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

by Bill Bernico

  “The eight thousand dollar offer stands,” Wentworth said, “Even if you get the information I need in your first hour there. And we can talk about an additional two thousand dollar bonus if and when you accept my offer. Can I count on your help and discretion, Mr. Cooper?”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding and then extended my hand. “I’m all yours for the next four weeks, Mr. Wentworth,” I said. “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  “Seven-thirty in the personnel office,” Wentworth said. “I can’t have you just showing up on the job without going through the proper channels. The company grapevine would leak that information back to the workers even before you took your place among them. We’ll get you all the necessary paperwork and then you can start working the floor at eight o’clock.”

  “Working the floor?” I said. “Doing what?”

  “Third floor foreman,” Wentworth said. “That way you’ll be able to float among all the different work stations and visit with all the employees on the third floor.”

  “Looks like you’ve thought of everything,” Mr. Wentworth. “Do I get a uniform, or can I wear my own clothes?”

  “I’ll provide you with slacks and blue shirts with your name on the pocket,” Wentworth said. “You will not be able to use your real name for obvious reasons.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “I have a file with a thousand and one aliases I could use. How does Fred Nethel sound? Or maybe Bob N. Frapples. I always liked that one. No wait, I know—Curt N. Rodd.” I giggles to myself.

  “Are you about finished, Mr. Cooper?” Wentworth said. “I hope you’ll take a more serious attitude toward this job than you do toward an undercover name. No, I already have a name selected for you to use for this assignment. I told our head of personnel to expect a Mr. Carl Abernathy and to send you to the third floor of the pottery building when they finish processing your paperwork.”

  We both stood, shook hands and walked toward the office door. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning, Mr. Wentworth,” I said.

  Wentworth nodded and turned for the door but paused in the doorway. He turned back to me. “Fred Nethel,” he said. “I just got it.”

  Even a stuffed shirt like that had to laugh at the I Love Lucy reference. I closed the door behind him and took a seat behind my desk again to call Bud. He may not think that this is much of a semi-retirement after he’s done talking with me, but that’s the way the private eye game goes sometimes. I filled Gloria in when I got home from work and stressed how important it was that she not share any of this information with anyone else. She agreed and I could almost see the wheels in her head turning as she calculated what she could buy with the eight thousand dollars when my month was up.

  “Do you know what he’ll have you doing once you get there?” Gloria said.

  “Hell,” I said. “I’m not even sure what they all make there. I suppose it would be in my best interest to look him up on the web and get an idea of what comes out of his factory.”

  “Wentworth Industries,” Gloria said. “Isn’t that the company that makes ball bearings for the aircraft industry?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re probably thinking of Walworth Bearing Works in Van Nuys.” I sat at the desktop computer in my study and typed in Wentworth Industries. I got more than four hundred links to the company. I clicked on the first link, the one with the most relevance, and learned that J. Taylor Wentworth owned and ran a six-hundred-million dollar company that produced plumbing fixtures. Suddenly I got a surge of optimism for the assignment. Every time I stood at a urinal I was staring at the Wentworth logo. They also made toilet bowls, bath tubs, sinks, faucets and small engines. I never quite got the connections between taking a bath and running a small engine, but they apparently sold more than ninety million dollars worth of engines every year.

  I turned to Gloria. “What does it say on the faucets in the kitchen?” I said.

  Gloria looked at me as if I’d grown a third ear. “What?” she said.

  “Just go look at the brand name on the kitchen faucets,” I said.

  She did and then turned back toward me. “Wentworth,” she said and immediately got the connection herself. “That’s the Wentworth who hired you this morning?”

  “J. Taylor himself,” I said. “And now that I know what his net worth is, eight thousand dollars sounds like pocket change.”

  “Don’t you do anything to screw that up, Elliott,” Gloria said. “It may be pocket change to him, but we could really use that money.”

  “I know,” I said. “But eight thousand out of that guy’s pocket it like four cents out of mine. He wouldn’t even miss the eight grand.”

  “Elliott,” Gloria said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “Don’t do anything to screw it up. Got it.”

  I slept intermittently that night, thoughts of eight thousand dollars and maybe even ten thousand dollars dancing around in my head. I’d have to be one hell of an actor to convince those lifers at the factory that I was one of them and to try and gain their trust. When I awoke the following morning I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. It would be a real challenge not to let that show in the personnel office.

  I arrived at the Wentworth factory at seven-twenty. I spent the next ten minutes walking from one end of the parking lot to the building. There must have been thirty acres of cars all crammed into that vast paved and striped car corral. By the time I got to the personnel office I was winded.

  “Good morning,” the woman behind the counter said as I entered.

  “Good morning,” I said, half out of breath. “That’s quite the parking lot you have out there.”

  “Oh goodness,” the woman said. “You didn’t walk that whole thing, did you?”

  I nodded, bent over with my hands on my knees now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Someone should have told you that we have a shuttle bus that makes the rounds every few minutes. Won’t you have a seat, Mr.?”

  “Abernathy,” I said, remembering my agreement with Wentworth. “Carl Abernathy. I have an appointment to see the personnel manager.”

  “That would be me,” the woman said, extending her hand toward me. “Lois Kohler. Won’t you come in, Mr. Abernathy?”

  Lois had me in and out of that personnel office within twenty-five minutes. Even after I explained that I’d had no experience as a foreman with a plumbing fixture company she still hired me. I guess Mr. Wentworth had gotten to her ahead of me.

  “My experience as a foreman,” I explained, “Was with a company that made outdoor lighting fixtures. I don’t imagine the procedure would be that much different with plumbing fixtures. Managing workers is pretty much the same procedure with any product, I guess.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Mr. Abernathy,” Lois said. She handed me a temporary badge. “Here, pin this on your shirt collar. Tomorrow we’ll have a permanent one made up for you with your picture on it. You can go anywhere in the plant with this pass.”

  “Thank you,” I said, pinning the badge on my short collar.

  “You’re welcome,” Mr. Abernathy,” Lois said. “Your next stop will be the pottery building.”

  “The pottery building?” I said.

  “Yes,” Lois said, pointing out the window at a tall, four-story structure several hundred yards in the distance. “You’ll talk to the shift supervisor, Leonard Sanders. He’ll show you where to go and what to do.”

  I looked out the window at the building in the distance and then turned back to Lois. “Do I walk to that building or is there another shuttle for that, too?”

  “Neither,” Lois said, handing me a key on a plastic fob. “Take that golf cart outside the door and just park it outside the pottery building. Leave the key in it and I’ll have someone pick it up later today. Good luck, Mr. Abernathy.”

  “Thank you,” I said and left the personnel office. I slid beneath the wheel of the golf cart, turned the key on and stepped on
the accelerator. The cart glided noiselessly through the paved streets of the factory grounds. It took me just two minutes to make it to the pottery building. I walked into the only door I saw and from there into another section of the building where forklift drivers carried pallets of bags full of some sort of powder back and forth across the wooden floor.

  I stopped the first guy I came across and asked where I could find Mr. Sanders. He pointed to an elevator at the other end of the room and told me to take it to the third floor. He said that Mr. Sanders would be in his office just as I stepped off the elevator. I found Sanders’ office with no problem. His office walls were only half walls, the bottom half being traditional wood and wallboard while the top half was mostly glass so he could see out onto the production floor.

  I knocked on the door and was motioned in by the man behind the desk, whom I assumed to be Sanders. “Mr. Sanders?” I said.

  Sanders nodded and motioned for me to come in and have a seat. “You must be Carl Abernathy,” Sanders said. “Personnel called and told me you were on your way. Have a seat, Mr. Abernathy.”

  “Please,” I said. “Call me Carl.”

  “All right, Carl,” Sanders said. “So you’re going to be my new foreman, eh? Welcome aboard. I hope you last longer than the last three foremen we’ve had this year.”

  I sighed, not sure how to answer a statement like that.

  Sanders picked up on my hesitation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to scare you away before you even start. It’s just that the job can be a little hectic at times. Those other three foremen just didn’t have the right stuff for the job.” He paged through a manila folder and plucked one of the forms out and read it. “But I see by your application that you’ve had foreman experience at a lighting fixture company. That’ll be useful to you in this job.”

  “I already told Miss Kohler that I don’t know much about plumbing fixtures,” I explained.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sanders said. “It’s kind of like owning a computer. There are thousands of things a person would have to know to be considered a computer expert, but if all you want to do is look up stock quotes, you can learn that in a few minutes. Same thing in the plumbing fixture business. Take this company, for example. We make cast iron bath tubs and sinks in the foundry building. We make porcelain toilets, sinks and urinals here in the pottery building. Over in the brass building we make faucets, drains and every other kind of metal accessory for our products. And then there’s the engine plant. We produce small engines for lawn mowers, small machinery and whatnot.

  My head was swimming with all the information I’d just soaked up and it must have shown on my face.

  Sanders held up a hand, showing me his palm. “But just like computers, you’ll only be working with one aspect of this business. Never mind learning anything about cast iron fixtures or brass accessories or even small engines. All you’ll need to learn about this company is the products that come out of this pottery building—the clay products.”

  I let out a deep breath. “Thank goodness,” I said. Suddenly it had occurred to me that this job held a bit of irony for me. Here I was working with clay products while in my other life, I’d had inherited my business from my father, Clay Cooper. I found that somewhat comforting.

  “Come on,” Sanders said. “I’ll give you the fifty cent tour.” He got out of his chair and walked me to the door. “Over here is where the fixtures are first cast in their molds. That stuff the men are pouring into the molds is called slurry. It’s a thin, runny clay that takes the shape of the fixture when it get poured into the mold. Those molds will sit for a while before the workers flip them upside down and pull the plug at the bottom, draining the middle mass out of the mold. That’s how we get hollow interior parts in things like toilet bowls and sinks.”

  “Fascinating,” was all I could think to say at this point, though most of it went right over my head.

  Sanders led me further through the operation, stopping at another area where men with buckets of water and sponges were wiping down recently cast toilet bowls. “These workers are smoothing the seams from the cast fixtures. They’ll also add other cast pieces to these fixtures to make the complete product before it goes on to the next phase of drying.”

  We walked down the first aisle to a long tunnel-like structure. “This is where the toilets and sinks and urinals dry before they go into the kiln,” Sanders explained.

  Overhead I could see a maze of tracks that hung from the ceiling like single upside down railroad tracks. Shelves hung on wheels from those tracks and gray clay fixtures sat on those shelves. Workers in full-length aprons pushed the hanging shelves into the drying tunnel and then walked back for more product.

  We walked over to the far end of the third floor and saw two gigantic doors swing open. A sudden blast of hot air swept past me and I flinched.

  “This is the kiln,” Sanders explained. “Once the fixtures come out of the kiln, they’ll travel down the track to the elevator and from there they get transported to the enamel shop where they get their finish coat. But, like I said earlier, that’s someone else’s job. You won’t have to get involved in that process. So, that’s all there is to your job. Just make sure the product gets from the slurry stage to the kiln with no problems. Think you can handle that?”

  I nodded. “Once I get used to seeing the procedure go through all the phases a few times I’m sure it’ll come easier to me,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Sanders said. “I have to go to a supervisor’s meeting so I’ll leave it up to you to introduce yourself to the guys as you deal with them. Glad to have you with us, Carl.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sanders,” I said, and walked back the way I came to where the procedure began. The process of slurry to kiln was repeated three times a day before the second shift came on and took over. I walked back to the slurry area and learned that there were six floors, as they were called. Each two-man team worked their floor, filling the molds, draining the interiors, breaking the molds apart, sponge finishing the cast fixtures and sending them on their way down the line. The first two men I encountered were in the process of turning their molds upside down in an effort to evenly distribute the slurry inside. I walked along beside the pair, watching them perform like a well-choreographed dance team, totally in step with their partner.

  I nodded to the two men. “Good morning,” I said. “I’m the new foreman, Carl Abernathy. I just started this morning, so bear with me while I get familiar with the processes here.” The two men kept at their job, nodding in return but not saying anything. They had twenty molds to turn over and I waited until they’d turned the last one before I spoke again. “Don’t let me interrupt you guys. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

  Both men went back over the twenty molds, pulling the bottom plug as excess slurry spilled out onto the floor. When they’d pulled the last plug they both walked over to where I stood and wiped their hands on their aprons.

  One of the men was tall, probably six foot five, while his partner was seven inches shorter, but very muscular. The tall one was the first to speak. He extended his hand toward me. “Warren Stromberg,” he said. “I hope you didn’t think we were ignoring you earlier. It’s just that this part of the procedure takes enormous concentration. We don’t even talk to each other until this step is finished.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “And don’t let me interrupt you, but I’ll be watching closely for the next few days just so I can get familiar with the procedures.”

  “That’s the best way to learn,” the shorter of the two said, and then held his hand out for me to shake. “Joey Getz.”

  “Joey, Warren,” I said. “Nice to meet you both. How long have you been with the company?”

  Joey scratched his head and thought for a moment. “Eight, no, nine years,” he said. “At least nine years here in the pottery. I transferred over from the foundry.”

  “Didn’t like it there?” I said.

  “Clos
est thing to hell you can experience without actually dying,” Joey said. “I was so glad when the transfer came through.”

  “How about you, Warren?” I said.

  “Twenty-two years this fall,” he said. “I guess you could call me a lifer.” He glanced up at the clock and the exchanged a look with Joey. Without another word, Warren tossed his head to one side and walked back over to the molds, which had finished draining by now. In yet another smooth motion, both men set about removing the wedges that held the steel bands around the toilet molds. The metal bands slid down like a woman dropping her girdle. The two men immediately pulled the two pieces of the mold apart and set the rough cast toilet on the shelf, where it would be wiped smooth with a wet sponge. Warren looked over at me while he moved on to the next mold and said, “At this stage the toilet is considered to be in the green stage.”

  “Green?” I said. “It looks gray to me.”

  “Green is just a term we use for the toilet until it is fired in the kiln,” Joey added.

  “Got it,” I said. “See, I’m learning already.”

  “After a couple weeks of watching the process,” Warren said, “You’ll be making toilets in your sleep.”

  Once the two men had completed removing the green fixtures from the molds, they went back to each mold piece and wiped it clean with a wet sponge, ready for the next round of slurry to be poured into it. I looked over at Warren. “Did the last foreman have an office?” I said.

  Warren pointed to the corner of the area where a small ten by ten room sat, surrounded by glass.

  “Thanks,” I said and walked to the office. I opened the door and immediately smelled stale air from a room that had been closed off for too long. The desk, chair and filing cabinet had a thick layer of pottery dust on them. I found a long brush lying on the filing cabinet. It reminded me of a wallpaper hanger’s brush. I tapped the dust off of it and then brushed as much of the dust off the desk and chair as I could before I sat.