Private Eye Four-Pack, page 69
His first call was to a computer information source located in Castle Rock, a mall-and-golf community about twenty miles south of Denver. Stevey was the man’s name and he was a world-class propeller head. Anything on record in any data bank was at his fingertips. He was invaluable for skip tracing and court searches, the latter of which Streeter ordered for Shelton, Moffatt, and Cooper. Stevey could do a statewide court sweep and get a printout of the case summaries. He got right on it, and about a half-hour later called the bounty hunter back.
“Let’s see here.” Stevey obviously was reading his screen while he talked. “Mr. Shelton was the plaintiff in a collections case in Boulder in 1983 and another one in 1986. He was awarded a small judgment both times. Then he got arrested for possession of a controlled substance in 1988 up there, too. Got probation. He was arrested again in 1993 in Denver for possession with intent to sell. The charges were dropped.
“Story Moffatt. Is that name for real? She likes to sue people, too. And she likes to win. I’ve got six collections cases where she was the plaintiff. All between 1987 and 1994. All in Denver. She won judgments in five. The sixth is still pending.
“And Thomas Hardy Cooper. He’s either a lawyer or a doctor. Sounds like a real gem. He’s been sued twice for malpractice. Both cases still pending. Looks like he was charged with assault in 1983 in Jefferson County. The case was later dismissed.”
“Quite a crew, huh?” Streeter asked. “Thanks for the quick turnaround, Stevey. Drop the printouts in the mail, okay? I want a closer look.”
His next call was to a close friend, one of the few lawyers he would work for from time to time. “How you doing, Bill?”
The voice at the other end came back relaxed. “Not bad. Yourself?”
William Wesley McLean usually sounded relaxed. A former district attorney in Arapahoe County, just south of Denver, Bill McLean had a reputation for being cool but tough. The man would rather lose an eye than take an ounce of trash from anyone. He and Streeter had been tight since they had lived next door to each other during Streeter’s last marriage. As with his first three marriages, Streeter and Beth lasted only two years. But during those two years, he and McLean got close, and their friendship continued to grow even after the divorce. He was one of the few people the bounty hunter let call him by the shorthand nickname of Street.
“How’s Darcy?” he asked Bill.
“Excellent, as ever.” Bill and Darcy had been married nineteen years. She was a successful psychologist. “She’s working at the clinic. Thursdays she works family counseling. There’s so much child abuse out there, it makes you sick.”
“Tell me about child abuse. My father drank and my mother made me take accordion lessons.”
“I’ll bet you were a natural, Street.” Bill, pushing sixty, was almost six feet six inches tall and had a full head of white hair. It gave him a distinguished credibility that helped greatly in court.
“Listen, I’ve got a quick legal question,” Streeter said. “There’s this lady I’m doing a little work for and it looks like she’s going to be hassled by a lawyer. She’s the executrix and main beneficiary of her boyfriend’s estate and the lawyer claims the guy died owing him money. Does she have any legal obligation for his bills?”
“Depends. Did they ever tell people they were married? Were they engaged?”
“She says no.”
“Then it’s unlikely that his claim’ll hold up. Who’s the lawyer?”
“A spastic named Tom Cooper.”
Bill grunted on the other end of the receiver.
“Guy with an office downtown? Yeah, I seem to remember him from back in my last days with the county. He was just getting into practice. Real nervous and tried to cover it up with a kind of swagger. Couldn’t pull it off too well. Thought he was a real lady killer, too. But he couldn’t pull that off, either.”
“If he comes after her, will you represent her?”
“Sure. Who is she? You usually don’t take private clients like this. Why the change for this one?”
“Interesting case, lots of cash up front, gorgeous client.”
“Gorgeous, huh? Look, Street, you better be careful if you try to mix business with pleasure. What’s that old saying about not slamming your dick in the cash register? You don’t want to do that.”
“That’s very eloquent. And you’re right, I don’t. Catch you later.”
Streeter hung up and then called Carl Shorts, a Boulder private investigator he used occasionally. A great many people in the Denver area knew Carl, if not for his legendary drinking habits and relentless womanizing, then at least for his nickname: Pokey. Try being ignored with Pokey Shorts for a handle. Rumor had it that he got the nickname because, as a newspaper reporter, he was slow at deadline time.
“How you doing, Poke man?” Streeter greeted him.
“Hey, Tarzan. Long time no see,” Pokey shot back. Although just a shade past fifty and married with two sons, Pokey drank and caroused like he was just out of college. But when it came to investigating, he knew the secrets of every soul in Boulder County, and his drive for digging up dirt was even greater than his love of the bar scene.
“Too long. But this is more business than pleasure.” Streeter told Pokey about Story Moffatt and her late boyfriend, emphasizing the part about his living in Boulder and dealing drugs.
“So now you need to find out about Mr. Shelton,” Pokey said.
“You got it.”
“The name sounds sort of familiar. I think he ran with Marcus Greenberg and that crowd over at Potter’s and Quinn’s. Some of those Pearl Street Mall watering holes. Let me look into it and I’ll give you a holler back. I’m also thinking we should get together for a couple hundred beers one of these days.”
“That sounds fine to me.”
Streeter’s last call was to Detective Bob Carey of the Denver Police Department. Carey was his only real source on the department, but one source like him was plenty. Carey had twenty-three years on the job and he played cards with Streeter and some friends every other week. They’d been doing it for just over ten years, and Carey had walked away a winner maybe five times.
“Robert, Streeter here.”
“Robert?” There was a pause. “That means you want something.”
“Right. Do you know anything about a Doug Shelton? A coke dealer who died in a car wreck a few months ago.”
“Should I?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Don’t mean nothing to me. I’ll check around, though.”
“How about a drug lawyer named Tom Cooper?”
“Now, that name I do know. A regular certified shithead. You’re not working for him, are you?”
“No. Against him probably.”
“I don’t think you want to work for him or against him. What you hear next, you didn’t hear from me. We were looking into this Cooper jackass and so were the guys up in Adams County. Seems they had a homicide up there a while back. Some little welder who was supposed to testify in a murder trial ends up with his throat slit. Cooper was the defense lawyer in the aforementioned murder trial, and he has this investigator named Psycho or some damned thing that everyone is very interested in. Psycho is right. Totally nasty fucker. Looks like the sergeant at arms at a Teamsters meeting, from what I hear. So far, he’s clean. But Cooper and his friends are bad people. You be careful. You got half my pay for the last ten years at the poker table and I want a shot at winning it back.”
“With all your stinking luck, you still never give up. I don’t know if that’s persistent or pathetic.”
Carey coughed into the receiver. “Bad luck’s like a marriage, Streeter. Sooner or later they both gotta end. You should know all about that.”
SIX
As Jacky Romp watched Cooper walk across the parking lot, a shadow of amusement twitched across his face. Actually, Jacky never looked totally amused or totally happy or totally anything you might call pleasant. His features were delicate, not unattractive, but at the same time he projected an overriding meanness. There was a strange menace to his entire being, like barbed wire covered with pale skin.
Watching Cooper shuffle toward the diner, he smiled and looked across the table at Soyko, who was stirring his coffee. Jacky glanced back out at the lot and muttered, “Goofy fuckwad,” seemingly without moving his jaw.
Soyko nodded. He was so used to his partner’s not using full sentences that he just glanced at the scurrying lawyer and understood. Leo couldn’t really disagree. Romp and Soyko had done numerous jobs for Cooper over the years, making a good chunk of change from the hard-assed collection shakedowns and intimidating interviews. The work had increased in both volume and scale lately—as Cooper’s practice grew and intensified—to a point where it was now Soyko and Romp’s main source of income. “That jerk’s a regular cash cow,” as he put it to Jacky not long ago. But if anything, Leo’s regard for the attorney decreased with time. Now, watching him in the lot, Soyko could only think, What a clown the lawyer is. Cooper always sort of shuffled along bent forward, as if he couldn’t get where he was going fast enough. Or maybe he couldn’t get away from where he’d just been fast enough. Either way, it appeared awkward and panicked to Leo.
Cooper had asked Soyko to meet him at The Full Belli Deli in the sprawling suburb of Aurora, immediately east of Denver. It was their usual spot. He didn’t like Soyko coming to his office, and because he also lived downtown Cooper didn’t want to meet in the city, where they could be recognized. The Full Belli was just fine. Soyko lived nearby and Cooper liked the coffee and the service. What he didn’t like was Jacky Romp, and his features hardened as he entered the restaurant and saw him sitting there. Not that it surprised him. Soyko and Romp were inseparable. Still, the attorney’s dislike for Jacky was monumental.
The feeling was eagerly reciprocated. Romp generally considered anyone who wore a suit to be “pure Yuppie rat shit,” and Cooper specifically to be a phony stooge. The attorney sensed that hatred immediately and viewed Jacky as a highly repugnant loose cannon with the added liability of not being necessary. When he hired Soyko, he always felt like he was paying a little extra for Jacky even though Leo could do the job just as well by himself.
“There he is.” Cooper smiled and approached the booth, looking straight at Soyko. “The most persuasive investigator in town. How you doing, my man?”
My man this, Soyko thought, looking back impassively. This jerk really thinks “my man” is some sort of hip street jive. “Yeah, my man.” He looked over to Jacky and nodded. “Sit down, Mr. Cooper.” There was no warmth in the invitation.
Cooper slid into the booth next to Soyko, still deliberately avoiding eye contact with the man across the table. Usually he barely acknowledged Jacky’s presence and spoke to him only when necessary. For his part, Jacky seldom talked to anyone but Soyko anyway, and the few words he directed at Cooper were mocking or vaguely obscene.
The waitress came and Cooper ordered coffee. Then, for the first time, he looked directly at Jacky, and his venom rekindled. Soyko had the blocky muscles and thick, strong hands of a foundry worker. Basically, he scared the hell out of Cooper. But Jacky Romp seemed too frail to be intimidating, so Cooper frequently took shots at him. The lawyer looked intently back at Soyko and in the deepest voice he could muster he asked, “Do you have to always bring this malignant piece of shit with you?”
Soyko had no idea what “malignant” meant, but the “piece of shit” part was clear. He rolled his eyes for a second and looked out the window. The constant friction between the two men bored him. “All right, ladies.” He looked back with no emotion on his face. “Let’s cut the ‘malignant’ bullshit here and get down to business.” He glanced toward his lap and slid an envelope along the booth seat at Cooper. It contained fifteen hundred dollars in wrinkled bills. “Like we said on the phone, for the thing with Tiny. And now no more about it.” His voice indicated that this was the end of the subject. Absolutely the end. “What’s next? Something about a girl you want me to talk to?”
“That’ll come in good time.” Cooper looked down at the envelope and pushed it back at Soyko. “But first, I want you to gather information on a former client of mine. I’ll want some real digging on this guy. Keep the money to cover your efforts.”
“Who we talking about?” Soyko said in his slow, can-do tone.
Cooper lowered his voice slightly. “You know anyone named Doug Shelton? Greaseball handsome guy, always dressed to kill. Sort of a low-end player with the blow and the ladies. Hung around places like El Chapultepec, the jazz bar, and the Wynkoop poolroom.”
The two investigators looked at each other for a long time, like they were having a telepathic conference. Then Jacky simply said, “Porsche prick,” through his closed mouth.
Soyko nodded and looked back at Cooper. “I think I know who you mean. Guy about thirty-five maybe. Little older than me. Waved a lot of cash around but wouldn’t even shoot you pool for fifty cents. I know he deals. Drives a red Porsche and acts like he’s hot shit, too. Ain’t seen him in a long time.”
Cooper smiled, once again amazed at the broad range of people that his investigator knew. “Nor are you likely to see him in the future. He died a few months ago. He’d been arrested late last year for possession of several ounces of flake, excellent quality. Had a short rap sheet from here and there and he was facing some state time. Most judges have big erections for drug dealers these days. Like they think that putting them away for a few months to play tennis in medium security somehow protects society. It’s a joke. But what the hell? It keeps me supplied with clients.
“At any rate, our Douglas was basically screwed because it was a hand-to-hand sale. Then something very unusual happened. A couple weeks after his preliminary hearing, I received a call from the prosecutor telling me they were going to dismiss everything. Seems the cocaine had inexplicably disappeared from the police-evidence locker. Other physical evidence disappeared as well. As we hadn’t had a chance to test the coke yet, the charges were dropped and Douglas was free.”
Soyko frowned. “Too bad he died.” Then his face brightened slightly. “Normally, that means he’s out of the picture, but I’m sure, if there’s any way to get something out of a dead guy, you’ll think of it. He owed you money?”
Cooper frowned in pained sincerity. Doug Shelton had paid him over nineteen thousand dollars in two quick cash installments. That basically covered his meager legal efforts about five times over. If anything, Cooper owed the estate a refund, but no one, least of all Soyko and his crazy partner, needed to know that. “A considerable sum, and I certainly don’t intend to wipe out the debt without trying to collect,” Cooper said severely. “I put in long hours on this man’s case and I’m entitled to the appropriate payment.”
Soyko studied his face. “I tell you this, it would break my heart to see you take it in the shorts like that. But don’t you usually collect a shitload of money up front before you even budge on a case?”
Cooper inhaled deeply and spoke with a forced patience. “That is not at all an accurate characterization of my practice. Typically, I do like to get a decent retainer. That’s just prudent business. But I provide all my clients with the best legal assistance possible regardless of their ability to pay in advance. I also do a considerable amount of work pro bono—that is, without receiving a penny. It’s the least I can do.”
Thomas Hardy Cooper was more likely to get pregnant and deliver twins than do one hour of pro-bono work and everyone at the table knew it. Jacky Romp spit out a laugh and turned away.
Soyko just shrugged. “Whatever you say. But if this guy was such a slow pay, what makes you think he had any money to go after?”
“I’ve handled a great many drug defenses these past few years and I can tell when a dealer has money. Theoretically, they all should have plenty, because their profit margin is so obscenely vast. Christ, just last month I had these two post-office guys, letter carriers, come to hire me. A couple of coons, no less. They had been arrested dealing eight balls to their fellow employees. They come to me and they’re dressed about a notch above Goodwill. I tell them I’ll need ten thousand in cash just for starters, figuring that would turn them away. One says to me, ‘Okay, but I gotta get the money from the credit union.’ He says it like it’s hysterical. Then he reaches into one of his socks and pulls out a wad of cash the size of his dick and counts out the ten grand. I’m sitting there just about creaming my pants and thinking, Why didn’t I ask for more?
“But drug dealers, like so many of us, fail to handle their money properly. Sadly, a good many of them are addicted themselves, so they piss their money away. Our Mr. Shelton was not like that. He also had a good real-estate income. He was always well turned out. You know, the car, the clothes. Plus, this evidence theft took some doing. It seems obvious to me that Douglas arranged it. He had to have someone on the inside, on the force. That costs plenty. He damned near told me that he arranged it, and he implied it was no big deal, money-wise. That man had assets, no doubt about it.”
“He had a way of flashing it around, I’ll give you that,” Soyko interrupted. “Had a nice-looking blond chick with him sometimes. Great ass and legs. His wife?”
“I’m not certain,” Cooper answered, uncomfortable that Soyko knew about Story. “He implied that it might have been a common-law situation.”
The three sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Finally, Jacky spoke up. “We supposed to be reading your mind or what?”
Cooper glanced at him for a second and then turned back to Soyko. “I want you to find out everything you can about Douglas. I think he kept women on the side, and I’m dead solid certain he stashed money. He used to brag about the financial reserves he kept hidden from his lady. Gentlemen, if this is anything like what Douglas led me to believe it is, there could be close to half a million in it for us. Or whoever has the balls to go get it. I’d say it’s definitely worth a little looking into, wouldn’t you?”
