The Tin Collectors (13 page)

Fifteen minutes later Shane was back in the Harvard Westlake faculty parking lot waiting for Brad Thackery. After ten more minutes the assistant dean of admissions pulled his rusting Ford van into his parking stall and got out. Shane moved to him. "Good morning, sir," he said pleasantly.

"Maybe for you, but it's not a good morning for Chooch. I saw him sitting out front when I drove past. Since I still haven't heard from Mrs. Sandoval, you can just go right back around and pick him up and depart the premises, ad quam primum. He is no longer welcome at this school," Thackery said harshly, then added brusquely, "and remove your vehicle from faculty parking. This is a restricted area."

"How do you say that in Latin?"

"I'm through talking to you, whoever you are. Good-bye."

Shane pulled out his badge and held it up for Brad Thackery to read. Thackery looked at it, surprised, readjusted slightly, then with less anger said, "Big deal."

"You're right, it is a big deal, 'specially since your van there is crawling with vehicular irregularities. You wanna put that blinker on? Seems to me it wasn't working when you turned in here."

"I'm about to get it fixed."

" 'About to' doesn't cut it," Shane said. "Put it on, please. I want to check it out."

Thackery glared at Shane. "This is what really gets you guys off, isn't it?"

"Yep. Can't get enough of it."

As Brad Thackery opened the van, Shane moved to his Acura and opened the back door. A black Labrador jumped out and, with his tongue lolling, followed Shane back to the van. Thackery was leaning into the front seat, fiddling with the blinker and trying to get it to work, when the dog started barking and pacing back and forth along the side of Thackery's van.

"Whoa . . . whoa . . . whatta we got here?" Shane said with mock surprise. Thackery jerked his head out of the van.

"Get that dog away from me."

"This isn't a dog, Mr. Thackery, this is a drug enforcement officer. His name is Krupkee. It looks like Officer Krupkee's got a noseful. Where is it, boy? What ya got?"

The black Lab had moved to the rear of the van and now had both paws up on the spare tire, which was hooked by a locked bracket to the back of the van. Then the black Lab started barking and pawing at the tire.

"Oh boy, this ain't good, Mr. Thackery. You wanna give me the key that releases that back tire?"

"No. No, I don't."

"Lemme put it another way, sir. Gimme the key, or I'll pry the fucking thing off with my tire jack. Officer Krupkee just gave me probable cause for a search."

After a long moment, Thackery reluctantly dug into his pocket and produced the key that unlocked the tire bracket. Shane swung it away from the van and looked into the tire. There, attached by magnets to the inside of the tire drum, was a small metal box. Shane pulled it off and opened it. There were about four ounces of grass in a canvas bag and a bottle with a few pills. Shane opened the bag and poured some low-grade pot into his palm.

"This is not good, Mr. Thackery. As a matter of fact, you're under arrest, regnat populus." He poured the dope back into the bag. "So you won't get the wrong idea about me and think I'm some overeducated, Latin-quoting blowhard, that's just the state motto of Arkansas. I was stationed there in the Marines. It means 'the people rule,' and the people of Los Angeles don't like this one bit and are about to rule that you go to the city lockup."

Shane pulled out his handcuffs, spun Thackery around, and put them on.

"You can't do this," Thackery protested.

"Somebody should tell that to my watch commander. In the meantime, you're gonna sit this one out downtown. Don't worry, I'll call the principal for you and tell him his assistant dean of admissions is gonna be at County Jail riding the pine in the detox box."

"Is this about Chooch? Is that what this is all about?" Thackery's eyes were darting around, hoping no other member of the faculty would come driving in and witness this debacle.

"You bet it's about Chooch. But it's also about you, Brad. If you weren't such an insufferable asshole, I probably wouldn't have gone so far out of my way to knock your dick in the dirt."

"Look, Chooch has problems. Okay? He's got deep emotional difficulties. Besides, he's selling drugs."

"Bet he didn't sell you this crummy bag a' bird food," Shane said, holding up the bag of thin, seed-ridden grass.

"You think this is funny, is that it?"

"It's about as funny as prostate surgery. How do guys like you end up teaching school?"

"What do you want?"

"I want you to cut Chooch some slack. I want you to go to bat for him."

"I can't change the course of events. It's too late. They've already had a faculty meeting about him."

"I'd think the assistant dean of admissions would have a little pull around here," Shane said. "Of course, after this bust, you'll be lucky to be in charge of school bus schedules."

"Look, okay . . . maybe ..."

"Maybe what?"

"If I... if I said to them I'd work with him separately, maybe do some drug counseling or something ..."

"I don't think you're exactly the right guy for that, but go ahead, keep talkin'."

"Maybe if I really try, I could get him another chance. Just one . . ."

"Okay, that sounds more promising. You give him another chance, I give you another chance."

Just then, two other faculty cars pulled into the parking area and slowed as they passed Thackery's van. He was standing there with his hands cuffed behind him. A woman put down her window.

"Is everything okay, Brad?" she asked, looking at the handcuffs.

"We're fine." Shane said. "I'm the magician Mr. Thackery hired for next month's high-school assembly. Just showing Brad here how I do my handcuff escape." Shane smiled and she drove on, not looking too convinced.

"I want immediate results, Thackery. I'm looking for Chooch to get outta that detention hall this morning and back into regular class. If he gets goofy about anything in the future, don't bust him. Call me."

Shane shoved his business card into Thackery's shirt pocket and then unhooked the cuffs. He put the dope and pills in his jacket pocket, gave Brad Thackery back his car keys, then he led Officer Krupkee over to the Acura.

The Lab jumped into the backseat, Shane put the car in gear, pulled out of the faculty parking area, then drove back to Valley Division and returned the dog to the Valley Bureau Drug Enforcement Unit. He shot back onto the freeway and got to Internal Affairs downtown with ten minutes to spare.

Chapter
15

THE BRADBURY BUILDING never failed to amaze Shane. He felt that it was the most magnificent building in Los Angeles. Only five stories high, it had been designed in the late 1800s by Gregory Wyman, a draftsman with no architectural degree. It sat bravely on the corner of Broadway and Third while slovenly men leaned forward to piss against her or curled up to sleep, rubbing the grime from their clothes on her magnificent yellow bricks.

Shane pulled into the modern concrete parking structure that had been built next door, took the ticket, then found a spot on the second tier. He rode the elevator down and came out onto a brick patio with umbrella tables that served as a lunch area. It was located directly behind the old building. Along the concrete wall adjoining the patio was the historic fresco depicting the life of an African-American woman named Biddy Mason. The wall chronicled her odyssey, from her birth as a slave in 1810, throug
h h
er incredible life journey, all the way to her final heroic years of service as a nurse delivering babies in Los Angeles hospitals in 1870.

The fresco had been placed there to show the early African
-
American commitment to the quality of life in L
. A
. Shane found it strange that in post-Rodney King L
. A
., this monument was behind the Internal Affairs building, in a patio where mostly cops accused of misconduct would ever see it.

He pushed through the back doors of the Bradbury, through a section under reconstruction on the first floor, into the building's magnificent covered courtyard. He looked up at the five floors stacked above him. Light brick contrasted with the intricate black wrought-iron railings. They wrapped around the interior hallways that surrounded the open atrium. Polished oak banisters snaked along the top of the ornate black-painted iron. On each side of the building's courtyard were beautiful, antique turn-of
-
the-century open elevators. They ran on exposed counterbalances that carried the filigreed boxes up and down. They moved slowly, stopping carefully at each floor as if time had not sped up in modern L
. A
. or had not fallen into desperate conflict with elegance. Over it all hung a glass roof five stories up, supported by black metal grates.

Shane stood there for a long time. He had been here for a week during his last BOR and had learned the rituals of the place. He knew about the waiting-room silence that followed the bustle of echoing voices in the atrium just before the nine o'clock commencement of the boards. He remembered the tense posture of witnesses and police officers as they leaned over the metal railings near the fifth-floor hearing rooms, waiting nervously to testify. There were the subtle, silent signs that were read only by the people familiar with the activity in the building and who spread the word on each board's outcome. The elevator operators watched carefully as accused officers left their penalty hearings, checking to see who was carrying the accused's gun. If it was in the advocate's hand, it meant the officer had been terminated.

The administration of LAPD justice churned relentlessly in the building, leaving bits and pieces of its victims' lives bobbing like scattered garbage in its wake. Like the Tower of London, it was way too beautiful a place for all the beheadings that occurred there.

Shane got on the elevator, rode to the third floor, and moved up to the heavy glass-paneled, wood-frame door of the Advocate Section. After taking a deep breath, he pushed it open and walked inside.

He was back in the narrow, gray and brown space fronted by three reception desks, where secretaries directed business to the twenty advocates seated behind them. Across the hall, on the opposite side of the open atrium, were the investigating officers, known as IOs. They were regular detectives assigned to IAD who did background interviews and took affidavits from "wits." All of Shane's memories of the place came rushing back. From where he was standing, he could see back to the advocates' cubbies located on the far side of the office. The advocates were all sergeants or lieutenants and worked in five-by-five clutter at small desks, cardboard "case" boxes filled with affidavits and IO reports clustered at their feet.

Shane remembered the chief advocate, a tall, vanilla milkshake named Warren Zell. Shane moved to one of the secretaries, a black woman with a remarkable body, and smiled at her.

"I'm Sergeant Scully. I've been assigned here. I'm supposed to report to Commander Zell."

"Hi," she said, "I'm Mavis. Take a seat. I'll tell him you're here."

While she buzzed in, Shane sat and picked up the LAPD newsletter, The Blue Line, that was on the table along with a stack of Chief Brewer's newsletters, a glossy white four-sheet called The
Beat. He assumed The Beat was required reading in this political squirrel cage. He was looking down when he heard the female voice that distressed him the most.

"Mavis," the voice said, "can you send all these 301's on the Scully deps out to the subpoena control officer and tell him I need them served as soon as he can get them issued? Also, make sure this charge sheet gets sent to Pam Davis in the District Attorney's Office. They're monitoring his board for a possible murder indictment."

He looked up and saw Alexa Hamilton standing with her back to him, wearing one of her severe, tailored gray suits. Her shapely calves and tight, rounded ass were only a foot from his face.

"Work, work, work," he said softly.

She turned abruptly and, for the first time, saw him sitting there.

"It's not work when you're having fun," she replied.

"Don't forget to subpoena Barbara Molar; she's an eyewitness and supports my statement word for word."

"We always include exculpatory evidence, despite what you think, Scully. This division exists to try and keep the department clean. We're not down here doing hatchet jobs."

"This division exists to destroy hardworking cops so people like you can get an E-ticket ride to the top of the department. You know it. I know it. Everybody on the job knows it. But don't take it from me, go ask any uniform sitting in the front seat of a Plain Jane."

Alexa stood there and tapped her thumb against a file folder. "Y'know, Scully, you mighta been an okay cop, except you've gotta do everything your own stiff-necked, jackoff way. You're always trying to be the smartest guy in the room, always cutting corners and blaming others. This is a division that is set up to defend the rules and mandates of this department. Since you have your head so far up your ass, you only see things through your navel; it's understandable your view is clouded. That's your problem, not mine." She turned to Mavis. "On second thought, Mave, I'm gonna walk this stuff over to the subpoena control desk personally. Nothing's too good for Sergeant Scully." She turned away and, carrying the paperwork, moved back to her desk behind the counter. Her hips swayed seductively as she walked. Shane felt nothing. She had turned his balls to ice.