Unpaid Dues (9 page)

As far as Munch could tell, all he'd really done was
change the spark plugs and perform a basic transmission service,
which really only amounted to changing the fluid and filter. It was
needed maintenance, but it wasn't solving the problems that the car
came in for. If Stephano put half the energy he used coming up with
excuses into trying to fix the car, they'd all be better off.

The Jag's undercarriage was a mess. Everything
leaked, the transmission, the power steering, the crankcase, the
radiator. Someone needed to put the car out of its misery before
Stephano drove its owner into bankruptcy

"Did you check the modulator?" she asked.

"I don't know if these have one," he
answered. She wanted to say You're supposed to be the expert, but she
knew he'd just get all huffy and treat her to a string of technical
terms that meant nothing. All the talk in the world wasn't going to
convince an engine to run better.

"
What's this?" she asked, pointing to what
might be a vacuum pod sticking out of the transmission. Stephano
looked, but said nothing.

"
Put it down, and start it up," she said.
"I want to check something"

Stephano did as she asked, not letting his male
chauvinism stand in the way of free help. She put the car back up in
the air with the engine running. The idle was rough, and slightly
higher than it should be. The part she suspected of being the
transmission's vacuum modulator valve had a small pipe nipple. The
tubing was slightly cleaner than the other metal around it,
suggesting that at one time it had been covered. Munch grabbed a drop
light and searched until she found a dangling, sixteenth-inch,
neoprene hose. Heat and age had hardened the rubber, causing it to
split. She put her finger to the end of it and felt vacuum. She
snipped it down to where the rubber was still soft enough to be
pliable, pulled it gently to create enough slack so that it would
reach the nipple on the valve, and then stuck it back on the exposed
tip. The engine idle immediately slowed down and smoothed out.

"
Try it now," she said, "and let me
know. You've got a water pump on an Alpha Romeo coming in."

"
Thanks," he said, puffing his chest into
her face. "Anything I can do for you, just ask."

"
I'll keep that in mind."

A guy Munch didn't recognize pulled up in a BMW 320
and got out.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"
I spoke to Carlos," he said.

She gave him a quick appraisal. Up-and-coming
white-collar professional, thirtyish. Probably rented a condo on
Montana, leased the Beamer, and drank wine spritzers with his pasta.
Total Yup. Big show, but tight with the dough.

She left him and moved on to the next customer,
smiling when she saw it was Mrs. Obie. Everybody loved Mrs. Obie. She
was a widowed, retired schoolteacher, had an older house up in the
hills, and was the original owner of an absolutely cherry metallic
green 1966 Pontiac Bonneville. If anything ever went wrong, she got
it fixed, no questions asked, paid any price requested, and did all
the recommended maintenance. Even Stephano went easy on her.

"Hi, Mrs. Obie," Munch said. "What can
we do for you today?"

"
Brakes. You said I'd be due in five thousand
miles. It's only been three, but I need an oil change, so we might as
well take care of both now."

"
Do you need a ride home?"

"
Yes, dear, if it's not too much trouble."

"Not at all," she said, looking around for
Pancho, the shop's gofer. She noticed that the guy with the Beamer
was still standing by his car and looking impatient. Carlos was under
the hood of a Honda that was parked in front of the office. "Pancho,"
she said, peeling two sheets of carpet protectors off the pad under
the service desk and handing them to him, "I need you to take
this lady home. Okay?"

"Sure t'ing, baby" he said in his Jamaican
lilt, flashing her a smile that showed off the gold edging on one of
his front teeth.

"
What did you need?" she asked the guy in
the Beamer again.

"I got my tire fixed here last Saturday" he
said, "and it's still losing air."

"
No problem," Munch said, thinking no
wonder she didn't recognize the guy. She didn't work Saturdays.
Carlos had a new baby on the way and took all the hours he could get.
"Sometimes a plug leaks, or you might've had more than one
nail."

"
All I know is that I still have the problem,
and now I'm missing work."

"And Carlos knows you're here?"

"
I called an hour ago."

"
Oh," Munch said, seeing the mix-up, "but
you haven't spoken to him in person yet?"

"
I've already been waiting"—the guy
looked at his Cartier tank watch—"over fifteen minutes."

Obviously the thing didn't keep accurate time.
"Carlos," Munch yelled, "you talked to this guy about
his tire?"

Carlos looked up, then at the guy "Oh yes,"
he said, in his thick, nasal El Salvadorean accent. "I be right
there. Jus' one minute."

The Yuppie shifted feet, tapping a shiny loafer on
the cold concrete. He clearly was not accustomed to waiting.

Carlos wiped his hands and went to the back of the
shop to fetch the floor jack. The expression on Mr. Yuppo's face grew
more exasperated by the second.

"Do I have to sit here and take this from him?"
he asked. Saying him as if Carlos were some piece of scum. Munch's
face went hot. "He's going to help you right now."

"He's ignoring me. I don't see why I'm expected
to take this kind of shit."

"How much did you pay for the tire repair?"
Munch asked.

"Eight dollars," the guy said petulantly as
if this was another point in the case building against Carlos. Eight
whole frigging dollars, wow.

Munch went to the cash register and pushed the return
key The drawer slid open and she pulled out a five and three ones.
She motioned for Carlos to wait, walked back to the guy and thrust
the cash into his manicured hands. "Here's your money back, now
get the fuck out of here."

Carlos looked embarrassed. The guy in the Beamer
looked like he was going to burst a facial vein. "I want the
manager."

"You're looking at her."

"Then the owner."

"Be my guest," she said. "He's in the
office. Here, I'll show you so you don't get lost."

The guy followed her into the office. Lou looked up
from his desk, his weathered face expectant. "I want to register
a complaint." The guy explained his version of the event, ending
with, "And then she said, 'Get the fuck out of here.' I mean,
can you believe the mouth on this woman?"

Lou pursed his lips thoughtfully "Is that what
you object to? Her language?"

The guy looked confused and then said, "It's her
whole attitude."

Munch opened her mouth to speak, but Lou beat her to
it. "Maybe," he said, "you'd be happier taking your
business elsewhere."

The guy stormed out of the office and burned rubber
as he left the shop.

"Can't win 'em all," Munch said.

Lou shook his head. "I mean, what an idiot. For
all he knew I could be in love with you."

She didn't want to look at Lou's face, afraid of what
she might find. Her life was already too complicated. She was trying
to find a graceful exit line when Lou glanced out the window over his
desk. "Your cop buddy is here."

"Yeah, I was expecting him."

He proved that he had read her tone correctly when he
said, "You want me to tell him you joined the Foreign Legion?"

"
Nope, it's too late for that." Ten years
too late.
 
 

Chapter 9

I had trouble meeting St. John's eyes and didn't know
what to do with her hands. "Let's get this over with," she
said.

"Bad as all that?"

"
I'm just not sure what you want from me."

"Tell me about this Thor character." They
were standing outside the office. He pulled out his notepad and
clicked his pen open. "Start with the basics. How old is he?"

She did a quick calculation, surprised to realize
that he would have aged. She avoided driving past her old haunts,
seized by an unreasonable certainty that if she turned down certain
familiar streets she would find herself with the old gang and nothing
would have changed. It would all be exactly as she had left it:
Boogie would still be a little kid. Sleaze would still be alive and
flashing his trademark devil-may-care grin. Her few close women
friends would still be capable of laughing without it sounding forced
and harsh. Flower George would still be leering at her with his one
good eye. In her mind, Thor was always in his twenties, old enough to
be on the lam from a felony warrant back East, young enough to still
be crazy dangerous. "Mid-thirties," she said. "God, he
could be as old as forty." ,

St. John raised an eyebrow. "Old as that, huh?"

"I didn't mean forty was old."

"
How tall is he?"

"
Six feet, maybe six-one, I never measured
exactly."

She had a quick image of herself holding a wooden
ruler next to Thor's erect penis. Ten inches, like the Aerosmith
song. They had both been impressed.

"Build?" St. John asked.

"
Strong. He was very strong."

"Hair?"

Munch looked over at the open lube bay If she didn't
soon claim the bay Stephano would tie it up for another hour.
"Reddish, like, not a carrot top, lighter. Blondish."

"
Beard? Mustache?"

"When I knew him he wore a full beard, covered
his neck." She turned so that her feet were pointing toward her
toolbox.

"Eyes?" St. John turned the page.

"
You mean the color?"

He looked up at her, his pen marking his place.

"
Yeah, listen, I only have the rest of my life
here. You think you could step it up? You know what I want."

"You want to find him, see if he had anything to
do with Jane's death."

"
That's right"

"
I really don't—"

"Why would you want to protect any of these
assholes?"

"It's not that."

"
What then? Are you worried this is going to
come back to you? You want to be an anonymous source?"

She looked past his shoulder, feeling the increasing
gap between them. She didn't want to be a source at all. Anonymity
wasn't the issue. She knew how this worked. They could start pulling
on some of those threads from the past, and the next thing she knew,
her whole life could unravel.

"
I have another question I'd like answered,"
he said. "The autopsy showed that Jane never gave birth. Why
would Jane Ferrar be clutching a doll?" He paused.

"I don't know." She remembered how Jane
sometimes sucked her thumb, and tried not to picture her dead.

"
I'd really like to find out where she spent her
last days."

"And who killed her," Munch added.

"Yeah, especially that. We haven't been able to
get any kind of line on Jane's whereabouts prior to her murder. She
didn't have a current driver's license, hadn't applied for any
government aid, didn't have any utility bills or a listed phone
number. Her last known public activity was an arrest five years ago
for shoplifting?

"
What was she stealing?"

St. John flipped backward in his notebook. "A
stuffed animal, an Easter bunny"

Munch said to herself the most dangerous phrase in
the English language—the short version of the Serenity Prayer: Fuck
it. She looked St. John full in the face.

"Thor had brown eyes. Ten years ago he drove a
Ford pickup. Sixty-two or sixty-three. Brown, stick shift, six
cylinder." He also owned a big black boat of a Chrysler New
Yorker, but that car was long gone, so she didn't mention it.

"He had some felony beef in Pennsylvania, I
don't know what it was, but knowing Thor, it was for hurting someone.
He's one of the scariest guys I've ever known. Unpredictable,
violent, and smarter than you would think. His last name might have
been Mc-something. He did a short stretch at Chino about twelve years
ago. I'm sure he's been back since. If not there, then some other
joint."

"
How about identifying marks?"

"Oh yeah," Munch said, "he had a few
of those."

She told him almost everything she could think of.
Almost. "I'll call you if I remember something else."

"Will you?"

She rearranged the work orders on the service desk.
"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"I don't know.

That's right,
she
thought,
cops didn't call it snitching, they
called it "doing the right thing.
"
As if the choice was always that clear.

* * *