No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella (4 page)

"Then this is your lucky day"

Hagouchi brought out two long wooden dowels and
pushed them carefully through the holes in the windshield until they
just touched the corresponding punctures in the back seat. He had the
photographers take more pictures of the windshield with the dowels
inserted.

"Find any spent cartridges?" Hagouchi
asked.

"Not yet," Blackstone said, pointing to the
uniformed officers traversing the vacant freeway shoulder to
shoulder. He took Hagouchi over to the skid marks. One of the bullets
had lodged into the asphalt there. Hagouchi drew a circle around it
with yellow chalk and then followed Blackstone back to the truck.

"We've got two scenarios," Hagouchi said.
"I'll know more when I examine the projectiles, of course. You
got either a long-range shot with a rainbow trajectory. . ."

"Three times?"

"Or a passing tall vehicle. Find your spent
cartridges and you'll have distance and angle. I'll extract the other
bullets once we get the truck back to the station."

Blackstone showed Hagouchi where the bullets had
punctured the steel skin of the cab behind the seat. Hagouchi
whistled. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Definitely not hollow points," Blackstone
said, knowing that hollow points would have mushroomed on impact.
"Full metal Jackets?" he asked, referring to military-type
bullets that were designed to take out more than one human target.

"At least," Hagouchi said. "Possibly
APs."

Blackstone nodded grimly He definitely didn't like
the idea of mobile sharpshooters armed with AP rounds. He made a note
to himself in his notebook, writing out the words that nobody had
said out loud. There was another name for armor-piercing ammunition:
cop-killers.
 
 

4

MAYBE I'T HADN"T been him, Munch thought as she
turned onto the Santa Monica westbound freeway After her initial
reaction of shock and horror a strange calm had settled around her
heart. Surely if it had been Sleaze lying there dead she would feel
something more. After all they'd been through together, he wouldn't
depart the planet without her instinctively knowing. No, she needed
more proof before she mourned him. Until that time, it wasn't real.
It didn't happen.

She focused on the appointment with her probation
officer.

It hadn't taken long after being assigned to Mrs.
Scott for Munch to see that the woman was not looking to make any
friends with her clients. Her office was plastered with plaques of
appreciation from law enforcement groups. She kept a signed picture
on her desk of her shaking hands with the chief of police. So much
for being in the business of rehabilitation.

"Fuck 'er if she can't take a joke," Flower
George would have said. But he was dead now. His ill advised fatherly
advice needed to be buried with him. All that old stinking thinking
needed to go. She was trying to stop saying the F word, too. For now
she was still caught in the system and she accepted that. The legal
system—the judges, the lawyers, the cops—never expected anyone to
successfully complete a three-year probation term, but she would
surprise them. Probation was just a device they used to keep you on
hold—their way of saying, "You can walk for now, but we got
you when we want you." The random surprise testing enabled them
to gather fuel for future leverage. junkies didn't go straight. That
was a well-known fact. It was the recidivism factor.

Recidivism. She'd learned the word in rehab.

The statistics were that ninety-seven percent of all
junkies went back to the needle.

That meant three percent didn't.

With eight months clean and sober, she was looking
forward to her first sober Thanksgiving. To celebrate, she planned to
go to the California Institute for Women at Corona as part of an AA
panel. CIW would have been her next destination if things hadn't
changed.

She'd spent the previous year's Thanksgiving holiday
at the county jail, Sybil Brand Institute, awaiting trial for various
and sundry drug-related charges. In her old life, everything was
drug-related. If she'd been busted for jaywalking, you could bet that
she was crossing the street to score some dope, get high, or turn a
trick to get some money to buy dope.

Last year's incarceration had been her longest
ever—over a month.

A diesel-powered black-and-white sheriff's bus
spewing black smoke pulled in front of her as she took the exit for
the Santa Monica Courthouse complex. It reminded her of her many
trips from jail to court, her only forays into the world during that
long month. They called the bus "The Gray Goose." She
didn't know why She only knew that it was dirty inside and
partitioned with steel grating. The larger rear portion of the
bus—where the seats were arranged like church pews—was where they
put the men. The women sat on long bench seats lining the sides in
the front. Separate, but equal. The bus always seemed to appear next
to her when her thoughts turned down dangerous paths. Another of
those eerie coincidences that made her feel like God had taken a
personal interest in her case. He used the hulking, black-and-white
vehicles like a page mark in her life to remind her that whatever was
going on, it could always be worse.

As she pulled into the parking lot, she thought about
the body in the truck, the booted foot, the shattered windshield. If
it was Sleaze, what would become of his kid? With Karen dead, Asia
was an orphan. Maybe.

Stay in the moment
, she told herself. Park.
Turn off the car. Breathe in and out.

The lot was full of cop cars. Munch didn't lock her
car. If it wasn't safe there, then the hell with it. She passed the
large rusting sculpture of nautical chains on the lawn in front of
the court building. The police station was on the other side of the
court building. They kept the prisoners on the first floor. Milk was
served with the meals, which Munch preferred to the bitter black
coffee offered in Van Nuys. But unlike Van Nuys, Santa Monica had a
no smoking rule. That had seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to
her during her brief incarcerations here.

Never again, she thought.

She entered the court building, pushed through the
door to the probation department, and gave her name at the front
desk. The woman seated there told her to go right in.

‘
You know the way?" the woman asked.

"Yeah," Munch said. "I've been here
before." She walked the hallway in her dreams. Some nights, the
hallway had no end and she was in the wrong building and running late
and if she didn't find the correct cubicle soon her probation would
be violated and she would be sent back to Sybil Brand. She'd wake
with the sheets twisted around her legs.

Wiping her hands on her pants, she checked the clock.
She was still ten minutes early, she noted, no need to panic. She
headed toward her probation officers cubicle.

Mrs. Scott glanced up as Munch entered. "I'll be
right with you," she said as she reached for a rubber Stamp,
inked it on a pad of red ink, and brought it down sharply on the
papers in front of her. Munch saw that the stamped letters read
VIOLATION. The older woman put the stamp and paperwork aside,
straightened the lapel of her navy blue blazer, and then opened
Munch's file.

"How are you, Miranda?" she asked. Mrs.
Scott was the only one who ever used that name with her.

'Tm here."

The thin orange line of the PO's lips turned down at
the corners and the crease between her eyes grew deeper.

"How are you?" Munch asked.

"Let's stay on track, shall we?" Mrs. Scott
said.

"Are you still working?"

"I brought my pay stubs," Munch said,
reaching into her shirt pocket. Of course she was still working. If
any major changes occurred in her life, like changing jobs or moving,
she was to notify her PO within twenty-four hours.

Mrs. Scott took the papers and handed Munch a
mimeographed form. " need you to fill out this personal
Financial report." Mrs. Scott went back to the file she had been
stamping with her red ink. Under RECOMMENDAIIONS on the last page,
Mrs. Scott wrote, "3O days county time," and smiled.

Munch looked at the paperwork her probation officer
handed her. The categories listed were: RENT, UTILITIES, FOOD, GAS,
CLOTHING, and ENTERTAINMENT. On the other side of the ledger she was
to put what she earned.

Munch wrote in the numbers and handed the form back.
She had left the entertainment column blank.

"Aren't you saving anything?" Mrs. Scott
asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You're making enough to have several hundred
dollars left over at the end of the month. What happens to that
money?"

"I don't know. I spend it, I guess."

"By our next appointment, I want to see some
signs of fiscal responsibility"

"I pay my bills."

"And is that all you want for yourself? To just
get by?"

Obviously the woman wasn't going to be satisfied
unless she found something that needed correcting.

"I'll work on it."

Mrs. Scott gave Munch a waxy look. "I guess
we'll see." She picked up a plastic cup. "Are you ready?"

"Yep." Munch stood and made for the
bathroom with Mrs. Scott close behind. The hallway had a bleachy
smell that always reminded Munch of cocaine. She kept the observation
to herself. The clicking of Mrs. Scott's heels on the linoleum echoed
off the walls.

They pushed into the women's room and Munch was
relieved to see that they had the place to themselves.

She unzipped her pants and positioned the cup under
herself in such a way as not to cut off Mrs. Scott's view. Mrs. Scott
believed you couldn't trust a dope fiend not to bring along someone
else's sample and try to pass it off as her own. Munch didn't have to
do that. Her test would be clean. She used to feel proud of the
stream of drug-free urine that flowed from her body Lately it was
beginning to feel humiliating to have Mrs. Scott there in the stall
with her. The pee overflowed the tiny container and ran down her
fingers. She poured half out, carefully wiped the sides, put on the
lid, and handed it to her PO. "Anything else you want to tell
me?" the woman asked before they parted in the hallway "Any
problems?"

"No, everything's fine." She blinked back
the images of the blood dripping from the boot. Was he dead? Really
forever gone? She felt the weight of his key in her pocket as she
walked away Why hadn't she treated him better? Why hadn't she agreed
to go see his kid? Why couldn't she at least have had lunch with him?
The extra half-hour might have altered the course of events—but no,
she had been too caught up in herself and her own needs.

Stop it, she thought. You don't even know hes really
dead. Obviously there would be no peace for her until she found out
for sure.
 
 

5

SHE LEFT THE CLUSTER of court buildings and headed
south. As she neared the familiar streets of Venice, her mind flooded
with images from her childhood—the early years when her mother was
still alive. The Venice Beach she knew then had been a magical place
peopled by beatniks and jazz musicians who treated her like an equal.
Mama filled her young ears with promises of castles and ponies,
singing her to sleep with Joni Mitchell lullabies.

Munch had believed it all—even when they "camped
out" in different people's living rooms and garages and washed
their hair in the Laundromat sink. She'd been such a dumb kid. She
didn't wise up until she was ten, and that was almost a full year
after Mama died. It had taken that long for the reality to sink in.
Months and months before she finally noticed that as great and
wonderful as heaven was reported to be, it was a place nobody
returned from. So who really knew if it was nice at all? Thats when
she had learned to pay more attention to what people did than to what
they said.

She lit her cigarette with the car's lighter. The
smell of a match's sulphur still reminded her too much of dope, and
she didn't need the sensory memory in such already dangerous
territory Venice, god. It felt weird to be there again, like she'd
been away for years instead of just months. She briefly considered
stopping in and seeing her old boss, Wizard, but decided that she was
better off sticking to what she came for and leaving the social calls
for another day

Instead of turning left on Rose Avenue, she cut
through side streets until she arrived at the alley running parallel
to Hampton. The building where she had once lived with Sleaze was a
horseshoe-shaped collection of single and one-bedroom apartments.
Sleaze liked Number 6 because it was a corner unit. The front door
faced an overgrown hedge of oleander instead of the street. On the
other side of the hedge and sharing the same alley was the abandoned
Jewish Center. A morning glory vine, flush with large purple blooms,
had taken over the Centers back fence and formed a web between two
palm trees. She parked in the alley behind a gold Impala balanced on
Jack stands and stripped of its wheels, rear bumper; and
differential.