by Bill Bernico
I looked at Bonnie and smiled. “I hope the skies there are a lot friendlier than the ones that dumped us out in the woods.”
Over dinner Bonnie told me about the call she had made to her lawyer. “He thought I was dead,” Bonnie told me. Apparently I even made the headlines and people started buying up my jewelry like crazy. I guess they figured it was like art and would only go up in value. So I guess this dark cloud had at least one silver lining for me. What about you? Did you get a hold of your son?”
“I did,” I told Bonnie. “He told me that he and his wife, Gloria never gave up hope. He said he just knew I was still alive despite what the papers were saying.”
“I’ll bet he’ll be glad to see you again,” Bonnie said.
That’ll makes two of us,” I said. “He told me to catch a commercial flight to San Francisco and then down to L.A. I guess the airline that covers that route is not on strike.”
“But didn’t you come here to meet a friend?” Bonnie said.
“That’s right,” Clay said. “I’d better call Harry, I mean Fred, and let him know what happened. Thanks for reminding me. I’m obviously going to have to forget staying with him for a week, like we’d planned. I need to get home to Elliot and Gloria.”
Well, which is it?” she said. “Harry or Fred?”
I briefly explained Harry’s situation without mentioning either of his last names. “I’m sure he’ll understand,” I said.
Bonnie pointed to my armpit. “Don’t try to take that thing on the plane with you,” she said.
I patted my shoulder holster. “Oh gees,” I said. Now what am I going to do with it?”
“Give it to me,” Bonnie said. “Unloaded, of course. When I get home I’ll pack it up carefully and mail it to you at your office.”
“That’s illegal, you know,” I said.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Bonnie said. “I’ll label the box Fragile and Glass and maybe then they’ll handle it more carefully. When does the next flight leave for San Francisco?”
“Tomorrow morning at ten-thirty,” I said.
“Oh wow,” Bonnie said. “What are we going to do with you until then?” She smiled a wry smile and winked at me. “Maybe I can show you my jewelry. It’s at my house just a couple of miles from here.”
Is that your version of showing me your etchings?” I said, smiling.
“Something like that,” Bonnie said.
“What will the neighbors say?” I told her.
“Screw the neighbors,” Bonnie said.
“But it’s your neighborhood,” I said.
“And I’m one of the neighbors,” Bonnie say and then lowered her eyes.
Clay guessed that when he told Elliott and Gloria about his ordeal that he could always leave that part out.
88 - The Not-So-Private Eyes
“Mr. Cooper?” the man said as he approached me on the street.
I said I was.
“Mr. Cooper, my name is Philip Sinclair,” the man said. “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”
I nodded. “Sure,” I said and waited.
“Uh, I mean in private,” Sinclair said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m on my way to meet my wife for lunch,” I said. “Can this wait?”
“Under normal circumstances maybe,” Sinclair said, “but I’m under a bit of a time constraint.”
“Would talking to me in front of my wife be private enough for you, Mr. Sinclair?” I said.
Sinclair thought for a moment and then offered, “That would depend on how public the place is where you’re meeting her.”
“It’s just a regular restaurant,” I told him, “but maybe we could grab a corner booth off by ourselves. Would that do?”
Sinclair nodded. “I guess it will have to,” he said. “At least I’ll be able to lay out the outline for you. And if you’re interested, perhaps we could meet at say, your house or office for the rest.”
“The rest of what?” I said. “Look, if you have something to say, spit it out or be on your way. I’m a busy guy.” I lied. I just didn’t get a good feeling about this guy.
“Where is this restaurant,” Mr. Cooper?” Sinclair said.
I stopped right there on the sidewalk, gave Sinclair direct eye contact and said, “Right here.” I tossed my head to one side, gesturing toward the front door of The Gold Cup coffee shop. “Follow me.”
Gloria was already sitting at a table for two in the middle of the room when we approached. She smiled when she saw me and then looked at the man following me and her face changed to one big question mark.
“Philip Sinclair,” I said and then held my palm up in Gloria’s direction, “This is my wife, Gloria Cooper.”
Sinclair extended his hand to Gloria. “How nice to meet you, Mrs. Cooper,” Sinclair said and then turned to me.
I looked around the room and spotted a vacant booth in the back, away from curious ears. I turned to Gloria. “Gloria, would you mind if Mr. Sinclair joined us for lunch today?” I said.
“Sure,” Gloria said. “I guess that would be all right.” She gestured toward the chair on her right.
“Would you also mind if we took a booth in the back?” I said.
Gloria’s eyebrows turned down but she slowly nodded just the same. “I guess that would be all right,” she said, picking up her coffee cup and following me back to the corner booth.
Gloria slid in first and I sat next to her. Held a hand out toward the seat across from us and Sinclair slid in. A waitress came by with an extra set of flatware wrapped in a napkin and set it in front of Sinclair.
“Coffee, gentlemen?” she said, waiting with her pencil poised over her pad.
Sinclair held up one finger but I waved her off. “Just water for me,” I said.
She returned a minute later with a coffee pot in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Sinclair turned his coffee cup upright and the waitress filled it. She set the water in front of me. “Would you like a minute?” she said. “Or are you ready to order?”
“Give us a minute, would you?” I told her.
She walked away and I looked at Sinclair. “All right,” I said, “let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?” Gloria said. “What’s going on here, Elliott?”
“Beats me,” I said. “I just met Mr. Sinclair on the way here and he wanted to talk to me so I suggested he join us.” I turned to Sinclair. “Well?”
Sinclair sipped his coffee, patted his lips with his napkin, set the cup down and said, “Mr. Cooper, I represent the firm of Sinclair, Newman and Maxwell.”
“You’re a lawyer?” I said.
Sinclair laughed. “Oh, heavens no,” he said. “We’re a publishing house. We publish books, both in hardcover and paperback.”
“So far I don’t see any connection,” I said. “Are you looking to hire a private detective to do something for your company?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Cooper,” Sinclair said.
“Then what do you want, Mr. Sinclair?” I said.
Sinclair paused, choosing his next words carefully. “Our firm would like to publish an account of the Cooper family and their legacy in the private investigations business.”
“The Cooper family?” Gloria said. “What exactly does that mean?”
“Mrs. Cooper,” Sinclair said, “We’ve already done some preliminary background on your husband and his father...” Sinclair pulled a notebook from his pocket, flipped it open and continued. “…Clay Cooper. I understand that you, Mr. Cooper, are the third generation of Coopers to carry on the family business.”
“Yes,” I said, somewhat suspiciously.
“Well,” Sinclair said, “like I said, we’ve done some preliminary background and I see that it was Clay’s father, your grandfather, Matt Cooper who started the business in 1946. Am I accurate so far, Mr. Cooper?”
“Yes,” I said, “but where are you going with all this?”
“In our background check, Mr. Cooper,” Sinclair said, “
we were able to find quite a few newspaper clippings going back to the forties that documented some of your grandfather’s exploits. We also found several interesting stories that involved your father, Clay. And we haven’t forgotten about you, either. Granted, there aren’t as many clippings about you, but you’re relatively newer in the business. I expect that you’re file will have many interesting pieces in it over time.”
“My file?” I said. “Why would you have a file on me and my father and grandfather?” I said, a little annoyed now.
“I’m sorry,” Sinclair said, “I thought I’d already mentioned that our firm is interested in a biography of sorts on the Cooper family and their private eye business. That is, if you’re interested in having your story told.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “We Coopers are kind of private. I don’t know that I’d want to air our dirty laundry, so to speak, in public.”
Gloria laid her hand on my arm. “Hold on, Elliott,” she said. “Let’s not be too hasty here. I’d like to hear a little more of what Mr. Sinclair has in mind for this project. You know, what angle he plans on pursuing if we give him the go ahead to do it.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cooper,” Sinclair said. “What we had in mind was a little more on an epic scale, if I may explain. You see, we’d like to start even further back than your grandfather, Matt. We’d like to start at least one or two generations further back with our story, say, with Matt’s father or grandfather and we’d tell the story starting back then and work our way to the present day.”
I remained silent for a moment and thought about such a plan. After a while I said, “And why The Coopers? Why not any of the other eight or nine private eye agencies in Hollywood? And just exactly what’s in this for you? How can you even be sure a book like this would sell, unless…” I held up one finger and shook it. “…Unless you’ve already made some sort of deal for the movie rights,” I said. “That’s it, isn’t it, Mr. Sinclair?”
“It’s no secret that good books make for good movies,” Sinclair said. “And your family’s story is certainly interesting enough. And yes, I’ve spoken with some of the studios about such a project. It wasn’t something I was trying to keep from you, Mr. Cooper. I first needed to find out if you’d have any interest in such a project.”
“But I’m not a writer,” I said. “And Dad’s only written one book—a cook book. That doesn’t necessarily make him Raymond Chandler, now does it?”
“You don’t have to worry about that part, Mr. Cooper,” Sinclair said. “We would provide the writer. All you and your family would need to provide is the stories. Just tell them in your own words and our writer will arrange them into the correct format. From what I’ve seen from our research department so far, you’ll be able to come up with way more material than we’ll need. But that’s good. That way we can pick and choose what we like and what will work with the main storyline.”
“And that main storyline will be what?” I said.
“The saga of the Coopers and how you got to where you are now,” Sinclair said. “So what do you think? Does this sound like something you’d be interested in doing?”
“How soon would you need an answer?” I said.
“Naturally, we’d like to start as soon as possible,” Sinclair said. “It is a big project. But you two go home tonight and talk it over with Clay. We’ll want his cooperation as well. If you could let me know sometime tomorrow that would be great.”
Sinclair pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and slid it across to me. I looked at it briefly and dropped it into my own shirt pocket. “We’ll call you tomorrow, Mr. Sinclair,” I said.
The waitress returned and asked if we were ready to order yet.
Sinclair slid out of the booth and left two twenty-dollar bills on the table. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ve already had my lunch, but you go ahead and have lunch on me.” He turned and walked out of the coffee shop.
Gloria and I gave the waitress our order and she left again. I slid out of the booth and back in again, across from Gloria.
We exchanged looks, our eyes getting wide. “What do you think?” Gloria said. “Something like this could be really good for our business, but I’ll leave it up to you.”
“You know,” I said, “this reminds me of that motorcycle building show on television. There was this father and son in New York that had a small chopper building business. They were approached by a TV producer and asked if they wanted to build their motorcycles while the television crew filmed them. That was ten years ago and now those guys are both millionaires because of the exposure. I doubt that we’d get super rich off something like this, but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt us any.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Gloria said. “After lunch how about if we go back to the office and lay it all out for your dad and see what he thinks?”
“Sounds like a good first step,” I said, as our lunches were set down in front of us. When we’d finished, I paid for the two meals from the forty dollars Sinclair had left us and left five bucks for a tip. Even if we said no to his proposal, we still came out ahead by two lunches and fifteen dollars.
When we got back to the office, Dad was on the phone. It sounded like he was just wrapping up his conversation and five seconds later he hung up the phone and looked up at us. “How was lunch?” Dad said.
“Free,” I said, and waited for his reaction.
Dad looked at Gloria. “He made you pay?” Dad said.
Gloria shook her head. “Not me,” she replied.
“All right,” Dad said, “I give up.”
Gloria and I both pulled chairs up to Dad’s desk. We were both smiling.
“What is this?” Dad said. “Are you going to double-team me and tell me I’m fired, or what?”
“Nothing like that,” I said. “But get this.” I laid out Sinclair’s proposal for Dad and answered the few questions that I was sure he’d have for me.
“And you both think this is a good idea?” Dad said.
“Don’t you?” I said. “This could be the kind of exposure we need to take us to the next level. People in need of a private eye will think of us first. We can charge more for our services with exposure like this. We may get so busy that we’d have to hire more help. We can get out of debt.”
“Clay,” Gloria said, “if this projects gets made into a movie or maybe even a TV show, we could all become household names.”
“A movie?” Dad said. “Would we get to pick who we want to play us?”
“I don’t think so,” Gloria said. “They have casting directors for that.”
“Yeah,” Dad said, “but if they make some kind of reality show out of it, they’d be using us for that, wouldn’t they?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “We haven’t even given Sinclair an answer yet. There’s no book yet. And if they make a movie or TV show out of it, that’s way down the line, so how about if we decide on what we’re going to tell Sinclair before we start spending the millions we don’t have yet?”
“Well, I say yes,” Gloria said.
“I’m all for it,” I said. “What about you, Dad?”
Dad paused, looked at us both and smiled. “I’m in,” he said.
“All right,” I said, “before I call Sinclair back, what about family history going back to Grandpa and even further back? How much of our family history do we want to allow them to use? Dad, is there anything about our past that you wouldn’t want made public, you know, like before I was born?”
“I don’t have any skeletons in my closet,” Dad said. “And my dad had nothing to hide.”
“Are you sure you want to read about Great-Grandpa Nick’s murder in a book?” I said.
“All the people who were around then or involved are already dead,” Dad said. “It couldn’t hurt to let the story get out there. Yeah, I say let them have what they want. The more material they have to work with, the better the final product could turn o
ut.”
“Then it’s settled?” I said. “We give Sinclair the go ahead?”
Dad and Gloria both nodded. I pulled Sinclair’s card from my pocket and dialed the number.
Another week had passed before Sinclair’s lawyers had drafted the contract between the firm of Sinclair, Newman and Maxwell and the Cooper family. It provided exclusive rights to the Cooper’s collective biography and also stated that a ten thousand dollar advance was to be paid to The Coopers against any future royalties. Elliott deposited the check in the company account and paid off all of his creditors, and still had fifteen hundred dollars left over. Now if business was slow for a while, they could still get by while the publishing company conducted their interviews and drafted their chapters.
Philip Sinclair sent one of his best writers, a man called Henry Mandell, who had had several successes co-writing biographies for three movie stars, an Indy race car driver and one man who scaled Mt. Rainier on crutches. He had decided to start his interviews with Clay and try to learn more about Clay’s father, Matt Cooper. During his initial call to Clay, Henry Mandell asked if they could meet at a downtown hotel so that they wouldn’t be disturbed during the interview. Henry also asked Clay to bring along any material, scrapbooks or keepsakes that he thought might be helpful in crafting the storyline in chronological order. Clay took the elevator to the tenth floor and walked down the hallway until he came to room ten seventeen. He knocked on the door and Henry Mandell greeted him.
“Come in, Mr. Cooper,” Henry said. “I’m so glad you could make it. Would you like something to drink? Coffee, soda, beer or maybe a mixed drink?”
“Not right now, thank you” Clay said. “Maybe a little later.”
The room was more of a suite, with a bedroom and a sitting area with a sofa and two overstuffed chairs separated by a coffee table. Clay sat in one of the chairs and Henry sat in the other, a yellow legal pad on his lap and a mini digital recorder on the coffee table.
Clay felt a bit nervous, not knowing what to expect. “Where did you want to start, Mr. Mandell?” he said.