An Unacceptable Death - Barbara Seranella

by Unknown

  There was an anticipatory rustle in the room as Father Lanning, in full white robes, swept down the aisle. He paused to take Fernando's hand and murmur something that made Fernando nod in agreement. Father Lanning then laid a hand on Cruz's head and smiled beatifically. Cruz smiled back, childlike, an echo of the emotions surrounding him. Father Lanning continued down the front row. Sylvia crossed herself. Angelica wouldn't meet his eye. He seemed accepting of the teenager's reaction.

  At last he came to Munch and Asia and Ellen.

  He looked Munch in the eye and said, "God didn't bring you this far to drop you."

  Munch felt a tingling sensation climb up her back to her scalp. She didn't go in for all the mumbo-jumbo of organized religion, but she recognized when God reached out and spoke to her directly.

  She managed to mumble back, "I know that." And she did know that, though not lately. She'd forgotten lots of things she knew. That was a common denominator among alcoholics and addicts, sober or not. They were the last to remember and the first to forget. It was these timely reminders, delivered by angels of all ilks, that she counted as miracles.

  It was also at that moment, with the smell of incense and flowers in her nose, the sun filtering in through panes of colored glass, the church bells striking the hour, that she knew she needed to find a way to get through this. And she knew why. It was for Asia and Angelica, to lead by example. Survival wasn't for wimps.

  Father Lanning mounted the stairs to his pulpit and intoned, "Let us pray."

  The service went on with the liturgy. Father Lanning's voice was sonorous and hypnotic. The church was warm. Munch stared at the open casket. They'd done a nice job of cleaning Rico up. His mouth was closed and there was a faint suggestion of a smile on his lips as if he were sleeping peacefully. The skin color was more natural and they must have put some padding under his—Rico's eyelids fluttered. Munch bolted upright as terror shot through her. She sneaked a look sideways at the other mourners, waiting for someone else to scream first.

  Get a grip, she told herself. This wasn't some horror movie. He'd been shot, autopsied, and embalmed. No one could survive all that. It was an illusion of light combined with fatigue. It was the candle-lights that flickered, not his eyes.

  Ellen reached over and squeezed Munch's hand. Asia snuggled into her, finding the comforting softness of her mother's breast. As she cuddled, Asia also sucked the three middle fingers of her right hand, as she used to do when she was a toddler.

  Munch took a deep breath and noticed that Father Lanning was finished with his sermon and stepping down. A plump, mustached Hispanic politician who was some representative of something or on the board of something replaced the priest. Munch didn't quite catch or understand his relevance to her life or Rico's. The guy started speaking about the Hispanic community and role models. His self-serving speech was so permeated with ambiguity as to be impossible to understand in any language.

  "And so it begins," Munch said under her breath.

  Ellen leaned over and whispered in her ear, "What do they call four Mexicans in a boat full of holes?"

  "I give up," Munch whispered back.

  "Quattro sinko."

  Munch strangled back a laugh, Fucking Ellen. She buried her face in Ellen's shoulder, hoping that her heaving shoulders would be interpreted as sobs. Asia pulled her fingers from her mouth and patted Munch's leg. Her mouth dropped open in astonishment when she realized that the two adult women above her were laughing.

  "Stop it," she hissed. "You're humiliating me."

  This only made them laugh harder. Ellen buried her face in her hands. Munch stopped looking at her until she could get herself under control. She kissed the top of Asia's head. "I'm sorry, honey."

  Hands patted her shoulders and she turned back to smile her appreciation. What she saw was Mace and Caroline St. John; her boss Lou; her sponsor Ruby; Happy Jack—her boss when she first got sober—and his wife; Art Becker and his wife; even Cassiletti, Mace's protege, who had brought a date. The row behind them was filled with the other guys from work and four women Munch sponsored. She didn't know how they knew to come. It certainly wasn't expected of them, but it was very thoughtful, particularly for the newly sober whose heads weren't out of the dryer yet.

  What she felt was loved. She'd forgotten how this worked—that the worst moments of her life were always balanced somehow with the best of human nature.

  She felt the microphone jab into her collarbone and wondered what Roger and Chapman were making of all this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HUMBERTO DROVE TO CHRISTINA'S APARTMENT. NUMBER 6, she had told him, on the second floor. He could park in the back if he liked. He wouldn't and he didn't.

  He arrived for their meeting a half hour early, and did some recon. Her apartment had a front and a back door. Unusual for an upper-floor unit. She had only told him about the front entrance. The back door he discovered on his own when he walked the perimeter. The door was the type that had a window built into it. A dryer vent protruded to the left of the door. Wooden stairs on the right led down to the driveway and parking for the building. The driveway was shaped like a flag, with the pole running the length of the building and opening to a paved rectangle painted with yellow lines. The spaces were numbered one to seven. A blue Honda Civic with primer spots occupied Christina's space. He put his hand on the hood. It was slightly warm. The other slots were mostly vacant. Splatters of various automobile fluids glistened on the cracked asphalt assigned to apartments 4, 5 , and 7. Weeds grew in the cracks under an aged Oldsmobile up on blocks. A boat in a rusted trailer was parked beside the Olds. It, too, had seen better days.

  There was a string of free-standing garages at the far end of the parking lot and no alley. Most of the garages were padlocked. One door had a red-and-white FORRENT sign tacked to it.

  His car was parked at the curb, and would remain there. He rubbed his arms as if suddenly realizing he was cold, and retrieved his coat from the trunk. A car drove by and he glanced at it briefly, avoiding eye contact with the driver. The car was a dark blue Ford, the driver a lone white man. There had been a yellow parking stub under the passenger-side windshield wiper. All this he had noted in a second's time.

  Humberto wondered what the driver of the Ford had thought of him. Probably nothing. Humberto was just another big dumb Mexican after all. He shifted the gun in his right boot so that the barrel rested to the side of his ankle and crossed the sidewalk.

  The building's scrappy front lawn was more weeds than grass, but trimmed short. A few shrubs with dusty leaves and a twin palm shared the same flower bed. The cement stairs leading to the second-floor landing were flanked with iron railings in need of paint.

  Apartment 6 was a corner unit. He knocked on the green wooden door, placing his face in front of the peephole. The mini blinds to his left parted briefly. Moments later, the new-looking dead bolt snicked open.

  "Aye, yi yi," he said.

  Both of Christina's eyes were black and swollen. She lifted the ice bag she was holding to her lip long enough to say, "Come in."

  He stuck his head in the door and looked quickly left and right. "We're alone," she said. She tossed the ice bag into a large ceramic ashtray.

  He sat on the couch and rubbed his palms across the tops of his thighs. "Are we set?"

  She licked her lips and winced. "They wanted me to test a sample." Humberto scratched his shin, feeling the reassuring pressure of his forty-five. "Who?"

  "The guys putting up the money."

  She went into the kitchen and returned with a paper sack and a small plastic box. He recognized the logo on the box. It was a Ferguson Test Kit. She opened the paper bag to show him the stacks of bills.

  She removed a vial of pink fluid from the test kit. "Do you have it?"

  He reached in his pocket and removed a brick of dope, setting it on the coffee table next to the cash.

  She straightened a paper clip and broke open the vial. Pointing toward the coke, she asked, "Do yo
u mind?"

  "Please," he said, his ears cocked for any sound that didn't belong in the supposedly empty apartment. Christina looked older to him than he had first thought. She was probably in her thirties rather than her twenties. Her businesslike manner brought this to his attention. His reevaluation was reinforced as he studied her face more closely. Now he noticed the creases in her forehead and the hardness in her eyes. His attention hadn't been focused on her face the first time they had met.

  She stabbed through the wrapping and then dipped the cocaine powdered end of the bent paper clip into the pink solution. The test fluid turned robin's-egg blue. She smiled lopsidedly. "I think I'm in love."

  They made the exchange. He didn't need to count the money there. He flipped through the stacks, making sure they were all American bills. He would count the money later, in private. If the count was short, well . . . He was reasonably sure she knew better.

  "How do I get ahold of you?" she asked.

  "Chicken knows how to reach me. Call him."

  * * *

  Humberto took a circuitous route back to the motel, retrieved three more packages from his truck, and went to the house on Hampton. Chicken was waiting for him out front, nervously hopping from one foot to the next, scratching the dirt at his feet. Humberto wondered if this was how he had earned his nickname.

  Chicken got in the Chevy and directed Humberto to a house in Compton. They drove down Rosecrans, a wide avenue in the predominantly black neighborhood. The liquor stores offered to cash checks and decorated their windows with Laker pennants. The small markets accepted food stamps and sold lottery tickets. Humberto wondered if they made direct exchanges. Girls in knee-high boots and short skirts waited at bus stops, but judging by the way they assessed the single-occupant males of passing cars, it was not for public transportation.

  "What do you think, esse?" Chicken asked, giving the nod to a chubby black woman in hot pants and a red wig. "You want to change your luck?"

  "My luck is running well," Humberto said.

  "Okay, turn up here," Chicken said, giving the hooker an apologetic shrug, which she answered with a one-fingered salute. Chicken glowered at the disrespect. "I ought to go back and cut that puta a new hole."

  "She's lucky we have other things to do," Humberto said, reasonably certain that the amply endowed prostitute could take Chicken one-handed. He knew girls like her, girls who concealed razors in their hair or stilettos in their boots and would just as soon slice you as spit on you. At least this one was open about her hostility. He appreciated honesty in women.

  They pulled up to a house on a side street. Three teenage kids with very black skin sat on the front stairs. Rap music drummed from a boom box at their feet. Two of the boys wore their hair long and natural, with metal "cake cutter" pick combs stuck in the sides. Humberto thought again of the hooker, open hostility, and concealed weapons. The third boy wore a hair net and recognized Chicken with a nod. A jet took off overhead, drowning out the mu- sic. The two long-haired boys bobbed their heads, keeping the beat perfectly until the jet had passed.

  "This guy is cool," Chicken said to Humberto as he returned the teenager's nod. "The father might be there, Waiter. He's the bank."

  "How does he make his money?" Humberto asked.

  "Chiva. Lamont, that's the kid in the hair net, thinks the future is in blow. He talks a lot, but these guys are solid."

  Humberto nodded in acknowledgment, but not agreement. From what he knew of the narco business, and that was considerable, he didn't think heroin would ever go out of fashion.

  The teenagers parted, creating a narrow path for Humberto and Chicken. Lamont knocked on the door, two quick taps, a pause, then two more, and then he invited them to follow him in. The television was on and tuned to a soap opera. Seated on a plush orange couch opposite the set was a very fat black man. A thin white woman with a bad complexion and unfocused eyes sat beside him stroking his head. Another girl, much younger, but with dark circles under her glassy pale blue eyes rubbed lotion into the big man's hands. "I love your skin, baby," she said. She sounded sincere.

  "You'll forgive me if I don't get up," the fat man said.

  "I wouldn't either," Humberto said. He watched the television show for a minute, mesmerized by the flashing dark eyes of a beautiful woman who was obviously up to no good. It amused him that outlaws followed the trials and tribulations of wealthy socialites with the same fascination that the law-abiding set had for shows about cops and robbers.

  Chicken waited for the commercial, then planted himself in front of the television. "Walter, this is my homeboy, Humberto." The younger woman's blouse was carelessly buttoned, but Chicken ignored the free show.

  Lamont had gone into another room and now returned carrying a long flat wooden box with an electrical cord which he plugged into a wall socket. Chicken, Humberto, and Lamont all sat down around a glass-topped table. Humberto noticed the multiple straight scratches left by single-edge razor blades. Lamont opened the hinged box to reveal a red, LED, digital display crystal, a one-by-two-inch stainless-steel rectangle, various knobs, and a compartment full of glass slides.

  "Let's see the shit," Lamont said.

  The girl on the couch raised her head as if she were a Labrador retriever and someone had just said, "Ball."

  Humberto put a kilo on the table. Lamont opened one end. The inside of the paper wrapping had a number on it: 249. Humberto hid his discomfort. He didn't know the bundles were numbered. This could be a problem.

  Lamont put a small amount of the cocaine on one of the glass slides and chopped it up very fine. He put the slide on the rectangle of steel inside the box and flipped a switch. The LED display, which had been blinking dashes, showed the temperature in Fahrenheit degrees.

  "This'll take a few minutes to get going," Lamont said. He spooned a second small helping of cocaine into a petri dish, again crushing the crystals into a fine powder. While he worked, he chanted a steady monologue, directed at no one, under his breath. Both women were now looking at them. The younger one licked her lips.

  Lamont poured some methanol into the dish with the cocaine and swirled it around.

  "What's you doing now, boy?" Walter asked.

  Lamont showed him. "I'm looking for complete solubility."

  Walter laughed. "Yeah, so's Marjorie here." He slapped the older woman on her bare thigh, and she laughed indulgently.

  Several minutes passed. The heating element on the hot box glowed red. The display showed 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Lamont's chanting became a song.

  Marjorie untangled herself from the couch and came over to watch. "Looking good, Daddy," she said. "Looking real good."

  Humberto was unconcerned. The common cuts used to dilute coke were sugar-based and would leave golden-brown dots of caramelization when heated. He knew his cocaine was pure. It would melt cleanly and quickly at 198 degrees. He admired Lamont's professionalism. Chicken could learn a thing or two.

  Lamont looked at Marjorie. "Okay, girl, get your stuff."

  Marjorie went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water and a zippered leather kit, such as one might keep manicure tools in. She opened the kit to reveal a syringe and spoon. Lamont measured a quarter gram into her spoon, saying, "The proof of the pudding . . ."

  Marjorie finished his sentence, ". . . is in the tasting."

  She drew water into the syringe and slowly squeezed it into the bowl of the spoon. The white crystals dissolved quickly. She dropped a small wad of cotton into the solution and drew the liquid cocaine back into the syringe through this makeshift filter.

  They waited while she found a vein and slammed the coke directly into her bloodstream. A smile formed on her lips and she seemed to be in the throes of an orgasm.

  "It's good?" Lamont asked needlessly.

  "Oh, yeah. It's very good."

  Lamont lifted his shirt to reveal a money belt and counted out the cash. "Give me a day or two to talk to some of my boys, and we can move some serious weigh
t."

  "You got it, my brother," Chicken said.

  Mutually lucrative business transactions, Humberto noted, made brothers of them all.

  Ten minutes later, Chicken and Humberto were out the door.

  * * *

  Christina had also noticed that the kilos of cocaine were numbered. She unfolded the end flap and positioned the packages on the front page of a week-old copy of the the LA Times. She took many Polaroids, making sure in the last few that the three-digit numbers, the black ink skeletons, and the headline with last week's date all showed plainly.

  She'd also seen Chacón's obituary, read it as she ran her tongue along the inside of her split lip. Stupid little bitch had provided a shopping list of Rico's entire family. Fucking amateurs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ELLEN HAD ARRANGED FOR MUNCH MEET WITH PETEY on Saturday afternoon. First Munch had to get through Rico's funeral on Saturday morning. She wasn't worried about her safety. She would be in the company of hundreds of policemen.

  At nine A.M. , the only bikers visible were the rows of motorcycle cops accompanying the hearse that delivered Rico's body to the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

  Munch had her limo bring her and Asia. They had stopped at Fernando Chacón's house in Lawndale on the way and picked up Fernando, Sylvia, and Angelica. These were all the people closest to Rico as far as Munch knew.

  As far as she knew, which wasn't far enough, apparently, Rico once said most wives of undercover officers didn't want detailed accounts of what their spouses did while on the job. Munch had been the opposite. She often was. Rico had chosen to hold back on her. It was for her own good, he said, and at the time she had believed him.

  At the time.

  There it was again. She hated how doubt had crept into her thoughts.

  It was a bright clear cold day. Snow capped the San Gabriel Mountains visible to the north. The mayor was there, as were several city council members, the city attorney, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney, putting on a show for the troops. Munch wouldn't have known any of them if she had tripped over them.