backwards. It’s depressing. The minute I get a decent job, I’m out of here.”
“I know just what you’re talking about, believe me,” Phil related, but at once he felt dried up. He’d said the same thing to Vicki, hadn’t he? No way he was going to work in a nowhere town like this. He was too good for Crick City. And now Vicki was a prostitute and Phil was—
The thought didn’t even need finishing.
“How long have you been working for Mullins?”
“A little under a year,” she said. “He’s a decent man, if a bit ornery, and he offered me the dispatch job when he heard I was looking for something to help me through school. He knew my parents when they were alive.”
Better not ask about that, Phil told himself, though he did note their commonality. “So you grew up here, too?”
“Yeah,” she said despondently. “My father was on disability; he got shot up in Viet Nam. My mother worked lots of odd jobs to get us by, but it just seems the harder she worked, the harder things got.”
There seemed to be a similar variation of the same story for just about everyone around here: poor people struggling just to make it, and never quite succeeding. Phil had been too young to really even remember his own parents—but the tale was the same. He could tell the coversation was draining Susan; her luster was gone, her bright-blue eyes not quite so bright now. He struggled for something more upbeat to talk about, but nothing came to him until he remembered that she seemed enthused about guns and cop talk in general.
“What do you know about Cody Natter?” he asked.
She pushed her plate aside, leaving the fries. “Not a lot. About the only place he’s ever seen with any regularity is Sallee’s. He owns the place now, you know.”
“Yeah, Mullins mentioned that. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Sure it’s weird. A guy like Natter? No visible income, no bank account. I don’t guess that Sallee’s sold for much, but still, you have to wonder where he got the cash to buy the place.”
“I’m even more curious as to why?”
“I have to agree with Mullins,” Susan said. “An out-of-the-way strip joint like that is the perfect contact point if you’re networking dope. Last year Mullins had the Comptroller’s Office audit him, but the guy’s books were picture perfect. No way we can nail him on taxes. I don’t know how he did it.”
Phil didn’t care. “I don’t want to get him on tax fraud or ill-gotten gains; I want to bust him for manufacturing and distribution.”
“Then you’re going to have to have solid evidence linking him to his lab, which’ll be tough,” Susan reminded him, “and finding the lab itself will be plain impossible.”
“Why?”
“Natter’s a Creeker; his lab’s got to be up in the hills. You ever been back there? It’s a mess. You’re talking about three or four thousand acres of uncharted woodlands. There are roads back there that aren’t even on the county map grid. Finding Natter’s lab will be like looking for the needle in the haystack, or try ten haystacks.”
She had a point, and Phil was no trailblazer. “Yeah, but maybe one of his people will spin.”
“Don’t hold your breath. Natter’s people are all Creekers, too; they’re never gonna talk, first, because they’re all terrified of Natter—he’s like their god—and another reason they’ll never talk is simply because most of them can’t. Let’s just say you catch one of them dealing dust; no judge in the world will accept their testimony. Why? Because technically they’re all retardates—they’re legally mentally impaired.”
Phil frowned. She was right again. “But what about Natter himself?” he raised the issue. “You ever talked to the guy? He’s sharp as a tack. He’s smart, he’s well-read, he’s articulate. I wouldn’t call him mentally impaired at all.”
“Phil, be real. The guy’s a Creeker, he makes Frankenstein’s monster look like Tom Cruise. You get him into court on shaky testimony, all the guy’s gotta do is play dumb and the judge throws the whole thing out. The only way you’re gonna get Natter is to bust a bunch of his point people or bag men—people who aren’t Creekers—and get them to testify. You’re gonna have to make a positive link between Natter and known PCP dealers. At least Mullins has you on the right track. Staking out Sallee’s over a period of time, getting a line on Natter’s out-of-town contacts—that’s the only way you’ll be able to get Cody Natter on a distro bust that’ll stick.”
Phil saw no point in telling her that the whole idea was his, not Mullins’. But she was right on all counts. This would probably wind up being as complicated as any of his PCP cases in the city, if not more so since the circumstances were so atypical. “I still want to find that lab, though,” he muttered, more to himself. “No judge will argue with hard photographic evidence.”
Susan’s expression turned bemused. “What, you think you’re gonna get a picture of Natter at the lab?”
“Why not? It’d be an open-and-shut case.”
“Never happen, Phil. Natter’s way too smart for anything even close to that. He’s probably never set foot in the lab, you can bank on that.”
Phil grumbled. Again, he knew she was right. Yeah, this sure ain’t the city, he thought. On Metro, he’d been one of the best narc cops on the force, but his expertise felt like a white elephant now. Everything was different here; things worked different ways. This was another world
“Phil!” Susan was suddenly whispering. “Look!”
He glanced up from the remnants of his hash and eggs. Susan was gazing fixedly out the window. Along the shoulder of the Route, a teenage boy and girl were walking, both dressed in little more than rags. Both had shaggy heads of dirty black hair, and they ambled along unsteadily, even crookedly. The boy wore rotted workboots, while the girl was barefoot, oblivious to the shoulder’s sharp gravel. In the bright, hot afternoon sun, they looked like bizarre ghosts.
“Creekers,” Phil uttered under his breath.
“God, I feel sorry for them,” Susan remarked, still staring out. “Talk about getting a bum deal from life.”
Phil gulped. Her observation made him at once feel selfish; in all his reflection upon his own problems, here were two kids with real problems. They walked at such a distance that he could discern little of their physical features, but even that was more than enough. The boy’s neck appeared twice as long as it should, which caused his enlarged head to droop to one side, while the girl didn’t seem to have any jaw at all, and though her left arm looked normal, her right was grievously shortened, the hand sprouting from the elbow.
“I wonder how many of them there are?” Phil said.
Susan’s gaze never strayed off their backs as they grew tiny beyond the bend.
“Who knows?” she answered.
— | — | —
Ten
Back in Black, Paul Sullivan thought along with the pounding juke music. Right now this hotter-than-hell redhead was dancing up a cock-stoking storm on stage. Big tits, like a Penthouse Pet, and legs that looked a mile long. Vicki Steele, her name was. He and his buddy Kevin Orndorf just got off a bag run out near Waynesville; Krazy Sallee’s was the perfect place to drop a few beers after a sale. It was also a good place to meet their partners and point men, talk some quick business and make arrangements. Of course, they’d never actually sell the product here—that’d be crazy. Paul and his people, after all, were big time runners, not dime-baggers. Kevin himself was a little cranked up; he’d lit up a dust roach in the parking lot and he was hopping. Paul had lit up himself, but just a toke; he didn’t want the shit turning his brain to mush. Just a quick hit once in a while.
The joint was packed. This redhead on stage was pure fucking dynamite, the best bod he’d seen in the house all night. Wonder how much a gal like that’d cost, Paul’s thoughts strayed. Couple hundred at least. Maybe five.
But it would be worth it.
“Too bad they gotta wear them fucked-up g-strings here,” Kevin postulated, stroking his goatee. “Bet she’s got a snatch redder than a pit fire.”
“And them tits?” Paul added. “Christ. You could hang your hat and coat on ’em.”
“Be right back, partner. Got’s to drain the love-snake.” Kevin drunkenly rose, then wended through the jammed aisles. The music was so loud it seemed to swell Sallee’s old plank-wood walls. Strobe lights throbbed to the beat, along with the redhead’s sultry dance moves. Her firm, big breasts jiggled as those long legs traipsed
