The Tin Collector

Chapter 38

HE FOUND HER kneeling by the toilet in the bathroom, wearing latex gloves and brushing black granite powder from her field-investigation kit onto the toilet handle with a fine bristle brush. Every detective and patrol officer carried a crime-scene investigation kit in the trunk of his or her car.

"You got gloves?" she asked, glancing back at him, not bothering with a greeting.

"No," he replied woodenly. Alexa reached into her open kit and pulled out an extra pair. "I'm gonna need a set of elimination prints from you. We've also gotta get a set of Chooch's and Long-board's from somewhere."

"Right," he said, and looked around the bathroom. "You get anything yet?"

"Hard to tell. A lot of this is junk, smudged or overlapped. I got a partial palm off that kitchen chair, where somebody must've grabbed it by the back and carried it. I think, from what you described on the phone, the videotaping took place in the center of the living room. They moved the chairs back to the kitchen, but there are fresh indent marks on the living-room carpet. I marked 'em with chalk, so don't step on 'em. I'm gonna take pictures. I emptied the kitchen trash into a towel in the sink, but I haven't gotten to it yet."

Shane moved out of the bathroom and looked at the small living room. "You try the TV?" he called out to her. After a minute she came out of the bathroom with a yellow four-by-five fingerprint identification card in her hand. She leaned down on the dining-room table and labeled a partial print she had just lifted off the toilet flush handle.

"We'll never get a print run with these," Alexa said. "They're mostly partials and smudged. The best we can hope for, if we even catch these perps, is maybe a match on a few of the basic Galton classifieds maybe connect up on some of these ridge endings. The loops, arches, and whorls are pretty smudged."

"Chooch used the TV; maybe the remote has a set of his you can use for elimination," he said.

She took the channel changer, holding it by its side, and started dusting it, dipping the brush into the glass vial of black powder, then softly brushing the fine camel-hair bristles across the remote, looking for graphite residue that would indicate the oil of a fingerprint. She found a few good latents on the underside of the channel-changer, then took the clear tape out of her field kit and lifted the prints, stuck them on the card, and pressed them down, labeling the back of the card, "Channel Changer Right Index and Middle Finger."

While she worked, Shane moved through the apartment. There were no signs of a struggle, no blood, but lots of dirty black powder. She had been working there for quite a while and had left graphite everywhere on the door jamb at shoulder height, where somebody might lean with a palm, against the wall, on the cupboard doors, on the countertops.

Shane put on his latex gloves and began, halfheartedly, poking through the trash collected on the towel lying in the deep kitchen sink. He found a cardboard roll about an inch in diameter and plucked it out, using a pen from his pocket. Then he saw an empty bag of M amp;M's. Longboard was an M amp;M's freak. He pulled it out as well and took both items back into the living room. He handed the cardboard roll to Alexa. "Looks like the core from the roll of silver duct tape," he said.

"I saw that, too," she said. "We can try, but there's so much gummy shit on it, I doubt we'll lift anything." She took the powder and brushed it on the cardboard core, but as predicted, it was too sticky. Powder clung everywhere, turning the core graphite black and revealing nothing.

He told her about Longboard's candy addiction, so she went to work on the M amp;M's wrapper.

"Was there anything on the videotape you can remember that might be helpful?" she asked as she brushed the surface of the wrapper.

"No," he said. "Except there was a shotgun in the side of the frame… a riot pump. Looked like an Ithaca."

"Department issue." She said what he'd been thinking. "I don't think we're gonna find anything. If those guys were cops, they wouldn't leave evidence behind. They were probably all wearing gloves and picked up or flushed everything."

"Speaking of flushes, did you check the trap in the toilet?" he asked.

"No," she said, looking up. "I always hate that job, but I guess we oughta give it a try." She finished with the M amp;M's wrapper, lifting three good prints. "We're gonna need wrenches to get to the toilet trap," she said.

"I'll go see the manager."

"Don't bring him in here," she said sharply.

"Don't worry, I'm not a total idiot," he snapped back, then went down to the front desk, rang the night bell, and got the manager out of bed.

"Trouble with the toilet," Shane lied to the bleary-eyed man, who looked as if he hadn't shaved in two days. Rumpled, tired, and angry, he glowered at Shane from under the harsh light above his desk.

"Shit," the man said.

"You got a pipe wrench? I used to be a plumber. I can clear it for you."

The manager looked at him and computed the odds that Shane might break his toilet against the cost of calling a regular plumber. Money won… South of Main Street, it usually did. The manager moved into the back room and returned with a toolbox.

Shane took it up to the third-floor apartment. He closed the door and put on his gloves, then he and Alexa moved to the bathroom and removed the commode. He took off the porcelain top and plugged the flush valve with toilet paper. Then they began to remove the metal elbow from the back of the toilet.

One of the little-known truths about modern plumbing is that it takes at least two, sometimes three flushes to completely get rid of a bowl load. On more than one drug raid, the perps had flushed the dope with the cops coming through the door, not bothering to repeat the procedure, then were shocked to learn that two or three grams of cocaine remained in the water in the elbow and trap. Liquid samples had rolled up more than one drug dealer. The Drug Enforcement teams called it "the Three-Flush Rule."

They got the elbow off, and toilet water spilled onto the floor. Shane kept from kneeling in it by squatting as he worked. The elbow looked pretty clean, so he went after the trap, which was below the elbow and was there to keep larger obstructions out of the plumbing lines until they dissolved or softened.

"The things one learns in law enforcement," he muttered as he finally got the trap out and took it to the sink, emptying the four-inch cylinder into the basin. The last thing out was fat, round, and dark brown. It landed on the white porcelain like a turd on a wedding cake. The object had a shiny gold band around it.

"Cigar," he said triumphantly, picking it up with his latex gloves. It was a three-quarter-smoked panatela. The gold band said DOMINICAN REGAL.

"I think this is what's commonly called a clue," she said, smiling. "We have us a cigar smoker." She was holding out an evidence bag.

He dropped the mushy stogie inside the glassine pouch, then washed his gloved hands.

Five minutes later they had replaced the toilet fixture, taken the living-room crime scene photos, and were sitting on the cigarette-burned sofa, trying to figure it all out.

"There was no forced entry, so Longboard must have just let the guys in. If they were cops, they probably just flashed a potsy," she said.

"Maybe." His mind was circling a worrisome thought, but he pushed it aside. "Coy Love told me to go home and wait for two or three days. That means whatever it is they're worried about, it goes away after that."

"Makes sense," she answered.

"He also said to forget about the Long Beach Naval Yard and Mayor Crispin."

She nodded, but said nothing.

"These guys aren't gonna turn Longboard and Chooch loose, are they?" he blurted, putting the distressing thought into words. "They're gonna kill 'em."

"Probably," she said. "They'll hold 'em for leverage in case you get restless, but once this is over, they can't leave a kidnapping charge and two vies on the table."

"Shit," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I've fucked this up so bad. It's always like… if I knew yesterday what I know today…"

"Shane, I think we need to tell his mother."

"Yeah. I guess I've been putting that off." He looked at his watch. "It'll be sunup in an hour. Sandy is having sleepovers with some DEA target. She won't be there till sometime after eleven. I'm whipped, but I can't sleep here. How's your place sound?"

"I got a couch you can use," she said, then gathered up all of her stuff and stood in the doorway, looking at the dusted room. "If we leave it like this, you're gonna forfeit your security deposit."

"Fuck it. Let's go."

They closed the door and locked up, heading downstairs. Shane deposited the toolbox behind the counter without ringing the night bell, and they walked out into the street.

"I gotta drop this department car back at the Glass House. I don't wanna disobey any of their instructions. Follow me, then later we can go to Sandy's in your car," Shane suggested.

"My car's at home. I was with a friend when you called. I had him drop me off here. I figured we'd use your car."

"Then who owns that plainwrap?" he said, pointing to the gray Crown Vic across the street. "That's gotta be department issue. No civilian is gonna buy a stripped-down gray sedan with no air and blackwalls."

They moved across the street and looked through the windshield of the locked car. They could see the telltale wires hanging down under the dash, identifying the recessed police radio.

"Yep," she said, "but it's not a detective car. No coffee lids on the dash."

She was right. Since detectives had to do lots of stakeouts, they drank gallons of coffee. The cars were department-owned, so the cops had no pride of ownership. The common practice was to peel the plastic lids off the Styrofoam Winchell's cups and throw them up onto the dash. Shane had never been in a detective's plainwrap that didn't have half a dozen or more plastic lids up there. If the motor pool ever cleaned the interiors, the old, wet rings from the tops stained the dash and remained behind as a permanent testament to the practice.

"Staff car?" he said hesitantly.

They both walked around the Crown Vic, looking through the windows. It had beem immaculately cleaned. All the cars in the staff motor pool were automatically washed and vacuumed once a day by inner-city gangsters dressed in jailhouse orange.

Alexa took out her cell phone and punched in a number. After a minute she got the Communications Center.

"This is Sergeant Hamilton, serial number 50791. I found one of our plainwraps parked in a bad spot. It's a 548E," she said, giving the radio code for a vehicle parked illegally across a driveway. "It should be moved. Could you give me the officer's name so I can contact him to move it?" She listened, then said, "City plate, DF 453." Another wait, then, "Thanks," and she closed the cell, a troubled look on her face.

"Shit, I don't even want to ask," he said.

"It's a Triple-O staff car," she said.

Triple-O stood for the Office of Operations, which reported directly to the chief of police. Shane remembered that the administrative staff of the Office of Operations contained about five men and women, all captains and above. The office acted as an adviser to the chief of police and exercised line-of-command oversight in all divisions. In short, Operations was Chief Brewer's right hand.

"It could have been left here because of the movie," she said hopefully. "Triple-O handles press relations."

"You packing?" he asked.

"Yeah, of course."

"Gimme it. Mine's gone. I've been losing guns faster than winos' teeth."

"What're you gonna do?"

"Break into this thing. I don't wanna fuck around with the lock, standing on a street corner. Lemme have it."

She dug her Beretta 9mm out of her purse and handed it to him. He dropped the clip and handed it back, then tromboned the slide to make sure the chamber was clean. He held the automatic by the barrel, looked both ways for potential witnesses, then broke the side window of the car, shattering glass onto the maroon velour upholstery.

"Dominican Regals are expensive smokes," he said. "I don't know many line cops who can afford ten-dollar cigars."

He opened the door, leaned inside, and started rummaging around. The ashtray was clean. He opened the glove box. There were three objects inside: the departmental registration, indicating that the car was indeed the property of the Los Angeles Police Department; an L. A./Long Beach Thomas street guide; and in the back of the compartment a sealed Baggie containing three fresh Dominican Regal cigars.