The Tin Collector

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:

The shoulder trim was done in a pattern resembling a red 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.