Sometimes a Cigar Isn't Just a Cigar, Part One

I didn’t really want a cheating spouse case right now, but I didn’t want to run out of cereal for breakfast either.

So here I was, sitting in Raul’s Cigar Bar and Grille in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, watching Rose Egan, my client’s wife, smoking Kool menthols and drinking a gin and tonic.

She didn’t have the vibe of a woman waiting for a date. She smoked methodically, one cigarette after another, never looking up when the door opened. She’d gone through half a pack of menthol Kools at her table and was still on her first drink.

I nursed a soda water with a lime and pretended to check messages on my phone at the bar. A cigar smoldered in an ashtray next to my glass. I’d had to order it so I wouldn’t look out of place.

At least this case looked like it would have a happy ending. The wife wasn’t cheating, just apparently sneaking cigarettes where her husband wouldn’t see her.

Raul’s—named for Fidel’s brother?—had walls paneled with cherry wood, original paintings and sculptures, high-backed chairs at the bar, and a bartender in a tuxedo. A set of stairs in the corner led to an upstairs room.

People talked quietly at tables, some playing cards, others working their phones. Some ate dinner—the kitchen served steaks and seafood. Fans in the ceiling swirled the cigar smoke around the air toward vents that sucked it up and sent it away.

The lighting was dim, the music was classical, and the ashtrays were emptied often.

A security camera in one corner watched everything.

I picked up my cigar and puffed without inhaling. The balding bartender freshened up my soda water and added a fresh lime.

I pointed the cigar at a set of stairs in the back. “What’s up there?”

“Private club.” The bartender dumped my ashtray.

“How private?”

He smiled. “Ten thousand dollars to join.”

My eyebrows rose. “They must have some good cigars.”

“The best.”

After an hour Rose Egan finished her pack of cigarettes. I wondered if she had more in her purse, but she waved down a waiter and asked for her check. I placed some money of my own on the bar and got ready to leave.

Then a monster came rampaging down the stairs.

Seven feet tall, it had a stubby crocodile snout and beady yellow eyes, but a short black ponytail hung down the back of its neck. The beast wore a ripped suit jacket and a shredded shirt, its pants bursting at the seams like the Incredible Hulk.

A half-smoked cigar dangled from its claws.

Surprised and confused, customers around the room abandoned their cigars, drinks, and meal and scattered in terror. Still, some sat stunned, staring at the creature as if trying to decide whether it was some kind of macabre joke. Most headed for the restrooms or the kitchen. Pushing against each other, panicking, they shouted and kicked in their attempts to get away from whatever was stalking down the steps.

Rose Egan lurched up, knocking her gin and tonic over, staring at the monster. Maybe the drink had gotten her drunk. Maybe she was too terrified to move

But for whatever reason, the monster stalked toward her, knocking chairs and tables over with each step.

My instincts told me to run behind the bar and cower until the beast went away. My bladder urged me to head for the restroom. My pounding heart wanted me to lie down and take a nap.

But my conscience reminded me that Rose Egan was my client’s wife. I could hardly call him to report: “Well, the good news is your wife isn’t cheating. The bad news . . .”

I had to do something. Distract the thing before it got to her. And then run, as fast as I could.

So I used the closest thing to a weapon I had. I threw my half-filled glass.

It hit the monster between the eyes. Damn it. Usually my aim isn’t that good.

The beast turned to face me. Maybe ten feet away. Oops. No way I could hop over the bar—I’m in my forties and I haven’t worked out in years, unless you count running for my life from vampires and other assorted creatures.

So I lifted up my chair like a lion tamer years past his prime, and prepared to defend myself to the death, pondering my life choices in the back of my mind while the rest of my brain screamed, “RUN YOU IDIOT.”

Then two men ran down the stairs. One was African American, and he was carrying a Taser. The other guy, white, held a small tube of pepper spray in his fist.

The stun gun guy fired his Taser. The darts hit it in the back of the neck.

The creature leaned back, howling, and then the white guy blasted its face with pepper. The thing collapsed, rolling on the ground and shrieking in pain.

I dropped my chair and leaned against the bar, my heart pounding.

Rose Egan glanced at me. Then she ran for the door.

I jumped when the bartender patted my shoulder. “You okay?”

I wasn’t sure. “Does this happen often?”

He wiped the sweat off his scalp and shook his head. “Sorry.”

Rose Egan was gone. I slid my money across the bar and followed her out the door.

            But as the two men from upstairs were struggling to drag the beast away, I leaned down and snagged its cigar on my way out.

The next morning I called my client. “Mr. Egan? Tom Jurgen here.”

            “Uh, hello.” Wayne Egan was a semi-retired lawyer in his fifties who worked from an office in his home. He was 15 years older than Rose, which was probably a factor in his suspicions.

“What—uh, what can you tell me?” He kept his voice low, even though his wife was at her job at an advertising firm downtown.

“Good news.” I was sitting at my dining room table, my laptop open, looking at the report I’d been typing up. “I don’t think your wife is having an affair.”

“Huh.” He sounded skeptical. “Then what’s she doing?”

“Smoking. She went to an cigar bar in Uptown last night and smoked a pack of Kool menthols.”

“What?” His voice rose. “She told me she quit!”

“Apparently not.” Wait—this was good news, wasn’t it? But you never know how a client’s going to react. I’ve had wives breathe a sigh of relief when they learned their husbands were seeing hookers instead of cheating with their secretaries. Breaking a promise to stop smoking might be more important to Egan than a meaningless affair. People are funny that way.

I hit “save” on my report. “So I can keep following her if you want—”

“No. Wait—yes, tomorrow night.” He ground his teeth. “Rose goes out Tuesdays and Thursdays most weeks lately. Some kind of volunteer work, she says. If she does the same thing tomorrow, then I’ll consider it closed.”

He was the boss. “Fair enough.”

I was about to hang up when Egan said, “She seemed—a little shaken up when she got home last night. Did anything happen?”

I hesitated. Would he believe me if I told him about the monster? Some clients hire me because I have experience with the supernatural. Egan wasn’t necessarily one of them. “There was a—disturbance at the bar last night.”

“What kind of disturbance?”

Honesty was the best policy. It hadn’t always worked out for me, but it helped me sleep at night. “It looked like . . . some kind of monster.”

Two slow seconds passed. “A monster.”

“That’s right.” I leaned back and waited to be fired.

“Then I definitely want you to follow Rose tomorrow night.” He didn’t sound worried about her smoking now. “Keep her safe.”

I’m not a bodyguard. Just an ex-reporter trying to make a living as a private detective. But at least I’d get paid for one more night’s work. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good.” He hung up.

I set my phone down, closed the Egan file, and sipped some coffee. I had other cases I would work on before tomorrow night. Some didn’t even include potential monsters.

Instead of moving on, I closed my laptop and looked at the half-cigar I’d picked up from the floor last night. It sat on a saucer next to my laptop. I couldn’t see anything that would identify the brand. It smelled nauseating.

            The monster had held it in its claws, coming down from the private club that cost $10,000 to join. What was going on up there?

            Not my problem. All I had to do was follow Rose Egan for one more night—and hope no more creatures emerged from the upper room.

            But I was curious. Yeah, I know what happens to cats. It’s come close to me, more times than I can count. But I never could let go of a story.

            It had cost me my career, and my marriage. And more.

            So I could let it drop. Or I could do something that scared me more than confronting any monster.

            In the end, it wasn’t even a choice. I took a deep breath and picked up my phone again.

“Hi.” Rachel sounded pissed.

            “Hi, it’s me.” I tried to keep my voice steady.

            “Your face is still on my contact list. What do you want?”
            “I need a favor.”

            Rachel sighed. “Like what?”

            “I want you to look at something.” It was the kind of thing I used to call her for all the time. Today the question seemed loaded with land mines.

            A groan. “I’ll be right down.”

            Fifteen minutes later Rachel knocked on my door. She has a key, but she waited for me to unlock everything. “Hi. Thanks.”

            “Whatever.” She pushed past me. “What is it?”

            Rachel has short red hair and deep hazelnut eyes. She’s my upstairs neighbor, and she’s psychic, which sometimes helped me on my cases.

            Until a few weeks ago, she was my girlfriend.

            I’d been dealing with a demon, in a kind of amateur exorcism. During the process, the demon had spouted the usual kinds of lies, trying to shake my faith in—anything. Not being religious, the lies didn’t have any impact, even when it accused Rachel of having sex with other men. I didn’t believe it, and it had finally gone back to Hell, or wherever demons come from.

            But later Rachel told me the truth. And it had shaken my trust in everything I thought I could depend on.

            “Over here.” I pointed to the table. “That cigar.”

            She snorted. “You’re smoking cigars now?”

            “It’s not mine.” I didn’t want to tell her too much before she examined it. “Just—take a look at it.”

            Rachel shrugged. I locked the door out of habit and followed her as she walked to the table.

            She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that smelled as if it had just come out of the dryer. At the table’s edge she glanced over her shoulder and gave me a smirk. “Stop checking out my butt, asshole.”

            “Force of habit.” But my breath came a bit easier. If Rachel was calling me names, she was still talking to me.

            “Riiight.” She pulled out a chair. “Okay, let me . . .”

            Rachel touched the cigar with the tip of her finger. A bit of dried ash fell off. She bit her lip, breathing slowly, then sat down and rubbed her hands on her jeans. “What’s wrong with it?”

            “It came from a monster.” I told her about last night.

            Rachel picked the cigar up for a moment, then dropped it back down on the saucer. “Yeah, there’s something wrong with this. I don’t know what exactly. Maybe drugs. But not the usual kind. There’s magic mixed up inside.”

            That’s what I’d been afraid of. “Okay. Thanks.”

            She stood up. “That’s it?”

            I hesitated. “You want some coffee?”

            Rachel sat down again. “Sure.”

            I poured. “You okay?”

            She shrugged. “Busy with work. You?”

            “Same.”

            We sat across the table, not looking at each other.

            “You going to go on with this?” She crossed her arms.

            I nodded. “The client wants me to go back tomorrow night. Assuming his wife goes.”

            “And if she doesn’t?” She gave me a stare.

            I sighed. “Okay, I was planning to go back on my own and ask a few questions.”

            Rachel slid her chair back. “I could come with you. Help you scope the place out.”

            Really? I tried not to jump to conclusions about what this might mean. “That would be—fine.”

“But not tonight. I have to work.”

            I tensed and looked away from her. But I managed to keep my mouth shut.

            She stood up. “Yeah, I mean work. For real. I’ve got too many projects. I don’t have time for—anything else.”

            “Okay, okay!” I stood up too. “I didn’t say anything—”

            “You looked at me.” Her shoulders were heaving.

            “I wasn’t looking at—”

            “It was the way you didn’t look at me!” She kicked her chair. “Okay. I can’t . . . we’ve got to do something. I can’t go on like this.”

            Me neither. “What do you want?”

            “I want . . .” Rachel shook her head, and then walked around the table. For a moment I thought she might kiss me.

            Instead she punched me in the arm. The way she used to. “That.”

            Ow. “What was that for?”

            “For not calling me until you needed help.” She turned for the door.

            “I thought . . .” She hadn’t called me. But maybe that wasn’t the right response.

            Rachel grabbed the doorknob. “See you tomorrow.”

           

We followed Rose Egan in my Honda back to Raul’s. Neither of us spoke as I drove.

            Rose was sitting at the same table, her pack of Kools already out as she ordered a drink. Other couples and groups sat smoking and listening to the classical music as the overhead fans revolved endlessly.

Rachel and I took seats at a table with a white tablecloth, a small vase of flowers, and two menus—one for drinks and one for cigars.

The bartender from the other night looked up and gave me a nod. Then he went back to serving drinks and flicking his lighter.

            “I’ll probably order a cigar just to look like I belong here,” I told Rachel as a waiter with a thin mustache walked toward us. “You don’t have to—”

            “I’d like this one.” Rachel pointed to the menu. “And a red wine.”

            “Very good.” The waiter smiled. “And you, sir?”

            I checked the list. The cigar Rachel had picked was $24. “I’ll have the same cigar, and a soda water with lime. I’m driving.”

            “Of course.” The waiter backed away.

            “You smoke cigars now?” I glanced at Rose Egan. “And drink wine?”

            She shrugged. “Time to try something new. And this looks more like a wine place than a beer place.”

            I don’t drink because of the anti-anxiety meds I’m taking, but the glass of wine the waiter brought looked good. He snipped the ends of our cigars, lit Rachel’s first, then fired up mine.

            Rose was on her third cigarette. She watched the stairs nervously, as if remembering the beast from the other night. I didn’t blame her.

            Before the waiter darted away I asked, “Is Davis here tonight? Davis Shank?”

            The waiter blinked. “Does he know you?”

            “I just wanted to say hello. I was here the other night.” I handed over my card.

            He looked it over as if he’d seen cards from more important people. “I’ll see if Mr. Shank is available.”

            “What’s up with that?” Rachel kicked me under the table.

            “I’m a detective, remember? I did some research. He owns the place.”

            She looked at the name on the menu. “Then who’s Raul?”

            “Fidel was too probably too obvious. I only want to ask him some questions.”

            Rachel snorted. “Riiight.”

            I kept my eyes on Rose Egan—and also on the stairs to the upstairs room. I wanted to be ready in case another monster came stalking down.

            Okay, I also watched Rachel when she wasn’t looking. She was wearing jeans and boots, and a loose vest around a blue long-sleeve T-shirt that hugged her slender arms.

I missed her—talking to her, watching TV, even getting punched. This wasn’t a date, but it was almost good enough.

            She caught me. “What are you looking at?”

            I zeroed in on Rose Egan. “Nothing.”

            Rachel groaned. “Look, did I say I’m sorry?”

            She hadn’t. “You don’t have to.”

            “Shut up. You don’t get to do that.” She glared at me.

            “Do what?” I was confused.

            “Pretend you’re not mad at me. Like it didn’t matter.” She gulped her wine.

            “Of course it—” Wait a minute. This wasn’t the right time. But if she was willing to talk to me . . .

            “Yes, I’m mad.” I kept my voice quiet. “I thought—you felt the same way I did.” She didn’t always like it when I told her I loved her. And now I wasn’t sure how I felt.

Yes, I still loved her. Yeah, I was mad at her. My blood started pumping harder than usual. “So why the hell did you have to—”

            “Shh.” She pointed a finger. “Later.”

            Damn it. I turned in my chair.

            “Tom Jurgen? Davis Shank.” He held out a hand that was broader than a catcher’s mitt. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

            Shank was a big man, almost as large as the monster the other night, with long arms and a barrel chest. He had short hair, almost white, and a nose flat as a hammer.

            “Uhh . . .” I stood up as he shook my hand. “You know who I am?”

            He laughed. “Lots of people know Tom Jurgen. In certain circles.”

            “You’re a wizard?” Or a vampire, maybe. I didn’t want to ask.

            Another chuckle. “No. But I have friends who—walk in those circles.” He grinned at Rachel. “And you are?”

            “Rachel.” She stood up as well. “I’m Tom’s—” She hesitated. “It’s complicated.”

            “Nice to meet you.” Shank plopped down in a chair. “What can I do for you?”

            I saw Rose Egan looking over. Shank’s voice carried over the quiet music and low conversations.

            “I  . . . was here the other night.” I gestured at the back stairs with my cigar. “When the, uh, excitement happened.”

            Shank’s smile vanished like a puff of smoke. “That was—things like that don’t happen often.” His voice was quiet now. “We took care of it.”

            “What was it?” I checked out Rose. She was staring at her gin and tonic. “I’m not working—on this, anyway. I’m just curious.”

            “Yeah, I’ve heard that about you too.” He grimaced. “Look, there isn’t much I can tell you—”

            Then shouts erupted from upstairs. Followed by a gunshot.

            Shank’s chair fell over as he lurched to his feet. “Goddamn it—”

            What the hell? I looked at Rachel. She twisted around, peering at the steps. “Is this what happened last time?”

            “There weren’t any—”

            Something boomed in the upstairs room. A gunshot. Shank twisted in his chair. “What the hell?”

            Not a monster. This time a man and a woman pounded down the stairs. The woman, slender and blonde in a short skirt and leather jacket, carried a handgun that looked too big and heavy for her skinny arms to carry.

            The man was taller, with black hair in a short ponytail, in a long raincoat. He carried a long wooden box in his hands, holding it with tight fingers as if it might explode

            The woman jumped the last two steps to the ground. “Just stay there!” She waved her gun as people ducked to the floor or, like the other night, started running for the nearest door. “Stay put!”

            She fired the gun at the ceiling. It almost dropped out of her hand from the kick, but it got the impact she wanted. Plaster rained down on the tables and floor. Most people froze, and those who didn’t dropped down, crawling under tables or behind whatever cover they could find.

            “Come on!” The blonde woman raced for the door, her partner behind her.

            Shank jumped from his chair, ready to chase her, but she waved the gun back and forth, and he backed away, arms raised. But his eyes were red with anger.

            The door banged as they left.

            Rose finished downed her drink, grabbed her cigarettes, and dropped some money on her table. Then she marched toward the door—along with half of Shank’s customers, all pushing to get out.

            The two men from the other night rushed down the stairs. The African American made his way toward the door, sliding through the stampede with his Taser in his fist.

            The other man came up to Shank, gasping. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shank. They just—”

            “Josh!” Shank shouted above the crash of people fighting for the door. “Don’t go after them! Let them go!”

            Josh was pulling people aside, but Shank’s order stopped him. With an angry frown, he jammed his Taser into a pocket and held the door open for patrons frantic to leave.

            “What happened, Tony?” Shank watched as his customers fled.

            “They were just smoking cigars.” Tony spread his arms. “Nothing unusual. They weren’t even turning, just taking it easy. Then suddenly the girl had a gun, and the guy was grabbing for the box. She took a shot at the wall and Ben let him take it—”

            “Was anyone hurt?” Shank pounded a big fist on the table.

            “No.” Tony trembled. “Just the wall.”

            “Good.” Shank rubbed a relieved hand across his forehead. “Did they get—”

            “Yeah.” Tony nodded.

            “Damn it.” He sat down again.

            Rose was gone. I could follow her, but at this point I figured she’d just go home and y never come back again. I didn’t blame her. “What’s going on?”

            Shank ignored me. “All right, everybody!” He held up his hands and, surprisingly, about half the customers stopped shouting and shoving.

            “I’m sorry there was a disturbance.” He managed to keep his voice calm. “But it’s all over now. Just sit down and have a few drinks and cigars on me.” He turned to the white guy. “Tony, tell the staff to cancel all bills. Everything on the house. Josh, with me.” He hesitated. Then he looked down at me. “Will you stay? I’d like to talk to you.”

            I glanced at Rachel. She shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

            Shank and Josh headed upstairs.

            Most of the customers left despite Shank’s offer of free drinks, but a few, either fearless or too rattled to leave just yet, took their seats again and gulped at whatever was in front of them.

            Rachel polished off her wine in one swallow. “You do take me on interesting dates.”

            Date? I didn’t say anything. But maybe it was a start.