by Bill Bernico
Matt and Elliott stood now and Elliott shook Conrad’s hand. “How do you do, sir?” Elliott said cordially.
Conrad kept the greeting short and turned back to Matt. “Did you find Lila yet?” he said.
“I’m working on it,” Matt told him. “I have a couple of leads to follow. I should be able to find her in the next few days. I’ll keep in touch and let you know how things are progressing, okay?”
Conrad Jenkins smiled and let out a deep breath. “Thank you, Mr. Cooper. That’s all I ever wanted.” He turned to his granddaughter. “What’s for lunch, Tricia?”
Tricia caught my gaze and simply raised her eyebrows before retreating to the kitchen. She called back to Elliott and Matt, “Would either of you like a sandwich, too?”
“No, thank you,” Elliott called back. “We really have to be going. We’ll see ourselves out.”
Tricia gave Gramps his sandwich, told him to watch television while he ate it and then rushed outside to catch Matt before he could drive away. He and Elliott were just getting into the car as she ran up to them. “You can see what I have to deal with,” she said. “One minute Gramps seems pretty normal and in the moment, so to speak, and the next minute it’s the 1940s and he becomes obsessed with finding this Lila woman. If there’s any way you can get him involved further in this ‘case’ as it were, maybe it would help him find closure once and for all and he could let it go. And if he can die thinking he’d finished what he started, well, then…” She didn’t have a finish for her thought. She grabbed Matt’s hand and squeezed it. “If your great-grandfather was even half the man you appear to be, then he must have really been a special man.”
“We’ll work something out,” Matt assured her before he released her hand and rolled his window up again. He and Elliott drove away with the vision of Tricia in the rear view mirror.
On their way back to their office Elliott turned in his seat and said, “I hope you’re not getting too far out on this limb with this guy, Matt. I mean, there really isn’t much of anything that we can involve the old guy in as far as him working with us. He’s frail and we don’t need the liability if something were to happen to him in the course of him trying to help us.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Dad,” Matt said. “So how can we keep him happy and still distance ourselves from him physically?”
Elliott thought about it for a moment and then offered, “As long as your involvement with him doesn’t interfere with our regular business, I don’t see any harm in occasionally calling him or stopping by with some made-up results of the investigation that you’re not really doing.”
“How do you propose I do that?” Matt said. “During those times when his mind is back in the forties, he might be able to tell when I’m making stuff up just to placate him.”
Elliott let out a deep breath. “You could always do a little research on Grandpa Matt’s original case, gather a few details that he might know about and feed him a little information at a time just to keep him happy.”
“I guess I could do that,” Matt said. “I just have to keep his mind occupied for two weeks, or two months, or whatever time he has left.” He thought about it a little more and said, “I’ll do it. Hell, it might even be fun to revisit that old case just to get a feel for the times. As for the places, they’re all still here, for the most part. I guess I could take Jenkins around to some of the locations mentioned in the case. You know, jog his memory a little and make him feel useful.”
Matt pulled into the parking lot behind the Cahuenga Building and killed his engine. He and Elliott rode the elevator back to their third floor office to find Elliott’s answering machine blinking. Elliott took a seat behind his desk and hit the Play button. The machine beeped once.
“Elliott, it’s Eric. Give me a call when you get this.”
Elliott deleted the message and dialed Lieutenant Anderson’s office at the twelfth precinct.
“Anderson,” Eric said when he picked up.
“Eric, it’s Elliott. What’s up?”
Eric turned away from his phone and called to his secretary, telling her about some report that he’d left on her desk before turning his attentions back to Elliott. “Sorry,” Eric told him. “I just needed to finish one detail. Anyway, the reason I called was to see if either of you is available for a one day job. Two days on the outside.”
“Depends on which days you’re talking about and which one of us is free,” Elliott told him. “What do you have?”
“I’m a man short this week,” Eric explained. “Crowley’s home with some sort of stomach virus and I have a small job that can’t wait until he gets back.”
“And everyone else there is busy?” Elliott said.
“Well, I uh,” Eric started to say.
“Come on, Eric,” Elliott said. “Just like you can tell when I’m using my phony paper shuffling routine over the phone when I’m pretending to page through my appointment book, I can always tell when you’re not telling me the whole story. So what is it?”
“I guess you know me better than I thought,” Eric admitted. “Okay, here’s the scoop. I’m going to be tied up on a week-long case involving…well, that doesn’t matter. The point is I can’t get away from here for a while and my grandmother is coming to town just overnight. I can’t very well leave her alone at my house while I’m working and I don’t want to just stick her in some hotel, and I was just wondering if maybe…”
“So,” Elliott said. “Now it comes out. You need a babysitter.”
“More like a granny sitter,” Eric admitted. “Elliott, I’m all out of options and you’d be doing me a huge favor just to show her around town for the day, just until I can get off work tonight. Tomorrow all you’d have to do is make sure she got back on the plane for Phoenix and your part is done.”
“That’s all?” Elliott said. “So who’s picking her up when her flight comes in?”
“I, uh…”
“In other words, me,” Elliott said. “I’d have thought any grandmother of yours would have been a hometown gal.”
“She was, for the first sixty-five years of her life,” Eric explained. “When she retired twenty-three years ago she had to move to the warm, dry climate of Arizona for her health.”
“And I’m keeping Granny company?” Elliott said.
“Would you?” Eric was almost pleading now. “I’m sure I’ll be able to throw some real work your way in the next few weeks. Come on, what do you say? I can owe you big time.”
“Oh, all right,” Elliott finally agreed. “What time’s her flight coming in?”
“Thanks, Buddy,” Eric said. “She’s on Flight 433 arriving at two thirty. If you hurry you can just make it in time to meet her as she steps off the plane.”
Elliott looked at his watch. “That’s cutting it a little close, wouldn’t you say, Eric?”
“The longer we stay on the phone, the longer it’ll take you to get there,” Eric said.
Elliott was about to hang up and then put the phone back to his ear. “Eric,” he yelled.
Eric heard him before he hung up and said, “What?”
“I’ve never met your grandmother,” Elliott said. “I don’t know what she looks like or even her name. That might help me find her.”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Her name is Rose Anderson. She’s about five feet nothin’, maybe ninety pounds with a head full of gray hair. She’ll be the eighty-eight year old with way too much red makeup on her cheeks. Kinda like the geriatric version of Olive Oyl. You can’t miss her. Thanks again, Pal.” Eric hung up and breathed a sigh of relief.
Elliott placed his phone back in its cradle and turned to Matt. “Gotta run. Eric’s got a job for me.”
“So I heard,” Matt said, laughing. “Give Granny a hug for me when you see her.”
“No one likes a smart ass,” Elliott said on his way out the door. He turned around abruptly and held his hand out. “I need to take your car,” he told Matt. “I can’t expect an old lady
like that to climb up into my van.”
Matt dug in his pocket and produced a pair of keys on a key fob and tossed them to Elliott. Elliott tossed his van keys back to Matt. “In case you need to go anywhere.”
It was at least a thirty minute drive to the airport and Elliott was grateful that this wasn’t during the after work rush hour or he could have easily doubled that drive time. He checked his watch as he parked Matt’s car in the lot. It was two-twenty and he still had to find the gate for Flight 433 from Phoenix. Just inside the door he checked the board and found that Flight 433 was on time and would be touching down in just eight minutes. He checked at the nearest ticket counter and found out where he had to go to meet the flight.
Just as he approached the boarding area Elliott could see a jet rolling up to the building. It took another five minutes but soon the first passengers began to walk past the spot where he stood. A couple dozen people filed past him before he saw what had to be Eric’s grandmother. She fit his description to the letter. Popeye couldn’t be far behind her. Elliott stepped up to her and said, “Rose Anderson?”
She agreed that she was and who was this brash young man who wanted to know.
“Hi, my name is Elliott Cooper,” he told her. “Your grandson, Eric sent me down here to meet your plane. He’s unavoidably detained but I’ll be glad to drive you into Hollywood.” He remembered that his car was a dozen rows back in the parking lot. “I’m going to have you sit on the bench near the front door while I go get the car. I’ll pick you up right here in front of the terminal, okay?”
“You go ahead,” Rose said. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”
Elliott looked around. “Don’t you have any luggage with you, Mrs. Anderson?”
Rose held up her small overnight case. “This is all I have.”
Great,” Elliott told her. “I’ll be right back.” He hurried back to his car and returned to the terminal doors to find Rose Anderson patiently waiting for him. He took her overnight bag from her, set it on the back seat, helped her into the front seat and drove north toward Hollywood.
“So how do you like living in Phoenix, Mrs. Anderson?” Elliott said, just to have something to say.
“Please, Elliott,” she said. “Call me Rose and may I call you Elliott?”
“That would be nice,” Elliott said, “Seeing how we’re going to be spending a little time together. So, how do you like Phoenix?”
“It’s awfully hot,” Rose said. “And this time of year it can be very stifling.”
“But everyone says it’s a dry heat.” Elliott remarked.
“So is the inside of a pizza oven,” Rose answered. “Or so I’ve been told.”
“You must run up quite an electric bill running the air conditioner.”
“I suppose,” Rose said.
“Do you miss Los Angeles much?” Elliott said.
“Every now and then,” Rose said. “Sometimes I get homesick for my hometown and then it just takes a trip like this and soon I’m not homesick anymore.”
“Really?” Elliott said. “And why is that?”
“Because it’s changed so much,” Rose said, taking in the scenery outside her window. “The old Southern California is still there under a few layers of remodeling, but you have to look for it. Other parts that I remembered with fondness are gone altogether, like the Brown Derby. And I mean the original one, that was actually shaped like a bowler hat.”
“I think they call that progress,” Elliott said. “Me, I like it the way it was back then, too, but nothing stays the same forever. I wasn’t around back in the forties or fifties but I’ve seen enough photos from my grandfather’s photo album to get a feel for what it was like.”
“Cooper,” Rose said. “Would you be any relation to Matthew Cooper?”
“He’s my son,” Elliott said and then thought better of it. “But I don’t suppose that’s who you’re talking about, is it?”
“I doubt it,” Rose said. “The Matt Cooper I knew was some kind of private eye when I was a young woman living here in Hollywood.”
Elliott smiled. “That would have been my grandfather. I never really got to know him very well. I was still pretty young when he died. How is it that you knew him?”
Rose seemed to get lost in the memories of her youth. “I met your grandfather back in, let me see, I think it was around 1947 or 1948 when I was working in Hollywood as bit player at RKO Studios.”
Elliott smiled. “You were in the movies?” he said, genuinely interested now.
“Oh my, yes,” Rose said. “I worked in half a dozen pictures when I was young.”
“Were you in anything that I might have heard of?” Elliott said.
“Depends,” Rose said. “Do you like those old movies? They still play a few of mine late at night when almost no one is watching. Have you ever seen I Remember Mama?”
“In fact, I have,” Elliott explained. “Which part did you play, Rose?”
Rose turned toward Elliott. “Well, I never did get screen credits on any of the movies I was in. I was what you might call a bit player or an extra. They’d have lots of extras walking around in the background or standing around in crowds on the street. After five or six times of being an unpaid extra, I decided that I’d rather eat regularly and found a real job that actually paid me good money, and I never looked back.”
“Well, let me say that I’m proud to have met anyone who worked in the movies,” Elliott told her. “I guess you could say that I’m a bit of a movie trivia nut. At least that’s what my wife tells me, anyway. So how did you meet my grandfather if you were working as an extra?”
“If I remember correctly,” Rose said, “Matt was called in as a technical advisor on some detective movie they were doing at the time. Don’t ask me which one. I don’t remember, and I’ll bet no one else remembers it, either. Anyway, I was walking in the background with a bunch of other extras and I had just walked out of camera range and bumped into Matt. Goodness, I nearly knocked him off his feet because I wasn’t watching where I was going. We got to talking and eventually got to be friends. Then I heard that he had recently gotten married and we drifted apart. I think I only saw him once more after they had their baby.”
“That would have been my father, Clay,” Elliott explained.
“Yes, Clay, that was his name,” Rose said with a twinge of nostalgia. “Is your father still around, Elliott?”
Elliott shook his head. “No, Dad passed away unexpectedly a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rose said and then looked out the window again, as if she was sorry to have reminded Elliott of it. She turned back to Elliott. “So where is it you’re taking me?”
“I’m not sure,” Elliott said. “Eric just asked me to pick you up and show you a good time. It hadn’t occurred to me that you might want to rest after your trip.”
“Poppycock,” Rose said. “I’ll have all the time in the world to rest after I’m gone. Today I’d just like to see the town I once knew, if you think you’re up to a tour like that.”
“You may not like what you see,” Elliott told her. “Like you said, the whole area has changed since the forties, Hollywood included.”
“I’d still like to see it,” she said.
“Are you hungry?”
Rose raised her eyebrows. “I could do with a sandwich. How about you?”
“I know just the place,” Elliott said. “It’s right on the boulevard. It’s called The Gold Cup. My son and I often have coffee and donuts there.”
“I’ll leave it up to you, Elliott” Rose said. “The Gold Cup sounds good to me.”
It took Elliott a little better than half an hour to make it back to Hollywood. He found a parking space two doors down from the coffee shop. He walked rose to the double glass doors and held one open as she entered the shop. Once Elliott was inside, he scanned the room, looking for a booth or a table. His eyes stopped when he saw the back of an old man’s head. He was sitting across from Matt.
Elliott led Rose over to the table and gestured toward his son. “Rose Anderson,” Elliott said. “I’d like you to meet my son, Matt Cooper. Matt, this is Lieutenant Anderson’s grandmother, Rose.”
Matt stood and politely nodded to the old woman, unsure if he should shake her hand. He had visions of her brittle bones breaking beneath even the slightest of squeezes. The old man turned in his seat toward Elliott and Rose. It was Conrad Jenkins. Conrad stood now and faced Rose, a smile playing on his face. “How do you do, young lady?” He extended his hand.
Rose blushed. “Aren’t you the smooth one?” she said.
Matt gestured with his open hand at Conrad. “Rose, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Conrad Jenkins.”
Conrad lifted Rose’s hand to his lips and gently kissed it before releasing it again. He gestured toward the two empty chairs at his table. “Won’t you and Mr. Cooper join us?”
Rose smiled as Elliott pulled out her chair and waited until she sat before sitting across from her. Elliott turned to Mr. Jenkins. “After we eat, I was going to take Rose around to see Hollywood. Maybe you and Matt would like to join us.”
Conrad looked across at Matt. “What do you think, Matt? Wanna tour Hollywood with us?”
Matt looked at Elliott. “Why not? It could be interesting.”
As they ate their sandwiches and drank their beverages, Elliott said to Conrad, “You might find this interesting. Rose, here, worked in the movies during the forties.”
“Really?” Conrad said. “That is interesting. Did you work with any big stars?”
Rose told him an abbreviated version of the tale she’d told Elliott on the ride to Hollywood, ending with her decision to leave movies behind in favor of a regular paycheck. “Have you lived here all your life, Conrad?” Rose said.
Conrad liked the fact that she called him by his first name without asking permission. He smiled. “All my life,” he confirmed. “And you? Where do you live?”
“I moved to Phoenix long ago,” she said. “My doctor said the dry heat would be good for my achy bones. Personally, I think I’d rather ache in my leg bones just a little than in my heart. I miss this town.”
