Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine (8 page)

"Just keep looking."

"What kind of phone are we looking for anyway?"

"Any phone," I snapped. "If you see an old Ma Bell cast iron telephone I want to know about it."

We took two more steps and Artie's light dipped for a minute as he said, "There it goes, right there."

His light was aimed directly down at the brown water and I said, "No, don't tell me that."

He lifted his head and rubbed his eyes, saying, "Sorry, the fumes are getting to me tonight. It's right there." He pointed across the gap at the ledge, and I saw a thin black smartphone laying on the concrete platform directly across from us. Out of the water. Perfectly preserved. And guarded by the largest, nastiest looking rat I'd ever seen in my life.

The rat's eyes turned red in the light, and it looked up with a menacing snarl, warning us to keep away. The thing's pink tail was almost the length of my forearm.

"Madone. Look at that thing. Shoot it," Artie said.

"I can't shoot it," I said. "I might hit the phone, or the bullet might ricochet off the wall and hit us both. Anyway, I'm not allowed to just crank off rounds like that."

"Okay, then stab it. You got a knife?"

"I'm not stabbing the rat! It will run off when you go over there. The things more scared of you than you are of it, trust me."

The rat snarled and hissed at us, showing us its sharp, vicious teeth.

"It don't look scared," Artie said. "And what do you mean when I go over there? I'm not going over there."

"But you're the sanitation guy!"

"And you're the cop, doll. I'm an equal-opportunity kind of person. It would be sexist of me to think you weren't just as capable of going over there as any other police officer, right?"

I turned and looked at him, the tight cord of my paper hood squeezing my cheeks and making my lips puff out. "The gender equality card doesn't work when you try and play it on me, Artie. It only works when I use it on you."

Artie shrugged and said, "I'll keep my light on the whole time. Be careful crossing the water. It's got an undertow. I heard of people drowning in the stuff before. You don't wanna drown in poop river, trust me."

"You're just full of all sorts of good information," I said.

"I watch the History Channel," he said with a shrug. "What if we pelt it with a rock?"

"I can't risk knocking the phone into the water."

"Well, then I guess that's that. Good luck, doll," Artie said. He clapped me on the shoulder and said, "I'll be waiting for you over here."

I nervously eyed the rat. "Artie, you're really gonna make me go over there by myself? All by my little lonesome? A big, strong man like you?" I batted my eyes at him and made the pouty-face where I stick out my lower lip, the same one I'd been using since I was two years old as a secret weapon against the male gender. It never failed.

"Yup," Artie said.

I groaned and slowly stepped off the platform, hovering over the running brown water for a moment in revulsion of actually putting my feet into it. Artie thrust his hand out and said, "Hold on tight. It's going faster than it looks. Oh, and keep your head up as high as you can. If it splashes you in the mouth or eyes, you'll need a hepatitis shot."

I pinched my lips together and lowered my foot down, stepping knee deep into the sewer. I could feel it pulling hard on my boot, the undertow as strong as an ocean tide, but instead of sand dissolving under my feet and the smell of the sea, this was a thousand yards of liquefied shit that smelled bad enough to make my eyes water and my nose run.

"There you go, keep going," Artie said.

I had both legs in now, and I was already in the center of the stream, as close to the other side as I was to Artie. He was already extended as far as he could go, and as I inched further and further away, I felt his hand slipping out of mine. The murky water was splashing my thighs now, splattering the white Tyvek suit with brown spots as high as my waist. I kept my head stretched as high as I could. I kept my mouth sealed shut.

"Go, go!"Artie shouted. "Grab the other ledge!"

I lunged for the far wall and grabbed it with both hands, using it to launch myself out of the water as fast as I could, desperate to get out. I pulled myself up onto the concrete ledge and stood up, feeling the wet warmth of sewage sliding down my suit. The rat was sitting on top of the phone, staring at me.

I stamped my foot and shouted, "Get!"

It didn't move.

I took a few steps closer, raising my voice to shout, "Get out of here! Shoo!"

The rat bared its teeth and reared up on its hind legs like it wanted to fight, its red eyes filled with evil. I glared right back at it and said, "You little son of a bitch, I'll throw you in a microwave if you don't get off that damn cellphone!"

I clapped my hands and roared like a maniac, but the rat didn't budge. I backed away slightly, trying to present myself as less of a threat. Maybe the thing would give up the phone and leave peacefully. That way, I didn't get bit, and he didn't get his skull crushed under my boot.

The rat lowered its head to the phone and sniffed the surface, its thick whiskers twitching as it decided it liked what it smelled and gave the surface a long lick.

"Stop that!" I shouted. The damn thing was going to screw up any fingerprints with a long trail of rat slobber. I'd had enough. I stomped toward the phone and just as I came close enough to bend down and grab it, the rat reared up on its hind legs to strike.

Instead of striking, though, it wavered slightly and lost its balance. I watched the thing twitch and bend sideways, squealing miserably as it collapsed to one side and toppled down into the sewer water. I turned to see it floating on the brown river, heading farther and farther into the darkness. "Serves you right, you trash eating piece of crap!" I shouted at it.

"What the hell just happened?" Artie shouted from across the tunnel.

"The rat had some kind of seizure or something."

"I never saw a lady kill a rat by looking at it before," he said.

"I'm a woman of many talents," I said as I bent down to scoop up the phone, holding it up in the light of Artie's headlamp to inspect it. It didn't look wet, except for the rat saliva. In fact, the screen was only slightly dirty from lying on the ground, but that was it. I looked up at the storm drain above on the street and said, "Somebody must have tossed it down here, and as luck would have it, the thing landed on the ledge."

"Lucky break," Artie called out. "You ready to come back or do you want to hang out down here all night?"

I nodded and unzipped the suit from my throat low enough to drop the cellphone down the front of my shirt, tucking it into the padding of my bra to keep it safe. I zippered the suit back up and edged out toward the water once more, trying to steel myself into making another descent.

"What are you doing?" Artie asked.

"I'm going for a swim, dumb ass," I said. "I gotta get back, don't I?"

"Take the bridge back, goofball," he said. He turned his head down the tunnel, and I saw a rickety iron bridge in the distance, connecting both sides of the tunnel.

I looked at the bridge in disbelief and then back at him, "Why the hell didn't you tell me there was a bridge?" 

"Everybody has to make their first crossing through the water. It's a sanitation tradition. It's bad luck otherwise."

I muttered under my breath as I headed down the ledge. There was sewage down my boots, sloshing around both feet. The suit had leaked. It might be good for keeping out radiation but as a wetsuit, it left a lot to be desired. If the terrorists ever attacked with barrels of raw sewage, our HazMat guys were in big trouble.

God only knows what slimy horrors were soaking through my stockings and filling up between my toes. I tried not to think about it as I walked toward the bridge. Still, I had made the crossing, and really, I needed all the good luck I could get.

It took me over an hour to drive across town to the Chicago PD Crime Scene Unit. I knocked on the reception window at the crime lab and flashed my badge at the bleary-eyed technician who answered. I must have woken him up. Working midnight shift on a specialized unit like CSU was a cake job and people fought for it. First, not as much went down during an overnight shift. Sure, on occasion you'd catch a body or two. One gang member would flame another gang member, or the police would bust a cap in a wanted felon, but night work was a license to print money, because every case you got involved with meant you were going to court, and court only operated during the day. It was heavy overtime.

On dayshift, you started out slow and got busier as the day went on. On four to twelve, you started off neck deep in shit and ended up even deeper. Mainly, the midnight rotation came in to bat cleanup for all the guys trying to go home, and things slowly calmed down as the city went to sleep. And apparently, so did the guys working in the Crime Scene Unit.

I held up the paper bag containing Herb's cellphone to the reception window and said, "I need this processed for everything. Prints, DNA, electronic data, everything."

He picked up a clipboard instead of taking the phone and said, "What's the case number?"

"There's no case number," I said. He looked up at me like,
why are you wasting my time
, and I said, "It's an administrative investigation. This is a department-issued phone. The commanding officer is Captain Phillip Miller. You can call him right now if you have any questions. I'll give you his cellphone."

"What is it?" the tech said.

I read off Miller's cellphone and silently wondered if I should have told him I had the phone before coming directly to CSU. In between getting out of my soaked HazMat suit and convincing Artie Luco to dispose of it for me, I'd been too overwhelmed by the lingering stench of sewage in my car and on my person to think clearly, much less to think of calling Miller. It was probably coming from my feet, I decided. The CSU tech had no idea how lucky he was to be standing behind that window. "Who was the phone issued to?"

"Detective Herb Benedict," I said.

"You with Internal Affairs?"

"No. He works with me."

"Oh, I see," the tech said quietly. When he finished writing, he slid his clipboard through the window toward me to sign. "That's the work order requesting we process the phone, in addition to a waiver saying we're doing this under your direct instructions without a case number. Listen," he added, "just in case this is something else, I'm telling you, it's not worth it."

"What do you mean?" I said.

He looked at me carefully and said, "Let's say a woman and a man are working together, right? And he's married and she's his side-piece. He's saying he'll leave his wife but in reality, it don't happen. Finally, the other woman pushes him too hard and he says, 'Look, you crazy broad. It was just for kicks!' And now she's scorned, right? So she starts looking for ways to jam him up. Maybe she's trying to dig up some dirt, using whatever she can to hurt him. I'm just saying. In situations like that, it's not worth it for her. You follow me?"

I nodded as he spoke and once I was sure he finished, I finally said, "Are you asking me if I'm instructing you to search this phone because of some jilted love affair?"

"Of course not," he said, smiling thinly.

"Would you ask that if I were a man?"

"I would if you brought in a woman's phone."

"Well it's legitimate," I said.

"Okay," he said, reaching through the window to take the evidence bag from me. As he leaned out, I saw his nose curl up a little. "We'll have this done in a day or two. You smell that?"

"Smell what?" I said innocently.

"Nothing," he said. He stared at me as he lowered his head to sniff the bag.

I slowly backed away from the window, careful not to let my shoes squeak on the sterile tile floor of the CSU reception area. My feet were still wet.

I went in through the basement door to my home and stripped. I kicked off my shoes and clawed out of my pants and shirt right there, leaving them in a pile on the mudroom floor. I peeled off my stockings and balled them up to stuff them in the trash can. My feet and legs were brown, from the shin down. I hopped up on the washing machine and hoisted my feet into the plastic sink between the washer and dryer and turned on the water. I squirted the lavender hand soap I keep there onto my feet and scrubbed them together like a monkey, trying to wash away the filth.

Once they were cleaned off, I wiggled out of my panties and bra, a nice peach colored thong and pushup bra, and I was glad they weren't ruined too. They set cost almost a hundred bucks at Victoria's Secret. I dropped everything into the washing machine and headed up the stairs, walking through the house naked, wondering if I'd remembered to close the blinds on all my windows.

I made it halfway through the living room before realizing I hadn't. If anybody was looking in through my front windows at that moment, they were getting a free show. To hell with it, I thought. What's the point of worrying about what I eat and drink all the time if nobody ever gets to see the results anyway?

I headed up the stairs and turned on the shower, letting the water get piping hot and fill up the bathroom with a thick layer of steam before climbing in. The water pelted my back and sides and hips, and I just stood there, letting it massage me, and purify me and wash away the grime and the worry of the day.