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

by Bill Bernico

  “Have you got the area phone books there?” Elliott said.

  Matt reached into a shelf that had been built into the cargo area of Elliott’s van. It held half a dozen area phone books. “Got ‘em,” Matt said. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Either Glendale or the Silver Lake district,” Elliott said. “They’re closest.”

  “Glendale it is,” Matt said, retrieving the Glendale phone book and opening it to the A section. He was looking for auto body paint shops. “I suppose we can just go right down the list, can’t we?” Matt said.

  Elliott pulled out of the parking lot and headed east toward Glendale. “I think we can skip the major dealerships that have paint shops. Too many people would notice anyone using it to paint a mailbox. Let’s stick with the smaller, private shops.”

  Matt ran his finger down the column and stopped on a place called Triple A Body Shop on Colorado Boulevard. He relayed the address to Elliott and then sat back in his seat. Matt remained silent for next two minutes before he spoke. “Dad,” he began, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead,” Elliott said. “Ask away.”

  “I, um, I was just kind of wondering about things in general,” Matt said nervously. “More specifically, about babies.”

  “It’s a little too late to ask me about babies now, don’t you think?” Elliott said. “Now if you’d come to me when you were a teenager...”

  “I don’t need to know that kind of stuff,” Matt said. “I was wondering more about when the baby actually gets here.”

  “What about it?” Elliott said.

  “I have no idea what to do or what to expect,” Matt explained. “I mean, I’ve never had to take care of a baby before. What if I don’t do it right? How will I know if I’m doing it right? They should come with owner’s manuals.”

  “You’ll just have to learn it as you go along,” Elliott said. “I remember feeling the same way when your mother was expecting you. I was really nervous the first time a nurse handed you to me to hold. I was sure I’d break you if I held on too tight.”

  “So what did you do?” Matt said, curiously.

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Elliott replied, “You’re here, aren’t you? And you don’t have any major dents or defects, do you? Well, at least not any physical defects, anyway. That warped sense of humor you have could use some work, but all in all, I’d say your mother and I did a pretty good job with you and Olivia, and all without an owner’s manual, either.”

  “You sure?”

  “Don’t be such a worry wart, Matt,” Elliott said. “You and Chris will do fine. Have you thought about what you want to name him or her?”

  “If it’s a girl,” Matt said, “Chris would like to name her Veronica after your mother.”

  Elliott shot Matt a quick look. “Really?” he said. “That would be super. What about if it’s a boy?”

  “Well,” Matt began, “two Matt’s is enough for one family tree and calling him Elliott could get confusing when he’s sitting on your lap and one of us calls out the name. Clayton would be nice, but again, we just wouldn’t want to have to clarify every time we talk about him. There are bound to be some people who’d still think I was talking about your father.”

  “Wouldn’t they think the same thing about Veronica?” Elliott said.

  “Grandma died even before I was born,” Matt said. “And her name doesn’t come up in conversation that often that someone would confuse the two of them. No, Veronica would still be a great name if we have a daughter.”

  “So what does that leave in the event you have a son?” Elliott said.

  “We thought about it a lot,” Matt said. “And I think we have it narrowed down to two choices. Either Nicholas or Heywood.” He said nothing further, waiting for his father’s reaction.

  “Heywood?” Elliott said, his eyebrows furrowing.

  “We’re almost there,” Matt said. “Turn right at the light.”

  “Heywood?” Elliott repeated. “I hope this is just another example of your warped sense of humor. Heywood?”

  “And just what’s wrong with Heywood?” Matt said, stretching this joke out for Elliott’s benefit.

  “Didn’t you ever see that Don Knotts movie, The Shakiest Gun In The West?” Elliott said. “His character’s name was Jesse Heywood and he was a real wimp. I can’t hear the name without thinking of that dumb-ass movie.”

  “Jesse Heywood?” Matt said. “Now that’s ironic.”

  Elliott’s eyebrows furrowed and he quickly shot Matt a look before turning his attentions back to the traffic ahead of him. “What’s so ironic about that?”

  Matt smiled. “I thought you were supposed to be the movie and TV trivia expert.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Elliott said.

  “You do realize that Don Knotts real name was Jesse, don’t you?” Matt said.

  “No foolin’?” Elliott said, amazed that he hadn’t know that trivial fact about one of his favorite actors.

  “Jesse Donald Knotts was his real name,” Matt explained. “So calling him Jesse Heywood in that movie would have been someone’s idea of an inside joke.”

  “Still,” Elliott said, “Nicholas would be a more respectable name. It was my great-grandfather’s name, not to mention my dad’s step-brother. They’re both long gone now, so there’s be no confusion when the name comes up.”

  “But Heywood would be unique,” Matt said.

  “You want unique?” Elliott said. “Why not just go all out and name him Poindexter? Then you could send him to school wearing a sign around his neck that says, ‘Beat Me Up’ and be done with it. And another thing...”

  Matt held up one palm toward Elliott. “Settle down, Dad. This joke’s gone far enough. We never really considered Heywood as a name for our son.”

  Elliott let out his breath. “Thank goodness,” he said, turning onto Colorado Boulevard.

  “There it is,” Matt said, pointing out the windshield. “Triple A Body Shop. Pull over.”

  Elliott parked in Triple A’s parking lot and he and Matt walked toward the building. It was a small shop with a three-bay garage. Outside, used tires were piled up, making an unsightly mess in this otherwise clean neighborhood. Elliott could see a man sanding the side of a car’s fender just inside the garage door. He turned to Matt and said, “You want to look around a little while I talk to this guy?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Matt said, walking through the garage to another room in the back. The inside of the garage was just as messy as the interior but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Matt couldn’t see any metal fabricating tools or even a spray painting booth. From the looks of things, they must paint their cars right out in this open room. All the toolboxes and tables had a layer of dust and overspray on them. He discounted this room and returned to the front to find Elliott ready to leave.

  “Anything?” Elliott said, as the two of them climbed back into Elliott’s van.

  Matt shook his head. “Nothing that jumps out at me,” he said. “Just a messy room where they do the painting. What about you?”

  The guy working on the car out in front doesn’t know anything,” Elliott said. “He’s not even the owner. Besides, I got the same impression you did. This can’t be the place. Let’s keep going down the list. Who’s next?”

  Matt ran a finger down the column in the phone book and said, “Barry’s Auto Body. It’s just a few blocks east of here.”

  Elliott and Matt spent the rest of the morning covering all of the smaller body shops in the area. When they’d finished at the last one on their list, Elliott turned to Matt and said, “Well that’s it for the body shops. We can either continue with the body shops in the other areas, or we can stay here in Glendale and check out the metal fabrication shops and the other types of places Eric mentioned. What do you think?”

  “We might as well stay in town and finish up here,” Matt said. “We can start tomorrow in Pasadena or Silver Lake with the same list of b
usinesses. Gees, at this rate, it could take us the rest of the week to make the rounds.”

  “Eric’s paying us by the day,” Elliott said. “If we weren’t doing this, we’d be back at the office wondering where our next client was coming from.”

  “That reminds me,” Matt said. “I’d better call our office and check the machine for messages.” Matt pulled out his cell phone, dialed their number and then entered his answering machine code. It took just a few seconds to find out that no one had left any messages for them. He closed his cell phone, looked at Elliott and said, “Let’s hit the streets, Dad. There’s nothing going on back in Hollywood.”

  By quarter to four that afternoon they’d covered every possible place in Glendale where a mailbox receptacle could be manufactured or painted and were just about to call it a day when Matt’s cell phone rang. It was Matt’s mother, Gloria.

  “Matt,” Gloria said. “Is your father there? Would you hand him your phone?”

  Matt passed his phone over to Elliott, a question playing on his face.

  “Elliott,” Gloria said. “Don’t you have your phone on? I tried to reach you earlier but got nothing.”

  “Hold on,” Elliott said. “Let me take a quick look at it.” Elliott pulled out his phone, flipped it open and immediately noticed that his battery was blinking on its last bar. Before he could close it again, his screen went black. “Looks like I forgot to charge it,” he told Gloria. “What’s up?”

  “It’s our boarder, Penny,” Gloria said. “She called from her job and told me that she’s been transferred back east. She just wanted to let us know that she’d have to give up the room she’s renting.”

  “When is she planning to leave?” Elliott said.

  “At the end of this month,” Gloria said. “Looks like I’ll have to run another ad for Olivia’s room unless you know of anyone out there looking for reasonable lodgings.”

  “You can hold off for a day or two before you need to run the ad again,” Elliott said. “Meanwhile, I’ll ask around and see if I can come up with a suitable renter.”

  “Thanks, Elliott,” Gloria said and then paused.

  “Was there anything else?” Elliott said.

  “I guess not,” Gloria said. “It’s nothing that can’t wait until you get home.”

  “And that shouldn’t be too much longer,” Elliott told her. “Matt and I are just finishing up here in Glendale.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost four now. I should be home in an hour or so.”

  “Talk to you then,” Gloria said and hung up.

  Elliott handed the phone back to Matt and pulled into traffic. On their way back to Hollywood Elliott passed a metal shop and would have driven right by it, had Matt not brought it to his attention.

  “Did you see that metal shop?” Matt asked. “You just passed it.”

  “And?” Elliott said.

  “And it’s on our way back,” Matt said. “And it’s one less place we’d have to check tomorrow. And it might...”

  “Okay, I get it,” Elliott said, turning at the next corner and continuing around the block. He pulled up in front of Maritime Metal Stamping and the two of them got out to have a look around. The sign on the door said that the shop was open from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon. Matt checked his wristwatch. It was ten past four and the front door was locked.

  “I’m going to walk around the building,” Matt said. “I might be able to see in one of the windows.” He headed around the left side of the building while Elliott tried the right. Halfway to the back of the building Matt found a window into the shop. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in. There were metal stamping and shaping machines filling the space. An arc welder stood against one of the walls. Next to some of the machines sat wooden crates on wheels, the kind used to cart away the metal scraps after the stamping process. On the floor next to one of the carts Matt could make out a scrap of metal with a half semi-circle shape on one end. He tried to picture a city mailbox and decided that if anyone was going to fabricate one, that they’d probably end up with a similar scrap of metal. He hurried around to the back of the building and ran into Elliott coming his way.

  “Find anything?” Elliott said.

  “I’m not sure,” Matt said, explaining about the rounded scrap of metal he spotted on the floor. “Might be the cutoff from the rounded end of a mailbox. Then again it could just be that these people make round blanks for stamping into cups or bowls or something else entirely. Maybe you should have a look.” He led Elliott back to the window and pointed to the scrap metal he’d seen lying on the floor.

  “You might be on to something there, Matt,” Elliott said. “Let’s keep looking. If we find another clue that might fit the scenario, we’ll let Eric know. Otherwise, the one scrap is not enough to go on yet. I’m going back around to the other side.”

  Matt pressed his face against the window again and scanned the room. Nothing else really jumped out at him as out of place. He moved on to the next window toward the back of the building. It appeared to be a paint shop. Most of the back wall had a coat of silver paint on it. Perhaps they stamped out metal parts for lighting fixtures and painted them silver. What was obvious at first glance was the blue pattern that had been sprayed over the silver. It left the definite pattern that would be left after someone had painted a sheet of metal with a rounded top. And there were two of them side by side. That was the clue they needed, Matt decided. He found Elliott again and told him what he’d seen.

  “Could be the two end panels from a homemade mailbox,” Elliott agreed. “Did you notice any red overspray, or white?”

  “No,” Matt said. “But if this is what we think it is, they could have painted the white and red parts first and while they were drying, they could have gone back to whatever it is they normally do here. That would have resulted in the red and white overspray getting covered with silver again. Could be that the blue parts were sprayed last and left that pattern on the wall. Now should we call Eric?”

  “Might be a good idea,” Elliott agreed. “We’ll let him decide if he wants to look into this place any further. Meanwhile, take down the name and address of this business. We’ll look up the phone number when we get back to the van.”

  Once in their van again, Matt looked up the phone number for Maritime Metal Stamping while Elliott placed the call to Lieutenant Anderson at the twelfth precinct. His secretary answered on the first ring and told Elliott that Eric was still out with his partner, chasing down leads on several shops in town. She asked if Elliott wanted to leave a message for him, but he told her that he could call Eric’s cell directly and thanked her anyway. He hung up and dialed Eric’s cell number.

  “Anderson,” Eric said when he picked up.

  “Eric, it’s Elliott. I think we might have something for you as far as a possible place where they could have made that phony mailbox.”

  “Where are you?” Eric said.

  “Matt and I are in Glendale, on the western edge of town,” Elliott explained. “We had already checked out every kind of shop that you’d mentioned and were just heading home for the day when we spotted a metal stamping shop on the corner of San Fernando Road and South Central Avenue. The shop is closed but we walked around the building and looked in the windows. We saw what could have been cutoffs for the end panels of a mailbox, but they could just as well be from something else entirely. Then we could see the wall of a paint shop with blue overspray on it in the shape of those end panels. I thought I’d better at least let you know what we’d found in case you wanted to have look for yourself.”

  “No, you did the right thing, Elliott,” Eric said. “Can you wait around until we can get there?”

  “We’ll be parked around the corner on Central,” Elliott explained. “Don’t want to spook anyone if this is what we think it is.”

  “Give us fifteen minutes,” Eric said and hung up.

  It took Eric and Officer Crowley eighteen minutes to find Elliott’s van. He pulled
up behind them and got out. Together, the four men walked back to the metal stamping shop for a closer look around. Matt led the policemen around to the side and pointed through the window at the rounded metal scraps on the floor and the blue silhouettes on the paint booth wall.

  Eric asked for Officer Crowley’s flashlight and shined it in through the window onto the metal scraps. He moved the beam of light to the paint booth wall and decided that the pieces and the overspray shapes were the right size. He turned back to Officer Crowley and said, “Go back to the patrol car and call downtown. Ask for the records department and get me the name of whoever owns this shop, along with an address and phone number for them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Crowley said, returning to the police cruiser. He returned five minutes later with the information on a slip of paper and handed it to Eric. Eric dialed the phone number and waited while it rang. After four rings a man answered in a voice that told Eric he was not happy to have been disturbed.

  “Is this Jose Sanchez?” Eric said.

  “Who wants to know?” the man said.

  “This is Lieutenant Anderson of the L.A.P.D.,” Eric said. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “This is Jose,” he said, his tone a little more polite this time.

  “Mr. Sanchez,” Eric said, lying through his teeth, “I’m at your shop on San Fernando Road. I’m here with another officer and it looks like there may have been a break-in at your place of business. Can you come down here right away and let us know if anything’s been taken?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Sanchez said. “Give me a few minutes.” He hung up his phone and ran directly for his car.

  Eric closed his phone and turned to Elliott. “He’s coming right down. You two had better wait somewhere out of sight until we get inside. You can give us a few minutes to look around before you join us. I’ll reach into my pocket and hit your speed dial number, but wait for my call. If this Sanchez thinks he’s being set up, he might bolt.”