Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine Read online

  I turned to look at him, feeling the shakes coming on strong.

  4.

  I kept telling myself he'd be there. I kept telling myself that we'd pull up to his house and I'd see his car parked in the driveway and all of this would be some funny story we sat around telling over beers.

  His car wasn't in the driveway. Bernice had left the porch light on.

  Frank O'Ryan pulled up to the curb and put my car in park, scratching his chin as he bent forward to inspect the front of Herb's house. "You're gonna have to play this one real careful," Frank said.

  I stared through the window at the house, unable to move. In some very real way, I felt foolish about the whole thing. Like a little girl who was overreacting and whose mother was going to be very upset with her when she found out. "Tell me I'm not being an idiot," I whispered.

  "You're not being an idiot," Frank said.

  But then, he would say that. It was his fault I was so worked up. Him and his stupid gut feeling about there being some sort of danger, based on nothing but some implied threat that scumbag Marvin had made. Him and his out-of-town former police turned witness for the defense sensibilities. Here I was getting lead by the nose, right? In fact, wasn't it more plausible that Frank was hustling me for the defendant and his scumbag attorney, trying to keep me from being focused on the trial? I turned and looked at him. "Why did you want to come with me?"

  "You looked like you were about to pass out and needed someone to drive you."

  "I was fine."

  "Okay," Frank said.

  "Don't say okay like that."

  "Okay," Frank said.

  "And mocking me is how you expect to build trust?"

  He turned and looked at me, taking me in from bottom to top, his eyes rolling over me until he reached my own and stopped. "After I got shot, they assigned me to detectives. I had to work with this pain in the ass named Vic who was like a lost soul. Like he'd spent too much time delving into the psyches of child molesters and drug addicts and couldn't climb back out. He was slowly dissolving right in front of me, and I didn't see it. He finally shot himself in our office. I found him there."

  "Jesus, that's terrible," I said. "What did you do?"

  "I staged it to look like an accident."

  "You tampered with the crime scene?"

  Frank nodded. "I never told anybody, and when I try to understand why I did it, why I lied about it and covered it up and risked going to prison, the excuse I use is that it was the only way to save his reputation and take care of his kids. But you want to know the truth? The deep down, secret truth that I don't tell anybody? I did it because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that it happened and that I hadn't seen it coming. Me, the so-called detective. I didn't stop it. There is not a single day that goes by that I don't wish I could go back, but I have to live with the fact that I let him die. Don't lose your partner, Jack. Whatever it takes."

  "Jeeze, that's awful. Maybe you should let yourself up off the mat by now, Frank."

  "Never gonna happen."

  I had no words for Frank, so instead I looked back at the house and said, "She isn't going to take this well. She and Herb, they're one of those disgusting happily married couples."

  We got out of the car together and Frank followed me up to the front door. The living room television was on, I could see it flickering through the porch windows. I bent down and peeked in, seeing Bernice curled up on the couch under a soft quilt. Waiting for Herb to come home, I thought. Wanting to be sure she saw him.

  I knocked gently on the front door, not wanting to scare her. There was time enough for that.

  I waved to her through the window as she sat up and pulled the quilt around her shoulders, shuffling toward the door and turning the locks to let us in. "Hi, Jack," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Where the hell is my husband?"

  "That's what I'm trying to figure out," I said. "Can we come in?"

  She looked at me and then over my shoulder at Frank and said, "What do you mean figure out? I thought he was working with you."

  I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. My head was aching with the onset of migraine, flashing like a pinpoint of light in the corner of my temple, driving into my skull with the force of a bullet. Frank stepped around me, saying, "Ma'am, we need to come in and speak with you. There's nothing to be alarmed about yet, but what's important right now is that we all get on the same page. Understand?" His voice was steady and professional. He'd had practice, apparently.

  "Yes, of…of course," she said. She backed into the living room and sat down on the couch, staring mystified as we came into the house and Frank picked up the remote control and turned off the television. "So you don't know where Herb is?"

  "We lost track of him," I said. "Have you talked to him any time recently?"

  "No," Bernice said. "Not since he called me after you arrested that man."

  "Which man?" I said.

  "The one who was already in prison. The one who sent those people after you."

  "What did he say when you spoke to him?" I said.

  Bernice's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in a garbled, shuddering wail, "Oh my God, do you think they went after him next? Oh sweet Jesus, not my Herb. Please no, please God."

  She looked ready to fall over and I sat down on the couch, wrapping my arm around her to keep her upright, telling her, "Wait, wait, nobody said that. We can't lose our heads right now."

  "I can't lose him," Bernice gasped, rocking violently back and forth as she moaned and pleaded over and over to God not to take her husband. I tried to calm her and get her to listen, but her grief steamrolled over me, flattening my resolve until all I was doing was rocking with her, the two of us sea buoys bobbing in a violent storm.

  "Hey!" Frank said, snapping his fingers in front of Bernice's face. "Hey, can you hear me?"

  "Yes," Bernice mumbled. "Oh God. I can't believe this. Where is he?"

  "I mean it. Can you hear what I'm saying to you? If you want to sit around crying, we'll leave. If you want to help us find him, get it together for five minutes and answer our questions. You pick."

  I looked up at Frank in horror at the way he was speaking to her, but then Bernice swallowed thickly and sputtered, "What-what-what do you want to know?"

  "When Herb called you, word-for-word, precisely what did he say?"

  "H-He said he was finished at court," Bernice sniffled.

  "And?"

  "And that he had to be back early the next day for court."

  "Good. What else?"

  "He asked me to iron his blue shirt and find him a clean tie."

  "Did he say anything about where he was going?"

  "He was coming home!" Bernice sobbed. "He was supposed to come home!"

  "Right away?" Frank said. "Did he tell you he was going to stop anywhere for gas or for milk? Did you tell him to pick up anything on his way home? You have to remember."

  Bernice closed her eyes and tried to think. Snot bubbles were leaking down on her upper lip and I grabbed the tissues off the side table and tried to hand her one. When she didn't take it, I bunched it up and pressed it against her nose and said, "Blow."

  She did. It was wet in my hand.

  Bernice's eyes opened and fixed on Frank. "He asked me if we had any beer. He said it was a long day and he felt like he needed a beer."

  "You didn't have any, I'm guessing," Frank said.

  "No. I don't like having alcohol in the house," she said.

  Frank looked at me and I said, "There's a bar near the courthouse. You can see it from the parking lot."

  "Did he say anything else?" Frank pressed her.

  "No," Bernice said. "He told me he'd be home soon … told me that he loved me."

  Frank smiled warmly at her and bent forward to put his hand on her arm. "You did good, Mrs. Benedict. This helps us a lot."

  She grabbed his arm with her hand and looked stricken. "I didn't tell him I loved him back. I was mad at him for being out so late. What did I
do?" she whispered.

  "You didn't do anything," I said.

  "What did I do? Why didn't I tell him!" she moaned. "Oh, God, why!"

  And then we were back to the sobbing and the rocking.

  Frank was standing on the porch, waiting for me. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and I finally got to the door and got it open, telling Bernice one last time, "I will call you as soon as I find anything out, and I promise everything will be okay."

  Frank looked sheepishly at me as I pulled the door shut and he said, "Listen, I'm sorry I had to step in. It wasn't my place, but it had to be done. You know that, right?"

  I headed down the steps to the car. The night air had turned cold, and it felt good to breathe it in. "It's fine," I said. "She needed someone to snap her out of it. I wasn't getting through. Too emotionally involved myself."

  "The guy's your partner, Jack. Of course you're too close to the situation," Frank said. "It's tough to think right when you're involved on a personal level."

  "Give me my keys," I said. Frank handed them to me and moved around to the passenger side of the car. I got in and readjusted my seat and mirror, reclaiming my position as the driver. "You saying I'm incapable of handling this investigation?"

  "No, I'm saying it's difficult. Especially when the witness sees you more as a shoulder to cry on than an investigator."

  "You sure know a lot about this stuff for an unemployed civilian, Frank."

  He laughed and said, "I read a lot."

  We drove in silence through the neighborhoods to make our way back to a main road that would take us to the courthouse. Frank spent most of his time staring through the window, taking in the tall buildings and blinking lights of the skyline. I pointed to my left at the vast black waters of the harbor and said, "Here, look at that."

  Frank leaned across me and I slowed the car down just as the rotating lights of the Chicago Lighthouse came into view. He smiled and said, "Very cool."

  "I'm sure you have plenty of things to see back in Philly."

  "Sure. But it's like anything else, you don't appreciate it if it's around you all the time. We have this place in Center City called the Reading Terminal Market, right near City Hall. It's this massive landmark, filled with every kind of ethnic food you can imagine. The Amish have a stand there where they sell what they grow. You can buy a live octopus. Homemade ice cream. Cajun food. You name it. One time, I walked in, and this butcher was skinning a sheep right at his counter. Right in front of everybody, and then he started to cut it up and wrap up the meat and put it out for sale. I mean, it's…well, it was kind of disgusting to see this skinned animal laying there with its eyes bulging out, but in a way, it was kind of refreshing to. A reminder of how things used to be before we started genetically modifying food, you know?"

  "Are you one of those, Frank? You going to tell me about an agricultural conspiracy now?"

  "No," he laughed. "I'm just saying, the place is like a throwback to a different time."

  "I understand," I said.

  "So, I'm talking to my dad one day and I tell him I was in the city at Reading Terminal Market, and he looks at me and says, 'I always wanted to go there.' Now, bear in mind, the guy has lived twenty-five minutes away from Center City his entire life. He's had sixty some odd years to get off his ass and go, but he never has." Frank shrugged and said, "I guess when you start drinking gin and soda at nine o'clock in the morning, things like that don't matter so much."

  "Nine thirty in the morning?" I said.

  "Ever since he retired. He's one of those guys who loved being a cop. Worked his whole life in patrol, but the job was his whole identity. He couldn't go out to cut the grass without being armed. When he retired, when people didn't automatically shut up and listen to what he told them to do anymore, that's when he started drinking."

  I laughed slightly and shook my head, "My mom was a cop too. I grew up listening to all her stories about chasing bad guys and rescuing people; she made it sound like the greatest job in the world. She left out the years of my life I've spent staring at buildings waiting for someone to come out, or sitting in a van watching a street corner for some mystery car that never shows up."

  "Do you have any kids?" Frank said.

  "No. You?"

  "Two little girls," he said. "Well, one's not so little anymore. She's wearing a bra now. Freaks me out kind of, to be honest."

  "That's normally what happens when you have girls," I said. "Do either of them want to be cops? Do you tell them all your stories?"

  He looked at me and said, "All my stories are about child molesters and heroin users, Jack. No. I don't tell them any of my stories. If they told me they wanted to become cops, I'd ship them off to boarding school."

  We arrived at the bar within sight of the courthouse and I parked on the street. It was nearly closing time, and the bartender had propped the front door wide open to let the cool night air dry the floor as he mopped it. There was one old guy sitting by the register, taking his time with the inch of suds left in his glass. Frank and I got out of the car and walked up to the door, and the bartender said, "Sorry, folks. We're closing up for the night."

  I held up my badge and said, "We're not here to drink." The old guy at the register took one look at my tin, swallowed the rest of his suds in one gulp and spun around in his seat to head for the rear exit.

  The bartender folded his hands on the mop and said, "What's up?"

  He was a young kid, early twenties, kept himself in good shape. The tattoos going down the length of his arms to the knuckles of both hands wouldn't help him on any job interviews, but what the hell? In a town like Chicago, people would always need someone to pour them a drink. "We're looking for someone who might have been in here last night. Were you working?"

  "Yeah," he said. "But we were pretty crowded last night. Is he a regular here?"

  "I don't think so," I said. "It was probably around seven o'clock. You'd remember him, trust me."

  "Okay, try me."

  I stuck my hands out and said, "He's real, real big. Boisterous personality. Thick mustache. Kind of looks like a cartoon version of a walrus."

  He scrunched up his face for a second, then snapped his fingers and said, "Yeah! I remember that guy. He ate, like, forty hot wings."

  "That's him!" I said.

  "Nice guy," the bartender nodded.

  "Exactly," I said. "Now here's the important part. I need you to think about anything he might have said before he left. Did he look concerned? Did he have any trouble with anybody in here? Were there any problems at all?"

  "Not that I can think of," the kid said. "Is he in some kind of trouble?"

  "No," I said, getting irritated.

  "I watch crime shows all the time. Are you looking at him for some kind of investigation?"

  Frank tapped him on the arm and said, "The way this works is we take in the information, we don't give it out, all right, Hair Mousse? Now answer the lady so you can get back to cleaning up and go home. Otherwise, it's gonna be a long night for all of us."

  "Ease up with the hot cop, scary cop routine, all right?" he said.

  Frank looked at me and then back at the bartender and said, "Did you just call Lieutenant Daniels scary?"

  "Look, the guy was in here. He minded his business and didn't cause any trouble with anybody from what I could see. Then, him and his lady friend left."

  "Lady friend?" I said. "What lady friend?"

  The bartender shrugged and said, "Hell if I know, but she was smoking. This Asian number with long black hair. When I saw the two of them leaving together, I thought he must have rented her for the night or something."

  I felt like grabbing the little bastard around the throat and slapping him for making up such a stupid story, but before I could spit it out, Frank said, "Are you sure they left together?"

  "Positive. She told him it was time to go, he gave her a little bit of a hard time because he wasn't done stuffing his face or something, I guess, but then she said some
thing that made him hop to. If I looked like him, and I was with a woman like that, she wouldn't have to tell me twice."

  "That's enough!" I said. "No way in hell was Herb Benedict here with some hot Asian chickee who told him it was time to leave. I will throw you in lockup so fast your head spins if you tell me one more lie, you little shit."

  "Whoa!" the bartender said, "I'm not lying! The fat dude was here with some girl and they left together!"

  "Really?" I said. "Which way did they go then, huh? Where's his car? Which of Keenan Marvin's goons did you tip off, you son of a bitch!"

  "Hey!" Frank said, grabbing me by the arm to pull me back.

  "Goons? What the hell are you talking about? You know what, I'm done," the bartender said, holding up his hands. "You're not allowed to threaten me like that."

  "Nobody threatened you," Frank said, trying to lead me toward the door.

  "The hell I didn't!" I shouted. "I swear to God I will put you in a hole so deep you'll need dentures before you ever see daylight again."

  "That's it," Frank said. "We're done. Good night."

  "Hey," the bartender said. "What's your names? I want your names."

  He was grabbing for a pen and a napkin by the register, telling us we had to give him our names, that it was in the Constitution. Frank shoved the door open and blocked me with his body, forcing me outside, keeping me from going back for more.

  "I'm serious, I will call the cops if you don't give me your names!" the bartender shouted.

  Frank turned his head and said, "Relax. No problem. She's Janice Rand and I'm Christopher Pike. We work for NCIS. Thank you for your cooperation."

  The bartender was scribbling it all down when I heard him say, "NCIS? Really?"

  Frank pulled the bar's front door shut and held his hand up to my face, telling me not to talk until we were a safe distance away. I stormed down the street to the nearest alleyway, hands clenched into tight fists, waiting for Frank to limp after me. I held up my hand to stop him and said, "You are this close to getting arrested for interfering in a criminal investigation!"

  "He wasn't lying," Frank said calmly.

  "The hell he wasn't! I've known Herb Benedict since I started working plainclothes. I've known Bernice since they got married. You seriously expect me to stand there and listen to that crock of horseshit about some Asian supermodel who took him home? So help me God, Frank. You interfere in one of my interrogations one more time and I will arrest you, understand? Do not ever get in my way again. We're done. I don't know why the hell I let you tag along this far!"