The Tin Collectors

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “Okay, okay…I won’t. You’re right—you’re right. Jesus, what’s wrong with me…. It’s just…Ahhh, fuck it! This guy is going!” Shane pointed the gun at the chief and pulled the hammer back. The metallic click echoed in the silence.

  “Don’t, Shane. Please!” she shouted, in standard Actors Studio over-the-top fashion. Mayweather was too panicked to spot their bad performances.

  “Please…please stop him. Don’t let him shoot me,” the deputy chief begged Alexa. This was a new Tom Mayweather; no longer the officious police commander, this one was shitting his pants, pleading for his life.

  “How can I stop, Tommy? You’re such a hopeless prick. I can’t believe all the worthless shit you’ve been pulling, starting with screwing me for Ray’s death, going all the way up the penal code to double felony kidnapping.”

  “What’re you talking about?” he said, his lips quivering, blood beginning to run down the side of his face where the cement chips had cut him, staining his collar.

  “What I’m saying, Tom, is I want answers. Don’t you get it? I’m fucking pissed off! I’m through taking your shit. You don’t walk away from a bad FI down here. You get buried in this fucking wash!” Shane was taking time on his performance now, first working on his loony sound, then screaming, making it unstable and completely out of control.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” Mayweather blurted.

  “Come on, you think I’m a fucking moron? You’re the deputy chief, asshooole,” he said, dragging the word out, leaning on it. “You’re Burl’s guy. You think I’m gonna believe that? You took all those files outta Zell’s office. Your fuckin’ prints are all over the folders.” He was pacing madly back and forth, strobing the floodlight, keeping his head turned from the lens but throwing a moving shadow against Mayweather and the sweating concrete tunnel wall. The effect was eerie.

  “I just get money. I don’t ask questions. I do what I’m told.” His voice shook badly.

  “Is that how you can afford that shiny new sailboat?” Shane asked.

  “I…I…Yes.”

  “And you know what? You know what? You know what I’m feeling?” He was rolling his words around like marbles in a tin dish. “I’m thinkin’ you and Brewer and Ray and his whole fuckin’ den are just scum-sucking pieces of shit! You sold out the fuckin’ job for a fuckin’ sailboat.”

  Mayweather was breathing through his mouth now. His fear was so pronounced, he’d forgotten to swallow; drool started coming out the right side of his mouth, running down his chin. He was close to snapping. Close to the edge of temporary insanity.

  “Hey, Shane, calm down, for Chrissake. Whatta you doing?” Alexa said, seeing the dangerous change in Mayweather, not wanting him to snap and start babbling. “The man wants to talk—why don’t you let him?”

  “Tom, you gonna talk?” Shane said, sounding a little more in control. “You talk, maybe you could live to go sailing again…. Maybe—just maybe. But I need answers, man. I can’t take no more shit! I can’t…I just fucking can’t.” A little insane exasperation.

  “Let him talk, for Chrissake,” Alexa persisted. “Go ahead, Tom. Just tell us.”

  “What…what is it you wanna know?” His voice was close to tears.

  “I wanna know what’s going on with the H Street Bounty Hunters. How come Ray’s den was letting those bangers run free in Southwest?” Alexa asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is just more fucking bullshit!” Shane screamed, and cocked the gun again.

  “No, no…Please…Please stop it. What I’m saying is, I know they’re being allowed to rob down by the university.” His words tumbling out now…“The gangbangers were told to do whatever they want from Exposition Boulevard to the freeway, and the police would look the other way.”

  “Down by USC?” Alexa said.

  “Yeah, the old University Division.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. For the love of God, I’m telling you all I know, I swear it.”

  “Why are those Gs being told it’s okay to caper south of Exposition?” Alexa continued.

  “I don’t know. I don’t…All I know is Brewer, once when I asked him, said that he wanted to drive the crime stats up in that part of town.”

  “The chief of police wants to drive the crime stats up?” Alexa asked from the darkness behind the camera. “Why? His job performance depends on driving the stats down.”

  “I don’t know. It’s all he said.”

  “Tommy, this is all fucking, runny yellow bullshit.” Shane shoved the gun out in front of him, right into Mayweather’s face, the barrel pressed against his right cheek.

  “Shane—NO!” Alexa shouted.

  “Stop it,” Mayweather sobbed, his eyes bugging, straining to get away, the cuffs rattling against the metal ladder. “I don’t know—I swear it! All he said was he was trying to increase the number of uncleared crimes in that section of the city. Molar’s den was setting it up, running it. They transported the H Street bangers after the arrests and turned them loose. Sometimes they blew the busts by not reading the Miranda or by losing evidence.” He was glistening with sweat under the floodlight. Shane didn’t answer, but recocked the gun. The sound echoed menacingly in the concrete tunnel.

  “Scully…Calm the fuck down,” Alexa ordered.

  There was a moment when all Shane could hear was the three of them breathing. Then Alexa moved out from behind the camera.

  “Stop him…. Make him stop,” Mayweather pleaded. Tears were suddenly running down his cheeks.

  “Tell me about Calvin Sheets,” Alexa said. “He worked the Coliseum detail down there. He was letting hookers and petty thieves run wild. Was he part of it?” She was taking over “point” on the interview because Mayweather had begged her. She probably seemed like his only chance. Shane let her have him, taking a step back.

  “I don’t know why, but yes, I heard Sheets was in on it.”

  “So that’s why all Ray’s den members have cases going through IAD,” Alexa reasoned. “But why send them to full boards where they’d be tried in the open, in public hearings? The chief could have disposed of the charges on his own, in private, under Section 202.”

  “Because the community down there was getting pissed. Their shops were being held up, people beaten or killed. They were filing complaints. That city councilwoman, Alicia Winston, is making a big fuss, her and Max Valdez. They want the bangers stopped, so the chief sent all those cases to open boards to appease the community. The panels were gonna be rigged. I was in charge of picking them. The officers were all gonna be acquitted or get modulated penalties—days off without pay, but no terminations. If that happened, they’d get envelopes to make up the difference. Burl wanted to control the timing of the boards so they wouldn’t fall one on top of the other.”

  “And that’s why Drucker’s board was just postponed?” she asked.

  Mayweather now seemed uncomfortable. He shifted his weight, averted his eyes.

  “Something wrong with that, Tommy?” Shane asked, stepping in again. “Did I get that wrong? Spit it out!”

  “Uh…uh…uh…please…please…make him…I’m trying to…” the deputy chief said inarticulately.

  “Was Li’l Silent making trouble?” Alexa persisted. “Did he want something that you couldn’t give, so you couldn’t trust him on the stand in Drucker’s case? Was he shaking you down?”

  “Look, I’ve told you all I know.”

  “Are we ever gonna see Sol Preciado again?” Shane asked softly. “Or did Li’l Silent break jail and dive into a pit full of lye?”

  Mayweather licked his lips and said nothing, but it was as good as a confession.

  “How did you ever get to be a deputy chief?” Alexa said softly.

  Mayweather was sobbing heavily now, standing there, psychologically stripped, cuffed to the ladder and sweating like a field hand, his chest heaving, tears streaming down his handsome face. “My dad was a cop, y’know. H
e was a uniform in Lake Falls, Illinois. When I went to UCLA to play ball, he used to save up, come to the games…. He loved watching me play. He was proud…. He was…he…he…” Mayweather was so lost and out of control, he couldn’t get the words out.

  Shane closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hear this man’s bullshit story.

  “When I didn’t make it in the pros, I wanted to make my dad proud…so I…so I…”

  “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll kill you just for being a pussy,” Shane shouted, not performing now, truly pissed.

  “You kidnapped a boy named Chooch Sandoval. With him was my next-door neighbor and friend, Brian Kelly. I want them back. If I don’t get them back, you die.”

  “Honest, honest…I know nothing about that. I told you, I know nothing about any kidnapping.”

  Shane took the cold barrel of the gun and again laid it up against Mayweather’s cheek and held it there. The man’s eyes got wide, trying to look down to see it.

  “Why should I believe you?” Shane asked softly. “Make me a believer, Tom.”

  “Sol Preciado is dead,” he whispered. “They let him out of that jail-transport vehicle, then took him out and shot him. That makes me an accessory before the fact in a first-degree murder. You think I’d confess to that with a tape running and withhold information on a kidnapping?”

  Shane took a deep breath and a moment to get level, turned away, then shut off the videotape and sun gun, packing up the camera. Alexa reached out and uncuffed Mayweather. Shane could barely see him but knew the deputy chief would not make trouble. He was beaten.

  “Go home, Tom,” Shane said softly. “Think about what you’ve done, the lives you’ve hurt or destroyed. Not just mine or Sol Preciado’s, or Chooch Sandoval’s or Brian Kelly’s, but all the shop owners who had their brains kicked loose or were murdered. Think about all the old ladies who got knifed or beaten for their welfare checks so you could have that pretty new sailboat. If you believe in God, you better start working on a good excuse, ’cause you’re gonna need it.”

  He turned and, carrying the video box, walked out of the tunnel with Alexa.

  When they were outside, he paused and handed her gun back to her. They could hear Tom Mayweather splashing around in the tunnel, slowly making his way out.

  “You wanna drop him somewhere?” she asked.

  “Let the prick find his way home. Maybe some H Street gangster will pick him up and finish the job for us.”

  They scrambled up the concrete incline and finally got back to the car. Shane locked the video box and tape in the trunk. Tom Mayweather’s confession was obtained illegally and under duress. It would be useless in court but would surely keep him on the sidelines. The last thing the deputy chief wanted was to see it on the six o’clock news.

  They sat in the front seat of the Crown Vic for a long moment, both changed by what they had just done.

  “That was brutal,” Alexa finally said. Shane nodded, and she added, “What now?”

  “What now? We’ve just pulled off a pretty successful kidnapping and felonious assault,” he said. “Wanna try your hand at forced entry and burglary?”

  38

  A Beginning?

  Shane didn’t want to attempt a B&E in broad daylight, so they went back to Alexa’s apartment to wait for the sun to go down.

  He felt dirty and tired as he sat on her snow-white sofa. Mayweather’s confession had darkened his mood, driving his spirit down without producing Chooch.

  Shane had always considered police work a noble calling, where Blue Centurions defended the public, upholding society’s laws. The slogans reverberated in his mind: Protect and Serve; Reverence for the Law; Integrity in Word and Action. His oath made seventeen years ago while holding his head and right hand high now seemed hollow and meaningless. “I recognize the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of police service.”

  Years on the job had shown him that police work was a flawed occupation at best, its participants on a narrowing, cynical path toward destroying the very thing they had pledged to uphold. Mayweather’s crimes made Shane as dirty as if he had committed them himself.

  “Is it okay if I take a shower?” he asked Alexa, hoping that maybe a long, hot soaking would wash the feeling away.

  “Sure,” she said. “I was just thinking the same thing, but you go first.”

  Shane heard a sadness in her voice that matched his own. He got up and walked into the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at himself in the mirror. The face staring back at him was tired and craggy and didn’t resemble what he’d come to expect. The change worried him. He stripped off his shirt, pants, shoes, socks, and underwear, then turned on the shower and waited for it to get hot. Shane stepped in and stood under its steaming spray. He looked up at the nozzle, his eyes squinting as the spray bounced hard off his face and hot water filled his mouth. He was dirty in places it could not reach.

  “You want, I’ll do your laundry. I’ll throw it in the machine with mine,” he heard Alexa call from outside the bathroom.

  “Good. Thanks. I tossed ’em next to the sink,” he shouted back. Then, through the frosted shower door, he saw her step into the bathroom, retrieving his clothes. He turned his back, pinching his eyes shut, trying to blank out his troubled thoughts, when, almost before he knew what was happening, the frosted glass door opened and Alexa was in the shower with him, standing there naked, the steam turning her beautiful body slick with its moisture.

  “Move over, you’re hogging the spray,” she said.

  “What’re you doing?” Shane’s mind was doing flip-flops.

  “I feel…I feel…”—she stopped, then looked up at him—“like I don’t exist…like I don’t even want to.”

  “Me, too,” he said softly.

  “I thought if we…” She stopped. “Bad idea…”

  Shane didn’t say anything, just took her into his arms and held her. As her wet body slid up against him, for the first time in days he felt the tension disappear; the knot in his stomach released as they stood locked in a cathartic embrace. They remained like that for a long time—holding each other, feeling each other’s comfort and warmth. Then Shane felt his desire for her swelling and pushing between her legs, proving that he was still alive, still a man; perhaps all his failures of the past week could somehow be forged into a new beginning. He desperately wanted to start over. Then he felt her clutching him, pulling him closer, and was overtaken by a desire for her that was so intense, it brought tears to his eyes. “Is this right?” he said, asking for absolution, permission, and maybe directions all at the same time.

  “Shut up,” she whispered.

  And then they were caressing each other in the steaming shower, Shane’s mouth covering hers, his body pushing her back against the wet tiles on the wall of the small shower, kissing with abandon, feeling each other’s warmth. Suddenly she pulled herself up, wrapping her arms around his neck, bringing her legs up around his waist. While she clung to him, he entered her, slowly at first, then thrusting more deeply. As her moans of pleasure washed over him, he felt changed and reborn.

  Shane didn’t know how long it lasted; time, in that small place, had become endless. They were in a wet cocoon of human ecstasy, and then he heard her cry out as he released inside her. She kissed him hard on the mouth, her breath mixing with his in the steaming shower.

  Shane finally set her down, and they remained under the hot spray in a desperate embrace, almost afraid to let go, afraid to return to their individual fears and loneliness. Finally she took the bar of soap and began to wash his back, his arms, lathering him in erotic places. After she was finished, he did the same for her. They held each other in a sweet fragrance of body and soul. Shane felt different, stronger, more alive.

  He looked down into her laser-blue eyes, which now seemed softer and filled with caring.

  “Now we can start over,” she said, putting his exact thoughts
into words.

  Later she made dinner and they sat at her kitchen table. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe; he was wrapped in a towel.

  After dinner she handed him his clothes, fresh from the dryer; they felt soft and were still warm as he put them on. When he walked into the living room, he noticed that there was renewed energy in his stride and a spring in his step.

  They said very little, but as they locked her front door and headed to her car, she reached out, took his hand, and squeezed it.

  39

  The Hot Prowl

  He was back in the parking lot, studying the fourteen-story steel-and-glass building in Long Beach. They had waited for the sun to go down. It was 8:05 on Saturday night, and they were still using the staff car Shane had been given up in Arrowhead. Across the street, roof letters announced Spivack Development Corporation in five-foot-high blue neon.

  “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde. Do you have this effect on everybody?” Alexa said. She was sitting in the Crown Vic next to Shane, putting on a pair of latex gloves so she wouldn’t leave her prints behind, both of them feeling a sense of awkwardness from the passionate lovemaking they’d engaged in a few hours before.

  “Y’know, you’re the last person I would ever have thought I’d be pulling a second-story job with,” he finally said. She ignored it.

  “You said you were here before. Did you scout it? You got a way into this place?” She was all business, putting that memory out of reach, taking the binoculars out of the glove box, unwinding the strap and training them on the building.

  “Look, things have changed. We both know it,” he said softly.

  “Yes, but…Shane, it’s dangerous. We have to be either cops or lovers. We can’t be both. You’ve seen what a mess that turns into when it happens…. For now, we gotta do the job.”