The Tin Collectors

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “Get Bob at the flight center. Tell him we gotta get moving.”

  While Alexa turned on her cell phone and dialed, Shane got a Miami all-news radio station. It had been only five or six minutes, but the story was already breaking.

  “Our field news team covering the plush NFL party Logan Hunter is throwing at Elton John’s Coral Gables mansion has reported a shooting,” the announcer said. “We’re still awaiting more details, but as we have it so far, several people have been gunned down. A man and a woman are identified as the shooters and have fled the scene in one of Elton John’s personal vehicles. Stand by as we get more information.”

  Shane let Alexa off at Million-Air Charters, then parked the car around the corner and up the street in a dense growth of oleander bushes, out of sight of the road. He wiped their prints quickly, using his old shirt, not forgetting to do the back of the rearview mirror, the place most car thieves miss. Then he walked around the corner and met Alexa. They entered the office and found Bob in the pilot’s lounge, filing his FAA flight plan.

  “Ready to go?” Bob said. “That was quick.”

  “Can’t afford the hangar time.” Shane smiled, but the grin felt wide and shiny and about as genuine as an Amway salesman.

  “Be right out,” Bob said.

  They quickly boarded the plane, this time without waiting for the red carpet. Shane and Alexa sat in tense silence as the two pilots finally got aboard, shut the door, and smiled warmly. “We’ve got a slight tailwind for a change,” Bob said happily. “Should get us back in four and a half hours or so.” He settled into the right seat and wound up the engines.

  Moments later they were rolling down the runway, taking off, leaving Miami and four dead bodies behind.

  Shane sat stoically in the cabin, unable to deal with his thoughts. Alexa reached over and took his hand. “You okay?” she asked. “What did Sandy say to you?”

  “Nothing,” he answered. He couldn’t tell her yet, couldn’t quite admit it to himself.

  His mind went back almost sixteen years, recapturing a memory long forgotten: it was his second summer on the job, right after the first arrest Sandy had arranged on the Valley bond trading case. They’d gone to dinner several nights later, to celebrate. Sandy had made her pitch to him, offering to work for the police as an informant. They’d had too much to drink, and in the car outside her apartment, he had shucked her out of her dress, then in awkward, thoughtless passion had entered her. There had been no tenderness in the coupling, and surely no love. It had been pure sex for him, raw and unadorned, an act he thought held no consequences. For Sandy, it was like a handshake to close their new deal. He had been just twenty-two years old.

  The next morning he had felt cheap and ashamed of himself. She was a prostitute, and since he had always demanded more from his intimate relationships, he had never made love to her again. Instead, they’d gone into business together. Over the years he had managed her informant’s career, making her rich while getting his share of class A busts in the bargain. The drunken romp in the backseat of his car was all but forgotten.

  All these years later, the consequences of that mindless act had finally come due. If what Sandy had told him was true, she had changed his life forever with her one dying sentence.

  Then he remembered what she had said in the doorway of her Barrington penthouse two days before. It had made no sense then, but now it spoke volumes: “You weren’t doing me a favor,” she had told him solemnly. “I was doing one for you.”

  43

  Dead End

  The road was dark and winding, and he was going too fast, overdriving his headlights.

  “For Chrissake, slow down. We’re gonna die on one of these curves,” Alexa barked at him.

  Shane momentarily lifted his foot off the gas and then, without realizing it, slowly sped up again, impatient to get there.

  They had turned off the car radio because he and Alexa had just been named as the shooters at Elton John’s Florida home and were now dominating every national newscast. Somebody at the party in Florida had made them, probably one of the ex-cops from Sheets’s old Coliseum detail. They were the subjects of a national manhunt. Shane knew it was only a matter of time before their sleeping pilot would get up, turn on his TV, and see the story. He would inform the police that Shane and Alexa were back in L.A., thereby narrowing the manhunt.

  The national news story was snowballing, becoming as big as when Andrew Cunanan shot Gianni Versace, each broadcast digging deeper into their pasts. Shane was now being described as a rogue cop prone to violence. His moment of self-defense when he protected Barbara and himself from Ray’s insanity was now being called the cold-blooded murder of an exemplary police officer that launched a coast-to-coast crime spree. The news media was having a party with Alexa’s involvement, calling her his Internal Affairs prosecutor, accomplice, and partner in crime. Her Bonnie and Clyde joke had come true.

  Shane had chosen to take the back road up to Arrowhead. They were on I-18, known as “the Rim of the World Highway,” heading through the mountain town of Snow Valley. There were patches of snow visible at the highest elevations, distant reflections glimmering faintly in the moonlight.

  Shane took another turn too fast, and the tires on the Crown Vic screamed in protest.

  “For Chrissake, Shane, slow down!” she repeated, then reached out and switched on the police-band radio but got only static. They were too far up in the mountains to get anything, so she turned it off.

  They slowed down to drive through the small town of Running Springs. At Crest Park Drive they took 173 along Burnt Mile Creek and finally dropped down into Lake Arrowhead. Shane knew the route to Ray’s house and quickly found his way there.

  He drove slowly past the party house on Lake View Drive. It looked dark inside. If they were holding Chooch and Brian, he reasoned, they would probably try to make it look deserted. Shane turned the car around before parking it. He wanted no cul-de-sac mistakes this time.

  Shane had found a sporting goods store in South Central on the way in from Long Beach. The owner-manager made it a point to mind his own business as Alexa bought a box of FMJ 9s and Shane a box of .38 hollow points. She had changed back into the clothes she wore to Miami: jeans, tennis shoes, and a turtleneck. Alexa pulled her handcuffs and reload case with the extra clip out of her purse and slid them into her belt with her cell phone. Then she and Shane got out of the Crown Vic and moved down the street toward the Arrowhead party house.

  As they approached, his heart was beating fast. Shane knew he had to do this just right. He couldn’t take a chance that Chooch would end up in a cross fire as Sandy had. He pledged to rescue Chooch and Brian, or die trying.

  The problem right now was that Shane and Alexa couldn’t get backup. If they showed their faces in any police station, they’d be arrested on the spot. Nobody would listen to them, and Chooch and Brian would simply become part of the untold history of the new L.A. football franchise.

  They were across the street from the house, crouched down behind the low hedge, looking at the property carefully. “I hate to say this, Shane, but that place looks empty. No cars out front, nothing,” she whispered.

  “They use a boat to get here. A Chris-Craft inboard.”

  “Okay, let’s go, then,” she said.

  They moved like shadows across the street, their guns out in front of them, staying low as they went.

  They got to the side of the house, creeping through the old rosebushes, trying to ignore the thorns. When they were within view of the dock, they could see that there was no Chris-Craft tied there. They made their way to the back porch, where, after checking the windows and seeing nothing, Shane shimmied up under the porch rail, then wormed his way across the deck on his stomach. Alexa covered his approach, her gun at port arms, looking right, then left, scanning the area, straining her night vision.

  Shane was finally at the sliding glass door. He looked into the living room but could still see no lights or movement
inside. Then he knelt, taking out his pocketknife, and pried open the door as he had done before. He motioned for Alexa, who came quickly and lightly up onto the porch, using the steps on the far side.

  They entered, breathing the stagnant air of an empty, shuttered house. They went through the place efficiently, moving fast—Shane going one way, Alexa the other, no longer creeping silently but throwing open doors SWAT-style, training their guns through the thresholds, calling out to each other.

  “Master bedroom and bathroom clear,” he heard her call from the back of the house.

  He threw open the guest bedroom and was looking at another empty room. “Guest room clear,” he shouted. Then he made his way to the secret room. He pushed the door open, hoping—praying—that Chooch would be there, alive, waiting. But the room was empty.

  “Kitchen and pantry clear!” he heard her shout from the back of the house. Then she yelled, “We’re secure!”

  The entire house was empty.

  They met in the living room and looked at each other. Shane’s face was pulled tight. “You think they got here ahead of us and moved him?” Shane asked.

  “No. There’s no sign of anybody having been here. No garbage in the kitchen trash. Nothing. This isn’t the place.”

  “Sandy said he’s in Arrowhead,” Shane protested.

  “But not here. He’s someplace else….”

  “Alexa, we’ve gotta find him.” His voice was thin. Even he could hear it screeching in the still house.

  “I wanna find them, too. It’s how we get out of this. But ever since Miami, you’ve been different. You’re not right, Shane. You’re not thinking straight. You gotta calm down.” And then she asked softly, “What did Sandy tell you? Whatever it was, your face dropped when she said it.”

  When he didn’t answer, she took a guess. “Did you used to sleep with her?”

  He still wouldn’t answer.

  “He’s your son, isn’t he?”

  When he looked up at her, his expression told her it was true.

  “Okay. But you’ve still gotta calm down, okay? Calm the fuck down. We can figure this out, but we gotta think it through.”

  “ ’Kay,” he said softly.

  “All right. You said they owned an old boat—that they used a boat to get here. Who owned it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not really old. It’s a reproduction of one of those classic Chris-Crafts with two windshields like they used to make in the thirties or forties.”

  “Maybe there’s a dealer….”

  “Shit, that’s gonna take forever. They know we talked to Sandy in the chauffeur’s house and that she got the location out of Calvin Sheets. That’s gotta be the reason they were hitting her, trying to find out how many people she told. If they know Sandy knew where Chooch was, they’re gonna move him. He won’t be up here anymore.”

  “We’ve gotta take this one step at a time,” she said evenly. “Let’s start with the phone book. There’s one in the kitchen.” She walked away from him, into the kitchen, turned on the light, and grabbed the Arrowhead directory. Then she started looking in the Yellow Pages, under “Boat Dealers.” “Here. Butterfield Boats, an authorized Chris-Craft dealership.”

  “It’s nine o’clock at night, Alexa. They’re closed.”

  She was already flipping to the Bs in the white pages. “Leo Butterfield, Lake View Drive. Can’t be too far from here. We can call him or pay him a visit. Connect the dots…. What’s it called?”

  “Police work,” he said dully. “Our faces are all over TV. We’ll probably do better on the phone.”

  “Okay. Who makes the call, you or me?” she asked.

  “The head of the department up here is a guy named Sheriff Conklyn. Let me…. Let’s hope these guys don’t go fishing together.”

  Shane had pulled the phone out of the kitchen four days ago, so they returned to the one in the living room. He dialed the number and after a minute a woman answered.

  “Mrs. Butterfield? This is Sheriff Conklyn at the substation. I need to talk to your husband,” he said.

  “Just a minute.” Her voice sounded puzzled.

  So far, so good. She didn’t seem to know Conklyn personally. Chances were her husband didn’t, either.

  “This is Leo Butterfield. What is it, Sheriff?” a baritone voice said.

  From his tone, Butterfield didn’t seem to know Sheriff Conklyn. “Mr. Butterfield, sorry to bother you at home, but I’m trying to run a trace on a classic reproduction wooden Chris-Craft. You deal in that line of boats, I understand.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can’t be too specific, but I’m looking for somebody who lives up here who may have bought one of those classic designs in, say, the last two or three years.”

  “We got a few of those boats on this lake. It’s a rare item. They’re beautiful, but not for everyone. I service most of them myself.”

  “Can you give me the owners’ names from memory?”

  “Think so…Let’s see…Carl Nickerson bought one last June….”

  Shane made a writing sign in the air, and Alexa grabbed a pen.

  “Carl Nickerson,” Shane said. “Go on.”

  She jotted it down on the back of the phone book.

  “Bert Perl has one….”

  “Bert Perl,” Shane repeated, and she wrote it down.

  “Logan Hunter,” Leo said. “The movie producer.”

  “Logan Hunter,” Shane said, and Alexa closed the book and looked up.

  “Does he have a dock? Where’s he keep it?” Shane asked.

  “It’s the old mansion on Eagle Point Drive on the Shelter Cove side. The one built by Clark Gable in the forties, looks like a Transylvanian castle.”

  44

  The Code Six Mary

  They parked off the road and got out of the car. The house was down by the water, two blocks away.

  Shane and Alexa walked down Mallard Road to Eagle Point Drive, where they found the public dock that accessed Shelter Cove. They walked out on the wooden float and stood on the blue and white platform, looking back across the moonlit waters to the huge house that loomed majestically against the distant snowcapped mountains. Its slate roof was glistening in silver light, its four roof turrets, each crowned with metal spikes, punching holes in the cloudless sky. The twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion had been designed in the forties and resembled a medieval castle, complete with stone arches and dormer windows.

  The lights were on downstairs, and from the distance, across the cove, they could see occasional movement inside. From time to time people passed in front of the first-floor leaded-glass windows. Parked on the grass, near the water, was the same Bell Jet Ranger that had brought Shane up to the lake after he’d been kidnapped in front of an entire movie company on Spring Street.

  Tied to the dock was a classic reproduction wooden Chris-Craft.

  “Sandy told me that Logan Hunter was a closet gay. This must be his getaway house. Good place for slam-dance weekends.”

  “Boy, do I hate this layout,” she said, still studying the mansion carefully. “The house sits on high ground, acres of grass all around. Porches and too many windows…Tactically, we’re fucked.”

  “Come on…don’t be so negative. We lickety-split across the lawn, slip through an open window, find Chooch and Brian, make the rescue, bust ass, and we’re gone—zim, zam, zoom.”

  “Shane, we need backup.”

  “Who did you have in mind, the Power Rangers?”

  “If Chooch Sandoval and Brian Kelly are being held here and we get them out, they make the kidnapping case for us, and we’re halfway off the hook. If we get caught, we’re dust anyway. I think we need to call in a Code Six Mary.” She was referring to the LAPD radio designation for officer assistance required due to extreme militant activity. “We’d have to time it right, but once we know Chooch and Brian are there, let’s just dime ourselves out, let Sheriff Conklyn sort the frogs from the princes.”

  “What if C
hooch and Brian aren’t here,” he said, “and we don’t get killed, but arrested? Then we’re sitting in jail, trying to talk our way out of four killings in Florida.”

  “No plan is without some operational deficiencies.”

  He shot her a withering look.

  “Okay, let’s go in, scout it, then back out to a safe spot and do a nine-one-one,” she said, revising her idea.

  He thought about it for a long moment, then said, “I’d rather take it one step at a time and see what develops. But, either way, I think we should tee up the Code Six Mary before we call it in.”

  “Good idea…but how?”

  “Gimme your phone.”

  She handed the cell phone to Shane. He got Information, then called the Arrowhead Sheriff’s Department. After asking for Sheriff Conklyn, he was transferred, then got the tall, balding man on the phone. “Guess who?” Shane said.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea….”

  “Turn on your TV. I’m starring in every newscast.”

  “Shit…Scully?”

  “I’m looking for you to take me in, Sheriff. I want you to make the bust. You’ll be famous. It’s probably at least good for a shot or two on Oprah, but I have a few conditions….”

  Conklyn paused, and then Shane heard a click, so he knew the rest of the conversation was being T and T’d—taped and traced.

  “Why me?” Conklyn asked.

  “If you’re tracing this call, it’s just gonna come back to a cell station in Arrowhead. I’m up here now, but I’m not quite ready to turn myself in yet. I want you to make the arrest because I’ve got problems with some of my brother officers in L.A. and I don’t want to stop a stray bullet by mistake.”

  “Not to mention all the dead bodies you left in Florida.”

  “There’s a story that goes with that, Sheriff. Extenuating circumstances.”