Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online

dead find sanctuary.  
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    I had lunch with a tense and fidgety Abe Johnson and found him a bit cool, almost distant with me, especially early on. That was understandable. He did not give me much over lunch, but he did know that I'd been charged at County and seemed to want my version of it, which I gave him.
    I told him I thought Edgar was shooting from the hip and hoping for a lucky strike.
    "Don't count on that," Abe said. "They've got good cops over there. You should know. Don't sell them short. Matter of fact, we're reevaluating all the evidence ourselves. Taking a fresh look at all of it, including your input—and frankly, Joe, none of it seems to hang together. This is a messy case. None of the pieces seem to fit together, especially not with your pieces."
    I had to wonder what Abe knew that he was not sharing with me. "If it's all that messy, then I'd guess
    someone set it up that way. You should be wondering why, and while you're doing that you should keep remembering who the patsy is. If I was a criminal part of it, don't you think I'd know how to cover myself better than that?"
    "That's the way I've been trying to look at it."
    "I'm getting the strong feeling I was set up coming in. Why? For what? Why make me a fall guy to a conspiracy? What would that buy anybody?"
    "That's part of what we're wondering—"
    "Well, please keep on wondering. And while you're at it, wonder about Melissa Franklin too. I'm not sure that she's the one I saw in the limo. I'm not sure that Wiseman is the Albert Moore who hired me. I'm not sure that the real Albert Moore was driving that limo, and I'm not sure that the real Melissa Franklin was in that limo moments before it destructed or that she was in my office yesterday when I got sapped from behind. I'm not sure, period."
    Johnson said, "So you see our problem. Very messy, too many possibilities. And what's frying the whole thing now—"
    "The executions?"
    "Right. You took pictures of fourteen people outside NuCal before the bombing, ostensibly to identify a disloyal employee at United Talents. From one point of view that set the whole chain of events in motion—beginning with the bombing of the building and continuing on to the execution-style slaying of four of the people you photographed. We're trying to identify and warn the others, just in case any more have been marked, but there's been no luck there. Not yet. We're probably going to have to put it on the air and request those people to come forward and identify themselves."
    "Sounds reasonable."
    "Unless some are criminally tainted. There's evidence to suggest that NuCal Designs was a front for illegal activities in the back room."
    "The film lab?"
    "Yeah. More than that, looks like they were manufacturing video cassettes back there too. We're figuring it as a possible pirate operation. With Wiseman in the picture—and in light of what he told you when he hired you—we're thinking it could have involved a ripoff of UT's big hits using the film from their own vaults. If Wiseman had tumbled to something like that . . ."
    By the look on his face, his stops and starts, it was clear that Johnson was having trouble buying his theories. "Doesn't ring, though, does it. Why would a man in Wiseman's position, and stuck in a wheelchair, want to play it that way? These big studios have their own security setups. Why didn't he just turn it over to his security honcho or to the cops?"
    Johnson sighed. "Yeah. Unless the rumors are true."
    "What rumors?"
    "That Wiseman was very kinky himself and that a faction at UT has been trying to expose him."
    "You want to tell me more about that?"
    "Not 'til I know more about it myself."
    Over coffee, I reminded him: "Wiseman or Moore, or whoever paid me the thirteen hundred, hinted that he was trying to set up a disinformation game. Maybe that was the one true thing he said to me."
    "So what does that buy?"
    "A confusion of the circumstances," I said. "If the guy was not being