Copp On Ice, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Carl Garcia is a quality guy
. We'd never been what you'd call friends, exactly—not in the sense of visiting in each other's homes or hitting the town together, hadn't been anything like that. But I guess we'd always liked and respected each other, and a friendship like that can sometimes be more compelling than the other kind.

We met in San Francisco while I was on the force there and he was a civilian police administrator. Within that year I was walking out the door and heading south in a graceful exit to join LAPD with my good record intact, thanks to a courageous stand by the good Garcia when all around him were howling for my scalp. I think that cost him, though he never said anything about it, because he was out the door himself a few months later and working for one of the smaller Bay Area cities in a similar capacity. That usually means smaller pay—so, yeah, it cost him.

We hadn't actually made an effort to keep in touch across the years—wasn't that kind of friendship—but circumstances kept us crossing paths now and then during the course of business. He'd moved around some too. That can happen to a quality guy who won't play the games some would demand of him. Somewhere in those years he'd picked up a master's degree in government administration; last I'd heard of him, I was with L.A. County and he was City Manager for one of the inland Northern California towns. I sent announcements around to everyone I've ever known when I set up my own shop as a cop for hire, so of course I sent one to Garcia, too, but never knew if he'd received it because we'd been out of touch for a couple of years.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when Carl called me that Friday evening from the Brighton city hall and offered me a job. Temporary job, he hastened to point out, good for probably no more than seventy-two hours, or until the city council could bury their own differences long enough to get together and shoot down the appointment. And of course they would. Candidates for a job like this are screened very carefully, qualifications weighed and re- weighed, salaries negotiated and all that. They'd shoot it down.

But there was big trouble in Brighton, for sure. Carl had been hired by the council just a few days earlier. His predecessor had resigned at the height of a political firestorm which also took the police chiefs job, one week after the death of the city's mayor. I'd never known Carl Garcia to be afraid of anything but he sounded nervous and maybe even a bit scared. "I have to emphasize, Joe, that you'll be walking into a pressure cooker that no man in his right mind would want to contend with. And it could be dangerous. The whole thing here is thoroughly rotten. I'm actually afraid of the cops here, and I believe a couple of the councilmen are certifiably insane."

      
"Why hire me," I managed to ask, "when you know I'll be fired almost immediately?"

      
"Well, I guess you must know that I'll expect you to come over here and kick some asses into line in your usual direct approach to problem-solving. I—"

      
"You know that I've gone private."

      
"Yes. I received your announcement. Took awhile because you sent it to the wrong place. By the time it caught up with me it was too late to send congratulations, so what the hell, congratulations I guess if that's the way you want it. I'm not asking you to give anything up. It's just that I can't call a private eye in here to kick ass in the police department—not as a private eye, that is. You've always been a lightning rod, Joe. I figure you'll draw enough lightning over the weekend to at least get a feeling for who can and cannot be trusted in this town. Just give me a handle, even a very short one."

      
"Who's running the department at the moment?"

      
"I am," he said ruefully.

      
"You don't have an acting chief?"

      
"They're all Indians here, Joe; no chiefs."

      
I didn't like the sound of that. "I couldn't go along with a sham appointment," I told him.

      
"Neither could I," Garcia assured me. "It's strictly legal. I get to run the city until the council unleashes veto power. They're so disorganized it will take them awhile to do that. If I want you to run the PD, then by God you'll run it your way until someone yanks both of us out. Will you do it?"

      
"You want me to kick ass."

      
"That's what I want, yes."

      
"Cops too."

      
"Cops especially."

      
"You sound worried."

      
"I am worried. There have been death threats, Joe."

      
"Against you?"

      
"Against my wife and kids. They're still up north and that makes it even worse. I haven't found a place to live down here yet, still in a hotel."

      
"Stash them."

      
"Right now?"

"Soon as you break this connection, yes. Put them into cool storage, right now. Tell no one where they're at, not even Grandma, and use a public phone to send them there. Once they're stashed, don't let them use a credit card or a telephone. They are to get cool and stay that way. Understand? Maybe it's an overreaction, and let's hope it is. But do it."

      
"Okay, yes, I'll do that. Does this mean you're taking the job?"

      
"That's what it means, yes. When do I start?"

      
"I was hoping you could come right now. The timing is important. I figure we need the weekend to sneak you in past the council."

      
I sighed, checked the clock, and told him, "Give me a couple of hours."

      
The relief was evident in his voice. "Right. I'll be waiting. Come straight to city hall, Chief."

      
After I hung up I sat there for a couple minutes, staring at the telephone. Chief, eh? It was a laugher. The rest was not. It all sounded a bit nutty and unbelievable, but I'd been hearing things out of Brighton and I knew it was all entirely ominous too. But I laughed anyway, remembering Sidewise, Taxidriver, and Lila Boobs.

      
It was worth a laugh, sure.

      
I could cry later. . . and I would.

Brighton sits low
in the foothills with a view of Mt. Baldy and several other towering peaks of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains. In the winter, they're snowcapped peaks and nothing is prettier. Rest of the time they just stand there shrugging off the desert heat and smog rising from below, sometimes shrouding themselves with cooling clouds when conditions are right—and sometimes the Santa Anas whistle down their slopes and scream through the canyons of the foothill communities like angry spirits from some long gone Indian tribe hoping to discourage the steady encroachment of the squatters filling the broad valleys and blotting out the hills, but nothing will discourage that except maybe a couple of well-timed 8.2 quakes arising from the numerous faults that crisscross the area.

The city was founded by agricultural pioneers before the turn of the century. They brought year-around water to the desert and transformed it into garden oases of citrus and avocado, date and olive and grape, built packing sheds and rail lines and roadways, tamed the wilderness and prepared it for the urban onslaught that would follow a hundred years later. Gone now are most of the crops, the packing sheds, the farm laborers camps and most everything else related to agriculture, replaced by broad boulevards usually choked with endless streams of cars and trucks, square mile upon square mile of houses and apartments and restaurants and service stations, liquor stores and theaters, shopping malls to stupefy those early pioneers, and problems no suburban city ever thought it would have to face.

Ten years ago the Brighton Police Department numbered thirty sworn officers and four civilian employees. Police excitement in those days would involve little more than a fistfight in a local bar, a fenderbender on Main street or a rowdy drunk beating up his wife. Today you cat count nearly a hundred badges, a civilian bureaucracy almost as large as the sworn force ten years ago, and they deal routinely with gang drive-by shootings, armed robberies and burglaries, a homicide rate that has doubled in two years, drug dealers large and small, rapes and violence of every type, prostitution, sophisticated white-collar crimes and cons and swindles; name it, they got it at Brighton just as in any big city in the land, and all in a dizzying ten years.

What they did not have at Brighton at the time was an effective police department. What they had was a department in shambles, no clear direction, no morale, no faith in their ability to police the town. And of course it goes without saying, in such a situation, they had some
baaad
cops on that force. I could smell them all over the place, like stinking garbage that's hidden away and you can't see it but God you know it's around somewhere close.

I hit town about an hour before midnight, traveling light with only a suit bag and a few changes of underwear, and met briefly with Carl Garcia in his office. He swore me in, gave me my badge and gun, walked me over to the PD and introduced me to the watch captain, and then he left town for parts unannounced.

The captain's name was McGuire, they called him Pappy, and he clearly did not like me for shit. Which was okay, I didn't like him either and it meant not a thing either way. He had twenty officers coming in for the graveyard shift and a few more than that going off; I ordered them all to stay put and told McGuire I wanted a general muster of every sworn badge within the hour, no exceptions except for those presently engaged in sensitive duty operations. He gave me a nasty look and I thought for a quick staredown minute there that he was going to disregard the order, but finally he blinked first and passed the command along to the dispatch office.

It was a modern, clean, and spacious building outfitted with all the latest technology. These cops obviously wanted for nothing that money could buy. They had a workout gym and a couple of handball courts, luxurious lounge, all the employee trappings of an enlightened and prosperous city. What had gone so sour?

My office was a marvel. The desk was as big as a double bed. Had a long leather couch, a little alcove with tables and four overstuffed chairs—a television and a VCR, for God's sake—even a full bath with glassed-in shower stall. A snazzy hi-tech communications unit was built flush into the desk; you could audit all the telephones from there and record conversations, patch in directly to the dispatcher's console and record there too. I'd never seen anything like it, certainly had not expected to see it in Brighton, of all places.

I decided I could live there, at least for the weekend, brought my stuff in from the car and set up my shop, then went out for a word or two with Pappy McGuire. He's a guy about forty, long and lean, frown wrinkles rumpling the forehead, all the negative elements of a cop's eyes— suspicion, fear, worry, hostility—you can't miss it and you can't overlook it.

He asked me right off the top, "You been certified by the research and academic council for this job?"

He was referring to a state organization that establishes training criteria and qualifications for police management positions as an aid to local governments. "Not lately," I replied. "You?"

"Two years ago. Why do they always want to go outside the department for a new chief? I'll have to uproot if I want to go any higher in this line of work. Not that it wouldn't be better after all, considering the loonies at this city hall."

      
"They didn't even appoint you Acting Chief," I said, watching for his reaction. "Why not?"

      
McGuire shrugged, picked at his nose, examined his fingernails. "They appointed nobody Acting Chief. It's been a revolving situation, with each Watch Commander as the badge in charge reporting directly to the City Administrator, except that we had no C.A. until your friend Garcia arrived. It's no job for a civilian, I guess even you know that. We figured Garcia to do something stupid. Looks like he's done it. Where'd you come in from? What's your background?"