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

by Bill Bernico

  “I don’t,” I said defensively. “It’s for someone else.”

  “So,” Elliott said. “A little more of the puzzle comes into play. What else will I find out about your mystery woman?”

  “Just drive, Elliott,” I said, folding the newspaper over the magazine again.

  We got to the front of our building and I told Elliott to let me off there while he drove around to the lot and parked the car. I made it up to the office several minutes ahead of Elliott and buried the Frost magazine under a stack of papers in my desk drawer. By the time Elliott came in, I was sitting on the leather couch reading the Times article about last night’s murder. Before Elliott had a chance to grill me again about the magazine, I folded the paper and held it out to him.

  “The Times article says pretty much the same as The Tribune,” I said. “Only this later edition has the victim’s name in it along with his wife’s name. I don’t remember any mention of a wife in his folder.”

  “Let me see that,” Elliott said. He read the article all the way through before handing the paper back to me.

  “I think this wife might be worth a visit, don’t you?” I said.

  “What can she tell us?” Elliott said.

  “You won’t know until you talk to her,” I said. “That’s all part of being a good detective.”

  Elliott had just one arm out of his jacket before he stopped, sighed and put the jacket back on. “Give me the address,” Elliott said.

  I wrote the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Elliott. “I’ll be here when you get back,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Elliott said, shuffling out the door.

  I gave him a good two minutes to make sure he wasn’t going to duck in again before I picked up my phone. It was only a few minutes past one and I still had six and a half hours to go before I could see Gloria again. I decided to give her a call and see if we couldn’t change the arrangement a bit.

  I dialed Gloria’s number and it rang twice before she picked up. Just hearing her voice gave my heart a jump start. “Gloria,” I said, cheerily. “It’s Clay. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing special,” Gloria said. “Just washing a few things out in the sink and then I thought I’d watch a little television. Why?”

  “Elliott’s off interviewing someone about a case we’re on,” I said. “And I have an hour or so to kill and I was just wondering…”

  “Sure,” Gloria said. “Come on over.”

  “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes,” I said and hung up.

  Just in case I got delayed, I left Elliott a note telling him that I was out following up on a lead of my own and that I’d be back as soon as I had finished. I left if on his computer monitor screen, taped to the upper edge. He’d be sure to see it there. I pulled the magazine out of my desk drawer, grabbed my coat, locked up the office and hurried to my car.

  I made it Gloria’s house in twelve minutes, the magazine rolled up in my sweaty fist. I didn’t get a chance to ring her bell when the front door opened and she pulled me inside. I dropped the magazine on the end table and wrapped my arms around her. I kissed her and she held the kiss longer than I had intended. I wasn’t complaining, though, but by the time we’d parted again, my heart was pounding out of my chest.

  Gloria laid her hand on my chest and then bent over, laying her ear on that same spot. “You’d better relax or you’ll have the big one right here,” she said. “Now I ask you, how would that look? How would I explain that to Elliott?”

  I smiled and gave her one more brief, gentle kiss and then slipped out of my jacket, laying it over the back of her overstuffed easy chair. She ran her hand on my cheek, her fingernails gently scraping from my ear to the tip of my chin. The look on her face made me want to pull her to the floor right then and there, but I managed to restrain myself until my heart rate was back to normal again.

  Gloria retreated to the kitchen and returned a minute later carrying two glasses of lemonade. She handed one to me and then took a seat on her sofa. She set her glass down on the coffee table and looked at me again before patting the seat next to her. I set my glass next to hers and then planted myself next to her. If we’d been any closer, she’d have been wearing my clothes.

  She ran her fingers through the hair on the back of my neck as she pulled me close and locked her lips with mine. After a moment, her right hand had stopped tousling my hair and had moved to the buttons on my shirt. She unbuttoned three of them and then slipped her hand inside, running her fingers through my thick chest hair. She pinched my nipple gently and then moved her mouth from mine to my ear. Her tongue played on the rim of my ear for a moment and then she whispered, “Let’s go into the bedroom.”

  She gently guided me off the couch and led me by the hand to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She pushed me down on the bed and finished unbuttoning my shirt, peeling it off me as if she was peeling a banana. Then she dropped to her knees and unbuckled my belt. I tried to sit up, but she pushed me back down again and finished working on my belt buckle.

  Thirty minutes later, when we emerged from her bedroom, our arms around each other’s waist, I had a hard time wiping the smile from my face. I walked to the front door, pulled my jacket off the back of the chair and slipped into it. The ice in both of our lemonade glasses had long since melted, almost like my heart.

  Gloria glanced down at the end table and saw the rolled up magazine lying there. She picked it up and noticed Robert Frost on the cover. “What’s this?” she said. “Is this for me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw it at the news stand and thought you might like it.”

  “I do,” she said. “This one can be my reading copy. It’s already curled up, so I won’t hurt it.”

  “Your reading copy?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  Gloria grabbed a magazine that had been lying upside down on the dining room table and brought it over to show me. It was the same magazine I’d just brought her. “This one can be my keeper copy,” she said. “I’ll put this one away as a collector’s item and I can still read the one you brought. Thank you so much, Clay. You’re such a dear to think of me this way.”

  “You’re welcome, I guess,” I said.

  “Are we still on for seven-thirty?” Gloria said, walking me to the door.

  “You bet,” I said. “Think about where you’d like to eat tonight and what you want. I’d better get back to the office before Elliott starts asking more questions.”

  “When are you planning to tell him about us?” Gloria said. “I mean, he’ll find out sooner or later, won’t he?”

  “Let’s give it a while longer,” I said. “I have to find just the right moment.”

  “All right,” Gloria said. “Just don’t let him find out from anyone else.”

  “I won’t,” I said. I gave her one more kiss before I walked back to my car and drove to the office.

  Elliott’s car wasn’t in the lot when I got back and I breathed a sigh of relief. I rode the elevator back up to the third floor, smiling to myself the whole time. I unlocked the office door and stepped inside. I removed the note from Elliott’s monitor, crumpled it up and threw it in my waste can. Then I looked at the answering machine and saw that the red light was blinking. I walked over and pressed the message button. It was Elliott.

  “Dad,” he said. “Pick up. It’s Elliott.” There was a pause and then Elliott said, “Dad, I’m at the Polton house. I just spoke with Mrs. Polton and she told me something that I need to follow up on. My cell phone is on. Call me as soon as you can.” A clicking sound followed and then the dial tone sounded. This was followed by the mechanical voice that came with the answering machine. “Wednesday, October Twenty-Forth, one forty-five, p.m.”

  I checked my watch. It was quarter after two. Think, Clay, I told myself. Where have you been for the past thirty minutes? In the bathroom? No, he wouldn’t believe I’d taken that long. Maybe I stepped out for lunch. Yes, that was it. I went to the corner for a sandwi
ch. That was believable enough, I thought. I started dialing Elliott’s cell phone and then hung up again. The sandwich excuse wouldn’t work. We’d both grabbed a burger on the way home from Dean’s office. Where else could I have been that he’d believe?

  Then I remembered the note. Sure, I was out following up on another lead. But what lead? Why was I beating myself up over this? I’m the father. I shouldn’t have to answer to my own son, should I? Of course not. I should just tell him. After all, like Gloria said, he’ll find out sooner or later and it would be better if he heard it from me. And when you think about it, he’d had his chance. If he had been interested in Gloria, he’d had her to himself for those three long months when I was home recuperating from my heart attack. If he hadn’t made a move before this, chances are he wasn’t interested. But I certainly was.

  As much as it went against all logic and reason, I was interested. Our age difference didn’t seem like an issue now, I thought. But would it be an issue in thirteen years, when I was seventy-five and Gloria was forty-three? I couldn’t worry about that now. Who knew if I’d even live that long? No, I had to worry about the here and now and nothing else. I had to concern myself only with whatever it was that made me happy.

  I dialed Elliott’s cell number and waited. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Dad,” Elliott said. “I called half an hour ago. What have you been doing all this while?”

  “We can talk about that later,” I said. “What did you find out from Mrs. Polton?”

  “She was home,” Elliott said. “But she didn’t seem all that upset about her husband’s death. It was really strange, I mean the way she acted toward me and all. It was almost like she expected to hear from me, or someone else. Anyway, she gave me the name of a guy that knew her husband from San Quentin. I thought I’d drop by and pay him a visit and I figured you might want to come along.”

  “Give me the address,” I said. “I’ll meet you somewhere near there. Just don’t go in alone.” Elliott gave me the man’s address and I thought for a moment before adding, “That’s just two blocks from the drug store on the corner of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. I can meet you there in twenty minutes. Now you be sure and wait at the drug store until I get there, do you understand?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Elliott said. “I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t dawdle.”

  I hung up the phone and hurried back down to my car and drove east on Hollywood Boulevard, turning south on Western Avenue. Ten minutes later I found a parking spot near Santa Monica and hurried into the drug store. I found Elliott sitting in a booth, sipping from a glass of soda. I slid into the booth, across from him.

  “So what’s the name of this guy we’re going to see?” I said.

  Elliott pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to me.

  “Lester Bellamy,” I said. I checked the address the woman had written down for Elliott and handed him back the note. “You ready?” I said.

  Elliott nodded and sipped the last of his soda.

  “You don’t know if he’s home, though, do you?” I said.

  “Polton’s wife seemed to think so,” Elliott said. “I have no idea how she’d know that and I didn’t want to ask. But there’s one way to find out for ourselves.”

  We both slid out of the booth and got into my car, which was parked closer to the drug store. I tooled my Olds two blocks toward Lester Bellamy’s house. Elliott checked his note for the address one more time.

  “This must be it,” Elliott said, gesturing with the note toward a faded brown house with an overgrown lawn. The house could have used a couple of coats of paint and a new window screen or three.

  Elliott and I stepped up onto Bellamy’s porch and rang the bell. I couldn’t hear any chimes or buzzers inside so I knocked on the frame of the screen door. It was still silent inside as we waited for someone to appear. After a minute and a half, we turned and walked back to my car.

  “We’ll have to try him again later,” I said.

  Elliott glanced out his window just then and noticed someone slinking across the back yard of the house we’d just come from. He gestured with his chin. “Someone’s back there,” he said. “Let’s go have a look.”

  We walked around the side of the Bellamy house toward the back yard. A man was walking toward the alley that ran behind the house. When he turned and saw us, he began running. We ran after him but he was quicker. The gap between us was widening.

  “I’ll go back and try to cut him off with the car,” I told Elliott. “Try to stay with him.”

  “Right,” Elliott said, as I ran back to my Olds. I pulled around the block and stopped at the alley entrance just as the man ran past me, across the street and down the alley in the next block. A few seconds later Elliott followed in hot pursuit.

  I drove around the next block and up the alley, cutting off the man’s exit. He reached into his coat and pulled out a revolver and fired once at me. The bullet hit my windshield and made a perfectly round hole just below my rear view mirror. The glass around it cracked into a star pattern. The man cut through the nearest yard between two houses. Elliott followed, his own .38 now drawn.

  I backed out of the alley and drove around to the front of the two houses he’d run between. I pulled up to the curb and got out, drawing my .38 as I slammed my car door. The man came out from between the houses and saw my car. He fired toward me again, hitting my passenger side front window. It shattered as the bullet passed through it and on through my driver’s side window as well.

  I peeked around the front end of my Olds and saw Elliott coming out from between the houses. The man who’d shot at me stopped and aimed his gun toward Elliott. I quickly stood up, took aim and hit the man in the side of his thigh. He went down firing, but missed Elliott by yards. He’d dropped his gun when he grabbed at the bullet wound in his leg. Elliott snapped the man’s gun up and held his on the wounded man until I could get over there myself.

  I held my gun on the man who now lay on the ground bleeding. He held his free hand up in front of his face.

  “Don’t shoot,” he yelled. “Please, don’t shoot.”

  “You got him?” Elliott said.

  I nodded and Elliott reached for his cell phone and called Dean Hollister at the twelfth precinct. “Dean,” Elliott said, “Would you come over and pick up a shooting victim and a shooter?”

  “Two people?” Dean said.

  “Just one,” Elliott told him. “They’re one and the same person.” He gave Dean the address of the house in whose yard the shooter lay. “Better send an ambulance, too.” He snapped his phone closed and dropped it back into his pocket. Elliott drew his .38 and trained it on the fallen man and then nodded at me.

  I bent over and rummaged through the man’s pockets, pulling out his wallet. I dropped it into my pocket and felt the rest of his body. I stopped when I got to his ankle and found a snub-nosed .32 in an ankle holster. I pulled it out and dropped that into my jacket pocket and finished my frisk.

  “That’s all he has,” I told Elliott and then turned my attention to the man at my feet. “Why the hell were you shooting at us?” I demanded.

  The man just scowled but said nothing. I pulled his wallet from my pocket and flipped it open to his driver’s license. “Lester Bellamy,” I read. “Well, Lester, it looks like you’ll be spending some time at San Quentin after this little episode. All we wanted to do was talk to you, but you had to go and turn it into a felony. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “You mean no one sent you?” he said.

  “And just who would that be?” Elliott said.

  Bellamy looked up at him. “Nobody,” he said defiantly. “Forget it.”

  “You’ll talk sooner or later,” I told Bellamy. “You could save yourself a lot of grief and talk now.”

  “Go to hell,” Bellamy said and then lay flat on his back.

  His face was turning white and his words were beginning to slur. Blood ran out between his fingers and ont
o the lawn.

  “I must have hit an artery,” I told Elliott. “Let me have your tie. We have to get a tourniquet on that leg before he bleeds to death.”

  “Why don’t you use your tie?” Elliott complained. “I just got this one. That old thing you’re wearing is about ready for the Goodwill drop box anyway.”

  “Elliott,” I repeated. “Your tie.”

  Bellamy opened his eyes and shifted his gaze between Elliott and me. “For Christ sakes,” he said. “One of you needs to tie this off or I’ll bleed to death.”

  “He’s got a point,” I said to Elliott, but still didn’t reach for my tie.

  “I think you’re right,” Elliott said. “From what I’ve heard, you can bleed out in just a few minutes. Now if Lester here was willing to talk and tell us why he was shooting at us, well, then that would put a whole new spin on things. I don’t suppose I’d mind messing up my tie then.”

  “All right,” Bellamy cried, trying to raise his head to look at us. “I’ll tell you, just tie off this leg and I’ll tell you all you want to know.”

  Elliott holstered his .38 and removed his tie. He began to kneel at Bellamy’s side when Bellamy’s head dropped back down to the grass and he had stopped breathing. A few blocks away I could hear the sirens of what were probably the ambulance and Dean’s cruiser.

  The owner of the house we were standing in front of poked his head out of his front door. “What’s going on out here?” he demanded. “I’m calling the police.”

  I hiked a thumb over my shoulder toward the sound of the sirens. “We already did,” I told him. “Better go back inside.”

  The front door closed again just as Dean pulled up to the curb, followed closely by an ambulance. A few other front doors in this otherwise quiet neighborhood began to open and people peeked out to see what was going on. Some were even brave enough to wander over to where we were standing over Bellamy’s body.

  Dean looked up at the neighbors, held his shield in plain sight and announced, “Please, everybody just return to your homes. We have this situation under control. Thank you.” He turned to me and asked, “What happened here, Clay?”