He almost laughed. All right, so my cop career is over. Now I’ve got a new career as a security guard working midnight-to-eights and pulling in $7.50 an hour It’s better than being in the joint…
The job itself required very little in the brain department; a well trained chimp could do it, he supposed. Security work was about the only thing he could think of that was relative to his education and interests, and Preventive Security, Inc. was the only company in the state which offered him a job despite his rep with the metro cops. The job was simple: he punched a Latham roundclock every hour in the factory. The rest of the time he sat in an office, drank diet Pepsi, and read novels. “It’s a cinch,” his new boss promised. “We haven’t had a break-in at this place in twenty years.”
Interesting work.
Then the perimeter alarm went off.
“So much for the boss’s twenty-year record,” Phil mumbled to himself. Probably an alarm malfunction. He checked the jack plate on the Sparrow/Jefferies alarm system. ZONE TWO, the light blinked. ENTRY BREACH.
I don’t believe it! I’ve got someone busting into the place! He cut the office lights and screwed the red lens on his Kel-Lite. Then he grabbed his GOEC Mace—Preventive Security was an unarmed company, no gun permits— and slipped out into a secondary transport aisle. He kept his light low; he didn’t want to scare anyone away, he wanted to catch them, if only to relieve the boredom. Walking through the dark factory, though, put him on edge. What if the intruders were armed? Just be careful, skillethead. Flanks of nameless machines led him around the production area. At the other end of the building (designated ZONE TWO) he could see the exit door ajar.
Someone’s in here, all right, he realized. But who would want to break into a freakin’ textile factory? What’s to steal? Spools of thread?
Down the aisle and another turn, and his question was answered. How stupid can crooks be? he wondered. Someone had turned on the lights in the automat, and right this instant he could see a shadow leaning over one of the machines. A coinbox jockey, it seemed obvious to him. Why work a job when you can make a living busting into vending machines? On Metro, this would’ve been an easy collar, but Phil’s new boss reflected some very serious sentiments for situations that actually involved a burglar. “Remember, Phil, you’re not John Law anymore, you’re just a guard. You see anyone actually break into that place, you call the county cops and get out. No playing hero. Christ, in this state if a guard injures a crook during a crime, the crook sues and wins. I don’t need any lawsuits or liabilities.” Phil saw the man’s point, especially given the fact that he didn’t have a gun or police powers any longer. But—that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun…
“Freeze! Police!” Phil shouted. “Don’t move or I shoot!”
“With what? A paper clip and rubber band?” the “intruder” replied and casually turned away from the vending machine. Then he smiled. “How’s it goin’, Phil? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Crick City’s favorite son. I guess you’re not too keen on keeping in touch.”
Phil couldn’t believe it. The man who faced him stood short and fat. The bald pate glimmered in the automat’s buzzing fluorescent light, and his mustache was like a stout caterpillar on his lip. Those features, plus the tidy, starched municipal police uniform, were all Phil needed to recognize.
“Lawrence Mullins,” Phil identified, “Chief of the Crick City Police Department. Would you mind telling me what in the hell you’re doing here?”
“What’s it look like? I’m getting a cup of coffee,” Mullins said and raised the steaming Macke cup.
Phil closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, he commanded himself. Don’t blow up.
Then, as was usually the case, he…blew up.
“You broke into my factory just to buy a goddamn cup of coffee!”
Mullins chuckled approvingly. “Still got that temper, I see. Good, good. And, you know, you sure got some cheapie locks on this place. Shit, I had that door open in less time than it takes to use the key. Oh, and how about reholstering that 44-magnum can of Mace, huh? What, you get a lot of mean dogs around here?”
Phil sighed. “Please, Chief. Don’t screw with me. I’ve had a bad day—or I should say, a bad year.”
“So I’ve heard. Back in town, we all heard about that shooting when you were with Metro. But we can talk about that later. That was a smart move, resigning voluntarily instead of fighting them. You fight with any big city IAD, you lose your ass. Then you really would have been washed up. Shit, a former cop with convictions… You wouldn’t have been able to get a job cleaning the greasehole at Chuck’s Diner.”
One thing Phil didn’t need to be reminded of was the Metro frame. And another thing he didn’t need was a load of wisecracks. “Chief, look, it’s good to see you and all that, but are you going to tell me why you’re here, or are you just trying to piss me off while you stand there sipping coffee?”
Mullins sipped more coffee, just barely smiling over the steam. “Oh, is that what you want to know? You want to know why I’m here?”
“Yeah, Chief, I do.”
“Well, we’re friends, right? From way on back? Shit, I practically raised you myself. And when I heard about the Metro thing, and you taking this pissant security job, well… I was a little concerned, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like you’ve seen fit to stop by your old hometown once in a while, you know, just to say hello to some of the folks you grew up with. But of course I guess you been too busy for the last ten years, what with the highfalutin’ big city job with Metro. A narc lieutenant, ain’t that what you were?”
Were, Phil slowly thought. Not am. Not anymore. “Chief, are you trying to make me feel guilty? All right, so I haven’t kept in touch. Sorry. But you still haven’t told me why you busted into my gig.”
Mullins laughed. “Well, I wanted to see if you were keeping on your toes, now that you’re not a cop anymore.” The chubby man grinned at the open service door. “Pretty slick lock-picking, huh?”
“Chief!”
Mullins was getting a real kick out of this. “Okay, Phil, I’ll level with you. The real reason I came all the way out to this bumfuck yarn factory is because, well… I want to talk to you.”
Mullins’ cat-and-mouse games got old fast; this was the first Phil had seen of him in nearly a decade, and he was already sick of him. Some guys never change, he dully realized. “Fine, you want to talk to me. About what? Please, Chief, tell me before I have a stroke.”
Mullins finished his coffee and pitched the cup in the trash. Then he got a Milky Way out of the next machine.
Then he said, “I want to offer you a job on my department.”
And that was about all Mullins had elaborated upon, which was pretty typical; Mullins’ hedging sense of humor was part of his overall psychology—he’d always make his point by taking subtle shots. Phil had been born and raised in Crick City. His father had run off a week after he’d been born, and his mother died about a year later when the laundromat she’d been working in caught fire. So Phil was reared by an aunt, who received a subsidy from the state, and about the only thing he ever had that came close to a father-figure was Mullins, the chief of Crick City’s police department for as long as anyone could remember. Mullins, now, had to be close to sixty, but to Phil he’d always looked the same, even back when Phil was in junior high and hanging out at the station after school.
Mullins was a decent man, or at least as decent as any shuck-and-jive backwoods police chief. Crick City, with a population of less than two thousand, wasn’t exactly Los Angeles in its law-enforcement needs, and since nothing in the way of serious crime ever seemed to occur there, the town council never had any reason to appoint a new chief.
Phil had a confused regard for the man. As a kid, it was Mullins who always had an encouraging, if not gruff, word when Phil was down, and it was Mullins who kept him out of trouble. Mullins looked after Phil when no one else could, and it was Mullins, too, who had inspired Phil’s interest in police work.
But on the other hand…
It was the town itself that always rubbed Phil the wrong way, and Chief Mullins was a constant reminder of that. Crick City was a backward, run-down pit of a town—a trap. No one ever seemed to get anywhere, and no one ever seemed to leave. It was the sticks: low-paying jobs, lots of unemployment, and the highest dropout rate in the state. Dilapidated pickup trucks ruled the pothole-ridden roads, at least those trucks that weren’t propped up forever on blocks in the front yards of one seedy saltbox house after another. The only crimes that did seem to occur with regularity were drunk and disorderlies, and the hallmark: spouse abuse. In all, Crick City unfolded as an unchanging nexus. A nowhere land inhabited by nowhere people.
Phil didn’t want to be one of those people.
But there was one thing he did want to be—
