by Bill Bernico
A moment later my unit squawked. “I’m here, Elliott,” Dad said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve finished installing my six cameras,” I said. “Do you need any help with yours?”
“Nope,” Dad said. “I’m just setting the last one in place now. “I’ll meet you back at the doors to the offices in just a few minutes.”
“Got it,” I said and returned my walkie-talkie to my pocket. I met Dad back at the office doors a few minutes later. “How’d it go?”
“Slicker than dog shit on wet grass,” Dad said.
I gave him a strange look.
“What?” he said.
“Did you pick up that little gem in line at the electronics store, too?” I said.
“Just think about it literally for a second,” Dad said. “There aren’t too many other things slicker, you have to admit.”
“Dad,” I said, “I hate to say it, but it seems every time you open your mouth lately, a little more of your class slips away.”
“Oh, really?” Dad said. “When did you get so snooty?”
“Snooty?” I said. “It’s not snooty to want to sound like a professional and ‘dog shit on wet grass’ just screams lowlife.”
“But it’s just the two of us here,” Dad said. “There’s nobody I need to impress. I always figured you were already impressed with your old man.”
“I was,” I said, “until you started talking like this. What happened to the classy Clay Cooper I once knew?”
“Really?” Dad said. “Is it that bad?”
“Maybe not in the present situation,” I said. “But it’s just a matter of time before it starts slipping over into your social and business life. Then what are people going to think of you?”
“Oh, all right, you old poop,” Dad said. “I won’t embarrass you in front of anyone.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I said. “Can we get out of here now?”
Dad gestured with his open hand in front of him as he bowed slightly at the waist. “After you, my son,” he said, following me out to the offices and back to the alarm box. I unlocked the front door, armed the system again and let myself out. Dad followed and I locked the door within the forty-five seconds allowed by the alarm system.
Our pockets bulged with the mini monitors as we walked back to my van. Once inside the van again, I emptied my pockets onto the shelf, arranging the monitors numerically with their numbered holders. Once mine were in place, Dad emptied his pocket and arranged his monitors in the open slots, securing them with the thumb screw holders. All twelve monitors were now in operation and receiving the signals from their camera counterparts. All were transmitting clear images to the monitors.
“Well,” I said. “That’s it. Now we can go back to Hollywood and just wait until tomorrow night. Maybe we’ll catch some after-hours action.”
“Are you going to have to sit there in front of those twelve tiny monitors and watch for something to happen?” Dad said.
“Not at all,” I explained, and told him about the fast view option on the unit. “I can set all twelve on fast view and just scan back and forth in the van. If something moves, I just stop the action and go back to that particular camera. Either way, after twenty-four hours the unit’s memory will be full and I’d have to erase the chip for it to accept another twenty-four hours worth of video. That’s a little time consuming, but I’d do that during regular business hours when no one would dare take anything from the factory floor.”
“Is that something I can help you with?” Dad said.
“That would make things go faster and smoother,” I said. “Sure, I can use your help. I’ll let you know when it gets to that point.”
I dropped Dad back at the office parking lot where he switched to his car and drove home again. I pulled out of the lot and headed home myself. This was turning out to be a lot of running around, but the final paycheck would make it all worthwhile.
Mrs. Chandler met me at the door and took my coat. I found Gloria in the living room, stretched out on the couch alone. She had an empty plate with some food crumbs still on it and a glass with a few drops of milk still in the bottom.
“Looks like you’ve had a full day,” I said.
“Shhh,” Gloria said, holding her index finger up to her lips. “I just got Matt to sleep a few minutes ago. I love him to pieces, but he wears me out with all his constant needs.”
“We all had ‘em at that age,” I said, sitting next to her. “He’ll grow out of it in no time and before you know it, he’ll be asking for the car keys.”
“Well, how about if you let him be a kid for a little while longer before you have him driving off in our car?” Gloria said.
“Okay,” I said, slipping my arm around Gloria’s shoulder.
“And how was your day?” Gloria said.
“You think you have your hands full with Matt?” I said. “Dad’s getting to be quite a handful himself. You should hear some of the stuff he comes up with. But we did manage to get all those mini cams installed at Powell Industries. Now we just wait and see.”
“He certainly enjoyed your outing in the van yesterday,” Gloria said. “He had to call and tell me all about it.”
“Did he also tell you that he already spent half of the hundred I gave him?” I said, pulling the pair of walkie-talkies out of my pocket. “He bought these and we hardly used them tonight.”
“Let me see that,” Gloria said. “Gees, these are tiny.”
I looked at them for a moment and said, “I wonder what would happen if I taped the talk button down on one of these and set it near Matt’s bed. I’ll bet you could hear him from anywhere in the house on the other one.”
“I can already hear him from anywhere in the house,” she said, “without one of those. I suppose next you’d have the helicopter hovering over his bed with the camera.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I’ll just keep my toys at work. What did you have for supper?”
“Just a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk,” Gloria said.
“Sounds good to me,” I said and turned toward the kitchen. I almost ran into Mrs. Chandler, who was holding a plate with a ham and cheese sandwich on it in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. She handed them both to me.
“I figured you might want this,” she said and returned to the kitchen. When she returned she had her coat and hat on while her purse dangled from her arm. She looked past me toward Gloria and said, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going home now.”
“Thank you,” Gloria said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Can I give you a lift home?” I said.
“Thank you, Elliott,” she said, “but my cab just pulled up out front.”
“Good night, Mrs. Chandler,” I said and closed the door behind her.
*****
It was four thirty the next afternoon when I folded my laptop closed and brought it with me down to the van to check the twelve monitors. If I’d captured anything, I wanted to have my laptop handy for transferring any files to if from the portable units. Dad was waiting for me outside of my van when I got to the parking lot. I looked at him with a bit of surprise.
“What?” Dad said. “You didn’t think I was going to come?”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’d forgotten about it myself. As long as you’re here, let’s have a look at the monitors and see if we caught anything on them.”
I played each unit back in the fast forward mode and watched the first six monitors while Dad kept an eye on the other six. Nothing popped out at either of us. I emptied the memories of all twelve units and reset them. They’d be good again until this same time tomorrow night. This was Friday and it could be the day that some Powell Industries employee did their shopping from the company store.
“We’ll just have to take another look at them tomorrow,” I said. “So, what are you going to do with the rest of your night?”
Dad shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I might go on down
to the corner and have a beer and watch a little television by myself.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and waited.
“All right,” I said after a moment. “Let’s go.”
I sat with Dad for an hour before I made up some excuse to get home again. He remained on his barstool as I said goodnight and walked out of the place. I was eager to get home again to my wife and son. I’d turned into a homebody before I even knew what hit me.
Saturday night came and went and now I had twelve more camera units to check for activity. Now it was Sunday morning and I figured I could take care of checking the monitors early and have the rest of the day to myself. I walked out of the house in my slippers and robe and took a seat in front of the shelf unit in the back of my van. I started all the monitors playing and then one by one hit the fast forward play buttons. I sat there looking up and down the row of monitors for something, anything.
About fifteen minutes into the playback something caught my eye on the eighth monitor. I stopped all of the playbacks, rewound a few minutes worth of video and started all of them playing again. A minute and a half later I saw it again in real time. There were two of them sneaking around inside the factory on a Saturday night. I watched as one of the men walked into frame with a wheelbarrow and set it down in front of a stack of boxes. He began piling several boxes into the wheelbarrow. When he had filled it, he wheeled it out of camera range. I looked one monitor to my left and the man with the wheelbarrow came back into view.
A second man joined him. He was pulling a four-wheeled cart behind him. The cart had a dozen or more boxes of varied sizes and shaped on it. They pulled and pushed their loot out of camera range and appeared on the next monitor in the chain. I followed both of the men all the way to the last monitor, which covered the back door to the parking lot.
I watched as the men exited the plant with full carts and returned with empty carts. They took the time to walk the cart and the wheelbarrow back to where they’d found them, trying to make the surrounding areas seem undisturbed. I listened, trying to hear what each man was saying, but they were talking in low tones close to each other’s face.
As they turned to leave, I noticed one of them looking around him, as if to see if he was being watched. He paused a moment and then continued out of camera range. Three more monitors over I picked them both up again. They had paused and I noticed one man looking up, in the direction of one of the cameras. His eyebrows furrowed and he continued to stare into the monitor from down on the floor. He said something to his partner that I couldn’t make out and then the first man looked like he was pushing a box ahead of him.
From out of nowhere a giant face stared at me from the monitor. The man moved his face a little to the left and soon all I could see of him was his one eye. It was almost on top of the camera. The picture on the monitor moved and I realized that he must have picked up the camera and had carried it back down to where his partner was standing.
“What do you make of this, Dale?” the first man said.
The picture jolted some more as the second man turned the camera around in his hand, finally aiming it right into his face. “Looks like some sort of camera, Lou,” the second man said. “What do you suppose it was doing up there?”
“Beats me,” Lou said. “I think maybe they’re gonna wire this place with surveillance cameras. Looks like they only got as far as setting them in place. Lucky for us they haven’t connected the wires yet or we’d be in deep shit.”
“That’s it for me,” Dale said. “Tonight’s out last load. I ain’t spending any time in jail for Kendall. If he wants any more of this stuff, he can steal it himself.”
“Me, too,” Lou said. “Put that thing back where to found it and let’s get out of here.”
The picture jolted for a few more seconds until a close-up of Dale’s hand pulled back from the screen and he jumped down off the box. He pushed the box back into its original position, took one last look around the shop and hurried out the back door.
I stopped all the monitors and clapped my hands together, rubbing them like Mr. Miyagi from that movie about the karate kid who kept getting beat up. “I got ‘em,” I yelled. I smiled and laid my hand on top of the monitor. I patted it and whispered, “Good job.” I unlatched all the mini monitors and brought them into the house with me.
Gloria was still sitting at the kitchen table, holding Matt in her arms when I walked in, all smiles. “You look like you just won the lottery,” she said.
“Next best thing,” I told her. “I got ‘em. There are two of them on the video and I caught ‘em in the act of stealing a carload of supplies from the factory. These idiots looked right into the camera and even called each other by name. Not the two sharpest crayons in the box. Boy, just wait until Mr. Powell sees this. That ten grand bonus is as good as mine.”
“That’s great,” Gloria said. “When are you going to see him again?”
I thought for a moment. “He told me to call him if I had anything to report,” I said. “Well, I have something to report, all right. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow morning. He’ll probably want me to fly up there again right away. You have Mrs. Chandler coming in again tomorrow, don’t you?”
Gloria nodded. “She’ll be here at eight o’clock,” she said. “What time do you think you’ll be going?”
“It depends on whether or not Mr. Powell can fit me in right away. I’m guessing he’ll make time after I tell him what I have.”
“I’m so proud of you, Elliott,” Gloria said. “I must admit that I was skeptical when you first told me about all this mini cam stuff, but you were right. It paid off.”
“Big time,” I said. “I can see this becoming a big part of our business in the future. We might even expand, who knows?”
“Just take this thing a step at a time,” Gloria said. “Don’t go spending that bonus on another load of spy cameras and such. Remember you have a family to think about, too.”
“Baby steps,” I said. “I’ll take it nice and slow and work our way up gradually.” I turned toward the living room but stopped to turn back to Gloria for a second. I held up one of the monitors. “I have to transfer all this video to the hard drive. I’ll be a while.”
“Go on,” Gloria said. “Earn that bonus.”
I had learned from a past job involving video surveillance not to give the client the only copy of the evidence that I’d collected. My first client got me started with video surveillance by providing the equipment and then letting me keep it all after the job was finished. I had gathered the evidence he needed and I had transferred it to a USB jump drive. I gave the client the jump drive, figuring I’d never have any use for the video evidence, but when the client was blown up in his car in my parking lot, he took the only evidence with him to the next world.
I made copies of all the videos I’d collected from the twelve cameras and left the originals on the cameras themselves. It would be easier for Mr. Powell to see the evidence just as I had seen it—across the twelve monitors with the suspects walking in and out of the frames and ending with the close-up and personal shot of the burglar’s face. My mind flashed to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” I had to laugh. These two idiots would be spending the next few years behind bars and Edgar Kendall would go from a high-paying, prestigious job of general manager of a major manufacturer to making license plates for the state.
Once I’d finished with the video transfers, I packed all the mini monitors into a single suitcase small enough for me to carry onto the plane. No way was I going to check this bag.
“Just give me another couple of minutes,” I said to Gloria. “I have to call Dad and tell him the good news.”
“Take your time,” Gloria said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
A few minutes later, after I’d finished talking to Dad, I joined Gloria in the kitchen again. She had just finished feeding Matt and had him laid over her shoulder, patting his back and waiting for that al
l important burp. It came a few seconds later and she hugged him to her. These were the Kodak moments you heard about.
Monday morning I was back in my office again. Dad was sitting behind Gloria’s desk and I was watching the wall clock over our door. When nine ten rolled around I picked up the phone and called Powell Industries and asked to speak to Carlton Powell. The receptionist put me through right away.
“Good morning, Mr. Cooper,” Powell said. “May I assume that you have good news for me this morning?”
“You may, indeed,” I said. “It took only three days, but I believe I have what you need. It’s all on video and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see what we captured with the cameras.”
“Marvelous,” Powell said. “How soon can you get up here, Mr. Cooper?”
I had already checked departure times with the airlines before I called Powell. “There’s a plane leaving here in an hour, Mr. Powell. I can be there by noon if you have the time.”
“I’ll make the time, Mr. Cooper,” Powell said. “I’ll see you before noon. And thank you again. Good bye.”
I hung up my phone and looked at Dad. “Gotta run,” I said. “There’s a flight leaving at ten-twenty. I can just make it if I hurry. I should be back here before you close up for the day. Thanks for watching things around here. You’ve been a big help, Dad.”
“Glad to do it, Elliott,” Dad said. “Go on, you have a plane to catch.”
Without any further exchange of words, I was out the door and in my van on the way to the airport. The traffic gods were smiling down on me this morning and I made it to LAX with time to spare. I held the small suitcase on my lap and settled into my seat. I patted my pants pocket to reassure myself that the backup USB drive was still there. It was, and I spent the next hour and five minutes just relaxing.
At eleven forty-five I met with Mr. Powell, made my presentation and waited for his reaction.
“Splendid work, Mr. Cooper,” Powell said. “I think I can safely say that Mr. Kendall won’t be walking around free much longer and neither will his two cohorts. I’m very pleased with your work, Mr. Cooper. You can bet I’ll be telling my associates about you. You can use more work along these lines, can’t you, Mr. Cooper?”