The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “How much?”

  “I’ll throw it in for ten bucks.”

  I sighed and looked at the man. His face didn’t change expression. He should be a professional poker player. “All right,” I said. “Bring it along.”

  “Bring it along?” The man said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “The car’s not here and I can’t walk back to it carrying the tire. I’m gonna need a ride back to my car.”

  The man smiled and I knew there was another figure he had in mind.

  I looked at him. “How much?”

  “Thirty cents a mile, both ways,” he said. “I can give you an exact figure once we get there.”

  I looked at my watch. “Let’s go.”

  The man looked at his watch and shook his head. “Gotta wait. I’m still open for business until five.”

  “That’ll give you just enough time to mount my new tire on the rim and fill it with air.”

  Again the stare from the highway robber.

  “How much?” I said.

  He said nothing, but held up five fingers. I nodded, wondering all the while if he’d be missed once we got back to my car. I still had enough energy to dig a shallow grave. The idea popped out of my head almost as soon as it had appeared.

  I could see the man through the window of his garage door. He was busy mounting the tire on the rim. He finished just as five o’clock rolled around. The gas station lights all went out and a second later the man walked out his front door, threw the mounted tire in the back of his tow truck and started it up. I hurried around to the passenger’s side and climbed in beside him. He backed out onto the road and headed down the road toward my car. I didn’t have to make up any excuses about why I didn’t want to talk to him during the trip.

  Seventy-five minutes later we came to the spot in the road where my car sat disabled. The man did a U-turn, pulling up directly behind my car and we both got out. He reached into the bed of his truck and pulled the tire out, bouncing it a couple of time before rolling it over to my car.

  “There you go,” he said. “Just let me check the mileage and I can give you a total.”

  “Aren’t you gonna put it on the car?” I said, indignantly.

  He stared and smiled again.”

  “Okay, how much?” I was really starting to hate this guy.

  “Ten bucks and that includes taking the old one off and throwing it in your trunk for you.”

  I bit my lip. “How much if I throw it in the trunk myself?”

  “It’s still ten bucks. I do that part as a courtesy to my customers for free.”

  “Aren’t you the philanthropist?” I said sarcastically.

  He reached into the back of his truck and pulled out a bumper jack and got to work. Fifteen minutes later he dropped the flat in my trunk and closed the lid. He wiped his hands on the rag that had hung from his back pocket. I met him alongside his truck.

  “All right,” I said. “What’s the total?”

  The man pulled out his order pad and began writing, mumbling to himself as he wrote. “Let’s see now, that’s twenty-five for the tire, ten for the rim, ten for the installation and, let’s see, sixty three miles times two. That’s a hundred twenty-six miles at thirty cents.” He did some basic arithmetic on the side of the sheet and then announced, “Thirty-seven eighty, and the rest of it comes to eighty-two eighty. And we can’t forget the governor.”

  I held up a hand. “You can pay the governor and I can write you a check, or you can skip the governor and I can give you eighty dollars cash.”

  The man thought about it for a second and then held his hand out. “Let’s call it eighty even.”

  “Aren’t you generous?” I said, handing over four twenties. Without saying another word, the man turned and climbed back into his truck and drove away before I could even come up with a smart-ass parting remark. I climbed back behind the wheel and started the engine. If there were any more wayward jackrabbits, they’d just have to yield to my wheels. Ain’t no way I was gonna swerve for any more critters ever again.

  Now I remembered why I didn’t like vacations.

  It was after midnight before I got back into Hollywood. I pulled into my driveway and left my bags in the car. I just wanted to get to bed before I collapsed on the porch. I had all I could do to undress and slip under the covers before I nodded off. I normally couldn’t sleep longer than seven or seven and a half hours but this time I didn’t roll out of bed until I’d been out a full ten hours. It was just after eleven the next morning when I rose to face a new day.

  I threw on a robe and slippers and shuffled into the kitchen to get the coffee started. My paper was waiting for me on the porch and I settled into my easy chair with it, waiting for the coffee to brew. I flipped through the pages and stopped on an eye-catching advertisement for padded shoe insoles. The way my feet felt this morning, I just might have to go downtown and buy a pair. A few pages further I saw a small, two-inch article about a man who’d been found shot and dumped in an alley just a few blocks from here. The article said they were withholding the victim’s name pending notification of next of kin.

  I folded the paper and set in on the sofa when I heard the coffee perking in the kitchen. I poured myself a cup, slid two pieces of bread in the toaster and started the shower running. The water heater in my basement was notoriously slow and by the time I’d finished my breakfast, it was warm enough to take my shower. Afterwards, I got dressed and drove to my office.

  I parked in the parking lot behind my building and walked into the building through the back door. Before taking the elevator to my floor, I walked to the front lobby to check my mailbox. I grabbed my mailbox key and was reaching for the lock when a cuff was slapped on my wrist. At the other end of the cuff stood one of L.A. finest, Sergeant Dan Hollister. Standing next to him were two uniformed officers. Dan pulled the cuffed hand behind my back and grabbed my other wrist, joining the cuffs behind me. He spun me around to face him.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” I shouted. “Come on, Dan, this isn’t funny. Take these damned things off, right now.”

  Dan turned to the officers. “Take him downtown. I’ll follow you down in my car.”

  The officers pulled me by my elbow and dropped me into the back seat of the black and white they had parked at the curb. They pulled away from the curb without so much as a single word of explanation. They ignored my questions and demands and before I could say Police Brutality we were at the twelfth precinct. One of the officers opened my door and grabbed my elbow again, yanking me out of the patrol car and pulling me toward the door to the precinct. Before they got me inside, I looked back to see Dan Hollister pull up behind us. He got out and looked briefly in my direction before I was whisked away.

  The officers brought me up to the booking desk. The desk sergeant pulled a piece of paper from a drawer and looked at the officer. “What’s the charge?”

  The officer holding my elbow said, “Murder one.”

  The desk sergeant wrote that on his form and was about to ask the officer another question when I blinked and said, “What? What the hell is going on here? Where’s Sergeant Hollister?”

  The desk sergeant sighed and gave me a dirty look. “Name?”

  “Huh?” I said, not sure he was talking to me.

  He repeated it, more harshly this time. “Name?”

  One of the officers nudged me.

  “Cooper,” I said. “Matthew Cooper.”

  The sergeant added that to his sheet. “Age?”

  “Thirty-six,” I said.

  Before he got to ask his next question Dan Hollister appeared to my left and exchanged looks with the desk sergeant. “Let me talk to him for a minute,” Dan said, pulling me aside. He walked me down the hall to an empty office and closed the door behind us.

  “What are you people doing?” I said. “And what’s all this nonsense about murder one?”

  “Sit down, Matt,” Dan said, taking the cuffs off my wrists.

  I st
ared defiantly at him, rubbing my chaffed wrists.

  “Please,” Dan added.

  I sat at a table but Dan continued standing, hovering over me like a hummingbird over a flower. “Matt,” he started, “this is serious and I want you to think before you answer. “Where have you been for the past week?”

  “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I was in Palm Springs.”

  “Until when?”

  “I got back last night. Why?”

  “When did you get there?”

  “Last Monday.”

  “And you never left the springs all that time?”

  “No. Now will you tell me what’s going on here?”

  Dan pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped it open to the last page. “Do you know Raymond Darnell?”

  I thought for a second or two. “Doesn’t ring any bells. Should I?”

  “And did you take your .38 with you?”

  “On vacation?” I said. “No, I wasn’t expecting to have to shoot my way out of the pool. Why?”

  “And Tuesday night?”

  “What about it?”

  “Where were you?”

  “Are you losing your memory, Dan? I already told you I was in Palm Springs for the week. Friday was my last day and night there. I left there Saturday and drove home again.”

  Dan jotted something in his notebook and then looked back at me again.

  “Can anyone verify your whereabouts on Saturday?”

  I had to think back. “My car had a flat tire in the desert,” I said. “I was stuck out there for several hours.”

  “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Convenient? What’s so convenient about being stuck in the desert?”

  “Makes it hard to check an alibi,” Dan said.

  “And just why would I need an alibi? Dan, you better tell me what’s going on here.”

  Dan checked his notes again. “Raymond Darnell, WMA, forty-four, six foot one, brown, blue. Mr. Darnell was found dead on LaCienega Wednesday morning. He’d been there since Tuesday night. Shot three times. He’s quite dead.”

  “I gave Dan a puzzled look. “And this would concern me how?”

  Dan referred to his notes again. “Darnell was shot in the back with a Smith and Wesson .38.”

  “And?”

  “And according to ballistics, the gun in question is registered to one Matthew Cooper, age thirty-six of Hollywood. Now does it ring any bells?”

  I started to stand but Dan kept me seated with a hand on my shoulder. “There’s more,” he said, “in case you’re concerned now.”

  I twisted in my seat to look up into Dan’s eyes. He was dead serious. I settled back into my chair.

  Dan went on. “Friends of Darnell told us that he thought some private eye was tailing him. They told us the peeper’s name was Cooper, Matt Cooper.”

  “I didn’t...”

  “Wait,” Dan said. “Let me finish.”

  “For the past week or so people we talked with said that a man named Cooper had been seen around town, looking into certain matters for a client, or so he told them. On one occasion, he told a store owner that he was tailing a man and wanted to know if the store owner had seen him.”

  “Stop right there, Dan,” I said. “You’ve known me for how many years now? And in all that time have you ever known me to let out that kind of information to anyone not directly connected to one of my cases? No. That right there should tell you that someone is going around posing as me to establish, what?”

  Dan shrugged. “So where’s your .38?”

  “Where it always is when I’m not wearing it—in my holster hanging on the coat rack in my office.”

  “Try again, Cooper,” Dan said. “The holster’s there, but the .38 isn’t.”

  “Someone could have broken into my office, stole the gun, killed Darnell with it.”

  “Matt,” Dan said, “When we found Darnell and questioned a few people, the clues led to you. When we got to your office, there was no sign of any break-in. The door was locked and the office was tidy, even for you. You saying that someone stole your gun and tidied up your office before they locked the door and left again?”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Well, looks like you got me. We can skip court. Take me right to the chair.”

  “Matt,” Dan said. “You wanna get serious?”

  “Do you? You know I didn’t do any of what someone said I did, so why the theatrics? What’s with all the drama?”

  “What would you do in my shoes?”

  “I’d arrest me and bring me in for questioning, I guess.”

  “Okay, Matt, let’s cut through the crap and get to the facts. Once we verify your whereabouts we can rule you out as a suspect and concentrate on finding the person who’s out to frame you.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” I said.

  For the next hour and a half Dan and I spent time in his office, making calls to the Palm Springs hotel where I stayed, to the gas station where I was robbed of eighty dollars, and to the hospital where Bill Evans’ son had been born. I had three solid alibis that even Dan couldn’t break. He got me released and drove me back to my office so I could start looking into who it was who tried so hard to frame me.

  “I know you have a vested interest in this case, Matt,” Dan said when he dropped me off, “But you just make sure you let me in on whatever you find out. We’ll be working the case from our end as well.”

  I agreed to share my results with him and watched as Dan sped away from my building. I could see I’d have to get home and get my backup piece.

  I took the elevator to my floor and walked the hallway, trying to imagine someone walking this same route, getting into the same office and finding my piece hanging on the coat rack in its holster. After I opened my door, I bent down, trying to get a better look at my lock. There were no signs of tampering and whoever got in, knew his way around a lock pick. The office was as neat as Dan had described, neater than I’d ever kept it. It looked as if a cleaning woman had just finished her deluxe cleaning job. I almost hated to sit at my desk; afraid I’d mess up someone’s hard work.

  The holster still hung from the coat rack, empty, of course. I pulled it off the rack and slipped into it. I don’t know what I expected to find here, but I had to see for myself. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time and decided to drive home for my backup .38. I was in and out of the house in less than a minute and felt complete now with the extra weight under my arm. I figured I could always count on some of my regular contacts for information and they always hung around downtown. I found my first contact at the Gold Cup, a restaurant on the boulevard. I took the stool next to him at the counter. He turned toward me as I sat. His eyes showed surprise as he recognized me. He leaned away from me slightly.

  “Chuckie,” I said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I, uh, I...”

  “Clever, Chuckie. What else you got to say for yourself?”

  “What are you doing in town?”

  “I live here, remember? I work here. This is my town. Where should I be?”

  Chuckie swiveled sideways on his stool, scanning the room and the front door. “How’d you manage to dodge the cops?”

  “And just why should I have to dodge the cops?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t, Chuckie. Suppose you fill me in.”

  Chuckie looked around again.

  “Relax,” I said. “No one’s after me. Someone after you?”

  Chuckie laughed a nervous laugh and pretended to be absorbed with sipping his coffee. He set his cup down and leaned in toward me. “I just figured since they found Darnell and your gun and all, that you’d be sittin’ in the pokey, ya know.”

  “For what? I haven’t shot anyone, at least not this week.”

  “But I heard you was asking around town about Darnell and now he’s...”

  “Dead. Yeah, I heard, but I didn’t do it.
I wasn’t even in town all last week, so who do you suppose is going around using my name and my gun?”

  “You really didn’t do it?”

  “I think you’re catching on, Chuckie.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “So who told you about me asking around town about Darnell?”

  Chuckie shrugged. “You know, you hear things around. Not from anyone special, just from the grapevine, you know?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know. Now think, where’d you hear all this?”

  “Honestly, Matt,” Chuckie said, “It just got around. I didn’t hear it first hand, but anyone who knows you wouldn’t mistake this other guy for you. I could pick you out of a crowd of gumshoes. Musta been someone who doesn’t know you personal, like I do.”

  “Well, thanks for your confidence,” I said. “What else have you heard?”

  “Nothin’ really, ‘cept...”

  “Come on, Chuckie, give.”

  Chuckie scanned the room again before offering, “I heard you, well, not you, but the guy passing himself off as you, took some guy’s money and split. The guy came in looking to hire you and this other guy took his money and then didn’t do the work. The guy who paid him is probably out looking for him, or in this case, you. I’d watch my back if I were you.”

  I threw a dime down on the counter. “The coffee’s on me. Thanks, Chuckie.”

  Chuckie looked at me like I’d sprouted a third eye in the middle of my forehead. “A dime? That’s all I’m worth?”

  I reached for the dime. “Would you rather buy your own coffee?”

  Chuckie snapped up the dime and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “Next time give me more to go on and I’ll throw in enough for pie.”

  I rose from the stool and headed for the door. I could hear Chuckie mumbling under his breath as the door closed behind me. I’d gone only half a block when I noticed two men across the street. One was talking close to the other’s face and then gestured toward me. The two men split up, one walking away up the street and the other crossing in the middle of the block toward me. I kept walking and heard footsteps fall in behind me. I stopped in front of a store and check the reflection in the glass. The guy was still following me. I walked on and turned into the alley, stepping up against the wall. I didn’t have to wait long. The man who’d been tailing me also stepped into the alley and I grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him up against the wall.