Copp In Deep, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Two large inconsistencies
were gnawing at me as I
 
went back to Beverly Hills that morning, one squarely in the front of the head and the other somewhat buried in the twisting memory of those past twenty-four hours.

The one up front had to do with Toni.

And it had to do with Nicky.

They'd been together, went to Malibu to find Frank
Dostell
. Shortly thereafter, according to Nicky's version of the events, Toni asked him to drop her at a house in Brentwood Park. He told me that she appeared to "admit herself." He watched her go inside, then he left. A couple of hours later, Toni shows up in Beverly Hills bleeding from a beating at unknown hands.

So far, okay.

I had been
focussed
by rage, intent on discovering what actually happened to Toni, and I'd been inclined to take things at face value.

      
But then that whole thing falls apart when that

house in Brentwood Park is revealed as an FBI safe house. A safe house is a sort of secret jail where the feds keep important witnesses who could drop dead before telling their stories to judge and jury. It is all strictly legal under the Federal Witness Protection Act but it is carried out under great secrecy and with extraordinary precautions.

So how the hell could Toni have known about the house in Brentwood Park?

And if she had known about it—which would seem to suggest some tie-in with the FBI—why would she then endanger it by asking an agent of the KGB to take her there?

See?—it made no sense.

On the other hand, Nicky himself had sent
me
there. If not via Toni, then how had he known about it? And if he'd known that it was a safe house, why did he tip his hand by sending me there?

Made no sense.

Unless . . .

Unless, of course, he'd known that the joint was wired to blow at seven o'clock and he'd hoped to include me in those festivities.

That brings up something else, see.

I had told Browning during our first
tete-a-tete
that Nicky told me that he'd dropped Toni at Browning's house at two o'clock. At the moment, of course, I was assuming that the Brentwood Park address was where Browning lived. But Browning should have tumbled right away that I was talking about the Brentwood

house, that I'd staked it out and followed him from there—otherwise how could I be sitting there talking to him over breakfast in a restaurant five minutes away?

But I got no rise from Browning over that info. I was telling him in essence that both Nicky and Toni had been outside that safe house a few short hours earlier. Why didn't that trouble him? Maybe it had—but if it had, he was damned good at covering his feelings—and why hadn't he moved immediately to safeguard his prisoner? If that had been me, I would have had a flying squad over there and moving that prisoner in the wink of an eye.

Why hadn't Browning done that?

See?—there were these troubling inconsistencies.

The other began working its way clear of the gray matter while I was mulling those.

The other had to do with Browning also.

So I called my friend at LAPD and checked it out.

I asked him, "Were you able to get any good ballistics evidence on that freeway shooting?"

He wasn't exactly friendly but not hostile either, had to go look it up, came back to tell me, "We got some pretty good ones, yeah, very little deformation. Steel- jacketed
hardpoints
, nine millimeter."

"Any conclusions as to the type of weapon that fired them?"

"You know better than that, Joe."

I knew better than that, yeah.

But when I'd asked Browning about it, he came right back with, "Uzi."

Of course he could have put it together as an educated guess, but it hadn't come out that way and I couldn't figure Browning as a sloppy thinker. The Uzi is not the only nine millimeter submachine gun. But it had just popped out: "Uzi."

It was a bother, yeah.

I still could not distinguish friend from foe.

      
The old mansion was quiet and sleepy at ten
a.m
. The maid buzzed me through and met me at the front door, took me through to the pool area, parked me at a patio table and quickly produced Danish, orange juice, and a silver pot of coffee.

I hadn't touched any of that except for an experimental sip of orange juice when the "secretary," the tall blonde identified as Alexandra, came out to greet me. She was dressed for aerobics, legwarmers and the whole bit, and a large white towel was draped about her shoulders. Makeup she did not need, and none was in evidence as she dropped gracefully onto a chair opposite me and dazzled me with a smile.

"You're early," she informed me. "This is like the middle of the night for most of us here."

"But not you."

"We try to stagger the hours so that someone is always around and alert. I am usually in bed by two
a.m.,
so I'm up earlier too." She was blotting herself with the towel, showed me a sort of embarrassed smile, apologized for her sweat. "I try to start my day with a good

workout and I usually take a swim to cool down. Join me?"

I said, "Thanks, no. I already had my
cooldown
. When does the rest of the household begin to stir?"

"Never before noon. Usually about two.
Cherche
for sure is good for two."

"Did you hear about the excitement last night?"

"We have excitement every night," she said with a smile. "Was there something out of the ordinary?"

"Maybe not," I replied.

I suddenly felt very tired. It was Friday, and the weight of the week was bearing down on me. I'd been chased by dogs, seduced, kidnapped, shot at, set up, set down, booked on murder charges, jailed, played with by the FBI, the KGB, maybe the CIA and God knew who else; I'd been wooed, betrayed, misled, tricked—and I'd seen an old friend die. Through it all I had slept maybe eight hours, had eaten hardly anything, and had smoked not a single damned cigarette.

Now this gorgeous blonde who could make a fortune posing for cameras was sitting two feet away in the dazzling sunshine and taking off her clothes with a smile right before my eyes and inviting me to join her in the pool.

I felt two hundred and sixty years old and incapable of even toddling over to that pool, let alone frolicking in it with a nude bunny—yet that stupid, blind, unreasoning male part of me that responds to such stimuli was responding as usual.

She was saying, "This could be a good day, Joe, until two o'clock," and she was skinning the tights down from the shoulders, twisting and turning in the chair to get free of them, with only now and then coverage from the towel.

I said, "It's a terrible day, Alex. I just saw a friend off to the morgue."

"All the more reason to lighten up," she told me, free and clear now and coming off the chair.

I had to close my eyes to shut that out. I heard her giggle in a very ladylike way, then I heard the splash as she entered the pool.

Closing the eyes had been a mistake.

They did not want to open again, and I drifted in a kind of twilight sleep full of lazy hallucinations while remaining vaguely aware of my physical surroundings. I knew when Alexandra returned to the table but I did not see her, and I heard female voices in quiet discussion without comprehending the words. Some time later I knew that I was on my feet and moving with assistance, and then someone was undressing me and putting me to bed, but the reality of the physical world was confused and lost in the swirling fogs of a waning consciousness and I was powerless to bring the focus in. So I merely surrendered to it. I remember thinking that maybe death was something like this. I think maybe I even confused the experience with death and, funny thing, I didn't even mind.

      
I was never one for nightmares but I guess I came as close to one as I'd ever been during that brief sleep. I

dreamed that I was in hell. Satan was taunting me with still-frame scenes from my life on earth—but they were not bad scenes, they were good ones. My hands were tied over my head and I was suspended by a rope in a big wooden vat bubbling with decomposing excrement and vile sewage. I was up to my chin in it. Tom Chase came floating by and he looked at me pleadingly but I couldn't make a move toward him. Toni was there somewhere with her banged up face but I could never get a clear look at her as she bobbed around with the bubbles surrounding her. There were other faces in that mess, too, but I recognized none of them. Meanwhile Satan is showing me all these happy scenes and telling me what I jerk I'd been all my life. Once, there, he looked just like Nicky—another time like Browning— but the faces kept changing off and I knew that Satan was very confused about his own identity.

It was a very long dream and totally confused. Somewhere near the end I'd managed to pull my feet up out of the muck and I was trying to kick
ol
' Satan into it. I finally connected with a good one to his chin, but he was Ivan now, and that's where I woke up.

I was in a gorgeous room with sunlight streaming through the window, lying in a tangle of covers atop a very nice bed that smelled of roses and felt like velvet to my naked body. Alexandra stepped out of a connecting bathroom and gave me a curious look. She was wearing a sheer negligee and nothing but.

"Are you fully awake this time?" she asked me.

"Which time is this?" I asked back with an uncooperative voice.

"It's nearly two o'clock," she told me. "You've been dead to the world for about four hours, passed out on the patio. Do you remember talking to me beside the pool?"

I said, "Sure. Did you enjoy your swim?"

"Too short," she replied, wrinkling her nose for effect. "You must weigh three hundred pounds. Thought we'd never get you up the stairs."

"Whose bed is this?"

"Mine."

"Did we have fun?"

She laughed. "Maybe you did. I think you were wrestling bears the whole time. Look, I have to get dressed. But you're welcome to use the shower any time you're ready. And please shave."

I felt my face and agreed, "Yeah, I've got some stubble here. Is this still Friday?"

She laughed again and said, "Of course. And that is more than mere stubble, my friend. You're like sandpaper."

"Checked it out, eh?"

She lightly replied, "Remember what I told you last night?"

I said, "Yeah, and you told me at the pool that this was a very good day. Talk dirty to me."

She just laughed and went back into the bathroom.

I fought my way clear of the tangled covers and got

both feet on the floor. That was quite a victory, but I was beginning to feel alive again and to feel glad about that.

Alexandra reached back and patted my belly as I squeezed past her en route to the shower. "Leave something for me," she suggested playfully. "But you'll have to put it on hold. I'm at work in ten minutes. Have to arrange a special party for Mr. Woodman."

I turned back from the shower door to say, "It will keep. Who is Woodman?"