Chapter 7: Jake’s Place
I hadn't been to Jake's place since before I left the force it was a dark corner bar with small windows and glass bricks around the front door a cops bar located on the fringes of the bad part of town it was a place where cops went to blow off steam and didn't welcome people who weren't part of the blue brotherhood or people like me who had been expelled before my exile I had spent much too much time here, regular enough for the owner Jake to consider me a friend though not friend enough to discourage me from drinking. Friend or not he was not happy to see me walk through his front door dropping his conversation at the far end of the bar to meet me at the near end and warned me off. “I don’t want any trouble, Dan,” he said. Jake was about 45 but life in a pub had added a lot of Gray so that he looked 20 years older his mustache and beard had gone white with only a brown stain from cigarettes giving color near his lower lip. “I’m not here to make trouble,