Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine

by Bernard Schaffer

  "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.

  "Nothin
g," 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.

  Tomorrow everything would be better, I told myself. Tomorrow, all of this would seem worth it, for sure.

  7.

  The day started around two o'clock in the morning, right after she'd just fallen into a state of floating semi-consciousness that had good potential. It felt like it might even finally lead to something resembling sleep, when the phone rang. She rolled over and squinted to see the name HERB BENEDICT HOME on the phone's screen and shot upright in bed, hammering the answer button. "You son of a bitch, where the hell have you been?" Jack shouted.

  The woman's voice was quiet on the other line when she said, "It's Bernice, Jack."

  "Jesus, I'm sorry," Jack said, pressing her hand to her face. She felt a dull throbbing in the side of her head from not sleeping. It was like someone was slowly carving out her skull with a spoon. "I thought he came home."

  "No," Bernice whispered. "I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest with me."

  "All right," Jack said.

  "Was there ever another woman?"

  Jack paused, squeezing her temples with her fingers, trying to stop them from throbbing.

  "Jack? You're not answering me. I guess that's my answer."

  "No," Jack said. "Not that I know of. I don't think so."

  "Think?"

  "I mean, not that he ever said."

  "I've been married to a cop long enough to know when someone isn't telling the whole truth, Jack," Bernice said. "I need you to be honest with me. Please."

  Jack lied back down on her bed and looked up at the ceiling fan. There was half an inch of dust on its blades. She closed her eyes and said, "We interviewed a bartender who said Herb was last seen talking to a pretty Asian woman. He might have left at the same time she did. Now, we're not sure if he did, and that doesn't mean they left together, you understand? It's just one witness's statement and they hardly ever turn out right. The most important thing is to stay positive and keep looking until we get an answer."

  When Bernice didn't answer, Jack said, "You okay?"

  Surprisingly, Bernice let out a small laugh and said, "A pretty Asian woman? That's preposterous. Herb?"

  "I know, right?" Jack said, finding herself laughing now too.

  "I mean, maybe if he thought she was going to cook for him."

  "The only Asian that ever tempted Herb Benedict was a General named Tso."

  "This is so crazy," Bernice said. Her laughter was gone then, a short-lived thing like a comet flashing across a dark sky, only to be swallowed instantly by thick storm clouds. "I can't believe he'd leave me like this. I just can't believe it."

  "If it helps," Jack said, "I'm not ready to believe it either, and until I am, we're going to keep looking."

  Even after she hung up the phone and closed her eyes, desperate to sleep off the throb in her head, she could not. She'd playfully teased her body with finally getting some rest, and it was now paying her back by refusing to fall for the same trick twice. At four in the morning, she got up and made food for the day. She sliced carrot sticks and cucumbers and packed them in a ziplock baggie to take with her to work, telling herself that even if she was making herself ill by not sleeping she would at least try to eat right.

  At five in the morning, she took a shower and did her hair, taking her time to blow dry and brush it out and do it nice. She picked out a blouse, blazer and skirt for the day, then took the time to iron them until each crease was sharp enough to cut someone with.

  She left the house at six thirty, picking up coffee and a newspaper and two aspirin powders. She didn't know if it was the caffeine or the aspirin, or maybe both, but the headache slowly subsided, a distant beat of jungle drums getting softer and softer as you floated downstream.

  It wasn't so bad getting up super early, she thought. The day hadn't even started, and she was more productive than usual. Maybe I'll try this not sleeping thing full time, or at least until they lock me away in the loony bin once I start hallucinating.

  The sun was rising into the sky as she pulled into the courthouse parking lot. It was empty, save for the personal cars of the overnight guards, and their windows were covered with dew. Jack sipped her coffee and spread the newspaper across her steering wheel, starting at the first page.

  Reading the newspaper was something she'd always thought cops did. So was drinking coffee and smoking. For that matter, so was telling dirty stories and laughing about them, then taking a quick look around to see if anyone who shouldn't be hearing them was listening. That was how Jack heard all her first and finest curse words. Nobody could curse like cops. Not sailors, not construction workers, not nobody.

  Jack remembered all the handsome detectives sitting at their desks back when she was kid, typing their reports on the huge old Olympia typewriters, making their bells ring with every carriage return, cursing bitterly whenever they messed up a word. "Hey, kid," they'd say to her. "You looking for your mom?"

  They smelled like hair products and aftershave and gun leather. Some of them even wore hats, the old fedoras like detectives did in the movies.

  Jack's fate had been sealed from the start. She was police all the way through and had been as long as she could remember.

  Somehow, sitting in her car, drinking her coffee, reading her newspaper, it all reminded her of those throwback cops of bygone days. They'd worked their cases and made their pinches and nothing had slowed them down. I'm cut from that cloth, she thought. If somebody zapped me through a time machine, I'd walk right into one of those offices, grab a desk and start punching up reports. Jack pulled the rearview mirror down and checked her face. She took a good, long look at it and thought about those old cops, and she knew that if somebody had messed with one of them, they messed with all of them.

  Nobody is taking my partner from me, she thought. Nobody.

  Jack was sitting in the courtroom at the prosecutor's table, waiting as people began to file into the court room. She was there when the tipstaff arrived and the bailiff and the sheriff's deputies. She was there when Alan Davidson came into the court carrying his briefcase and there when Keenan Marvin was brought in, shuffling uncomfortably in his leg irons. Jack reached into her pocket and shut down her cellphone. She'd heard stories about Judge Ceparullo seizing people's phones if they rang in court, and she couldn't afford to lose hers.

 
The judge entered the court and the bailiff tapped the podium with the gavel and said, "All rise."

  They all stood up.

  The judge sat down.

  They all sat down.

  Judge Ceparullo looked at the empty seat next to Jack and said, "I don't believe this shit." He immediately covered the microphone in front of him and said, "Strike that. Lieutenant Daniels, where is Mr. Roth?"

  "I don't know, your honor," Jack said.

  Ceparullo sighed and said, "Put this on the record. All parties were advised to be in court today at eight AM. It is now eight oh two. Mr. Roth is hereby fined five hundred dollars for being in contempt, payable to the sheriffs immediately upon his arrival, or he will be taken into custody for−"

  The doors burst open at the front of the court and Jack spun in her chair to see Joel Roth barging in, calling out, "I'm here! I'm here, your honor, sorry I'm late."

  "You are in contempt, Mr. Roth," the judge said. He snapped his fingers at one of the deputies standing behind Keenan Marvin and said, "Extract the fine from him or take him into custody."

  "Your honor," Roth gasped. "How much is the fine?"

  "Five hundred dollars."

  "I don't have five hundred dollars on me."

  "Oh well, you should have thought of that before you came late to my court."

  Roth turned to look at the deputy and said, "Do you guys take credit cards?"

  "Nope," the deputy said.

  Roth reached into his pocket and dug out his wallet. He started to count out his cash and said, "I've got eighty one, no, eighty two dollars on me right now. I will get the rest as soon as we break for lunch, sir, I promise, but I have a very good reason to be late!"

  "You'd better come up with four hundred and eighteen good reasons to stay, Mr. Roth," Judge Ceparullo snapped.

  Roth looked pleadingly at Jack, who stood and opened her purse to pull out her wallet. "Here, I think I've got some," she said. She pulled out two hundred dollar bills and said, "You're lucky I didn't go to the bank yet."