Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

I HAD NEVER taken pleasure or even satisfaction from any death. Guess I always believed that where there is life there is hope, and death means the end of hope. Not that I'm a Pollyanna. I have seen too much misery in this world to see it any way but the way it is. But I also have seen evil from good men and good from evil men, so I know that all our sketches are in shades of gray and the light always falls in shifting shadows that conceals as much as it reveals. So don't ask me to be God; it's hard enough to be Joe
Copp
. Don't ask, either, why I pursued the devil toward the boat slip; I could have turned and walked away, collected Linda,

and left the whole thing to Billy
Inyoko's
inscrutable resolution.

      
Maybe I pursued because I was pursuing something inside myself—or maybe I pursued because I knew down deep that there was no hope for a guy like Davitsky, no gray, that nothing short of death would release us from his brand of evil.

      
I do know that I had not thought to kill him. My gun was in my waistband and it was there as it is there for every cop, as the bottom line after all other forms of persuasion have been exhausted.

      
He was running for the boat, the chains swinging from his shoulders as he ran, and I was pursuing doggedly—not altogether sure what I would do when I caught him.

      
He halted at the dock and turned to face me, both hands up. "What do you want?"

      
I halted too, about twenty feet out, I guess because I did not know myself what I wanted.

      
I turned the question around. "What do you want, Mr. Supervisor?"

      
"I want to be left alone," he yelled. "Get out of here, get out—"

      
I shook my head. "No way. You've fixed it so you'll never be left alone again, Davitsky. You need a keeper. Just look at you. Look at yourself. What have you done, man? You had the world by the tail. Why'd you have to reach for the balls?"

      
His voice was a scream. "Don't you preach at me. Who the hell are you to be telling me what's right and wrong—?"

      
"Tell it to yourself. Why are you running? What are those ridiculous things around your neck? What do they prove? Why do you need them?"

      
I took a step forward. He took one backward, held up the hands. "Stay back. I'll kill you. Understand me? I'll kill you, and I'll do it slowly. You'll suffer, damn you—"

      
"Why do you need my suffering, Mr. Supervisor?"

      
"I don't; I don't need it. You need it. You and all the others like you. I'll feed you your own cock, damn you."

      
The guy was over the edge.

      
I almost walked away from him at that point.

      
Not because I was afraid of him, or of myself. But because I knew it was hopeless, and I suddenly felt the full force of that hopelessness. What do you do with people like Davitsky? Our jails and asylums are filled with them, and it's a revolving door. I've never known of a single sex offender who was changed by incarceration or treatment. We no longer just lock the cell and throw the key away, so we mostly tolerate their presence among us.

      
A better way?

      
Short of executing them I knew of no better way.

      
And I, by God, was not an executioner.

      
So, like everyone else I was ready to turn the back and walk away.

      
Well ... almost like everyone else.

      
I forgot about the victims. We all do that, don't we?

      
But there was a victim here who had not and probably never could forget or simply turn away.

      
She came running down the path behind me in a long silken robe, and she had Ed Jones's gun held tightly in both hands.

      
She called out, "Jim. You son of a bitch," and took up a firing stance with the gun in both hands at eye level.

      
I yelled, "Linda, don't," and lunged toward her.

      
She got off two shots before I could reach her and snatch the gun away. Both went wild, probably nowhere near the target, but they were enough to send Davitsky scrambling in retreat.

      
I saw him from the corner of an eye as he leaped for the swim platform of his cruiser; saw him rebound from too large a leap, teeter backward with the chains flying, then topple into the water.

      
By the time I got there, he was clawing toward a
fingerhold
on the swim platform and having a hard time finding one because the heavy metal was now tangled and wrapped about his neck and dragging him down.

      
I knelt down and stared him in the eye for the first time ever at close range, and I saw in there, mixed with the panic and the fear of dying, I saw God knows how many screaming, tortured girls of the past, and the devil knows how many of the future with this guy around. I saw Juanita and Maria, a shadow of Linda and maybe even of myself, dying slowly for this guy's pleasure.

      
"Help me ..." He was flailing at the end of his chain.

      
"I can't do that, Mr. Supervisor," I told him.

      
Indeed, I could not.

      
I am not an executioner, no, but I am a human being, and I could not hold a hand out to that creature.

      
He slipped away, the eyes wide and pleading until they disappeared into the depths.

      
I collected Linda and led her back up the walk to meet Billy
Inyoko
, who, along with a goodly chunk of HPD, had just invaded the grounds.

      
It had not been a good case, or a neat case.

      
But at least it was a closed case. And I was satisfied with that.

Chapter Thirty

ED JONES HAD some minor hurts. He was transported to an emergency room
enroute
to jail, and Billy tells me he was screaming "deal" all the way.

      
Jones is nowhere in
Davitsky's
league, of course, but he is a natural bad-ass who probably will never get it together. I have learned that he was cashiered out of the army with some other guys for black-market activities in Europe involving stolen army goods, and there'd also been something involving brutality and profiteering against prisoners in an army guardhouse over there. Seems the army had no hard evidence on Jones for any of that; he'd
dealed
and plea-bargained his way clear with just a slap and a convenience of the government discharge "under less than honorable conditions."

      
Guess he thinks he's going to do it again, but he's into heavier stuff this time—even in Hawaii, if HPD can find some remains of the two girls he and Davitsky fed to the sharks on their final outing.

      
Turns out that Davitsky had been running really scared when he came over this time. Things were looking shaky in L.A. and beginning to come apart. There were also loose ends in Hawaii. A couple of
Davitsky's
favorites from Charlie Han's stable could speak against him, and he was suddenly worried about that. That may have been his undoing with Charlie, because I have learned that Char-

lie feels protective of his girls and was already genuinely uncomfortable that a few of them had "disappeared" while under
Davitsky's
custody.

 
But the guy had obviously hoped to lay several worries to rest during this visit to the islands. He had, as she'd tried to tell me, Linda on his butt; he had me on his butt; and

he had Charlie Han worried and wondering. He set me up for Charlie, I feel certain, as much to compromise Charlie as to get rid of me. Surely he'd not felt it necessary to lure

me onto the island if the only plan was to have me killed. He could have arranged that in L.A.; indeed, he'd already done so.

      
Ed Jones was the big mistake for Davitsky. I feel that in my bones. Jones is not that bright and certainly not that efficient as a triggerman. Okay enough, sure, with easy targets. Hell, a ten-year-old can put a gun to a sleeping man's head; that's no big thing. Any guy can swagger around and think tough. But not every guy can be tough and think smart. Ed Jones could not. Ed Jones is an asshole. This guy will do hard time, believe it, no matter how he pleads—and he could end up on death row if the state of California ever gets their act together. Whatever, he will find Q a bit more hostile to WASP bad-asses in the prison population than anything he ever encountered in the army, and to go in there as an ex-cop will prove nerve-racking indeed if I know my Q's. So this guy is in for no idyllic retreat at state expense, however it turns.

      
But he's crying for a deal in Hawaii, for sure. He has already given HPD enough to clear their slate on a string of homicides involving young women. I found a curious satisfaction in the fact that nowhere was Charlie Han implicated in those. In fact, I have heard of no charges against Charlie in any of this. I guess things are cooling back to normal and the ethnic peace of the island, as well as the political peace, is
HPD's
chief concern at the moment.

      
Davitsky was the man all the way—as far as the island killings went—though a couple of Washingtonians could get their political careers derailed through sideline involvements in a couple of those. Our friend Davitsky, prince of the mainland, was not only terribly bent, he also loved to keep photographic records of his high moments. Jones turned Billy
Inyoko
onto a treasure trove of such photographic moments involving hundreds of still photos and three videotapes.

      
It was those photographic moments, apparently, that touched off the killings in L.A. Maria Avila had made some wild threats to keep Davitsky off her back. About that same time, a file of photographs and a short videotape came up missing. This stuff was later found in Gil Tanner's safety deposit box. Up front, though, Davitsky figured Maria as the culprit and figured that she either had the stuff or had passed it elsewhere for safekeeping. Maybe she did give the stuff to Tanner, and maybe Jones got that out of her before he killed her; whatever and however, Maria died; Juanita died; George died; Tanner died; and the list may have become endless as Davitsky scrambled to cover his bizarre indiscretions.

      
Meanwhile Tanner and crew had already become something of a headache for Davitsky. These cagey sleazebags knew a good thing when they smelled it and they were starting to muscle in, using the Davitsky connection as their passport and their knowledge of his activities as leverage. So all those guys had been marked for extinction, too, I'm sure. I guess I did Tanner's partners a favor by interrupting that flow. They're still alive, anyway—though they could find themselves scratching off the days in the same population with old pal Ed. You know ... things could get downright interesting at San Quentin.

      
I hope I haven't told anything here that might sour you on the law enforcement community. A few bad cops, as they say, do not discredit the whole. And please keep in mind that in many countries of our world the police are installed by the government to oppress the people. At least in our system the cops are supposed to be our surrogates, and the badge is a symbol of our trust in one another. We're supposed to police ourselves, see. A cynical Frenchman said several centuries ago that a society can't exist unless we are the dupes of one another. I don't believe that. You're going to find corruption and thievery wherever you find human beings, sure—that's part of what we are—but the real story of a free society is that its men and women from all kinds of backgrounds at least try to work together with some respect, on the theory that that's the best way for us all.

      
And so I strongly believe that here, anyway, law enforcement is among the nobler professions, because its job is to service the common good, and to take care of the minority among us that wants to rock the boat.

      
Our cops are the equalizers against the barbarians. Please don't forget it.

      
And don't keep the eyes fixed on the likes of Ed Jones and Gil Tanner. Or me. I'm just a cop for hire, now. I enjoy the luxury of picking and choosing my own responses. If I don't like a case, I can walk away from it. The guy with the public badge can't do that. He belongs to you; he wears your badge, and he always has to respond.

      
End of sermon. Sorry.

      
I am still in Hawaii and beginning to enjoy it.

      
Belinda does not feel so bewitching anymore, but she is starting to enjoy it too.

      
She is on voluntary island detention along with me for a couple more days while the paperwork flows. Same police hospitality, as a matter of fact, and in the same hotel. We had breakfast together this morning, and we have a sort-of date for a luau this evening.

      
She is clean with the law here in Hawaii, except as a material witness, but I am afraid she will get a slap or two when we return to California. She knows that, and accepts it. Our relationship—if you can call it that—is trying to stabilize around the new honesty. I don't know what that will bring, but I know that I will be opening all the doors I know in L.A. to keep her official record clean. She's going to be a damn good clinical psychologist one of these days soon; we don't want a blemish to stand in the way of that. Maybe she could cop a plea for going a step too far in the interests of direct psychological research—or losing herself in her thesis—but I know, and she knows I know, that in fact she just got a little lost in Belinda. I doubt she'll get lost again.

      
Kid likes my house, you know.

      
That place could become a home, someday.

      
Well . . . enough already. I have not slept for two days. I just now hung out the Do Not Disturb, and I hope to sleep 'til luau time.

      
This
Copp
is not for hire 'til further notice.

      
Aloha. Peace. Go for it.