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

by Bill Bernico

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just tossing out ideas to see what surfaces. Could be nothing to it, but on the other hand…”

  Sean thought for a moment and then swiveled around in his chair. He opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and pulled a folder out, setting it on his desk. He opened the folder and leafed through its contents, stopping on one sheet in particular. He pulled it from the stack and read it before handing it to me. “Here’s one,” Sean said. “Left here without finishing the course that he paid for. Never asked for a refund, either.”

  “Does it say anything else about him?” I said.

  Sean looked over the document and shook his head. Then he pressed the button on his intercom and said, “Art, would you come in here for a minute?”

  “Right away, Mr. Kelly,” Art said.

  A few seconds later an old man in sweats came in and looked at Sean. “You wanted to see me?” He said.

  Sean handed Art the application form for the guy who’d left without a refund. “You remember this guy?” Sean said.

  Art looked at the form for a moment and then handed it back to Sean. “Sure,” Art said. “That guy was something else. He stuck around long enough for a couple of workouts and must have decided he wasn’t getting results fast enough and took off.”

  Sean said, “You remember what became of him?”

  “Sure,” Art said. “I remember hearing something about him getting involved in some sort of ruckus at the bus stop a few months back. Couple of guys beat the crap out of him. Sent him to the hospital, if I recall. Why?”

  “Know where he is now?” I said.

  Art looked down at me and then over at Sean. Sean immediately jumped in with, “I’m sorry, Art. This is a friend of mine, Matt Cooper. Matt, Art Carvell, one of my trainers.” I stood and extended my hand and Art took it.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Cooper,” Art said.

  “Please,” I said. “Call me Matt.”

  Art nodded. “And you call me Art. And getting back to your question, Matt, I know exactly where is he is and it’s a sure bet he’ll still be right there if you want to locate him.”

  “And where’s that?” Sean said.

  “Forest Lawn,” Art said. “He never did come out of that coma after they brought him in. Poor guy. Another six months of lessons here and he could have taken care of himself in any fight.”

  “Forest Lawn?” I said. “Is that the one in Glendale or the one closer to Burbank?”

  “Burbank,” Art said. “Close to the Disney Studio.

  “Thanks, Art,” Sean said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Art nodded at me and left the office. “So much for that theory,” I said. “What was that guy’s name?” I said. “Just in case I need to check on him.”

  Sean looked at the application for again at the bottom where he’d signed. “Sweeny,” Sean said. “Myron Sweeny.”

  “Can I see that for a minute?” I said. Sean gave me the form and I laid it in front of me. “You mind if I copy down some of this information, Sean?”

  “No,” he said. “In fact, if you want that form, you can have it. I won’t need it anymore.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “Take it, Matt,” Sean said. “Just let me know if it amounts to anything. I’m sure the guys around here will want to know how much longer they have to keep looking over their shoulders.”

  I folded the document twice and slipped it into my jacket pocket. “Thanks, Sean,” I said. “I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.”

  “And don’t be such a stranger from now on, you hear?” Sean said, extending his hand. I shook it again and promised to keep in touch.

  I drove back down to city hall and looked up Eva Bishop again. She looked up and saw me coming and immediately smiled.

  “I know I said to keep in touch, Matt,” she said. “But I didn’t think it would only take you such a short time to miss me.”

  “What can I say?” I told her. “You’re like a Matt magnet. Don’t worry; I still plan on taking you to lunch to swap wedding stories. I haven’t forgotten. But for now, all I need is a little more information, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Never too busy for you, dear,” Eva said, winking at me.

  “Come on now,” I said. “We’re both married and…”

  “Married, not buried,” Eva said, laughing. “Okay, I can get serious for a minute. What do you need?”

  I pulled Sean’s application form from my pocket and pointed to the name on it. “Can you look this guy up and tell me any more than there is on this form?”

  “Well, let’s have a look,” Eva said. She looked at the information contained on the form and then went to get the large ledger that had more details on almost anyone you cared to look up. She opened the ledger on the counter and turned it sideways so we could both look at it. She ran her finger down the column and stopped when she got to Sweeney, Myron. “Here he is,” she said.

  I looked at the information on the line next to his name. I looked back up at Eva. “Might go quicker if you translate this for me.”

  Eva turned the ledge back toward herself and said, “Sweeney, Myron. Born February 9, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri. Last known residence was this address in Burbank.”

  She pointed to the address and I wrote it down.

  “Never married,” Eva continued. “One brother, Byron, same birthday. Hmmm, he must have been a twin. Says here Myron died August 19, 1951, just three months ago. Wasn’t very old, either.” She did the mental math and declared. “Didn’t live to see twenty-six.”

  I wrote that down as well and said, “What do you have on the brother, Byron?”

  Eva moved her finger down one line and said, “Sweeney, Byron. Same birthday and birthplace, naturally, same address, too, Matt. Sounds like they were inseparable.”

  “I guess,” I said. “I’m close to my brother, but then we weren’t twins. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a twin.”

  “A friend of mine has a twin,” Eva said. “She claims she can tell when her sister is sick, even though they live miles apart. You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But maybe the brother has an ax to grind. Thanks, Eva. You’re a lifesaver, and I might mean that literally, if this turns out to be what I think it is.”

  Eva closed the ledger and returned it to the shelf. I leaned over the counter and kissed her cheek. “Keep your calendar open for next week,” I said. “We’ll work out a date for that lunch.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” Eva said.

  I took my new information and drove to the twelfth precinct and walked down the hall to Dan Hollister’s office. He was in and had a file open in front of him when I entered. “You busy?” I said, keeping one foot out in the hall.

  Dan motioned me in. “Come in, come in,” Dan said. “Close the door, will you?”

  “What is it?” I said. “You look like the cat that just swallowed the canary. You find something for me?”

  “I just may have,” Dan said. “Turns out that your buddy Ronald Dorsey has been a bad boy. He’s got a rap sheet. Not as long as some, but longer than the average no good.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Let me see,” Dan said, running his finger down the page. “Breaking and entering, assault, two counts, burglary, extortion, blackmail. Should I go on?”

  “No, I get the idea,” I said. “You think Bea knows about him?”

  Dan flipped the first sheet over. Beatrice Dorsey,” Dan said. “Forgery, bad checks, blackmail, sixty days in the county lockup for assault and battery. I tell you, it looks like the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  I gave Dan a strange look.

  “What?” Dan said.

  “Doesn’t fall far from the tree?” I said and shrugged, spreading my hands.

  “Oh, that’s the good news part of all this,” Dan said. “She’s not your kid.”

  “No?” I said.

  “No way, no
how, not even close,” Dan said. “Her mother turned out to be the same Susan Cunningham that you may have dated.”

  I held one finger up. “It wasn’t…” I started to say.

  “The same girl you cranked?” Dan said.

  “Well,” I said. “The way you put it makes it sound so crude and dirty. It wasn’t like that at all. I’d have asked her out again if she hadn’t just up and disappeared the next day.”

  “Regardless,” Dan said, pulling out my service record from when I’d been a cop at this same precinct. “Your blood type is O negative, correct?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, so what?”

  Dan laid my record down and picked up a folder marked “Susan Cunningham” and opened it. “And the Cunningham girl’s blood type is also O negative.”

  “You going someplace with this?” I said.

  He picked up Beatrice Dorsey’s files and spread it out in front of him. “Your little girl’s blood type is AB positive. Pretty rare, I’d say.”

  “So what does that prove?” I said.

  Dan picked up Ronald Dorsey’s file again and opened it, plucking out his medical record. He held it up for me to see and said, “Ronald Dorsey, AB positive.” He laid the paper back into the file and closed it. “Not your kid, Matt.”

  “Now I’m really confused,” I said. “Dorsey showed me the slip of paper that Susan had written the name of Bea’s father on.”

  “And that was supposed to be the convincer, the deal clincher, so to speak,” Dan said. “You can bet they’re both in on it, Dorsey and his daughter.”

  “Then why drag me into it?” I said.

  “The way I see it,” Dan said. “Somewhere along the line Susan Dorsey, or Cunningham if you prefer, told Beatrice about her one night stand with you. At the time, there was nothing Bea could do with the information except sit on it and save it for a rainy day. When Susan died, that story died with her, at least the true version, that is. Bea took that part of the story and added bits of her own, formulating the idea that you had gotten her mother pregnant and that you were her real father. She could never have gotten away with her little scheme while mom was still alive, but once mom died, she and dear old dad hatched this plan to fleece you out of some easy money.”

  “But she hasn’t asked for anything,” I said. “But then again, I haven’t told her about my findings yet.”

  “She already knows what Ronald Dorsey told you and showed you,” Dan said. “Remember? She’s in on it. She’s probably wondering why you haven’t told her yet, since she knew that you already knew when she stopped by your office just before I showed up.”

  “Are you saying I should play along with her little plan?” I said.

  “Unless you want her and Dorsey to walk away Scott free again,” Dan said. “Otherwise you can go along with her and see what she suggests or demands. Then I’ll nail ‘em both for blackmail.”

  “I like that plan better,” I said. “How do you wanna work it?”

  “You’ll have to call her back to your office,” Dan said. “I’ll be there, somewhere out of sight and when she asks for the money I’ll step out.”

  “And how do you plan on getting her dad?” I said. “He can always say he didn’t know anything about Bea asking for money.”

  “If she asks for anything,” Dan said, “I don’t know, make something up. Tell you you’ll only deal with both of them together.”

  “That should do it,” I said. “I gotta tell ya, Dan, for just a little while there I was excited about having a daughter. I was also nervous about how Amy would take all this. Now I’m just as glad I don’t have to tell her.”

  “You’re not going to tell her that someone tried to scam you?” Dan said. “You can present it in a whole new light now that we have the facts. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” I said. “I’ll have to approach it carefully.” I rose from Dan’s chair and turned to leave. “Thanks a million, Dan,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dan said. “Amy will be on your side on this one.”

  I nodded and left his office.

  *****

  Police surround the one story ranch house in Burbank. Several officers take up positions around the back of the house. Two more officers cover each end, making sure no one exits through the windows. Dan and three other officers carefully approach the front of the house, moving quietly toward the front door. Dan silently signals to the officers covering the sides of the house, who in turn signal the officers covering the back. They all move in at once.

  Dan pounds his fist on the front door. “Byron Sweeny,” Dan yells, “This is the police. We have your house surrounded. Come out with your hands above your head.”

  There’s no answer. Dan repeats his orders. Still no sounds, no movement from inside. He signals to his men and they kick in the front door, quickly stepping aside. Dan leads the way in, sweeping back and forth with his .38. The back door bursts open and four more officers rush in, checking rooms as they meet Dan in the front room. They shake their heads.

  “Empty,” one of the officers says.

  “Check the garage,” Dan tells him.

  “Looks like we missed him,” Officer Clark says.

  The man with the suitcase watches from a block away as police swarm his house, kicking in doors and making a lot of commotion. He smiles to himself, knowing he won’t be going back there. After today it won’t make any difference. He’ll make today’s kill count for something, like the last two. This will be a high profile kill that will get him national attention, guaranteed. He has time to wait for just the right target, he thinks. The location is everything. It’s the key to his whole purpose. Myron would be proud of him.

  He catches the next bus downtown and gets off at the exact location. He steps off the bus and surveys the area. He looks at the spot on the sidewalk where those men beat his brother into a coma and walked away Scott free. He turns and looks up at the buildings in the neighborhood. He sees one behind him with a perfect view of the bus stop and finds the back door to the building. The back door is open and he lets himself into the hallway. There’s a freight elevator halfway down the hall. He takes it to the top floor and exits. He finds the door to the roof and eases the door open, peeking out before stepping all the way out onto the roof.

  He gets his bearings and turns to face south. When he gets to the edge of the roof, he looks down and sees the bus stop across the street. He has a perfect line of fire from up here. He sits down and waits, listening to the traffic and pedestrian sounds. His watch tells him it’s ten minutes to eight. The next bus will be along in ten minutes. He opens his suitcase and assembles the pieces of his rifle, not bothering with the tripod. He can rest the weapon on the roof ledge when the time comes.

  He watches over the top of the short ledge. The bus stop is vacant. No one is waiting for the bus. At eight o’clock the bus stops and three people get off. Two women and one child step down off the bus and walk away. It will be another fifteen minutes before the next bus is due on this corner. He crouches back down and waits, checking his watch occasionally.

  At twelve minutes past the hour, he looks down at the bus stop. Two people are sitting on the bench. One of them is a gray-haired man in a brown suit. The other person is a fat woman with two grocery bags. Neither one qualifies as a suitable target. When the bus stops, only one person gets off. It’s a teenage girl in a flowered dress. The two people from the bench get on and the bus pulls away. It’ll be another fifteen minutes before the next arrival. He waits.

  At eight twenty-five he looks over the ledge again and sees a large man walking toward the bus stop. The man’s shoulders are wide and his waist is narrow. He has the muscular features of someone who works out with weights. Perfect, he thinks. Coming toward the bus stop from the opposite direction are two women, their arms locked together and their purses dangling from their opposite arms. They reach the stop before the body builder and sit on the bench. The large man s
tops at the bench and looks down at it. There probably was enough room for him to sit next to the women, but he chooses to stand, glancing at his watch and knowing he wouldn’t have to stand for long.

  Byron Sweeney grabs his rifle and eases it over the ledge, sighting through the scope. A block away he sees the bus coming. He knows he’ll only get one chance at his target and it has to be now. He draws a bead on the large man’s head, bringing the crosshairs together in the middle of the man’s head. He holds his breath and feels his heartbeat. Once again, between heartbeats he squeezes the trigger and his hollow point 30-06 bullet finds its target. The large man topples to the ground, minus most of his head. It takes the two woman on the bench a second to realize just what they’re seeing before they scream and flee the bench.

  The bus pulls up to the curb and the rear door opens. A woman steps down toward the sidewalk and then recoils in horror as she sees the man’s red, pulpy head bleeding into the street. She screams and scurries back up into the bus. The bus’s front door opens and the driver steps out to see what’s causing his passenger to panic. When he sees the man lying on the sidewalk he hurries back into the bus and grabs the microphone clipped to the dashboard. He calls his find into the bus terminal and tells them to call the police. He pulls away from the curb and turns at the next corner, even though that’s not a part of his regular route.

  The bus stop is filled with police cars and flashing lights in a matter of minutes. By now, however, Byron Sweeney has already broken down his rifle and has packed it back into the suitcase. By now he’s a block away, casually walking north without a care in the world.

  *****

  I spent the rest of the evening quietly watching television with Amy. I watched The Cisco Kid and Ellery Queen. By the time Amy had finished the dishes and put Clay to bed, she joined in on the couch in time to see the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. We sat quietly, watching the black and white screen and just enjoying each other’s company. I still hadn’t decided how or if I was going to tell her about Bea and Ronald Dorsey. I finally decided it could wait one more day, at least. We went to bed, my mind still swimming with the thought of how she might react to all this.