Unpaid Dues

by Barbara Seranella

  "Sleaze was a lot of things, and watch the language."

  She took down three plates and filled them with spaghetti. "Wasn't he always nice to you?"

  Nathan didn't answer and Munch knew why His mother had probably told him that Sleaze was a snitch and that's why he was killed. There was a whole lot more to that story.

  "You know, not everything is black and white," she said. "In fact, hardly anything is. A person can do stuff, stuff that's wrong, stuff that maybe hurts someone, and not be a completely bad person. Sometimes people get caught up in things and get in over their heads. You get one side of the story but not the whole story"

  He just stared at her. She couldn't read him. He wasn't exactly hostile, but he didn't look like he was accepting her wisdom either.

  "I'm only saying 'judge not lest ye be judged! " A rote saying. She tried again. "Do you think you would ever see yourself in a situation where you might need to call the cops? Maybe to protect yourself or someone you love?"

  "I could have called the cops on you a few times."

  "And that would have been all right. Getting busted saved me. It drove me to a place where I needed to get straight or go to jail. If dope were legal, like in England, I'd still be strung out. I wouldn't have my work, or Asia, or this home. So maybe if you had called the cops way back when, I would have gotten sober that much sooner." Maybe your mom would have too, she thought.

  "I don't know," he said. "I was raised that you don't rat. Ever."

  "I was too. 'Snitches end up in ditches.' Right?"

  He looked at her with surprise, the way Asia did when she learned something new in school and then found out her mother already knew. Kids. They all thought they'd invented the wheel.

  "It's all bullsh—Uh, baloney, Nathan. Stupid rhymes that cons run by each other to perpetuate their loser lifestyles."

  "Would you drop a dime?"

  She didn't tell him that she already had. "Depends on the situation and who was getting hurt. You get to be my age and you learn never to say never."

  He smiled, and she felt a ray of hope.

  "And another thing, my boy. You're welcome to stay here, but I'm not your maid. I expect you to help with the other chores around here. You can start by doing the dinner dishes."

  Nathan began to protest, but then stopped himself. Perhaps he sensed the thin ice.

  "And don't even think of doing a crappy job so I don't ask you again. I'm hip to that trick."

  He grinned as he picked up two of the steaming plates of pasta and took them to the table. "I don't mind helping. I can even baby-sit sometime if you want."

  "I just might take you up on that, but don't call it that in front of Asia."

  "No, I hear you. She's a cool little kid."

  "Thanks. I think so too." She watched him move awkwardly around the small table. He'd shed his work boots, but he was still tall and gangly. His face was unguarded for a moment as he aligned the dinner plates. She had a quick vision of him as a four-year-old in stocking feet. "How are you going to get to work?"

  "Bus, I guess, until I get some wheels."

  "Do you have a driver's license?"

  "Yeah. I even got a passport. My mom's going to send me a ticket when she gets settled."

  Munch hid her reaction to the boy's slim hope.

  "I've got this little Honda Civic at work. I've been fixing it up. It runs okay paint's not bad considering. Can you drive a stick?"

  "Yeah, my mom's truck was a stick. Three on the tree."

  "Well, are you interested?"

  "What are you asking?"

  "I'll sell you the Honda for what I have in it, but you have to get insurance and put it in your name."

  The name that was on his driver's license anyway.

  "For real?" he asked, that big smile of his threatening to break out.

  "This is L.A. You need a ride."

  "I get paid Friday"

  "All right, come to my work and we'll go to the DMV together." She went to her desk and found the business card of her insurance company. His having fraudulent identification was not something she cared about. It wasn't his fault that he was on his own and forced to take care of himself so young. She'd had her own set of ID when she was fourteen and was driving. The important thing was taking responsibility and having insurance was part of that package. "These people have the lowest rates around. I use them for my limo business and my personal cars."

  "Yeah, I saw the limo in the back. What' s the deal with that?"

  "Bare1y worth the effort, I'm sorry to say I have the one car and an ad in the Yellow Pages. I do weddings, some airport runs. Most of the time it just sits around costing me money but come spring, especially May I make some good bucks."

  "What happens in May?"

  "High school proms. See what all you're missing?"

  "When did you want me to baby-sit?" he asked.

  "How about Friday night?"

  "Sure."

  "You're all right, kid. Now go find madam and tell her dinner is served."

  After dinner, Munch pulled down a box from the upper shelf in her bedroom closet. She kept precious few artifacts of her old life. Most had been lost to fire and moves and unplanned incarcerations. Deb had always been the one who was into pictures and keepsakes. She had compiled three albums devoted to Nathan's milestone events by the time he was four.

  Over the years, she also had collected and saved photographs of most of the old gang. When Munch adopted Asia, Deb had sent pictures of Sleaze John. Asia kept them in her own little keepsake box in her room.

  Munch's mementos fit in a shoe box: a courtesy card from the Satan's Pride, a tooled leather belt made by a former boyfriend, and a few old pictures. She unrolled the belt and studied its imperfect craftsmanship. The tooling was a craft he'd probably learned in some youth rehabilitation facility; '76 was stamped above the rivets holding the belt buckle and next to that were two lightning bolts signifying Aryan Brotherhood. Then came the words WE EAT SLEEP RIDE BREATHE DREAM LIVE AND LOVE MOTORCYCLES, H.D. (for Harley-Davidson), more lightning bolts. A large Venice in between two Harley wings. Beneath Venice smaller letters that read IS NOT MARINA DEL REY. And finally a nicely rendered marijuana leaf.

  Thank God, she thought for not the first time, that she had never gone in for tattoos.

  She put the belt back in the box and then opened an envelope of pictures. There they were: the pictures of Thor and Jane's wedding. He looked drunk, sneering at the camera. Whoever had taken the picture—Boogie, probably—had held the camera crookedly so that Thor and Jane stood at an angle. Jane, in her white dress, smiled brightly happily oblivious to what was coming.

  Chapter 11

  Cassiletti sipped his morning coffee and stared at the braided rope before him. The whole cinder-block thing was on hold for the moment. The killer had either been experienced at concealing his crimes or dumb lucky to dump the body in water. Moving water at that, one of the biggest enemies in an investigation that depended on trace evidence such as fibers and fluids.

  St. John was working the victim angle, but Cassiletti believed the answers lay in the killer's methodology He dreamed of coming up with the significant something that would give them the killer. St. John would grin, shake his head, and say something like, "That Cassiletti, he's something. Son of a bitch."

  He'd use a tone of gruff admiration. "Fucking Cassiletti, huh? Tony the goddam 'tiger.' "

  Cassiletti would shrug modestly; play down St. John's praises of him in the bullpen—no, better yet—a bar, a cop bar full of men angling to buy him a drink and pat his back. This would be the day of the trial, when the defense attorney attempts to break him and fails. Cassiletti looks the jury in the eyes as he explains himself and his thought process. The jury deliberates less than an hour before returning a verdict of guilty

  When the newspapers take his picture, he doesn't smile. He has an intelligent expression on his face, maybe does something with his hands to show how he's pieced together the clues to re
-create the crime. He takes off his coat so that his weapon and badge show. It looks impressive, his big black thirty-eight in the tan holster and next to that, his gold shield. He wears his gray slacks that day and a black belt, the Italian one.

  A dispatcher from downstairs walked by Cassiletti shook himself back to reality

  Both he and St. John believed they were looking for a strong man as their offender. A man perhaps comfortable around horses, good with his hands.

  The rope the killer used was white, or had been when it was new and clean. It appeared to be made of nylon. The ends had been sealed by some heat source that left them blackened. When it extended, the rope would have been six feet long. Cassiletti could only estimate this, as the knot that had been fastened by whoever tied the cement block to the body was still intact.

  The core of the rope was braided. He went over to the crime lab and checked other samples of rope. Many were braided on the outside, fewer had a center core, and he could find no samples of rope that were a braid encased in a braid.

  The knot, the block, the rope, the doll. They were all going to mean something. He could feel it.

  * * *

  St. John put Cyrill McCarthy's scriptors out over the network of police agencies with a "wanted for questioning" stipulation. He'd been released from Chino a month earlier, on January sixteenth. His parole officer was on vacation and wouldn't be back until the following Monday

  St. John also ran Stacy Lansford's name through every system in the Department of justice's database—CLETS, NCIC, DMV voter registration, even the phone book—and had come up with zip. She had existed once, but the paper trail had died four years earlier. He had struck out similarly with Jane Ferrar. Christine Hill died from breast cancer in 1983. Poor kid.

  Cassiletti knocked on the glass of his cubicle. "Want to take a ride?"

  St. John threw down his pencil. "Yeah, might as well." He followed his younger partner out to the parking lot. "Where are we going?"

  "The scene of the crime," Cassiletti said, making his voice melodramatic. "One of them anyway."

  He held up an evidence bag that St. John saw contained a length of rope.

  "I want to follow some leads." Cassiletti laughed that high silly laugh of his that was so incongruent with his large build, and St. John half smiled as he fastened his seat belt.

  "Let's take Sepulveda," St. John said. "I want to stop at Munch's Texaco station. Would you mind?"

  Cassiletti stared out his side window, the slightest hint of disapproval in his tone. "No."

  When they arrived at the gas station, Lou was on a ladder at the gas pumps, replacing one of the fluorescent bulbs in the canopy

  They pulled up beside him, and St. John rolled down his window. "Munch here?"

  "She's on a test drive. Be about fifteen minutes. Want to wait?"

  "No, we were in the neighborhood. Tell her we stopped by."

  Cassiletti nodded to Lou, and for just a moment St. John saw a look pass between Cassiletti and Lou that seemed to echo Cassiletti's earlier tone of reproach. St. John felt a split second's guilt, as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He almost said, "We're just friends," but stopped himself.

  "What are you waiting for?" he asked, instead.

  Cassiletti's foot spasmed on the gas pedal, sending the car forward with a lurch.

  "Watch it," St. John said.

  "Do I yell when you drive?"

  "You don't need to."

  "I wouldn't do that to you."

  "Would you just go already? Christ, you sound like an old woman. "

  Cassiletti burnt rubber onto Sunset Boulevard, smiling slightly when St. John gripped the handhold over the glove compartment. He drove in silence until they arrived at the site that St. John had identified as the spot where Jane Ferrar's body must have been dumped into the storm drain. Cassiletti parked the Buick on the dirt easement beside the stables where a woman in tight Levi's and a long-sleeved blue shirt was mucking out the stalls. St. John waited so Cassiletti would be the first to approach the woman.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," Cassiletti said.

  St. John winced. Women under thirty, as this one appeared to be, preferred to be addressed as "miss."

  She paused, leaned against her rake, and studied them. Most of her attention was on Cassiletti, taking in the detective's full height of six-three. She had a friendly smile on her tanned face even though she gave St. John no more than a cursory glance.

  "Patricia," she said. "Patricia Kelly."

  "I hate to bother you, Miss Kelly" Cassiletti said, "but I was wondering if you could help me."

  "Call me Patty " She rested her rake against the corral wall and pulled off her leather work gloves. "And you're?"

  Cassiletti handed her a business card and her eyes lit up even more. St. John watched with a pang of nostalgia. Something about the badge parted more knees than the Charleston.

  "What do you need?" Patty asked.

  Cassiletti was all business as he produced the plastic evidence bag containing the rope that had been used to bind Jane Ferrar. "Is this the type of rope you use around here?"

  "May I?" She reached for the bag.

  Cassiletti let her take it. She studied the rope for a moment. "Nylon."

  "That's right."

  "We'd never use it here, not for a lead. I like cotton, much softer on your hands if the horse shies. Nylon burns your hands and when you cut it you have to seal the ends or it unravels."

  Cassiletti showed her the melted end. "Seal it like this?"

  She looked, learning in much closer than she needed to, St. John thought. "Exactly" she said, giving her long brown hair a flip and smiling with all her teeth for Cassiletti.

  "One more thing," he said.

  "Sure."

  "Were you here last Saturday?"

  "In the morning. I came in and fed the stock."

  "How about later?"

  "You mean Saturday night?" She looked at him speculatively "I had a date, a very boring date, and I went home early."

  St. John waited for her to add "alone." With Cassiletti, she'd be better served if she hit him over the head and then lassoed him with one of her soft cotton ropes.

  "Thank you, Patty," Cassiletti said. "You've been a big help."

  "Do you want my number?" she asked. "In case you have any more questions?"

  "That would be great. Thank you very much."

  Cassiletti wrote down her full name and phone number, checked his watch, and made a notation of the time. All business.

  Patty touched his hand. "And that's 'Miss.' "

  Cassiletti nodded without looking up. His ears darkened and he cleared his throat.

  Fuck, St. John thought, this is truly painful to watch. When they walked back to the car, St. John held his hands out for the keys. Cassiletti relinquished them without protest.

  St. John swung a U when there was a break in traffic. "You going to call her?"

  "About what?"

  "Have I taught you nothing?"

  Cassiletti let out one of his trademark giggles and rolled his eyes. "Oh," he said.

  "Yeah," St. John said. "Oh." He looked across the seat. "What did you do last Saturday night?"

  "I cooked dinner for my dad."

  "What about your mom?"

  "What about her?"

  "l don't know, you never talk about her."

  "She was a model from England. And very beautiful."

  That would explain Cassiletti's hazel eyes and long lashes. St. John had met the father, a hefty but short Italian. His son's looks hadn't come from him. "Is she still alive?"

  "Probably." Cassiletti stared out his window.

  "You don't know? When's the last time you saw her?"

  "I was eight when my dad kicked her out."

  "And he kept custody of you?" St. John didn't mean to pry; but this was too surprising not to demand an explanation.

  Cassiletti looked at him, then at his knees as he smoothed his impeccable slacks. "My dad
kicked her out because he came back from a business trip and the makeup she put on me rubbed off on his hand. "

  "She put makeup on you?"

  "To cover up the bruises. My dad put it together, realized the other things weren't accidents."

  "The other things?"

  "The burns, the chipped teeth." Cassiletti shrugged as if to say: "History."

  St. John drove in silence. Well, no wonder then, he thought. His dad used to say: "Everybody has a story" Digger St. John was right about that.

  * * *

  Munch was not surprised to see St. John's Buick swinging out from the spot where she'd witnessed the new fence being installed. She didn't honk or wave and neither St. John nor Cassiletti had seen her. She was driving a customer's big white Ford Bronco, which had a whine in the rear end.

  A cowgirl was leading a large gray horse out of one of the stables. Munch pulled in beside her and put a big smile on her face. "Hi, did I miss them?"

  "You mean those cops?"

  "Yeah." Munch shifted the truck into park and rested her elbow on the windowsill. "They ask you if you saw anything the other night?"

  "You mean Saturday?" The woman walked the horse over. "I wasn't here. I told them that. They were asking me about some rope."

  "What kind of rope?"

  "Just regular nylon, might have been clothesline, I guess. Not the kind we use here." The horse nudged her arm. "So you know those guys?"

  "Yeah, they're friends of mine."

  "Do you know if he's married? I didn't see a ring."

  "Which one?"

  "The cute one. The big guy"

  "Oh, him. " Munch had to smile at the relief she felt, as if it made any difference which cop this woman had taken an interest in. "No, he's available, but he's shy around women. Why do you think the rope was clothesline?"

  "Because it was white, I guess. Why?"

  "They're investigating the murder of a friend of mine."

  "The woman in the storm drain?" The horse put his head into her back and pushed. She stumbled a few steps forward, then pushed back and stroked the horse's face, admonishing him to be patient.

  "That's the one."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Yeah, me too." Munch fished Thor's photograph out of her pocket. "You ever see this guy before?"