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

by Bill Bernico

  The hoses from the truck had been aimed at the blown out windows, sending hundreds of gallons of water through them. Other firemen entered the lobby of the building wearing oxygen masks and carrying fire axes and hoses in with them. It would be sometime before the fire could be contained and the handful of tenants, who had found temporary safety on the roof, brought back down again.

  It was almost one o’clock now and Elliott was just returning from his appointment with a potential client. He couldn’t get near his building or even into the parking lot behind it. He parked in an alley two blocks away and ran the rest of the way to Hollywood Boulevard. He made his way to the south side of the street and looked up at the third floor, where his office had been. The side of the building was charred black and there were no windows left.

  Elliott found the first fireman he saw and tapped him on the shoulder. “What happened here?” Elliott said, looking all around him.

  “A fire,” the fireman said, as if it was obvious enough without having to go into detail.

  “I can see that,” Elliott said, pointing to the third floor. “I mean what happened with my office? My son was up there. Have you seen him?”

  The fireman softened a bit and shook his head. “I didn’t see anyone,” the fireman said. “But then I just got here with the third alarm. You might want to check with Chief Olsen over there.” He pointed to a man with a white cap and black visor. He was wearing a blue uniform with several insignias on the sleeves. Matt hurried over to where the Chief stood and tapped him on the shoulder. The man turned to face Elliott.

  “Chief Olsen?” Elliott said.

  The Chief nodded and said that he was.

  “Chief, my name is Elliott Cooper,” he said. “My son and I occupied the office on the third floor in front. Have you seen him? Do you know what happened to him?”

  The Chief laid his hand on Elliott’s shoulder. “Come with me, sir,” he said and lead Elliott to the back of one of the fire trucks. “Is this your son?” The Chief gestured toward Matt, who was sitting on the rear platform of the truck with the long ladder.

  Matt looked up then to see his father standing there. He sprung to his feet and stepped up to Elliott. Elliott looked Matt up and down and all over before asking, “Matt, are you all right? What happened here?”

  Matt smiled nervously. “I’m all right, Dad,” he said. “Shortly after you left I saw smoke seeping into the office under the door. I don’t know where it started, but the fire had traveled down the hall and there was no time to get out. The firemen got a ladder up here and took me down this way.” He pointed toward the southern face of the building.

  “That must have been scary,” Elliott said. “I know I’d have probably frozen up there, what with my vertigo and all. As long as you’re all right, that’s all that matters.” Elliott looked back at the Chief. “Can I take him with me now, Chief?”

  The Chief looked at Matt. “As long as you feel all right and nothing’s broken, you can leave. But first let me get some information from you, if I may. I’ll just need your name and address and your phone number in case we need to talk to you further.”

  “Talk to him?” Elliott said. “About what?”

  “There’s bound to be an arson investigation,” the chief said. “Your son may know more than he thinks and our guys may want to ask you a few questions about today.”

  “Thanks again, Chief,” Matt said, and left with Elliott.

  “What did the Chief mean, ‘if nothing’s broken’? How could you break anything coming down a ladder?”

  “Where are you parked, Dad?” Matt said. “I’ll tell you over lunch. I’m starved.”

  “Did you skip breakfast again?” Elliott said.

  “No,” Matt explained. “I had a good, hearty breakfast but it didn’t stay with me.” He told his father about the jumper lying in the street and the effect it had had on his stomach. “My lunch went up in flames, along with the office,” Matt added. “I never got to eat a single bite of it before all this happened.”

  Elliott stopped in his tracks. “The office,” he said. “I’ll have to call my insurance man and arrange for a temporary office until that one can be fixed again.”

  “Let’s talk about all this over lunch,” Matt said, rubbing his stomach. “My stomach’s really growling now.”

  Matt stepped up into the passenger’s seat of Elliott’s van while Elliot slid behind the wheel. Traffic was still snarled and it took them a while to get away from the congestion and out of the neighborhood altogether. Elliott headed west and found a diner on Highland Avenue. It was a good time to be there, between the lunch crowd and the dinner crowd. They found a table right away. The two of them sat down and checked the menus.

  “I had lunch with our client,” Elliott explained. “But you go ahead and get as much as you want. It’s on me today.”

  Matt ordered a whole lunch while Elliott ordered just a glass of chocolate milk. While they waited for the waitress to return, Elliott pulled out his cell phone and dialed his insurance agent, telling him what had just happened at their building.

  “We’re going to need to rent a temporary office with furniture, computers, the whole works,” Elliott said, telling his agent of the fire that morning. “You know what we need. How soon can we get it?”

  Elliott’s insurance agent, a man named Reuben Winchester, took down all the information and said, “See what you can come up with as far as some office space, Elliott. I’ll try to round up some temporary furniture for you. Let me know what you find and I can have it delivered.”

  “Thanks, Reuben,” Elliott said. “I’ll be in touch.” He hung up and turned his attentions back to Matt. “Now what was all this about having nothing broken?”

  Matt tried to explain about falling off the ledge with a harness wrapped around his body, but he found he couldn’t tell it all without stopping to compose himself several times.

  Elliott laid one hand over Matt’s. “Gees,” he said. “It’s a good thing they had that harness on you. I’d have had the big one right there, dangling over the street like that. At least you’re safe. That’s the main thing.” Elliott tried to lighten the mood and turned to Matt. “I thought you said if you were going out that you’d leave me a note.”

  Matt rolled his eyes. “I did, Dad,” he said. “I left it on your desk. It should still be there. You any good at reading ashes?”

  “Touché,” Elliott said.

  Matt looked at Elliott. “All our computer records are gone,” he said. “Everything’s gone—the filing cabinets, desks, computers—everything. We’ll have to start over from scratch with our record keeping.”

  “Not quite from scratch,” Elliott explained. “I have a backup at home. Granted, it’s a week old, but at least that’s all we’ll have to type back in again is that last week’s worth of information.”

  “I wonder what started the fire,” Matt said.

  “The fire department has special teams that look into that sort of thing,” Elliott said. “A week from now they’ll be able to tell you exactly where it started, what was used and maybe even who started it, if it turns out to be arson. They’re pretty thorough when it comes to that stuff.”

  “I suppose,” Matt agreed. “Hey, you didn’t tell me about the client from this morning. What did he want?”

  “Just another tail job on a cheating wife,” Elliott said. “I’m really getting tired of these kinds of jobs.”

  “They help pay the bills,” Matt said, reaching out for the plate that the waitress had just brought to the table. He picked up his fork and started right in with the potatoes. Between bites, he said, “You gonna handle this one alone or is there room in it for me?”

  “Actually,” Elliott said, “I thought I’d turn the whole thing over to you. That would free me up to find us another office.”

  “When am I supposed to start,” Matt said. “And who am I supposed to be following?”

  Elliott pulled a slip of paper and a three by five photo fr
om his inside pocket and laid them next to Matt’s plate. “It’s all right there,” he said. “She gets off work at five-thirty but rarely gets home before seven on Tuesdays, and she lives just two miles from the store. Mark, that’s her husband, thinks she’s meeting someone every Tuesday night and he’d like us to either ease his mind or confirm what he suspects.”

  “Didn’t he ever ask her where she goes on Tuesdays?” Matt asked.

  “He says he tried that once, but she got very defensive and argumentative with him, so he thought he’d try it this way instead,” Elliott explained.

  “And I’m going to follow this woman, am I?”

  “Yes,” Elliott said. “But you go ahead and finish your lunch first.”

  “That’s mighty big of you, Dad,” Matt said and continued eating.

  Elliott allowed Matt to finish his lunch before he asked any more questions about the fire. After Matt had washed the last of his lunch down with his chocolate milk, Elliott gestured at Matt with his chin. “So, what was it like coming down that ladder with the fireman? Were you scared? Did you look down? I know I’d have been petrified.”

  “Dad,” Matt said. “I made it down safely and isn’t that all that counts? I really don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  Elliott backed down. “Sure, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  Two men at the next table were talking. At first Elliott tried to ignore them but something in their exchange caught his attention and he cocked one ear their way.”

  “Oh man,” one of them said. “I hope I never see anything like that again. I thought I was gonna be sick there for a minute.”

  “Me too,” the other man said. “Gees, when that body hit the street I thought I was gonna puke. It sounded like someone dropping a watermelon off the truck the way that guy’s head split open when he hit.”

  The first man was almost laughing now. “For a minute there I thought he was gonna take that guy on the ledge with him. He couldn’t have missed that poor schlep by more than a foot.”

  “And when the guy on the ledge fell backwards, I thought we were gonna see two bodies there on the street,” the second man added. “Boy, if he hadn’t been wearing that harness.”

  “Yeah,” the first man said. “He dangled there like a spent yoyo.”

  That was all Elliott could stand. He stood and turned toward the two men. “Why don’t you two just shut up?” he said, giving the two men a cold stare.

  “What’s it to you, buddy?” the first man said in their defense.

  “Yeah,” the second man chimed in. “What makes this any business of yours?”

  Elliott hiked a thumb over his shoulder toward Matt. “Because that’s my son sitting over there.”

  “Yeah, so?” the second man said.

  Elliott got right in his face now, nose to nose. “So he was the man on the ledge. Now shut your pie hole or I’ll shut it for you.” When Elliott leaned toward the man, his jacket fell open and the man could now see Elliott’s .38 hanging under his arm in the shoulder rig. He stared at the gun for a second and then looked back up at Elliott. “I’m sorry,” he said to Elliott. “We didn’t know. I’m glad to see he’s all right.”

  Elliott didn’t bother answering either man. He just turned back toward Matt and said, “Come on, Matt, let’s get out of here.” Elliott threw some money down on the table and headed for the door. Once they were back in the car Elliott turned to Matt. “That must have been quite a ride to the street at the end of that harness. I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it.” He thought for a moment before adding, “How about if we don’t say anything about those details to your mother? You know how she worries and she doesn’t need anything on her plate right now.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me on this one,” Matt said and then added, “You wanna drop me at the parking lot behind our building so I can get my car?”

  “I’ll get you as close as I can,” Elliott said. “The streets are probably still jammed with fire trucks and gawkers.”

  The words were no sooner out of Matt’s mouth than his cell phone rang. Matt flipped it open and listened as his mother’s frantic voice almost yelling. “Matt,” Gloria said. “Are you all right, honey?”

  “Mom,” Matt said, “What are you talking about?”

  “It was all over the news, Matthew,” Gloria said. “Every channel carried it. My gosh, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. How’s your father?”

  “Dad was out on a call when this happened,” Matt explained. “He’s here with me now. Did you want to talk to him?”

  “Yes, put him on, would you?” Gloria said in a hurried voice.

  Matt handed the phone to Elliott. “Gloria, what is it?” Elliott said.

  “Your son was all over the news,” Gloria said. “The television cameras covered the fire from three or four different angles. Some of them were on the roof across the street.” Gloria broke down now and was trying her best to control her breathing. “Elliott, we almost lost him.”

  “Settle down, Gloria,” Elliott said in a soothing tone. “Matt’s fine and I wasn’t even there at the time.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Gloria said. “Someone’s trying to call on the other line.” Then she remembered Matt’s wife, Chris at home with their twin babies. “Oh no,” Gloria said. “Chris probably saw the news, too. Let me call you back. I’ll let her know Matt’s all right. Tell him to call her.”

  “I will,” Elliott said and closed his phone.

  “What was that all about?” Matt said.

  “You know how your mother gets,” Elliott said. “She saw the news coverage on TV and immediately thought the worst. Maybe she didn’t catch the whole newscast and thought the guy who fell to the street could have been you. Oh, and you’d better call Chris before you do anything else.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said, taking his phone from back and opening it. He dialed his home number and waited. The busy signal sounded in his ear and he turned to Elliott. “Busy.”

  “She’s probably talking to your mother,” Elliott said. “She was getting a call on the other line when I talked to her. Don’t forget to try again later.”

  “I won’t,” Matt said and then changed the subject. “Where are you going to find another office on short notice?”

  Elliott started his engine and then held up his index finger. “I have a friend who’s a realtor. Maybe he can help me find some office space.” He pulled out into traffic and a few minutes later dropped Matt a block from the parking lot before leaving to find his realtor.

  Matt got into his own car and drove to the address on the slip of paper Elliott had given him. It was a department store and according to the note, the woman Matt was supposed to watch worked in the jewelry department. He casually walked past that department, looking for a woman who looked like the one in the photo. He spotted her wiping down one of the glass cases with a sheet of paper towel. Matt walked a bit closer, trying to get a look at the name tag the woman was wearing on her lapel. It said, ‘Joan’ in white letters on a black plastic background. He checked it against the slip of paper. That was her, all right—Joan Armstrong. Her hair was a brighter shade of red than any natural redhead he’d ever seen. That in itself would make this tail job a lot easier, he thought.

  Matt hung around the store for more than an hour, waiting for closing time. There was still twenty minutes before the store would be closing so Matt spent that time riding around in the parking lot looking for the car that Elliott had described on that slip of paper he’d given Matt earlier. Matt slowly cruised each aisle, looking for a red Toyota Camry with the personalized license plate that said, ‘JOAN ARM.’ This should be a snap, he thought.

  He began on the outer fringes of the lot, since most store employees had probably been told not to park close to the store and to leave those spaces for the customers. It took him less than five minutes to spot the red Camry and when he got close enough to make out the license plate,
he verified that it was the right car. Matt parked two rows over and waited for Joan Armstrong to come out. He only had to wait fifteen minutes before the woman with the bright red hair emerged from the store. When she got closer to her car, Matt thought it was ironic that her hair color almost matched her car color. He briefly wondered if she used car wax on her hair to keep it in shape, but quickly dismissed the idea as just plain stupid.

  Twenty feet from her can, Joan pressed the little black key fob in her hand and her parking lights flickered as the doors unlocked. Joan got in and started the car, buckled herself in and pulled out of the space, heading toward the exit onto the street. Matt pulled out behind her and kept a respectable distance between his car and hers. Matt knew from the information that Elliott had provided him that Mrs. Armstrong lived on the other side of the department store. She was already going the wrong way. This should be easy, he thought.

  Joan had gone several more blocks before turning south. She stopped in the middle of the block, parking behind a blue Ford sedan. Matt kept driving slowly past her and watched as she walked up the sidewalk to a white house with a picket fence that surrounded the front yard. He parked at the curb, got out and doubled back toward the house. He stopped one house from the one with the picket fence and soft-footed it between the two houses, trying to see if there was a window he could look into. There were two windows with shades that had not been fully lowered and Matt positioned himself between them, waiting for movement from inside.

  He didn’t have to wait long. He heard the unmistakable Latin rhythm coming from somewhere in the house shortly before he spotted Joan Armstrong and another man embracing in the middle of the living room. Their bodies swayed in time with the music as the man with Joan moved her rhythmically around the floor. She moved away from him with her body, but held on to the man’s hand as she twirled around and then came back to him, as if tethered by an elastic band.