“Terry,” I said. “Give us a starting point and we’ll branch out from there, each of us driving in a different direction.”
“We’ll all be driving in a different direction,” Dad pointed out. “Once you get up into those hills, the roads snake every which way. It’s not hard to get lost or turned around up there.”
“That’s probably why they chose that area,” I said. “It’s pretty secluded and hard to find.”
“It might be hard to find by car or on foot,” Terry said, “But we’ll be tracking their signal.”
“Let’s get moving,” I said.
The four of us in four separate cars drove west on Hollywood Boulevard and turned north on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Terry’s car led the way and he stopped south of Mulholland Drive and got out of his car. He walked over to my car and I rolled down the window.
“We should split up from here,” Terry said. “They can’t be too far away.”
By now Gloria and Dad had gotten out of their cars and had walked up to mine. Terry was still talking to me.
Dad interrupted him. “What should we be looking for?” he said to Terry.
“Look for a secluded house, possibly with its own broadcasting tower on the roof,” he said. “They could be using an existing tower, but I doubt it.”
“And I know this sounds elementary,” I said, “But it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye open for a red Corvette, too. Maybe they haven’t disposed of it yet. And keep your phones on and handy.”
Everyone got back into their cars and spread out, each one taking a different winding road into the hills. I turned west and followed Lookout Mountain Avenue. Gloria continued north a short way before turning east on Willow Glen Road. Dad drove north all the way to Mulholland and then took a sharp right onto Woodrow Wilson Drive. Terry turned his car around and drove south again, turning east on Laurelmont Drive. Each of our routes took us through more twisting and turning streets than one could imagine.
Twenty-five minutes later my cell phone rang. It was Terry.
“Elliott,” Terry said, “I think I may have something.”
“Where are you, Terry?” I said.
“I’m on a winding section of road where Bantam Place meets Nicholas Canyon road,” Terry said. “Do you see it on your map?”
I flipped a few pages and found the area Terry was talking about. “Got it,” I said.
“There’s a dirt road with an iron gate blocking it,” Terry said. “I’m getting a very strong signal from this area, but I can’t see any further.”
“Stay put,” I said. “I’ll call Dad and Gloria and we’ll all meet you there. Give us a few minutes, but don’t do anything until we get there.”
Terry’s curiosity and impatience got the better of him. A few minutes after he’d gotten off the phone, he decided to take his laptop and start walking toward the gate to see if his signal strength increased. He looked both ways up the road. He was alone. Terry looked at his laptop screen as he got up to the gate. It was as he suspected. He peered through the bars on the gate and leaned to one side. Further back he could see one wall of a house and part of a garage.
Although the iron gate was built to keep vehicles out of this driveway, it did nothing to stop anyone from walking around it, through some bushes, to gain access to the driveway. Terry closed his laptop and squeezed through an opening between the gate and a thick bush and found himself on the inside of the gate.
I’d called Dad and Gloria and the three of us converged on the spot Terry had described. I arrived first and pulled up behind Terry car. He was nowhere in the immediate area and I cursed to myself. I’d told him to stay put. Gloria pulled up behind my car with Dad right behind her. They both got out and met me at Terry’s car.
“Where is he?” Gloria said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just got here and he was gone. I think he might have gone inside the gate.”
“Let’s not take any chances,” Dad said, patting his side to let me know he was carrying.
I patted my side as well and Gloria patted her hip. “Let’s go,” I said, walking across the road. We looked over the iron gate and found the space where Terry had probably gone in. We followed his path and started up the dirt road toward the house and garage.
A moment later I heard a shot and instinctively grabbed my .38 from under my arm. Dad and Gloria did likewise. We hurried toward the house now, our guns out in front of us.
“It’s Terry,” Gloria said, pointing ahead of us and to the right.
Lying on the side of the road was Terry, still clutching his laptop to his chest. The laptop had a hole through the lid and on through the body of the computer. I lifted the laptop off him and saw blood on his chest. A small amount of blood oozed out of the wound. I turned to Gloria, “Call 9-1-1,” I said. “Get an ambulance, then call Hollister and get the police out here.” I gestured toward Terry. “Stay with him. Dad and I are going up.”
Dad hugged the right side of the road and I stayed on the left, cautiously making our way closer to the house. I could see the whole house now. There was a tall antenna sprouting from the roof, anchored by several guy wires.
Dad signaled to me with his gun, gesturing toward the house. He made our way closer just as the garage door opened and a fire engine red Corvette, probably an ‘87, roared out and down the driveway toward us. Further down the road, the iron gate was starting to swing open. Dad braced himself in a shooter’s stance and took careful aim, putting two rounds into the windshield on the driver’s side. The car kept coming. I fired twice and the Corvette swerved off the road and crashed into a large tree. Smoke poured out from under the crumpled hood and the rear tires kept spinning.
Dad and I cautiously approached the car. Through the driver’s side window I could make out the body of a man, slumped over the wheel. He was alone in the car. I pulled the driver’s door open and pointed my .38 at the driver while I pressed two fingers into his neck. He was dead. I reached in and turned off the ignition.
I could hear sirens wailing in the distance. I ran back down toward the road to meet the ambulance and Dean. The ambulance was first to arrive. The iron gate was fully open now and I directed the ambulance in, toward the spot where Terry lay. They pulled to a stop alongside him and immediately attended to his chest wound.
“How is he?” Gloria said.
One attendant wiped the wound clean and pulled a sharp piece of plastic from it. It had penetrated Terry’s chest only an inch or so. I bent over and picked up his laptop and turned it over. The tip of the bullet was just peeking out but the impact had cracked the plastic case, sending a sharp plastic shard into Terry’s chest.
“He’ll be fine,” the attendant said. “He’s lucky he was holding that computer or we’d be driving him to the morgue.”
Gloria bent down further and hugged Terry just before he was lifted into the ambulance. “I’m going with him,” she said, climbing into the back with Terry and the second attendant. You can bring me back later for my car.”
I nodded and waved as the ambulance pulled out of the driveway and out onto the road. The ambulance passed Dean Hollister and several other squad cars on their way up the hill. Dean pulled into the driveway and got out. He walked over to where I stood looking at the wrecked and smoking Corvette.
“What happened here?” he said, gesturing toward the Corvette.
I filled him in on what Audrey had hired us to do and how it had led us here to this remote location, ending with the part where Terry got shot and how Dad and I stopped the Corvette from running us down.
“And this is the Wilson woman’s car?” Dean said.
I nodded. “The driver was apparently running his Internet scams out of this house.” I pointed to the antenna on the roof. “It’s a complicated story, but I’m sure Terry can give you the technical details when they release him from the hospital.”
“After a bullet to the chest?” Dean said. “That could be a while.”
I explained how the bullet had
been stopped by Terry’s laptop and that his chest wound had been superficial.
“That’s one lucky kid,” Dean said.
“I’ll say,” Dad said, stepping up to Dean and me. “I’ve heard of a bullet being stopped by a badge, a silver dollar and even a bible, but a laptop? That’s a new one on me.”
Dad stayed behind with Dean until the scene had been secured and photos had been taken. I excused myself and drove to the hospital. I found Terry’s room on the third floor and walked in. Gloria was sitting next to Terry’s bed, holding his hand. Terry was smiling and so was Gloria.
“How are you doing?” I said, walking up to Terry and laying my hand on his shoulder.
Terry sighed. “They’re keeping me overnight for observation,” he said. “But I can go home tomorrow morning.” He pulled his gown aside to show me the place on his chest where the plastic sliver had pierced his skin. It was covered by an ordinary one inch by one inch bandage. “Not even a stitch,” Terry said, almost proud of the chest wound, which was also beginning to turn black and blue.
“So, what do think of the private eye business now?” I said.
Terry winced. “I think I’ll stick with computer work, safe, isolated computer work, maybe in my own safe cubicle somewhere safe.”
Gloria laughed. “I get the distinct feeling that safety is your main priority,” she said, patting Terry’s hand.
Terry nodded. “I’ll just go to college this fall, learn all I can about the computer sciences and get a cushy six-figure job with some Fortune 500 company.”
“Go for it,” I said. “Say, listen, I just wanted to thank you for all your help on this case. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“That’s right,” Gloria said. “And if you need a reference in the future, you just let us know.”
“I will,” Terry said. “And if any of you ever need any computer help, you let me know and it’ll be on the house.”
“We will,” Gloria and I both said at the same time.
Dad and Dean entered the house in the Hollywood Hills and went through each room with some of the other officers. Inside they found six desktop computer setups and as many laptops, all connected to a main server, which was connected to the Internet. Dean had called in one the department’s own computer experts to decipher what we saw on the screens. There were stacks and stacks of printouts lying on the tables. One table had a stack of maybe a hundred blank money orders, eight to a sheet. The backside was blank, probably waiting for the second pass through the printer.
There were five other rooms in this house, each one stacked floor to ceiling with merchandise ranging from computer parts to televisions to major appliances to boxes of DVDs. One room even held a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Hanging from the handlebars was a tag with the name and address of someone in Tijuana, Mexico who was probably buying this bike from the guy who’d been running his scams out of this house.
It took three days to get everything catalogued with descriptions and serial numbers and photos. Dean had everything hauled to the impound lot behind the precinct. It would be quite some time before the rightful owners would be reunited with their merchandise.
The red Corvette was also hauled into the impound lot where I took several pictures of it on my digital camera. I called Audrey Wilson and arranged to meet her at her home. When I got there, she was sitting on her front porch, a pitcher of lemonade sitting on the table in front of her. She was sipping from her glass. She invited me to sit in the chair next to her.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cooper,” Audrey said. “Would you like some lemonade?”
“Sounds good, Audrey,” I said.
She got up and went into the house for a moment and returned with another glass, pouring some of the lemonade into it and handing the glass to me. “Are you bringing me good news?” she said.
“Well, yes and no,” I said.
Audrey set her drink down and turned toward me. “Did you find my husband’s ‘87 Corvette?” she said.
“Yes we did,” I said, nodding.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Audrey said. “Where is it?”
“That’s the bad news part of my visit,” I said. “It’s in the police impound yard.”
“When can I get it back?” she said eagerly.
I set my glass down and pulled the digital camera from my pocket and turned it on. I found the five pictures I’d taken of it in the impound yard and turned the tiny screen toward Audrey. “This is it,” I said.
Audrey looked at the five pictures of the wrecked car and then up at me. “Are you sure it’s the same car?” she said.
“The serial number checks out,” I said. “It’s yours, all right. What do you want to do with it?”
“What can I do with it?” she said. “Look at it, it’s totaled.”
“You had it insured, didn’t you?” I said.
“You think the insurance company will still honor the policy despite everything that’s happened?” she said.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the title for the Corvette that Dean had found in the house. I held it out to Audrey. “It’s still in your husband’s name,” I said. “The scammer didn’t get around to destroying the title. He might have even sent it with the car to some place in Mexico if Terry hadn’t found him first.”
Audrey smiled again, genuinely pleased at the outcome of her misfortune. “I’ll have a check to you in tomorrow morning’s mail, Mr. Cooper. And thanks again for all your help.” She picked up her drink again and sipped from it. I picked up my glass of lemonade and held it up toward her. She clinked her glass on mine. “To technology,” she said, sipping from her glass.
“To Terry, I said, and took a drink myself.
Gloria and Dad were in the office the next morning before I arrived. I wasn’t late. They were both early. Dad was sitting behind his desk and Gloria was sitting in his client’s chair. They stopped talking as soon as I walked in.
“What’s going on here?” I said. “Did someone call a meeting and forget to tell me?”
I looked at Gloria. She was not smiling. Neither was Dad.
“Come on,” I said. “What is it? What’s going on here?”
Gloria reluctantly spoke up. “Elliott,” she said quietly. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say, so please let me finish before you comment.”
I exchanged a quick look with Dad. He shrugged but leaned back in his chair and said nothing.
“I’ve been here for almost two years now,” Gloria said. “And in that time, I’ve had occasion to see the numbers generated by this company; before I came on board, during the time Clay was off and now during this period, with all three of us working. I know that at times there was hardly enough work to keep the two of you busy, let alone a third employee. I don’t want to see this company fold, so I’ve decided that I have to move on and let you and Clay take over the business by yourselves again. After all, this started out as a family business and I’m not family, so the choice is obvious.”
My eyebrows furrowed as I stared at a spot on the floor. “Are you sure this is what you want?” I said, looking up at her.
Gloria nodded, a single tear running down her cheek. “It has to be,” she said. “Otherwise Cooper Investigations will have to close its doors, and I don’t want to be the one to have caused that. I’m sure you understand. You’re a businessman. You know about balance sheets and profit and loss.”
“But what will you do?” I said. “This is the job you were born to do.”
“We talked about that before you came in this morning,” Dad said. “Gloria has agreed to be available to us on an as-needed basis if we want her to.”
“What about your income when we don’t need you?” I said. “How will you get by?”
“Dad left me a little money from his insurance,” Gloria said. “It wasn’t enough to keep his P.I. business open, but I’ll be all right for a couple of years before it runs out. By th
en I should have something else lined up.”
I walked up to Gloria and gave her a hug that lasted longer than it probably should have. I released her and said, “It won’t be the same around here without you.”
Gloria wiped her cheek and turned toward Dad, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing. She kissed him on the cheek and turned away, walking toward the door. She turned back before she left and said, “You boys behave yourself now, you hear?” The office door closed and she was gone.
I turned back to Dad just as he was wiping his eye with the back of his index finger. “She’s right, you know,” Dad said. “As much as I loved having her around, we wouldn’t have made it another six months at this rate. Looks like it you and me again, kid.”
“I guess so, Dad,” I said. “I guess so.”
64 - Heart Condition
It was a quarter to nine and Elliott Cooper was heading for the office. I always got there several minutes after Elliott did and Gloria was no longer with the company, so Elliott didn’t have to worry about getting the fish eye from her if he happened to be a few minutes late himself.
Gloria had been a great asset to the company when I had been laid up, recuperating from my heart attack. Elliott had originally hired her to take up the slack during my recovery and she just stayed on afterwards. She’d been with the investigations firm for almost two years before she realized that her being there was bringing Cooper Investigations closer to closing its doors because of having to support three employees. She had told Elliott and me that she thought it was best if she left, since she didn’t want to be the cause of our collapse and neither Elliott nor I could think of an argument to make her stay. That was two months ago.
Elliott had parked behind the building in the lot but rather than come in through the back door, he decided to walk around to the front of the building. He wanted to be able to pass the pretzel wagon that had recently found a home on our corner. He had to admit, they had the best pretzels anywhere in Hollywood.
As he approached the pretzel stand, Elliott spotted a black and white cruiser idling at the corner. Standing in front of the pretzel stand was one of L.A.’s finest, Lieutenant Dean Hollister. Dean and I had been friends for most of our lives. Dean’s father, Dan Hollister had also been a cop and had been my father, Matt Cooper’s best friend during his days on the force as well as after he’d left to form Cooper Investigations.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 182