Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine (5 page)

I handed Phin his beer and he said, "Keep drinking. I play better when you drink."

"I'll break," I said.

Phin lifted the rack off the balls and looked at me as I leaned over the table to line up my shot. "New bra?" he said.

I looked down and realized the collar was hanging a little lower than I thought, but I had such a good line on the cue ball, I couldn't risk moving. I popped the stick with one sharp, crisp movement and the balls broke in every direction. Two solids rolled into the right corner pocket and I was already set up for the third and fourth shot. I started to chalk my cue and said, "Maybe it's my lucky bra."

Phin cocked an eyebrow as I walked past him and said, "Or maybe it's my lucky bra. You never know. I get frisky when I lose at pool."

"Then you must be frisky all the time because I can't think of the last time you won."

"It's not my fault," he said. "You employ unfair distraction techniques against me when we play."

"I wore a turtleneck last time we played."

"Yeah, but it was a very suggestive one."

I dropped another solid in the side pocket and looked at him. "You must be getting desperate, Phin."

"Times is hard on the boulevard, Jack."

I pulled the stick back as I lined up the shot and purred, "Exactly how hard, big boy?"

His wicked smile turned sideways as I winked at him and sank the next shot. I moved around the table to line up my next shot and was about to make another smart-assed comment when I realized the look on Phin's face hadn't changed, and that he was no longer looking at me . There was a man coming through the bar toward us. A man with a limp.

Phin walked around the pool table, still holding his cue, and leaned back, putting himself firmly between me and the newcomer. Joe reached under the bar and put his hands on the Louisville Slugger he kept there, ready to make good on his offer. A few of the regulars turned around on their stools, putting their drinks down and waiting for the first chance to start cracking skulls.

Frank O'Ryan stopped in the middle of the bar and looked around, making eye contact with every single person who was staring at him. He held his hands wide and said, "Does somebody wanna pat me down, or what?"

"State your business," Phin said, sounding all too serious.

"State my what?" Frank said, laughing sharply. "People talk like that around here? Okay, I came to speak to Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels."

"About what?"

Frank looked at me and said, "Does this mutt screen your calls too, L-T?"

Phin's pool cue dropped to the ground with a clatter and he stepped forward, throwing his arm's wide in front of Frank, saying, "When she wants to talk to you, I'm the guy that lets you know. Who you calling a mutt,
mutt?
"

O'Ryan stared at Phin evenly, saying, "I worked narcotics long enough to recognize a mutt when I see one, friend. Now get out of my face before things get out of hand."

"Enough!" I said. I grabbed Phin by the arm and pulled him back to the table, saying, "You've got enough to worry about with this game." Then I pointed at O'Ryan and said, "You go sit at the bar and I'll get to you when I get to you."

"Fine," Frank said, eyeing Phin.

"Fine," Phin muttered, eyeing him right back.

Boys.

I tapped Phin on the shoulder and said, "It's your shot."

"I don't like that dude," Phin said as he bent down to line up his shot.

Over my shoulder I saw Frank take a spot at the bar's farthest corner, keeping his back to the wall, positioning himself where he could see the front door. Some habits die hard, I thought. Joe walked over to him and slapped his towel over his shoulder and grumbled something to him.

Frank dropped a twenty on the bar and eyed the taps, telling Joe which one he wanted. 

"You don't even know him," I said to Phin.

"I don't have to. It's instinctive. It's what keeps wild animals alive in the jungle. Dogs don't like cats, lions don't like hyenas and I don't like that dude."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. No missed calls. No missed texts. Nothing about Herb. I sighed and said, "All right, let's get this massacre over with. I have court tomorrow."

Phin sank the next ball, then scratched. I finished him off in four more shots, each one zeroed in on the pocket like a laser. As the eight ball spun into the corner pocket, I looked at Phin and said, "I guess I didn't drink enough for you to play well?"

"Whatever," he said, putting his cue back in the wall. It was obvious his attention was elsewhere. He cocked his head toward Frank and said, "What are we doing with him?"

He was still sitting at the bar, quietly sipping his beer. He watched everything but looked at nothing, blending in with the ease of a man who'd spent some time doing undercover work. I sighed and said, "We're doing nothing. I'm going to go talk to him. You are going to mind your business."

"Like hell," he said.

"Then go hang out with the guys for a bit. I'll be fine."

Frank sipped his beer as I came around the corner of the bar and sat down next to him. Joe went to pour me a new glass, but I held up my hand and said, "Just water for me. I'm driving."

"All right, Jack," Joe said.

Frank looked sideways at me as he set his beer down and said, "They call you Jack? That's funny. You have unusually cruel parents or was it a marital mishap?"

"Marital mishap," I said.

"Happens to the best of us."

I nodded as he spoke, waiting a respectable amount of time before I said, "So is this a social call or do you have something you want to talk about, Detective O'Ryan?"

"It's Frank," he said.

"Not yet, it's not," I said.

"All right. Fair enough. Mainly I came to check on you. I don't know what you heard when I was talking to Keenan Marvin, but it wasn't good."

"It didn't sound like talking," I said. "It sounded like some of the old-school interrogations we used to do back before we became a kinder, gentler police department."

He grunted and said, "I guess I fall back on old ways sometimes."

"You can tell me whatever you want, but it doesn't mean I'll believe it," I said. "People lie to me for a living and I don't get excitable."

"I understand," Frank said softly.

"You do, huh? How long have you been out?"

"Since last year."

"Because of your leg?"

He shrugged and said, "Kind of. The shooting happened several years ago. I put up with the pain because I was doing important work, and I thought at the time that maybe it was worth it. Then, things changed, and I knew for certain that it wasn't. So I looked for an exit."

His eyes were steady on me as he spoke and I said, "Tell me about the shooting."

"It was a prowler call. Lady reported an unknown male came into her bedroom while she was sleeping. We were checking the area and my sergeant saw this kid coming up the street. I say kid, but he was as tall as me. Anyway, Heck was telling the kid to show us his hands, but the kid was refusing. Heck grabbed him and I heard a pop. Next thing I knew, the kid turned his gun on me and my knee blew into pieces."

"What did you do?" I said.

"I fired back."

"And the kid?"

O'Ryan shook his head quietly and finished the last of his beer.

"And your partner? How long did he last?"

"You ever had to put a deer down on duty?" O'Ryan said.

"No. We don't get many deer running through the streets of Chicago."

"We do back home," O'Ryan said. "Cars hit them all the time, and when you get there, the deer will be off in the woods somewhere, trying to get up and flee, even when its guts are hanging out of its side. It's just panicking, making all kinds of noises, confused why its body isn't working right anymore." His voice grew very quiet as he said, "In the movies, when a person gets shot, they don't scream. In real life, it's a lot uglier. And then they just die."

I looked at him and said, "All right, it can be Frank now. So what did you come to tell me?"

He swiveled on the stool, getting close and keeping his voice low, "You need to watch your back. He seemed real, real confident that he's never going to see prison."

"You think he's going to try and escape?" 

"I think it's something else. He sent his people after you once already, right?"

"Yeah," I whispered.

"Well what's to stop him from doing it again? He's got to have plenty of soldiers out there. Maybe they figure if they whack you, the prosecutor can't put you back on the stand to refute any testimony…" Frank's voice trailed off as he saw the blood drin from my face. "What is it?" he said quickly. "Did something happen already?"

"I'm not the one getting called back to the stand," I whispered. "My partner Herb is."

"Okay," Frank said. "Where's he at?"

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."