The Tin Collector

Chapter 25

IT WAS JUST after ten P. M. when Shane left a brooding Chooch Sandoval with Longboard Kelly. He was driving across town to the Bradbury Building, dressed for a burglary in 211 colors: a black LAPD sweatshirt, black jeans, and Reeboks. He had his.38 backup piece snug against his belt. His badge and ID card, picklocks, and penlight were stuffed in all available pockets.

He pulled off the freeway and drove down Sixth Street, right into the hovering helicopter lights of the Schwarzenegger movie. They were back downtown doing night work, barricades in place, assistant directors and klieg lights glaring. He had hoped he would be able to sneak into IAD, rifle the chief advocate's files, and get out unobserved. The last thing he needed to deal with was this fucking movie.

He got stopped two blocks from the Bradbury by a motorcycle cop, now a potential witness who could put Shane at the location.

He considered turning around and going home but then decided, fuck it, he was running out of options. He had to take the chance.

"Sorry, Sergeant, we're almost on a take," the old motorcycle cop said after Shane badged him. He had outgrown his uniform, which stretched over his belly like a Mexican bandit's faded guayabera.

The LAPD supplied movie companies with police assistance to control crowds and traffic on location, and many of the retired old-timers made some money by working movie gigs. Shane didn't know this officer. He never had many friends in Motors because the officers assigned there were basically "hot pilot" types attitude junkies known on the job as "mustard cases."

"I need to get to my office," Shane explained.

"Lock up traffic. This is picture," the assistant director's voice came over the motor cop's walkie-talkie.

The officer was in his late sixties and looked slightly ridiculous in his too-tight shirt and worn leather knee boots. He held up his hands as if to say there was nothing he could do. The god of cinema had just spoken. "Sorry, we have to wait for the shot," he said.

"It's a good thing the corner bank isn't being robbed," Shane muttered.

They waited while the helicopter hovered loudly overhead. Suddenly a car squealed around the corner of Spring Street, roared down Sixth, skidded sideways, then disappeared around another corner.

"Cut. Release traffic," the AD said over the walkie-talkie, and Shane was finally waved through.

In L. A., movies had their own hallowed place in the subculture. God forbid anybody should fuck with a unit production schedule.

When Shane got to the Bradbury Building, he was greeted by another surprise. The entire north side of the building was flooded by a huge condor light suspended forty feet in the air from a crane. It lit almost the entire city block.

"Shit," Shane muttered. This was getting ridiculous. He was dressed in black, trying to do an illegal entry while a movie was shooting, and the fucking building he was burglarizing was lit up like City Hall. He had already decided not to use the parking structure, because he was pretty sure that the gate had a common security feature that would read his key card, then time-log it, so he parked in a private lot next to a string of honey wagons and dressing rooms.

He locked the Acura and walked past a line of chattering extras, out onto the brightly lit sidewalk. Hugging the bricks of the Bradbury, turtling his head down into his collar, he tried to hide, feeling stupid and exposed like a cockroach scuttling along a kitchen baseboard.

The building was open, as he knew it would be. Advocates often worked late, so the department kept civilian guards on at night. Usually they slept somewhere on the fifth floor.

He walked into the huge lobby and stood in the atrium. The guard desk was empty. He looked up at the advocates' windows on the third floor. The lights were off. He climbed the stairs, his tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor. When he got to three, he headed down the corridor and stood for a moment in front of the advocates' offices, looking through the windows, past the reception desks to the cubbies beyond, where any late-working advocates might be sitting. The place looked empty, and the lights were all off. He knocked loudly on the door.

Shane had a cover story ready. If anybody was inside, he was going to abort and say that he had come back to finish some Xeroxing but first needed to pick up his key.

He knocked again, but nobody answered. Everyone had gone home. He looked up and down the exterior corridor, then pulled out a small leather case and removed a set of picklocks.

Ironically, picking locks was a criminal specialty he had learned from Ray Molar. A good set of picklocks contained an array of long, needle-shaped tools and one long, thin, notched metal strip. Shane slid the notched strip into the lock and jiggled it to find the first tumbler by feel. Then the smaller picks slid in behind it. The idea was to fill as many of the lock's keyed openings as possible so that you had enough leverage to turn all the tumblers inside the bolt. It was not as easy as it looked on TV, where some guy would just slide a credit card into a door and, bingo, he was in. It took Shane almost ten minutes before he could turn the lock and let himself inside.

He stepped onto the gray carpeted area just inside the door, then slowly withdrew the picklocks and returned them to the case. He closed the door and locked it from the inside. He moved down the carpeted hallway between the reception desks and windows, heading quietly toward the chief advocate's office. Shane knew that all of the active IAD cases were in a file cabinet there. He got to the end of the long reception area, pushed open the door to Warren Zell's office, took two steps inside, and stopped to adjust his eyes to the low light.

He had stood right in this same spot yesterday, when Zell had informed him that he was IAD's new Xerox machine operator.

He saw the file cabinet at the far end of the room. As he moved to it, he prayed that the cabinets weren't locked. He didn't want to spend any more time there than necessary. As he crossed the room, he took the small penlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and stuck it in his mouth, gripping it between his teeth. The narrow light hit the top of the metal cabinet, reflecting the beam off its burnished gray finish. He put his hand on the top drawer handle and tugged on it. It slid open. The sound of the little metal rollers filled the room.

He looked down into a file crammed full with case folders; each one had a yellow tab with the officer's name and CF number. He cocked his head to aim the light on the tabs and, working alphabetically, quickly went through the cabinet. In the middle of the top drawer, he found a tab marked L. AYERS. He pulled the file out and opened it. Inside was a single slip of paper with the typed words: