Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I needed no fancy footwork to find this guy. He lived the same place he had lived for thirty years, one of the charming old homes in the foothill college community of Claremont, lived there as a kid and inherited the place when his folks died. Never married, never had a girl as far as I knew—Edgar had always been a strange man with strange ways and weird friends. I had played poker a couple of times in this house, went back the second time out of sheer charity, never knew anyone else who went back more than once.

He's not much good at anything, Edgar isn't, except department politics. For that, he's a natural—kind of guy who laughs only at the discomfort of others and sneers at every man's success. A weird little prick and I'd always despised his guts.

The feeling, of course, was entirely mutual, which

didn't make me special. Edgar, I think, despised everybody.

      
He answered the bell with the door on a security chain, showed only his nose to ask, "Who's there?"

      
"It's Joe
Copp
."

      
He bounced it off the chain and came out in his stocking feet and pants, nothing else except his service revolver leading the way.

      
Edgar had never been hard, but now it was ridiculous. A couple years younger than me, about five-ten and one-seventy to one-eighty, too much beer and too much television over too many years had given him a potbelly and sagging tits. He was near bald, too, and looked fifty years old if a day.

      
I told him the truth: "You look like shit, Edgar."

      
"Shut up." He jabbed the gun at me. "Against the wall. You're under arrest."

      
"Big deal."

      
He was fumbling at his hip pocket for a pair of cuffs, too anxious for the collar, when I kneed him in the groin and took his pistol.

      
He fell back into the house, curled up like a fetus. I closed the door and unloaded his pistol, tossed it into a chair, threw the bullets to the other side of the room. I picked him up by his belt and deposited him on the couch. "Learn a little humility."

      
"Rotten—"

      
"Look who's calling what rotten, the guy who went to bed with Butch Cassidy. Shall we call you Sundance now, prick?"

      
"You're crazy."

      
"You're the one that's crazy, going to bed with a guy like that. He's mob-connected all the way. You're lucky someone blew him out of his skin, else he'd have his hooks in you the rest of your life. What a
dumbo
you are."

      
I almost literally had the opponent by the balls. I prodded a fat buttock with my knee. "It was a setup going in, wasn't it?—and I played right into it. Actually I'm the
dumbo
, you're the smart one, I'm the fool who's got cops chasing his ass. I don't like that, Edgar. I
resent
that."

      
"Joe, I didn't set you up. I already had the video when the guy came to me. Hey, he worked for Wiseman and he said the guy was still alive. He said L.A. was booting it, and he offered to work with me to straighten it out."

      
"He was your tipster?"

      
"Well, yeah, but ... it made sense. And we heard your name mentioned a couple of times on the audio side of the tape."

      
"Mentioned how?"

      
"
Copp
, just
Copp
."

      
"Did they spell it for you, Edgar?"

      
"It could've been either way. I had to take the worst case."

      
"Or the best for you?"

      
"Cassidy suggested we put the pressure on you and see which way you ran."

      
"So, of course, you being such a cooperative officer of the law, you reluctantly took the advice of a security sister from the private sector to put the screws to a former officer—"

      
"Okay, so I didn't mind it all that much. But I didn't set you up—"

      
"You knew damned well I hadn't committed any crime—"

      
"I knew nothing. What the hell, you've been out of

the department a long time. How the hell do I know what you're up to these days?"

"My worst enemies could tell you."

"Joe, I
didn't
set you up."

I toed him in the butt. "Where has your investigation taken you?"

"Guess it's sort of stalled."

"I guess it is. And the bodies are still falling while you help play helter-skelter in a chase for an innocent. Namely me ..."

"It was L.A. put out the APB. I tried to tell '
em
—"

"Tried to tell '
em
what?"

"That you'd come home."

"You dumb ass, the last time I went home I found
Forta
and Rodriguez decorating with their own blood. What do you think we're doing here? You think all of this was designed in heaven to get you a
shitface
promotion? Damn near two dozen people are dead. I've been conked and headshot myself, and that's only the easiest part. Why are you lounging around watching television and drinking beer when two of your deputies are fresh in their graves? Why aren't you out there looking for the reason? Where was your great victory just now when you thought you were going to put the cuffs on me? The cop that caught terrible Joe
Copp
? Big deal. I haven't killed anybody, I haven't plotted against anybody. You know it as well as I know it. So what kind of
dumbshit
games are we playing here, Edgar? Damn you
, tell
me."

The guy actually started to shake. Whether from pain or rage I couldn't say, but it was all I was going to get from him, so I got the hell out.

At least he was a good warm-up for the night I had in mind.

      
She couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, maybe less, with one of those
dreamshine
complexions without cosmetics and frightened eyes. Or maybe she just looked that way when I was around.

      
"
No hay
nadie
aqui
," she told me at the door, then repeated it in tremulous English: "There is no one here."

      
I believed she comprehended the lingo better than she sometimes let on, a natural defense.

      
I went on in. "You're here." She didn't react to that so I tried it in her lingo, though I have a bad time with Spanish syntax. "
Aqui
usted
."

She showed me an almost smile. "
Si
,
por
. . . and that's all I got of that so I decided I'd better quit showing off and stick to English.

      
"Let me see your Green Card," I said, a dirty trick because I well knew she could not produce one. L.A. is overrun with
illegals
and she fit the profile.

      
Of course she just gave me the patented blank look that all the border smugglers must teach to their
illegals
. It can cover many embarrassing moments.

      
I told her, "Forget it, I'm kidding, it's okay."

      
"Okay?"

      
"Yeah,
comprende
? No card, okay."

      
"No card okay."

      
"You got it."

      
She showed me a dazzling smile. "
Gracias.
"

      
"Nada
. Where's your boss?"

      
She pumped her shoulders. "Boss leave Friday, say back Monday. Police come today, say—"

      
"They tell you about
Hulda
?"

      
"Yes."

      
"Did they come in and search?"

      
"Search? Yes. Her room."

      
"Where is that?"

      
She looked toward the gym. "There."

      
"Next to Mrs. Wiseman's rooms?"

      
"Yes."

      
"Where is your room?"

      
She looked to the other direction.

      
"Near the kitchen?"

      
"Yes."

      
"You were a knockout Thursday night."

      
She put a questioning hand to her breast. "Knockout?"

      
"You, beautiful.
Muy
guapa
."

      
Color flooded into her cheekbones and her eyes went to the floor. Great eyes. You've maybe noticed that I have a thing about eyes. This kid had it, all of it. . . "Sorry, didn't mean to embarrass you."

      
"I must dress as I am told."

      
I said, "It's okay with me. I meant it. You looked great."

      
She gave me the damnedest coquette look and said very softly, "
Gracias."

      
"Like your job?"

"Yes."

"Get along with Mrs. Wiseman okay?"

"Yes."

"And
Hulda
?"

"Yes."

"Even when they hit on you?"

"Hit? No. Never hit."

"I meant . . . never mind. I'd like to see
Hulda's
room."

She led me to it, through the gym and the bath obviously shared with the lady of the house—a large room at the rear, surprisingly feminine and subtly attractive.

"Do you have a name?"

"My name is
Carmencita
."

"Could you get me something to drink?"

"Coke? Whiskey?"

"Coke is fine. In a glass, please. With ice. And could you bring some extra ice?"

"Extra?"

"In a towel."

She gave me a puzzled look but went to fill the request.

I immediately violated
Hulda's
privacy, figuring she didn't need it anymore anyway.

The clothing, like the room, was surprisingly feminine, and the intimate apparel was even more so. Not a lot of it, but what was there was Rodeo Drive quality and tastefully attractive. The cop who had searched ahead of me had obviously been in a hurry. The only drawers that looked disturbed were the deeper ones with layers of clothing; in these the stuff had been tossed about some and obviously displaced. In a shallower drawer a small photo album lay concealed and probably unnoticed beneath bundles of athletic socks.