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

by Bill Bernico

  Dad had recalled that Beatles tune, Free As A Bird as we were tracking the compressor but at this moment a John Lennon song was running through my mind. It was from his last album, Double Fantasy. It was John’s song to his son, Sean, called Beautiful Boy and one of the lines in it just seemed to fit me at the moment. Here I was, a successful private investigator who, in a relatively short time, had found himself with a wife and son and who was moving in a direction he could not have foretold.

  The line went, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

  Boy, could I relate.

  81 - Nothing To Sneeze At

  Dad and I pulled into the parking lot of the boat rental place and locked the car. We went inside to pay the deposit on the small fishing boat we had reserved earlier in the week. It was going to be a long weekend, what with Monday being a holiday, so Dad and I had agreed that a fishing trip could do us both a little good. It was true what they said about all work and no play, and in our case, all work as private investigators and no fishing would really make the two of us dull boys.

  Gloria was home with our new baby, Matt and Matt’s nanny, Mrs. Chandler. She could have left Matt with the nanny, but Gloria had absolutely no interest in anything to do with fishing. She told Dad and me to just go and have a good time and that she’d see us when we got home.

  I helped Dad load the fishing gear into the boat, untied the mooring rope that held the boat to the dock and climbed in behind Dad. It was a small lake so we didn’t really need a motor. The boat came with two sturdy oars and I rowed us out to the middle of the lake and threw the anchor overboard.

  The small boat rocked back and forth as I cranked the spinning reel. I alternated the cranking of the reel with the pulling back of the rod, my fiberglass fishing rod bending with each pull. The water at the end of my line churned and splashed as the fish broke the surface, trying in vain to get away.

  “Get the net, Dad,” I yelled as the fish pulled even harder. The fish struggled right up to the time Dad scooped him up in the net and pulled it into the boat.

  “Nice one, Elliott,” Dad said, holding the large fish up by its gills. He pulled his needle nose pliers from the tackle box and removed the hook. “That has to go three pounds if it’s an ounce.”

  I smiled, pulling out a portable scale and holding it up at arm’s length. Dad hooked the fish onto the scale and gently released it. The dial on the scale spun around almost halfway and stopped on fifty-two ounces.

  Dad looked at the dial and smiled. “What’d I tell you?” he said. “Three pounds, four ounces.”

  I removed the fish from the scale and strung one end of the stringer through its gills and lowered it over the side of the boat. I swished my hands around in the water, wiping off the fish slime. I shook them out and wiped the residue off on my shirt.

  I turned to Dad. “I’m getting hungry,” I announced. “What do we have in the basket for lunch?”

  Dad grabbed the basket, opened the lid and was about to reach in when I said, “Hey, wash your hands first, will ya? I don’t want your fishy hands touching my food.”

  Dad handed the basket to me. “Here, look for yourself,” he said.

  I pulled back the cloth napkin covering the food and looked at the sandwiches Gloria had prepared for the two of us. There were four sandwiches. Two were ham and cheese on rye and two were peanut butter and jelly on white. There were also four cupcakes and a thermos of coffee, with two Styrofoam cups.

  I set the basket down in the boat as an odd look played on my face. My eyebrows turned up and my eyes squinted as I appeared to be having trouble breathing, inhaling in very small breaths.

  “What’s with you?” Dad said.

  I held up one finger while continuing with the erratic breaths and the squinched up face. I looked up quickly toward the sun and then back down again. A few seconds later I did it again, looking away again quickly. My finger still in the air, I turned my head away and let loose with a violent sneeze. Two seconds later, the second sneeze followed, not nearly as violent as the first. I turned back toward Dad with a smile on my face.

  “Ah,” I said. “Two good ones.”

  “God bless you,” Dad chimed in.

  My eyebrows turned down and the smile dropped from my face. “Huh?” I said.

  “God bless you,” Dad repeated.

  I just shook my head and went back to examining the contents of the picnic basket. “Whatever,” I mumbled under my breath.

  A few hours later, having caught our limit, Dad and I tied the boat back onto the dock piling and went back into the office to pay for the boat rental and get our deposit back. Dad and I climbed into my van and drove away, our cooler full of fish. As we rode along into the sunset, I felt another sneeze coming on. I leaned forward, looking toward the sun and sat upright again. Looking at a bright light usually helped bring on a sneeze and I really loved to sneeze. One more glance at the sun was all it took and soon I lowered my window, turned my head outward and let loose with another sneeze. The second followed like clockwork a second or so later.

  Again Dad chimed in with, “God bless you.”

  I glanced over at my weekend fishing partner with a quizzical look on my face. “I have to ask you,” I said. “Why do you feel compelled to say, ‘God bless you every time I sneeze?”

  “Huh?” Dad said.

  “What’s with the blessing every time I sneeze?” I said. “You did it back in the boat and again just now. What’s up with that anyway?”

  “Habit, I guess,” Dad said. “Why?”

  “Habit?” I said. “That’s it, habit? There must be more to it than that. Are you overly religious or something?”

  “What’s religion got to do with it?” Dad asked, turning in his seat toward me.

  “Because you always say ‘God bless you,’” I explained. “How did God get involved with the act of sneezing? I’ve heard sneezing described as the next best thing to the ‘Big O’ and maybe after a great sneeze someone muttered, ‘Oh God’ or something along those lines, but even that’s a stretch. What’s with the blessing? That’s what I want to know.”

  Dad thought about it for a few seconds, his face showing obvious puzzlement with the question. “I guess it goes way back to the old biblical days or something. I think I remember someone saying something about how people back then believed that when you sneezed your soul temporarily left your body and if you happened to die during a sneeze, the person blessing you wanted to make sure your soul made it to heaven, or something like that.”

  “How superstitious can people get?” I asked in total disbelief. “Are you saying that as soon as someone sneezes their soul leaves their body? What does it do, climb back in right after the second sneeze? Come on, Dad. You’re an otherwise sensible, intelligent person, but this is pure poppycock.”

  “Hey,” Dad said, his hands held up palms out, “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard over the years. Sounds pretty silly when you actually dissect the origins of it, doesn’t it?”

  “Silly?” I said. “This goes way beyond silly. It’s like those same idiots who actually believe some guy named Noah really did put two of each animal in an arc and sailed them away during the flood.”

  “You mean he didn’t?” Dad said.

  “Are you for real?” I said. “Scientists have proved conclusively that there was no way two of every animal could have fit in a boat with the dimensions described in that tale. Besides, he must have built that vessel in the desert. Where do you suppose he could come up with two polar bears, two walruses, two seals or two hummingbirds, for that matter? And there’s the logistics of that whole voyage. Did it occur to anyone that the lions would naturally eat the zebras and gazelles, not to mention Noah and his family, given the chance? There’s just no logical way it could have happened, period.”

  Dad took a deep breath. “Well, you can’t take all those bible passages literally,” he said. “A lot of that was meant symbolic
ally. You have to read between the lines. Remember, these were primitive people who wrote the bible. Back then they were prone to exaggeration. I guess it boils down to faith.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I said, “that whenever some bible-thumping, scripture-quoting zealot gets cornered with reason, they always fall back on faith. It’s almost the same faith we ask little kids to have when we tell them a story about a bearded fat man with a sleigh and flying reindeer who can deliver presents to every kid in the world all in one night and still have time to stop for cookies and milk. And he does this by slipping down their chimneys and yet he comes out of it all looking pristine without a trace of soot on him anywhere. Is that the kind of faith you had in mind?”

  Dad looked puzzled.

  “Or perhaps,” I continued, “it’s the faith that you ask little kids to have when you tell them that long-eared, warm-blooded mammals actually lay multi-colored eggs and hide them all over the yard for those kids to find on Easter. And you can bet there are kids out there somewhere who believe that if they put their tooth under their pillow, the tooth fairy will leave a dime. And that same fairy knows about inflation and increases the amount per tooth every time the economy changes. Is that what you mean by faith?”

  “You make a good point there,” Dad said, “But...”

  “But what?” I said. “Let me ask you something. How long do people generally live these days? I mean what’s the average lifespan?”

  Dad thought for a moment and said, “I think it’s something like seventy-four for men and seventy-eight for women. Give or take.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “You know what the average lifespan was two hundred years ago?”

  Dad said nothing.

  “It was around forty-nine or fifty for men and fifty-three or so for women,” I said. “And two thousand years ago men only lived into their thirties before dropping dead. And those were averages. As you can see, the life expectancy has increased over the years.”

  “So?” Dad said, wondering where I was going with all of this.

  “So how is it some guy named Methuselah lived to be nine hundred sixty-nine years old, according to the tales told in the bible?” I said. “Huh? Explain that one, will you?”

  “Again,” Dad said, “You can’t take everything in the bible literally.”

  “Right,” I said. “They exaggerated, as you stated earlier. You think those nine hundred sixty-nine years just seemed like nine hundred sixty-nine because most of those guys were dropping dead at thirty? Maybe Methuselah was a fluke and lived to the ripe old age of eighty. That’s still an eight hundred eighty-nine year stretch of the truth, isn’t it?”

  “Some people might consider that blasphemy,” Dad said.

  “Blasphemy is a victimless crime,” I told him. “In fact, to us non-believers, it’s a non-existent concept.”

  “Hmmmm,” Dad said, without actually replying.

  “Yeah, hmmmm,” I said. “It makes you think, doesn’t it? Have you ever heard the saying that money is the root of all evil?”

  Dad nodded. “Seems I’ve heard that somewhere,” he said. “What about it?”

  “Well then why does the Catholic Church seem to lust after it so much?” I said. “Why do they place such importance on collecting money, even from people they know can’t afford it? Why do they tell poor, grieving widows that in order to get their recently deceased husbands out of limbo that they must pay the church hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars? If there is such a place as limbo, how can the mere exchange of green paper affect the outcome of such a predicament in the so-called afterlife?”

  “You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?” Dad said.

  “You’re damned right I have,” I said. “Here’s another prime example of the blatant hypocrisy involved with organized religion. Okay, you have three guys. For this example we’ll call them Moe, Larry and Curly. Moe has been a bastard his whole life, killing and robbing and kidnapping and stealing. Larry has been a bible-thumping, church-going, hymn-singing, halleluiah-spouting, non-questioning believer his whole life. Curly, on the other hand, has never killed anyone, never robbed anyone, has never stolen a thing in his life and is for all practical purposes a non-believer. He just treats his fellow man with kindness and respect and minds his own business.”

  “Isn’t this a bit of an extreme example?” Dad said.

  I held up one finger. “Hold on there, Buckwheat,” I said. “Just hear me out before you try to debate this with me.”

  Dad sighed. “All right, Elliott, go on with your hypothetical example,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, “so Moe’s the asshole, Larry’s the believer and Curly’s the nice guy non-believer. It’s Friday and all three are on their deathbeds. Two seconds before he dies, Moe has a change of heart and asks God for forgiveness. Then he dies. Larry, on the other hand, has a moment of weakness and eats a T-bone steak. Curly, a nice guy to the end dies without further comment or fanfare. Now, are you telling me that because Moe asked to be saved at the last possible second, that he’s going to heaven, despite his life of killing, stealing, robbing, etc.?”

  “Well,” Dad started to say.

  I cut him off. “And Larry, the lifelong believer who did everything by the book his whole life and ate meat on Friday at the last possible second, is NOT going to heaven? And then there’s Curly, the best of the bunch. He lived his whole life treating his fellow man with kindness and respect and was just an all-round good person is going to hell because he didn’t happen to buy into the whole religion thing? Is that what you’re telling me, Dad?”

  Dad didn’t quite know what to say to such logic and reason. “You make some pretty good arguments for your side there, Elliott,” he said. “But I’ve known some really good people who believed.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I explained. “If someone wants to believe in a higher power, I say go for it. It’s the organized religion that I have a problem with. That and the religious extremists who kill in the name of their god. Are you aware that most wars were fought over religion? There’s a saying I heard that I just love. It goes something like, ‘Science Flies Men To The Moon. Religion Flies Men Into Buildings.’ That about sums it up, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dad seemed at a loss for words, but after a moment said, “You know, Elliott, I never really thought about it like in those terms. Now it seems that I’ve got a whole lot of stuff to think about.”

  I turned to Dad. “Don’t misunderstand me, Dad,” I said. “I’m not saying we, meaning those of us who question, are saying we’re better than those who believe. It’s just that it strikes me odd that otherwise logical, sensible, educated people blindly follow the path set forth by their ancestors simply because that’s the way it’s always been. I mean, they have the wherewithal and common sense to figure this stuff out for themselves if they just think about how ridiculous it sounds from this end. If they want to go on believing that there’s a superior being out there somewhere and it helps them stay on the straight and narrow, fine. I just don’t think it’s healthy to buy into the whole enchilada. Know what I mean?”

  Dad said nothing. But just then his face scrunched up, he squinted and inhaled in small, erratic breaths before exploding in a giant sneeze. The second sneeze followed soon after. Dad looked over at me for a reaction.

  I shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Just sit there and enjoy your ‘Little O.’”

  82 - Your Place Or Mine

  It had been a long weekend, what with Monday being a holiday and all. Three days away from the business felt like three weeks, especially when you love what you do, as is the case with me and my father, who run Cooper Investigations in Hollywood. My grandfather, that is, Dad’s dad, Matt Cooper, started the business in 1946 and his son, my father; Clay Cooper joined him in 1971. Grandpa has been dead for a dozen years and Dad works on a semi-retired, part-time basis. That leaves me, Elliott Cooper, and my wife/partner, Gloria to handle the bulk of the business.

  This parti
cular Tuesday morning as I straightened my tie and combed my hair in the bathroom mirror, I heard my son, Matt crying from his high chair in the kitchen. Gloria was trying to feed him and not having an easy time of it. Matt was nearly a year old already but hadn’t yet taken his first steps. I walked back into the kitchen, laid a gentle hand on Matt’s little head and said in a soothing voice, “What’s the problem here, little man?”

  Matt stopped crying long enough to look up at me and smile, even as the tears were running down his chubby cheeks. I turned to Gloria. “What time is Mrs. Chandler coming by today?”

  Gloria looked up at the kitchen clock and sighed. “Any minute now, thank goodness.” She must have seen something in my face because she quickly added, “Not that I don’t love our little darling, but if I don’t get some quiet time, I’m going to open a vein.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, trying to lighten the situation. “Before you know it, Matt will be grown and gone and you’ll look back on today as a fond memory.”

  The front doorbell rang and Gloria stood upright. “That must be Mrs. Chandler now,” she said, handing me Matt’s baby spoon full of strained peas and hurrying to the door. She let the nanny in, gave her a few last minute instructions and hurried into the bedroom to dress for work. Ten minutes later she emerged, looking just like any well-dressed private eye should. She turned to Mrs. Chandler and said, “We should be home around five-thirty. You can call the office if you need to reach me.” Then she turned to me and said, “Come on, Elliott, Hollywood is waiting for its two premier gumshoes.”

  I waved to Mrs. Chandler and left the house, locking the door behind me. Gloria and I drove downtown to our office on Hollywood Boulevard, near Cahuenga. I parked in the parking lot behind our building and the two of us entered through the back door. Before taking the elevator to our floor, I stopped at the battery of mailboxes in the lobby and checked for any mail. I slipped my key into the lock and pulled the metal door open, pulling out the half dozen pieces of mail and locking the box again.