by Bill Bernico
Sonny looked around to see if any of his biker gang was within earshot. He leaned over and whispered into my ear and then straightened up again. I nodded and jotted the name down on my clipboard. I motioned to Elliott and he loaded the camera into the back seat of my Olds. I gave Sonny’s hairy hand a few vigorous pumps before climbing back behind the wheel again. I stuck my head out the window and called to Sonny. “Eight miles and ten minutes,” I said, holding my wristwatch out toward him and hiking my thumb over my shoulder. “I’ve got exactly seven fifty-five. You can start now.”
Sonny looked at the watch that sat nestled on a wide leather band around his thick, hairy wrist. He looked back up at me and gave me the thumbs-up. I felt somewhat like Charleton Heston as the sea of motorcycles in front of us opened up to let us pass.
Sonny circled his huge hairy arm overhead, signaling to the rest of the gang, like the wagon master who may have passed by this very spot a hundred and fifty years ago with a wagon train of his own. Sonny and his henchmen hopped onto their hogs and roared east on sixty-two, whooping and screaming and waving their chains overhead.
I was never so glad to see anyone leave in my life. I wasted no time in putting as much distance as possible between us and the gang of bikers. Within a minute we’d reached Twentynine Palms. In another four minutes, the town was behind us. Five more minutes after that we were seven miles west of town.
I looked at my watch. “Sonny and the boys should just about be at the eight-mile mark at the boulder,” I said to Elliott. “They can sit there for another ten minutes while we put another dozen miles between us and them. I’d say we have a good thirty-mile head start on ‘em.”
Elliott looked at the camera in the back seat and then out through the back window. “Suckers,” he said. “Too bad we didn’t have any film in this camera. We might have been able to bring back some interesting footage of that prehistoric tribe.”
“Bring back footage?” I said. “To whom? Those Hollywood studio moguls don’t take unsolicited footage from nobodys like us. You have to have an agent. Like every other aspect of Hollywood, it’s not what you know, but who you know.”
“It could happen,” Elliott said. “Even two camera-totin’ roadies like us should be able to get a foot in the door somehow. This might have been our one shot at the big time.”
“Just thank your lucky stars that we had this stuff along,” I said. “It helped fool Marion and his buddies.”
“Marion?” Elliott said, looking puzzled. “And just who the hell is Marion?”
“Marion Sunnybrook,” I said. “Sonny. He thinks he’s going to see his name on the screen. Let’s just hope he never sees us again or our hides won’t be worth spit. In fact, we’d better stick with the private eye business and leave this kind of work to the studio roadies.”
Elliott snickered. “Marion Sunnybrook. That’s rich. If we ever run into him again we can talk our way out of any trouble just by threatening to tell the rest of the gang his real name.”
“Don’t push your luck, Elliott,” I said. “Next time we’ll take another route.”
“Next time I’m driving,” Elliott said.
I looked over at him and smiled. I handed him the pencil from behind my ear. “Next time.”
61 - Noel
Detective Lieutenant Dean Hollister sat opposite the bank clerk, taking names and making notes on the recent bank robbery suspect who had just held up this branch.
“Would you describe the suspect as best you can?” Dean said to the clerk, his pen poised over his notepad.
“Well,” the bank clerk said, trying to be as helpful as she knew how, “He was about six feet tall and had a long white beard, a big bushy white mustache and rosy cheeks.”
Seagram looked back up at the clerk and said, “What else can you tell me about him? For instance, what was he wearing?”
The clerk looked puzzled, as if it were obvious enough. “He was wearing a red coat with white fur trim on the collar and cuffs,” she said. He had red pants, black boots and a black belt. And, oh yeah, he had a red cap with a white ball hanging down on the end of it.”
Hollister put down his notepad. “Lady, it sounds like you’re describing Santa Claus,” he said.
“I guess I am,” the clerk said. “But that’s what he looked like.” She smiled a nervous smile. “The only thing that didn’t fit the image was the gun that he pointed at me. Santa never carried a gun like that one.”
Hollister let out a sigh of exasperation. “And you say this was at two fifteen?” he said.
“Yes it was,” the clerk said. “Just ten minutes ago.”
“What’d he get?” Hollister said.
“It happened so fast, you see,” the clerk said. “But it only took a minute or so and he only got what was in my drawer.”
“And how much was that,” Hollister said, still writing in his notepad.
“He took twelve-thousand six hundred dollars,” the clerk said.
Seagram jotted down the amount. “Thank you,” he said, stuffing the pad in his lapel pocket and clicking his pen with an unconscious flourish. “We’ll be in touch.”
He rose from his chair and joined his partner, Detective Sergeant Eric Anderson, at the front door. “What did you get?” Hollister said.
Anderson checked his notes. “Description is the same from everyone who was here,” he said. “Santa Claus with a gun, period.”
“Yeah, that’s what I got, too,” Hollister said. “That makes three Santa holdups this week alone. This guy is good. He’s in and out of the bank in less than three minutes and he always disappears into the crowd afterwards. Gees, I’ll be glad when this damned Christmas season is behind us.”
“You and me both,” Anderson said. “It’s getting so you want to frisk every Santa ringing a bell on every street corner. Now how would that look, I ask you? Come on, Dean, let’s go get some coffee.”
Hollister and Anderson drove south on LaCienega Boulevard and turned the corner at Jefferson Boulevard where they parked behind a white panel truck. The coffee shop was on Jefferson just around the corner. It was two thirty-five and Hollister needed his coffee.
He had just taken his first sip when the radio he had placed on the counter next to him squawked. Hollister listened intently before scooping up the radio. “Let’s go,” he said, taking another quick sip. “Santa has struck again.”
Anderson laid a dollar on the counter and followed Seagram out the door. “Where did he hit this time?” he said.
Hollister squealed away from the curb. “The Beverly Boulevard branch near Vermont Avenue on the other side of town,” he said.
Anderson reached out his window and placed the magnetic, revolving red light on the roof. The car raced through the streets, its siren wailing. Even at the speed the unmarked car was traveling, it still took the two detectives eighteen minutes to reach the Beverly Boulevard branch of the First National Bank. There was a black-and-white on the scene and a small crowd had gathered outside the bank doors.
Hollister held his shield up over his head as he made his way through the crowd. “Police,” he said, shoving past the people. “Stand back, please.” He and Anderson entered the bank and found a uniformed officer talking to a clerk at the nearest window. Hollister showed the officer his badge. “What’s the story here, officer?” Hollister said. “Another Santa Claus holdup?”
The officer straightened up. “Yes sir,” he said, as if awaiting further orders. “It happened just a few minutes ago. Some witnesses said they saw him drive away in an old, beat up car. No description, just beat up.”
“We’ll take it from here, officer…” Hollister paused to look at the nametag on the officer’s jacket. “…Officer Biggens. See if you can keep that crowd outside back away from the doors, would you?”
The officer nodded and exited to the street while Hollister and Anderson continued questioning clerks and customers. One customer thought the man in the Santa Claus suit weighed over two hundred fifty pounds while another was sure she
saw the tail of a black and blue plaid shirt hanging out the back of the red suit. One clerk noticed that Santa’s boots weren’t exactly shiny. In fact, they looked like Santa had recently stepped in ankle-high mud with his right boot.
It was three-fifteen when Hollister and Anderson concluded their preliminary investigation and climbed back into their unmarked squad car. “Another thirteen grand from this branch,” Anderson said.
“That’s almost twenty-six grand in an hour,” Hollister said, comparing his notes with the earlier holdup. “It sure beat’s minimum wage.”
“This guy’s sleigh must really be able to fly,” Anderson said. He knew how silly that sounded as soon as the words left his mouth.
Hollister’s face had the same question on it. “There’s no way he could have made it here in twenty minutes, unless…”
“Unless there are two of them,” Anderson said, finishing Hollister’s sentence. “Gotta be. There’s no other way.”
Hollister scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s get back to the precinct and see if we can get lucky with the files.”
As Dean Hollister and Eric Anderson walked toward the records room, Dean friend, private detective Clay Cooper approached from the opposite direction.
“Dean,” Clay said, stopping in the hallway and extending his hand. “I was just coming to see you. Are you in the middle of something?”
“Actually,” Dean said, “Eric and I are trying to track down a couple of Santa Claus bank robbers. Can this wait?”
“I guess it could,” Clay said. “Is there anything I can do to help? Elliott and Gloria are back at the office trying to straighten our own files out. Gloria pulled the top drawer out too far and the cabinet tipped over. I decided to get out of there for a while.”
“Don’t offer you help unless you want me to put you to work,” Dean said.
Clay smiled at the prospect of having something to occupy his morning. “Lay it on me,” he told Dean.
Dean and Eric continued walking down the hallway toward the records room. Clay followed close behind. When they got into the room, Dean opened a drawer to one of the many file cabinets in there and pulled out a handful of file folders and handed them to Clay.
“Here you go, Clay,” Dean said. “You can start with these. Eric and I will grab a stack of our own. We can all sit here at this conference table.”
“And just what are we looking for?” Clay said.
Dean and Eric sat across from Clay, each with a sizeable stack of file folders open in front of them. “We’re looking for bank robbers with the same M.O. as the ones who are working the city today. They’re dressed like Santa Clause when enter the bank and hold it up.”
The three men scanned their respective piles of file folders, looking for any with a similar mode of operation. It took just eight minutes before Eric Anderson said, “I think this might be one of them,” he said, handing his file to Hollister. The file contained a long rap sheet for a known bank robber named Frank Sullivan, 45, brown, brown, six-one, one-ninety-five with a scar across his nose.
A few minutes later Clay pulled a record from his stack and held it up. “This looks like another possible,” Clay said, handing the file to Hollister.
Hollister looked at the file and then over at Eric. “Didn’t you just hand me this one?”
Eric looked at the name on the folder and then looked at the folder he’d pulled from his pile. “Two Frank Sullivans?” he said.
Hollister took a closer look at the second file. “This second one is for a guy named Frank L. Sullivan,” Hollister said. “The first guy didn’t have a middle initial. Here, look at the photos. Different age, different height and weight, different color eyes. Looks like all they have in common is the name.”
Hollister finished his own stack but came up empty. He looked at Eric and Clay and said, “That’s all of ‘em. I’ll take these two and run off several copies and pass them out to the day watch commander. These two clowns are bound to slip up sooner or later.” He looked at Eric. “We’d better get back out there and try to locate these two.”
Clay looked at Dean and said, “What about me? I want to be there when you catch them. Do you have any problem with me riding along with you this morning?”
Dean exchanged looks with Eric, who nodded. Dean turned back to Clay and said, “Sure, you can ride with us this morning. Let’s get going.”
At the Midtown Savings and Loan near Pico and Crenshaw, Santa’s sleigh, a rusty 1977 Plymouth Volare’ sedan, that may at one time have been the pride of the Plymouth dealer’s showroom two decades earlier, pulled into the parking space marked ‘reserved.’ Santa shut off the ignition and emerged, kicking at the car whose engine continued running several seconds longer. He pulled up his sagging red pants and stuffed a revolver into the belt of his inner jeans before pulling his red coat down over the pearl grip and walking briskly into the building.
Behind the last window, a teller smiled and said, “May I help you, Santa?”
Santa sidled up to the window and shoved a small cloth bag at the clerk. Under his breath he softly said, “Put the money in the bag and be quick about it.”
The clerk laughed. “Christmas Club account, eh?” she said. “Where are your elves, Santa?” She laughed. “Are your reindeer waiting outside with the sleigh?”
Santa pulled the pistol from his belt and let the clerk see it. He repeated, “Put the money in the bag or I’ll blow your damned head off. Ho, ho, ho.”
The smile quickly left the clerk’s face as she rifled through her cash drawer, grabbing stacks of wrapped money. She stepped on the silent alarm as Santa nervously looked around, waiting for the bag of cash to be passed back to him.
“Come on, come on,” Santa said impatiently.
Outside, in the space next to Santa’s Volare, a turquoise blue and primer gray station wagon came to a stop. A second man, also dressed as Santa, stepped out onto the sidewalk, adjusting the revolver in his belt. His right boot had mud on it. He entered the Savings and Loan and quickly took up his position at the first window.
The clerk at the first window took one look at the second Santa and whispered to him, “I hope the kids don’t see you both at the same time.”
“Huh?” The second Santa grumbled.
“You know, two Santas,” she said. “It could get confusing.”
The second Santa’s head turned toward the last window where the first Santa was completing his withdrawal transaction. The first Santa, moneybag in his left hand, turned toward the second Santa with a snarl. Both Santas pulled their pistols and took reckless aim at each other before pulling their triggers several times each.
Both clerks and several customers screamed as the two Santas fell in their prospective pools of blood. The first Santa died instantly from a carelessly placed .38 slug that hit him between his left eye and left ear. It exited near his right temple. Red streams ran down his face and into his beard, matting it against his chin. The second Santa had taken two slugs in the chest and the streaming blood was barely noticeable against the red suit until it ran down onto the white fur-trimmed cuff. He was still laboriously breathing when the front door opened and detectives Hollister and Anderson entered, their own guns drawn. Clay Cooper had his own .38 in hand as he followed the two detectives into the bank.
Clerks and customers were crouched on the floor, some cowering, and some sobbing uncontrollably. Hollister and Anderson held their badges up for the clerks and customers to see. “Police,” Hollister shouted. “Everyone please stay right where you are.”
Sergeant Anderson holstered his .38 and stepped over to the teller’s cage. Hollister carefully stepped over to the first Santa while Clay approached the second. Both men kicked the two Santas’ guns clear before kneeling down to get a closer look. Hollister knelt next to the Santa with the third eye. “This one’s had it.” He said, pressing two fingers into the man’s neck. He pulled the hat and beard off the first Santa and said to Blake, “It’s Jimmy Pullman, dead as a mack
erel. Who do you have there?”
Clay Cooper pulled the hat and beard off his dying Santa, the one with the muddy boot. It was another familiar face—Frank L. Sullivan. At least that’s who it looked like. There were two Frank Sullivans in Hollister’s files. One used a middle initial and the other did not. It was hard to tell them apart at first glance and even Hollister often got them confused. Clay called back to Hollister, “It’s your old buddy, Frank L. Sullivan.”
Santa lifted his head and licked his lips. If he was going to leave this world, he was determined to leave with the correct identity. He looked up at Clay and used his dying breath to utter, “No L.” Santa laid his head down and breathed his last.
Clay looked back down at the dead Santa. “And a Merry Christmas to you, too, dirt bag.”
62 - Classified Information
I had another ten minutes before I had to leave for work and still beat Gloria to the office. I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of having anything to hold over me, as she liked to do. Not that we had any kind of competition going on, it’s just that being her boss, I liked to set a good example for her to follow. Then, if I need to, I can reprimand her for coming in late, if the occasion arose.
I finished my last sip of coffee and swallowed my last morsel of toast and was headed for the front door when my laptop signaled me that I had just received a new email. There was still plenty of time to check it so I took a seat at my desk and hit a key to wake up the monitor screen. I clicked on the email icon and opened my inbox. There was a new email from someone who had identified themselves as Mr. Jordan. I had been talking to Bentley Jordan two days ago regarding a possible job that he wanted Cooper Investigations to look into.
I clicked the heading of the email only to find out that this Mr. Jordan was a man from The Netherlands who wanted me, specifically, to help him get fifty million dollars out of his country by allowing him to transfer said money into my personal bank account. And all I had to do to earn my ten percent was to give him my bank routing number along with my account number, birth date, social security number, home address and phone number. Then he asked that I return forty-five million dollars to him when he arrived in this country and that I could keep the remaining five million dollars for my troubles.
