An Unacceptable Death - Barbara Seranella Page 4

  The top right-hand drawer of the desk yielded pictures. She started to select a few and then stopped. Maybe his daughter or his father and brothers would want to have first pick. The bottom drawer also had pictures in it, or rather a single large manila envelope full of snapshots.

  She pulled them out and fanned them across the desktop, wondering why these weren't with the others. She imagined there would be many unanswered questions in the days to come.

  The pictures were of various family members. Fernando and Cruz in the driveway of the Lawndale house. Rico's ex, Sylvia, and daughter, Angelica, taken as they got in a car outside their house in Los Feliz. This dated them. The move to the Los Feliz house had been two months ago.

  Other photos were of Rico's brothers and their families. Several were shots of older Mexican men and women who might have been aunts and uncles. judging by the unpaved roads and the laundry drying on the bushes, these were taken in Mexico. There were also pictures of her and Asia, even one of Jasper. She looked hard at the photos, trying to remember the occasion. She wasn't smiling for the photograph and neither was Asia, which was really odd. The kid was such a ham.

  Munch went back over the other pictures and noticed that none of the subjects had smiled for the camera or even looked directly at it. Two honks broke through her thoughts. Ellen's signal.

  Munch pocketed Rico's address book and put the pictures back where she had found them. She made for the bathroom off the hallway between the two bedrooms. It had a door that led to the backyard. Rico's brush was on the sink counter, lying there as if he had just put it down. Long strands of black hair trailed from the bristles. She couldn't help but notice how much longer they were than Rico's own hair as she let herself out the back door, but she had no time to ponder their source now.

  She came around the side of the house, crouching low so as to be concealed by the retaining wall that separated the pool from the steep bank of ivy. She thought briefly of the rats that lived in the undergrowth as she headed toward the far side of the garage.

  Rolls of chain link and odd-sized lengths of two-by-fours were piled helter-skelter against the outer garage wall. Weeds grew in between the metal and wood. One misstep could bring the mess tumbling apart noisily. The last thing she wanted was for whoever had caused Ellen to give the warning signal to catch her.

  Car doors slammed one after the other and Munch hazarded a peek around the edge of the garage wall.

  A van and a car had pulled into the driveway. The van, according to the lettering 0n the side, belonged to a locksmith, the car was a blue Ford Mustang, a Shelby. She'd locked the front door after herself, but the alarm was still turned off. Shit. She'd made it easy for them. Two men got out of the car—one was a longhair, the other clean-cut—and waited for the locksmith. They all headed for the front door and out of her line of vision. The locksmith carried his toolbox, the two other men carried cardboard file boxes. The boxes were empty, judging by the way they handled them. She waited until the three men had turned the corner, then made a break up the driveway.

  Ellen started the engine when Munch was almost to the passenger door. "Those were cops, right?"

  "I guess," Munch said. "Pretty nice ride for a cop. Those Shelby Mustangs go for three times the rate of a regular Mustang, and those aren't cheap to begin with."

  "They took the mail right out of the box." Ellen swung into the lane with a wide U-turn, taking them past the house again. "Isn't that a federal crime, to mess with the mail?"

  "A lot of rules don't apply to cops." Munch wished she'd thought to check Rico's mail. "Go slow," she told Ellen as they passed the house. The locksmith was working on the dead bolt. The other two were joking with each other as they waited. She would have loved to stay and give them the evil eye, but it was time to pick up Asia at school and explain why their lives had changed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ELLEN DROVE MUNCH BACK TO HER CAR. MUNCH WAS quiet on the trip over, staring out the window, contemplating a sad future. She had told Cruz that they would get through this, but only because she knew he wouldn't ask how.

  Asia's school bus would be dropping her off soon. Ellen offered to come along, Munch didn't hesitate to accept. She'd done her share for Ellen in the past and then some. Ellen made the favor easier by offering. She knew how difficult it was to ask for help, how bad it felt when someone told you no after you'd screwed your courage up and asked.

  Telling Asia was going to be rough. She understood much better than most kids what death meant and how forever it was.

  When Munch's mom had died, she was only a year older than Asia was now. Walking around school after that, it was as if a force field projected from her. She was the kid whose mom had died. That scary, unknown prospect kept everyone from coming too close.

  Now Munch understood that the isolation she'd felt hadn't been intended to hurt her. The teachers had probably been worried about saying the wrong thing. Or maybe they thought by not bringing the subject up, Munch wouldn't think about her orphan status so much. None of Munch's young friends could help her either. None of them had lost a parent, and most of them had two to begin with.

  Munch quickly learned that people's sympathy had limits. Most people who asked how she was had only wanted to hear, "Fine."

  That was still true.

  When adults took the risk of addressing her situation, it was to praise her for being tough, for moving on. She had begun getting in fistfights at school, her grades should have slipped, but the teachers went easy on her. Not that there had been anyone in her life to read or miss the signs.

  Sometimes, young Munch slipped away from school in the middle of the day. Once, while rambling along in an alley, she came across a gate strung with barbed wire. Not sure how serious she was, she ran her wrists across the sharp wire spikes. Enough to scratch the skin. The next time, she drew blood. At ten years old, she didn't know what she was trying to accomplish. She was staying with doper friends of her mom who barely noticed when she came and went, never asked her to account for her time, and let her eat whatever she could scrounge.

  When she got home that day, she didn't wash the wounds and wore short sleeves to school the next morning. No one asked about the lines of scabs crisscrossing her wrists. Her invisibility continued, as did her survival/destruction instincts.

  When Flower George stepped up to be Munch's dad, she was open to suggestion. The same had been true when she started using. Strange as she knew it might sound, drugs had saved her or at least given her a greater purpose. Then the booze and narcotics had joined the pantheon of her life's love/hate relationships. Her life was full of yins and yangs, and never short of extreme.

  Even now, twenty years later, Munch had to remind herself that suicide wasn't an option, not if she was buying into the theory that there was a Higher Power with a plan. Some days it was harder than others.

  "What are you thinking about?" Ellen asked.

  "My mom. I wish you could have met her."

  "Me, too," Ellen said as they pulled into the gas station to wait for the school bus. "How are you going to tell Asia about this?"

  "I thought we'd go to a park, maybe that one on Alla Road, near the Marina Freeway."

  They watched the traffic go by. Munch wondered where everyone was going and who would make it.

  "Who told you when your mom died?" Ellen asked.

  "I was in school when it happened. Miss Hyde's class, fourth grade." Munch remembered Miss Hyde vividly. She wore her black hair in a beehive, painted her unsmiling lips with dark red lipstick, wore her dresses mid-calf, and encased her feet in sheer stockings and black patent leather pumps. Miss Hyde was the polar opposite of Munch's beatnik, free-spirited mother Gloria.

  Mama wore her hair long and free, didn't believe there was such a thing as too much black eyeliner, and wouldn't be caught in a skirt and heels if her life depended on it.

  The mother Munch remembered (and those memories grew more intangible with each passing year) dressed in flowing gypsy c
lothes, smoked like a diesel truck, and didn't believe in bras, war, or marriage. She also loved her drugs and died on a stranger's couch, choking on her own vomit with her shirt on inside out. If she had been wearing panties, they never surfaced.

  Flower George was not above using those small horrid details of her mother's passing to his advantage. Say, for instance, if he needed her unbridled tears to perpetrate one of his scams. That device stopped working after the first few times. Then Munch was immune to his words and he had to figure other ways for her to earn her keep. Munch stared out the window, replaying the moment she had learned she was a motherless child. "Miss Hyde told me the principal wanted to see me, but she wouldn't say why. She called me honey and put her hand on my shoulder. I should have known then something was up. She was never nice to anyone."

  Ellen nodded. "Yeah, that's always a big giveaway, when people are suddenly too friendly."

  "I went to see the principal. She was a big, bosomy woman. Old.

  Old to us then, like she could be someone's grandma. She was probably in her forties. Mrs. Adams. The secretary led me into Mrs. Adams"s private office, then closed the door behind her, leaving just the two of us alone. Mrs. Adams was standing by her desk. 'Mi—randa,' she said, ‘I have some sad news."

  "Sad news?" Ellen slammed her palm to her forehead. "She actually said that?"

  "Well, she was right. It was pretty fucking sad. What should she have done? Line up all the kids at assembly and announce, ‘Everyone with a living mother take a step forward. Not so fast, Miranda.' "

  Ellen laughed, a privilege of being a member of the dead mothers club.

  "She just came right out with it and said, 'Your mother has died. I'm sorry.' Then she held her arms out to me and I realized I was supposed to let her hug me, so I ran into her big chest and buried my face there."

  "You think it made her feel better?" Ellen asked.

  "Probably. I was ten. I sure didn't get what death meant. How final it was. I had to take my cues from the grown-ups around me."

  "I feel like I'm still doing that," Ellen said.

  "I hear you."

  "The more you know, the more you know you don't know."

  "You got that right, babycakes." Munch looked into the near future, the next hour. That was as far as she cared to go for the moment. "Yep, that's best. That's how I'll do it. just come right out with it."

  "Hug her first."

  "I don't know about that. I don't want her scared of my hugs."

  Ellen nodded. "Like they're harbingers of bad news."

  Munch sputtered a surprised laugh and looked at her friend as if she had just begun speaking in tongues.

  "What?" Ellen said. "I read more than the National Enquirer."

  "Of course." No doubt during one of her stays at the University of Corrections.

  Asia's bus pulled up, a moment later she skipped off. When she saw her mom and Aunt Ellen, she smiled and waved. Munch would have given the world not to have to ruin this day.

  They stopped at Baskin-Robbins and got ice cream cones. Asia had vanilla with sprinkles. Munch got a scoop of pralines and cream. Ellen had rocky road. Munch waited until they were all seated on a bench overlooking the sandbox.

  Munch's ice cream had pretty much melted down her hand. Asia and Ellen were taking the last bites out of their cones. Ellen looked at Munch, probably wondering when Munch would feel the time was right.

  Munch threw away her cone, took a sip of cold water from the drinking fountain and rinsed her hand. She allowed herself to be captivated momentarily by the water swirling down the drain. Sometimes life was best experienced one freeze frame at a time.

  The nuns at Asia's school would tell her that the angels had taken Rico home. Or that her deceased loved one was looking at the face of God. Munch couldn't choke those words out. Those sentiments required acceptance, a reconciliation with laws of fate, surrender. She wasn't anywhere near that state of grace, more like a state of astonishment that something like this had happened. That, with all her clean living and good deeds and correct moral choices, Whoever was in charge had allowed this shit.

  Goddamn it, it wasn't fair.

  Fair. Listen to her. Munch knew better than to expect fair. But she was not going to explain to her daughter why it made any kind of sense. Because it didn't. It just didn't.

  She rejoined Asia and Ellen by the swing set. She brushed back Asia's brown curls from her eyes and sat down beside her. "Honey, I have some sad news."

  Asia was more quizzical than apprehensive.

  Munch looked at Ellen, then back at her daughter. "Some really, really terrible news."

  She had Asia's full attention.

  "You know how Mace St. John came over real early this morning?"

  Asia poked a small finger up her nose, nodding as she itched or picked or whatever she'd suddenly gotten so intent on doing. "He found out that something happened to Rico and wanted to tell me in person. I don't know how and I don't know why yet, but Rico got killed. He's dead."

  "No he's not," Asia said.

  Munch nodded slowly. She didn't want to keep saying the words. Terror flashed unmistakably before the tears burbled from Asia's brown eyes. She looked to her mother for . . . what? For something. Munch knew she was supposed to supply more to the moment, but she had nothing. She was screwing this up.

  "He loved you both very much," Ellen said.

  "Then why did he have to die?" Asia asked. "Is this going to happen every time now?"

  Munch couldn't speak. Her whole body ached and she felt tired, the act of keeping her eyes open taxed her. How nice it would be to curl up and sleep.

  Asia folded her arms across her chest. "I wish he was here."

  Munch unwrapped her daughter's arms and fit them around her neck. She hugged her daughter to her as if she were drowning. "Me, too, kiddo. Me, too."

  As Asia sobbed into her chest, Munch realized that this was going to be like kicking an addiction. Unable to take comfort in the only thing that could give her comfort. If Rico weren't dead, he would be the person she would call about this. It was his shoulder she yearned to cry on. But that wasn't going to happen, was it? They would have to make do with what was left.

  * * *

  The first night . . .

  Munch moved to what had been Rico's side of her bed; his scent was on the pillow. A poor substitute. She got up, stripped the bed, and washed the sheets and pillowcases with extra bleach. He no longer had a side. He was gone and she needed to get used to that.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Asia climbed in bed with Munch. Munch pretended she was asleep. Jasper groaned once, then settled his head on Munch's leg. Asia's little hand reached over to pat Munch's back. Munch waited until they were both snoring, then let her tears fall silently into the pillowcase. She drew a deep breath and felt it shudder her chest on exhale, as if everything inside were hanging in tatters. She'd never felt so fragile before and she didn't like it. She had to be strong for all of them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE DAY AFTER . . .

  At the IA officer's request, Munch went to see Bayless. They made an appointment to meet at his Parker Center office in downtown Los Angeles at ten that morning.

  She gave her name at the desk and then waited by the potted palms.

  Two minutes later, Bayless stepped off one of the elevators. The cop at the front desk gave her a visitor's badge to pin to her shirt. Bayless escorted her upstairs. It was her first time on the sixth floor. He offered her coffee. She declined. He poured himself a cup from the Mr. Coffee machine on top of his filing cabinet.

  She noticed the thick gold wedding band on his finger. "How long have you been married?"

  "Three years."

  "Not your first, I take it."

  "No, no, no." He chuckled as he spoke, as if she had stumbled on a source of amusement for him.

  "I've never been married," Munch said.

  "What about your daughter's father?"

  She looked at hi
m a moment, surprised that he knew she had a daughter. Maybe it was to her advantage. "He's dead, so's Asia's birth mom. It's been her and me since she was a little baby."

  Bayless nodded, taking it in. Munch knew full well why she was telling him all this. To make herself more real to him. So he wouldn't be able to brush her or her questions aside so easily. She looked at the backs of the picture frames on his desk. He kept the faces of his loved ones pointed toward him. She wondered about that. Not on a shelf for the world's benefit, proof that he had people, but private and only for him. She wasn't sure if she liked that or not.

  "You got kids?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "How many?"

  He looked up and to his left. Munch wondered if he needed a moment to count them all. "Two boys. Two girls. And a girl."

  "So three girls." Munch wondered if the guy was stupid, pretending to be stupid, or if the third daughter had arrived much later. Maybe he'd been used to having two daughters for more years and with a previous wife. She noticed a pair of tiny bronzed shoes weighing down a stack of closed files. "How old is the baby?"

  "Almost four." He took a sip of his coffee, then placed the mug carefully on an envelope, nearly positioning it perfectly inside a previous ringed brown stain. "You're not here to talk about me."

  She watched the steam rise from the windowsill. It had been cold and wet that morning, but now the sun was breaking through. She wondered if, four years down the road, if someone asked her if she had ever been married, would she need to pause a moment and think about it? Would she look vaguely skyward and say something like, I was engaged once, briefly.

  "Ms. Mancini?"

  "What?"

  "What do you think happened to Detective Chacón?"

  "I sent him to his death."

  He folded his hands in front of him. "How did you do that?"

  "I was hoping you could help me figure that out."

  "If you're serious, there are ways you can help."

  "Whatever it takes."

  "Fine," he said. "Tell me what you know."