“Because I don’t like their special,” Gloria said. “Bratwurst with scrambled eggs and orange juice and hash browns and pancakes don’t really trip my trigger.”
I waved the cards again. “Might as well go for the money meal,” I said. “With these cards we can walk out free and clear on a bill for more than ten bucks. Pay dirt, baby.”
“After three months of this same place it’s beginning to taste like dirt,” Gloria said. “And if you don’t like the food, what good is it?” Gloria picked up the menu again and motioned for the waitress. “I’m getting my usual. You can get whatever you like. More doesn’t necessarily make it better.”
The waitress returned and waited for one of us to speak. Gloria pointed to the same place on the menu where her regular choice was printed. “I’ll have that.”
“And you, sir?” the waitress said, ready to scribble on her pad.
I picked up the menu and pointed to the deluxe super breakfast special. “I’m having that,” I announced proudly. The waitress sidled away.
I picked my wallet up from the table and began to slip the cards into the currency compartment. Gloria looked down at my wallet. It was bulging with bills of all denominations. I thought about the punched cards. I’d be giving them to the waitress in a few minutes and it made more sense to slip them into my shirt pocket where I wouldn’t have to dig for them.
“Why do you have to carry so much cash on you?” Gloria said, looking around to see if anyone else noticed.
“It’s only a couple of hundred,” I said. “I just cashed Mrs. Filbert’s check last night and I haven’t been to the bank yet. We’ll go there from here, all right?”
“Well for now just put it away and stop opening it up in plain sight,” Gloria said.
“You worry too much, you know that?” I said, folding the wallet and returning it to my hip pocket. “Besides, like I said, this is our lucky day.”
“Are you still going on about that free breakfast?” Gloria said. “What’s so lucky about free potatoes and toast with a wiener?”
“It’s not just that,” I said, digging for my wallet again. I produced a ticket and handed it to Gloria. “Last night’s lottery,” I said. “I got four numbers.”
Gloria studied the ticket. “And what does four numbers get you? Twenty-five dollars?”
I snatched the ticket from between her fingers. “Nope,” I said. “Four numbers gets me five hundred big ones. How’s that for lucky? I can take it to the mini mart and cash it in right after we finish breakfast.”
“Well, at least one thing is going right today,” Gloria said.
“Two,” I said. “I get the big breakfast free while you get the same ol’ same ol’.”
“Yeah,” Gloria said sarcastically, “That’s real lucky. Twelve orders of gut bomb food just to get another gut bomb free. Aren’t we blessed?”
“Six bucks is six bucks,” I said. “And I’m going to enjoy every bite.”
Gloria glanced over toward the kitchen. “Where the heck is that waitress with our order?” she said, somewhat annoyed. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Maybe they know there’s no tip in it for them today and they’re purposely being slow,” I said.
“What do you mean, no tip?” Gloria said.
“How much will today’s meal come to?” I said, lifting the punched cards half way out of my shirt pocket.
“Nothing,” Stella said. “Today’s the freebie.”
“And what’s fifteen percent of nothing?” I said, smiling.
“Nothing.” Stella had to admit. “I guess it is lucky in that sense anyway.”
A minute later the waitress returned and set two plates of food down in front of us. I’d just dug my fork into the wiener when the front door opened and two men in their early twenties strode in. There was a confidence in their manner and a purpose in their step. One of them remained just inside the front door while the other marched over to the counter where our waitress was ringing up someone’s total on the cash register. The customer stood directly in front of her.
“I’ll be right with you in just a minute,” she told the young man.
The man reached into his jacket and produced a small handgun and pointed it at the waitress. “You’ll be right with me right now,” he said, pushing the waiting customer out of his way. “Empty the cash drawer into this,” he said, producing a white pillowcase from inside his jacket.
At the other end of the room a middle-aged balding man got up to leave. The young man standing just inside the door produced a pistol of his own and motioned to the chair that the balding man had recently vacated. “Sit down, pop. Nobody’s going nowhere.”
The waitress emptied the contents of the cash register into the pillowcase and handed it back to the gunman. He stepped over to our table and held the bag open. “We’ll start with you two. Drop your wallets into the bag and be quick about it.”
Stella nervously dug into her purse and pulled out the brown leather wallet. She snapped the changed compartment open and reached in.
“Just throw the whole thing in the bag, lady,” the gunman said, waiving his gun in our general direction.
Gloria frowned at him. “You don’t have any use for my mother’s ring,” she said. “I’m keeping it. You can have the wallet.”
The gunman bent over and snatched the wallet, ring and all, and dropped it into the bag. Gloria started to stand up but a sharp rap from his gun on top of her head sat her back down again. I dropped my wallet into the sack without resistance. The gunman pointed to our wrists with his gun. “Watches, too,” he said.
Gloria and I slipped our watches off our wrists and dropped them into the bag. He moved on to the next table and repeated the procedure. After a few minutes, he’d collected wallets and watches from almost everyone in the restaurant. Some people weren’t wearing watches, but everybody donated their wallets.
Gloria and I had met here at the restaurant. I hadn’t been to the office yet and my .38 was still hanging in its holster from the coat rack. This ought to teach me to wear it with me everywhere.
The first gunman called over to his partner who was still guarding the front door. “Hey Vic, look at this,” he said holding up the bulging sack. “Looks like we hit pay dirt.” He backed out of the front door with the sack and followed his partner out to their waiting car.
Our waitress collapsed on the floor behind the counter. The short-order cook hurried to her side and patted the tops of her hands and shook her. He reached up onto the counter and grabbed a water glass. He stuck his fingers into the glass and flicked water in the waitress’s face. She remained unconscious. He emptied half the glass onto her face before she came around.
Some customers scrambled out the door while others peered over the counter, curious as to the waitress’s condition. Still others remained seated and simply waited, not sure if the two thugs would return.
The short-order cook stood back up and reached for the phone on the counter. He dialed 9-1-1 and almost shouted into the phone before hanging up again.
Gloria sat there, at a loss for words. The loss was short-lived when she remembered her mother’s ring and the other contents of her wallet that had disappeared out the door. She couldn’t decide whether to cry or yell. She yelled.
“Lucky day, huh?” she said. “I had seventy-three dollars in my wallet. They got my mother’s ring. They got our credit cards. Your wallet’s gone with the two hundred bucks in it. Still think it’s a lucky day?” Her face sank when she remembered. “Your lottery ticket,” she said. “Five hundred bucks down the drain. Gees, what else can go wrong today?”
I picked up my napkin and wiped my brow. My shaking hand sank into my shirt pocket and plucked the two punched cards from its depths. “Well,” I said, “At least we still get the breakfast free.”
Gloria snatched the cards from my fingertips and tore them both in half and then in half again. She threw the pieces in my face.
59 - Take The Money And Run
&nb
sp; The private detective business is not all car chases, shoot-’em-ups and ‘follow that car’. Sometimes we take a particular job either to have something to do when business is slow, or to help pay the bills. This was one of those jobs. Alvin Miller, the owner of Midwest Shows, a traveling carnival, had called Cooper Investigations to see if we might be interested in working security while their show was in town. It was just two day’s work, but those sixteen hours of walking the midway, looking for con men, pickpockets and petty larcenists would pay for our overhead for a week. The carnival couldn’t very well patrol itself so the city council took it upon itself to demand that Miller provide extra outside security during the carnival’s weekend stay in town. When they threatened to withhold Miller’s permit, Miller agreed to bring in extra security and called me. It wasn’t a prestige job, but it was something to do while Elliott and Gloria had their hands full working another case in Hollywood. I told Miller I’d handle this one myself.
The night smelled like mud and soda and cotton candy and close bodies. The day was coming to an end and the sun was just starting to set in the west. The midway took on an orange hue and cast long shadows everywhere.
People strolled the length of the midway, stopping at booths to knock over lead milk bottles with a softball or break balloons with a dart or toss ping-pong balls into fish bowls with small openings. A few people walked away with stuffed animals and worthless plastic trinkets. It was a sure bet the people walking around with the six-foot stuffed Teddy Bears were planted by the carnival operators as come-ons to show other people that it could be done with a little persistence and thirty dollars worth of quarters.
I stopped in front of one of the booths and watched as people struggled to make their way past me. Behind the throngs of people pushing and shoving their way past the booths, I could see the silhouette of the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl and a few other rides designed to make the rider either throw up or walk around the rest of the day with a dizzy headache. The screams of the riders, mostly girls’ screams, filled the night air and blended perfectly with the sounds of the calliope music coming from the merry-go-round.
A carnival barker stood on his pedestal challenging passers-by to, “Step right up and see the ninety-pound killer rats from the sewers of Paris.” For only a quarter, spectators could climb the five stairs and walk up to the top of a cage and look down on the three-foot, dog-sized rodents. Most people walked away in awe of the giant rats. Some questioned the barker as to why these rats had no tails or why they had webbed feet. A few even demanded their quarter back when they confronted the barker with the fact that these weren’t giant killer rats from the sewers of Paris, but rather harmless capybara from the jungles of South America. No one ever got a refund—just a pat line about seeing the owner. It didn’t seem to be worth the bother for a quarter refund and that’s what the show’s owner was counting on.
I waited for an opening in the crowd and continued on my way toward the exit gate. That was where my rounds started and ended and I’d made a dozen rounds since I came on duty at noon. That was my job. One more round and it would be time to go home. My feet were swollen and achy and when this forty-five minute trek around the grounds was over, they’d be closing the show and moving on to another town to start the process all over again for another weekend of thrills and chills and cotton candy and killer rats.
With less than half a round to go, I stopped for a cup of soda. I gave the man in the concession wagon my dollar and he handed me a paper cup with three cents worth of ice and two cents worth of soda. With a markup like that, a guy could retire selling soda.
I’d almost finished my drink when something caught my eye behind the soda wagon. I stepped between the soda wagon and the cotton candy wagon to get a closer look. It was shiny black shoe, a low-heel pump. Filling the shoe was the foot of a girl, probably no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. She lay in that rag doll position that always meant the same thing. Her eyes were fixed wide open, staring off into the night sky. She wore a red plaid skirt that had been bunched up around her waist and no panties. Her once white button-down sweater was now muddy and bloodstained. It was also open in the front. What had once been a frilly lace bra appeared to have been torn open at the front from a pull by a strong hand. The girl’s face was bruised around her left eye and her jaw. There were also bruised around her throat. Her tongue was hanging halfway out of her mouth.
The area behind the concession wagons was littered with parked cars and trucks and trailers from the carnival show. The spaces in between created a kind of a maze. A person could get turned around in there and it could take a few minutes for someone to find their way out again. Beyond the trucks and trailer was a gravel road that led back to town.
I bent over and pressed two fingers into her neck and wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find a pulse. I left her there and made my way back between the wagons again to the soda vendor. He was busy serving soda to a family of four at the other window. I slapped my palm down hard several times on his countertop and got his attention. Startled, he looked up at me and stepped over to my window.
“Have you got a phone in there?” I said impatiently.
“Are you kiddin’ me, Mac,” the vendor replied. “We ain’t even got a toilet in here.”
“Where is the nearest phone?” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
The vendor thought for a moment, scratched his stubbled chin and said,” I guess the closest phone would be at the ticket wagon. It’s on the other side of the midway.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know where it is. Thanks.”
I knew from making the rounds that it would take me fifteen minutes to fight my way through this crowd to get back to the ticket wagon. Instead, I did the first thing that came to mind. I returned to the back of the wagon and pulled my .38 out from under my arm. I held it overhead and squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession. Screams and gasps and yelling filtered through the crowd as people began pushing and shoving and running the other way. As was usually the case, though, many people rushed toward the sounds and soon people were straining to see what was going on behind the soda wagon.
Within fifteen minutes of my shots I could see the swirling blue and red lights on top of the Los Angeles Police Department cruiser that was coming my way on the dirt road behind the wagons. The crowd parted, allowing the cruiser to get in close. Two deputies emerged with guns drawn and stern looks on their young faces. I held my shield and ID up as they approached. I didn’t need to point at the body of the girl; their eyes were already fixed on it.
“What happened here?” one of them said, checking my ID as the other knelt next to the body.
“I was hired for extra security,” I explained. “I was making my rounds when I spotted the girl’s foot between the wagons. I found here just like that.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of the body without looking that way.
“Did you disturb anything?” the taller cop said.
“I only touched her neck, trying to find a pulse,” I explained. “With this size crowd, I knew it would take me too long to get to a phone, so I came back here and fired three rounds to get your attention.”
“Well, you got it,” the cop said.
A few minutes later another cruiser pulled up behind the first one and behind the second cruiser was an ambulance. Lieutenant Dean Hollister emerged from the second cruiser, along with another policeman I recognized, Sergeant Eric Anderson. Dean pushed his way past the crowd and the two officers on the scene stepped aside to let him through.
Dean caught my eye. “Clay, what are you doing here?” he said.
“I was hired to patrol the grounds and provide extra security when I found her lying there,” I said, gesturing toward the body. “It’s just one of those days.”
Hollister turned to the taller officer and asked, “Have you secured the scene?”
“Yes, sir,” the officer replied. “My partner called in for some more crowd control and the M.E. shoul
d be here any time now.”
“He’s here,” Hollister said, stepping aside as Andy Reynolds, L.A.’s medical examiner worked his way toward the girl’s body. He knelt next to her and went through the motions of looking for vital signs that he was sure weren’t there.
“She hasn’t been dead long,” Andy said. “My best guess would be less than an hour.” The crowd parted again and Andy’s two ambulance assistants pulled their gurney up to the body. They looked at Andy, who looked at Dean. Dean nodded and the girl’s body was loaded onto the gurney. The black night came alive in a kaleidoscope of blue and red lights. Other officers held the crowd back as the ambulance attendants pulled the gurney back through all the people and loaded it into the back of the ambulance.
The taller officer pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open to a blank page. He looked at me. “Did you know her?” he said casually.
I shook my head and slipped my .38 back into its underarm holster. “Nope,” I said. “She was dead when I found her here.”
“And nobody saw nothin’,” he said, not really expecting an answer. “A girl gets killed in a crowd of three or four thousand people and nobody sees nothin’. What the hell’s this world coming to anyway?”
“Take it easy,” Hollister said to the officer. “Why don’t you and the others start asking around and see if anyone here saw anything. I’ll handle Mr. Cooper.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said, walking away.
“He does have a point,” Dean said. “How can anyone get killed in the middle of all these witnesses without someone seeing something?”
I shrugged. “People are just animals,” I said. “Some of them are housebroken and some of them aren’t. Are you about done with me here? I’ve got to finish my rounds.”
Hollister jotted my name down in his note pad, flipped it shut and returned it to his shirt pocket. “Yeah,” he said, “I know where to find you if I need you. But I wouldn’t worry about finishing your rounds, though. This show is closed until I get some answers.”
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 176