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

by Bill Bernico

  Gloria and Harper returned from one of the other rooms. Gloria came over to where I was standing and looked out the window. “What a beautiful view, dear,” she said. “Do you think we could take it?”

  I looked at Harper and sighed. “Could we have a day or so to think it over?” I said. “We’ve looked at several apartments today and we just need some time to compare features. Would you be able to hold it for twenty-four hours while we decide?”

  “I don’t know about twenty-four hours,” Harper said. “But I could keep it open until the close of business today. That would give you almost six hours to decide. Would that be enough time?”

  Knowing we’d be done with the apartment by four, I said it would and thanked him for his time. He escorted us back to the lobby and shook my hand. I walked Gloria back to the car and we got in.

  “We can get Armstrong’s listening devise and all that other equipment and be back here by two-thirty,” I said. “You’ll just have to keep Harper busy while I bring the equipment up here and get what we need. Can you find a way to occupy Harper for an hour?”

  “No problem,” Gloria said. “I’ll just tell him that we discussed the apartment and decided a park view wasn’t as important as a second bedroom. I’ll have him show me a few apartments on the other side of the building and I’ll take my time deciding. Just make sure you’re out and have the equipment back in the car as soon as you get what you need. Then you can come and find me and we’ll head out. Simple, eh?”

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s get over to Armstrong’s and pick up all that spy stuff.”

  “No doubt you have a plan for getting back into the apartment later,” Gloria said.

  I patted my breast pocket. “I have what I need,” I said, smiling.

  As we drove back toward the office, Gloria dialed Armstrong’s cell number and caught him in. She explained that we needed to pick up all the surveillance equipment and he agreed to meet us in the parking lot behind our building. He made it there right after lunch and transferred the devices into my back seat. Gloria and I thanked him and drove off to have a bite to eat before returning to MacArthur Park.

  It was a few minutes after two-thirty. I let Gloria off in front of the apartment building, parked across the street and waited. We had agreed that she would find the manager, tell him of her decision to look at other apartments and then excuse herself to use the bathroom. Then she’d signal me from the front door and I’d give her a few extra minutes to get Harper out of sight before I carried the two suitcases full of surveillance equipment back up to the third floor apartment that faced the park.

  I waited for five or six minutes and then saw Gloria at the front door, waving to me. She disappeared back into the apartment building and I checked my watch. Five minutes later I slid out of the car and opened the back door, pulling the two suitcases out and closing the door again. I crossed the street and let myself in the front door of the apartment building. I carried the two cases over to the elevator and pressed the up button. Thirty seconds later I got off on the third floor and carries the cases to the end of the hall.

  I set the cases down and pulled a small zipper case out of my breast pocket and withdrew two stainless steel probes like my dentist uses. I inserted them both into the lock and twisted. The door knob turned and I was in. I pulled the cases inside and locked the door behind me. It was still quarter to three when I unpacked and set up the equipment I needed to eavesdrop on Mrs. Armstrong and her lover. With five minutes to go, I aimed the parabolic ear around the park, adjusting the volume control until the voices of the people I’d aimed it at came in clear.

  I had also set up a portable digital recorder and connected it to the listening device. It had space enough on the internal chip for seventy-five minutes of audio. That was more than enough time to get what I needed. Next to the listening device I had a digital video camera aimed at the bench as well. At precisely two fifty-eight I began recording both video and audio of the park bench area. At three o’clock a man in a brown business suit casually sat on the park bench and unfolded a newspaper, pretending to be engrossed in its contents. In less than a minute a woman joined him on the bench but didn’t turn toward him or look at him. He kept the paper up in front of his face. I pressed the headphones to my ears and listened, recording all that went on in the three minutes that the meeting lasted.

  When she got up and left, I let the equipment record for another minute until he had also left the park. I switched everything off, packed it back into the cases and let myself out of the room. I rode the elevator back to the lobby and hurried back to my car with the two cases. I returned to the apartment building and walked over to the manager’s counter. I read a small sign that instructed visitors to press a button on the counter for service and that the manager would be with them momentarily.

  I pressed it and waited. A few minutes later the elevator doors opened and Gloria stepped out, followed closely by the manager. He smiled when he saw me again.

  “Was that you pressing the service button?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Gloria told me she was coming back alone to check other apartments. I was busy at the other complex that we’d visited before we came here.”

  I turned to Gloria. “Good news, dear,” I said. “We got the other apartment, you know, the one with the Jacuzzi.”

  “That’s marvelous, honey,” Gloria said and then turned to the manager. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have gotten one of your apartments. They are all so beautiful. Thanks for your time anyway, Mr. Harper. Good bye.”

  Ronald Harper stood there, his mouth hanging open with nothing to say as we exited to the street. Gloria and I rushed back to the car and drove away, not wanting to take any chances of someone getting our license number.

  “Well?” Gloria said. “Did you get it all recorded?”

  “I’ll say,” I told her. “And just wait ‘til you hear what I got.” I told her about what I’d heard in the headphones and had recorded on the video recorder.

  Gloria whistled. “Wow,” was all she could manage.

  “Yeah, wow,” I said. “Armstrong’s in for a surprise.”

  “Ya think?” she said. “That’s the understatement of the year. Infidelity is the least of Armstrong’s worries. When are you going to tell him?”

  “Well,” I said, “normally I’d let it drag out for a day or two and run the bill up a bit before bowing out. I don’t think we can do that this time.”

  “I think you’re right, Elliott,” Gloria said. Let’s just get over there and lay it all out for him, collect our fee and stay out of the rest of it.”

  “I agree,” I said, and drove back toward the office. Gloria phoned Armstrong on the way back from the park and he agreed to meet us in our office this time. We got there fifteen minutes ahead of Armstrong.

  By the time Armstrong walked into the office, I had the surveillance equipment set up and ready for playback. Without a lot of preamble, I invited him to sit across from my desk. I flipped open my laptop computer and inserted a small USB drive into the slot on the side. I selected a multimedia player and started the video playing. Armstrong watch, wide-eyed as his wife took her seat on the bench. The image zoomed in on Mrs. Armstrong’s purse as she reached into it and withdrew a fat stack of wrapped bills and passed it over to the man on the bench.

  “I can’t hear what they’re saying,” Armstrong said.

  “The video camera couldn’t pick up the conversation from our vantage point,” I explained. “After the video finishes I can play back the audio track that I recorded with the parabolic ear.”

  Armstrong went back to watching what was left of the video. Mrs. Armstrong rose from the bench and walked out of the shot. The mystery man lowered the newspaper from in front of his face, folded it up and set it down next to him. He looked around him in every direction before sliding the bundle of bills between the newspaper’s pages. When he got up off the bench, he turned toward us and walked out of the shot, but not before Armstrong
got a good look at his face.

  “That bastard,” Armstrong said. “It’s one of my own employees. Why on earth would my wife pay him a large sum of money?”

  “Hold on, Mr. Armstrong,” I said. “Listen to the audio and it’ll all make more sense.”

  I closed the video screen on the laptop and opened another application for playing audio files. I cued the file up and paused it, turning to Armstrong again.

  “Just picture the video again while you listen,” I said and then started the audio player.

  The man’s voice came across first. “Did you bring the money?”

  Mrs. Armstrong answered. “It’s all here. When can you do it?”

  Mystery man: “All you need to know is that it’ll be sometime today. It’s better if you don’t have any more details. You can’t tell what you don’t know.”

  Mrs. Armstrong: “Just give me time to establish an alibi across town. What about you?”

  Mystery man: “Don’t worry, I’ve got myself covered. There won’t be anything to link this to you. I’ll get back to the office and I’ll be just as shocked and surprised as everyone else when they hear the news.”

  Mrs. Armstrong: “Well don’t miss. You won’t get a second chance.”

  Mystery man: “You worry too much, Mrs. A. I’ve never been caught yet. I am a professional. Don’t try this at home.” He laughs.

  Mrs. Armstrong: “This is the last time we’ll ever see each other. You never heard of me if anyone asks.”

  Mystery man: “Same goes for you. Now you’d better take off before someone notices us sitting here.”

  The sound of movement and newspaper crinkling and then the video goes silent.

  I turned off the audio player and looked at Armstrong. He’s sitting there, speechless. A moment later, trying to lighten the moment, he said, “At least she not having an affair.”

  Neither of us laughed. I pulled the USB drive out of my laptop and handed it to Armstrong. “You’re on your own from here, Mr. Armstrong. You just give that jump drive to the police and let them sort out the rest. But do it right away, before that employee of yours gets ambitious and does you early. Who is he?”

  “I’d rather not say just yet,” Armstrong said. “Let me confront him back at the office and see how he reacts first.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned Armstrong. “It could just set him off on you.”

  Armstrong lets out a deep breath and sits, stunned by what he’s just seen and heard. He turns to me. “Thank you so much for your service, Mr. Cooper, Miss Campbell. Would you just send me a bill for what I owe you?”

  “I normally would,” I told Armstrong, “but under the circumstances, I’m afraid I’ll have to collect from you now. You understand, I’m sure.”

  Armstrong blinks and says, “Yes, of course,” and pulls out a calfskin wallet, withdrawing two one hundred dollar bills and laying them on my desk.

  I reached for my wallet to give him his change, but he waved me off. “Keep it,” he said. “You’ve both earned it. And like I told you earlier, the equipment is yours to keep, too.”

  Without another word, Armstrong left my office and walked out of our lives. A moment later Gloria looked at me and remarked, “You think the police will stop Armstrong’s mystery employee before he carries this thing too far?”

  “We can only hope,” I said, and sat down behind my desk.

  Before Gloria could even settle down at her own desk an explosion rattled our office windows and vibrated the floor beneath us. We both jumped to our feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Gloria said.

  “Let’s go,” I said, running out of the office and down the hall. We took the stairway just to be safe. When we got out to the parking lot behind our building I could make out the figure of a man sitting behind the wheel of a car that was engulfed in flames. The occupant was beyond any help we could offer.

  “Armstrong?” Gloria said.

  “Must be,” I said and then looked one car over at my own car. It was also burning out of control. “Oh great,” I said. “He couldn’t have parked somewhere else. That’s just what I need to make this a perfect day.”

  Gloria looked to the left. In just a split second she realized that the car parked on the other side of Armstrong’s was hers. “Oh shit,” she said. “Not mine, too.”

  I could hear the scream of sirens in the distant, coming closer and in less than a minute the parking lot was overrun with fire trucks, police cars and ambulances. Firemen hurried over to the burning car and opened their hoses up on it. The fire was out in under a minute, but the car’s occupant sat there, his mouth agape and the flesh on his face seared to a dark black. The firemen turned their hoses on my car and managed to put it out, but not before the fire had managed to totally destroy it.

  “Look at the bright side,” Gloria said. “Your insurance company will pay for another car for both of us.”

  “You think we’ll be able to get our replacements in the next couple of hours?” I said.

  “Why?” Gloria said.

  “Otherwise we’ll have to tell Lieutenant Anderson to hire someone else for tonight’s rolling stakeout,” I said. “Remember?”

  “I’d almost forgotten,” Gloria said. “Well, what are you going to do? Better call him right away and give him time to line someone else up for the job.”

  I turned to head back for the office until Gloria grabbed my arm and turned me around again. “Never mind,” she said. “Here he comes now.”

  Eric pulled into the parking lot and got out to survey the damage and to have a look at what was left of Barry Armstrong. A moment later he turned to me. “Did you see this?” he said.

  We both shook our heads. “We didn’t see it, but the guy behind the wheel was just in our office. We came down here when we heard the explosion.”

  “What was he doing in your office,” the lieutenant wanted to know. “And who is he?”

  I pulled Eric aside, away from all the noise and commotion and explained how Armstrong had hired us to tail a guy to MacArthur Park. I told him about our surveillance job, what Armstrong had suspected and our surprising discovery.

  When I finished, Eric said, “And Armstrong didn’t tell you the name of this employee in the video?”

  “No,” I said. “He wouldn’t give us his name. He just said he was planning to confront him and I told him that it probably wasn’t a good idea and to just turn the evidence over to you guys.”

  “And just where is this evidence?” Eric said.

  Gloria and I exchanged glances and then looked at Eric. I sheepishly pointed to Armstrong’s body, still smoking in the car. “He’s got it,” I said.

  “Then what about your copy?” Eric said.

  Without saying a word, my face conveyed, oops. “I didn’t make another copy,” I told him. “I didn’t see any need for me to also have a copy and gave Armstrong my jump drive.”

  “So all I have to go on is your description of the guy on the park bench,” Eric said.

  “That and Mrs. Armstrong’s testimony,” Gloria said. “Just lean on her and she’ll spill her guts to you.”

  “Gee,” Eric said. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He turned to me. “I’m going over to Armstrong’s company. You can come along and point out this employee to me and save me a lot of interrogation work with Armstrong’s grieving widow.”

  “Gloria,” I said. “Would you watch the office while I ride back with the lieutenant. It won’t take long.”

  “I’m on it,” she said.

  Eric turned to me. “I’ll have a few stops to make when I finish at Armstrong’s. Maybe you should just follow me.”

  “I can’t run that fast,” I said.

  “Huh?” Eric said.

  I pointed at my smoldering car. “I don’t think it’s going to start on the first try,” I said, and then pointed at Gloria’s smoldering shell of a car. “And I can’t use Gloria’s car, either. Which brings up another point we need to ta
lk about,” I said, and slid in beside him in his patrol car. “About tonight’s rolling stakeout.”

  *****

  It was the second week after the New Year and all of Gloria’s planning and arrangements had paid off in the form of the reception we’d missed out on when we had eloped to Las Vegas two months earlier. Gloria had rented a large hall in Glendale and she’d even found a band on that short notice as well. All of our friends were there and as much family as we could round up from both sides. Dad’s newly discovered half-brother, Nicholas was there with a guest, a woman about his age, in her early eighties. They made a cute couple.

  Dad was there, too and he’d managed to find himself a date for the evening. Dad and Gloria was just about all the family I had left these days. I think I remembered Grandpa Matt talking about a couple of nephews he had back in Chicago, but we couldn’t locate them and they probably wouldn’t have made the trip for someone they’d never met anyway.

  Gloria was an only child and both her parents were dead. She did invite one uncle and aunt who pretty much kept to themselves all night. She did manage to invite some of her friends and even a few of her former clients from when she and her father had their own private investigations business.

  We all sat down to dinner and had a good time getting to know each other. When the meal had finished and the tables and chairs had been cleared away, the band began to play some old, forgotten tunes from the sixties and seventies. The dance floor filled and for the first time in my life, I saw my father dancing. It was an odd sight for me and I wished I’d thought to bring my camera. When the song ended, the guitar player in the band stepped up to the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, could I have your attention, please,” he said over the P.A. system. “This next song is a very special song and goes out to the bride and groom, Gloria and Elliott.”

  Clay and his half-brother Nicholas disappeared behind a door next to the stage. The guitar player slipped out of his guitar and handed it to Clay, who had walked out onto the stage. Nicholas followed and took a seat at the piano. The band’s guitarist grabbed the microphone again. Elliott quickly turned to the stage, surprised to see his father and his new uncle up there.