“No kidding? What did the driver look like?”
“Average,” Del said. “I mean you really can’t see how tall a guy is when he’s sitting behind the wheel of a car.”
“I guess not,” I said. “But I suppose you could see what color hair he had, right?”
“Sure. It was red—carrot red and lots of it, too. Boy that guy sure could have used a haircut.”
“How about his face? Did he have any marks or scars on it?”
“You know Mr. Cooper, you sound like you’re a cop with all these questions. You ain’t a cop, are you?”
I chuckled. “No, I’m not a cop, just a curious guy. So was there anything special about the guy’s face?”
Del thought for a moment. “His face was just normal, you know. No big nose or ears or anything, just normal.”
I switched gears. “What about the car? Did you notice any damage on it?”
“Couldn’t see the front of the car after he hit the kid ‘cause like I said, he was heading down Western by then and all I saw was the rear end. That’s how I knew it was the same year as mine.”
“Taillights?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, thanks, Del,” I said. “You’ve been a big help. Now I know where to come when I need flowers. If you’d like to give me a business card, I can spread the word for you if you like.”
“That’d be great,” Del said, plucking a card from his shirt pocket and handing it to me. “I can use all the free advertising I can get. Thanks.”
I dropped Del’s card in my coat pocket and shook his hand once more before leaving the store. Sure, I might get around to telling some other people about his shop, but I really wanted his card in case I needed to contact him again.
I decided that if I was going to get any information at all about the front of the black Lincoln that I’d have to visit a few shops a little further south on Western Avenue. They might have had time to get a look at the front end of the Lincoln. I stayed on the same side of the street as Del’s Flower Shop and walked south for another block. I passed a funeral home and a dry cleaner’s shop but neither one had windows in the front but a little further down the street I found a bakery with two large windows facing Western Avenue. It was near the corner of Fernwood Avenue and decided to give them a visit.
The sign over the door identified this place as the Western Avenue Bakery. Sounded a bit impersonal to me, but then it wasn’t my shop. A bell over the door announced my arrival. A woman in a white apron came out from a back room and took her position behind the display cases full of pastries of every imaginable type. I guess it was my day for white aprons. This is the third one I’d seen in the last twenty minutes.
The woman smiled at me and laid her hands on top of the glass case. “Something I can get for you?”
I scanned the cases and decided on a plain cake donut with chocolate frosting. “That one,” I said, pressing my finger against the glass.
She plucked a piece of waxed paper from a dispenser and grabbed the donut, handing to me over the countertop. “That’ll be a nickel.”
I gave her a nickel and she rung it up in the register. I kept standing there, eating my donut and trying to come up with a reason not to leave right away. I pointed to a donut with white frosting and some colored sprinkles on top. I stuffed the last bite of the chocolate donut in my mouth, chewed and swallowed and said, “One of those, too, please.”
I gave her another nickel and she dropped that one in the register as well. “Will that be all?” she said, apparently eager to get back to whatever it was she’d been doing in the back room before I came in.
I decided the straightforward approach would be my best bet in this case. I pulled out my wallet and flipped it open to my I.D. and license and held it up in front of her just long enough for her to get a sense of my authority without actually letting her read the content.
“Matt Cooper,” I said, using my official voice. “I’m investigating the accident that happened last Friday right up the block from you. There was a young man killed when a car jumped the curb and ran him down and I need to ask you a few questions. It’ won’t take but a minute.” I returned my wallet to my pocket and waited for her to acknowledge me.
“Yes, sir,” she said. Her voice had an edge to it, like she was suddenly intimidated. “I’m always willing to co-operate with the police.”
I didn’t correct her assumption. If that’s what she wanted to think, I was going to let her. “Were you working that day?”
She agreed that she was.
“Can you tell me what you saw that morning?”
“Let me think,” she said. “I was just bringing a tray of long johns out to put in the display case when I heard a sound outside. A second later I heard a woman screaming and went to the window to see what the commotion was all about.”
“And just what did you see?” I said, setting my second donut on the wax paper on top of the counter and producing a notepad and pencil, like every good cop would have.
“I didn’t see the actual accident,” she explained. “That part was already over by the time I got to the window, but there was this car. A big black one, you know, like the politicians and rich guys drive, kinda long.”
“A Lincoln?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Most cars look alike to me. Couldda been a Lincoln.”
“You happen to notice if there was any damage to the front end of the car?”
“Damage?”
“Yeah, like a dented fender, broken headlight, smashed grille, anything like that?”
“Boy, let me think,” she said. “Now that you mention it, the chrome part in the front had a big dent in it. And that thing that sits on top of the hood was missing.”
“The hood ornament was gone?” I said.
“Part of it, anyway.”
“Anything else you can remember about the car? Did you happen to see the license number?”
She shook her head. “No, sorry, it all happened too fast and I didn’t think to look.”
“Did you get a look at the driver as he drove by your shop?”
She thought about it for a moment before offering, “Just that he had a head full of red hair. Does that help?”
I closed my notebook and dropped it back in my pocket. I picked up my donut and took a bite. “These are really good,” I said. “Do you have a business card?”
She plucked one from a cardholder on top of the display case and handed it to me.
“Western Avenue Bakery,” I said, reading from the car. “Angie Sorrell, owner. Is that you?”
Angie nodded her head and said, “Is there anything else, ‘cause I have some bread coming out of the over right about now.”
“No,” I said, “That’ll be all for now. If I have any more questions I can call this number, can’t I?” I pointed to the number on the card.
Angie nodded again and I thanked her, leaving the way I’d come. Now I had the make, model, year and color of the car as well as a partial license number and description of the damage. I drove back toward my office and for some lunch. I picked up a hamburger to go and ate it behind my desk while I paged through the phone book looking for auto body shops in the area. Within Hollywood itself there were eight auto repair shops listed in the yellow pages. I tore that page out of my phonebook, folded it and stuck it in my pocket. The new phone book was coming out soon and I didn’t think I’d need this one page again before that happened.
The first five shops that I visited weren’t currently working on any Lincolns, nor did they have any scheduled for the immediate future. The sixth shop specialized in foreign cars only. It was the seventh body shop that caught my attention. It sat on the corner of Melrose and Ardmore Avenues and looked like a mom-and-pop business without the mom. The sign over the garage door labeled this as Melrose Motor Repair. I pulled into the parking area directly in front of the garage and headed for the office door. Inside I could see several cars in various states of dismantle or repair.
Car doors rested against walls, hoods and trunks sat on saw horses, and there were three car grilles hanging from wires over the other parts.
I didn’t immediately see anyone working in the garage but remembered it was the lunch hour. Just because I only took ten minutes to wolf down a hamburger at my desk didn’t mean that everybody did. I spotted a door marked ‘Office’ and knocked before turning the knob and walking in. There was a wooden desk piled high with papers and small parts. Two men sat on either side of the desk, cups of coffee in front of them. They were eating sandwiches out of metal lunchboxes and one of the men was thumbing through a car magazine.
They looked up when I entered the office. The one with the magazine put it down long enough to say, “Can I help you?”
“Looking for the owner,” I said.
“You found him. Art Simon,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
“I was looking for a place to fix my Lincoln,” I said, lying. “My wife ran into a parking meter and it looks like I’m going to need a new grille and some fender work.”
“How soon do you need it?” Art said.
“Is it possible to bring it in this week?” I said.
Art shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. I have three jobs out there that I need to finish first. You’re probably looking at two weeks minimum before I can get you in.”
“No,” I said, “That won’t do. We want to take the car on vacation and I’d like it fixed before that. Can you recommend anyone else who can work on Lincolns?”
Art thought for a moment and then offered, “You might want to try Buford Lincoln. He’s over on Santa Monica just east of Vermont. Just ask for Dick in the body shop.”
I thanked him and climbed back into my car. I crossed Melrose Auto Repair off my list and headed for Santa Monica Boulevard. This was my last hope in the Hollywood area. If the driver had taken the car to a repair shop in another city, I might never find him.
Buford Lincoln was a large auto dealership that took up half the block between Vermont and Madison Avenue. There were rows of cars lining Melrose Avenue, each with a colorful streamer hanging from the antenna and each with a large sign in the window proclaiming it to be the deal of a lifetime. The second row of cars consisted of the used cars that had been traded in for the new models. Sitting in the middle of all those cars was a thirty foot building with a sing over the door that said, ‘Sales Office.’
I pulled up in front and climbed the two stairs up to the front door. Inside I found four sales desks with chairs on either side. A smaller table held a coffee maker and several cardboard cups along with a sugar bowl and creamer. Salesmen and customers occupied three of the desks. The forth desk was empty. I looked out the window onto the lot and saw another man in a business suit shaking hands with a guy in a colorful short-sleeved shirt. The man in the suit walked back into the office and saw me standing there.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said with a look that could put a fox to shame. “Welcome to Buford Lincoln. I’m Jerry Hanes and you are…?”
“Just looking,” I said.
“Fine,” Jerry said. “That’s where it all starts, with the looking, the feeling, the smelling. Come on, let’s go out in the lot and kick a few tires. I’m sure we can find…”
I held up a hand. “It’s not a car I’m looking for. I was wondering if you could tell me where to find Dick in the body shop.”
The smile fell off Jerry’s face and his helpfulness quickly turned into disinterest. He pointed out the window to the end of the lot. “At the other end of the lot,” he said, tonelessly. “The door marked ‘Service’. He’s inside.”
“Thanks, Jerry,” I said in a phony cheerful voice, and left the sales office.
The body shop was just where Jerry said it would be and it wasn’t hard to spot Dick. He was the guy in the blue shirt with the patch that said, ‘Dick’ over the pocket. He was standing in front of a Ford with a dented fender writing what I assumed to be a repair estimate. He stopped writing when he saw me standing next to him.
“Yes sir,” Disk said. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, Art Simon over at the repair place on Melrose said you might be able to help me. He was too busy to fit me in.”
“Sure, I know Art,” Dick said. “What seems to be the problem?”
I told him the same phony story about my nonexistent wife hitting the made up parking meter and damaging the imaginary grille on the Lincoln I didn’t really own. I asked how long it would be before he could fit me in.
“You know,” Dick said. “Sometimes I don’t see a Lincoln in here for months and then I get two in the same week. What are the odds? I mean what are the odds that they’d both need grille work, too?”
“You have another Lincoln with grille damage?” I said.
“Too bad you didn’t come in earlier this morning,” Dick said. “I already sent out my order for that first grille. I could have made that order for two grilles had I known.”
“Say, that is a coincidence,” I said. “Did the other guy’s wife hit a parking meter, too, or would that hoping for too much of a coincidence?”
“No, I’m afraid that’s where the similarity ends,” Disk said. “This guy was someone was driving through Griffith Park last Friday and a deer jumped out in front of them. It caught the grille, the fender and even broke off part of the hood ornament. They’re gonna have quite a bill before we’re done with it.”
“Yeah,” said, “Deer can make an awful mess, what with the blood and everything.”
“And there was blood on the front. Looks like someone tried to wash most of it off, but I could still see traces of it between the grille slats. I can imagine what the deer looks like.” Dick looked at his clipboard and then back at me. “So when can you bring it in for an estimate?”
“Well,” I said, “I want to make sure the work is done right. It’s still drivable and I thought maybe I could see how this other guy’s car comes out before I commit. You know, maybe ask him for his opinion of your work.”
“Gonna be kind of hard to nail down any one person with an opinion,” Dick said.
“How’s that?”
“Oh, I see,” Dick said. “The car doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. It’s a county-owned vehicle. Part of a fleet, I guess.”
“County-owned?”
“Yeah, like either part of the mayor’s office or one of those unmarked police cars or maybe even an alderman’s ride. Who knows? They all take turns using anything in the fleet. Depends what’s available at the time.”
“No kidding?” I said, feigning interest. “I suppose the whole fleet has some sort of series of sequential license plate numbers so they can remember which is which.”
Dick flipped over a page on his clipboard and checked something. He looked up at me again. “You’re probably right,” he said. “My guess is that they all start with LAC and end with a three-digit number, like this one.”
“Huh?”
“This one,” Dick said, “Is LAC-202 and that means that the fleet probably has similar plate numbers from LAC-100 to LAC-999 or something like it.”
I had what I need and decided to leave before Dick started to get suspicious of my real intentions. “Well, thanks,” I said. “I’ll check back with you later.”
“You want me to call you when the county’s Lincoln is done?” Dick said. “That way you can see first-hand the kind of work we do.”
“That would be helpful,” I said. “But seeing the finished car wouldn’t tell me much if I hadn’t seen the car before it was fixed.”
“I can help you there, too,” Dick said. “It’s in the shop now. Wanna take a look?”
“That would be great,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Dick walked me to the back of the shop and through a small door that led to a larger room where the cars were initially dismantled. Just inside an overhead door I could see a 1946 black Lincoln with front-end damage. Half the hood ornament was broken off and the grille was caved in. The
left front fender also had a huge dent in it. I bent over for a closer look and could see the blood residue Dick had told me about. This was the car, all right. Now all I had to do was find out who was driving it last Friday and why anyone would intentionally drive up onto the curb to run someone down.
I remember that I promised to let Sergeant Hollister in on whatever I found out, but he was a government employee just like the driver of the Lincoln. I couldn’t be sure that my findings wouldn’t be swept under the rug. I’d have to find the driver on my own.
I thought I’d take a ride down to the county garage and have a look at the rest of the fleet. The garage was located in the basement of the county building and I had to drive down a ramp to the underground parking area. There were rows of cars parked across the back wall, all the same color, make and model. They were Chevys and were probably the backbone of the fleet. I guessed that the Lincolns were reserved for upper level employees only. Across from the row of Chevys there were eight of nine small pickup trucks with brooms sticking up out of a holder near the cabs. No doubt these were maintenance vehicles. In the bed there were other utensils that could prove handy to the drivers of these vehicles.
One the end of the garage closest to the entrance there was an office with a large window looking out onto the parking area. I knocked on the door and let myself in. There was a man sitting at the desk and he was checking numbers on a clipboard. He had a silver ring of hair around his head with nothing on top but a few stray wisps. The nameplate on his desk identified him as Clyde Cummings. He finished running his finger down the license of numbers and then looked up at me.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Clyde.” I’d never met him, but I thought asking for the man by name tended to personalize the meeting.
“I’m Clyde,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
I wasn’t sure that being honest with him at this point would get me anywhere so I lied a little. “My name’s Cooper and I’m looking into the accident with the Lincoln from last week. We’re holding up the claim until we can get a few more facts.”
Clyde seemed unimpressed. After all, these cars didn’t belong to him and this was just a job as far as he was concerned.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 61