The Tin Collector s-1 Read online

  The mahogany door opened, and Sandy was standing there in a tailored black sheath that fit her size-four frame like a second skin skin that was dusky, the color of dark sand; her eyes, golden-brown amber; her long raven tresses swirling around her shoulders with planned abandon. A single strand of pearls dangled with fuck-you elegance. She was dressed to party. She stood in the doorway, a questioning look on her gorgeous face. Then she shot a quick glance at Alexa.

  "What is it? This is a terrible time, Shane. I'm bushed, I just got home."

  "Chooch is gone," Shane said. "He's been kidnapped."

  "I… I thought you said you had found him," Sandy finally stammered, her liquid amber eyes losing focus, clouding like a fighter hit too hard.

  "He's been kidnapped, Sandy. By men who are trying to stop an investigation. I'm afraid…" He stopped. "I think by cops," he finished.

  "Cops?!" she said, and involuntarily her hand went up to her mouth.

  "This is Sergeant Hamilton. She's my " He looked over at Alexa. What exactly was she? His department prosecutor? His only believer? His nemesis? What the hell else was she?

  "I'm Shane's partner," she said, answering his question and filling the void.

  Sandy spun abruptly and headed back into her apartment. Alexa and Shane followed. She walked slowly ahead of them, fluid as a dancer, her hips swaying seductively. Shane would have preferred a more leaden gait. Even in the face of this news, she radiated sexual grace. When she turned and faced them, he saw distress bordering on hysteria in her eyes. Instantly his heart went out to her, and guilt overwhelmed him.

  "Why? Where did it happen?" she asked.

  "An apartment on Third Street, a safe house I was renting. I guess they followed the sitter over from my place in Venice. I can't think of any other way they could have found him," Shane said.

  "We aren't exactly sure who," Alexa said. "But it appears to be high-ranking police officers who are calling the shots."

  "You should go to the chief. Go to Burl. Tell him what you suspect."

  When Alexa hesitated and looked at Shane, Sandy sank down on the sofa. "You're telling me you think Burl's "

  "We don't know exactly who is involved," Shane said. "But it goes way up. Maybe all the way to the mayor. It involves Logan Hunter, Tony Spivack, and the Long Beach Naval Yard."

  "The 'why' is easier to understand. They took Chooch to keep us from continuing an investigation into it," Alexa said.

  Sandy looked down at the white plush pile to hide her devastation.

  "Sandy… I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't see it coming. If I could change this, I "

  She waved this away with her slender hand, sat absolutely still for a moment, then looked up. Her expression had hardened, the vulnerability had vanished. "How can I help? There must be something we can do." He watched in fascination as she tucked the loose strands of panic away, grabbed hold of her plummeting emotions, pulled hard, and darted up quickly, climbing hard, like a kite in a strong wind.

  "Do you know any of these girls?" Alexa asked as she reached into her purse and handed over two packets of pictures from the party at the naval yard. Sandy spread them out on the white marble coffee table. She picked up a small antique magnifying glass with a carved ivory handle and examined each picture.

  "I know one or two of these girls," she said, looking at them slowly, studying the shots, separating out the pictures of the two girls she knew. "Scarlet Mackenzie is the red-haired one. This one here this blonde changed her name from Gina Augustina to, what the hell was it… Avon Star. Used to have black hair. I think some of these others used to work with Madam Alex until Heidi took over the L. A. market. They all work the executive trade."

  "What about the men? We know a lot of them are cops," Alexa said.

  Sandy looked through the pictures again but shook her head. "To be honest with you, I'm not working much with LAPD anymore." She shoved the pictures of the two girls she knew toward Alexa, never once looking over at Shane. "I only know these two."

  "These girls might know what's going on," Alexa said. "We need to find somebody who can help us, somebody who can tell us who took Chooch."

  Sandy studied Alexa for a moment, then looked back at Shane. "I'm going to have to shut down this thing I'm doing for DEA. I'll tell 'em I need two days, that my brother got sick in Connecticut." She got up, moved to the phone, then punched in fourteen or more digits, which Shane knew was probably a number for a satellite beeper that the feds all used now.

  After she finished, Sandy hung up and returned to the table. She sat down and looked at them, biting her lower lip. "Maybe I could convince Scarlet to duke me in with this crowd."

  Duke me in, Shane thought. Sandy was even beginning to talk like a cop. It was definitely time for her to get out of the business.

  "I could call Scarlet, say I just got out of a bad marriage and want to get back on the stroll. Nobody knows what I've been doing all these years. I haven't seen these two girls in ages."

  Shane had to get out of there. He was starting to feel trapped. He got up abruptly. "Here's my beeper number," he said, giving Sandy one of his cards. "It's on all the time."

  Alexa took out a pencil, wrote hers down, and handed it to Sandy.

  "Okay," Sandy said. "I'll check back with you tomorrow. I should be able to get in touch with her by then. I'll set something up. If she knows anything that will help us get Chooch back, I'll find it."

  "Good," Shane said.

  They all walked to the front door. Sandy seemed cool and in control again. After she opened the door, she looked hard at him, and Shane knew he had to say something.

  "I was trying to do you a favor when I took Chooch," he said. "It didn't work out, and I'm sorry."

  What she said next was very strange. "You weren't doing me a favor, Shane, I was doing one for you."

  He saw the dark, strange look again, and then her amber eyes opened for a moment and he was seeing her uncovered core… a self-loathing and sadness deeper than he could have ever imagined. Then the look was gone, replaced in a heartbeat by shrewd cunning and the cold gleam of sexuality. She closed the door, and he found himself looking at brown mahogany, the exact color of her eyes and almost as hard.

  Chapter 40

  S AND J

  It was noon, and they were back in Shane's borrowed Crown Vic. Alexa had turned on the police radio, and they were listening to staccato radio calls detailing the menu of violence and death, all of it described numerically in a flat monotone: "One X-ray twelve. A 415 at 2795 Slauson. Handle Code Two." Human carnage was a day-and-night routine.

  "I don't know what the next move is," Alexa admitted.

  Shane looked over at her. He knew what he was going to do, but it was a felony and he didn't think he should confide in her, for fear she'd hook him up on the spot.

  But she was good, and she read the look in his eyes. "Let's hear what you're planning," she said suspiciously.

  "You don't want any part of it. I'll drop you home."

  "Lemme guess. You wanna go pick up Drucker or Kono or one of Ray's other hamsters… then go give them some S and J."

  S and J stood for "sentence and judgment." Cops used to call it "holding court in the street." Either way, in this case it would be kidnapping and assault, both Class A felonies.

  "Right idea, wrong guys," he said. "Kono and Drucker are small players; they may not even know what's really going on. I think they're just getting envelopes."

  "It doesn't matter, 'cause we aren't going to kidnap and threaten anyone. That's a bonehead play." She stared hard at him in the dim light. He didn't look back. "Who, then?" she finally asked, her curiosity boiling over.

  "You're gonna hate it." And then for some unknown reason, he told her.

  After he had finished explaining his idea, she sat silently in the car for almost five minutes. The police radio underscored their separate thoughts, broadcasting misery while each of them pondered the personal cost if his dangerous plan went wrong.

 
; Shane knew he had nothing more to lose. Any way he looked at it, odds were, he was headed to prison, where as a cop in the joint, he would last about as long as ice cream on a summer day.

  Alexa, on the other hand, was only on the edge of this. She hadn't been put in play yet. Nobody except Sandy knew she'd been helping him. She could still go home and sit it out, saving her career and maybe her life.

  He finally looked at her and saw those chips of blue staring out the front window, her brow furrowed in stubborn concentration, frustrated and confused like a fifth-grade algebra student.

  For Shane, it was only about Chooch. It was his fault the boy was gone, and if he had to end his own life behind the secure perimeter of Vacaville State Prison, at least it would be for trying to put this mess right. Deep down he had formed a fraternal attachment to Chooch Sandoval. He couldn't exactly explain why, but it had happened.

  Then he felt Alexa's weight shift on the seat beside him. He looked over at her. She had turned to face him.

  "Okay," she said slowly, "I'm in."

  ???

  The marina was strangely quiet for a Saturday afternoon. Shane thought the boat was a ketch or a yawl whatever the hell they called them when the second mast was taller than the first.

  "Schooner," Alexa said, reading his thoughts perfectly. The stern of the fifty-five-foot sailboat carried the boat's name.

  "Board and Cord cute name for a sailboat," she said.

  He assumed she was thinking it stood for the wood of the hull and sail lines, so he set her straight. "It's a basketball expression. Means a bank shot off the backboard and through the net."

  "Oh." She smiled. "In that case, he should have called it Cheap Shot."

  They were parked in the lot next to the slips at D Dock in Marina del Rey, looking out the front window of the car at the boats tied up forty or fifty yards from them, baking in eighty-degree sunlight. Both were wearing drugstore baseball caps and wraparound sunglasses a minimal disguise.

  "I heard he's down on this thing every weekend," Shane said, focusing a new pair of binoculars he'd found under the seat at the boat's portholes, looking for movement inside. "He's probably sleeping late."

  Shane shifted his field of vision, concentrating on the yachts to either side of Mayweather's schooner. It appeared that most of the boats around the Board and Cord were empty.

  "You sure you want to do this?" he asked. It was hard for him to believe she was about to risk her career and maybe even her freedom for Chooch Sandoval, whom she didn't even know. Of course, he had completely missed the point, so she set him straight.

  "You claim I didn't believe what I said about keeping the job free from corruption, that I didn't want to risk it when the chips were down, and maybe there's some truth there. This is hard for me, I admit it, but these guys are committing crimes. They're kidnapping children. So, if I know this is happening and I walk away, that makes me as guilty as they are."

  "Still, we're talking about committing a Class A felony."

  "Shane…"

  "Huh?"

  "Shut up, will ya? Let's go roll up this shitwrap."

  She opened the door and got out of the car. He followed her to the concrete path.

  "I hope he's here. I wish I knew what his POV looked like," she said, changing the subject so he wouldn't pursue it, looking out at the twenty or thirty parked cars in the marina lot.

  "Listen, you've gotta hear me on this," he said, turning her around, holding her arm as he talked, feeling the tight muscles in her biceps. "This means a lot to me Chooch has become important Brian, too, but Chooch… Chooch and I, we… it's like he's the piece of me that got lost growing up. It's hard for me to explain exactly, but I'm never gonna be able to pay you back."

  "No shit, Sherlock." She smiled, then turned and moved off toward the slips.

  They walked quietly along the concrete path and down onto the dock, light-footing it. They had already decided how they would do it, and as they got to the stern of the boat, Shane found some cover one boat away as Alexa moved up to the cockpit.

  "Hello, anybody there?" she called out. "Anybody home? Chief Mayweather? Request permission to come aboard."

  The back cabin door opened, and Deputy Chief Thomas Mayweather stuck his gleaming black head out. "Yes?" he said. "What is it?" He had on a striped polo shirt and white pants.

  "You alone, sir? It's Sergeant Hamilton, IAD. I need to talk to you."

  "My wife and kids will be here in an hour. What is it, Sergeant?" he said impatiently.

  "It's about the Scully prosecution, sir. I've got a big problem, but I don't think we should talk about it out here. May I come aboard?"

  "Okay." There was some hesitancy in his voice, almost as if he smelled deception. He came out of the cabin, reached up, and helped her down into the cockpit, then into the main salon. Once they were inside, he closed the rear hatch.

  Shane had been hiding, lying flat on the dock one slip away. Now he got up and moved around until he was standing behind the schooner. They had planned to take Mayweather in the main salon, where they could control the capture and not be observed. Shane knew that he had to be very careful getting aboard. Mayweather would feel the sway of the boat if he rocked her when he stepped on.

  Shane slowly lowered himself down and hung his feet carefully over the deck, gradually getting his footing on the upholstered cockpit seat. But to his dismay, the moment he put all his weight down, the boat shifted with the load, and a few seconds later the salon door flew open. Mayweather glared out at him.

  "Permission to also come aboard?" Shane said stupidly.

  "What the fuck?" Mayweather blurted.

  Then they both heard Alexa chamber her 9mm behind the deputy chief. The sound froze Mayweather.

  "Assume the position, asshole," Shane snarled, switching to street demeanor. They would have to take him out in the open. Shane moved farther onto the boat.

  Deputy Chief Mayweather glanced back at Alexa in the middle of the salon, holding her gun, glaring blue ice over the barrel.

  Shane was unarmed and presented Mayweather's best avenue of escape. Suddenly the deputy chief charged. Shane had been ready for it and had already screwed his heels awkwardly into the padded seats for traction.

  Mayweather was coming at him fast, lunging from the cockpit. Shane swung a right hook, missing the shot, bouncing his fist off the top of Mayweather's head. The ex-UCLA point guard was fast, his quickness and athleticism on full display. He grabbed Shane's legs and took him backward over the rail onto the wooden dock. While Shane clutched him tightly and held on for all he was worth, Alexa clamored off the boat and screwed the barrel of her 9mm into the deputy chief's ear. She pulled the hammer all the way back; the gun "snicked" dangerously in the still air.

  "It won't be pretty," she warned him.

  Mayweather stopped struggling. Alexa grabbed her cuffs off her belt and hooked him up. Shane got untangled and yanked the deputy chief to his feet. A few people on the next dock turned to look at them.

  "You people are fucking crazy! You have any idea what you're doing?" Mayweather protested.

  "Do you?" Shane replied.

  Three minutes later they had pulled him off the dock, past some startled onlookers, then pushed him into the trunk of the Crown Vic with his own socks stuffed into his mouth.

  They drove fast, up the 405, back to the Bradbury to pick up a videotape unit. Then they headed out to a deserted spot Shane knew about in the Pavia Aqueduct of the L. A. River.

  Chapter 41

  THE ULTIMATE FIELD INTERVIEW

  They parked the Crown Vic off the road in Glendale where the 134 and 5 freeways intersect, then helped a stunned and blindfolded Thomas Mayweather down the paved concrete levee that bordered the riverbed. Their hard leather shoes fought for traction on the forty-five-degree slope. They finally got the deputy chief to the floor of the wash, where a narrow trickle of water flowed down a spillway cut into the center of the paved concrete riverbed.

  Black meta
l drain caps, thirty feet in diameter, each with two triangular cutouts on the top, faintly resembled the heads of huge black cats. Glendale taggers had completed the impression by spray-painting the metal with white noses, eyes, and whiskers.

  They moved in single file, in broad daylight, under the leaden stares of the painted drain covers. Shane led the way along the wash, under several bridges, until they got to a huge metal drainage pipe, tunneling deep into the side of the hill. As they entered the mouth of the seven-foot-high sewer, they could hear things slithering and rustling in the inky darkness ahead of them. When they had gone far enough so that there was only a dim residue of sunlight from the tunnel's mouth behind them, Shane stopped.

  "This is good enough," he said, and spun Mayweather around.

  The deputy chief started to gurgle and wheeze around his sock gag, but Shane paid no attention. He knew there was a ladder about where they were standing that led to the surface a few hundred feet above.

  Shane had been in this sewer drain two years before on a tip that it contained the body of a dead rape victim, a ten-year-old child. He'd found the girl's mutilated corpse in the tunnel, her blond hair and tiny body caked with mud and covered with feasting rats. He had had nightmares about it for a month afterward. He never caught her killer.

  Shane found the ladder, more or less by feel. He uncuffed May-weather's right wrist, dragged the disoriented deputy chief over, and hooked him to the ladder with both hands behind his back through the metal rail.

  "Gimme the nine," he said to Alexa. She handed it to him, and he stuffed it into his belt. Then they set up the video camera. It was a Sony compact with a sun gun on the front. The telescoped tripod was fitted neatly into the bottom of the video carrying case. Mayweather, blindfolded and terrified, harrumphed and squirmed at the ladder. Shane secured the camera on the tripod, then turned on the sun gun. The single beam of harsh light hit the deputy chief in the chest. Shane adjusted it until it was right in Mayweather's face, then stepped forward and yanked the blindfold off the startled deputy chief.