The Tin Collector

Chapter 7

Any police officer facing an administrative review gets to choose a defense rep to defend him. According to Section 202 in the Police Bill of Rights, that representative can be anyone in the department below the rank of captain. The charter provides that the chosen officer must serve as the accused's defense representative unless such service would cause undue hardship or unless the chosen officer has a current duty assignment of such a sensitive nature as to prohibit the time commitment.

Over the years, several officers had become very adept at winning Internal Affairs cases and, as a result, got chosen as defense reps time and time again. They became schooled in the legal vagaries of the department disciplinary system, and most of them viewed Internal Affairs as a black hole of intrigue that they referred to as "the Dark Side." In a way, these men and women were mavericks inside the department, seeing themselves as an important demarcation line between the accused officers and the meat-eating "politicians" who worked at Internal Affairs.

Such a man was retired Sergeant DeMarco Saint. He lived on the beach in Santa Monica. His house was run-down and desperately in need of a new roof and paint. He had made his place a hangout for a young, breezy beach crowd: everybody from surf bums and Rollerbladers to volleyball players and sidewalk musicians. They hung in clusters in front of his wood-shingled bungalow. DeMarco Saint presided over this collection of party animals like a wise, bearded guru. He had been a police officer for thirty years and had pulled the pin just last December. Then he had made an almost seamless transition from maverick cop to New Age swami.

Shane pulled his slickback into the public parking lot two doors down from DeMarco's house and showed his badge to the attendant, who greeted the free-parking move with a frown. Shane locked the car and walked to the beach bike path. He could hear loud rap music pounding before he even got on the pavement. As he got closer, he saw several young girls in string bikinis and some tanned surfers in boxer shorts sitting on DeMarco's low brick wall like prizes in a game of beach Jeopardy being played all day at high energy under a synthetic drumbeat.

Of course, Shane looked like a cop to them right off, and the conversation shriveled up like rose petals in a hot summer wind. By the time he got to DeMarco's wall, only the recorded rap of Snoop Doggy Dogg managed to ignore his presence.

"DeMarco around?" he asked the closest girl, a tall brunette in her mid-twenties.

"Inside," she said, arching a pierced eyebrow and clicking her silver tongue stud against her teeth to see if it would piss him off.

"That's nothing." He smiled. "I've got mine through my dick."

She laughed as he moved past her and through the front door of DeMarco's house.

He found the fifty-eight-year-old defense rep on his hands and knees, trying to adjust one of the blasting speakers while a teenage boy watched.

"Fucking bass is vibrating. Sounds like shit," the young surfer with bleached blond hair and black roots said sullenly.

DeMarco kept fiddling and finally took some of the low end out. He leaned back on his knees to listen. "Whatta you think?" he asked. "Better?"

Snoop Doggy Dogg's staccato voice was bouncing ghetto hatred off the walls while DeMarco leaned forward again to screw with his woofers and tweeters.

"Gotta fuck the pigs. Gotta make da man die, if he come passin3 by da pork's gotta fry," the Snoopster rapped violently.

"You got a minute?" Shane yelled.

DeMarco turned and saw him, grinned, and stood up. He was over six feet tall, and since Shane had last seen him, he'd let his gray hair grow. It was now tied in a ponytail that hung a quarter of the way down his back. He was wearing a tank top and had added a few tattoos that Shane thought looked ridiculous on his spindly arms, but not anywhere near as ridiculous as the silver cross that dangled from a chain in his left ear.

"Halley called. Been expecting you." He turned to the fifteen-year-old surfer. "You tinker with it for a while."

As the rap banged against their ears, he led Shane through the kitchen, where he grabbed two cold Miller Lites out of the refrigerator, and then out the back along the side of the house, onto Santa Monica's long, sandy beach. The waves were unusually high that morning because of a storm in Mexico. They broke energetically forty yards away, shaking the sand under the two men's feet.

"I must be getting really old," Shane said. "That shit pisses me off."

"I like having the kids around. So what're you gonna do?" He smiled, then reached into his ears and pulled out some cotton balls.

Shane couldn't help himself, he started laughing. "You're tuning your speakers with cotton in your ears. No wonder your low end is vibrating."

Shane and DeMarco sat in the warm sand and ripped the tabs off. The beer cans chirped and hissed foam. They clinked aluminum, and both took long swallows.

"I need help," Shane said.

"I know. Captain Halley already filled me in. He thinks you're being schmucked."

Shane looked at DeMarco. Sixteen years ago, a much younger DeMarco had saved him at a BOR. He was praying the newly ponytailed defense rep could do it again.

"Alexa Hamilton is back down there," DeMarco continued. "I figured she'd've transferred to some cushy job in administration by now."

"She's still there after sixteen years? I thought an average tour at Internal Affairs was only five years."

"She used to be their number one tin collector," DeMarco said. "They brought her back just to get you." A tin collector was an advocate who got convictions that resulted in an officer losing his badge. Sergeant Alexa Hamilton was the department prosecutor who tried him all those years ago, only she had failed to get his tin.

"They're all a bunch a' ladder-climbing suck-ups," DeMarco said, his hatred for the Dark Side spewing out of him unchecked. "Everybody in the fucking division is looking to get to the top floor of the Glass House. It sucks, the way it's set up."

Shane had heard DeMarco's complaints before and knew the old defense rep was talking about the fact that most of the captains and deputy chiefs on the ninth floor at Parker Center had also spent time as tin collectors in Internal Affairs. That made assignment as an IAD advocate a coveted post. It was a club. Lieutenants and below were selected by virtue of their test scores and oral boards, but to make captain, you had to be picked by the chief of police. The fact was, it was hard to be picked if you hadn't spent some time on the Dark Side. This phenomenon had the effect of making Internal Affairs a catcher's mitt for every hot dog and ladder-climbing politician in the department.

"Why did you mention Alexa Hamilton? What's she got to do with this?" Shane asked, thinking of the attractive but overly severe woman who sixteen years back had prosecuted him with such fanatical enthusiasm. She had quite a reputation, both personally and professionally, leaving a long trail of busted careers and broken hearts. More than one Parker Center Romeo had moved in with her, only to discover that her personal demands matched her professional compulsions. Shane wondered if her apartment was furnished in relationship failures as his was.

He had grown to despise her in the few months that his case was going through the division. One of his best moments on the job was seconds after his not-guilty verdict had come in. He looked over and saw such distress on Alexa's face that it gave him a moment of pure, soul-cleansing vengeance. When she caught him looking, he smiled and surreptitiously flipped her the bird.

"I thought you knew," DeMarco said, interrupting his thoughts. "She's got your case. She put in for it."

"You can't be serious," Shane groaned.

"Yeah. If at first you don't succeed, and all that good shit." DeMarco took another long pull on his beer and let out a deep belch. "Maybe you shouldn't've flipped her off."

"Wouldn't matter, she hates me anyway."

DeMarco went on. "It's not good that they hopped over your Shooting Review Board and went straight to a BOR. It shows the department is going to war."

"Why? Barbara Molar is my witness. She'll say what happened."

"I made a few calls down to my old crew at the Representation Section in Parker Center. The rumor down there is, this whole railroad train is coming right out of Mayor Crispin's office. He wants your balls in his trophy case."

"Why?"

"Lemme take a wild guess" He drained his beer. "How 'bout 'cause you lit up his bodyguard. Blew his arithmetic all over that bedroom wall."

"You gotta help me, Dee. You gotta get me off."

"I'd like to, Shane. I really would. But frankly, I can't get into that rat race again. Alexa Hamilton is one tough, nail-chewing piece of business. I faced her fifteen or twenty times. Lost more than I won. I don't like it one bit that she's volunteering for this case. That tells me there's a big political payoff somewhere. Maybe lieutenant's bars and a transfer to something sexy like Organized Crime or Special Investigations. Mayweather could set that up for her, no sweat."

"You're telling me I'm cooked before we even get a hearing?"

"Tell you what… you know Rags Whitman? He's a good defense rep, smarter than me. I used to ram my dick up their asses and piss on their hearts. Ragland, he's mellow, he plays the game Mr. Wheel of Fortune. They like him at Parker Center. I was you, I'd get him to take your case. Ask him to plead you out, see what kinda deal he can get. My bet: maybe he gets you a six-month suspension without pay and no termination."

"For defending myself from that crazy bastard? What kinda deal is that?"

"You shot Ray Molar. Not a good move, but you got an eyewitness who, we hope, backs you up. You got Ray's bullet in the wall, proving he fired before you got him. You also got Molar's record of spousal abuse. All this is good. On the bad side, you got the fuckin' mayor of L. A. tail-gunning you. You got Chief Brewer with his ears back, and you got some tricky 'undue use of force' statutes that could go against you. Your best bet is to see if Rags can spin the big wheel and plead it down."

"You won't help me? Come on, Dee, you're off the department. They can't threaten you; they can't get to your pension. What's the problem?"

"I'd. Do it if I could, man. I just can't. I've got no stomach for it anymore. I go down there, and my guts start churning. I'd choke. I hate those pricks worse than the National Anthem. You wanna know why I pulled the pin? It wasn't 'cause I had my thirty in. It was ulcers. My stomach lining looks like a Mexican highway. I can't put myself back in that mess. Go talk to Rags. Get him to negotiate a kick-down."

Shane stood up and handed DeMarco his half-empty beer. "Okay," he finally said. "Sorry to take up your morning." Then he turned and walked away, his shoes filling with warm sand as he went.

"Hey, Scully," DeMarco called, and Shane turned around. "Whatever you do, don't volunteer to take a polygraph. I think the IA poly is rigged. They use it to get confessions. I've had more than one case where I think I got a bum test."

"Okay," Shane answered. "Thanks for the warning."

Shane pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the Coast Highway. As he started toward the Santa Monica Freeway, his stomach was churning and he could taste bile in his throat. Then he heard a siren growl and saw a black-and-white behind him with its red lights on. Since he was in a black-and-white slickback, it surprised him that he was being flashed to the curb like a civilian. He pulled over and got out.

A young uniformed cop with two stripes on his sleeve moved up to him.

"What's up, Officer?" Shane asked.

"You Sergeant Scully?" the man asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm Joe Church. I was ordered to accompany you to Parker Center forthwith. Apparently your mobile data terminal is turned off."

"They get the gallows up already?" Shane quipped.

"I'm sorry, what, sir?" Officer Church said, deadpan, maybe with a tinge of cold anger.

"Why?" Shane asked. "What do they want?"

"Chief Brewer wants to see you immediately." He sort of barked it at Shane.

"Did I do something to piss you off?" Shane asked.

"You wanna follow me?"

"I can make it. You afraid I'll get lost?"

"Why don't you wait till I pull around. Since you haven't got a bar light, I'll put on the flashers and siren. It gets us there faster."

"You got a siren, how cool. I can hardly wait."

Shane got back into his unit and waited until the squad car pulled around in front of him. Joe Church growled his siren once, then raced out into the fast lane with Shane behind him.

The two police cars shot up onto the Santa Monica Freeway, heading back to downtown L. A. and Parker Center, Code Three.