Unpaid Dues (22 page)

"Huh?" Big Mike looked at St. John. "No,
I mean no as in 'you don't say'. "

"Have these blocks been sitting here all week?"

Cassiletti asked.

"Yeah, they were delivered on the tenth."

"
Do you have any security on the site?" St.
John asked.

"
You mean like a guard?"

St. John blinked but kept his face calm. It was
obvious that he needed to keep his wording simple and I precise with
Big Mike.

A black kid with a T-shirt wrapped around his head I
interrupted. "Mike? We're done with the south wall."

"All right, I want to take a look before the
inspector comes." Big Mike turned back to St. John and
Cassiletti. "Anything else you need from me?"

"A list of your employees and their shifts for
the last two weeks," St. John said.

"You got a warrant?"

"Do I need one?" This guy really was a
Class-A idiot.

"Only if you expect access to my records. I
don't mean to be a hard-ass here, but I have to look after my crew."

St. John spread his hands in a let's-be-reasonable
gesture and relaxed his face into a grin. "You're going to make
us drive all the way back to the courthouse and bother some judge?"

The contractor looked at his watch. "We're
wrapping up here in another hour. So it looks like you're out of luck
today"

St. John took a step closer, planting himself in Big
Mike's path. Now he was going to have to be a prick.

"A lot of things can hold up a job like this.
Additional inspections, license checking. I'll start by running
warrant checks on all your workers, then we'll make traffic stops on
deliveries. That should cut into your deadlines, kill any bonuses."

"And if we did need to go get a warrant,"
Cassiletti added, "we'd be well within our powers to put a
freeze on this work site until we return. It's called probable
cause."

"Jesus, what the fuck do you want from me?"

"Just your cooperation. I believe I asked nicely
the first time."

"
All right. Let's go into my office."
 
The detectives left fifteen minutes later
with a list of employees and, at Cassiletti's request, a sample of
the rope from the work trucks.

When Cassiletti got behind the wheel of their Buick,
he said, "There's one thing I don't understand."

"
What's that?"

"The killer marked the body right?"

"
Yeah. There was a V scratched into her torso,
postmortem."

"But then he went to some lengths to conceal the
body So who did he mark the body for?"

"
I've always said it was personal."
 

Chapter 19

Munch hit the Monday night meeting at the clubhouse
on Ohio Street. Nathan had offered to stay in with Asia.

The first speaker was a middle-aged woman who talked
about living in New York and drinking all the time. She took a
business trip to California, rented a car, drank through her business
meeting, and then flew home. A month later the bill came for the
rental car that she had forgotten to return. She had left it parked
on the street and the rental company had charged thirty days of
rental against her credit card.

Munch knew people forgot all kinds of things when
they were on a binge: the job they were supposed to be at, the
husband at home, the kid in the car.

Years ago, her friend Ellen once went to Tijuana as
some rich guy's date, failing to remember that she was on probation
and not supposed to leave the state, never mind the country. It
always seemed to slip Deb's mind that she was in love with somebody
else when she was out drinking. Munch tended to forget she wasn't six
feet tall after three shots of Jack Daniel's.

There were all sorts of cute sayings about substance
abusers and the murky swamps of their judgment facilities. "Last
to remember and first to forget," was one of Munch's favorites.
It also helped to have scars, lingering medical conditions, and
unadjudicated felonies to keep a person humble and on course.

Before the coffee break, birthday cakes and plastic
chips for varying lengths of sobriety were handed out, beginning with
the people who had reached the milestone of thirty days without a
drink or a drug.

A guy who seemed vaguely familiar stepped up to the
podium. Munch often had feelings of recognition at these meetings.
Cons tended to carry themselves in a way that was universally
identifiable. When they walked, their arms rolled forward from their
shoulders, held akimbo by muscle mass forged in prison. There was the
way they held their heads, their chins slightly up, mouths slack,
dead eyes that expected nothing—not fairness, nor forgiveness, nor
brand-new worlds. Their hands tended to cross over their genitals
when they stood. Cops, she noticed, did that too.

This guy at the podium was nothing new. He was about
six feet tall, his hair was cut short, and he was clean-shaven,
though his face seemed to beg for a stubble to fill in the mottle
caused by years of self-induced, slow-acting poison and repeated
contact with hard surfaces. He would never be mistaken for a
white-collar worker or a well-toned Yuppie, not with a mug like that.

Yuppies also didn't have spiderwebs tattooed on their
elbows, or walk around at night with speckles of dried house paint
still clinging to their hair.

"
My name's Cyrill," the guy said, accepting
the white poker chip with 30 Days drawn in gold script across the
face, "and I'm a grateful drunk."

Now the voice was familiar too. Munch leaned forward
for a closer look at his arms. She saw the Viking horns tattooed on
his biceps, but they only confirmed what she knew as soon as she
heard him speak. It was Thor, sans the ZZ Top beard and older,
especially in the eyes.

Her heart seemed to freeze within her chest. She
couldn't hear what he said. The words were lost below the roar in her
ears. Someone sitting behind her had to nudge her when her own name
was called to take a cake for eight years of sobriety Thor's eyes
widened when Munch stood and never left her as she blew out the
candles.

"I'm a miracle," she said. "Nine years
ago in 1976 I hadn't been arrested enough." This announcement
was greeted with appreciative chuckles. "My last year of using
was the worst. I hit bottom and just kept on going. " Out of the
corner of her eye she saw Thor nodding.

"
The ninth step has been coming up a lot lately
in my life. For all you newcomers, that's the one where we make
direct amends to all the people we have harmed." She noticed now
that Thor was sitting very still and listening intently

"
I've been given the opportunity to make amends
to the kid of another alcoholic who I used to drink with. I can't
undo the bad years, but I can set an example.

"Today I am blessed. My life changed completely
once I surrendered to the disease and turned my will and my life over
to God. A little over eight years ago, I was arrested for that final
time." She knocked on the wood podium and the audience laughed.
"When I was in jail, God sent me an Eskimo. You know the joke,
right? Guy's sitting in a bar in Alaska. He tells the man sitting
next to him how it's a miracle he's there.

" 'Why?' the first man asks.

" 'Well,' the guy says, 'I was out there in this
god-forsaken country I'd lost my sled dogs, my bearings, and I'm in
the middle of a terrible storm when the iceberg I'm on starts to
break loose. I knew I was gonna die, so I pray to God to save me.'

" 'He obviously answered your prayer,' the
second man says, 'because here you are—sitting in this bar, safe
and sound.'

" 'Oh, it wasn't God,' the first guy says. 'A
god-damned Eskimo came out of nowhere, over the iceberg, in the
middle of the storm, and took me back to his filthy igloo.' "

Munch waited for the laughter to subside, then
continued.

"I was a bad-ass biker chick eight years ago. I
hated cops, I hated women, and I wasn't overly fond of black people.
So you know who God sent me, don't you?" Munch nodded. "That's
right. A black female police officer. She listened to me, heard that
I had really surrendered, and brought me a piece of scripture that
got me through many long nights: 'When God is with me, who can be
against me?' On that note, I'll shut up and sit down."

Thor applauded with everyone else. Munch was aware
that she hadn't mentioned Asia in her litany of what she had to be
grateful for. Common street sense wamed her to keep the existence of
that which was most precious to her hidden.

The leader of the meeting announced the coffee break.
Thor was waiting for her as she stepped down from the podium.

"Eight years," he said. "That's
fucking amazing."

"
No more than thirty days," she said,
taking a step back so she wouldn't have to crane her neck so far to
look at his face.

He nodded in understanding.

"Why haven't I seen you before this?" she
asked.

"
At a meeting, I mean."

"
We've been hitting mostly men's stags in the
Valley "

"We?"

"I'm in a halfway house. New Start. It's in Sun
Valley"

"Is Danny T. still the director?"

"Yeah, he's here tonight. We drove over in his
car."

She scanned the crowd, finding Danny near the
literature in earnest discussion with a teenage boy. Hispanic and not
tall, Danny T. was a charismatic speaker with his Fu Manchu mustache,
collar-length black hair, and multiple tattoos. He could easily work
as a stand-up comedian. He had a hilarious story about stealing power
lawn mowers when he was a junkie. In fact, hearing him speak at one
of her first meetings had made her feel as if Narcotics Anonymous was
a cool enough place for her.

She also saw a group of six cons holding up the back
wall whom she immediately pegged as New Start residents. They were
predominantly Chicano and dressed in dazzling white T·shirts and
crisply pressed khaki pants. Their faces bore
I'm-here-but-that's-a1l-I'm-copping-to expressions, barely flickering
to life even for the brazenly dressed newcomer women who swished past
them on their way for coffee and cake.

She knew the type well, in trouble since they were
juvies and well on their way to being permanently institutionalized.
Letting that bullshit pride thing get in the way of anything good or
new in their lives. Hip, slick, and terminal. Even now, they were in
doing-time mode. They weren't in prison, but they weren't on the
street either. One in thirty might eventually be able to see that he
was his own worst enemy

"How long have you been there?" she asked.

"
Thirty days," Thor said, holding up his
chip.

"Of course."

"
You still working on those cars?"

"Sure am. " She held up a hand so he could
see the grease stains. "You painting?"

He reared back slightly his chest expanded, and his
hands rose waist-high. If he were a dog, the hair along his back
would be bristling.

"How'd you know that?" he asked, eyes dark.

For an instant she saw the old Thor and had to remind
herself that he couldn't hurt her here and now When God is with me .
. . "The paint on your arm was a big clue."

He smiled and shook his head. "Of course."

"Nice to wear short sleeves again, huh?"

"
Nice to be doing a lot of things again,"
he said. He took a step closer so that his chest was in her face.

"You seeing anyone?"

"
Yeah, I am." She heard her apologetic tone
and wondered if part of her would always be emotionally stuck at
fourteen, when—in a pathetic bid to be wanted and needed and
accepted—she would screw anyone who asked her. Or maybe it was the
glimmer of hope  she saw on Thor's face that she responded to,
his glimpse of possible redemption and a life free from crime and
punishment, violence and jail. At thirty days—had he been drug-free
for thirty days?—he had no business thinking about dating. It was
much too soon.

"
Can I have your number?" he asked.

"You got it already It's eight"

"
And your sign is stop, right?"

She smiled in spite of herself, still trying to come
to grips with seeing him again, and at her home meeting of all
places.

"l heard about Sleaze," Thor said. "There
but for the grace of God, huh?"

She wanted to laugh out loud, hearing those words
from his lips. Life was too bizarre.

"And now New York Jane," she said.

"Oh yeah? When?"

"
A week and a half ago."

A woman in a see-through top walked by and Thor was
momentarily distracted. He turned to watch her with his whole body.
When she disappeared out the back door for some of that "parking
lot sobriety" Thor brought his eyes back to Munch. "She
OD?"

"
Yeah, on a tire iron."

His expression was genuinely puzzled. "What do
you mean?"