The Tin Collector

Chapter 9

After picking up his Acura at the Spring Street Tire Center, Shane got back to the Harvard Westlake School at three-thirty to retrieve Chooch. He waited in a long line of British and German cars driven by Beverly Hills soccer moms. When he finally pulled to the curb where the students waited to be picked up, there was no Chooch. Then he saw him, off to the side of the crowd, sitting on a curb by himself. His CD player was hooked in his ears; he was lost in the music. Shane tapped on the horn to get his attention. Chooch picked up his book bag and ambled over to the newly shod black Acura now sporting four Michelin radials that Shane couldn't afford at a hundred dollars a tire.

As Chooch was sliding into the front seat, a tall, reed-thin man with a lipless mouth, curly hair, and heavy, dark-rimmed glasses stuck his head into the car. "Mr. Sandoval, I'm Brad Thackery, head of the Latin department and high-school assistant dean of admissions."

"I'm not his father," Shane said.

"Oh… uh, well, I'm sorry. I just got the job two months ago, and I'm still trying to get all the names and faces straight. Will you be talking to Chooch's parents today?"

"Whatta you need, Mr. Thackery?"

"We need to schedule a teacher's conference immediately. Chooch has some severe problems that need to be addressed, ad summum bonum."

Off Shane's puzzled expression, he translated, "For everyone's good."

Shane looked at Chooch, who seemed not to be hearing any of it as he bobbed his head to the beat of some alternative rock leaking at high decibels from his earphones.

"I'll call his mother. Thanks."

Parents behind him were beginning to tap their horns impatiently, so Shane put the car in gear and pulled out onto Coldwater.

Shane said nothing until they were on the Ventura Freeway. "Hey, Chooch," he said, looking over at the boy slumped down in the seat beside him. "Chooch, you wanna take off the headset for a minute!? We need to talk."

Chooch paid no attention. He was bobbing his head to the music, oblivious.

Shane suddenly reached over and ripped the jack out of the CD.

That got his attention. Chooch spun around and glared. "What!" he said angrily.

"They want a teacher's meeting."

"I heard him. Thackery's a dick. Who the fuck cares? I hope they kick me out."

"Whatta they wanna talk about?" Shane asked. "I've gotta call and tell your mother."

"Whatta they wanna talk about? They wanna accuse me of dealin' drugs at school."

"Of what!?"

"You heard me. They think I'm dealin' drugs."

"Are you?"

Chooch didn't say anything, he just shrugged.

"You're not gonna tell me?"

"You're a fuckin' cop. Don't I get a lawyer and my Miranda rights first?"

Shane pulled the car off the freeway, down the Sepulveda ramp, and parked on the busy cross street. Then he turned to face Chooch. "Listen, Chooch, I'm not a cop where you're concerned. I'm your…" Shane couldn't think of the right word. What was he?

"My what?" Chooch challenged. "My fuckin' guardian? My baby-sitter? My spiritual coach? What the fuck are you?"

"How 'bout your friend," Shane finally said.

"You're not my friend. I don't have any friends. Not one."

"Chooch, if you're selling drugs to kids at school, we've got a big problem. They could go to the LAPD. They could file criminal charges against you."

Chooch leaned back in the seat, not sure what to do.

"I'm not gonna bust you," Shane continued, "but I've gotta know what the deal is if I'm going to help."

"Not gonna bust me, huh? Where'd I hear that before?"

"Tell me. Were you selling drugs?"

"No. I didn't sell nothin'." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Once or twice, maybe… I loaned some Rasta weed to somebody. And then maybe once or twice I found some cash in my locker that I don't know where it came from…"

"Shit," Shane said, not sure how extreme his response to this should be. "You're in deep shit if they can prove it. Is anybody there gonna talk?"

"You mean, will my dickhead clients roll over and give me up?" Chooch asked. "In a fuckin' heartbeat. You want my opinion? They're not gonna go to the cops. That school doesn't want some newspaper story about drugs on campus. Since I'm Mexican, they're also probably scared shitless somebody will charge 'em with race discrimination. They're just gonna demand I go quietly, something I'm real prepared to do."

Shane looked hard at the teenager, still sitting with his head back on the seat, his eyes closed.

"It isn't your problem anyway," Chooch said. "You're just this month's paid jerkoff."

"Right. That's me." Shane put the car in gear and headed back up onto the freeway. They didn't speak all the way back to Venice.

Finally, Shane pulled into his house at 143 East Channel Road. He parked in the garage and got out. Chooch grabbed his book bag and slouched along after him as they opened the back door. The two of them walked into the kitchen, and Chooch slung his book bag angrily onto the counter.

"Take that into your room and start doing your homework."

"Homework? Ain't that a little off the point?"

"Do it anyway," Shane said. Then he moved out of the house into his small backyard, which looked out onto one of the narrow channels of Venice. What had been a cold April morning was now turning into a surprisingly pleasant California afternoon.

From Shane's small backyard on Venice's East Channel, he could see all the way down the intersecting Howland Canal.

Venice, California, had been the brainchild of Abbot Kinney in 1904. Kinney had wanted to create a luxury community in the style of Venice, Italy. He supervised the design of channels to carry water in from the ocean two blocks away. He designed his development around four long canals, intersected by a series of concrete, arched Venice-like driving bridges that spanned each canal. He added small walking bridges and brought some scaled-down gondolas over from Italy. It had been quite a place in the early 1900s but had seen hard times ever since. The canals still had a sort of rustic charm, but the once-grand houses of the thirties had been knocked down or subdivided and in their place were smaller, cheaper structures. The architectural style ranged from antebellum to trailer-park modern. The people who now lived on the canals were an even more interesting mix. Young doctors who smoked dope lived next door to disapproving retirees. New Age musicians and mimes competed for hat tips on the boardwalk, while four blocks inland, on Fifteenth Street, gangbangers and unaware tourists fought and died over wallets and watches. Jammed in with all of this confusion, next to a longhaired surfboard shaper, was LAPD Sergeant Shane Scully. There was something about the canal blocks of Venice, California, that suited him; something offbeat and sad. Venice seemed as misplaced as her residents.

Less than half a mile to the south were the yuppified environs of Marina del Rey, where young ad executives and airline flight attendants took sexual aim at one another in the crowded waterside bars and fish houses. A mile to the north was Santa Monica, with its population of trendy superagents, junk bond salesmen, and Hollywood power brokers. Halfway in between, sitting on its silly three-foot-deep canals, trying to be something it could never duplicate, was the other Venice, sinking into the mud of social indifference as surely as Venice, Italy, was sinking into the sea.

But Shane Scully was at home there, like no place else on earth. Venice, California, defined him.

As he watched a hummingbird hang energetically over the still East Channel, he opened his cell phone and dialed Sandy.

She answered after the tenth ring and seemed out of breath. "Yes," she said. "Hello." She also sounded angry and impatient.

"Catch you at a bad time?" he asked sarcastically.

"Shane, I can't talk now. I was already out the door. I'm late."

"Then let me make it quick. I think they're going to throw Chooch out of Harvard Westlake for dealing grass. Some guy named Thackery wants a teacher's meeting with you. I told him I'd let you know. That's the whole message. Nice talking to you."

"Wait a minute. He's dealing what?"

"Grass… Mary Jane, Aunt Hazel, African bush, bambalacha. You pick the cool name. He's selling shit to his classmates, and Mr. Thackery ain't one little bit amused about it."

"Well, what am I supposed to do? I can't… I mean, can't we…?"

"Unfortunately, I don't think there's much we can do. But you've gotta call and set something up. As Thackery says, 'It's for everybody's good.' Ad mumble bubble gum. And before you ask, lemme say that as this month's paid jerkoff, I'm not up for the teacher's conference."

"Come on, Shane, it can't be that bad."

"Sandy, I'm in some very big trouble myself right now. Big enough that I could end up getting fired or, worse still, even prosecuted by the DA."

"But "

"No. Listen. I can't handle this problem. I didn't know what I was getting into with Chooch."

"He sounds worse than he is. He's not that bad. You just have to be patient with him."

"You're sure about that? 'Cause I think he's one very confused, very angry kid. I think he's in the diamond lane to Juvenile Hall, and not that you care, Sandy, but I think you need to pay more attention to him. This kid is being passed around like a hot rock. Nobody's giving him what he needs."

"Including you?" she said darkly. "I thought you told me you were up for it, that you wanted to make a one-on-one investment in something with lasting dividends."

"What the fuck were we drinking, anyway?"

"Shane, look, I hear you. Unfortunately, I'm working for the DEA right now. I'm up to my ass in a dangerous sting that is days from going down. You know from the jobs we've pulled together that my biggest jeopardy is right before I drop the dime. If I get made now, I could end up the captain of a fifty-gallon oil drum at the bottom of the Catalina Channel. I can't take Chooch. I can't take a chance he'll get hurt, and I can't divert my energies or my concentration at this point in the sting. You said you'd take him. You promised. Otherwise, I wouldn't have left him there."

"Okay, Sandy. I'll do the best I can. But you wanna know something…?"

"Not if it's gonna be a lecture."

"It's an opinion, baby. This boy is hurting bad. He's on fire. He's so self-destructive, I'm heartsick for him. But I'm up to my ass in department bullshit. I shot my ex-partner."

"That was you? It was on the news." Shane didn't answer. "Well, good," Sandy finished. "Ray was a son of a bitch. He deserved to die."

"No, he didn't. But if this goes like it's been going, I'm not going to be available for Chooch, either. So start figuring what you're gonna do and call this prick Thackery and get him off my ass.

"Okay, okay, sugar. I'll call him. Gotta run. Bye." And she was gone.

He slumped down in his rusting metal lawn chair, and then someone cleared his throat. Shane turned and realized that Chooch had come out the side door and had been sitting in one of the other metal chairs at the side of the house.

"Well, she's probably got a lot more important shit on her mind," Chooch said. "Want me to roll you a number? It's pretty fine Jamaican ganja."

Chooch had some Zig-Zag papers and a small cloth drawstring bag in his hand. Shane hadn't had a hit of marijuana since the Marine Corps, but he was so tight, so frayed, that he was worried about his imploding psyche. "Yeah, sure, roll me up one."

"No shit?" Chooch said, "What about Rule One: No smoking grass in my house, not now, not ever?"

"I gotta do something to bend the energy in this day. Rule One is temporarily suspended."

Chooch rolled a bud, fat and short. Then he handed it over. Shane sat there, holding the jay, wondering what kind of example it was going to be for him to blast a joint in front of Chooch or, worse still, get high with him. But then he thought of the events of the day, starting with his shooting Ray Molar at 2:30 A. M., all the way through to his disastrous meeting with Chief Brewer. Somehow, in the light of all that, passing grass with an angry fifteen-year-old just didn't seem all that important.

"Fuck it," he said, then reached back and grabbed one of Chooch's matches, fired up, took a hit, and passed it to Chooch.

The two of them sat in metal chairs in the small, green-brown garden behind Shane's house, sharing the joint and trying to unwind their separate but equally devastating problems.