Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine (11 page)

"Fred?" Davidson said.

Frank was turning the corner now, finally out of view. That was the signal to go.

"Fred Watkins," Davidson said loudly, finally getting Phin's attention. "That is your name, right?"

"Huh?" Phin said, turning back to look at him. Davidson was holding up the phony driver's license and other info. Phin only had two other full sets of fake ID, and this one had his actual picture on it. Not to mention, his fingerprints. Phin frowned and said, "Watkiss. Not Watkins."

Davidson flipped the license around and said, "It says Watkins right here."

"Bullshit," Phin said. "You're reading it wrong."

Davidson jammed his finger down on the card and said, "I can read what it says, you idiot. On all three of these cards."

"Jesus, are you serious?" Phin said. He held out his hands, "They must have misspelled it on the license and those idiots at the DMV copied it. I never caught it."

Davidson handed Phin the cards and said, "You know what? This is too crazy. I'm calling the cops."

Phin shrugged and stuck the cards back in his pocket. "Sounds good to me." He watched Davidson dig in his pocket for his cellphone and started to back away slowly.

Alan Davidson was punching the numbers into his phone, watching Phin like a hawk. "Don't even think about going anywhere, pal."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Phin said, even as he continued to back up.

"I'm not kidding!" Davidson shouted.

Phin turned and ran, breaking for it while Davidson shouted into his phone, "Yes this is an emergency! Some idiot crashed into my car and now he's running away! Help! Police! Help!"

Frank was waiting for him in an alleyway two blocks away. Phin jumped into the car, waving his hands frantically while saying, "Go, go, go!"

Frank eased out of the alleyway, taking his sweet time. "Never peel out," he said. "It gets people's attention. You'd be amazed what you can get away with when you look like you belong there." The folder from Davidson's office was tucked between the seat and center console, thick with photographs and files. Frank looked at Phin and said, "You weren't supposed to actually crash the cars. I said sideswipe."

"I like to make a dramatic entrance," Phin said. He reached up to touch the goose egg forming on his forehead and winced.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No. I just need a few aspirin and a six-pack, and I'll be fine."

Frank looked doubtfully at the lump and said, "If you start feeling like you're gonna puke, tell me. That means you've got a concussion."

"I always feel like I'm gonna puke," Phin said. "It's part of my condition."

"What condition?"

"The noneya condition. As in, none ya business." Phin turned and looked at Frank, regarding him carefully for a moment before speaking. "You sweet on her?"

"Sweet on who?"

"Jack."

"No," Frank said. "I'm married. My wife and I went through a thing not too long ago. I got mixed up with this other woman and barely escaped by the skin of my teeth. The last thing I want to do is screw that up again."

Phin stared at him, not sure if he believed him or not. "So why are you so interested in her?"

"You don't know many female cops, do you?"

"I don't make it a habit of socializing with you people, no offense."

"None taken. I'm not a cop anymore."

"You still got their stink on you."

Frank shrugged and said, "Fair enough. Well, I haven't had many good experiences with female cops. It's like anything else. The few bad ones ruin it for the rest. The ones I've known have mainly been in it for the attention, or they're badge bumpers who decide they don't want to just be groupies anymore, they want actually be part of the show. And what a show they turn it into, believe me. But your friend, she's real police. She's out here with the rest of us laying it on the line, working cases, fighting the good fight. Now along comes some asshole like Keenan Marvin and what, he's going to get his people to rape her? To kill her? That's not acceptable. Somebody needs to die."

Phin's eyebrows raised at that, "Die? Is that how they do things back east, tough guy? Out here they don't really roll like that. They lock people up but don't execute them."

Frank wilted a bit and said, "You know what I meant. Die in the, whatever, the figurative sense."

"I get it now. You're like the white knight riding in to save the damsel in distress and shit?" Phin said. "Here's a newsflash, buddy. Jack Daniels don't need it."

"Probably not," Frank said. "Maybe I'm the one that needs it."

10.

It seems like every big city in America has a Chinatown and they all have gates adorned with dragons and brilliant primary colors. I wonder who thought of that one first. "We're gonna build a big gate over the street right here and put a bunch of shops and restaurants for Asians behind it. Trust me. This is gonna catch on. You don't know how important this gate thing is going to be for our brand recognition."

In the movies, every time a cop goes to Chinatown, there's a parade. The moment the cop sets foot through the gate there's fireworks and little dancing girls in bright blue satin pajamas and huge Chinese dragon parade floats rippling through the crowd. It's almost like the Triad members are posted on every rooftop watching for the cops, and when they see one, they pull the alarm and the whole block breaks out in a spontaneous New Year's celebration.

I've lived in Chicago my whole life and never saw one parade.

Either the movies are lying or the Triad in my area is asleep at the wheel.

The reality of Chinatown is that you've got a lot of restaurants and specialty food supply stores and a suspicious lack of any stray cat population. I dated a guy once who liked to come down here for Dim Sum in the early morning. We'd eat tiny pieces of spicy rolls and sweet rolls and drink black tea and everything seemed like it might finally be going right. Turns out, he liked more than Chinese food. Last I heard, he met someone through the "Marry Your Very Own Vietnamese Girl" website and was flying out with a briefcase of cash to give to her parents.

I hoped, in my heart of hearts, they'd kidnapped him and stuck him in a tiger cage with all the other stupid, horny, round-eye bastards.

Delivery men carrying thick cardboard boxes weaved through the streets ahead of me, lugging them out of white vans into restaurants, lugging them out of supply shops and into the vans again. The boxes were all marked with a mixture of red Chinese characters and American shipping labels. There were fish mongers in ice trucks and men racing down the street with hand trucks loaded with heavy barrels of cooking oil.

I passed a shop that had nothing but dead ducks in the window. Dozens of them all strung by the neck, all their skins roasted to a crisp, light-brown. They still looked exactly like ducks though, complete with beaks and eyes, and it freaked me out a little. I wondered if people bought a duck to go and walked down the street eating it like a big piece of fried chicken. I actually like duck, and it probably tasted wonderful, I just didn't want to eat anything that was looking back at me.

The address Phin had written down for me was an empty-looking, plain white building with a few cheap-looking trinkets dangling in the storefront window. A small cardboard sign read
Tan's Fortune Cookie Wholesale
in the lower right hand corner. I pulled on the front door handle. It was locked. I pressed the buzzer and tried to look into the shop through the smoked glass windows. There was a glass counter and little else.

I guess it didn't take much to run a fortune cookie operation. Ever since I was a kid, I played this game when we ordered Chinese food. There's always a bunch of fortune cookies in the bag and everyone has to pick theirs. That way, whatever fortune you get was meant to be yours. It makes it a little more personal. Everybody always opens their cookies and reads the little slip of paper and adds the words "in bed" to the end of whatever it says. Then they laugh and toss it away. But the good ones? The really good ones that kind of say something meaningful depending on whatever's going on in my life at the moment? I secretly fold them up and put them in my purse, just in case they were really meant to be mine.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sentimental and shit. Kiss my butt.

If you think about it, there's really no better way for a deity to communicate with a lesser being. They don't really do the burning bush routine anymore and people who hear voices get locked away in the basement of loony bins, so what better way to slide a little divine insight to somebody without raising suspicion?
Hang in there, Jack, things will get better. Or, take your time getting to know this guy, Jack. And maybe even the occasional, make sure you keep your gun nearby next weekend, Jack.

Herb is out there, and you've almost found him, so don't give up, Jack.

That last one would be nice.

I laid on the buzzer again. Whoever was inside the store was either going to answer the door or go deaf from the noise. I was good either way.

A man's voice called out, "I'm coming, I'm coming, you white devil, stop before you break the button!"

I bent down as he came to the door and stepped back as he started turning the latches. Even now, after all these years, my academy instructors words rang out in my ears, yelling at us to avoid the "fatal funnel." Any doorway, hallway, alleyway…all right, basically anything with the word "way" attached to it, is a fatal funnel where the good guy gets corralled through a confined space while the bad guys just have to point their guns at it and shoot. Every time I'm standing in a doorway I instinctively step back, backing out of the way to give myself room to maneuver. Even when the person opening the door is a seventy-year old Chinese man wearing the ugliest silk robe I've ever seen, and he only stands about five feet tall. He looks like Yoda.

"What are you ringing the door so much for…hey, gorgeous, look at you," he says, smiling suddenly, wide enough to show me his gnarled yellow teeth caked with decades of tobacco use. "You looking for Tan? Tan right here for you, hot stuff."

I nodded slowly and said, "Yes, I am, Mr. Tan. Can I come in?"

"You come in, come in now," he said, stepping back to wave me in. "Who you work for? Aramark? How many fortune cookie you need? Tan do all the big events for corporate function. All best quality cookie, no shit."

"No shit," I said.

"No shit, Sherlock," he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. "Come right from China factory, not cheap imitation. Tan fortune cookie number one, number one all over the world."

"I'm sure," I said, looking around. The store was empty except for the Formica counter with a cash register and laptop computer.

"So," Tan said, "How many fortune cookie you need?"

"I don't need fortune cookies," I said.

He looked at me in confusion, "You didn't come for cookie?"

"No."

"You come for nookie?"

"No."

"Quickie?"

"No!" I said. "I came for a snake."

He flinched when I said it, then his face twisted up into the ugliest rendition of a smile I'd ever seen, and he said, "Oh…I get it. You came for special snake."

"Yes. Exactly."

Tan shrugged and reached between his legs to begin fumbling with his pants, "You came for trouser snake."

I clenched my fists and said, "I swear to God, you pull that little thing out and I'm going to rip it off and throw it into traffic."

"Hey, easy, hot baby," he said. "Tan just want to help you."

"You can help me if you stop screwing around and tell me how much for a cobra."

"Cobra? You think Tan sell cobras? Tan sell fortune cookie, not snakes."

"Look, Mr. Tan," I said, putting my hands on the counter. "My husband is very, very sick. His kidneys are failing. We've been importing freeze-dried cobra venom from India for six months but now we're out of time! I can't wait for another shipment from overseas, see? I need a real, actual, venomous cobra so we can milk the damn thing and try to save Dave's life. I don't care what it costs. I have money."

His eyes narrowed on me, then he made a point of looking past me to check the front door and sidewalk below. "Are you a cop?" he said.

"No," I said.

"Are you a cop?"

"No," I said again.

"Are you a cop?"

"Are you an idiot?"

"You answer three times that you aren't cop so I believe you. It's in the Constitution."

I nodded slightly and said, "Oh, right. The Second Amendment. I always forget that part. No, I'm not a cop." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a thick roll of cash that made Tan's eyes widen. It was actually just two hundred bucks, with the first hundred made up of single dollar bills all rolled around one another and the last bill, a Benjamin, wrapped around the top for show. I palmed the roll as I showed it to Tan and said, "So what do you say? Can we do business?"

Tan hurried around the counter and went for the front door, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. He locked the door quickly and shut off the lights to the store. He waved for me to follow him to the back of the store, back toward a door that led to the cellar. "I hope you like animals," he said quietly.

"You mean, like, dogs and cats?" I said.

He opened the basement door and held out his hand for me to go down first, "Not exactly."

The stench wafting up from the basement hit me instantly, sending my senses reeling. It stank like nothing I've ever smelled before, and I've worked violent crime scenes that would make a maggot's eyes water. It was absolutely horrific, but not unfamiliar. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my memory, I recognized the smell.

I'm a little girl again, holding my mother's hand. We're going into the Regenstein small reptile house at Lincoln Park zoo. It's a hot day and the ice cream I whined my way into getting is running down my hand and saturating the wrist of my long-sleeve T-shirt. I'm no more than seven years old.

There's a zoo worker at the entrance who says, "The air conditioning is broke inside the reptile house today, girls. You probably don't want to go in there."

My mom looks at me and says, "We'll be fine, won't we, honey? You wanna see the snakes, right?"

I lick my ice cream and say, "Mmm hmm."

"Suit yourself," he says, turning to open the door for us.

I make the mistake of taking a lick of ice cream just as the smell comes flooding through the doors. It fills my mouth and nose and boils my insides until I can't stomach the taste of chocolate ice cream even to this day.

Mom grabs my hand firmly and pulls me in behind her, saying, "Come on, Jack. No turning back now."

I hear her voice as I reach out and take the hand rail, going down the rickety stairs into the darkness. Something hisses at my approach. Not something, I realize. A dozen things.

Tan flicks on the lights as I reach the bottom of the stairs, stopping me cold. Lights come on inside at least twenty cages that line the walls of the basement. Directly in front of me was a ten foot aquarium holding five baby alligators that were fighting over the remains of a chicken carcass. Another tank of almost the same size holding an anaconda that was thicker than my forearm, wrapped in thick coils with its face pressed against the glass, watching our every move. There were strange insects with massive wing spans and ferocious-looking reptiles I recognized from late-night shows on the Discovery Channel. Tan held up his hands toward the last cage and said, "Here you go, the one you look for. Isn't it beautiful?"

He tapped the cage with his knuckle and the speckled snake sat straight up in the air, a four-foot reticulated length of venomous death. The snake fanned its hood and Tan smiled, saying, "This a beautiful monocled kaouthia from Bangladesh." He tapped the opposite end of the glass and the snake chased after his hand, tightening up its coil to strike. "Very aggressive, with very potent venom. You can see the distinctive O-pattern on the back of the hood. It takes some time for people to get used to the milking process, so lucky for you, I have anti-venom for sale. I make a good price for hot baby. Lucky you."

I folded my arms and said, "I'm not looking for a monogrammed chupaloopa cobra, Tan. I'm looking for the real thing. A king cobra."

He let out a short laugh and said, "Don't be stupid. Nobody has king cobra for sale. Nobody want one. Nobody crazy enough to capture one. King cobra live twenty years and never forget who capture it. They escape captivity and come back long time after you forgot them, and they kill you out of revenge."

"I don't have time for legends and wives tales, Tan. I need a king cobra and I know you can find one for me." I flashed the wad of bills at him and nodded eagerly, "Sell me a King Cobra, Tan my man."

He looked at me with growing concern. I'd definitely touched a nerve. He waved his hands in my face and pushed me back toward the steps, "No sale for you, crazy baby. You don't know what you're talking about."

I reached into my back pocket and brought out my gold badge and held it up for Tan to see. "So I guess this means we're making this an official conversation, Tan. I really didn't want to go this route."

"No fair," he shouted. "No fair, I ask three time, you say no three time, this is big-time bullshit!"

"You should be more careful what you read on the internet, Tan. It was probably a cop who invented that ask-three-times crap anyway." I wrapped my hand around his neck, pushing him back toward the cobra cage, "Now, one last time before I get on the phone with code enforcement and wildlife control and put us both in the newspaper. Where do I get a king cobra?"

His eyes were flicking back and forth like he was inventing a story, like he was getting ready to sell me a line of garbage that it would take too long to verify. I didn't have time for a wild goose chase. I called an audible and shouted, "Tell me about the woman, Tan!"