Working undercover, that was his job. Time to let some bullshit fly. “We were taking down a PCP lab one night. It was cut and dry; in fact, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Only problem was there was this prick named Dignazio who had it in for me. He shot a kid, a spotter, with illegal ammo and made it look like I did it. It was a sham, a frame-up. But I got shitcanned all the same.”
She looked at him sympathetically. “Why did this guy have it in for you?”
Here was his cue, the perfect place to start his cover story, his lie. “I was stringing out; Dignazio was the only guy who knew that, and he wanted me out of the picture. Only problem was he couldn’t prove it without turning on his own stools.”
Her stare fixed on him in the dark. Sure, she was a prostitute, but she was also an ex-cop, and she knew the language. “You were strung out? You?”
“That’s right,” Phil lied. “By then, I’d been free-basing crystal for a few years. Then I switched to dust ’cos it was the only way I could get off the ice.”
This fabrication, he knew, would build a new bond between them, however phony. By demonstrating a weakness that she could directly relate to. Vicki knew she was on a road to ruin; if she believed Phil was on the same road, he’d have her. And from there—with some luck—he could get a real line on Natter’s lab and operation.
“Now,” he continued, “I’m trying to get off the dust, but I can’t. It’s a real bitch.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get off coke for two years now. Can’t do it. I try real hard all the time but…”
“I know,” Phil said. “You don’t have to tell me. I guess it’s all the same in a way. Coke, dust, ice, booze—it’s all a kick in the ass, but what can you do? A habit’s a habit.”
A pause drifted between them, but Phil sensed it was a natural one. She was letting some serious things air out here, another good sign that his pitch was working. They lounged back in the darkness, watching the fireflies, listening to the crickets. Phil thought he’d delivered his lines well, and he knew that she believed him when, a moment later, she snapped open a small wrist purse.
Was she testing him? No, if she thought his recital was a fake, she’d never take so open a chance as this.
So, it could only mean one thing:
She trusts me.
If she didn’t trust me, if she even suspected for a minute that I was really still a cop, there’s no way in hell she’d be doing something like this.
In the moonlight, he couldn’t see much, but he could see enough. The purse contained the typical provisions of a prostitute: lipstick, eyeliner, a small pack of tissues, and, of course, condoms. He also noticed a small amount of cash. But from beneath it all, she extracted the tiny glass vial…
No, she’d never be snorting coke in front of me if she thought I was working undercover…
“You want some?” she distractedly offered.
“Naw. That stuff makes me break out in hives. Like I said, dust’s my bag.”
A tiny silver spoon and chain depended from the vial. With expert quickness, she sniffed two shots out of the spoon, and then the stuff was all back in her purse before either of them could so much as blink.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
I guess that says it all, Phil thought. She rested back against the bench seat, her eyes closed. Her chest, arousing in the tight halter, rose and fell. And the look on her face…
He’d seen it a million times. The source of the habit didn’t matter in the least (cocaine, PCP, crystal meth, heroin), the expression was always the same. There was no pleasure in it, but an articulate and very abstract intertwining of relief, disgust, and self-capitulation.
All addicts had it. It was the look of someone who had surrendered to their own slavery.
The night’s stillness enveloped them. The high, two o’clock moon cast shadows about the car. Lightning bugs shifted in legion, and the trill of crickets throbbed hypnotically.
Vicki fidgeted a moment, and sighed.
Hitting her up now with questions about her source—would be the worst thing he could do. As with Eagle, he knew he’d have to walk on eggshells a day at a time. He must prove to her that he was one of her ilk, that his life had turned to garbage just as quickly as hers had.
“Maybe it’s all for the best,” she said with a grim joke in her words. “You’re on dust, I’m on coke… Not what you would call model cops.”
Phil laughed. “You got that right.” Then he shrugged as though it didn’t mean much. “Guess we just weren’t cut out for it. Big deal, you know? I was a shitty cop anyway.”
“I don’t miss the job, either. It got too scary.”
“Scary? What could be scary about driving a beat in Crick City?”
“You don’t know the half of it, Phil.” Lethargically, she lit a menthol cigarette and watched the smoke drift out the open window. “Let’s just say you got out of town at the right time. Remember Adams and North?”
“Yeah. Town boys. I never knew ’em, but I’d seen them around. They worked for Mullins too, didn’t they?”
“Um-hmm. After I got fired, some pretty serious shit started to go down around here.”
“Like what?”
“Never mind what. Just take my word for it, it was hairy. Mullins had Adams and North working on it, though.”
Phil could guess what she was talking about: Natter’s PCP operation, but of course he couldn’t let on that he knew about that, at least not yet.
“All right,” he said. “But what about Adams and North?”
“They disappeared,” Vicki said.
Disappeared. It took a moment for the word to sink in. Mullins had told him that Adams and North had merely left the department for better-paying jobs elsewhere. Fairfax and Montgomery County, he thought. And as he recalled, they were decent guys and fairly tough customers.
“There were some murders,” Vicki finally admitted. “Drug dealers from out of town, PCP guys mostly. It was really gross; they were mutilated. It looked like…”
Phil’s patience ticked. He didn’t want to push her, but he did want to know what she was talking about. He let a few more seconds pass, then: “It looked like what, Vicki?”
She was clearly distressed, but was it the coke or something else?
“These cowboys they found dead?” Her voice lowered to a dusky croak. “It looked like they’d been… skinned.”
Skinned. His pause burgeoned. Just like that cowboy we found, Rhodes. He was a dust dealer from out of town. And he’d been skinned.
“I heard they found a dozen bodies at least,” she went on. “Same m.o. each time. Mullins had Adams and North investigating. Then one day—four or five months ago, I guess—both of them just disappeared.”
Phil chewed the inside of his cheek. Disappeared, huh? This was the second time she told him something that directly refuted Mullins. And when they’d found Rhodes’ body? Mullins had seemed genuinely shaken, but he’d also seemed…
Well, Phil wasn’t quite sure what. But he didn’t like it. Why would Vicki make something like this up? And if it were true, why wouldn’t Mullins have told him about it.
Whatever it is, he declared to himself, I’m going to find out.
He got back on track. “So what exactly happened? I mean, to Adams and North?”
That somber croak came back to her voice. “Nobody knows.”
Phil ran a hand across his cheek, scruffing stubble. “Okay. But what do you think happened to them?”
Her brow rose wide. “Me? I think they got killed by the same people who did the job on those dealers. They’re probably at the bottom of one of the swamps, chained to a couple of manhole covers. You ask me, they got too close, so they got offed.”
“Yeah, Vicki, but what did they get too close to?”
“I don’t know,” she wavered.
I know, Phil thought. They got too close to your Creeker hubbie’s angel dust bizz. That’s what they got too
