The Tin Collector

Chapter 44

Don't worry, I'll get us there."

It was just after ten P. M. and the last flight to Miami had departed LAX, so Shane drove to the Long Beach Airport. He found the executive jet area and drove along Executive Terminal Row until he found a busy-looking FBO called Million-Air Charters. He pulled into the parking lot next to the mostly glass one-story building, then he and Alexa got out.

"Private jets cost big money," Alexa said

"I've got a hundred thousand in small bills, but we're gonna look like drug dealers, so get your tin ready."

He opened the trunk and retrieved the suitcase with Coy Love's cash bribe inside. They walked into Million-Air Charters, and Shane plunked the leather bag down on the counter.

"We'd like to charter a jet to Miami," he said.

The girl behind the counter was young but no dummy. She took one look at Shane and Alexa's off-the-rack clothes, stole a quick peek at their fourteen-dollar Timex watches, and knew these two were not customers.

Alexa pulled out her LAPD identification and laid it on the desktop. "If you need to talk to a manager, this is police business. We're with the Drug Enforcement Task Force and we have got to get to Miami before morning."

Shane snapped open the suitcase and spun it around, revealing the stack of cash.

"Confiscated drug money," Alexa explained. "We'll need you to receipt it for us." All bullshit, but comforting words when a civilian is looking at a suitcase full of used bills.

"Let me talk to Mr. Lathrope," she said.

Mr. Lathrope wanted to be called Vern; he had hunched shoulders, wireless granny glasses, and hair that had the general shape and texture of a number-nine paintbrush. He looked at the cash and Alexa's badge speculatively, then made a few calls. His weary attitude said he didn't like them, but business was business. "I can have two pilots here in half an hour, then I'll put you in 868 Charlie Papa," he said to Shane.

"What's 868 Charlie Papa?" Shane asked, showing total ignorance of jet charters.

"Tail number. It's the white Gulfstream Three with green stripes," he said, nodding his head toward the window where three or four executive jets were parked.

Shane didn't know a Gulfstream 3 from a palomino pony, but he nodded anyway. " 'Bout how much is that gonna run?" he asked.

"It's fifteen each way, thirty for the whole trip. We won't charge you for hangar time up to five hours; after that, the ground rate is one-half the hourly."

"Not giving us much of a break here, are you, Vern?" Shane said.

"Our prices are competitive. Make as many calls as you want check it out. However, if you're interested in an opinion, it is a bit unusual to be getting paid with used bills out of a suitcase." Stalemate.

Shane moved to the sofa, put the open suitcase on his lap, and began counting out stacks of banded cash. Each packet had fifty twenty-dollar bills in it. Shane counted out thirty stacks, snapped the suitcase shut, then walked up and handed the money to Vern Lathrope, who couldn't get his right eyebrow down from the middle of his forehead.

"I usually have a brown paper bag for transactions like this," Shane said as he shoved the cash over.

Shane and Alexa sat and waited on the expensive calf-leather couches, now clients of Million-Air Charters. Shane made two calls to Sandy, but she didn't pick up and her answering machine was off.

Half an hour later two young pilots in uniforms led Shane and Alexa to the Gulfstream 3 that Shane now realized was the biggest plane sitting on the flight line.

"Vern didn't like taking used cash, but he sure didn't mind renting us the most expensive piece of iron he had," Shane groused.

They stepped on a small rectangular red carpet before climbing the ladder and entering the jet. Then the copilot quickly rolled it up and stuffed it in a luggage compartment, with a "so much for that" smile on his face. He climbed up the stairs and pulled the door up after him. A few minutes later the Gulfstream jet, with Shane and Alexa and nine empty seats, was out on the end of the Long Beach runway, waiting for the tower to green-light the takeoff.

Shane found a beer in the refrigerator and brought one back to Alexa, who had kicked off her shoes and was reclining in the seat.

The plush interior was heavily scented with the smell of English leather. Rich, polished burlwood glistened in the Trivoli lighting. There were Baccarat crystal glasses in slots over a full bar.

"Okay, Shane and Alexa," Bob, their friendly pilot, said. "We're cleared for takeoff, so we're gonna do our thing now. Anything we can get you along the way, we're on channel three on the intercom."

"Thank you," Shane said to the empty cabin.

"I think you have to pick up a little receiver first," she said, smiling at him.

"For thirty grand, Bob can come back here when I want to talk to him." Then he kicked off his loafers and put the seat back. He had chosen to sit across the aisle from Alexa, facing backward so he could look at her.

Suddenly the plane was hurtling down the runway, its wheels coming up immediately on takeoff, climbing fast. They flew out over the ocean, then the pilot made a slow turn and headed east.

Shane and Alexa sat in the luxurious executive jet, sipping imported beer while the plane climbed to altitude and the lights of Long Beach gradually slipped away below the starboard wing.

"I'm gonna try to get some sleep," she said, putting her head back and closing her eyes.

Shane could smell her perfume again; it drifted across the aisle like a carefully thrown net.

"Mayweather's dad was a cop in Illinois," she said unexpectedly, without opening her eyes. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah," Shane said. "Just another grunt in a blue suit, out there hookin' and bookin' assholes for the city."

"My dad was a cop in Hartford, Connecticut," she said, her eyes still closed. "He was a patrol cop but never made sergeant. Couldn't take tests. He froze every time he went up for the exam."

"Oh," Shane said, trying to picture her father. What must he and Mrs. Hamilton have been like to have produced this iron-willed yet exotic-looking creature?

"Did you have brothers or sisters?" he asked, hoping she would open up. After a long moment:

"Two brothers." She started slowly, then it seemed important for her to tell him more. "I was the youngest. My mom died in childbirth. For a long time I thought that was my fault. We had pictures of her all over the house. It was like a shrine. My brothers and I, we tried to imagine what it would have been like to have her around. I used to wonder if she was in heaven looking down, mad at me for causing her death, so I tried to make her happy by doing all the chores: cleaning up after Dad and my two brothers, doing dishes, washing clothes, trying to take her place but knowing I never could." She stopped, the memory somewhat painful, then went on. "Dad remarried when I was fifteen, and we got Karen, who was nice but kind of distant. It was like Dad's three kids were some sort of mistake that she was forced to accept in the deal. I went to college on a track scholarship at UCLA sprints and hurdles. I was there about ten years after Mayweather, but they still talked about him on Bruin Sports Radio, particularly during Bruin basketball games. He was a big deal, even years after he graduated. They all said he should have made the pros, but he ended up on the police force instead…

"It felt shitty watching him plead and beg down there… Somebody special that everybody looked up to turns out to be a self-centered shitball. Down there in that tunnel, I lost something. I don't know why it should affect me, but it does."

He was looking at her, wondering if she was ever going to open her eyes.

"Is that enough personal history?" she said, shining her blues at him again.

"Are you mad at me for some reason?" he asked. "You seem pissed off."

She sat still for several moments.

"Yeah… I guess I am. I wanted this career, wanted to believe in it. I wanted Mayweather to be stand-up. I actually liked him once. Respected him. Life is full of disappointments. I'll get over it. I wanted Santa Claus to come down the chimney with toys made at the North Pole especially for me."

He studied her, his dark, intense eyes trading her amp for amp.

"But just so you don't get the wrong idea, Shane, I don't think it's your fault this is happening. You just got put in the soup. You didn't ask for this any more than I did. It happened to you, and I'm in this with you because to do anything else is unthinkable."

There was a long silence. He was trying to think of the right thing to say. Finally he just smiled.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

They didn't speak again until they landed.

Before he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, he glanced over at her. Her shoes were off, feet up on the seat facing her, those restless ice-blue lasers sheathed now. She was breathing rhythmically, sleeping peacefully.

He tried to picture her as a child, a little girl wondering if she'd killed her mother during her own birth, carrying that burden around with her. Just as he'd carried the idea that he had not meant enough to his own parents to have them hold on to him even for one day. He'd been left at the hospital like trash put out by the back door.

He had often tried to picture his parents… Who were they? Did they go to college? Were they just teenagers who got careless and conceived him in a drive-in movie and decided to run? Were they hicks from Alabama, driving a pickup and drinking sour mash from a jug, with no money to raise him? Was he part Jewish or Italian or Irish? Did his mom and dad ever think about him and feel bad about what they'd done?

Why had they left him without even a first name pinned to his shirt?

He'd spent his life struggling to move past it, struggling to overcome it, finally using Chooch as a way to pull himself up, until he discovered that Chooch had become more important to him than the whole tired problem that had been weighing him down in the first place.

Alexa had been struggling, too. Internal Affairs was the perfect place for her. Weeding out the bad ones, making another house clean, all the time looking up, wondering if her mother hated her… wondering if she was good enough to be forgiven.

He admired her for it, but it also made him sad.

The sound of the huge jet engines hypnotically hummed in his ear. I wonder if, despite all that's happening, I'm actually beginning to feel something important for this woman.

Then Shane Scully, whose first given name was Infant 205, finally closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Shane dreamed about Chooch. The boy was on a vast beach, flying a kite over the ocean, but the kite was all black and dipping dangerously, diving toward the surface before straightening up again. Each time it seemed to get lower and lower.

"Shane, help me!" he was yelling. "It's going to crash!" Shane was moving toward him, but the faster he ran, the farther away Chooch i emed to be. If Shane didn't stop the kite's wild flight, he knew it would all end in disaster.