Cabernet Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “Put this altogether, shake gently and you’ve got the blandest of all outcomes, nothing. When this happens, what do you do? I’m sure this kind of a situation is not new to you.”

  “Look for new ingredients. I might take a second look at Giuseppe Pelegrinno to see if I overlooked something. I’m thinking that the killing of Petrillo has ruffled the feathers of Petrillo’s bosses, riled them to the point of seeking revenge and making them more determined to succeed with their takeover plans. I think there’s probably already something in the works to exact that revenge and to raise the heat on the wineries to sell. I’m going to give Inspector Antonio Bianchi of the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia a call to relay to him what I’m thinking and to urge him to advise his resources to focus on looking for signs of this taking place. Other than that, all we can do now is sit and wait for new developments and be ready to pounce when they occur.”

  Looking at his watch Derrick says, “Wow, did this evening flow by fast. It’s well after ten. We’d better call it a night or we’ll be zombies tomorrow.”

  Derrick settles up with the waiter and after a pit stop at the restrooms they head for his car. The parking lot has pretty much emptied out with only a few cars still scattered around the lot. On the way back to Julie’s condo they stop off at the K-9 unit to pick up their protection for the night. Tonight they’re given two German Shepherds, one’s named Duke and the other Champ.

  When Derrick pulls into the parking area in front of Julie’s condo the parking area lights are out and it is completely dark. The street light in front of her complex is also out. Julie says, “This is a first. This area is always lit up like Levi’s Stadium on game night. A transformer or something must have burned out.”

  “I smell a rat, Julie. I’m going to turn the car lights off as well as the dome light but leave the engine running in case we have to get out of here in a hurry. Let your eyes adjust to the dark, put Duke on alert and then slowly open your door and get out of the car. Close the door but stop it before it latches. I’ll do the same with Champ. Crouch down behind the rear of the car and I’ll do the same behind the car next to us. Have your gun in hand in case you need it. Try not to make a sound. Let Duke and Champ do their thing. If they give a warning, follow my lead.”

  They remained crouched down behind the rear of the cars for at least ten minutes with nothing happening. Then both of the dogs became rigid, ears pulled back and eyes staring at something behind a hedge running along the side and back of the complex. Whoever was hiding out there must have initially positioned themselves in the back of the condos where they were in a better position for an ambush. Apparently, when they heard no car door slam or saw no one approaching Julie’s front door they got curious and moved closer to the parking area to reconnoiter and the dogs picked up their scent.

  Derrick gave Champ the command to attack, Julie did likewise with Duke and Derrick flicked on the flashlight he grabbed when he got out of the car and began to cautiously follow the dogs.

  “Julie, move out alongside of me keeping a distance of at least ten yards. Let’s not make it easy for whoever is out there to shoot both of us.”

  A minute later there is a lot of terrorized screaming as the dogs find their prey and then a shot rings out. When Derrick and Julie get to where the sounds are coming from they find one man lying on the ground with Champ standing over him, growling menacingly. Duke has another man backed up against a tree paralyzed with fear. The man on the ground isn’t moving or making a sound. The hand of the man up against the tree is bleeding profusely.

  Derrick checks the man on the ground and sees that he has been shot in the center of his forehead. That had to be the shot they heard. The man is dead. He has no pulse. Derrick spots a gun lying in an empty bird bath and comes to the only conclusion that makes sense. Apparently, Duke saw a gun in the man’s hand and went for the man’s arm to disarm him and in the ensuing struggle the gun went off and the round wound up in the body of the man on the ground and the gun wound up in the bird bath. The dead man is Mario DiMaggio.

  The man Duke has shaking in his boots is Moose Mueller. While Derrick has been checking out DiMaggio, Julie has been keeping an eye on Mueller. Seeing that Derrick has things under control and has told Champ to stand down, she gives the same command to Duke but commands him to stay on alert. Duke stops growling and retreats to where Julie is standing with her gun pointed at Mueller’s chest.

  “Turn around Mueller, spread your legs, put your hands up against the tree and keep your eyes front.”

  He doesn’t move at first, but then he relents and obeys. Figuring Duke has her back, she holsters her weapon, removes the cuffs on her utility belt and moves forward to put them on Mueller. She grabs one of his wrists to put a cuff on him and that’s when things went all to hell.

  Mueller quickly turns and using his size and strength flings her away from him and she falls to the ground. He then lunges for her and that is the last thing he does on this earth. Before he can reach her, Julie has recovered and is on her feet. After Julie has connected with a series of vicious and devastating kicks and punches, Mueller in desperation lunges at Julie again trying to get a firm hold on her where his size and strength would give him an advantage, but Julie deftly tosses him over her shoulder and he strikes his head on the bird bath, collapsing to the ground with Duke growling in his face. Mueller isn’t moving and Derrick moves over to check the damage.

  “Julie, call Duke off.”

  Taking a close look at Mueller he utters quietly, “Ah shit! It looks like his neck is broken.”

  Feeling for a pulse and finding none he adds, “Damn! These two were probably our best chance to shed some light on who the brains are behind the wineries’ troubles and perhaps get some solid evidence that we could use to bring them down. We’re now down to Cordell and the Paganellis and maybe Giuseppe Pelegrinno to hopefully open some doors for us.”

  “I’m sorry, Derrick. I didn’t mean to kill him, just put him out of commission until I could subdue him and get him cuffed.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me or anyone else. You did what you had to do. The guy is as big as a gorilla and probably was as strong as one. If he had managed to hit you, that could be you lying there with a broken neck.”

  “Well, it looks like we’re going to be a couple of zombies tomorrow. We’re going to have to call this in and then hang around for the coroner to get here to do his thing and then Bemis will probably show up to gives us the third degree along with who knows who else. I sure would like to have a decent number of hours of sleep under my belt before I have to face the interrogations of our internal affairs folks who will probably be calling on us early tomorrow morning.”

  “The commander of the K-9 unit is also going to have a lot of questions for us.” Bending down to pet the dogs he says, “Don’t you guys worry about a thing. You came through this ordeal with flying colors. If it weren’t for you, Julie and I could be heading for the morgue instead of these two scumbags.”

  “I second that. You two were definitely our best friends this evening.”

  The dogs seem to understand what Derrick and Julie are saying to them because they rise up on their hind legs and start to bark and lick their faces.

  By the time the coroner, crime scene personnel and a half dozen deputies in patrol cars arrive on the scene, the parking area is swarming with residents of the complex and surrounding residential areas close by who are curious about what all the commotion is about. Some said they heard the gun shot.

  It wasn’t until two-thirty in the morning that the area returned to normal, the onlookers had returned to their homes, the coroner had left with the stiffs and their colleagues and comrades in the war against the bad guys had split. Surprisingly, Bemis was a no show. Julie and Derrick are wondering if maybe he had those drinks after the meeting about vehicles available for police work and was in no shape to put in an appearance.

  Saying good night to Julie at her front door Derrick asks, “
Are you okay with what went down tonight? Being responsible for the death of someone even if it wasn’t your intention and no matter how much they deserve it can mess with your head.”

  “Have you ever killed someone?”

  “I have, but that’s a subject for another time. Are you going to be alright?”

  “I think I’ll be fine, but thanks for asking and thanks for taking me to dinner tonight or I guess I should say last night seeing what time it is.” She quickly gives him a peck on the lips, adroitly backs into her condo and closes and locks the door.

  He thinks about that peck all the way home.

  Chapter 39

  When Derrick and Julie manage to show up for work on time later that morning, internal affairs has already put in an appearance in Bemis’s office. Bill sees them walk in and motions for them to come into his office. Bill looks to be in a good mood and the internal affairs guy, Tom Jaffrey, looks like most internal affairs guys look, suspicious and willing to toss the book at somebody with the slightest provocation.

  Derrick and Julie look like they’ve been run over by a street sweeper. They’re still wearing the clothes they had on yesterday which are now loaded with wrinkles because they slept in them, Derrick needs a shave and Julie’s eyes are bloodshot from not getting enough sleep.

  Bill says, “Tom has just given me the lowdown on what happened last night and has some questions for you. When he’s through, write up your reports, give them to me and then go home and get some sleep. You two look like something the cat dragged in. Where are the dogs?”

  Derrick answers for both of them. “We dropped them off on the way into work and answered a barrage of questions from the top dog there.”

  Bill remarks, “Well it’s good to see your experience and lack of sleep hasn’t dulled your wit any. As I’m sure you know, Tom has his own barrage of questions he wants to fire at you. I have to leave and do my dog and pony show for my masters and at least now I have something new to report.”

  Bill leaves and for the next two hours Tom embarks on a rapid fire interrogation of the two deputies. When the questioning is finally over, the two really look like they’ve been put through the wringer.

  They write their reports, plop them on Bemis’s desk and head for home sans dogs. They figure they have a small respite before Mueller and DiMaggio are replaced. It wouldn’t surprise them if more than two hit men were sicced on them the next time. The kingpins of organized crime don’t tolerate anyone getting in their way and those responsible for the assaults on the wineries have got to be really pissed at them.

  The respite turns out to be less than 36 hours as around three a.m. on a cold, rainy Wednesday morning Derrick is awakened from a sound sleep by his bedside phone ringing. It’s dispatch notifying him of another assault on a winery. This time it’s the Arlinghaus Winery. Someone has set fire to one of the wine storage areas and there have been a couple of fatalities.

  On his way to the winery, Derrick’s thinking that some poor saps working nights to make a living were in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, when he arrives he sees Hans Arlinghaus sitting on a wall with a gun in his hand, his upper arm sporting a bloody makeshift bandage, staring down at two dead bodies lying on the ground. Derrick has arrived right behind two fire engines, three patrol cars and a paramedic ambulance. Two deputies run over to Arlinghaus with their weapons drawn and Derrick has to shout at them to back off.

  Jumping out of his car and flashing his ID he yells, “Leave him be. He’s the victim here. Check around for anyone who shouldn’t be here.

  As he’s walking over to where Arlinghaus is sitting a paramedic runs by to attend to Arlinghaus, so he stops to check the pulses of the men on the ground and confirms one of them is dead, but one of them is still alive, barely. Grabbing another paramedic by the arm he points to the guy with the feeble pulse and says, “This one is still alive. See if you can stabilize him enough for a ride to the nearest hospital under police guard.”

  While the paramedics are doing their thing, Derrick starts to rifle through the men’s pockets for ID, but is waived off by Arlinghaus. “I already checked. They’re pros. There’s nothing on them to give us any idea who they might be.”

  “Mr. Arlinghaus, what the hell happened here?”

  “I’ve been sleeping at the winery ever since you and I first talked, just in case something like this was to happen. Around two, something woke me up and my office where I’ve been sleeping on a cot was lit up like it was broad day light. I got up to see what was going on and when I looked out the window I saw one of our storage areas engulfed in flames. I dialed 911, grabbed my Glock and went out to investigate. When I got closer to the fire, I heard some movement behind a nearby shed and snuck around to the back to see what was making the noise. One of these guys was on the other side of the fire hidden by the flames and when he saw me nosing around took a shot at me. He winged me in my arm, nothing but a flesh wound that bled a lot, and I shot back and hit him square in the chest. He staggered over here and then fell down dead. The other one was behind the shed fixing to set fire to it and when I spotted him and ordered him to stop he dove to the ground, pulled a gun, fired at me and missed. I fired back and didn’t miss. I got him in the crown of his head. End of story.”

  “That’s definitely one for the best sellers list that’s for sure. You did good sir. I’m glad they were lousy shots and you weren’t. Where are your security guards?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Their car cruised by around eleven when I was getting ready to hit the sack. We waived to each other and that’s the last I saw of them.”

  Calling the deputies from one of the patrol cars over, he tells them to drive out to the vineyards and look around for any sign of the security people and to call him on his cell if they find anything. He gives them his cell number and then directing his attention back to Arlinghaus he says, “Try to relax while I round up a ride to take you to the hospital to have that arm looked at. Give me your Glock. Our lab people will need it to confirm the slugs in the people you shot came from it.”

  Arlinghaus complies and then Derrick heads over to a couple of deputies guarding the entrance to the crime scene. As he’s doing this, Derrick spots Julie’s car flying down the road leading to the archway entrance of the winery. He had called her on the way to the winery and told her to meet him here. She lives a bit closer to the winery than he does and should have arrived before he did. He asks the deputies to tag and put Arlinghaus’s gun in an evidence bag and take Arlinghaus to the emergency room at the hospital and then walks over to Julie as she’s climbing out of her car to fill her in and find out what delayed her.

  Before he can say anything she says, “I had a flat tire and my spare is one of those donuts that you can’t go very fast on, so I called Triple A. Fortunately, there was a truck available close by my condo and he came right away. What happened?”

  He tells her what went down and she says, “I wonder if this was in the works before we took Mueller and DiMaggio out of the game or if it’s their way of retaliating for what we did.”

  “Either way, the harassment has now moved up to an entirely different level and they now have no qualms about killing anybody if that’s what it takes to get the job done.”

  Fifteen minutes later his observation is supported by the deputies searching for the security guards notifying him on his cell that they had found the missing security guards. The car was parked on a dirt road that runs around the perimeter of the vineyards. The guards were in the front seat, dead, both shot in the head. Derrick’s assuming it’s the work of the arsonists to clear the way for what they came to do.

  By the time they are ready to leave the winery, the fire is out, the coroner has shown up, done his thing and taken the dead men away, the security guards’ car has been towed to the impound lot where it will be dusted for prints and examined for anything else the killers might have left behind that would identify them, the forensic personnel have closely scrutinized the pertinen
t areas at the winery looking for anything helpful but to no avail, the other arsonist has arrived at the hospital and is still alive and breathing and Arlinghaus is sitting in the emergency room at the same hospital waiting to have his arm looked at.

  The fire department’s quick response has kept the damage to the storage area to a minimum. Some wine has been lost, but the majority of the wine temporarily stored there came through the ordeal without even getting a label singed.