applications.”
“Oh, jeeze.” Mullins sat down himself then, behind his desk. His belly stretched his police shirt to its absolute physical limit.
“How come you lied to me, boss?”
Mullins chewed on the accusation. “I wouldn’t exactly call it lying. Let’s just call it—”
“What? A tactical circumvention of facts?”
“Well, yeah. That sounds good. I kinda like it. A tactical circumvention of facts. You got yourself a dandy vocabulary, Phil.”
“Fuck my vocabulary,” Phil said. “How come you told me North and Adams left for better-paying departments?”
Mullins gusted a big sigh. “‘Cos I needed ya, Phil. This PCP shit is turning the whole town to garbage, and it’s makin’ me look like the garbage man. You might not’ve taken the job if I told you up front why North and Adams left.”
“So tell me now. What happened to them? Are they dead?”
“Dead?” Mullins gaped. “No, they ain’t dead, but they sure as shit ain’t here. Things started to get too hot, so they both threw in the towel. Turned in their badges and boogied.”
Phil smirked plainly. “Come on, Chief. The whole story.”
“All right. North and Adams were working on the PCP thing for a couple months. Then they got a lead on Natter’s lab, so the three of us checked it out one night. We was told he had the works back up in the hills past Hockley’s.”
“Who told you that?”
“Let’s just say an anonymous tip.”
“Okay. What happened?”
Mullins suddenly flinched, as if at a bad memory. “What happened was we nearly got ourselves killed. The whole thing was a set-up. There must’ve been two dozen of those fuckers waitin’ for us, a fuckin’ army of ’em.”
Phil didn’t quite get it. “An army of who?”
“Of Creekers. And they were all packing rifles and shotguns. We walked right into Natter’s ambush. I got myself an assful of 16-gauge buck. Wanna see the scars?”
“I’ll pass,” Phil said.
“Adams took a .308 in the upper leg, shattered his thigh bone. The bullet fragged and tore the living shit out of his knee, poor bastard’ll never walk right again. And North got nicked in the ear. Another two inches, and he would’ve got his head blowed off. By the time we got out of there, the patrol car was so full of holes it wasn’t even fit for the demolition derby.”
Phil leaned back in his chair, assessing his boss. Mullins had broken out in a light sweat, and when he took another sip of coffee, his big, fat hand was noticeably shaking.
“So North and Adams freaked?”
“That’s right,” Mullins said. “Said they couldn’t hack it no more, and I can’t say I blame ’em. North quit right away. And Adams quit the day he got out of his cast. Had to pay the fucker ten weeks of workman’s comp.”
Phil folded his arms. “That’s funny, Chief. I heard that neither of these guys quit. I heard they disappeared and were never seen again.”
Mullins’ lips puckered as if he’d just sucked a lemon. “You seem to be hearing a lot these days, and I think I know who you’re hearing it from. Don’t let Vicki Steele make a horse’s ass out of ya, Phil.”
“Shit, Chief. You haven’t leveled with me. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t believe her.”
“I’ll give you a bunch,” Mullins replied. “She’s a sexfreak, a stripper, a dopehead, and a whore. Plus she’s Natter’s wife.” Mullins hocked his chaw into the wastebasket, then loaded up another. “North is walking a mail route in Bowie, Maryland—after he took fire, he said he never wanted to be a cop again. Adams and his brother got a small-business loan and bought a liquor store in Whitehall. If ya think I’m bullshitting ya, then go right ahead and look up their names in my Rolodex and give ’em a call.”
Skip it, Phil thought. Mullins was coming clean now. But there was one more thing…
“All right, so you pulled my leg about what happened—”
“Naw,” Mullins interrupted. “I made a tactical circumvention of facts.”
“Fine. But why?”
“I told ya. I was afraid you wouldn’t take the job if I gave the full scoop right away. I was fixin’ to tell ya; I was gonna tell ya this week as a matter of fact. Figured you’d be agreeable once you got on the case awhile.”
“That’s pretty shitty, isn’t it?”
“Well, sure,” Mullins admitted. “But face it, Phil. Once a cop, always a cop. This case was cut out for you; I just wanted to give you some time to ease into it. You’d have taken the job anyway, right?”
Phil didn’t answer, but he knew the chief was right. He knows me better than I thought. “One more thing,” he said.
“Let me guess. Your ex-sweetheart blabbed shit about North and Adams. Stands to reason she’d blab more shit to boot. The bodies?”
“Yeah, Chief. The bodies. Vicki said there were over a dozen, all with their skin cut off like Rhodes.”
A wave of Mullins’ hand dismissed these mere details. “It wasn’t no dozen, shit—maybe seven or eight, and yeah, they were all done up like Rhodes pretty much. All dust cowboys from out of Crick City. I figure Natter’s got his Creekers hitting anyone who tries to compete with his own operation.”
“That’s what it sounds like to me, but that’s also beside the point,” Phil posed. “It would’ve been helpful for me to know about these murders before you sent me out on an undercover investigation, don’t you think?”
Mullins shrugged. “Keep your shirt on. I was gonna tell ya all about that too, just like I was gonna tell ya about North and Adams. But I thought it best—”
“To give me some time to ease into things.”
“Right.”
By now Phil’s frown seemed like a permanent fixture on his face.
Mullins spat again, sipped more coffee, and scratched his belly. “That night we got shot up, that was because none of us knew what the hell we were doin’. North and Adams, sure, they were decent cops, but they were town cops, Phil. They didn’t have the know-how to get on with a serious dope and murder investigation, and neither do I. But you do know what you’re doin’. You’re an expert at this kind of job; Christ, that’s all you did out on Metro. If I’d thought for a minute that you weren’t experienced enough to hack the heat on a case this hot, then I never would’ve rescued you from that brain-dead goin’-nowhere yarn factory you were rotting in uptown. I gave you a chance because I figured you deserved it. Not many chiefs would” —Mullins paused to stretch— “considerin’ the shit on your record at Metro.”
This little reminder took some of the punch out of Phil’s petulance. The chief had a point; Phil knew dope networks like the back of his hand, and he knew what to expect. But Mullins? And hicks like Adams and North? No wonder they almost lost their asses. Those guys don’t know PCP from a PCV valve.
And another consideration began to smolder. Who am I to get pissed off at him for not exactly following protocol? Last night relit in his mind: Vicki.
They’d made love in his car for over an hour.
I haven’t exactly been following protocol either, he had no choice but to remind himself.
“So let’s get it all right out on the table,” Mullins began again. “Without you on this case, it won’t be long before the whole county knows about it, the papers, the news shows. Sure, I got a vested interest, I ain’t sayin’ I don’t. My fuckin’ job, you know. Natter and his Creekers are turning Crick City into a pile of shit, and I’ll be the one goin’ right down the crapper with it. But it ain’t just the job—this pissant, redneck burg is my home and it’s yours, too, whether ya like it or not. You don’t owe me nothin’, and I don’t expect you to stick your neck out to save my job as chief. But, shit, Phil, you must care a little about what Natter’s doing out there. He’s getting kids turned onto his shit, nippin’ ’em in the bud before they even get half a decent chance at life.”
“I was a narc lieutenant for several years, Chief,” Phil refreshed the big man’s memory. “I know what dope does to kids.”
Mullins spat another streamer. “And don’t forget about what Natter did to your ex.”
Another reminder.
