The Tin Collectors

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “You don’t have a year. You may not have a week.”

  “Shane, the sting on this drug deal goes down in two days. I’m right at the critical point, creating my exit strategy.”

  “You mean setting up your dead man,” he corrected.

  “Boy, are you in a shitty mood. Stop being so contentious. I’ll take him once this sting is over. I promise. But I’m not taking him today, or tomorrow…. Maybe this will be over by Monday. Let’s shoot for Monday.”

  Shane got to his feet, without having touched the sandwich or the beer. She didn’t beg him to stay, either.

  “By the way, who the hell is his father?”

  “His name is Carlos Delmonica. I got careless with my pills. He was a drug dealer in Simon Boca’s operation, and he’s currently a resident of Leavenworth, Kansas, doing twenty-five to life in the federal pen.”

  “Jeez, no help there, I guess.”

  “The best thing we can hope for is that Chooch never meets his father. And don’t tell him who he is. I don’t want Chooch writing Carlos, who doesn’t even know he has a son.”

  “Monday,” Shane said with finality.

  He started for the door, and Sandy scooped her purse off the sofa table. “I’ll go with you. Maybe I can still make my lunch.” She picked up the phone and dialed the bandleader with the braided shoulders in the lobby. “Darling, it’s Sandy. I’m coming down with the gentleman who just arrived. Be a dear, will you?” She hung up and smiled brightly, “Our cars will be right up. Magic.”

  They exited into the hall. As she punched the elevator button, a phone rang. Both Sandy and Shane dug for their cells. It was Shane’s. He popped it open.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  It was Luanne McDermott, of the Fingerprint Analysis Unit at SIS. “The print lab lifted a set of pretty good latents off the videotape box,” she said. “They came back to Calvin Sheets, 2329 Los Feliz, apartment sixteen.”

  “Calvin Sheets,” Shane said, taking a pen and his small spiral notebook out of his pocket. “Spell it ea or ee?”

  “Sheets—ee. Also, he used to be one of us.”

  “A cop?”

  “Yeah…got terminated by Internal Affairs six months ago.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thanks.” He closed the phone and tapped the pen on the spiral notebook, deep in speculation.

  The elevator arrived at the penthouse level, and he and Sandy got aboard. This time they were listening to an orchestrated version of “Eleanor Rigby.”

  “I know Calvin Sheets,” Sandy said, surprising him.

  The doors closed and they rode down.

  “You do?”

  “He works for Logan Hunter—at least he used to.”

  “The movie producer?”

  “Actually, Logan runs his own independent studio now, Starmax. Calvin Sheets is head of his security.”

  “How do you know Logan Hunter?” Shane asked, always surprised by the level of people Sandy knew. “Isn’t he a big social deal, always doing some major fund-raiser or civic project?”

  “Actually, that’s how he keeps his reputation. He only works on stuff that will keep him in the press. Right now he’s in the paper ’cause he’s trying to get a pro football team to come to L.A. He’s a football fan like I’m a microbiologist, but it’s popular, makes him look good. If it’s a news story, he’s up for it.”

  “I hesitate to ask you how you met him.”

  “I was working Logan for U.S. Customs about two months ago. It went nowhere. He just wouldn’t give me any play. One of my few wipeouts. I found out a few weeks later that he’s a closet gay. To each his own…”

  “What did U.S. Customs want him for?”

  “They thought he was smuggling heroin into the country, using film magazines being shipped back from a production he had shooting in Mexico. They thought he was unpacking loads of Mexican Brown in the film lab, but like I said, I never got close enough to find out.”

  “And Calvin Sheets works for him now?”

  “Yeah. And is he ever an asshole. A blister, that one. I’d hate to get caught alone with him in a dark place.”

  They got to the lobby and stepped out of the elevator. The doorman had already called up the cars; two Spanish-speaking men in white coveralls with BARRINGTON PLAZA stenciled over their pockets delivered the keys and stood by the cars waiting for their tips.

  Shane slipped his man a dollar, while Sandy tipped hers five, then rattled some Spanish at him. He smiled and bobbed his head energetically up and down like a sparrow digging for worms. She got behind the wheel of her new bottle-green XJB convertible. They both drove off, heading their separate ways: Sandy in her Jag, to arrange some poor asshole’s funeral; Shane in his battered Acura, to pick up her only son at Harvard Westlake before Mr. Thackery threw a shit-fit and started threatening expulsion, ad summum bonum.

  21

  B & E

  It was just after ten P.M. when Shane left a brooding Chooch Sandoval with Longboard Kelly. He was driving across town to the Bradbury Building, dressed for a burglary in 211 colors: a black LAPD sweatshirt, black jeans, and Reeboks. He had his .38 backup piece snug against his belt. His badge and ID card, picklocks, and penlight were stuffed in all available pockets.

  He pulled off the freeway and drove down Sixth Street, right into the hovering helicopter lights of the Schwarzenegger movie. They were back downtown doing night work, barricades in place, assistant directors and klieg lights glaring. He had hoped he would be able to sneak into IAD, rifle the chief advocate’s files, and get out unobserved. The last thing he needed to deal with was this fucking movie.

  He got stopped two blocks from the Bradbury by a motorcycle cop, now a potential witness who could put Shane at the location. He considered turning around and going home but then decided, fuck it, he was running out of options. He had to take the chance.

  “Sorry, Sergeant, we’re almost on a take,” the old motorcycle cop said after Shane badged him. He had outgrown his uniform, which stretched over his belly like a Mexican bandit’s faded guayabera.

  The LAPD supplied movie companies with police assistance to control crowds and traffic on location, and many of the retired old-timers made some money by working movie gigs. Shane didn’t know this officer. He never had many friends in Motors because the officers assigned there were basically “hot pilot” types—attitude junkies known on the job as “mustard cases.”

  “I need to get to my office,” Shane explained.

  “Lock up traffic. This is picture,” the assistant director’s voice came over the motor cop’s walkie-talkie.

  The officer was in his late sixties and looked slightly ridiculous in his too-tight shirt and worn leather knee boots. He held up his hands as if to say there was nothing he could do. The god of cinema had just spoken. “Sorry, we have to wait for the shot,” he said.

  “It’s a good thing the corner bank isn’t being robbed,” Shane muttered.

  They waited while the helicopter hovered loudly overhead. Suddenly a car squealed around the corner of Spring Street, roared down Sixth, skidded sideways, then disappeared around another corner.

  “Cut. Release traffic,” the AD said over the walkie-talkie, and Shane was finally waved through.

  In L.A., movies had their own hallowed place in the subculture. God forbid anybody should fuck with a unit production schedule.

  When Shane got to the Bradbury Building, he was greeted by another surprise. The entire north side of the building was flooded by a huge condor light suspended forty feet in the air from a crane. It lit almost the entire city block.

  “Shit,” Shane muttered. This was getting ridiculous. He was dressed in black, trying to do an illegal entry while a movie was shooting, and the fucking building he was burglarizing was lit up like City Hall. He had already decided not to use the parking structure, because he was pretty sure that the gate had a common security feature that would read his key card, then time-log it,
so he parked in a private lot next to a string of honey wagons and dressing rooms.

  He locked the Acura and walked past a line of chattering extras, out onto the brightly lit sidewalk. Hugging the bricks of the Bradbury, turtling his head down into his collar, he tried to hide, feeling stupid and exposed like a cockroach scuttling along a kitchen baseboard.

  The building was open, as he knew it would be. Advocates often worked late, so the department kept civilian guards on at night. Usually they slept somewhere on the fifth floor.

  He walked into the huge lobby and stood in the atrium. The guard desk was empty. He looked up at the advocates’ windows on the third floor. The lights were off. He climbed the stairs, his tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor. When he got to three, he headed down the corridor and stood for a moment in front of the advocates’ offices, looking through the windows, past the reception desks to the cubbies beyond, where any late-working advocates might be sitting. The place looked empty, and the lights were all off. He knocked loudly on the door.

  Shane had a cover story ready. If anybody was inside, he was going to abort and say that he had come back to finish some Xeroxing but first needed to pick up his key.

  He knocked again, but nobody answered. Everyone had gone home. He looked up and down the exterior corridor, then pulled out a small leather case and removed a set of picklocks.

  Ironically, picking locks was a criminal specialty he had learned from Ray Molar. A good set of picklocks contained an array of long, needle-shaped tools and one long, thin, notched metal strip. Shane slid the notched strip into the lock and jiggled it to find the first tumbler by feel. Then the smaller picks slid in behind it. The idea was to fill as many of the lock’s keyed openings as possible so that you had enough leverage to turn all the tumblers inside the bolt. It was not as easy as it looked on TV, where some guy would just slide a credit card into a door and, bingo, he was in. It took Shane almost ten minutes before he could turn the lock and let himself inside.

  He stepped onto the gray carpeted area just inside the door, then slowly withdrew the picklocks and returned them to the case. He closed the door and locked it from the inside. He moved down the carpeted hallway between the reception desks and windows, heading quietly toward the chief advocate’s office. Shane knew that all of the active IAD cases were in a file cabinet there. He got to the end of the long reception area, pushed open the door to Warren Zell’s office, took two steps inside, and stopped to adjust his eyes to the low light.

  He had stood right in this same spot yesterday, when Zell had informed him that he was IAD’s new Xerox machine operator.

  He saw the file cabinet at the far end of the room. As he moved to it, he prayed that the cabinets weren’t locked. He didn’t want to spend any more time there than necessary. As he crossed the room, he took the small penlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and stuck it in his mouth, gripping it between his teeth. The narrow light hit the top of the metal cabinet, reflecting the beam off its burnished gray finish. He put his hand on the top drawer handle and tugged on it. It slid open. The sound of the little metal rollers filled the room.

  He looked down into a file crammed full with case folders; each one had a yellow tab with the officer’s name and CF number. He cocked his head to aim the light on the tabs and, working alphabetically, quickly went through the cabinet. In the middle of the top drawer, he found a tab marked L. AYERS. He pulled the file out and opened it. Inside was a single slip of paper with the typed words:

  FILE RELOCATED TO S.I.D.

  He looked in the second drawer for Joe Church, the second name on the list, and found a file for him as well. It contained the same slip, indicating that the contents had been sent to the secure files over at Special Investigations Division in Parker Center. He glanced at several of the other case files in that drawer and found that none of them had been relocated, only Ayers and Church.

  He knelt down and opened the bottom drawer, where he figured he would find Samansky’s file, if there was one. It was right in the middle of the drawer, also empty, except for the same note.

  What the fuck is this? he thought as he began looking for the Drucker and Kono files. He found both folders empty; the same note was in each. Coy Love didn’t have a case pending. He was the only one of Ray’s den not facing a Board of Rights.

  Shane closed the drawer and stood up. He was just taking the penlight from between his teeth when he heard a gun cock behind him.

  “Don’t move,” a woman’s voice said. Then the lights were switched on.

  He turned and saw Alexa Hamilton framed in the doorway, a black automatic gripped in both hands, her arms triangled out in front of her in a shooting stance. “You sure are one rule-breaking son of a bitch,” she said.

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “Shut up, Scully! Where’s your piece? Where’re you packing?”

  “Huh?” His mind was spinning, looking for a way out.

  “Turn around. Put your hands behind your neck.”

  “Come on—this Dirty Harriet thing isn’t working. I’m assigned down here, same as you. Put the gun down.”

  “Do what I say, asshole. Do it now!”

  He turned his back to her and assumed the position; she quickly patted him down. She removed his clip-on holster, took a step back, and put it on the desk.

  Shane assumed she didn’t cuff him only because she didn’t have her handcuffs handy. She was dressed in a blouse and jeans, her hair was slightly mussed, and he guessed she’d been working late, then fell asleep on the sofa in the back of the advocates’ section. He’d awakened her when he’d broken in.

  She shifted her gun to her left hand and held it on him while she picked up the phone, locked the receiver under her ear, and dialed three digits. “This is Sergeant Hamilton…requesting a Code Six Adam at 1567 Spring Street, third floor. I’m in the chief advocate’s office. Notify the responding unit that they will be transporting a police officer under arrest to Parker Center, and notify Chief Mayweather, head of Special Investigations, to call me at 555-9878.” She listened for a moment, then hung up the phone.

  “You’ve gotta hear me out before you do this.”

  “It’s done, Scully. You’ve just been yanked.”

  “I wasn’t looking at my file—”

  “I don’t wanna hear it. I’m prosecuting you, so we’re not having an ex parte conversation. Just button it till the backup gets here.”

  Shane was down to his last chance. She would either have to shoot him or listen to him, but he was not going to just stand there, mute, waiting to be arrested.

  “Ray Molar was supervising a den of six guys. Five of them have cases going through IAD.”

  “Shut up. I don’t wanna hear another word outta you.”

  “All of their case files are missing. They’ve been relocated to the secure files at SID. Why? I’ve never heard of that before, have you?”

  “I said be quiet.”

  “Alexa, I need you to listen to me. Those files are missing because they contain dangerous information.”

  “Those files could be missing for a lot of reasons.”

  “Only the files on the guys in Ray’s den are gone,” he said incredulously. “Why only those guys?”

  “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. The chief advocate can relocate files anywhere he wants. They’re his. Maybe he knows what a loose cannon you are, figured you’d pull this dumb-ass burg.”

  “Ray has a second home in Lake Arrowhead,” Shane went on. “He had a second identity up there: Jay Colter. The house is owned by a real estate company, Cal-VIP Homes. I don’t know who owns the company yet, but I have a search being done by the Corporations Commission. When I was up at Ray’s Arrowhead house last night, I caught four guys cleaning the place out. After they left, I broke inside.”

  “So, you’re averaging one illegal entry a night. This some kind of sideline for you?”

  “Listen to me, will ya?” He was getting impatient. He told her about t
he one-way mirror, the glory hole, and the videotape box with the name Carl Cummins on it.

  “None of this ties to anything,” she said. “You’re rambling, Scully.”

  “What’re you talking about? A lot of it ties together. Ray’s old den had some kinda deal going with the Hoover Street Bounty Hunters, possibly to blow arrests and let them off. Chief Brewer was on his answering machine at the party house. I can play the tape for you if you don’t believe me. I think maybe even the mayor, who Ray was driving, is somehow involved.”

  “In what? Involved in what? You think it’s some kinda buy-down? Some bullshit collars-for-dollars scheme?” she asked, referring to a situation in which a criminal shares his take with the arresting officer in return for a chance to walk. “Why would the chief of police and the mayor of L.A. be involved in some two-bit street hustle like that? You’re delusional.”

  “I don’t think it’s a buy-down. I think it’s something else, something much bigger. I got called into Brewer’s office yesterday. He threatened me with this ridiculous murder charge, told me he thought I stole a videotape out of Ray’s house, and if I gave it back, maybe all my problems would go away. If Ray was videotaping sex parties, maybe this Cummins character or somebody else was getting blackmailed, and if I lean on him hard enough, maybe he’ll tell me what’s going on. That is, if I can find him.” He was rambling now, his own voice sounding desperate to him.

  “This is weak shit, Sergeant—delusional and paranoid.”

  “Gimme some time. I’ve only been working on it for two days. Whatever is going on, it’s sure got the top floor of the Glass House worried. They’re threatening me with a murder indictment to get some tape they think I have.”

  “They’re threatening you with murder because Ray’s wife was your eighty-five. You used to date her, and my IOs say, like the stone-ass moron you’re proving to be, you’re still actually seeing her.”

  “Eighty-five” was police slang for girlfriend. Shane ignored it and went on: “All of these IAD cases involve the Hoover Street Bounty Hunters. Some ex-cop named Calvin Sheets is involved. His fingerprints were on the Carl Cummins videotape box I found up at Ray’s house in Arrowhead.”