“See you around,” she said and left.
His bewilderment held him in a momentary check. When he looked around the doorway and down the hall, she was already gone.
Cody. Natter’s. Wife. Each word smacked like a piton into stone. How could any man, however irredeemable, let his own wife dance in a strip joint and turn roadside tricks in pickup trucks. When Phil closed the door, he wanted to punch a hole in it. His anger raged like a huge beast trapped in a tiny cage. He thought he would explode.
And the emotion doubled when he went into the bathroom. Perhaps his cop’s sensitivities had tuned him in; anyone else wouldn’t have noticed it in a million years. But—
“Oh, my God, Vicki, no no no—”
At the corner of the old porcelain sink, the faintest sprinkling of diminutive white dust lingered. He knew what it was even before he rubbed a trace across his upper gum and felt the numb, cold tingle.
Cocaine. No wonder Natter got her stripping and turning tricks so fast. He got her hooked on coke…
— | — | —
Fourteen
Phil walked into the station at five of eight, keyed up by an array of emotions: despair, perplexion, and anger…
Mostly anger.
“Hi, Phil,” Susan said from the commo niche, her nose buried in a textbook.
“What?”
She vaguely smirked, looking up. “I said hi. It’s a colloquial Modem English interjection commonly used to denote a greeting.”
“Oh, yeah. Hi. Where’s Mullins?”
Susan obviously sensed his disheveled mood at once. “He’s eating sushi on the Ginza in Tokyo. You know, like he does every night at eight.”
“Huh?”
“He’s in his office! Where else would he be?” She closed her book somewhat testily. “What’s wrong with you? You get out on the wrong side of the bed today?”
“Sorry, Susan. I—” He didn’t know how to properly explain it, not that he would want to anyway, not to her. What? My ex-fiancee stopped by today and enlightened me to the fact that she’s married to Cody Natter. She claims Mullins tried to rape her. Oh, and she’s also a prostitute and a coke addict. No, that wouldn’t wash, and it would certainly put a damper on their date tomorrow.
“Just feeling a little out of it today. Talk to you later.”
Phil’s frown widened when he stepped into the chief’s office; Mullins wasn’t there, but an instinctive glance to the back window showed the chief lumbering out of the disused lockup behind the station, bearing a can of coffee.
“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I see,” the big man said when he came in.
Phil didn’t waste time. “That was real cool of you to not tell me Vicki Steele was married to Cody Natter. I guess you just forgot that minor detail, huh?”
“I can tell you’re in a great mood.” Mullins started another pot of coffee, then sat down at the cluttered desk. “I figured it was best you found out on your own. Didn’t want to shake you up before I had to.”
“Oh, I appreciate that, Chief. I’m not a school kid, you know. I don’t let personal stuff get in the way of my job.”
“I can tell.” Mullins’ chair creaked like a keening hinge when he lounged back. “You haven’t even been in the office ten seconds, and you look about as happy as a mad dog. I didn’t think you could handle that information right off the bat.”
“Well, fine. But next time fill me in, all right? How can I do a good job on this case if you withhold pertinent facts?”
“Sorry, dear. It won’t happen again. I take it you ran into her.”
“Yeah, this afternoon before I turned in.”
“Were you in uniform?”
“No, no, my cover’s intact.”
“Good.” Mullins hand-pinched a few choice leaves of tobacco from his bag, then stuffed them into his cheek.
“Takes the cake, don’t it? That ugly scumbag is married to the best-looking woman in town, and he’s got her doing a strip show and turning tricks.”
Yeah, it takes the cake, all right. But now that he’d had time to think about it, it wasn’t terribly surprising. “Actually it’s pretty common in criminal networks. Drug kingpins frequently take a beautiful wife for status, then use them for business. The dust honchos in the city do it all the time. It’s like buying a $500 silk shirt and using it to check your oil. It’s street machismo.”
Mullins chuckled grimly at the simile. “Ugly Creeker slime. I can’t wait to bust his ass.”
“We got a lot of very positive leads real fast, and Vicki’s the best lead yet.”
“You figure you’ll run into her on a regular basis?”
“Sure. She works at Krazy Sallee’s; I’ll be hanging out there every night. And I’ll be seeing a lot of Eagle Peters, too. I should be able to infiltrate the entire scene at Sallee’s if I play my cards right.”
“Yeah, but if you play ’em wrong, you could wind up looking like that chump we found in the ravine this moring. So be careful.”
“But,” Phil went on, “a secure cover is the key, and there’s no way I can expect to maintain a secure cover by staking out Sallee’s for a few hours in plainclothes and then touring the town in uniform for the rest of my shift all night. There’s only one way to do this right, Chief.”
“You want to go undercover full time, in other words?”
“There’s no other option, Chief. Say I’m hamming it up at the bar with Peters one night, and a couple hours later the guy sees me cruising around in the patrol car. Or any of the regulars at Sallee’s. Not only would that destroy my cover for good, it would tip Natter that you’re eying him. He’ll move his distro point somewhere else, and then we’re worse off than before we started.”
“You’re right,” Mullins grumbled and spat. “But I’ll have a hard time selling it to the town council. This ain’t Miami Vice, you know. They won’t like the idea of paying an officer for fulltime undercover and not having a uniform on duty during the nightshift.”
Phil gave a smirk. “Piss on the town council, Chief. They want you to solve this PCP business, you gotta do it the right way. Those loudmouth assholes shouldn’t even know about it. And, shit, you don’t really even need a patrol cop out here at night. All I ever get are smoochers parking out on some of the old logging roads. Anything hairy goes down, Susan can call you, or dispatch the county. If you want me to get into Natter’s shit, I can’t be seen anywhere near this station or that cruiser. And no one, not even the town council or the mayor, can know about me being undercover. They could blab, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Natter’s greasing one of them for tip-offs. You trust those guys?”
“Wouldn’t trust ’em to walk my dog, and I don’t even have a fuckin’ dog.” Mullins festered a moment more, then conceded. “All right, you’re the big city expert, we’ll do it your way. Work your own hours, do your own thing, but keep me posted each day. And be fuckin’ careful. These people don’t fuck around; you saw that Rhodes guy this morning.”
I sure did, Phil remembered. Seeing a skinned human being wasn’t easy to forget. He got up to leave, but hesitantly.
“Ain’t you even gonna stay for a cup of coffee?”
Phil raised a brow at the bubbling pot. “No thanks. But look, Chief, there’s one thing I gotta ask.”
“What?”
How could he phrase the question without looking absurd? He’d wind up proving that he couldn’t keep personal feelings separate from the job.
