by Rod Kackley
Joy had been reading some crime novels, too.
A COUPLE OF HOURS AFTER they hit the Motor City, Joy had to admit Amanda had been right. It was easy enough of find potential coffee shops on the internet. And thanks to the Uber dispatcher looking for some quick fame in the pages of the Chronicle, the driver had refused to talk, they had a pretty good idea of the neighborhood where Mary Eileen would be hanging out, trying to survive.
But tromping from one coffee shop to the next — the Espresso Bar, the Final Grind, the Brewer, the Roaster, the White Pigeons, Jack’s Warm Buns and of course, Central Perc— the list of places selling and roasting coffee was endless.
Joy and Amanda spent a week going from one coffee bar to the next.
“I can’t take one more espresso,” Amanda said holding her stomach as she and Joy walked through the door of a place called Bean There, Brewed That.
“At least the owner seems more creative than the last ten or twelve,” said Joy. But she had to admit that her stomach turned at just the thought of one more latte.
“If we don’t find Mary Eileen by the end of the day, I say we turn around and go back home,” Joy said.
“If we find her today, I think I will just kill her and spare the court system the trouble,” muttered Amanda.
“Don’t you dare!” Joy said as she pushed the door open and saw one more brick inside wall in one more coffee shop. “This story is our ticket to New York! I can hear CNN calling right now.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down,” Amanda said.
The women, St. Isidore Chronicle’s Dynamic Duo backed out of the doorway to let a young couple — two men, both with neatly trimmed beards and a definite bounce in their step, walk out hand-in-hand.
Joy was just about to whisper to Amanda, “We aren’t in St. Isidore anymore,” when she saw her. Mary Eileen Sullivan in all her Irish glory, auburn tresses tied in a neat bun, green eyes flashing, turned around from the coffee bar with a tray of steaming hot drinks on her shoulder.
Good, God! Amanda and Joy shared the thought as they spun on tip-toe and looked at each other with the smile of conspirators whose master plan was about to pay off.
The next moment they shared another thought — Oh My God! — as two male hands grabbed each of their shoulders from behind and pulled them out of Bean There, Brewed That.
“What the fuck?” Amanda managed to say as she tried to wriggle out from the grasp of a man whose hand was as big and hairy as a bear’s paw. She looked up over her shoulder and saw a giant with blond hair and blue eyes. Irish? A friend of Mary Eileen’s? Amanda wondered.
Joy was twisting and squirming herself. The guy who had her wasn’t nearly as tall or cute. But he was a muscular as anyone Joy had ever encountered. Her brothers had push some real crushing grips on her during childhood wrestling matches, but this guy was almost crushing her collarbone.
He used his other hand, as did Amanda’s abductor, to grab one of Joy’s wrists and twist it behind her back.
The men pulled and then pushed Amanda and Joy away from the coffee shop and into an alley behind Bean There, Brewed That.
As much as they had been dreading their next shot of caffeine a few moments ago, Joy and Amanda were both wishing they could have just one more coffee before getting a shot of whatever these two had planned for them.
Two big, black SUVs — the kind of trucks that were either used by politicians or awful bad guys in the movies — were parked about 100 feet away. Amanda and Joy sensed both of those vehicles had trouble inside.
“Do you realize who we are?” Joy said as Amanda cringed. She had never been in this kind of situation before, and she always gave deference to her boss and mentor. But really Joy, is this the best play to make, Amanda couldn’t help thinking.
“We are reporters for the St. Isidore Chronicle,” Amanda said. It was probably best to play along now that Joy had tossed down the first card.
“If we go missing, people will be looking for us,” Joy said, making the next obvious play.
But who were these guys? The journalistic souls of Joy and Amanda begged for an answer. It’s not like they had any real money. Were they being kidnapped? Or could it be that Mary Eileen had a couple of cohorts who were protecting her?
Maybe this story was even bigger than they thought.
“Someone’s looking for you already,” said one of the men holding Joy. He pulled her around to the driver’s side of one of the SUVs and opened the passenger door for the rear seat. The other one pulled the rear passenger door on the other side and pushed Amanda inside.
The engine was running, as was the air conditioner. The atmosphere was almost as chilly as one might expect for a final ride, Joy thought. Even in this moment of utter fear she couldn’t help composing an article in her head.
Amanda was chewing on her lip. Her protege seemed so, well, tiny, helpless and even vulnerable that Joy reached over and held her hand, trying to reassure Amanda that everything would be okay.
But Joy knew that chances were worse than 50-50 that they would survive.
Two men sat in the front. It was easy to see from the size of the backs of their heads that they were big guys and even muscular. Their necks were next to nothing. It was almost like they had to skulls mounted on swiveling pedestals.
Amanda was scared to death. They had been in tight situations before, tracking serial killers, homicidal maniacs and even white-collar criminals who might kill before they allowed themselves to be dragged away to prison. But this was the first time someone had gotten the drop on them, to quote the pulp crime novels Joy loved to read.
Amanda looked at the guys in the front seat and just knew either one of them could snap her like a twig.
The man in the passenger seat put his hand to his mouth and cleared his throat. He seemed to be dressed in business casual and was wearing a brown sports coat. The attire gave Amanda and Joy at least a little hope.
He cleared his throat and turned to his left.
Amanda and Joy blinked hard and looked at each other with their mouths hanging open and their eyebrows dancing.
“Joy and Amanda,” Sean Patrick Flynn said as he smiled and nodded at each woman, “what a pleasant surprise.”
Twenty Five
Bean There, Brewed That. It was a name so smart that Mary Eileen almost wished she had thought of it for her coffee shop. But that didn’t matter as much as getting off her feet. She must have walked a mile from the rats and other vermin, like her new boyfriend, who infested the mansion that Mary Eileen called home.
It was a combination of music and outright exhaustion that drove her down that street to the mansion with an orange electrical cord running into a window. She’d climbed on an old, rickety shed, using a couple of old tires to get close enough to the shed’s roof to hop up and grab the ledge with her fingertips.
With a strength she had forgotten she had, Mary Eileen pulled herself onto the top of the shed, found a window open and shimmied inside. She wandered through the rooms, using the last bit of battery strength in her smartphone to run the flashlight app and avoid the mice and whatever else was scurrying on the floor, and the piles of clothes, books, furniture, and pictures.
The woodwork that had survived Detroit’s Great Recession was spectacular; Mary Eileen had to admit. During her exploration of the house, she would find four bathrooms, none of which with a functioning toilet, the water must have been cut off long ago.
She also found one man inside, or rather, he found her.
Mary Eileen was wandering down a hall on the third floor when she thought she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Oh, fuck, she thought. This is not going to end well. Not unless I can use all my powers, Mary Eileen laughed to herself. She wasn’t afraid of some bum in a shack. She’d dealt with worse, much worse, in New York.
The sound of a shell racked into a shotgun wrecked her confidence. This guy is more serious than most, Mary Eileen thought. Or maybe he is more afraid than I am Mary Eileen decided to use a weapon
she had not unveiled in days, and perhaps one Mr. Shotgun Man hadn’t seen in an every long time. Mary Eileen turned and smiled. And they reached what could be called, an agreement.
Now Mary Eileen had a place to call home while she reinvented herself. True, she had to do more for this guy — she did almost feel sorry for him, living along for a year scared to death of whatever or whoever came down the street at night — than she had wanted to do. But this arrangement gave her the space she needed. And it’s not like Mary Eileen had never traded favors.
Jason — that was his name — had everything she needed. This guy was hunkered down for the duration of whatever warfare came to him in Detroit. Thanks to his power-stealing orange electrical cord that ran from the house to a power pole, they had a refrigerator, a TV, radio; and even a computer. Since Mary Eileen had Verizon data, she didn’t need a Wi-Fi connection for her smartphone. She was all set. Yeah, running water would have been nice. But Jason had a garden hose running through three backyards to a house where the water was on. At night, they’d turn on the tap and run back through the yards to collect as much water as possible in the three bathtubs in the house.
So Mary Eileen would live.
Making a living was next. There had to be coffee shops, right? It was a simple matter to find one that would pay her under the table. Once she plugged her phone into Jason’s computer to recharge it, Mary Eileen searched for small coffee shops, the independents, who must be struggling.
Mary Eileen knew first hand the trials, tribulations and financial margins of running a coffee shop. Everybody thought selling a four-dollar cup of coffee made with probably a nickel’s worth of beans should be like having a license to print money.
How little they knew about all of the other expenses that went into running any small business. Mary Eileen knew. And she also realized that anyone facing the challenges she had faced in the Coffee Shoppe might be willing to do just what she had done — hire someone ready to work without bennies, somebody, who wanted to stay under the radar and get paid under the table.
And, so she found herself at Bean There, Brewed That. Not a bad gig. She was making a few hundred dollars a week, all tax free, no questions asked.
Had Mary Eileen spent time thinking about Sean? Sure, she did. This guy she was with, this Jason, was such a nothing compared to Sean. Mary Eileen had to close her eyes and think about the one true love of her life every night that Jason took her to bed.
She had not resisted. She had even pretended. Mary Eileen needed this guy and this house. She didn’t have a master plan for the reinvention of herself yet. All Mary Eileen required was time, some money and if things kept going the way they were, a chainsaw and a bag of cement mix wouldn’t hurt either.
So far though, Jason was serving his purpose. So Jason was still alive. And he would breathe as long as he was a good boy and didn’t ask for too much. Still, he was on thin ice. Now that Mary Eileen had a good job or at least a way to bring in money without selling her body she really didn’t need Jason. She could buy her food. She could protect herself. His guns could quickly become her weapons. And Mary Eileen still had the Beretta that she’d used to free herself from David and Hans.
Jason could be next.
Later for that, Mary Eileen decided. She’d had enough drama in her life the past few weeks. If nothing else, Jason was a life support system for an adequate penis.
And as long as she dreamed of Sean, the pretending part wasn’t so bad.
“White mocha latte, two dark coffees, and three muffins,” Mary Eileen heard herself say to the Bean There bartender. As she waited for her order, her mind drifted, and she glanced out the front window watching the traffic and day dreaming.
Mary Eileen thought about Sean so hard at times like this; she could almost see him.
This morning, she was sure she had, at least twice. Mary Eileen had been thinking about Sean more than usual for the past couple of hours. Her last dream of the night, one that ended just before her smartphone’s alarm went off at 4 a.m., was a rough one. It had been about Sean. The two of them were together. Mary Eileen couldn’t remember all the particulars, but it had not ended well. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and laid in her sleeping bag for nearly ten minutes filled with a dread that comes when one realizes it could be a very, very rough day ahead.
Mary Eileen might have been able to rub the sleep out of her eyes, but she couldn’t cleanse her mind of that dream. So, it was no wonder that every other guy who walked into Bean There, Brewed That looked for a moment just like Sean. Mary Eileen could have even sworn she had seen him in an SUV that rolled slowly by the store as she was opening for the morning.
But of course, there was no chance of that. He had to be teaching his literature students in Ann Arbor.
“It’s a school day, right?” Mary Eileen whispered to herself.
Twenty Six
Sean didn’t say anything. The women in the back seat were frozen as solid as a couple of chicken breasts hidden in the freezer behind the frozen vegetables that nobody wanted. He just smiled and flipped up his wallet that showed his state police badge and his identification. With the practice of years of shocking surprised suspects and witnesses, Sean held his badge and picture-ID next to his smiling face.
There could be no mistake. He was a cop. And not just a cop, Sean Patrick Flynn was a state police detective.
“What the fuck?” Amanda and Joy mouthed to each other silently.
“Well, said, ladies, well said,” Sean said with a laugh. His partner in the front turned to his right so he could see the shock on the faces of their passengers.
“It seems we’ve been after the same person,” Sean said, closing his ID.
“Could we see your ID, again?” Joy said.
Sean smiled and handed his wallet to them.
“Good God,” Amanda said. “Sean Patrick Flynn, you’re not a professor from Dublin.”
“Are you even Irish?” Joy whispered.
“Well, Irish-American. My family came over in the 1800s, so there is some connection to Ireland, but I was born and bred in the suburbs of Detroit,” Sean said. “And as for being a professor, hell, I hardly made it through four years at Wayne State and then the state police academy.”
“But, Sean...” Amanda said.
“Why don’t you just call me, detective,” Sean said. “I mean, just so we all know who is in charge here, okay?”
What could Amanda and Joy do except shrug and nod their agreement? Who were they to complain. Their story had just gotten even better.
Amanda had an idea.
“Okay, Sean,” Amanda said, dragging out his name until she ran out of breath.
“So you’re an undercover cop, or you were until your cover just got blown,” Joy said.
“What’s next?” said Amanda.
Joy didn’t chime in with her voice. She just lifted her eyebrows and waited.
“How did you find her? Was it luck, or are you just that fucking good?” said Amanda
“A little of both,” said Sean. He could have shared his story of how he found Mary Eileen’s new home, her faux boyfriend and how he convinced the pitiful excuse for a male to rat out his chick. But he chose not too. There would be plenty of time for that tale in court. Sean didn’t have a minute to spare talking to reporters. He and his three-man squad of state police heavies were all on the clock. And their suspect had shown she could vanish in an instant.
It was time to bring Mary Eileen Sullivan home to St. Isidore.
“Stay here,” Sean said.
Joy just about jumped out of her seat.
“No fucking way! This is our story,” she said.
“Story? Who gives a flying fuck about your story?” said Sean’s partner behind the SUV’s steering wheel.
“Come on,” said Amanda, “this could be excellent for you and the department. It’s a great story to tell.”
Sean laughed.
“No fucking way, who?”
“I meant, ‘
No way, detective.’”
He paused for a moment if only to insert his authority back into the conversation.
“Stay here,” said Sean using a tone of voice that left no doubt there were plenty of handcuffs to go around if either Amanda or Joy should choose not to obey a direct order from a state police detective.
Again, Sean paused. This time he wanted to be sure the order had sunk in with both women. The last thing he needed was to have them go rogue on him while his men were bringing in a double-murderer.
Sean would have liked to have waited until Mary Eileen got off work and was walking home. But Joy and Amanda didn’t leave him any choice. Well, there was a choice. If they waited like good cops should until Mary Eileen was free of any civilians who might get caught in an ugly crossfire, they would be stuck with two reporters in the back seat. Nearly a fate worse than death, Sean decided.
Besides, as dangerous as Mary Eileen might be, he was pretty confident that the element of surprise — Sean could hardly wait to see her face when he walked into Bean There — would give him all the advantage he would need.
Was he happy to bring this to a close? Yeah, Sean was pleased It was tough doing the undercover role of a literature professor making a play for a beautiful Irish girl, a real Colleen, who he wanted in actual life, not in his undercover life. No ruse, no fooling, just hot, hard lust and then love. Sean was head over heels in love with Mary Eileen Sullivan.
But he had always been a cop first. And so Sean was today. He was a cop who had to make an arrest. And, it was an arrest that would look good, damn good, on his record. So as he got out of the SUV and signaled to his men that it was time to go, Sean understood the meaning of the word ‘bittersweet.’ He could almost hear Michael Douglas defining the word in “Wall Street,” as being “like watching your mother-in-law go off a cliff in your brand new Maserati.”
His team, three of the sharpest, toughest uniforms on the street were standing with him. He had a great squad. They had brought in some significant cases, and this arrest would be right up there with the cream of that crop.