Unpaid Dues (5 page)

lt' s been done, Munch assured her.

They turned right on San Vincente Boulevard. Large
branches dangled broken from the massive coral trees filling the
median. The orange-flowered limbs were no contest for the strong
winds of last week's storms. The heavy flow of commuters kept pace
with a steady stream of joggers dressed in two-hundred-dollar tennis
shoes and slit-seam shorts. The runners breathed deep the morning
exhaust fumes as they toned their bodies. Munch said a small prayer
of gratitude for her job at the garage, which kept her fit.

She turned left on Allenford Avenue behind a big
yellow school bus. Asia sat up to study the teenagers filing into
Paul Revere. Munch cruised slowly straining to see the cordoned
police area. She didn't know what she was looking for. She just felt
the need to be here. Someone had stuck a bouquet of flowers in the
fence.

Allenford dead-ended on Sunset Boulevard. Munch
turned right and drove alongside the sprawl of bungalow classrooms,
noticing that the storm drain also followed the contour of the
school. She had plenty of time to study it while she and three other
cars waited for the light at Mandeville Canyon. A utility truck with
A-1 Fence painted on the door was parked in the dirt driveway on her
left. She watched two men strap a new sheet of chain link between two
poles.

"Aww," Asia said. "Horsies."

"Uh-huh," Munch said absently "pretty
horses."

What really had her attention was the yellow flutter
of more crime scene tape. The light changed and a motorcycle cop
parked at the curb motioned for her to move on.

She dropped Asia off at school and then pulled over
and opened her Thomas Guide map. She traced her finger between the
two hot spots of police activity and realized that that was where the
storm drain went under Sunset. Last Saturday night, Valentine's Day
it had poured rain, really matching her mood as a matter of fact. The
evening's torrent had been more than enough to wash a body into the
open.

The real question was: With all the places in Los
Angeles to dump a dead woman—a woman she knew—why did the killer
have to choose a spot within a couple miles of her job?

Ruby was right, as usual, about sleeping dogs.
 
 

Chapter 5

That night Munch opened her front door to find a
six-foot-tall black man on her porch staring back at her. That was
her first impression. His blackness, his size. She hated that she did
that. He was dressed in a Pendleton-lined Levi's coat, jeans, and
lace-up work boots. A second later she noticed the duffel bag at his
feet and that he was young, despite the sparse goatee. Her next
thought was that he was some inner-city kid bused into the
neighborhood to sell something, but usually they chose really
dark-skinned kids for the door-to-door stuff and this kid was
obviously a half-breed.

He said, "Munch?"

Her mouth dropped open, then she blinked and said,
"Boogie?" He wasn't some stranger. It was her little
Boogieman. Her old running partner Deb's son all grown up and wearing
his hair cropped short instead of in the big Afro Deb used to spend
hours picking with a wide-toothed comb.

"
What are you doing here?" she asked, too
surprised to do anything but stare.

His face went still, and whatever expression had been
forming-joy hope, relief—dissolved into impassiveness.

"Never mind," she said quickly "You
just blew me away for a second. I mean, look at you, you're a man."

She swung the door wide open and pulled him into a
hug. He was so tall that her face was level with his chest. Would
Asia one day be taller than she? It was hard to imagine. "Come
in, come in," she said after releasing him. "How did you
get here? How long have you been in town? I can't believe how much
you've grown."

He made a half-grin, came inside, and deposited his
duffel bag next to the couch.

Munch reached up to run a hand over his short hair.
She realized part of what she was feeling was relief. Relief that he
had made it to this age and hadn't been terribly damaged in some
irrevocable way. That was the burden of parenting, even the shared
parenting of your friends' kids, the never-ending worry.

There were always the ones who didn't make it. She
thought again of Jane and the doll found wrapped in her arms, then
pushed the awful image aside and smiled at Boogie, grinned actually
like some kind of idiot. He hadn't seen her in seven years and all
she could do was gape at him as if he had arrived by teleport.

"
The last time I saw you, you were this high."
She put her hand just below her chest. "Come on, there's someone
I want you to meet." She led him into the kitchen, where Asia
was finishing her macaroni and cheese.

Asia looked up, wide-eyed and curious.

"Asia, this is Boogie. I've known him since he
was a couple months old, but I haven't seen him in"—she looked
at Boogie, her hand cocked in question as she calculated—"seven,
almost eight years?"

"That's about right," Boogie said. He
sounded as if he was forcing his voice into its lowest octave. "And
I go by Nathan now."

Munch had a quick memory of how wet and cold it had
been in Oregon that October seven years ago, and her eight months off
the antifreeze. Boogie running through Deb's little cabin to fetch
his mama her pipe. Deb and their other friend Roxanne, smoking bright
green Oregon homegrown, drinking cheap wine, and snorting speed at
the kitchen table as the logging trucks barreled down the highway
outside.

Munch had flown up there to find Sleaze John's killer
and Asia—his orphaned baby. Back in the day Sleaze John aka John
Garillo had been many things to Munch. Lover, co-conspirator, friend.
He had been shot to death within hours of visiting Munch at her work.
He had stopped by to tell Munch about his baby and the death of that
baby's birth mother, Karen. And, of course, being Sleaze, he had come
in need of a small "favor."

Munch came close to losing everything in the week
that followed: her newfound sobriety, the baby she hoped to save, her
freedom, even her life. With all that at stake she should never have
been tempted to get loaded with her old friends, but old habits die
hard and the good ones are the easiest to break. Dope had a funny way
of screwing up an addict's memory even before he or she used any.
Ruby said that's why alkies and druggies needed meetings, because
everybody together didn't forget the same things at the same time.

The trip to the great Northwest that long-ago autumn
ended happily enough. Munch stayed sober, Asia became her daughter,
and the extra bonus was that a longtime friend and using partner,
Roxanne, found the program and moved to Sacramento. Deb, being Deb,
found a new ol' man as the old one was carted off to prison. As Ruby
would say That Old Boy upstairs works in mysterious ways.

"Nathan," she repeated. "I like that.
This is my daughter, Asia." She didn't qualify the nature of
their parent/child relationship. Asia knew she was adopted, but it
didn't need to be mentioned every time either one of them turned
around.

Nathan shook Asia's hand and said, "Hey Asia."

"
Actually you two have met," Munch said.
She turned to Nathan. "Remember when I came up to Oregon for
your seventh birthday? Asia was just a baby and I had about eight
months of sobriety."

Nathan stared at Asia for a second and then said,
"You're Sleaze John's kid?"

Asia nodded and looked skyward. "He's dead. So's
my other mother. She took too many drugs."

"
I remember," he said.

"So you're fourteen now?" Munch asked,
wondering what else his memories held.

"
Yeah," he admitted somewhat grudgingly
"but I've got ID that says I'm eighteen."

She could see he passed for that easily. Fourteen was
a long time ago, but she couldn't remember any of the boys she knew
in her adolescence who weren't puny little geeks. Maybe if she had
gone to high school, she would know different.

"Where's your mom?" Asia asked.

"Amsterdam."

Deb had called Munch last month from overseas wanting
what she termed "a small favor." Her current boyfriend,
Aaron, was a parolee fugitive, and had taken Deb with him to
Amsterdam. Apparently there was no extradition treaty. between the
two countries. Deb wanted to send some letters to friends stateside
and she didn't want them postmarked abroad. She was hoping to mail
Munch a package to divvy up and forward. Munch told her no and chewed
her out for even asking. Deb's voice had sounded hurt after that, and
it was all Munch could do to not take her words back.

"Don't you go to school?" Asia asked. "I'm
in third grade."

"
Nah," he said, "I'm through with all
that. I've been working since last summer. What's high school going
to do for me?"

"
Asia wants to be a vet," Munch said.

"Or maybe an astronaut, like Sally Ride, I
haven't decided."

"Either way she wants to go to college,"
Munch said.

"
That's cool." Nathan looked around him,
his expression neither approving nor disapproving, just taking it all
in.

"Have you eaten?" Munch asked. "Are
you hungry?"

"Sure." He sat down at the table and waited
for her to serve him. She wondered if that was the adolescent in him
or the man. Deb did backflips for the men in her life, always trying
to prove what a standup, perfect ol' lady she was.
Observe,
ladies and gentlemen. She cooks, she cleans, she gives head, and
always looks cute doing it in her tight jeans and heels, bangles on
her arms, rings on every finger; long brown hair down to her ass.

Deb also had a way of putting on her Southern accent
and saying, "Oh, g'wan," as she laughed at some guy's
stupid jokes. Munch had spent years watching her charm the leather
off the bikers they had both known. Yet how many times had one of
those same bikers turned to Munch and asked, "What's your friend
doing with a nigger kid?"

Once, tired of the question, Munch had told a guy
that Deb had picked him up on her travels to Zimbabwe. Daxrmed if the
idiot hadn't believed her. Without looking up, Nathan cleaned half
the plate Munch set before him. Asia sat opposite him, utterly
fascinated. Munch wondered how long it had been since his last meal.

Asia looked at the duffel bag by the couch. "Are
you going to stay with us?"

"
For a couple days, if that's all right,"
he said. Munch didn't hesitate. "Of course it's all right.
You're still my little Boogieman."

"Your ace boon coon?" Nathan asked, a funny
half-smile turning up his dusky lips while his brows met in a frown.
It was the sort of expression people make when someone they care
about hurts their feelings.

Munch winced, recalling the little jingle she used to
recite to him. "
You're my ace boon coon,
my pride and joy, an ugly motherfucker but you 're still my boy."
What kind of a jerk uses that kind of language with a little kid?

"
Nathan—"

"Yeah?"

"I, uh . . . I'm . . . You want to clean up,
maybe take a nice bath?"

"Sure," he said, standing up, not bothering
to take his plate to the sink.

She fetched him clean towels. He met her in the
hallway She was aware of his height again. The small boy she used to
know was almost a man. Fourteen going on twenty-five. It seemed like
yesterday when she had held his little hand as they crossed the
street.

"I'm doing a load of laundry if you have any
dirties."

"Thanks," he said, smiling shyly "They're
in my bag."

Munch felt another urge to hug him, but they were
alone in the doorway of the bathroom, and she was suddenly gripped
with a shy attack of her own. Seven years is a long time in a kid's
life. She wanted to reestablish a connection, but recognized that she
would have to tread slowly She contented herself with giving his arm
a motherly pat.

The phone rang, and Asia jumped up to answer it. A
moment later she was spelling her name loudly to the caller; then she
rolled her big brown eyes saying, "It's Rico," and tried to
hand the phone to Munch.

Rico. Munch took her time with the plate she was
washing and then carefully wiped her hands dry Asia wiggled the
receiver in the air, bulged her eyes, and pressed her little lips
together in frustration.

"I'll be there in a minute," Munch said.

Asia liked the idea that her mom had a cop as a
boyfriend. Munch suspected it made for good show-and-tell. What Asia
didn't know was that Munch and Rico had agreed to keep their romance
quiet until his current girlfriend, Kathy transferred to her new job
in Boston. Rico didn't want Kathy to know he'd found someone else. He
wanted her to leave town believing that he just wasn't ready for a
serious relationship instead of knowing the more hurtful truth.

Munch had agreed to the terms. The alternative would
have been never to see him again and that, as far as her heart was
concerned, was unthinkable, or at least it had been in January But
now she had to ask herself what she was doing pining away for a guy
who had spent Valentine's Day with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, who
was supposed to be moving away?