The Tin Collector s-1 Page 18

  "You are an amazing piece of work, Sergeant," the deputy chief finally said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I wasn't complimenting you. Why the hell didn't you come back from Arrowhead and report in here, as instructed?"

  "I left you a message."

  "Right… the 'I had an accident/fell asleep at the wheel/stayed in a motel' message, left with my secretary at eight-fifteen A. M." He shook his head in wonder. "You must think I'm one stupid son of a bitch."

  "How would you like me to respond to that, sir?" Shane was getting mad now, wanting to fire back but on tender ground professionally.

  Mayweather leaned back in his chair, the knife-sharp creases in his pants now visible over the desktop. "Take off your gun and hand me your badge. You're suspended from duty without pay pending your Internal Affairs Board of Rights."

  "Don't you have to write up a 1.61 before you can suspend me?"

  "Consider it written."

  "The Police Bill of Rights really seems to have its limits where I'm concerned, doesn't it?"

  "The 1.61 will be in your hands before nine o'clock. Take off your gun and give me your badge and ID card."

  Shane removed the clip-on holster from his belt, then pulled his badge and ID in the brown leather fold-over out of his pocket.

  "Put them on the desk, please," Mayweather commanded.

  Shane did as he was instructed. "Now what?"

  Mayweather seemed puzzled by the question, so Shane added, "Doesn't the district attorney show up about now with a murder warrant and cart me off to the lockup?"

  "You really have an active imagination."

  "I didn't imagine the nine-millimeter machine-gun slugs in my living-room walls. Chief Brewer has been threatening me with a murder indictment. Since you're not doing that, something else must be happening. Maybe you just want to leave me on the street without my gun and badge, where I'll be easier to get at?"

  "You are a sick, paranoid man, Sergeant Scully. There are other ways to view what just happened."

  "Let's hear."

  "I think you're involved with the wrong people, vice or drugs… some other street action. You were taking a 'patch' and you took too much." A "patch" was police argot for a payoff to a cop for letting a crime happen, differing from a "buy down," which was a bribe to turn an arrestee loose or book him for a lesser crime. "People you thought you had fooled, or had under control, got tired of paying and threw you a party," Mayweather added.

  "You surprise me, Tom," Shane said, using the deputy chief's first name to show he had lost respect for him. "The word in the department is you're a good guy, a smart guy, but what's happening here right now, between us, isn't smart at all. If you really don't know what's going on, then you're being used played for a patsy. Either way, it marks you."

  "I see." Mayweather seemed to consider this, sitting still, thinking, his big trophy-filled office and black Armani pinstripes dissing Shane making him small. Then the deputy chief seemed to make up his mind and sat upright. "Get out. Check in every day with Captain Halley. Go home and leave this alone."

  "Go home? Should I sit in the window?"

  "That will be just about enough of that. Go home. Stay put. If you know what's good for you, you'll stop making trouble."

  "You can suspend me, but you sure as hell can't tell me not to work on my own defense. Somebody made a big mistake. They thought I took something out of Ray's house and they overreacted. Now they're pretty sure I don't have it, but Chief Brewer leaned too hard and got me looking in the wrong places. Suddenly I have too much of it and have to be neutralized. Whoever's behind this had one easy shot and missed. I won't be stumbling around, half asleep in my undies, next time. It's gonna be much harder."

  Shane turned and walked out of the office without looking back, leaving his badge, gun, and career in police work behind.

  Once again, he was stranded downtown without his car. He didn't trust anybody enough to ask for a lift, and as a suspended officer, he couldn't check a slickback out of the motor pool… so he walked four blocks east to the Bradbury Building and waited in the parking garage for Alexa Hamilton to arrive.

  Chapter 29

  PRINT HIT

  Seven thirty-five A. M. Alexa pulled the gray Ford Crown Victoria into the parking structure and parked in her spot. She was early, as usual, getting a jump-start on the day while DeMarco slept late.

  She got out of the car, dressed for success in a dark charcoal pantsuit tailored to her trim, twenty-three-inch waist. She was carrying another cardboard box full of files, her bulging, faded leather briefcase hanging from a strap over her shoulder. She headed toward the elevators and stopped when she saw him standing next to a concrete pillar in the shadows of the huge, underlit parking garage.

  "You shouldn't be here," she said.

  "I know, I should be in a slumber room at Forest Lawn."

  She walked toward him now, closing the distance, stopping two feet away. He could smell her perfume. He'd never thought of her as wearing perfume.

  "What happened?" she asked. "The chief advocate called me at six. He said somebody shot up your house."

  "Shot up… My house was massacred. I got enough lead in the walls to go into strip mining. On top of that, I got suspended this morning by Mayweather. He took my gun, badge, and ID, kicked me loose. So I'm back on the street running around, a moving target. It's been way too entertaining. I was expecting to get hit with a murder one indictment, but for some reason it didn't happen. I guess things were bound to slow down sometime."

  "The warrant's coming. The writ got signed. I saw it yesterday. Looks like they're holding it in reserve… Let's go back and sit in my car," she said unexpectedly.

  They walked to her car. She put the box in the backseat, then they both slid into the Crown Vic and closed the doors.

  "Look, I don't understand what's happening. I agree, something's going on. I don't get it myself… but I'm compromised here," Alexa said with some anxiety.

  "Lemme see if I got this straight," he said. "I've been threatened by Chief Brewer and most of Ray's old den. Somebody blew the shit out of my living room, Mayweather just suspended me, I got a murder warrant pending, but we're worried you're 'compromised'?"

  She sat quietly, deep in thought. He sensed there was something she wasn't telling him.

  "What is it? You know something else," he said.

  Finally she opened her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  "Those are the missing files from the Chief Advocate's Office. On my way in this morning, I stopped by the Office of Administrative Services. They supervise the Officer Representation Section at Parker Center. I have a friend down there. She pulled the duplicates on all missing case folders from the discovery files and made copies for me."

  Shane took the missing files and looked through them. "Jesus, look't this, it's just what I thought. All of them involve Hoover Street Bounty Hunters. Lee Ayers was beefed by a store owner just like Drucker; slow response to Code Thirty calls. Kris Kono is also accused of a slow response. Joe Church failed to Mirandize a banger after a street homicide. The case got pitched." He looked up at her and, for the first time, saw indecision on her chiseled face. "Why would Ray's old den be kicking gangsters loose?" he asked.

  "I don't know, but it's not my case. You're my case. I'm supposed to be prosecuting you."

  "Well, excuse me," he said, anger filling the space between them.

  "Look, Shane, I just said I agree you may have stumbled into something, but "

  "But you don't wanna see your career go in the bucket with mine."

  "What do you want me to do? If I start messing with this, they're going to pull me off your case. The district attorney will file against you anyway. It won't change anything."

  "Yes, it will, because you'll be doing the right thing. Alexa, I'm down to just you. Nobody else in the department will even talk to me. With no badge, I'm locked out. I can't even access the computer system."

  "And you wa
nt me to sacrifice myself for you?"

  "All that righteous shit you were giving me last night, the Rodney King speech about IAD policing the police, kicking ass when there's corruption that was just bullshit. Sounds good, but what you really meant is, as long as you can do it without hurting yourself or putting yourself in jeopardy."

  "That's not fair."

  "Then help me."

  "I can't help you. I'm prosecuting you. Don't you get that?" She sat in the car, glaring at him. Shane wondered how it happened: this woman he had despised so recently now seemed like the only chance he had left.

  "I'll resign from the department, okay? I'm gonna get terminated anyway, so I'll save you the trouble. I'll send a letter of resignation, and then you won't have to prosecute me. You won't have this monumental ethical problem."

  "Don't resign," she said softly.

  "Why not?"

  "Because… just because."

  Then her beeper sounded, and she pulled it out of her purse. She looked at it, then quickly put it away.

  "What is it?"

  "Prints and Identification. I dropped off one of those empty folders from Zell's files. They're calling me back."

  Shane didn't say anything, but he thought it was a good move to see whose fingerprints were on those empty file folders. He was surprised he hadn't thought of it.

  She pulled her cell phone out of her briefcase and dialed a number. "This is Sergeant Hamilton, serial number 50791. I got paged to this number. I have a fingerprint request, number 487, April twenty-third," she said, reading off a slip of paper from her purse.

  They sat in the still air of the parked Crown Vic as she waited. Then: "Okay… right. Okay, I've got it." She hung up and put the phone back in her purse.

  "What?" he asked.

  Indecision was tightening her lips, bending them down. "I've been a cop for seventeen years. It's all I ever wanted to do," she said sadly.

  "Alexa, whose prints were on the file? They weren't Commander Zell's, right?"

  "Zell's were on there, of course. But there was another set, fresh ones."

  "Whose were they?"

  "Why is the fucking head of Special Investigations Division personally clearing active case folders out of the Chief Advocate's Office?"

  "Mayweather?" Shane said.

  They sat in the Crown Vic, both realizing the answer was obvious. Mayweather had been doing damage control. There was no way she could ignore it, he thought. Mayweather was actively involved. The deputy police chief was personally emptying sensitive files because he didn't trust anyone else to do it. Shane looked at her and waited. Would she finally admit he was right? Whatever was going on, it was frightening and went straight to the top of the department.

  Chapter 30

  ESIS

  Alexa Hamilton sat in the Crown Vic for another minute, saying nothing. Then she opened the door and stepped out, retrieving her box of files from the backseat. She kicked the back door closed with her foot and stood looking over the roof of the car at Shane, who had also exited the vehicle.

  "I don't know what you expect me to do," she said, her voice ringing in the cold, empty structure.

  "I don't, either," he said. "If the district attorney files that 187 warrant, I'm going to be sitting this out in jail. I've got a lot of ground to cover, six cops to check out."

  She stood there, reluctant to stay, unable to go. The heavy box was balanced on her slender knee. "What're you gonna do?" she asked, finally sliding the box up onto the trunk so she wouldn't have to hold it.

  "On the tape in Ray's Arrowhead house, Don and Lee left a message. It said, 'We're on for Friday night, the Web. Bring the jerseys.' I don't have a clue what that means, but it's Friday, so tonight I thought I'd tail Drucker or Ayers, see what and where the Web is."

  She listened but said nothing.

  "Then I've gotta find out about Cal-VIP Homes… research who owns that company."

  A car came up the ramp in the garage and pulled past them.

  "I can't stand around here talking to you. Give me your cell phone number. I'll call you," Alexa said impatiently.

  "When?"

  " When I'm through. I've got six affidavits scheduled for today, starting with Bud Halley at eight-fifteen this morning. I've gotta go to the Patrol Division and dig out your old TA reports, then over to the Traffic Coordination Section and pull the reckless-driving sheets. You sure busted your share of city vehicles."

  "You can't be serious?"

  She pressed the alarm activation button on her car key, and the Crown Vic chirped loudly, cutting him off, ending the argument. Then she pulled the file box off the trunk and headed away from him toward the elevator. He watched as she stood in front of the elevator, balancing the heavy box; then the door slid open and she stepped inside. Just as it started to close, she stuck her foot out and stopped it.

  "Meet me at the Appaloosa after work, five-thirty. We'll follow Drucker and Ayers together." Before he could answer, the door closed, taking her from view.

  ???

  Shane spent the morning getting himself settled. He rented a room in a building called the Spring Summer Apartments, picking it because it cost only two hundred for one week. It was also within walking distance of the Bradbury.

  The room was small but clean. He sat on the faded blue bedspread and dialed Budget Rent-a-Car. He reserved a Mustang from the rental agency located a few blocks away on Third, and walked over to pick up the car.

  As he started down Third Street, he could see signs posted on telephone poles and buildings that notified residents and store owners that there would be no parking permitted on Saturday, by order of the LAPD, as a motion picture would be shooting on these streets. Schwarzenegger, no doubt.

  When he got to Budget, they showed him to a red Mustang convertible, a year or two newer than Barbara's but totally unacceptable for a tail job. He turned it down in favor of a dull-brown four-door Ford Taurus.

  He drove the Taurus back to the Spring Summer Apartments, parked, went back up to his room, and checked in with the Corporations Commission on his request for a printout of corporate ownership of Cal-VIP Homes. He was informed by a cold female voice that his request was in line but had not been processed yet. Maybe sometime after noon. He gave his cell phone number to her, stressing the urgency, and the woman promised to call back.

  He hung up and sat in the room, feeling restless and caged. After pacing for almost half an hour, he called the Electronics Scientific Investigation Section (ESIS) to check on Ray's answering-machine tape analysis. He got a clerk there, somebody named Boyd Miller, who told Shane that ESIS had picked up fragments of old voices on the tape.

  "Some of this is kinda jumbled," Miller said. "On one message, our best fragment sounded like 'If this is Susan Burbick or Burdick, we have your… something.' I couldn't make out the rest."

  "Anything else?" Shane said, writing it down.

  "No. That's it. You want to pick this up or shall we send it back to your office?"

  "Hold it for me. I'll pick it up."

  He hung up and sat there for several moments before reluctantly calling Barbara Molar at her house. He got the machine, so he tried her new cell phone. After he identified himself, she brightened.

  "Hi, stranger. How you doing?"

  "Terrible. How 'bout you?"

  "Well, actually, pretty good. It's nice you finally called. I was worried."

  "Have you ever heard of someone named Susan Burdick or Burbick?" he asked.

  "What do I get if I say yes?"

  "You get to find out if Ray was actually married to her or not."

  "Oh… well, I'll have to think about it. I'll look in Ray's address book. How 'bout we get together for a drink, talk it over?"

  "I can't, I'm meeting someone at five."

  "Don't play hard-to-get with me, Shane. I don't like being dumped."

  "Neither did I," he said softly, and hung up.

  He sat in the transient apartment with its chipped, broken bathro
om fixtures and fly-speckled wallpaper and wondered what to do next. Finally he got the number for the Arrowhead Sheriff's Department, called, and asked for Sheriff Conklyn. After a few minutes the tall, middle-aged sheriff was on the phone.

  "Sheriff, it's Sergeant Scully. Remember me?"

  "Whatta you want?" He was angry now, or maybe just impatient.

  "When I was up there, you had a murder, a body you pulled out of the lake and couldn't identify. I never heard if it was a man or a woman."

  "Woman."

  "You ever ID the corpse?"

  "Nope, still a Jane Doe." There was a sliver of interest in his manner now.

  "Check out a woman named Susan Burdick or Burbick. I don't know which. I also don't have an address, but maybe you can get a line on her through her marriage license. I think she was married to Ray Molar using the name Jay Colter. They tied the knot at the Midnight Wedding Chapel in Vegas six months ago. If that checks, you could get a dental match and maybe pin it."

  "Why do I get the feeling I'm doing your footwork?"

  "Hey, Sheriff, I'm trying to help you. If you don't wanna ID your icebox cases, don't bother with it."

  "But if I do, you'd probably be interested in who she is and where she came from."

  "I'm a curious guy."

  "Okay, this will probably take a day or so. Call me back."

  After he hung up, Shane drove back to the Fotomat to pick up the Arrowhead pictures. He was told by the clerk that they had to push the negative four stops to get an exposure. Shane opened the envelope and looked at six grainy snapshots of the men inside Ray's house. He could see most of their faces but didn't recognize any of them. He wondered which one was Calvin Sheets. Since his camera was in the Acura back in Venice, he bought a new Canon with a zoom lens and some film. He was loading the film when his cell phone rang. It was Sandy.

  "Chooch ran away," she told him straight out.

  "I was afraid of that."

  "You've gotta find him."

  "How'm I gonna find him, Sandy? All I can do is put a 'runaway juvie' out on him, and he's gonna get arrested. Then you'll be fooling around with the LACCSD that's children's social services. If they find out what you do for a living, they'll take him away from you. Then he's gonna be a ward of the court."