The Tin Collectors (36 page)

They scrambled up the concrete incline and finally got back to the car. Shane locked the video box and tape in the trunk. Tom Mayweather's confession was obtained illegally and under duress. It would be useless in court but would surely keep him on the sidelines. The last thing the deputy chief wanted was to see it on the six o'clock news.

They sat in the front seat of the Crown Vic for a long moment, both changed by what they had just done.

"That was brutal," Alexa finally said. Shane nodded, and she added, "What now?"

"What now? We've just pulled off a pretty successful kidnapping and felonious assault," he said. "Wanna try your hand at forced entry and burglary?"

Chapter
42

A BEGINNING?

SHANE DIDN'T WANT to attempt a B&E in broad daylight, so they went back to Alexa's apartment to wait for the sun to go down.

He felt dirty and tired as he sat on her snow-white sofa. Mayweather's confession had darkened his mood, driving his spirit down without producing Chooch.

Shane had always considered police work a noble calling, where Blue Centurions defended the public, upholding society's laws. The slogans reverberated in his mind: Protect and Serve; Reverence for the Law; Integrity in Word and Action. His oath made seventeen years ago while holding his head and right hand high now seemed hollow and meaningless. "J recognize the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of police service."

Years on the job had shown him that police work was a flawe
d o
ccupation at best, its participants on a narrowing, cynical path toward destroying the very thing they had pledged to uphold. Mayweather's crimes made Shane as dirty as if he had committed them himself.

"Is it okay if I take a shower?" he asked Alexa, hoping that maybe a long, hot soaking would wash the feeling away.

"Sure," she said. "I was just thinking the same thing, but you go first."

Shane heard a sadness in her voice that matched his own. He got up and walked into the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at himself in the mirror. The face staring back at him was tired and craggy and didn't resemble what he'd come to expect. The change worried him. He stripped off his shirt, pants, shoes, socks, and underwear, then turned on the shower and waited for it to get hot. Shane stepped in and stood under its steaming spray. He looked up at the nozzle, his eyes squinting as the spray bounced hard pff his face and hot water filled his mouth. He was dirty in places it could not reach.

"You want, I'll do your laundry. I'll throw it in the machine with mine," he heard Alexa call from outside the bathroom.

"Good. Thanks. I tossed 'em next to the sink," he shouted back. Then, through the frosted shower door, he saw her step into the bathroom, retrieving his clothes. He turned his back, pinching his eyes shut, trying to blank out his troubled thoughts, when, almost before he knew what was happening, the frosted glass door opened and Alexa was in the shower with him, standing there naked, the steam turning her beautiful body slick with its moisture.

"Move over, you're hogging the spray," she said.

"What're you doing?" Shane's mind was doing flip-flops.

"I feel ... I feel . . ."
she stopped, then looked up at him
"like I don't exist. . . like I don't even want to."

"Me, too," he said softly.

"I thought if we . . ." She stopped. "Bad idea ..."

Shane didn't say anything, just took her into his arms and held her. As her wet body slid up against him, for the first time in days he felt the tension disappear; the knot in his stomach released as they stood locked in a cathartic embrace. They remained like that for a long time
holding each other, feeling each other's comfort and warmth. Then Shane felt his desire for her swelling and pushing between her legs, proving that he was still alive, still a man; perhaps all his failures of the past week could somehow be forged into a new beginning. He desperately wanted to start over. Then he felt her clutching him, pulling him closer, and was overtaken by a desire for her that was so intense, it brought tears to his eyes. "Is this right?" he said, asking for absolution, permission, and maybe directions all at the same time.

"Shut up," she whispered.

And then they were caressing each other in the steaming shower, Shane's mouth covering hers, his body pushing her back against the wet tiles on the wall of the small shower, kissing with abandon, feeling each other's warmth. Suddenly she pulled herself up, wrapping her arms around his neck, bringing her legs up around his waist. While she clung to him, he entered her, slowly at first, then thrusting more deeply. As her moans of pleasure washed over him, he felt changed and reborn.

Shane didn't know how long it lasted; time, in that small place, had become endless. They were in a wet cocoon of human ecstasy, and then he heard her cry out as he released inside her. She kissed him hard on the mouth, her breath mixing with his in the steaming shower.

Shane finally set her down, and they remained under the hot spray in a desperate embrace, almost afraid to let go, afraid to return to their individual fears and loneliness. Finally she took the bar of soap and began to wash his back, his arms, lathering him in erotic places. After she was finished, he did the same for her. They held each other in a sweet fragrance of body and soul. Shane felt different, stronger, more alive.

He looked down into her laser-blue eyes, which now seemed softer and filled with caring.

"Now we can start over," she said, putting his exact thoughts into words.

? ? ?

Later she made dinner and they sat at her kitchen table. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe; he was wrapped in a towel.

After dinner she handed him his clothes, fresh from the dryer; they felt soft and were still warm as he put them on. When he walked into the living room, he noticed that there was renewed energy in his stride and a spring in his step.

They said very little, but as they locked her front door and headed to her car, she reached out, took his hand, and squeezed it.

Chapter
43

HE WAS BACK in the parking lot, studying the fourteen-story steel-and-glass building in Long Beach. They had waited for the sun to go down. It was 8:05 on Saturday night, and they were still using the staff car Shane had been given up in Arrowhead. Across the street, roof letters announced Spivack Development Corporation in five-foot-high blue neon.

"I feel like Bonnie and Clyde. Do you have this effect on everybody?" Alexa said. She was sitting in the Crown Vic next to Shane, putting on a pair of latex gloves so she wouldn't leave her prints behind, both of them feeling a sense of awkwardness from the passionate lovemaking they'd engaged in a few hours before.

"Y'know, you're the last person I would ever have thought I'd be pulling a second-story job with," he finally said. She ignored it.

"You said you were here before. Did you scout it? You got a way into this place?" She was all business, putting that memor
y o
ut of reach, taking the binoculars out of the glove box, unwinding the strap and training them on the building.

"Look, things have changed. We both know it," he said softly.

"Yes, but. . . Shane, it's dangerous. We have to be either cops or lovers. We can't be both. You've seen what a mess that turns into when it happens. . . . For now, we gotta do the job."

He knew she was right and finally nodded.

"So, did you scout it?" she asked again.

"Yeah ... we can get to the roof by way of the fire stairs. Go down through a special staircase up there for the helicopter pad. It leads right down to Spivack's floor. The fire doors have interior bolt locks except on the first floor."

She nodded. "Y'know what pisses me off?"

"Ummmn," he answered, putting on his own pair of gloves.

"These binoculars piss me off
Bushnell 16x35s with a waterproof case. I worked Southwest Patrol for three years with a cracked pair of six-power prewar Lens Masters with one side out of whack. Couldn't focus the right eyepiece, asked for new binocs ten, twelve times, was told it wasn't in the budget. And here, in this staff car, they leave 'em under the seat like throwaways."

"Yeah, and we don't get sailboats, either."

She didn't answer but continued to focus the binoculars on the building. "You think we try for the roof? Go up through the fire stairs, pry the lock up there, then go down one floor, hope the interior doors aren't wired?"

"You're a fun date," he said, finishing with his gloves, snapping the wristbands while she lowered the glasses.

"Spivack builds shopping centers and commercial real estate all over the place, right?" she said.

"Yeah, malls, sports complexes, city buildings
anything where you've got high budgets and low administrative supervision costs."

"Tony Spivack, Logan Hunter, Chief Brewer, Mayor Crispin, and Ray Molar
quite a five-man team," she said.

"With Tom Mayweather still at point guard. Seems pretty obvious they stole this land in Long Beach
the naval yard
to build something. Hotels or a huge resort would be my guess. It's right on the bay. ..."

"Why would Logan Hunter be part of it? He's a movie guy."

"I don't know. He likes press . . . maybe it's gonna be his new studio, with a theme park like Universal's . . . call it the Web. Lotsa rides, lotsa fuzzy cartoon characters greeting you at the gate in chipmunk costumes. Who the fuck knows?"

"Let's go," she said. "This isn't gonna get any easier the longer we wait."

They got out of the car and moved across the parking lot.

"If we get stopped, flash your tin," he said.

"Always my tin, my gun."

"You collected mine already, remember?"

"Stop bitching," she said, but they were both smiling.

Strange how that can happen, in the midst of losing Chooch and Brian. Despite feeling devastated in the face of that loss, he had first had a moment of uncontrolled sexual passion with her and now he was grinning like an idiot, adrenaline driving his emotions, skewing his senses while keeping his vision bright. . . both of them acting like kids snatching a pie off a bakery-shop windowsill.

They got to the side of the building and began walking around it, looking for the fire door. There were several private security guards inside. Shane and Alexa could see them in the lobby looking out through the glass at them.

"Gimme your hand," he said.

She immediately reached out and took his, strolling lazily beside him, putting her head on his shoulder. They looked like two lovers going nowhere special, nuzzling and feeling it again: a new sense of closeness.

Shane was acutely aware of her perfume, and in that moment, while they were pretending to be lovers, he felt something strange and confusing and powerful stir inside him. The feeling was undeniably strong but totally inappropriate in the middle of a hot prowl, so he bundled it up, stowed it on a top shelf in the back of his mind, slammed the cupboard shut, and saved it for later. He turned his thoughts instead toward the fire door coming up on the left.

She took her latex-gloved hand away from his and tried the door. It was locked.

"I have keys," he said, removing his little leather pouch of picklocks.

"No way," she said, looking askance at the burglar tools.

"Stand back. I'm not as good as Ray was, but I'll have this open in a sec." He went to work on the lock while she turned and watched the terrain behind him, making sure no slow-moving Long Beach patrol car came upon them unexpectedly.

After a moment he manipulated the last pick in the lock and felt it hook down into the tumbler inside the door. He was ready to turn the knob. "Okay, all set," he said.

She turned back to him. "What about the alarm?" she asked.

"What about it?"

"Won't it go off when we open it?"

"Here's the way I have this figured," he said. "If there's an alarm on this door, then when I open it, it will damn sure go off. If there isn't one, then my thinking is, it won't."

"Asshole."

"Of course, if it rings, we need to fall back and think up a new strategy. I'm not good with alarms; I haven't had time to perfect that talent yet."

"Let's go. Do it," she said, and watched breathlessly as he put his hand on the knob.

He felt the lock turn and then pushed the door open.

Nothing!

They ducked into the dimly lit concrete stairwell and closed the exterior door.

"That's amazing," she said. "Why wouldn't they have this door rigged?"

"They did. I unplugged it yesterday afternoon when I was here. The unit box is in the sub-basement." He smiled while she glared. "Come on, lighten up. I wanted you to experience the whole thrill."

Then he turned and ran up the stairs, taking the first flight two at a time.

It took them almost five minutes to get up to the roof, then they were standing in the reflected glow of the five-foot blue letters while Shane went to work on the roof door.