Read Online The Tin Collectors by Stephen J. Cannell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen J. Cannell
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, People & Places, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Juvenile Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Police, Police Procedural, Los Angeles (Calif.), Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Police - California - Los Angeles, Police corruption, Corruption, Detective and mustery stories; American
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drugs?"
"No. I didn't sell nothin'." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Once or twice, maybe ... I loaned some Rasta weed to somebody. And then maybe once or twice I found some cash in my locker that I don't know where it came from. ..."
"Shit," Shane said, not sure how extreme his response to this should be. "You're in deep shit if they can prove it. Is anybody there gonna talk?"
"You mean, will my dickhead clients roll over and give me up?" Chooch asked. "In a fuckin' heartbeat. You want my opinion? They're not gonna go to the cops. That school doesn't wan t s ome newspaper story about drugs on campus. Since I'm Mexican, they're also probably scared shitless somebody will charge 'em with race discrimination. They're just gonna demand I go quietly, something I'm real prepared to do."
Shane looked hard at the teenager, still sitting with his head back on the seat, his eyes closed.
"It isn't your problem anyway," Chooch said. "You're just this month's paid jerkoff."
"Right. That's me." Shane put the car in gear and headed back up onto the freeway. They didn't speak all the way back to Venice.
Finally, Shane pulled into his house at 143 East Channel Road. He parked in the garage and got out. Chooch grabbed his book bag and slouched along after him as they opened the back door. The two of them walked into the kitchen, and Chooch slung his book bag angrily onto the counter.
"Take that into your room and start doing your homework."
"Homework? Ain't that a little off the point?"
"Do it anyway," Shane said. Then he moved out of the house into his small backyard, which looked out onto one of the narrow channels of Venice. What had been a cold April morning was now turning into a surprisingly pleasant California afternoon.
From Shane's small backyard on Venice's East Channel, he could see all the way down the intersecting Howland Canal.
Venice, California, had been the brainchild of Abbot Kinney in 1904. Kinney had wanted to create a luxury community in the style of Venice, Italy. He supervised the design of channels to carry water in from the ocean two blocks away. He designed his development around four long canals, intersected by a series of concrete, arched Venice-like driving bridges that spanned each canal. He added small walking bridges and brought some scaled - down gondolas over from Italy. It had been quite a place in the early 1900s but had seen hard times ever since. The canals still had a sort of rustic charm, but the once-grand houses of the thirties had been knocked down or subdivided and in their place were smaller, cheaper structures. The architectural style ranged from antebellum to trailer-park modern. The people who now lived on the canals were an even more interesting mix. Young doctors who smoked dope lived next door to disapproving retirees. New Age musicians and mimes competed for hat tips on the boardwalk, while four blocks inland, on Fifteenth Street, gangbangers and unaware tourists fought and died over wallets and watches. Jammed in with all of this confusion, next to a longhaired surfboard shaper, was LAPD Sergeant Shane Scully. There was something about the canal blocks of Venice, California, that suited him; something offbeat and sad. Venice seemed as misplaced as her residents.
Less than half a mile to the south were the yuppified environs of Marina del Rey, where young ad executives and airline flight attendants took sexual aim at one another in the crowded waterside bars and fish houses. A mile to the north was Santa Monica, with its population of trendy superagents, junk bond salesmen, and Hollywood power brokers. Halfway in between, sitting on its silly three-foot-deep canals, trying to be something it could never duplicate, was the other Venice, sinking into the mud of social indifference as surely as Venice, Italy, was sinking into the sea.
But Shane Scully was at home there, like no place else on earth. Venice, California, defined him.
As he watched a hummingbird hang
"No. I didn't sell nothin'." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Once or twice, maybe ... I loaned some Rasta weed to somebody. And then maybe once or twice I found some cash in my locker that I don't know where it came from. ..."
"Shit," Shane said, not sure how extreme his response to this should be. "You're in deep shit if they can prove it. Is anybody there gonna talk?"
"You mean, will my dickhead clients roll over and give me up?" Chooch asked. "In a fuckin' heartbeat. You want my opinion? They're not gonna go to the cops. That school doesn't wan t s ome newspaper story about drugs on campus. Since I'm Mexican, they're also probably scared shitless somebody will charge 'em with race discrimination. They're just gonna demand I go quietly, something I'm real prepared to do."
Shane looked hard at the teenager, still sitting with his head back on the seat, his eyes closed.
"It isn't your problem anyway," Chooch said. "You're just this month's paid jerkoff."
"Right. That's me." Shane put the car in gear and headed back up onto the freeway. They didn't speak all the way back to Venice.
Finally, Shane pulled into his house at 143 East Channel Road. He parked in the garage and got out. Chooch grabbed his book bag and slouched along after him as they opened the back door. The two of them walked into the kitchen, and Chooch slung his book bag angrily onto the counter.
"Take that into your room and start doing your homework."
"Homework? Ain't that a little off the point?"
"Do it anyway," Shane said. Then he moved out of the house into his small backyard, which looked out onto one of the narrow channels of Venice. What had been a cold April morning was now turning into a surprisingly pleasant California afternoon.
From Shane's small backyard on Venice's East Channel, he could see all the way down the intersecting Howland Canal.
Venice, California, had been the brainchild of Abbot Kinney in 1904. Kinney had wanted to create a luxury community in the style of Venice, Italy. He supervised the design of channels to carry water in from the ocean two blocks away. He designed his development around four long canals, intersected by a series of concrete, arched Venice-like driving bridges that spanned each canal. He added small walking bridges and brought some scaled - down gondolas over from Italy. It had been quite a place in the early 1900s but had seen hard times ever since. The canals still had a sort of rustic charm, but the once-grand houses of the thirties had been knocked down or subdivided and in their place were smaller, cheaper structures. The architectural style ranged from antebellum to trailer-park modern. The people who now lived on the canals were an even more interesting mix. Young doctors who smoked dope lived next door to disapproving retirees. New Age musicians and mimes competed for hat tips on the boardwalk, while four blocks inland, on Fifteenth Street, gangbangers and unaware tourists fought and died over wallets and watches. Jammed in with all of this confusion, next to a longhaired surfboard shaper, was LAPD Sergeant Shane Scully. There was something about the canal blocks of Venice, California, that suited him; something offbeat and sad. Venice seemed as misplaced as her residents.
Less than half a mile to the south were the yuppified environs of Marina del Rey, where young ad executives and airline flight attendants took sexual aim at one another in the crowded waterside bars and fish houses. A mile to the north was Santa Monica, with its population of trendy superagents, junk bond salesmen, and Hollywood power brokers. Halfway in between, sitting on its silly three-foot-deep canals, trying to be something it could never duplicate, was the other Venice, sinking into the mud of social indifference as surely as Venice, Italy, was sinking into the sea.
But Shane Scully was at home there, like no place else on earth. Venice, California, defined him.
As he watched a hummingbird hang
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