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

by Bill Bernico

  The elevator opened to the lobby and Dobbs headed back to his van. Eric and I parted company in the parking lot and went our separate ways. I got home shortly after seven to find Gloria with a serious look on her face. She glanced up at the wall clock and then back at me. “Where have you been, Elliott? Dinner’s cold and Olivia went out for the evening.”

  “Sit down,” I said, and explained what my evening consisted of, ending with the office sweep. “That’s why I couldn’t call you. I didn’t want to take a chance that someone could be listening in.”

  “Poor Mrs. Bowman,” Gloria said. “Do you know if she and Lester had any children?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me. I sure hope not. Imagine losing both parents in the same week.” I explained Eric’s plan and how he was going to call my office in the morning to tell me about some fictitious person who supposedly had evidence connecting Willy Logan to Lester Bowman’s death. “Don’t worry,” I assured Gloria. “We’re not setting up any meetings in the office or any meetings at all that involve me or Matt. Our part in this dance is done once we hang up the phone. Eric and his men will have the meeting place, wherever that turns out to be, staked out. They’ll get ‘em.”

  Thank goodness for that,” Gloria said, locking an arm around mine and leading me to the kitchen. I made myself a sandwich and washed it down with a glass of chocolate milk before retiring to the living room to catch the evening news and one or two of my favorite shows before bed.

  I got to work early the next morning and waited for Matt in the parking lot for some last-minute briefing. I told him that Eric had planned to call us sometime between nine and nine-fifteen. “Just keep your voice normal, like you don’t know anything’s going on,” I reminded him.

  Matt touched his index finger to his thumb and gave me the OK sign as we rode the elevator to the third floor. We each took a seat behind our desks and did what we would normally do. Matt surfed the web on his desktop computer while I paged through the morning paper. We kept our small talk to a minimum as we waited for Eric’s call. The call came at ten past the hour.

  “Cooper and Son,” I said.

  “What happened to Cooper Investigations?” Eric said.

  “We’re going back to Cooper and Son,” I explained. “My dad named it that when he joined Grandpa Matt and now that my son has joined me, I decided to change it back. I just didn’t get the sign restored yet. What’s up, Eric?”

  “I think we caught a break in the Lester Bowman case,” Eric said. “I took an anonymous call this morning from some guy who says he saw something strange that he thought we ought to know about.”

  “That’s great, Eric,” I said, playing along with the charade. “Is he coming in to the precinct?”

  “No, he’s afraid someone may see him and he’ll end up just like Lester. He wants me to come to him this morning. Thought you might like to come along with me.”

  “Sorry, Eric,” I said. “But you’ll have to count me out. You remember what I told you about Willy Logan and how I didn’t want any part of it? If you need backup, take a couple of officers with you.”

  “I won’t need them,” Eric said. “It’s just a meeting and besides, this guy spooks pretty easily and asked me to come alone.”

  “Where are you meeting him?” I asked.

  “At his house,” Eric explained. “I didn’t even have to write the address down. It’s an easy one to remember. He lives at 1777 Sunset Avenue.”

  “And why is that easy to remember?” I asked.

  “You know,” Eric explained. “That old TV show, 77 Sunset Strip that used to be on fifty some years ago? Now I have that theme music stuck in my head.”

  “But Sunset doesn’t go that low,” I said. “I think it ends somewhere in the forty-seven hundred block.”

  “Not Sunset Boulevard,” Eric said. “This is Sunset Avenue in Santa Monica. Well, anyway, he’s waiting for me so if you’re not coming, I have to head out. It’s a dozen miles from my office and in this traffic it’ll take me a good forty minutes to make it there. I’ll let you know how it goes, Elliott. Later.”

  I hung up the phone, looked at Matt and winked. “That was Lieutenant Anderson. Looks like he found a witness who’s willing to talk. Sounds like this guy has enough to help put Willy Logan and his henchmen away for a long time.

  “What’s the guy’s name?” Matt said.

  “It was an anonymous call, but Eric’s on his way to meet the guy right now. We should know more in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, we’d better get busy ourselves and take another stab at the database before it piles up on us again.”

  The house Eric had selected for the rendezvous had been vacant for two months, ever since the homeowner, one Violet Biggins had passed away. Eric got the key from the realtor, dropped four of his men in front of the house earlier in the morning and arranged to park the squad car inside a neighborhood gas station less than a block away. He walked back to the house, let himself in the back door and waited. He hadn’t called Cooper Investigations from his office but from his squad car near the gas station. Eric and the four officers waited silently inside the house for what seemed hours. It was actually closer to fifteen minutes when they heard the first stirrings outside the front door. Eric positioned himself just to the left of the door and waited. A few seconds later he heard the knock.

  Eric lowered his voice to sound older. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Lieutenant Anderson from the police department,” the voice on the other side of the door called back. “You called me about something to do with a witness.”

  “Just a moment,” Eric said as he unlocked the door and stood back.

  The door burst open and two men rushed in, looking at their surroundings. They both stopped in their tracks when they came face to face with Eric and the other four policemen.

  Eric had his .38 pointed at the man in the camel overcoat. “Now how can you be me?” he said. “There’s only one me and I’m it.” Eric held up his shield and I.D. and then sneered at the man. “Dumb ass.” Eric signaled to the officers. “Watch ‘em.”

  Eric holstered his weapon while three of the other officers kept the two men covered with their guns. The fourth officer let himself out the front door and walked out to the car these two had come in. Eric reached into the first man’s coat and withdrew a .45 automatic, handing it back to one of the officers. He moved over to the bigger of the two men and repeated this maneuver. He came out with another .45 and held both guns competently.

  “I’m guessing one of these is going to match the slug we found in the warehouse,” Eric told the first man, going nose to nose with him. “How am I doing so far, Mr. Logan?”

  Logan’s eyes narrowed.

  “That’s right,” Eric said. “I know who you are and how you’ve been killing all those people and making them look like heart attacks.” Eric turned toward the big man. “And this would have to be Sammy Solo. Well, well. Something tells me Willy here wouldn’t bother soiling his own hands and had you do his dirty work for him. That’s fine with me because in the end, Willy may walk while you get the needle.”

  Sammy shot Willy a dirty look and then turned back to Eric. “It was all his idea,” Sammy said, gesturing toward Logan.”

  Logan elbowed Sammy in the ribs. “Shut your mouth, you simp. They got nothing on us.”

  Just then the fourth officer came back in the house holding a small amber plastic bottle and handed it to Eric. “Found this in the glove box, sir.”

  Eric read the label. “Lester Bowman,” he said, looking at the prescription on the medicine bottle.

  “You idiot,” Logan yelled. “I told you to get rid of that.” He immediately caught himself and stifled any further comment.

  Eric turned to the other four officers. “You all heard that. Willy Logan had prior knowledge of this evidence.” Eric fished a small manila envelope from his pocket and dropped the pill bottle into it. He turned toward his men again. “Cuff them both.” He turned to one cop in particular and handed
him a set of keys. “Go back to the corner gas station and bring the squad car back, would you?”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer said.

  “And call for backup when you get outside,” Eric added.

  “Ten-four,” the cop said, reaching for his shoulder mic and pressing the button.

  Eric turned back to Logan and Sammy, whose hands were now secured behind them. “You two have the right to remain silent,” he said. “But that doesn’t apply to me, so just relax and listen while I tell you what we already know. We figured out how you killed each of those people. You just found out their weaknesses and used that against them, scaring each one to death with a method chosen especially for that person. You knew about Lester’s bad ticker and just pretended to execute him there on the foundry floor. That was the easy one.”

  “But…” Sammy started to say.

  Eric backhanded him in the face. “Just stand there and listen and keep your mouth shut. You left too many clues behind with Leo Lazslo. There was the tape residue on his sleeves and the oven mitt fibers under his nails. Once we dug a little into his background and found out he was claustrophobic, the rest of it fell into place. I’d say you shoved him into a box or a casket and threatened to bury him alive. That was the reason for the oven mitts—so he wouldn’t scratch and claw away at the interior of the lid. But that first victim, that was a little harder to figure out.”

  One of the cops behind Eric spoke up. “Sir, backup has just arrived. They’re out at the curb.”

  “Thank you, officer,” Eric said. “They can wait a minute.” He turned back to Logan, who was by now nervously shifting from one foot to the other. “You knew Max was deathly afraid of heights and you got the bright idea of pushing him off the edge of a tall building while you had him strapped to a harness. I have to tell you, Willy, that one would have scared me to death. But you made the mistake of not padding the shoulder harness. Max had red bruises on both shoulders and that made me curious enough to dig a little deeper.”

  The front door opened and two more policemen entered the house. Eric turned toward them and then gestured to his two prisoners. “Take these two vermin downtown and book them for three counts of first degree murder—each.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Logan protested. “I had no hand in any of them. It was Sammy. He…”

  Logan never got the chance to finish his sentence. Sammy Solo cocked his foot back and kicked Logan in the shin hard enough to break his leg with those heavy boots and Logan went down. After he was on the floor, Sammy kicked him once more in the head and Logan’s neck snapped back from the force. Two of the officers pulled Sammy away and out to the patrol car.

  Eric knelt at Logan’s side and noticed a deep gash in his temple. That alone would have been enough to kill the man if he hadn’t already died from a broken neck. Eric wondered which one the medical examiner would list as the cause of death. He didn’t care which one it was, as long as Logan was dead. This case turned out better than Eric could have imagined. That was one less costly trial that the taxpayers had to pay for.

  It was half past four that afternoon before Eric got all the loose ends of this case tied up. Sammy Solo was cooling his heels in a holding cell while Willy Logan was just plain cooling it in a refrigerated drawer in the morgue. Eric let out a long, deep breath and settled back in his chair when he remembered a call he promised to make.

  “Elliott,” Eric said when I answered my phone. “I almost forgot about you.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “I wanted to call you but figured you already had your hands full. How’d things turn out?”

  Eric chuckled. “About as good as they could have,” he said. “You and Matt can relax. Willy Logan is dead and Sammy Solo is behind bars. I don’t expect he’ll see daylight again until long after we’re both dead, which I hope won’t be for another couple of decades.”

  “Say, that is good news,” I said, turning to Matt with the thumbs up gesture. “So, when will your electronics guy be around to remove the bugs and phone taps? We’re starting to get a little anal having to watch our language around here.”

  “Can it wait until tomorrow, Elliott?” Eric said. “It’s been a long day and I just want to go home and kick my shoes off.”

  “Is it something Matt and I can do ourselves?” I asked.

  “Better not,” Eric said. “There may be other fingerprints on the units and I want to make sure we totally clean out Logan’s rat’s nest. You two are only an hour away from closing time anyway, so why not knock off for the rest of the day?”

  “Uh, because we’re not paid by the taxpayers if we don’t work,” I explained. “We might still pick up some business this afternoon.”

  “All right,” Eric said. “Just remember not to say anything that you wouldn’t want made public until my guys removes the units. Wouldn’t want any baby talk between you and Gloria to go viral on the web.”

  “We never did talk baby talk to each other,” I told Eric. “In fact, neither one of us ever wanted any pets names like ‘Dear,’ or ‘Honey’ or ‘Sweetheart’ used by the other. We’ve always been just Elliott and Gloria to each other.”

  “Just a couple of romantics, eh?” Eric said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Take care. Give the Mrs. a hug for me.”

  “I’ll give her a hug, but do I have to say it’s from you?” I laughed.

  “Goodbye, Elliott.”

  I hung up the phone just as Matt stepped over to my desk. “Good news?” Matt said.

  “The best,” I said. “We can relax again. Logan’s dead and his muscle is in jail. Eric suggested we call it a day. What do you say?”

  “You go ahead, Dad,” Matt said. “Spend a little quality time with Mom. I’m going to hang around here for a while longer and spend a little quality ‘alone’ time in peace.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “I’m sure,” Matt replied. “I’ve got no one to go home to. No sense both of us wasting the rest of a perfectly good afternoon cooped up here.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Matt.” I left my son sitting at his desk and walked down the hall toward the elevator.

  Matt spent the next fifty-five minutes in peaceful silence. A few minutes before five-thirty Matt shut down his computer and pulled his coat off the rack, ready to lock up the office when he heard footsteps coming his way. He hung his coat back on the rack and sat behind his desk, as if he’d been there all along. Half a minute later the office door opened and a young woman, perhaps twenty or so, knocked and let herself in. She looked at Matt.

  “Mr. Cooper?” she said.

  Matt nodded. “That’s me. Come on in. How can I help you today?” He gestured toward his client’s chair and invited the woman to sit. He extended his hand to her. “Matt Cooper,” he said. And you are?”

  “Christine Sullivan,” the woman said. “My friends call me Chris.”

  It was a few minutes before nine the next morning when I came in to find Matt sitting behind his desk, apparently lost in a daydream. He blinked and turned to look at me.

  “Morning, Matt,” I said.

  Matt smiled. “Morning, Dad.”

  “What’s with you?”

  “Fate,” Matt replied. “Funny how it works, ain’t it?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” I took a seat behind my own desk and Matt stepped over, casually sitting on the edge of my desk.

  “Fate works in mysterious ways, don’t you think?” Matt said. Without waiting for my reply, he added, “Take yesterday afternoon, for example. If I’d left when you did yesterday, I’d never have met Chris.”

  I sat up straight now and gave Matt my full attention. “Chris? Who is Chris?”

  “She’s a girl from Glendale,” Matt explained. “She came in last night just before quitting time and wanted to hire me to tail her boyfriend to see if he was cheating on her. So I agreed to take her case. I told her I could start today. We talked for a while and then I walked her back down to the street. Her car w
as parked half a block west on the boulevard. I’m walking her to her car and we’re talking when she looked across the street to an outdoor café and saw the boyfriend she wanted me to tail. He was sitting there all cozy like with another woman, kissing her and holding his arm around her. There’s no doubt about it. This guy was a real dog.”

  I smiled. “That must have been awkward,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Chris darted across the street and slapped the guy on the back of his head,” Matt said. “Before he could respond, Chris slipped a ring off her finger, dropped it in this guy’s coffee cup and then poured the coffee in his lap. He just sat there speechless. Chris came back across the street to where I was waiting. I have to tell you, I was impressed. Chris could hold her own with that creep. She reminded me of someone.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mom,” Matt said. “I’m sure if Chris’s former boyfriend had gotten out of his chair that Chris would have knocked him to the sidewalk without half trying. I was really impressed. She doesn’t look anything like Mom, but her actions reminded me of her, in a way.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And what?”

  “What happened next?” I said.

  “Well,” Matt went on, “Chris just turned and headed for her car. I followed her and she invited me to go have a cup of coffee with her at The Copper Penny in Glendale. I slid in beside her and she drove around the block and headed east. Man, you could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. She calmed down by the time we got to the coffee shop. Anyway, we sat in a booth and before we knew it, it was half past nine and she said she had to get home. I reminded her that I rode with her and that I needed to get back to my own car in Hollywood.”

  “And she drove you back here?”

  Matt nodded and smiled some more.

  “And?”

  “And we’ve got a date tonight to see a movie,” Matt said.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “About the strange way fate works,” I said. “You great grandfather, Matt and my father, Clay both met their wives purely by chance. Come to think of it, so did I. I probably told you this already, but I met your mother when she answered the ad I put in the paper for temporary help here at the office. I’m starting to see a pattern emerge here.”