Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)
Page 239
I just stared incredulously at Thurman. “It’s always about money and the bottom line, isn’t it?” I said. “You know you can’t keep a lid on this, for crying out loud. It’s murder. It doesn’t get any more serious than this and if I don’t let the authorities know what I know, they could haul me in as an accessory after the fact.”
Thurman sighed heavily. “All right,” he said, “but let me call it in. You have to give me a chance to let our publicity department at least try to put a positive spin on this so we don’t look so bad. Just give me thirty minutes and I’ll take care of everything. Thirty minutes, that’s all I’m asking, Copper.”
I hesitated briefly and then nodded. “I’ll give you your thirty minutes,” I said, “but if the cops aren’t here in forty minutes, I’m blowing the lid off this thing, understand?”
Thurman stuck his hand out but I didn’t offer mine. Thurman looked down at my dangling hand and then up at me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll be here. My assistant will take you to the front gate to wait for them.” He snapped his finger and a kid with a clipboard appeared out of nowhere. “Eddie,” Thurman said, “take Mr. Cooper to the front gate, will you?”
“Right away, Mr. Thurman,” Eddie said, leading me away from the murder scene and out to the front gate.
It didn’t even take thirty minutes for a black and white cruiser to show up at the front gate. I didn’t recognize the officer behind the wheel, nor the one riding with him. The guard opened the gate and let the patrol car enter. It stopped just inside the gate and the two cops got out.
“I got a call that someone here wanted to see me,” the driver said. “What’s the trouble here?”
“That’s the message you got?” I said. “Who called you?”
“I don’t know,” the cop said. “The dispatcher only said that it was someone from the studio and that you were waiting for me. Care to fill me in?”
“This way,” I said. “There’s been a murder on the movie set.”
The cop stopped in his tracks. “A murder?” he said. “Who murdered who?”
“I have no idea who the murderer is,” I explained, “but the victim is some actor named Stu. Someone shot him in the forehead right over here.” I gestured toward the movie set.
When we approached the body was still lying right where I’d last seen it. The movie crew was in position and the director was sitting in his canvas-back chair. When I walked into the scene with the two cops, Thurman yelled, “Cut,” and got up out of his chair in a huff. He looked at me, obviously annoyed.
“Cooper,” Thurman said, “we’re trying to make a movie here and you just ruined a shot. What these police doing here?”
I ignored Thurman and pointed at the body lying in the street. “There it is,” I said. “The victim.”
The cop stepped over to the body and looked down into its eyes. He jumped back, holding his hand over his heart when the man on the ground blinked and shifted his gaze to the cop’s eyes. The man sat up, looked at the cops and then at Thurman. “Did you get the shot, Mr. Thurman?” the man said, standing up and brushing himself off.
Thurman shook his head. “Sorry, Stu,” he said. “We’ll need another take. These gentlemen stepped into the shot.”
The cop looked at me. “I thought you said there’d been a murder here,” the cop said
I looked as surprised as anyone could and spread my hands. “I heard the suppressed shot,” I said. “I came out here and found the body with a bullet hole in his head.”
Thurman pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and rubbed it across the actor’s forehead, showing the cop the resultant red smear. “Is this what you’re talking about, Cooper,” Thurman said. He glanced and the cop and rolled his eyes.
The cop turned to me and stared for a moment without saying a word.
I shook my head. “Something’s not right here, officer,” I said.
“And I think I know what, or should I say who it is,” the cop replied. He glanced at the officer who had accompanied him here and tossed his head toward the front gate. The two policemen walked away without further comment. They got back in their cruiser and backed out of the gate and drove away.
Thurman ignored me and took his seat again and yelled, “Places everyone. This is a take.”
I was beginning to doubt myself at this point. I know what I heard, but when you got right down to it, I didn’t actually see anything. Come to think of it, I never really knelt down and took a close look at the victim. For all I know it could have been two actors rehearsing a part. On the other hand, I’d been around enough dead bodies to know one when I saw it, didn’t I?”
Before the cameras began to roll for the next scene, Thurman crooked a finger in my direction. I walked over to where he was sitting and bent over. “You know, Cooper,” Thurman said, “I think you’re right. This studio is wasting money on a technical advisor. You don’t have to finish out your three day obligation. You can go now, and we’ll still pay you for the full time we agreed on. Thanks for your help. I think you know the way out.”
For the first time today I was at a loss for words and just turned and walked away. The movie business was really too strange for me and I was anxious to get back to reality and relative sanity and I knew just where to find that—my office.
Dad and Gloria were there when I got back. Dad was on the phone and Gloria was entering old case files into our database. Neither of them looked up at me when I walked in. Gloria finished the file she was on but Dad was still on the phone. Gloria got up from behind her desk, stretched her arms and flexed her legs and then came over to give me a hug.
“That’s all I can do for one day,” she said. “If I sit in one position for too long, my leg falls asleep. I’m just going to do ten or twelve records a day. They’re not going anywhere. I’ll eventually get them all entered.”
Just then Dad hung up the phone and looked my way. “How’d it go at the movie studio?” he said. “I thought you were supposed to be there through the end of this week.”
“Funny you should ask,” I said, and told them both about the bizarre experience I’d recently had. “You know,” I said, “when it first happened, the director was more worried about losing the studio’s investment than he was about the dead actor. Then after the two cops showed up, his demeanor changed and suddenly he didn’t have a care in the world, aside from having his last shot ruined. Something’s not right here, I can feel it.”
Gloria laid her hand on my forearm. “But you said yourself that the guy lying in the street got up and was just fine.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “The guy, some relatively unknown actor named Stu, acted surprised as well. But you know, come to think of it, I never really got a good look at him before all this happened, so I couldn’t even swear that the first Stu and the second Stu weren’t the same guy. I just never looked that close.”
“Maybe you were just stressed out,” Gloria said, “and you thought you heard a real gunshot.”
I shook my head. “I just don’t know anymore,” I said.
“But what’s in it for you if you pursue this thing?” Dad said. “You have nothing to gain and future work with the studios to lose if you do.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought about all that on the drive back here, but it’s one of those things that’ll probably bug me to no end unless I can get some closure on it.”
“Closure’s overrated,” Dad said. “I thought I needed closure with some of those bullies who tormented me back in high school. And you know, after fifty years, it just doesn’t matter anymore. Let it go, son, or it’ll drive you nuts.”
“Your dad has a point,” Gloria said.
“I suppose,” I said. “But you know, it’s like that old saying, ‘you can’t find peace until you find all the pieces.’” I turned to Dad. “Who was that on the phone when I came in?”
“Ah,” Dad said, “I think we have ourselves another client. He’d coming up here in a few minutes.”
“What does he want from us?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “He was kind of vague. He said he’d rather discuss it in person.”
I held my hand over my stomach and let out a low, soft moan.
“What’s with you?” Gloria said.
I waved her off. “Just a gut bomb from that catering wagon food,” I said. “It’ll pass.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of” Gloria said. “And I think I know how it’ll pass. Maybe you’d better wait out in the hall until it does. We have a potential client coming in shortly and you know what they say about first impressions.”
“That’s probably not a bad idea.” I said. “I’ll be back shortly.” I left the office and walked the hallway, waiting for the bloated feeling to pass, one way or the other. I opened the door to the stairway and walked down one flight and then back up. Somewhere in the stairwell, it passed—literally.
By the time I had walked back up one flight to the third floor and down the hall to the office, my stomach was feeling much better. I breathed easier and let myself back into the office. Dad was sitting at my desk and there was a man sitting across from him in the client’s chair. I approached Dad and he immediately stopped talking to the client and introduced me.
“Simon Fuller,” Dad said, “I’d like you to meet my son, Elliott Cooper.”
Fuller stood, turned toward me and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Elliott,” Fuller said. “I was just telling Clay here that I think I’d like to hire you both.”
Gloria stood now and shot me a glance. “Mr. Fuller,” I said. “Have you met my wife, Gloria yet?”
Fuller turned toward her and offered his hand. Gloria hesitated momentarily.
“Mr. Fuller,” I said, “has Dad mentioned that Gloria is also a licensed private investigator with all the skills that we have and in some cases more so?”
“I don’t believe he mentioned that,” Fuller said, smiling at Gloria, his hand still extended. “Naturally I’d want your participation as well, Mrs. Cooper.”
Gloria took his hand now and shook it. “Thank you, Mr. Fuller. We work best as a team and I’m sure we can get the results that you want.”
Gloria and I pulled two more chairs up beside Fuller’s and listened as he relayed his problem to Dad.
“Mr. Cooper,” Fuller said. “I’d like to hire you and your team to help me with a problem I’m having. You see, I’m from a little town in Idaho called Caldwell. It’s just twenty miles west of Boise. I’m here looking for my son, Jay, and not having any luck at all.”
Dad took notes on his yellow legal pad as Fuller spoke. “And you’re sure Jay came here to California?” Dad said.
“Not just to California,” Fuller said, “but to Hollywood specifically.” Fuller pulled the wallet from his back pocket and produced a three by five snapshot of a teenage boy and handed it to Dad.
“Do you mind if I make a few copies of this photo?” Dad said.
Fuller nodded. “Sure, go ahead, if you think it’ll help.”
Dad lifted the lid on his desktop scanner, stuck the photo on the plate and closed the lid. He scanned the photo into the laptop and printed three copies, distributing one each to Gloria and me and keeping one for himself.
“Jay came out here to try to get into the movies,” Fuller explained. “That was all he talked about for months before he left home five months ago. He sent letters home regularly but now we hadn’t heard from him in more than a month and I couldn’t reach him at the hotel where he’d been staying. I decided to come down here myself and try to locate him. I’ve been in town for more than a week now, Mr. Cooper, and I can’t find any trace of him.”
“That’s a familiar story,” Dad told Fuller. “Kids come out here by the carload, expecting to break into show business their first week here. Most of them end up going home, broke and defeated. A few of them stay here and find themselves jobs as waitresses, theater ushers, dishwashers, valets and on and on. Very few of them actually achieve any level of success. There’s just too much competition. As a matter of fact, my father, Matt, who started this business in 1946 took on a case very much like this one. He had told me about it on more than one occasion.”
“And what was the outcome of his investigation?” Fuller said.
“My father eventually found the girl and sent her home again,” Dad said. “And we’ll do our best to do the same for you, Mr. Fuller.”
I turned toward Fuller and said, “Mr. Fuller, do you have any information about the last known place your son was seen? Did he send letters or postcards home with a return address? Did he mention working anywhere in Hollywood? Did he mention any friends or co-workers? This is all the kind of information we would need to start looking for Jay.”
Fuller reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced three envelopes and two postcards that had been addressed to him and his wife in Boise. He handed them to me. The two postcards had a return address in the Silver Lake district, near Glendale. One of the letters showed an address on Yucca Avenue, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, near Highland Avenue. The return address on last two letters was from downtown Los Angeles in one of the seedier parts of town. I handed these all to Dad, who copied the postmark dates and return addresses onto his legal pad before handing them all back to Fuller.
“Mr. Fuller,” Gloria said, “do you know how Jay supported himself while he was living here?”
“In one of the letters home,” Fuller said, “Jay said that he’d gotten a part as an unpaid extra in one of those low budget movies that everybody seems to be making these days. I think he said it was something called a slasher film, whatever that is.”
“It’s generally a budget movie with lots of blood and gore,” Dad said. “Purely for shock value and mostly not very good.”
“Well,” I said, “like you said, he was an unpaid extra so he’d have had to find other work just to get by. Did he mention any other jobs?”
“One of the postcards mentioned that he was stocking merchandise at a Lane Bryant store in Beverly Hills,” Fuller said. “Only he didn’t stay there because he said the manager was coming on to him—a male manager, and it made him uncomfortable so he left. I think he was only there a week or two at the most.”
“And after that?” Gloria said.
“Oh, you know,” Fuller said. “The usual. He sold newspapers on the street corner for a while. He told us that he played his guitar for spare change every now and then. During this time we got one letter from him with that Glendale return address on it. He said he’d met a couple of girls named Shelly and Doreen. I never got their last names. I believe the last job he told us about was distributing value coupons door to door.”
“Value coupons?” Dad said.
“Yeah,” Fuller said, “You know, those booklets with fifty coupons in them that give you discounts at some of the area stores. Or they could be good for a free meal when you buy one, that sort of thing. That job was six weeks ago and we haven’t heard from him since.”
“I think we have enough information to start our investigation,” I said. “Is there someplace we can reach you while you’re in town?”
Fuller thought for a moment. “I’m not sure of the name of the hotel,” he said, “but it’s that one up on the hill on Highland Avenue, I think it is. There’s a winding set of cement steps going up to the rooms. Do you know which one I mean?”
“I know the place you mean,” Dad said. “It’s just north of Franklin on the west side of the street.”
“That’s the one,” Fuller said. “I don’t know their phone number, but it really doesn’t matter. I can give you my cell number.”
Dad added Fuller’s cell number to the yellow pad and then stood up. “We’ll get started on this today,” Mr. Fuller,” Dad told him. “We’ll call you when we find something out.”
Fuller stood now, too. He shook Dad’s hand. “Thank you Clay,” he said and then turned to me and extended his hand. “Thank you, too, Elliott.” He t
urned to Gloria. “I’m sure you’ll show them both how it’s done, won’t you, Gloria?”
“You bet,” Gloria said. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Fuller. If Jay’s in town we’ll find him for you.”
“I feel better already,” Fuller said, before he left the office.
Dad and Gloria and I huddled around my desk. “I think we’d better split up,” Dad said. “We can cover more ground faster.” He tore the yellow sheet in three pieces and we each took a former employer. Gloria took the Lane Bryant lead, Dad said he’d check out the two girls from Glendale and I decided to pay another visit to the movie studio to find out about that slasher movie and who the extras were. I didn’t see any way of tracking down the newspaper selling job. It could have been any of a number of those rags with mostly ads in them that they almost gave away for free on the street corners. There was also no way to find out about Jay Fuller’s panhandling venture with the guitar.
We all left the office and went our separate ways from the parking lot. Gloria headed west to Beverly Hills and pulled into the parking lot behind the Lane Bryant store on Pico Boulevard. She entered the store through the back door and walked directly toward the information counter near the front of the store. She asked the clerk behind the counter if she could speak with the store manager. The clerk buzzed her manager on the phone and asked Gloria to wait right here.
“My name is Bill Fischler,” the man who had approached Gloria told her. “I’m the manager here, may I help you?”
“Mr. Fischler,” Gloria said, handing the man her business card, “my name is Gloria Cooper and my company is looking into the disappearance of one of your former employees, Jay Fuller.”
“Jay Fuller,” Fischler said, trying to recall the name. “I don’t recall anyone by than name having worked here.
Gloria produced the scanned photo of Jay and held it up in front of Fischler. “Ring any bells now, Mr. Fischler?”
Fischler flushed a little and pretended to suddenly remember. “Ah yes,” he said. “I do recall the lad. He didn’t stay with us very long. I’m afraid he was only here for a week or ten days, something like that. I haven’t seen him since then. I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss…”