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:

THE WEB

A NEW CONCEPT IN ENTERTAINMENT

The centerpiece of the development was a football stadium with two rings of luxury suites. It was perched on the property, a big concrete oval, its escalators

arching away from the perimeter like eight long spider legs. It dwarfed everything. Engraved over the stadium's modern entry was a tiny sign: THE WEB

"The L. A. Spiders. A football team," Shane said. "Sandy told me Logan Hunter was trying to bring an NFL franchise to L. A."

"This is about footballshe said, appalled, sounding exactly like every housewife in America.

"It's really not about football, it's about real estate." He studied the rest of the development. The thirty or more architectural models placed on the site plan were beautifully made and exquisitely detailed. They dotted the five-hundred-acre site. There was an amusement park with roller coasters and Ferris wheels; five luxury hotels, each one next to the water; shopping malls and restaurants. Little catamarans were stuck in the "water," racing along motionlessly up on one pontoon, their tiny sails billowing orange and red against aqua-blue plaster waves.

Shane was trying to put it together. "Okay," he said slowly, using her words. "It's called police work… Connecting the dots… Ray Molar and his den blackmail the Long Beach City Council with hookers at the party house in Arrowhead. A video festival occurs that forces Carl Cummins and the embarrassed city officials of Long Beach to give the naval yard over to L. A. and Mayor Crispin in return for some bogus water rights. The mayor gifts the property to Spivack in return for Spivack's promise to develop it for the city of L. A. as a home base for a new sports franchise. Spivack funds the actual physical development in return for the property. Logan Hunter gets the NFL to award L. A. a new football franchise, and everybody, from top to bottom, gets silent ownership in the deal and walks away multimillionaires."

"And the H Street Bounty Hunters were just a fun idea that got included for ethnic diversity?" she said.

"Okay, that's a wild piece. I don't have that connection yet, but I like the rest of it."

"Could be…" She sounded less sure.

"I remember reading once that the real money play on these sports franchise deals is the land, not the team. These guys get billions of dollars' worth of land from L. A. for free in return for financing the project and building this thing. Most of the public doesn't bitch, 'cause they don't care about the land; they want the team and a class A stadium to go with it. Sure, you end up with a roomful of environmentalists and hotheads protesting, but it's on page ten of the Metro section… Nobody gives a damn about them because pro football is coming back to L. A.!"

"They can do that? Just give the land away?"

"Yeah, happens all the time. Years ago the city of Anaheim gave Georgia Frontiere hundreds of acres around Anaheim Stadium to get her to move the Rams there. Then, even when she carpetbagged the team off to St. Louis, the land was still hers. The O'Malleys were given Chavez Ravine for Dodger Stadium the city condemned it, moved out all the Hispanics who lived there, then gave the O'Malleys the property, free and clear, in return for building Dodger Stadium. That way they wouldn't have to try and float a bond issue."

"Do you mind if we get out of here?" she said. "This is all quite fascinating, but I'm not as comfortable doing hot prowls as you are."

"One more thing first," he said, and moved out of the conference room and over to Spivack's desk. He opened the center drawer and took out Tony Spivack's appointment calendar while Mrs. Spivack and two dark-haired children eyed him suspiciously from behind a silver frame on the corner of the desk.

He opened the leather-covered book and started flipping pages.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

"Wanna see if he's in town. Last time I saw this shitbird, he was flying off in a green and white helicopter." Shane flipped the calendar to April. "Here it is; Sunday, April twenty-sixth, Miami Beach, NFL, eight-thirty A. M."

"Lemme see that," she said, and he spun the calendar toward her.

"Alexa, he's in Miami Beach right now, meeting with the NFL at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. You likin' my theory any better?"

They moved out of the office, but she stopped at the secretary's desk and looked around at the slips of paper that Spivack's secretary had pasted up neatly on a bulletin board: lots of yellow Post-its, reminders, important numbers and addresses.

"I thought you wanted to leave."

"If we're gonna do this, let's do it right," she said, still looking. "I worked as a secretary once, during a summer vacation in college. You keep the boss's temporary numbers up near the phone if he's traveling." She reached up and pulled a Post-it down. " 'Coral Reef Yacht Club.' That sound like Miami to you?" she asked.

"Take it. Let's go," he said.

Seconds later they were on the roof, then back inside the concrete fire stairs; a few moments later they were in the Crown Vic and gone.