Unpaid Dues (15 page)

Munch's clothes lay in a heap on the floor. Traffic
on the street had quieted to the occasional car, the buses having
stopped running at midnight. She glanced at the clock on his
nightstand, shocked to see it was after one.

She rolled on her side and snuggled into him.

"
Tell me something you're ashamed of," she
said. Her hand rested on his bare chest. His heart sped up a beat,
even though his breathing stopped for a moment.

"Where did that come from?" `

"You told me once you'd done things, things you
weren't proud of. Tell me one."

He gripped her fingers and squeezed gently. His eyes
were on the ceiling. "Okay," he said after a few seconds.
"There was this one time, when I was on patrol, I did a traffic
stop on this kid. He gave me his license, but I forgot to give it
back to him. A week later I see the same kid, and I pull him over
again. This time I give him a ticket for driving without a license.
About a month goes by, maybe more. I see the same kid, only now the
ticket has gone to warrant, so I arrest him."

"That's it?"

"
Pretty shitty don't you think?"

"
I guess." She twirled the hair that grew
in the cleft of his pecs. There was a glass of now-melted ice on the
nightstand. He had brought the cubes in earlier and used them to
trace the outlines of her overheated body. She didn't ask him where
he'd learned that
trick.

She always felt as if she was holding her breath
around him. The tension was close to unbearable. There were times she
almost envied his ex-wife. At least she knew where she stood with
him.

"Now you," he said.

The first thing that came to mind blocked out
everything else and of course it was the very thing she couldn't tell
him-probably ever. When all was said and done he was an officer of
the court and her confession would put him in an impossible position.
She didn't want to do that to either of them. Finally she shoved that
one memory aside and thought of something to share—an experience of
equal value, equal depth, equal candor. "It was a work thing.
I've got this nice young rich couple that comes in. She's beautiful;
he just got promoted to president of the company"

"What's the company?"

"
I don't know, but she has a gray-market
Mercedes, and he has a Porsche." She pronounced it as a
one-syllable word. It sounded too snooty the other way Pretentious.
"Anyhow, her air conditioning went out. She needed a hose, and
it was a dealer item. "

"
Which means?"

"No after-market manufacturer. You're pretty
much stuck going to Mercedes and paying their price. We double
whatever our cost is when we rebill. Carlos was doing the work and he
told me the cost of the part so I could call the lady and sell the
job. Only he gave me the list cost, and I thought he was giving me
the wholesale price. So I double it and tell the lady this
astronomical amount it's going to take to fix her car.

"Her husband calls me, and I explain that those
hoses are expensive, and what are you going to do. He gives me the
go-ahead. I knew he would. He wasn't going to let his wife run around
without air-conditioning.

"I realized the mistake while I still had time
to correct it, but I never did. I keep telling myself that I'll make
it up to the lady on another job."

"
You can't tell her now," he said. "I
don't think Lou would be very happy about giving them a refund."

"The real truth is l don't want them to know I
cheated them."

"It was an honest mistake. These things happen
everywhere." Case closed, his tone said.

She rolled on her back, feeling alone.

"
You cold?" he asked.

Before she could respond, he took her face in both
his hands and kissed her deeply His tongue was insistent, demanding,
and she answered him in kind until he was the first to pull away.

"
Just checking," he said.

"Still here," she managed to say

He lifted his head and looked at the clock on his
nightstand. "You hungry?"

She giggled. "Starved."

"C'mon," he said, pulling her to her feet.

Rico walked across the living room naked, moonlight
reflecting on his damp skin. He seemed as comfortable with his
clothes off as on. She slipped on his T-shirt, rich with the scent of
his sweat, and followed him to the kitchen.

She knew she'd follow him anywhere. Resolution number
one thousand and eight: Get to know a guy before you screw him. Sex
shouldn't be one of your screening devices to see if you like him,
especially if he's as good a lover as Rico. Not that she believed he
was this good with anyone else. What they had was personal chemistry
like none she'd ever experienced. She saw it in his face too. The way
he looked at her with the same mixture of surprise and wonder.

A woman could lose herself easily for that payoff at
the end of the day—overlook things she shouldn't. Once, at a
women's stag AA meeting, they all started talking about orgasms. A
few of the women confessed that they didn't understand what the big
deal was, and they were looked upon with sympathy Munch asked for a
show of hands and discovered that a huge majority of those who had
had orgasms during sex were still with the man responsible.

Passing the plate-glass window in the living room,
she caught a glimpse of her hair. It was teased into twice its usual
volume, curled by hours of sawing against first the pillows, then the
mattress, the carpet, and finally back up on the bed again. The skin
on her back and butt glowed warmly with rug rash. She imagined his
knees felt the same.

Rico opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plate
of roast chicken.

"I responded to an armed robbery call this one
time at a chicken place on El Cajon." He tore off a chunk of
white meat and offered it to her. "We got there as one of the
guys was running out the back. He pulled out a gun. I pulled out mine
and fired. Afterward, I went up to make sure he was dead. I pulled
his mask back and saw his face. I wished I'd never done that."
He stood there for a minute, lost in the memory.

Then he asked, "You ever have food poisoning?"

She thought a minute. She'd been dope-sick enough
times and was told that was close. "Yeah."

"That's what I felt like for two weeks
afterward. I still dream about it."

Munch walked over to the sink, ripped two paper
towels off the roll on the dispenser, and handed him a one. What she
really wanted to do was to step right into him, to be absorbed by
him.

Rico tore off a drumstick and bit into it.

"
Is that another thing you're ashamed of?"
she asked.

He looked at her and she watched that change take
place, the stony expression that hardened his features when he went
into cop mode.

"Not ashamed, no."

"
But something you wished had never happened."

"
I tell myself the guy was a punk"

"
I know, you had to do it." What she really
thought was that some people needed killing. He probably would agree
with her, but she didn't think he'd be comfortable with her saying it
first. Attitudes like that don't make for good wife material. She
realized she had put on her saleswoman hat, but she was selling a
product whose qualities she could merely guess at. Her only guide was
to ask herself, What would Caroline St. J0hn say?

He put the chicken away without asking her if she
wanted more. "C'mon, we need some sleep or we'll be dead meat
tomorrow."

Head on his pillow, his arms holding her, she closed
her eyes reluctantly. The minutes they spent together were precious.
She had never been so unleashed in bed, nor had such a hungry
innovative lover. She lived to drain him, to make him spend it all on
her so he'd have nothing left for his other girlfriend, that Kathy
chick. She hated to waste any part of the night with him on sleep.
Now she propped herself up on an elbow so that she was facing him in
the dark.

"When Nathan was little, like about four or
five, we were all out partying one night."

"Nathan?"

"The kid who's staying with me."

"
Oh, right, him." Rico took no pains to
hide his disapproval.

"
You haven't even met this kid."

"I don't have to and I don't want to."

This attitude of his, his complete confidence that he
had a situation sized up and was accurate in his judgment, was at
times appealing, but more often frustrating. A lot of cops she
knew—well, the two anyway—seemed to have this quality. Mace St.
John evaluated people quickly and definitively He was usually right,
which didn't help when she found herself on the other end of the
argument, trying to prove that people changed sometimes or deserved a
second chance. There was an Italian expression for it:
testa
dura
. Hard head.

"So you were all out partying . . ." Rico
prompted.

"
Yeah. This is his mom, Deborah; Asia's daddy
Sleaze John; and some other guy I can't even remember now."

"Deborah's date?" Rico asked.

She grinned. "Probably She's rarely without a,
um, date. Anyway we drove around all night, looking for parties,
whatever, and we wound up in some house in Tujunga. We all had to
crash on this mattress in the garage. I'll never forget Nathan's
little voice saying,

'
Mom, I'm hungry' We didn't have anything, no money
no food, the car was out of gas. We didn't even know where we were.
Deborah said, 'Go to sleep, son, and dream about food."

"
The really pathetic part is that we all thought
that was hilarious. Everybody but Boogie."

"Who was Boogie?"

"
Nathan. That's what we used to call him back
then. His daddy was a musician."

"Where's this guy now? Why isn't he taking care
of his kid?"

"He's dead."

"How about other family?"

"
I feel like I'm his family " Munch
realized her tone had grown defensive.

"But you're not. When's his mom coming back?"

"I don't know. She's not somebody to count on. I
talked to her on the phone last night. Nathan might be eligible for
some Social Security benefits."

"What does that have to do with you?"

"She needs affidavits from people who knew her
and Nathan's dad, knew they were together and that he was the daddy."

"You don't have the time to be hunting down
ghosts from her past."

"I can ask a few questions." She pulled
away from him, annoyed that he thought he knew what she did and did
not have time for.

"
So you want me to run the father's name through
the system?"

"
Won't you get in trouble?"

"
Let me worry about that."

"I think he got busted once in the early
seventies, but it was just for pot."

"If you know when and where he went to trial,"
Rico said, "the court transcripts would be a matter of public
record. They would probably yield all sorts of information. It's all
available to you as a private citizen. Actually you don't need me
there."

Yeah, she thought, but just once I'd like to do
something with you in public. She got out of bed and gathered her
clothes.

"
Can't you stay?" He reached out a hand to
stroke her thigh before she pulled her pants up. "I hate to have
you out on the streets this late."

She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her
boots. "I don't want Asia to wake up with me not there"

"
That reminds me," he said, plumping up the
pillow behind his head. His features were soft in the dark, making
him look young and deceptively vulnerable. "My daughter wants to
meet you."

"
She does? When? I'd love to."

"
I'll set it up and let you know."

He rolled out of bed with a grunt, pulled on a pair
of sweatpants, and walked her out to her car. She kissed him good-bye
and drove away happy thinking how it was a definite move in the right
direction to meet his daughter.

She was very aware that she hadn't mentioned Jane's
murder or St. John's visits. Partly she held her peace because she
sensed tension between the two cops whenever one of their names was
mentioned to the other. Why the two most important men in her life
seemed to be at odds was a cruel cosmic complication. But then, even
Lou didn't get overjoyed at the sight of either Mace or Rico. She
wrote it off as misdirected machismo and tried not to get too
frustrated at their childishness.

She also didn't want to get into a big
question-and-answer session with Rico. The lies by omission she had
going on with Mace were bad enough.

She'd like to see Jane's murderer brought to justice,
but did that have to mean dredging up the details of events better
left forgotten? Maybe she was just being paranoid, but that horrible
episode had linked a group of four people in a knot of complicity for
nearly a decade, and now the second of two of those people was dead.
That still left two little Indians who had a lot to lose.