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Less heat. And a lot less heat when they had a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent marking their routes for them and calling in diversions. But Cummings was baiting Spaz; he knew Sladder couldn’t pay any more for his protection. It was in a roundabout way, instead, that Cummings wa giving Spaz a push, because he knew Spaz was into more than backwoods corn liquor.

“You and Sladder are both skell, and you both know it,” Cummings went on. “If you guys go down, you two pig-dick-lickers will spin on me faster than it takes you to pop a butt-pimple. I need more green for my risk.”

Spaz hungover eyes fluttered as he dared look Cummings in the face.

“And if you chuckleheads even think about spinning on me, I hope you both have brains enough to realize I’ll kill your redneck asses before you can turn evidence. So what’s the deal?”

“Hall, he — “ Spaz faltered in his smudged overalls. “He ain’t got the dough, man — er, I mean Agent Cummings.”

“You’re not hearing me.” And then Cummings drew his Smith & Wesson Model 13 chock-full of .357 Q- loads. Cocked it. “I need more money, and I can’t trust you guys for shit.”

“Wait, wait, man! Listen to me. Here’s a deal for you. Keep covering Hall’s hooch runs, keep taking the c- note, and I’ll set you up with something else that’ll pull you a thousand a month.”

Yeah. Got him. “In exchange for what?”

Now Spaz dared to grin. “Coverin’ somethin’ else, man. I run dust and pot too, and…coke.”

“For who?”

“Fella named Dutch.” Spaz was getting ballsy now. “You ain’t need ta know his real name.”

“So this Dutch motherfucker’ll pay me a grand a month to feed him safe routes?”

“Well, yeah, I think so. It’ll take me some talkin’ though. I mean, Christ you’re a federal cop.”

“No Spaz, I’m a federal cop on the take. Tell this redneck piece of trash Dutch motherfucker that I can guarantee he’ll never get pinched. I’m a fed, my office gets every state narc and DEA fax in the area. He’ll sail clean as a cat’s ass if he works with me. But I gotta have that k-note every month, in cash, unsequenced serial numbers. And tell him this too, Spaz, I won't just mark routes for him. I'll carry his product to his point in the trunk of my federal unmarked fucking police car. Tell him that.'

Spaz' moonshine-scarlet eyes grew wide in glee.

Cummings replaced his piece.

'Sh-sure, Stew - er, I mean, Agent Cummings.'

'Cut out the Agent Cummings crap, will ya. Call me Stew.' Cummings lit a smoke, offered one to Spaz. 'We still friends or what?'

'Sh-sure, Stew.'

'Just want you to know where I'm coming from. And this dope-peddler of yours, this Dutch — just think how happy he'll be when you tell him you gotta federal tin who wants to transport product for him.'

'I-I never thought about it that way.'

'Shit, Spaz, he'll be so happy with you, he'll probably pay your next semester's tuition at Harvard.'

Spaz' face hooked up in confusion. 'Whuh — what's 'harvard,' Stew?'

'Never mind. you guys need me to make your lives easier, and I need the bread. So go talk to your man. I'll meet you here same time tomorrow.'

Spaz cheered up quick, smiled again with those teeth that would make a dental hygienist throw up in the rinse sink. 'Tomorrow, man, you got it. Any luck I'll have your first month's dough in my pocket.'

Cummings spewed smoke, nodded abruptly. 'Talk to Dutch.'

Spaz roared off out of the dell in his souped '71 Mustang, a 351 Cleveland. Got him hooked, Cummings knew. He'd played it just right, worked Spaz like a puppet and let him come to his own conclusions.

It was a beautiful day. He got back into his unmarked and pulled onto the county highway. Yeah, he told himself, I’m a federal cop on the take. He wasn’t too happy about it, but how else could he afford Kath’s medicine? in the past, it had just been hooch — no big deal — but now he was moving up to the real McCoy — coke, PCP, shit these scumbags sold to 9-year-olds, shit that turned people’s lives inside out. But Cummings had a plan for that too.

Cummings was a Special Agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Russell County Field Office, in Lewisburg, Virginia. He’d worked the gig 10 years now, busting bootleggers and moonshiners, busting stills, setting up stings. At first, he’d even believed in his work — until Kath had gotten sick.

I gotta come through for her, he thought desperately, I can’t let her down.

Nobody else gave a shit, so why should he? And he swore to himself, once Kath was better, he’d go off the pad...

“Hey, Stew.”

“J.L.” Cummings dropped his gunbelt in the field office, hot weight off his waist. J.L. Peerce was a Special Agent in Charge of the FO, and he knew the ropes; Peerce grew up out here, was a rube himself until he got out and got himself an education. Slicked-back black hair, chopburns, and an Elvis sneer. Cummings didn’t have much of a problem with him.

“We’se be goin’ to Washington next month, fer a training session at Buzzards Point.” he declared. “Party hard in D.C. strip joints every night, all on the lamb.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“So how was your watch?”

Cummings eased down in an opposing metal folding chair, lit up another Lucky. “Squat. Nothin’. Checked all those still sites we busted last winter, and the sites are dry. Checked all the back trails, and — nothing. But I’m finding a little activity in some of the old McKully sites. Should be ready to drop hammer on them soon.”

“Good,” Peerce said from his own chair across a U.S. Government gray-metal desk. “How’s the wife, by the way?”

The question felt like a sudden fish hook sunk into Cummings’ check. “The same. Goddamn medicine is killing me. Four-fifty a month, and it’s going up.”

“Don’t know how ya do it, Stew. Yer a good man.”

Not as good as you might think, Cummings thought.

........

Ten years now, and all they were paying him was a piddly 32.5 a year. Different raise prerequisites and time- in-service stats, save for a pissant COLA every now and then. Cummings reasoned it was their fault that he had to do what he did. If they paid him what he was worth — that would be different.

Wouldn’t it?

The sun was sinking. State Route 154 ribboned through treelines and dead pastures, taking him home. Sometimes he had to pull over and masturbate — another thing he didn’t fell too good about — because, despite his primal male needs, he knew it wouldn’t be right to be going home and jumping Kath’s bones, sick as she was. But whenever he did it, every single time in fact, he thought about Kath...

She was always tired, always run down. He knew she tried hard to stay up for him every night, but lately she didn’t even have the energy to do that. Sometimes she cried about it.

Don’t think about it, he cut off the thought. Be a man. Do the right thing. Take care of your wife, because you know goddamn well if it was you who was sick, she’d be bending over backwards to take care of you.

That was about all it took.

He was about to take the turnoff, then, when he saw the flashing red and blue lights up in Cotter’s Field...

........