairs of shoes. In the midst of all that, the man slept in a waterbed— admittedly, though, a hell of a waterbed with a built-in footboard displaying a twenty-seven-inch combo TV/VCR and a library of videocassettes. Checked those out too. None were packaged products but had been labeled by hand. I tried one just for size and found that it met my expectations: amateur porn. Watched it for a minute, saw nothing recognizable except the action itself, which beat the hell out of some of the professional stuff I'd seen.