No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella Read online

  Danielle, as usual, was surrounded by a group of admiring men. She was wearing a hooded navy blue sweatshirt and somehow managed to look sexy in it. Perhaps it was the skin-tight jeans and four-inch heels, Munch thought. Or maybe it was the way her curly dark hair fell playfully down her back and shoulders all the way to her belt. Danielle also had a way of looking at a guy like together they had a secret. Munch had tried to imitate that coy smile once with a tow truck driver she thought she might like to get to know better. He had asked if he had food on his nose or something.

  "You want me to get us some seats?" she said. Danielle turned at the sound of Munch's voice.

  "Just a sec," she said, grabbing Munch's hand and holding it as she wound up her conversation with the guy she was talking to. "Monday then. Pick me up at seven-thirty"

  The guy leaned over and kissed Danielle's cheek.

  She graced him with one of her secret smiles.

  Munch felt her palm begin to sweat. Danielle's fingers were securely laced within hers. As much as part of her enjoyed the expression of friendship, the rest of her recoiled at holding hands with another woman. She pulled loose.

  She cast a covert glance toward the group of men lounging against the back wall. "So you got a date Monday huh?"

  Danielle threw back her head and laughed.

  Munch watched the men watch her.

  "It's an AA date. A meeting and coffee afterwards."

  "Beats a blank."

  "Do you want me to ask him if he's got a friend?"

  "Naw, then I'd have to watch both of them ogling you all night."

  Danielle laughed again. "Don't exaggerate." She looked around the room, her gaze lingering on the group of men by the coffee machine. Munch noted how the men puffed out their chests. Danielle ran her hand through her hair. Munch noted that, too.

  "Anything here look good to you?" Danielle asked, as if consulting a menu.

  "Every time I think a guy is cute," Munch said, "he raises his hand as a newcomer"

  "Sounds like you're still attracted to the disease."

  "That's what Ruby says."

  "I know," Danielle admitted. "That's what she always used to tell me when I was new."

  "So what's the answer?"

  "Time, just give it time. C'mon," Danielle said, grabbing Munch's hand again. "The meetings about to start."

  They took their seats and the meeting began. Munch had trouble following the discussion. She kept thinking about that boot dangling from the open truck door, and then those bodies in Venice. What were the odds that she'd be at two murder scenes in the same day? She felt as if she existed in a bubble, protected by her secrets. When that bubble finally burst, she suspected, reality would come crushing in. But until then, she planned to coast on this curious sense of detachment as long as possible.

  At the coffee break, Danielle flitted from man to man. Munch envied the ease with which she made small talk. Munch sat in her folding chair and watched the large clock on the wall. She wondered if this was how she'd be spending the rest of her life, sitting on other peoples furniture and waiting for time to pass.

  What was the point of it all? You grow up, you go to work, you get married and have kids so they can grow up, go to work, and get married. Eventually everybody dies. She didn't see her own involvement in the life equation. Maybe if she had her own kid, life would feel different. Relationships with men didn't seem to be happening. The few dates she had been on had all ended in disaster. Ruby had suggested that maybe Munch shouldn't reveal so much about herself, that it scared men away Munch said she didn't want secrets in her relationships. A man took her how she was or forget him. Besides, she argued, the guy had a right to know what he was getting into. Ruby maintained that not all needed to be revealed on the first date.

  The meeting started again. While the speaker droned on, Munch sat back in her chair feeling disconnected. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she grasped the biceps of her left arm with her right hand and made a fist until the veins popped up.

  At last ten o'clock arrived. Munch stood by the door, holding up the wall and waiting for Danielle to say all her goodbyes.

  "You about ready?" Danielle finally asked, standing next to Munch, her face flushed.

  "If you are."

  "God, yes. Let's get out of here."

  In the car, Danielle said, "I really admire how comfortable you are within yourself."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I mean, I can never sit still. I jump from person to person like a madwoman. I don't even know what I say to half of them. And then I'd look over at you sitting there so perfectly relaxed and I wished I could be calm like that."

  "Any more calm, I'd be dead," Munch said. She looked out the window then back at her friend. "Do you ever miss it?"

  "Miss what?"

  "The life, the excitement, the rush?"

  "The jail, the shakes . . ."

  "Yeah, yeah," Munch interrupted. "Thats how we're conditioned to think about it now. But this is me talking to you. Don't you just sometimes wish you could be out there in the thick of it again?"

  "I think that's why I go so overboard on the sex thing," Danielle said. "It's like the only thrill I have left." She turned off Sherman Way and onto Munch's street. Without looking over at Munch, she said in a softer voice, "Some people call me a slut."

  "Hey fuck 'em."

  "I probably already have."

  They were still laughing when Munch got out at her apartment building.

  "Are we still on for tomorrow?" Danielle asked. Munch grabbed the door handle. "Unless you've got other plans."

  "We had a deal. Although I still think you sold yourself short."

  "I need a lot of help." She stepped out of the car.

  "It'll be fun. You'll see. I still can't believe you don't like to shop."

  "There's something I need to do in the morning," Munch said, looking everywhere but at her friend, "something I need to check on."

  "The stores don't open until ten."

  "I'll call you in the morning."

  "All right," Danielle said as she pulled away "I'm counting on that."

  When Munch entered her apartment, she realized she wasn't a bit tired. Sleep would be out of the question for at least another three or four hours. The events of the day swirled in her head. She knew they would haunt her when she closed her eyes. The committee inside her head attacked at night, when she was the most vulnerable. Tonight they would come at her from all sides, nagging her with questions that she couldn't answer.

  She picked up a sponge and wiped down the clean counters, opened the refrigerator and moved a carton of milk an inch to the right.

  She shouldn't have come home right after the meeting. On Friday nights, people went on from the meeting to local coffee shops, where they would talk, catching up on the latest fatalities: who had gone back out and died or gone to jail or had their ear bitten off. The survivors would sit around and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and wonder how to fill the long hours before sleep. Tonight she hadn't been in the mood for more talk and hadn't made herself available to be asked.

  Ruby was always telling her to go to the AA dances and picnics. Why all this emphasis on group activities? she had asked once. Ruby said that alcoholics and addicts were anti-social—another thing to change. Sometimes Munch wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and shield her brain from the steady bombardment of shoulds and should nots. Sometimes this being restored to sanity felt a lot like going crazy She wished she could just take a break from it all. The kitchen clock read a little past eleven. She sighed. The spiral notebook on her kitchen table called to her, and she eyed it guiltily

  Ruby had been after her to start writing another AA fourth-step "searching and fearless moral" inventory When Munch pointed out that she had already done one, Ruby explained that these things worked in layers, like onions.

  Munch had no idea where to begin. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was no help. The example it gav
e had a mythical inventory-taker writing about feeling resentful towards a Mr. Brown for "his attention to my wife." Maybe that kind of stuff was helpful back in 1939, when alcoholics were all men and strictly boozers. But for a modem-day dope fiend such as herself, that Mr. Brown's-attention-to-my-wife shit just didn't cut it.

  Across the top of the page of college-lined paper she wrote INVENTORY. She wrote the date on the top right corner and stared at it. Boogie's birthday was at the end of the month. She hadn't seen Deb or her son in a year. Would she and Deb still be able to read each others minds? Finish each other's sentences? And Boogie. God. What sort of memories did he carry?

  She wrote ace boon coon across the middle of the page and beneath that Canyonville, then closed the book.

  It was too quiet. She turned on the TV The eleven o'clock news was on. The newscaster was saying something about a sniper attack on the freeway She stood in front of the set and watched the footage of the blue truck being towed away on top of a flatbed. The scene cut to the Pacific Division Police Station, where a woman, who was identified as Sergeant Lopez in black subtitles, read a prepared statement.

  "The LAPD is investigating a shooting that occurred on the southbound San Diego Freeway thats the four-oh-five freeway this afternoon at approximately three-twenty near the Santa Monica Freeway interchange. The victim is identified as a male Caucasian in his late twenties to early thirties. six feet tall, medium build. The coroner's office will release a photograph of the man sometime this week if no one comes forward to identify him. We have no information as yet on the assailants or the motive for this attack."

  The scene switched to the on-scene reporter. The wind whipped the woman's hair as she stood in front of a parking lot full of police cars. She held one hand to her ear; the other held a microphone. She looked directly into the camera. "Police say this is the third such freeway vigilante-style shooting this year. What authorities won't say is what is being done to prevent such attacks in the future. They are asking anyone with any information about this latest incident to contact the department. If you were driving on the San Diego southbound freeway near the Santa Monica Freeway at approximately three-thirty this afternoon and might have seen something, please call the number appearing on your screen."

  A telephone number flashed across the scene.

  "This is Sheena Moral live from Culver City Back to you, Jerry."

  "In other news," a gray-haired anchorman cheerfully reported, "police are investigating the shooting death of a couple in Venice Beach tonight. The couple was discovered late this afternoon by a local merchant. Police say that the man and woman, identified as twenty-one-year-old Cynthia Ruiz and twenty-two-year-old Jesus Guzman, had probably been killed sometime this morning."

  Munch stared at the TV The scene switched to the apartment building. The detectives working the case were easy to spot, with their dark sportcoats and gold shields. One was a tall good-looking white guy who radiated an air of tacit superiority He strode past the reporters and onlookers, brushing aside their questions with unsmiling curtness. She'd met his type before. The second detective was a plump Hispanic man. He looked like the kind of cop who would joke around with you. The kind who didn't feel they had to be a hardass all the time. She thought about Mace St. John, the homicide cop who had once come after her. Maybe it was time to give him a call. She turned back to the picture on her TV screen.

  It was getting real, she thought, whether she was ready for it or not.

  8

  MUNCH WOKE THE next morning and knew there was no way she could go shopping. She reached over to the nightstand beside her bed and grabbed a cigarette. Then she remembered that she wasn't going to smoke in the bedroom anymore and not first thing. She put the cigarette back in the pack. She'd had weird dreams all night: searching for something lost, but not sure what it was that she was looking for; unable to find her voice; trying to make phone calls but not being able to dial. She had a good idea what was at the root of all those uneasy images. She needed to find out for sure if Sleaze was dead. That was all there was to it.

  Surely they would just run the dead man's fingerprints through their computers. If it was Sleaze, they would find a match soon enough. She got out of bed, grabbed her smokes, and went into the kitchen to put on the coffee water. As she passed the TV she turned it on to Saturday morning cartoons. She paused briefly to watch Wile E. Coyote fall off another cliff. Then she turned the sound down and called the Venice police department, asking for Mace St. John. The woman who answered the phone told her that the lieutenant was on his vacation and would be out for the rest of the week. So much for that ace up her sleeve.

  She drank two more cups of coffee before she got out the phone book, turning to the front where county services were listed.

  Under Coroner there were several numbers: one for regular business hours, another for emergencies, and a third for 5:00 RM. to 8:00 A.M. on weeknights, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. She dialed the last number.

  "L.A. County"

  "Is this the morgue?"'

  "We are not a morgue," a man's voice informed her. "We are the Coroner's Office of Los Angeles County"

  "Oh," she said, not quite sure what the big difference was. "I just wanted to check your hours. Are you open?"

  "Not to the public."

  Of course, she thought, they wouldn't let just anyone in there.

  "I'm not exactly the public," she said, stopping short of saying that she was missing a family member. That wouldn't work. He'd want to know the name of her missing relative, how long he had been missing, and if she'd filed a missing persons report. Understandably the coroner might also want to know why she thought her relative might be dead and at his facility

  "Are you with the CSI class that's coming here this afternoon?" he asked.

  She hesitated only a second. "Yeah, when is that?" It was only a teeny lie, she decided, but one that might get her inside if it came to that.

  "Don't you have your sheet?" he asked.

  "No, uh, sorry I don't have it."

  "Great. It's today at four. I suppose you've lost your parking pass as well." She could almost see him shaking his head.

  "If it was with the sheet then I don't have it," she said truthfully

  "And you want to have a career in law enforcement?"

  "It's my dream," she said.

  "Just get here, but you'll have to park in the public parking lot."

  "I don't mind. Will we be viewing bodies?"

  "Yeah, we got a full house for you guys."

  "Great. I'll be there."

  She hung up the phone and remembered to breathe. Then she made a third call.

  When Danielle answered, Munch told her that her errand was going to keep her tied up for most of the morning and possibly the afternoon.

  "Are you all right?" Danielle asked. 'You sound funny"

  "Yeah, I'm fine," she said and cleared her throat as if that would diminish the weight of the unsaid words there.

  They said their goodbyes and hung up. Munch went to her closet and looked over her limited wardrobe. What was the well-dressed student criminalist wearing these days? She picked out a pair of camel-colored slacks and a flowered blouse and draped them over a chair in her bedroom.

  She spent the rest of the morning doing busy-work around her apartment. At two-thirty she put away her tools and changed her clothes.

  Her hair was straight again after last evenings bath; she pulled the top half back into a ponytail, letting the rest fall softly around her ears. Danielle had had Munch buy all sorts of makeup, most of which sat in her drawer unopened. The lipstick that Danielle had picked out for her had felt too conspicuous when Munch had put it on alone in her bathroom. Without Danielle's brazenness for encouragement, she had been unable to leave her house until she wiped all of it off. Now she applied it carefully as well as the eye shadow, blush, and blue mascara.

  She found a pair of pumps that almost matched the pants. But her hands, she realized, definitely didn't
go with the outfit. If she was wearing her work coveralls, they'd be fine, but now they just looked dirty She dug out a pair of soft leather driving gloves from her dresser and slipped them on, wincing as they chafed against her numerous cuts and split cuticles. Before she left the house, she grabbed her notebook off the kitchen table, thinking that this added prop would make her look more scholarly

  The building that housed the Coroner's Office of Los Angeles County was on the eastern fringe of downtown Los Angeles. The entrance of the building was at the top of a small hill, and as Munch stood in the lobby reading the directory by the elevator, she realized she was on the third floor.

  "Can I help you?" the security guard asked.

  "Oh," she said, startled. For a moment, the presence of a uniform shook her nerve. How illegal was it, she wondered, to sneak into a morgue? " was looking for the CSI class," she said.

  "You're late," he said. "They've already gone down."

  "Down?"

  "To the autopsy suite," he said.

  "Yes, yes, of course." She pushed the button on the elevator. "I'll just catch up to them."

  "It's not that easy" the rent-a-cop said. "We have security measures here."

  Munch's stomach lurched and her resolve wavered once more. It wasn't too late to just turn around and go. What had she done so far? Just said that she was looking for the CSI class, not even a lie really Then she got angry with herself. The whiny voice inside her head disgusted her. It was time to get off the goddamn fence.

  "You need a special key to get off at that floor," he said, looking her up and down. "Kinda warm for gloves, isn't it?"

  She smiled her best Danielle-smile at the guard. "You know what they say: Cold hands, but a warm heart."

  The guard took a breath that puffed out his chest. " think we can let you slide this one time."

  She hoped she wasn't laying it on too thick as she ran her hand through her hair and said, "Well, aren't you just the nicest thing?" The last was a patented Deb line, some of that Southern sugar she dispensed to bend men to her will.