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

by Bill Bernico

  “Certainly,” Crawford said. “We keep that all on computer now so it’ll be a lot easier to access than having to go through a bunch of sales slips. Please, have a seat again and I’ll bring up those records.”

  Crawford hit a few keys on his desktop computer and enter slingshot for the search word. He got more than a dozen hits for slingshot sales. “Can we narrow this down at all?” Crawford said.

  “Narrow it down to just the models powerful enough to propel the half-inch nut,” Eric said.

  Crawford entered the model number three fifty and the list immediately shrunk to just three names. He hit another button and the list printed out on his desktop printer. He handed the list to Eric. “That’s all I have,” Crawford said. “But keep in mind that there are three other sporting good stores just in the Hollywood area, not to mention the Greater Los Angeles area.”

  “I have a feeling the guy I’m looking for will turn out to be local,” Eric said. “Well, thanks again, Mr. Crawford.

  Eric left the office and returned to his car. The first name on the printout belonged to Ron Harper with a Hollywood address. Eric drove to the house on Carlton Way just east of Gower Street. It was a single story ranch with several bushes around the perimeter of the yard. A red bicycle lay in the front yard, along with a coaster wagon that had a fielder’s mitt in it. On the other side of the sidewalk that led up to the house there was a doll buggy with lace netting over the top. Eric got the idea that several kids lived here and they were none to neat about picking up after themselves.

  Eric rang the bell and a woman in a half apron answered the door, holding a young girl, maybe two years old. The girl cried when she saw him looking back at her. Her mother soothed the kid and turned sharply to Eric.

  “Yes?” she said, somewhat impatiently.

  Eric pulled his I.D. card and shield out and held them up for the woman to see. Her demeanor softened when she realized she was talking to a policeman.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just a little busy right now. How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a Ron Harper,” Eric told the woman.

  “Ron’s still at work,” she said. “Why did you want to see him?”

  “Routine questions, ma’am,” Eric said. “I’m just doing a follow-up on recent slingshot purchases in the neighborhood. Do you know if Mr. Harper still owns the slingshot that he bought at the sporting goods store on Sunset last July.”

  “He did have up until two months ago,” the woman explained. “He had to throw it away. It broke.”

  “Those things are built pretty solid,” Eric said. “How did it break?”

  “Ronny,” the woman said, “that’s our son, was playing with it and left it lying in the driveway. Ron ran it over when he came home and it flattened out. There was no way to fix it, so he threw it away.”

  Eric thanked the woman and apologized for the interruption before returning to his unmarked cruiser. The second name on the list belonged to someone named Karl Essinger who lived on LaMirada, just south of Fountain. He turned out to be a Boy Scout troop leader who used his slingshot when he had taken his troop on overnight outings in the woods. After talking with him for several minutes, Eric made a few notes on the man, but had discounted him as a viable suspect.

  Drake Phillips’ name appeared third on the list and he lived on Argyle Avenue, between Sunset and Hollywood. Phillips, as it turned out, was fifteen years old and a freshman at Hollywood High School. His mother had told Eric that she didn’t know where Drake was at the moment, but that she expected him home by five o’clock. Eric got a description of the boy and asked his mother if she had a photo that he could borrow.

  “What’s this all about?” Phillips’ mother said.

  “Routine investigation,” Eric said. “Do you know if Drake owns a slingshot, Mrs. Phillips?”

  She looked puzzled. “I haven’t seen him with one,” she said. “Is it important?”

  “It could be,” Eric told her. “Would you mind if I took a quick look in Drake’s room, Mrs. Phillips?”

  “Why?” she said suspiciously.

  “I could make a call to Judge Parker and get a search warrant,” Eric said, “but then I’d have to have the entire house searched and the guys doing the searching aren’t known for their neatness. If I could just have a quick look, I wouldn’t have to disturb the rest of the house. Please?”

  She stepped aside and allowed Eric to pass. She led him down a hall to a room on the right. Once inside, Eric made a cursory search, looking under the mattress and in dresser drawers. In the closet, Eric found a cigar box up on the shelf and pulled it down. He lifted the lid and found perhaps forty or fifty chrome nuts. They looked to be approximately half an inch in diameter. Eric looked at Drake’s mother.

  “Any idea why Drake would need this many nuts?” Eric said. “Especially when there are no corresponding bolts.”

  The woman shook her head. “I didn’t even know he had those,” she said.

  The slingshot was nowhere to be found and Eric had to assume that Drake had it with him, along with who knows how many chrome nuts. He turned to the woman. “I’m going to have to take this box of nuts with me,” he said. “And I’ll have some officers parked at the curb, in the event that Drake comes back here before I find him.”

  “What’s he done?” Mrs. Phillips asked, a touch of panic in her voice now.

  “I’m afraid it pretty serious,” Eric told her. “Several merchants have complained about broken windows in their shops.”

  “You know how boys are,” she tried to explain. “It just harmless mischief. His father and I will have a talk with the boy.”

  “We’re past the mischief stage, Mrs. Phillips,” Eric said. “One of the merchants is dead. He was killed with a slingshot, shooting chrome nuts like the ones I found in Drake’s closet. I have to find him and stop him before anyone else gets hurt, or killed.”

  Mrs. Phillips was crying now. “Don’t hurt Drake,” she said between sobs. “He’s really a good boy.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to bring him in unharmed,” Eric assured the woman.

  Eric left the home and drove to the twelfth precinct. He had dozens of copies of Drake’s photo made and circulated them throughout the department. An all points bulletin was gotten out for the boy.

  *****

  Clay Cooper walked into the office shortly after two-thirty to find his son and daughter-in-law pecking away at their laptop computers. He looked at the plywood that covered the window behind Elliott’s desk. “What happened here?” he said.

  “Some nut with a slingshot,” Gloria said.

  “More like a slingshot with a nut,” I said, explaining about the chrome nut that had destroyed my other laptop computer. “I just picked this one up at the computer store and we’re entering old cases into them?”

  “Them?” Dad said.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “All three of our computers are connected with a local network. Now all three of us can help with the data entry that Gloria has been doing by herself.”

  Dad sat at his desk and I briefly explained how the network functioned by connecting all three computers. “We’ll all have access to the database any time we need it.” I looked at Dad. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were talking the day off.”

  “You can only watch just so much daytime TV before it starts to wear on you,” Dad said. “If I see those gabby broads from The View one more time, I swear I’m going to open a vein. Christ, they all talk at once and say nothing.” Dad looked at the refrigerator and saw the dent in the door. “Same guy?”

  I nodded. “Have you been reading about the rash of broken store windows in the neighborhood?” I said.

  “I just read that article this morning,” Dad said.

  “Well, since then it’s gotten a lot more serious,” I said. “The last store owner was killed in the alley behind his store. Someone hit him in the back of the head with a chrome nut. Has to be the same guy who’s br
eaking the windows. In fact, the store owner had just complained to the police earlier that day about some kid trying to shake him down for protection money.”

  “What’s this world coming to when kids are the new gangsters?” Dad said.

  “And Elliott just missed getting hit himself,” Gloria said.

  Dad turned to me. “What?”

  I told him how I’d left my desk for a soda when the window shattered and my laptop got smashed.

  “So what are you doing about it?” Dad said.

  “Eric told us to stay out of it,” I explained.

  “When has that ever stopped you before?” Dad said.

  I looked at Gloria. I knew she was just as eager to find this kid as I was. We exchanged knowing looks and both of us got up and headed for the door. I turned back to Dad, “Well, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help us look for this nut job?”

  Dad sported a huge smile and followed us out of the office. We all got in Gloria’s sedan and started cruising the boulevard, not exactly sure what it was we were looking for. As we drove past Saul Green’s clothing store, I noticed that his front window was shattered. He had just had it replaced a few days ago.

  “Pull up here,” I told Gloria. I turned and laid my arm over the back of the seat so I could talk to Dad and Gloria both. “I was just here this morning,” I said. “Saul Green, the owner, had just had this window replaced earlier this week. I don’t see the cops here, so we can assume this just happened. Dad, you go around to the back door. Gloria and I are going inside.”

  When we got inside the store, I saw Saul on the phone, talking in a loud, excited voice and using lots of hand gestures.

  “You send a car over here right now,” Saul demanded and hung up the phone. He looked up and saw me coming his way.

  “Again,” Saul said. “Can you believe it, Mr. Cooper? That little bastard hit me again. If I get my hands on him I’ll kill him myself.”

  I held up a hand. “Hold on, Mr. Green,” I said. “You don’t need that kind of trouble. The police will take care of whoever is doing this. Did anyone come in the store and talk to you about helping you prevent this from happening?”

  “That’s the little bastard I’m talking about,” Saul said. “The nerve of that kid. I told him to get the hell out of my store or I’d kick him so hard he wouldn’t sit for a week.”

  “And what did he say?” Gloria asked.

  “He just told me I’d be sorry,” Saul explained. “And he ran out of here. Five minutes later I hear my front window shatter again, but the kid is nowhere around.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” I said.

  “Not two minutes ago,” Saul said. “You have to stop that kid before he hurts someone.”

  “He already has,” Gloria said and then looked at me. “We’d better get moving, Elliott.”

  “Pick us up out back,” I told her.

  Gloria rushed back to her car and I left through the back door. Dad was standing in the alley when I emerged. A moment later Gloria pulled up and Dad and I got in.

  “Where are we going?” Gloria said.

  “I have a hunch,” I told her. “Drive over to Rudy Berger’s shoe store. It’s four or five blocks west of here.”

  We got there in just a few minutes. The front window was still intact as Gloria pulled her car to the curb. We all got out and entered the store. Rudy came up to greet me as we entered. I introduced Dad and Gloria and told Rudy about Saul Green’s second hit on his window.

  “Better keep an eye out,” I told Rudy. “This kid may be making return visits to the places he’s already hit.”

  “You think he’ll come back here so soon?” Rudy said.

  Before I could answer, the front window of Rudy’s store crashed to the sidewalk. A chrome nut hit a shoe display behind me and bounced to the floor. I instinctively pulled my .38 and made a dash for the front door. A kid on a red bicycle was peddling away as fast as he could. Dad stayed with Rudy while Gloria and I hurried out to the car. By the time Gloria was able to pull out into the traffic, the bicycle was gone. We cruised up and down some of the side streets, but didn’t see anyone with a bicycle, red or otherwise.

  We pulled up in front of Rudy’s shop again and found Dad talking to a police officer, who was writing something in his notepad. I interrupted their conversation and told the officer about the kid on the red bike. “We lost him in the traffic on the side streets,” I explained.

  “Did you get a good look at the kid?” the officer said.

  “Only from the back,” I said. “He was wearing a blue windbreaker and had a matching blue baseball hat on. He wore jeans and black and white sneakers. What little hair I could see sticking out from under the hat was blonde.”

  “That’s a pretty detailed description,” The cop said. “You a cop?”

  “Private,” I said and showed him my I.D. and shield.

  “And what were you doing here?” the cop asked.

  “I stopped in here this morning to talk to Rudy,” I explained. “We had just been over to see Saul Green up the street and figured we’d better come back here again.”

  “Why’s that?” the cop said.

  “Didn’t you hear?” I said. “Saul Green was just hit again a few minutes ago. I figured the kid might come back here again so we drove over.”

  “We?” the cop said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, pointing to my two partners. “This is my wife, Gloria and my Dad, Clay Cooper. All three of us work out of the same office just down the street.”

  A bulletin came through over the cop’s radio, alerting any unit in the area to be on the lookout for a kid on a red bicycle who had just broken a window at a store on Highland Avenue.

  “Kid’s got a lot of nerve,” I said. “He just barely got away from us and he’s out hitting other stores already.”

  The cop grabbed the mic on his shoulder, turned his head toward it and replied, “This is car seven,” he said. “I’m at Rudy Berger’s shoe store. The front window here was just broken again. It could be the same suspect.”

  The transmission went silent for a moment and then the dispatcher came back on. “Car seven, meet Lieutenant Anderson on tact two.”

  “Copy that, dispatch,” the officer said, switching to tact two on his radio. “Lieutenant Anderson, this is car seven, Officer Bradley, go ahead.”

  “Car seven,” the lieutenant said. “I think the kid we’re looking for is Drake Phillips.” He conveyed the address to Officer Bradley. “Approach with caution. He’s probably killed one person already. And do not mistake that slingshot for a toy. It can kill you so treat it as though it was a gun.”

  “Copy that, Lieutenant,” Bradley said.

  “I heard that,” I told the cop. “The kid’s a killer.”

  “You stay out of this, Mr. Cooper,” the cop said. “This is a police matter.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard that once before.”

  The cop left the store and returned to the black and white parked at the curb and headed west on the boulevard.

  “We’d better get moving,” I told Rudy. “Watch yourself.”

  “I will, Elliott,” he said, and then proceeded to clean up glass shards for the second time.

  Dad and Gloria and I got back into her car and drove west on Hollywood, turning south on Highland. “So where are we going now?” Gloria said.

  “Two blocks over,” I said, pointing south down Highland.

  “The cops just told us to stay out of it, Elliott,” Gloria reminded me.

  “And?” I said.

  “And I think this time we should listen to them,” she said.

  “Gloria may be right on this one,” Dad said. “This is no longer just some misdemeanor glass breakage case. We’re dealing with murder. You interfere with that kind of investigation and we’ll all be sitting behind bars before the day is through.”

  I thought about it briefly and said, “All right, but let’s just stop at Sam Perkins’ Del
i for a minute. I just want to warn him about Drake Phillips. He may not even know about Abernathy’s death yet. If something happened to Sam and we could have prevented it, we’d never forgive ourselves. Come on, it’ll just take a minute.”

  “But after this we stay out of it, right?” Gloria said.

  “Right,” I agreed.

  The front window was still in one piece at the delicatessen when we pulled up in front of it. We sat there for a moment and just observed. A moment later we all got out and walked toward the front door to the deli. I motioned to Dad to cover the back door while Gloria and I went inside. I saw the same clerk behind the counter and smiled at her as we approached.

  “Remember me?” I said.

  “Mr. Cooper,” the clerk said. “What brings you back here so soon?”

  “Just checking on a few things,” I said. “Has anyone been here to talk to you about the window since I was here last?”

  The middle-aged woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “Was someone supposed to?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. I heard a commotion coming from somewhere behind the woman, who also turned toward the sound. “Where does that door lead to?” I said.

  “It’s the back door,” the clerk said. “It leads to the alley behind the store.”

  “Dad,” I said to Gloria as we both rushed through the back door.

  Dad way lying on his back next to some garbage cans. He looked up at me and rolled his eyes.

  “What happened here, Dad?” I said.

  Dad gestured with his chin toward one of the garbage cans. “I was trying to step up onto the can to get a better look over that fence.” He pointed to a six-foot stockade fence behind him. “I slipped off the can and fell on my ass.” He extended a hand out to me and I pulled him to a standing position.

  “Are you all right?” I said, looking him over.

  “The only thing hurt was my pride,” Dad said, “and one butt cheek.” He rubbed his butt with his hand and stood there, looking embarrassed.

  “What’s on the other side of that fence?” I asked the clerk, who had now joined us.