Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (6 page)

D.W. parked in a space marked LOADING ZONE.

Munch waited while he got his blue plastic grocer's
basket ready. In the back of the van he had three large square
quilted bags. Each was stamped SANTA MONICA HOSPITAL. When he
unzipped the first bag she saw it was lined with silver insulation
fabric. He removed a rectangular aluminum box and put it in the
basket. Definitely chicken. The second quilted bag contained a cold
meal and from the third carrier he pulled two small cartons of milk
and one of orange juice. He placed all of these in the basket,
started to loop the wire handles over his arm, seemed to think twice
about that, and then grasped them in his hand as if he were carrying
a briefcase.

"This way" he said, as he headed down a
concrete path. She followed.

The morning's newspaper was on the mat. D.W. picked
it up and added it to his care basket. To the right of the door was a
potted geranium; the foliage was wilted and the soil dry. Behind the
dehydrated plant was a spigot and hose.

D.W. knocked on the door. Munch turned the faucet,
found it fully functional, and gave the plant a good drink.

"Yes?" a voice called suspiciously from
behind the door. "Who is it? What do you want?"

"
Meals-On-Wheels," D.W. said. "Robin,
it's me. I brought Munch. You know, the lady mechanic from the gas
station."

Moments passed. D.W. didn't seem unduly alarmed or
impatient. Munch tried not to tap her foot. Then came the sound of a
dead bolt lock being snapped open. D.W. put his hand on the knob,
waited another ten seconds, and opened the door. "We're in,"
he said.

He ushered Munch inside. The house was dark and
smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. She heard D.W. locking the door
behind them and turned sharply, the skin prickling on the back of her
neck.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Kind of a routine we got going," he said.
"Robin doesn't like leaving the door unlocked."

The foyer where they stood looked over a sunken
living room. There was a piano made of dark wood. A large yellow swag
lamp with fringe hung over the piano. It was on but didn't provide
much light.

"Robin?" D.W. called out. "I'm going
to put the food in the kitchen." He stepped down the two marble
stairs leading away from the entry hall. Munch kicked off her greasy
shoes before following D.W. across the thick carpet.

Robin emerged from the back hallway. She was dressed
in a bulky white bathrobe. When she saw Munch, she blinked and gave a
small nod of acknowledgment.

"Hi," Munch said, feeling as if she were
intruding. "We've missed you at the station."

D.W. set down his basket on the kitchen counter. The
woman startled at the noise then cleared her throat. "Sorry,"
she said. "I didn't get much sleep last night." She pushed
back her hair with a skeletal hand.

Munch decided that it would have taken more than one
sleepless night to account for the dark circles under Robin's eyes.
D.W. opened Robin's refrigerator. It was full of boxes similar to the
one he now put there. The door of the fridge was lined with small
cartons of milk and juice. D.W. sneaked a look at Munch, making sure
she registered the implications of all the uneaten food. Robin lit a
cigarette.

Her jumpiness was contagious, the silence only
serving to amplify the tension in the air. "So, how's it been
going?" Munch blurted out, instantly regretting the question.

The gaunt woman laughed and waved her hand in the air
as if to encompass the house. A thin trail of smoke followed the
movement. "I haven't been out much lately. "

Munch shook off the goose bumps dancing up her spine
with a quick hunching and jerk of her shoulders.

"Have you seen Robin's work?" D.W. said. He
flicked on the light. Robin recoiled slightly. Munch saw neatly
bundled bags of trash lined up next to the sink and the blinking
light of the answering machine on the counter. The message counter
showed ten messages. There was a calendar on the wall that was still
turned to last month, September.

"She was on the cover of Omni," he said,
pointing to a framed photograph on the living room wall.

"Do you mind if I look?" Munch asked her,
gesturing to the living room, knowing instinctively that in Robin
Davies's present fragile state it would be disastrous to make any
sudden moves around her.

"Go ahead."

Munch studied Robin's trophy wall. The Omni cover was
framed. It showed Robin gazing into a crystal orb. Blue bolts of
electricity radiated from the sphere. Robin was dressed in an
ethereal gauzy white gown. Her hair fanned up and out from her head
as if suspended in a weightless atmosphere. In addition to the cover
portrait, there were studio head shots, movie stills showing Robin in
various costumes, and cosmetics ads. Robin was beautiful in all of
them. An auburn brunette with green eyes. Eyes that once had been
capable of a mischievous glint but now darted side to side, making
Munch think of a dog who had been beaten and expected more of the
same.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Munch
asked.

Robin looked at the pictures. She didn't speak for a
long time. Munch glanced back at her and saw that the ash had grown
long on her cigarette.

Munch prayed for guidance before she spoke. "What
happened?" she asked softly.

She saw D.W.'s reflection in the glass of one of the
picture frames. He stood very still, a light sheen of sweat on his
forehead. Robin took quick breaths; soon her shoulders were heaving.
A high whimper escaped her throat. Three times she made attempts to
speak before she finally said, "I was . . . he . . . a man . .
." She stopped, swallowed, seemed to dig deeply for a last
reserve of strength. "I was raped. Raped and tortured. Sometimes
I think I was killed."

Tears of empathy filled Munch's eyes and closed her
throat. Robin dropped her voice to a whisper.

"You'll have to go now," she said. "I
still get tired so easily."

D.W. picked up the bags of trash. "I'll see you
next week."

Munch didn't want to leave her. She seemed so damaged
and alone. Surely there was something more she could offer this
woman, some way she could intervene with the tragedy playing out. No
doubt Robin had been made aware of all the counseling services
available to her.

Munch flashed back to her own experiences in the
Emergency Room all those years ago. They'd all been very nice to her,
even though they surely knew who and what she was then. The cop who
had driven her there had waited in the hallway. The nurse had held
her hand while the doctor did that whole rape kit number. And later,
there had been a kind-faced woman who had offered her card and her
ear if Munch needed to talk. But Munch had just walked away on her
own two feet, wanting to put the whole ordeal behind her. At the
time, the only counseling she turned to came in the form of liquid or
powder. She had even managed to turn the incident into a joke with a
few select drinking buddies, laughing and saying, "Next,"
as if it were no big deal, as if nothing could touch her.

"I'm going to give you my home phone number,"
she told Robin now, finding a pad of paper in the kitchen.

D.W. headed for the door. Munch scribbled a note
beside her phone number. Call me, please. We can talk or we can do
more than talk. Whatever it is you need.

When D.W. and Munch were back in the van and heading
for the gas station, D.W. spoke. "She'll never be the same."

"Probably not," Munch said.

"Fucking guy," he said with vehemence.

Munch couldn't help but wonder if D.W.'s emotion was
a little put on. Maybe he pegged her as some sort of raging feminist
and thought this attitude would appeal to her. "He promised her
he would come back."

"The cops didn't catch the guy?"

He looked back at the house. "They didn't have
enough to go on."
 

Chapter 7

 
L
ou was
standing outside by the gas pumps when Munch and D.W. returned.
"Radiator shop called," he said, looking annoyed. "They
said you're looking at a recore."

"You get a price?" she asked.

"Yeah, the numbers are on the desk."

"I'm going to take off," D.W. said.

Lou nodded as if he thought that was a good idea,
then went back to the office.

"See ya later," Munch said, her mind
already turning to the next hurdle, the Ford owner's reaction to the
cost of a new radiator.

The detail guy Pauley was bent over a red Ferrari
using a soft chamois on one of the front wheels. Pauley ran his
detail business out of the station. The tip of a bluish tattoo peeked
out the sleeve of the black T-shirt as he worked the chrome. He
always wore black: black Levi's, black tennis shoes, black jackets.
Carlos called him Johnny Cash behind his back. Pauley's hair was cut
very short. So short that several healed-over scalp wounds showed
through, the largest of which was a horseshoe-shaped scar above his
left ear.

"
You going to start going out with this guy?"
he asked as D.W.'s van pulled away.

"This was about something else," she said.

"It's obvious he's got a thing for you."

"
Yeah, he's a nice guy. "

"But?"

She put a hand on Pauley's muscular shoulder and
picked which truth to tell him. What she said was, "I'm already
seeing somebody." What she thought was, I already have a
fixer-upper house and car. One fixer-upper boyfriend in a lifetime is
enough. Pauley answered as if she'd spoken her thoughts.

"Yeah," he said. "You can do better."
She wondered if she was that transparent.

He straightened and held out his hand. "Give me
your keys," he said. "I'll wash your car. "

She dug them out of her pocket and handed them over.
They bartered wax jobs for repair work, and he still owed her for the
water pump she had replaced on his van the week before.

"I've got to deliver this one," he said,
indicating the Ferrari, "but I'll get to yours before you
leave."

"
You know Diane Bergman? Honda Prelude? Lived on
Chenault?"

Pauley found a spot on the hood of the Ferrari and
bent over it, his chamois working to blend in the blemish. "What
about her?"

"She's dead."

"Yeah?" He still didn't look up. His cheek
hovered above the red glossy paint, checking for imperfections only
he could see. "I didn't know her that well."

Fair enough, she thought. At least Pauley wasn't one
of those types of people who claimed instant kinship with someone
newly dead, thereby diverting sympathy and attention to himself.

She called the owner of the Ford and got an
authorization to do the work. While waiting for the radiator shop to
deliver her parts, she couldn't get Diane Bergman or Robin Davies out
of her mind. Maybe Brentwood wasn't the safe haven people thought.

In the world she grew up in, sexual assaults were
inevitable, like black eyes, and motorcycle injuries. You learned
quickly never to get drunk around strange bikers. Or put yourself in
a position where you were alone in a room with three or more of those
guys. And when it did happen, it did. She had always viewed rape as
an occupational hazard, given bikers' predilection toward it and the
fact that sex was a commodity that she had often bartered. Everybody
she knew got ripped off at one time or another.

And then there was that time with Culley. She had
been sixteen, almost seventeen, and had temporarily left her father's
little slice of hell for what she hoped would be a happier life. She
moved into an apartment building they all called Tortilla Flats. It
was on Rose Avenue, right on the border between the barrio and the
exclusively black ghetto known to the locals as Ghost Town. The
inhabitants of the Flats were a loose band of teens and
twenty-year-olds. Their numbers fluctuated, as people moved on, got
busted, or found religion. There were even a few like Karen, Asia's
birth mother, who had left in the back of a coroner's wagon. It was
also at the Flats that Munch had met Sleaze John, Asia's handsome,
dark-skinned Latino father, although he died somewhere else.

God, she hadn't thought of that group for a long
time, Sleaze, New York Jane, Brian, Gypsy Farmer, all the others. How
many of them were now dead, in jail, or living under a freeway
overpass and advertising their needs on pieces of cardboard?

Culley was much older than the rest of them, possibly
as old as thirty. It only took a moment to relive what he did to her
that afternoon, how it hadn't made sense. Just another experience
that was way behind her now. So many things felt as if they had
happened to another person, the person she used to be. It was easy to
disassociate from all that stuff. She couldn't imagine what it would
feel like to be sexually assaulted now. One thing for certain, she
wouldn't be forgiving and forgetting. No, she'd be damned pissed.

The loudspeaker above her head crackled and then
Lou's voice called her name, announcing she had a call on line two.
She took the call on the extension at the service desk. It was Robin.