Unpaid Dues (19 page)

"
Where was your dad?"

"He came to America," he paused and looked
at her before adding—"illegally"

Munch shrugged. He'd get no judgment from her.

"
He was going to send for us when he got set up,
but it took a while. I made money too. In Mexico, they have big dumps
of trash. I used to go through them looking for copper, and then I'd
haul it to this guy who paid me by the pound. That was hard work for
a ten-year-old."

Munch nodded. She knew junkies who used to steal
radiators and pipes from work sites and sell them for the copper. She
always thought it was a lot of physical labor to go through to steal
something.

"Did you go to school?"

"
Oh, sure. There were two sessions, morning and
afternoon. I went in the afternoon. I was too scared of my mother not
to go, even though it cost. Nothing is free in Mexico." He
switched lanes aggressively. "My dad used to deliver Sparklett's
water before he went North. The cops there stopped him once, wanted
their mordida, their bribe. My dad said, 'Look, I've got no money'
The cop said, 'Okay I'1l catch you tomorrow.' From then on, my dad
had to hide from this guy This cop got this attitude that my dad owed
him."

"He felt entitled," Munch said, sitting up
straighter. Entitlement was an interesting concept to her.

"
Yeah, it's a mess down there. Fucking bandits.
I wouldn't pay it either."

"When did you come North?"

"When I was twelve. My dad got an apartment and
sent for all of us. I was blown away when I got here. I couldn't
believe this place, the paved streets, the inside toilets. I'd never
seen a park before. It was beautiful and free. You could play there
all day if you wanted."

"How'd you get from there to being a cop?"

"I used to watch those shows, Adam-12, Drugnet.
I thought cops were great."

"
American cops," she added.

"Right. When I was in high school, I wasn't in a
gang, but I used to dress the part." He paused, then chuckled.
"One time I was standing there at the school yard with all my
little girlfriends and I see these three blurry images across the
street. I needed glasses, but I never wore them. Too uncool, you
know?"

Munch looked at him in surprise. She was so used to
seeing him in his Carerras, it never occurred to her that they were
prescription.

"So anyhow, I'm staring and staring, and trying
to see who it is. This is something you don't do with gangbangers. If
you look at them hard, it's a challenge."

"Mad dogging," Munch said.

He nodded. "So these three guys walk over to me
and say 'Where you from?' Now I got to declare myself. There's three
of them, but I'm on the other side of this big fence."

"Surrounded by all your girlfriends."

"
Yeah, so I start talking trash, mothers are
mentioned, but my machismo is intact. I'm still a big man on my side
of the fence. Well, lo and behold, this fence I'm on the other side
of has a gate, and this gate isn't locked. Those guys beat me bloody
The one was a big guy, a football player. He kept picking me up and
throwing me on the concrete. Every time, these flashes of light would
go off in my head and I would pass out, only to come to with them
still beating me. I just wanted it to be over. I thought they were
going to off me, and I'm looking this guy ir1 the eyes, I can't even
talk, but with my eyes I'm saying, 'You don't have to kill me.' "

Munch wondered what all his so-called girlfriends had
been doing while this epic ass-kicking was going on.

"
The first guy who punched me said, 'Setenta y
Ocho.' Seventy-eight, which was his street corner. He was going to
kill me for a street corner. About forty-five minutes into the
beating, an L unit rolled up."

"What's an L unit?"

"
A one-man patrol car. Just his presence made
the cholos split. The cop didn't even have to get out. I knew then
that's what I wanted to be. Plus I was laid up for two weeks
recovering, so I had a lot of time to think. I stopped wearing gang
attire, started taking school seriously—"

"
Got some good glasses," Munch added.

Rico grinned. "You bet your sweet ass."

Munch smiled at the compliment, thinking how the
puzzle of Rico was coming together. Now she understood his interest
in boxing, why he had worked at it until he excelled.

"And then your girlfriend got pregnant."

He looked at her with an amused smile, perhaps
flattered by her chauvinism toward him. "I had a little
something to do with that, I think. Anyway it all worked out. I love
being a cop. I've never wanted to do anything else."

She wondered why he looked so sad as he said those
words.

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. For a
moment she had the paranoid sensation that he was saying good-bye.
She had to stop doing that. Hadn't he just taken her to meet his kid?

"
Yeah," she said. "I love working on
cars. Every day there's something different. There's also that
instant gratification of making something broken work."

They got on the freeway Rico floored the accelerator
and the exhaust rumbled from the blown-out glass packs. At least he
had a good stereo system, she thought, adjusting the volume on his
Blaupunkt to override the freeway noise.

She also wished the car had a bench seat so she could
snuggle into him. She reached across the console and rubbed the back
of his neck. He rolled his head back and sighed with pleasure.

"I'm sorry about that thing with your dad,"
he said.

"
Don't be, it wasn't a 1oss."

"But, still, she was a jerk to put you on the
spot like that."

"
She was just being protective, and she's
fifteen."

"Tell me about it. "

"You never brought me a television," she
said playfully.

"
There's a reason for that."

She stroked his ear.

"C'mon," she said. "From the look of
your kid's room, you must own a share of an electronics store."

He looked at her warily and said, "You don't
want to know where that stuff came from."

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

"It's not that."

"No, it' s okay" she said. "I got it."
Something warned her to say no more.
 

Chapter 17

Sunday afternoon, Munch emptied out the pockets of
Nathan's jeans before she threw them in the wash. Three round seeds
rolled out of the right-hand pocket. She also found the remnants of a
joint, recognizing immediately the burnt yellowed paper and the
familiar smell.

She wasn't surprised. Weed was widely smoked up there
in Oregon, and although Deb made it a point to shield her son from
her snorting of stronger stuff, or at least she had seven and a half
years ago, Deb never hid her drinking or smoking from her son and
neither did Munch. Looking back, it was a wonder they hadn't killed
him—a little bit of Southern Comfort in his bottle when he was
teething; the time they got him drunk on beer on his fourth birthday;
drinking toasts to him until he got sick and passed out. They'd never
heard of alcohol poisoning back then, and even if they had, they
would never have understood the risk to themselves. They were going
to live forever or to twenty-five, whichever came first.

She emptied the other pocket and found a disposable
Bic lighter. She struck the flint and the flame shot out like a
blowtorch. Nathan had the lighter cranked to its highest setting. She
knew you didn't use a flame like that to smoke pot, but you did need
a lot of heat to smoke crack or boil dope in a spoon.

Munch set the lighter on top of the washing machine.
Part of her was afraid to touch it—as if contamination might spread
with prolonged physical contact. She couldn't have someone doing
drugs in her house, both for Asia's sake and her own. If she called
Rico or St. John, they would confirm this immediately.

Besides, Rico was already prejudiced against Nathan;
this would only cement his opinion.

She went into the kitchen and called her sponsor.
Ruby answered on the first ring.

"
You've got to create a crisis, honey;"
Ruby finally said.

"
How do I do that?"

"
Make a scene, yell, throw things. Confront him.
React. You want him to link using dope with trouble. Make it
unpleasant as you can for him. Can you do that?"

"
Yeah," she said. "I can do
disagreeable."

Nathan arrived home twenty minutes later. Munch was
waiting for him, sitting in the armchair opposite the front door.
Asia was in her room. Munch warned her there was going to be yelling.
She'd cleared the coffee table of magazines and put the lighter there
instead, plainly visible.

After a brief glance around the room, Nathan froze.

"
What' s up?"

"I found this in your pocket."

"Yeah, so?" His expression hovered on the
verge of outraged protest.

Munch flicked the lighter on and a six-inch tongue of
flame whooshed out. She lifted her finger off the butane lever. The
flame died. She threw the lighter against the wall, chipping the
paint above the wall socket.

"
Hey" Nathan said, more out of surprise
than anything else.

"Do you want to go to prison?"

He visibly blanched. "What are you—"

Munch didn't let him finish. "You want to die?
Go crazy? What the fuck's the matter with you?" She kicked the
table. It overturned with a cracking noise. She stood with her fists
clenched.

Nathan stared back, openmouthed, obviously unsure how
to handle an angry woman who was a foot shorter but didn't seem to
care.

"Are you going to hit me?" he asked, his
voice sounding unusually calm. The coldness in it or rather the lack
of emotion made her pause.

"
I'm so pissed at you, I might. I thought you
wanted to build a life for yourself."

"You're not my mother. You've got no right—"

"
The fuck I don't," she screamed. "I
care, and you're hurting yourself and that hurts me."

"How am I hurting you?" he screamed back,
forgetting to lower his voice.

She grabbed his left hand and scooted his sleeve up.
His arms were cut and scarred, but there were no telltale puncture
wounds over his veins. He didn't pull away—

"I'm not a hype," he said.

"Not yet."

"
Not ever."

She looked down at his forearm. He had a homemade
tattoo there, the name Walter. His daddy. Deb had one just like it on
her shoulder. A deep scratch obscured the letter "t".

"
Your mom mentioned you'd had some trouble. Was
it drugs?"

"Nah. It wasn't about dope. I got in a fight
with this guy Cops called it mayhem at first. I was just taking care
of business. Some chump didn't know who he was messing with."
Nathan pulled his arm back and scooted his sleeve back down.

"Mayhem?"

"They switched it to aggravated assault."

Munch wondered about the distinction. Wasn't assault
always a result of aggravation? "So you have a juvenile record?"

"They ended up dropping all the charges. My mom
talked to the DA, got it all cleared up."

Munch had a quick picture of what Deb must have done
for the DA, who was obviously a man.

"So now what?" Nathan wiped his eyes
fiercely with the sleeve of his Pendleton. "Do you want me to
leave? "

"No," she said, "I want you to live."
Tears filled her eyes and she willed them to flow freely "I want
to save you from my mistakes." She raised her voice.

"
Both of you."

Nathan stood his ground uncertajnly for a moment and
then in a gesture reminiscent of his childhood, he hugged his side
with one hand and buried his face in the other. His shoulders heaved
as he rocked his head side to side. "It's just so hard," he
said between sobs. "S0 hard."

Munch put her arms around him while he cried. She
knew it was difficult to be so young and on your own. Asia peeked her
head out her door, her eyes wide. Munch gave her a nod of
reassurance. Asia ran into the room. Now she cried too as she joined
their embrace.

Munch pulled her in, stroking her soft curls as she
spoke to the top of Nathan's bowed head. "You didn't choose
this, but this is your life. You've got to be your own parent. Your
mom is an alcoholic. She always has been. Your daddy . . ."

"
He's dead."

"
I know and I'm sorry I lost my mom young too
and that's just the way it is. Don't you think he would want you
happy and alive?"

Nathan sniffed wetly and straightened his back.

"I'm not a crackhead. I don't even smoke
cigarettes. I used the lighter for something at work."

"I hope that's true."

"
It is."