Unwilling Accomplice - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We’ve rerouted the call forwarding. Stop asking questions. You’re going to piss off the wrong guy."

  "First of all, you got it all backward. The guy on the phone started the shit with me. I’m the one who’s pissed off now. "

  "l’m not introducing you to any narcs."

  "Fine. I never counted on you in the first place," she lied.

  This time she did hang up, which on the mobile phone involved pushing a button. Slamming down the handset would have been much more satisfying. She was deferring gratification a lot lately it seemed. Maybe she would be a better person as a result. All she knew was that there goddamned better be a heaven at the end of all this.

  She stopped at a gas station and changed into a clean shirt. She always kept one in her trunk. As she drove toward Jill’s school, she decided to have some more posters made of Charlotte and have Jill and Asia help her post them throughout the neighborhood. Rico wasn’t the boss of her.

  The final bell was ringing as Munch parked on the street opposite Jill’s school and walked to the administration office. Jill was at the drinking fountain, bent over for a slurp. What was it about schools and water pressure? Two girls her age idled nearby. Munch considered the eleven-year-olds carefully. They were already experimenting with lip gloss and jewelry no doubt jazzed about getting that first bra, starting to notice boys in a different way. Their eleven-year-old male counterparts tromping by seemed big-footed and loud. Some had the bleached-blond, tanned surfer look. Noses in a permanent state of peel and sunburn. Others were going for the urban-gang look: pressed pants, white T-shirts, hair slicked back.

  The boys jostled and pushed, unconcerned with their dirty faces and untied shoes. The girls leaned against the wall, trying too hard to pretend they hadn’t seen or heard their classmates, covering their noses with cupped hands as they passed their secrets. Alien observers would think they had stumbled onto two separate species of Earth beasts.

  "Auntie Munch/’ Jill called.

  Munch caught up to the girls and gave Jill a welcoming hug.

  "All ready?"

  "Did you bring the limo?"

  Munch smiled to herself, wondering if she had helped raise Jill’s status. "Yep, we need to go. Asia will be getting home soon."

  "Bye, guys," Jill told her friends. The girls’ heads converged for one last giggle and whisper.

  "We do have a little extra time," Munch said. "Do any of your friends need a ride home?"

  The girls looked at one another and squealed. Munch smiled.

  "Wait out front, I’ll bring the car." The curb was full of mothers picking up children. It would take a little longer this way but Jill might as well enjoy her prestige.

  Jill and her two friends were waiting on the curb with barely contained enthusiasm, casting protracted glances over their shoulders, hoping for witnesses. A woman who must have been a teacher or perhaps the principal stood at the school's entrance.

  "Good-bye, Mrs. Hansen," Jill’s blonde friend yelled.

  "Good-bye, Rachel." Mrs. Hansen waved back.

  This went on for another minute or so. The performance was repeated with every adult and child, until Munch sensed the impatience of the other parents waiting to pick up their kids. She loaded the three girls in the back and followed their directions to their various homes.

  After the last friend was deposited safely at her door, Jill leaned across the seat separating her and Munch.

  "When I was in first grade, I used to think only movie stars rode in limos."

  "I wish a few of them would hire mine." Munch said, although she’d had her share of so-called producers. It was L.A., after all. Wannabe moviemakers were as common as palm trees.

  "Auntie Munch?"

  "Honey you’re going to have to put your seat belt on."

  "I will. I was just wondering . . ."

  Munch found the eleven-year-old’s face in the rear-view mirror. "What?"

  "Did you know my dad?"

  Munch wished she had some story to give the girl, an anecdote that she could share. "No, honey. I’m sorry. I wish I had," Jill shrugged as if to say Worth a try. Munch knew it mattered, but there was nothing she could do. She was tempted to make up a little history but that wasn’t the answer to the child’s wish to know her father.

  Two blocks from the gas station, the mobile phone rang.

  "Will you accept a collect call from Los Angeles County jail?" the operator asked.

  "Yeah," Munch said, "put her on."

  "Can you believe this shit?" Lisa asked. "How’s Jill? I tried calling your work, but nobody would accept a collect call."

  "Jill is with me. I just picked her up from school." Jill sat up higher in her seat upon hearing her name. Munch held up a finger and mouthed to her, One moment. Then she lowered her voice to ask Lisa, "You know a guy called Mouseman?"

  "I don’t know."

  "You don’t know?" Munch knew there was no privacy in custody The walls had eyes and all communication made by prisoners was closely monitored. A lawyer had told her that. Lisa would probably be oblique anyway just out of habit.

  "I mean, no, I don’t. Why?"

  "Does Charlotte spend time with any older guys? A father-figure type who maybe does things for her, takes her places?"

  Munch glanced in the rear-view mirror. Jill had disappeared.

  "Hang on a minute," Munch said into the phone. She pulled over to the curb, put the car in park, and stuck her head into the rear passenger compartment. Jill was kneeling on the rear-facing seat, obviously having jockeyed herself into the best eavesdropping position available to her.

  "You want to say hi to your mom?" Munch asked.

  Jill reached for the phone. As soon as the receiver touched her ear, she began crying.

  "Mommy? When are you coming home? I miss you."

  Munch couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. She thought she was showing Jill a pretty good time. Then again, Munch knew that when you were down to one parent, that parent became all the more precious. Her dead father, Flower George, used to say that the same was true about his one good eye. Speaking of messed-up parents. Even he had had to screw Munch over repeatedly and royally before she had finally severed the relationship, and then it had been by emptying the full clip of a .22 automatic into his face.

  "Okay" Jill was saying to her mother, "I won’t. Bye." She handed the phone back to Munch.

  "What?" Munch asked, realizing she had adopted the same tone Rico had used with her when last they spoke. She wanted to ask Lisa what she and Charlotte had argued about the night before Charlotte disappeared. She didn’t for two reasons. Jill was listening and might feel Munch was betraying her. And two, it would probably be a waste of breath anyway Lisa’s interpretation of reality wasn’t reliable.

  "You gotta get me outta here," Lisa said.

  "Why don’t you just sit tight? Rico says you’ll go to court Friday and probably get kicked out for time served."

  "I know what he wants," Lisa mumbled, running her words together, speaking quickly to slip her message past the cops.

  Munch didn’t ask who or why but picked up the conversation as if there had been no break in continuity So Lisa did know why Charlotte had been snatched. "I don’t see why we should spend the money on bail."

  "I’ll pay you back. But I got to get out of here to make things right."

  "All I can do is all I can do," Munch said. Let whoever was listening take that any way they wanted. "Thanks for the snake job, by the way."

  "Whadda you mean?"

  "Charlotte’s not the diabetic, you are." Might as well get this little tidbit on the record.

  "And if I told you I knew she was in trouble because she hadn’t made her bed, I’m sure you would have believed me."

  "God forbid you try the truth first," Munch said, matching Lisa’s sarcasm.

  "I'm sorry all right? I love my kids, no matter what anyone thinks. What I do is for them. I can’t do anything for the
m from in here, but you do what you think you have to do."

  "I will," Munch said as she pulled into her gas station. "I won’t let these kids down."

  Chapter 14

  Asia was in Lou’s office, watching his little black-and-white television as usual. Munch sent Jill in to join her. The two hoists were tied up with a Thunderbird and a Mercedes. The Thunderbird’s rear axle had been pulled, and all four tires were off the Mercedes. The accumulation of black asbestos dust on the rims told Munch that the Mercedes was probably in for brakes. Carlos was up to his elbows in grease and bent over a Chrysler New Yorker. Even Stephano had managed to work up a sweat.

  Lou held a clipboard and was writing up a young girl while the tow truck dropped her overheated Toyota Supra in the lot. From the looks on both their faces, he was delivering bad news and she wasn’t happy about it. Though in this neighborhood, she was probably more put out by the inconvenience than the expense.

  All in all, the world of Bel Air Texaco seemed to be going on all right without her. She silently calculated all the money she wasn’t making and tried not to feel too jealous.

  "Any luck?" Lou asked, having let the young Toyota owner use his phone to call whomever. Her daddy probably.

  "Lots of it," Munch said. "Just none of it good."

  "No news on your niece?" Lou asked as if he really cared.

  She appreciated that. He and she had come a long way together. He hadn’t seemed to like her much when he’d first met her. Truth be told, the feeling had been mutual.

  He explained to her later that once he’d heard she’d been on drugs, he’d expected her to go back on them. Somewhere in her first year clean and sober, he’d been convinced otherwise. He’d asked her once how smart she’d thought she’d have been if she hadn’t destroyed so many brain cells. She’d explained to him that heroin didn’t really fry your brain as much as put it to sleep. He’d said he thought she was waking up nicely.

  "Have you eaten?" he asked now.

  "Not since breakfast." As soon as he said the words, she realized she was starving.

  "Give me your keys," he said. "I'll fill your tank. You need any money?"

  "No, l’m good." She handed him her keys, and he whistled for Miguel to come fetch them.

  "There’s an apple in the office and one of those muffin things you like."

  She kissed him on the cheek, at least she meant to, but at the last moment he turned his face and their lips pressed together. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him away laughing as she said, "Hey watch it."

  She hoped to God that Lou and his wife never split up. Then she’d really have to set him straight. She was never very good at saying no or hurting feelings, but she knew how to do so

  when she had to.

  "Asia, Jill, c’mon, we need to get going."

  "You got a call," Lou said, reaching into his shirt pocket.

  "She left a number." He handed Munch a slip of paper with the name Kathy Pascoe on it and a phone number.

  "What did she want?" The words came out in a snarl.

  "She didn’t say. Who is she?"

  "The broad Rico was going to marry The one who said she was pregnant and wasn’t."

  "You going to call her?"

  "I guess so. Christ, this is all I need."

  "Maybe she wants to give you her blessing."

  "Like I need it." Munch watched the office door, but the girls hadn’t appeared.

  Lou wiped at a spot on his shirt with a grease rag. "So, you two getting back together?"

  "I don’t know." It wasn't as if Rico could ever hurt her again. Deeply anyway. She was pretty well inoculated after last winter ’s bombshell. She’d been so into him before, so worried what he thought and felt, now it wasn't like that. The playing field was much more even. Who believed in perfect soul mates in any case? Even Mace and Caroline St. John had once spent months apart. Honeymoons only lasted so long. Expectations were made to be lowered. You spend enough time with anyone, Caroline once confided, and there comes a day when you hate the way he chews. Munch hoped she’d get the relationship thing right soon, so Asia would have a good example. She already knew there were some good men in the world. Men worthy of respect, capable of love, willing to contribute. What hope did Jill and Charlotte have with the information they’d been provided by Lisa? Munch hoped they’d rebel by becoming debutantes, joining country clubs, and learning how to play bridge and golf. Couldn’t get much further away from Lisa than shrimp cocktails at the club.

  Munch headed for Lou’s office, stepping over reels of air hose, noticing the graveled wear on the Mercedes brake rotors. They would have to be replaced. She resisted the urge to lift the calipers and see if the seals were seeping hydraulic fluid. It wasn’t her job, why sully her hands, not to mention lungs, with someone else’s brake dust?

  She grabbed the apple and muffin on Lou’s desk. Jill and Asia were sitting side by side in the padded desk chair. Thick as . . . cousins.

  "Your coach awaits, mesdames."

  "All right then," Asia said in an arch tone. "Home, James."

  "At your service, milady." Munch said, relieved that Asia had decided to be eight again. Lou stood in the doorway, his wiry arms crossed over his flat chest. His uniform shirt was uncharacteristically dirty. A smear of grease was under one eye and he looked tired. She was letting him down. "I’ll be here tomorrow." she told him, "unless something happens."

  "What are you going to do now?" he asked.

  "This lady I met is offering a reward for some missing jewelry. I thought I'd take a run over to Santa Monica and check out the pawn shops."

  Lou followed them to the car. "Couldn’t she do that herself? And don’t the cops do that regularly anyhow?"

  Munch opened the back door and gestured for the kids to get in. "I know a guy who runs a private operation."

  "A fence?"

  Munch made sure the girls strapped on their seat belts.

  "Something like that." Actually Benny Harper was exactly that. "I’ll see you tomorrow."

  "Yeah, sure."

  Munch didn't respond to his disbelief. She didn't like to make promises she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  ***

  She’d met Benny when he was the bartender at the Venture Inn. The bar, a dive really was on Venice Boulevard, close to the boardwalk. It was one of Munch’s old watering holes. Benny had had some battles with cocaine, which he felt helped him to keep up with the frenetic pace of the bikers ordering drinks.

  When the Venture Inn closed, Benny got a job at an uptown establishment in the Marina. He also got sober, or what passed for sober as far as he was concerned. He no longer snorted cocaine or drank, but he considered weed medicinal. He also kept his hand in the brokering of expensive trinkets of dubious pedigree. He liked to think of his suppliers as modern Robin Hoods. Munch warned him of the bad karma associated with stolen items, how they had a habit of keeping moving, but Benny fancied the action. In a weird way Munch kind of liked that about him. He was also fair in his dealings, never lowballing selling customers, no matter how desperate they were. Maybe those small acts of kindness balanced out his karma. Munch knew he didn't approve of violence. Once, years ago, on a slow Monday morning, an ex-Mongol (and she stressed the word ex) named Grinch had knocked her off a barstool for refusing to remove a cutoff vest he felt too closely resembled biker club colors. Benny had vaulted the bar, bad leg and all, and pushed the guy back with the sawed-off baseball bat he kept under the counter.

  Munch might have removed the vest, but she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. And what was the big deal anyway? She’d earned every patch sewn on the thing. Broken Harley wings, signifying she’d been in a wreck. A guy in a Quaker hat flipping the bird and saying FUCK THEE. A coiled snake with the legend DON’T TREAD ON ME. She’d considered herself quite a threat back then. An alligator attitude attached to a canary ass was more like it. Though, to be fair, attitude often carried a person a lot farther than ability.

  Wh
at Grinch had objected to was the banner across the bottom, drawn on with Marks-A-Lot, that read VENICE. Seems the Hells Angels or some other bunch of macho, he-men assholes

  once used that as part of their colors.

  Munch was born and raised in Venice. She had a right, she felt, and told him so.

  She was also nursing a black eye, and she’d just spent a hellish weekend trying to get away from a band of Satan’s Slaves who’d kidnapped her. The kidnapping was her own fault. She had stupidly and drunkenly proclaimed on a meeting night that she was nineteen and wanted it nineteen times. Some celebration that birthday had turned into. After sobering quickly in the back of a windowless van, she had talked most of the guys out of doing her. Then she’d spent the rest of the weekend in bum-fuck-she-didn’t-know-where, trying to get their old ladies to help her escape or at least point her to the bus that would take her back to Venice and out of that nightmare.

  Those pleas had fallen on deaf ears. The women looked right through her, as if she were the one trespassing and in the wrong. Self-righteous cunts. Munch had vowed then to support her sisters. Shit, the guys were already rough on them, why give it to one another as well? How about a little compassion?

  So when the dude in the bar told her to take off her colors, Munch was in no mood to acquiesce. Fuck him. Grinch was a surly son of a bitch. He didn’t get his name for nothing. She knew for a fact he hadn’t had a bike for a year, so who was he to push her around, tell her the law? Who died and made him King Kong anyhow? she asked him. Then Grinch slapped her off the stool and Benny did his jack-in-the-box broad jump over the bar before the punk had an opportunity to kick her.

  Benny took a chance doing that, and she’d never forgotten it. Later he had given her a ride home in his convertible Coupe de Ville, spotted her a twenty, and suggested she lie low for a

  little while.

  Two years ago, Munch had seen Grinch again. He was at an AA picnic, missing his front teeth, and looking pretty humble.

  She had grinned at him until he asked, "What?"

  She just shook her head and hadn’t let him in on the joke. Life had a funny way of balancing out.

  The bar where Benny hung his shingle now serviced an upscale restaurant with a view of the Marina. There was also a coffee shop in front for the family crowd. Munch parked the limo, got her and the kids a booth in the G-rated section, and caught Benny’s eye.