Creekers (12 page)

“See how hard I’m laughing?” Mullins replied, poker-faced. “Just learn it and quit the wisecracks, unless you want to get fired your first day and go do amateur comedy for tips every Friday night at Rudy’s Tavern.”

Phil smiled. “So we’re on the county commo band, huh?”

“Fuck no. We’ve got our own frequency and our own dispatcher. Her name’s Susan, and she’s in the other room. Make sure you touch base with her before you start your shift.”

“Susan, dispatcher. Right.”

“She’s nice, so don’t break her chops like you do mine.”

“Oh, one thing I wanted to ask. Does the department supply a bulletproof vest?”

Mullins looked back in grim hilarity, “What do I look like, fucking Santa Claus?”

Actually, with white hair and a beard…
“Hey, you know, cops get shot at all the time,” Phil pointed out.

“You’re a Crick City cop, not the warrior of the apocalypse. Only thing you need a vest for around here is to keep the mosquitoes from stingin’ your tits when cooping out by the swamps. You want a fucking vest, buy it yourself.”

“Hey, I was just asking.”

“You want to ask questions, fine. Just don’t ask
dumb
questions.”

“Okay. What’s the department policy on impeachment use of statements obtained without Miranda warnings during spontaneous field situations after probable cause has been previously determined?”

Mullins glowered. “Just whatever they taught you in the academy.”

Phil kept his smile to himself.
He steps on my tail all the time, it’s only fair that I step on his every now and then.
It seemed only fitting. Plus it was
a lot
 of fun.

Mullins packed a pinch of Skoal under his lip, then spit into the old coffee cup he was using for a spittoon. Phil hoped to God that the chief never actually drank out of it by mistake. “What I want you to do,” Mullins said, “is refamiliarize yourself with the town first couple of nights. That shouldn’t take too long considering you grew up here, unless of course all that smog you breathed on Metro for ten years rotted your brain. After that, everything’s pretty routine. First part of your shift, keep on your ass. Cruise all the TA’s and residential areas real slow, let the lokes know we gotta night cop again. And keep an eye on the Qwik-Stop ’cos it’s open all night. And whatever you do, don’t fuck up the cruiser. It’s brand-new, and it took me years to get the mayor and the town council to requisition it.” Mullins spit again into his cup. “And I guess that’s about it.”

Phil’s eyes narrowed. “That’s it? I thought you were going to brief me.”

“I just did.”

“Yeah, sure, Chief, but you must have some particular operating procedures you want me to follow.”

“For what?”

Phil sighed. “For the PCP thing. You say that’s your biggest problem in town. What ideas have you got? How do you want me to handle it?”

Mullins looked momentarily confounded. “Oh, yeah, well naturally I want you to check it out. Buzz around, look things over. Just do all that good cop shit you did on Metro.”

Phil wanted to laugh. Was the man naive? If the town’s biggest problem was Natter’s PCP ring, didn’t Mullins have any kind of plan? He seemed not to have thought about it at all. Phil could see he would have to use his own initiative; waiting for Mullins to come up with a strategy on his own would be less productive than waiting for his own hair to turn gray. “Well, the way I see it,” Phil began, “is we have to isolate Natter’s distro point, and the most logical distro point in Crick City is probably Krazy Sallee’s. I mean, what else have you got here? Not only is Sallee’s your only watering hole, it’s your only strip joint, and chances are half the girls working there are turning tricks, so it’s a good bet that’s where the local dustheads go.”

“Right,” Mullins conveniently agreed. “Sallee’s is where you’ll want to keep your biggest eye out. So start staking the place out each night close to last call. What, I gotta tell you everything?”

This guy’s something. Must be getting too old for the job.
Phil didn’t bother shaking his head. “You want me to stake out Sallee’s every night in the patrol car?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Now Phil did shake his head. “Chief, if Natter and his people see a cop car sitting in the parking lot every night, they’re just going to move someplace else and make it that much harder to step on their tails.”

“All right, smart boy, big city narc, what’s your plan?”

“You want to catch these guys red-handed, I’ll have to go undercover. First couple of weeks why don’t I check the place out in plainclothes and my own car? Nobody’s going to remember me ’cos I never hung out there, and if anyone does, I’ll have a cover story ready. It’ll give me a chance to get some names, tag numbers, and some kind of a read on what’s going on out there. If I’m lucky I might even be able to cultivate an informant or two.”

“Well, sure, a little undercover work, that’s what I was going to suggest next.”

Yeah, right.
“Okay, so that’s what I’ll do. Each night about an hour before last call, I’ll change into plainclothes and check the joint out. You’ll pay me mileage for use of my own vehicle, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Mullins complained. “Just go do your thing. Report to me in the morning. Oh, there’s one more detail you should know, too. Natter
owns
Krazy Sallee’s now.”

How in the hell?
Phil thought. “How’d a Creeker manage to buy a strip joint? Most of them have no incomes.”

“No
legal
incomes,” Mullins augmented. “I had IRS investigate the buy, and the records were legit. Somehow he laundered his dope money and bought the place.”

Phil nodded.
Makes sense,
he realized. There were all kinds of financial loopholes that seemed to exist solely for criminals—this was nothing new.

“Okay.” Phil got up and prepared to leave, but Mullins, after spitting again into his cup, added, “And whatever you do—”

“I know, be careful.”

“Well, that too, but don’t forget to pick up those coffee filters either.”

That’s what I like,
Phil thought,
a police chief with real priorities.
He went out into the front of the station to check in with the dispatcher Mullins had mentioned. Probably
some old ditty on social security,
he speculated.
Looks like Old Lady Crane on a bad day.

“In here,” he heard.

Phil turned toward a cubby of a room off to the side of the front door.
Boy, did I call this one wrong,
he realized. Sitting behind a big county scanner and Motorola transmitter was a pretty blond woman who looked to be in her late twenties, dressed simply in jeans and a plain pink blouse. Opened in her lap was a textbook of some kind.

Phil extended his hand in greeting. “I’m Phil Straker, the new cop.”

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t think you were the new Good Humor Man dressed like that,” she replied, and strangely did not shake his hand. “My name’s—”

“Susan, the night dispatch,” Phil cut in. “The chief told me to check in.”

She seemed exasperated, though Phil couldn’t fathom why.
 I guess I better change deodorants.

“We use the county signal sheet, so familiarize yourself with the codes, and do it fast,” she said. “One thing I can’t stand is a green cop who doesn’t know his radio codes.”

Phil frowned. “Do you know what a signal 72 is, by the county signal sheet?”

Her face darkened. “A 72? No.”

“It’s a juvenile complaint call. You can check on your sheet there you got taped to the wall. And if you got some problem with me, fine. Just don’t break my chops for nothing, all right? And for your info, I’m not green, I’ve been a cop for ten years.”

“Yeah. I know,” she said choppily and went back to her book.

Phil walked out of the station, as discomfited as he was confused. He wasn’t anti-social, but he didn’t see any reason why he should take a load of crap from some woman he’d just met.

It wasn’t her rudeness that bothered him nearly as much as the look in her eyes…

They were probably the prettiest blue eyes he’d ever seen, yet in that last moment before he’d left the station, he sensed beyond a doubt that those same blue eyes were burning with outright disdain.

— | — | —

Six

Such a precious little thing,
Natter mused, assessing the new girl with his uneven eyes.

“How old is she?” he asked.

“‘Bout sixteen, I thinks.”

Such a precious harbinger…

“You think she’s ready, Cody?”

But what did
ready
mean? What did it
really
mean, in the light of everything?
Have faith,
 he told himself. He was, after all, a faithful man. These little people, his own kin, served in their own way. They didn’t realize how, but what did that matter? They all fed the meaning of their providence…