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

by Bill Bernico

  Gloria looked it over for a few minutes, taking in all the detail before walking up closer and touching the wall with her finger. She pulled it back and noticed her fingertip had a red stain on it. The paint was still wet. She couldn’t have missed these guys by more than a few minutes, she thought. She looked both ways up the alley before hurrying north. She’d gone less than half a block and stopped, wondering what she was doing in a dark alley at this time of night. She decided to get back to the Fountain Avenue and walk back to the precinct, where her car was parked.

  As soon as she turned to leave, she spotted the green plastic hanging out of the dumpster that sat in the alley. She stopped and took a closer look. Gloria lifted the green plastic material and stared into the bag at half a dozen empty spray cans. She pulled the bag out of the dumpster, took a closer look at its contents and decided to take it along with her. She carried the bag of cans back to her car and dropped it in her trunk. She’d come back with it in the morning and see if Eric could extract any prints off the bag or its contents.

  Gloria got home shortly after one in the morning and decided not to wake Elliott. She got undressed and quietly slipped between the sheets and was asleep shortly after her head hit the pillow.

  Elliott was already up and dressed by the time she woke the next morning. Her daughter, Olivia was sitting at the kitchen table finishing her bowl of cereal when Gloria came in and sat next to her.

  Olivia looked up between bites and said, “Dad said to tell you he’d see you when you got to the office.”

  Gloria looked up at the wall clock. It was just after nine. “How long ago did he leave?” she said.

  “About an hour ago,” Olivia said. “He didn’t want to wake you, I guess.”

  “Gees,” Gloria said, “I’d better get dressed and get down there.”

  “Don’t you want to eat something first?” Olivia said.

  “I’ll get something on the way,” Gloria told her.

  It was nine thirty-five when Gloria walked into the office to find me at my desk reading the morning paper. “Morning,” she said, her voice a little rough. She laid her purse on her desk and slipped out of her coat, hanging it on the rack.

  I looked up from my paper. “Well, hello there, stranger. You sleep all right?”

  “I guess,” Gloria said.

  “So tell me how it went last night. Did you catch up with the urban artists?”

  “Couldn’t have missed them by more than a few minutes,” she explained. “I found their latest creation and the paint was still wet.”

  “Sure it was theirs?” I said.

  “Same signature in the lower right—TMB. Had to be them.”

  “So now what?”

  “So now I start again tonight,” Gloria explained. “They’ll be back.” She stared off into space for a moment.

  “What is it?” I said.

  Gloria snapped her fingers. “I just remembered. I found a trash bag full of empty spray paint cans and two pair of surgical gloves. I’m pretty sure it’s theirs.” She slipped back into her coat, grabbed her purse and headed for the door again.

  “Now where are you going?” I said.

  “I have to get that bag of cans over to Eric,” Gloria explained. “I’ll bet we get some prints off either the contents of off the bag itself. I’ll check back with you later.”

  Before I could say another word, she was out the door and down the hall.

  Gloria pulled two tissues from her purse and grabbed the garbage bag at the top, carrying it into the police station. Eric’s office door was open and Gloria walked in holding the bag. She set it on the floor in front of Eric’s desk.

  “Is it trash day already?” Eric said. “Here, let me empty my trash into there before you go around to the rest of the offices.”

  “Funny,” Gloria said. “Don’t give up your day job for the comedy circuit.”

  “What do you have there?” Eric said.

  “I found this in a dumpster in the alley behind the Fountain Avenue Garage,” Gloria explained. “That garage now has a new mural on its back wall. The paint was still wet when I got there, so those two must have left just minutes before I got there. I found this bag of empty spray cans a little further down the alley. I figured maybe your lab guys could lift some prints off some of this stuff.”

  “Let me take a look,” Eric said, opening the bag with the tip of his pencil. He looked down and saw the cans, along with two pair of gloves. He turned his pencil around and lifted one of the gloves with the eraser end and held it at eye level. He turned to Gloria. “I doubt you’ll find any prints on the cans,” he said. “Looks like they wore gloves when they sprayed. Look at the right index finger of this glove. It’s got paint residue on the outside.”

  “I’m more interested on what on the inside of that glove,” Gloria said.

  “Prints,” Eric said, smiling. “Good thinking.”

  Gloria pointed at the garbage bag. “And they dropped their cans into the bag when they finished, along with their gloves. Once the gloves were inside the garbage bag, they had to lift the bag into the dumpster with their bare hands. Should be some prints on the outside of the bag as well.”

  Eric sat behind his desk again and picked up his desk phone. He dialed the extension of the crime lab down the hall and waited. “Ron, would you come to my office and pick up some potential evidence? I need you to see if you can get any prints off any of it as soon as possible.” He hung up the phone again and smiled at Gloria. “This could be the lead we need to find these guys. Good work.”

  *****

  Shortly after noon that day two foot patrolmen were walking their beat on Carlos Avenue, just north of Hollywood Boulevard when they came upon a gruesome sight. Lying in the alley was a Mexican male, probably no older than eighteen. Grasped in his dead hand was a spray can. On the wall near the body the two cops could make out several gang signs that had been recently put there.

  The first cop, a veteran named O’Malley, squatted down to get a closer look at the victim. Someone had shot the kid in the back and blood had pooled around the body. O’Malley plucked a wallet out of the victim’s back pocket and opened it to the driver’s license window. “Juan Gonzalez,” he said to his partner. “Probably marking his gang’s territory. Looks like some other gang member might have taken exception to this and let him have it.”

  The wound was plainly visible as his partner, a rookie named McCorkle, stepped up to get a closer look. “Looks like he was shot with a golf gun,” McCorkle remarked, pointing at the wound in the kid’s back.

  “A golf gun?” O’Malley said, puzzled.

  McCorkle smirked “Yeah, it sure made a hole in Juan.”

  O’Malley stood now, his face just inches from McCorkle’s. “You think this is funny, McCorkle?”

  The smile dropped off the rookie’s face. “No sir,” he said nervously.

  “Then put a sock in it and keep your yap shut, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  O’Malley called it in and told the dispatcher to send an ambulance and a team from the crime lab. It took the ambulance just ten minutes to pull into the alley. Another van with ‘Los Angeles County Crime Lab’ printed on the side pulled in behind the ambulance. The ambulance attendant did a cursory examination and declared the victim to be deceased. Before they loaded it onto the gurney, a man from the crime lab snapped several photos of the victim and the scene. At O’Malley’s request he also snapped several photos of the gang sign graffiti on the wall.

  “Would you make sure I get copies of those last photos of the graffiti?” O’Malley said.

  “Sure thing,” the photog assured him.

  O’Malley followed the ambulance back to the morgue and then walked further down the hall to Lieutenant Anderson’s office. He rapped on the door and entered. Eric looked up from his paperwork at the veteran cop.

  “Yes?” Eric said. “What is it?”

  O’Malley removed his hat and stepped into the office. “Sir, you
said you wanted to know about any gang-related activities. Well, my partner and I came upon a dead body in the alley off Carlos Avenue and the kid was found with a spray can in his hand. Looks like he’d just left his territorial marks on the wall when he was shot. Thought you should know.”

  “Good work, Sergeant,” Eric said. “Did you get any photos at the scene?”

  “The crime lab took a couple,” O’Malley said. “I can pick up my copies in the lab any time. Would you like copies?”

  “Absolutely. Can you go over there and get them now?”

  “I’ll be back in five minutes,” O’Malley told him. “Excuse me, sir.” O’Malley made his way down another hall to the crime lab and found the photographer hunched over his computer, looking at his most recent photos. On the screen O’Malley could see the spray painted graffiti from the crime scene. The photog slipped a jump drive into his laptop and made copies for the cop, who promptly brought them back to Eric’s office.

  Eric slipped the jump drive into his desktop computer and clicked the file names. The graffiti photo appeared on the screen. From a file drawer somewhere behind him, Eric produced a three-ring binder with laminated sheets inside. Each sheet held a eight by eleven photo of a gang sign along with a tag identifying which gang it signified. He flipped through the sheets until he found one that matched the image on his screen.

  “Got it,” Eric said to O’Malley. “That’s the one.”

  “Which gang does it belong to?” O’Malley said.

  Eric turned the binder toward the sergeant and pointed. “Street Kings,” he said.

  “Are there other gangs bordering that neighborhood?” O’Malley said.

  “You’re one jump ahead of me, Sergeant. The next closest gang who might want to claim that territory would be Meurte Soldato.”

  “Meurte Soldato?” O’Malley said, puzzled.

  “Death Soldiers,” Eric said.

  “And it looks like they mean business,” O’Malley remarked.

  Eric gave O’Malley a stern look. “Round ‘em up and bring ‘em in, Sergeant. All of ‘em. I’ll send backup your way in a few minutes.”

  “Right away, sir.” O’Malley excused himself and left Eric’s office, returning to Officer McCorkle in the patrol car.

  “Let’s roll, McCorkle,” the sergeant said.

  *****

  Ron Simpson returned from the crime lab in thirty minutes with several papers in his hand. He handed them to Eric and waited. “We got two partials on the trash bag, but the real prizes were inside the gloves. We got several full prints from all four gloves. We were able to identify two different subjects from those prints.”

  Eric read through the report and then looked up at Simpson. “Jose and Jorge Gomez,” he said. “I’ll get an APB out them right away. Good work, Ron.”

  Ron left the room as Eric picked up his phone and called Gloria at Cooper Investigations. She picked up on the first ring. “Gloria, it’s Eric. We caught a break in the case. Those gloves you brought in gave us full prints of two suspects. We have an APB out for them now. Unless they’re in hiding, we should have them in custody by tomorrow.”

  “So you still want me to check that neighborhood tonight?” Gloria said.

  “Unless you hear from me that we picked them up, you may have to go one more night. You up for it?”

  “That’s what you hired me for,” Gloria said confidently. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.” She hung up and looked up at me.

  “You going out again tonight?” I said.

  “Unless Eric calls to tell me that they picked up the two suspects,” Gloria explained. “I hope I find them first.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can explain things to them,” Gloria said. “I don’t think these two are in the same league as those gang animals. You can see the difference immediately when you compare the garbage left on the walls by the gangs versus the artwork these two are capable of. They just need to channel their energies in the right direction. And I’m sure the local merchants would agree to let them use their walls if for no other reason than to keep the gangs from defiling them.”

  “You may have something there, Gloria,” I said. “But still, be careful. You can’t always tell the players without a score card.”

  “What about you?” Gloria said.

  “What about me?” I replied.

  “How are things progressing on the Cummings case?”

  “I should be able to wrap it all up by tomorrow night,” I said. “Mr. Cummings is satisfied that the evidence I collected so far will be enough to insure a no contest divorce from his wandering wife.”

  “If you have enough up to this point, what do you have left to do that takes until tomorrow night?”

  “I’m supposed to interview two more principles from his wife’s side,” I explained. “More of a formality than anything else. I should be home by six-thirty or so at the latest.”

  “Then I guess I’ll see you at home tonight around five-thirty.” Gloria got up from behind her desk and headed for the door. “I’m going home now and catch a few winks before I have to go out again tonight.” She came over to my desk and gave me a quick kiss before leaving me alone in the office for the rest of the day.

  It was just a few minutes before eleven as I was getting ready for bed when Gloria slipped into her coat and promised to be back a few hours from now. She drove her car to the parking lot on Gower Street just south of the boulevard. She had the Gomez Brothers’ address Eric had provided but doubted they’d be home this time of night. She was pretty sure that they knew the police were looking for them and that they probably had another place to stay.

  Near the corner of Gower and Selma Gloria spotted a clothing store whose front door faced the intersection. She wondered if the numbers above the door represented a Gower address or a Selma address. She checked the numbers on either side of the store and found that the number sequence matched those on Gower. Around the side of the store sat a small parking lot and next to that was the east wall of the clothing store. It had just one small window near the middle of the otherwise vacant space. It could easily become the next masterpiece for the Gomez Brothers. Gloria crossed over to the south side of Selma Avenue and sat in the darkened doorway of a vacant building. She was playing a hunch.

  The hunch paid off twenty minutes later as she watched the parking lot from where she sat. Two young men in baggy pants slowly walked past the parking lot and then doubled back, sizing up the blank wall. They looked this way and that up both streets before they settled in next to the building and unloaded the spray cans from their pockets.

  Gloria watched intently as one of the youths took a spray can and outlined a rough shape near the middle of the space. He went back and filled in some of the blanks with several different colored paints. Meanwhile, the other youth was busily spraying all along the bottom edge of the building in a bright green color. As he made his way from one end of the building to the other, he was careful to step around the first youth, their efforts seeming almost choreographed.

  Gloria eased herself out of the doorway and silently made her way around the opposite side of the clothing store. She soft-footed to the parking lot and positioned herself directly behind the two artists, who were so engrossed in their creation that they hadn’t noticed Gloria until she spoke.

  “Freeze right there,” Gloria said in her authoritative voice. She hadn’t yet drawn the revolver from her belt holster. The two youths stood like statues where they were and waited. “Set the cans down on the pavement and walk backwards toward the sound of my voice.” The two did as they were told, keeping their eyes facing forward. When they were within ten feet of where Gloria stood, she instructed them to sit cross-legged on the pavement, facing the building. Both of them complied.

  Gloria walked around the two artists and stood facing them now, her hands on her hips. She hiked one thumb over her shoulder and said, “Not bad, boys. Not bad at all. Ever consider doing this professionally?”


  The two looked at each other, puzzled by this seemingly unarmed woman and wondering why they were blindly following her orders. The older looking of the two slapped his companion on the shoulder and started to get up.

  “Stay where you are,” Gloria barked.

  “Yeah?” the older of the two said. “What you gonna do about it if we just get up and leave?”

  “Try it and see what happens,” Gloria said, switching to a Tae-Kwon-Do stance.

  The two looked at each other again and settled back down onto the pavement. “So what you want?” the older one said.

  “I just want to talk,” Gloria explained. “That’s all. Can you sit still for five minutes and hear me out? When I’m finished, if you still want to leave, you’re free to go.”

  The older youth looked both ways before settling his eyes on Gloria again. “On the level?” he said.

  Gloria held up both palms. “You have my word on it.” She gestured toward the older of the two and said, “Let’s start with your name. Who are you?”

  The older one paused for a moment and said, “Pepe Villareal.”

  “No,” Gloria said. “I mean which one are you, Jose or Jorge Gomez?” Again the two looked at each other and then back at Gloria. “Come on, you’re burning up my five minutes. Which one are you?”

  The older one sighed. “Jorge,” he said.

  Gloria gestured toward the younger of the two and added, “Then you would be Jose, I take it.”

  Jose nodded.

  “Look,” Gloria said, “I’m not here to arrest you or make a stink about what you two are doing to the buildings in this neighborhood. Actually, I’ve been hired by the police just to find you and present you with an idea that we all came up with. Now, I’ve seen some of the gang graffiti around here and I have to tell you, I think it looks like absolute garbage. And it’s probably scaring a few customers away from some of these businesses.” She hiked her thumb over her shoulder again. “Your work, on the other hand, adds a little bright spot to an otherwise scary neighborhood.”