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

by Bill Bernico

  “Wouldn’t that include Holbrook?” Rob said.

  “Holbrook doesn’t need the money,” I said. “The value of that ticket he stole is peanuts to a guy like that. No, he’s holding the ticket for ransom. Not for money but for evidence.”

  Eileen furrowed her brow. “What do you mean ransom for evidence?” she said.

  “Our client,” I said, “has evidence that could put Holbrook away for the rest of his life. Holbrook somehow got hold of our client’s winning lottery ticket. He’s willing to exchange the ticket for the evidence. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll destroy the ticket and disappear. He doesn’t want to have to disappear. He’s lived here all his life and he wants to continue to do so. In exile, he’d be a nobody without any power or influence. Here he can go on being the big shot he’s always been.”

  “And what would stop your client from making a copy of the evidence and turning it in anyway after he gets his lottery ticket back?” Eileen said.

  “Good question,” I said. “What our client has isn’t something that can be copied. It’s a finger, a human finger, and it’s the proof the D.A. would need to put Holbrook away. The finger belongs to the man Holbrook is suspected of having killed. Cops never found the body and without a body, it’s pretty hard to prove murder.”

  “Aren’t you two accessories after the fact?” Rob said. “I mean, you both know about the finger, and it’s part of an ongoing investigation. Couldn’t you be arrested for withholding evidence?”

  “What evidence?” I said. “I haven’t seen the finger. I’m just taking my client’s word for it that he has it. One, he could be lying, but why would he? Two, once he hired me and told me about it, by law he’d be entitled to client confidentiality. And three, once we get the lottery ticket back and our client cashes it in, Gloria and I get five per cent and that’s not chump change.”

  “Seems a little out of whack, doesn’t it?” Rob said. “I mean, you two get five per cent of a jackpot and all Eileen and I get is a ticket out of town.”

  “Would you two rather not be able to leave town at all?” I said. “You could just go straight to jail, not pass Go and not collect two hundred dollars, if you prefer.”

  “Rob,” Eileen said. “Let’s just do this and get out of this damned town.”

  Rob knew better than to argue with Eileen. “Oh, all right,” he said. “When do we start?”

  “Right now,” Gloria said, handing Rob the information about Holbrook. She glanced at the wall clock over the office door and then back at Rob. “If everything goes smoothly, you two can be back here in three hours.”

  “But…” Rob said.

  “You’re wasting valuable time,” I said.

  “But how are we supposed to get to these places without our car?” Rob said.

  Gloria gestured toward the slip of paper she’d given Rob. “All those places are within a few blocks of our office. Even on foot you have plenty of time.” She grabbed Rob’s bankroll off my desk, peeled off two ten-dollar bills and gave them each one. “This should be enough to get you around today.”

  Rob took the ten, stuffed it in his pocket and tossed his head toward the door. “Let’s go, Eileen,” he said. “Suddenly all I want is to see Hollywood in my rear view mirror. He turned to me. “We’ll get your ticket and it won’t take us three hours, either.” He and Eileen left the office, the sound of their footsteps fading down the long hallway.

  I looked at Gloria. “Any bets on whether or not they’ll be able to pull this off?” I said.

  “Two to one they get caught with their fingers in Holbrook’s pocket,” Gloria said.

  I pulled my wallet open, extracted a five dollar bill and laid it on my desk. “You’re on.”

  Once they were back on the street, Eileen looked at Rob and said, “Why don’t we just pick a few more pockets until we have enough for bus fare home and scram?”

  “Because I don’t want to have to always be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” Rob told her. “We can do this, get our stuff back and still be free to go anywhere else without fear that the cops will be on our trail. We’ve done this a thousand times. Hell, we can do this in our sleep. This guy can’t be any harder to pick than all our other marks.”

  “Oh, all right,” Eileen said. “And then I want to get as far away from California as we can get.”

  “Let’s see that list,” Rob said, taking the slip of paper from Eileen. He glanced at his watch and then back at the list. According to this, Holbrook should be in someplace called Big Frank’s Bar on Selma, between Cahuenga and Ivar. I know Selma is just a block south, but I’m not sure where Ivar is.”

  Gloria pointed to a man walking toward us. “Just ask that guy,” she said. “We don’t have time to wander around looking for it.”

  Rob stepped in front of the man. “Excuse me,” Rob said, “could you tell me where Ivar Street is?”

  “You mean Ivar Avenue?” the man said.

  “I guess,” Rob said.

  The man pointed east. “Two blocks that way,” he said. “Can’t miss it. Just turn right at the yellow burger joint on the corner.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but the man was already walking away, mumbling something to himself. I turned to Eileen. “Let’s go. We’re only two blocks away from Big Frank’s Bar.” It took us ten minutes to walk the two blocks. The building itself wasn’t anything special. Just a rectangular, fifty by sixty square foot structure painted brown. We paused outside the bar.

  “I’d better go in first by myself,” Eileen said. “Give me a minute and then come in but don’t acknowledge me. I’ll use the standard stop-turn-and-spill routine when I get in front of him. When he collides with me…”

  “Yes,” Rob said, “I know. We’ve done this a few times, remember?”

  “I know,” Eileen said, “but we were usually out in the open, not in a crowded room.”

  “All the better,” Rob said. “He’ll expect some bumping into from other people. Once I get the wallet, I’ll head for the men’s room, make the switch and hand the wallet off to you when I come out again. You take it from there.”

  Eileen nodded and left Rob standing on the sidewalk while she went inside. The room was dimly lit. Perfect, she thought. Eileen spent the next sixty seconds circulating, looking for her mark. She found him standing at the bar drinking a beer from the bottle. She glanced at the front door. Rob had just come in. She made eye contact with him and then looked at Holbrook. Rob gave a barely noticeable nod and moved in.

  Eileen squeezed in between Holbrook and the guy standing next to him and held one finger up to the bartender. “I’ll have a tap beer,” she said, handing the ten-dollar bill over the bar and grabbing the full glass and her change. Before she turned and started to walk away, she looked Holbrook in the eye and managed a polite smile. She hadn’t taken three steps when she could see Holbrook in the mirror behind the bar, following her. She also saw Rob directly behind Holbrook.

  As if on cue, Eileen stopped abruptly and began to turn around, spilling her beer on Holbrook’s shirt. She began to wipe the front of his shirt with her hand, all the while apologizing and looking embarrassed. “Oh my,” Eileen said. “I am so sorry. I didn’t see you there. Here, let me wipe that off.” Eileen plucked a few napkins from the bar and began dabbing at Holbrook’s shirt.

  Holbrook managed a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Accidents happen, Miss…”

  “Jennings,” Eileen said. “Sandy Jennings.”

  Just then Rob eased his way past the two of them and walked into the men’s room, the door automatically closing behind him. Rob entered an empty stall, pried the wallet open and extracted the lottery ticket, tucking it into his pants pocket. He pulled the fake ticket out of his shirt pocket and put it back exactly where the original had been, making sure it was folded exactly the same way and facing in the same direction. He closed the wallet again and quickly exited the men’s room.

  Eileen was still standing face to face
with Holbrook, fawning over him apologetically. Rob squeezed through the crowd and up against Eileen’s back. She held one hand behind her back and Rob set the wallet in her palm and then kept moving.

  Eileen slipped the wallet into her jeans and turned her attentions to the bartender. She held up another finger and said, “Could I have another bottle of…” She turned to Holbrook and looked at his beer bottle. “…of Bud Light, please?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Holbrook said, looking like a fox who was about to eat a chicken. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you a beer.”

  That was Rob cue to stumble into Holbrook’s back, as though he’d been pushed. Holbrook quickly turned to see who had bumped him. He grabbed Rob by the lapels and lifted. That was Eileen’s cue to slip the wallet back into Holbrook’s pocket. Once she’d done that, she winked at Rob.

  “Sorry,” Rob said, from up on his tip toes. “Somebody pushed me into you.”

  Eileen squeezed around the two men, shot a quick look at Holbrook and said, “This place is way too violent for me. I’m leaving.”

  Holbrook released Rob and tried to get Eileen to stay. Rob took that opportunity to slip out the back door and around the building. He waited outside for Eileen. When she came out the front door, Rob pointed east. “You go that way,” he said. “I’ll go west and we’ll meet back at Hollywood and Cahuenga.”

  “Got it,” Eileen said, walking away from Rob.

  As Rob began walking west, he turned around to see Holbrook sticking his head out the front door and watching Eileen walking away. Something must have alerted Holbrook at that moment, because he reached for his wallet and seemed relieved to find it still there. He pried it open, assured himself that the lottery ticket was still there and shook his head before slipping back inside the bar.

  Ten minutes later as Rob stood outside Elliott Cooper’s building, he looked up the street and saw Eileen coming his way. She caught up with him, a little out of breath.

  Rob laid a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he said. “Holbrook checked his pocket after he got outside.”

  “He did?” Eileen said.

  Rob nodded. “Uh huh,” he said. “He even looked inside it and must have been satisfied that everything was as it should be. He forgot about you and just went back inside. Good job, kid.”

  “You were no slouch either,” Eileen said. “Come on, let’s get that ticket back upstairs and get the hell out of here.”

  Rob looked at his watch. “Not bad time, either,” he said. “We’ll be back with two and a half hours to spare.”

  Rob and Eileen took the elevator to the third floor and walked to the end of the hall. Rob knocked on the office door and walked in with a big smile on his face.

  “Did you two forget something?” Gloria said. “You’re back so soon.”

  Rob pulled the ticket out of his shirt pocket and held it up.

  I leapt out of my chair and hurried over to where they stood holding the ticket. “That was quick,” I said.

  “Don’t try this at home,” Rob told me. “We are professionals.”

  I took the ticket from Rob and I examined it. I handed it to Gloria and she gave it thorough examination as well. “That’s the real deal,” she said, handing me back the ticket.

  “I won’t ask how you two managed to pull this off,” I said. “And a deal is a deal. Here are your wallets and your car keys, and, oh yeah, your bankroll.”

  “And I want those beer cans, too,” Rob said, pointing to the two beer cans with their fingerprints on them.

  I shot Gloria a quick glance and she shrugged. “Oh, all right,” I said.

  Rob grabbed the two cans, crumpled them in his hands and held onto them. Eileen looked at Rob and said, “Now can we go?”

  “One minute,” Rob said and then turned to me. “I think I know a way that this Holbrook will never find out that he’s been had. And the best part is that you can also take steps to make sure he still goes to jail.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Holbrook wants to exchange the ticket for the finger,” Rob said. “Doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So give him the finger,” Rob said.

  “What about our leverage?” I said. “How did you think we’d still be able to put Holbrook away if we give him the evidence?”

  “It came to me on the way to meet Holbrook,” Rob said. “You must know some of the guys who run the funeral homes around here, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Pay one of them to snip a finger off one of the corpses they have laying around in caskets,” Rob said. “No one’s going to look at the hands. The hands will be laid out alongside the body and no one will be able to see them, missing finger or not.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to get that kind of reputation around town.”

  “I thought you might say something like that,” Rob said. “Why don’t you let me and Eileen get one for you? It can’t be that much harder than lifting a wallet. All I need is a pair of garden shears and a distraction.”

  Eileen raised her hand. “That would be me,” she said.

  Gloria managed a wry smile. “Wouldn’t that be the ultimate in justice?” she said. “We’d successfully conclude our client’s case and help put Holbrook away in the process. I like it, even though I’m not crazy about the idea of snipping off a dead man’s finger.”

  “He won’t feel a thing,” Rob assured her. “It’s all for the better.”

  Gloria and I exchanged glances. I sighed and looked at Rob. “You two come with me,” I said. “There’s a funeral home right down the street.” I looked at Gloria. “We’ll be right back.”

  Good taste would preclude me from sharing the details of our trip to the funeral home. Suffice it to say that after a quick stop to the neighborhood hardware store for a pair of pruning shears, Eileen and I created the opportunity for Rob to be alone with the dearly departed for the fifteen seconds he needed to harvest the finger. The three of us were in and out of there in record time.

  Once we got back to the office I called our client and filled him in on our progress, leaving out Rob and Eileen entirely. I’d find a way to explain the extra finger and the plan that went with it when I met with the client. Even though we no longer had a need to go through with the exchange, we thought it would still be a good idea if for no other reason than to set the hook and give Holbrook a false sense of security before we turned the real finger over to the police. Revenge, or justice, in this case, is a dish better served cold, just like the finger we’d recently obtained.

  Before they left the office for the last time, Rob turned back to me and said, “I still think under different circumstances that we could have been friends.”

  “We’ll never know,” I said, and escorted the two pickpockets to the elevator. “Don’t forget,” I said before the elevator doors closed, “out of town by tonight.”

  Rob crossed his heart with two fingers and held them up. “Scout’s honor,” he said, as the doors closed.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if any of my neighbors would turn up at the twelfth precinct tomorrow to report their wallets stolen.

  99 - It’s Worth A Shot

  I pulled out of the drive-thru and handed the bag of food to Gloria. “Where should we go to eat?” I said.

  “We’re only a block from the park,” Gloria said. “And it’s a beautiful day. How about if we find ourselves a nice bench and eat lunch there?”

  “Works for me,” I said and turned toward the park. I found a parking place on Alvarado, dropped a quarter into the meter and walked Gloria across the street to the park. We found a bench that faced the sidewalk leading to the interior of the park. Gloria bent over the bench, blew away the loose dirt and dust on the seat and sat down. I did the same and turned to Gloria with my hand out.

  Gloria handed me a small bag of French fries and a paper-wrapped hamburger and then set the bag down between us. I handed her one o
f the two cups of soda I’d carried from the car and set my cup down on the bench. It was a long bench, longer than a standard bench like you might find at the bus stop. I had just begun to pluck French fries from my bag when a shabbily-dressed man sat next to me on the end of the bench. He nodded and smiled at me and then waited patiently while I nibbled on one of the French fries. I’d eaten ninety-five percent of the fry from between my fingers before I swiveled in my seat and handed the nub of the fry to the man who’d sat next to me. He popped it into his mouth and then patiently waited while I pulled another fry from the bag.

  When I’d eaten the second fry down to a nub, I handed what was left to the man, who promptly stuck it in his mouth, chewed twice and swallowed. Gloria gave me a strange look.

  “What are you doing, Elliott?” she said.

  “Huh?” I said, reaching for a third fry. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you eating your French fry down to your fingertips and then giving the nub to that man,” Gloria said. “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him before,” I explained. “I don’t know how he knows I’m here or how he manages to find me, but almost every time I come here to eat, he shows up and waits for my French fry nubs, and I let him have them.”

  “Why?” Gloria said.

  I plucked another fry from the bag, bit it off at finger level and then held the remainder up. “Because my fingers touched that part and I don’t want to put that part in my mouth, so I give it to him.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to wash your hands?” Gloria said.

  “Even then,” I said, “I’d still give the nub away, or leave it. At least this way it doesn’t get wasted.” I handed the fourth nub to the bum, who promptly ate it and then smiled an almost toothless smile at me.”

  “Why haven’t I noticed this little quirk of yours before?” Gloria said.

  “Probably because I haven’t eaten French fries in front of you before,” I said.