The Tin Collector

Chapter 25

It was just after ten P. M. when Shane left a brooding Chooch Sandoval with Longboard Kelly. He was driving across town to the Bradbury Building, dressed for a burglary in 211 colors: a black LAPD sweatshirt, black jeans, and Reeboks. He had his.38 backup piece snug against his belt. His badge and ID card, picklocks, and penlight were stuffed in all available pockets.

He pulled off the freeway and drove down Sixth Street, right into the hovering helicopter lights of the Schwarzenegger movie. They were back downtown doing night work, barricades in place, assistant directors and klieg lights glaring. He had hoped he would be able to sneak into IAD, rifle the chief advocate's files, and get out unobserved. The last thing he needed to deal with was this fucking movie.

He got stopped two blocks from the Bradbury by a motorcycle cop, now a potential witness who could put Shane at the location.

He considered turning around and going home but then decided, fuck it, he was running out of options. He had to take the chance.

"Sorry, Sergeant, we're almost on a take," the old motorcycle cop said after Shane badged him. He had outgrown his uniform, which stretched over his belly like a Mexican bandit's faded guayabera.

The LAPD supplied movie companies with police assistance to control crowds and traffic on location, and many of the retired old-timers made some money by working movie gigs. Shane didn't know this officer. He never had many friends in Motors because the officers assigned there were basically "hot pilot" types attitude junkies known on the job as "mustard cases."

"I need to get to my office," Shane explained.

"Lock up traffic. This is picture," the assistant director's voice came over the motor cop's walkie-talkie.

The officer was in his late sixties and looked slightly ridiculous in his too-tight shirt and worn leather knee boots. He held up his hands as if to say there was nothing he could do. The god of cinema had just spoken. "Sorry, we have to wait for the shot," he said.

"It's a good thing the corner bank isn't being robbed," Shane muttered.

They waited while the helicopter hovered loudly overhead. Suddenly a car squealed around the corner of Spring Street, roared down Sixth, skidded sideways, then disappeared around another corner.

"Cut. Release traffic," the AD said over the walkie-talkie, and Shane was finally waved through.

In L. A., movies had their own hallowed place in the subculture. God forbid anybody should fuck with a unit production schedule.

When Shane got to the Bradbury Building, he was greeted by another surprise. The entire north side of the building was flooded by a huge condor light suspended forty feet in the air from a crane. It lit almost the entire city block.

"Shit," Shane muttered. This was getting ridiculous. He was dressed in black, trying to do an illegal entry while a movie was shooting, and the fucking building he was burglarizing was lit up like City Hall. He had already decided not to use the parking structure, because he was pretty sure that the gate had a common security feature that would read his key card, then time-log it, so he parked in a private lot next to a string of honey wagons and dressing rooms.

He locked the Acura and walked past a line of chattering extras, out onto the brightly lit sidewalk. Hugging the bricks of the Bradbury, turtling his head down into his collar, he tried to hide, feeling stupid and exposed like a cockroach scuttling along a kitchen baseboard.

The building was open, as he knew it would be. Advocates often worked late, so the department kept civilian guards on at night. Usually they slept somewhere on the fifth floor.

He walked into the huge lobby and stood in the atrium. The guard desk was empty. He looked up at the advocates' windows on the third floor. The lights were off. He climbed the stairs, his tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor. When he got to three, he headed down the corridor and stood for a moment in front of the advocates' offices, looking through the windows, past the reception desks to the cubbies beyond, where any late-working advocates might be sitting. The place looked empty, and the lights were all off. He knocked loudly on the door.

Shane had a cover story ready. If anybody was inside, he was going to abort and say that he had come back to finish some Xeroxing but first needed to pick up his key.

He knocked again, but nobody answered. Everyone had gone home. He looked up and down the exterior corridor, then pulled out a small leather case and removed a set of picklocks.

Ironically, picking locks was a criminal specialty he had learned from Ray Molar. A good set of picklocks contained an array of long, needle-shaped tools and one long, thin, notched metal strip. Shane slid the notched strip into the lock and jiggled it to find the first tumbler by feel. Then the smaller picks slid in behind it. The idea was to fill as many of the lock's keyed openings as possible so that you had enough leverage to turn all the tumblers inside the bolt. It was not as easy as it looked on TV, where some guy would just slide a credit card into a door and, bingo, he was in. It took Shane almost ten minutes before he could turn the lock and let himself inside.

He stepped onto the gray carpeted area just inside the door, then slowly withdrew the picklocks and returned them to the case. He closed the door and locked it from the inside. He moved down the carpeted hallway between the reception desks and windows, heading quietly toward the chief advocate's office. Shane knew that all of the active IAD cases were in a file cabinet there. He got to the end of the long reception area, pushed open the door to Warren Zell's office, took two steps inside, and stopped to adjust his eyes to the low light.

He had stood right in this same spot yesterday, when Zell had informed him that he was IAD's new Xerox machine operator.

He saw the file cabinet at the far end of the room. As he moved to it, he prayed that the cabinets weren't locked. He didn't want to spend any more time there than necessary. As he crossed the room, he took the small penlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and stuck it in his mouth, gripping it between his teeth. The narrow light hit the top of the metal cabinet, reflecting the beam off its burnished gray finish. He put his hand on the top drawer handle and tugged on it. It slid open. The sound of the little metal rollers filled the room.

He looked down into a file crammed full with case folders; each one had a yellow tab with the officer's name and CF number. He cocked his head to aim the light on the tabs and, working alphabetically, quickly went through the cabinet. In the middle of the top drawer, he found a tab marked L. AYERS. He pulled the file out and opened it. Inside was a single slip of paper with the typed words:

FILE RELOCATED TO S. I. D.

He looked in the second drawer for Joe Church, the second name on the list, and found a file for him as well. It contained the same slip, indicating that the contents had been sent to the secure files over at Special Investigations Division in Parker Center. He glanced at several of the other case files in that drawer and found that none of them had been relocated, only Ayers and Church.

He knelt down and opened the bottom drawer, where he figured he would find Samansky's file, if there was one. It was right in the middle of the drawer, also empty, except for the same note.

What the fuck is this? he thought as he began looking for the Drucker and Kono files. He found both folders empty; the same note was in each. Coy Love didn't have a case pending. He was the only one of Ray's den not facing a Board of Rights.

Shane closed the drawer and stood up. He was just taking the penlight from between his teeth when he heard a gun cock behind him.

"Don't move," a woman's voice said. Then the lights were switched on.

He turned and saw Alexa Hamilton framed in the doorway, a black automatic gripped in both hands, her arms triangled out in front of her in a shooting stance. "You sure are one rule-breaking son of a bitch," she said.

"I'm just trying to "

"Shut up, Scully! Where's your piece? Where're you packing?"

"Huh?" His mind was spinning, looking for a way out.

"Turn around. Put your hands behind your neck."

"Come on this Dirty Harriet thing isn't working. I'm assigned down here, same as you. Put the gun down."

"Do what I say, asshole. Do it now!"

He turned his back to her and assumed the position; she quickly patted him down. She removed his clip-on holster, took a step back, and put it on the desk.

Shane assumed she didn't cuff him only because she didn't have her handcuffs handy. She was dressed in a blouse and jeans, her hair was slightly mussed, and he guessed she'd been working late, then fell asleep on the sofa in the back of the advocates' section. He'd awakened her when he'd broken in.

She shifted her gun to her left hand and held it on him while she picked up the phone, locked the receiver under her ear, and dialed three digits. "This is Sergeant Hamilton… requesting a Code Six Adam at 1567 Spring Street, third floor. I'm in the chief advocate's office. Notify the responding unit that they will be transporting a police officer under arrest to Parker Center, and notify Chief Mayweather, head of Special Investigations, to call me at 555-9878." She listened for a moment, then hung up the phone.

"You've gotta hear me out before you do this."

"It's done, Scully. You've just been yanked."

"I wasn't looking at my file "

"I don't wanna hear it. I'm prosecuting you, so we're not having an ex parte conversation. Just button it till the backup gets here."

Shane was down to his last chance. She would either have to shoot him or listen to him, but he was not going to just stand there, mute, waiting to be arrested.

"Ray Molar was supervising a den of six guys. Five of them have cases going through IAD."

"Shut up. I don't wanna hear another word outta you."

"All of their case files are missing. They've been relocated to the secure files at SID. Why? I've never heard of that before, have you?"

"I said be quiet."

"Alexa, I need you to listen to me. Those files are missing because they contain dangerous information."

"Those files could be missing for a lot of reasons."

"Only the files on the guys in Ray's den are gone," he said incredulously. "Why only those guys?"

"I don't care. It doesn't matter. The chief advocate can relocate files anywhere he wants. They're his. Maybe he knows what a loose cannon you are, figured you'd pull this dumb-ass burg."

"Ray has a second home in Lake Arrowhead," Shane went on. "He had a second identity up there: Jay Colter. The house is owned by a real estate company, Cal-VIP Homes. I don't know who owns the company yet, but I have a search being done by the Corporations Commission. When I was up at Ray's Arrowhead house last night, I caught four guys cleaning the place out. After they left, I broke inside."

"So, you're averaging one illegal entry a night. This some kind of sideline for you?"

"Listen to me, will ya?" He was getting impatient. He told her about the one-way mirror, the glory hole, and the videotape box with the name Carl Cummins on it.

"None of this ties to anything," she said. "You're rambling, Scully."

"What're you talking about? A lot of it ties together. Ray's old den had some kinda deal going with the Hoover Street Bounty Hunters, possibly to blow arrests and let them off. Chief Brewer was on his answering machine at the party house. I can play the tape for you if you don't believe me. I think maybe even the mayor, who Ray was driving, is somehow involved."

"In what? Involved in what? You think it's some kinda buy-down? Some bullshit collars-for-dollars scheme?" she asked, referring to a situation in which a criminal shares his take with the arresting officer in return for a chance to walk. "Why would the chief of police and the mayor of L. A. be involved in some two-bit street hustle like that? You're delusional."

"I don't think it's a buy-down. I think it's something else, something much bigger. I got called into Brewer's office yesterday. He threatened me with this ridiculous murder charge, told me he thought I stole a videotape out of Ray's house, and if I gave it back, maybe all my problems would go away. If Ray was videotaping sex parties, maybe this Cummins character or somebody else was getting blackmailed, and if I lean on him hard enough, maybe he'll tell me what's going on. That is, if I can find him." He was rambling now, his own voice sounding desperate to him.

"This is weak shit, Sergeant delusional and paranoid."

"Gimme some time. I've only been working on it for two days. Whatever is going on, it's sure got the top floor of the Glass House worried. They're threatening me with a murder indictment to get some tape they think I have."

"They're threatening you with murder because Ray's wife was your eighty-five. You used to date her, and my IOs say, like the stone-ass moron you're proving to be, you're still actually seeing her."

"Eighty-five" was police slang for girlfriend. Shane ignored it and went on: "All of these IAD cases involve the Hoover Street Bounty Hunters. Some ex-cop named Calvin Sheets is involved. His fingerprints were on the Carl Cummins videotape box I found up at Ray's house in Arrowhead."

When Shane mentioned Calvin Sheets, suddenly Alexa's body posture turned rigid. Her jaw clenched and her expression darkened. "Calvin Sheets is now head of security for the Starmax movie studio," he continued. "It's an independent studio owned by Logan Hunter, who U. S. Customs suspects of drug smuggling."

She was looking at him differently now. So he took a wild guess, trying to reel her in. "You know Calvin Sheets."

For a minute, he didn't think she was going to answer him.

"Another advocate, a good friend of mine, terminated him," she finally said. "He was a rogue officer, a dirty sergeant. How was he involved with Ray?" Shane had finally piqued her interest.

"I'm not sure. I've got his voice on that same answering-machine tape from Ray's house in Arrowhead. He said, 'Don't fuck around with love.' At first I thought they were talking about love in the romantic sense, but now I know they were talking about Coy Love."

He waited for her to respond, but she didn't, so he went on. "I'd like you to explain to me why my case jumped over the Shooting Review Board and went straight to a BOR, and why the district attorney is setting me up for this bullshit murder charge, when I have an eyewitness who backs me up."

"Barbara Molar is a shit witness. She's the motive for the murder. I should've punched your ticket sixteen years ago."

"Okay, since you brought that up, why didn't you?"

Her ice-blue eyes were sparking anger. "Why didn't I what?"

"You threw my board sixteen years ago. Why?"

"Who told you I threw it? That's ridiculous."

"DeMarco told me. He said you impeached your own witness and withheld Ray's sworn affidavit."

Now they could hear men's voices downstairs; they echoed in the hollow atrium. The backup unit had arrived. The elevators were shut down for the night and, after a minute, they heard footsteps marching up the tile stairs.

"You might have me on this low-grade B and E, but I'll get you for throwing that Board of Rights sixteen years ago," he threatened. "DeMarco will testify that you gave the case away. You'll probably be getting your own CF number down here. Give you a look at this division from the other side."

"I wish I'd never laid eyes on you," she said sharply.

He could see the beginning of indecision in her eyes. She was a career cop, high on the lieutenant's list.

There was a rattling at the front door of the Advocate Section.

"Anybody in there?" a cop's voice called into the office.

"What's it gonna be, Sergeant?" he asked. She stood frozen, holding her gun in one hand. Finally she lowered her weapon, turned, and walked to the door, then opened it.

Two uniforms moved in. Shane could see them through Warren Zell's open office door.

"It's okay, Officer. My mistake," he heard Alexa say. "It was just one of our sergeants. He works here."

To punctuate the point, Shane pulled out his badge and flashed it at them.

"Sorry for the call," she said. "If you could do me a favor… Cancel my Code Six A and ask Communications to cancel my call to Deputy Chief Mayweather."

The cop nearest to her touched his shoulder mike and started broadcasting a Code Four, which was a stand-down. Both uniforms turned and left. Alexa closed the door and walked back to where Shane was standing. "We're even. Get outta here," she said angrily.

"Not until you hear the rest of it," he said softly. "And not until you tell me why the hell you threw my board sixteen years ago."