Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (11 page)

"No, it only takes a few seconds to trap the
call. Let me know when and if it happens, and I'll handle it from
there."

"Fine. I really don't want to give this guy any
more power than I have to. I don't even want to think about it
anymore. Last night, I scared the shit out of Asia. Every time the
phone rings now, my heart races. But what really pisses me off is
that rattling me is more than likely just what he wants."

"You're probably right. It doesn't hurt to take
precautions."

"I am, I have, and believe me, I will."

When the school van arrived, Munch walked Asia to its
door. How many times had she just let the kid run out there? And how
many times when she was busy with a customer or on the phone had she
scarcely given the driver or the van a second look? After Asia
climbed in back and strapped herself in, Munch came around to the
driver's window. The driver was Mr. Mars, an affable black man with
gold in his front teeth and a ready laugh.

"How you doing today?" Munch asked.

"
Fine. Fine," he said. "Yourself?"

"Not so good." She lowered her voice so
that Asia wouldn't overhear and then recounted the events of
yesterday, beginning with the note found on Asia's jacket, and
culminating with the threatening call.

Mr. Mars seemed to age a bit, with some of the light
going out in his eyes, his usual smile fading.

"I tell you what I'm going to do," he said.
"I'm gonna bring these children to school today and wait. I
won't leave until each and every one of them is safely back in the
arms of their parents."

Munch squeezed his arm, choked out a thanks. He
patted her hand and told her to try not to worry

At eight-thirty she went on a test drive in a
Chrysler New Yorker that had a noise in the rear end that worried the
customer. The noise turned out to be a bad tire. The tread had
separated, making a thump. There was also a bad shimmy at forty. It
never ceased to amaze her what vehicle owners failed to notice.

A familiar black Mercedes was pulling into the
station when she returned. She hoped it was there for gas only but
that wasn't going to be the case.

The Mercedes drove past the pumps and headed for the
lube bay. She gave the Chrysler tire job to Carlos, who was happy
enough to make the ten bucks. Not like Stefano, who felt changing oil
and mounting tires were beneath his dignity

Her first impulse was to duck into the storeroom and
wait out the guy in the Mercedes. But, of course, she wasn't going to
do that. She hated it when the other mechanics sat on their asses,
putting out the thousand-yard stare when undesirable customers pulled
in for service. Not dealing with a problem was the coward's way of
making it go away and didn't always work. Besides, Lou had named her
service manager and would expect her to handle this guy.

She stuck her grease rag in her back pocket and went
out to see what "Frank" Fahoosy's complaint was this time.
The name on his registration was Farhood Fahoosy. He told Pauley that
his family were friends of the Shah and had to flee Iran five years
ago when the Ayatollah took over in '79.

And you believed him? Munch had wanted to ask but
didn't. It seemed like every Persian she met claimed a close personal
relationship with the deposed ruler.

Fahoosy pulled up to the first lube bay got out of
his car, and stood by his rear tire, his dark eyebrows raised and
lips pursed in an expression of exasperation. Like many of the Middle
Eastern men who frequented the station, Fahoosy was wickedly
handsome. Black hair and eyes so dark that there was no distinction
where pupil ended and iris began. He trained those exotic eyes on her
now.

"Problem?" she asked.

Lou had also seen Fahoosy pull up and was standing in
the doorway of the office, waiting for Munch to communicate whether
she needed him or not. She locked eyes with her boss and made a
slight upward lift of her head. Lou caught her meaning and
approached.

"This is unacceptable," Fahoosy said,
pointing to his rear tire. She looked down at the chrome rim and
wished she'd never sold this guy a set of tires. The negotiations for
the low-profile Pirellis had taken half a morning, and he had managed
to get the spin-balancing thrown in for free. At least she had
thought far enough ahead to pretend she charged for valve stems, too.
Lou walked over and stuck out his hand. "Frank, how are you?"

Fahoosy took the proffered hand, his cuff pulling
back to reveal a watch heavy with diamonds and gold chunks. According
to his business card he was a producer. In Los Angeles that could
mean many things, including nothing.

"This tire needs to be balanced again," he
said. "It was not done properly and now bounces me all over the
road."
 
Munch looked down at
the wheel in question and noticed the lead wheel weight near the
valve stem. She tugged at Lou's sleeve and pointed at the weights.

"
Just a second, Frank," Lou said, and
pulled Munch over to the side. "What?"

"I never balanced that tire," she told him,
speaking softly so he would have to lean closer. "On a chrome
rim like that, I always put the weights on the inside so they don't
show. "

"What are you saying? The guy swapped tires to
get a free balance job?"

"That's right."

"Look, just go ahead and do it. It'll only take
you a few minutes and it'll get the guy out of our hair. " Lou
was of the school that any customer was a good customer.

"That's not the point," she said. She was
angry now . . . mostly at herself for letting greed overpower
caution. When Fahoosy had first come in, she'd seen the obvious clues
to the guy's nature: the wire coat hanger where the antenna used to
be and the key scrapes up one door. She'd also seen four bald tires
and gone out of her way to be nice to the guy. She had ignored the
signs of his unpopularity had given him the benefit of the doubt. As
a rule, Munch let her compassion to her fellow man go only so far,
especially at the workplace. Fahoosy had also burned Pauley out of a
wax job by stopping payment on his check—a fact that only surfaced
with yesterday's mail. Now this.

"C'mon, Frank," Lou said, clapping the guy
on the back as if they were old friends. He could do that, too.
Pretend as if he liked someone for the good of the business. It hurt
her face to smile at Fahoosy, but she did. Lou expected her to rise
to any occasion.

"Let's let her work," he said now, "and
I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

Munch waited until the two men were out of sight
around the corner before she opened the trunk. The spare tire wasn't
even bolted down. A mass of loose videotapes surrounded it. Movies
with titles like Naughty Nurses and Deep and Deeper. Figured. Munch
thought of her own brief career in film. Flower George had set it up
with this guy who drove a Corvette—a convertible. He was a young
guy too, and dressed sharp—not the regular sort of man who waved
her to his car for a quick exchange of what he wanted for what she
needed.

The guy said he could spot talent. Photogenic gold.
He said she had it, and she had let herself believe for one brief,
exhilarating moment that maybe she had found a way out of her life.
That he was going to show her some magical escape from old men's
groping hands, her father's included. His being the worst. She had
been dumb enough to go for the so-called filmmaker's line. No, not
dumb, she corrected herself. Take the judgment out of it. If there
was one thing she tried to communicate to the women she sponsored, it
was to have compassion for their former selves and to treat their
current selves as if they were someone they loved. Fake it till you
make it, she'd tell them when they would call, crying how difficult
it was to change so much about their lives. She counseled her
"babies" in the same manner she had been counseled, by
sharing her experience, strength, and hope. She told newly sober
women that they didn't get screwed up all at once, and that they
wouldn't find their issues magically resolved all at once either.
When she told them these things, she was also reminding herself.

So, no, she hadn't been dumb so much as she had been
naive back then. Oh sure, at sixteen she had felt old enough for
anything and plenty world-wise. But now, with a twenty-eight-year-old
woman's perspective it was clear to her how young sixteen really was.
No match for some slick guy with a pearly smile and earnest eyes,
who, judging by his car and clothes, had his shit pretty well
together. And he was telling her she was beautiful—had something
special. The very thing she suspected and was trying to convince
herself of at the time. Somehow he had known how to prey on that.

She had gone with him to his "studio." He
told her what to do and she let him direct her. Later, drowning her
shame at the bar, she had wondered if there had even been film in his
camera or if that was part of the lie. He never called back. For
years afterward she had sneaked surreptitious glances at the covers
of the sex rags they sell from the corner vending machines. She
always looked at the girls' faces on the covers, scared spitless that
one day she would see her own looking back at her with her tongue
curled provocatively and eyes half-closed in a come-hither-and-do-me
look.

How would she live that one down if the photos were
to surface now?

It wasn't as if she didn't admit to most of her past
life openly, especially when it would help someone else, like at an
A.A. meeting. Even then she liked to work up to the worst parts.
People liked to act as if they were cool with anything. Hey it's the
eighties, they'd say But really you never knew. Of course, an
audience of recovering alcoholics and addicts tended to be a much
more tolerant crowd than, say the PTA.

Garret knew. She would never enter into a close
relationship with a man without telling him her history. He had taken
the news of her past almost too well. She suspected it thrilled him a
little, to be with such a former bad girl.

For the most part, it was safer to just keep your
mouth shut about certain things. Flower George had taught her that,
too. But then again, if the story of her past came out, so be it.
Might even be liberating. One less thing to hide. Another advantage
she had was that stacked against all she'd been through, there
weren't that many big deals.

She slid the tire toward her and stuck her fingers
through the center hub hole. Lifting a tire out of a trunk was
awkward. No leverage could be applied; she had to rely solely on arm
muscles. She could have asked one of the guys to help, but she never
did unless it was something they would be asking for help with if the
situation were reversed. Like putting a standard transmission back in
after a clutch job or setting a cylinder head down over a new gasket.
Nobody was ever going to accuse her of not pulling her weight.

Her size made it necessary for her to employ a
variety of tricks when lifting. If a vehicle was on the rack, she
could handle even one-ton truck tires by balancing them on her leg
first and then bouncing them to the ground. But for now all she could
do was grunt a little and heave. Fortunately the Mercedes rim was an
alloy and lighter than its steel counterparts.

She leaned the spare against the back bumper and shut
the trunk. The inside of the rim was dirty with old grease and road
grit, further proving her theory that Frank had pulled a switcheroo.
The shop's brand of wheel weights were still hammered firmly on the
inside lip of the rim. She jacked up the back of the Mercedes, zipped
off the lug bolts with her air gun, and put the wheel she had already
balanced back on the car. It would have been less work just to
balance the swapped spare, but there was principle involved, and that
always took precedence over effort.

She rolled the tire that had been on the car into the
office and leaned it against the wall. She was letting the jack down
when Frank and Lou walked up the driveway holding Styrofoam cups from
the bakery next door.

Lou had a cup in each hand. "All set?" he
asked, handing her one already doctored just the way she liked it.

"Take it away" she said.

After Fahoosy left, Lou went back in the office to
reconcile the morning's books and figure out his next gas load. A
moment later he called Munch's name. She came to the doorway.

He pointed at Fahoosy's spare. "What's this
about?"

"
The detail guys must have forgotten to put that
back into Fahoosy's trunk. They'll have to call him later. He can
pick it up when he comes in to make good on the check he gave them."

"This is the kind of shit I'm talking about,"
he said. "You go out of your way to find trouble."
 

Chapter 11

 
M
unch started
to offer a defense but stopped when the phone rang. Lou answered with
the standard "Bel-Air Texaco." She took the opportunity to
walk away. She grabbed the key to a Ford Mustang off the work order
and read the customer's complaint. The engine was stalling at
stop-lights, cutting out on acceleration, and idling roughly. Sounded
like it had a misfiring cylinder.

The Mustang was parked next to Pauley's wash stall by
the north driveway There was a hose there and it was in a far corner
of the lot.