Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (4 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

See, it was a very untidy package with loose ends sticking out all around and more contradictory than resonant. You naturally try to draw some kind of scenario when you're in the dark and possessed of only a few hard facts, but the scenario that was presenting itself still made very little sense to me.

I could accept right off the top Dobbs and Harney as a hotshot team of marshals protecting an important witness in some past or pending sensitive federal case.
 
U.S. Marshals and their deputies are primarily officers and instruments of the federal district court, the court of appeals, and what is now called the Court of International Trade. They are considered to be national police officers and they have all the statutory powers of any lawman anywhere. They can seize property, arrest without a warrant, take prisoners anywhere in their district and remand those prisoners to jailers on their own authority. What's more, they can take them out of jail the same way. But you don't hear much about the marshals.
 
They cut a low profile in the legal processes of this nation—but they are there, always there, and they have awesome powers

when you think about it. A recent law modernized them as the U.S. Marshals Service, a bureau under the attorney- general, with their own director appointed by the president, but they still operate as marshals of the federal courts.

I had thought that the FBI had primary responsibility for the witness protection program.
 
But I could also see how the marshals could be involved.
 
It is their primary role and mission to provide for the security and to obey, execute, and enforce all orders of the federal courts. That could cover a lot, and it could mean overlapping responsibilities with the FBI.
 
So there could be some scrambling there.

But even taking that at face value, it was hard to reconcile the other facts.
 
The most logical scenario gave me a mystery person under federal protection for some sensitive reason and with the marshals involved in it. Since I had blundered into it, and since life had become very harsh for me since my meeting with a prospective client from the dinner theater, then the logic pointed to someone involved in the theater as the mysterious
protectee
. Doesn't take a genius to get to that point.

But the scenario also would seem to fall apart at that point.

If you want to hide somebody, would you put them on a stage in public view?

I wouldn't.

Of course, I’m no genius. If you give the guy a new identity and a totally new history, if you change the way he looks just a bit, then further camouflage him behind greasepaint and art gum, then bury him in a small community theater at the edge of a sprawling metropolis ... well

okay, maybe that would make some sense. Maybe he'd be as safe from detection there as anywhere.

Of course, though ... if the guy turned out to have a really splendid talent, and the show began drawing attention from outside that small community, and if people started coming forward with offers to take that show on the road as a major production—could sudden fame be far behind? How safe then?

So maybe the package was not as sloppy as it seemed.

Maybe...

Well look at it this way. The
protectee
is the one who made this show sensational enough to attract investors. Now he's in a
quandry
. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. If he quits the show and looks for somewhere else to hide, will the moment ever come again?

Suppose he can't turn away from that opportunity. Maybe he even feels an obligation to the other players. If he walks away, so will the investors. More than one impossible dream would be smashed. So he cannot turn away. He calls his official watchdogs and tells them of his decision.

Now they panic.

Why?

Because they still want something from this guy. They need him for something hot, politically sensitive. Maybe a federal court has
ordered
that this crucial witness be given full protection and produced at some future date. "Produced" could be a key word there, where Dobbs and Harney were concerned. But they can't budge the kid's decision to jeopardize all that.

So what now? Try to scare him back into line? Give him

a little taste of mortality?—a little fear?—a reason to think again?

I could easily see Dobbs and Harney as cowboys, like U.S. Marshals of the old wild west, virtually autonomous and committed to their job.

Wouldn't be too hard to engineer a few suspicious "accidents" that are near misses. Shake the guy up. Make him come running back for protection.

Something like that could work, sure.

As a scenario, okay—marginally okay. The package is not so sloppy now.

Until someone else gets worried.

Someone who wants to tour the nation with a hit show, maybe several
someones
.

So then enter Joe
Copp
, onto a scene that is already under the watchful eyes of the cowboys. Maybe the whisperer's phone was under a federal tap. Maybe they had me coming in and were resolved to guide me through a revolving door and right back outside again.

That could explain the gunshots in the parking lot and the follow-up visit at my home. They didn't like the sound of me there so took the discouragement a step farther and tried to give me something more important to think about.

Stretched just a wee far, it could also explain the telephone call from Minnesota. A diversion, maybe, designed to suck me away into some quick and false resolution that would pad my wallet and satisfy my curiosity.

But they went too far, and that worried someone higher up or caused discomfort at the overlap. In that connection, I had to think that
Shenks
and
Osterman
had been dispatched after my visit to the FBI, although of course it was possible that they'd been telling the truth and it was just a coincidence that I'd already gone in on my own.

Whatever, the FBI was definitely interested and no doubt strongly involved—but what did that tell me?

And what if the Minnesota angle had not been engineered by the watchdogs themselves? Who turned Roger Johansen onto me? What if there is no Roger Johansen?

I talked to one, sure, but so far he is just a voice on a long-distance telephone connection, and I had only his word that the man in the photograph he sent me was his son Alfred.

So maybe "Roger Johansen" is a hit man looking for another kind of connection.

But how'd he get to me?

I had to skull this thing. Had to bring the loose ends together. I was like a blind man tapping his way through the darkness and it was driving me nuts. That is why I went back to the dinner theater. I had to know, see. I simply had to know. Then maybe I could make an intelligent decision about what I wanted to do with it.

Man of La
Mancha
is only very loosely adapted from the Cervantes novel,
Don Quixote
. Actually it's sort of a twist on Cervantes himself who has been thrown in prison during the Spanish Inquisition and he tells the Quixote story to his fellow prisoners to entertain and uplift them. So the title role is a mixture of both Cervantes and the fictional Quixote as the author becomes the character in acting out the story.

It's, you know, a bit fanciful but damned good theater. The entire play takes place in this Spanish prison. Most of the characters are male and they're all dressed in rags

except the lead who, by some device, has this old theatrical trunk packed with costumes which he wears at various points in the story. There are only three female roles identified in the playbook I saw, which would seem to narrow the field of possible whisperers if mine had told the truth, but this particular production also used an offstage chorus to help Cervantes musically with his story, and there were four women in that group.

As I think I mentioned earlier, I'd already seen this production at this theater a couple of months earlier—but I wanted to see it again, now, from the top and with directed attention upon the players individually and the way they interacted with one another. You can learn a lot that way, by just watching people and checking interactions.

I didn't pay, this time. It's a thirty dollar tab with dinner and I did not want to be confined to a table anyway. The theater is set up Las Vegas style with none of the seats actually facing the stage, unless you can snare one of the VIP booths at the rear. This one is particularly nice, strictly class, with waiters in tuxedos and excellent food, probably holds several hundred people, has a large stage with curtains and all like any regular theater, not one of those intimate "in the round" setups.

I showed my badge at the maitre d' podium out front and told the guy the absolute truth to get inside without paying. Most people never look closely at a badge, I don't know why unless the symbol is just so confronting and they're immediately impressed by it. It flustered the guy at the podium. I laid it out there for him to look at but his eyes bounced away instantly. I told him, "I need to just

stand at the rear and observe for awhile. You understand, I’ll be as unobtrusive as possible."

      
He even brought a stool and offered me coffee but I turned both down. "Are you investigating the accidents?" he whispered.

      
I just gave him a knowing look. He winked and went on about his business.

      
They serve dinner before the show and usually dessert during intermission. The waiters and busboys were still clearing the dinner tables when I arrived, which was a few minutes past the scheduled curtain time, and the show had not begun. I could sense a lot of movement behind the curtain and a moment later it was announced that the tide role would be played during this performance by Johnny
Lunceford
so I immediately went back to find out what was going on.

      
Chaos was going on, back there.

      
Apparently the lead was not the only one who'd missed the curtain. Several others were missing also and Judith White was busily reassigning roles and moving people about. They got it together rather quickly, I thought. I watched from the wing until the curtain went up, then went on backstage for a word with the beautiful director.

She was beside herself.

      
I asked, "What's going on?"

      
She asked, "Who the hell are you?"

      
I replied, "You know who I am," and handed over the money envelope.

      
She said, "What the hell is this? Go away. How'd you get back here? We're trying to put on a show here, sir."

I asked, "Where's Craig?"

"If I knew, I'd kill him. Will you get away and leave me alone!" She flung the envelope at me. It hit my shoulder and spilled the big bills at our feet. "My God!" she squealed.

I was attracting a lot of attention. Angry looking people were moving toward me, and among them I spotted my old pals Dobbs and Harney. They wore tuxes like the waiters out front and they were bearing down on me with malice aforethought.

So I left the money where it lay and went out quickly across the other wing.

The house was full, the show was on, and everyone appeared to be having a great time. Didn't want to spoil any of that. I went on outside, lit a cigarette, and awaited the inevitable.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I stand six-three and tip the scales well beyond the two hundred mark, so I'm no lightweight in ordinary company. I was not in ordinary company this time, though. These two were no taller than me but they were big, just big all over, with probably not ten pounds of body fat between them.

      
"Dobbs and Harney, I presume," I said softly as they
scowlingly
approached me just outside the theater.

      
The one I'd heard called Larry threw the first and only punch. I went under it and held onto the arm, stepped into it and levered the elbow into my chest. He froze under the sudden pressure, knowing what could happen next. I told his partner, "Back off, or I’ll
 
hand you his forearm."

      
"Believe it, Jack!" Larry grunted.

      
The other guy held up both hands at shoulder level and took a step backward, chuckled coldly and said, "I'd say it's a mess either way. You let go, hell kill you. You don't, I’ll kill you."

      
"Let's just talk about it and not kill anybody," I suggested. "Maybe we have a common cause that needs to be explored first."

      
I released the guy and pushed him away in the same movement. He rubbed the elbow and turned a respectful eye on me, then said to the other, "Let's listen."

      
"Other way around," I corrected him. I’ve already taken all the lumps I intend to take from you two. Maybe I can respect it if I know why, but not this way. So why don't you explain it to me. First, which is Dobbs and which is Harney?"

      
Larry grimaced and replied, I’m Dobbs."

      
So the other was Jack Harney. He was carefully lighting a cigarette and coolly checking me out over the flame from his lighter. "Don't give this jerk too much comfort," he growled to his partner.

      
"No, I think, we should talk to him again," said Dobbs.

      
"Forget it," I warned, "if it's going to be no different than the first time. Don't you guys really think you're just a bit too much? Who the hell do you hope to impress with the tough guy act? Talk sense to me and I can talk sense back. But if all you want is a rumble, well okay, I can do that too."

      
"I think he can," Dobbs said ruefully.

      
The other one sighed, took a deep pull from his cigarette and fixed me with a cold stare. "Some guys are just congenital assholes," he growled.

      
I said, "Right, but I won't hold it against you if you won't hold it against me. Where's your witness?"

      
"What?"

      
"Don't tell me you're moonlighting as waiters because you need extra cash. Your witness. The understudy is doing the show tonight, or didn't you notice?"

      
Harney did not take murderous eyes off me but his next statement was obviously directed toward his partner.

“Take a look."

We stood there and measured each other with our eyes at ten paces while Dobbs ran back inside the theater. The next words were his as he danced back into view and called from the doorway: "He's right!
 
It's
Lunceford
!"

Harney dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, said to me in a cold voice, "Later," and walked quickly back inside.

But I could not wait for later. I had already reaffirmed my earlier decision. I knew that I had to become the cop in the case.

I didn't know where else to go at the moment so I went back inside and watched the rest of the show from the back wall of the theatre. So far I'd apparently struck out twice in trying to return the retainer and still didn't know who I'd actually been talking with that night in the lounge. I was not getting any clues from the people on stage and there was no sign of Dobbs or Harney out front.

The maitre d' brought me coffee during intermission and this time I accepted it. Patrons were milling around, trying to divide their time between fancy desserts and the rest rooms, lot of traffic back and forth past my position at the wall.

At some time during all that, someone slipped the now worn envelope into my coat pocket. I didn't discover it until just before the curtain opened. The ten one-hundred dollar bills had been gathered up and neatly re-enclosed. There was also a scrawled note from "Elaine" which read: "Meet me at the stage exit after the show."

The name
Elaine Suzanne
surfaced immediately from my earlier study of the cast file. Age twenty-four, graduate

of UCLA school of drama, single, a background in half a dozen community theater productions in the L.A. area, now cast as
Dulcinea
, the object of Quixote's affection. I watched her closely during the balance of the play, a strikingly pretty woman with long black hair and dancing eyes, and now and then I did pick up a head movement, a gesture that could tie her to my whisperer, though nothing whatever in the voice. Of course, these people were trained 'm voices and could probably sound like most anything a role may require.

      
As it turned out, she denied that she was the one when we met after the show. "We spotted you from the stage," she explained. "Judith thinks you're a nut. She insisted that someone return your money. I volunteered."

      
"Why?"

      
"Because I know you're not a nut. And we don't want you to give back the retainer. We want you to earn it."

      
"By doing what?"

      
"By seeing that nothing happens to Craig
Maan
. We thought you understood that."

      
"Who
is'we
?"

      
She gave me a riveting flash of eyes as she replied, "Some of the kids in the cast. We think it's a good investment."

      
"Why all the hokey pokey? Why didn't you simply come to me and lay it out in a businesslike way instead of whispering in my ear in the dark?"

      
"Because—no, you have it wrong, that wasn't me. Look, I chipped in and went along with the idea but I'm not the one who hired you."

      
"Who is?"

      
"I can't tell you that."

      
"Can't? Or won't."

      
"Both," she replied, raking me with those eyes. She seemed to realize just at that moment that we were walking through the parking lot. She planted her feet suddenly and asked me, "Where are we going?"

      
To my car," I suggested.

      
"No you don't," she said firmly. "I had nothing like this in mind."

      
"What did you have in mind?"

      
"I just wanted to keep you on the job."

      
"I'm a bit confused," I told her. "I've already been fired. That's why I returned the fee."

      
"I know, but that was before we got together and took a vote. We overrode that earlier decision."

      
"What made you change your minds?"

      
She said, "Because we got a commitment from Craig."

      
"You did?"

      
"Yes. He wasn't involved, at first. Now he is. And he says let's go for it."

      
"So where is Craig now?"

      
"Nobody knows," she said worriedly. "He came in tonight and got ready, then walked out a couple of minutes before the curtain. Some of the guys went with him, but I don't know where or why."

      
"How many guys went with him?"

      
“Three, all majors. I mean, it could have wiped us out. But Judith put it back together and I think we did all right. That's why she was so rude to you backstage. She was under a lot of stress."

      
I asked, "Is Judith in on this?"

      
"I can't talk about that. It's a secret pact. So please don't—"

      
"Why all the secrecy?"

      
"It could seem self-serving, couldn't it."

      
I said, "Nothing wrong with that, kid. Especially now that Craig himself has joined you. Why would you suppose that someone wants him dead?"

      
She looked around to make sure we were alone, then leaned closer to quietly tell me, "This is absolutely confidential, top secret, you must keep it to yourself. Craig is an undercover cop. A
narc
.
Maan
is not even his real name."

      
I said, "Aw, come on!"

      
"No, really, that's why all the hush-hush. There's a price on his head. That's why he didn't want to take the show out."

      
"Or that's the story he gave you," I suggested.

      
"Why would anyone lie about a thing like that? And who wouldn't want to be the star of a hit show, unless . . . ? He only did it part-time, but he was really committed to it."

      
"When did he tell you this?"

      
"Just today. Well, there had been hints before that. I mean, some things just didn't jell."

      
I took her arm and said, "Come on."

      
She went along toward my car, but definitely under protest. "Where are we going?"

      
"To find Craig."

      
"I'd really rather not."

      
"Me too," I said, "but I guess I have to. Unless you'd rather I just go home and forget it."

      
But I guess she didn't fully commit herself to it until I'd seated her in my car. I went around and slid in beside her, kicked the engine, and asked, "Okay, where to?"

      
She bit her lip and said, "I guess we should try my place first."

      
"Your place?"

      
She nodded her head in confirmation. "Craig is my husband."

      
I gave her a hard look and replied, "The resume for both of you says single."

      
"I know. We were secretly married a month ago."

      
"Why secretly?"

      
She turned fidgety eyes to me and said, "That's none of your business. But I expect you to respect it and not go blabbing it around, none of this."

      
Hell, I wouldn't blab it, none of it.

      
Didn't even believe it, not any of it.

      
But it was damned good theater, and I was hooked. Yeah, I was really hooked.