Copp In Deep, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Read Online Free Page A

for her in her apartment. She spotted the crack of light at the bottom of the door and whispered to me, "I left no lights on."
    So I took the key from her and pushed her clear, un- leathered the 57 and let it lead me inside.
    The son of a bitch fired first, without warning, and with a bit too much fingerjerk to the pull. His bullet hit the wall beside my head and already I was reflexing the reply. The big round hit him squarely at center-chest and punched him backward into a chair.
    He was dead before I could touch him with my hands.
    Fairly nice looking guy, well dressed, about my age.
    "Do you know him?" I asked the Israeli.
    She shook her head in mute, wide-eyed response.
    So I went for the pockets, found his wallet, found a second wallet—a very familiar looking second wallet—opened it, and it was my turn to go mute and wide- eyed.
    Talk about "deep," pal.
    I had just shot to death a Special Agent of the FBI.

 
    Chapter Four
     
    I here was no search warrant that I could find | and nothing appeared out of place in the apartment. The credentials found on the body identified the dead man as Walter Mathison and if the address on the driver's license was current he lived in Burbank and he was 38 years old. So, dammit , that probably meant a widow and kids left behind and it all seemed too damned pointless at the moment.
    I heard sounds of voices in the hall as I was examining the scene, stepped out quickly because I knew what it was—two big guns had been fired in that building and it is not the sort of thing that goes unnoticed in the middle of the night. A man and a woman were standing in front of the next apartment, both dressed for the bedroom and talking excitedly until they saw me. Then both clammed up real quick and were giving me the scared look, so I yelled down, "Did you hear it?"
    The man nervously yelled back, "Sounded like a gun, didn't it."
    I said, "There were some kids on the street just outside when I came up, dorking around. Probably them. Fireworks or something."
    "Sounded like an M-80," the guy agreed.
    "I'll call the police just to be sure," I volunteered.
    The woman smiled at me and went back into her apartment. The guy waved and hurried back to his. He encountered another couple in an open doorway along the way and paused to reassure them.
    Didn't do much for me, though.
    Nor for the Israeli Kid.
    She was white and trembly and fighting tears when I went back inside. "He was waiting here to kill me," she declared in a shaky voice.
    "Why would he want to do that?" I asked her.
    "I do not know why. But it is obvious, is it not?"
    "Doesn't sound like the FBI way," I told her, "but these days we never know, so . . ."
    Look, I was scared as hell, make no mistake. Even if the guy had gone renegade and had been playing some personal game of his own, not a fed alive would buy into a self-defense plea unless there was overwhelming evidence to support it. I had no evidence at all, of anything. And yeah, I was plenty scared. And maybe the kid was right, he'd come there to kill her. If so, were there others just like him? Tom Chase apparently thought so. So where the hell did that leave anything? What kind of crazy weave was I caught in?
    Maybe Tom himself was kinky, this kid was kinky, and they'd been caught playing footsies with "Nicky"
    and the KGB. So maybe I'd been sucked in to interfere in a legitimate federal investigation and I'd just killed one of the investigators. Apparently I had even been turned to LAPD, maybe they'd known all along about the plan to heist the consulate, maybe they'd been watching me even before . . .
    See, that's where my head was at and that is where my guts were at. Not exactly panic but cold clawing fear, to be sure. I have a clean record, understand, and I have friends in the police establishments of this area— even know a couple of feds on friendly terms—but there has been a cloud over my head all the time I've been a cop, followed me from job to job and even into the