Creekers (21 page)

“Only on weekends,” she said. Inside they took a booth in the back.
Another blast from the past,
Phil considered. It had been over a decade since he’d last set foot in here. Chuck’s Diner was your typical greasy spoon, though cleaner than most. A middle-aged waitress in an apron and bonnet took their orders.

“So what are you packing?” Susan asked.

“Packing?”
Phil queried.

Susan, frowning, rephrased, “What kind of weapon do you carry off-duty?”

“Oh,
that
kind of packing.” But what a strange question. “A Beretta .25.”

“That’s a peashooter!” she exclaimed. The waitress set their orders down, then Susan continued, “What are you gonna shoot with a .25? Gnats?”

Phil appraised his hash and eggs. “Well, actually I’m not planning to shoot anything, except maybe the waitress if she doesn’t bring me some salt and pepper.”

“Cops are supposed to be prepared for trouble round the clock. What if some coked-up scumbags try to take you down?”

“In
Chuck’s Diner?
Look, if they want my hash and eggs, they can have it.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead with anything less than a hot-loaded 9mm,” she told him, then nonchalantly bit into her cheeseburger sub. “Right now I carry a SIG .45.”

“You carry a gun?” Phil asked.

“Of course. Mullins got me a carry permit, told him it was the only way I’d dispatch for him. It’s a crazy world, there’s a nut around every corner.”

Phil nodded. “Two on every corner is more like it.” And he’d seen them all on Metro. He felt inclined to tell some stories, but before he could, Susan said, “Take a look,” then abruptly opened her purse and withdrew a large, clunky automatic.

“Put that away!” Phil said. “This is a diner, not an armory.”

She shrugged and put the gun back. “I’m thinking about buying one of those H&K squeeze-cockers, or maybe a used Bren-10.”

How do you like that?
Phil mused.
Dirty Harry’s got a sister.
“If you want my opinion, stick to simple pieces.”

She glanced across the table as if slighted. “Oh, because I’m a woman? Women can’t handle sophisticated handguns?”

Phil sighed in frustration. “Simmer down, Annie Oakley. Wait till you’re neck-deep in a shootout one night and your fancy auto stovepipes a round. You’ll sell your soul for a Colt revolver.”

Again she shrugged, almost as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to agree. “How’s it feel to be back?”

“Okay, I guess. A job’s a job.”

She fidgeted with a French fry, glancing down. “And, again, I really apologize for the way I treated you this morning. I had no right to say things like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Phil passed it off. Actually, it was kind of funny now.
A few hours ago she was practically accusing me of murder, and now she’s buying me hash. “
I guess we all have a bad day every now and then.” But he thought it best to change the subject quick, “So what are all the books I see you reading at the station? You in college?”

“Yeah, slow but sure. I’m majoring in criminology, minor’s in history. This is my last semester, thank God. Evening classes a couple nights a week.”

“That’s great,” Phil acknowledged. “What are you going to do when you get your degree? Work for Mullins?”

“Not on your life. I’ll shoot for DEA or maybe Customs. And there’re always the county departments up north. Last thing I want to be is a Crick City cop—” Then she caught herself, brought a hand to her mouth. “Sorry. No offense.”

“None taken,” Phil laughed. “It’s the last thing I want to be, too, but I don’t have much of a choice at the moment.”

Her gaze moved absently to the window. “It’s the town, you know? It’s so slow and desperate and backwards. It’s depressing. The minute I get a decent job, I’m out of here.”

“I know just what you’re talking about, believe me,” Phil related, but at once he felt dried up. He’d said the same thing to Vicki, hadn’t he? No way he was going to work in a nowhere town like this. He was too good for Crick City. And now Vicki was a prostitute and Phil was—

The thought didn’t even need finishing.

“How long have you been working for Mullins?”

“A little under a year,” she said. “He’s a decent man, if a bit ornery, and he offered me the dispatch job when he heard I was looking for something to help me through school. He knew my parents when they were alive.”

Better not ask about that,
Phil told himself, though he did note their commonality. “So you grew up here, too?”

“Yeah,” she said despondently. “My father was on disability; he got shot up in Viet Nam. My mother worked lots of odd jobs to get us by, but it just seems the harder she worked, the harder things got.”

There seemed to be a similar variation of the same story for just about everyone around here: poor people struggling just to make it, and never quite succeeding. Phil had been too young to really even remember his own parents—but the tale was the same. He could tell the coversation was draining Susan; her luster was gone, her bright-blue eyes not quite so bright now. He struggled for something more upbeat to talk about, but nothing came to him until he remembered that she seemed enthused about guns and cop talk in general.

“What do you know about Cody Natter?” he asked.

She pushed her plate aside, leaving the fries. “Not a lot. About the only place he’s ever seen with any regularity is Sallee’s. He owns the place now, you know.”

“Yeah, Mullins mentioned that. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Sure it’s weird. A guy like Natter? No visible income, no bank account. I don’t guess that Sallee’s sold for much, but still, you have to wonder where he got the cash to buy the place.”

“I’m even more curious as to why?”

“I have to agree with Mullins,” Susan said. “An out-of-the-way strip joint like that is the perfect contact point if you’re networking dope. Last year Mullins had the Comptroller’s Office audit him, but the guy’s books were picture perfect. No way we can nail him on taxes. I don’t know how he did it.”

Phil didn’t care. “I don’t want to get him on tax fraud or ill-gotten gains; I want to bust him for manufacturing and distribution.”

“Then you’re going to have to have solid evidence linking him to his lab, which’ll be tough,” Susan reminded him, “and finding the lab itself will be plain impossible.”

“Why?”

“Natter’s a Creeker; his lab’s got to be up in the hills. You ever been back there? It’s a mess. You’re talking about three or four thousand acres of uncharted woodlands. There are roads back there that aren’t even on the county map grid. Finding Natter’s lab will be like looking for the needle in the haystack, or try ten haystacks.”

She had a point, and Phil was no trailblazer. “Yeah, but maybe one of his people will spin.”

“Don’t hold your breath. Natter’s people are all Creekers, too; they’re never gonna talk, first, because they’re all terrified of Natter—he’s like their god—and another reason they’ll never talk is simply because most of them can’t. Let’s just say you catch one of them dealing dust; no judge in the world will accept their testimony. Why? Because technically they’re all retardates—they’re
legally mentally impaired.”

Phil frowned. She was right again. “But what about Natter himself?” he raised the issue. “You ever talked to the guy? He’s sharp as a tack. He’s smart, he’s well-read, he’s articulate. I wouldn’t call him mentally impaired at all.”

“Phil, be real. The guy’s a Creeker, he makes Frankenstein’s monster look like Tom Cruise. You get him into court on shaky testimony, all the guy’s gotta do is play dumb and the judge throws the whole thing out. The only way you’re gonna get Natter is to bust a bunch of his point people or bag men—people who aren’t Creekers—and get
them
to testify. You’re gonna have to make a positive link between Natter and known PCP dealers. At least Mullins has you on the right track. Staking out Sallee’s over a period of time, getting a line on Natter’s out-of-town contacts—
that’s
 the only way you’ll be able to get Cody Natter on a distro bust that’ll stick.”

Phil saw no point in telling her that the whole idea was his, not Mullins’. But she was right on all counts. This would probably wind up being as complicated as any of his PCP cases in the city, if not more so since the circumstances were so atypical. “I still want to find that lab, though,” he muttered, more to himself. “No judge will argue with hard photographic evidence.”

Susan’s expression turned bemused. “What, you think you’re gonna get a picture of Natter at the lab?”

“Why not? It’d be an open-and-shut case.”

“Never happen, Phil. Natter’s way too smart for anything even close to that. He’s probably never set foot in the lab, you can bank on that.”

Phil grumbled. Again, he knew she was right.
Yeah, this sure ain’t the city,
he thought. On Metro, he’d been one of the best narc cops on the force, but his expertise felt like a white elephant now. Everything was different here; things worked different ways. This was another world

“Phil!” Susan was suddenly whispering. “Look!”

He glanced up from the remnants of his hash and eggs. Susan was gazing fixedly out the window. Along the shoulder of the Route, a teenage boy and girl were walking, both dressed in little more than rags. Both had shaggy heads of dirty black hair, and they ambled along unsteadily, even crookedly. The boy wore rotted workboots, while the girl was barefoot, oblivious to the shoulder’s sharp gravel. In the bright, hot afternoon sun, they looked like bizarre ghosts.

“Creekers,” Phil uttered under his breath.

“God, I feel sorry for them,” Susan remarked, still staring out. “Talk about getting a bum deal from life.”