by Bill Bernico
From behind me I came that familiar voice I’d come to know. “Don’t move, don’t even breathe.”
I started to turn around. The voice repeated, “I said don’t move.” The sound of a hammer being pulled back and the slick click of a barrel revolving into position got my immediate attention and I froze. A heavy hand reached into my jacket and relieved me of my .45 and my extra clip.
“Sit down, Mr. Cooper,” the voice said in a now calmer tone.
I turned and looked into Emil Becker’s eyes as I had done at Maggie McMillan’s house. I started to speak but was cut short by an enormous fist to the gut. I doubled up and flopped back onto the sofa. It was Vince, the doorman at Becker’s Indio Club. I looked up at him, breathless and aching.
“Gobble gobble, you son-of-a-bitch”. Vince laughed a sinister, maniacal laugh. “It’s pay back time, you smart ass.”
His huge fist connected with my left cheek and I sailed backward and bounced off the back of the sofa, landing on the floor. Vince laughed again as he kicked me in the stomach several times.
Blood ran from the corner of my mouth as I tried to stand. With a final jolt to my jaw, I careened backward and rolled over on the floor, coming to rest face down. I heard Vince take another step toward me and then Becker’s voice. “That’s enough, Vince. I have plans for Mr. Cooper. Get him out of here.”
“Vince picked me up off the carpet and escorted me out through the kitchen and out the back door. Half dragging me through my own back yard, I found myself in the alley leaning against that damned Packard. The back door opened and Vince threw me on the back seat, slamming the door behind me. We quietly disappeared into the darkness.
I just laid there trying to keep my head from exploding. We drove on for another fifteen or twenty minutes before the car began to slow. I could feel it turn and make a slight incline. I guessed we were going up a driveway. I felt my leg and followed it down to the ankle holster. My piece was still there.
The car stopped and the back door opened. Vince dragged me from the back seat and half carried, half dragged me to the front door of a huge mansion. Emil Becker was just three steps ahead of us.
The front door opened and the light from inside illuminated the walkway. Vince pulled me inside and over to a sliding door just to the right of the entrance. He threw me down on the floor and slid the door closed again. I laid there alone in the dark, able to get up but knowing better than to try.
Footsteps walked away from the door and I could make out the sounds of voices in the next room. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I could tell there were two people talking. Probably Becker and Vince.
My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and I could just barely see around the room enough to get up and explore my prison. On one entire wall there stood a bookcase with volumes of books in all sizes. The opposite wall housed a fireplace and mantle big enough to hang Paul Bunyun’s stocking from.
There were several windows on the third wall. I pulled the drape back far enough to see outside. There was a full moon and the yard was lit up like a ballroom. The last wall held the locked door that imprisoned me. I pressed my face to the crack between the doors and looked out into the main hallway. I could see Becker and Vince facing me, talking to the third man whose back was to me.
Becker mumbled something and Vince walked toward me once again. The third man left through the front door before I could get a look at his face. I could hear the footsteps getting louder with each step. I lay back down on the floor where Vince had thrown me, and waited.
The door opened and Vince bent down and picked me up, pulling me toward the main hallway at the front of the house. Emil Becker stood there waiting. “Sit him down over there,” he instructed Vince.
Vince grabbed a generous clump of my hair and jerked my head back. My eyes opened wide and once again focused on Becker’s impatient face.
“Mr. Cooper, I’m only going to ask you this once so you’d better listen carefully. Where is the tie tack?”
My head remained in the position that Vince had set but my eyes were still able to roam. I eyed Vince, who had his free hand cocked and ready to deliver another convincing blow if I decided not to answer. They roamed back the other way and stopped on Emil Becker’s face. He obviously meant what he said and was prepared to have Vince pound me to a pulp if I decided not to co-operate.
“In my office,” I started to say.
“Wrong answer,” Becker said. “We turned it upside down. It’s not there.” Becker looked over at Vince and nodded. Vince drew his fist back and was about to rearrange my jaw again.
“Wait,” I yelled. “It’s there. In the floor safe.”
Becker looked at Vince and waited.
“We didn’t see no floor safe, Mr. Becker. He’s lying.”
“It’s there,” I said. “Under the rug next to my desk. You couldn’t have found it. It’s there.”
Becker waved Vince off and nodded to him. Vince relaxed the grip on my hair and I fell onto the floor. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his .38 snub nose. Bending over, he stuck it in my ear and pulled the hammer back. He seemed to be waiting for the go-ahead from Becker. He diverted his eyes from mine just long enough for me to grab the .25 automatic from my ankle holster. Becker gave the nod and walked away just as I pointed my piece upward and fired three times in rapid succession. The slugs entered Vince’s head under his chin and exited out the top of his skull. It exploded, sending chunks of blood and gray matter into the air.
I rolled over and out of the way as Vince’s huge body plummeted down next to me. I was quick but Becker was quicker and had disappeared before I could get to my feet. Seconds later the sound of tires squealed away down the driveway. I quickly went through Vince’s pockets and retrieved my .45 and extra clip before leaving through the front door.
A black Cadillac sedan sat in the driveway. I ran over to the driver’s side door and looked in. The keys were there in the ignition and I jumped in. It was a long driveway and I could still see Becker in the Packard ahead of me. He sped out the front gate and turned south on the boulevard. I followed close behind, gaining on him with every block. He tried an evasive maneuver but was obviously used to having someone drive him around. I had no trouble staying with him.
I was closing fast and ready for anything when I looked in my rear view mirror. It was the steady red flash of a police car. The black and white squad pulled up alongside the Cadillac. One of the officers pointed his revolver at me and yelled for me to pull over.
From over their loudspeaker I heard him bellow at me. “Step out of the car with your hands where I can see ‘em. Do it—NOW!”
I stepped out with my hands in the air and walked toward them. “Nice going, you let Becker get away,” I started to say.
A heavy hand spun me around and threw me against the trunk of the Caddy. The officer ran his hands down my sides and yelled back at his partner, “got a gun, Al.” He continued to run his hands down my legs and stopped at the ankle holster. “Got another one.”
He finished his frisk and grabbed me by the collar and yanked be backwards. His revolver was pointed in my face once again and the look in his eye told me I’d better keep my wise cracks to myself.
The other officer was on the radio calling the dispatcher. He waited a minute or so before joining his partner alongside me. “Your car?”
“Not exactly,” I said. It belongs to the guy I was chasing before you stopped me.”
“What guy?” The first officer asked. “You’re the only guy we saw.”
The officer who frisked me handed my wallet to his partner, Al. Al Flipped it open to my badge and I.D. and then looked back up at me. “You Cooper?”
“Matt Cooper,” I answered.
“Yeah? What’s your P.I. license number?” he said.
“3691744. It expires July of ‘48. My office is on LaBrea at Lexington. For breakfast this morning I had...”
“All right, don’t be a wise guy,” Al said
. “You’re who you say you are. But you were still speeding and in a car that doesn’t belong to you. You got some heavy explaining to do downtown.”
“Look,” I said, “I’ll go downtown with you. I’ll pay the damned speeding ticket. I’ll tell you where the dead guy is. I’ll even...”
“Wait a minute,” the second officer barked. “Back up. What’s this about a dead guy?”
“Let’s go,” I said. It’s a long story, I’m tired and Dan Hollister is really the one I want to talk to anyway. Come on,” I said, dropping my hands and walking toward the squad car.
Al stepped in front of me and said, “Turn around and put your hands behind you.”
I did as I was told and crawled into the back seat of the squad cuffed and mad. It was a quiet twenty minutes back to the precinct.
Dan was in his office when the two officers led me in. Hollister looked at me and then at the officers. “Take those things off,” he ordered, pointing at my handcuffs. As soon as the cuffs came off, Hollister motioned the officers out and I sat in the stiff, wooden chair next to his desk.
Dan leaned back in his chair, his hands rubbing his eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair and straightened up, looking me squarely in the eyes. “Cooper, what is it with you? Every time I turn around you’re in trouble.”
“Is that all you have to say?” I snapped back. “I was damn near killed tonight and you’re worried about a little trouble?”
“It’s what they pay me to do,” he said. “Now what the hell’s going on?”
Dan listened as I explained the situation. I told him everything I knew up to that point. I could have told it all to the wall, for as much attention as he paid to me.
Hollister and I made it back to the Becker mansion later that night. The crime lab was there dusting for prints and picking fragments of .25 caliber slugs out of the ceiling. Vince was being hauled out on a stretcher as Dan and I entered the main hallway.
Hollister motioned to the men carrying the stretcher and they stopped long enough for him to pull back the sheet. He flipped it back over Vince’s face and turned to me. “Thorough, aren’t you?”
“That might have been me lookin’ back at you from under that sheet,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Dan said. “Just seems like every time I run into you another body shows up. Why is that, Cooper?”
“Dunno. Just lucky, I guess.”
Dan turned to Officer Burns, who was depositing Vince’s .38 into a handkerchief. “Get an A.P.B. out on Becker right away.”
“Right, Sarge.”
Hollister turned back to me. “Come on, give. What was so damned important that Becker had to drag you back here?”
I was in no position to hold out any longer. “This,” I said, holding out the piece of paper that held the drawing of Becker’s tie tack.
“What is it?” Dan asked impatiently.
“It’s Becker’s tie tack, or at least a drawing of it,” I said. “I’ve got the real McCoy back at my office.”
“Come on, Cooper,” Dan snapped. “We’re going back to your office. That’s evidence and I want it—NOW!”
On the way back to my office I explained to Dan how I’d found the tie tack and how I tricked my way into the Indio Club and how I came to be at Becker’s mansion earlier that night.
We opened the door to my office and I flipped on the overhead light. The office looked as thought a wrestling tag team had ripped through it. Papers were everywhere and most of the furniture was tipped over. My P.I. license lay in its broken frame on the floor near my desk. The closet had been emptied of its contents and my favorite overstuffed chair had been ripped to shreds, its stuffings lying about.
I nudged the desk back a few inches and lifted the throw rug. Retrieving a screwdriver from my bottom desk drawer, I carefully pried up on a loose floorboard and reached in.
Dan watched as I pulled the tie tack out of my “floor safe” and handed it to him. “I found this in that lot over on Santa Monica and Cahuenga where McMillan’s body turned up.”
Dan examined it. “B—Becker,” he said. “Makes sense. This all you got?”
“Yeah, but looks like it was enough to worry Becker,” I said. “He wanted it back pretty bad.”
Dan lifted his eyes from the tie tack and looked as though he wanted to chew me out for withholding evidence. He never got the chance. The phone rang and I searched for the source of the ringing beneath the mess that once lay neatly on my desk. I found the phone cord and pulled. The phone followed close behind. I lifted the receiver and said, “Cooper.”
The silence was shattered by a panic-ridden scream on the other end. “Help me. Please, help me!”
“Who is this?” I said.
“Maggie McMillan,” the voice said. Someone’s breaking in through my back door. Please, Matt, hurry!”
Her last words were followed by another scream and the sound of the phone being thrown to the floor. I could hear what sounded like pounding and glass breaking, then heavy, fast footsteps.
I dropped the phone and ran for the door. “Come on, Dan,” I said. “It’s Mrs. McMillan. Someone’s after her.”
Dan and I dashed to the street below. He hopped into the squad car and I followed close behind in mine. The squad’s lights and siren sliced through the still night air.
We made it to the McMillan house in just under four minutes. Dan covered the front door while I proceeded around to the back of the house to find the back door standing open, broken. The flimsy chain latch hung from the door, a piece of wooden doorframe still dangling from it. We entered the house simultaneously and began our search on the first floor.
We could hear what we thought was water running upstairs. It was a trickling sound, like a faucet not shut completely off. We could hear the drip, drip, drip, like the sound of water running down the drain. It had a faint, hollow echo in the two-story house, which was otherwise silent.
With our guns drawn, we ascended the stairs, searching the second floor room by room. Throughout the search we could hear the steady dripping sound. A shiver ran up my back and down the length of my forearms.
We finished our search in the upstairs bathroom, where we found the body of Maggie McMillan. She was lying in the bathtub, wearing nothing but a sheer nightie. She had been stabbed several times and had fallen backwards into the tub.
Dan pressed his fingers against the vein in her neck. It yielded one last faint thump as several more drops of blood pumped out of the wounds in her neck and abdomen and ran down the bathtub drain. Then she was still. Dan retracted his fingers, wiped them on his handkerchief and stepped back, shaking his head in disbelief.
“We couldn’t have missed the killer by more than a minute or two,” he said, looking at me and still somewhat shaken. “Why do you suppose she called you and not the police station?” Dan asked.
“How the hell should I know?” I said. “Last time I saw her was here at her house and she didn’t seem too upset that I was on the receiving end of Becker’s henchman.”
Dan shook his head and looked down at the body again before shifting his gaze to the toilet. “Look,” he said, pointing to the toilet seat.
On the lid was a perfect imprint of a shoe outlined in fresh blood. A few more drops trickled down the tank. The window above the toilet was open but we hadn’t immediately noticed it since it was covered by a pair of dark green curtains.
I carefully leaned over the bowl and separated the curtains. Outside the window was a short, low roof that covered the kitchen below. It dropped off to the back yard. “He left here, all right,” I said. “Come on.”
Dan and I hurried downstairs and out the kitchen door. The back yard was dark and quiet. It had rained earlier and portions of the yard were muddy. The yard was surrounded by tall hedges. There was a gap in the hedgerow near the corner of the yard. I poked my head through the opening and looked out into an alley. I turned back to Dan, “he slipped out through here,” I said.
Just then we cou
ld hear the deep, throaty roar of an engine and the sound of a large car leaving in a hurry. The tires on the wet pavement sounded like bacon frying. Dan ran back to the squad and radioed for backup. I slid behind the wheel of my car and sped off in the same direction the large car had taken.
The six cylinders in Olds were no match for the eight cylinders of the sedan I was following. Within a few short blocks it had managed to put a lot of distance between us. If I couldn’t be faster I had to be smarter. On a hunch, I turned north and sped back to The Indio Club.
The ornate building lay before me in the night. I parked the Olds around the corner and waited once more behind one of the huge potted plants that flanked the entrance. I didn’t have to wait long. In the distance I could hear the familiar roar of that same powerful engine cutting through the night air. Within seconds it had screeched to a halt directly in front and its driver was coming my way fast.
Emil Becker’s hand reached out for the door latch just as I emerged with my .45 drawn. I pointed it directly in his face and smiled. “Imagine that.”
Becker sneered at me and looked around as if for a reprieve from one of his henchmen, then back at me. “We can talk,” he said, his hands pointing upward.
“We’re all done talking, Becker. I’ve seen the way you talk. I prefer my way,” I said. I slowly approached him and reached inside his coat to retrieve his gun. “Inside,” I said, motioning with the gun.
Becker opened the front door to The Indio Club and slowly entered with me right behind him. Instead of continuing straight ahead to the main dining room, we turned just inside the door and made our way up a flight of stairs to his office. He opened the door and flipped on the light before I pushed him in the rest of the way. “Sit,” I said, pointing to a tan leather chair near the wall.
I closed the door behind me and locked it before breathing normally again. I withdrew my handcuffs and stepped over to where Becker was sitting. I threw the cuffs at him and instructed him to put one of the cuffs on his wrist and the other on the radiator pipe next to his chair. He hesitated for a moment, looked at the barrel of my .45 and proceeded to do as he was told. Once secured to the radiator, I eased the grip on my .45 and holstered it before taking a seat behind Becker’s desk.
