The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  He let out a breath and whispered, “Don’t try to take me out of the chair. They have it rigged with some sort pressure sensitive device attached to the seat. If I get up it releases the pressure and pulls the pin.

  “What if I just cut the string above the pin?” I said.

  “No good,” Elliott said. “If you cut the string on this end, it’ll release the pressure on the other end, the spring will pull the grenade down, leaving the pin dangling.”

  I turned to Dean. “We’ll have to do this together. You grab the grenade by the wall, I’ll grab this one and we’ll both cut the string at the same time. You ready?”

  Dean nodded and stepped over to the grenade by the wall. He grabbed it and the pin and then looked at me. I grabbed the grenade attached to the chair and nodded to Dean. We both snipped the string ends and stood up each holding a grenade. Just then the other two officers came into the room, their guns drawn. When they saw the situation, they holstered their weapons. Dean called them over and they each took one of the grenades from each of us.

  “Take those outside, someplace safe and call the bomb squad,” Dean said.

  “Yes sir,” one of the officers said. They both left the room, walking slowly and deliberately back to the stairway.

  I bent over and untied Elliott’s hands and feet and pulled him to a standing position.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  Elliott shrugged. “I guess, all things considered,” he said.

  “Who did this to you?” Dean said.

  “I never saw a face,” Elliott said. “Two guys grabbed me outside of your house, hit me, slipped some sort of black bag over my head and hit me again, several times. When I came to, I was lying on my back with the bag still on my head. Some guy grabbed me by the shirt and started asking me questions about Harrington.”

  “What’d you tell him?” I said.

  “There wasn’t anything I could tell him,” Elliott explained. “They didn’t believe me at first, but I just kept telling them that someone killed Harrington before he got the chance to stop by my office. I guess they believed me after a while. Then I got knocked out again and when I came to, I was tied to this chair. Then you showed up and that’s about all there is to tell. What’s going on, dad?”

  I explained how I’d found Peggy Harrington’s diary and that she had named Grant Dixon among her clientele.

  “And he’s married,” Elliott said. “Not to mention what it could do to his career in politics.”

  “Speaking of careers,” I said, “We found someone else’s name in Peggy Harrington’s diary.”

  “Yeah?” Elliott said. “Who’s?”

  I paused and looked at Dean and back at Elliott. “Yours,” I said.

  “Mine?” Elliott said, genuinely surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. “The strange part was that with the other names, there were figures ranging from a hundred to five hundred and even one for a thousand next to Dixon’s name. But every time your name was mentioned the figure was twenty-five dollars and never more.”

  “Wait a minute,” Elliott said. “Did you ever get a good look at this Peggy’s face? The only picture I ever saw was the one in the paper but she was lying in the street and I couldn’t see her face.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “There was a picture of her in her bedroom back at Wendell’s house. Why?”

  “What did she look like?” Elliott said. “Describe her for me.”

  Dean stepped up and pulled his notepad out and flipped to the page with Peggy Harrington’s stats on it. “Five-four, a hundred twenty, blue, blonde, a tattoo of…”

  “Of a starfish,” Elliott said.

  “How’d you know?” Dean asked. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You would know, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Elliott explained. “I never made the connection. She didn’t go by Peggy when I knew her. No, her street name was, let me think, Doreen. That’s it, she went by Doreen.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So she went by Doreen. So what. Your name is still in her diary with twenty-five dollar notations.”

  “Yeah,” Elliott said. “It would be. A few months ago I was working on a case involving a wandering husband. You remember, dad, the guy went out every Tuesday and when his wife got suspicious she hired us?”

  “I do remember a case like that,” I said. “How’s it connected?”

  “Well, the guy was seeing one of Doreen’s, uh Peggy’s friends and I got Peggy to help me with the surveillance. And each time she did, I paid her.”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” Dean said.

  “That’s right,” Elliott said. “The hundred dollars I eventually paid her came back in the money the wife paid us when we brought her the evidence that her husband was a cheating dog.”

  I sighed. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  Elliott pointed at me. “You thought I was one of her Johns?” he said. “Come on, dad, you know me better than that. I’m too tight with a buck to ever pay for it. Hell, if anything, I could get them to pay me, but let’s not go there, either. Okay?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, helping Elliott out of the room and down the stairs.

  When we got outside, there were three more squad cars, their red lights flashing. There was an ambulance and the medical examiner’s car there also. Some members of the press caught wind of the killings of the two officers from car eleven. A photographer was snapping pictures of the scene as well.

  Dean, Elliott and I made it back to Dean’s car. Elliott rested against the back door, rubbing his sore wrists, and looked at me.

  “What about Dixon?” Elliott said.

  “He can’t get far,” Dean said. “We’ll be able to pick him up tonight yet. He’s got nowhere to go.”

  Dean drove to the emergency room entrance and I made sure a doctor checked Elliott out for a concussion or anything else potentially serious. After thirty minutes Elliott emerged from behind the curtain wearing a white bandage on his forehead. His bloody nose had also been cleaned up and he had two stitches in his chin.

  Dean dropped the two of us off at my house and promised to keep us in the loop when they caught Dixon.

  Elliott made a beeline for the refrigerator and grabbed a cold beer. He held one out to me but I waved him off. When he’d finished his beer he headed for the bathroom and ran the water in the shower.

  “I’m just gonna take a shower and hit the sack early,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Can’t say that I blame you. I’m just gonna sit here for a while before I got to bed, too. See you in the morning.”

  Elliott nodded and closed the bathroom door. Ten minutes later the light under his bedroom door went out and before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep in the recliner.

  I awoke the next morning before Elliott and my neck was a bit stiff. I decided to let him sleep in a while longer and walked to the kitchen to start breakfast. The smell of bacon frying was all it took to get Elliott’s bedroom door to open. He peeked his head out and sniffed.

  “Making some for me, too?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Get your robe on and come out here.”

  Elliott took the seat across from me at the kitchen table. His face looked a lot better than it did yesterday. Over his eggs and bacon Elliott said, “Ever wonder if we’re in the right business?”

  I took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. “Not even once,” I said. “Dad did it for more than twenty-five years when I joined him. I’ve been at it for almost forty and you. Well, let’s see, how many years has it been for you now?”

  “Almost nine,” Elliott said. “And it feels like I’ve been doing this all my life.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

  “Well?” Elliott said.

  I said nothing, and just took another sip of my coffee.

  The phone rang and I motioned to Elliott to stay where he was and finish his eggs. I got up and picked up the wall phone in
the kitchen.

  “Cooper,” I said.

  “Clay,” the voice said. “It’s Dean. Thought you’d want to know that we picked up Grant Dixon and sure enough his lawyers were already at his side.”

  “You saying you think he’ll walk?” I said.

  “Not a chance,” Dean said. “They were able to trace the grenades back to him and two of his minions. And when we showed his lawyers the entries in Peggy Harrington’s diary, the started talking about making a deal. Yeah, I’d say his days of freedom are numbered.”

  “Great news, Dean” I said. “Elliott will be glad to hear it.”

  “I’m sure I’ll see him before the trial,” Dean said. “But just let him know that his testimony will nail the coffin shot on Dixon.”

  “Thanks, Dean,” I said.

  I sat across from Elliott again, grabbed my coffee cup and smiled.

  “Hollister?” Elliott said.

  I nodded. “It’s a slam dunk on the Dixon file. I think we did a pretty good job for a tired old man and a son who’s not sure he wants to be in this business.”

  “I suppose so,” Elliott said, rising from the table and setting his dishes in the sink. He started to walk toward the living room when a faint ringing sound came from his bedroom. Elliott went in and came back out holding his cell phone. He flipped it open on the third ring.

  “Cooper Investigations,” he said. “Uh huh. Yes, I guess I could meet with you. How’s an hour from now work for you? Good, I’ll see you there. And thank you for choosing Cooper Investigations.” He snapped the phone shut and dropped it in his robe pocket. He looked at me and said nothing for a moment.

  “Well, old man,” Elliott said. “You just gonna sit there or are you coming down to the office with me?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “We’ve got a business to run,” Elliott said. “Come on, old man, get dressed.”

  I smiled, took one last swallow of coffee and set my cup in the sink. I walked up to Elliott and held my hand out. He looked at me strangely for a second before he took it in his hand and pumped it.

  “Let’s go, partner,” I said. “We’ve got a client.”

  43 - The Cooper Back-Story

  The year was 1982 and I had recently started my new job as manager of a local automobile rental agency, which was situated on the corner of north Thirteenth Street and Michigan Avenue in Sheboygan. Renting cars is not a full-time occupation and there was always plenty of time to stare out the window and watch the world go by. On this particular day I sat watching the traffic going by the aforementioned corner when an accident occurred. This was not the first accident I’d witnessed from my office window but it was the one that made me write a letter to the editor of The Sheboygan Press, voicing my concerns for the need for a four-way stop at this corner.

  A week or so after I wrote the letter, it appeared on the editorial page of The Press. There was nothing outstanding or notable about this particular letter other than the fact that I wrote it. It was kind of neat seeing my words in print in the newspaper and I enjoyed the process of writing and submitting and waiting to see the result in print.

  Over the next few years I wrote more letters to the editor about various subjects ranging from seat belt safety to China’s one-child policy. All the while I’d noticed that most letters to the editor were of a serious nature and that many issues had been hashed and re-hashed until people were tired of seeing them in print. That’s when it hit me that maybe someone (namely me) should write letters to the editor that were more on a humorous level. They didn’t have to be about anything in particular as long as they gave Sheboyganites an occasional, much needed laugh. I took it upon myself to tackle just such a task.

  I decided my letters would be about nothing. And this was several years before Seinfeld used the premise in his show about nothing. My first submission was called “A Preference For News On The Lighter Side.” It read, in part, as follows:

  …Instead of more letters about the same serious issues, how about more good news or more human-interest news. News Like: Whatever became of Alfalfa Switzer? Will the Beaver Dam Beavers make it to the playoffs? How long until the drinking age is raised to thirty-nine? Does President Reagan dye his hair? Will the FBI catch up with Ernest Angely? What will minimum wage for baby sitters be in ‘88? Who will take Charo’s place? What’s Buffalo Bob Smith up to these days? Why did they take The Dating Game off the air?…

  After they printed this letter, it gave me a purpose, a goal, something to shoot for. The humorous letters to the editor continued intermittently for the next few years whenever I got the urge or needed to express a funny view.

  After several of these funny letters, I got some mail from a car dealer in Plymouth saying how much he enjoyed my sense of humor. I also got a call from the wife of a local industrialist, who offered me a job with their company. I declined, as I was enjoying the car rental business and the free time perks that came with it. But it got me to thinking that if these pillars of the community got into my humor, there must be others out there who’d like to see more.

  I decided sometime in 1986 to try to write a humorous book full of my rambling thoughts. It was tentatively titled Off The Top Of My Head. It contained two dozen short stories and collections of odd thoughts. I printed three copies and gave one to my mom, one to the bartender where my band often played and one got lost at home.

  Summer of 1987 rolled around and I set my sights a little higher. I decided I wanted to write a humor column for The Sheboygan Press. They didn’t know it yet, but I was already at work on several column ideas. I sent my ideas in a letter to the then publisher, John Werner, who sat on them for a few months before calling me at work one day. He asked what I had in mind for the column and I told him I wanted to continue the style I’d started with my letters to the editor. He eventually agreed and gave me free reign to write about almost anything I wanted. I hadn’t asked for any compensation and he never offered, so the first six columns were done for free.

  The new format his paper would be taking was to begin in August and I was to become a regular columnist with my material appearing every Sunday. I submitted my first column and waited. One delay after another prevented my debut until November of that year when they finally settled on a format they liked. I often liked to poke fun at my hometown and my first column appeared that Sunday.

  I continued writing and submitting column material every week for four years. Toward the end of the four-year stint I began to run dry of fresh material. The last column I’d submitted was about the current wedding between Liz Taylor and Larry Fortensky, a fellow resident during Liz’s last stay in the sanitarium. The Press paid me for the column, but refused to print it. I had three or four more columns printed after that, but I knew the end was in sight.

  When the newspaper changed ownership in 1991, the new owners decided to drop my column. I was both disappointed and relieved. Disappointed that I no longer had an outlet for my random thoughts and relieved because the pressure to come up with new material was no longer hanging over my head.

  During my stint at the car rental job, I had occasion to talk to a fellow employee about his childhood years. His family had been in the circus business since the 1920s and this fellow, Pete, had been their bareback rider. Pete’s sisters were also in the circus, one of them having worked as a high wire act and the other worked with elephants.

  Pete decided out of the blue that he could become a writer and set about writing a novel about his days with the circus. He did it long hand on a yellow legal pad. He was more than a few credits short in the spelling, grammar and sentence structure department so I offered to take his handwritten notes and type them into the computer for him. During this process, it dawned on me that if this guy can write a novel with no previous experience, then how hard could it be?

  He was still in the process of writing the novel and was about halfway finished when I asked if I could take a stab at it and write a chapter for him. He agreed and my first non-news
paper column creation took shape there on the screen of my Radio Shack Color Computer. When I’d finished, I found myself hungry to do more and just kept going, contributing three chapters to his book.

  The book never went anywhere but it gave me the experience and confidence I needed to try my hand at a novel. But, since I was still obligated to turn in a fresh column to the newspaper every week, I just didn’t have time to start on my own novel so the idea simmered on the back burner for a couple more years.

  In between my columns, my day job had also come to an end and I found myself working in the computer lab at our local technical college. It was more of a babysitting job, keeping an eye on the students in the computer lab and it afforded me lots of free time, much like the car rental job had. It was at my desk at the college that I wrote the first words to my first novel about a 1940s Los Angeles private detective who I called Matt Cooper. This was in 1989 and I just jumped right in and began writing, with no idea of a storyline and no idea of what I was going to write next. I just started banging away at the computer keyboard and before my shift ended that night at the college, I had my first two pages saved on my floppy disk.

  I’d been a huge Raymond Chandler fan and that’s where the idea for a vintage sleuth came from. As for the name, I plucked that out of the air, well, out of my subconscious, actually. During my early days of being a car salesman back in the late 70s I managed to sell a car to a man named Warren Cooper. The only reason I remembered Mr. Cooper at all was because the Dodge Polara that I sold him was a robin’s egg blue and that stuck out in my mind. Warren Cooper didn’t sound like a rough, tough private eye, so one day as I sat at my desk in the college computer lab, I looked down at the floor near the door and noticed a doormat. Matt Cooper, now that sounds like a rough, tough private eye and my detective character was born that very night.