The Tin Collector s-1

by Stephen Cannell

  Behind them, on the east end of the property, the surviving naval buildings loomed.

  Shane reasoned that they had a better chance of getting inside unobserved if they went west, where there were no structures left standing and, hence, nothing to steal and less need for security.

  "Where do you want to try?" she suddenly asked.

  He pointed to a place up ahead where the razor wire had come down, making it possible to get over the fence without ripping their hands and clothes.

  "With all this traffic on Ocean, we'll be spotted; somebody's gonna call it in," she said. "Let's try over there." She pointed to the far end of the property, where the fence seemed to turn a corner and head south toward the bay.

  There was a huge lit structure looming down there that Shane didn't like the looks of. "Except, what the hell is that?" he asked, pointing at it, but she didn't answer.

  They kept walking and finally got close enough to see that it was an active Army Reserve post, with its own entrance located at the far end of the naval yard. A bunch of weekend warriors were standing around in the parking lot, milling in front of the post HQ.

  "Okay," she said. "You're right. Let's go back and try your place."

  They returned to the spot Shane had seen, and then waited for the line of traffic to pass. Once the light down the street turned red, Shane touched her arm.

  "Now," he said.

  He and Alexa hit the fence simultaneously. It was an eight-foot-high chain-link; Shane scrambled up and over fast, surprised to see that they hit the ground on the other side at about the same time.

  They sprinted away from Ocean Boulevard as the light down the street turned green and the headlights of the approaching cars came toward them. They crouched in the dark unobserved as the traffic streamed past on the far side of the fence.

  "When Drucker and Kono went in, you sure you couldn't see which way they turned once they got inside?" Shane asked.

  "They were stopped by the plastic badge guarding the east gate, but once they drove through, I lost 'em. I was half a block away, across the street. I didn't want to chance getting spotted."

  "If they went in there, then they're probably still on the east side of the property," Shane reasoned.

  "Probably."

  They took off along the paved road inside the fence, this time heading east, back the way they had just come. The two-lane base road they were on was identified by a sign as COFFMAN STREET.

  They were both struck by the vastness of the old shipyard. Shane had heard about the property ever since he was a kid growing up in L. A., but he'd never been down there before.

  "This place is huge," he said, stating the obvious as they quickened their pace, doing a speed walk. "No wonder those people at the city council hearing were pissed. This place has gotta be worth billions of dollars. Prime waterfront, right on the border between L. A. and Long Beach; the Queen Mary is half a mile from here, Fisherman's Village a stone's throw away."

  She nodded but said nothing.

  They were coming to a part of the yard that had not been demolished yet. They began passing huge covered docks, once used to refurbish naval vessels. Faded signs hung on every kind of structure, from wood-frame officers clubs and enlisted-personnel mess halls to poured-concrete warehouses and five-story-high covered sheds. They passed blast foundation plants; the compressor boiler plant loomed next to an air compressor building; then some hazardous-waste staging areas. There were mammoth towers leaning against a dark sky, marked COLLIMATION TOWER and PUMPING STATION TWO. Neither Shane nor Alexa had a clue what they were used for.

  They passed the old naval credit union building, the sheet metal shop, and the asbestos removal headquarters, which was part of the current demolition operation and consisted of a flock of portable trailers.

  The property was beyond anything that Shane had ever imagined. Now they were at the end of Coffman Street, where it turned into Avenue D.

  Up ahead they could see some bright light streaming out of a huge warehouse. They were moving slowly now, trying to hug the shadows created by the occasional streetlamps.

  They finally got close enough to see ten or twelve cars parked in front of a huge lit warehouse. Shane and Alexa could see the open loading door with a sign overhead that read:

  BUILDING 132 MACHINE SHOP PIPE AND COPPER

  They crept across Avenue D and found cover behind a two-story-high cylindrical tank. When they looked around the rusting tank, Shane and Alexa could see directly into the mouth of the warehouse through the raised loading door.

  A party with more than thirty people was going on inside. Some tables had been set up full of food and buckets of beer. Men and women were dancing on the cold concrete floor, which was lit by lights from two gray police plainwraps that had been pulled inside. Both Crown Vies had the doors open; stereo music was coming from the car radios tuned to the same FM station.

  Shane was looking through his telescopic lens at the partyers.

  "Most of these guys are copsI know some of the girls. I busted a few when I was in West Valley Vice."

  "Hookers?" Alexa asked. "Gimme it."

  He handed her the zoom-lens camera, and she squinted through the eyepiece, panning around inside the lit building. "You're right, it's a regular coyote convention in there," she murmured. "Those are Beverly Hills pros thousand-dollar girls Angelica DeBravo, Deborah Kline, Donna Fleister, plus the rest of our police-department cast of characters." She was referring to Ray's den: Joe Church, Lee Ayers, John Samansky, Don Drucker, and Shane's blown tail, "Bongo" Kono. Calvin Sheets and Coy Love were not there, but the other guys he'd photographed up at Arrowhead were. Alexa identified them as ex-cops terminated from "Dream" Sheets's Coliseum detail. Then she caught her breath. "Shit don't like this," she said, her eye pinned to the camera viewfinder.

  "What?"

  "There're two guys from the mayor's staff in there his legislative assistant, Mark somebody, in the suit by the door; and Rob Lavetta, his press-relations guy, the one standing next to Drucker." She handed the camera back to Shane, who took a picture of both men.

  The party was in full swing, everybody drinking beer and dancing to the music, although "dancing" was a conservative description of what was going on. It was more like a group grope in 4/4 time. Dress was optional, with the thousand-dollar girls opting for maximum exposure.

  Shane wanted to photograph everyone, keeping a mental count of whom he had already shot and whom he still needed, waiting for the right moment when the dancers would spin, giving him a good angle of one or both. When he finished, he sat next to Alexa, leaning back against the rusting cylindrical tank.

  "They oughta put these shots in the departmental brochure," he finally said. "We'd end our recruiting problem."

  Alexa volunteered a slogan: "Not just long hours and cold coffee. Police work a changing profession."

  "Whatta you wanna do?" he asked.

  "I don't know…" She winced, then pulled something out from under her. It was a sign she'd been sitting on. They both read it:

  ABRASIVE TANKS MAINTAIN SO-FOOT SAFETY PERIMETER

  They both looked up fearfully at the old rusting tanks they were hiding behind. Then Shane realized that his hand was in something wet, pulled it up, and looked at it.

  "Shit," he said, shaking it dry.

  "Let's move back, get outta here," she said.

  Suddenly they heard laughing nearby. A man's voice: "You're on. Let's do it."

  Shane and Alexa cautiously leaned out and looked at the party. It had now spilled out of the huge building; people were standing around the back of one of the cars parked outside, while Drucker pulled two cardboard boxes out of the trunk. He ripped them open and started handing out shirts to everybody.

  "What the hell are those?" Alexa asked.

  "The jerseys," Shane replied.

  Black football jerseys with red numbers and letters on the back that read: L. A. SPIDERS

  The shoulder trim was done in a pattern resembling a re
d spider web. The cops started moving in a pack up the street with handfuls of beer and their arms draped casually around the hookers.

  "I gotta see this," Shane said.

  He and Alexa followed from the shadows, staying at least a hundred yards behind the group, which was drinking and grab-assing its way along Avenue D until finally they came to the old base athletic building and adjacent field. Shane and Alexa found themselves at the far end of the old field, the grass long dead from lack of water.

  Someone had brought a football, and after more drinking and groping, a very fundamental game of tackle ensued. Slow, looping passes drifted to giggling hooker wideouts who gathered the spirals in without too much interference. The playful tackles were short on violence but long on rolling around on the ground and piling on. The beer kept flowing. The game looked to Shane like a hell of a lot of fun.

  "How do you get a jersey and a place in the lineup?" he wondered.

  "You don't want in that game, Shane. You'd get tired of all the AIDS testing."

  He nodded and smiled. He realized it was the first time she'd used his first name.

  They watched for quite a while and finally decided that everybody was so drunk, this was where the evening would end. They backed out, got over the fence, and returned to the gas station.

  "I hate spiders," she said once they got to their cars.

  "So the jerseys are football, but is this place the Web?"

  "I don't know, must be," she said. "But I can tell you this much: these cops are having choir practice with first-string girls and two guys from the mayor's staff." "Choir practice" was an after-hours police drunk, usually in a park or some deserted place.

  "Gimme the film," she said. "There's an all-night drugstore half a block from my apartment. I'll have the proofs back in two hours."

  He hesitated, then unloaded the camera and gave her the two other exposed film containers.

  They got into their respective cars and started to pull out when Alexa sounded her horn. Shane rolled down his window. She leaned across her front seat, talking through her passenger window. "For whatever it's worth, I believe you. Something big and shitty is going on here. I'm in."

  "Thanks," he said gratefully. Then she waved at him and drove off. It had been more than a week, and she was the first one.

  Chapter 35

  THE PITCHES MOTION

  Shane was on the 405 on his way back from Long Beach when he saw the transition ramp for the Santa Monica Freeway. He wondered whether DeMarco had been working on his case or whether he'd spent the day drinking and listening to rap. He decided to find out. He put on his blinker and made the turn onto the 10. Seven minutes later he was standing on the bike path outside DeMarco's house.

  He hesitated a moment, almost afraid of what he would find. Finally he pushed open the gate, walked up to the front door, and knocked. One of DeMarco's new surfer roommates opened the door. He looked right through Shane and, without saying a word, stepped back and let him in. The boy was wearing surf trunks with no shirt and had an athlete's build. The eyes were where the problem was: empty, hollow tunnels of distrust.

  "DeMarco around?"

  The boy didn't seem to want to waste even one syllable on Shane. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the hallway, then flopped back down on the sofa, where his buddy was lounging with the TV remote. MTV's Real World was on the large Sony. Two teenage girls were on the screen arguing about their gay male roommate's new rottweiler, who apparently was shitting all over their London flat. One of life's smelly little problems. Shane moved through the hall and knocked on the end door. His defense rep called out angrily: "What?!"

  Shane pushed the door open and looked in. For the first time, Dee was hard at it. He had law books and police department manuals open on the cluttered desk in front of him, his half-glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was a blue and gray vision in a faded LAPD sweatshirt and jeans. He had taken his long gray hair out of the knot in back, and it now hung on his shoulders, Cochise-style.

  "How's it goin'?" Shane asked.

  "Don't you wanna give me a Breathalyzer first?" he groused.

  "Come on, Dee, gimme a break."

  The defense rep leaned back in his squeaking swivel chair and swung around to face Shane. "Basically, it ain't getting any better," DeMarco said.

  "You talkin' about the 1.61 Mayweather sent through this morning? I haven't seen it yet. I haven't been home."

  "Copy right here," DeMarco said, picking up a fax and waving it at Shane. "But it's worse than just the 1.61. I found out this afternoon that Donovan McNeil, the only friendly face you had on your judging panel, is no longer able to attend the hearing." DeMarco rooted around his paperwork, found another fax, and held it up. "He's been transferred as of yesterday to the command chair at Administrative Vice in Central Division. Big fucking job. And since that transfer is effective immediately, it has been determined by the Special Investigations Division that, under these extreme circumstances, he does not have the time available to serve on your board. He's been replaced. I guess these Dark Side pricks finally found out you two used t'sling bait together."

  "Who'd we get this time? The chief's brother-in-law?"

  "Nope. The chief's old driver, Leland H. Postil."

  "Fuck," Shane said. "Don't we still get to throw one out?"

  "Yeah, they gave me two choices. The other was Peggy York, former head of IAD. In your absence, I chose Postil."

  "Things can't get much worse," Shane growled.

  "Wanna bet? Check this. I've been trying to restrict Alexa Hamilton's demands for your personal background file. It's full of a buncha unsustained complaints, CO's tardy slips, ridiculous stuff that every cop gets the minute he starts hooking up scumbags and dealing with this nitpick four-hundred-page LAPD Manual. The stuff in those background files is always just unproved bullshit, but it looks bad if you string it out in front of a board hearing."

  Shane was pissed. "Old, unsustained complaints can only be used after the board convicts, //they convict, and then it can only be used as part of the penalty phase of the hearing to help determine past history and state of mind," he said.

  "I see you've been reading Section 202," DeMarco said.

  "I sleep with the fucking thing, for all the good it's doing me."

  "Well, buddy-boy, once again, the powers that control the Special Investigations Division have ruled against you. Alexa filed a Pitches motion to overturn that section of the Police Bill of Rights. The panel granted her motion, and the package went over to her at four this afternoon."

  They sat quietly in the room. Finally DeMarco got up, went to a small refrigerator in the corner of the office, and pulled out a beer. "You want one?"

  "Dee, you've gotta stay off the Bud Lights. Okay?"

  "Fuck you. I'm through listening to that shit from you." He ripped the tab off and took a swallow.

  "I'm hearing around that maybe you have an alcohol problem," Shane said. "I hear that's why you pulled the pin."

  DeMarco looked at him and smiled, then took a long fuck-you swig. "I won't even favor that with an answer."

  "Look, Dee, I'm into something here. I think I've got the mayor tied into a blackmail scheme to trade billions of dollars' worth of property from Long Beach over to L. A. Ray and his den were blackmailing people in Arrowhead so this would happen, most notably Carl Cummins, who's president of the Long Beach City Council. I followed some guys out there to the old naval yard. I've got "

  "You got shit," DeMarco interrupted, slamming the beer can down on his desktop. "Maybe if you'd stop running around, accusing all these high-profile guys of bullshit crimes, we wouldn't be facing all this administrative flack. We wouldn't be losing the Pitches and all our other motions."

  "But "

  "No! Don't 'but' me. Ever since I took this fucking case, you've been accusing me of not trying. The reason we're getting hosed here, buddy, is that you have proceeded to piss off the chief of police, Deputy Chief Mayweather, Ray's rookie den, an
d everybody in between. Add to that the fact that you're acting like you're fucking guilty. What kinda asshole breaks into Warren Zell's office and goes through his files?"

  "Who told you that?" Shane asked.

  "It's all over the department that Alexa Hamilton caught you in there, you dumb shit!"

  Shane stood there, feeling slightly dizzy and stupid as hell. Had Alexa lied? Had she told the department what he'd done? "I… I don't see how "

  "On top of all that, you're about to get arrested for first-degree murder," DeMarco interrupted. "I got a call from the warrant control desk today. They wanted to know if you were here. They've been checking your house and said you're not living there. I think you'd better get in touch with them turn yourself in."

  Shane spun and moved out of the office, back into the hall. DeMarco followed him through the living room and out the front door.

  "If you run, you're making a huge mistake," DeMarco said, standing in his doorway, peering over his half-glasses at Shane on the sidewalk.

  "What else can I do, huh?" Shane answered. "I got nobody but me. If I get arrested, I'm gone without a ripple. Nobody will try and find out what's happening here. If I don't figure it out, I'm gonna go down in front of this rigged murder case." Then he turned and walked up the path. When he arrived at the parking lot two doors away, he got into his car and pulled out onto the highway.

  He decided to go up the coast and cut across town on Sunset, afraid that DeMarco might call the cops down on him. He tried to get his head clear and to organize the facts. But one thought kept coming back.

  Why would Alexa tell about his break-in at Zell's office? Shane could end her career with the information about her throwing his old BOR. Something had to be wrong.

  Less than an hour ago, Alexa had said she believed him.

  Now Shane needed to decide if he could believe her.

  Chapter 36

  THE MONEY SHOT