The Tin Collectors by Stephen J. Cannell Page A

"Good goin'."
    "I don't care, so don't sweat it."
    "Yeah, that's right, I forgot. I'm just this month's paid jerkoff."
    "That was before. You're not a paid jerkoff anymore. You've been promoted."
    "To what?" Shane was barely paying attention. His mind was spinning, a kaleidoscope of horrible, career-ending problems.
    "You're my doobie brother," Chooch said with a grin, "my ganja gangtsa and Rasta weed warrior."
    "Listen, Chooch, you gotta forget about that. Okay? I'm having a rough time right now, I'm not thinking straight. That was a huge mistake."
    "Shit, it was the first thing you did that I liked. Showed me some stones, man. No other cop I know would sit around with some kid and bogart a fatty."
    "Chooch, if you tell anybody about that, I'm gonna kill ya."
    "No sweat. I can keep a secret." He smiled, then put his headphones on again and cranked up the tunes. He stayed plugged in until Shane made the turn onto the Santa Monica Freeway. It was the wrong way home, so Chooch took off his headset and looked over. "Where we going?"
    "I gotta go to a meeting down at the beach. It should only take an hour, maybe less. You can hang for a while, okay?"
    Chooch cocked an eyebrow. "Something's going on, right? You're in the soup, just like me, aren't ya?" he said with surprising intuition.
    "It's okay. I can handle it."
    They shot off the end of the freeway, back onto the Coast Highway. Five minutes later Chooch and Shane were walking through the front door of an almost empty bar-restaurant with a sawdust floor and a neon sign that read SILVER SURFER.
    It was 4:15 in the afternoon.
    ? ? ?
    They found DeMarco seated at the bar. He was wearing cutoffs and a blue-jean vest with no shirt, working on his third beer. The other two empty brown glass longnecks were lined up on the bar beside him.
    When Shane introduced DeMarco to Chooch, the teenager looked at the longhaired defense rep and smiled. "Cool fuckin' earring, dude."
    "I like your friend, Scully. You're finally kicking." The defense rep smiled at Shane.
    "Is it okay for him to be in here?" Shane asked, referring to the fact that they were in a bar that served hard liquor.
    "Yeah, he can go play the video games over there. Technically, that's not in the bar area."
    Shane dug into his pockets and gave Chooch some change.
    The boy moved over to a small alcove in sight of the bar, sat on a stool, and began feeding coins into one of the machines.
    Shane slid the Letter of Transmittal over to DeMarco, who read it carefully, then set it on the bar between them. "Mark, gimme another Lone Star," he yelled. "How 'bout you?" he asked Shane.
    "Slow down on the brewskies, will ya? I'm on fire here."
    "Then you're in luck. With this bladder, I can piss it out for you," DeMarco quipped. "In your telephonic absence, I went ahead and covered some pro forma ground. Tell ya this much, Alexa Hamilton doesn't let much grass grow under her magnificent gym-trained ass. She already got the rotation list for your judging panel and faxed it to me. Seven names: four sworn members of the department above the rank of captain and three civilians. If you remember how it works from before, you get to throw off two of the cops and two of the civilians, leaving you a panel of three judges: two sworn, one civilian." He reached into his blue-jean vest pocket and pulled out two slips of paper. "This ain't much of a beauty contest," he said, sliding both slips over to Shane. "In my opinion, all of these department guys are douche bags. Tell me who you like. I hate the whole bunch." DeMarco read the names aloud while Shane studied the list. "Captain Donovan McNeil, West Division; Commander Mitchell Van Sickle, Ad Vice; Deputy Chief Laurence Gadsworth he's the chief's administrative staff officer, so forget him; and Captain Bernard Cookson."
    "Jesus," Shane said, "except for Donovan McNeil, who I used to go fishing with occasionally, aren't these guys all in Chief Brewer's golf foursome?"
    "Yep. But it gets worse. Look't