Finnegan's Week (9 page)

“Was it hijacked?” Fin asked, which would make it a crime-against-person, not property, and he could easily kiss it off to
anybody
else. “Did somebody use a gun or force?”

“No,” Abel said. “We don' see thief.”

“It was gone when we came outta Angel's,” Shelby said. “Jist wasn't there on the street no more.”

“I'll do the fact sheet for you, Fin,” Sam Zahn said magnanimously. “You might wanna finish it?”

“Do the whole report, Sam,” Fin said. “Then send it downtown.”

The counter cop sighed and fetched a blank report, saying, “What's the name of the truck's registered owner?”

“Green Earth,” Shelby said. “Green Earth Hauling and Disposal.”

“You drivers're
always
leaving your keys in your trucks,” Fin griped. “Somebody's forever stealing one up there by Angel's.”

“We didn', sir,” Abel said. “The thief they pop out ignition.”

“How do you know they popped it?” Sam Zahn asked.

“He means they
musta
popped it or somethin,” Shelby said quickly, “cause he's got the keys in his pocket.”

Of course Fin was pleased that Central would get this one. They had plenty of paper-shuffling detectives up there, and they didn't have to battle for computer access. Each central investigator had his or her own cubicle instead of being jammed together like the refugees in the Southern Division gulag. Fin didn't need another piece of paper to file.

“Might end up in Mexico,” Fin said. “They often do when they're stolen around these parts.”

“Yeah?” Shelby said. “When you think the boss'll get it back?”

“They ain't in no hurry down in T.J.,” Sam Zahn said. “Weeks, maybe. Could be a lot sooner if your boss's insurance company's on the ball. The Mexican cops like a ‘reward' for finding hot cars. By the way, Angel's is four miles away. Did you boys
walk
clear down here or what?”

“Taxi,” Shelby said. “Caught a cab.”

“You coulda just phoned for a patrol unit,” Sam Zahn grumbled. “They woulda come to you and took the report.”

Shelby Pate said, “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There was money in the glove box that we picked up on our last job. Five hunnerd bucks. Sure hope the thief don't look in there, but he prob'ly will.”

“Five hundred bucks?” Fin said. “Why cash?”

“Don't ask us,” Shelby said. “The guy at Southbay Agricultural Supply jist handed us an envelope with five big ones in it.”

“Did you count it?”

“Yeah, we counted it. Fer our own protection in case it wasn't the right amount.”

“You went in for a taco and left five hundred bucks of company money in the glove compartment?” Sam Zahn asked doubtfully, figuring correctly that they intended to scam the boss. He'd like to have strip-searched them both. “Hope you boys got another job to go to. Leaving cash in the truck? Your boss might not believe you.”

Abel was the better actor and just smiled placidly. The ox started to twitch. He felt like turning his Mötley Crüe cap around backwards to show he wasn't worried. Suddenly, the remaining cash, still in the leather jacket with the manifests, felt heavy. He needed some methamphetamine.

“Anything else?” Fin asked. “Like maybe you left a fellow trucker sleeping in the van when you went to eat?”

“No, but there was somethin in there that we oughtta call to your attention,” the ox said.

“What's that?”

“Hazardous waste. Five drums altogether. Four from North Island and one from Southbay Agricultural Supply.”

“How hazardous?”

Abel shrugged, and Shelby said, “We ain't got no idea. We jist haul that shit. We don't know paint thinner from Agent Orange. We was supposed to bring it to our storage yard. The boss, Mister Temple, he handles it after that. He sends the real bad stuff outta state somewheres. To Texas or Arkansas, I think.”

Now Fin was
really
glad that it would go downtown. He didn't want a case involving the Environmental Protection Agency or any other bureaucracy. “Will your boss know if the stuff is particularly dangerous?”

“Sure,” Shelby said. “The description's there on the two manifests from the waste generators.”

“Where're the manifests?” Fin asked. “In the truck, I suppose?”

“Een glove box,” Abel said sadly. “Weeth five hundred dollar.”

“The generators of the waste got
their
copies of the manifest,” Shelby explained. “The navy at North Island and South-bay Agricultural Supply. Now we'd like to borrow your phone to call our dispatcher and have somebody pick us up, okay?”

“The thief musta only wanted your truck,” Fin said. “He sure wasn't after your load.”

“He get lucky,” Abel said. “Get our boss money.”

“Sure,” Sam Zahn said. “Sure he did.”

When Fin got off duty and was trudging toward the parking lot, he saw a truck with
GREEN EARTH HAULING AND DISPOSAL
painted on its doors pulling into the parking lot to collect the haulers. Then Fin almost panicked when he spotted something on his Vette until he realized that what appeared to be a ding in the left front fender was only a shadow made by the streetlight.

His 1985 Corvette was white with red leather, the second year of the major body-style change. His little beauty had a 240 h.p. fuel-injected engine with only 27,000 miles on it. It was the one thing of value that none of his three ex-wives had managed to confiscate.

When people asked Fin why the hell he'd got married
three
times, he always said, “Because they were
there
.” When people asked if he was going to do it again he always said, “Islam permits four wives and every Arab and Iranian in California drives a Mercedes, so maybe four's a magic number.”

But to friends, Fin said he'd get married again when Cher had her new lips deflated. The pope would get married before Finbar Finnegan, he told them.

While he was driving back home to south Mission Beach in rush-hour traffic, Fin slipped a Natalie Cole tape into the deck and relaxed the instant he heard her father sing the first lyric of “Unforgettable.” Fin had grown up listening to Nat Cole, Sinatra, Tony Bennett.

A baby boomer of the Bill Clinton/Al Gore generation, he had three older sisters, the youngest of whom was ten years older than himself. Their mother had become pregnant with him in her forty-first year, and two years after his father was killed in a boatyard accident, his mother died of breast cancer. Fin had been raised by his sisters, who treated him more like a son than a brother. He'd listened to
their
music, gone to
their
movies, read
their
books. And each of them felt free to kick his ass when she felt like it.

Finbar Finnegan had spent so many years being bossed around by women that as soon as he got old enough he joined the marines, even though it was a dangerous time, at the height of the Vietnam War. Like most people who'd been in that or
any
war, Fin hadn't fired a shot in anger. Near Danang there was the occasional incoming rocket, but being in a support batallion, he'd never even seen a live V.C. Only dead marines in body bags, being made ready for their trip home.

Although Fin hadn't had a John Wayneish marine career, although he'd bitched about the war as much as anybody, he was still vaguely uneasy about today's new breed of police officers, particularly the young sergeants and lieutenants with laptop computers and no military experience. Somehow they all looked too much like Bill Clinton. Finbar Brendan Finnegan was casting his November ballot for Ross Perot, mostly because of Perot's running mate, Congressional Medal of Honor winner James Stockdale.

That night, after eating some leftover meat loaf, Fin stared into the mirror and wondered if Orson Ellis would actually follow through and get him the part. This time, if he got to play a character who was going to be in future TV episodes, who knows, something
might
happen!

Fin slapped at the flesh between his chin and Adam's apple, wondering what a little tuck would cost, and whether he could make his medical insurance cover it. After all, he had legitimate acting credits, so why shouldn't cosmetic surgery be covered as a job-related medical expense?

Orson Ellis had been right. The benchmark birthdays
were
harder on actors than on normal sane people. It was no consolation to remind himself that Clinton and Gore were considered young by every journalist in America. Forty-five was not young for a cop, and not young for a failed actor.

His middle sister, Bess, the most sympathetic of his three siblings, offered some advice on the subject after he'd mournfully confessed to her how he'd dreaded the last birthday.

Thirteen years older than Fin, and silently suffering the misery of hot flashes, Bess studied her baby brother for a moment and said, “Fin, honey, only sea anemones don't age. How many movie roles're out there for sea anemones? Now stop all this male menopause
bullshit
and have a piece of blueberry pie.”

While Fin Finnegan was contemplating the injustice of being a human being and not an ageless anemone, a Mexican thief named Pepe Palmera had already spotted the abandoned bobtail van on the street in the Rio Zone just below
Colonia Libertad
. Within a few minutes the van was making its third trip of the day up the hill.

The first thing that Pepe did that evening, after he got near his house, was to park next to the mesquite-dotted canyon and get rid of the useless drums in the back. Pepe could not read English, nor Spanish for that matter, but he understood what the skull and bones meant on the drums. He ransacked the glove compartment but found nothing except registration and insurance papers, which he threw away. He found a pair of new steel-toe shoes on the front seat of the van, and would later profoundly regret not having put them on his feet.

The drums were very heavy, but Pepe was a determined thief. He managed to tip each drum and roll it on its edge to the cargo door, where he put his shoulder to it and pushed. But Pepe tipped the last drum a bit too far and it overturned, slamming onto his left foot before he could jump clear.

Pepe screamed and sat down while the big drum with the death's head placard rolled across the floor of the van and fell out onto the ground. Pepe knew at once that one toe was broken, perhaps two. He cursed and moaned, but eventually staggered to his feet and crawled out the cargo door.

The truck was parked one hundred meters from the row of shacks where he resided with his mother, and Pepe knew that there was a possibility that some
other
thief might steal the stolen truck, but that was the chance he had to take. His foot needed immediate attention.

His mother would know of a poultice or some other remedy that would control the swelling, and maybe tomorrow he could use the truck to earn enough money to go to a doctor. But then again, what could a doctor do with broken toes that nature couldn't do? Better to spend the money on some good marijuana, Pepe thought.
That
would help the pain better than anything.

Pepe's mother did her best to minister to her son that night, but the poultice didn't help very much. Pepe was in great pain from the fractures and didn't sleep well. And long before he got to sleep his van had been discovered by night prowlers.

The prowlers were not thieves like Pepe Palmera. They couldn't have stolen the van from Pepe even if they'd wanted to. The older of the pair, Jaime Cisneros, was ten years old. His companion, Luis Zúniga, was nine. But they were precocious in many ways, like most of the children of the border barrios.

Luis decided to run home and borrow some of his brother's mechanic tools to open the drums. Jaime said there might be motor oil inside them, and if there was, it could be sold for more money than they had ever seen. Even reclaimed motor oil had great value, Jaime said. His father always bought used motor oil for his Plymouth.

While the thief, Pepe Palmera, slept fitfully, Jaime and Luis labored beside the van, working on the bung that was screwed into the drum. They both had to pull on the wrench handle with all their combined weight before they had success, working there by moonlight.

C
HAPTER
7

“W
e don't know how many pallets're gone, but we know there's been a major theft,” the warehouse superintendent said to Detective Bobbie Ann Doggett. “We'll have to do a complete inventory.”

“When did somebody last see pallets in this spot?” Bobbie asked, indicating the only vacant space in that part of the quayside warehouse.

“Five days ago,” he said. “One of our people can definitely say they were here then.”

“And you're sure the pallets contained boxes of shoes?” Bobbie asked, glancing at the report she'd received from a patrolman.

“Flight-deck shoes,” the supervisor said. “Like these.” He pulled up his right trouser leg and showed Bobbie his steel-toe high-top shoe. “I could be wrong, but I think there's hundreds of pairs missing. Maybe more. We'll soon know.”

“How many civilian truckers would you say had access to this warehouse during the past five days?” Bobbie asked. “Both day and night?”

“Well, we're prestaging,” he said, “so I'd say a dozen. Maybe a dozen haulers.”

“A dozen. No more than that?”

“Could be more, I don't really know,” the supervisor said.

It was the same story every time: no suspects, uncertainty as to what was stolen, not sure when the crime occurred. At least this time it was narrowed down to the past five days.

When Bobbie was leaving, the supervisor said, “Guess our security around here ain't too good, huh?”

“I'd rank it with domestic beer and the House Armed Services Committee,” Bobbie replied.

After returning to the office Bobbie notified Naval Investigative Service of the grand theft, figuring they'd want to deal with it due to the large amount stolen. She got a female special agent on the phone, and after explaining the case to the woman, Bobbie said, “Guess we could handle it if you want us to. A dozen different civilian haulers coulda done it. Maybe more.”