The Tin Collector

Chapter 13

A LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL is always delivered to an accused officer and is, in essence, a summons and complaint. It gives the preliminary results of the IAD investigation and the determination by the department of the appropriate form of adjudication.

Shane had received the letter just before going out the door to pick up Chooch from school. He ripped open the brown envelope with trembling fingers. He had figured it would be bad, but this was even worse than he had expected. He shook with rage as he read the allegations. Then he stuffed the document into his side pocket and headed out the back door. Fuck 'em, he thought, I'm not gonna plead this out. I'm gonna fight it.

He pried the crushed front fender farther away from the tire, using the Acura's tire jack. Then as he took the 405 over the hill to Coldwater, he turned on his cell phone to call his new defense rep, Rags Whitman. He had talked with him once yesterday, but Rags was in the middle of defending another BOR, so they had agreed to meet at six that evening.

He punched the number into his cell phone.

Rags Whitman was on a break outside hearing room three when he answered the phone. Internal Affairs had rented the top three floors of the Bradbury Building in downtown L. A. It was a beautiful turn-of-the-century structure with a glassed-in courtyard and black wrought-iron banisters. Because Parker Center had become so overcrowded, the entire Advocate Section of IAD, as well as its four main hearing rooms, had been moved to this architectural treasure at the corner of Broadway and Third.

"Yeah," Rags answered in his surprising soprano voice.

"It's Shane. I just got the Letter of Transmittal."

"Bad?" Rags asked.

"They suspended me without pay. They're alleging I shot Ray because I used to date Barbara. It's total bullshit!"

"You'll probably do much better with DeMarco, if that's the way they're going. He fights gladiator-style."

"DeMarco won't take the case."

"He changed his mind. Your machine was turned off. He's been trying to reach you all afternoon. He didn't have your mobile number, so I gave it to him. The way this is going, you better start leaving your cell phone on."

"Oh," Shane said. He'd turned his answering machine and cell phone off because he was afraid that Barbara would call. He'd been having second thoughts about seeing her and wanted to put some distance between them for the time being. "You got his number handy? I don't have it with me."

Rags Whitman gave it to him, and Shane dialed.

"Go," DeMarco said when he answered. Shane could hear a mellower brand of rap being played in the room behind the conversation. This time he thought it was L. L. Cool J.

"It's Shane."

"Where've you been? I changed my mind. I gotta get one more swing at that bitch advocate Alexa Hamilton. I've been trying to reach you all day."

"I had my cell off by mistake. I'm glad you reconsidered. I got this fucking Letter of Transmittal. It's a complete load a' shit. They're fuckin' me over, Dee."

"Meet me at the beach as soon as you can."

"I've gotta go pick up a friend's kid at school. I promised his mother. Okay if I bring him?"

"Sure, I'll meet you at the Silver Surfer. It's a bar-restaurant on the Strand, about six doors up from my place. How 'bout an hour?"

"How 'bout an hour and a half?"

"See ya then."

"Hey, Dee… thanks. I feel better with you on this. I wanna go to war. I don't wanna plead out this bullshit. I wanna fight it."

"We'll talk in an hour."

When he arrived at Harvard Westlake, Brad Thackery was waiting for him. Thackery followed Chooch to the car and immediately came around to the driver's side.

"We still haven't heard from Chooch's mother," he said angrily, shoving his thin, pinched features and wiry hair down into Shane's face.

Chooch got in the passenger side and pretended to pay no attention, looking out the side window at the football field.

"Whatta you want me to do about it?" Shane said sharply.

"I want you to have Mrs. Sandoval get in touch with my office."

"I told her to call you two days ago."

"Obviously, neither you nor she have any idea of the seriousness of Chooch's situation. This is about his future here at Harvard Westlake."

"I told Sandy. I can't do more than that."

"Facta non verba" Thackery said with a smirk, then added, "Actions speak louder than words."

"Gobbelus feces" Shane replied, and after a second to figure it out, Chooch burst into laughter.

Shane put the car in gear and pulled out onto Coldwater. He was smoking mad. Of course, he knew it wasn't Thackery, it was his whole damn life that was pissing him off.

"Gobbelus feces. Eat shit pretty fuckin' good," Chooch crowed.

"Calm down, will ya… it wasn't that funny."

Chooch looked at him carefully, then turned off his headset and put the rig back into his book bag.

"Don't worry about Thackery, okay? It doesn't matter that Sandy didn't call. They're gonna throw me out anyway. It's a done deal. I'm not even in regular classes anymore. I'm in detention. They don't care if I do my homework or not. They're just sitting on me till they can tell her I'm dust."

"Shit," Shane said. "Good goin'."

"I don't care, so don't sweat it."

"Yeah, that's right, I forgot. I'm just this month's paid jerkoff."

"That was before. You're not a paid jerkoff anymore. You've been promoted."

"To what?" Shane was barely paying attention. His mind was spinning, a kaleidoscope of horrible, career-ending problems.

"You're my doobie brother," Chooch said with a grin, "my ganja gangtsa and Rasta weed warrior."

"Listen, Chooch, you gotta forget about that. Okay? I'm having a rough time right now, I'm not thinking straight. That was a huge mistake."

"Shit, it was the first thing you did that I liked. Showed me some stones, man. No other cop I know would sit around with some kid and bogart a fatty."

"Chooch, if you tell anybody about that, I'm gonna kill ya."

"No sweat. I can keep a secret." He smiled, then put his headphones on again and cranked up the tunes. He stayed plugged in until Shane made the turn onto the Santa Monica Freeway. It was the wrong way home, so Chooch took off his headset and looked over. "Where we going?"

"I gotta go to a meeting down at the beach. It should only take an hour, maybe less. You can hang for a while, okay?"

Chooch cocked an eyebrow. "Something's going on, right? You're in the soup, just like me, aren't ya?" he said with surprising intuition.

"It's okay. I can handle it."

They shot off the end of the freeway, back onto the Coast Highway. Five minutes later Chooch and Shane were walking through the front door of an almost empty bar-restaurant with a sawdust floor and a neon sign that read SILVER SURFER.

It was 4:15 in the afternoon.

???

They found DeMarco seated at the bar. He was wearing cutoffs and a blue-jean vest with no shirt, working on his third beer. The other two empty brown glass longnecks were lined up on the bar beside him.

When Shane introduced DeMarco to Chooch, the teenager looked at the longhaired defense rep and smiled. "Cool fuckin' earring, dude."

"I like your friend, Scully. You're finally kicking." The defense rep smiled at Shane.

"Is it okay for him to be in here?" Shane asked, referring to the fact that they were in a bar that served hard liquor.

"Yeah, he can go play the video games over there. Technically, that's not in the bar area."

Shane dug into his pockets and gave Chooch some change.

The boy moved over to a small alcove in sight of the bar, sat on a stool, and began feeding coins into one of the machines.

Shane slid the Letter of Transmittal over to DeMarco, who read it carefully, then set it on the bar between them. "Mark, gimme another Lone Star," he yelled. "How 'bout you?" he asked Shane.

"Slow down on the brewskies, will ya? I'm on fire here."

"Then you're in luck. With this bladder, I can piss it out for you," DeMarco quipped. "In your telephonic absence, I went ahead and covered some pro forma ground. Tell ya this much, Alexa Hamilton doesn't let much grass grow under her magnificent gym-trained ass. She already got the rotation list for your judging panel and faxed it to me. Seven names: four sworn members of the department above the rank of captain and three civilians. If you remember how it works from before, you get to throw off two of the cops and two of the civilians, leaving you a panel of three judges: two sworn, one civilian." He reached into his blue-jean vest pocket and pulled out two slips of paper. "This ain't much of a beauty contest," he said, sliding both slips over to Shane. "In my opinion, all of these department guys are douche bags. Tell me who you like. I hate the whole bunch." DeMarco read the names aloud while Shane studied the list. "Captain Donovan McNeil, West Division; Commander Mitchell Van Sickle, Ad Vice; Deputy Chief Laurence Gadsworth he's the chief's administrative staff officer, so forget him; and Captain Bernard Cookson."

"Jesus," Shane said, "except for Donovan McNeil, who I used to go fishing with occasionally, aren't these guys all in Chief Brewer's golf foursome?"

"Yep. But it gets worse. Look't the civilians: all lawyers from South Temple Street; one's a retired judge, a Crispin crony, of course. I checked the others all work at the municipal courthouse and all have strong political ties to Mayor Crispin. This guy here, Knox Pooly, actually chaired his committee to reelect."

"What's going on here, Dee? This isn't right."

"No shit. You're getting screwed without the Vaseline. If Donovan's an old friend, I'm surprised he made this list of suckfish."

"He figures. A year ago he was the chief's community affairs officer. They probably picked him not knowing he was a friend of mine."

"Okay, so we keep him on the list and hope that he'll at least have divided loyalties. Who else?"

"Not Deputy Chief Gadsworth, of course. I'll take Commander Van Sickle." Shane looked at the list of three civilians and cocked an eyebrow at DeMarco for help.

"Beats me," DeMarco said. "Throw 'em out alphabetically or just drop 'em over your shoulder and the one closest to the door stays. Good a way as any."

"I'll take Clifford Finch. At least he's a defense attorney."

"Okay, then your panel is Captain Donovan McNeil, Commander Van Sickle he'll be the chairman, based on rank and Cliff Finch. Good fuckin' luck. This bunch would convict Santa Claus of home invasion, but I'll notify Alexa that these are our choices."

Shane sat and brooded as DeMarco was served his fourth beer, then started to gulp it down. "Go easy, will ya?" Shane murmured.

"When I'm being fucked, it feels better if I get a little loaded first," DeMarco said dourly. He picked up the Letter of Transmittal and reread the Rationale Section. "Two things here; let's take 'em in order. One: they think you took something from Ray's home."

"It's bullshit. I don't know anything about it."

"You wouldn't hold back on me again, would you, Shane? You did last time."

"I don't know what they're talking about."

"Okay, so what's with this old fistfight in the garage at Southwest Division?"

"Nothin', just frayed nerves. It was way back in '84, for God's sake. You and I were just going through the BOR. I was uptight. I boiled over, that's all."

"Shane, you gotta tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; otherwise, we're gonna get blackjacked at that board. I'm gonna ask you again. What the fuck was going on between you and Ray and Barbara? Why did you get into that fight?"

"We never talked about it, but you knew who really beat that Hispanic kid half to death."

"My guess it was Ray." "Right."

"So, not that it matters all these years later, but why don't you do me a favor and finally spit it out. Tell me what happened."

"I was in a gas station, taking a leak. I came back to where our patrol car was parked, and Ray was beating this kid with his baton. I broke it up. If I hadn't stopped it, Ray would have killed him. Then, after the complaint got filed by the boy's family, Ray begged me to take the blame. The kid's head injuries had him blank on the incident. He couldn't remember who hit him. Since I was just a probationer and had no complaints on my record, Ray convinced me I would probably get only a few weeks' suspension. He said he'd make up my lost pay out of his own pocket. I was his partner real young, impressionable. Back then I was just like some of these rookies today. I thought he was the best cop on the streets of L. A. He had a way of getting to you, making you believe in him. And he was brave. More than once he risked his life for a brother officer. His two Medals of Valor were not bullshit. So I said okay. I took the complaint for him. But later, while you and I were going through the hearing, I started having nightmares. In those dreams, Molar and I would both be beating that kid. We'd be taking turns. I'd wake up sweating, hating myself. I was under a lot of stress back then, and I guess it was the beginning of my seeing Ray for what he really was a vicious, violent son of a bitch who wasn't a cop so he could protect and serve. He was a cop so he could kick ass and hold court in the street…

"It boiled over that night in Southwest. Barbara had just broken up with me. I was under investigation at IAD, and I just snapped. I yelled at him. He went into the coffee room, got a pitcher of ice water out of the refrigerator, told me to cool off, and threw it on me. I pushed him; he fell; we ended up in the parking garage. It wasn't much of a fight."

"You were way out of your weight division," DeMarco said softly. "He had almost a hundred pounds on you."

"That's the whole story."

Again, DeMarco swigged on the beer. He put the bottle down and began making Olympic rings on the varnished bartop, stamping them out with the bottle's wet bottom. Finally he wiped his artwork away with his palm. " 'Nother longneck, Mark," he shouted.

"Listen, Dee… I hate seein' "

"Give it a rest. Okay?" DeMarco said sharply. "Don't tell me how to lead my life. While you were running around with your cell phone turned off, I've been working this thing. I'm not through filling you in yet, so shut the fuck up." Shane nodded. "This morning I wrote up a standard petition to overturn the 1.61 and requested your return to duty. It's kinda pro forma when a police officer has been suspended without pay, like an automatic appeal, only I've never seen one get approved before. Guess what? You're the exception." He reached into his back pocket and shoved a fax over to Shane. "Signed by the Big Noise himself." Shane looked at the document. It was as DeMarco said, signed by Chief Burleigh Brewer. "The whole shebang, from application to acceptance, took two hours. Now go figure that."

"I can't," Shane said, staring at the fax in disbelief. The document put him right back on duty with full pay. It didn't make sense in the face of everything else.

"I called Bud Halley and asked him about it. He told me Tom Mayweather walked it through the system personally. However, Halley also told me where they've reassigned you. You're not in Southwest Detectives anymore."

"Where am I?"

"You ain't gonna believe it…"

"Oh, shit. What is it this time, the grain and drain train at the city jail?"

"You've been assigned to the chief advocate's office at Internal Affairs."

"I've been what?!" he said, his voice so loud that Chooch momentarily turned away from the video game he was playing and looked in their direction.

"You report to the tin collectors at the Bradbury Building at eight-thirty A. M. tomorrow."

"That's nuts. I've never heard of an officer awaiting a Board of Rights being assigned to the very division that's trying to terminate him."

"Me neither. But after thinking it over…"

"They want to keep me where they can watch me," Shane said.

"A winnah. Give the man something from the top shelf. You is da new Dark Side kick-me. I guess Chief Brewer doesn't want you running around looking for whatever it is they think you took out of Ray's house. They want you on a tight leash."

The bartender brought DeMarco his new beer. He took three long swallows, then set it down with the others. "All in all, not a good start, Shane, but rigged boards are my specialty. These tin-collecting assholes can be had 'cause they all got target fixation. Just go down there and keep your nose clean. Let me do the grunting and groaning."

As he sat on the barstool, looking at the old defense rep, his heart sank, taking his hopes down with it. He had no choice. He had to go down to Internal Affairs. He'd been ordered, and failure to comply with a direct order was also a termination offense.

The only bright spot was that he was still on the payroll. He'd still collect his bimonthly base salary of $2,170.20, plus his teji-year longevity compensation of $60. In return, he'd be working down at IAD, forced to endure the biggest collection of milk-fed assholes on the planet. As he sat there, he decided that he would devote all of his nonworking hours to finding out what was missing from Ray's house.

"Yes! Kick ass!" Chooch yelled suddenly as his game buzzed victory and he was advanced to the next level.

"Don't worry, Shane. I'll unwind this for you. I'll get you off," DeMarco said, causing Shane to look back at him.

"Factus non verba" Scully said darkly.