The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “Oh yeah,” Dad said and turned in the opposite direction.

  “Where are we going?” Jane said. “I thought you said we were going to pick up my car.”

  “We are,” Dad told her. “We just have to make a quick side trip.”

  Fifteen minutes later we pulled into the car dealership and around to the service entrance. Dad let me out. I turned back to Jane and said, “This won’t take long. I’ll be right back.”

  I found the service manager, paid him for the parts and labor and he gave me the keys to Jane’s car. It was still parked inside and the service manager opened the overhead door for me. I drove it out to the lot and got out. I walked back over to Dad’s car where he and Jane were waiting. I handed the keys to Jane.

  “There you go,” I said. “New thermostat and water pump, compliments of one very grateful guy.” I smiled at her and she looked confused.

  “And a thorough wash, from the looks of it,” she said. “Thank you so much, Elliott.” She kissed my cheek and stepped over to have a closer look at her car.

  “Now you don’t have to carry extra water with you wherever you go,” I said. “And you don’t have to let it cool down overnight, either.”

  Dad looked at me. “Do you want me to drop you home again, Elliott?”

  I glanced at Jane, who was looking at Dad with something akin to anticipation and I knew. I looked back at Dad. “That’ll be fine, Dad.”

  I hoped with all my heart that they’d turn out to be right for each other.

  79 - I See You

  “What about this one?” I said, gesturing toward another Toyota Corolla sedan.

  Gloria looked briefly at the car and then at me. “Another Corolla?” she said. “I thought you were going to get something bigger this time.”

  When both of our cars had recently burned up in our parking lot, Gloria and I had gone car shopping. She chose a Chrysler minivan and I picked out a white Toyota Corolla sedan. I hadn’t even had the chance to put four hundred miles on it when I’d been carjacked and kidnapped. By the time police caught up with the car thieves, they’d shot my car full of holes and it exploded. I could have cried when I saw what was left of it. I thought I might like to give Toyota one more try and that’s why we found ourselves in this car lot again so soon after our last purchase.

  I was walking around the Corolla, bending over to peer into the windows when a lot attendant drove out onto the lot in a one year old Dodge cargo van. He parked it three spaces down from the Corolla I had been considering. I gestured to Gloria to follow me and we walked over to where the lot attendant was lining up the van with the rest of the cars in this row. When he had it just where he wanted it, he got out, locked the door and started to walk back toward the sales office.

  I held up one hand and stepped in front of the kid. “Hold on a minute there. Would you mind if I looked inside?” I said, indicating the Dodge van.

  “Sure, I guess that would be all right,” the kid said, turning and walking back toward the van. He unlocked the front door and stepped aside as I got in and sat behind the wheel. The kid made a small circular motion with his hand and I rolled down the front window. He handed me the keys and said, “Go ahead, start it up if you like.”

  I took the keys from him, cranked the engine over and listened to it purr. I looked down at the odometer. It read twelve hundred seventeen miles. I looked out at the kid. “Is this actual mileage?” I said.

  The kid nodded his head and pointed at the window sticker, which had yet been attached to the window. It was just lying on the dash. I picked it up and read the statistics of this particular vehicle. It was this year’s model and the mileage was ridiculously low. It could have passed for a new van with no problem. I motioned for Gloria to come around to the passenger door and get it. She stepped up into the van and sat next to me. I turned to the kid again. “What’s the story on this van with only twelve hundred miles?”

  “The previous owner bought it with plans to customize the interior with carpeting and a few other goodies,” the kid said. “I guess he realized it wasn’t as easy as he thought it might be and traded it back in for a regular car less than a month after he bought it.”

  “Now just what were you planning to do with a cargo van?” Gloria said, turning around to look at the area behind the two seats. “There aren’t any windows except these two and the windshield. There are only two seats. What about a place for Matt’s car seat? And the back is all bare metal. How practical is this?”

  “I just had a brainstorm,” I said. “The minute I saw this van I knew that Cooper Investigations was ready to step up to the next level.”

  Gloria rolled her eyes. “And just what is on that next level?” she said.

  “Use your imagination,” I said. “Picture the back of this van stocked with all the latest surveillance equipment. Just think of all the extra jobs we can take with this van equipped the way I see it.”

  “Have you been watching that James Bond marathon on television?” Gloria said. “What do you know about spy equipment and who do you think is going to seek out services like that?”

  “Of course,” I said, “we’ll advertise that we can handle those kinds of cases once we have the van set up. You’d be surprised how many people need services like that. Even the police department wouldn’t have a setup like this. We might even be able to pick up a couple of jobs through them.”

  “That all sounds expensive,” Gloria said. “Where are you planning to get the money for all this?”

  “First of all,” I said. “The van doesn’t even cost as much as the car I just lost. Second, I can start out small, with just the bare necessities. I can always expand a little at a time. I don’t need to have command central back there all at once. I can always take out a small loan for the starter equipment I’ll need. You’ll see, this van will pay for itself in no time.”

  I handed Gloria the window sticker and she looked at the price. Her face softened once she saw the list price on the sticker. “It’s a lot less expensive than the Corolla,” she agreed, handing the window sticker back to me. “All right, give it a try, but if it doesn’t pan out, will you agree to get rid of it and get another car?”

  “No problem,” I said. “I don’t see that day ever coming, because I’m going to make this work. You’ll see.” I looked down at the kid. “Mind if we take this for a spin?”

  The kid looked up at me. “Wait right here,” he said. “I’ll have to send one of the salesmen out to talk to you.” The kid ran back to the sales office. I could see him through the picture window, talking to a man in a suit. I put the van in gear and drove it over to the sales office and got out. The man in the suit came out to meet me.

  I shook his hand and said, “My wife and I would like to take this van around the block, if you don’t mind. I don’t have a trade, so while I’m gone, you sharpen your pencil and see what you can do for me outright on this van.” I pointed to Gloria’s car on the lot and handed the salesman Gloria’s keys. “Just in case you need to move it,” I said. “But that’s my wife’s car.”

  I pulled out of the lot and headed off down the street. Seven blocks later I pulled over to the curb and killed the engine.

  “Why are we stopping at the library?” Gloria said.

  “Because it’s closer than our office,” I told her, “and I want to get online and check the retail price of this van before I get back. I don’t really need to test drive it. It’s almost new, but I would like to see what they’re going for in this part of the country.”

  Gloria waited in the van and when I emerged from the library several minutes later I had a confident smile on my face and a slip of paper in my hand. I slid in behind the wheel again, grabbed the window sticker and showed it to Gloria. “They’ve got this van priced almost the same as a new one,” I said. “I know they can knock off at least a grand and still make a profit. At least now I know where I stand when we get back to the dealership.”

  By the time Gloria and I had left the
dealership with my new van, I had managed to get more than twelve hundred dollars knocked off the sale price and I got them to fill the tank on top of that. “That’s how it’s done,” I told Gloria.

  Gloria followed me back to the office in her car. When we got back to the parking lot, Gloria stayed in her car and rolled her window down. “I’m going home to lie down for a while,” she said. “I’m feeling really tired.”

  “Go on,” I said. “You just take it easy and conserve your strength. You’re going to need it in the next couple of weeks when Matt gets here.”

  Matt was the son that was due to arrive shortly. When Gloria had her sonogram we found out that the baby she was carrying was a boy and that news thrilled me to no end. Knowing it was a boy helped us to prepare for his arrival. Gloria and I had agreed on naming him after my grandfather, my father and me. Matthew Clayton Elliott Cooper would someday be the fourth generation of Coopers to run the private investigation business that Grandpa Matt had started right after World War II.

  I leaned over and kissed Gloria just before she drove home. “I’ll catch up with you later,” I told her. I left the van in my still charred parking space and went up to my office. Once there, I got back on my computer and started looking up surveillance equipment on the web. I found several places right here in Hollywood that offered exactly what I needed to get started in the spy business, as Gloria liked to call it. I made a list of the companies from out of the area, the essentials that I’d need, along with the prices and shipping costs. Now when I went to the local stores, I could negotiate the best price and get more bang for my buck.

  I took my list with me to the first electronics store and just walked through the aisles, amazed at how small everything had become over the years. They had tiny wireless cameras no bigger than the tip of my little finger. The cameras sat on display and were hooked up to several monitors on the shelf. I walked in front of the little camera, looking at my image on the screen. The picture quality was surprisingly good for something so small.

  A salesman walked up to me as I stood there mesmerized by the technology. “May I help you, sir?” the man said.

  I pointed to the camera and said, “Can you tell me what the range of this unit is?”

  “This unit has a range of four miles,” the salesman said, “eight miles with the wireless extender. What sort of use did you have in mind for the camera?”

  I plucked my wallet out of my pocket and opened it to my P.I. license and badge. I tried to stay low key and held the wallet so that only the salesman would be able to see it.

  “I see,” he said. “We do a lot of business with the private investigator community. I’m sure we have everything you’ll need to get started.”

  “I don’t have a lot to spend,” I told the clerk.

  “What do you consider not a lot?” he said.

  “I’m just getting started in this field,” I said, “So for starters, I wanted to try and stay under a grand. I can always add more pieces as I need them.”

  The salesman gave me a wide smile.

  “Did I say something funny?” I asked.

  The salesman grabbed the small camera we’d been talking about and held it in his palm. “This unit alone is sixty-nine ninety-five,” he said.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Maybe I can’t afford to get into the surveillance business just yet. Thanks for your time.” I started to head for the door.

  “Hold on,” the clerk said. “Are you telling me seventy bucks is out of your price range?”

  “Seventy dollars?” I said. “That’s what you meant by sixty-nine ninety-five? I thought you meant just under seven thousand dollars.”

  Now I had the salesman laughing out loud. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re thinking of the early days thirty or forty years ago. These days everything has been miniaturized, including the retail price. Those Japanese sure know how to make things small and inexpensive.”

  I breathed easier and said, “Let’s take a closer look at all of this stuff.” I plucked the mini camera out of his hand and inspected it. Two isles down I saw an eighteen inch flat screen monitor and pointed in that general direction. “Would this camera work with a monitor like that?”

  The clerk turned around, saw where I was looking and then turned back to me. “No need for a big monitor like that,” he said and pulled another piece of equipment off the display shelf. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. “This comes with the camera at that price. It’s a fold-out three point two inch color LCD screen. You can carry it in your pocket and see what the camera sees any time, any place.”

  “What if I want to record what the camera is seeing?” I said. “Can this unit be hooked up to a video recorder?”

  The clerk took the folding screen unit from me and turned it around, pushing a sliding shaft out of the back end. “This is a USB connection,” he said. “Inside this unit is a digital chip that holds forty-eight gig of video. If you happen to be away from the computer as you’re monitoring the video feed, you can still capture about twenty-four hours of video with just this unit. However, with the included video cable, you can hook this unit directly to your laptop or desktop computer via the USB port and record continuously until you run out of hard drive space. That will most likely never happen.”

  My mind raced with the possibilities that just this one unit could provide. I had a million questions for the clerk, but nothing was coming to mind just now. I was too engrossed in this little miracle of science. I tried to picture a scenario where I’d use this camera and suddenly thought of another question.

  “What if I want to record video in a low-light situation or in the dark?” I said.

  “Then this isn’t the unit you want,” the clerk said. “The next step up in mini cameras is this beauty.” He held up a similar-looking camera. “Now this one has infra-red capabilities. You can record in total darkness. It does everything that other camera does, plus has the infra-red feature and it is also waterproof, so you could even record under water with it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I’ll bet it’s more expensive.”

  “I’m afraid so,” the clerk said. “Those extra features add another twelve-fifty to the price. You’re looking at eighty-two forty-five plus tax.”

  I had to laugh at the absurdity of what I could get for the price. I also suddenly realized that I really didn’t need a van after all. I could monitor the camera’s activities from a mid-sized sedan. I wasn’t about to let Gloria know about these turn of events. I’d never hear the end of it. Besides, a cargo van could come in handy for other things as well as my job.

  “I’ll take this unit,” I told the clerk. “As a matter of fact, let me have three of them. Make that two of the infra-red and one like the first unit you showed me.”

  The clerk bent over to slide open the display case door and pulled three small boxes out and handed them to me. “Will there be anything else for you today, sir?” he said.

  “I’m sure there must be a lot of equipment that would come in handy on the job,” I said. “But frankly, I don’t know enough about all of this to even know what to ask.”

  The clerk held up one finger. “If I may,” he said. “Allow me to show you what we have and what it is capable of doing for your business.”

  I spread my hands. “I’m in your hands,” I told the clerk. “Let’s see what you have.”

  He walked me over to an area that looked like it belonged in a toy store. “What’s all this?” I said, picking up a model helicopter.

  The clerk pointed to the underside of the aircraft. “See that little platform?” he said. “That little camera you just bought will mount to that platform. You could record video from overhead. The helicopter is capable of flying a thousand feet high and it’s quite maneuverable with just a single joystick controller and a little practice.”

  “Really?” I said, amazed at the possibilities this combination of gadgets presented.

  “Here’s the control unit,” the clerk said, handing me
a small box no bigger than DVD case. He pointed to a pair of mounting brackets at the top of the controller and then grabbed the folding mini monitor that came with the mini camera. He laid it on the helicopter controller and said, “Picture this, if you will. You’re controlling the helicopter with this joystick and you’re watching the monitor just above it. You’ll be seeing exactly where this helicopter goes and you’ll feel like you’re right there as a miniature pilot in the seat.”

  “Okay,” I said. “This has to be super expensive to be able to do all that.”

  The clerk shook his head. “You already have the extra camera kit. The helicopter itself is just a little under a hundred fifty bucks. Altogether you’re looking at,” he pulled a pocket-sized calculator out and punched in the numbers. “Four hundred seven dollars and eighty-nine cents. Let’s call it four hundred even for everything. That still leaves you six hundred from you budget. Would you like me to show you more?”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but this will do for starters. I’ll take the helicopter, too.” I gave the clerk my credit card, signed the slip and took my bag of goodies home with me. I took my purchases out to the van and decided to drive to Griffith Park to try out the remote helicopter. I spent the first ten minutes sitting in the van reading the small instruction booklet that came with the copter.

  I took the copter and the mini camera with its mini monitor out into the middle of the park and mounted the monitor onto the copter’s control box. I mounted the mini camera on the copter’s platform and pointed the camera forward and down a bit. I started out in small increments, making the copter fly just ten feet high and in small circles until I got the hang of controlling it. Eventually I was able to control the copter’s movements so well that I flew it up to a hundred feet and out over the lake in the middle of the park. All the while I’m watching what the camera sees on my mini monitor. I turned the copter toward me and gradually brought it down. As it’s descending, I can see myself in the monitor. It gently landed at my feet and after nearly an hour experimenting with the copter, I could safely say that I was comfortable enough to use it on any applicable job. I was eager to show off the new gadgets to Gloria.