Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine

by Bernard Schaffer

  "Jack, it's Miller," the captain said. "We found the phone."

  "Oh my God, you did? Send me the address!"

  "It's showing up off of Wentworth Avenue. I'm sending a squad car over there now."

  "Forget that," Jack said. "I'll take care of it."

  "You sure?"

  Jack looked at Joel Roth who was mournfully staring from the top of one of the files with a look that said, You can't be serious. Jack smiled gently and said, "It will be fine."

  "Let me guess," Roth said as Jack hung up the phone.

  "It's important. It's about Herb. I know where he is. Do you want me to go get him and drag him back to court so we can stop all this nonsense, or do you want to see what new and exciting ways we can find to piss off the judge and jury tomorrow too?"

  Roth sighed and said, "Fine. Go. I'll call one of the interns from the office to come help."

  "That's the spirit," Jack said as she slid her shoes back on. "I'm sure you have a few hot young college babes floating around who would love to come keep you company."

  Roth looked back down at the file and said, "I like mature women. Someone I can talk to."

  Jack patted him on the arm and said, "I appreciate what you're doing, Joel. I really do." She backed away to head out of the courtroom thinking, he's a good kid. It's gonna suck breaking his heart.

  6.

  Wentworth Avenue was locked up with rush hour traffic. Soccer moms carting vans full of kids to dance classes and karate classes. They were being eyed up by smarmy executive types in eighty thousand dollar convertibles, the kind of guys who wore a Bluetooth earpiece and cranked up hard gangsta rap songs because they were just oh so gangsta.

  I picked up my phone and called Miller. "I'm almost there, Captain. My GPS says I'm a mile away. Is the signal still good?"

  "I just talked to Sparky. He said the phone shut down a few hours ago, but he's still able to get a signal off the remaining battery. He said that when you get there, tell me, and he'll remotely activate an alert tone on the phone."

  "He can do that?" I asked. "These phones today, Captain. I don't know about them."

  "It's amazing what a few million Chinese child slave laborers can accomplish, isn't it, Jack?"

  I hung up the phone and concentrated on the destination. It was nothing more than a GPS coordinate. In my mind, that coordinate became a tiny apartment with Herb's car parked out front, the one I'd find him playing house in with that little bitch whore. There was probably going to be some screaming, I thought. Maybe by me. I wondered if the Asian chick would try to put up a fight. Well, let her, I thought. Unless she knows kung-fu or something. In that case, I know Smith and Wesson.

  I pulled up to the exact coordinates and looked around. I checked my GPS again, making sure I had the right ones. Something was wrong. There wasn't even any cross streets at that location. It was just mid-block Wentworth Ave with nothing but a few small buildings and open stretches of browned out plots of land. I texted Miller the GPS coordinates and said: I'm here. Are you sure these are the right coordinates?

  I waited in the car, nervously tapping the steering wheel as I waited for his response. The first building was a dentist's office with parking in the back. There were only a couple of cars parked there, and it looked like they were closing up for the evening. The only other one I could make out was a tool rental supply company that looked like it hadn't been open for business since the Bush Administration. The first Bush.

  My phone buzzed and Miller wrote: Sparky says you're at the spot. He's activating the tone now. Act fast, it's only got five minutes worth of battery reserves left.

  I jumped out of my car and started walking, thinking I'd be better off trying my luck at the abandoned building first. The chances of Herb being stuck in a dentist's office seemed less likely than me being a featured speaker at the Ladies Etiquette and Manners Symposium. He just wasn't a go-see-the-dentist kind of guy.

  Darkness was setting in over the Avenue, casting long shadows over the street. It was the kind of thing you saw in movies. Single woman walking down a dark, deserted street. A gang of thugs pops out from an alleyway, or a serial killer pulls over in his van and offers her a ride. I had the solution to both those situations on my hip though, and at that moment, the poor bastards who tried anything on me were going to regret it for the next five seconds of their miserable, short lives. Herb, I thought. If you're not dead, I'm going to kill you.

  Time was getting short, so I quickened my pace, trying to run up the street in my leather flats without slipping out of them and taking a face full of concrete for my troubles. I needed to pick, dentist's office or old rental building. Unless the phone had been ditched in one of the brown fields. Damn it! I thought. I should have brought help.

  A car raced past me as I ran, its music blaring, filling the air with horns and synthesizer chords, as if to say, 'are you looking for something that beeps? Here's six thousand things all doing it at once.'

  As the car's red lights vanished into the distance, I realized I could still hear the soft, steady buzzing of some kind of repetitive beat. Buried inside the buzzing was a soft, barely-audible alert tone.

  I stopped moving and listened as carefully as I could, even closing my eyes and trying not to breathe. The sound was getting more faint with each repeating buzz. It wasn't in the buildings, I realized. It was in the street.

  I jumped off the curb and ran forward, digging my flashlight out of my purse and searching the lanes of Wentworth Avenue for the phone. Finally, I stopped and stared at a sewer drain built into the sidewalk, its narrow gap just a few inches wide. I immediately dropped to the ground and pressed my face against the dirty, stinking sewer grate, trying not to die of all the toxic fumes rushing up out of it. In between trying not to gag, I listened as the sound of Herb's phone buzzed and beeped itself into non-existence, going silent and dark as the last of its juice ran out.

  But I had heard it. And I knew where it was.

  I pulled my phone out and scrolled through it until I found the emergency contact number for the city's sanitation department. You'd be amazed how many times I've had to call them over the years. I waited for someone on the other end to pick up, and as soon as the dispatcher answered, I said, "This is Lieutenant Jack Daniels, Chicago Police. I need access to a sewer line on Wentworth Avenue, right now."

  I listened to her response and I said, "Yes, it's an emergency. You think I'd be asking like this if it weren't?"

  I could hear the diesel engine of the sanitation truck rumbling down Wentworth Avenue from three blocks away. It choked and sputtered at the lights, and then let out long hissing squeals every time the driver stepped on the brakes. I raised my hands in the air as the truck came into view, flagging it down like I was hailing a taxi. In the way only a seasoned municipal employee can do, the driver nodded as he cut across lanes to pull over to the curb, ignoring the irritated drivers who swerved around him while blaring their horns.

  The driver opened the door and swung down from the tall seat like a silverback gorilla, his long arms hanging well below his waist, his wrists and knuckles hairier than my head. He slipped a yellow hardhat on his head and said, "You the cop what called for sewer access?"

  "Yes," I said. "There is a key piece of evidence down there and I need you to go get it."

  He shook his head and said, "Nah, doll. That wasn't what the work order said. It said access. It didn't say going in. Going in is a two-man job. Union rules. You need emergency access, I crowbar the manhole open and wait until you tell me to close it up again. You want us to go down, you gotta wait for another truck. A two-man truck. I mean, I'd like to help a pretty lady such as yourself but rules is the rules, right?"

  I smiled at him as sweetly as I could manage and said, "You're sweet. What's your name?"

  "Artie Luco," he said.

  "Well, listen Artie Luco. I don't have a lot of time. How soon can another truck be here?"

  "Not till tomorrow morning."

  "That's unacce
ptable!" I said. "This is a police matter and you will comply with my instructions or else I will haul your ass in for obstruction."

  He held up his hands and said, "Whoa, doll, I'm not obstructing anything. You want into the drain, I'll get you in, but if you're ordering me in by myself, it violates our safety plan. By which I will need a union rep and a safety coordinator to respond." He lifted his hardhat up and removed a small laminated card from inside the band and looked at it. "What's your name, miss?"

  "Lieutenant Daniels," I said.

  Artie looked back down at the card and said, "Lieutenant Daniels, I am officially advising you of my request to have a union official present while this interaction occurs. I feel that my rights are being violated and you are asking me to do something that is unsafe and compra - comprehends my ability to continue serving this fair city."

  I silently looked at him, then back down at the card, looking over what he read, and I said, "Compromises."

  "Say again?"

  "Compromises," I said, pointing to the card. "You said comprehends."

  "Oh," he said, moving the card closer to his eyes and said, "Lieutenant Daniels, I am officially−"

  "All right," I said, waving my hands. "I get it. I'm not asking you to go down. Just pop the manhole open, and I'll get it myself."

  He looked at me and said, "You serious?"

  "I told you this is important. There's evidence down there."

  "Well you can't go dressed like that. It's a sewer - it ain't no office party."

  I looked down at my clothes and said, "I walk through crime scenes with blood and brains dripping off the ceiling dressed like this, pal. I'll be fine."

  "With all due respect, this is a different kind of crime scene," he said. "Think about all the things people throw out in the street and all the filth they pour down those drains. When it rains, every bodily fluid you can imagine gets washed into those sewers from all over the city. You'll be climbing down into a highly toxic situation. There's tampons, dirty diapers, blood, puke, syringes, you name it. It's all swimming right down below. I heard they got twenty-foot long alligators down in the sewers of New York City. People buy those little baby gators thinking they're cute, and then the things start getting too big, so they dump them in the harbor, and next thing you know, there's Super Crocs running around. Here it's rats the size of small dogs."

  I started heading for the trunk of my car while fishing in my pocket for my car keys. He was trying to scare me, but it wasn't working. "That's an old wives' tale," I said. "They disproved that years ago. There's no alligators in the sewers in New York or anywhere else."

  "If you say so, sure, and this ain't New York" he said. "You ever seen a Chicago River rat? Size of a beaver, I tell ya. Sometimes when I'm down there, I hear things that can't be explained. Growling, and something splashing around in the water. Something big."

  I popped the trunk open and started to take off my blazer, showing Artie the gun strapped to my waist. "I know how to take care of myself. I'm not afraid of Super Rats or Crocs."

  "Everybody says that until one shows up," Artie said quietly.

  I opened my black gear bag up and pulled out a balled up Tyvek suit that I kept stored there for walking through crime scenes. I unrolled the suit and stepped in through the legs, pulling the crinkly paper material over my pants and sliding my arms through the sleeves. It felt like wearing a thick trash bag. This was the same stuff our SWAT guys wore when they were confronting a hazardous material threat. It was the same stuff nuclear scientists wore when they were handling plutonium. I zippered the suit all the way up to my neck and smirked at Artie. He thought I was just another chick.

  I had a pair of rubber, waterproof boots in the trunk and I put them on and covered them with the Tyvek booties stuffed in my pocket. These suits were meant to be worn with a respirator and goggles, but I wasn't going that far. I tucked my hair back into the hood and pulled the straps tight to my chin, locking it down. I was ready for business.

  Artie grabbed a pair of black rubber overalls from the back of his truck and thick rain boots. He selected a mid-size crowbar and draped it over his shoulder like a lumberjack as he walked over to the manhole cover, and then he expertly slid the bar into the notch and popped the thing up like opening a soda bottle. The manhole cover clanged on the asphalt as he pivoted it up and over and let it drop. He waved his beefy hand at the narrow ladder leading down into the watery cavern and said, "Ladies first."

  "Thanks," I said. I carefully lowered myself down into the manhole, making sure I had firm footing with each step. The paper covering my boots might be good for keeping sewage off them, but it was slippery as hell, and the last thing I needed was to be the cop who fell off the ladder and landed in the muck. Artie Luco would never have to buy another beer in Chicago if he told that story at every bar he went into.

  I took the rungs one at a time, easing myself down onto the small concrete platform along the edges of the drain. The water was moving slowly then, a gentle tide of brown and green with fumes so potent they made my eyes sting. I got out of the way as Artie came shuffling down the ladder after me. He clicked on the light that was mounted to his helmet instantly sending forth a bright cone of light at the gray walls all around us, giving me a clear view of exactly how confined we were down there. If there was a sudden flood, we'd be up to our thighs in liquefied shit in seconds. I needed to get the hell out of there.

  "You see this thing?" Artie said.

  "I heard it. It's a phone. We turned it on remotely and set off the alert tone. I could hear it under the drain."

  "How long ago?"

  "About an hour, now," I said.

  Artie frowned, "I hope the tide didn't rise any. Your evidence might already be on its way to the processing plant."

  "Let's hope not," I said. I moved down the narrow ledge, searching the one on the opposite wall, looking for the street drain. "Turn your light over this way, Artie."

  "Don't you have a flashlight?" he said.

  "It's in my pocket under this suit."

  "Smart."

  "Hurry up, this thing's hot."

  Artie came up behind me, moving quicker than I could on the ledge. "The drain's right there," he said. "Did the phone sound like it was to the right or left of it?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  He shrugged, "I thought maybe you could tell."

  "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.