Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) (18 page)

The cop must have hurried right past that drawer without feeling for treasures below. I did not, and I came up with treasures indeed, I hoped.

Most of the photos showed scenes and people that meant nothing, five did. There was one of
Hulda
and her smiling mother,
Edda
—a fairly recent Polaroid taken in the kitchen of the
Bel
Air cottage. Another showed
Edda
barely in the picture and looking rather wistfully toward a man in a wheelchair, and the man looking into the camera. Still another had the man in the wheelchair and Justine Wiseman on his lap, both smiling into the camera. The other two were variations on the same subjects. All five were
Polaroids
and seemed to have been taken at about the same time.

I noticed that five of the plastic envelopes in the series were empty. Seemed to me that Polaroid film packs come ten shots to the pack. I wondered if someone had removed five of the shots from that album, and, if so, why.

Anyway I lifted the other five and put the album back.

Carmencita
returned with a tray. I sat on the bed and made an ice necklace with the towel, draped it around the back of my head, which was hurting. The kid made sympathy noises and moved around to kneel behind me and help with the application.

So I sat there and let her do it, sipped coke and thought unacceptable thoughts while the kid ministered to my hurts.

After a moment she said, "I understand now what is mean by hit on.
Hulda
, yes. Mrs. Wiseman, no. Mrs. Wiseman tell
Hulda
, 'Leave the maid alone.' So she did. But sometimes . . ."

"Sometimes she didn't."

"Yes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and see
Hulda
at my door, and she calls my name. I do not answer, and she goes away."

I told her, "Love is hard all over ... look how tough it gets in the usual ways, think how much worse it must get for the other ones."

      
She replied, "Yes. I see this many times here. It is sad. Is it sad?"

      
"Yeah, kid, it's very sad."

      
We had become pals.

      
I reminded her, "The party Thursday night.
Jueves
noche
.
You were
Frenchy
frilly.
Ooh-la-la
."

      
She giggled softly, nodded.

      
"There were two men here.
Hombres.
"

      
"Yes. And you."

      
"And me, yes. One wore a dog collar."

      
"Roberto."

      
"Roberto? Not
Al
berto?"

      
"No, Roberto. He is much here. He is known to Mrs. Wiseman."

      
"Know his full name?"

      
"No."

      
"Know where he lives?"

      
"No. I think he—"

      
"It's important,
muy
importa
."

      
"I think maybe he too is a friend of Mr. Franklin."

      
"Franklin? Did he come around here much?"

      
"No, not since—oh, maybe—yes, he is here."

      
"Socially?"

      
"Sometimes, yes. He is a good friend with
Serior
Wiseman. No?"

      
"Yes, but—"

      
"Roberto I think works for Mr. Franklin. He is, what you say?—handyman?"

      
"And he comes here socially with his boss?"

      
"Oh no, socially no." She giggled again. "For the parties, yes, but socially no." She touched the crown of my head lightly with delicate fingers. "Is better now?"

      
"A thousand times better. I stood up and gave her my hand, helped her off the bed, then went in and shook down Justine's room and found a few more treasures—I hoped.

      
Carmencita
was standing at
Hulda's
window with a solemn face when I went back to her.

      
I asked, "Do you have any people in the area?"

      
"People?"

      
"
Familia
."

      
"Oh yes, I have an uncle."

      
"Where?"

      
"He lives in Baldwin Park."

      
"You're in luck. That's on my way. Get your things, I'm taking you home."

      
"Oh
no, Senora
Wiseman returns tomorrow—"

"Great. If she does, then you can return the day after tomorrow. But I can't leave you here, kid. You're so much raw meat."

      
"
Por
que
?"

      
"Raw meat. Like
Hulda
." Her eyes became very large. "Maybe. Don't get scared, just cautious. And now go get your things."

      
She walked out of there very slowly, looking over her shoulder at me as though hoping I would call her back.

      
I couldn't do that.

      
I knew how she felt. Probably supporting a whole extended family in Mexico from her salary as a maid for the rich and famous. Not that the bread came so heavy here, not even from the rich and famous, but because so very little went so very far down there. But I couldn't cancel the order because that might be the same as
cancelling
the kid, and she was much too good to waste.

      
She came back with a cardboard suitcase and I

took her home to Uncle Francisco in Baldwin Park. A considerable contrast to San Marino. Hellish conditions.

      
It was not that far out of my way, in more ways than one ... I was already halfway to hell myself.

I pulled up at the guard shack and killed the engine, dropped the keys into the guy's hand. He gave me a look and asked, "What's this?"

      
I flashed the ID at him. "Returning Cassidy's car."

      
"Cassidy died yesterday."

      
I said, "That's why the delivery service. It's a studio car."

      
"Well don't leave it here."

      
"Where do you want it?"

      
He gave me back the keys and told me how to find the security building. "Leave it around back."

      
"Whatever you say," I told him, and meant it because that was where I'd wanted to go all along and I didn't have a card to actuate the employee gate.

      
He made note of the license tag. "Just leave the keys in it. I'll report it. Unless you want me to sign a—"

I smiled and waved him away. He smiled back and waved me on through.

      
I put the car in a security slot behind the building and let myself into the office using Cassidy's keys. All was neat and clean in there, silent, abandoned. I sat at the desk and went through drawers, hoping I was ahead of the cops on this one, but found nothing that meant anything to me.

      
A small combination safe with correspondence stacked on top of it sat beside the desk. It was locked.

The correspondence was routine stuff, some of it very old. I sympathized with Cassidy's filing system: just leave the stuff where you can see it, then you'll never have a problem finding it. These letters had been scattered all over the top of the desk the last time I'd been in there.

I pulled out desk drawers one by one again and explored their undersides by touch, scored on the third try and pulled off a small index card taped to it. It was the combination.

I found some treasure in the safe, but it was going to take a while to put it together in any meaningful pattern. It was all neatly boxed and ready to go so I took it and went, left everything else the way I'd found it.

I exited via the automatic gates on the employee lot, didn't need a card to get out, could hardly wait to find somewhere cool and go through the treasure trove at a leisurely pace.

There was a videocassette in that box, Xerox copies of various legal documents, package of still photographs, a small spiral notebook crammed with cryptic notations in some personal brand of shorthand and a complete medical history on Bernard Wiseman.

I figured it was Cassidy's case file.

And I surely wanted to know what Butch had known that got him killed.

I did not find it in such precise terms. But I found the pointers, and for the moment the pointers were enough.

I found, for example, evidence to suggest that Wiseman had been doing illicit business of some sort with
NuCal
Designs
, paying them on studio vouchers for services that had never been performed.

I found also that
NuCal
was involved in more than costume design. They also did graphic design and special effects. I already knew that one of the dead partners had been a respected film editor. Now I learned that the other one had been a freelance acting coach specializing in dialogue training, which usually meant emphasis on foreign and regional speech, accents and the like. Cassidy also believed that the background operation was pirating porno flicks for bootleg videocassette sales out the back door, lately a booming enterprise in the area. Nickel- and-dime stuff, to be sure, but those fives and tens add up.

Wiseman had a piece of the action.

So did his wife, Justine.

One of the legal papers in the file was a separate agreement between the
Wisemans
and the official partners in
NuCa
l
broadly spelling out the business arrangements. The
Wisemans
jointly held a one-third interest.

There was also an interesting angle on Justine herself. Apparently Wiseman had hired a private dick to spy on her shortly after their breakup. The packet of photos was a pictorial backup to the dick's pithy summary: "Subject exhibits an unrestrained sexual appetite, appears to be sexually addicted."

Who isn't sexually addicted to one degree or another, to one thing or another, but it's one of the new buzzwords in psychiatry, and the meaning was quite clear. Wiseman had been gathering evidence to fight his wife in court.

As for Bernie's medical file—I had to swallow hard on that one because I'd already decided that he'd faked the accident in Mexico. This record started in Mexico and it gave a blow-by-blow description of all the damage sustained in that accident, complete with X rays and sonograms, a follow-up with local doctors confirming the Mexican prognosis: the patient would never walk again.