Unpaid Dues

by Barbara Seranella

  His first stop was the Builder's Emporium on Bundy He held the block in his left hand and away from his side so as not to snag his dark slacks. Building materials were in the outdoor yard next to garden supplies. The bitter scent of insecticides and fertilizer assaulted him as he walked down the narrow aisles.

  "Can I help you?" asked a clerk wearing a green apron.

  "I need some information. What do you know about cinder blocks?"

  "Aisle two."

  "I need one exactly like this one," Cassiletti said, holding up his evidence.

  "Hmm, I don't know. Ours are darker, but you could always paint it. I'll show you what we have."

  Cassiletti followed the clerk past flats of brightly colored petunias and stopped at a pallet loaded ten high with dark gray cinder blocks. These differed from his in more ways than color. They had wider tongue-and-groove joints and no inset cuts on the face. Cassiletti pointed this out to the clerk.

  "Chisels are in aisle eight," the guy said, looking past Cassiletti for a less-demanding customer. Stamped in black on the base of the pallet were the words Enco Block. Cassiletti noted the name. "Is this Enco Block local?"

  "I don't know, man," the clerk said, starting to look seriously put upon.

  Cassiletti pulled out his badge holder, relishing the moment when this guy's attitude would change. He held his shield close to the guy's face and watched the clerk's posture straighten, the color drain from his cheeks.

  "This is police business. Can you get me the information I want or do I need to see the store manager?"

  "No, no. I can help you. Follow me."

  Cassiletti pocketed his badge and smiled secretly at the guy's back as they made their way to the rear of the store and through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. A quick search through one of the file cabinets in the accounting office produced an invoice with the Enco Block address and phone number. It was in Sun Valley, an industrial section of the San Fernando Valley

  Cassiletti thanked the man, took his block, and left. It took forty minutes on three different freeways to get to Enco Block, which turned out to be a large operation near the railroad tracks. The company logo was painted in red on a tall silo and was visible from a quarter mile away He followed a line of pickup trucks driven by beefy sunburned contractors wearing short-sleeved T-shirts and turned-backward baseball caps to a driveway you would have had to know was there to find. Cassiletti felt more out of place than usual as he parked in front of a windowless building and followed the signs to a door labeled OFFICE. He introduced himself to the secretary whose nameplate identified her as Terri Ordell. She listened to his request, inspected his badge, smiled coyly and then pushed a button on her telephone.

  "Mr. Kulek?"

  A man's voice said, "Yeah?"

  "You have a police detective out here to see you. He has some questions about cinder blocks."

  Seconds later a robust balding man emerged from the inner office. "You the cop?" he asked in a booming voice—one no doubt trained to carry over the sound of a cement mixer.

  Cassiletti handed the man one of his new business cards. He'd had them printed himself at his own expense, paying extra for the embossed image of his detective shield complete with his badge number. The city provided only generic blue-and-white cards that had blank lines for the officers to fill in their names, ranks, and phone numbers.

  "Oh, shit," Kulek said. "What's happened?"

  "I need some information," Cassiletti said, "about this cinder block."

  "Like what?"

  "Anything you can tell me."

  Kulek studied the block for only a second. "A, it's not a cinder block. It's concrete. Cinder block is made from cinder. It's a couple pounds lighter per block and you'd see the darker particles, especially in a split-face block like this one. And B, it's not one of ours. Our eight-eight-sixteens have a thicker web between the cells and we don't do a Malibu cut."

  "Eight-eight-sixteen?"

  "Yeah, those are the dimensions in inches."

  "Actually; it's a bit smaller than that."

  "I'm talking with mortar," Kulek said. His tone seemed to suggest that this was information any man should know.

  Cassiletti felt a momentary fluster. St. John probably would have picked up the eight-eight-sixteen thing immediately

  "What's a Malibu cut?" Cassiletti asked, pressing on.

  "This inset on the face," Kulek explained.

  "What's it for?" A

  "Architectural design. Same as the color. We make our stuff for the do-it-yourself stores like Builder 's Emporium and National Lumber. We use the darker concrete that comes from Mexico, and we don't add pigment." The phone on the secretary's desk rang. Kulek looked at it and then back at Cassiletti. "Anything else?"

  "A list of your competitors?"

  "Terri," Ku1ek said, answering the phone himself, "give the man what he wants."

  Chapter 4

  Munch and Asia ate a quick dinner that night and then headed over the hill to the San

  Fernando Valley Munch was speaking at an AA meeting held at a church on White Oak. A lot of AA members brought their kids to this meeting and the church provided a playroom for them while the meeting was in progress. Munch's sponsor, Ruby was all for sheltering the children from the confessions and observations of recovering addicts and alcoholics. Her own son, Eddy followed her to meetings when he was young and Ruby once confided to Munch that she thought that early exposure had hurt his chances of taking to the program when he needed it.

  Munch was just as happy not to subject Asia to the cigarette smoke and cursing. She had quit the former already and was working on giving up the latter. This was also Munch's AA birthday week. Time to blow out eight candles on top of birthday cakes at the several meetings all over Los Angeles where she had gotten sober. It might take two weeks.

  The meeting didn't begin until eight-thirty. Munch got to Ruby's house at a quarter to eight. Ruby lived in Sherman Oaks, south of Ventura Boulevard. Eddy, her three-hundred-pound alcoholic son, had a room fixed up in the garage. Ruby's deaf mother lived with them too. The mother refused to use a hearing aid, but kept a long, orange plastic transmission funnel beside her armchair for when something on the television interested her.

  Asia joined the old woman in the living room, which left Ruby and Munch alone together at the kitchen table. Ruby had changed out of her Denny's uniform and was wearing black pedal pushers and a thick cable-knit sweater.

  "The water's still hot," Ruby said, nodding toward the teakettle. "Want a cup?"

  "I'll make it," Munch said, selecting a tea bag and pouring in sugar.

  Ruby eyed her from the kitchen table. "What's up?"

  Munch cast a quick glance into the living room to make sure Asia was out of earshot. "I got a visit from Mace St. John today"

  "And?"

  "This woman I used to run around with was murdered."

  "Was she still using?"

  "She was the last time I saw her, so, yeah, probably."

  Ruby clicked her tongue and lowered her eyes in sadness. She had a deep well of compassion for losers, the alcoholics and addicts who couldn't get to the program in time.

  "Yeah, well, anyway" Munch broke in after giving Ruby her moment of silence, "this friend was involved in something pretty terrible about ten years ago. Something I knew about."

  "Do you think it has something to do with why she was murdered?"

  "I kind of doubt it. Everybody involved was pretty lowlife. Those things have a way of working themselves out or else everybody involved tends to forget about it."

  "So you didn't mention this to Detective St. John?"

  "I really didn't see the point."

  "Do you want to tell me about it?"

  "They'd probably all be dead by now anyway," Munch said. "They were all heavy dopers and career criminals."

  "Like you?"

  "Even worse. And this happened ten years ago." In a world far removed from the one she inhabited now. So far removed that somet
imes she had trouble believing she had been that other person who used and abused herself and everyone around her. It was the drugs that had produced the creature she had been, and when they were eliminated, a different woman was born—a person who didn't steal or cheat or hurt other people. Knowing that, she was able to forgive herself and move on. Most of the time.

  "Thor is probably dead or in prison by now," she said, hoping it was the former. Sleaze John is dead. Now New York Jane is dead. That just leaves one other friend who's way out of the picture anyway. Why should I stir up the whole mess?"

  "Are you afraid of charges being brought against you?"

  "I didn't do anything."

  "Isn't that part of the problem?"

  "You mean I should have snitched them out?"

  Ruby stirred her tea. The sound of canned laughter intruded from the living room. Munch heard Ruby's aged mother mumble something unintelligible and Asia laughed. Asia found the old lady's dementia highly amusing, but not in a mean way—more like a what-a-silly way.

  "What would you want Asia to do?" Ruby asked.

  "You mean if she was hanging out with dope fiends and knew they'd just killed a bunch of other dope fiends? I'd want her to put as much distance as she could between herself and them and then come and put fresh flowers on my grave because I would be dead before I'd let her fu— Ah, mess up her life that way."

  "You think you would have control over how she chose to live?"

  Munch sneaked an unintended look at the door leading to the garage, where Eddy was either slumbering off a binge or preparing to do it all over again. "Maybe not, but I wouldn't make it easy for her."

  Ruby reacted as if she'd been slapped. "I can't turn my back on the boy, not while Mama is still alive."

  "Who do you think will die first?"

  "That's up to God."

  Munch let the age-old cop-out go unchallenged. Ruby had a real blind spot when it came to Eddy She seemed to have forgotten the rule that you were supposed to "carry the message, not the addict" when it came to her own blood.

  Ruby's sobriety stretched back to the year Munch was born. She was a great sponsor. Capable of such gems as "Honey, you're going to meet people in AA you wouldn't have gotten drunk with," when Munch complained about somebody she didn't like at an AA meeting. Ruby told her to run as fast as she could in the opposite direction when Munch confessed that a guy she loved in her first year of sobriety went back on the needle. Ruby was great at the giving advice part, but if she didn't get a handle on the guilt she carried about her son's early years, she was going to enable him to his grave.

  Munch looked at the clock over the stove. It was time to leave for the meeting if they were to get there in time to help make the coffee. She rinsed out her mug and put it in the drain board by the sink. "Like I said, it's best to let sleeping dogs lie."

  "Sleeping dogs have a way of waking up sometimes and crapping all over your living room."

  * * *

  The following morning, as Munch unfolded the Los Angeles Times on her breakfast table, a news item on the front page of the Metro section jumped out at her: BODY OF WOMAN CLUTCHING DOLL FOUND IN STORM DRAIN.

  Munch's body flushed with heat and she felt a dropping sensation in her stomach.

  The photograph showed the police gathered in what looked like a parking lot, except for the basketball hoops. The caption identified the location as the maintenance yard for the Riviera Country Club.

  Munch knew the area; she had customers who lived around there. It was only about five miles from the gas station. A mere blink for Angelenos.

  WOMAN CLUTCHING DOLL.

  Was this why St. John had asked if Jane had a kid? And was that kid still out there somewhere? Alone and scared?

  Munch called to Asia to get ready It was earlier than they usually left the house, but Munch had a reason. Asia climbed into the passenger seat, pulling her Pee Wee Herman lunch box onto her lap.

  Munch turned right on Pico instead of left. They passed blocks of shabby, thirty-year-old apartment buildings that needed paint and landscaping. It wasn't going to happen; this was rent-control land. The landlords were locked into late seventies rental rates, which left them no budget for painters and gardeners, whose fees had kept up with the cost of living.

  "Why are we going this way?" Asia asked.

  "I thought we'd take the scenic route." She turned right again on Ocean Avenue, passing the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier.

  "Where's Joseph and Mary?" Asia asked as they drove along Palisades Park.

  "Oh, honey they took all that down a month ago."

  Asia was referring to the series of life-size dioramas of the Nativity that the churches of Santa Monica erected every year. All that was left now were dead spots of grass where the consecutive scenes depicting the events of Christ's birth had stood, encased in anti-vandal mesh. She had taken Asia to see the Three Wise Men bearing gifts, the pregnant Mary aboard her burro, and finally the Baby Jesus in his crib. Asia looked hard anyway She was the kind of kid who savored her holidays and was all for the concept of a birthday week. Just last month she had announced that she wanted eight different husbands so she could have eight different weddings.

  lt' s been done, Munch assured her.

  They turned right on San Vincente Boulevard. Large branches dangled broken from the massive coral trees filling the median. The orange-flowered limbs were no contest for the strong winds of last week's storms. The heavy flow of commuters kept pace with a steady stream of joggers dressed in two-hundred-dollar tennis shoes and slit-seam shorts. The runners breathed deep the morning exhaust fumes as they toned their bodies. Munch said a small prayer of gratitude for her job at the garage, which kept her fit.

  She turned left on Allenford Avenue behind a big yellow school bus. Asia sat up to study the teenagers filing into Paul Revere. Munch cruised slowly straining to see the cordoned police area. She didn't know what she was looking for. She just felt the need to be here. Someone had stuck a bouquet of flowers in the fence.

  Allenford dead-ended on Sunset Boulevard. Munch turned right and drove alongside the sprawl of bungalow classrooms, noticing that the storm drain also followed the contour of the school. She had plenty of time to study it while she and three other cars waited for the light at Mandeville Canyon. A utility truck with A-1 Fence painted on the door was parked in the dirt driveway on her left. She watched two men strap a new sheet of chain link between two poles.

  "Aww," Asia said. "Horsies."

  "Uh-huh," Munch said absently "pretty horses."

  What really had her attention was the yellow flutter of more crime scene tape. The light changed and a motorcycle cop parked at the curb motioned for her to move on.

  She dropped Asia off at school and then pulled over and opened her Thomas Guide map. She traced her finger between the two hot spots of police activity and realized that that was where the storm drain went under Sunset. Last Saturday night, Valentine's Day it had poured rain, really matching her mood as a matter of fact. The evening's torrent had been more than enough to wash a body into the open.

  The real question was: With all the places in Los Angeles to dump a dead woman—a woman she knew—why did the killer have to choose a spot within a couple miles of her job?

  Ruby was right, as usual, about sleeping dogs.

  Chapter 5

  That night Munch opened her front door to find a six-foot-tall black man on her porch staring back at her. That was her first impression. His blackness, his size. She hated that she did that. He was dressed in a Pendleton-lined Levi's coat, jeans, and lace-up work boots. A second later she noticed the duffel bag at his feet and that he was young, despite the sparse goatee. Her next thought was that he was some inner-city kid bused into the neighborhood to sell something, but usually they chose really dark-skinned kids for the door-to-door stuff and this kid was obviously a half-breed.

  He said, "Munch?"

  Her mouth dropped open, then she blinked and said, "Boogie?" He wasn't
some stranger. It was her little Boogieman. Her old running partner Deb's son all grown up and wearing his hair cropped short instead of in the big Afro Deb used to spend hours picking with a wide-toothed comb.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, too surprised to do anything but stare.

  His face went still, and whatever expression had been forming-joy hope, relief—dissolved into impassiveness.

  "Never mind," she said quickly "You just blew me away for a second. I mean, look at you, you're a man."

  She swung the door wide open and pulled him into a hug. He was so tall that her face was level with his chest. Would Asia one day be taller than she? It was hard to imagine. "Come in, come in," she said after releasing him. "How did you get here? How long have you been in town? I can't believe how much you've grown."

  He made a half-grin, came inside, and deposited his duffel bag next to the couch.

  Munch reached up to run a hand over his short hair. She realized part of what she was feeling was relief. Relief that he had made it to this age and hadn't been terribly damaged in some irrevocable way. That was the burden of parenting, even the shared parenting of your friends' kids, the never-ending worry.

  There were always the ones who didn't make it. She thought again of Jane and the doll found wrapped in her arms, then pushed the awful image aside and smiled at Boogie, grinned actually like some kind of idiot. He hadn't seen her in seven years and all she could do was gape at him as if he had arrived by teleport.

  "The last time I saw you, you were this high." She put her hand just below her chest. "Come on, there's someone I want you to meet." She led him into the kitchen, where Asia was finishing her macaroni and cheese.

  Asia looked up, wide-eyed and curious.

  "Asia, this is Boogie. I've known him since he was a couple months old, but I haven't seen him in"—she looked at Boogie, her hand cocked in question as she calculated—"seven, almost eight years?"

  "That's about right," Boogie said. He sounded as if he was forcing his voice into its lowest octave. "And I go by Nathan now."