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

by Bill Bernico

  “Sure thing, Mr. Cooper,” Terry said and got immediately to work on the network installation. It was almost quarter to one when Terry packed up his tools and sighed. He gestured toward the laptop on my desk and said, “There you go. All done. Now you can access any computer in this room from any other computer and all you have to do is…”

  I stopped him. “Is this going to be more techno-talk that I won’t get?” I said.

  “Not at all,” Terry assured me. “I just wanted to point to this reset button in case the network freezes up or stops responding for any reason. Just hit the reset button, wait for the reboot and you’d good to go again.”

  Gloria spent five more minutes with Terry learning how to access the other two computers from her laptop. She thanked Terry and paid what he’d asked for shortly before he left the office. “Handy kid to have around,” she said.

  “I suppose,” I said. “But he’d drive me crazy in no time with all that techno-babble he spouts out at every opportunity. No, he’s just a little too hyper for me.” I gestured toward Gloria’s laptop. “So, you know how this whole network thing works now?”

  “Sure,” Gloria said. “Now, while I’m entering our records from last month, you can start with the earliest records and we’ll meet somewhere in the middle, at least theoretically, anyway. And with Clay helping out, we can be current in a month or less.”

  I flipped my laptop open and powered it up. While it took itself through the startup procedure, I stepped over to the small tabletop refrigerator I’d recently bought and retrieved a can of soda. I looked at Gloria. “You want one?” I said.

  “No thanks,” Gloria said.

  As I headed back to my desk, a smashing sound filled the room and the window behind my desk shattered. Whatever came through it just kept on going and hit my laptop screen, shattering that as well. I crouched behind my desk and gestured to Gloria to do the same behind hers. We waited for a moment and nothing else happened. I duck-walked past my window and stood up, trying to peek around the window sill to the outside. My .38 jumped into my hand and I held it up, pointing at the ceiling. Another projectile took out another large piece of glass from my window. It whizzed past the laptop this time and left a dent in the tabletop refrigerator door. It bounced onto the floor and I could see it now. It was a chrome nut, and from all appearances, looked to be a half-inch nut.

  Gloria spotted it, too, and looked at me. “I bet I know what you’re thinking,” Gloria said.

  “And you’d be right,” I told her. “Has to be the same guy who vandalized those three stores. Stay down, I’m going to try to get out there and up to the roof of the building across the street.”

  “Like hell,” Gloria said, pulling her own handgun out and crouching all the way to the office door. “I’m going with you. You can check the roof and I’ll go around the back of the building.”

  We walked bent over out of the office and then ran down the hall to the elevator. When we got to the lobby, we ran to the Hollywood Boulevard exit and paused before hurrying outside and across the street. Gloria went around to the back of the building and I went inside and found the elevator, riding it to the top floor. I got out and found the stairs to the roof. By the time I got out there, the roof was empty. I rushed over to the edge that faced our building and looked down. This building was just one floor taller than ours and I could see into my office from here.

  A few moments later Gloria came out of the stairway and onto the roof. I waved to her and she hurried over to where I stood looking across at our building. “Nobody in back of the building,” Gloria said. “Did you find anything up here?”

  “I just got here myself,” I said. “Whoever it was had to have stood right about where you’re standing now to make those shots.” I looked down at Gloria’s feet and pointed. “Look.”

  Gloria bent over and reached for the two chrome nuts. “Don’t touch ‘em,” I said. “There may be fingerprints on these.”

  “They look like they could do some real damage in the right hands,” Gloria said.

  “My laptop screen is proof of that,” I said. “And the refrigerator door. What the hell is going on in this neighborhood?”

  “You can bet it’s the same kid who broke those other windows,” Gloria said.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Lieutenant Anderson’s number. His secretary put me though right away.

  “I hope you’re not calling to say I told you so, Cooper?” Eric said.

  “What are you talking about, Eric,” I said. “The same guy I was telling you about earlier just hit our office—twice. He broke our window and my laptop and dented my fridge.”

  “Anybody hurt?” Eric said.

  “No, thank goodness,” I said. “But it has to be the same guy. We found two chrome nuts in my office and two more on the roof of the building across the street. Now, are you going to do something about this or not?”

  “Keep your shirt on, Elliott,” Eric said. “We’re already looking into it. That is, not your case in particular, but we got another call a little better than an hour ago from a store owner in your neighborhood. He had his display window smashed, too. And they found a half-inch chrome nut among the broken glass. Hang on, Elliott, I’m coming over there myself to take a look. And those two nuts on the roof, no, I’m not talking about you, just leave them where you found them. I’ll have a photog with me. Same with the ones in your office. Just leave everything the way it happened.”

  “We’re heading back there right now,” I told Eric and closed my phone. I turned to Gloria. “Eric’s on his way over,” I said. “One of us should stay here and one of us should meet him at the office, if that’s where he stops first.”

  “I’ll go back over to the office,” Gloria said.

  “All right,” I told her, “but don’t clean anything up. He’s bringing a photographer with him and he’ll want to take all four of these nuts back to the lab. Maybe we’ll get lucky with these.”

  Gloria hurried back to the stairway and a minute later, as I looked down onto the boulevard, I could see her racing across the street. Two minutes later she was looking back at me from our office. She waved and stepped away from the window. I waited for fifteen minutes and heard the stairway door open again. Eric and another cop were followed by a man carrying a camera. I waved them over and pointed down to the two chrome nuts. The man with the camera took several pictures of the nuts lying on the roof and then turned his camera toward my building and snapped a couple more. He left again, presumably to take a few shots from inside my office.

  Eric pulled a slim pen from his pocket and bent over to retrieve the nuts with the end of his pen. He dropped both nuts into a mini brown envelope, made some notes on the front of the paper and sealed the envelope, dropping it in his pocket. He looked over at my office window and then back at me.

  “It’s a good thing you weren’t sitting at that window,” Eric said.

  “I was just a few seconds before he did that,” I said, gesturing with my chin toward my window. “If I hadn’t gotten out of my chair to get a soda, one of those nuts could have gone through the back of my skull.”

  “Seems to me,” Eric said, “that so far in all these cases, no one has been hurt. If this is the same guy, he’s probably following the same M.O. and watched until you got out of your chair. My guess is that he’s shooting to intimidate and not to hurt anyone.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right, Eric,” I said. “Come on, we’ll head back over to my office and see how much all this is going to cost me.”

  Eric and I walked back down the stairs from the roof and got into the fourth floor elevator. On the way to the lobby Eric turned to me. “There’s one other thing I should probably mention,” Eric said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “I’ve already been over to see that fourth store owner,” Eric said. “He told me that shortly before his window was smashed, some kid came into his store and started talking about the first three stores and
about their damaged windows. He told the owner that he could prevent the same thing from happening to him, but that it would cost him seventy-five dollars. The owner told him to beat it and didn’t think anything more about it. Inside of an hour, someone broke his window and we found another chrome nut among the broken glass.”

  “And there you have your motive,” I said. “But a shakedown from a kid? Who’d take him seriously?”

  “I can think of at least one guy who should have,” Eric said. “Right now he’s sweeping up glass.”

  “Have you spoken to those first three shop owners?” I said.

  “Not yet,” Eric said. “I thought maybe we’d visit them together.”

  “Who told you?” I said.

  “Told me what?” Eric said innocently.

  “That I’d already been to see all three of them,” I said.

  “You just did, Cooper,” Eric said. I noticed that when we had our friendly, non-business talks, that Eric called me Elliott. But when he wanted to make a point and remind me of who was in charge, he called me Cooper. I got it.

  “It was just out of curiosity more than anything,” I told him. “I’d just read an article in the paper about the third window being broke, found out it happened in the neighborhood and just paid a friendly visit to one of my neighborhood merchants.”

  “And you no doubt left your card with all three,” Eric said. “Am I right?”

  “A guy’s got to make a living,” I said.

  “As long as that living doesn’t interfere with a police investigation,” Eric reminded me. “And right now that’s exactly what we have here. Follow me?”

  “To the end of the world,” I said. “What happens now?”

  “Now I take five statements and process these cases through the proper channels,” Eric said.

  I gave Eric a puzzled look. “Five?” I said.

  “Including you,” Eric told me. “You are a neighborhood merchant, aren’t you, Mr. Cooper?”

  Mr. Cooper was an even sterner hint than when he just called me Cooper.

  “Yes, Mr. Anderson,” I said in my condescending tone. “Whatever you say, Mr. Anderson.”

  By the time we got back to my office, the photog was already on his way back toward the elevator. He paused in the hallway to assure Eric that he’d left everything exactly where it was. Eric thanked him and we continued to my office. Gloria was standing at the window looking down at the street. She turned when we came into the office.

  “Are you all right, Gloria?” Eric said.

  Gloria nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Not even a scratch.”

  “I’m okay, too,” I said and then rolled my eyes.

  Eric ignored my sarcasm and took a quick look at the damage, his eyes resting on the chrome nut that had bounced off the refrigerator door. He scooped it up with his pen and dropped it into a second envelope and marked it before stepping carefully over to my desk and looking at my laptop screen. That chrome nut was still embedded in the glass of my laptop’s lid. He inserted his pen tip into the nut and plucked it out, dropping into the same envelope as the other nut.

  “Okay,” Eric said, as far as damage, it looks like you’ll need a new window and a laptop and some cleanup around here. Anything else?”

  I gestured toward my table top refrigerator. “It still works,” I said, “but look at that door. It’s dented.”

  Eric shot a quick glance at the door. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I think it gives it some character. You know, like a bullet hole in the wall at the bank. It’ll give you and your future clients something to talk about.”

  “Thanks for your concern, Eric,” I said. “If it has so much character, I’ll make you a good deal on it. You could use it in your office.”

  Eric ignored me and turned to Gloria. “Just submit a claim with your insurance man,” he said and turned for the door. Before he left, he turned back to me and added, “And don’t let me hear that you’re out looking for this guy, either. This is a…”

  “Police matter,” I said, finishing his sentence for him.

  Eric left and I turned to Gloria. “Guess I’d better take my broken laptop down to the computer store and see what Terry recommends,” I said, carefully placing my broken laptop into a shallow cardboard box. I started to pick up broken glass from my desk.

  “Just leave that,” Gloria said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Thanks,” I said and left the office with my cardboard box.

  *****

  The fourth store that had just been hit by the window smashing extortionist was a pet shop on Vine Street, just south of Sunset Avenue. Right after the impact of the nut through the glass, the window had completely shattered, allowing several of the animals in the window to escape into the street. “Two boa constrictors had slithered under a parked car while a three rabbits in a cardboard box hopped out of the display case and directly into the path of a kid on a skateboard. The kid kissed the cement losing two teeth while the rabbits scurried off into the traffic on Vine Street. Two of them were immediately run over by cars while the third one managed to make it across the street and disappeared between two houses.

  Several pet mice dashed away from the store. Three of them were pure white, two were black and white spotted and four of them were brown. All of them disappeared without a trace, but not before making several woman walking by scream for their lives. One of the women jumped up into the reluctant arms of a man coming the other way on the sidewalk.

  The police had arrived shortly after two of the store’s clerks had managed to prevent any other animals from becoming road kill. They talked with the manager, who had told them of the extortion attempt by the young man just before the incident. The cops got the information they needed and told the manager, a Mr. Abernathy, that they’d be in touch. That was three hours ago and since then Mr. Abernathy had been busy arranging for the glass company to come and take care of his problem.

  Shortly after the glass company had come to take measurements, board up the windows and return to the glass shop, Mr. Abernathy was busy sweeping up glass and dumping into the dumpster behind his store. One of the clerks noticed his absence after a few minutes and went looking for him. The clerk found Abernathy lying behind the store next to the dumpster. The man’s glasses were shattered and lying next to his face. The back of Abernathy’s head had a hole in it the size of a half-inch nut, which was still visible inside the skull. A half-inch nut made a hole about the size of a .45 caliber slug, only without the velocity.

  Lieutenant Eric Anderson took the call from the hysterical clerk at Abernathy’s Pet Shop. He and a backup unit made to the alley behind the store in just minutes. Eric looked down at the pool of dark blood beneath Abernathy’s head and then stepped around the body to take another look from a different angle. A dustpan and a broom lay next to Abernathy’s body. Eric took a few steps up the alley, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He found some wet footprints next to a puddle of murky water but nothing else useful to his investigation.

  After he finished taking statements from the pet shop clerk and two customers, Eric walked back to his cruiser and radioed in to the dispatcher that he’d be out on some calls for the next hour or so. He drove off down the block and turned left on Sunset. Three blocks east he found a sporting goods store and parked in front of it. Once inside he approached the first clerk he found and asked to see the store manager. He was led to a small back office where the clerk knocked on a door marked, ‘private’ and waited. When the door opened, the clerk told the store manager that a police lieutenant wanted to see him. The manager invited Eric into his office and closed the door behind him.

  “Won’t you have a seat, Lieutenant?” the manager said. He was a tall, thin man named Elroy Crawford.

  “Mr. Crawford,” Eric said, “I’d like to know if this store sells slingshots.”

  Crawford nodded. “We sell several models,” he said. “Were you looking for any special type, sir?”

  Eric pulled a half-in
ch nut from his pocket and held it out. “Is there a model powerful enough to fire this?” he said.

  Crawford took the nut and felt the heft in his palm. He looked at Eric. “Feels pretty much the same as a .45 caliber slug and those weigh a little less than half an ounce,” he said. “For something this size to work with a slingshot, you’d need something like our model three-fifty, which shoots .50 caliber ball bearings. A lot of hunters use these on small game with a lot of success.”

  “Let me ask you something, Mr. Crawford,” Eric said. “Would there be any advantage to someone using these half-inch nuts over the .50 caliber ball bearings?”

  “None I can think of,” Crawford said. “The ball bearing would be much more accurate, since they don’t have a hole through them like this nut does. But on the other hand, a guy buying a bag of nuts wouldn’t draw as much attention to himself as a guy buying a bag of ball bearings.”

  “What do you estimate the range of a nut like this to be with that model slingshot?” Eric said.

  “I’d say you could hit your target with the nut if you were within forty feet or so,” Crawford said. “Any farther away and your accuracy would drop dramatically, unless the target is a big one.”

  “Like the size of a display window?” Eric said.

  “Is that what this is about?” Crawford said. “I heard about those merchants in the neighborhood having their store windows broken. Is this what they used?”

  Eric nodded. “It looks like it, Mr. Crawford,” he said. “Thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Stop by any time, Lieutenant,” Crawford said. “Glad I could help.”

  Eric got up to leave and then had another thought. “Mr. Crawford,” he said, “do you keep records of the sales of your slingshots and ammo?”

  “Yes, we do,” Crawford said.

  “Could I have a look at any slingshot sales you may have had in the past year or so?” Eric said.