Three shirt deal ss-7

by Stephen Cannell

  I looked at the huge container factory, which had to be at least ten acres under roof. I wasn't sure what I was after. Maybe this would turn out to be an elaborate dead end, but I learned long ago that when working a case, you should never force a result. The best things happen when you just follow your leads. I searched my memory for an old case that I could plausibly sling at these people to gain access without tipping them to my real motives.

  Then I remembered the Four-thirty Bandits from five years ago. Three idiots were robbing mini-markets in one section of town at a few minutes after four-thirty every afternoon. I finally guessed that the reason for the four-thirty timeframe might be because they all got off work at four-thirty and went directly to the closest liquor store and stuck it up. It turned out I was right. By showing police artist sketches compiled from descriptions by the mini-market managers, to people who worked at companies in the vicinity of the robberies, I quickly located the automotive center that employed the gang and got the collar.

  To make my ruse work, I needed a few props. I took a photo six-pack from a just-cleared murder case out of my briefcase, along with its incumbent folder. Then I walked around to the side of a loading dock where three skip-loaders were hefting pallets of raw cardboard sheets and stacking them next to a door.

  "Help you?" somebody called out. I looked up and saw a man in a hardhat standing up on the dock off to my right. I went for my badge and flashed it quickly, not giving him any chance to read the ID card.

  "Hi. Van Nuys Robbery Division. Talk to you?"

  "Sure. Use the steps over there."

  I climbed up and faced a stout, muscular guy who didn't shave. Before I even started talking, he was impatiently tapping his clipboard on his leg in frustration.

  "I need to ask you about some robberies that are happening at local mini-marts in the area. I wondered if you would look at this identi-kit and tell me if…"

  He immediately held up a protesting hand, interrupting me. "Don't show me. You gotta talk to Miss Pascoe in Operations."

  "She around?"

  "Hang on." He crossed the loading dock to an interoffice wall phone, dialed an extension and, spoke softly to somebody. Then he hung up and said, "Wait here. There'll be somebody by in a golf cart in a minute. Miss Pascoe's over at the D-Center."

  I had no clue what a D-Center was. Demonstration? Development? Defecation? I waited to be surprised while he went off to supervise some guys stacking cardboard. Why couldn't I get a nice low-stress job like that?

  While I waited for my ride, I watched several people enter the factory area. It had security worthy of the Pentagon's E-Ring. First, the employee would hold his or her ID pass up next to their face and stand in front of a camera lens. Then they placed a full palm and five fingers on a glass photo plate for a scan. Next the employee punched in a security code and spoke their name loudly into a mike before the lock buzzed and the door opened. All of this to protect a bunch of cardboard cartons? Go figure.

  The golf cart finally arrived with a young girl in jeans and a sweatshirt driving. She motioned to me.

  "You the cop?"

  "Just the facts, ma'am," I said to prove it. She frowned at me like I'd just thrown up in the pool. I guess Dragnet wasn't one of her iPod downloads. I got in the cart and off we zipped.

  "Miss Pascoe is in with Mr. Dahl right now, so you may have to wait," she told me tartly.

  "Who's Mr. Dahl?"

  "Who's Mr. Dahl?" Like I'd just asked who Brad Pitt was.

  "Yeah. Who is he?"

  "He's the owner. Duh. Roger Dahl. He started this place in seventy-three when he was only twenty. Roger Dahl like designed and manufactured the first FedEx package."

  "I thought Aubrey Wyatt's brother ran this place," I said.

  "Mr. Dahl is Aubrey Wyatt's brother-in-law," she replied, clearing up Wade's genetic connection to all this.

  "Yeah," I said. "Guess that's what I meant." Then, to get on her good side, I added, "I've certainly heard of Aubrey Wyatt though. He's pretty famous in L. A." Didn't work. Her frown only deepened.

  "Everybody should know about Mr. Dahl, too," she snapped after a few seconds, sounding almost like she had a crush on him. "He's like famous in packaging."

  "I must have missed that issue of People."

  She sighed and pulled up in front of a very attractive, greenish-beige office building. It was architecturally pleasing, if a little avant-garde. But the effective landscaping softened its modern look. Shrubbery in all the right places, a nice strip of lawn that was well-watered. A sign said: design center. So now I knew.

  I followed my escort into the building and was told to wait. I chose a hard, chrome-frame red leather chair. Like a lot of places that sold design concepts, this lobby showcased minimalist design with cold, uncomfortable furniture. It was a triumph of form over function. The floor was shiny terrazzo and there were at least twenty windowed alcoves cut into three lava rock walls. A plate-glass fourth wall looked out onto a Japanese garden.

  Each of the lighted alcoves featured some cardboard container that Cartco had manufactured. There were McDonald's cartons and the original FedEx box. Video cassette boxes and DVD packages were on display. The alcoves also featured all kinds of food and consumer containers. Everything from 7-Up to Pampers.

  I was looking at the displays when the side door opened and a willowy, attractive, blonde woman entered. She wore an expensive, cream-white, tailored dress that hung perfectly on her athletic frame. She was followed into the lobby by one of those tall, executive, squash-player-type guys dressed in gray slacks and a dark blue blazer. He was in his early fifties, with a great head of silver-gray hair, and a robust health-club tan. His sculpted jaw parted the air like the prow of a Viking ship and framed a square, handsome face.

  "We can't afford to put too many of those manufacturing bays in one design mode," he was saying as they entered the lobby.

  "I'll have graphics draw up new estimates and get us a fresh set of D costs," she responded.

  "Make sure everything is run past the entire development committee. I don't want a design kickback because of some needless boardroom squabble."

  She turned and spotted me while he pulled out a new Black-Berry, just like Wade Wyatt's. Then he squinted and started poking manically at the keys.

  I was hoping the goddess in the cream outfit would turn out to be Miss Pascoe and my luck held. She crossed to me.

  "Are you the policeman?" she asked pleasantly.

  "Yes, ma'am." I flashed my tin. Fast, but effective. If I was lucky, I'd get out of here without anybody knowing who the hell I was.

  "I'm Dorothy Pascoe, Head of Operations. How can we help?"

  I unwrapped the egg foo yung and let 'er fly. "What time does Cartco end its workday?" I began.

  "We let the day shift off at four-thirty. There's an hour of maintenance and cleanup, then the night shift starts at six."

  I nodded gravely, as if I'd just received her terminal biopsy report.

  "Is that a problem?" she asked.

  "Markets are being robbed all around this area and these robberies are happening at about four-thirty in the afternoon," I said solemnly. "Now we find out that your company lets out at four-thirty."

  "Yes?" She seemed puzzled as to how her factory shift times had anything to do with my robberies.

  "Maybe the reason all these holdups happen at four-thirty is because one of the robbers is an employee of this company and doesn't punch out until then." She just stood there, so I said, "We wondered if you could identify any of these people as employees?" I handed her my photo six-pack from the old murder case.

  "We have almost five hundred people on our day shift. Of course, unless they're very new, being in operations, I'd probably recognize most of them." She took her time studying the six faces. "Sorry, I don't think so," she finally said and handed them back.

  The squash player broke away from his text messages and came over. He'd obviously been eavesdropping because he said, "Let me see."
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  I showed him the six-pack and waited while he studied them. When interviewing people, you always get more with praise than punishment. We all have a pass key that opens us up. For instance, A-type corporate guys who build and run things, for the most part dearly love to talk about them. If this was the esteemed, but rarely recognized, Roger Dahl, maybe I could lure him into a broader conversation.

  "Sorry," he said, and handed the six-pack back. "Don't think so." He turned to leave, so I took my shot.

  "Excuse me, but aren't you Roger Dahl?" I asked, letting a little gee-whiz seep into the question. He spun back, smiling like I was holding a plate of Russian caviar.

  "Why, yes. Do I know you?"

  "No, but my goodness, I've certainly read all about you. Didn't you start this place in seventy-three when you were in your early twenties, and then build it up from nothing after you designed the first FedEx package?" Using up the extent of my knowledge in one compound, complex sentence. I looked around at all the products shining under an array of alcove tinsel lights, gawking like a six-year-old girl at a Barbie exhibit.

  "Just goes to show you what a good idea, carefully pursued, can accomplish," he said proudly.

  "Man, what is this place, like ten acres under roof?"

  "Eleven point six." Then, because most people like to work their fan base, he said, "Wanta see something? Since you're interested, come here, follow me." He led me through a back door, leaving the striking Miss Pascoe tapping an expensive Prada sandal in cream-white exasperation. We walked down a narrow hallway into a small design office where several architectural concepts were pinned up on a cork wall.

  "This is what we're planning next year. It's going to be built down in Louisiana. I call it our two-fer because it helps create new badly needed jobs for people in New Orleans since Katrina, and we get to put our buildings on fifty acres of cheap land. Acreage down there is still in the crapper because of the hurricane. We're gonna do all our manufacturing for the East Coast from this new south Louisiana site. Alleviates a manufacturing crunch here and cuts our clients' shipping costs in half."

  "Nice," I said, admiring the pastel renderings of a modern-looking factory complex, embellished with colorfully sketched trees and slender, pencil-thin executives walking in and out of clean-lined buildings or strolling on manicured walkways, carrying wafer briefcases. "So you just make the packages, stuff like that?" Throwing up a jump ball. No clue where I was going.

  "Yeah. Client companies hire us to make their packages, containers, shipping crates. Anything that holds their products."

  "So that's like almost everything, then."

  "Well, not cars or heavy equipment. We're cardboard manufacturers. That determines what we can do."

  "I saw the incredible security system you have outside. Pretty damn impressive." More bread on the water.

  "That's just on the E-Building because that's where we make the rares."

  "Right. The rares." No idea what he was talking about. He picked up on my confusion.

  "Prize-winning containers." I was still lost. "In a promotion, a rare is what we call a prize package," he explained. "As opposed to, for instance, a common, which is just a regular carton." I must have still looked confused, because he added, "It's a prize. A scrape-off. Some of the companies we make containers for put on big, national promotions, which they advertise in magazines and on TV. In these promotions, they often give away big prizes. If somebody buys the rare and scrapes off the winning number, they could win a car or even in some contests, up to a million dollars in cash. Since some of the containers we make have million-dollar scrape-offs on them, we had to put in all that top-shelf security to protect the integrity of the contests."

  "Got it."

  "Employees working in areas making or distributing rares have to be logged in during contest weeks. We even give lie-detector tests."

  "Makes sense."

  He looked at his gold watch and appeared startled by what he saw there. He'd already wasted too much valuable time on me. "Well look, good luck catching your robbers. Sorry we couldn't help. Gotta go."

  As soon as he was gone, I hurried out of the room and back down the hall into the lobby. It was empty. Miss Pascoe had left. Only a faint wisp of her perfume remained behind to tease me. I started looking in the glass windows of the alcoves containing the Cartco products.

  I was halfway around the room, when I stopped. Looking very frosty and inviting, sitting under its own pin light, there it was: A million-dollar, prize-winning, six-pack of Bud Light beer.

  Chapter 20

  Alexa was waiting in the entry when I got home. it was nine o'clock that night and she was holding a charge sheet and transmittal letter from the Professional Standards Bureau.

  "We've gotta talk." Her voice was hard, even threatening. The one she uses when she questions suspects. "Calm down," I cautioned.

  She didn't answer, but thrust the charge sheet at me. I saw the PSB seal and the three typed yellow sheets that every cop dreaded receiving. In my distinguished career I've already received three.

  "Yeah, I've been expecting this," I said.

  "The IO served it here, an hour ago. Since you're the charged officer, the detective didn't want to leave it with me, but I insisted. Pulled rank."

  "It's good being king." I pushed past her, feeling busted, and went into the kitchen where I snatched a beer from the fridge. Alexa followed close on my heels. "Shane, we've got to discuss this."

  "Not with your voice like that, we don't." I pushed past her again and walked out to the backyard.

  "Stop doing that. Stop just walking away from me," she called, then followed me outside.

  I plopped in one of the lawn chairs, put my feet on an ottoman, and popped open the beer. It chirped loudly in the still night and I could tell it pissed her off that, under these circumstances, I would be sitting out here with my feet up, drinking beer. She came around and stood in front of me, blocking my view of the canal.

  "You don't have any idea what I'm going through right now, do you?" she asked angrily. "You have this bullshit idea that your career and my career are separate, but they're not. I'm your fucking boss, guy."

  "Is that a job description or a marital condition?" The minute I said it, I regretted the comment. I was tired and upset, but I knew I needed to handle this carefully. It was a critical moment for us, both personally and professionally. I looked up at Alexa. There was an awful look on her face. I don't know exactly what it was-anger and disappointment, of course, but it seemed there were other, even more destructive things in the mix. Contempt or even disdain. I'd never seen that look before. Or at least, it had never been directed at me. I forced myself to take a step back emotionally, to not fully engage.

  I reminded myself that I was the one out of line. I'd been breaking more crockery than a karate master, ignoring supervisors, working without portfolio. I also knew this angry person in front of me wasn't Alexa. This was TBI. This was a brain anomaly. This was caused by changing neurological functions. She must have read all that on my face because she shook her head sadly.

  "I'm not crazy. You can't blame this one on Stacey Maluga. I'm not the one ignoring the specific orders of a division commander and a deputy chief. You are."

  "Whatta you want, Alexa? I'm sorry. I admit that I've been reckless here. But no matter what I do, I can't make that charge sheet go away."

  "I want… I want you to…" She turned and faced the Grand Canal. Her mood was dark, a stark contrast to the canal water that sparkled brilliantly in the orange twilight. She turned back to me and finished her sentence. "I want you to help me, but you won't."

  "I'm trying to, honey. I know this is a stressful time for you, but now I really do need your help."

  "With this Hickman thing? Jesus! Can you please put that away for a minute?"

  "Alexa, you're stressed. You're frightened, okay? I get that. I also know you feel horrible about this review Tony is putting you through tomorrow, horrible about what's been happening to
you. I sympathize, because I know how unfair it is. It's just… I stumbled into this thing and now I don't know what to do about it."

  "What does that mean?"

  "This kid-this boy is only a few years older than Chooch. He's stuck up in Corcoran doing Level Four time. His prison car is full of net-heads who beat him up and rape him. They're putting him through hell. If I don't get him out of there, he's gonna commit suicide. I saw it in his eyes. And the worst part is we did it to him. We did. We put him there on a manufactured case. The more I look into it the surer I am."

  "You don't have anything, Shane. Not one solid fact." Her voice had softened.

  "I'm getting closer. I've turned up some important pieces." I took a breath and, because we'd always worked through tough cases together and because I wanted the old Alexa back, I tried my theory on her. "I think Wade Wyatt and Mike Church ripped off a beer contest to win a million dollars." Working it in my mind as I went. "That's why Church made Tru go to that exact market in a strip mall halfway across the Valley. The motive for the murder wasn't an argument over a six-pack of beer. It was over a rare worth a million dollars in prize money."

  "I have not the faintest idea what you're talking about," she said.

  "Alexa, I want you to listen to me. You and I could always work stuff out together better than any partner I ever had. Let me just run it down for you. We'll get a theory. Select a course of action."

  "No. I'm ordering you to drop this, Shane. Your behavior is bound to come up in my review tomorrow. This Hickman case, Deputy Chief Townsend, Jane Sasso. It's all gonna come out. They're going to wonder what kind of division chief I am if I let my own husband break all the rules. I already look impotent and out of it. Nothing I do lately seems to come out right." She snatched up the charge sheet from the table beside me and shook it under my nose. "And now this. Now I've got to try and explain this insanity."

  "I've got to get him out."

  "Why? You didn't put him there."

  "Hey, Alexa, we all put him there. You did when your Valley Bureau commander missed the sloppy case work on review. I did when I didn't testify against Brian Devine when I was in Patrol. Internal Affairs did when they let a hitter like Devine slide for twenty years. We're all guilty. We made the corruption that spawned this mess. How do we just say it's inconvenient to deal with now, because we both have more important career considerations? This kid is being beaten and raped."