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

by Bill Bernico

  “Did Clay mention what he planned to do with all his free time now?” Gloria said, tousling the longer hairs on the back of my neck.

  “He said something about taking up writing,” I said. “It’s funny, you know. Here I was the one who wanted to be a writer and then I got into this. I put my writing on hold with the intention of getting back into it later. Well, that was ten years ago and it’s become apparent that I probably won’t get back into it.”

  “That’s sounds perfect for Clay,” Gloria said. “He’s got so many stories from his years as a P.I. that he won’t run out of material for a long time. I hope he lets me read some of his work one of these days.”

  “Maybe that’s where I got it from,” I said. “Dad used to write when he was younger and then he joined grandpa Matt in this business. Maybe there’s still hope for me yet, somewhere down the line.”

  The phone on my desk rang, startling me out of my daydream. I gestured for Gloria to get up off my lap before I grabbed the phone. She stood up and sat across from me in my client’s chair.

  “Cooper Investigations,” I said. “This is Elliott.”

  “Elliott,” the caller said. “It’s Dean down at the twelfth. Did I catch you in the middle of anything important?”

  My lap was still warm from Gloria having sat on it, but I kept that information to myself. “Nothing that I can’t get back to later,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Are you available to take some work?” Dean said.

  “Depends,” I said. “As long as it doesn’t involve sweeping out your office and dusting the furniture.”

  “Cute,” Dean said, “But no, I was thinking more along the lines of a real investigation job. Are you interested?”

  “Can you lay it out for me?” I said.

  “Normally I would,” Dean said. “But this is one of those times were a picture is worth a thousand words. Can you come down here sometime this morning?”

  I checked my watch, flipped through my appointment book and said, “Twenty minutes okay?”

  “That long?” Dean said, and chuckled before he hung up the phone.

  “What do you know?” I said. “Our first case under the new management. Grab your jacket.”

  “What is it?” Gloria said.

  “It’s that blue thing with the sleeves and the pockets hanging on the coat rack over there,” I said.

  Gloria gave me a look that told me she wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Dean wouldn’t say. I guess it’s something that he’d rather show us.”

  I helped Gloria on with her jacket and walked her out to my car in the parking lot. The twelfth precinct was a fifteen-minute ride and we made it with minimal conversation. I left the car behind the precinct and walked with Gloria down the hall to Dean’s office. I rapped twice on the doorframe and let myself in. Dean was sitting behind his desk, looking through a file folder. He looked up when we came in.

  “So what is this thing that you have to show me?” I said. “And why couldn’t you just tell me about it on the phone?”

  “Hello to you, too,” Dean said and then turned to Gloria. “Don’t you teach this guy any manners?”

  Gloria elbowed me in the ribs.

  “Hello, Dean,” I said in an exaggerated, drawn out way. “How are you today and how’s the missus? Lovely weather we’re having today, don’t you think? Who do you like in the Super Bowl?”

  “Gees,” Dean said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “All right,” I said, “enough small talk. What do you have for us?

  Dean got up from his chair and came around to my side of his desk. “Follow me,” he said, leading us out of his office and down another hall.

  I had an idea about where we were going, since I’d been there many times in the past. My hunch was correct when Dean led us into Andy Reynolds’ office. Andy was the county medical examiner who worked in the morgue, which was housed in the same building as the police department.

  “Now will you tell me what this is all about?” I said.

  “Not yet,” Dean said. “Come on, follow me.”

  We walked into the autopsy room and found Andy standing over a body of an old man, which was lying on the autopsy table. It was apparent that he’d just begun with the initial examination of this body, since there were no incisions made yet. Andy glanced at Dean as he approached.

  “Again?” Andy said.

  “If you don’t mind,” Dean said, summoning Gloria and me to take a closer look.

  Andy pried the old man’s mouth open and shined his flashlight inside. He took a half step back to allow us to get a little closer. I peered down into the opening and saw several deep burn holes on his tongue and his cheeks, all around the inside of his mouth. I stepped away and let Gloria get a better look. She stepped back after just a second or two. The look on her face said more than she needed to.

  “What did that?” I said, gesturing toward the old man’s face.

  “I have to admit,” Dean said. “This is one of the most bizarre bodies I’ve ever come across.”

  “I’ve seen worse than this,” I said.

  “I didn’t say bad or worse,” Dean admitted. “I’m talking bizarre here.”

  “What’s so bizarre about this guy?” Gloria said.

  Dean nodded to Andy, who walked over to the wall switch and waited. Dean gave him the signal and Andy switched off all the lights in the room. You’d think we’d be standing there in the dark, but there was an eerie glow coming from the autopsy table.

  “What the…” I said.

  Andy stepped back over to the table and said, “My grandfather was a medic during the war. He once told me that he had treated soldiers in the field who had been burned by phosphorous bombs and he described how they looked. This guy on the table wanted to commit suicide and why he chose this way, I’ll never know. There are much easier ways to go.”

  “And what way is that?” I said.

  “Rat poison,” Andy said. “And this particular rat poison contained phosphorous, and you can see how it burned these large holes in his mouth. No doubt when I open him up, I’ll find similar holes in his stomach.

  “So why is he glowing?” Gloria said.

  Andy pointed a gloved hand at the old man’s mouth, nose, eyes and ears. They all glowed like the face of a bedside table clock. “They use a similar phosphorous to coat the numbers and hands of clocks to make them glow in the dark,” he explained. “The phosphorous from the rat poison made its way into the blood stream, and this is the result.

  Gloria finally turned away and gasped. Andy took her signal and flipped the light switch back on again. I had to admit that my own stomach was feeling a bit queasy right about now.

  “Do you understand now why it was better for me to show you than to tell you over the phone?” Dean said.

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” I said. But I don’t get where we come in.”

  Dean turned to Andy. “Thanks Andy,” he said. “I’ll let you get on with your work now.” Dean led Gloria and me back out of the morgue and down the hall to his office once more. We took our seats again and Dean proceeded to explain the reason for his call this morning.

  “This old man’s death is officially on the books as a suicide,” he said. “So that’s pretty much where it ends for me.”

  “But?” I said.

  “But this guy’s sister, Sylvia is sure it wasn’t suicide,” Dean said. “She wanted me to look into it further, but with nothing more to go on, I told her I’d call you and see if you might be interested in digging a little deeper.”

  “Give me some background,” I said. “Who found the body?”

  “The old guy’s name was Shapiro, Samuel Shapiro,” Dean said. “He lived with his daughter, son-in-law and a three-year-old grandson somewhere in Pasadena, I forget the address. Shapiro would occasionally babysit with his grandson. The daughter who called this in said that Shapiro had purchased the rat poison several days earlie
r. She says he told her it was because he saw evidence of rats out behind the house, next to the garbage cans. Two days ago the daughter said that Shapiro had waited until she and her husband had left the house to go shopping before he went into the living room to swallow the rat poison.”

  “Like Andy mentioned,” Gloria said, “there has to be at least a dozen easier, less painful ways to go if you’re determined to kill yourself.”

  Dean nodded in agreement and then added, “So the daughter forgets her car keys and goes back into the house and finds her dad lying on the floor in the living room, right next to junior’s playpen. She calls us and we send a patrol car right over. The officer who took the call says that when he and his partner got there, the old man was lying on the floor, still conscious and moaning. They saw the empty tube of rat poison on the floor next to him and knew what they were dealing with.”

  “And the old guy was still alive after that?” I said.

  “Apparently,” Dean said. “The officer told the daughter to bring him a glass of milk while they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He tried to get Shapiro to drink some of the milk but he was just thrashing around so much that he couldn’t do it. The second officer just grabbed Shapiro by the nose and pulled his head back while the first officer forced the milk down his throat anyway.”

  “You’d have thought this guy would be screaming out in agony,” Gloria said.

  “They did what they could for him,” Dean said, ‘but it was too little, too late. You saw the results for yourselves.”

  “Well, when did the sister get involved?” I said.

  “This morning,” Dean told me. “When she found out that her brother, Sam was dead, she got suspicious and called me. I told her about the officers’ reports and the M.E.’s findings and that it was listed as a suicide. Of course, she just couldn’t believe little Sammy would do such a thing.”

  “Little Sammy?” Gloria said. “Just how old was Little Sammy?”

  “Sixty-seven,” Dean said. “I guess he was always Little Sammy to his big sister.”

  “And big sister is how old?” I said.

  “Seventy-four,” Dean said. “But she can swear like a thirty-year-old. So, do you think you might like to talk to sis and see if there’s a job in it for you?”

  I looked at Gloria. She nodded and I turned back to Dean. “We’ll pay her a visit,” I said. “Do you have her name and address there somewhere?”

  Dean gave Gloria the information we needed and I thanked him for the referral. Gloria and I headed back out to my car and just sat there for a moment.

  “I must say,” I told Gloria. “That was one of the most ghostly, eerie sights I’ve even seen in my life.”

  “I’ll be dreaming about Little Sammy for months,” Gloria said. “Gees, that must have hurt like a son-of-a-bitch going down.”

  I winced at the thought of it, but wondered. If it wasn’t a suicide, why kill the old man in that fashion? And why do it right there in the living room? And most of all, who would have put the old man through that kind of agony to begin with? We had our work cut out for us on this one.

  “Suppose we pay the sister a visit?” I said. “Read me that name and address again, would you?”

  Gloria unfolded the slip of paper Dean had given her and said, “Sylvia Nash, 602 North Bronson Avenue. That’s just south of the Paramount Studios.”

  602 North Bronson Avenue was a white stucco house with a red tile roof. It was what tourists thought of when they tried to imagine housing in Los Angeles. It had a neatly trimmed hedge surrounding the property and a single car garage around the side of the house that emptied out onto Clinton Street. I parked at the curb and got out to take a better look at Sylvia Nash’s digs. Gloria followed closely and we walked up the cement path to the front door in tandem.

  The front door was made of a dark wood and looked like it was heavy. I could see bright brass hinges poking out between the wood and they were complimented with a large brass door knocker. I didn’t see any button for a door bell, so I gave a couple of taps on the knocker and waited. A few seconds later the door opened and a lady, perhaps in her mid-fifties peered out at us.

  “Yes?” she said.

  I nodded and smiled at her and said, “My name is Elliott Cooper and this is Gloria Campbell. We’re looking for Mrs. Nash.”

  “I’m Mrs. Nash,” the woman said.

  “I looked down at the slip Gloria had given me before we got out of the car. “I’m looking for Mrs. Sylvia Nash,” I said. “Would that be your mother?”

  The woman smiled a broad smile. “I’m Sylvia Nash. How can I help you today?”

  “We got your name from Lieutenant Dean Hollister from the Los Angeles Police Department,” I said, looking again at the slip of paper. “I was told that Sylvia Nash was seventy-four.”

  The puzzled look on my face must have been a look that she was accustomed to. “I get that all the time,” Sylvia said. “I must have good genes or something. Won’t you come in?”

  Gloria and I walked inside and I immediately felt like I’d stepped out of a time machine and into the fifties. The house was decorated in what could only be described as early poodle skirt, for lack of a better term. The furniture looked like it had just been delivered from the Montgomery Wards store catalog. Pictures on the walls brought images of American life during the Eisenhower administration. I was surprised that the house wasn’t decorated in blacks, whites and shades of gray, like the television shows from back then.

  Sylvia invited us to sit. “Now, perhaps you can tell me what this is all about,” she said.

  “Certainly, Mrs. Nash,” I said. “Lieutenant Hollister tells me that you suspect that your brother’s death was something other than the suicide that they claim it to be. Would you care to tell us about that?”

  “Oh, I see,” Sylvia said. “Yes, I did speak with a Mr. Hollister earlier this morning. He informed me that his department hadn’t planned on pursuing my brother’s case any further. They think Sammy did this to himself.”

  Gloria leaned forward. “And what makes you think that your brother did not take his own life,” she said.

  “If anyone would know Sammy, “Sylvia said, “It would be me. I’ve known him all his life and he just wasn’t the kind of person who would do something like this, especially in that terrible manner. Sammy had a very low tolerance for pain and if he had decided to end his life, he’d have chosen something painless like pills or car exhaust.”

  “Are you sure about all of this?” Gloria said.

  “As sure as anyone can be,” Sylvia said. “Sammy lived with me for six years before he moved in with his daughter. He’d only been living with them for less than six months when this happened.”

  I held up one finger and said, “Are you suggesting that someone in that house poisoned him?”

  Sylvia said nothing and looked at her fingernails. “Can I get either of you something to drink?” she said casually.

  “Mrs. Nash,” I said, “is there anything you’re not telling us? If you have suspicions, it would be in your best interest to share them with us. We can do a more thorough job for you if we have all the facts, opinions and suspicions. If you hold anything back from us, it’ll just make our job that much harder.”

  Sylvia Nash cleared her throat. “I don’t want to point my finger at anyone, you understand. What happens if I’m wrong about that person?”

  “And that’s what we in the investigation business call a hunch or a feeling,” I said. “And we’ll treat it as such until and unless we have evidence to prove it. You needn’t worry that we’ll accuse anyone without proof, but your hunches or feeling could help our investigation. You need to share them with us. We’ll keep it confidential, I promise.”

  Sylvia let out a deep breath. “This is not exactly a hunch,” she said, “but I would be interested in knowing who would benefit from Sammy’s death.”

  “You mean like a beneficiary to a will?” Gloria said. “Did Sammy even have a wi
ll? Did he have anything anyone else would want?”

  “All good questions,” Sylvia said. “His son-in-law wouldn’t let me see Sammy these past few months that he was living with them. I wasn’t able to talk to Sammy since he moved out of here.”

  “And what did Sammy’s daughter say about all this?” I said. “After all, you are her aunt, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Sylvia said, “Gail seemed friendly enough, but Lloyd was so controlling that I think it was his decision that Sammy not talk to me.”

  “I take it Lloyd is the son-in-law,” I said.

  “Yes,” Sylvia said. “Lloyd Grimes. I never knew what Gail saw in him.”

  “And what does Lloyd do?” Gloria said.

  “Do?” Sylvia said.

  “For a living,” Gloria explained. “What kind of job does Lloyd have?”

  “I don’t think he’s presently working,” Sylvia said. “But he did have a job with the city doing sewer work. I think I heard somewhere that he got fired when they caught him sleeping in one of the sewers.”

  Gloria shot a glance my way and furrowed her eyebrows.

  “Does she work?” I said. “I mean your niece, Gail. They have to be getting income from somewhere, don’t they?”

  Sylvia leaned back into her overstuffed chair, grabbing the armrests. “I think he’s collecting unemployment,” she said. “I don’t think he likes to work. Gail used to work in a bakery on Santa Monica Boulevard, but they went out of business a while back and she just never found another job.”

  I leaned in toward Sylvia and said, “Don’t you find it a bit odd that they can’t seem to hold jobs long enough to support themselves, and yet they can afford to take your brother in to live with them?”

  Sylvia thought about this for a moment. “I think they knew that Sammy got his Social Security check each month as well as his disability check. Those two checks amounted to more than seventeen hundred dollars every month.”

  “Sounds like those two found their cash cow,” Gloria said.

  “More like their sugar daddy,” Sylvia offered.

  “And how did you feel about that when Sammy decided to go and live with Gail and Lloyd?” I said.