The Tin Collectors

by Stephen J. Cannell

  My problem, of course, is I’m the asshole who shot him.

  I don’t know if I can bear to stand there under all the hatred I know will be directed at me.

  What would you do, Dad? I could really use the advice. I remember you told me once that, in matters of the soul, the thing that is the most difficult to do is generally the thing that you must do. You said that in order to grow spiritually, one must not turn away from emotional hardships. But, still, I feel so isolated, so alone, so out of the loop.

  Having you so far away has made things difficult. I know you can’t get around much and having emphysema makes flying difficult, but I need help, Dad.

  I guess one of my problems is I always tried to make the department my second family. All that bullshit they preach up at the Academy…the long blue line, fraternity of police, brothers in blue…I wanted to believe all that. I think maybe it’s why I decided to become a cop. And now, despite almost seventeen years on the job, I’ve found a way to fuck it up. I’m alone again.

  If you have any thoughts, gimme a ring. I’m still undecided about Ray’s funeral.

  I wish I had your strength, willpower, and sense of honor. I’m trying to do what I think would make you proud but, damn it, I’m panicked to go to that funeral.

  You’re probably saying I should just bite the bullet and go. So, that’s the answer. You always did know what was best.

  I miss you and love you. I know, enough already, blah, blah, blah.

  Your loving son,

  Shane

  9

  Warrant

  Shane didn’t go to the funeral.

  He put in for a sick day and, mercifully, it was approved. He hated himself for not having enough guts, but he just couldn’t make himself attend. Chooch, showing more backbone, had not objected that morning when Shane loaded him into the car, took him across town to Harvard Westlake, and dropped him at school. They barely exchanged words as Chooch got out of the car.

  Shane drove back to Venice, trying hard not to think about his emotional cowardice. He arrived home and busied himself cleaning the small house. He did some deferred maintenance, fixing a sprung hinge on the back screen door, then managed some idle conversation with Longboard Kelly, both of them talking over the back fence. But he couldn’t keep his mind on what Kelly was saying…something about Hawaiian North Shore supersets and the merits of a stubby board compared with a nine-foot Hawaiian classic. As he walked back inside, his recollection of the conversation hovered over him like a dream barely remembered. Then he checked his answering machine, something he hadn’t done for almost ten hours. There was only one message:

  “Shane, it’s Barbara. I know it might be dangerous, but we need to meet. I assume you’ll be at the funeral, but obviously we can’t talk there. How about ‘our spot’? I could be there by one. The funeral is scheduled to be over by twelve-thirty. Don’t contact me, I’m worried about my phone. I’m calling from a pay booth. Just be there. I have news. I love you.” Beep.

  Their “spot” was the outdoor restaurant at Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. Once or twice, when they’d been dating, they’d taken a room there. The place was picturesque, and most of the units overlooked the water. Back then they’d both been in their early twenties and single. Having lunch together on an open patio before going up to a rented love nest was fine. Now, after shooting Ray, the last thing he needed was to be seen hunched over a table, in whispered conversation with his widow. Still, Shane was drawn to her in a way he couldn’t describe. Maybe it was guilt, or maybe the feeling that she had been the one, and he had lost her through bullheaded pride, or maybe she had become just a fantasy in his memory. He had saved her from Ray, setting up, God help him, possibilities for some sort of future together. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t been laid in almost three weeks. Whatever the reason, he decided to take the chance and meet her there. After all, he rationalized, she said she had “news.”

  He dressed with more care than usual and even used the hair dryer on his dark, unruly mop. Then he got in the Acura and drove the short distance up the coast to Santa Monica.

  He arrived at Shutters at about quarter to one and selected a table near the back of the patio. He ordered her favorite bottle of wine, a French Montrachet. While he waited, he tried to justify the meeting in his guilt-ridden conscience. Maybe her “news” would shed light on his problems. Maybe it would be something that would help dig him out of the mess he was in. Of course, lingering always, like a sour aftertaste, was his desire for her and the knowledge that he wanted to sleep with her again. It was another picture for his gallery: guilt-ridden lust…presenting a portrait of carnal self-hate. Hang it in the Virginia Woolf exhibit.

  She arrived at 1:25 and stood in the doorway of the patio restaurant, wearing a black dress with a single strand of pearls. She wore large dark glasses to cover a black eye. The swelling from the nightstick was gone, and miraculously she no longer appeared to have any bruises. Her blond hair shimmered in the bright afternoon sunlight. She looked around the patio, spotted him, waved off the maître d’, and walked toward him with her athletic dancer’s step. She had once performed in the chorus of several musicals at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. She slipped gracefully into the vacant chair, puckered her lips, kissed the air, and smiled. Now that she was across the table from him, he could see that she had expertly covered the effects of the beating with Dermaplec, an over-the-counter makeup that is the best product available for hiding bruises. Every patrolman answering a spousal-abuse complaint quickly learned to check the medicine cabinet for Dermaplec. If it was there, it was almost as good as a confession by the husband that he had engaged in wife battering before.

  “Hard day,” she said sadly. “I thought you’d be at the funeral.”

  “Truth is, I chickened out.”

  “I can hardly blame you. It was a real Hollywood layout. Chief Brewer made a speech. Said Ray exemplified commitment to community and police honor. Mayor Crispin talked about his courage. Said he set a new standard for police excellence. They had a twenty-one-gun salute, gave me the flag off his coffin. There was a helicopter flyby, the whole police air unit.”

  “I’m surprised Schwarzenegger could spare the bird.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Nothing,” he said, not wanting to go into it.

  “Anyway, Ray’s in the ground. Lots of ceremony, lots of news crews and crocodile tears. Jeez, you wouldn’t believe what a big deal it was.”

  Shane poured her a glass of Montrachet. She sipped the wine and looked out over the sandy beach and the ocean a hundred yards beyond. A light wind ruffled her perfectly streaked blond hair. She seemed to be working up to something. He waited and let her get at it in her own way. Finally she turned back to him, a small, sad smile on her face. “This is strange, sitting here again after all these years, isn’t it?” He nodded his agreement. “God only knows why I chose to marry him, Shane. All day I’ve been trying to figure what was going through my mind. You were always the one.”

  “You don’t have to explain it,” he said, shifting awkwardly under the weight of the conversation and her penetrating stare.

  “You were what I was looking for, but Ray told me you had beat that kid half to death in Southwest Division. He told me horrible things about you and I just…got mixed up. It wasn’t until after we got married that he told me one night when he was drunk that he did it and that you had just taken the blame so IA wouldn’t kick him off the job. He thought it was funny. ’Scully’s just a dumb fuck,’ he said.”

  “It’s okay. It’s done. Forget it.” He felt his self-respect washing away like water rushing back to the sea, taking the sand beneath his feet, altering his stance, threatening his balance. It seemed wrong to be discussing this on the day that Ray went into the ground. Wrong to feel desire for his widow, wrong not to have found the courage to go to the funeral.

  Barbara went on, in a hurry to rid herself of her own painful memories. “Back then, when I told y
ou not to call me anymore, I cried for a whole night. I thought you had done what Ray said, you were on trial at Internal Affairs for it…and I…” She stopped and shook her head. “Ray started coming around a month later, and he seemed so strong. At first he could be so sweet, so tender. It was sort of touching, a huge brutish guy like that with an inner softness. I was looking for something, I don’t know what. Then he kept at me…calling…gifts…it went on for years before I said yes. My dancing career was going nowhere, and I just thought…” She shook her head in exasperation. “Whatta mistake, huh?”

  “Barbara, you don’t have to explain it to me. Please. I understand.”

  “I want to, Shane. I need to. I know this is a shitty day for it, but frankly, in the twelve years we were married, I’d come to despise Ray, and I had come to despise myself for getting into such a mess with him. He drank, he cheated, he didn’t come home sometimes for a week. Then a few years ago, he started hitting me. At the end, I was so frightened of him. I swear, it was a relief to see that casket go into the ground, almost like his grave was the doorway to my future.” She took a deep breath. “If that seems coldhearted, I’m sorry. It’s how I feel.”

  Shane looked at her for a long time. Under the dark glasses he knew she had beautiful aqua-blue eyes, the exact color of tropical reef water. She had a luscious body and chiseled features. More than once, in the old days, he had walked into rooms with her and felt the gaze of every man in the place undressing her. She was a physical trophy, but it went beyond that. He thought she had intense feelings and a depth of personality that this conversation betrayed. God help him, Shane still desperately wanted her, wanted to hold her and make love to her, but the feeling diminished him. Making it worse, he could tell that she was reaching out to him, asking him for forgiveness and inviting him to try again.

  “Barbara, I think, no matter what eventually happens between us later, this needs to wait.”

  “I know. I know. It’s just…I’ve been thinking about what it would have been like if things had been different. Sounds like a sad Barbra Streisand flick, doesn’t it?”

  He sat there looking at her, afraid to mention the number of times he had lain awake with the same thought. They’d really fucked it up. Ray had given it a nudge, but it had been the two of them, accelerated by Shane’s pride and anger, who had pushed something special over the cliff. Now any future relationship was destined to be a reclamation project. Ray’s memory would forever be between them.

  “You said you had news,” Shane said, changing the subject.

  “I got the phone printout like you asked, from AT&T. I got the number that woman called in on.”

  “Great. Lemme see it.”

  She handed over a slip of paper and he frowned. “This is a Venice exchange.”

  “I know.”

  “Why would somebody send an important package through the mail, where it might get lost, when they could just drive by at midnight and stuff it into your mailbox?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t make much sense.”

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number. He got a recording. “Disconnected,” he said as he snapped the phone closed. “When you gave your statement, did you tell the police about the woman who called and the videotape she said was coming?”

  “Yeah. I told them everything.” Then she added with a strange smile, “I told them Ray fired first, that it was self-defense.”

  Shane sat, thinking for a long moment. “We need to take a look through your house. I want to do a thorough search.”

  “There’s nothing there. Robbery/Homicide looked already when they did the crime-scene investigation.”

  “I wanna look anyway. Maybe they missed it. I think that tape the woman was talking about may be what this is all about. Can we skip lunch and go there now?”

  “What if they have someone watching the house? They’d see us together.”

  “With two-thirds of the department taking the day off for Ray’s funeral, I doubt there’s any spare manpower for a stakeout. Now is the best time. Let’s go. If it’s there, maybe we can find it.”

  He paid for the wine, and they walked out of the restaurant. On the way through the lobby, Shane had another thought. “Barbara, do you know Ray’s cell phone number?”

  “No. It was strictly a business phone. He told me never to use it, but I think he had it written down somewhere. Why?”

  “When we get there, see if you can find it.”

  “Okay.” She got into her red Ford Mustang convertible. The parking attendant stared openly as she pulled away, her blond hair streaming in the wind. Invisible in her wake, Shane got into his Acura and followed.

  When they got to Barbara’s house on Shell Avenue, the front door was ajar. Shane pulled up to the curb as Barbara pulled into her driveway. They both got out of their cars and looked at the half-open door with concern. Shane pulled his gun and handed Barbara his cell phone.

  “Call nine-one-one if I’m not out in two minutes,” he said. Then he moved up the steps and onto the front porch. He could see that the front-door lock had been drilled. Part of the tumbler mechanism was lying on the porch at his feet. With his toe, he edged the door open, staying to one side, out of sight. Then, when he had determined it was clear, he slipped into the house.

  He could hear drawers being opened and closed in the back. He moved silently in that direction, finally looking into the bedroom where, seemingly a lifetime ago, he had killed Ray Molar.

  There were two uniformed police officers going through dressers and closets. Shane decided to retreat. He didn’t want to be caught in this house with Barbara standing outside. As he took a step back, the floor squeaked; both policemen spun and saw him standing there, gun in hand.

  “What the fuck’re you doing going through Ray’s house?” Shane snarled, switching to offense and glaring at the two officers.

  They were both first-year patrolmen. One of them he recognized as John Samansky, Ray’s last probation partner. He was almost too short to be a cop, probably barely reaching the LAPD five-seven male height requirement. He had made up for his short stature by lifting weights. His wide trapezius muscles were straining his uniform shirt collar. The other police officer Shane had never seen before. He was also young but prematurely balding, with a narrow, pockmarked face. His nameplate read L. AYERS.

  “Whatta you doing here, Scully?” Samansky asked. He had the blown voice of a pack-a-day saloon singer or a throat-punched club fighter.

  “You got a warrant?” Shane asked, ignoring the question.

  “Show him, Lee,” Samansky said. Patrolman Ayers pulled a folded slip of paper out of his pocket and waved it under Shane’s nose. “Not that you got any rights in this house, least not that we know about.”

  Shane ignored the comment, turned, and moved out of the bedroom, back to the front door. He waved to Barbara, who closed the cell phone and walked into her house. He didn’t need more cops added to this party.

  “Give her the warrant,” Shane demanded as she entered the living room.

  Lee Ayers handed it to Barbara.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why are you searching my house?”

  “That’s none of your business, ma’am,” Samansky said, his sandpaper voice gruff and irritating.

  “You two are patrol officers,” Shane said. “Long as I’ve been on the job, it’s always detectives who administer warrants and paw through the dressers. Shouldn’t you guys be parked on a corner somewhere, writing greenies?”

  “You’re the asshole who’s headed for Traffic Division,” Ayers said with a smirk. “ ’Sides, we got this squeal direct from the top of the Glass House. You got a problem with that, take it up with the warrant control officer at Parker Center.”

  Shane took the warrant out of Barbara’s hands and looked at it. It had been signed by Judge José Hernandez, known by police and trial attorneys around the municipal courthouse as “Papier-Mâché José” because he was willing to hang all the paper the cops wanted: su
bpoenas, arrest warrants, wiretaps. If they wrote it up, Hernandez signed it. Defendants had their own moniker: “The Time Machine,” because the judge was infamous for passing out maximum sentences. He was a Mayor Crispin ally.

  Shane handed the warrant back to Barbara. “You guys about through?” he asked.

  “Yeah, we did the whole place,” Ayers said. “You need to vacuum behind the furniture, lady. You got a fuckin’ butterfly collection back there.”

  The two cops moved out the side door. Samansky had Barbara’s garage-door clicker, and he opened her garage, exposing their black-and-white. They had parked it there to avoid calling attention to their presence.

  While Lee Ayers got into the patrol car and backed it out of the garage, Samansky turned to Barbara. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Scully is the guy who shot your husband.”

  “That’s none of your business,” she said weakly.

  “ ’Cept it is my business. Ray was my friend, my partner. He was special. A guy like Ray comes along once in a lifetime. You had the best, lady. I’m fuckin’ dyin’ here…can’t even believe he’s really gone. You’re his wife, and you’re walking around with the shitwrap who dropped him. You should be ashamed.” Then he turned, moved to the squad car, and got in. He glowered at them from the passenger seat. “I wonder what Robbery/Homicide’s gonna say about you two bein’ together. Wonder how that’s gonna play downtown.” Samansky cleared his raspy throat, hawked up a spitball, and shot it in their direction. It landed two feet from the step they were on. Then he threw the garage-door opener at Shane, who snatched it out of the air.

  They backed out of the driveway, around Barbara’s Mustang convertible, and onto the grass. The squad car bounced over the curb, banging hard into Shane’s black Acura, caving in the front fender with its pipe bumper, knocking Shane’s car away from the curb. Then Lee Ayers cranked the patrol car’s wheels and sped off up the street.