The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “Okay, okay,” Chambers said. “There’s no one else here. You happy now?”

  I backed him up even further until the backs of his calves hit the edge of the couch and then pushed him to a sitting position. I bent over, stuck the barrel of my .38 against his forehead. His eyes got wide as saucers and his mouth hung open. He squeezed his eyes shut and shivered where he sat.

  “Now we’re only going to ask you once,” I said. “If you don’t answer, your landlady is going to get to keep your cleaning deposit. Do we understand each other?”

  “Who are you?” Chambers said. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” I said. “You probably don’t recognize me from the front. If I turned around, would you recognize the place where you shot me in the back?”

  It finally dawned on Chambers who it was that had the gun at his head. He stuttered as he tried to speak.

  “I, I, I, I,” he started to say. “I didn’t want to do it. It was those other two guys. They said they wanted to just take your wallet but you fought back. I was just doing what J.T. told me to do.”

  “J.T.?” I said. “Who is J.T.?”

  Weasel hesitated. I cocked the hammer back and the cylinder rotated into place. It was a sound Chambers was familiar with.

  “Joey Thomas,” Chambers said.

  “Which one was he?” I said. “The one with the switchblade or the guy with the pipe that hit my wife?”

  “J.T. always carries a knife,” Chambers said. “Always.”

  “And the guy with the pipe,” I said. “What’s his name?”

  Chambers’ eyes darted back and forth across the room but he didn’t answer quick enough to suit me. I smacked the top of his head with the gun barrel.

  “Ouch,” Chambers yelled. “That hurts.”

  “Not as much as a bullet going through your head,” I said. “Now spill it. The other guy’s name.”

  “Ernie,” Chambers said. “Ernie Bowden.”

  I backed up three steps, keeping my gun trained on Chambers. I pulled my notepad and pencil out and tossed them to Chambers.

  “White their names and addresses down on there,” I said. “Then sign your name to the bottom.”

  “What?” Chambers said. “Why do you…?”

  “Just do it,” I said. “And I’ll be looking them up after so if your addresses don’t match what I find, you’re dead. Understand?”

  “Hey,” Chambers said. “If you can look ‘em up why should I write them on here?”

  “Because,” I explained, “if I find these guys and they want to know who ratted them out, I can show them this in your handwriting. I guess you know what’ll happen to you if they find out?”

  “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Chambers said.

  “Here’s your alternative,” I said. “I turn you in to the cops and they put you into protective custody. It’s either that or I let your playmates carve you up. Which one will it be?”

  Chambers said nothing. “I take that to mean that you’d prefer the jail cell to the morgue.”

  Chambers slowly nodded. I picked up Chambers’ phone and called the twelfth precinct, but not Dan Hollister’s private number. I got the front desk and spoke to a Sergeant Adams. I whispered in case he remembered my voice or me.

  “Tell Lieutenant Hollister he can find one of the three killers he’s after at this address,” I said, giving the desk sergeant the Kingsley Drive address. “He’ll be tied up in the living room.”

  I hung up and looked at Chambers. “Turn around,” I said, pointing the gun at him.

  Chambers turned around and I hit him behind the left ear with the barrel of my .38. He fell forward onto the couch. I pulled my penknife out of my pants pocket and cut the cord that hung alongside the drapes in the living room. I secured Chambers’ hands behind him and then bound his ankles as well. I rolled him onto the floor and tied his ankles to his wrists like a calf in a rodeo. Then I got a glass of water from the kitchen, bent down and threw it in his face. He coughed and sputtered and his eyes fluttered open. He looked at me like he wanted to kill me.

  I held the notepad open to the page he’d written and showed it to him. “If you tell the cops who did this to you, I’ll make sure J.T. and Ernie see this notebook and you won’t even be safe in jail. You got it?”

  Chambers nodded slowly and laid his cheek back down on the carpet. I left the house and walked back to my car. I was three blocks away when I saw the two black and white cruisers speed past me and stop in front of Chambers’ house. One down and two to go, I thought.

  I drove back to Hollywood and then on to Clay’s high school. School was just letting out and I was parked directly across the street from the front door. A moment later I saw Clay walking out next to Randy and one other guy. Clay saw my Olds and turned to Randy and said something I couldn’t hear and then came running over to my window.

  “Dad,” Clay said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can’t a father pick up his son from school anymore?” I said.

  “Sure,” Clay said and ran around to the passenger door. He got in and looked at me. “Where are we going?”

  “Thought you might want to come with me to my office for a minute before we go home,” I said. “I just need to pick something up.”

  “You want me to wait in the car while you go up and get it?” Clay said.

  “No,” I said. “Why don’t you come up with me? We really haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately and my office seems like as good a place as any.”

  “Okay,” Clay said. “Hamburgers after?”

  “You got it,” I said.

  I parked in front of the building and put a nickel in the meter. Clay and I rode the elevator to the third floor and then walked to the end of the hall to my office. I was still pulling my keys out of the lock and when I turned around I saw Clay sitting behind my desk with his feet up on it.

  I held my hands up, thumbs touching, and framed him in the scene. “It’s you,” I said. “At least that could be you in a few years.”

  “Really?” Clay said. “Me, a private eye?”

  “Well,” I said. “Not until you finish college, at least.”

  “But a real private eye,” Clay said.

  “There are worse occupations,” I said. “You could do a lot worse, like working in some sweaty factory or selling shoes or driving a cab. I know. I’ve done all those things before I settled on this.”

  “Don’t forget cop,” Clay said. “And I’ll bet you were a darn good one, too.”

  “That’s up for interpretation,” I said. “Ask Dan.”

  “Uncle Dan?” Clay said. He’d called Dan Hollister ‘Uncle Dan’ since he could speak. I had explained that Dan Hollister wasn’t really related to us but that he didn’t mind the moniker.

  “Believe it or not,” I said, “Mr. Hollister and I didn’t always get along. In fact, he’s the main reason I quit the force.”

  “Really?” Clay said. “Hard to believe it, to see you two now.”

  “That was a long, slow process,” I explained. “Over the years we just grew closer than we ever thought we could. I know. It surprised me, too.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Dad?” Clay said.

  “No reason,” I said. “Just talking, you know, man to man.”

  Clay’s face lit up at the prospect of being on a level almost even with me. He pulled his feet off my desk and sat up in my chair. He gazed around the room, taking it all in and imagining himself six or seven years from now.

  I walked over to the desk, pulled the middle drawer open, pulled out the letter from the insurance company and handed it to Clay. He read it and then looked up at me.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’re rich.”

  “We’re rich,” I said. “That’s going toward your college fund.

  Clay handed the letter to me and I waved it off. “You keep that as a reminder of what the future could be for you,” I said.

  Clay folded the letter and stuck i
t in his shirt pocket. “Is this what you wanted to pick up here?” he said.

  “No,” I said and walked over to my closet. Up on the shelf I pulled a small white box down and carried it back to the desk. I set it in front of Clay and he looked at it and then at me.

  “Is that mom?” Clay said, meekly.

  I nodded. “It was her wish to have her ashes scattered in the Hollywood Hills,” I said. “And I thought it was something we should do together.”

  Clay nodded. “I’d like that,” he said and got up from my chair.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “The three of us, for one last outing.”

  Clay picked up the box and followed me out of the office. When we got back in the car Clay had set the box between us on the seat. “We’re ready,” Clay said, patting the top of the box.

  Clay and I had both seen the Hollywood sign for most of our lives, but neither of us had ever been any closer to it than Hollywood itself. I drove up the winding roads that led north from the city. By the time I parked the car, we were higher than the sign and could look down on it from a higher vantage point. I parked off the road and the two of us made our way down to the large white letters that at one time had spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND as part of a real estate development gimmick.

  Ten sure-footed minutes later Clay and I stood directly behind the large white Y and looked down on the city. It was a beautiful sight and I could see why Amy had chosen this spot as her final resting place. Clay and I stepped around to the front of the sign. I opened the box and looked at Clay. He put his hands over mine and together we released Amy’s remains into the wind. She was at peace now and my son and I were closer than ever before.

  “Goodbye, Amy,” I said. “I love you.”

  “Goodbye, mom,” Clay added. “I love you, too.”

  I wrapped one arm around Clay’s shoulder and drew him close to me. We stood like that for a moment before we broke away and trekked back up Mt. Lee, as it had been named. Once we were back at the car, we both stopped to catch our breath before sliding back into our seats. I drove back down into Hollywood and on to our home.

  The next morning Clay was up early for school and I had my day mapped out as well.

  “I may not be here when you get home this afternoon,” I said to Clay. “I should be back later if I can get all my work done in time. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  “Okay, dad,” Clay said. “I’ll be fine. See you tonight.”

  Randy picked Clay up at eight-thirty and I left shortly afterwards. I had my notebook opened to the page where Warren Chambers had written down the names of the other two thugs who had mugged Amy and me that fateful night last month. I decided that Joey “J.T.” Thomas would get my attention first. I wanted to save Amy’s killer for last.

  When I was laid up in the hospital, Dan had told me about Amy’s death and said that she hadn’t suffered. I didn’t know it then, but Dan was lying to spare my feelings. I’d spoken to the medical examiner upon my release from the hospital and upon my insistence; he gave it to me straight. Amy had died of a fractured skull from a blow by a blunt object, which turned out to be the eighteen-inch length of pipe that Ernie Bowden had used to hit Amy’s wrist in order to get her to release her grip on her purse strap.

  According to Chambers’ notes, Thomas worked at a lumber yard north of here. I found the place easily and parked nearby. I entered the retail store that sat in front of the lumber yard and walked around inside, hoping to catch a glimpse of J.T. Apparently he worked out in the yard because he was nowhere in the store itself. I walked out the back door of the store into the yard and casually walked between the rows of cut boards, always keeping an eye out for my quarry.

  After twenty minutes of surveillance I saw a man walking on a second-story landing where the shorter boards were stored. Each bin was labeled with the length, width and height of each board, along with the unit price. I climbed the stairs and started toward him. When I got to within five feet, he caught a glimpse of me approaching him.

  “Can I help you sir?” he started to say and then something in his face told me that he recognized me. Without another word he turned and ran in the opposite direction, descending the stairs on the other end of the landing. I followed him as fast as I could, keeping him in my sights. I got back down to ground level and gave chase up one of the other aisles of cut lumber bins.

  Every now and then he’d look over his shoulder to see if I was still following him. He could see that I was still hot on his trail and picked up the pace. He raced around the corner without looking and ran directly into a forklift with a full load of lumber on its forks. His face hit the lumber pile and he went down like a marionette with its strings cut. The driver of the forklift reacted instantly and stood on the brakes. The load shifted forward and fell on top of J.T., in a neat pile, still strapped together like a huge brick. I heard a sickening squashing sound and saw a large volume of blood run out from under the woodpile. I knew no one needed to take his pulse to pronounce him dead.

  I turned and casually walked the other way before anyone saw me. I went back through the store and out the front door again to my car and drove away without so much as a second thought for Joey “J.T.” Thomas. Two down and one to go, I thought, as I crossed his name off my list.

  Ernie Bowden, as it turned out, worked in a tattoo parlor in the seedier part of town. I got the number of the shop from the yellow pages section of the Hollywood phone book. I called and asked for Ernie. The guy who’d answered the phone told me that Ernie was due in at ten o’clock the next morning. I asked if there was anywhere else I could reach him and I was told that he didn’t have a home phone and that in fact, he didn’t have a home. He lived out of a Chevy Greenbrier van that he kept parked on the street. The location was almost never the same place twice, since he didn’t want to get ticketed by police or harassed by wary neighbors.

  I thanked the guy and before I hung up I tried a bluff on him and said, “Ernie’s van is the one with the screaming eagle painted on the side, isn’t it?”

  “Nope,” the guy said. “That’s not Ernie’s van. Ernie’s has a picture of a Hell’s Angel riding a chopper and the biker’s face is just a skull with flames shooting off it. Pretty cool, too.”

  I hung up and just started cruising the streets of Hollywood, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ernie’s one-of-a-kind van parked somewhere. I started on Franklin Avenue and drove the length of it, starting at Western Avenue and driving west to LaBrea. From there I started cruising south to Hollywood Boulevard and drove it west back to Western Avenue. Then I went back up Hollywood, making sure to try each north and south street in between Franklin and Hollywood. When that didn’t pan out I extended my search south again to Vine and started the whole grid search process over again. I kept up this search pattern until I eventually found myself on Santa Monica, zigzagging north and south between it and Fountain.

  I’d just turned the corner on Lexington and Wilcox when I spotted the van I was looking for. There was no mistaking it. There was the Hell’s Angel with the flaming skull riding a chopper. There just couldn’t be two vans like that in the whole world, let alone in Hollywood. I parked a block behind it and kept it in sight. Bowden had managed to find a secluded part of that block with two houses next to each other that both had For Sale signs in the front yards. They were probably vacant and that’s why he’d chosen this spot. It was nearly nine-thirty and the street was dark and quiet.

  I’d been sitting there for half an hour when the two rear doors opened and a man with a foot-long greasy ponytail of black hair stepped out onto the street. I could see into the van all the way to the front seats. He was alone. The man looked both ways to see if anyone was watching, unzipped his fly and proceeded to relieve himself right there in the gutter. When he’d finished, he zipped up again, crawled back into the empty van and closed the doors. That was definitely Bowden. No doubt about it.

  I got out of my car and opened the trunk, retrieving my tire iron. It had a nice heft to it a
nd I left it hang by my side as I approached the van from behind. I’d also brought a blue bandana and tied it across my face, so just my eyes showed over it. When I got within twenty feet of the back doors, I looked on the ground and saw several acorns that had fallen from the trees that lined both sides of this street. I picked up four or five of the nuts and walked closer to the van. I stood off to one side of the back doors and tossed the handful of acorns into the air directly above the van. They hit the roof with a machine gun-like rhythm. The back doors opened again and Bowden got out, looking straight up at the trees. He had a length of galvanized pipe in his hand.

  I could see his feet under the opened van door and knew precisely where he was standing. I gave the left rear door a quick shove, hitting Bowden as it swung. I stepped out from alongside the van and brought my tire iron down hard on his right forearm. He dropped the length of pipe and howled, holding his fractured right arm with his left hand. I raised the tire iron again and brought it down equally hard on his left arm. Both arms hung limp at his sides now. He looked me square in the eyes now and something in his face registered some sort of recognition. His eyes got wide and full of tears from the pain in his arms.

  Without hesitating I squatted and swung the tire iron again, this time sweeping it across his right leg. I could hear the bones crack as he went down on one knee. Within the space of two seconds, I hit the other leg with the same results. Bowden flopped to the pavement completely immobilized now.

  I knelt next to his face and whispered, “Don’t go away, punk. The party’s just starting,” and walked away.

  From where Bowden lay, he couldn’t see me by the time I got back to my car and drove to the nearest filling station to use the public phone to call the twelfth precinct. Once again I got Sergeant Adams at the front desk. In the same whisper voice I’d used before I told the sergeant where they could pick up the third killer they were searching for.

  “Who is this?” Adams said, but by now was talking into a dead phone.

  I drove home and parked in the driveway. Clay was still up watching television when I walked in the front door. When he saw me he got up off the couch and came into the kitchen.