Unpaid Dues (17 page)

Becker looked over to where his wife was sitting at
one of the booths sipping a soda and shifting her weight. St. John
had heard that she had health problems, something degenerative in her
nerves and very painful. It was rare to see either of them out
socially. She was no beauty either, but they made each other happy as
far as he could see. They had been high school sweethearts, married
young, and stayed married. He respected that.

Becker heaped two quivering mounds of Jello onto his
plates and pointed his body toward his wife, giving the feeling of
protective hovering from across the room. "Look, Chac6n's a good
guy he just has a habit of doing things that get him in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"
Administrative mostly He does what he thinks is
the right thing. That doesn't always agree with the big boys. This
last stunt is probably going to buy him some freeway therapy."

Freeway therapy, St. John thought, Admin's way of
sticking it to you. You took a wrong step and you found yourself
working down at the harbor when you lived fifty miles away in Simi
Valley or pulling nothing but night shifts. Transfers like that
seriously fucked up your quality of life. The brass justified such
actions by saying that rotation kept a guy from getting too
settled—read that complacent—in any one job. A cop had a right to
his rank was the message, but not necessarily his duty assignment.
And guess who had the biggest gun?

"Who'd he piss off?" St. John asked.

"
Let's just say the boy has ideas how the job
should be done and sometimes those ideas lead to not the best
decisions. Your friend better keep her eyes open."

St. John nodded. This was advice he'd learned too
late to give himself. Sometimes you see, but you don't see.

 
You hear, but you don't hear. Love had a way
of making a person squint away the rough edges, ignore the evidence.
He looked at Caroline across the room. As much as he loved his wife,
he would never be blind to the signs again. No way Temptations were
everywhere, but they didn't need to be indulged.

Kathy dabbed at Chac6n's mouth with a napkin. Chacón
looked annoyed, but accepted her kiss. Guy must have a
twenty-four-karat dick, St. John thought. I hope he gets transferred
to Cucamonga.
 

Chapter 16

Early Sunday morning, Rico called Munch. "Is
today good?" he asked.

"For what?"

"Meeting my kid."

"
Sure, except that Asia has a rehearsal in Santa
Monica."

"
She's in another play?"

"
A musical, if you can believe it.
Peter
Pan
. She's going to be Tinker Bell."
Munch lowered her voice. "She was so thrilled to have a starring
part, I don't think she's noticed yet that Tinker Bell never speaks
or sings." Munch suspected that this was a huge factor in the
casting director's decision.

"
So can you get away?"

"Sure, I don't need to stay. She's more
comfortable on a stage than in her bedroom, and she knows all the
grown-ups at the theater." Munch had planned to hit an AA
meeting while Asia learned her moves, but missing one wouldn't kill
her. "What time do you want to go?"

"I'll pick you up at eleven. We'll all go out to
breakfast."

She hung up the phone as Nathan walked into the
kitchen yawning. "What are you doing today?" she asked.

He opened the refrigerator and studied its contents.
"I thought I'd go see my grandma."

"Your grandma?" Deb's mama had died a few
years ago. He had to be talking about Walter's mother.

"Where does she live?"

"
In Compton."

Munch suppressed a shudder, glad that he was planning
on going in daylight.

Nathan pulled out the carton of milk with the
photograph of a little girl on the side and the caption "Have
you seen me?" Munch opened the cabinet where she kept the cereal
and got him a bowl and a spoon. He selected the Cocoa Puffs and
filled his bowl to the brim.

"That's great. Can I meet her too?"

"Why?"

"
Because I'm interested in your life, your
family."

She had also made her own inquiries with the Social
Security department, but before she discussed what she'd learned with
Nathan, she hoped to enlist his grandma's support.

He grunted and filled his mouth with cereal. She
wasn't sure if this meant sounds like a plan, no way or we'll see.

"What's her name?"

"
Doleen Franklin. " Franklin was the last
name Nathan used on the insurance forms and car registration. He said
it came from his daddy's side.

She went back into her bedroom and opened her closet.
Asia was on Munch's bed watching cartoons, but swiveled around to
watch her mother.

"What are you doing?" Asia asked.

"Trying to figure out what to wear."

Munch's choices were limited. Jeans, uniforms, and
two dresses.

"What's wrong with what you have on?" Asia
asked, coming to stand beside her.

"Rico's coming over and taking me out to
breakfast."

Asia pulled on the hem of one of Munch's two dresses.
"How about this one?"

The dress was one of Munch's not-so-subtle,
going-to-get-laid-tonight numbers. A slinky wraparound with a hemline
that barely covered her ass.

"
I don't think so, honey Not for a Sunday
morning.'

"It's not like you're going to church,"
Asia said, the slightest hint of reprimand in her voice. Asia was
probably the only kid in the world who nagged her mother to attend
Mass. Munch put her off, explaining that she didn't need a special
day or place to talk to God. She used the same argument for New
Year's resolutions or giving up something for Lent. If you needed to
change something in your life, you didn't wait for some date on the
calendar. People died waiting to change.

"Screw it," Munch said. "I'm good
enough as I am."

"
Of course you are," Asia said.

Munch looked at her and laughed. She hadn't meant to
voice her thoughts out loud.

"Now," Asia
said, "what should I wear?"

* * *

Munch dropped Asia at the theater, made sure another
mother would keep an eye on her, and was standing in front of her
small wooden house when Rico pulled up at five minutes to eleven. She
was wondering how the house would look painted a light gray with a
dark gray trim. Her roses had put on buds and she was anticipating a
bumper crop.

Rico was wearing his ever-present sunglasses and an
open-collared white shirt that showed off the St. Christopher medal
on his dark chest. His metallic green '66 Chevy Impala had a fresh
coat of `wax. He was very proud of his low rider with its custom coil
springs, low-profile mags, and wide racing tires, which brought the
car just inches from the ground. Munch secretly thought the look was
ridiculous. Why screw up perfectly good suspension?

It was a measure of her love that she deigned to ride
in the thing. The truth was, she had already bottomed out in the
vehicle department. Her last boyfriend, Garret Dimond, had owned a
Vespa, and she had straddled its seat a few times for local jaunts,
hiding her face in Garret's back when a real motorcycle passed them.
Garret had even worn a helmet. He'd embossed his blood type with a
Labelmaker on red self-stick tape and stuck it on the oversized
Plexiglas head bucket. Oh, please. As if he couldn't just stand up if
he saw trouble coming and let the scooter proceed without him.

"
Where are we going?" Munch asked as she
settled into the tuck-and-roll upholstered bucket seat and
reluctantly fastened her seat belt.

"Downtown. Angelica's mother had to work today
and dropped her off at the restaurant."

"How old was she when you got divorced?"

"Eight. Sylvia got pregnant when we were in high
school. My dad said I didn't have to deal with it, that I could go
back to Mexico. We still have family there."

He pronounced it Meh-he-ko. His English was largely
unaccented until he said a word with a Spanish origin. Sometimes she
asked him to speak to her in his first language. She didn't
understand the words but she loved the exotic roll of his consonants,
the way his mouth moved to shape his vowels.

"
I couldn't leave her like that," he said,
"to go through it alone. I had to be responsible. "

She loved that about him. His main parenting rule, he
told her once, was never to make a promise he couldn't keep. It
seemed to her that he also made that a life rule.

Rico's hand rested on the gear shift. She ran a
finger over his knuckles. "Nathan is trying to be responsible. I
wonder if he and Angelica would—"

"
Don't even finish that sentence," Rico
said, his mouth tightening in anger.

"
Why? I was just saying—"

"
This guy's already taking advantage of you, and
now you want to sic him on my daughter. And you want to know what my
problem is?"

"Nobody's taking advantage of me. I make my own
decisions of what I'll put up with." She looked at him pointedly

"
You want me to turn around?"

For a second she was tempted to just say yes, to say
something like, "You know what? Fuck this and fuck you. I didn't
get sober to put up with this shit. " But she waited, thinking
the words over before she let them escape her mouth. Sure, it would
make her feel good for the moment: powerful, righteous, and all that.
But she'd learned long ago the difference between reacting and
choosing her actions, and how consequences lingered long after the
heat of the moment passed.

Her sponsor, Ruby, had also spoken the truth when she
said that Munch knew how to leave a relationship—to pack her shit
and storm off in a huff. That was the easy thing to do. It was
staying that was the challenge. And how do you know when it's worth
the effort? she'd ask. Ruby said no one could answer that for anyone,
you just had to wait and see.

They were quiet as they jumped on the Santa Monica
Freeway eastbound. Munch turned on the radio and found a station that
played rock'n'roll. After a few minutes, Rico picked up her hand and
kissed it. Goose bumps erupted down her left leg. She caught a whiff
of his musky cologne.

"
You look nice today" he said. "I like
that color on you."

She made a mental note. Purple.

Rico had arranged for them to meet his daughter at a
Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street, in the city's oldest district.
Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, every Southern Californian
schoolkid learned, had been founded in 1781, and its oldest street
had been converted into a Mexican marketplace in 1930.

Rico badged his way into a parking space at Parker
Center. As they walked the two blocks down Los Angeles Street, he
took her arm and positioned her to the inside Jane of the sidewalk,
taking the side exposed to traffic. The freeway bridge overlooked
murals painted for last summer's '84 Olympics, depicting L.A.'s
diverse culture. Munch happily noted that they were unmarred by
graffiti. Musicians wearing large black sombreros, tuxedo pants, and
bolero jackets were setting up in the gazebo as Munch and Rico cut
across the Plaza.

"
I came here when I was little once," Munch
said, "with my mom."

"We should come back on Cinco de Mayo," he
said. "It really jumps then."

. Munch smiled so hard she had to keep her face
averted from him. May was three months down the road, and he was
talking as if of course they would be together.

A large wooden cross, reminiscent of the early
Mission days, marked the entrance to Olvera Street. Two-story
buildings of whitewashed adobe and ancient red brick flanked the
cobbled street. Vendors hawked their wares from freestanding
palm-frond-thatched-roof wooden stalls. Everything from embroidered
peasant blouses and square-hemmed guayabera shirts to dashboard
saints and Aztec calendars was offered in a dizzy array of color and
smells. Rico and Munch stopped at one of the crowded booths. Munch
bought three delicate strings of beads for his daughter and had them
gift-wrapped with colored tissue paper. She didn't want to arrive
empty-handed.

She also bought Asia a ceramic bull piggy bank
covered with bright pink flocking. Using white glue, the vendor wrote
Asia on the side in cursive and sprinkled the name with silver
glitter. Rico dropped the first quarter into the slot on the bull's
withers.

The restaurant where they were meeting Angelica was
festooned with weathered Christmas garlands and Mexican flags.
Pinatas and crossed wooden mariachi rattles, painted bright colors,
hung from the ceiling. Bullfighting posters and multihued serape
blankets covered the walls. A Mexican trumpeter blew sweet notes for
the diners. The music made Munch think of grand outdoor parties and
women in black lace shawls with high combs in their hair.

She spotted Rico's daughter immediately, seated at
one of the rough-hewn tables near the indoor fountain. Angelica had
his eyes and jawline—a nice-looking kid, not gorgeous. At fifteen,
she was still growing into her looks, waiting for her complexion to
clear, her
hair to make up its mind. Her skin
was the creamy
café au lait
color of a half-breed, a term Munch was trying to stop using out
loud.