Unpaid Dues

by Barbara Seranella

  Munch set Asia on her feet and brushed a stray curl behind the little girl's ear. Nathan righted the overturned table and picked up his lighter. A quarter fell from his pocket. Asia picked it up.

  "You keep it," he said. "Put it in your piggy bank."

  Munch smiled at her daughter's retreating back.

  "That was nice of you."

  "No biggie."

  Later that afternoon, Munch gathered the Sunday newspaper to take it out to the recycling box in the garage. In all the day's drama she hadn't had a chance to look through it. As she stood now in the kitchen doorway a headline jumped out at her.

  MURDERERS GO TO PRISON. There was a picture of a young Asian man in a prison jumpsuit, shackles around his ankles and wrists. Lately she'd been reading every article about murder and/or robbery. The suspects were always young, eighteen to twenty on average. This one was no different. He was holding a packet of paperwork—his useless defense, no doubt.

  "Killer sentenced to 25 years to life" was the caption. She scanned the article for the circumstances of the crime. The young man had stabbed a woman with a ten-inch kitchen knife and stolen her purse. Two men were arrested for the homicide. The second, described by police as the lookout, also was convicted of murder. Under California's "felony murder rule," the article stated, if the murder occurred during the commission of a felony—in this case an armed robbery—everyone involved in the felony was culpable for the murder. The lookout guy was to be sentenced the following month.

  "I'm screwed," she said, horror drying her throat.

  Tortilla Flats, 1975

  Munch checks the rearview mirror for the thousandth time. She is hunched down in the seat of Thor's Chrysler and parked in front of a project apartment building on Vernon. Sleaze, Thor, and New York Jane have been gone forever and she feels like a target.

  Three black kids on bicycles ride by and hoot at her through the window. They circle the car like little hungry crows.

  "Junkie bitch, " they taunt, pegging her right. She sinks lower, checks the doors to make sure they're locked. She wants to start the engine, but the gas gauge is already on empty, and no telling how much longer they'll be.

  She feels the dampness on her face and back, an oily sweat that only has one cure.

  "C'mon," she hums under her breath, her foot tapping uselessly on the brake pedal. She watches the doorway where the three of them disappeared minutes ago, maybe twenty. An eternity for a dope-sick white girl in the wrong part of town. At least she hasn't seen a cop car. Just the kids on their rusty Schwinns, who have correctly assessed her mission in their world.

  Thor promised they wouldn't come back empty-handed. They all went together. Trust goes as far as the door in their world. You save yourself first and make up excuses later. The last time Thor had gone to cop dope by himself he returned an hour later, scratching his nose and saying he had no choice but to swallow the dope, the pigs were on him, and he had to get rid of the stash.

  'This is the first time Munch has gotten strung out. She's played with dope for months, and now she's gotten serious. In a perverse way, being strung out has made the dope much better. The difference of feelings between being dope-sick and being loaded has increased and this contrast has improved the high.

  They were short on the money, but Thor promised. He said he knew this guy was holding. It is Munch's special day. She's turning nineteen and wants to get loaded.

  The thick steel security gate at the bottom of the stairwell is open. Some of the other buildings hire a guard to stand there, but not this one. Here the lowlifes are welcome. She sees a movement. "Please, let it be them, " she says. She doesn't ask God. He's not a part of this equation. There is just the need and the dope, only one altar to worship at. Sleaze appears first. His head is down. Munch leans across the seat and unlocks the door He's not smiling, she realizes, heart sinking. They didn't get it. Thor said they wouldn't come back without it, but Sleaze won't even look at here Jane is next. Thor holds her arm and hustles her in front of him. The three of them get in the car.

  "Drive," he orders.

  "Did you get it?" Munch asks as she pulls away.

  Thor stares at her hard, his expression angry, even accusatory.

  Sleaze slumps in the backseat and moans. It doesn't sound like him. She looks back once and sees a smear of something dark on the brown cloth of the seat, bright red drops on the vinyl door panel. Jane is humming.

  "Shut up," Thor yells.

  "Did you get it? " Munch asks again. It's all she can think to say. Thor has blood on his Army jacket. Jane is rocking now, but the humming has stopped.

  When she stops at the traffic light, Thor puts a knife to her throat. The blade feels warm. "Did you say something?" he asks. His eyes are alert. He wants her to argue, she senses. He wants a reason.

  "No," Munch mumbles, hating herself for cowering, for being a chump. She lives in a world where how bad you are, how crazy you are, defines who you are, but she is no match for Thor.

  He sticks his knife back in its scabbard.

  She drives them all back to the Flats. Tortilla Flats is a loose compound of apartments on Rose Avenue, where the barrio meets the ghetto—a land of No-tell Motels, Mexican mercados, Laundromats, and liquor stores. Even though it is late in the afternoon, the smell of baking bread rises from the Pioneer Bakery factory.

  They park on the dirt lot off the alley and file through the hole in the oleander hedge. Munch goes first. The other three follow in the same order they used to exit the apartment building in Ghost Town.

  Munch unlocks the door and they all head for the kitchen. Sleaze goes to the sink and throws up. He runs the water; then fills a glass and brings it to the kitchen table. The spoons are already there. Jane sits, her mouth is open, her expression blank.

  "You going to be useless all day?" Thor asks.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Get a bag, one of those big plastic garbage bags, and a magazine."

  Jane walks over to the pantry and tears of a bag from the roll on the shelf and shakes it open. Thor reaches into the pocket of his Army jacket and pulls out a quart-size Baggie. It's filled with glittery white powder He tosses it to the center of the table and it lands with a thunk.

  "Happy Birthday, " he says, looking only at Munch. She has never seen so much coke in one lump. She's seen mounds of brown heroin, but coke is more of a rich man's drug.

  Thor reaches behind him; his long arms find the radio on the windowsill. He switches it on and tunes it to an A.M. station. Traffic and news, updates every fifteen minutes. He opens the bag of coke. The air fills with a bleachy smell. Thor dips the corner of a playing card into the bag. It's a three of hearts, not that it matters to him. He is not a superstitious man.

  He dips the corner of the card into the white powder and dumps it into the waiting spoon.

  First things first.

  There is only one outfit, so they take their turns. Thor goes first, then Jane, then Sleaze. Munch ties off while Thor sheds his clothes and throws them in the garbage bag. He tells Jane to do the same. Sleaze doesn't have to be asked. Jane goes into the bedroom and gets them other clothes.

  "News on the hour" the radio says. They stop and stare at the radio speaker. The announcer 's voice is tinny, there is a sound like typing in the background. "Here are the headlines making the news: American troops evacuating Saigon as North Vietnamese swarm in, President Ford declares that the war in Indochina is over as far as America is concerned, American and Soviet astronauts dock in space."

  Thor, dressed only in jeans and socks, starts tearing pages from the magazine.

  "And locally—"

  All activity in the kitchen hangs suspended.

  "Chief Davis says that Jim Hardy, general manager of the Sports Arena, is 'sort of a baby!'. Hardy has accused the Los Angeles Police Department of using excessive force during the five-night peformance of the English rock group Pink Floyd. Police arrested five hundred and eleven persons on charges ranging from po
ssession of marijuana to assault with a deadly weapon, sex perversion, disturbing the peace, and ticket scalping. Stay tuned for traffic and weather."

  Thor stops working and stands. Jane rubs cocaine on her gums.

  The two men pace, working their dry mouths and not looking at each other but not leaving each other's sight. Jane renders herself catatonic with the coke, slamming hit after hit.

  "Watch it," Munch says. "You're going to have a heart attack."

  Jane draws up more water with the syringe, shakes more coke into the spoon, barely waits for it to dissolve before she sucks it back into the works. The needle glistens with body fluids and narcotics. She doesn't bother to mop the drops of her own blood rolling down her wrist.

  "This is getting sickening," Munch says. "You're just wasting it."

  Thor is quiet as he spoons quarter teaspoons of the cocaine onto squares of glossy magazine paper They don't own a scale, so he estimates. Sleaze folds the squares into bindles.

  They don't leave the Flats for two days, except for one beer run when they buy a newspaper

  Munch doesn't ask any other questions, not even when Sleaze reads the newspaper cover to cover. She looks up her horoscope. "Taurus: Study new ideas, but wait for a better day before putting them in operation."

  She doesn't ask about the one-half column report in the Metro section of a triple homicide in the Oakwood Projects section of Venice Beach. She doesn't want to know any more details about the three men found with their throats slashed at the house where she had parked, and served as the "wheelman."

  Chapter 18

  Monday morning, St. John checked in at work, picked up his copies of Cyrill McCarthy' s court transcripts, and then headed over to meet with Art Becker at the Pacific station.

  Becker greeted St. John in the lobby "You should be talking to Chac6n."

  "Oh?"

  "He's fresher on the facts."

  "I'd like to just start with the evidence," St. John said. "No offense to your boy but the last thing I want to hear are theories from some wannabe Dick Tracy."

  "This guy kick one of your dogs or something'?" Becker asked.

  "No, I just have my own way of doing things."

  Becker brought St. John over to his desk, which was crowded with framed photographs. St. John sat down in the wooden chair beside the desk and the two men exchanged reading material. The murder book was a large, blue three-ring binder. It began with the initial incident report recorded by patrol cops, followed by the homicide investigators narrative. St. John scrolled down to the name of the lead detective: Chris Yanney—a notorious rummy who had been a dinosaur when St. John was a rookie. Yanney had died two months after retiring. As yet there were no addendums from Chacón.

  St. John turned the page and studied the forensics reports, autopsy findings, and witness statements, leaving the photographs of the death scene for last. The bodies of three black men were sprawled throughout the shotgun flat. There was one victim in the kitchen, and one in the bedroom, where—judging by the blood on the carpet and walls—most of the killing had occurred. The third victim was in the hallway which was also thinly carpeted. The dying man had apparently crawled across the length of the narrow egress, his path traced clearly in blood and tissue. Judging from the condition of his clothes and the positioning of his limbs, he hadn't been dragged.

  The Scientific Investigation Division had recovered many fingerprints from the crime scene, and most of those fingerprints could be matched to individuals with criminal records. None of those individuals questioned knew anything about the murders, of course. Most of them denied ever having been in the house on Vernon.

  The criminalists focused their attention on latent impressions created with blood, particularly footprints left on the hall carpet. St. John found several photographs showing the variety of shoe sizes, ranging from a man's size twelve to one that was much smaller.

  At autopsy all three bodies were discovered to have V's carved into their chests—V-13 had been written on the walls in blood.

  Given the atmosphere of the time, the police would have assumed that the murderers were gangbangers, but there were a few problems with that theory. Why come into the middle of the Oakwood Projects to establish turf? And why sign a murder scene? It didn't make sense unless the purpose was to mislead investigators. Or could V stand for Viking? Was McCarthy that fucking ballsy?

  One of the few witnesses who came forth was a ten-year-old girl named Donzetta Williams. Donzetta told police that she saw a big black car parked in front of the building at the time of the murders. She also saw three white people come out of the building and get in that car. Two white "hippie dudes," according to her statement, and a "white chick."

  When investigators tried to reach her again, they were told by her mother that Donzetta had nothing more to say and did not have her permission to get involved. Now that ten years had passed, Donzetta would be a young woman. Parental consent was no longer needed.

  "Can I use your phone?" St. John asked.

  "Help yourself."

  St. John called the phone number listed for Donzetta and got a recording that the number was no longer in service.

  Becker watched him hang up the phone. "Like I said, you should get with Chac6n."

  "Where is he?"

  "He had some personal business to take care of. He'll be in."

  St. John went over to Chac6n's work space. He grabbed a pen from the mug on the corner and bent over to write a note. Chac6n's desktop had the look of a working detective's. There were stacks of files, some of them dated, newspaper clippings turned brown with age, black-and-white mug shots. On a telephone message pad, the name D. Williams was written in pencil followed by two phone numbers with local prefixes. One of the numbers was denoted G, the other W.

  St. John called the W number and found it connected him to B&B Hardware. He asked how late they stayed open and then hung up. Next he called the G number. A woman answered the phone.

  "Is Donzetta Williams there?"

  "No. What you want with her?"

  "Are you a relative?"

  "Maybe. Who's this?"

  "I'm a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department."

  "Another one?"

  "Yeah, but I'm better-1ooking."

  Becker glanced up in surprise. The woman on the phone responded with a throaty laugh. "Then she's gonna want to see you, baby."

  "Is she home now? I can be there in fifteen minutes."

  "You know where B&B Hardware is?"

  "On Washington?"

  "Yeah, she's over there. She works in the tool section."

  St. John thanked the woman and hung up.

  Becker held up Stacy Lansford's letter. "Pretty thin. We haven't even been able to contact this woman for verification."

  "I'm working on it, though I'm sure she lacks faith in the system."

  "Assuming she's still alive."

  "Right, assuming that."

  "Have you located Cyrill McCarthy?" Becker asked.

  "Not yet. I've put out a want on him, and searched custody records, but nothing so far."

  "I'll give this to Chacón and tell him you want to talk to him."

  * * *

  St. John left the Pacific station and drove the few long blocks on surface streets to B&B Hardware. He parked in the lot in the back, pushed through the turnstiles by the cash register, and followed the overhead signs to the tool section.

  A dark-skinned young black woman in a red shirt was extolling the numerous features of a cordless drills that was on sale to an enthralled thirty-something white guy in a polo shirt. St. John stepped close enough to glance at the woman's name tag and confirm her identity He waited until the sale was complete before introducing himself.

  Her smile was warm and open even after she learned he was a cop. He found that refreshing. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm looking into the triple homicide that happened ten years ago, in April of 1975. You made a statement to officers that you noticed a
carful of individuals that seemed out of place?"

  "Yeah, they was white," Donzetta said with a laugh. The plain gold crucifix resting on her throat took a few bounces. "That's why I noticed them in the first place; then I heard about those murders, and thought it might mean something. I called the police myself. My mama like to have a fit."

  "Why?"

  "She said good riddance to them people, they was dope dealers. My mama said their kind ruined the neighborhood, made the people slaves."

  "Do you think they got what they deserved?"

  "I don't know about that."

  "Can you give me a more detailed description of the people you saw?"

  "It's been a long time, but I still remember. Like I told the other detective, one was a big white man with reddish-blond hair, the other might have been a Mexican; he had long hair too, a goatee, looked like the devil or a pirate or somethin'."

  "Anything unusual about the woman with them?"

  "She had what my grandmama would call a hitch in her get along."

  "You mean like a limp? Can you show me?"

  Donzetta took a few steps across the floor. As she moved she went down on one side and swung the other leg to catch up.

  "You know," she said, "that's how those Crips took their name; they used to walk like that, all tilted, swinging their arms wide like they were some kind of cool. "

  "So Crips came from Cripples?"

  "Yeah, ain't that the most ridiculous thing you ever heard?"

  "Comes close," St. John admitted. "Was that your mother I spoke to at the eight-eight-oh-one number?"

  "No, sir, that was my grandmama. My mama passed."

  "I'm sorr'y."

  "Cancer," Donzetta added, her hand going to her crucifix.

  "Your grandmama said you had another detective speak to you recently?"

  "Detective Chacón. Mexican guy"

  "Yeah, I know him." St. John wondered when Chacón was going to get around to adding his notes to the report.

  "Is he, uh, you know, like, married?"

  St. John stared at her a moment, but Donzetta didn't back down.

  "I'm going to put together some pictures I'd like you to look at. I'll bring them by this afternoon if that's all right"