Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Both men had been shot once in the chest and apparently the shooter or shooters knew how to Mm do it right the first time. Death had come quickly, probably without warning. Neither had drawn his weapon. Rodriguez seemed to have been presenting his ID when he got it. In trying to reconstruct, I knew either there had to be two shooters firing near-simultaneously or one shooter using a silenced weapon, because the two officers had died with no evidence of struggle or even self-defense, and within twenty paces of each other.

Either someone had been waiting for me when the officers came, or someone had been surprised by their arrival during a burglary. It read the same either way. So ... had someone let them in?—someone who would not arouse particular suspicion by being there?—or had someone hidden when the cops arrived, then came out during the search to blast clear and get away?

Forta
had been sitting at my desk when he got it. He had produced a search warrant and left it prominently displayed in the entry way. Rodriguez was surprised in the hallway, ID in hand. Both had been dead for some time. Molly had told me that she'd been visited by "plainclothes cops" that morning. Same cops? Had they then come up only to search my house?

There was no evidence of a search by anyone. Everything seemed to be in place.

I did not call it in and I did not hang around. Dead is dead, I could do nothing for them now. I could do something for myself, though. I left everything exactly the way I'd found it, even the front door ajar, and I got away from there, groceries and all.

Some crazy son of a bitch was running wild, killing wild, and I had the sick feeling that somehow I'd helped launch this thing. I could do nothing about that now—but for sure I could try to stop it.

I've never been able to take death casually, not any death anywhere for any reason, not even death in bed from old age. A police psychologist once tried to tell me that was because I feared death so much for myself, but that's a crock. I think it's because I learned at an early age and through personal experience that death is always a personal loss to everyone left alive. Today we take death too casually. Murder is no longer a heinous crime. In this state now there even has to be "special circumstances" before a prosecutor can request for the death penalty.

But murder is a heinous crime because it takes something irreplaceable from all of us, whether or not we know the victim. Murder touches us all in some fine way. Ken
Forta
is no longer around to pull your baby from a burning building or to stop a drunk driver twenty seconds before he would've slammed into a school bus carrying your kids and all your neighbor's kids. He isn't here now to coach a Pop Warner team or to take a brotherly interest in screwed-up teen-agers or to turn a street gang onto a Toys for Tots drive next Christmas.

It touches us all, pal, each of us and all of us in many fine ways. We're all in this thing together and the loss is real for all of us when any of us takes the tumble. Try to remember that the next time you have to wait a couple of minutes at an intersection for a funeral procession; instead of impatience, try a little grief for a stranger whose death has diminished you.

Of course I was thinking in no such terms at the moment. I was just mad as hell and scared as hell ... I came down out of the hills and onto the Foothills Freeway, cruising west and starting to think like a cop again with Abe Johnson's abstract open on the seat beside me. San Marino leapt to my eye as the home of Justine Wiseman and because it was just a few minutes down the pike. It's one of the more affluent areas, sort of a Beverly Hills East with extensive neighborhoods of stately homes and million-dollar estates. Some of the movie people live out there. It was on my way and I was in rush-hour traffic—which isn't all that different anymore from midnight traffic or midmorning traffic; it's always bumper-to- bumper; there's just more stop-and-go during rush-hour—so I got off the freeway at Huntington and cruised past Santa Anita and on to San Marino. The surface routes were not much clearer than the freeway, but at least there's some justification for stop-and-go there so it doesn't affect my blood pressure as much.

It was about five o'clock when I found the Wiseman residence—not Bernard's anymore but still Justine's. He'd moved to
Bel
Air when they separated, poor guy, had to give up one stately mansion and start all over in another—the American Dream in Southern California, his-and-hers mansions.

This one was no slouch by any standards, not even
Bel
Air's. It gives me a shiver to even try to guess the current market value of such digs. I pulled the old Cad onto the circular drive and left it under the canopy at the front door behind a gleaming Mercedes SL. A uniformed Chicano maid answered my ring, a lovely young woman with glowing dark eyes that dulled a bit at the sight of my ID. Her English probably was not up to the fine distinction between public and private badges, so I didn't try to draw it.

She left me standing in the marbled foyer amid exotic potted trees and museum-quality
objets
d'art while she went to fetch the lady of the house.

I did a double-take when that one arrived, heart pounding between takes, because Justine Wiseman was a tall, tanned California-vintage blonde who could double in long shots for Melissa Franklin. Up close the difference was more obvious. This one seemed a couple of years older and didn't have the same thing in the eyes, but she had it all everywhere else. I would not have evicted her from my hot-tub club. She wore workout tights and legwarmers, a towel draped across the shoulders, much irritation in the face.

      
"How many times do I have to go through this?" she said.

      
"How many so far?"

      
"Two policemen were here yesterday and another two today. Can't you people ever get it right?"

      
"It's a big case."

      
"Well, what is it this time?"

      
I produced the photographs and handed them to her.

      
"I've already looked at these."

      
"Please look again. For me. And look closer this time. Tell me who you see."

      
She bestowed a sudden smile. "Oh, I see. The kids couldn't handle the job, so the boss had to come back to handle this difficult lady."

      
"Something like that. Look, cops don't work in a vacuum and we're not magicians. We need help. We're asking for yours. And ... you do have a vested interest in all this."

      
"Cut the crap, cop. I have no interest whatever. If the son of a bitch is dead, that's too bad for some but it's okay with me. Don't look for tears in my eyes. He used me and left me. I'm supposed to wear black and weep over his grave? Not me. Screw him. And you too. Now get out of here and leave me alone."

      
She handed the pictures over and flounced away.

      
I called after her, "Screw you too, lady."

      
She halted and turned around with a smile; said, in a friendlier tone, "Well I've got a live one here."

      
"Too damned close to a dead one, pal. I just left two who died in my place. That brings the body count to thirteen. For what? Who's next? You?"

      
"You think . . . ?"

      
"Haven't you? Does your mind work as fast as your jaw?"

      
She was wearing a small smile now. "You're not supposed to talk to me like that."

      
"Works both ways."

      
"What do you want to know?"

      
"Status of your marriage, for starters."

      
"Dead. He was what they call a man of the world, he'd already screwed up three previous marriages. I was a nineteen-year-old kid—trusting, dumb as hell. He signed me to a marriage contract so he could dump me cheap when something better came along. My lawyers have been working on that. We figured we were ready to face his lawyers in court. So now he's dead and we won't have to do that, will we? Does that make me a suspect? Well forget it, because now we have to sue his estate, all the previous wives and God knows how many kids who might crawl out of the woodwork. Am I sad he's dead? Hell, no. I'm
madder'n
hell, though, and I could kill the son of a bitch that did it to him and complicated my life."

      
"Let the state do it for you," I suggested. "Help us do it for you."

      
"What else do you want?"

      
"Tell me about Albert Moore."

      
"Albert is a geek."

      
I waited.

      
"A geek is a sideshow freak who eats live chickens. Albert would eat live chickens if he thought it would please Bernard. If I hadn't known better for sure, I'd have suspected, like they say, an unnatural attraction between the two."

      
"I see. But you know better for sure."

      
"Unless they're both bi, yes."

      
"Okay. Let's try another. Melissa Moore Franklin."

Mrs. Wiseman laughed and retreated a couple of paces.
   
"Melissa Moore rhymes with whore, and that is what she is for sure."

      
I wondered what I was getting here. "A whore for sure?"

      
"Melissa Moore—or Franklin or whatever she calls herself these days—is a whore for sure. Haven't you seen her old movies?"

      
"Which are those?"

      
"Cinderella Balls?, Passion's Pucker? She's sucked and fucked every porno stud in town. Cops don't watch porn like other natural men?"

      
Well, you can see, I had a live one too.

      
She invited me into the gym for tea and I took her up on it.

      
I had a live one, yes. And I began to wonder how long I could keep her that way.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I loved and hated the lady. She could be bitchy but also frank and witty. Everything was right upfront. She said what came to mind, never picked at words.

She'd been married to Wiseman for thirteen years, which made her thirty-two now. If she'd ever been nineteen and dumb, no one would ever guess it. Her husband had become disabled after their separation, the result of a freak horseback accident in Mexico while he was down there with one of his location units—some sort of spinal damage. Says she went down to visit him in the Mexican hospital and he ordered her out. The injury had done nothing to improve his character—and it was shortly after his return to L.A. that he took up with Melissa, who just months earlier had married the screenwriter Charles Franklin.

I wondered about his paralysis and his ability to work out with Melissa. Justine assured me that he would find a way; she was just as sure that Melissa would find something to suffice in her bag of tricks.

I also wondered about Albert and how he might have felt about chauffeuring around his ex-wife with his boss.

"He did more than chauffeur," Justine informed me. "He also bathed him, put him to bed, and probably shook his dick when he peed. So maybe Albert helped out in bed too. I told you, he would eat live chickens for Bernard. What does an ex-wife have to do with anything? My God, if he could stand the porno studs, what couldn't he stand?"

"Were they married while she was doing that?"

"Not to hear them tell it, but as far as I know she's still doing it. How old do you have to get to disqualify as a starlet?"

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-eight going on eighty, depending on which part of the anatomy you're wondering about. If you figure roughly six inches to the stroke and a hundred strokes to an encounter... that's right about fifty feet of cock per orgasm. About a hundred of those gets you a mile. She's got to have at least fifty cock-miles on her."

She gave that to me with an absolutely straight face.

I wanted to talk some more about her husband but Justine was itching to get out of her tights and into the shower. The "gym" was a room about twenty-by-fifty feet with Nautilus equipment and an aerobics mat, massage table, a corner lounge with overstuffed couches and large-screen TV. It connected to her bedroom via a huge bath with a circular sunken tub, island shower, another massage table . . .

      
"There's room for two in the shower," she told me, and casually stripped off the tights as I sat there.

      
I said weakly, stupidly, "Thanks, I had mine Saturday."

      
She shrugged, went into the bathroom, kept on talking to me through the open doorway while she showered. Wasn't much of a conversation because she couldn't hear me over the shower noise and I wasn't about to get any closer.

      
Under almost any other circumstances I can think of I would have carried that lady into her shower and carefully scrubbed every inch of her. Probably I would have contributed to her cock-miles.

      
But this wasn't James Bond time. I was burning, true, but not with sexual passion . . .

      
Later I was glad I'd kept perspectives intact. Because this big Viking of a woman came in shortly thereafter and began preparing the massage table—chiseled body, muscled thighs, looking as though she could wring you dry and squeeze the life out of you.

She looked at me. "Shall I put the tables together?"

      
"Thanks, I can't stay."

      
No way was I going to become hamburger patty sandwiched between those two. The Viking was naked as her mistress and breaking out the warm scented oil.

      
I like to think of it as a strategic retreat.

      
Actually I fled.

      
And I could hear the laughter all the way to the front door.

So what did I have? I knew what it meant in a general sense...that sleaze walks the high roads as well as the low, not exactly a big revelation. I worked for ten years behind a public badge in this town and I found most of the surprises during the first couple of years. You haven't met sleaze until you've been exposed to the corporate variety, to Beverly Hills sleaze, high-rise sleaze. These folks have it refined to high art. Wasn't it the rich and powerful who invented the orgy? Nothing wrong with sex, it's what you
do
for it or with it that makes for sleaze.

No, I don't have a Ph.D. in psychology and I've never sat on a philosopher's stone, but I've cruised these streets and I've dealt firsthand with most every variety of human misery. Don't talk theory of plumbing to a guy who's down there with his hands in it. And don't talk social theory to a cop who lives the reality the profs write about.

What does this have to do with my case?

The aroma of sleaze was strong in my nostrils.

What does it have to do with the case?

Take a good close look at this cast of characters.