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

  I gave her a quick up and down, smiled, and replied, "Even on Saturday?"

  "Do you need me? I just stopped by to..."

  "How'd you know?"

  "Grapevine." She had a very nice smile. "You're the talk of the town."

  "Already?"

  "Sounds like you had a crazy night."

  "You heard about that too."

  She came on in. We shook hands. I felt a bit awkward. Obviously, she had been Murray's secretary. I couldn't read happy or sad in her face, just nice. She told me, "I'd be glad to stay awhile and help you get settled."

  "I probably won't be here long enough to get settled," I replied soberly. "But maybe you could help me onto a fingerhold. You worked for Tim Murray?"

  She nodded. "The past five years. And I've been doing the necessary paperwork since he, uh, left."

  "Did Murray get shafted?" I asked bluntly.

  She met my gaze for an embarrassed moment, then dropped her eyes to say, "I never felt that he was incompetent."

  "Get along well with him?"

  "Well enough. He allowed me... considerable freedom."

  "Meaning that you ran this office for him."

  She locked onto my gaze again as she replied, "That is what secretaries do."

  I closed the file drawer and carried a stack of manila folders to the desk, deposited them there, told her, "From the looks of things here, you do it very well."

  "Thank you."

  "Thank you. Married?"

  "Yes."

  "Kids?"

  "Two, a boy and a girl. They're in high school."

  "Like your job?"

  "I love my job."

  "Do you live in Brighton?"

  "Yes."

  "What does your husband do?"

  "He's a teacher."

  "Treat you right?"

  "When 1 treat him right, yes."

  "So you've got it made."

  She smiled, and it was nice—like the rest of her. "I guess so."

  "You'd like to keep it that way."

  "Of course."

  "Do yourself a favor, then. You've been running this office for five years. That gives you a highly privileged view of this town and this department. Where is the garbage buried?"

  The smile faded. "What?"

  "Something stinks here. What stinks?"

  She said, "I'm not sure I. .."

  "You do, you know what I mean. You have a stake in this town. Work here, live here, your kids growing up here. Where is the garbage buried?"

  She had come in so perky, so composed, so nice. Now she was confused, troubled, unnerved. "I'd heard that you were very direct."

  "Have to be. I'm in a revolving door. I'll be gone next week. You won't be. You live here, your family lives here. Give it a shot. Help me find the garbage."

  She took a deep breath and showed me a shaky smile, then marched over to the file cabinet I'd just vacated, pulled open a drawer, removed a file, brought it to me and placed it in my hands, told me, "Maybe it's buried here," and left without saying goodbye.

  I looked at the file, noted the tabbed inscription. Task Force, removed a single sheet of paper. It was a copy of a letter signed by Tim Murray and addressed jointly to the sheriff of San Bernardino County and the head of the regional DEA office, a notification that Brighton was withdrawing from the joint drug enforcement task force. The letter was dated three years ago.

  While I was pondering that, Jack Ralston came into the office with a long face to tell me, "Maybe we have an ID on our two John Does." He placed two blackened badges on my desk. "Evidence technicians dug these out of the burned rubble of the car. Belonged to two of our undercover narcotics officers, Hanson and Rodriguez. Both men are missing, haven't been seen since early last evening." He sighed heavily, almost painfully. "There may have been a terrible mistake here."

  I picked up the badges and inspected them closely. It

  was obvious that they had been subjected to intense heat. I said, "Maybe. But I need to tell you something about that car and its occupants. Minutes before the car crashed and burned, it tried to run me down on the sidewalk outside the newspaper building. Obviously I had been under surveillance and the intent was to take me out. Do you still think it was your narcs?"

  He replied, "All I know is that those were their badges. Formal identification is still pending. But if you're asking me what I think—well, yes, I think it's them."

  "What about the vehicle ID?"

  "No help there. Car was reported stolen just a few minutes before the patrolmen spotted it and gave chase. Why would anyone want to run you down? You just got here."

  "I'm the type who makes enemies fast," I replied. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

  The daywatch captain almost smiled, but it didn't quite get to the eyes before he switched it off. "Haven't noticed you making any friends," he observed sourly. "Heard you had a run-in with Tim Murray last night."

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "It's still a small town, after all," Ralston said with a smirk. He collected the badges, went to the door, turned back to say, "I scheduled the shooting review for Monday."

  "Reschedule it," I said. "I may not be here Monday. Two o'clock this afternoon."

  Captain Ralston stared at me silently for a moment then turned and walked away.

  I read the three-year-old letter again, returned it to its folder, and went looking for other tidbits from the files.

  Found some.

  Marilyn DiAngelo might have just been guessing ... or she might have known much more than she wanted to know, was afraid of becoming involved in the politics that were tearing the town apart, and had genuinely tried to point the way for me toward the garbage. Whatever, it was more than a point, it was a shove—and I'd decided that Jack Ralston had been wrong about one thing, at least: I had found a friend in Brighton.

  The tidbits I found in the files that morning were no more substantial than the lead the secretary had offered, but they gave me quivers and I've gone a long way on quivers many times.

  I've said something already about the jumble of police jurisdictions in the area. That is always a problem, but local departments had joined with the counties years back to work out various reciprocal plans and programs leading to better law enforcement for all. One of those programs was a direct result of the all-out war against drugs. It involved the formation of a Drug Task Force composed of members of the various city and county police departments together with agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, which allowed a regional and cooperative approach to the problem irrespective of individual police jurisdictions. The DTF for this area had been spectacularly successful.

  So why had Brighton pulled out of it?

  The tidbits supplied a possible explanation. They also supplied a tantalizing clue to where the garbage lay.

  Have you ever heard that money stinks? In small piles it's hardly noticeable. But the odor from huge piles can become almost unbearable.

  It can even carry the unmistakable smell of fermenting garbage when that is what it makes of men's lives. And sometimes it smells of death.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was a matter of record that Brighton's participation in a number of large drug busts by the Valley Task Force had been crucial to the success of the operations, due largely to the fact that the busts had gone down inside Brighton itself and because the Brighton PD had actually initiated those investigations.

  It was also in the record, however, that Brighton felt shorted in its share of proceeds from the cash and property confiscated in those busts. Typically, all proceeds are divided between the participating agencies in a complicated formula that is supposed to be fair and equitable, and such proceeds are supposed to be funneled right back into the war effort.

  We are talking big bucks here. During the final year of Brighton's participation in the task force, the city received sixteen million dollars as its share of confiscations. Busts within Brighton alone that year yielded thirty-five million.

 
So Brighton pulled out and used the sixteen million to

  fund its own strongly beefed up narcotics division.

  That appeared to have been a mistake. Confiscations dropped during that first year to a little over five million, and held at about that figure over the two succeeding years. Apparently there had been some wrangling in the city council over the matter but Murray had stuck to his guns, the mayor backed him up, and Brighton remained alone in its solitary war against drugs. Surprisingly, drug arrests had climbed steadily during that period when confiscations were tailing off, but the busts were smaller and seemed to be largely confined to smalltime operators.

  Occasionally during those years Brighton had cooperated with other agencies in the area and with the task force itself, but there had been no large scale regional operations out of the Brighton PD since their decision to go solo.

  I asked Ralston about that and he referred me to Captain Williamson. "That's his headache," he said sourly.

  So I called Williamson at home and asked him about it. I suspect he was drunk, or else I'd awakened him from a sound sleep and he's a slow awakener. The voice was furry and the speech slurred as he told me, "That was Tim Murray's pet project. I don't really know that much about it. I'm nominally in charge of that area of operations but I'm really not in that chain of command. Sergeant Boyd runs the undercover narcs and he reports directly to the chief, which we haven't had lately. Since you've become such great buddies with the ex-chief, why don't you ask him about it?"

  "Who told you we've become great buddies?"

  "It's a small town," he said, and hung up on me.

  It was exactly the same comment Ralston had given me earlier. So I went over to the dispatcher and asked her, "Who gave the order to report my movements?"

  That flustered her. She said, "I don't..."

  I said, "Sure you do. Let me see the log."

  She pulled a small clipboard from a pigeonhole near her console and handed it to me without a word. How cute. I'd been under surveillance since I left the PD following the shootings of Manning and Peterson, time in and time out at each stop of the night.

  I returned the log to the dispatcher without comment, returned to my office and tried again to connect with Lila, struck out again at every number, decided to have it out with Ralston; called him in, closed the door, wiped the sour look off his face with a backhanded slap that put him on the couch.

  He stayed there, gazing up at me with sheer hatred but wisely non-combative. "You can't get away with that," he growled.

  "So file a complaint," I growled back. "Why was the narc unit hit?"

  "Hit? It wasn't hit. Set up, maybe, with a stolen car. That's why the officers pursued, it'd just made the hot list. Terrible, terrible mistake."

  "Try another," I insisted. "It was a hit. First me, then them. Maybe I can understand me. Them, I can't. Why them?"

  "This is crazy," Ralston muttered.

  I kicked at him, missed on purpose, told him, "Don't make me kick it out of you. You guys had me spotted all night. Every cop on duty knew exactly where I was at every minute. Why? What's so damned hot in this town? What are you guys covering? Not Murray. It can't be Murray." I kicked at him again, and this time I missed only a little.

  He rolled off the couch and came up on one knee at the

  wall, his service revolver in hand. "I won't take this shit, Copp," he said angrily. "Try that again and I'll take your leg off."

  I turned my back on him and went to the door, opened it, turned back to tell him, "You're going to take a lot of shit, pal, before I bow out of here. If you guys think I'm going to roll over for you, think again. I've had cops like you for breakfast all my life and I'm starting to gag on it. Clean it up, starting right now. You won't enjoy it if I have to clean it up for you. Speaking of that, get ahold of Boyd. Do it now. I want him and his whole scruffy bunch in this office at one o'clock sharp—and I don't care where they are or what they're doing, I want them here at one."

  I stepped outside and almost into the arms of a homicide detective. He pretended he hadn't heard my little speech to Ralston and I pretended I didn't see him until he spoke. "Chief, do you have a minute?"

  I'd noticed the guy at the Craggy Lane scene during the investigation there, thought he was a sharp and on the ball, fairly young—maybe thirty or so. I took him by the arm and walked him toward the exit while we talked.

  "What d'you have?"

  "ID on the Craggy Lane victim—well, I mean, further ID."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. Thought you'd want to know. He'd worked up there as a security guard since the place was built three years ago. There are three of them on rotating shifts. This guy was Franklin Jones. He used to be a K-9 deputy from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, expert dog handler."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. He came over to Brighton when Murray did, ten years ago, got fired a few years later. But it seems that he got the job with Schwartzman on Murray's recommendation."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. Isn't that strange? I helped ID five DOA's during one watch and every one of them either worked or had worked for this department. What is it?—open season on Brighton cops?"

  "Guess we're on a roll," I told him. "Thanks for the info. Is the autopsy report in yet?—on Jones, I mean."

  "Yeah. He got it three times in the heart. No way could he have walked after that, his heart was totally mutilated. Died on his feet before the fall."

  "Recover the lead?"

  "Bits and pieces. The shooter used frag rounds, explosives. Educated guess says they were .38 caliber or nine millimeter rounds, but of course..."

  We'd reached the exit and moved on outside to continue the discussion. I realized I didn't know the officer's name; told him, "Sorry—I forget your name. Too many too quick last night."

  He showed me a friendly smile. "Easy for me. You're only the second chief I've ever known. I'm Tony Zarraza."

  I asked him, "What kind of firearm do you carry, Tony?"

  He blinked and said, "I carry the official department firearm."

  I hauled out mine and checked it, a .38 Detective Special, double-action revolver. "Just like this?"

  "Yes sir. Chief Murray insisted that all plainclothes officers carry that piece."

  "Patrol officers?"

  "They carry Police Positives. No concealment problem for them."

  "Thirty-eights."

  "Right."

  I hefted the little pistol a couple times as I asked Zarraza, "Vice officers carry these pieces?"

  "If you mean Detective Turner, yes sir, she carries the standard piece."

  "What killed Manning and Peterson?"

  "Thirty-eight jacketed hollow-points."

  "The two narcs?"

  "Same type, yes. I meant to tell you, the fire did not kill them. Both were shot to death. Explosion had nothing to do with it."

  I tisk-tisked and said, "Bizarre incident, huh. You seem like a sharp cop. Why do you suppose those two were in that car, at that place, and at that time?"

  "Narcs are a different breed," he told me. "Every one's a cowboy. I have no explanation."

  "What would you say if I told you that those two tried to run me down with that car moments before they got it themselves?"

  "Are you telling me that?" he asked quietly.

  "Yeah."

  "Then I would say off the cuff that they copped the car for a hit and couldn't afford to be stopped in that car."

  I said, "Yeah, I had it doped that way too. But now I'm wondering..."

  "Sir?"

  "Are you aware that I have been under official surveillance since I got here last night?"

  "No sir, I didn't know that."

  "They've been keeping a log on me at Dispatch, every movement, every stop, every start. Why would someone want that?"

  Zarraza looked around a bit nervously as he replied, "There are some here, Chief, with fierce loyalty for Chief

  Murray, who think maybe there's a chance he'll be re
instated. I think they're scared to death that your appointment might stick."

  I said, "I think it's more than that. I think there's some heavy garbage buried within this department, and I think a lot of someones are scared to death that I'm going to sniff it out."

  He said, "Now that you mention it. .."

  "Yeah?"

  "I think you're right. I've caught the whiff myself, now and then."

  I said, "Thanks for leveling with me, Tony. I don't know what it will cost you in the long run, but... thanks, I appreciate it."

  He smiled and replied, "Hey, I just try to do my job." He looked about him, lowered his voice to add, "But thanks, I'll keep the eyes and nose open."

  "That would be wise," I said, and went on down the steps toward my car.

  He came down behind me, called to me, said, "I had the feeling you were going to tell me more about the narcs."

  I looked him up and down, asked him, "Think you can handle it?"

  "I'm willing to try."

  "I believe that one or more of those patrol officers this morning were ordered to hit those guys, one way or another. Maybe it was set up that way and maybe it simply fell in that way . . . but I think it was a hit, sure and certain, and I think the order went down before anyone knew that the hit on me had failed."

  That shocked him. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?"

  "Well, I don't want to get dead serious," I told him.

  "I've been working with these people for more than three years. I find it hard to believe that..."

  "You've been a cop for more than three years," I guessed out loud.

  He nodded. "Worked back east for awhile. My wife loves California, so ..."

  "You know how the mob does it, then. They hire the hit then hit the hitter. It's cleaner that way."

  "You're not saying that the mob is behind this."

  "Not that mob," I replied. "But every town has its counterparts. I think we could have a mob here, yeah, right in this department."

  "I'd rather not believe that."

  "Don't believe it, then, but open the eyes in the back of your head, too, if you're not one of them—and especially if you are one of them. There's a death squad in this department, Zarraza. And right now it's on a rampage."