The Tin Collector

Chapter 34

The sun set slowly and magnificently over the Pacific Ocean. Scattered clouds that were strung across the horizon in steel-gray formations suddenly turned deep purple, riding above the dark blue sea like a colorful celestial armada until the sun was gone and night claimed its final victory.

Shane retrieved his new camera from the trunk of the Taurus, grabbed the heavy lens and some film, then walked with Alexa along busy Ocean Boulevard, across the street from the old naval yard. They were both looking for a good place to climb the fence. With cars streaking by in both directions, they picked a hole in the traffic, sprinted across the busy four-lane street, then continued west, looking through the fence at the property beyond.

There were security lights located inside the old naval yard every block or so, illuminating sections of the torn-down facility. This part of the huge yard had already been completely razed.

Behind them, on the east end of the property, the surviving naval buildings loomed.

Shane reasoned that they had a better chance of getting inside unobserved if they went west, where there were no structures left standing and, hence, nothing to steal and less need for security.

"Where do you want to try?" she suddenly asked.

He pointed to a place up ahead where the razor wire had come down, making it possible to get over the fence without ripping their hands and clothes.

"With all this traffic on Ocean, we'll be spotted; somebody's gonna call it in," she said. "Let's try over there." She pointed to the far end of the property, where the fence seemed to turn a corner and head south toward the bay.

There was a huge lit structure looming down there that Shane didn't like the looks of. "Except, what the hell is that?" he asked, pointing at it, but she didn't answer.

They kept walking and finally got close enough to see that it was an active Army Reserve post, with its own entrance located at the far end of the naval yard. A bunch of weekend warriors were standing around in the parking lot, milling in front of the post HQ.

"Okay," she said. "You're right. Let's go back and try your place."

They returned to the spot Shane had seen, and then waited for the line of traffic to pass. Once the light down the street turned red, Shane touched her arm.

"Now," he said.

He and Alexa hit the fence simultaneously. It was an eight-foot-high chain-link; Shane scrambled up and over fast, surprised to see that they hit the ground on the other side at about the same time.

They sprinted away from Ocean Boulevard as the light down the street turned green and the headlights of the approaching cars came toward them. They crouched in the dark unobserved as the traffic streamed past on the far side of the fence.

"When Drucker and Kono went in, you sure you couldn't see which way they turned once they got inside?" Shane asked.

"They were stopped by the plastic badge guarding the east gate, but once they drove through, I lost 'em. I was half a block away, across the street. I didn't want to chance getting spotted."

"If they went in there, then they're probably still on the east side of the property," Shane reasoned.

"Probably."

They took off along the paved road inside the fence, this time heading east, back the way they had just come. The two-lane base road they were on was identified by a sign as COFFMAN STREET.

They were both struck by the vastness of the old shipyard. Shane had heard about the property ever since he was a kid growing up in L. A., but he'd never been down there before.

"This place is huge," he said, stating the obvious as they quickened their pace, doing a speed walk. "No wonder those people at the city council hearing were pissed. This place has gotta be worth billions of dollars. Prime waterfront, right on the border between L. A. and Long Beach; the Queen Mary is half a mile from here, Fisherman's Village a stone's throw away."

She nodded but said nothing.

They were coming to a part of the yard that had not been demolished yet. They began passing huge covered docks, once used to refurbish naval vessels. Faded signs hung on every kind of structure, from wood-frame officers clubs and enlisted-personnel mess halls to poured-concrete warehouses and five-story-high covered sheds. They passed blast foundation plants; the compressor boiler plant loomed next to an air compressor building; then some hazardous-waste staging areas. There were mammoth towers leaning against a dark sky, marked COLLIMATION TOWER and PUMPING STATION TWO. Neither Shane nor Alexa had a clue what they were used for.

They passed the old naval credit union building, the sheet metal shop, and the asbestos removal headquarters, which was part of the current demolition operation and consisted of a flock of portable trailers.

The property was beyond anything that Shane had ever imagined. Now they were at the end of Coffman Street, where it turned into Avenue D.

Up ahead they could see some bright light streaming out of a huge warehouse. They were moving slowly now, trying to hug the shadows created by the occasional streetlamps.

They finally got close enough to see ten or twelve cars parked in front of a huge lit warehouse. Shane and Alexa could see the open loading door with a sign overhead that read:

BUILDING 132 MACHINE SHOP PIPE AND COPPER

They crept across Avenue D and found cover behind a two-story-high cylindrical tank. When they looked around the rusting tank, Shane and Alexa could see directly into the mouth of the warehouse through the raised loading door.

A party with more than thirty people was going on inside. Some tables had been set up full of food and buckets of beer. Men and women were dancing on the cold concrete floor, which was lit by lights from two gray police plainwraps that had been pulled inside. Both Crown Vies had the doors open; stereo music was coming from the car radios tuned to the same FM station.

Shane was looking through his telescopic lens at the partyers.

"Most of these guys are copsI know some of the girls. I busted a few when I was in West Valley Vice."

"Hookers?" Alexa asked. "Gimme it."

He handed her the zoom-lens camera, and she squinted through the eyepiece, panning around inside the lit building. "You're right, it's a regular coyote convention in there," she murmured. "Those are Beverly Hills pros thousand-dollar girls Angelica DeBravo, Deborah Kline, Donna Fleister, plus the rest of our police-department cast of characters." She was referring to Ray's den: Joe Church, Lee Ayers, John Samansky, Don Drucker, and Shane's blown tail, "Bongo" Kono. Calvin Sheets and Coy Love were not there, but the other guys he'd photographed up at Arrowhead were. Alexa identified them as ex-cops terminated from "Dream" Sheets's Coliseum detail. Then she caught her breath. "Shit don't like this," she said, her eye pinned to the camera viewfinder.

"What?"

"There're two guys from the mayor's staff in there his legislative assistant, Mark somebody, in the suit by the door; and Rob Lavetta, his press-relations guy, the one standing next to Drucker." She handed the camera back to Shane, who took a picture of both men.

The party was in full swing, everybody drinking beer and dancing to the music, although "dancing" was a conservative description of what was going on. It was more like a group grope in 4/4 time. Dress was optional, with the thousand-dollar girls opting for maximum exposure.

Shane wanted to photograph everyone, keeping a mental count of whom he had already shot and whom he still needed, waiting for the right moment when the dancers would spin, giving him a good angle of one or both. When he finished, he sat next to Alexa, leaning back against the rusting cylindrical tank.

"They oughta put these shots in the departmental brochure," he finally said. "We'd end our recruiting problem."

Alexa volunteered a slogan: "Not just long hours and cold coffee. Police work a changing profession."

"Whatta you wanna do?" he asked.

"I don't know…" She winced, then pulled something out from under her. It was a sign she'd been sitting on. They both read it:

ABRASIVE TANKS MAINTAIN SO-FOOT SAFETY PERIMETER

They both looked up fearfully at the old rusting tanks they were hiding behind. Then Shane realized that his hand was in something wet, pulled it up, and looked at it.

"Shit," he said, shaking it dry.

"Let's move back, get outta here," she said.

Suddenly they heard laughing nearby. A man's voice: "You're on. Let's do it."

Shane and Alexa cautiously leaned out and looked at the party. It had now spilled out of the huge building; people were standing around the back of one of the cars parked outside, while Drucker pulled two cardboard boxes out of the trunk. He ripped them open and started handing out shirts to everybody.

"What the hell are those?" Alexa asked.

"The jerseys," Shane replied.

Black football jerseys with red numbers and letters on the back that read: L. A. SPIDERS

The shoulder trim was done in a pattern resembling a red spider web. The cops started moving in a pack up the street with handfuls of beer and their arms draped casually around the hookers.

"I gotta see this," Shane said.

He and Alexa followed from the shadows, staying at least a hundred yards behind the group, which was drinking and grab-assing its way along Avenue D until finally they came to the old base athletic building and adjacent field. Shane and Alexa found themselves at the far end of the old field, the grass long dead from lack of water.

Someone had brought a football, and after more drinking and groping, a very fundamental game of tackle ensued. Slow, looping passes drifted to giggling hooker wideouts who gathered the spirals in without too much interference. The playful tackles were short on violence but long on rolling around on the ground and piling on. The beer kept flowing. The game looked to Shane like a hell of a lot of fun.

"How do you get a jersey and a place in the lineup?" he wondered.

"You don't want in that game, Shane. You'd get tired of all the AIDS testing."

He nodded and smiled. He realized it was the first time she'd used his first name.

They watched for quite a while and finally decided that everybody was so drunk, this was where the evening would end. They backed out, got over the fence, and returned to the gas station.

"I hate spiders," she said once they got to their cars.

"So the jerseys are football, but is this place the Web?"

"I don't know, must be," she said. "But I can tell you this much: these cops are having choir practice with first-string girls and two guys from the mayor's staff." "Choir practice" was an after-hours police drunk, usually in a park or some deserted place.

"Gimme the film," she said. "There's an all-night drugstore half a block from my apartment. I'll have the proofs back in two hours."

He hesitated, then unloaded the camera and gave her the two other exposed film containers.

They got into their respective cars and started to pull out when Alexa sounded her horn. Shane rolled down his window. She leaned across her front seat, talking through her passenger window. "For whatever it's worth, I believe you. Something big and shitty is going on here. I'm in."

"Thanks," he said gratefully. Then she waved at him and drove off. It had been more than a week, and she was the first one.