No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella (30 page)

"The hawk is out, " she exclaimed, her
Southern accent kicking into high gear as it always seemed to do
around a group of men. The men shifted their attention from whatever
was going on around the side of the building and watched the three
women approach. Munch didn't have a good feeling about their scrutiny
She also knew that she didn't have a choice, so she tried to affect
an air of indifference. Finally the men returned to what they were
doing.

She saw that they had hung the deer from a tree and
were halfway through skinning it. Two men stood beside the carcass
with short bloody knives. The hide was peeled back to the rump. One
of the men tied a slip knot into the thick rope he was holding and
fastened it to a loose hunk of bloody inside-out deerskin. He tied
the other end of the rope to the bumper of a pickup.

"Let her RIP!" the man with the rope
yelled. At his signal, the pickup took off.

"I don't need to see this," Munch said and
pulled her friends towards the front door of the building. The minute
they entered the clubhouse, bikers swarmed around them. The music was
loud and discordant. The overhead lights flickered and she heard
someone curse about the generator.

A woman with spiky blonde hair refilled the men's
mugs from the keg of beer set up on a rough-hewn wood counter. Smoke
hovered under the low ceilings of the front room. A pool table was in
use in the center of the floor. Three men sat elbow to elbow on an
old sofa against the far wall, drinking beer and watching the game in
progress.

"C'mon," Deb said, tugging her arm. "I'll
introduce you.

"Great," Munch said under her breath. She
nodded to each seated man as Deb recited their names: Bull, Insane
Wayne, and Bug-eyed Tom. Munch didn't think she'd have any trouble
keeping their monikers straight. "She's looking for James,"
Deb yelled.

"Oh, yeah, I just remembered," Bug-eyed Tom
said. "He told me to take care of you."

'Yeah, right," Deb said, laughing and pushing
him away "Watch out for this guy" she told Munch. Bull, the
one with the Schlitz logo tattooed to his arm, shoved his mug of beer
towards her.

"No thanks," she said.

"Drink," he commanded.

She shot a look at Deb, hoping to get some help, but
her friend had already turned away

"What?" he asked, his face growing uglier

"I'm on penicillin," she said. He grunted,
satisfied that he hadn't been slighted. Her declaration also bought
her some distance from a few of the men within hearing distance.

Deb passed a bottle of Jack Daniels to Roxanne.

Roxanne tilted her head back and poured. "Hey
easy with that," Munch said.

Roxanne turned to her with glazed eyes. "What?"

Did I look like that?
Munch wondered.

The bottle came around twice more, followed by
joints. She passed them along without comment. Insane Wayne cut out
lines of meth on a mirror. Deb went first, taking the fatter lines.
Roxanne took her leavings.

Deb took over the woman-with-the-spiky-hair's
position by the beer keg, laughing at some joke, rolling her eyes and
pretending the guy talking to her was saying something interesting.
Roxanne shouted something, but it was lost in the general uproar The
men bounced off each others chests like figures in a pinball machine,
eyes glassy and beards matted with spilled beer. Munch knew that if
she smoked a little and drank some Jack, the scene before her would
miraculously transform. The men would get foxy their jokes funny. She
would feel cool and superior to all those normies—those
citizens—who didn't know how to live. The voices inside her head
would quiet, give her a break from their nagging.

Was that what she wanted? A break?

She located a good spot by an empty wall to stand.

"You want to play pool?" Bug-eyed Tom
asked.

She accepted gratefully; anything to stay busy and
not to be such a sitting target. She snuck a look at her watch. Where
was James?

Bug-eyed Tom racked the balls and broke them. Nothing
dropped. She took her turn and sank the two-ball. Someone jostled her
arm as she was aiming for her next shot. She missed.

"All right, then," her opponent said. He
took aim and sank a solid. Maybe he forgot that he was stripes. She
said nothing. She wasn't about to utter a sentence to him that
included the words "your balls."

Besides, it didn't matter who won this game. She just
wanted out of the line of fire.

Bug-eyed Tom leaned into her, bringing his florid
complexion and oddly bulging eye close to hers. His breath smelled of
garlic and liquor.

"Why don't you and me go somewhere and get all
fucked up?" he asked.

"No thanks," she yelled into his ear. The
music was deafening. "Not today I can't." She raised her
hands in frustration, as if to say that the music was too loud and
her story was too long to tell.

He turned from her and made a grab at the woman with
the spiky hair. Munch took the opportunity to slip away knowing that
if she was out of sight by the time he turned around again, the
chances were good he'd forget about her.

She looked for Deb and Roxanne and found them passing
a bong. It occurred to her that maybe she had already crossed the
line and copped a buzz on all the secondhand pot smoke. She tried to
determine if she felt any different. Would she know it if she were
high? Probably

Where are you? she asked. Still with me? I could
use a little help here.

All around her, the partiers got rowdier and louder.
Another half hour went by She kept losing track of Deb and then
Roxanne. Someone turned the music up another notch. She thought she
heard the roar of more Harleys arriving, but couldn't be sure. She
felt as if her head was going to explode. She needed some fresh air,
but to get to the front of the room would require wading through the
masses. Whats behind door number one? she wondered, spying one of the
doors she had noticed earlier in the back of the room. She fought her
way to the corner and tried the knob. It was locked. When she tried
the second door, the knob turned, and she pushed it open.

It was dark. She groped for a light switch, found it,
and snapped it on. She'd found the bathroom. Well, that was
something. Securing the lock behind her, she used the toilet and
splashed some cold water on her face. Beyond the shower stall, there
was a second door. She conjured up a spatial image of the clubhouse's
floor plan. The rooms of the building seemed to be laid out pretty
straightforwardly into squares and rectangles, which meant that the
door had to lead to the second room. And perhaps, with any luck at
all, the second room also had a back door.

Wanting no more surprises, she first put her ear to
the door and listened. All she could hear was the thrum of the music
booming in the front room. She bent down and peeked through the
keyhole. The lights were on in the other room, revealing yellow
walls. Freshly painted, from the smell of it. She pushed the door
open cautiously No, not yellow paint, she soon realized, but a
residue. She saw the burners, beakers, and scales. This was a meth
lab. Were these guys Fucking crazy? They shouldn't keep all this
flammable, toxic stuff in such a closed-in room.

Munch stepped closer to the table holding all the
paraphernalia. Large rocks of meth had been laid out on sheets of
aluminum foil to dry They glistened like Jill's chunk of quartz.
Rather pretty really

Fortunately she had never cared for speed. At least
that was what one part of her brain said. The other half seemed to be
in control of her hand, which was reaching for the meth. It said
something kind of funny really In a voice that sounded like Deb's, it
told her that she could always learn—that eight months was long
enough. She drew her hand back. Maybe tomorrow; she promised to quiet
the voices.
Just for today I wont use, I won 't drink, and I wont
kill myself. Weren't they all the same thing?

She started to leave the room when she noticed the
infant car seats leaning against the wall. They were the same brand
as Asias. The cushions had been removed and lay unzipped on top of a
table in the comer She felt the skin crawl on the back of her neck.
Were james and Asia already here? A row of rifles, like the one Deb
owned, was propped against the back wall. She worked quickly to
disable them by releasing the catch on the trigger guard as she had
seen Deb do and pulling the assemblies free. Using her pocket knife,
she popped off all the hammer springs, put the guns back together and
returned to the party.

Back inside the main room, she caught sight of
Roxanne, passed out on the couch. Not a good thing, Munch knew
Protection or no, an unconscious woman was fair game in these
situations.

She elbowed her way over to Roxanne and shook her
awake.

"Wha . . . ?"

"Come on," Munch urged, yanking her arm.

"We've gotta go outside."

Roxanne stumbled to her feet, swaying as she did.
Somehow Munch managed to get her out to the relative safety of the
truck and lock her inside. She returned to the clubhouse to find Deb
kissing probably one of the ugliest bikers Munch had ever seen. She
tugged on Insane Wayne's arm, pointing at the ugly man on the couch
swapping spit with Deb.

"Is that Tux?" she asked.

Wayne squinted and said, "Fuck no. Thats Shorty"

Great, she thought, so much for protection and
respect—now they were all sitting ducks. She grabbed Deb and
demanded the keys. "Time to go home."

"I'm not ready" Deb said and returned to
her new beau.

Munch felt a tap on her shoulder and spun around. The
good-looking man before her smiled.

"Aren't you the mechanic?" he asked.

She regarded him for a moment before answering. He
didn't seem to be a skeptic or looking to start a fight. Sometimes
the knowledge that she worked on cars for a living had this effect on
men.

"Yes, I am," she admitted.

"Would you mind stepping out back with me for a
moment?" he asked. " could use your help. I've got a
problem with my truck that I can't figure out and I heard you were
pretty good."

"Who told you that?"

"Your friend." He pointed at Deb.

"I don't think I should leave her."

"Oh, shell be okay" he said, disarming her
with a little boy grin. "This will just take a second. You're
looking for James, right?"

'You've seen him?"

"Yeah, he's back here."

She followed the guy to a door in the corner that she
assumed led outside. It wasn't until they were already across the
threshold that she noticed that her escort wasn't wearing complete
colors, only the bottom patch that read, NOR CAL. He wasn't a full
member, but merely a prospect.

Alarm bells went off inside her head, but it was
already too late. The door didn't lead outside after all, but to yet
another room—a room full of card-carrying, full-fledged Gypsy
jokers. Her escort grabbed her arm and guided her to a stairway.

She faced him, searching for remnants of the boyish
charm she had seen earlier, but all innocence was now absent from his
face. The eyes that regarded her now were venal and calculating.

Oh, shit.

One of the Jokers locked the door.
 

27

AFTER LISTENING TO Munch's plan, Blackstone left
Moody to pay a visit to Motel 7.

Claire, he knew, was staying in Room 3. He checked
his watch right before he knocked on her door. It was almost nine
o'clock. She was probably resting. He rapped on the door with the
authority bred by ten years in law enforcement.

The door opened. She stood before him with a shocked
look on her face. "What are you doing here?" she asked. Her
eyes strayed to the badge pinned on his lapel. "I don't
understand."

He pushed past her. Dark clothes for the nights raid
were laid out on her unmade bed. She closed the door after him. "You
might want to sit," he said.

"This could take a while." He pulled the
desk chair closer to the table lamp, where he knew Moody had planted
his bug. "I want three things," he said.

"Should I be taking notes?" she asked,
raising an eyebrow.

They both turned when there was a knock at the door

"That's probably Jared," she said.

"Jared Vanowen? Let him in," Blackstone
said.

"Everyone's invited to this party"

Vanowen came in. He was as surprised as Claire to see
Blackstone there. "What's going on?" he asked.

"The detective was just about to tell me,"
she said, recovering her composure. "He has a list of demands."

"First off," Blackstone said, " want
you, your department, to clear the LAPD of any wrongdoing in the
shooting of Darnel Willis, and I want you to do it publicly"

"I already told you I would, Jigsaw. Is this
what this is about? You're going to have to be patient. Trust me."