An Unacceptable Death - Barbara Seranella

AN UNACCEPTABLE DEATH

Barbara Seranella
2006

For Dr Tse-Ling Fong

PART ONE
Before
and After
 

CHAPTER ONE

MUNUNCH LIKED RICO'S HAIR LONGER. SHE ALSO DUG THE Fu
Manchu mustache he had grown, but she was glad he'd given up on the
scraggly beard. Mexican men should stick to mustaches. It was
Saturday. Asia, Munch's nine-year-old daughter, was at her dance
class. Rico had surprised her with his visit, but that's the way they
had to play it—snatching moments together when they could.

They strolled down the sidewalk, Rico's arm resting
comfortably on her shoulders. He was a foot taller than her own five
feet. They fit together just right.

If she had lived in a nicer neighborhood, she would
have warned her neighbors that this
vatto
-looking
guy was really a cop and in disguise. But between the bikers across
the street, the houseful of probably illegal aliens next to them, the
crazy Okie next door with the inbred daughter, and the alcoholic
divorcée on the other side, it was probably safer for all concerned
to say nothing.

Her WWII-vintage bungalow home was in Santa Monica,
on a street lined with untrimmed palm trees and a few Spanish-style
quasi-adobe houses that had seen better days. This part of Santa
Monica was closer to the gang-hangers of Venice than the pricey shops
on Montana Avenue or the large stately homes on San Vincente
Boulevard. Her little slice of real estate was far enough inland to
be affordable on her auto mechanic's salary and whatever income could
be eked from her limo business. If someone had told her ten years
earlier that she would one day be a homeowner, she would have
wondered what they were on.

Jasper walked ahead of Rico and Munch with his leash
draped across his shoulders. The cocker spaniel looked back
frequently to make sure the humans were keeping up.

"
I'm thinking of getting some tats," Rico
said.

He'd already pierced his ear and had taken to wearing
a small gold sliver of moon stud. She considered his brown skin and
thought red would look good.

"
How about PROPERTY OF MUNCH on your ass?"

"
It's already on my heart."

She laughed. "Good answer."

"
I'm getting a lot of practice being quick on my
feet."

She shuddered against the chill his words brought. It
was hard to think of him out there in the war zone. That world was
dangerous enough without being a spy for the other side. She pulled
away from him and folded her arms across her chest. "How much
longer?" she asked, trying to sound neither impatient nor
worried or upset.

"
I can't say."

She nodded, knowing she would have to be content with
that answer and feeling anything but.

He put his arm back around her shoulders and pulled
her close. "How long we got before the kid comes home?"

"
That I can answer." She made a hand signal
to Jasper indicating it was time to turn around and head home. "The
better part of an hour."

"
I can give you that," he said, picking up
Jasper's leash.

"
Uh-oh." Munch spotted a pit bull coming
their way. The dog was secured by a short chain to its short master;
both were bandy-legged and full of attitude. "Enemy approaching?

Jasper was still in happy-go-lucky mode, tail up,
mouth open in a dog smile, black eyes liquid and trusting.

The pit bull had scars across his face and back. As
he approached, his muscles rippled beneath his short hair. Munch knew
the breed had a bite like a piranha and once they'd sunk their teeth
in their prey, it was darn near impossible to make them let go. She'd
seen the biker across the street use a four-inch nail punch like a
hood prop once when his mastiff got hold of another neighbor's cat.

Jasper finally spotted the approaching danger. He
puffed out his chest, straightened his forelegs, and pawed the
sidewalk with alternating back legs like a bull getting ready to
charge. The hair along his spine sprouted into a Mohawk and he barked
his deep boy bark.

Rico pulled the leash in tight and waited for the
other dog to approach. The pit bull and his master drew alongside
them and then stopped, as both dogs snarled and snapped at each
other. The two men shortened their leashes and the dogs responded by
rising up until both were on their hind legs, lips curled back to
reveal sharp white teeth.

Munch wondered why one of the men didn't just keep
walking on his way, ending the encounter that much sooner. It would
be logical. As if logic dictated the behavior of males in the wild.
She also knew Rico wouldn't back down first.

The owner of the pit bull took a second take on Rico.
"
Essé
," he
said, giving his dog a curt command to sit. "You're Xavier's
homie, right?"

Rico tilted his head in a short upward nod and Munch
saw him instantly transform into street persona. She knew not to call
him by name in case this other guy knew him by something other than
Rico. Rico handed Munch the leash. "Wait here," he said.
"We've got a little business to discuss."

Munch assumed the good-ol'-lady pose, taking a few
steps back and waiting patiently for her man's pleasure. The more
things changed, the more they stayed the same. She'd been pretending
in the old days, too, before she had become a respectable citizen.

Rico and the man communicated in a street mix of
English and Spanish. Barrio Spanish. Rico pulled a ballpoint pen
refill from his coat pocket and found a scrap of paper on the ground.
When he finished writing, he returned the ink cartridge and note to
his pocket. After shaking hands like they were arm wrestling, the two
he-men parted company. The
vatto
gave Munch an up-and-down as if he were picturing her pinned beneath
him with her clothes torn off. She returned the look boldly as if to
say, "Not going to happen."

The guy leered knowingly. Munch wanted to kick him in
the balls. She saw the top of the Virgin Mary's head on his upper
back as he walked away. Guys in prison favored the tattoo, hoping to
put a would-be rapist out of the mood. Probably a tactic that only
worked with Catholics.

"
Who's the charmer?" Munch asked when the
guy was out of earshot.

"
He invited us to a barbecue," Rico said.

"
Oh, great. I'll make some potato salad."

"
You'd be better off developing a case of
amnesia." He grabbed her arm when they got close to her house
and kept them walking past her yard without glancing at it. "Just
to be safe," he said. Munch was all for erring on the side of
caution even as part of her was excited by the action. "Nice
touch with the pen, by the way," she said. Street toughs didn't
carry Parker ballpoints in their shirt pockets like a citizen might.

He chuckled. "It's the little things that keep
you alive."
 
 

CHAPTER TWO

ON SUNDAY, MUNCH WOKE EARLY. IT WASN'T YET EIGHT so
she let Asia sleep, pulled on her bathrobe, and went outside to
retrieve the
LA Times
from her driveway.

Fog shrouded the neighborhood. A fine jeweled mist
clung to her roses and beaded the limo's car cover. The fog wouldn't
burn off until ten. On weekdays, that was long after she had gone to
work in sunnier Brentwood.

She scanned the headlines as she waited for the
coffee water to boil. President Reagan was still talking to Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev, hopefully not about his polyps. The country
had learned last summer, in vivid detail, all about colons, following
the president's colonoscopy and subsequent surgery to remove the
benign cysts growing within him.

The investigation continued to find out why the space
shuttle Challenger exploded last month. What a bummer that had been!
Munch heard about the disaster at work, and didn't learn until that
evening that many elementary-school kids had been watching the
broadcast live. Appalled teachers had their students put their heads
on their desks, but by then the damage was done. Asia, who wanted to
be an astronaut (or a ballerina or a veterinarian) had been really
shaken by the tragedy.

In science news, Halley's Comet would be visible this
year. The next time it was due around was in seventy-five years. The
Griffith Park Observatory was having a special program for kids who
would be alive to see it in the year 2061. Thinking of Asia, Munch
tore out the article and pinned it to the corkboard above the
counter.

She grinned as she went about her morning routine.
Rico had promised to come over midday.

After finishing her breakfast and reading the paper,
Munch went out back into the narrow slice of her yard and examined
her crop of vegetables. She had built the raised plant bed herself.
It had taken twenty bags of assorted mulch, potting soil and a lot of
other junk the guy at the nursery said was essential to fill the
railroad-tie-bordered rectangle. She then studied the path of the
sun, the height the mature plants reached, and planted accordingly.
She didn't spend much time on the correct season for planting. Los
Angeles' weather was so mild, she didn't think it would matter. The
only mistake she made was in not understanding the germination
process of corn. She was a city girl, after all.

Since corn was the tallest vegetable, she had planted
a single row of stalks along the wooden fence that separated her from
the Okies. The corn grew straight and over six feet high, but the
ears didn't get anywhere as large as the ones she saw at the market.
An article she'd read said to harvest the corn when the silk turned
brown. She chose that Sunday, so Asia and Rico could share the
moment. The same article had also said that the corn was at maximum
sweetness when pulled from the stalk and diminished from there as the
sugar turned to starch. She figured the corn had cost her ten dollars
an ear, not counting labor. It had better be good.

Rico arrived at eleven and Munch assigned him to the
barbecue while Asia and Jasper pestered each other with a tennis
ball. They were a regular little family now. The man, the woman, the
child, the dog. All together for a nice Sunday family cookout.

"
How are the coals?" Munch asked Rico.

"
What?" called the voice across the fence.
It was the Alpha Okie, or at least the lone male of the strange tribe
next door.

Munch looked at Rico and rolled her eyes. "Almost
there," Rico called back.

"
You say something, Daddy?" a female voice
across the fence shrieked, sounding pissed off.

"
Where's my ladder?" the man responded.
Munch knew his name was Earl, but the females next door all called
him Daddy. He called two of the women Mother. The youngest female was
in her twenties and had teeth growing in every direction. Munch
noticed this because on their infrequent encounters the girl never
shut her mouth, letting it hang open as she stared. Munch avoided
contact with the disturbing clan as much as possible.

Rico mimicked the dueling banjo music from
Deliverance.

Munch smiled as she picked three of the more
promising ears of corn and shucked them. Once the husk and silk were
disposed of, she was left with little more than bare cobs. The
individual kernels had failed to plump with their promised sweetness.

"
Let's see," Rico said.

Munch held up an ear, it wilted pathetically to one
side.

Asia pointed one small brown finger at the motley
vegetable. "I'm not eating that." There was a touch of
hysteria to her voice.

Just when things couldn't get worse, Munch heard the
doorbell ring. She went in the back door, walked through the house,
Jasper barking at her heels, and opened the front door.

A familiar figure stood on her stoop. Today she was a
shaggy brunette with violet eyes, a shade not found in nature.
Rhinestones glittered from her fingernails and enough cleavage showed
through her skintight leotard body shirt to raise the dead. A black
Camaro Z-28 was parked at the curb.

Ellen.

Or, as she was often referred to by people whose
lives she'd touched: Fucking Ellen.