Cheese Wrestling: A Lt. Jack Daniels/Chief Cole Clayton Thriller Read Online Free

Jack.”
    “Sorry?”
    “Jack. Short for Jacqueline.”
    He looked at me for a moment and said, “Okay.”
    I waited. When he didn’t comment on my name, I said, “Go ahead. It’s fine. Everybody does it, so just get it over with.”
    “Get what over with?”
    “You know.”
    He shook his head and said, “I truly don’t.”
    “All right,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. I found myself spreading my blazer a little and sucking in my stomach to make my chest stick out, but just slightly. I looked down at the picture and then at the address on the paper and said, “I’ll take you over there to get eyes on the place. That neighborhood is Russian, all right. I never heard of any white slave traders there, though.”
    “No?” he said. “The Russians out my way mainly stick to alcohol and tobacco smuggling. Whiskey, mainly.”
    I looked at him, searching for any sign of sarcasm. “I thought they liked vodka.”
    He nodded, completely straight-faced, and said, “Right, right. I get the two mixed up sometimes.”



ALICE MCDERMOTT
    A lice opens her eyes.
    The heroin has almost worn off. What was warm and good had become just a little fuzzy.
    She’s thirsty.
    She has to pee.
    She tries to stretch, but she’s still in the cage.
    “Hey,” she says. Then louder. “Hey!”
    One of the girls who isn’t locked up goes to her.
    “Shut up. You’ll wake Sergei.”
    “I gotta go to the bathroom.”
    The girl frowns. “You gonna cause trouble?”
    Alice shakes her head.
    She picks up the keys on the table and opens Alice’s door. Alice crawls out, dizzy. She tries to stand up and almost falls over. The girl catches her.
    Alice is lead down the hallway, to the bathroom. The smell is disgusting. Alice closes the door. She pulls down her underwear and sits on the toilet, but not a lot of pee comes out. When she’s done she goes to the sink, drinks from the faucet. As she does, she sees a ghost in the mirror.
    No. That’s not a ghost. That’s me.
    So thin. So pale. Dead eyes. Brittle hair.
    “Hey!” The girl, pounding on the door. “Hurry up in there!”
    I should run. I should run away from here.
    But Alice was so tired.
    And worse. Her hands were already starting to shake.
    When high, sleeping in a cage didn’t matter. The world was perfect.
    But withdrawal was hell.
    “Hurry the fuck up!”
    Run away, and go through hell?
    Or stay, and hope for more smack?
    “If you make me come in there, I’ll cut you off cold turkey, bitch!”
    Alice made her decision.



JACK DANIELS
    T hey sat in her car without speaking, watching the house, watching the neighborhood itself. The windows on this block were all dark at that hour, except for the flickering television lights of a few upstairs bedrooms. Ukrainian Village wasn’t as isolated as it had once been, back when it was one of the few places immigrants from the Eastern Bloc could find housing. Times had changed, and money talked, and now there were all cultures and creeds mixed in. But tradition was tradition and if you were looking for a Russian in the city of Chicago, that was one of the first places you looked.
    Long-legged blonde women walked hurriedly back to their houses from their cars, stumbling after a late night of partying. Their skirts were so short Jack was able to tell the color of their underwear. The Copper didn’t seem to notice, or at least, he didn’t make any comments. Herb would have commented on how they should cover up, and maybe even gotten out and offered them clothes. Her old partner, Harry McGlade, would have been snapping pictures. Back in the old days, some guys put mirrors on their shoes to see up girls’ skirts. Harry had shoes with movie cameras in the toes.
    But Clayton said nothing, did nothing. Jack thought he came off like some kind of old-school throwback. He was the kind of guy you’d turn on a television show about cops back in the day when they walked the beat in long trench coats doing tricks with their nightsticks to