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

by Bill Bernico

  Dan stood there, fresh out of salt jokes. Then a sly smile crept onto his face. He looked back down at the killer, twisted up under the salt bags. “I’d better call the wagon to come get this pretzel out from under there.” He seemed satisfied to have had the last word.

  I pointed to the killer. “I’ll bet he’s pretty salty about all of this.”

  Dan threw his hands up in the air. “All right already. You win. Let’s get out of here.”

  I helped Dan back to his car. He called downtown and told them to send the medical examiner and a wagon to the salt company warehouse. We drove back to the precinct, both our minds racing to come up with just one more salt joke. Neither of us could.

  09 - A Million To One

  I must have looked like a tourist with my head tilted back and my neck straining to see the top of the building. Actually I wasn’t looking at any building at all. My eyes were fixed on the open cockpit biplane circling overhead. It was twisting and turning in the sky, its plumes of white smoke trailing behind. The intricate series of twists and turns eventually made sense as the pilot came out of a short dive. The smoke he was trailing spelled out the letter V in a large capital.

  He went through the same maneuvers three more times before the first word of his message was complete. It said VOTE. I didn’t need to stick around to see whom someone wanted me to vote for. I wasn’t that interested in either candidate. It was lunchtime and my internal clock was alerting me to the fact that I’d neglected to feed it.

  My Olds was parked at the curb on LaBrea Avenue and I was about to open the door when a man carrying a brief case approached me. He looked my way and tossed his head to one side. I let go the door handle and walked in his direction.

  He was a dark man, perhaps Mexican or South American. His eyebrows were dark and full and he had a course growth of two-day stubble on his chin. He wore a long dark overcoat and a brown felt pork pie hat. The hat was tilted and pulled down over one eye. The pant legs protruding from beneath the coat showed a blue pinstripe pattern that ended in shiny black leather shoes.

  “Cooper?” the man said in a voice that had seen too much rye and not enough cough syrup. “Let’s talk. Your office?” He pointed again using the head gesture. He was pointing at my office building. He looked at me with hollow eyes, sunken into his gaunt skull. His huge body began to sway slightly.

  He dropped the brief case onto the sidewalk. I looked down at it and noticed a few drops of blood on the cement. More blood dripped and I looked up at his sleeve and found the source. He swayed for a moment longer before grabbing a street sign pole and easing himself down on one knee. His coat fell open and I could see the shoulder holster holding a .38 with a bone grip. His shirt had a red stain near his stomach and his face was turning a pale white. I retrieved the briefcase, grabbed the man by one arm and helped him into the doorway. He leaned into me and threw one arm around my shoulder. It was only twenty-eight steps to the second floor but it felt more like a hundred.

  “In here,” I said, helping the man into my office. I guided him over to the leather couch in the inner office and sat him down. As his body made contact with the sofa, he passed out. I eased him onto the sofa and lifted his legs to lay him down.

  I ran a washcloth under the faucet and folded it twice, placing it on the man’s forehead. His overcoat hung open and I removed the .38 and set it on my desk. A brown bifold wallet protruded from his inside pocket. I pulled it out and examined the contents.

  A driver’s license that had expired in 1942 identified the man as Hector Ruiz from Santa Monica. A social security card bore the same name. There were fourteen dollars keeping the loose papers company.

  A strange, yellowed piece of paper caught my eye and I unfolded it. It read “Matt Cooper, Investigations” and it looked like it had gone through a major war. The corners were dog-eared and frayed and the printing was barely legible. It was one of my old business cards.

  The man’s eyes opened as I examined the card. His reflex action seemed automatic as his hand grabbed under his arm for the gun that now rested on my desk. I grabbed his wrist and placed it back down on the sofa.

  “Easy there,” I said. You’re hurt pretty bad. I’d better call a doctor.”

  “No doctors,” he said firmly, trying to sit up. “No cops.” The pain in his stomach immediately put him back down.

  “What are you so jumpy about?” I said. He just looked at me and didn’t say anything. He flinched as I unbuttoned the two bottom buttons on his bloodstained shirt. I moved the wet cloth from his forehead to his waist. A single bullet had entered in his right side and had exited a few inches behind. One more inch to the left and the bullet would have missed him altogether.

  I went to my closet and found one of my old shirts and tore it into strips, wrapping them around the man’s midsection. His eyes remained glued on me while I helped him stop bleeding. He was like a dog that’d been hit by a car. He knew I was trying to help him but still something in him still looked like he wanted to bite me.

  “Just try to relax,” I said. “You won’t do yourself any good trying to get up.”

  I put the contents of his wallet back where I’d found them and laid the wallet on the desk.

  “You wanted to see me about something,” I said. The man’s eyes darted around the room and landed back on me. He tried once again to sit up but gave up the obvious struggle and lay back, panting. “What happened to you?”

  Ruiz held out a hand toward me and I pulled him to a sitting position. “Couple of punks over on The Boulevard tried to stick me up,” he said, his face contorting with pain. “They won’t be sticking up anyone else.”

  I picked up the .38 on my desk and smelled the barrel. It had been fired recently. “Did you—” I started to say when he held his palm upright toward me. “Why did you want to see me?” I said, waiting for an explanation.

  Ruiz looked around the room, sizing up his options. Deciding it was either me or the cops, he chose me.

  “Well,” he said, “you remember a guy named Taylor Wentworth?”

  I thought for a moment and came up blank.

  “Taylor Wentworth,” he repeated.

  Suddenly it came to me. “That real estate tycoon from Palm Springs?” I said.

  “That’s the guy,” he said. “A few years ago he and his partner, James Hollington had a meeting at their office. It was the two of them, some fancy Beverly Hills lawyer and Wentworth’s bodyguard. Wentworth found out that Hollington was skimming profits off the top of their deals and confronted him with it. Hollington shot Wentworth and was about to shoot the lawyer when Wentworth’s bodyguard shot Hollington.”

  “I remember,” I said. Papers identified the bodyguard as Alberto someone-or-other.”

  “Gomez,” Ruiz said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Alberto Gomez. Papers said he was a pretty fair shot, too, if I remember.”

  Ruiz nodded and lowered his head.

  “You?” I said.

  He nodded again. “Yeah,” Hector said. “I had to take it on the lam to Mexico after that. I was buried so deep my own mother couldn’t find me.”

  “But you’re back now,” I said. “Why after all this time? What’s it been, five years?”

  “Six,” he said. “Almost seven. I got tired of hiding in the mountains after a couple years and beat it to Mexico City. A guy can get lost pretty good in a couple of million people. About two years ago I figured the heat was off and came back.”

  “Santa Monica?” I said, tossing his wallet back to him.

  “Yeah,” he said, returning the wallet to his coat pocket. “I’ve stayed outta trouble all these years. Here people know me as Hector Ruiz.”

  “So what do I call you, Gomez or Ruiz?”

  “I’ve been Ruiz for so long no, I prefer it,” he said.

  I sat next to him on the couch and stuffed the .38 back in his shoulder holster. “But what brings you back to Hollywood?”

  He winced at a sudden catch in his s
ide, the pain evident in his face. “A few months ago,” Hector said, “I retired and tried to keep busy with my garden and my house. It got boring, let me tell you. I figured a trip back to my old stomping grounds might get me going again. I don’t know. I needed something, anything to keep from blowing my brains out.”

  “Well,” I said, “did it help?”

  “Guess not,” Hector said. “I shouldda stayed around back then and took the heat. It would all be over by now and I couldda got on with my life.”

  “It is over,” I said, resting my hand on Hector’s knee. “That Beverly Hills lawyer laid it all out for the D.A. that night. He told him how you were Taylor Wentworth’s bodyguard and that you were only trying to protect your employer. The D.A. never even filed any charges in the case.”

  The man’s face went blank. He leaned forward and cradled his head in his hands. After a while he lifted it again. “All for nothin’,” he said. “I went through all this for nothin’.”

  “Not exactly nothing,” I said. “I’ll bet you didn’t know old Taylor Wentworth mentioned you in his will.”

  “He said something about it at the time,” Hector said. “But I just figured he meant he’d leave me his gun collection or maybe a car or something.”

  “A little bit more than that, Hector,” I said. “It seems old Mr. Moneybags thought a lot of his bodyguards.”

  “Oh?” Hector said, eager to hear more.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Enough to leave four million dollars.”

  The man lay back down on the couch, speechless. He laid his hand on his forehead. “Holy mother of…All this time I’ve been scratching out a living I could have been…Jesus.”

  “Well, yes and no,” I said.

  Hector clamped his huge hand onto my forearm and pulled me toward him, oblivious to the pain in his side. “Whaddya mean ‘yes and no’, Cooper?”

  “Yes, Wentworth did leave the money,” I said. “And no, it wasn’t all for you.”

  Hector’s eyes widened and then his eyebrows turned downward. “Whaddya mean?”

  “It was split,” I said. “Between you and Wentworth’s three other bodyguards. They went through all the proper steps of posting notices and trying to contact anybody named in Wentworth’s will, but you were hiding out. No one could find you to tell you.”

  “So, what happened to my share?” Hector said.

  “It’s in trust,” I said. “After seven years it gets split between the remaining heirs.”

  “But Wentworth was worth two hundred million,” Hector said. “What happened to the rest of it?”

  “He had no other living relatives,” I said. “The bulk of his estate went to a string of charities. In fact his will stipulated that in the event of the death of any of his heirs, the remainder of their share reverts back to the estate, to be divided among the surviving heirs.”

  Ruiz’s ears moved back involuntarily. “There’s a murder just waiting to happen,” Ruiz said. “Old Wentworth had a twisted sense of humor, didn’t he?”

  “Guess so,” I said.

  “Money does strange things to people, people you thought were your friends,” Ruiz said. “When is the seven years up, Cooper?”

  “Gees, I don’t know. Whenever seven years from his death is.”

  Hector searched his memory and looked at the floor. “Wentworth died seven years ago next Thursday,” he said. “On the seventeenth. How could I forget that day?”

  “There’s still time, Hector,” I said. “You can still claim your share. And if not…” I said, spreading my hands and hunching my shoulders, not sure how to end a sentence like that.

  “If not, it looks like it’s more of the boring, straight life,” Hector said.

  “That may be a little hard,” I said, “after icing those punks.”

  “What icing?” Hector said. “They ran away.”

  “But I thought you said they wouldn’t be sticking up anyone else,” I said. “You made it sound like—”

  “Look,” Hector said, trying to retain whatever dignity he had left, “those punks thought I was a soft touch and braced me for money. I shoved ‘em outta the way. One of grabbed me by the collar and I went for my gun. It went off in my holster.”

  “You shot yourself?” I said, almost snickering.

  “Yeah, so what,” Hector said defensively.

  “So what makes you think they won’t be sticking up anyone else?” I said.

  Ruis winced. “I was on my back looking up. By the time I got my piece out those two schnooks had their heads together and were staring down at me, face to face. I shoved my gun up between their ugly faces and fired. Musta been an inch or less from both of their ears.” Hector laughed, then coughed and winced again. “Their ears are probably still ringing. I hope the bastards go deaf.”

  I broke out laughing. “I wish I couldda seen that, Hector.”

  “Yeah,” Hector said. “One of ‘em pissed his pants when I fired my gat. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” He pressed the wet cloth on his side again and lay back down.

  I paced the floor in front of my desk for a minute and stopped in front of it. I lifted one leg and sat on the edge of the desk. “Who are the other three bodyguards,” I said.

  Hector thought for a minute. “Gees, I don’t remember those guys. That was almost seven years ago, Cooper. The only one that comes to mind is J.D.”

  “J.D.?” I said.

  “John Delany Kincaid,” Hector said. “J.D. for short. The other two worked different areas and times than J.D. and me.”

  “We could look it up in the records downtown,” I said. “But first let’s get you to the hospital and take car of that wound.”

  George Brenton’s office was downtown in the federal building. I took the elevator to the twelfth floor and found his door at the end of the hall. The receptionist stopped typing long enough to give me the once over.

  “Matt Cooper to see the D.A.,” I said.

  She finished looking me over, decided I looked all right and pressed a button on her phone, announcing me to the person in the next room. After a while she hung up her phone and said, “you may go in now, Mr. Cooper.”

  On the other side of the inner office door I found a long room separated by a railing with a swinging gate, much like you’d find in a courtroom. On my side of the railing there were several chairs.

  At the far end of the room Ruiz and Brenton were seated around a long table. Brenton motioned for me to sit. A stenographer was taking notes in the corner. I silently took a seat and watched. I couldn’t hear what was being said but I had a good view of the proceedings. After a few minutes, the D.A. rose from his seat. Hector rose and extended his hand to Brenton. Brenton ignored it and turned away.

  Hector stepped forward a step placed his hands on the table and leaned toward Brenton. Brenton left the room by another door on the far end. The glass on the door was stenciled with just one word—PRIVATE.

  The stenographer carried her pad and pencil past me and I stood as she left the room. Hector walked over to where I was standing.

  “He didn’t like it,” Hector said, “but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

  “About what?” I said.

  “He had to let me walk,” Hector said. “Come on, I’ll fill you in on the way back to the office.”

  “Wait a minute, Hector,” I said. “As long as we’re here, let’s check the records for the other two bodyguards’ names.”

  Hector and I took the elevator to the basement and found an attendant seated at a small desk at the end of the hall. After a brief explanation of what we were looking for, we were led to a battery of file cabinets on the far wall. The attendant pulled out a drawer and flipped to a folder labeled WENTWORTH, TAYLOR (Deceased).

  “The four heirs named in Mr. Wentworth’s will,” the attendant said, “are John Delany Kincaid, Oscar Francis LeMay, Alberto Hector Gomez and Jerome Wendell Pearson.” The man slid his finger down the list and stopped. “It seems all but one have been found and
notified.

  “How long does the last guy have to claim the inheritance?” Hector asked.

  The man flipped to the first page of the document he was holding and slid his finger to the date. He looked up at the calendar on the wall and said, “four days. He has until the seventeenth.”

  We thanked the attendant and left. Hector and I took the elevator back up to the fourth floor and quickly found the country clerk’s office. It took almost an hour, but Hector had finally and officially notified the estate of his intent to collect his inheritance. Now if I could just keep him alive long enough to collect it.

  Hector slid in beside me and I drove toward the boulevard. As we pulled up to a red light at Santa Monica and Western, I noticed a gray Buick in the next lane. There were two occupants in the front seat. The driver leaned far back, as if giving the passenger room to see out the driver’s window. A gun appeared in the passenger’s hand and aimed out the window. I quickly backed my Olds up a few feet, turning the wheel hard to the left. As I backed up, my front end swung around and hit their car in the left rear fender. The gun went off, but it had been jarred upward. The bullet went over my car and hit the green traffic light. The glass in the top light shattered and three people waiting at the curb to cross the street lay down on the sidewalk, covering their heads. One of them screamed.

  The Buick squealed around the corner and headed east on Santa Monica. I floored the Olds and fell in behind it. At Normandie the Buick turned north and then east another block up. Another series of north-east-north turns and he’d lost me in the traffic. I drove back to my office on LaBrea.

  “Who else knows you’re back in town, Hector?” I said.

  Hector spread his hands and shrugged. “No one as far as I know.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here,” I said. “Too many people know this place.”

  Hector looked at me. “My place in Santa Monica,” he said. “They don’t know it.”

  We headed west and after a while I pulled over near the corner of San Vicente and Fourth. Hector looked all around him for a second and determined that he’d not been followed. “This way,” he said, motioning with his head.