The Tin Collectors (26 page)

"Meet me at the Appaloosa after work, five-thirty. We'll follow Drucker and Ayers together." Before he could answer, th
e d
oor 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 bathroom 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 k
now 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."

"Well, what can we do?"

"I don't know. I'll try and find him, but I don't even know where to start. It's not going to be easy."

But it was easier than he thought. As soon as he hung up from Sandy, his phone rang. It was Chooch.

"I'm in a phone booth over by UCLA, the Texaco just off the freeway on Sunset," the teenager said. "I gotta see you."

"On my way." Shane got into his rental car and headed back to West L
. A
.

Chapter
31

HE WAS SITTING on a low wall that framed the perimeter of the Texaco station one block west of the 405. He seemed small sitting there, diminished by events, his head down, staring at the sidewalk as if the answer to his life might be hiding in the scrub weeds growing between the cracks.

Shane pulled the rented Taurus into the gas station and tapped the horn. Chooch got off the wall, moved to the car, and slid in, pulling the door shut. He sat there, silent, looking like he'd lost something he couldn't replace.

"Your mom's worried."

"Yeah. Okay, let's go," he said.

"You had lunch? There's a good place in Westwood, over by UCLA. Got subs and a great deli."

The boy shrugged, so Shane put the car in gear and headed that way.

The place was called the Little Bruin. Shane and Chooch got a booth in the back surrounded by chattering college students and lunch-break shopkeepers. Chooch ordered the special; Shane, pastrami on rye. They both had Cokes.

"I thought we had a deal. You were gonna stay put, and I was gonna try and get my stuff settled, get back to you by next weekend at the latest."

Chooch was looking out the window at the passing traffic so he could avoid Shane's eyes. "I been thinkin'," he said. "I know it's like a problem all the time havin' to have somebody look after me, but like you said, I'm a man. I make my own choices now, right?" "Right."

"So, if I moved in with you, you wouldn't have to baby-sit me anymore or have Longboard come over and sit. I don't need to be supervised. I'm sorta beyond that. Like you said, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Shane said. "But I got guys shooting up my place. We'd have to get Kevlar jammies."

"You're not sleeping there, either. I'll go wherever you go."

" 'Cept I'm not your legal guardian. I can't make that choice for you. Sandy has to."

"Yeah, well, the thing is, Sandy and me, we're not gonna happen."

"You sure of that?"

"Yeah. I'm sure. It didn't work."

"You gave it a whole nine hours."

"You know what she does for a living?"

Shane didn't know how to answer that. "Do you?" he finally said.

"Yeah. She's a hooker. I found her trick book. She has over fifty guys in there. It lists what they like, what kinda sex." He was having trouble talking about this, watching the traffic out the window, studying the street with manufactured interest.

"She's paying for my school and shit by fucking guys. She's a whore." He turned back, and Shane could see the anger in the boy's black eyes.

"Chooch, your mom
"

"Yeah?"

"When I first met her, she was young, alone in L
. A
. She made a bad choice, but she doesn't do that anymore. She's an informant for the police department. Federal, as well as LAPD."

"How does that pay for anything?" he challenged. "The private school and that penthouse."

"She dates guys that law enforcement wants to bust, works 'em for information, then sells it to the cops. She does real well. She's trying to save up enough to retire, live with you in Phoenix, be a regular mom."

"Some real mom."

The waitress, a college girl in shorts and a UCLA T-shirt, delivered their lunches, set down silverware wrapped in paper napkins, and left. Shane unwrapped his knife and fork and put the napkin on his lap while Chooch continued to look out the window, brooding.

"Whatta you want, man?" Shane finally said. "It is what it is. I can't change it; neither can you. You've gotta move past it."

"Easy for you. I got nobody now. Least you've got somebody you can talk to."

"Yeah? Who's that?"

"I found all the letters you write to your dad. They were in the desk drawer in the living room. I was looking for paper for my homework."

Shane put down his half-eaten sandwich. Chooch watched him closely, focused on him hard.

"You shouldn't read other people's mail," Shane said softly.

"You write them but you never send 'em."

"He's sick. They were downers. I didn't want to distress him. I don't want to talk about this with you. It's not right you reading my private mail."

They sat in silence for a moment, then Shane's cell phone rang, interrupting an awkward moment. It was the guy at Parker Center checking the Cal-VIP Homes with the Corporations Commission.

"Go," Shane said, grabbing a pencil.

"Spivack Development Corporation, Long Beach, California, owns Cal-VIP and paid the real estate taxes on the Arrowhead address you gave me."

"Anthony Spivack? That Spivack Development? The big corporate developer?"

"It just said Spivack Development, 2000 Lincoln Ave., Long Beach, California."

"Thanks," Shane said, and folded the phone.

"I can't go back to Sandy's place. I won't do it," Chooch protested.

"Okay, okay, I'll work out something. But I've gotta call and tell her you're okay."

"Fine. I don't care. I just don't wanna go back."

"Okay. We can try, but I can't promise that's gonna stick."

They sat quietly in the booth and ate their sandwiches. Chooch, still deep in thought, only picked at his.

"Shane," he said, and Scully looked up at him. "Did she ever tell you who my father was?" The question had been waiting there building up pressure, needing to be asked.

"Yeah," Shane said, "but she didn't want you to find out who he was."

"Because he was one of those guys, one of the crooks she plays to the cops?"

"Chooch, come on . . ."

"I wanna know. Was my old man a criminal?"

"She'll have to tell you. She made me promise, but it's not really gonna change anything, because he's not coming back for a long time."

"He's a crook ... I know it. Some legacy, huh? No wonder I get into so much trouble."

"Hey, Chooch, criminal behavior isn't genetic. You don't pass it on, father to son, like blue eyes and freckles. You can make whatever you want of your life. It's up to you. Your father's mistakes are his. Everybody gets to make their own."

"That's what you keep telling me," the boy said. Then he gave Shane a rueful smile. "And you don't ever lie, right?"

"Right," Shane said. Then without really knowing why, but realizing it was the right thing to do, Shane finally unburdened himself of something he had kept hidden for years. "You wanna know why I never mailed the letters?"

Chooch nodded.

" 'Cause I don't know where to send them."

"It says Florida."

"I don't know where he is, or even who he is. I was left at a hospital. 'Infant 205,' in 1963. I got named by City Services. It's silly. I write the letters when I need to get my thoughts down. And my father ..." He stopped, unable to finish for a second. "My father is an idea I can talk to."