The Tin Collectors Read online

  Shane looked at his watch. He was surprised to see that it was just a few minutes to twelve. He finished the case he was Xeroxing, then, following instructions, he put the copies in a manila envelope and addressed them to the defense rep involved. Then he put the packet in the OUT basket, where it would be picked up and sent off by registered mail.

  He shut off the Xerox, locked the office door, dropped the key with Mavis, and headed out of the Bradbury Building on his lunch hour—make that half hour.

  Shane wasn’t hungry, so he decided to check on his Scientific Investigation Section request. He began to walk the four blocks to Main Street, where Parker Center was located. He needed to clear his mind. He made it a brisk outing, his arms swinging hard, his stride even and quick. When he got halfway there, he ran into another movie barricade. He badged his way through, walking along the sidewalk while wary assistant directors with head-mikes and walkie-talkies clipped on their belts glared at him. He was ignoring their barricades, trespassing on their superiority.

  “You’re in our shot, sir,” one of them yelled.

  Shane hurried along. Arnold was across the street with the director, engaged in an animated discussion. There was a lot of gesturing and arm waving. Tourists and downtown office workers stood behind the barricades, holding their cameras at port arms, hoping for a shot while streetpeople angrily cursed this invasion of their living space.

  Shane got to Parker Center and moved quickly to the Scientific Investigations Section on the seventh floor. He went down the corridor, hoping to remain invisible. Occasionally somebody would look at him, grab the arm of a companion, and start whispering. Shane could write the dialogue: “That’s him, right over there. Can you believe it? He shot Lieutenant Molar…they used to be partners.”

  He got to SIS and asked for the results of his laundry tag analysis. A middle-aged woman with thick, red-rimmed Sally Jessy Raphaël glasses leaned across the counter with the results. “We got lucky. Most of the laundries in the database are local; this one is a ways away, but was still inside the sample area.”

  Shane looked at the printout. “Mountain Cleaners, Lake Arrowhead,” he read aloud.

  “That’s what the computer says,” she replied. Then almost as an afterthought: “I don’t know if you missed it, but on the inside of the tag is a date, April tenth.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “You’re right, I missed it.”

  He moved away from the desk with the printout. The address was on Pine Tree Lane in Lake Arrowhead. He left Parker Center for the walk back to Broadway and Third, wondering why Ray Molar was getting his shirts done in Lake Arrowhead, and whether it really mattered.

  Arrowhead was a two-hour drive up in the mountains. Shane had been there once or twice before. He remembered that the town sat in wooded splendor, around the ten-mile circumference of a beautiful freshwater lake. The community was picturesque, catering mostly to artists, writers, and L.A. refugees. A lot of old Hollywood royalty had built huge mansions on the lake in the thirties, and some of these houses still existed—out-of-place old European-style homes with their stone walls and slate roofs.

  When he got back to IAD, he picked up his key and trudged back down to the Xerox room. He unlocked the door and saw that a new case had been shoved through the mail slot. He picked it up and glanced at it as he walked across the room to drop it on the NI pile. Just as he was setting it down, he saw the name on the face sheet: PATROLMAN I JOSEPH CHURCH.

  Shane stopped and looked at the sheet again. Joe Church was the patrolman who had escorted him yesterday morning, red light and siren, to see Chief Brewer. He flipped through the file, reading quickly.

  According to the charges, three weeks ago Patrolman Church had been in a Code Thirty burglary car. He had accepted a call on a “hot ringer” in Southwest. A Hoover Street jewelry store was being robbed. It was a “There Now” call. Church had “rogered” the transmission but had not shown up for almost forty-five minutes. His Mobile Data Terminal showed him as being three blocks away. When he finally got there, the owner of the store had been beaten almost to death, and was still in the USC Medical Center. The IOs on the case stated that Church claimed he had never received the call, despite the fact that he had rogered it, and all of his communications and times were logged on his MDT as well as in the Communications Center.

  Shane dropped the case back on the pile, not attaching much significance to it, except for one stray thought: Why would an officer whom the chief of police had just personally directed to an IAD Board of Rights be given a special assignment by the chief to pick up and escort Shane to his office? It didn’t make sense. But then, nothing that had been going on lately made much sense.

  He turned on the Xerox machine and spent the rest of the day burning copies in the hot, narrow room.

  Shane punched out at five-thirty, walked back to his car next door, and headed to Harvard Westlake.

  Chooch was sitting alone on the curb. Everyone else had been picked up. He stood slowly, then dragged both his book bag and ass over to the car and got in.

  “Sorry. We’re gonna have to make new arrangements for the pickup. I can’t get back here till five forty-five. I sent you a message. I hope they gave it to you.”

  Chooch was strangely quiet. He just nodded.

  Shane put the car in gear and headed up onto the freeway, back to Venice.

  “Did you have some kinda talk with Mr. Thackery?” Chooch finally asked after almost ten minutes of silence.

  “No, why?” Shane said, glancing over at him.

  “I don’t know. He pulled me out of study hall. It was like he was a different guy, wants to be my bud. He said I was gonna get another chance, that he had gone to bat for me.”

  “I’ll bet your mom called and set him straight. Sandy did pretty good, huh? I’m telling ya, you got your mother down in the wrong column, Chooch.”

  “Yeah…What column is that, the ‘Don’t bother me, I’m always busy’ column? She’s had me in boarding school since second grade. Up at Webb School in Ventura, I never even got to come home at Christmas. I was the only kid left in the dorm over the holidays. I was being watched by custodians…had to eat at the headmaster’s house. Sandy’s some mom, all right. We gotta get her a Mother’s Day award.”

  “People aren’t always what they appear to be,” Shane persisted. “Your mom has reasons. Her job takes her away a lot. She’s trying to give you a great education. She wants you to have a good start in life.”

  “Thackery said if I have any problems, or if I want to talk, I should look him up,” Chooch said, changing the subject. “As if I’d even tell that dickhead which way was due north.”

  “Look, Chooch, if he’s changing his tune, don’t hawk a lugie at him.”

  “He’s a prick.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he’s had a change of heart. If he’s trying to cut you some slack, take it.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure, I believe him. Hey, look, Thackery may be okay underneath all that Latin he quotes. Maybe he’s just a guy who’s scared, like us.”

  “I ain’t scared a’ nothin’.”

  “Then you’re the only one on the planet, Chooch. Everybody is scared.”

  “Were you scared when you shot that guy?”

  Shane looked over. He had not discussed the incident with Chooch, and he didn’t have a TV. He was foolishly hoping it would never come up.

  “It’s all over school,” Chooch said, reading his look of dismay. “So tell me. When you offed him, were you scared?”

  “Yeah. Yeah…I was scared to death. I was shitting bricks.”

  Chooch sat there for a long moment thinking. “Physical stuff doesn’t scare me. I’m not afraid a’ getting bombed on or fucked over that way. But”—he hesitated for a moment, his eyes on the road ahead—“sometimes I’m afraid that what I believe in isn’t true, that everything I think is true was just set up by somebody to fool me.”

  Shane nodded. “Yeah, I’ve b
een getting some of that myself lately.”

  “And sometimes, just once in a while, I want to be the most important, instead of the least….” He paused for a long time, his face in a wrinkled frown. “Sometimes I’m scared I’ll never have anybody who gives a shit.”

  They rode in silence.

  Finally they got back to East Channel Road. Shane pulled the car into the garage, and they went into the house. Shane closed the door and watched as Chooch dragged his book bag into his room, to sit there with desperate, lonely thoughts that probably matched his own.

  14

  A.K.A.

  Shane sat in his living room listening to an occasional siren, which always seemed to come from the east, where the gangbangers held their nightly life-ending turf parties. It was six o’clock and the sun had just gone down. He put his mind back on his problem.

  Any police detective worth his salt always started a case by arranging known or probable facts in chronological order. Shane took a piece of paper off the table and began making notations:

  Late Feb. or early March, Ray Molar gets a job driving for Mayor Crispin.

  March, R.M. begins not coming home.

  April 2, Joe Church fails to respond to Hoover St. robbery (related?).

  April 10, R.M. gets shirts done at Mountain Cleaners.

  April 14, B.M. gets phone call from mystery woman/tape coming.

  April 16, 1:30 A.M., R.M. gets home, beats B.M.

  April 16, 2:35 A.M., R.M. shot (no tape found in house).

  April 16, 5:17 A.M., T. Mayweather does DFAR (S.S. secure files in IAD possibly accessed).

  April 16, 6:00 A.M., S.S. threatened by Kono and Drucker, police garage.

  April 16, Joe Church escorts S.S. to C.O.P.

  April 16, C.O.P. threatens S.S. with murder indictment. Wants case material returned.

  April 18, Samansky, Ayers break in and search B.M.’s house (no tape found). Warrant signed by Hernandez, Crispin appointee.

  April 18, Letter of Transmittal arrives. S.S. suspended. S.S. motive for murder mentioned.

  April 18, T. Mayweather walks 1.61 appeal through department. S.S. back on duty.

  April 19, S.S. reports to IAD (DA intends to audit BOR).

  He stopped writing and looked at the list. It was his first chronological log. There were huge holes in his time line. Aside from the missing tape, there was Ray’s increasingly violent behavior toward Barbara. Also, the list made it even more obvious that there was some kind of link between Ray and the top floor of the Glass House, and that it might have to do with Mayor Crispin. The list directed him to where he had to look next. He needed to find out why Molar had his shirts done ninety miles away. He looked at his watch—seven o’clock. Shane turned on his desk lamp and picked up the phone. He got the number for the laundry on Pine Tree Lane in Arrowhead and dialed. After a few rings, a man’s voice came on the line.

  “Mountain Cleaners,” the voice chirped.

  “Yes. Who am I speaking to?”

  “This is Larry Wright.”

  “Mr. Wright, I’m Sergeant Shane Scully, with the LAPD. I’m working a case and I have some dry-cleaned shirts that were done at your laundry. I’m trying to find out who dropped them off.”

  “I see, well, without looking at the tags, I wouldn’t know. They’re bar-coded; I’d have to run them through our scanner.”

  “This case is pretty important. If I got in my car, I could be up there in two hours. I know it’s an imposition, but do you think we could make an appointment to meet about nine tonight?”

  “No problem. I’m usually stuck here till nine-thirty.”

  “Great. I’ll bring the shirts with me.” He hung up and dialed Longboard Kelly.

  “Yer tappin’ the Source,” the surfboard shaper answered. Kelly believed “the Source” was a magical place where great waves came from.

  “It’s Shane. You think you could come right over and keep an eye on Chooch for a couple of hours?”

  “I’m busy crankin’ off an eight-ball, dude. After I finish, I could make it.”

  “You’re doing what?” Shane asked.

  “I’m on the throne, takin’ a shit. Gimme five.”

  “Great. I’ll pay you.”

  “What for, man? One day, if I get busted, you play the ‘Get Brian out of jail’ card.”

  “Right. Only we took that card out of the deck. How ’bout I play the ‘Put in a good word for Brian’ card instead?”

  “Agreed, dude! I’ll be right over.”

  Shane hung up.

  He went into the guest bedroom. Chooch was hunched over the desk, doing his homework. Shane had a momentary stab of “parental” gratitude. “It’s great you’re doing your studies,” Shane said proudly.

  Chooch looked over at him, and Shane saw that he had a Game Boy on his lap.

  Shane’s expression of gratitude was replaced with exasperation. “I’m gonna run out for a few hours. Kelly is coming over to be with you.”

  “Cool. He’s kickin’.”

  “Right. When are you gonna get back to your studies?”

  “I’m just takin’ a break, man. You don’t get breaks down at that duck farm where you work?”

  “Yeah, I get breaks. I’ll be back before midnight.”

  “Solid.”

  Shane left the room, got his coat, collected his badge, and grabbed one of the bagged dry-cleaned shirts, which he had hung in the closet. He headed out the back door.

  As the garage door was going up, a car’s headlights pulled in right behind him, blocking his exit. He put a hand on his belt holster and cautiously moved toward the driveway. As he rounded the back of his car, he could see Barbara Molar’s red Mustang convertible. When she turned off her headlights, he saw her behind the wheel, a scarf tied around her hair.

  “Shit, Barbara, whatta you doing here?”

  “I had to come over. I couldn’t reach you. Your machine was off and your cell phone is out of service.”

  “If they catch us together, I’m gonna be out of service,” he said quickly.

  “Shane, I’m getting phone calls at the house. Spooky calls. I’m being threatened.”

  “Go park a few blocks away. Lock up. I’ll drive over and pick you up.”

  She nodded and followed his instructions. Shane got behind the wheel and backed the Acura out. He drove up East Channel Street to where Barbara was standing, her arms wrapped around her, shivering slightly in the cold marine air. She had put up the Mustang’s top and, he hoped, locked the car. Shane reached over and threw open the passenger door. Barbara got in. He put the Acura in gear and pulled off East Channel to a side street, keeping one eye on his rearview mirror.

  “Who’s calling?” he finally asked. He could tell she was panicked. Her features were drawn; she seemed even more pale than normal.

  “It’s a man’s voice. He just says, ‘If you’ve got what we want, turn it over, or you’ll pay the consequences.’ Stuff like that. Then a couple of calls where there was just breathing first, then somebody said, ‘Do the right thing, bitch,’ and hung up.”

  Shane pulled to the curb and parked. “That means they still haven’t found what they’re looking for.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “So am I.”

  She looked at the shirt between them on the front seat. “Is this one of Ray’s?”

  “Yeah. The laundry is in Arrowhead.”

  “Arrowhead?”

  “You got any idea why he’d have his shirts cleaned all the way up there?”

  “None.”

  “It doesn’t make much sense,” Shane said. “He was driving the mayor. Arrowhead is two hours out of L.A.”

  “Maybe the mayor had personal business there.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I was just heading up to Lake Arrowhead to talk to the cleaner. I wanna see what I can find out from the guy. They have customer information on the bar code of this laundry tag.” He held up the shirtt
ail with the purple tag attached.

  “I wanna go with you. And don’t tell me no. I’m scared. I can’t go home. Those calls are terrifying me.”

  “Barbara, the DA is contemplating indicting me for murder. My motive, they think, is that I killed Ray to be with you. If we get caught riding around together, I will be trying to explain it in court.”

  “Take me with you,” she said again. “Please. I need company. I’m shaking.”

  Kinetic thoughts were buzzing around, bouncing off unanswered questions with pinball energy. Then without really weighing his answer, he just nodded.

  “Okay,” he said impulsively, and put the car in gear. They headed up the street.

  Shane turned right onto Washington Boulevard, which took him to the 405, then north to the 10, which would lead them east toward San Bernardino and Lake Arrowhead.

  The road was narrow and winding. His headlights swept across shadowy tree trunks that lined the two-lane highway in the Angeles Mountains. Shane had his eye on the road, but his mind was on Ray Molar.

  Barbara sat silently beside him. She had started the trip with a lot of chitchat, then had tried to swing the conversation to her future, what she would do with her life now that Ray was gone. Then she made the leap to how Shane was feeling, how he felt about her and about them.

  Shane had deflected it all, keeping his answers short. He was beginning to suspect that Barbara had some hidden agenda, but he couldn’t yet tell what it was. Maybe it was just his cop instincts that distrusted everything. But something was telling him to pull back—to defend his perimeter.

  While she talked, he had been thinking about the night of the shooting: the two critical minutes from the time he’d gone into that bedroom to the moment he had peeled the Nine at Ray. Something in his Letter of Transmittal had stuck in his mind. The department had accused him of inappropriate use of force, of bad judgment, which had escalated the situation out of control. Had he fucked up? Why had he taken his gun? Had he anticipated shooting Ray? Had he acted out of policy? Was there a way he could have prevented Ray’s death? The only other witness to the event was sitting next to him, so after weighing the consequences, Shane gingerly broached the subject.