The Tin Collector

Chapter 43

HE WAS BACK in the parking lot, studying the fourteen-story steel-and-glass building in Long Beach. They had waited for the sun to go down. It was 8:05 on Saturday night, and they were still using the staff car Shane had been given up in Arrowhead. Across the street, roof letters announced Spivack Development Corporation in five-foot-high blue neon.

"I feel like Bonnie and Clyde. Do you have this effect on everybody?" Alexa said. She was sitting in the Crown Vic next to Shane, putting on a pair of latex gloves so she wouldn't leave her prints behind, both of them feeling a sense of awkwardness from the passionate lovemaking they'd engaged in a few hours before.

"Y'know, you're the last person I would ever have thought I'd be pulling a second-story job with," he finally said. She ignored it.

"You said you were here before. Did you scout it? You got a way into this place?" She was all business, putting that memory out of reach, taking the binoculars out of the glove box, unwinding the strap and training them on the building.

"Look, things have changed. We both know it," he said softly.

"Yes, but… Shane, it's dangerous. We have to be either cops or lovers. We can't be both. You've seen what a mess that turns into when it happens… For now, we gotta do the job."

He knew she was right and finally nodded.

"So, did you scout it?" she asked again.

"Yeah… we can get to the roof by way of the fire stairs. Go down through a special staircase up there for the helicopter pad. It leads right down to Spivack's floor. The fire doors have interior bolt locks except on the first floor."

She nodded. "Y'know what pisses me off?"

"Ummmn," he answered, putting on his own pair of gloves.

"These binoculars piss me off Bushnell 16x35s with a waterproof case. I worked Southwest Patrol for three years with a cracked pair of six-power prewar Lens Masters with one side out of whack. Couldn't focus the right eyepiece, asked for new binocs ten, twelve times, was told it wasn't in the budget. And here, in this staff car, they leave 'em under the seat like throwaways."

"Yeah, and we don't get sailboats, either."

She didn't answer but continued to focus the binoculars on the building. "You think we try for the roof? Go up through the fire stairs, pry the lock up there, then go down one floor, hope the interior doors aren't wired?"

"You're a fun date," he said, finishing with his gloves, snapping the wristbands while she lowered the glasses.

"Spivack builds shopping centers and commercial real estate all over the place, right?" she said.

"Yeah, malls, sports complexes, city buildings anything where you've got high budgets and low administrative supervision costs."

"Tony Spivack, Logan Hunter, Chief Brewer, Mayor Crispin, and Ray Molar quite a five-man team," she said.

"With Tom Mayweather still at point guard. Seems pretty obvious they stole this land in Long Beach the naval yard to build something. Hotels or a huge resort would be my guess. It's right on the bay…"

"Why would Logan Hunter be part of it? He's a movie guy."

"I don't know. He likes press… maybe it's gonna be his new studio, with a theme park like Universal's… call it the Web. Lotsa rides, lotsa fuzzy cartoon characters greeting you at the gate in chipmunk costumes. Who the fuck knows?"

"Let's go," she said. "This isn't gonna get any easier the longer we wait."

They got out of the car and moved across the parking lot.

"If we get stopped, flash your tin," he said.

"Always my tin, my gun."

"You collected mine already, remember?"

"Stop bitching," she said, but they were both smiling.

Strange how that can happen, in the midst of losing Chooch and Brian. Despite feeling devastated in the face of that loss, he had first had a moment of uncontrolled sexual passion with her and now he was grinning like an idiot, adrenaline driving his emotions, skewing his senses while keeping his vision bright… both of them acting like kids snatching a pie off a bakery-shop windowsill.

They got to the side of the building and began walking around it, looking for the fire door. There were several private security guards inside. Shane and Alexa could see them in the lobby looking out through the glass at them.

"Gimme your hand," he said.

She immediately reached out and took his, strolling lazily beside him, putting her head on his shoulder. They looked like two lovers going nowhere special, nuzzling and feeling it again: a new sense of closeness.

Shane was acutely aware of her perfume, and in that moment, while they were pretending to be lovers, he felt something strange and confusing and powerful stir inside him. The feeling was undeniably strong but totally inappropriate in the middle of a hot prowl, so he bundled it up, stowed it on a top shelf in the back of his mind, slammed the cupboard shut, and saved it for later. He turned his thoughts instead toward the fire door coming up on the left.

She took her latex-gloved hand away from his and tried the door. It was locked.

"I have keys," he said, removing his little leather pouch of picklocks.

"No way," she said, looking askance at the burglar tools.

"Stand back. I'm not as good as Ray was, but I'll have this open in a sec." He went to work on the lock while she turned and watched the terrain behind him, making sure no slow-moving Long Beach patrol car came upon them unexpectedly.

After a moment he manipulated the last pick in the lock and felt it hook down into the tumbler inside the door. He was ready to turn the knob. "Okay, all set," he said.

She turned back to him. "What about the alarm?" she asked.

"What about it?"

"Won't it go off when we open it?"

"Here's the way I have this figured," he said. "If there's an alarm on this door, then when I open it, it will damn sure go off. If there isn't one, then my thinking is, it won't."

"Asshole."

"Of course, if it rings, we need to fall back and think up a new strategy. I'm not good with alarms; I haven't had time to perfect that talent yet."

"Let's go. Do it," she said, and watched breathlessly as he put his hand on the knob.

He felt the lock turn and then pushed the door open.

Nothing!

They ducked into the dimly lit concrete stairwell and closed the exterior door.

"That's amazing," she said. "Why wouldn't they have this door rigged?"

"They did. I unplugged it yesterday afternoon when I was here. The unit box is in the sub-basement." He smiled while she glared. "Come on, lighten up. I wanted you to experience the whole thrill."

Then he turned and ran up the stairs, taking the first flight two at a time.

It took them almost five minutes to get up to the roof, then they were standing in the reflected glow of the five-foot blue letters while Shane went to work on the roof door.

"This leads right down to the lobby on the top floor," he said.

"Is this alarm unhooked, too?"

"I hope so. The panel was a little confusing down there. I had to straight-wire a lot of shit."

"So you are an expert on alarms."

"Ray always said the picks are worthless if you set off alarms."

"Some probation training you got."

He finally had the door open, and the two of them went down the one flight to the fourteenth floor. The interior door to the helicopter stairs was unlocked, and in another minute or so, they were inside the steel-and-glass offices of Spivack Development Corporation. The only thing missing was the blond ice goddess behind the reception desk.

They moved through the lobby into the back, where they found themselves in a long, narrow hallway decorated with artistic schematics of past Spivack developments. Huge hotels and major airport buildings hung in stainless-steel frames. The renderings were crisp line drawings with pastel watercolors. They passed out of the corridor into a huge drafting area. "I wonder where Tony Spivack lives," Shane said.

After a few more minutes of searching, they found his office, fronted by a vast secretarial area and a set of mahogany doors with ANTHONY J. SPIVACK engraved on an antique silver plaque.

Shane turned the doorknob and pushed it open. They entered an ornate, palatial office: red carpet, embroidered drapes, and a mixture of furniture styles; French armoires and steel-and-glass tables populated the room. Shane moved to the immense plate-glass window that overlooked the city of Long Beach. He could see the domed city hall and, way off to the west, the Queen Mary sparkling with lights. Beyond that, he knew, was the Long Beach Naval Yard, which was magnetic north because everything pointed to it.

"We've gotta go through his files, see if we can find the project drawings," he said, still looking out the window, struck by the view: the shimmering Pacific Ocean beyond a ribbon of moonlit sand.

"Shane, look at this," he heard her say.

He turned, and she was no longer in the office.

He found her standing in the adjoining conference room. There was a magnificent 1:16 architectural model on a ten-foot-long side table. It covered the entire tabletop and was ten by five feet. Shane approached the huge model and saw that it was the architectural layout for the five-hundred-acre Long Beach Naval Yard project.

The plaque read: