She started it up and pulled the spark plug wires off one at a time till she found the dead cylinder.
"You ever use a scope?" Jack asked her, watching from the office.
"Never needed one," she said.
"Lou will show you how to hook it up." Jack lumbered down the stairs. "Lou, come over here. Show her how this contraption works." Then to Munch he added, "It'll save you from getting shocked."
Lou demonstrated how to hook up the various wires and how to read the monitor. He threw her the owner's manual. "Here, read this. In a week, you'll be telling me how to work it."
She held the manual in her hand and acknowledged his help with a mumbled, "Thanks." By tomorrow she'd know more than he ever did. She'd always been good with books. It used to blow Wizard's mind how she remembered everything she read. He said she should run the numbers, because she'd never have to write anything down. She preferred to fix things.
Using the diagnostic machine, she shorted out a cylinder at a time. Then she traced the one that didnt alter the idle speed when the spark to it was diverted. A compression test on the dead cylinder confirmed her suspicions. She told Jack the head would have to come off, a valve was burnt or stuck open.
"I'1l call the customer," he said.
Ten minutes later, Jack emerged from the office.
"The guy wants to come over and see for himself. Think you can handle a valve job?" he asked her. "The heads are heavy I don't want to see you trying to lift them by yourself. You're gonna hurt yourself if you do. Ask me or Lou to help you. Thats what were here for, to help each other. Okay?"
"I never needed help before." She wiped clean the wrench in her hand. "I've always managed."
"Well, we're team players here."
They were interrupted by the phone ringing.
"I'll get it," Lou called. He picked up the extension in the lube room. "Jack, this lady says she's a member of AA and wants to know if we're AA approved." He laughed and returned to the call.
"She meant to say triple A." Jack smiled. "Happens all the time. Lou just likes to embarrass the people. Listen, I know he's an asshole, but if you get past that, you could learn a lot from him."
"I'll try" she promised.
She heard a car pull into the driveway behind her. Before she could turn around, Jack was greeting the customer.
"Well, here's a familiar face," he called out over her shoulder. "Hey Ruby. What can we do for you, doll?" He walked over to the waitress's car and leaned into her window.
Ruby held up her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. "Good morning, jack. My car is jiggling again. Do you think I need another tune-up?"
"Probably just an adjustment. We tuned it a month ago." He straightened. "Have you met my new mechanic?" He presented Munch proudly. "As a matter of fact, I have. She's been into the restaurant a few times, but I never caught her name."
"Daisy, I want you to meet Ruby. Take good care of her, she makes the best coffee in the valley"
Munch nodded and the corners of her mouth did a quick upward jerk.
"Her car is idling rough. Hook it up to the scope and see what you can do."
Munch rolled the scope out to the Datsun and hooked it up as she had been shown, then she got a glass of water and set it on the air cleaner.
"Start it up," she told Ruby. Ignoring the scope, she adjusted the carburetor till the water in the glass stopped shaking.
"Wow, my car's never run this smooth," Ruby said.
"You can shut it off now," Munch told her.
Ruby got out of the car and stood near Munch while she disconnected the scope.
"How many days do you have?"
"What do you mean?"
"How much time sober?"
"I don't drink." Munch moved away from her before she tried anything.
"I'm in AA, too," Ruby said.
"You mean Triple A."
"No, AA. That's why I was at the meeting, at the church."
"Oh, uh, well, congratulations, I guess."
"Isn't that why you were there?"
"No, I was there to see the priest. I ain't no alcoholic, no offense?
Ruby patted her arm. "I'm not trying to push anything on you. But if you're trying to get clean, you're going to need some help. There's another meeting tonight at the high school. Would you like to go with me?"
"I got plans tonight."
Ruby opened the trunk of her car and fished through a cardboard box. "Here's some meeting directories with the times and addresses of the meetings held near here. The thinner directory is for Narcotics Anonymous meetings; there's a younger crowd that goes there. You know, in case your plans change." She pushed another card in Munch's hand. "You might want to read this."
After she drove off, Jack walked over with a middle-aged man wearing white bell bottoms and Elvis Presley sideburns. His polyester shirt was open in front, revealing graying chest hairs and a thick gold chain.
Munch studied the man for two seconds before deciding. Fifty-plus.
They came to a stop at the fender of the Dodge. Jack looked up from his clipboard. "Daisy this is the owner of the Charger. Show him what you found." He went back to work on the estimate.
The customer leered at her. "Daisy are you the head mechanic?" He laughed and elbowed Jack.
"Be sure to get all my nuts tight, honey"
Jack pressed his lips together. "Does this look right to you?" he asked, handing her the work order.
He pointed to the estimate price. She noticed where he had changed a one to a seven.
"That should cover it," she agreed. She liked his way better.
Jack had the man sign the estimate and after the guy left, he turned to Munch. "What a pig."
"Yeah," she said. "I hate pigs."
11
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MACE CALLED CAROLINE Rhinehart. His heart quickened at the sound of her voice, and it took him a second or two to remember why he had called.
"The investigation involving the Mancini girl has heated up."
"What's happened?"
"It's been linked to another homicide. I need everything you've got: friends, family, haunts."
"Let me grab her file."
Mace pictured slender fingers opening the file cabinet. He wondered if she played the piano. He had a nineteenth-century practice piano aboard the Bella Donna. It had taken many trips to the music store to get it tuned. The wooden harp that held the strings had been almost hopelessly warped from years of bouncing around on the back of a horsedrawn wagon. That's how they gave lessons in those days, he had learned, they took the little piano with them from farm to ranch.
Caroline returned to the phone. "Is she a suspect in the other homicide?"
"Certain physical evidence links her to the crime."
"When did this other homicide take place?"
"End of January"
"Oh." There was a pause as he heard her shuffle papers. "I was assigned to her in December. I had her on surprise testing. Except for alcohol, she tested clean, mostly."
"Mostly?"
"I'll get back to that. I helped her get a job at the Venice Cab Company Her employer was a man named Orson Ozwald, everyone calls him Wizard.
"She was doing well, reporting to our appointments, showing up for work. I really had hopes for her, there was always a certain innocence to her. Despite the fact that she grew up on the streets."
"What about other family?" Mace asked.
"The only family I show was the father, now deceased according to you."
"The cab company is on Brooks and Electric, right?"
"Do you want the number?"
"Nah, that won't be necessary" He paused for a while over the telephone, trying to think of some thing more to say Caroline filled in the silence.
"I tested her again last week. As I said, she'd been testing clean. Well, the first test anyway The second was last week." She hesitated a second, then admitted: "It was dirty Heroin."
"Were you going to violate her?"
"Probably not, scare her maybe. I like to give everyone a chance."
He chewed on her answer for a minute. Did she really mean everyone? "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
He listened till he heard her hang up. Then he turned to his waiting partner.
"Let's get out of here."
"Where are we going?"
"We're off to see the Wizard."
***
Plumes of sparks splashed into the air at the far corner of the open yard of the Venice Cab Company as they pulled in the driveway A large man bent over the empty gas tank of a Plymouth, at work with his torch. His dark blue jacket with the Ford Cobra emblem on one sleeve and the American flag on the other was pocked with burn holes. The top half of his wide ebony face was concealed by a tinted welder's visor. He lifted it when the detectives approached.
Mace imagined that in another time, the big black man would have been the village blacksmith, pounding out horseshoes, keeping his iron hot in vats of billow-stoked coals.
The detectives presented their gold shields. Wizard waved the badges away "I know who you
is." He said this unsmiling, but met their eyes without flinching.
"We're investigating the murder of George Mancini. You probably knew him as Flower
George."
"I didn't know that asshole as anything." He turned off the valve on his propane tank and the flame abruptly died. He set down his torch and reached for a piece of steel from a pile on the ground. Turning his back to the detectives, he proceeded with his work.
The detectives followed him to a workbench and watched him spin the handle of a large vise till its jaws opened wide enough to accommodate the iron bar in his hand. "'We're seeking an employee of yours, Munch Mancini," Cassiletti said. "When did you see her last?"
The big man faced them. A muscle under his left eye twitched once, almost imperceptibly before he answered, "I haven't seen her all week. Is she okay?"
Mace twisted his head from side to side, stretching his neck. As he did so, he made a visual sweep of the shop. Against a rear wall sat a bare motorcycle frame. A stout iron ring had been recently welded to the rear strut support; beads of bright silver ringed the junction points awaiting a coat of primer, then a second of lacquer.
"Did she ever ride with any of the Satan's Pride?" he asked.
"I know she liked bikes. I don't know who she hung with outside the shop. They come in here. I do some work on their choppers, modifications, you know."
"Stuff like this?" Mace pointed to the frame in the corner.
Wizard stared back. "I don't think the man would appreciate me discussing his business like that." He grabbed the top of the steel bar he had secured in the vise and pulled down on it. The bench shuddered and the piece of steel bowed in the center.
Mace tried a different tack. "Do you know if Munch was on good terms with her father? Had
the two ever argued?"
"Why do you do me like that?" the big man said. "First you tell me the man's dead, then you want to know if the girl was mad at him. l'll tell you one thing, Flower George wasn't about nothing but hisself. I think he was messing with that girl. She never gave him up, wasn't her way" He removed the steel from the vise and used it to punctuate his words as he spoke. "That girl had a future in the automobile business. She picked it up quick, like none of your business." He set down the piece of iron he had been gesturing with on an old couch that sat against the wall. The water-stained cushions depressed with the weight of it. Mace figured that piece of steel had to weigh a good forty pounds and the man had been waving it around like a majorette's baton. Wizard moved in close to the detectives. Cassiletti took an involuntary step backward. "Why don't you just let it go?" Wizard asked. "Give the girl a break. You can do that."
Mace dropped his chin to his chest and bent slightly at the knees. He took a measure of the big man, looking up at him from a boxer's stance till the whites of his eyes showed beneath his irises. "Give her a message." He held up a hand when Wizard began his protests. "Tell her I just want to know where she got the gun, then all else will be forgotten. Tell her I talked to Miss Rhinehart and I'll square everything." Mace patted the big man on the chest and felt solid muscle.
"Let's get out of here," he told Cassiletti, and they walked slowly to the car.
***
When they were in the car, Cassiletti asked, "Would you do that? Forget the whole case?"
"What have we got?" Mace replied. "A corpse, no weapon, no witnesses, no confession. Of course her prints would be all over the van and the house. She lived there. The best we could hope for is a conviction for joyriding, even that probably wouldn't stick."
"So you'll let her slide?"
"If we play our cards right, she'll help us build our own case. Remember: Reasonable deception. Any criminal dumb enough to provide evidence and testimony against themselves deserves what they get."
***
The Narcotics Anonymous meeting started at 8:30 at a high school in Reseda. Munch slunk in ten minutes late. A large banner that said "WE CARE" was tacked over the chalkboard. She stood by the back door, ready to bolt. She liked the sound of Narcotics Anonymous. It sounded tough and hip. She rolled the words around in her head. The people at the meeting didn't look like any addicts she'd ever known. They were too happy almost glowing. They had to be smoking something, she decided.
A woman stood at a podium at the front of the room and cleared her throat and read some stuff from a plastic-bound folder. Something called, "Who is an addict?" Munch didn't need any help with that question. Who an alcoholic was was another issue entirely The yellow card that Ruby had pushed on her was some kind of test for seeing if you were an alcoholic. The instructions said to answer yes or no. It was a rigged test. Had she ever been arrested for drunk driving? Yes, but she had been off dope that week, so technically she was doing good. Did she ever drink in the morning? Only beer, but that still counted as a yes. Did she ever hide her liquor? Only if she didn't want some asshole ripping her off. Then a bunch of stuff about did drinking ever interfere with work, social, or family relations? She'd left that answer blank. When she got through with the test, it said on the bottom that you only had to answer a few "yeses" to be an alcoholic.
The woman at the podium announced that there would be refreshments at the break. Munch lit a cigarette and looked around the room for an empty seat.
The woman finished reading and the group responded with scattered applause. "Now it says here I'm supposed to introduce the first speaker." She laughed self-consciously. "Gilbert S. will speak for fifteen minutes about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now."
A Chicano man with tattoos showing everywhere that his starched and ironed white t-shirt didn't cover rose from his seat in the first row. The people clapped and whistled when he took his place behind the podium. Munch sat in his vacated chair.
He began by telling a story about the time he was low-riding with his homeboys. "We were dropping reds and drinking Mad Dog." A chorus of appreciative titters rippled through the audience. "The car flipped on the freeway We were going sixty miles an hour and I was thrown clear. At the hospital, the doctors told me that I hadn't suffered any serious injury because I was so drunk. My body was so loose when I hit the road that I just absorbed the impact. If I had been tense, they said, I would have broken bones.
"So I told my homeys, °Listen, man, if you're gonna drive, drink; it'll save your life."' Gilbert waited for the laughter to subside before he continued. He went on to talk about his life of robbing, using, and going to prison. He had been to every penitentiary in California and had spent twelve of his twenty-eight years behind bars. Then, he said, he had found Narcotics Anonymous.
"I'll always be an addict," he said. "Even today when I get a headache, I tell my wife to give me four aspirin cuz two ain't gonna get it."
"Why does everyone keep laughing?" Munch asked the man next to her.
"They identify"
She looked
around the room.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" he asked.
She was surprised to find herself nodding in agreement. The meeting continued. She listened open-mouthed, as if trying to absorb the speaker's words through every orifice in her head.
Gilbert kept his message simple. "Go to meetings or die," he said. "Go to meetings, meetings, meetings, and don't use in between."
At the end of his talk, everyone clapped. The woman who had read the preamble stood up and said, "We will now observe the seventh tradition." A basket was passed.
Munch watched everyone reach in their pockets and pull out dollar bills. She knew it. They wanted money What a scam.
"Newcomers and visitors for the first time are asked not to contribute," the woman finished.
At the coffee break everyone poured into the parking lot. Munch grabbed a handful of cookies and stood where she could overhear snatches of their conversations:
"How much time you got?"
"Thirty days."
"Great."
"You got a sponsor yet?"
"Henry D. went back out."
"I'm not surprised, the dude wasn't willing to get honest."
"Are you new?" someone asked her.
"I guess so."
"How much time do you have?"
"Four days."
"That's great, keep coming back," the man said.
"Take it a day at a time. Remember, there are no big deals."
The meeting started up again and the second speaker was introduced, a woman who identified herself as Sylvia and said she was a drug addict and an alcoholic. She had been hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt. The psychiatrist at the mental institution where her family brought her told her, "Nine times out of ten, when a person commits suicide they're killing the wrong person."
Munch laughed at that. At the end of the meeting, they all held hands and said a prayer. It started, "Our father who art in heaven . . ." She recoiled in shock. Images of Flower George lying there, stoned and naked; his glass eye staring at her, the other rheumy and oblivious; the gun, hot in her hand, the smell of gunpowder, her ears ringing. All these memories flashed through her head in an instant. She even felt the relief that had come over her, as if the bullets had purged something festering inside her. The woman holding her hand kept a Firm grip, even gave her a little squeeze and mouthed to her, "It's okay" Munch watched the lips of the people around her and picked up the words as they uttered them. On the way to the stretch of leafy roadway shoulder she claimed as home, she threw away the syringes.
No Human Involved - Barbara Seranella Page 10
