Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)

by Bill Bernico

  I also had the reference book with me and looked to see what it said about the origins of some of the Mother Goose rhymes. I had checked the index at the back of the book and looked up Humpty Dumpty. I found its legend on page ninety-seven.

  It stated that Humpty Dumpty actually referred to a cannon that was used to defend the Church of St. Mary-at-the-Wall by the Royalist defenders in Colchester in the siege of 1648. A high wall that protected the church and a castle surrounded the town. A large cannon was strategically placed on the wall. The cannon was called Humpty Dumpty by the townsfolk. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Cavaliers, or in the case of the rhyme, ‘all the King’s men’ attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but because the cannon was so heavy ‘All the King’s horses (the cavalry troops) and all the King’s men (the infantry) couldn’t put Humpty together again’. Why they drew Humpty Dumpty as an egg was still a mystery to me, since there is no mention of the character being an egg.

  I closed the reference book and laid it aside. The nursery rhyme book was still open in front of me when my desk phone rang. I closed the book and grabbed the phone.

  “Cooper,” I said.

  “Matt, it’s Dan.” His voice had an edge of urgency to it. “Humphrey’s been spotted on the boulevard just a few blocks from your office.” He gave me the location. “Meet me there in five minutes.”

  “On my way,” I said and returned the phone to its cradle.

  Don Humphrey had been spotted on a corner near Hollywood and Cahuenga. The beat cop who had recognized him from the A.P.B. fliers yelled for him to stop, but Humphrey just ran into the nearest building he could find. The patrolman called into the precinct for backup and waited. In a matter of minutes four prowl cars had merged on the location and the building was surrounded. The police methodically searched all the floors of the building Humphrey had run into.

  Dan and I arrived on the scene as the officers were concluding their search on the twelfth floor. The search of the first eleven floors yielded nothing. We joined them on the twelfth floor as they opened the office door at 1218 and burst in. Except for the furniture, the room was empty. There were no other doors and only one window. It had been opened and the breeze blew the blinds back and forth, rattling them as they swayed with the wind.

  Our guns drawn, Dan and I scanned the room and then eased our way over to the window. Dan pulled on the cord that hung alongside the blinds and the metal slats folded into each other, making their way to the top of the window.

  I eased my head out the window, looking both ways. To my right there was nothing but an empty ledge. Straight down I could see a huge crowd gathering and gasping. To my left stood Donald Humphrey. He was a fat man, short and fat. He was ceremoniously dressed all in white. He smiled wryly as our eyes met. Tears ran down both cheeks. He reached to wipe his eyes but a sudden wave of vertigo made him slap his hands against the building again. His breathing was getting faster and shallower.

  “Mr. Humphrey,” I said. “My name’s Matt Cooper and I want to help you. Won’t you come inside?”

  “Stay away,” Humphrey almost yelled. “Just stay away from me.”

  “Mr. Humphrey,” I continued, “I know about Carrie and I’m so sorry for your loss. It must have been devastating for you and I want to help you. Please come inside.”

  Dan hurried to the window on the other side of the man on the ledge. He eased the window up and stuck his head out, looking toward Humphrey. He looked past the man and caught my eye. He nodded acknowledgement that I was doing the right thing by calmly talking to the man. Dan hiked a thumb back toward the room and we both ducked back inside. I met Dan between the windows.

  “Keep him talking, Matt,” Dan said. “It’ll give us time to get a few men up on the roof with ropes. Maybe we can repel down the side and grab him while he’s busy talking to you.”

  “You really thing that’ll work?” I said. “He looks pretty desperate to me.”

  “We’re running out of options here, Matt. We’ve got to at least try.”

  I jerked my head toward the door. “Go. I’ll keep him talking.”

  Dan hurried out the door and gathered four patrolmen and headed for the roof while I returned to the window and slowly stuck my head out again. Humphrey was still plastered against the bricks, breathing heavy. I rested my hand on the ledge and leaned further out to talk to Humphrey.

  “I talked to your wife recently,” I said, just for something to say. “Did you know that? She told me about Carrie and how it affected you. Do you want to talk about it? I’m a very good listener. At least that’s what people tell me. Won’t you give me a chance to listen?”

  Humphrey just shook his head and kept his eyes closed tightly. His jaw muscles showed that he was clenching his teeth. He turned his head toward me and opened his eyes. He was crying again.

  “Carrie was my whole life,” he said. “Those bastards at the school took her from me.”

  “No,” I said emphatically. “It was an accident, just an accident. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just bad wiring in the ceiling.”

  Humphrey lowered his head and looked at the crowd on the sidewalk. He leaned forward slightly.

  “Humphrey,” I said quickly, trying to distract him until Dan’s men on the roof could get into position. “Listen to me for a minute. Will you do me that much of a favor? Just listen to me. I realize that the school where Carried died was called the Mother Goose Pre-School, but what have any of these other people done to deserve what you did to them? Some of them only had the misfortune to have names similar to names in the Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book, but they never did anything to you. Why?”

  I never got the chance to say another word to him. Humphrey turned his head and looked me squarely in the face. In his eyes I saw a man who had made a decision and knew what he had to do. He seemed at peace with himself, if not with the rest of the world.

  As I opened my mouth to try to talk him in, he turned toward me and calmly said, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” and stepped off the ledge into eternity.

  I watched as he sailed through the air and the crowd below collectively gasped and quickly parted. As he hit the pavement more than a hundred twenty feet below, people screamed and ran away while I shook my head in disbelief and finished his last rhyme “...Couldn’t put Humphrey together again.”

  A minute later Dan cam back into the room and found me, still leaning out the window, my hands resting on the cement window sill. I pulled myself back into the room and turned to Dan.

  “Did you…?” I started to say.

  “Yes,” Dan answered. “I saw it from the roof. Man, what a way to go. At least it was quicker and less painful than the way his daughter died.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Dan,” I said, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. “I need to feel normal again.” I gestured toward the handful of patrolmen who were still in the room. “They can handle this until we get back. I just need a break and a drink.”

  Dan walked me out of the room and toward the elevator. “I’m glad this whole thing is over. I don’t think I could take one more gory scene.”

  We rode the elevator to the lobby and stepped out. Several more policemen milled around in the lobby while four or five more worked crowd control outside. One uniformed cop with two stripes on his shoulders walked toward us as we exited the building.

  “Sergeant Hollister,” he said. “Would you come with me?”

  “What is it,” Dan said.

  The cop hesitated and looked around to see if anyone else was within earshot. He looked at me and then back at Dan.

  “It’s all right,” Dan said. “You can talk in front of Matt. What is it?”

  “They found a body in the alley a few blocks from here,” the cop said. “Looks like he’s been dead less than twenty-four hours.”

  “And you’re telling me becaus
e?” Dan said.

  “Figured you’d wanna know,” the cop said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re working on this nursery rhyme case, aren’t you?”

  Dan shifted his gaze to me and back at the cop. “Yeah, so?”

  “We have the victim’s identity. Thought you’d be interested,” the cop said, reaching for his notepad. “Victim’s name was Simon, Lester Simon, twenty-eight.”

  Dan thought for a moment and shook his head. “Name doesn’t ring any bells. Should it?”

  “Maybe not all by itself,” the cop said. “But this guy was retarded. You know, um…”

  “Simple,” I muttered almost to myself. Dan had the same thought but vocalized it louder than I did.

  “Simple Simon?” Dan said, looking at me.

  The cop folded his notepad closed and stuffed it into his pocket again. He nodded and lowered his head.

  Dan turned to me. “That drink’ll have to wait, Matt. I have to take this.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ve had enough. I’ll be at Smiley’s Bar when you’re finished. You’ll have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Save me a stool,” Dan said and turned and walked away.

  I wondered how many drinks it would take for me to forget these last dozen murders. And oddly enough, I also wondered about the fate of Muriel Chess and whether or not Marlowe would ever get to the bottom of that case. Maybe I’d have time to find out now that this nightmare had finally come to an end.

  08 - The Condiment Killer

  I sat at the table across from a family of five who’d just ordered their lunch. The little girl, who must have been five or six, sat playing with her fork and knife. She banged them together until her mother took them away from her and pointed an angry finger in the girl’s face. Just when I thought my surroundings couldn’t get any more annoying, the little girl started to cry. Nothing her mother said to her seemed to have any effect on the spoiled kid. She just cried louder and longer. The mother looked around the room nervously and noticed several of the other patrons looking back at her with disgust. Several even got up and left the restaurant. Finally the mother grabbed the little girl by one arm and half walked, half dragged the little girl out of the restaurant.

  Once they were out the door and on the sidewalk, one weary-looking patron began to clap. He kept clapping until another patron across the room joined in. They both clapped, looking around the room and smiling. Eventually all the other patrons, myself included, clapped along with them. From outside it must have sounded like the fifth curtain call at a Ziegfield floorshow.

  Once the applause had died down, the waitress brought me my coffee and I tried to enjoy what was left of the morning. Even a P.I. has to eat. The mother and daughter never did come back inside. Her husband paid the tab and quietly left, trying to slip out without further embarrassment.

  It was nearly noon as I sat staring out the window at the traffic rolling by on Sunset. I was lost in a daydream that involved a woman I had encountered at a diner on the other side of town. I can still hear those sweet and gentle words that she spoke to me: ‘What’ll you have, sir?’ That’s right, she was a waitress and her face has been stuck in my memory now for the past three days. I’d have to make it my mission to get back there soon.

  My peaceful daydreams were shattered by the loud, high scream of an old woman. I turned and stood, facing the source of the scream. Two tables down, an old man lay on the floor, his elderly wife kneeling at his side. He was convulsing and foaming at the corners of his mouth. His flailing legs had managed to knock over the empty table next to where he’d been sitting. After a few seconds of chaos the old man stopped kicking and laid still, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Almost everyone in the place was now standing, crowding around the old couple. The undertone in the crowd’s conversations was almost deafening. Other women screamed at the sight of the old man. One patron tried putting her arm around the old woman, but just got pushed away as the old woman tried in vain to revive her husband.

  I pushed the crowd apart and took my place alongside the old woman. I pressed two fingertips to the man’s neck and then leaned over with my ear to the man’s nostrils. There was no pulse and the man had stopped breathing. The old man’s face turned a pale blue. I looked into the old woman’s face. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were vacant and glassy. I pulled her up off the floor and found a chair for her. She just stared off into space, her breathing now a lot shallower.

  In a matter of minutes I could hear the ambulance, its siren tearing up the afternoon peace and spitting it out in front of the diner. The two ambulance attendants arrived and wheeled a gurney up next to where the old man had fallen. They performed their cursory duties and repeated some of my earlier actions before lifting the old man onto the gurney and pulling the sheet up over his face. They wheeled the old man out to the waiting station wagon with AMBULANCE stenciled on the side. They helped man’s wife into the back of the ambulance and drove off, back to the hospital and then on to the morgue.

  After I’d stopped to follow up a lead on a case I’d been working on, I drove back to my office on Hollywood Boulevard. I made it back by four-fifteen and took a seat behind my desk. I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and retrieved the bottle I kept there. I was pouring myself two fingers of rye when my office door opened again and Sergeant Dan Hollister stood there, waiting to be invited in.

  “Heard you had a rather unusual morning, Cooper?” he said.

  I swiveled my chair around, looking out the window. People were walking up the boulevard, oblivious to my stares. The light changed to red and the traffic stopped. I turned back around to face Dan.

  “You could say that,” I replied. “I was just trying to enjoy my lunch.” I told him about the ruckus the little girl had made and how the entire place exploded in applause when the kid was dragged outside. “And just when I think I can finally finish my sandwich, some old guy drops over from a heart attack. I never did get to finish my lunch. The old man two tables away from me keeled over and died right there on the floor.”

  Hollister walked over to the window and looked out, as if he wanted to see what I was looking at. “It wasn’t a heart attack, Matt,” he said.

  I turned around in my chair and set my glass down. “Now how do you know that?” I said.

  “I just came from the coroner’s office,” Dan said. “The man was poisoned, Matt, plain and simple. We’re questioning his wife now and I need your statement for the record.”

  “What statement?” I said. “I just happened to be there when he dropped dead. What more can I say?”

  “Just that,” Dan said. “If that’s all you say there is to it, say so in writing. That’s all I’m after.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll stop by your office on my way downtown. I have to meet a guy at five-thirty. That soon enough?”

  It was closer to six when I walked into Hollister’s office. Dan picked up a folder from his desk and plucked a paper from it. He turned it around toward me and slid it across the desk. I grabbed it before it slid off my side of the desk and onto the floor. My eyes followed the paragraphs down the sheet and stopped near the bottom.

  “Arsenic?” I said.

  “It’s beginning to look like it,” Dan said. “I won’t know for sure until the M.E. is finished with his findings. The old man’s heart was already weak and poison would be all it would take to push him over the edge. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than forty seconds, a minute tops.”

  “What about the diner,” I said. “Anybody check that angle?”

  “You’re getting ahead of me, Matt,” Hollister said. “The lab ran tests on all the food that was on his table. Nothing. We’re at a dead end. Want to look into it? Maybe nose around on the sly. You know, low profile. The owner of the diner doesn’t want any uniforms hanging around scaring off customers.”

  The diner was on Highland near Sunset. It was nearly eight when I stopped in and asked for the man
ager. A tall man in a white full-length apron emerged from the kitchen door holding a spatula and looking impatient. I explained what I was doing there and he quickly took hold of my arm and dragged me into the kitchen.

  “You’re not a cop, are you?” he said. “Christ, I’ve lost enough customers as it is. I don’t need...”

  “Relax,” I said, “I’m private. I’m looking into this as a favor to Sergeant Hollister downtown. My name’s Cooper, Matt Cooper. I was having my lunch here just a couple of tables away from the guy when it happened.”

  “Maxwell,” the man said, extending his hand to me. “Burt Maxwell. I own the place.”

  “I’ll try to make this short and to the point, Mr. Maxwell,” I said.

  “Look,” Maxwell said, “just because some old guy buys the farm while he’s eatin’ here doesn’t mean we had anything to do with it. Coincidence, nothing more. All our food’s already been checked and it came up clean.”

  “It may be just that,” I said, “but I have to cover all the bases just the same. Do you mind if I just have a quick, quiet look around so I can make out my report and turn it in? Then we can all be out of your hair and let you get on with your business.”

  Maxwell thought about it for a moment and then said, “So what is there to find then?”

  “At this point, I’d be guessing,” I told him. “What did the guy have to eat?”

  “Gees,” Maxwell said, “I can’t even serve it anymore. It’s become famous like Wild Bill Hickock’s poker hand. What did they call it?”

  “Dead Man’s Hand,” I said. “Aces and eights.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “This guy had the broccoli soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. People are starting to call it the Dead Man’s Lunch. And quite frankly, Mr. Cooper, I don’t find that one bit funny.”