"I won't tell about your dad if you won't tell about mine," Shane said.
"Deal," Chooch said, and smiled. They got in the car and left Westwood, both wondering what this strange new connection held for them.
Chapter 32
THE FIFTEEN-STORY steel-and-glass building on Lincoln Boulevard was named the Two Thousand Building by a large monument sign that marked the entrance. Under that in gold letters:
It was also on top of the building in five-foot-high lit letters, leaving no doubt about who owned the place.
Shane and Chooch parked in the underground garage, got out, and moved to the elevator, taking it up to the management floor at the top of the building. They exited into a huge architectural lobby decorated in monochromatic colors, dominated by too many sharp edges and angular lines. Steel-and-glass furniture dotted the interior. Futuristic recessed lighting laid down a cold blue-white glow. A huge gold sign behind the receptionist again announced that this was:
Shane left Chooch by the elevator and approached a striking, unfriendly white-blond receptionist who looked cold enough to have been delivered with the furniture. Shane opened his wallet and took out his police business card. Since he didn't have his badge, the business card was the best he could manage. He was hoping it would get him past the blond goddess who was guarding the floor, stationed behind her huge, semicircular, two-inch-thick green glass desk, like a turret gunner.
"What's this regarding?" she asked, speaking coolly, not intimidated by his card or manner.
"Police business," he replied.
"Mr. Spivack isn't here. Perhaps someone else can help you?"
"How about Calvin Sheets?" Shane said, wondering if Logan Hunter's head of security was also working for Spivack.
"He's down at the city council meeting with Mr. Spivack. Sorry…"
"The Long Beach City Council?"
She ignored his question and smiled an icicle at him. "Would there be anybody else…?"
"Coy Love."
"We don't have a Coy Love."
"I'm not doing too well, am I?"
"Sometimes if you make an appointment in advance, it works wonders." Freon.
"I may just have to get a search warrant and start emptying everyone's desks… Do a couple of body searches."
"Anything else?" She had grown tired of him.
"Pamela Anderson Lee wouldn't happen to be around, would she?"
"Just left." But at least this earned him a smile.
He picked up his business card, tucked it into his wallet, then took a Spivack Company brochure off the glass desk and walked across the lobby, the ice-blonde watching him all the way. He retrieved Chooch, got into the elevator, and went down. He left the teenager in the lobby, then found the staircase to the basement. It took him five minutes to find the service utility room. Inside was a huge gray panel box with a dime-store lock that took Shane less than thirty seconds to pick. Now he was looking at a startling array of colorful wires. "Shit," he said, then slowly went to work unraveling the building's complicated alarm system.
???
"I wonder where the city council meets. Probably city hall," Shane said as they settled back into the Taurus. He picked up his almost fried cell phone, called Information in Long Beach, and got the address for city hall on Front Street just before the phone quit.
They drove away from the Two Thousand Building and, with some help from a gas-station attendant, found Front Street. The huge domed city building loomed two blocks ahead…
As they pulled up the street, they could see quite a demonstration in progress thirty or forty pickets were congregating around in front of city hall. It was a strange mixture of people. Some were old men in American Legion uniforms, holding duplicate hand-lettered signs that read:
VETERANS AGAINST LONG BEACH LAND-FOR-WATER DEAL
Other pickets carried more traditional union placards:
Others protested with:
GIVE US JOBS, NOT SOBS SPIVACK-EVACK WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE WE SAVED THE WHALES YOU SAVE OUR JOBS!
Shane and Chooch had to park a block away in a city parking lot and, after locking up, moved across the shimmering, heated asphalt to where the demonstration was taking place.
"What's going on?" Shane asked a tough-looking woman with inch-long hair wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a sign that read:
BEACHFRONT FOR HzO?
"These idiots are trading the Long Beach Naval Yard to Los Angeles County for a bunch of fuckin' water rights," she growled.
"Naval yard? I thought the navy shut it down years ago."
"Yeah, they did, and now we're giving it to L. A."
"Isn't it federal property?" Shane persisted.
She shot him a withering look. "Where you been, buddy? This is all over the fuckin' news."
"I don't have a TV," Shane answered.
"It was leased land. Now Long Beach's gonna trade it for some dumb water rights."
Shane moved past her and, along with Chooch, climbed up the steps and entered city hall.
The Long Beach Municipal Building was a large brick structure that had been built in the forties. It had a high, two-story rotunda, now overflowing with TV news crews who had set up there for a press conference.
"I'm gonna try and find this guy Spivack," Shane said to Chooch. "Stick close, okay?" "Got it."
Shane moved past the news crews but got stopped at the door to the City Council Chamber by a uniformed Long Beach police officer.
"Sorry, we're maxed out. Fire regs," the cop said.
"LAPD, I'm working." He handed the cop his business card.
"Okay, Sarge, but it's a madhouse in there."
"He's with me," Shane said, indicating Chooch; then they entered the meeting hall.
The council room was a theater-sized, cavernous hall with a sloping floor and raised dais. The room was packed. They could hear a contentious argument being staged over microphones:
"How the hell can you say that the property can't be used by Long Beach?!" a woman yelled from the floor. "I worked at that yard, I was an employee of the Metal Trades Council for thirty years. I thought we were being reamed in '94, when the government closed the only profitable shipyard in the navy. But that's nothing compared to what's going on here. You're taking a huge city asset and trading it for chump change!"
The crowd shouted its approval. The president of the city council banged his gavel for order, then replied, "To begin with, the yard was closed in '94 because it was badly situated, too close to the big refitting yard in San Diego. What's going on here now is good for the city of Long Beach. Mr. Spivack is going to clear all the old military buildings off the site, regrade the property, and develop it. Okay, it's going to be ceded to the city of L. A., but I might remind you that the shipyard borders L. A. on the north and Long Beach on the south, so it's contiguous with them as well as us."
"Who cares? I'm not talking about geography. I'm talking about jobs!" the woman fired back, to a chorus of cheers.
The city council president was prepared. "Long Beach residents will get the jobs because the yard is much closer to our main workforce than to L. A.'s. There'll be hotels, shopping malls, restaurants all employment for Long Beach citizens. And we don't have to float bond issues or construction loans to develop the site. We won't have to pay for its construction; L. A. will. But we will get the major work benefits, plus much-needed water from L. A."