Unpaid Dues (4 page)

"Aisle two."

"
I need one exactly like this one,"
Cassiletti said, holding up his evidence.

"Hmm, I don't know. Ours are darker, but you
could always paint it. I'll show you what we have."

Cassiletti followed the clerk past flats of brightly
colored petunias and stopped at a pallet loaded ten high with dark
gray cinder blocks. These differed from his in more ways than color.
They had wider tongue-and-groove joints and no inset cuts on the
face. Cassiletti pointed this out to the clerk.

"
Chisels are in aisle eight," the guy said,
looking past Cassiletti for a less-demanding customer. Stamped in
black on the base of the pallet were the words Enco Block. Cassiletti
noted the name. "Is this Enco Block local?"

"I don't know, man," the clerk said,
starting to look seriously put upon.

Cassiletti pulled out his badge holder, relishing the
moment when this guy's attitude would change. He held his shield
close to the guy's face and watched the clerk's posture straighten,
the color drain from his cheeks.

"This is police business. Can you get me the
information I want or do I need to see the store manager?"

"No, no. I can help you. Follow me."

Cassiletti pocketed his badge and smiled secretly at
the guy's back as they made their way to the rear of the store and
through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. A quick search through one of
the file cabinets in the accounting office produced an invoice with
the Enco Block address and phone number. It was in Sun Valley, an
industrial section of the San Fernando Valley

Cassiletti thanked the man, took his block, and left.
It took forty minutes on three different freeways to get to Enco
Block, which turned out to be a large operation near the railroad
tracks. The company logo was painted in red on a tall silo and was
visible from a quarter mile away He followed a line of pickup trucks
driven by beefy sunburned contractors wearing short-sleeved T-shirts
and turned-backward baseball caps to a driveway you would have had to
know was there to find. Cassiletti felt more out of place than usual
as he parked in front of a windowless building and followed the signs
to a door labeled OFFICE. He introduced himself to the secretary
whose nameplate identified her as Terri Ordell. She listened to his
request, inspected his badge, smiled coyly and then pushed a button
on her telephone.

"Mr. Kulek?"

A man's voice said, "Yeah?"

"You have a police detective out here to see
you. He has some questions about cinder blocks."

Seconds later a robust balding man emerged from the
inner office. "You the cop?" he asked in a booming
voice—one no doubt trained to carry over the sound of a cement
mixer.

Cassiletti handed the man one of his new business
cards. He'd had them printed himself at his own expense, paying extra
for the embossed image of his detective shield complete with his
badge number. The city provided only generic blue-and-white cards
that had blank lines for the officers to fill in their names, ranks,
and phone numbers.

"Oh, shit," Kulek said. "What's
happened?"

"I need some information," Cassiletti said,
"about this cinder block."

"Like what?"

"Anything you can tell me."

Kulek studied the block for only a second. "A,
it's not a cinder block. It's concrete. Cinder block is made from
cinder. It's a couple pounds lighter per block and you'd see the
darker particles, especially in a split-face block like this one. And
B, it's not one of ours. Our eight-eight-sixteens have a thicker web
between the cells and we don't do a Malibu cut."

"Eight-eight-sixteen?"

"Yeah, those are the dimensions in inches."

"Actually; it's a bit smaller than that."

"I'm talking with mortar," Kulek said. His
tone seemed to suggest that this was information any man should know.

Cassiletti felt a momentary fluster. St. John
probably would have picked up the eight-eight-sixteen thing
immediately

"What's a Malibu cut?" Cassiletti asked,
pressing on.

"This inset on the face," Kulek explained.

"What's it for?" A

"Architectural design. Same as the color. We
make our stuff for the do-it-yourself stores like Builder 's Emporium
and National Lumber. We use the darker concrete that comes from
Mexico, and we don't add pigment." The phone on the secretary's
desk rang. Kulek looked at it and then back at Cassiletti. "Anything
else?"

"
A list of your competitors?"

"
Terri," Ku1ek said, answering the phone
himself, "give the man what he wants."
 
 

Chapter 4

Munch and Asia ate a quick dinner that night and then
headed over the hill to the San

Fernando Valley Munch was speaking at an AA meeting
held at a church on White Oak. A lot of AA members brought their kids
to this meeting and the church provided a playroom for them while the
meeting was in progress. Munch's sponsor, Ruby was all for sheltering
the children from the confessions and observations of recovering
addicts and alcoholics. Her own son, Eddy followed her to meetings
when he was young and Ruby once confided to Munch that she thought
that early exposure had hurt his chances of taking to the program
when he needed it.

Munch was just as happy not to subject Asia to the
cigarette smoke and cursing. She had quit the former already and was
working on giving up the latter. This was also Munch's AA birthday
week. Time to blow out eight candles on top of birthday cakes at the
several meetings all over Los Angeles where she had gotten sober. It
might take two weeks.

The meeting didn't begin until eight-thirty. Munch
got to Ruby's house at a quarter to eight. Ruby lived in Sherman
Oaks, south of Ventura Boulevard. Eddy, her three-hundred-pound
alcoholic son, had a room fixed up in the garage. Ruby's deaf mother
lived with them too. The mother refused to use a hearing aid, but
kept a long, orange plastic transmission funnel beside her armchair
for when something on the television interested her.

Asia joined the old woman in the living room, which
left Ruby and Munch alone together at the kitchen table. Ruby had
changed out of her Denny's uniform and was wearing black pedal
pushers and a thick cable-knit sweater.

"The water's still hot," Ruby said, nodding
toward the teakettle. "Want a cup?"

"I'll make it," Munch said, selecting a tea
bag and pouring in sugar.

Ruby eyed her from the kitchen table. "What's
up?"

Munch cast a quick glance into the living room to
make sure Asia was out of earshot. "I got a visit from Mace St.
John today"

"
And?"

"This woman I used to run around with was
murdered."

"Was she still using?"

"She was the last time I saw her, so, yeah,
probably."

Ruby clicked her tongue and lowered her eyes in
sadness. She had a deep well of compassion for losers, the alcoholics
and addicts who couldn't get to the program in time.

"Yeah, well, anyway" Munch broke in after
giving Ruby her moment of silence, "this friend was involved in
something pretty terrible about ten years ago. Something I knew
about."

"Do you think it has something to do with why
she was murdered?"

"
I kind of doubt it. Everybody involved was
pretty lowlife. Those things have a way of working themselves out or
else everybody involved tends to forget about it."

"So you didn't mention this to Detective St.
John?"

"I really didn't see the point."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"They'd probably all be dead by now anyway,"
Munch said. "They were all heavy dopers and career criminals."

"
Like you?"

"Even worse. And this happened ten years ago."
In a world far removed from the one she inhabited now. So far removed
that sometimes she had trouble believing she had been that other
person who used and abused herself and everyone around her. It was
the drugs that had produced the creature she had been, and when they
were eliminated, a different woman was born—a person who didn't
steal or cheat or hurt other people. Knowing that, she was able to
forgive herself and move on. Most of the time.

"
Thor is probably dead or in prison by now,"
she said, hoping it was the former. Sleaze John is dead. Now New York
Jane is dead. That just leaves one other friend who's way out of the
picture anyway. Why should I stir up the whole mess?"

"Are you afraid of charges being brought against
you?"

"I didn't do anything."

"Isn't that part of the problem?"

"You mean I should have snitched them out?"

Ruby stirred her tea. The sound of canned laughter
intruded from the living room. Munch heard Ruby's aged mother mumble
something unintelligible and Asia laughed. Asia found the old lady's
dementia highly amusing, but not in a mean way—more like a
what-a-silly way.

"What would you want Asia to do?" Ruby
asked.

"You mean if she was hanging out with dope
fiends and knew they'd just killed a bunch of other dope fiends? I'd
want her to put as much distance as she could between herself and
them and then come and put fresh flowers on my grave because I would
be dead before I'd let her fu— Ah, mess up her life that way."

"You think you would have control over how she
chose to live?"

Munch sneaked an unintended look at the door leading
to the garage, where Eddy was either slumbering off a binge or
preparing to do it all over again. "Maybe not, but I wouldn't
make it easy for her."

Ruby reacted as if she'd been slapped. "I can't
turn my back on the boy, not while Mama is still alive."

"Who do you think will die first?"

"
That's up to God."

Munch let the age-old cop-out go unchallenged. Ruby
had a real blind spot when it came to Eddy She seemed to have
forgotten the rule that you were supposed to "carry the message,
not the addict" when it came to her own blood.

Ruby's sobriety stretched back to the year Munch was
born. She was a great sponsor. Capable of such gems as "Honey,
you're going to meet people in AA you wouldn't have gotten drunk
with," when Munch complained about somebody she didn't like at
an AA meeting. Ruby told her to run as fast as she could in the
opposite direction when Munch confessed that a guy she loved in her
first year of sobriety went back on the needle. Ruby was great at the
giving advice part, but if she didn't get a handle on the guilt she
carried about her son's early years, she was going to enable him to
his grave.

Munch looked at the clock over the stove. It was time
to leave for the meeting if they were to get there in time to help
make the coffee. She rinsed out her mug and put it in the drain board
by the sink. "Like I said, it's best to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Sleeping dogs have a
way of waking up sometimes and crapping all over your living room."

* * *

The following morning, as Munch unfolded the Los
Angeles Times on her breakfast table, a news item on the front page
of the Metro section jumped out at her: BODY OF WOMAN CLUTCHING DOLL
FOUND IN STORM DRAIN.

Munch's body flushed with heat and she felt a
dropping sensation in her stomach.

The photograph showed the police gathered in what
looked like a parking lot, except for the basketball hoops. The
caption identified the location as the maintenance yard for the
Riviera Country Club.

Munch knew the area; she had customers who lived
around there. It was only about five miles from the gas station. A
mere blink for Angelenos.

WOMAN CLUTCHING DOLL.

Was this why St. John had asked if Jane had a kid?
And was that kid still out there somewhere? Alone and scared?

Munch called to Asia to get ready It was earlier than
they usually left the house, but Munch had a reason. Asia climbed
into the passenger seat, pulling her Pee Wee Herman lunch box onto
her lap.

Munch turned right on Pico instead of left. They
passed blocks of shabby, thirty-year-old apartment buildings that
needed paint and landscaping. It wasn't going to happen; this was
rent-control land. The landlords were locked into late seventies
rental rates, which left them no budget for painters and gardeners,
whose fees had kept up with the cost of living.

"Why are we going this way?" Asia asked.

"
I thought we'd take the scenic route." She
turned right again on Ocean Avenue, passing the entrance to the Santa
Monica Pier.

"Where's Joseph and Mary?" Asia asked as
they drove along Palisades Park.

"Oh, honey they took all that down a month ago."

Asia was referring to the series of life-size
dioramas of the Nativity that the churches of Santa Monica erected
every year. All that was left now were dead spots of grass where the
consecutive scenes depicting the events of Christ's birth had stood,
encased in anti-vandal mesh. She had taken Asia to see the Three Wise
Men bearing gifts, the pregnant Mary aboard her burro, and finally
the Baby Jesus in his crib. Asia looked hard anyway She was the kind
of kid who savored her holidays and was all for the concept of a
birthday week. Just last month she had announced that she wanted
eight different husbands so she could have eight different weddings.