Chapter 19

Sonny slid onto the bar stool while saying, “I’ll have a beer.”

The bartender looked at Sonny and then poured a beer out of the tap. He put it down in front of Sonny and said, “That’ll be four bucks.”

Sonny pulled out a five and said, “Keep the change.”

“Thanks,” the bartender said.

Sonny turned to the man seated beside him and said, “Well! Hello, Detective Mike Saperstein. What are you doing frequenting my favorite drinking establishment in all of Los Angeles?”

“What in the hell are you doing here?” Mike asked. This was the bar down the street from the police station. The only customers who frequented the place were cops.

Sonny held up his mug of beer and said, “I’m having a beer. What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re here to make me miserable,” Mike said.

He really disliked Sonny Daniels.

Sonny took a sip of his beer and then said, “I just wanted to find out how the search for those two desperados who shot me was going. Any luck finding them?”

“No,” Mike said.

Sonny said, “I bet you are losing sleep every night wondering where they are.”

“No, I’m not,” Mike said.

He was losing sleep because the legal system was broken.

“Good. I would hate for you to lose sleep on my account,” Sonny said pleasantly.

“That’s nice of you,” Mike said.

“I was watching a live broadcast on the news the other night. Some reporter was talking about how the police still did not have any suspects in that bombing and fire at the strip club where that gang hangs out. You wouldn’t believe who I saw on it,” Sonny said.

Knowing that he wouldn’t like the answer, Mike asked, “Who?”

“I saw the two men who shot me. They were walking around there like they didn’t have a care in the world,” Sonny said.

“I didn’t know about that,” Mike said.

He looked down at his beer thinking he could probably chug it down and be gone in thirty seconds. The idea that Sonny would chase him out of ‘his’ bar, grated on him.

Sonny said, “I called 911 and told them all about it. I kind of expected to see them arrested, live, on television. There was even a police car in the background of the video. I’m sure that you can imagine my disappointment when nothing happened.”

“I’ll look into it,” Mike said.

The fact was he knew exactly why the two men hadn’t been picked up yet, but he wasn’t going to admit it, publicly.

“You do that,” Sonny said with a smile.

“Is there anything else that you wanted to tell me?” Mike asked.

Sonny said, “I was curious about something.”

“What?”

“I was wondering if you ever thought about retiring from the police department, here, and taking a position out in the country,” Sonny said.

He took a sip of his beer and watched Mike over the mug.

Mike stared at Sonny for a second wondering why he was really here in the bar. It dawned on him that anytime something happened around the gang that Sonny had an airtight alibi. There wasn’t any better alibi than sitting in a bar surrounded by cops.

He swore, “Oh shit.”

Mike reached into his coat and pulled out a cell phone. He dialed a number and waited for an answer.

He said, “Dispatch, I am Detective Mike Saperstein. I need two cars dispatched to a location.”

“I don’t have the address. It’s the strip club where we had the explosion and fire a couple weeks ago.”

“I want them parked across the street from the strip club.”

“Let them know that I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

Mike closed his cell phone. He said, “I’ve got to be going.”

“You never answered my question about moving to the country,” Sonny said.

Looking at Sonny, he said, “I’d rather live in hell than be surrounded by a bunch of yahoos like you.”

“That’s a rather unfriendly attitude. I’m a pretty nice guy,” Sonny said.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Mike said getting up from his stool.

Sonny asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to that strip club,” Mike answered.

“Are you going to arrest those two guys?” Sonny asked.

“I’ll try to if I can,” Mike answered.

He had a feeling that all of this would disappear as soon as the two men were in custody. He wished that he could actually arrest them.

Sonny asked, “Are you afraid that something bad is going to happen there because I’m here with you?”

“Yes,” Mike said. “You’re here to establish an alibi.”

Mike was getting ready to walk off when Sonny said, “I wonder if you’ll blame me if nothing happens tonight.”

“Why don’t you come with me?” Mike said thinking it would be good to watch Sonny so that he couldn’t make a call to prevent something from happening.

Taking a sip of his beer, Sonny said, “I’d love to. Do I have to ride in the back like a suspect?”

“No, you ride up front with me. I want to keep an eye on you,” Mike said. “Let’s go.”

Sonny followed Mike out of the bar. He took off his hat and wiped his brow with a red bandana. He said, “It sure is hot out here.”

“It’s the middle of summer. What do you expect?” Mike asked. He gestured to the passenger door and said, “Get in.”

“Okay,” Sonny said. He got into the car and looked around at the dashboard. Not seeing any special police equipment, he asked, “Are you going to drive around with your siren on?”

“No, this is my personal car,” Mike said. “Officially, we’re not on official business. We’re just two citizens driving around.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Sonny said. He looked around the car and then said, “This is one of my first times in a sedan. I have to say that I don’t like it. It seems to me like you’re too low to the ground to have good visibility. I’ve always driven pickup trucks. They sit a little higher off the ground.”

“You’ve been driving ... what ... three years,” Mike said.

He started the car and pulled away from the curb. The traffic was pretty bad at that time of the day. He hoped that he made it to the strip club before something bad happened.

“I’ve been driving since I was ten,” Sonny said.

He turned his head to look at a woman wearing a short skirt entering the police station. She looked like what he imagined a ‘working girl’ to look like.

“I didn’t know that you can get a driver’s license at ten in Montana,” Mike said glancing over at Sonny to see his reaction.

“You can’t. The earliest you get a learners permit is fourteen. After six months, you can get a limited driver’s license,” Sonny said.

He leaned back in his seat to check out a car that was cruising beside them. It was bright orange and had yellow flames painted along the side. He expected a young kid to be driving it, but the driver was a middle-aged man. He shook his head.

“It seems to me that you don’t have much regard for the law if you started driving at ten,” Mike said. For some reason it didn’t seem all that unexpected that Sonny was driving that early.

“You don’t need a license to drive on your own property. We’ve got five square miles of land back home. It was either ride a horse or drive if I needed to get to one of the far pastures,” Sonny said.

“Five square miles?” Mike asked turning to look at Sonny. He realized that he was about to drive into the car in front of them and hit the brakes.

“That’s right,” Sonny said looking at the incredulous expression on Mike’s face. “It’s not the biggest place around, but it’s also not the smallest.”

Mike said, “What are you doing going to school here if you own that much land?”

“I like computers. I’ll be going home after I graduate. Right now our only connection to the internet is via dialup. Of course, there’s always satellite, but that’s expensive and they restrict your usage. I want to bring low-cost high-speed connectivity to the area,” Sonny said.

“What do you need high-speed connectivity for?” Mike asked.

“You may not be aware of it, but modern ranching is a big business. Farm equipment can cost over a million dollars apiece and you can’t afford to have it sitting around because some twenty-dollar part broke on it. If you need a part for it, you can’t rely upon a printed catalog that’s a year or two out of date. You want to know if they have it in stock, how long it will take them to get it to you, and how much it will cost you. You try going to some of those websites with a dialup modem and see how much you like it,” Sonny said.

“I never thought about it,” Mike said.

“I’m sure you didn’t. Did you know that as of 1997 that there were still six percent of the households in this country that didn’t have a telephone?” Sonny asked.

“I didn’t know that,” Mike said, thinking he was going to have to go look that up when he got home.

“The availability of high-speed internet in rural areas is abysmal,” Sonny said, “There are government programs out there to help rural areas get connected. I want to help my family and my neighbors. There is only one person around who will do it and that’s me. No one from Los Angeles is going to move out to Montana to start a small internet company.”

“It sounds like you have it all planned out,” Mike said.

He didn’t think that Sonny would ever live to see those plans bear fruit. He was going to arrest the man and convict him for his role in all those gang member deaths. The more times they interacted, the more likely it was that Sonny would slip and say something.