The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “I guess a few people still remember,” Hector said.

  I nodded.

  “I don’t think those punks over on The Boulevard meant to stick me up,” Hector said. “Maybe they were just sent to make it look that way.”

  There was a thud at the front door and Hector jumped. I drew my .45 from beneath my arm and went to the door. My hand pulled the narrow curtain at the side of the door and I looked out. There was nothing. I opened the door a crack and peered out into the neighborhood. I holstered my piece and swung the door open the rest of the way in time to see the paperboy pedaling away down the block.

  I bent over and retrieved the late edition of the L.A. Times. Hector smiled, embarrassed by his jumpy demeanor. I handed him the paper and sat at the couch again. He seemed lost in thought.

  I turned toward Hector. Hector’s eyes again displayed the look of concern as he handed me the late edition. “That’s one of ‘em,” he said, pointing to a picture of a black man, perhaps in his late twenties.

  The caption beneath the picture identified him as Leon Thomas, age twenty-two. It was apparently a file photo from the police department. It showed a full frontal face shot with several white on black numbers identifying the man.

  The article went on to say how Leon Thomas and another, unidentified youth had been found dead in a section of the town dump usually reserved for major appliances and tin cans. Each had one bullet hole in the back of their heads, the trademark of a professional hit.

  “Looks like they blew it,” I said. “They came back empty handed.”

  “And deaf,” Hector added, laughing. He sat on the sofa and I sat next to him in an overstuffed easy chair.

  “Cooper,” he said, “help me collect what Wentworth left me and I’ll make it worth your while. Say five percent?”

  Five percent of Hector’s inheritance made for a good day’s wage. Hell, it made a good enough wage to take me well into the next decade.

  “I get forty dollars a day plus expenses,” I said.

  “Don’t be a sap, Cooper,” Hector said. “Take it. I get plenty if we can pull this off. And you’ll earn your five percent.” He extended his hand.

  I hesitated, shook it and nodded. “Okay.”

  The next morning I contacted my old friend, Eva Bishop at City Hall. I told her what I was looking for and she disappeared into an adjoining room. I took a seat on the bench in the outer office and waited. Two cigarettes later she returned with three manila folders and laid them on the counter in front of me.

  The files were labeled “John Delany Kincaid”, “Oscar Francis LeMay”, and “Jerome Wendell Pearson”. I opened the first one on Pearson. It contained a photo of him, the legal documents connected with his inheritance and a few other official looking papers. It was the last document that caught my eye. It was a death certificate.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “What’s that, Matt?” Eva said, twisting her head sideways to see the certificate.

  “This guy died within six months of inheriting a million dollars,” I said. “What are the odds? “Cause of death is listed here as drowning.”

  “So?” Eva straightened up and looked me square in the eye. Her eyes always had a twinkle in them for me and today was no exception.

  “So drowning’s one of those causes that’s hard to prove foul play,” I said. “Could have been an accident or someone might have helped him along.”

  I opened the next folder marked with Oscar LeMay’s name. It had pretty much the same set of documents as Pearson’s folder except for the death certificate. It did have one additional sheet at the bottom of the pile. The sheet had a familiar-looking letterhead on top. It was from the Internal Revenue Service.

  Further examination of the paper revealed that Mr. LeMay had been delinquent in back taxes for several years. The bottom line showed that he owed the government in excess of a million four hundred thousand dollars. There were two separate receipts in his folder. Stamped sideways across the bottom or each with an IRS stamp it said, “PAID” in bold letters. The first one was dated three days after Wentworth’s death and the second one was dated within a week of Pearson’s death. If nothing else, the IRS was prompt. Looks like Oscar was back to square one.

  The third folder, the one on Kincaid, yielded a triplicate set of documents that I’d already seen in the first two. There was no death certificate or IRS lien but there were additional estate papers dividing Pearson’s share between him and LeMay. Apparently Pearson had spent nearly two hundred thousand in the first five months after the estate had been settled. His balance at the time of his death was just over eight hundred thousand. That would explain where LeMay came up with the rest of the money owed the IRS.

  I thanked Eva and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She blushed.

  “What’s a girl gotta do for a few more of those?” she said.

  I spread my hands and hunched my shoulders. “Try stopping by some night.” I winked at her and left.

  Hollywood Boulevard during the day is like a housewife in a bathrobe and slippers and with her hair in curlers. At night it’s like a hooker with all her make-up on. Tonight she looked especially beautiful.

  I pulled up to the curb at Western and Hollywood. The Hotel Rector loomed in the background. It was a well-known watering hole for predator and prey alike. The predators wore fancy hats and suits and drove shiny cars while the prey tried their best to get noticed by some suburban husband with a few extra bucks in his pocket and a wife with a headache.

  Across the street I spotted a familiar face. It was Wade Larson, one of the better-known predators. He was a man, technically speaking. After all he was twenty-one, but he looked older and acted younger. His jet-black hair was slicked tight against his head and swirled to a point in back. His feet sported alligator skin cowboy boots and he wore tight blue jeans. The leather jacket on his back displayed a picture of a panther’s face with one claw extended toward me. Blood dripped from the claws and fangs. It said “Panthers” across the top in gold script.

  He was leaning against his Mercury picking at his fingernails with the tip of his switchblade. I crossed to his side of the street and approached him.

  There were three other men near him, all of them hunched over, pitching pennies at the wall of the building on the corner. One of them scooped up his winnings and all three took their place behind the crack in the sidewalk, ready to pitch again.

  I nodded as I approached Wade. He took the knife out of his teeth and pressed the button on the handle. The blade disappeared and he pocketed the weapon.

  “Well, well, if it ain’t Cooper the snooper,” Larson said. “We gotta start chargin’ admission to this corner. Helps weed out the riff-raff.” The other three delinquents laughed and punched each other in the arm before returning to their big stakes game.

  “Tell your playmates to take a hike,” I said, motioning to the three penny pitchers.

  Wade tilted his head to one side and sneered. “What for?”

  “We need to talk,” I said. I don’t need an audience.”

  Wade stood perfectly still, staring me down. I didn’t unlock my gaze either. After a minute he said, “take a break, boys,” speaking to them but still staring at me.

  The three high rollers picked up their pennies and slowly strolled off down the block. Wade’s stare was still drilling a hole in me. “Now what you want that’s so important?” Wade said.

  He leaned back again, his elbows resting on the Mercury.

  “I need information,” I said. “The Women’s Sewing Circle was fresh out and I figured you’d be my next best bet.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like where I can find Oscar LeMay,” I said.

  Wade retrieved his knife and popped the blade back into position, making sure I saw it. I kicked his feet out from under him and he slid down to the pavement, landing in a sitting position.

  “Ya try to be nice and this is what ya get,” I said. “Tssk, tssk.” I clicked my tongue on
my teeth like a mother scolding her child.

  This made Wade even madder. He tried to stand but my foot kept him where he was. He swung at my leg with the knife and I kicked it into the gutter.

  I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to his feet. “When you gonna learn to respect your elders, little boy?”

  The snide look left his face as I lifted. His feet dangled just inches from the cement and we were nose to nose. “What’s that you were saying?” I said and let him drop.

  He straightened himself out and tried to look tough again. I saw his gaze shift to the hotel behind me. “Oscar’s over there,” he said, motioning at the Rector. I turned around to see a man’s face at the window on the second floor.

  “If that’s not him,” I said, sticking my two hooked fingers in his nose and lifting, “I’ll be back.” I eased him down and wiped my fingertips on his jacket. Wade rubbed his nose as I crossed the street.

  I bypassed the desk clerk, who was asleep behind the counter, and took the stairs two at a time. I found the room that belonged to the window where I’d seen the face peering out at Wade. I knocked.

  “It ain’t locked,” a voice on the other side of the door said.

  I entered. It was a dingy room in a seedy hotel. With a little care and a woman’s touch it could graduate to disgusting. A pull-down wall bed with a paper-thin mattress stood on the far wall. A single dresser sat opposite it. There was a small sink dripping out a steady beat in the corner. A single bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the room illuminated the space.

  “You Oscar LeMay?” I said.

  “Yeah, so what.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “We’re talkin’, ain’t we?”

  “Weren’t you Taylor Wentworth’s bodyguard a few years ago?” I said.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Cooper,” I said. “Matt Cooper. I’m looking into some business connected with Mr. Wentworth. You were his bodyguard, weren’t you?”

  He shrugged and spread his hands. “Not any more. He don’t need no protectin’.” He laughed at the thought of Wentworth’s present condition.

  “Mr. LeMay, from what I understand Taylor Wentworth left you a considerable amount of money. And you got another sizable chunk when Jerome Pearson died.”

  “Hey,” he said, spreading his arms wide as if to present his surroundings, “there’s nothing left to take, buddy. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Now get out.”

  “I know about the IRS,” I said. “I’m not from them.”

  “Then whaddya want?”

  “I just want to know if you’ve seen John Delany Kincaid lately,” I said.

  “J.D.?” He shook his head. “I ain’t seen him since the IRS wiped me out back in…” he looked up, trying to remember. “…back in ‘40.”

  “What about Jerome Pearson?” I said. “What do you remember about his death?”

  LeMay sat on the edge of the bed and reached for a glass of some dark liquid off the nightstand. I didn’t think it was cough syrup.

  “Jerry drowned in the waters off Venice Beach,” he said. “His body washed up early one morning and a fisherman found him.”

  “What do you remember about that?” I said. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

  He took another swallow from his glass. “He was fully dressed, for one. And the autopsy showed he had a big bruise in the middle of his back.”

  “Like he was held down?” I said.

  “Yeah, but no one could prove anything and they closed it faster than honeymoon suitcase.” He finished what was left in his glass.

  “Could you show me the spot where he was found?” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Just curious,” I said. “Come on, will you show me?” I dug into my pocket and produced a ten-dollar bill and played with it in front of him.

  “Not today,” he said. “Meet me tomorrow morning at Seventeenth Street and Venice Beach. I’ll point it out for ya.”

  I tore the ten spot in two and gave him half. I held its twin up at eye level. “I’ll give you the other half tomorrow at the beach.”

  My Olds took me back along Hollywood Boulevard and west to LaBrea. I picked up the phone in my office and dialed the Santa Monica number Ruiz left with me. I asked to stop by and run a few ideas past him. Ruiz agreed and I drove over to his house near the ocean.

  He was in his front yard, clipping the hedge when I drove up. He invited me in and we sat in the living room.

  “Oscar LeMay wasn’t much help,” I said, “but I got a little better picture of the way Pearson ended up. I’m meeting LeMay tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m coming along,” Hector said.

  “Better not, Hector,” I said. “He’s jumpy and I don’t wanna spook him.”

  “I’ve got more to lose than you do, Cooper,” Ruiz reminded me. “I’m coming!”

  “At least wait in the car, out of sight until I can get a chance to talk to him,” I said.

  Ruiz agreed and the next morning we drove to Venice Beach and waited. There was no sign of Oscar LeMay. I got out and walked on the beach for a while. Still no Oscar. After half an hour I got the feeling I’d been stood up and was about to leave. Something made me stay. Something had a shoe on it. Beneath a pile of kelp lay the body of Oscar LeMay. I knelt next to the body.

  A shadow crept over me as I knelt there. I looked up to see Ruiz standing over us. I plucked the kelp from the face of the wet body.

  “It’s Kincaid,” he said, kicking at the shoulder of the dead man on the beach. “He did this. It has to be him.”

  There was a phone booth at the corner. I stood and started toward it. “Keep an eye on him,” I said over my shoulder.

  I phoned it in to Dan Hollister and hurried back to Ruiz and LeMay. It was starting to look like Kincaid was eliminating any possibility of having to share any of Hector’s inheritance with any other former bodyguards.

  Fifteen minutes later Ruiz and I walked back toward my car to wait for Dan and the coroner. “I’ll drive,” Ruiz said, coming around to the driver’s side door.”

  As he rounded the front of my Olds, a Buick sedan squealed around the corner and bore down on my coupe. Hector had his hand on the door handle and was about to open it but froze momentarily when he saw the Buick coming at him.

  The Buick’s right front fender caught Ruiz in the hip and flung him up in the air and threw his limp body to the pavement. The car sped up and zigzagged down the street. It made a sharp left at the first corner and was gone before I could draw a bead on it.

  I ran over to where Ruiz’s crumpled body lay. He was still breathing but he’d lost a lot of blood. Both his legs lay twisted beneath him and a jagged bone protruded from his left arm.

  I pulled off my coat and bundled it up under his head just as Hollister’s car was just pulling up. Dan got on the radio and called for an ambulance before running over to where Ruiz lay in a twisted mess.

  “Your call was a little late,” Dan said, “by a couple of days. If you’d have called me sooner…”

  “What?” I said. “You could have prevented this?”

  “We could have hauled Kincaid in and…”

  “And what,” I said, “asked if he had anything to do with LeMay’s death or Pearson’s?”

  “Cooper, you’re so far out on a limb with this one…”

  He didn’t have a finish for his sentence and I was too beat to argue.

  Hollister drove ahead of the ambulance, clearing the way to Mercy Hospital. I followed in my Olds. The guard stationed at the door to room 312 stood up straight as Dan and I passed. Lanny Matura, the assistant D.A. and Doreen Reed, a three-year veteran policewoman greeted us. Doreen was dressed in a nurse’s uniform and looked every bit the part. The doctor on this case was Earl Hoskins. He was studying the chart that hung on the foot of the bed.

  In the bed behind them laid the broken shell of Hector Ruiz, his body held together with more pins than a bowling alley. Both of his legs were in ca
sts and hung suspended from a frame over the bed. His left arm also hung from a suspended cast while his right arm lay useless at his side. Even his head was wrapped in bandages. All you could see of the man were his brown eyes.

  “How’s our boy holding up?” I said.

  “He’ll make it,” Doctor Hoskins said. “He may walk with a limp and have to learn to write with his left hand, buy he’ll live.”

  “You sure you want to do this, Matt?” Hollister said.

  I nodded. “With Hector’s testimony we’ll be able to put Kincaid away forever.” I was determined not to let him walk this time. We knew what his next move would be.

  I looked around the room. “We five are the only ones who are in on this, right?” I said.

  Everyone nodded in agreement. “As far as anyone else in this hospital is concerned,” Matura said, “Ruiz is right here in this room, and he’s improving every day. Cooper, we can’t afford any foul-ups on this one. Our case has to be airtight. You make sure you dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s. I don’t want Kincaid walking on a technicality.”

  Doctor Hoskins and Doreen Reed wheeled Hector’s bed out the door and down the hall to a room marked “Staff Lounge”. In a few minutes they returned. “You’re sure he’ll be safe there?” Doreen said.

  “I’ve got three of my best men in there,” Hollister said. “He’ll be safe. It’s Cooper I’m worried about.”

  Doc Hoskins returned carrying the long white plaster-wrapped casts. He turned them around and gave me a look at all sides of them. I looked into the openings and then up at Doc.

  “These ought to do it, Doc,” I said. “What do I owe you?”

  “Just get that guy and we’ll call it even,” he said.