I didn’t bother with a proper closing like, “Sincerely, Bill” or “Kindest Regards.” But did you notice how I rubbed in the “kid” part again?
I’m not sure if it was the CASE CLOSED in all caps, the “shove ‘em” remark or the reference to his being a moron, but I didn’t hear another word out of him and figured he’d given up and moved on to easier prey.
Several weeks passed and I was actually starting to miss the banter I’d established with the delusional idiot who thought he owned my car for a lousy dollar. That’s when the shit hit the fan.
A month after my last e-mail from the guy with the punctuation handicap, I was just leaving for work on a Friday morning when I saw the truck pulling into my driveway. It was a large straight rig with a flatbed on the back. Near the cab I noticed an electric winch. There were two men seated in the cab.
Directly behind the truck was a California State Police cruiser with two deputies in the front seat. The truck stopped in front of my garage and the police car stopped behind it. The two men emerged from the truck, followed by the two deputies. The deputies wore their starched blue uniforms with the striped pants legs and Smokey-The-Bear hats. They walked straight toward me and a lump formed in my throat.
One of the deputies approached me first, carrying some sort of paper in his right hand. He said, “Mr. Cooper?”
I nodded and looked at the other two men.
The cop handed me the paper he’d been carrying. “I have a warrant here for the legal seizure of one royal blue 1940 Oldsmobile sedan. It is to be turned over immediately to this gentleman.” He pointed to one of the men who’d come in the truck.
I looked at the paper and read the fine print. It mentioned me by name as well as “the auction site” and a Mr. Randall Grimes. I looked at the cop. “Who the hell is Randall Grimes?” I said.
The man from the truck stepped forward. He was a middle-aged man, probably fifty or so, with gray hair and bad teeth. He wore a dingy white dress shirt with three pens sticking up out of the pocket. He wore his pants below his extended belly and I could see a gaudy pair of cowboy boots protruding from beneath the jeans. “I’m Randall Grimes. You may know me as “noo” or “kid” or maybe you remember calling me “moron.” In either case, I’m here to collect my car.”
He handed me a crisp, new one-dollar bill and turned to the cop. “You’re a witness, officer,” Grimes said to the cop. “I paid this man the dollar that I bid for this car and won fair and square on the auction site.”
I swallowed hard again and shifted my gaze to the dollar in my hand. I clenched my teeth and crumpled the bill up and threw it in Grimes’ face. “You’re too late,” I said. “The car’s gone. I sold it two weeks ago.”
The second officer handed the first cop another paper. The first cop passed it along to me. “I also have a warrant to search your premises for the Oldsmobile, Mr. Cooper.”
The air escaped from my lungs all at once as my shoulders dropped. I hiked a thumb up and pointed behind me to the garage. “It’s in there,” I said.
The first cop twisted the door handle and lifted the overhead door, revealing the glistening chrome bumper and grille of the prized vintage automobile that Dad loved so much. The wide white-wall tires stuck out like a newcomer in a nudist colony. The royal blue paint job was flawless.
Randall Grimes smiled a smile that had nothing to do with being friendly. I wanted to smack him right then and there.
Grimes opened the driver’s side front door and slid in behind the wheel, twisting the steering wheel back and forth, like a little kid playing driving games. He giggled maniacally before exiting the car again. He turned to the man who’d driven the truck. “Load ‘er up, Max,” he said gleefully. “Let’s take her home.”
I took a few quick steps toward Grimes before the two state police officers could grab my arms and restrain me.
“Settle down, Mr. Cooper,” one of them said to me. “There’s nothing you can do about it. You don’t need any more trouble.”
I relaxed my tense arms and the officers released me. There was nothing I could do but stand by helplessly as the truck driver started my Olds and drove it out of the garage. He lined the car up with the back of his flatbed and got out again. There were two ramps that slid out of the back of the truck and attached to the bed of the truck. They allowed the driver to drive whatever vehicle they were hauling right up onto the back of the truck.
It was a tall truck, with the bed raised up five feet or more off the ground. The ramps extended back probably twelve or fifteen feet behind the truck once they’d been set in place. Once the driver had secured the ramps, he got behind the wheel of my Olds and started it up again.
I stood in front of the car and shouted to the driver, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“He’s not you,” Grimes said from a spot beside me. “Now get out of the way so I can take my car home with me.”
I looked back at the cop. “Look,” I said, “I’m only trying to tell you…”
The cop pulled me out of the way and allowed the driver to proceed. I shouted this time. “Listen, you can’t just…”
The cop shook me by the arm just as Randall Grimes stepped up to me and punched me squarely in the mouth. “Shut up, kid,” he said, making a reference to the name I’d called him in my e-mail.
The second cop stepped between Grimes and me. He turned to Grimes with a sneer. “Just take your car and get out of here. You touch this man again and I’ll run you in.”
Grimes hesitantly backed off and turned his attentions to the truck driver, who was preparing to ascend the ramp with my Olds. The driver lined the car’s wheels up with the ramp while Randall Grimes stood behind the car, eyeing up his approach.
Grimes shouted from behind the car, “Looks good, Max,” he said. “Take ‘er up.”
I turned to the cop. “Can’t say I didn’t try to warn him,” I said.
The cop said, “Huh?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Max stepped on the accelerator and headed up the ramp. Grimes followed close behind, making sure the Oldsmobile’s tires stayed on the ramp. Max hadn’t given it enough of a running start and the front wheels didn’t even make it to the top of the ramp. Max stepped on the brakes and outside we could all hear a loud popping sound. The sound of Max’s foot hitting the floor of the car was followed by the sound of Grimes’ scream as the car slid backwards and directly over Randall Grimes.
Both sets of tires bumped over Grimes’ body before the car came to a complete stop. Randall Grimes’ left leg was twisted up under his body, which had rolled up in a ball under the front bumper. His head was a pulpy mass of red and gray beneath the left front tire. His blood formed in a pool and mingled with the brake fluid that had spilled out of the burst brake cylinder.
Max jumped out of the Olds and looked down at what was left of Randall Grimes. He turned away and vomited on my driveway. The two cops stood there, their eyes bulging in amazement. They knew it would be futile to extricate Grimes from beneath the two-ton automobile. One of them hurried back to the squad car and radioed in for an ambulance. The other just looked at me.
“I tried to tell him,” I said. “I tried to tell all of you but all I got for my troubles was a punch in the mouth.”
“What are you talking about?” the cop said, looking at me with a puzzled face.
“I tried to tell you that the Olds had a faulty master cylinder,” I said. “I was meaning to get it fixed eventually but I just never got around to it. Grimes was in such a hurry to take my car and gloat about it that he wouldn’t listen and now look what it’s got him.”
The cop returned from the squad car and joined his partner. “What happens now?” he said.
The first cop shrugged. “I don’t know,” he told his partner. “I guess the owner of the car would be responsible.” He looked at me.
I bent over and picked up the crumpled dollar bill. I held it up in front of me along with the seizure warrant. “Don’
t look at me,” I said, pointing to Grimes’ body. “It’s his car.”
86 - Nut Job
I was sitting with my back to the window that looked down onto Hollywood Boulevard. We were between cases so I told Dad he could stay home today. He didn’t argue the point. My wife and business partner, Gloria, was sitting at her desk entering older case files into the database program on her laptop. I could hear her grumbling with every entry she typed in. I ignored her. I knew it was better not to fuel that fire.
I was reading an article about a rash of broken storefront windows in the neighborhood. In each case the police and the store owners had found a half-inch chrome nut on the floor inside the store. It was the kind of nut that would have threaded smoothly onto a half-inch bolt. In each case, the glass window broken measured in excess of four feet square and had cost the store owners several hundred dollars in repairs. Even the store owners who had insurance against such occurrences had a hefty deductible to pay before they could get a replacement window.
The three stores that were mentioned in this article were all situated within walking distance of our office. Since I had nothing better to do and since I’d already finished the paper, I decided to take a walk and have a talk with some of the men who had suffered such a loss in their store. I told Gloria that I’d be gone for an hour or so. She grumbled something without looking up. I left the office and rode the elevator down three flights to the lobby.
I stepped out of the elevator and over to the wall of mailboxes just inside the front door. It was too early to expect mail today, but checked our mailbox anyway. As I suspected, it was empty. I pushed the front door open and began walking west on Hollywood Boulevard. A block and a half west of our office I found the shoe store that was mentioned in the article. It had two large picture windows facing the street. The one on the left was boarded up with two sheets of plywood.
I walked inside and asked to see the store manager. The girl who had greeted me asked me to wait while she went into a back room to find him. A moment later an older man with a semi-circle of white hair walked out of the storeroom in shirtsleeves. We walked up to me with a puzzled look on his face. “Did you want to see me?” he said.
I extended my hand and he shook it. “Elliott Cooper,” I said. “I have an office just up the street.”
“Rudy Berger,” the man said. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Cooper. What can I do for you today?”
“Mr. Berger,” I started to say before he stopped me.
“Rudy,” he said. “Please, call me Rudy.”
“All right, Rudy,” I said. “And you can call me Elliott. Anyway, Rudy, I was reading the paper this morning at my desk when I saw the article about the three stores that had had large windows damaged recently. Looks like you were the latest victim.”
“The little vandals,” Rudy said. “Just let me get my hands on those little punks. I’ll show them.”
“You’re thinking it was kids?” I said.
“Who else?” Rudy said. “They broke my window with a chrome nut. Probably used one of those high-powered slingshots. You know; the kind with the aluminum grip that wraps around your wrist.”
“Did you see the person who did it?” I said.
“Well, not exactly,” Rudy said. “But who else would use a slingshot and a chrome nut? Gangsters would use a gun.”
“Were you insured against glass breakage,” I said.
“A lot of good it did me,” Rudy said. “I can barely afford the premiums so last month my agent says he can save me a few dollars by raising my deductible to five hundred dollars. I figured if the store burned down, five hundred would be a drop in the bucket. But this, hell, the replacement window out in front costs nearly eight hundred dollars each. This is going to cost me five hundred dollars even with the insurance.”
“I suppose you’ve already called the glass company,” I said.
Rudy nodded. “They’re coming this afternoon to replace it. Then I have to pay another guy to paint the store name back on it again. When this is all done, I’ll be out more than seven hundred dollars. What is this world coming to, I ask you?”
“That is a stroke of bad luck,” I said. “Is there a glass company in this neighborhood?”
Rudy gestured toward the front window. “Grover Glass Replacement down on Sunset,” he said. “Just a few blocks from here.”
“Let me ask you something, Rudy,” I said. “Do you know the other two store owners who had their store windows broken?”
“Sure,” Rudy said. “I know them both. Sam Perkins owns the delicatessen two blocks over and Saul Green owns the men’s clothing store just east of here a few blocks on the other side of the street. We’ve all been in business here in this neighborhood for more than thirty years. The only one of us who got off light was Saul. He only has a hundred dollar deductible on his insurance policy. But he’s just as mad as Sam and me, let me tell you.”
“Well, Rudy,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear about your loss and I just wanted to stop by and tell you in person.”
“Thank you, Elliott,” Rudy said. “By the way, your office isn’t on the first floor, is it?”
“No,” I said. “Thank goodness. But then I don’t have any picture windows, either and I’m on the third floor. I don’t think anyone would bother with me.”
“And what business are you in, if I may ask?” Rudy said.
I pulled a business card from my pocket and handed it to Rudy. “Private Investigator,” I said.
“Cooper, Cooper,” Rudy said, trying to remember. “Are you related to Clay Cooper?”
I smiled and nodded. “Clay’s my father,” I said.
Rudy suddenly made the connection and smiled, his memory kicking in. “Then Matt would have been your grandfather, I take it.”
“Did you know grandpa, too?” I said.
“My father, who had this store before me knew him better,” Rudy said. “But I met him a couple of time. Your dad, too. How’s Clay doing these days?”
“He’s doing all right,” I said. “He’s semi-retired but still comes into the office every now and then.”
“Well, you just tell Clay that Rudy Berger says hello next time you see him,” Rudy said.
“I’ll do that,” I said. “And it was nice to meet you, Rudy.” I walked out of the shoe store and turned east and began walking toward the delicatessen.
As I walked, I fished my cell phone from my pocket and hit the speed dial button for Dad. It rang four times before Dad answered, almost out of breath. “Never fails,” Dad said when he came on the line. “I could be sitting next to my phone all day and it doesn’t ring, but the minute I sit down on the toilet…”
“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “Next time why don’t you just take the phone with you and lay it on the sink?”
“Next time,” Dad said. “What’s up?”
“I was just talking to a man who told me to say hello to you for him,” I said.
“Yeah?” Dad said. “Who was that?”
“Rudy Berger over at the shoe store on the boulevard,” I said. “Said he knew grandpa, too.”
“Rudy,” Dad said, sounding like he was happy to hear the name again. “Sure, how’s Rudy doing these days?”
“Well,” I said, “when I talked to him a few minutes ago he sounded pissed. Seems somebody broke his picture window and he had a high deductible.”
“The dirty bastard,” Dad said. “We had trouble like that in this neighborhood oh, about ten or twelve years ago. They never caught the guy, either.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s the same guy,” I said. “In fact, Rudy thinks it’s a kid shooting chrome nuts out of a slingshot. They found a half-inch chrome nut just inside among the broken glass.”
“They’re probably more affordable than ball bearings,” Dad said. “Do they have any idea who’s doing this?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “But there have been three instances all within this neighborhood. Listen, I’m just about at the second place that was hit. Let
me call you back later.”
I closed my phone and walked south on Highland for two more blocks. As I got close to the delicatessen I could see a service truck parked directly in front of the store. On the side of the truck I noticed a large circle with GGR painted inside. Below that it said Grover Glass Replacement. Seems to me that was the same company that Rudy said was coming to fix his window. Then I saw by the address that was painted under the company name that they were located just a few blocks away. I guess it would make sense to use someone that close.
The two men had lifted the large glass pane in place with a couple of suction cup devices attached to handles. I had to step around the glass installers to get into the deli. I found a middle-age woman behind the counter. She might have been considered attractive if it had not been for the hair net bunching her hair up, flat on her head. I stepped up to the counter and asked for Sam Perkins.
“He’s not in today,” the woman said. “Can I help you?”
I gave her a business card and told her about my visit to the shoe store and that I’d gotten Sam’s name from Rudy Berger.
“Terrible,” the woman said. “Just terrible. Seems you can’t turn your back for a minute without some damn kid breaking something. This makes two times someone has broken that window in the past eighteen months.” She gestured toward the front window with her chin.
“Were you here when this happened?” I said.
The woman shook her head. “No,” she said, “I only work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This happened three days ago on my day off. I’m glad to see the window back in place. It’s been pretty dark around here having to work behind sheets of plywood.”
“Well,” I said, “would you give Mr. Perkins my card and tell him I stopped by?”
She agreed she would, smiled and then called out the next number from the ticket machine. A man stepped up to the counter and presented his ticket. I left the shop and walked back up to Hollywood Boulevard and turned east. When I got to the corner I crossed the street. Saul Green’s clothing store was just a few blocks away. I made it there in six minutes.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 244