"You know," he finally said, "you should have come to me sooner."
"I went to see a lawyer and he said under the felony murder law I was just as guilty"
"You went to go see a lawyer instead of talking to me?"
"Well, yeah. I didn't want to put you in a bad position. You know, of having to bust me or not."
"But if you came to me to help with the case, why would I bust you?"
She looked down at her hands, picked at the grease in her cuticles.
"What?" he asked.
"I wasn't sure about helping you."
"Why not?"
"I've given that a lot of thought in the last few days."
"You've helped the police before"
"I know. But never as a co-conspirator."
"And that makes a difference?"
"Felt like it. I've never bought my way out of trouble at the expense of someone else."
"Look"—he took her hands in his—"the way it sounds to me, you didn't know they were going up into that apartment to kill anyone, you didn't know they were going up there to do anything but get high."
"I didn't."
"I'll talk to the DA myself. With your cooperation helping us close these cases, I don't see that you'll have any charges leveled against you."
"Thank you."
"Now, is there anything else I should know about?"
"No, that's it."
She answered way too quickly for his liking.
"We're not quite done."
"I know," she said. "You need me to finger him."
"Finger him? What kind of talk is that? You think you're doing something wrong? Breaking the code? You want to be an asshole? You want to be a home-girl?"
"No.!"
"What the fuck's the matter with you? This guy is a murderer. A multiple murderer. He needs to pay for what he's done."
"I know, I know. I want to help. I want to be one of the good guys."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"I'll go see Thor and I'll wear a wire."
"You sure?"
"I need to do it."
"It could be dangerous."
"You'll be nearby."
He felt the weight of her utter trust and knew he would never abuse it.
Chapter 23
Munch called New Start halfway house. Danny T. answered the phone.
"I need to talk to Cyrill," she told Danny after identifying herself.
"I'll go get him."
"No, it has to be in person." The cops wanted the meet somewhere alone and in the open.
"He isn't allowed to leave the premises, but you can come here. "
"All right, I'll do that."
She hung up and turned to the representatives of law enforcement surrounding her. They were at the West Los Angeles police station, upstairs in the detective bullpen. Rico was there, though, as if by some prearranged agreement, made no effort to speak to her privately Cassiletti and St. John took the chairs on either side of her. Three other men were new to her. They had been introduced as Josh Greenberg, an assistant DA, Sergeant Flutie, the watch commander, and a slight, bearded guy named Tam Spiva, who was in charge of the audio equipment.
Spiva handed her a small black microphone attached to an alligator clip and instructed her to snake it up under her shirt and clip it to her bra.
"Give me a sound check," he said.
"Our Father who art in heaven—"
"That's good."
"I wasn't done."
He patted her shoulder. "You'll be fine. Just try not to sweat."
She smiled at that.
"You think of a word yet?" Rico asked.
"For what?"
Rico looked at St. John, something like surprise on his face. "If something feels wrong, you say the code word and we'll move in."
Spiva chuckled. "Last month, I wired this feeb for a solicitation sting. The plan was, when the hooker took off her clothes, he was supposed to say 'Looks like Christmas!"
"What went wrong?" Munch asked.
"The woman was so ugly that when she took off her clothes he said, 'Looks like Halloween.' "
"Help me," she said, adjusting the clip so that it didn't jab her breast.
Spiva moved to assist her but she waved him off.
"No, I mean I'll say 'Heaven help me' if I think it's going bad."
"That'll work." Spiva patted her arm. "Don't worry. We'll be listening."
"I know. The force is with me."
* * *
The halfway house was in Sun Valley near the intersection of Tuxford and Lankershim. Sun Valley sounded like it should be a happy place, and maybe it was for some people. To her, it was an ugly town, defined by sweatshop factories, junkyards, and railroad tracks. Most of the billboards were in Spanish and offered services such as legal assistance and family planning. Compared to someplace like Tijuana, it was probably a slice of heaven.
Rico wore a blue beanie cap pulled down to his eyebrows and a hooded sweatshirt. St. John had a five o'c1ock shadow to go with his stained tan windbreaker. Cassiletti, in a black cable-knit sweater, sat slumped in the backseat tapping his foot nervously against the hump in the carpet until St. John growled at him to stop.
The halfway house was in a converted motel complex and enclosed in ten-foot-high chain link. She signed in at the front desk, leaving St. John, Cassiletti, and Rico parked halfway down the block with earphones.
The guy at the desk, a wizened little dark-skinned black man who made her think of a homeless version of Sammy Davis, Ir., led her across a hard-packed dirt courtyard to a building in the back. Thor was already inside sweeping the linoleum floor.
"Your visitor's here," Sammy's double said.
Thor gave his push broom one last thrust and then leaned it against the wall. He was dressed in jeans, work boots, and a T-shirt that read PARKER CARPET and below that the helpful motto THE FUZZY SIDE GOES UP.
"Aren't you cold?" Munch asked, pulling her coat tighter around her.
Long tables were pushed against the wall. Collapsed metal folding chairs stood next to them on a wheeled gurney AA banners hung on the wall with the usual proclamations: WE CARE , LET GO AND LET GOD. Each of the twelve steps and twelve traditions was spelled out on individual placards. In English.
Thor lifted two chairs easily from the rack, opened them, and invited her to sit. "I'm used to it. Did you come here to get warmed up?"
She thought about how those words would sound to her lover's ear and sent a nervous look over her shoulder out toward the street. "I'm not here for me."
"Oh yeah?"
"We need to talk."
"About?"
"The cops came to see me. About Jane." She opened her coat, lessening the layers between his mouth and the microphone.
"Yeah." His tone was completely neutral. She'd have to do better than that.
She leaned closer to him. "They know."
"What do they know?"
"They know she was at the Ghost Town thing in '75. They know all about Sleaze and Jane and you. They have evidence you were there."
"They don't have shit. They never have. They're playing you."
"Nobody' s playing me. They might have played Jane, but she was never that bright."
"She wasn't that dumb either."
"How's that?"
"She would never go against me."
"Maybe she wasn't as scared of you as you'd like to think."
The clip digging into the soft flesh of her chest began to burn. She longed to itch the spot. She squeezed her arms at her sides, pushing her breasts together to relieve the pressure.
The movement brought his focus to her cleavage, but his expression was dark.
"What are you saying?" he asked.
She followed his gaze and saw the slight square protrusion in her blouse. "If they talk to you, what will you say?"
"I won't say shit. I wasn't there."
"Someone must have seen you guys in the hallway or leaving the building."
"They didn't tell me."
"They didn't tell you because there isn't anyone. It's bullshit."
The clip on her bra made a slight click as it disengaged.
Thor reached out to her with surprising speed and clamped a hand over her mouth. His other hand went to the back of her head and he lifted her like that, right off the chair. She kicked at it, hoping to make a racket. Her heel only glanced off the seat. It scooted back a few inches, but remained upright.
She ripped at his hands, trying to pry them loose. He was covering her nose too and she couldn't get any air. He dragged her to a side door, pushing it open with his hip, and then they were outside next to the halfway house's small fleet of vans. Her feet made periodic skips on the dirt seeking leverage, but he was too strong. Her vision grew dark and her fingers tingled as the lack of oxygen shut down her body. Thor spun her so that the back of her head was in his chest, which freed his hand to rip open her shirt.
She flailed at his eyes, but he seemed impervious to her attack. The wire separated easily from the microphone in his big hand. He slid the van door open, lifted her head by the hair. She only had time to draw one breath before his fist slammed into the bridge of her nose and sent her spiraling to the back of the van.
"Something's wrong," Rico said.
St. John felt it too. "We've lost the feed."
"Let's go now."
They opened their doors and stepped out just as a white van burst through the chain-link gate.
* * *
Munch felt the thickening flesh between her eyes. She wasn't out, not completely; but it was a moment before she could collect her thoughts.
"Is this your doing too?" Thor snarled as he waved a blue greeting card envelope over his head. "Every fucking year? You and that cunt fucking with my head?"
She buried her face in her knees, fighting to return to full consciousness.
Get it together:
The van shook as it rumbled over unpaved ground. She heard a train's air horn from a distance. A crate full of plumbing fixtures slid out from beneath the front seat and came to rest by her foot. There were no good-size lengths of pipes, none suitable as a club, mostly elbows and threaded brass tees.
She heard sirens and hoped they were coming for her, hoped they wouldn't be too late. She stood, grasping at steel reinforcement beams on the van's walls. The back door was blocked by gallon cans of paint, thick canvas tarps, and wooden ladders. There was no handle on the inside of the side door and she would never make it to the front passenger door without him grabbing her and stopping her. The sound of the train grew louder. Now she heard the ding, ding, ding of the railroad crossing gate.
She grabbed a plumbing fixture from the box and threw it at his head. It missed him but hit the windshield, cracking it. He pitched the steering wheel hard to the right and she went down again. The box of plumbing parts spilled out and rolled with her on the van's dirty uncarpeted floor. She picked up whatever was loose and threw the various pieces of copper and steel at him, aiming at his head, all the while screaming at him in her rage. The van rocked as the steering wheel jerked from side to side in his hands. She knew that the chances were good they'd roll, but in her fury she didn't care. She wanted him hurt and she wanted him stopped. At any cost.
There was a sound of cracking wood as the van burst through the red wooden arm of the semaphore signal pole. She heard the hiss and scream of the train's air brakes, the blare of its warning horn. The rear of the van cleared the tracks. Almost. There was a sickening, ugly crunch as metal tore into metal, then mated in a deadly embrace. The van was blown along as if in a hurricane. She braced herself for impact. The scream of steel on steel filled her head. Different-colored lights flashed through the windows. She threw an arm across her eyes and knew she was going to die.
The forward momentum stopped, shifting suddenly and violently to a sideways roll as the van broke loose from the train. She rolled with the inside of the van, losing sense of up and down, night and day At last it came to a creaking halt upright.
Some time must have passed because she realized she was waking up. The roof was dented in. The shattered glass of the windshield held together by its lamination folded inward, leaving the windshield wipers sticking, incongruously unbent, into midair. She realized something else. She was alone.
Carefully and slowly she moved her limbs. Everything seemed to work. There was a sharp stabbing pain in her right ankle and when she pulled her pant leg up she discovered she'd lost some flesh on her shin. Floodlights from overhead filled the van. A voice on a megaphone warned her to come out slowly with her hands in the air.
Fuck 'em, she thought. They could come to her.
Then she had an unpleasant notion involving tear gas and stun grenades and decided that she'd better do as they asked.
She limped to the front seat of the van, climbing over the engine cover to get there. Broken glass littered the seat. The engine had stalled. She reached over and shut off the key while yelling, "I'm coming out. Alone."
The train had come to a stop and the night was filled with urgent sirens. St. John, Rico, and Cassiletti arrived in their undercover car. Their badges were now displayed prominently on their chests. Rico had lost the beanie. He got to her first.
"Are you all right?"
"Just a few bumps."
He had her face between his hands and was examining her nose. "I don't think it's broken but you're going to have a couple shiners."
"Did you get him?"
"Not yet. Was he hurt?"
"Not enough apparently"
"That's my girl."
"Am I?"
St. John reached them. "Did you see what direction he went?"
"No, sorry"
"Don't be sorry Shit, I'm the one who's sorry" He spit. "Let's get an ambulance over here. Move it."
"I'm fine."
St. John put an arm around her and squeezed. She heard something go crack in the joints of her back, but tried not to wince.
He glared at the damaged van. "What a fuckup." He squeezed her again, drawing her into his reassuring warmth. "You sure you're okay?" Before she had a chance to answer he said, "Let's get you checked out. Son of a bitch/."
"I'll take her," Rico said.
"No," she said. "I just want to go home."
"First we have to go back to the station," St. John said. "I'll call Caroline and tell her what's going on. We better get some ice on that nose."
"I was going to say that," Rico said.
St. John looked at him coldly "Yeah, you were going to say a lot of things, weren't you?"
"Oh for crying out loud," Munch said.
Chapter 24
Munch accompanied St. John, Rico, and Cassiletti back to the station in West Los Angeles, where Munch was ensconced in the victims' room. It was the size of a cell, but decorated like a drawing room with comfortable armchairs, a table lamp, and pictures on the walls, which were painted a soothing shade of tangerine. The walls were thick enough to keep out the sounds of the police station, but there was nothing to be done for the voices shouting in her head.
Cassiletti brought her ice wrapped in a short white gym towel and helped her clean out the wound on her leg, apply salve, and wrap it with a bandage.
Rico stood by until Cassiletti announced, "That should do it."
Munch stood and tested her ankle. It took her weight, but just to make sure she bounced on it a few times.
"Go easy" Cassiletti warned.
Rico handed him two dollars. "Would you mind getting us a couple sodas?"
Cassiletti took the bills and the hint.
When they were alone, Munch spoke first. "I know about you and Kathy "
"What do you know?"
"Her dad says she's engaged to a cop. Has to be you. Tell me I'm wrong."
"You're not wrong."
She let the towel full of ice slip to the floor. "So that's it?"
"No, there's more."
She breathed
through her mouth shallowly trying to lessen the pain around her heart. "What more can there be?"
"All I've ever wanted is to be a cop. I love my job. I've told you that."
"You've told me a lot of things."
"I've always tried to do the right thing. It's not always the easy choice, but for me it's always been the only one. Until now. I've been going back and forth, asking God for a sign."
"Couldn't you have waited one more day?"
"Kathy's pregnant."
Munch sat down heavily; not expecting this additional wound. "How long?"
"A few months."
Munch nodded dumbly the math was simple.
Their relationship was doomed before it had ever begun.
"She's Catholic," he said. "So am I, supposedly."
Her stomach cramped with the onset of diarrhea. He reached for her hand, but she pulled away He nodded as if he understood. "The brass has been scrutinizing me pretty heavy this last month."
"Why?" She managed to ask the word, but couldn't summon the energy to care.
"Politics. It's never-ending. They want to see some clearances. I've been accused of sitting on a case. Here were my choices." He pulled out a heavy three-ring binder and flipped it open. "Solve it or pass it on. But before I passed it on, I needed to write a thirty-day report on what I'd discovered."
"And what had you discovered?"
Rico lined up three photographs side by side. They were mug shots of Jane and Thor, and another picture of Sleaze John. The photograph of Sleaze was one she recognized from Asia's collection.
"You took this from my house?"
"I found a witness who put them all at the scene. She said there was a driver. I knew it had to be you. I'm recusing myself from the case and I'm marrying Kathy. Neither thing is absolutely perfect, but our options are what they are. You've done the right thing coming forward. And when this is over, you still have your life to live. We're all going to have to live with our choices, our past deeds."
"That isn't exactly a news flash."
"What are we going to do with you now?"
"What makes you think you're involved with that decision?"
"Cyrill McCarthy. Witnesses against him have a habit of getting lost."
Unpaid Dues Page 19