The Tin Collector s-1

by Stephen Cannell

  "Well, what can we do?"

  "I don't know. I'll try and find him, but I don't even know where to start. It's not going to be easy."

  But it was easier than he thought. As soon as he hung up from Sandy, his phone rang. It was Chooch.

  "I'm in a phone booth over by UCLA, the Texaco just off the freeway on Sunset," the teenager said. "I gotta see you."

  "On my way." Shane got into his rental car and headed back to West L. A.

  Chapter 31

  DEAL

  He was sitting on a low wall that framed the perimeter of the Texaco station one block west of the 405. He seemed small sitting there, diminished by events, his head down, staring at the sidewalk as if the answer to his life might be hiding in the scrub weeds growing between the cracks.

  Shane pulled the rented Taurus into the gas station and tapped the horn. Chooch got off the wall, moved to the car, and slid in, pulling the door shut. He sat there, silent, looking like he'd lost something he couldn't replace.

  "Your mom's worried."

  "Yeah. Okay, let's go," he said.

  "You had lunch? There's a good place in Westwood, over by UCLA. Got subs and a great deli."

  The boy shrugged, so Shane put the car in gear and headed that way.

  The place was called the Little Bruin. Shane and Chooch got a booth in the back surrounded by chattering college students and lunch-break shopkeepers. Chooch ordered the special; Shane, pastrami on rye. They both had Cokes.

  "I thought we had a deal. You were gonna stay put, and I was gonna try and get my stuff settled, get back to you by next weekend at the latest."

  Chooch was looking out the window at the passing traffic so he could avoid Shane's eyes. "I been thinkin'," he said. "I know it's like a problem all the time havin' to have somebody look after me, but like you said, I'm a man. I make my own choices now, right?" "Right."

  "So, if I moved in with you, you wouldn't have to baby-sit me anymore or have Longboard come over and sit. I don't need to be supervised. I'm sorta beyond that. Like you said, right?"

  "Yeah, I guess," Shane said. "But I got guys shooting up my place. We'd have to get Kevlar jammies."

  "You're not sleeping there, either. I'll go wherever you go."

  " 'Cept I'm not your legal guardian. I can't make that choice for you. Sandy has to."

  "Yeah, well, the thing is, Sandy and me, we're not gonna happen."

  "You sure of that?"

  "Yeah. I'm sure. It didn't work."

  "You gave it a whole nine hours."

  "You know what she does for a living?"

  Shane didn't know how to answer that. "Do you?" he finally said.

  "Yeah. She's a hooker. I found her trick book. She has over fifty guys in there. It lists what they like, what kinda sex." He was having trouble talking about this, watching the traffic out the window, studying the street with manufactured interest.

  "She's paying for my school and shit by fucking guys. She's a whore." He turned back, and Shane could see the anger in the boy's black eyes.

  "Chooch, your mom "

  "Yeah?"

  "When I first met her, she was young, alone in L. A. She made a bad choice, but she doesn't do that anymore. She's an informant for the police department. Federal, as well as LAPD."

  "How does that pay for anything?" he challenged. "The private school and that penthouse."

  "She dates guys that law enforcement wants to bust, works 'em for information, then sells it to the cops. She does real well. She's trying to save up enough to retire, live with you in Phoenix, be a regular mom."

  "Some real mom."

  The waitress, a college girl in shorts and a UCLA T-shirt, delivered their lunches, set down silverware wrapped in paper napkins, and left. Shane unwrapped his knife and fork and put the napkin on his lap while Chooch continued to look out the window, brooding.

  "Whatta you want, man?" Shane finally said. "It is what it is. I can't change it; neither can you. You've gotta move past it."

  "Easy for you. I got nobody now. Least you've got somebody you can talk to."

  "Yeah? Who's that?"

  "I found all the letters you write to your dad. They were in the desk drawer in the living room. I was looking for paper for my homework."

  Shane put down his half-eaten sandwich. Chooch watched him closely, focused on him hard.

  "You shouldn't read other people's mail," Shane said softly.

  "You write them but you never send 'em."

  "He's sick. They were downers. I didn't want to distress him. I don't want to talk about this with you. It's not right you reading my private mail."

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Shane's cell phone rang, interrupting an awkward moment. It was the guy at Parker Center checking the Cal-VIP Homes with the Corporations Commission.

  "Go," Shane said, grabbing a pencil.

  "Spivack Development Corporation, Long Beach, California, owns Cal-VIP and paid the real estate taxes on the Arrowhead address you gave me."

  "Anthony Spivack? That Spivack Development? The big corporate developer?"

  "It just said Spivack Development, 2000 Lincoln Ave., Long Beach, California."

  "Thanks," Shane said, and folded the phone.

  "I can't go back to Sandy's place. I won't do it," Chooch protested.

  "Okay, okay, I'll work out something. But I've gotta call and tell her you're okay."

  "Fine. I don't care. I just don't wanna go back."

  "Okay. We can try, but I can't promise that's gonna stick."

  They sat quietly in the booth and ate their sandwiches. Chooch, still deep in thought, only picked at his.

  "Shane," he said, and Scully looked up at him. "Did she ever tell you who my father was?" The question had been waiting there building up pressure, needing to be asked.

  "Yeah," Shane said, "but she didn't want you to find out who he was."

  "Because he was one of those guys, one of the crooks she plays to the cops?"

  "Chooch, come on…"

  "I wanna know. Was my old man a criminal?"

  "She'll have to tell you. She made me promise, but it's not really gonna change anything, because he's not coming back for a long time."

  "He's a crook… I know it. Some legacy, huh? No wonder I get into so much trouble."

  "Hey, Chooch, criminal behavior isn't genetic. You don't pass it on, father to son, like blue eyes and freckles. You can make whatever you want of your life. It's up to you. Your father's mistakes are his. Everybody gets to make their own."

  "That's what you keep telling me," the boy said. Then he gave Shane a rueful smile. "And you don't ever lie, right?"

  "Right," Shane said. Then without really knowing why, but realizing it was the right thing to do, Shane finally unburdened himself of something he had kept hidden for years. "You wanna know why I never mailed the letters?"

  Chooch nodded.

  " 'Cause I don't know where to send them."

  "It says Florida."

  "I don't know where he is, or even who he is. I was left at a hospital. 'Infant 205,' in 1963. I got named by City Services. It's silly. I write the letters when I need to get my thoughts down. And my father…" He stopped, unable to finish for a second. "My father is an idea I can talk to."

  "Somebody you wish you had, who can be whatever you want him to be," Chooch said, knowing exactly what Shane meant, feeling all the same things… the loneliness, the disenfranchisement, the emptiness coming from the same hole in their personal histories.

  "Yeah." Shane's voice was husky.

  "I wondered why you agreed to take me. That's why."

  "I don't know why, Chooch. I don't know what I was looking for."

  The waitress came to the table and asked them if they wanted anything.

  "Yeah," Chooch said. "But I don't think you've got it in the kitchen."

  Shane smiled. "Let's get going. I've got an errand to run. You want, you can come with me."

  He paid and they left the Little Bruin and h
eaded to the brown Taurus parked at a curbside meter, dazed by what had just happened.

  "Thanks for telling me about your dad," Chooch finally said.

  "I won't tell about your dad if you won't tell about mine," Shane said.

  "Deal," Chooch said, and smiled. They got in the car and left Westwood, both wondering what this strange new connection held for them.

  Chapter 32

  CONNECTING THE DOTS

  The fifteen-story steel-and-glass building on Lincoln Boulevard was named the Two Thousand Building by a large monument sign that marked the entrance. Under that in gold letters:

  A SPIVACK DEVELOPMENT

  It was also on top of the building in five-foot-high lit letters, leaving no doubt about who owned the place.

  Shane and Chooch parked in the underground garage, got out, and moved to the elevator, taking it up to the management floor at the top of the building. They exited into a huge architectural lobby decorated in monochromatic colors, dominated by too many sharp edges and angular lines. Steel-and-glass furniture dotted the interior. Futuristic recessed lighting laid down a cold blue-white glow. A huge gold sign behind the receptionist again announced that this was:

  SPIVACK DEVELOPMENT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS

  Shane left Chooch by the elevator and approached a striking, unfriendly white-blond receptionist who looked cold enough to have been delivered with the furniture. Shane opened his wallet and took out his police business card. Since he didn't have his badge, the business card was the best he could manage. He was hoping it would get him past the blond goddess who was guarding the floor, stationed behind her huge, semicircular, two-inch-thick green glass desk, like a turret gunner.

  "What's this regarding?" she asked, speaking coolly, not intimidated by his card or manner.

  "Police business," he replied.

  "Mr. Spivack isn't here. Perhaps someone else can help you?"

  "How about Calvin Sheets?" Shane said, wondering if Logan Hunter's head of security was also working for Spivack.

  "He's down at the city council meeting with Mr. Spivack. Sorry…"

  "The Long Beach City Council?"

  She ignored his question and smiled an icicle at him. "Would there be anybody else…?"

  "Coy Love."

  "We don't have a Coy Love."

  "I'm not doing too well, am I?"

  "Sometimes if you make an appointment in advance, it works wonders." Freon.

  "I may just have to get a search warrant and start emptying everyone's desks… Do a couple of body searches."

  "Anything else?" She had grown tired of him.

  "Pamela Anderson Lee wouldn't happen to be around, would she?"

  "Just left." But at least this earned him a smile.

  He picked up his business card, tucked it into his wallet, then took a Spivack Company brochure off the glass desk and walked across the lobby, the ice-blonde watching him all the way. He retrieved Chooch, got into the elevator, and went down. He left the teenager in the lobby, then found the staircase to the basement. It took him five minutes to find the service utility room. Inside was a huge gray panel box with a dime-store lock that took Shane less than thirty seconds to pick. Now he was looking at a startling array of colorful wires. "Shit," he said, then slowly went to work unraveling the building's complicated alarm system.

  ???

  "I wonder where the city council meets. Probably city hall," Shane said as they settled back into the Taurus. He picked up his almost fried cell phone, called Information in Long Beach, and got the address for city hall on Front Street just before the phone quit.

  They drove away from the Two Thousand Building and, with some help from a gas-station attendant, found Front Street. The huge domed city building loomed two blocks ahead…

  As they pulled up the street, they could see quite a demonstration in progress thirty or forty pickets were congregating around in front of city hall. It was a strange mixture of people. Some were old men in American Legion uniforms, holding duplicate hand-lettered signs that read:

  VETERANS AGAINST LONG BEACH LAND-FOR-WATER DEAL

  Other pickets carried more traditional union placards:

  AFL–CIO OPPOSES NAVAL YARD WATER SWAP THEY GET THE DOUGH, WE GET THE HOSE

  Others protested with:

  GIVE US JOBS, NOT SOBS SPIVACK-EVACK WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE WE SAVED THE WHALES YOU SAVE OUR JOBS!

  Shane and Chooch had to park a block away in a city parking lot and, after locking up, moved across the shimmering, heated asphalt to where the demonstration was taking place.

  "What's going on?" Shane asked a tough-looking woman with inch-long hair wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a sign that read:

  BEACHFRONT FOR HzO? OUR CITY COUNCIL SUCKS!

  "These idiots are trading the Long Beach Naval Yard to Los Angeles County for a bunch of fuckin' water rights," she growled.

  "Naval yard? I thought the navy shut it down years ago."

  "Yeah, they did, and now we're giving it to L. A."

  "Isn't it federal property?" Shane persisted.

  She shot him a withering look. "Where you been, buddy? This is all over the fuckin' news."

  "I don't have a TV," Shane answered.

  "It was leased land. Now Long Beach's gonna trade it for some dumb water rights."

  Shane moved past her and, along with Chooch, climbed up the steps and entered city hall.

  The Long Beach Municipal Building was a large brick structure that had been built in the forties. It had a high, two-story rotunda, now overflowing with TV news crews who had set up there for a press conference.

  "I'm gonna try and find this guy Spivack," Shane said to Chooch. "Stick close, okay?" "Got it."

  Shane moved past the news crews but got stopped at the door to the City Council Chamber by a uniformed Long Beach police officer.

  "Sorry, we're maxed out. Fire regs," the cop said.

  "LAPD, I'm working." He handed the cop his business card.

  "Okay, Sarge, but it's a madhouse in there."

  "He's with me," Shane said, indicating Chooch; then they entered the meeting hall.

  The council room was a theater-sized, cavernous hall with a sloping floor and raised dais. The room was packed. They could hear a contentious argument being staged over microphones:

  "How the hell can you say that the property can't be used by Long Beach?!" a woman yelled from the floor. "I worked at that yard, I was an employee of the Metal Trades Council for thirty years. I thought we were being reamed in '94, when the government closed the only profitable shipyard in the navy. But that's nothing compared to what's going on here. You're taking a huge city asset and trading it for chump change!"

  The crowd shouted its approval. The president of the city council banged his gavel for order, then replied, "To begin with, the yard was closed in '94 because it was badly situated, too close to the big refitting yard in San Diego. What's going on here now is good for the city of Long Beach. Mr. Spivack is going to clear all the old military buildings off the site, regrade the property, and develop it. Okay, it's going to be ceded to the city of L. A., but I might remind you that the shipyard borders L. A. on the north and Long Beach on the south, so it's contiguous with them as well as us."

  "Who cares? I'm not talking about geography. I'm talking about jobs!" the woman fired back, to a chorus of cheers.

  The city council president was prepared. "Long Beach residents will get the jobs because the yard is much closer to our main workforce than to L. A.'s. There'll be hotels, shopping malls, restaurants all employment for Long Beach citizens. And we don't have to float bond issues or construction loans to develop the site. We won't have to pay for its construction; L. A. will. But we will get the major work benefits, plus much-needed water from L. A."

  Shane was looking for Anthony Spivack somewhere down front, not paying much attention to the argument going on between the Long Beach City Council and its angry residents. He had the Spivack brochure open to a picture of the CEO. Spiva
ck was a heavyset man with a thick head of close-cropped, curly gray hair. The woman at the mike raised her voice in response, cutting through the background noise with electronic shrillness. "And who, may I ask, gets the municipal tax revenue on all this commercial property, Mr. Cummins?"

  Shane spun around and looked up at the president of the Long Beach City Council. He was a slender, hollow-chested man with horn-rimmed glasses, identified by a plaque in front of him on the elevated dais:

  CARL CUMMINS PRESIDENT, LONG BEACH CITY COUNCIL

  "Son of a bitch," Shane said.

  Chooch looked at him. "What is it?"

  Just then, some kind of disturbance seemed to be taking place in the back of the hall. A chant began: "AFL–CIO… Tony Spivack, you must go."

  About thirty protesters had broken into the hall and were trying to march down the aisle, carrying placards. The agitated audience soon picked up the chant.

  Carl Cummins started banging his gavel, trying to regain order. "We can't conduct this hearing under these conditions!" he said, screeching it into his mike, getting loud boos and electronic feedback. "The discussion period on City Resolution 397 is concluded. The board will retire to chambers to take its vote. We're adjourned." He angrily banged his gavel and rose.

  The chorus of boos grew louder. Suddenly people in the front rows stood up and started throwing fruit at the stage; pulling oranges and plums out of carry-bags, brought in anticipation of this demonstration.

  Carl Cummins and the nine other members of the city council bolted from their chairs as they were pelted with fruit, making a hurried exit from the stage.

  The pushing and shoving was getting increasingly intense in the auditorium, threatening to turn into a riot.

  "Let's go!" Shane said, grabbing Chooch. "Stay close to me. Hold on to my belt."

  He felt Chooch grab hold of his belt in the back, and then Shane pushed through the melee to the fire exit on the same side of the room that Carl Cummins and the city council were using as a retreat. By now most of the frightened council members had left the stage.