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

by Bill Bernico

  “It’s just a date, Dad,” Matt said. “Don’t get us married off just yet.”

  “Famous last words,” I said. “See, everything happens for a reason. Debbie went back to her old boyfriend, freeing you up to meet Chris. Well, I sure hope this one works out for you, son.”

  “So do I, Dad,” Matt said. “So do I.”

  123 - Scavenger Hunt

  I read the article twice to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. No doubt about it, it was correct. It read:

  Matthew Cooper, 22 of Hollywood and Christine Sullivan, 21, of Glendale were treated and released from Hollywood Community Hospital yesterday following a minor traffic accident near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Bronson Avenue that occurred at 7:38 Thursday evening. The driver of the other vehicle, Theodore Bradley, 78, was sighted for following too closely and for driving with an expired driver’s license.

  I folded the paper and laid it on the corner of my desk, looking at the empty desk across the room. My office door opened just then and my son, Matt stepped in and over to his desk, chewing gum as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Morning, Dad,” he said nonchalantly.

  I held up the paper. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

  “There was nothing to tell,” Matt said. “Some old guy bumped us from behind over near Bronson Avenue and that was that.”

  “But it says you and Chris were taken to the hospital,” I told him, waving the newspaper at him.

  “I guess cops are overly cautious,” Matt said. “There just happened to be a cop parked at that corner and he saw the whole thing. He was at my window even before I had a chance to shut off my engine and pull out my driver’s license. Hell, I drove us both to Community Hospital, had the doctor do his cursory once over and we were out of there in ten minutes. The traffic cop apparently wasn’t taking any chances that either of us might have suffered whiplash. Believe me, Dad, we’re fine.”

  “What about the other driver, that old guy, as you call him? How’s he doing?”

  “He bumped his head on his own steering wheel but he’ll be fine, too,” Matt explained. “He got a bandage on his forehead and walked out of the hospital on his own, too. No big deal, so can we just forget it?”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re both all right,” I said. “Was there any damage to your car?”

  “Just a dented license plate,” Matt said. “He had one of those older cars with the bumper guards sticking out in front. One of those things hit my license plate. Neither car showed any damage and only the old guy got a ticket. I heard he may have to take his driver’s test again before they’ll issue him another license.”

  “What did Chris have to say about all of this?”

  “She just laughed and said this was her most exciting first date ever. We’re going out again tonight.”

  I smiled at Matt but said nothing further.

  “What?” Matt said.

  I held up both palms but kept my mouth shut.

  “So what do we have going for today?” Matt said. “Am I ever going to get to go out on a case?”

  “Relax,” I told him. “You haven’t even been on the job a week yet. Give it time.”

  Our phone rang and Matt grabbed his receiver. “I got it,” he said and placed the phone to his ear. “Cooper and Son Investigations, this is Matt. How may I help you?”

  “Mr. Cooper,” the man on the other end said, “I’d like to hire you if I may. Are you available?”

  “To do what?” Matt said.

  “I’m having problems with my next door neighbor and I need the services of a good private eye,” the man explained. “Can I come to your office and talk to you about it?”

  “When would you like to come here?” Matt said.

  “Can I come right now?

  “Sure, I guess,” Matt said, taken by surprise. “Do you know where we’re located?”

  “I’m looking at your Yellow Pages ad, unless you’ve moved since it came out.”

  “Nope,” Matt told the man. “That address is correct. Hollywood and Cahuenga. Come on up. We’re in the front on the third floor. I’ll see you when you get here. Goodbye.”

  Matt hung up and made a quick note to himself on his yellow legal pad. “Got a live one,” he said.

  “What does he need us to do?” I said.

  “He wouldn’t say, but he’s coming right up.” Matt hesitated for a moment and then added, “Dad, can I handle this one by myself? I have to learn the business sometime and today seems like a good a time as any.”

  I nodded. “Tell you what, I’ll just sit here and listen and I won’t interrupt unless he asks you something that you can’t answer. Fair enough?”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Matt said, smiling now as he sat behind his desk.

  Ten minutes later our outer office door opened and closed again. Matt looked at me briefly. I clicked my teeth together and pointed at them, indicating that Matt should get rid of the gum. He spit it into his waste can and I gestured toward our inner door with my chin. “He’s all yours,” I said.

  The inner door opened and a man stepped inside. He looked over at me and said, “Mr. Cooper?”

  I pointed to Matt. “That’s Mr. Cooper,” I told him.

  The man approached Matt’s desk as Matt stood and offered his hand. “You’re Mr. Cooper?” the man said.

  Matt smiled. “I get that a lot. People think I’m younger than I really am. Must be good genes or something. So, how may I help you, Mr…”

  “Collier, Lee Collier.”

  “Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Collier?”

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Cooper,” Collier said, sitting across from Matt. “Like I mentioned on the phone earlier, I’m having problems with my next door neighbor. He’s giving me grief about my house.”

  “What kind of grief?” Matt said.

  “He doesn’t like the color I painted it,” Collier explained. “He claims the color yellow gives him a headache and he wants me to change it. I just finished painting it two weeks ago. I certainly don’t want to have to repaint it just to shut him up.”

  “Then don’t,” Matt told him. “So where’s the problem? He can’t make you repaint your house if you don’t want to.”

  “Legally, no,” Collier said. “But ever since that confrontation, he’s been doing everything he can to disrupt the peace and quiet in our neighborhood. I don’t have any legal recourse but things have gotten out of hand lately.”

  “How so?” Matt asked.

  “Last week this neighbor, his name is Bradford, Tim Bradford, had complained to the police that I’m assaulting him. Can you beat that?”

  “Have you spoken to the police about this?” Matt said.

  “They’ve been over to see me,” Collier said. “They take one look at the trampled flowers on Bradford’s lawn and ask if I did that? Of course I didn’t, but how can I prove I didn’t do it?”

  “Seems to me the burden of proof lies with him,” matt told Collier. “He has to prove you did it, not the other way around.”

  “But this isn’t the only time something like this has happened,” Collier explained. “Three days ago he called the police again, saying that I broke his bedroom window with a rock.”

  “And did you?”

  Collier looked hurt.

  “Excuse me,” Matt said. “I had to ask.”

  “Of course not,” Collier said. “You know, I have a feeling he’s doing these things to his own property in an attempt to frame me.”

  “And what would you like me to do for you, Mr. Collier?”

  Collier looked around the room. “Don’t private eyes do stakeouts?” he asked.

  “On occasion,” Matt said.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Couldn’t you stake out our houses and see what’s really happening over there?” Collier said.

  “I could,” Matt explained. “But at two hundred dollars a day, it could get expensive. Suppose
I stake the place out and nothing happens for a week?”

  Collier scratched his head. “I see what you mean. Now what do I do?”

  “Would you like me to try the stakeout idea for one day and see if anything turns up? You can decide from there if you want to take it any further.” Matt waited for Collier’s response.

  A moment later Collier nodded and said, “Yes, Mr. Cooper. I think I’d like to give it a try. But how will you be able to watch our houses without him seeing you?”

  “Just leave that to me,” Matt told him. “When would you like me to start?”

  “Tonight?” Collier said. “Seems like everything happens at night. I never hear him complain that anything ever happened in broad daylight, which makes me wonder if he’s not doing this himself.”

  Matt made a few notes on his pad and then looked up at Collier again. “It starts to get dark around eight this time of year,” he said. “I can be in place shortly after that and I’ll stay put until two a.m., unless anything happens.”

  Collier thought about it for a moment and said, “That’s only six hours. Are you still going to charge me for a whole day?”

  Matt shot me a quick glance. I shrugged and stayed out of the negotiations. He turned back to Collier. “Mr. Collier, our regular business hours are from eight-thirty to five-thirty. I’d be working after hours to accommodate you. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll give you another six hours in that same time slot for two nights in a row and just charge you a one day’s rate. Fair enough?”

  Collier stood and extended his hand. “It’s a deal, Mr. Cooper. I hope this works out.”

  Matt spent the next few minutes getting Collier to sign a standard contract for his services before he showed him to the door.

  “I guess I’ll see you tonight,” Collier said.

  “If you do, then I’m not doing my job,” Matt told him. “But I’ll see you…and your neighbor. Thank you for choosing Cooper and Son, Mr. Collier. Good day.”

  Collier left the office and Matt immediately turned to me, looking for a response.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

  Matt smiled and handed me the contract.

  “There’s just one thing I’d have done differently,” I told Matt, “But that’s just me.”

  “I handled it all right,” Matt said, defending himself. “What more could I have done?”

  “A deposit would have been nice,” I said. “This way, once your job is done and he decides not to pay, you’d have to take him to small claims court. People tend to take a contract a little more seriously when they have to plunk down a hundred dollars upon signing. Maybe you’ll get through all this with no problems. I’m just saying.”

  Matt nodded. “I’ll get one next time, I promise. So, do you have anything going for yourself today, Dad?”

  “I’m waiting for a call back from a potential client who left a message this morning,” I said. “I called him back but I got his machine as well. He never said what he wanted so I guess I’ll just have to wait.”

  I picked up my paper again and leaned back in my chair just as the crashing and crunching sound came from behind me, down on the boulevard. I flinched and dropped the paper. “What the hell,” I said and sprang to my feet. Matt was already standing at the window, looking down at the two cars that were obviously totaled. It appeared that the car heading east on Hollywood Boulevard collided with another car that was facing south on Cahuenga.

  I tossed my head toward the office door. “Let’s go, Matt. There might be someone hurt down there.”

  “I’ll catch up with you on the street,” Matt said, grabbing his desk phone and dialing 9-1-1.

  I hurried to the corner and found the occupant of the eastbound car lying with his head back against the seat, blood trickling from his nose. I nudged the man’s shoulder lightly. “Mister,” I said gently. “Mister, are you all right?” There was no response.

  A crowd had gathered around the southbound car and I had to shove my way past the people. “Step away from the car, please,” I said, still inching my way forward. “Come on, people, let me through.” The crowd slowly parted and I soon found myself standing next to the driver’s window of this second car. There was a woman sitting behind the wheel, her head tilted at an odd angle to the right. I couldn’t see any movement in her chest. I pressed two fingers to her neck and didn’t find a pulse.

  A police siren parted the throngs of people even further away from the cars as two officers got out of the black and white patrol car, holding people back away from the two damaged cars. “Anyone see what happened here?” An officer named Sheffield shouted into the crowd. No one answered.

  The second officer, a younger man wearing a name tag that identified him as someone named Blake, stepped up beside me as I was turning away from the dead woman. “What happened here?” Blake said.

  I pointed up to my third floor office window. “My office is up there,” I said. I heard the crash and hurried down here to see if I could help.” I gestured toward the woman in the southbound vehicle. “She didn’t make it, but the guy in the other car is still breathing.”

  Matt hurried up to where I stood talking to the officer. “I called it in,” Matt said. “An ambulance is on its way.”

  “Who are you?” Officer Blake said, looking at Matt.

  “This is my son, Matt Cooper,” I explained. “My name’s Elliott Cooper.”

  The officer turned to Matt. “Did you see what happened?”

  Matt shook his head. “I’m afraid not, officer. I only heard it and then looked down from our office. I called 9-1-1 and then came down here.”

  “All these people milling around on the street and no one saw anything,” Blake said. “Typical.”

  An ambulance pulled up to the accident scene and two attendants each hurried to one of the wrecked cars. The first attendant laid his stethoscope on the woman’s chest and listened momentarily before withdrawing and stepping over to the first car, where his partner was slipping a neck brace around the man’s neck. He tried to pry the car door open, but it was jammed. He turned to Officer Sheffield. “Do you have something you can use to open this door?”

  Officer Sheffield stepped around to the rear of his cruiser, opened the trunk and plucked out tire iron. He brought it back to the side of the first car and inserted it between the door and the jam. He rocked back and forth with the tire iron for a few seconds before the door popped open. Sheffield dropped the tire iron and pulled a folding knife out of his pocket and extended the blade. He reached into the car and cut the seatbelt off the man’s chest and lap before stepping back out of the way.

  The two ambulance attendants pulled a gurney out of the back of the ambulance and wheeled it alongside the car. They eased the man out of the seat and gently laid him on the gurney, strapping him in place. They loaded him into the ambulance and hurried off to the hospital, their lights flashing and their siren wailing.

  Officer Sheffield took down my name and phone number, along with the address of my office. Officer Blake did the same with Matt before releasing us. “Thanks for your help,” Blake said

  “I just wish there was more we could have done,” Matt said, walking back up onto the sidewalk. I joined him there and watched in fascination and the police taped off the intersection and kept the throngs of people up on the sidewalks. I turned to Matt. “We might as well get back to the office. There’s nothing else we can do here.”

  Forty-five minutes had passed since I first heard the crash. Matt and I both found it hard to concentrate on our individual tasks and sat at our desks, lost in daydream. I broke the silence. “I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking,” I told Matt.

  “I know,” Matt said. “That could just as easily have been me and Chris. Once again, fate stepped in and changed two more lives.”

  “Looks like fate doesn’t always work in someone’s favor,” I said.

  The following morning I was scanning the paper and found a small article about y
esterday’s accident on the boulevard. It identified the deceased woman as Shirley Jackson, 29, of West Hollywood. She left a husband and a twelve-year-old son. The driver of the other car had been identified as Henry Porter, 36, of Glendale. He was reported to be in satisfactory condition with only a broken nose. The article went on to say that charges were pending, but it didn’t say which driver was being charged.

  I laid the paper down and looked at Matt. “Looks like the man from yesterday is going to make a full recovery. He only had a broken nose.”

  “What did it say about the woman?” Matt wanted to know.

  “She left a husband and son,” I told him. “It also says charges are pending, but doesn’t say against which driver.”

  “I guess they have to do more investigation work before they can decide who was at fault,” Matt said.

  “From where I stood, it looked like the woman was westbound on the boulevard and turned in front of the eastbound car.” I paused momentarily. “The man T-boned her and must have snapped her neck.”

  “Poor guy,” Matt said. “Probably wasn’t even his fault and now he has to live with that woman’s death for the rest of his life.”

  “It happens,” I said, and dropped the morning paper into my trash can.

  Mid-afternoon, three days after the accident my office door opened and a man walked in. He wore a blue suit and looked like any other man except for the big white bandage across his nose. It covered the entire nose. Above the bandage the man sported two black eyes. He limped somewhat as he eased his way into the office. He looked in my direction. “Mr. Cooper?” he said.

  I stood up and stepped over to meet his at the door. I offered my hand and he shook it. “Elliott Cooper,” I said and then gestured toward Matt. “And this is my son, Matt. How may we help you today?”