The Tin Collector

Chapter 8

TRAFFIC WAS JAMMED UP because some jackass had issued a motion-picture permit to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that was now shooting on Wilshire at Spring Street. The film crew had moved in downtown, parking their honey wagons, dressing rooms, and sixteen-wheelers up and down the curb on Third, laying out barricades and blocking traffic for ten city blocks. Shane couldn't believe that some dummy in city government had signed a film-location permit that would tie up all of downtown L. A. Twice, Patrolman Church had to get out of his car and talk to an off-duty policeman working for the movie company so they could get through.

After struggling for over forty minutes, they finally drove into the parking structure next to Parker Center. They both found a spot on the top level. Shane got out of his car, and Joe Church immediately joined him.

"Damn movie has this town tied up worse than my colon,"

Church growled as they looked at a low-flying helicopter that was hovering half a block away. There was a cameraman hanging out of the side door in a harness. Suddenly the rotors changed pitch, and the silver-and-red Bell Jet Ranger took off after a car that was speeding down barricaded Main Street after a motorcycle, Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking ass on celluloid.

"Let's go," Church said, getting back to business, taking Shane by the arm.

"I can make it. Even go to the bathroom now without Mommy's help."

"Don't be an asshole, Scully. I've got orders."

Shane decided not to push it, but he pulled his arm free and followed Church into the building.

For the second time in four hours, he found himself back on the ninth floor. They moved off the elevator, onto the thick, sea-foam green carpet, past the blond paneling and executive furniture, until he was finally standing in front of a massive woman who sat behind an oak desk the approximate size and shape of a Nimitz class carrier. She was parked directly outside Chief Burleigh Brewer's office.

Joe Church had shifted gears. No longer the stern centurion, he was now wearing an ingratiating, apple-polisher's smile. "Patrolman Church," he effused. "I was called specifically by Chief Brewer for this assignment. I've brought Sergeant Scully in. It was a 'forthwith.' "

"Thank you, Officer," the linebacker-sized woman said. Her heavy body wasn't helped by the shoulder pads in her tan suit coat. The name on her desk plate read CARLA MILLER. "YOU can sit down over there, Sergeant," she said to Shane, pointing to a chair. Joe Church took a position of advantage, guarding the exit.

"Jeez, Church," Shane growled, "I'm not Clyde Barrow. I'm not gonna shoot my way outta here. Try giving it a rest."

Carla Miller nodded to Church. "We'll be okay."

Church shuffled his feet, flashed a gee-whiz smile, and a few seconds later backed out of the office and was gone.

Carla buzzed Chief Brewer and talked to him softly for a second, then hung up the phone.

Shane waited in the chair for almost thirty minutes, watching the efficiency with which Carla Miller fended off appointments and people. She was a tough, competent goalie, crouching in the net, deflecting problems. She never looked at him once. Outside, he could hear the distant drone of the movie helicopter as it whirled and turned, its rotors whining above the streets of L. A.

Suddenly the intercom buzzed. Carla picked up the phone, listened, then looked at Shane. "You can go in now."

He got up and moved into Chief Brewer's office. The first thing that struck him was that the movie helicopter seemed to be almost inside the office. The chief had a huge expanse of glass. You could see all the way down Main Street to the Financial Center. The Bell Jet Ranger was hovering loudly only fifty feet from the chief's plate-glass window. It was a startlingly eerie effect.

Chief Brewer's back was to him. He was looking out the window at the chopper and the movie company in the street below. The camera ship hovered, stirring air gusts against the window. The rotor sound inside the office was almost deafening. Shane could see the pilot's features clearly. The cameraman hanging from straps inside the open side door was still hunched over the eyepiece. It occurred to Shane that while he had been outside, waiting with his heart in his throat, his police commander had been watching them shoot this fucking movie.

Then Chief Brewer turned. Making it worse, he was holding a pair of field glasses. He set them down on his desk and motioned to Shane to come forward.

"You wanted to see me, sir." Shane's voice was lost in the noise from the helicopter. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach he knew that what he was about to be told was not going to be good. Sergeants get summoned to the COP's office for only two reasons, and Shane was pretty sure he wasn't about to get another Meritorious Service commendation.

Then the chopper turned and flew away abruptly, photographing some part of the movie in the street below. The silence that ensued was a blessing.

"Sergeant Scully, you've had a busy morning," the chief said. He was a stout forty-five-year-old red-haired man with cheeks that always seemed to have a ruby blush. He had his suits carefully tailored to hide a growing midsection. Recently he had added rimless glasses that blended a touch of severity into an otherwise unremarkable face.

"Yes, sir. Busy morning, sir," Shane said, trying to read where this was going.

"Movies," the chief said. "Boy, they use a fuck of a lot of equipment. They've got four whole blocks tied up down there. Three helicopters. That one there is the camera bird. God knows what the other two are for. We let 'em use one of the police choppers for a picture ship."

"That's very generous, sir. I'm sure they're grateful."

"It's a Schwarzenegger flick called Silver and Lead. He plays a cop who breaks up an armored-car robbery. It's a silver shipment, but it turns out the robbery is just a decoy to pull the cops away from a presidential assassination. Arnold signed a copy of the script for me," Chief Brewer bragged.

"Bet that'll be worth a few bucks." Shane felt like a moron, standing there with his asshole puckered, talking about the movie business.

"People would feel a lot better about you, Sergeant, if you were more of a team player."

No segue. One moment it's show biz, the next it's team ball.

"Oh?" Shane said. "I think I'm a good team player, sir. Check with my captain, my watch commanders."

"I'm not talking about your field performance, Scully. I'm sure you're a good detective. That's not what this is about. What I'm talking about is attitudinal."

"Attitudinal?" Shane was lost. He didn't have a clue.

"Sometimes a guy will find himself in a position where he thinks maybe he's got an advantage. He thinks maybe he got lucky, stumbled into a piece of good fortune, but the fact is, he's not lucky at all. Fact is, he's stepped in a vat of shit and doesn't even know it. Then he's isolated a marked man. That's not a good thing. It's better if you're a part of the team."

"Exactly what is it we're talking about, sir? I'm kinda lost."

"Are you? How come I knew that's what you were going to say?" Chief Brewer stood there, looking at Shane as if he were a grease spot on one of his new silk suits. Then he let out some more line. "Sergeant, there are items missing from Lieutenant Molar's case files. According to his duty logs, they were in his house before you shot him. They are no longer there. We questioned his wife. We believe she knows nothing. That leaves you. You were in a position, after you killed him, to remove those items."

"And you think I have them?"

"These items might appear to you to be some kind of windfall or perhaps something an ambitious person might think he could use to his advantage. They aren't what they appear to be. Lieutenant Molar was involved in something very sensitive, and he had the full cooperation of this office. This material could easily be misinterpreted if it got into the wrong hands. It needs to be returned now!"

"Sir, I don't have anything of Ray's. Nothing."

"I fully expected you to deny this because we both know it's against departmental regs to remove another officer's case material. You could be terminated if you admit you took it. However, Sergeant, there are things in this life that are worse than job termination. I expect that you're going to continue to deny it until the full gravity of the situation becomes clear to you, but by then it may be too late. There may be nothing I can do to help you."

"What items?" Shane's heart was pounding now. He was feeling as if he were trapped in a nightmare and couldn't find a way to wake up. "I didn't take anything," he repeated.

"In which case, you probably wouldn't object to taking a polygraph test."

"A polygraph? I… I don't even have a defense rep yet. I… I'm not sure I want to submit to a lie detector test without legal advice."

"Again, exactly what I thought you would say. Believe me, Scully, you're making a horrible mistake."

"Sir, I'm not saying I won't take a polygraph. It's just… I'm having a hard time figuring out what's going on. I shot a man who was trying to kill me. He'd been beating his wife with a nightstick. Since that happened, my shooting review was canceled. I understand my case is being directed to a full administrative hearing, and now you're telling me I'm supposed to have stolen something from Lieutenant Molar's house? I took nothing, sir. I'll swear an affidavit to that fact."

The chief made a waving motion, brushing all this aside. "Here's my deal, Scully and if you know what's good for you, you better take it. You've got four hours to turn over what you took. Drop the material off here. If you think you can use it to extract either money or career advantage, then you're going to find out that the entire city of Los Angeles, from Police to Sanitation, will go to war against you. It won't end well. By way of example, the district attorney, right now, is seriously considering filing murder charges against you for killing Lieutenant Molar."

"What?" Shane couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Sergeant, do yourself a big favor and turn the material over."

Shane stood across from Chief Brewer with his knees shaking. He tried to collect his thoughts, then he took a breath to calm down.

"Let's suppose I have what you want and I turn it over," he said. "What happens to the charge of removing case materials and my Internal Affairs Board of Rights?"

"Maybe something gets worked out there. We look the other way on the case material. Your undue-use-of-force gets sent back to the Officer Involved Shooting Section, they look it over. Maybe it gets disposed of in a few hours, the district attorney decides there's no case."

"So you're using the BOR and this murder charge to try and scare me into doing what you want?"

There was an awkward silence, then the chief took a step toward him and changed the subject.

"Sergeant, there are only three places that material can be, and we've already looked in the other two. You've got four hours. Your career, and maybe the way you spend the rest of your life, depends on your decision. That's all I have to tell you." Then he turned his generous backside on Shane and looked out the window again, at the movie company.

Shane hesitated, wanting to continue to try convincing him, but it was obvious he had been firmly dismissed. Shane turned and walked out of Burl Brewer's office, closing the door behind him.

When he got into the waiting room, Alexa Hamilton was sitting in the same chair he had been warming a few minutes before. She stood when she saw him. Alexa Hamilton was in her mid-to late thirties and was beautiful in a severe, hard-charging way. Coal-black hair was pinned up on the back of her head. High cheekbones and slanted eyes gave her an exotic look that Shane didn't think fit her no-nonsense, ball-busting personality. She had a tight, gym-trained body. He thought her beauty was badly overpowered by a raw will to succeed that made her sexually unattractive to him. He saw her as one of the new breed of LAPD ladder-monkeys, moving fast through the department, eating her dead, leaving a high-octane vapor trail behind her.

"We meet again," she said, arching a tapered brow and smiling without humor.

"This isn't a meeting, it's an ambush."

"Call it what you like, I'm ready. I don't usually have to take two swings at such a slow pitch."

"I'll try and put a few more rpms in my routine." He looked down at the folder in her hand. "That my package?" he asked. "My sealed background records seem to be making the rounds. Will I be reading about my confidential history in next month's newsletter, or is it just going up on the division bulletin board?"

"I'm not reading secure files, Scully. I don't need to cheat to hammer you in. The infield fly rule's on. We have a play at any base."

"If you say so." He walked out of the office and was heading down the hall when she stuck her head out and called to him.

"Hey, Scully."

He turned and faced her.

"I didn't 'peel the nine' at Ray Molar, you did. You go around shooting your ex-partners, you're bound to pick up a little grief."

"Lemme file that under 'shit to remember.' "

He stabbed hard at the elevator button, missed, and stabbed again. Thankfully, it opened almost immediately and he got on, stepping out of her black-eyed stare. It whisked him mercifully away, down to the traffic-jammed reality of downtown Los Angeles and Arnold Schwarzenegger.