by Bill Bernico
Eddie walked the alleys, pulled all the doors, checked the windows for burglaries and pulled the front doors all night long. It was four o’clock in the morning and Eddie still had two hours to go until the end of shift. It was still dark yet when he walked up the alley alongside the building, checking the windows with his flashlight. As Eddie got near the back of the building, a man came walking out from behind the building, right across Eddie’s path.
The man turned and looked at Eddie and said, “Good morning, officer,” cool as anything and just kept walking.
Eddie said, “Good morning.”
The man just kept walking with a cardboard box under one arm. Eddie figured the man was just a factory worker walking home after his shift, but turned and followed him out to the street to find out. The man got out to the street and crossed it. It didn’t look to Eddie like the man was going to any car so he hollered to him to stop so he could to talk to him and verify his identity.
As soon as Eddie did, the man took off running, still carrying the box. He carried it for about a half block and then dropped it. As Eddie came running by, he looked into the box and saw mainly just some bottles of liquor in there. Eddie was suspicious that the man had done something but he didn’t know what. He certainly didn’t want to shoot him because at that point Eddie had no knowledge that the man had committed any crime.
Eddie chased the man a couple of blocks when he turned to run between a private home and another small machine shop down there. Across the back of the lot there was a high cyclone fence there and Eddie thought he had him penned in there. As Eddie was chasing him towards this fence he yelled, “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” and I fired one shot in the air.
Instead of stopping, the man just climbed up the fence and grabbed the top of it and went over. When he did, Eddie was right behind him and could see that the man had cut both palms of his hands open from grabbing the barbs on top of the fence. He fell down just the other side of Eddie. Eddie could have shot him in the back as he was chasing him, shot him on the other side of the fence, but he still didn’t know if he committed a crime.
The man took off running again behind the factory, so Eddie cut back around the other way to run around to cut him off on the other side. When he got around the factory, the man was nowhere in sight. Right across the street there was a private home and the owner had a large garden with high stalks of corn and tomato plants.
Eddie had his gun and his flashlight out, looking all through the garden and couldn’t find him. The property also had a small garage with thick lilac bushes all along the side of the garage. Eddie was peering in there with his flashlight and spreading the branches, looking for him. He thought he was seeing the side wall of the garage, but didn’t realize that there was a solid board fence that was between the garage and the bushes. There was only about two feet of space between the garage and this fence. The man had crawled in that narrow space and Eddie didn’t know it because he couldn’t see him.
Eddie knocked on the door of the house so he could stand there and keep an eye on the area. Eddie figured the man couldn’t have gotten away from there. A man came to the door and Eddie asked him to call the department and send me some help. The home owner said he didn’t have a phone, so Eddie knocked on another door and the lady who answered this door called the police and they sent squads down to help in the search.
Eddie told them what happened and that the man was still in the area. The squad started searching all over the neighborhood. One squad checked the Eagles Club and found out that he had piled up garbage cans in the back of the building to get up to a high window where he broke it gain entrance. In the box that the man had dropped when he was fleeing from Eddie was the radio that they kept on the back bar of the tavern. There were also bottles Hagen Hague Whiskey, money, and jewelry.
The Eagles Club sat two blocks from the factory. There was also a public parking lot there and Eddie found a Chevy sedan parked down there all alone. Figuring that it might be involved in this burglary, the other officer raised the hood and took the distributor cap off and took the rotor out.
A search was made of the area but the man Eddie had been chasing was never found. Eddie was asked to return to the station to make out a report for the sergeant. When he finished, Eddie went back on his beat and tried to think where the guy might go. There was a local hotel about three blocks away and Eddie thought the man might have gone there. Eddie went to the hotel and talked to the night clerk and asked him if anybody had come in there fitting that description.
The clerk told Eddie that he hadn’t seen anyone fitting that description. As if on cue, the door opened up and the burglar walked right into the hotel. He had removed his blue and white plaid shirt. He had dirt all over his white t-shirt and both of his hands were ripped open. Just as cool as a cucumber, the man looked at Eddie walked up right along side of him to the night clerk.
“Do you have a Georgia White registered here?” the man asked the clerk.
All Eddie had to do was reach out and grab the man’s wrist. He slapped the cuffs on him and placed him under arrest. Eddie used the hotel phone to call for a squad car and took him down to the station. Eddie later found out that this guy was a hardened criminal who had served a lot of prison time. He was from San Diego and the first time he comes to Los Angeles to pull a job, he gets nailed. Sometimes it just works out like that.
Eddie later learned that the man had crawled back in the area between the garage and the fence and that he had more money and jewelry from the Eagles Club in the shirt he had taken off. He had scratched a hole in the dirt and had buried his shirt there. Eddie recovered the items and brought them back to the station.
The man Eddie had arrested was quite a hardened criminal and a good guy to catch. It was the one of the first positive marks on Eddie’s record and he felt proud for having done his job well.
The chief did call Eddie in the next day and congratulated him on a good arrest. “Eddie,” the chief said, “I’m especially glad that you didn’t shoot that man at the time, because that’s bad publicity for the department.”
Eddie explained that he could have shot but didn’t because he wasn’t sure at that point that the man had committed a crime. From that night on, Eddie was able to continue patrolling alone if he wanted to. He was moving up in the department and felt he was really making his mark in the job that he loved.
It had been eight years since Eddie had joined the police department and he was now a sergeant on the day shift. The country had been drawn into another war eleven months earlier when the Japanese bombed our naval base in Pearl Harbor. The day after the bombing, Eddie, along with thousands of other men, hurried down to enlist in one of the branches of the military. Eddie was ready and willing to do his part to serve his country, but was not able. An inner ear problem kept him out of active duty. He’d have to be content to defend his country on the home front.
Monday, the twenty-third day of November, 1946 found Eddie in his office sifting through paperwork that had backed up on his desk. There came a knock on his door that broke the trance he’d had on a single form that lay in front of him.
“Come in,” Eddie said, not looking up from his papers.
It was the receptionist from the personnel department, Gladys Hayes. “Excuse me, Sergeant Heller,” she said, stepping aside to let another man enter Eddie’s office. “I’d like you to meet a candidate who applied for the patrolman’s job. Sergeant Heller, this is Matthew Cooper.”
Cooper leaned forward and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant,” Cooper said.
Gladys handed Eddie Cooper’s application. “I thought you might like to look at this one yourself,” she said. “Matthew comes to us with experience on the Chicago P.D.”
“Thank you, Gladys,” Eddie said. Gladys closed the door behind her and returned to her office.
Cooper nervously shifted from one foot to the other, not sure where to look or what to say first.
Eddie gestured to the chair acro
ss from his desk. “Please, Mr. Cooper, won’t you have a seat?” he said.
Cooper sat, crossed his legs, uncrossed them then crossed them the other way. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He cleared his throat.
“Relax,” Eddie said. “Unlike a trip to the dentist, I’ll try to make this quick and painless.” He looked down at Matt’s application. “I see here you served two and a half years with the Chicago department.”
Before Matt could answer Sergeant Heller got a phone call. After he’d hung up he looked at me said,” I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper, but I have to meet with the captain right away. I’m sorry. Please follow me, I’ll take to Sergeant Hollister’s office. He can do the interview for me.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said, in as professional a voice as he could muster.
Sergeant Heller led me down the hall to another office. He didn’t bother knocking before he opened the door and faced another officer with three stripes on his shoulder. “Dan,” Heller said, “I was supposed to interview Mr. Cooper for the patrolman’s job, but the captain wants to see me right away. Could you do it for me?” Eddie handed Hollister my application.
“Sure, Eddie,” Hollister said and then turned to me. “Come on in.”
“Mr. Cooper,” the sergeant said, extending his hand. “My name’s Sergeant Daniel Hollister, pleased to meet you. Won’t you come into my office?”
Matt followed the sergeant into his office and sat where Hollister directed him, across from his desk. He took a seat behind the desk and glanced at the application again. A moment later he looked up at Matt.
“I see you spent eighteen months as a Chicago policeman, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “That was six years ago. Why so short a career and what have you been doing since then?”
“Well,” Matt said, “to answer the first part, the career only lasted a year and a half because of the sergeant I had to work under. As I told Officer Jerry Burns last week, I didn’t agree with my sergeant’s heavy handed approach to obtaining confessions and when I complained, he just made my job more difficult than necessary. I took it for a while, but then realized that life was just too short to be the object of anyone’s vengeance.”
“And did this sergeant have any reason to seek vengeance against you?” Hollister said.
“He thought so,” Matt said.
“And why do you think he resented you?” Hollister said.
“This may mean that I won’t get this job,” Matt told the sergeant, “But his name was Nick Burns and I tagged him with the nickname “Third Degree Burns” and I guess he took offense.”
Hollister tried to suppress a smile and then looked back down at my application. “And the second part of my question. What have you been doing since you left there?”
“Odd jobs, temporary jobs,” Matt said. “Making enough to get by and pay my bills, but not very satisfying. I managed to land a job with a plumbing company over on Franklin Avenue. I didn’t know anything about plumbing, but I did have experience working in an office setting so they made me the dispatcher. I took the calls and sent the plumbers out on their assignments.”
“And do you think police work in Hollywood would be any more satisfying than it was in Chicago?” Hollister said.
“Yes,” Matt said. “Especially in January and February.”
“I take it you couldn’t get used to the snow back east,” Hollister said.
“I was born in Chicago,” Matt said. “I grew up there and went to school there, so I didn’t mind the snow all those years. It’s just when I started patrolling the slippery streets with snow piled high on the curbs that it became a real pain. I figured I could do a better job of it out here.”
Hollister looked at Matt’s application, turned it over and then looked at the front again. He turned to Matt. “I don’t see any mention of a service record on your application.”
“That’s because I didn’t have any,” Matt said. “I went down to the recruiters the day after Pearl Harbor but they wouldn’t take me. 4-F because of flat feet.”
“I know cops are sometimes referred to as flatfeet,” Hollister said, “but that’s just a myth. You think that’ll hinder your ability to be a patrolman?”
Matt shook his head. “If they hadn’t told me had flat feet, I’d never have known,” he told Hollister. “It was never a problem for me in the past, but I guess the military is a lot fussier than the average citizen.”
Hollister made a few notes on my application and then looked up at Matt. “When can you start, Mr. Cooper?”
“Just like that?” Matt said. “No police academy, no training, no probation period?”
“Oh yes,” Hollister said. “You’ll have all of those things to look forward to. And the sooner you get them behind you, the sooner you can start patrolling the streets of Hollywood. Does it sound like something you’d like to do?”
Matt thought for a moment and realized that whatever course he was on now wasn’t working for him. This opportunity could be just what he needed for stability and security. “I can start tomorrow,” Matt said.
Sergeant Hollister walked Matt back to the personnel department and made sure he got all the proper forms and knew where to go next. “Good luck, Matt,” Hollister said before returning to his office.
It had been almost three years since Matt Cooper had joined the department and then one day out of the blue he turned in his resignation. Ten days later the resignation came across Eddie’s desk and he looked at it with wonder. He walked to Sergeant Hollister’s office, resignation in hand, and walked in.
Eddie laid the resignation on Hollister desk. “What happened, Dan?” Eddie said. “I thought Cooper was working out pretty well, and now this.”
“Seems like a little déjà vu, Eddie,” Hollister said. “He told me he’d left the Chicago department over a clash of personalities with his sergeant and now that’s the same excuse he’s using here. He claims he can’t get along with me and that he’d rather branch off on his own. Can you believe it? He’s even applied for a private investigator’s license and he plans on opening an office on the boulevard.”
“I guess you just can’t tell about some people,” Eddie said. “Looks like the problem with personalities was on him.”
Hollister shrugged. “At least I don’t have to put up with him anymore,” he said.
“Well, keep your eyes and ears open for another candidate,” Eddie said. “We have an empty patrolman position to fill.”
“Sure thing, Eddie,” Hollister said.
Eddie returned to his office and filed Matt Cooper’s resignation. He hoped the next candidate would view the job as a career and not just a stepping stone for something else they’d rather do.
The forties came and went and on the second day of August, 1950, after a relaxing day at home, Eddie returned to work as a lieutenant. Lieutenant Crandall had moved up the ranks and was now the precinct captain, leaving the vacancy that Eddie had filled. He figured he could handle the job for at least four more years before he had to make a decision about retiring while he was still young enough to enjoy life. He could put in his twenty, collect his pension and maybe take a part-time job if and when he got bored.
That afternoon Sergeant Collier came knocking at Eddie’s door. He stepped in and removed his hat. “Lieutenant,” Collier said, “I thought you might like to know that they found the Stevens boy.”
“You mean that kid whose parents reported him missing last week?” Eddie said. “Where’s he been hiding all this while?”
“A couple of kids were playing in that big open field just a block from the Stevens home,” Collier said. “They told their parents that they were climbing that big oak tree in the middle of the field and one of the kids saw something that scared him so much he fell out of the tree.”
“Was he hurt?” Eddie said.
“Not really,” Collier said. “He got up and ran right home.”
“What did he see in that tree that scared him so much?” Eddie said.
“He sa
w the Stevens boy hanging there with some kind of electrical cord wrapped around his neck,” Collier said. “He was there the whole time.”
“We spent six days and hundreds of man hours looking for him,” Eddie said. “We questioned all his friends and checked all his know hangouts and he was a block from home the whole time?” Eddie said. “Didn’t anyone check that empty field when he first went missing?”
“I guess the tree was so full of leaves that no one saw him hanging there,” Collier said by way of explanation. “Even if you look up into that tree from the ground, you couldn’t have see him. It was only when that other kid climbed up in it that he saw the Stevens kid.”
“Have his parents been notified yet?” Eddie said.
Collier nodded and sighed. “They’re on their way here to identify the body,” Collier said. “Jack Walsh has him in the morgue. He’s not a pretty site. The body’s all bloated and discolored. Those poor parents are going to have nightmares for the rest of their lives when they see him in this condition. Do they have to make the actual identification, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know what else we could do,” Eddie said. “He’s too young to have his fingerprints on file and they’d probably be too far decomposed anyway.”
“What about dental records?” Collier said. “There must be something we can do so the parents don’t have to go through this.”
“Did they find anything in the kid’s pockets?” Eddie said.
“Just a real short note,” Collier said. “All it said was that he was sorry and then he signed it. Of course, anyone could have written the note and put it in the kid’s pocket. That’s not enough to prove who the dead kid was.”
“Do you know if the kid had any distinguishing marks or scars that would make for a positive I.D.?” Eddie said. “Any broken bones that might be on record in some doctor’s office?”
“I can check,” Collier said, “But I wouldn’t be able to get the results before the parents got here.” Collier glanced at his watch. “They might even be here already. Maybe we should join Jack in the morgue so he doesn’t have to face this alone.”