Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)

by Bill Bernico

  Several minutes later, I found myself in front of Nate Kilgore’s office. “This is it,” I told the cabby and opened the rear door and stepped out. I stepped over to the front passenger side window and looked in at the cabby, who had grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and was jotting something down on his clipboard.

  “A buck eighty-five, Mac,” the driver said as he lifted the flag and slipped the pencil back behind his ear.

  I peeled off a couple dollar bills from the folded currency that I had in my pocket. “Keep it,” I told the cabdriver and walked away from the cab and headed for Nate’s office door.

  “Last of the big-time spenders, eh?” the cabbie said. The yellow vehicle sped off in search of another fare.

  I stood there, eyeing the front of Nate’s building. One door to the south was Harry Marcheske’s dry cleaning shop and one door to the north was another large building with a gray brick front and lots of glass. The sign above its front door read “H. H. Dennison Company, since 1879”.

  I didn’t think anything of it at the time. All I knew was that the Dennison Company was a major employer in the area. I remembered reading that there were about seventeen hundred employees working for Henry Dennison, sixty or so at this location and the rest at several other locations around town.

  I tried the front door handle. It was locked and the lights were out. Slipping through the space between this building and Harry’s shop, I found the back door and tried the knob. Not really expecting to find it unlocked, I wasn’t surprised when the door wouldn’t budge.

  I found the opening between the buildings again and started for the street. Halfway between the alley and the street, I spotted a window. It was a small window, much like a transit above an office door, but this one was at ground level. It was too large to be a basement window yet too small to be a conventional window. The glass was frosted and I couldn’t see in but I was able to move the frame by pushing on it with the butt of my palm. A little more effort exerted on the window and it swung upward, enough to allow me to slip in.

  I lowered myself to the ledge and crawled in through the narrow opening. Once in, I could make out a sink with a mirror and some stalls with doors on them. “Well, at least I know where to find the john,” I said and stepped down onto the tank of a toilet and then down onto the floor.

  Leaving the lights out, I found the door and exited to another large room. At the far end of the room I could make out a set of stairs that led up. At the other end of this huge room I could see a large, dark object that looked like a Buddha with arms outstretched. I cautiously approached only to find it was the furnace with pipes leading every which way.

  I decided to try the stairway that led up. I climbed to the top but was held back by a locked door at the head of the stairs. I headed back down until I reached the bottom step, where I promptly sat down. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out what was left of my pack of cigarettes. Giving the pack a little jolt upwards, one of the cigarettes popped up above the rest and I wrapped my lips around it, pulling it from the pack.

  Returning the crumpled pack to my jacket, I reached into my other pocket produced a single, wooden match. I reached out to the wall on my right and scrapped the match on its surface. The head of the match flared up, giving off a small, bright light for an instant.

  As I brought the flame to my mouth, I noticed that there was another small door just beyond where I was sitting. It looked like the size door that usually led to a canning pantry or coal bin. I held the match out in front of me and leaned toward the door, the unlit cigarette still dangling from the corner of my mouth.

  As the flame got closer to my fingers, I quickly shook my wrist, extinguishing the match. I dropped the charred remains and quickly produced another match. I grabbed the door handle just as I struck this second match. The door opened easily and I entered the room. It had once been a fruit cellar. The smell of ripe apples still hung in the air.

  Proceeding further into the room, I could make out a string hanging from the ceiling. It was connected to a light bulb on a wire and I pulled it, illuminating the enclosure. I quickly dropped the match and stood there looking at what Nate was trying so hard to protect.

  The room was approximately twelve feet long and probably just as wide with a ceiling height of seven feet. The most obvious feature was the dirt. It was piled everywhere. Along two walls the dirt had been piled up almost to the ceiling and all that remained of usable space was a walkway three feet wide that led to the north wall.

  At the far end of the room, I could see three shelves attached to the wall. Focusing my attention on the lower north wall, I noticed several bricks missing. There were enough missing to create a hole in the wall large enough to allow a man to pass through. I dropped to my knees and looked into the gaping hole. It was black. I grabbed another match from my pocket and struck it on the brick wall, holding it into the hole and tried to see further into it.

  All I could tell at this point was that the hole went further than the match would illuminate so I backed out and stood up, dropping the match and brushing the knees of my slacks with my hands.

  I looked at the shelves at the end of this tiny room. One shelf held a screwdriver, a hand drill with a large bit, a small hand axe and several hundred wood screws. On the shelf above that there sat an old kerosene railroad lantern with a glass chimney and wide wick. I took hold of the lantern, raised the chimney and reached for another match. The wick sucked the flame into its fibers as I lowered the glass chimney and held the lantern toward the hole.

  Dropping to my knees again, I crawled into the hole, holding the lantern in front of me, and crawled forward. I held the lantern up with my right hand and held my body up with my left, inching my way further into the black hole. The dirt had been meticulously removed and the walls of this tunnel had been reinforced with lumber. Each piece had been screwed together, not a nail anywhere. Someone didn’t want the sounds of a hammer driving nails.

  As I crawled along, I could hear the sounds of people becoming more audible by the minute. Strangely enough, though, those sounds weren’t coming from behind me or in front of me. The sounds of conversation were originating from above and ahead of where I had stopped. I not only stopped because of the sounds, but because I had no choice. The tunnel seemed to end right here. I set the lantern down and listened. People were talking and it was definitely coming from somewhere over my head.

  Looking up, I noticed that the lumber which had lined the ceiling of the tunnel up to this point was missing. Instead there was another hole leading upwards. I got off my knees and stood. I was almost erect when my head hit the dirt above. I quickly returned to my kneeling position and from there I went to a sitting position.

  I sat there staring at the ceiling hole. “What the hell was Nate doing down here, anyway?” I thought, twisting the lantern wick higher.

  I was far enough into the tunnel to be almost directly beneath the Dennison Company office. This being the main office for all the other locations, it would also distribute the monthly payroll. I remembered reading in the L.A. Times last April about how business was up since the war and how the Dennison Company had had a record year. The article went on to say that Henry Dennison’s payroll for the month of April had topped the half million-dollar mark for the first time since 1879.

  “Now it all falls into place,” I thought. “Nate needed only another few hours of steady digging and drilling to make it into the Dennison office. If Harry exercised his right to evict Nate before he’d had a chance to finish the tunnel, it could mean a half million dollars down the drain.”

  “But why would Harry want to lose a paying tenant?” I wondered. “It would take more than a whim to make Harry part with that kind of extra income every month.”

  I crawled back out and took the hand axe from the shelf and crawled to the end of the tunnel again. Curiosity prompted me to find out just how far Nate had dug and set the lantern down. Scraping away at the dirt wall ahead of me, I quickly got an ans
wer. The digging sound quickly gave way to a scraping sound as the blade of the axe hit a brick.

  “Ol’ Nate was just a brick wall away from hitting pay dirt, or should I say payday.” I remembered the Dennison payroll, which, in just two days would be just inches from where I crouched. “I gotta get outta here,” I thought, dropping the hatchet. “Somebody’s got some explaining to do.”

  I turned around and crawled back out of the tunnel and into the fruit cellar. I extinguished the lamp and placed it back on the shelf. After brushing the loose dirt from my knees and hands, I exited to the main room and found my way back to the bathroom. Standing up on the toilet tank, I opened the side window and crawled out to the space between the buildings again. “Now Hollister has to believe me.”

  I looked up and down the street. Seeing no one coming from either way, I slipped out from between the buildings and crossed the street, walking briskly in the direction of my own office less than two blocks away.

  I locked the door behind me and tossed my hat in the direction of the coat tree, which stood in the corner behind the door. As usual, the hat found its mark and dangled from the rack. I pulled up a seat behind my desk and switched on the gooseneck lamp.

  I unbuttoned my jacket and grabbed the lease from my pocket, stretching it out in front of me. There had to be more to this than just a tenant-landlord disagreement. I eyed the document and wondered why this original copy was not left in some secure place instead of the locker at the Y.M.C.A.

  Several minutes of scrutinizing left me with no clearer a picture than before. There had to be another angle. I suddenly remembered that I’d left Nate Kilgore in the trunk of my Olds in the park. I wasn’t about to let him slip away again, not after the ribbing I took from Dan Hollister at the empty house.

  I grabbed my black desk phone and dialed the number at the precinct. “Let me talk to Sergeant Hollister. This is Matt Cooper.” I half whistled, half hummed and waited for the voice on the other end.

  “Cooper, where are you?” Dan said.

  “I’m at my office,” I said. “I’ve got a package for you, Hollister. It’s in the…” I didn’t get to finish my sentence when Dan interrupted.

  “You mean Nate Kilgore?” he said. “We found him an hour ago in the trunk of your car in the park. Cooper, you’ve got some explaining to do on this one.” Dan sounded anxious.

  “Well, he’s banged up a little, but it was either that or he was gonna part my hair with his Smith and Wesson. I suppose he was mad as a wet hen by the time you let him out of the trunk, eh, Dan?”

  “No, Matt, as a matter of fact, he didn’t say a word. It was a little hard to speak with a bullet lodged between his eyes.” Dan didn’t seem to appreciate my humorous tone.

  “Kilgore’s dead?” I said. “But he was okay when I left him. What’s going on here, Dan?” The lighthearted approach I started with gave way to concern as the guilt now shifted to me.

  “Let me ask you something, Cooper,” Dan started to say. Before he got to finish his sentence, I heard a knock at my office door and laid the phone down. I walked across the room to the door and unlocked the latch and turned the knob. As I did, the door burst open and Officer Burns and two other patrolmen grabbed me by the arms.

  Officer burns reached inside my coat and retrieved the .45 automatic from my holster. “I’ll take that.”

  “What’s going on here?” I said.

  Without answering, Officer Burns walked to my desk and picked up the phone. “We got him, Sarge. Right, we’ll bring him right down.” Burns hung up the phone and motioned his men to lead me out of the office. Burns followed, closing the office door behind him.

  Dan Hollister was sitting at his desk when Burns brought me in and sat me down in the chair next to Dan’s desk. “Here he is, Sarge. No trouble at all,” he said and turned for the door. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “That’ll be all, Burns,” the sergeant replied. Rising from his desk chair, Dan Hollister walked over to the door and said in a tone almost too low for me to hear, “Wait outside, will you?” and closed the door behind the officer. Dan quickly opened the door again and peered out at the officer waiting in the hallway. “I want to know what ballistics finds on this Kilgore thing. Get me the results as soon as they’re finished.”

  The sergeant closed the door again and turned his attentions back to me. I was leaning back casually in the chair, my legs stretched out while my feet came to rest on his desk. “Well, Cooper, are you ready to talk yet, or do you still insist you have nothing to hide?” Dan’s voice had dropped the casual tone.

  “You seem to have all the answers,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Dan Hollister reached over and grabbed my ankles and flung my feet off his desktop. “You smart-ass son-of-a-bitch. We’ve got three stiffs at the morgue and you seem to be in the area each time one appears.”

  “Three?” I said. “Where do you get three? I count Harry Marcheske as one and Nate Kilgore as two.”

  “Have you forgotten about Willy Cornelius already?” Dan said.

  “Oh, so now you believe me about him, too?” I said.

  “We found him this afternoon in the canal off Broadway Street,” Dan said. “He had three slugs in him. Your slugs, I believe.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along,” I said. “But you didn’t seem to want to listen. Why are you so interested now, Dan?”

  Dan sat back down behind his desk and slid his bottom right drawer open, producing a bottle and two glasses. “Face it, Matt, when you first dragged us over to that empty house, you’ve got to admit that your story had a lot of holes in it.” Dan set the two glasses on the desk and poured two drinks.

  “Well what made you believe me now?” I said.

  “Kilgore had this on him when we pulled him out of your trunk.” Dan reached into his suit pocket and produced a switchblade. The same switchblade Willy was about to use on me. “It fit what you told us about that night at the house. This and Willy’s three ventilation holes, that is.”

  “So why’d you drag me down here then?” I said.

  “Just ‘cause a few things jive, doesn’t mean you didn’t have anything to do with Kilgore’s death. But I guess you know that, don’t you?” Dan sipped from his glass and eyed me as I slid further back into my chair.

  “Do I look like I’d be stupid enough to hang around if I iced a guy in cold blood?” I downed my drink and set the glass back on Hollister’s desk.

  “Just sit tight, Cooper. They’re running your gun through ballistics now along with the slug they removed from between Nate Kilgore’s eyes. If I were you, Cooper, I’d…” Dan was interrupted when his office door swung open and Officer Burns appeared, holding a large manila envelope.

  “Here’s those results you wanted on the Cornelius case,” the officer said, handing the envelope to his sergeant. Officer Burns looked at me, then at Sergeant Hollister before he stepped back away from the desk, as if awaiting further orders.

  “That’ll be all for now, Burns. Close the door behind you when you leave.” Dan returned to his desk chair, slipped his thumb under the manila flap and lifted. Tipping the packet upside down, three white, typed sheets slid out and onto the desk.

  I leaned toward the sergeant and twisted my head, trying to read upside down. Dan looked up at me and quickly lifted the papers from the desk, leaning back in his chair. “Your slug matches the ones they took out of Willy,” Dan said.

  “Of course they do,” I said. “I told you what happened there. While you sit here trying to hang this on me, the real murderer is still out there.”

  “Hold on, Matt,” Dan said. “Your slug matched Willy’s slugs, but it didn’t match the one from Kilgore’s head. It looks like he was shot with a .38 snub nose. Your .45 would have lifted his scalp high enough to park a jeep under there. But that doesn’t let you off the hook. There’s still Willy.” Dan shuffled the papers back together again and replaced them into the envelope.

 
“I’m tellin’ ya Willy got into rural real estate because he was gonna carve me up,” I said.

  “What are you talking about, Cooper? What’s all this about rural real estate?” Dan looked puzzled.

  I casually answered, “Huh? Oh, I mean he bought the farm because he was coming after me with…”

  “Can’t take anything seriously, can you, Matt?” Dan said. “One of these days you’re going to push me just one step too far and I’ll squash you like a bug,” Dan shouted as he brought his fist down hard on the desktop. “You got that?”

  “Sure, Hollister,” I said. “Can I go now, or do you wanna play twenty questions some more?”

  “Get out of here, Cooper. But…”

  I placed my hat back on my head, gave it a pat and grabbed my .45 from the desk where Dan had laid it before he opened the office door. “Are you trying to say ‘don’t leave town’ again? You’re startin’ to sound like a broken record, Dan.” I returned my handgun to its holster and exited to the hallway.

  I passed the desk sergeant’s station and was close enough to hear Dan Hollister’s voice on the intercom. “Send Mrs. Kilgore in here, would you?”

  “Right away, sergeant,” the desk sergeant replied. As he lifted his finger from the intercom button, the desk sergeant turned to a woman seated on the bench alongside of the wall. “You can go in now, Mrs. Kilgore. It’s the first door on your right.”

  The woman rose to her feet and started down the hall. As she passed me, I removed my hat and nodded at her. “Hello,” I said as she passed.

  Without acknowledging the salutation, the woman continued down the hall and to Sergeant Hollister’s office. I looked at my hat and was about to place it back on my head when I saw the photo still tucked under the rim.

  I pulled the photo out once more and scrutinized it. “That’s her, all right,” I said, slapping the photo against my left palm. I looked in the direction of Dan’s office once more just as Mrs. Kilgore closed the door behind her. “How do you suppose she fits into all of this?”