by Bill Bernico
“Your grandpa was murdered?” Elliott said. “Why?”
I tried to think back to the day all those years ago when my dad had told me about Grandpa Nick’s death. Parts of what he told me were untrue, I was sure. And parts of what I learned were painful.
“Grandpa Nick stumbled onto a scheme to cheat one family out of their land,” I said. “This family had a house that used to sit right where the oil field is today. They wouldn’t sell so the big shots at the oil companies framed the owner for murder and he was sent to prison. After he was gone, it was easier to convince his wife to sell. Hell, they even helped relocate her in Pasadena and bought her house from her for peanuts. And you can see how valuable that land is today.”
“What did that have to do with Great Grandpa Nick?” Elliott said, totally absorbed in the story by now.
“The oil company had an independent geologist do a survey on the land,” I said. “He brought his findings to the executives at the oil company. They didn’t want any word of this study to get out before they had a chance to acquire the land from the homeowner so they had him killed. And Grandpa Nick was nearby when they killed the geologist. They didn’t know it at the time, but as they were moving the body, Grandpa Nick tried to sneak away from where he was hiding and they heard him and caught him and…”
“Killed him,” Elliott said. “The bastards.”
“And of course, they had all the pull on their end to cover up both killings as well as the survey,” I said. “Dad took it pretty hard and vowed someday to find Grandpa Nick’s killers. I guess that’s why he became a cop.”
“Cop, then private investigator,” Elliott said. He’d heard that part of the story before and knew about dad’s years on the Chicago Police Department and then later on the Los Angeles Police Department.
“That’s right,” I said. “I remember when you were about four or five, dad used to sit you on his knee and tell you stories about being a cop.”
“That’s right,” Elliott said, thinking back. “I think I remember something about him showing me an old badge or something.”
“He kept it all those years, even after he left the force,” I said. “He was supposed to turn it in when he left, but he told his boss that he’d lost it.”
Elliott turned and looked out his window. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his hand go up to his face and wipe something away. I pretended not to notice and he turned back toward me.
“I guess it’s in our blood, isn’t it?” Elliott said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Snooping, detecting, digging out the truth,” Elliott said.
“Yes, I guess it is,” I said. “And you know, Elliott, I’m so proud of your for carrying on the family tradition and keeping the business going. Just think, three generations of Cooper Investigations. Someday I hope you pass it on to your own son.”
“Hold on,” Elliott said. “You got me being a father already and I’m not even dating anyone regular yet. Let me get married first, will you?”
I pulled the shifter back down into Drive and continued on to the restaurant. I pulled up and parked in front of the place and sat for a moment, taking in the familiar sight. The restaurant where Veronica and I had met all those years ago looked pretty much the same as it did back then. It looked like someone had parked a railroad car on the street and decided to sell food out of it. That style was all the rage seventy years ago and this was one of only two of these train car diners left in all of Los Angeles.
Elliott and I found a booth along the front of the car, looking out onto the street. A waitress came by with two glasses of water and two menus before returning to the kitchen. Elliott put his menu down immediately.
“You already know what you want?” I asked.
“Sure,” Elliott said.
“Well,” I said. “I still need a minute, if you don’t mind.” I scanned both sides of the menu and finally decided what I wanted and laid my menu on top of Elliott’s. Sandy, the waitress who usually waited on me when I came in here, came back, pulled a pencil from somewhere behind her ear and flipped her order book open to the last page.
“Okay,” Sandy said, “Who’s first?”
Elliott raised on finger in the air and recited, “Ham and Swiss on rye, no pickle, mustard on the side, an order of fries and chocolate malt.”
Sandy turned to me and smiled. “Clay, how about you?” she said. “What’ll it be?”
“My usual, my dear,” I told her.
Sandy jotted down what I wanted and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Your usual?” Elliott said. “Just how often do you come here?”
“Couple times a week,” I said. “I’m not much of a cook and when you’re not home it doesn’t pay for me to even mess with dinner, so I come here.”
“Hmmph,” Elliott said. “The things you can learn by just hanging out with your dad.” He turned to look out the window and a moment later turned back to me. “Speaking of learning things, suppose you tell me a little more about meeting mom in this place. That was when?”
I smiled, a flood of memories overtaking my senses. “That would have been November twenty-eighth of, let’s see, nineteen seventy six. I had just turned twenty-six and your mother was twenty-three. God, she was a sight.”
Elliott smiled, eager to know more. “You remember the first thing she ever said to you?” he asked.
“Like it was yesterday,” I said. “She looked me right in the eye and said in her delicate voice, ‘what’ll you have, sir?’ And I looked into her eyes and said something clever, like, ‘How about a hamburger with the works?’ or something along those lines.”
“She was the waitress here?” Elliott said, astonished.
“That she was,” I said. “And pretty as a picture in her white dress and pink frilly apron. And I don’t mind tell you, I was smitten?”
“Smitten?” Elliott said. “Who uses ‘smitten’ any more?”
“What? You prefer, ‘captivated’ instead?” I said.
“No,” Elliott said, “I guess ‘smitten’ fits better. So, how long after you two met did you take her out?”
“That night,” I said. “I waited outside of this very diner until her shift ended at midnight and I pulled my ‘65 Buick up to the door, rolled my window down and used my favorite line.”
“Which was…?” Elliott asked.
“Can I give you a lift, Miss?” I said.
Elliott pursed his lips. “And that corny line worked?” he said.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” I said.
“I guess so,” Elliott said.
Sandy returned with their orders, set them down on the table and left again. I grabbed my hamburger with the works and took a big bite. I swallowed and said, “Not like the burgers your mom used to bring me.”
“Okay,” Elliott said between bites, “So you met here, you took her out and then…?”
“It was a fast courtship,” I said. “We went out for a few months and then I asked her to marry me and she said yes. And that’s pretty much it.”
“And then I came along in December of ‘80.”
“Right,” I said.
“But what…?” Elliott started to say.
I pointed to his sandwich. “Eat before it gets cold.”
“It was made cold,” Elliott said. “You trying to avoid something here?”
“What else is there?” I said, grabbing two fries, dipping them in the ketchup and stuffing them into my mouth.
“How’d you come up with my name?” Elliott wanted to know. “Far as I know, there are no other Elliotts in our family on either side.”
I sighed and laid my hamburger back on the plate. “If you must know, when I was a kid, probably nine or ten, there was this show on television called The Untouchables. It was all about Chicago in the twenties and thirties and about Al Capone. The head of the task force called The Untouchables was a cop named Elliott Ness, played by Robert Stack. I just thought he was the coolest character
on television at the time. His name stuck in my memory and when you came along his name just jumped out at me again.”
“Gees,” Elliott said, “It’s a good thing you weren’t a big Lucy fan. I mean, Desi Cooper doesn’t sound too cool, now does it?”
“Just be thankful I wasn’t a Bonanza fan.” I said. “Hoss Cooper? How’d you like to go through life with that moniker?”
“I’ll stick with Elliott, thank you,” he said.
“People had suggested either Gary or Jackie,” I said. “But you can guess why we turned those two down.”
Sandy came back to check on us and Elliott got so nervous that he dropped his napkin on the floor. Sandy bent over to pick it up and stuffed it into her apron pocket. From the opposite pocket she pulled out another neatly folded napkin and reached across Elliott to set it next to his plate. I could smell her hair from where I sat and it was heavenly. I can imagine how it smelled to Elliott.
Before she straightened up again, I heard a dull cracking sound and looked at Sandy. She was holding her side, blood oozing out between her fingers. She fell to the floor, trying to hold on to the edge of our table as she went down. I looked at the window next to our booth. There was a fresh bullet hole right about where Elliott’s head had been seconds earlier. It had been Sandy’s bad luck to lean over just at that time, forcing him to lean back, out of the path of the bullet.
Elliott and I quickly slid out of the booth and hit the floor. Elliott always wore his .38 under his arm, on duty or off and he had it out now. I hadn’t worn my gun for several weeks and had had no reason to wear it tonight.
Another dull crack rang out and a second hole appeared in the window. Elliott crawled to the front door and stood up alongside it, trying to cautiously peek out into the night. He saw a black sedan squealing away down the street, fishtailing as it went. He hurried back over to where Sandy lay and I crouched.
“How’s she doing?” Elliott said, looking down at Sandy’s blood uniform.
“She took one in the side,” I said. “Through and through. I don’t think they hit any vital organs. If we can just keep her from bleeding out and get an ambulance here, her chances should be pretty good.”
I grabbed Elliott’s shoulder. “That was meant for you, you know.”
“Me?” Elliott said. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re not taking any more chances. I’m gonna start wearing my gun again and we’re gonna look into this with a fine tooth microscope.”
“Comb,” Elliott said. “A fine tooth comb.”
“Whatever,” I said.
We stayed by Sandy’s side until the attendants wheeled her out and loaded her into the ambulance. I stood next to Elliott and nudged him with my elbow. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got work to do.”
“We?” Elliott said.
“That’s right,” I said. “We, as in you and me. I’m in this one, too so don’t give me any shit about it, all right?”
Elliott stepped back and raised both his palms toward me. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re in. Where do you want to start?”
“Right over there,” I said pointing to the area where the two gunshots had originated.
Elliott and I hurried over to a dumpster that was situated next to a loading dock. Behind the dumpster we found two wooden crates stacked up side by side. It was probably the platform the shooter needed to sight in on us over the dumpster. I checked the ground next to the crates and spotted a brass shell casing. A foot away from it I found another. I pulled the pen from my shirt pocket and stuck it in the open end of the shell and held it up under the street lamp’s rays.
“Give me your handkerchief,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Handkerchief?” Elliott said. “Nobody carries a handkerchief anymore. It’s unsanitary.”
“Then run back into the diner,” I said, “and bring me a plastic sandwich bag, if they have it. If not, just bring me a napkin.”
Elliott ran back toward the diner and I continued scouring the area for evidence. On top of the crate I saw some dark marks. With my foot, I slid the crate out from behind the dumpster into the light. The marks were mud from the shooter’s shoes.
Before Elliott returned, a black and white patrol car skidded to a stop in front of the diner. Another car pulled up behind it. I recognized Dean Hollister getting out of the second car.
“Dean,” I called out from the dumpster. “Over here.”
Dean and another man hurried over to where I stood, holding my pen with the shell casing on the end. The man with Dean retrieved a small manila envelope from his coat pocket and pressed the sides until the envelope yawned open. I dropped the shell casing into it and bent over for the second one, dropping it in with the first one. I looked at Dean and then pointed to the crate.
“Probably stood on these two crates and shot over the dumpster,” I offered. “You might want to have your fingerprint guy dust the top edge of the dumpster. I doubt you’ll find anything, but you never know.”
“Cooper,” Dean said. “You’re just like your dad. Wherever he went, trouble seemed to follow. You think maybe this was some disgruntled boyfriend?”
“Dean,” I said. “He wasn’t after Sandy.”
“Sandy?” Dean asked.
“The waitress who got shot,” I explained. “I think I was his target and Sandy just got in the way.”
“Okay,” Dean said, “Who’d you piss off this time? I mean, regular people off the street just don’t decide to shoot at you for no reason, do they?”
Elliott returned with a handful of napkins and held one out.
“Too late,” I said. “The officer brought an envelope.”
Elliott threw the napkins into the dumpster and turned to Dean. “You think this could be connected to the Harrington shooting?”
“Who’s Harrington?” I said, “And what shooting are we talking about?”
Elliott turned to me and said, “I got a call at the office this afternoon from some guy named Wendell Harrington. Said he needed to see me right away, but couldn’t tell me anything over the phone. I told him to come up to the office but he never made it.”
“He got as far as Sunset and LaCienega before he took one in the head,” Dean explained. “Junior, here showed up at…”
“Junior?” Elliott said indignantly and pointed at me. “No, he’s junior. I’m… Oh never mind.”
Dean turned to me and said, “Did you find anything else out since this afternoon?”
“I never got a chance,” Elliott explained. “I went home from there and then dad and I came here for supper and now this. If there’s a connection, then whatever it was Harrington wanted to see me about must have been pretty important. At least that’s my best guess.”
“We’ll get back to you if we learn anything else,” I told Dean. I turned to Elliott. “Come on, let’s get over to the office. We have a few things to discuss.”
I waved a single wave to Dean and walked back to the car. Elliott slid beneath the wheel and I slid in beside him. The office was ten minutes away. We took the elevator to our floor and stepped out into the hall. I could see the office at the end of the hall.
“You leave the lights on?” I asked Elliott?
“No, I didn’t,” he said, pulling his .38 from beneath his arm. He silently padded down the hall to his office door and tired the knob. It turned effortlessly and we crept in. The office was empty but it looked as if two grizzly bears had just had a fight to the death in it. There were papers everywhere. The desk had been flipped upside down, its drawers out and strewn across the floor. The cushions of the reupholstered sofa had been gutted like a fish. The stuffings lay on the floor in a pile.
“And I just had that upholstered,” Elliott said in disgust. “Look at this place. It’s a disaster area.”
“Forget the sofa,” I said. “What do you suppose whoever did this was after?”
Elliott ran both hands through his hair and left them on to
p of his head. “Has to be the Harrington thing,” he said. “I didn’t have any other case at the present time. Did you?”
“Not me,” I said. “So let’s go after this with the assumption that someone thinks Harrington told you something. I mean why else would they do this?”
Elliott and I each took an end of the desk and set it back on its feet. Elliott picked up all the drawers and slid them back into their slots. The papers could wait until another time. I picked up the swivel desk chair and rolled it behind the desk and sat in it. Elliott picked up the client chair and sat across from me.
I pointed to the Hollywood phone book on the floor behind Elliott. “Can you reach that phone book and hand it to me?” I said.
Elliott leaned over without leaving his chair and grabbed the phone book and threw it on the desk in front of me. I paged through it, stopping on the H page and ran my finger down until I came to the Harringtons. There were eight of them, the last one being Wendell J. It listed an address in the Silver Lake district along with a phone number.
“It doesn’t pay to call there,” I said. “Since the police would by now have notified any other occupants of that address. But I suppose we could drive over there and have a look.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Elliott said.
I wrote the address down and rose from the chair. Elliott began picking up papers and laying them on the desk.
“Leave that,” I said. “We’ll straighten it up when we get back.”
We found Harrington’s house a block from the Copper Penny restaurant and pulled up in front of it. It was a two-story white clapboard house with a large porch in the front and a detached garage along the side. Elliott followed me up the steps and waited next to me while I rang the doorbell. No one answered and I tried again. Still no one came. I motioned for Elliott to go around to the back of the house and see if anyone was in the yard. He left and came back a minute later shaking his head. I cupped my eyes and peered in through the front window. The place was empty.
“I’ve got another idea,” I told Elliott. “Let’s stop off at the library and check the old newspaper files and see if anything shakes loose.”
