Copp In Deep, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (11 page)

I did have, after all, some very tantalizing ideas to play with.

Trouble was, my heart did not want to play with them. Gina, Angelique, Toni—whatever the name, my heart that night had its own agenda.

And that is about as deep as you can get, pal.
 

Chapter Sixteen
 

Ever noticed how
time can expand or contract at
 
certain times to manipulate our sense of reality? The hours I had spent with Toni that spanned our first meeting outside the consulate on Tuesday night and my awakening alone at the mountain retreat on Wednesday morning had seemed like a
fingersnap
of time while I was experiencing them, yet those meager hours contained practically all of my direct experience of her and in retrospect they seemed a lifetime. I had to keep working the time through my mind to keep the reality in grip. This was Thursday night. Tom Chase had contacted me on Sunday night and I'd invaded the consulate on Tuesday night. So this was merely Thursday of the same week and that did not add up to anything like a lifetime, yet the feeling was there.

I have been married several times, and each time for several years. Each marriage contained some good and some bad times and I had never regarded any of them with bitterness. But all those years and women combined could not add up to mean as much in the sensing of my life as those few hours spent with Toni. I did not understand it and I did not like it, but there it was anyway.

I was giving it a lot of thought as I whiled away the night in my car beside that Malibu mountain road. I was positioned in good enough cover with a good enough view of the roadway and I had a night 'scope which would help me pick out faces in the darkened interiors of cars passing by, and of course I was waiting for a particular face to come my way.

Gudgaloff
and crew were the first to pass, about thirty minutes after I'd begun the wait. I sent a mental salute to Toni and let them pass. Twenty minutes later another car came down, and then another shortly thereafter, but I waited until two o'clock for Frank
Dostell
. He was driving a hot looking Ferrari and a woman was in the seat beside him. I gave it ten seconds and pulled out behind him and took up the track. Wasn't a very long one. Ended at a beach house several miles along the highway toward L.A., one of those that are jammed in side by side with backsides and garages butted directly onto the highway.

I made a mental note of the location and went on by as he was wheeling the Ferrari into the garage. By the time I got turned around and found a place to park, lights were on inside the house and I could hear angry voices raised against each other as I felt my way toward the ocean side. These places are built for maximum exposure to surf and sand. Every year, it seems like, when

the winter storms come in across the Pacific, the houses along here get battered and flooded and one or two washed away, but you couldn't pay these people to live somewhere else. Don't blame them, it is nice if you can afford the lifestyle and don't mind the roaring of surf night and day.

This one had open decks on two levels overhanging the sands, stairways from both levels—maybe a duplex, up and down—glass fronts for maximum ocean view. The lights and sounds were on the lower level. I reached the deck outside just in time to witness a full blown domestic brawl, assuming they were married or living together.

Dostell
is about my age, I guess, give or take a couple years, suave looking guy with military hair and mustache, glittering eyes that can go real mean real quick— probably handsome and sexy from the female point of view. He had no visible means of support other than investments in movie properties from time to time—films, that is, with occasionally a credit as a co-producer— and I guess he had backed a couple of small local plays that had gone to Broadway and made some bucks for him. He made it look good on paper, anyway, and kept his illicit gains very well covered.

There had never been a suggestion from any source that
Dostell
was into big time drug trafficking but it was common knowledge among the in-crowd that he had all the necessary contacts and an ever available access to cocaine, which had become the glamour drug of the eighties. Cocaine from
Dostell
, in fact, had greased many a business transaction in the local movie and music communities while greasing his own slide into the inner circles of local wealth and power as well.

Of course, most of this had come during those naive years when all the hip people were deluding themselves with the thought that cocaine was a harmless ride into fun and frolic, in a town that does love to frolic. The drug's proscription was viewed as a ridiculous and misguided attitude of the square community, much the same as the prohibition of alcohol in an earlier era, and those who were brave enough to deal in the stuff were accorded no less respect than the bootlegger or speakeasy proprietor of yesteryear.

In fact, Frank
Dostell
had been a very popular hero of the drug revolt and apparently he continued to wield considerable influence even during this enlightened time. Part of the reason for that, of course, was that so many who had lionized him in the past were now addicts and relied on his continued good favor to feed their habits.

I have seen so much of this, you know. I've seen what an addiction can do to deservedly proud and successful people and the depths into which they will descend in order to safeguard their supply of the junk. Which is why I was so intrigued with the possibility that Nicholas
Gudgaloff
might be caught in one of those descending spirals. If it could happen to bankers and generals and movie stars and recording stars and athletes and all the other bright people of our age, then why not to a bright and ambitious Russian agent far from home?

      
 
Which is exactly what I wanted to discuss with Frank
Dostell
.

Though there were drapes at that glass wall overlooking the sea, they had not been drawn and my view was through lacy curtains which really did not hide a lot from up close. I could hear the angry voices even over the sounds of the surf but I could not distinguish words. The woman was not a bad looker and seemed quite a bit younger than
Dostell
. She had a nasty mouth, though, and she was screaming things at him apparently at the top of her voice, judging by the body language that accompanied it. He was yelling back at her and pacing around the room. It ended, finally, when he began slapping the hell out of her and tearing at her clothing.

I had no part in that. I simply held my ground there in the shadows of the deck and waited for a chance to get closer. Don't know to this day what it was all about and didn't really care at the time. They kissed and apparently made up with her standing naked in his arms, then she gathered her clothing and went into another part of the house.

Dostell
made himself a drink at the bar and came out onto the deck, walked right past me to stand at the rail and gaze broodingly at the sparkling surf.

I could not have set it up better myself.

"Won't find your answers out there, Frank," I told him from behind.

He turned on me with a startled face; asked, "Who the hell is that?"

      
"Doesn't matter who it is," I replied. "It's purely business."

"What kind of business?"

"The life and death kind. Yours and mine."

"Everybody dies," he said quietly, almost thoughtfully. I was shadowed by the building and he was trying to get a better look at me.

"Some sooner than others, though," I reminded him, "and some harder than others. Lately there's been an epidemic of hard and premature deaths. I think one of those is trying to find you. Me for sure."

"Who are you?" He was circling warily, squinting in the effort to pierce the shadows that enveloped me. "You look familiar."

"I should," I told him. "I busted you once."

That really pissed him. Those glittery eyes were blazing with hatred as he growled, "I won't tolerate this kind of harassment! I'll have your Goddamned badge! What do you—?"

I stopped him with a very simple device, the snout of a pistol. It was in his mouth before he even saw it and his last few words were biting on it. The taste and feel of it locked his jaws in place and bulged the glittery eyes.

I told him, "The name is
Copp
, with two '
p's
. I haven't been a one-P cop since shortly after the first time we met, so I've had no interest in people like you. Suddenly I've got a new interest because it seems my life is at stake. Way it works out, that puts your life on the line with mine. I'm not going to play cute games with

you because there's not time enough for that and because I don't like you very much, Frank, to start with."

It was a long speech to bear with one's mouth wrapped around the cold steel of a revolver. He was beginning to drool around it already and I still had a few words to say up front.

"We begin with the self-evident truths and go on from there. I'll ask you a simple question. Then I'll give you the opportunity to give me a simple answer. We'll try that first, see how it goes. It's up to you, Frank. How long have you known
Gudgaloff
?"

I withdrew the barrel of the pistol but let the muzzle nestle the lips and made him speak past it. Very effective arrangement.

"I think since shortly after he came here."
Dostell
replied shakily into the pistol bore, all the fight drained out of him. "Five or six months, I guess."

I gave him some cold steel to suck on while I asked the next question, then again withdrew it to the muzzle for his reply. We did it that way every time, so the conversational flow was not as smooth as it may seem here.

"Did he find you, or vice versa?"

"He found me."

"How?"

"A party somewhere. He just came over and said he'd like to buy some stuff."

"He's quite the party animal, eh?"

"I guess so. He makes buys usually two or three times a month."

      
"Expensive lots?"

"Usually, yes."

"Is he a user?"

"I think so. But no one could use that much."

"What does he do with the rest of it?"

"I think he gives it to his friends."

"Or business associates?"

"Well, that's usually the way . . ."

"What?"

"I said usually that's how it works."

"Why is that?"

"Well . . . that's how . . . this stuff is power, you know, it's better than money."

"Gives one a business advantage. Do that for me and I will do this for you."

"Yes. Look do we have to—?"

I gave him enough barrel to gag the most determined fellatrix and said, "Uh-uh—I ask, you respond. Did he make a buy tonight?"

"Tonight? Uh . . ."

I reinserted the barrel of the revolver as I told him, "That was a test question, Frankie, and you failed it. Try again."

"I saw him just a few hours ago."

"For a buy."

"Yes."

"And what else?"

"Well, he . . . wanted to know ... if I'd thought it over."

      
"Thought what over?"

"Uh . . ."

I said, "I'm not sure how many tests I will let you fail, Frankie."

"Our proposed business venture."

"Perestroika venture?"

"Yes."

"Exports to Russia?"

"Yes."

"In particular, the commodities that are at your disposal?"