Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (5 page)

      
I winced. "Poor choice of words, Miss Future Ph.D. Wish you hadn't put it just that way."

      
"You think I'm in danger?"

      
I knew damned well she was. I just wasn't sure why.

Chapter Seven

WE DRANK SOME coffee and Linda decided I needed some ice beneath the eye. She wrapped an ice cube in a paper napkin and was dabbing at the mouse with it. The napkin got soaked and started dripping onto my shirt, so she suggested I off with the shirt.

      
One thing led to another, there, and we ended up in the spa.

      
Like I've told you, I've been a cop most of my life. A cop usually finds himself living in the seams of life. I mean, we spend our days and nights involved in the lower depths.
Gorgki
. I'm no illiterate. What we have not experienced with people does not happen with people. We live with them all: murderers, rapists, psychos, thieves, con men, hookers, pimps, addicts, pornographers, screwed-up kids, mean-ass dudes, wife beaters, husband beaters, child abusers, parent abusers—we get them all, all the time. These are the people we live with.

      
But, you know, a cop has a different view of all this—different than the average citizen, I mean. Maybe it's the way news gets reported, but I think the average citizen tends to think in labels more than cops do. A murderer does nothing but go around murdering people; right? A hooker does nothing but screw people for a fee; right? From a distance, see, the criminal becomes the crime.

      
Not so, for a cop. We are dealing with these people as people, not as crimes. What they do is against the law. What they are is very human. And we have to deal with that. What I am trying to say is that these are the people of our world. As people, the murderer might be admirably devoted to his bedridden mother and the whore might spend all her afternoons at the old folks home cheering up the residents. The child molester might be the leading philanthropist of the community and the shoplifter might be a loving wife and mother having trouble with menopause.

We're always hearing about brutal cops with anesthetized feelings and arrogance and how they're all cynics. Some, yeah; some get that way, or some start that way and get worse. But we're affected by our environment, just like everybody else. I guess that's why some cops go bad; why some cops who start bad go worse. We're subject, believe it or not, to the human condition, such as it is.

      
I have known cops who married hookers. Hookers they'd busted over and over again. End up marrying them. I have known cops who formed strong friendships with hardened criminals and went to bat for them, even visited them in prison or took care of their kids or whatever. We're involved in this world, see, and we're influenced by it, and we see these people as people, not as crimes.

      
All of which, I grant you, is a long way of saying that I was falling for Linda. Not that I put her in the class with any of those above. But, face it; she was living in the seams, too. Many people in our society—most people, I guess—would tend to judge her harshly for the way she makes a living. Any woman, they'd say, who romps around a stage bare-ass to incite lust in a gathering of men is really just a whore at heart. That’s an extension of the label. A "whore at heart" is a whore indeed, in that line of thought.

      
I am here to tell you that Linda Shelton was not a whore to me, at heart or indeed. As between her and me—she, woman; me, man—the only remarkable difference about Linda lay in the person she was, not in what she did for a living.

      
And she was a delightful person.

      
She may have thrown off her clothes and thrown her muff into the faces of several hundred guys every night, but she slipped out of her clothes this time and into my spa with the same mix of timidity and uncertainty as any woman might show in similar circumstances. Which is to say she did not act the brazen slut. She did not act that way because she was not one.

      
I would almost have wished otherwise, at the moment. I am a direct person. I also have a direct sexuality. When a beautiful naked woman slips into the warm waters beside me, I have a very direct reaction—the kind my creator designed me for. And I stay that way until some sort of direct action brings me down. Not only do I stay that way, but the pressure to bring me down grows by quantum leaps and, by God, demands that something bring it down.

      
So, hell, I just grabbed her by the hips and hauled her over onto the lap.

      
In a muffled little voice she said, "Oh shit, Joe, don't do that."

      
I told her, "Every cell in my body is screaming at me to do that."

      
She said, "
Dammit
,
so's
mine—but let's not, huh? I mean, not like this."

      
"Like how, then?"

      
"Later. Okay? Please. Let's talk awhile first."

      
"Hell," I groaned. "We've been talking for hours. What do we talk about?"

      
She slid away, moved to the opposite side—the moving waters waving those marvelous tits at me—and said, "Let's talk about Joe. What makes him tick. What makes him mad, glad. You know. Introduce yourself first."

      
I said, "Oh, well, my favorite subject."

      
"Okay. Tell me."

      
I said, "Suddenly my mind's a total blank. Barely remember my name."

      
"It's Joe. Joe
Copp
. Remember now? Who is he?"

      
"
Copp
for hire, yeah. Right now, he is ninety-nine percent ..." I let my eyes finish the statement.

      
She giggled. "Another theory exploded."

      
"What theory is that?"

      
She said, "Has to do with strong men and— you know."

      
I sighed. "Maybe it's all relative."

      
"Not in your case," she said. "
Dammit
, Joe. No wonder you scare your women."

      
"That's not what I meant and you know it. Anyway, there's nothing here to scare anybody."

      
Those eyes gleamed wickedly. "It could be an interesting investigation, I guess."

      
"I'm interested," I assured her.

      
"Me, too. But I have some scruples about these things. I don't lay with a man I know nothing about."

      
"Didn't ask you to lay."

      
"Okay. I don't sit on their flagpoles, either."

      
It became a laugher.

      
"Born in Palo Alto," I told her.

      
"Oh, very good. I love Palo Alto."

      
"I didn't. Stodgy and dull. Nobody's sweat even smells there."

      
"So where did you go?"

      
"San Jose."

      
"Gritty."

      
"You bet. Everything smells in San Jose."

      
"Just your cup of tea, then. What happened there?"

      
"Forgot myself, one day. Had a little rhubarb with the chief, knocked him on his ass."

      
"It seemed wise to leave after that."

      
"Seemed wise, yeah. Went to San Francisco."

      
"Even grittier than San Jose."

      
"Oh. Say. Much more. You haven't smelled life at all until you've smelled it in San Francisco."

      
"What happened there?"

      
"Come back over here and I'll tell you."

      
"Tell me right where I'm at, Samson."

      
"Let you cut my hair."

      
"Darn! Forgot and left my chainsaw at home."

      
"I bleed like other men."

      
"Sure, but you've got more to spare."

      
I said, "See? I do intimidate you."

      
She said, "Of course you do. What happened in San Francisco?"

      
"Replay of San Jose. But with the mayor."

      
"Wow. You don't fool around."

      
"He was an asshole."

      
"The way I hear it, most mayors are."

      
"Yeah, but this one used his for politics, I think."

      
"You couldn't tolerate that."

      
"Not usually."

      
She laughed and I laughed.

Then she came back to me and climbed aboard. Not altogether aboard but close.

"I really like you," I told her.

"Think I kind of like you too," she told me.

"Raise up," I suggested. "And come just a little closer."

"How do you do this?"

"This what? Surely you know how to do this."

"Not that. This." She nudged me. "That. How do you keep it there like that for so long?"

      
I assured her, "It keeps itself. Come on. Up and over. We'll see how well it keeps itself under the gun."

      
She said, "Huh uh. So far we're still in San Francisco.”

      
We were not destined to get any farther than San Francisco this time.

      
The picture window about ten feet to our right exploded inward. It's one-way glass—I can see out but others cannot see in without really working at it—and we were in muted lighting, so I guess the guy was firing blindly and trusting to luck, but somebody just beyond that shattered glass was pumping buckshot into the room in a murderous fire pattern via a semiautomatic shotgun.

      
Stuff was flying everywhere and moving our way by the time my reactions took hold. I pulled Linda to the bottom of the tub with me and held her there until she began to fight me, then gave us nose depth and no more until I could assure myself that it was reasonably prudent to expose more.

      
I charged up out of there then with a mad like I had not tasted for a long time, grabbed a pistol from a drawer of the desk and quietly went out the back door.

      
Caught a glimpse of the guy in time to get off a couple of rounds as he disappeared at the corner of the house—but it was only a glimpse and I knew better than to chase after him.

      
I was, after all, balls naked and dripping wet.

      
But I was alive and Linda was alive.

      
I figured we got lucky. And I felt like the biggest jerk in town.

      
I should have been expecting something like that. Somebody was on a killing streak, and it was not just for kicks.