J. Jance - Name Witheld

Compared to outside, the restaurant was warm and inviting. A young, smiling hostess hurried to the front podium to inform me that the kitchen was just closing. "That's all right," I said, "all I want is a cup of coffee."

"In that case," she said, "would you mind sitting at the bar?"

"Not at all," I answered. "No problem."

I grabbed a stool at the near end of the bar, and there on the counter right in front of me, as if it were fate itself, I saw an old, dear friend of mine-a bottle of MacNaughton's.

"Did I hear you say coffee?" the bartender asked, hurrying toward me.

"No," I said, "I changed my mind. Give me a Mac and water."

And that was all there was to it. No drumrolls. No lightning flashes, just, Give me a Mac and water. The bartender who served it up to me was totally innocent of any wrongdoing. He had no way of knowing that this was my first drink in over two years.

In zoos you always see signs that say, DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. Maybe alcoholics should all be required to wear tattoos that say, NO BOOZE, PLEASE. I AM A DRUNK.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, I've often heard stories about people plotting out a game plan for falling off the wagon-planning the where, why, and when of it in great gory detail and well in advance of the actual event. For me, there was no planning. Until I saw the bottle of MacNaughton's sitting there on the counter staring back at me, I hadn't realized I wanted a drink-hadn't anticipated having one or even thought about it much. But when that first taste of booze touched my tongue-when that first long gulp of alcohol blasted into my long-sober system, it tasted great.

For the first half hour or so, I was on top of the world. Invincible. Nothing at all mattered. Nothing, including the fact that I hadn't had a bite to eat in more than ten hours.

"Ready for another?" the bartender asked sometime later.

That, of course, was the critical moment. If I could have walked away from the second drink, even more so than the first, I might have been all right. But it turns out that I'm an alcoholic. Saying no wasn't an option.

"Sure," I said, shoving my empty glass across the bar. "Why the hell not?"

By the end of the second drink, all the other things I had been worrying about and agonizing over disappeared off the face of the earth. They simply went away. I have no idea how many drinks I drank, because I don't remember much after I watched with grave interest while the bartender poured my third.

During most of my adult life, I prided myself on my tolerance for booze. When it came to drinking somebody under the table, I was usually the last man left standing in any given room. Maybe, without my noticing, that legendary tolerance may have been dropping some before I ever went into treatment. Inarguably, between then and the time I took that first drink in Bellevue, somebody pulled a dirty trick on me. It turns out that I couldn't hold my liquor anymore, not worth a tinker's damn.

From the time I took the first sip of the third drink to the time I woke up in what turned out to be the Silver Cloud Motel just up the street, I don't remember a thing-not a damned thing. And when I did wake up-when I finally came to my senses and opened my aching eyes-I wished I hadn't, because I was sick as a dog-more hung over than I've ever been in my whole life. Barely able to stand, I lurched into the bathroom and barfed my guts into the toilet.

Then, as I staggered back to bed, I realized that midnight had come and gone without my ever calling Dave Livingston down in Rancho Cucamonga the way he'd asked me to. Once again, I'd screwed up and let my family down. As usual.

Filled with revulsion and self-loathing, I looked at my watch. It said it was eight o'clock in the morning on Thursday, January 4. I was lying stark naked on the bed of a strange motel room with no knowledge of how or when I'd come to be there. The only thing I did know for sure was that since it was eight A.M., I was now late for work.

Slowly and shakily, feeling like an old man, I showered and managed to clamber back into my stinky clothing. Aware that I was checking out of the place without benefit of luggage, I felt like an errant schoolboy when I walked up to the desk in the lobby.

"Why, good morning, Mr. Beaumont," a cheery young female desk clerk said to me, looking at the number on my key and comparing it to the name on her computer screen. "I hope you slept well."

"Oh, yes," I stammered, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt or looked. "It was fine." I glanced outside, but there was no sign of a parking lot in front of the motel.

"Can I help you with something?" the young woman behind the desk wanted to know.

Embarrassed, my ears turned red. "I seem to have misplaced the parking lot," I said.

She smiled tolerantly, as though having overnight guests lose the parking lot was a commonplace occurrence. "It's around back," she said.

"Thanks."

I found the lot with no further difficulty, but my Guards Red Porsche wasn't there, either. Not only had I misplaced the parking lot, I had also lost my car.

I walked back to the front of the motel. I was standing there looking blankly to the right and left, up and down Twelfth, trying to figure out what the hell to do next, when a Bellevue city cop came steaming by in a black-and-white, lights flashing and siren screeching. When he jammed on his brakes, skidded, and slowed, and then bounced into the

parking garage underneath the Grove on Twelfth, I suddenly remembered very clearly exactly where I had left my missing 928.

About that time, a second cop car came screaming by and turned into the Grove's garage entrance, exactly the same way the first one had. As soon as the second patrol car disappeared into the building, I started getting a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach-a feeling that had nothing whatever to do with the fact that I was as blindly hungover as I had ever been in my life.

I started toward the street just as a third squad car barreled down Bellevue Way and turned in on Twelfth, cutting across a double yellow line and through cars stopped in the left-turn lane. With a final squawk of the siren, that car, too, rocketed into the Grove's underground parking.

One cop car is bad. Two are worse. Three in a row means very bad news for someone. And somehow, I knew that one of those someones was going to be me.

Call it instinct, call it fate, or say that I've been in this business far too many years, but long before I jaywalked across the street at midblock, I knew that Virginia Marks was dead. Drunk or sober, there are some things longtime homicide detectives simply don't have to be told.

Walking into another guy's deal is always a tough call. That's especially true when you're not on your home turf, when you're hungover as hell, and when you're dragging around in yesterday's wrinkled, smelly clothing.

Halfway down the garage I could see the top of Virginia Marks' powder-blue wheelchair carrier towering over the roofs of other nearby vehicles. Just inside the garage entrance, a young, uniformed police officer headed me off at the pass.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said. "There's been a problem in the building. We're not letting anyone inside just now."

Shaking my head, I flipped open my I.D. "I'm a fellow police officer," I said. "Seattle P.D. I'm concerned that whatever has happened here may have something to do with a case I'm currently working on."

The young officer checked over my I.D., looked at me questioningly, shrugged, and then said, "Do you mind waiting here while I check with my sergeant?"

"Go right ahead."

A call on the officer's radio brought a sergeant on the double. He emerged from the same elevator where I had spent so much time waiting for Virginia Marks to answer her phone the night before. Looking anything but friendly, the sergeant hustled across the floor of the garage to the entrance where his conscientious young patrol officer was still barring my way.