Creekers

by Edward Lee

  Then she said, none too quietly, “Fuck you!” and turned around and ran back up the stairs.

  Phil ran after her, ludicrously holding the towel around his waist. “Susan, wait!” he yelled.

  “Eat shit!” she yelled back, thumping up the steps ahead of him. “Eat lots of shit!”

  “Would you please wai—” Phil began, then barked “Jesus!” as he stubbed his toe on one of the uncarpeted stairs.

  He heard Susan’s door slamming shut on the landing above.

  The entire house shuddered.

  Phil limped the rest of the way up, feeling about as low as a typical snake belly. What could he say that wouldn’t be a foolhardy cliché? He could hear himself now. Susan, let me explain! Or, it’s not what you think! If he said anything like that, it would prove an even worse insult to her.

  Pathetically, he asked himself, How do I get myself into messes like this?

  No answer was forthcoming.

  “Susan?” he said, rapping gently on her door. “Please, open the door and at least let me talk to you.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “All right, you’re really mad now, I understand that. So how about if I come up a little later when you cool off?”

  “Blow yourself!”

  “Tomorrow, then. Okay? Can we talk tomorrow?” he all but pleaded.

  “If I ever see you again, you lying son of a bitch,” she shrieked from the other side of the door, “I’ll kick you in the balls so hard they’ll pop out of your ears!”

  Phil took a forlorn step back from the door.

  Well, he thought. I guess that means no.

  ««—»»

  Vicki, of course, was gone when Phil went back to his room. I guess she knows a bad scene when she sees one. He couldn’t blame her for the mishap—he could only blame himself. Susan had told him weeks ago that any sound in his room traveled up to hers through the heating duct. He felt scorned; he hadn’t even done anything wrong.

  So what else is new, Phil?

  Right or wrong, though, common sense told him that nothing he could say could salvage things between him and Susan.

  It wasn’t even 6 p.m. when he was dressed and ready. But ready for what? Eagle’s dead—he was my closest lead, and God knows where Vicki is. He’d have to start from scratch again, go back to the club tonight, and try to cultivate the trust of another denizen of Crick City’s underworld.

  It would take weeks.

  But there was still one person he could work on…

  He drove the Malibu to Millersville, to the county lockup. He flashed his ID, then signed his gun in with the block sergeant. In a few minutes, Paul Sullivan was brought to the interview room in handcuffs.

  Phil sat with his feet up on the desk. “Hey, bub, how’s it going? I’ll bet you thought it was your Aunt Millie coming to visit, huh?”

  “Fuck you,” Sullivan grumbled.

  “Believe it or not, Paul, you’re not the first person to say that to me today. Oh, and I really dig your wardrobe. Brooks Brothers?”

  Sullivan sat down, dressed in bright orange prison utilities. “How come I got moved out of PC to general pop?”

  Generally new inmates were kept in protective custody for five days, for in-processing, before being moved into the general prison population, but it had been at Phil’s request that Sullivan was transferred immediately. And Phil noticed something else: Sullivan had a black eye and new bruises on his face. “You can thank me for that, Paul,” Phil told him. “A sociable guy like you, I figure you’d appreciate the company of your fellow convicts. And with that handsome mug of yours, I’ll bet you got a lot of fans already.”

  “Motherfucker,” Sullivan replied. “Half the chumps in there hate my guts. I get in half a dozen fights a day.”

  “It’s called socialization, Paul. Let me ask you something. Does the word mannona mean anything to you? Or prey-bee? Or skeetinner?”

  “Naw. But it sounds like Creeker talk.”

  “And how would you know that? You know a lot of Creekers?”

  “Naw, man, but, you know, they’re all over the place, and a lot of the whores at Sallee’s are Creekers. I hear ’em jabberin’ all the time. Coupla years back, me and Eagle ran flake with some hillfolk out of Luntville, pretty much the same as Creekers ’cept they ain’t all fucked up from inbreedin’. They told us all about the shit the Creekers were into, scared shitless of ’em. Said the Creekers were cannibals and shit like that, and they got some weird religion.”

  Phil raised a brow. “What do you mean? What kind of religion?”

  “I don’t know, why the fuck should I care? But these hillers also said the Creekers, since they can’t talk right, they kinda got their own language. You been to Sallee’s, you’ve heard ’em jabbering that shit.”

  This just proved more of what Phil already suspected. Sullivan’s familiarity with the way Creekers spoke only verified some kind of proximity to them. And it was also pretty obvious that he was hiding something.

  “You been a liar and a scumbag all your life, Paul? Ever think you might want to do something with your life besides be a lying, ugly, redneck, dope-dealing piece of shit?”

  Sullivan grit his teeth. “Man, if I wasn’t in these cuffs, I’d kick your cop ass up and down the wing. I’d dance on your fuckin’ face, bub.”

  Phil leaned forward and smiled. “Oh? Well, you sure weren’t doing a whole lot of dancing the other night when we had our little party in your luxurious abode.”

  “That’s just ’cos you didn’t fight fair.”

  Phil laughed. “Bill me for the coffee table.”

  “Go ahead and laugh, bub. At least I got ya back, blowing your cover all over fuckin’ town.”

  “Blowing my cover, Paul? And how did you manage that?”

  Sullivan mustered a smile, which made the wedgelike face even uglier. “You think you’re pretty smart, slapping that bullshit no-call order on me. So ya wanna know what I did?”

  “What’s that, Paulie? I’m dying to know.”

  Sullivan’s smile came to its peak, like a curved gash in a slab of tenderized steak. “I had one of the guys on the block call Eagle.”

  “Oh? And this colleague of yours talked to Eagle?”

  “Well, no, but he left a message on Eag’s answering machine, and spilled the beans about you.”

  Crafty fucker. Phil leaned back, chuckling. “Well, let me tell you, Paul, unless they got an answering service at the pearly gates, that’s one message Eagle’s never gonna get.”

  Sullivan’s face pinched. “What you mean?”

  “Eagle’s dead. And so is your buddy Blackjack. We went out to his place last night, and Blackjack was lying there looking like something in the fresh meat rack at Safeway. Then some Creeker kid blew a hole in Eagle’s chest big enough to drive your big piece of shit truck through.”

  “A Creeker?”

  “That’s right, Paul. We got set up, there were six of them waiting for us. And I’m sure it breaks your heart to see that I got out alive.”

  “A Creeker,” Sullivan quietly repeated.

  “One of Natter’s boys. I smoked all of them. A tragic waste of some worthy humanity. Guess none of them will make it to Harvard now, huh?”

  Sullivan’s cockiness quickly grew drained of its edge.

  His shoulders slumped. Phil could tell the guy was worried now.

  “All right, you want me to talk, I’ll talk. But you gotta get me outta general pop and back into PC, and you gotta drop the distro charge.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere. “I’ll think about it,” Phil baited. “But you gotta give me something now.”

  Sullivan’s big, unpleasant head nodded. “Awright. We’se been workin’ through a new flake lab outta Lockwood. New guys. Some backer from Florida and an egghead labman just out of stir from the federal can in Bradford, PA. The regular supplier jacked the price, and the rednecks went nuts. These rednecks out here, they go through flake and dust like kids buyin’ cotton candy at th
e fuckin’ carnival.”

  “An eloquent simile, Paul,” Phil remarked. “So you got with these new guys and decided to corner the local market, undersell the group turning out the old product.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was the deal?”

  “It was me and Eagle running point with Blackjack and Jake Rhodes and another guy named Orndorf. They’d drop the product to us, and we’d take it to the distro runners, a couple of whacks—Scott-Boy Tuckton and some fat kid named Gut. They were the replacements.”

  “Replacements?”

  “For the other distro runners. There were a bunch of ’em, but they all disappeared. Like I told you the other night. But Gut and Scott-Boy, they disappeared too, I don’t know, a month ago, so me and Eagle were running the product to the distro points ourselves. That’s why we took you on to drive.” Sullivan sputtered. “Dumbest-ass thing I ever agreed to. Usually I smell cop a mile away.”

  “I stopped using deodorant—that way, I’d smell just like you.” Phil whipped out a pad and jotted down the names. “Okay, Paul. Good boy. Now give me the loke on your lab.”

  “Shit, man!”

  “Come on, Paulie. You don’t want to miss the cellblock shower, do you?”

  Sullivan glared. “They’ll know it was me who dropped dime on them!”

  “No they won’t, Paul. They’ll think it was Eagle or Blackjack or any of the other guys in your operation who disappeared. For all your supplier knows, those guys are in the joint, too. I’ll even put the word out that it was someone else; I’ll say I heard it was Blackjack. They’ll believe it because nobody even knows Blackjack is dead.” Phil tapped his pen. Sullivan was small-time on a losing streak; Phil wanted the big fish, Natter. Give him a deal, he decided. Get what you really want. “You know what PBJ is, Paul? Probation before judgment? That means you don’t do time. Give me what I want, and if it all checks out square, I’ll talk to the state attorney’s office. I’ll tell them that you’ve been a good citizen, cooperating fully with the police, and I’ll get you PBJ’d. You’re out of here in forty-eight hours. You leave town, you leave the state, no one knows where you went. All you gotta do is see a probie officer once a week wherever you go. And you know what you could even do? You could start all over again, Paul, get a real job, a real life, live like a real person for once. Who knows, you might even like it. It’s got to be better than sitting in the slam, making dust runs, and sweating bullets every night not knowing when the other guy might have you in his crosshairs.”

  Sullivan’s heavy jaw set. He was chewing his lip, thinking.

  “It’s a good deal, Paul, and it’s either that or you get to sit in this stone motel for the next five to ten years. But don’t worry—I’ll send you a fruitcake every Christmas.”

  It was fun putting the squeeze on a guy like Sullivan.

  “Time’s a’wastin’,” Phil quipped. “Keep me waiting, and I might just have to go shake down some other dustdealer and get what I want out of him.”

  Sullivan swore under his breath. “Awright, shit. Who else I got to trust?”

  Then he gave Phil explicit directions to his supplier’s lab operation.

  “Outstanding, Paul. I knew you were a good guy deep down. But there’s one more thing I want, and you know what it is.”

  Sullivan looked at him, incredulous. “The fuck you talkin’ about? I just handed you the works, ya motherfucker! “

  Phil idly shook his notepaper. “This is penny-ante, Paul. What I want more than any of this nickel-dime shit is the location of Natter’s lab.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about Natter,” Sullivan said. “Just that the ugly Creeker runs whores out of Sallee’s.”

  “You’re pulling my dick, Paul. Here I am giving you the best present of your life, and you’re bullshitting me again. That’s no way to show gratitude, is it?”

  Sullivan slammed his handcuffed wrists on the interview table. “You’re the one bullshitting, ya fuck!” he yelled. “I knew this was a crock! I just dropped the whole operation in yer lap, and now you’re not gonna give me shit!”

  Phil didn’t flinch, though to himself he had to admit that Sullivan’s outburst was a bit intimidating. Sullivan was a big man. You know, Phil, he considered to himself, if he broke out of those cuffs, you’d be in a world of hurt. I don’t see any coffee tables here. “Let me put it this way, Paul. This shit here—” Phil held up the piece of notepaper, then crumpled it up and tossed it over his shoulder; he’d already committed it to memory, but the gesture seemed very dramatic— “it doesn’t mean squat to me. I couldn’t care less about a bunch of pissant punks like you—I want Natter’s lab, and if you don’t give it to me, I’ll make sure you do the full ten big ones with no parole.” Which, of course, was way beyond his power as a police officer, but Sullivan didn’t know that. So why not pour on a little more? “Shit, Paul, I’ll even lie to the judge; I’ll tell him that I saw you kill Blackjack. Then you go up for fifty.”

  Sullivan’s face turned beet-red; it was a terrifying and nearly inhuman visage. The muscles in his forearms flexed, showing puffed, dark blue veins, and his massive chest threatened to tear open the orange prison shirt. “You can’t treat me like this, ya motherfuckin’ cop! We had a deal!”

  “What deal?” Phil said, and smiled like a cat.

  Yes, indeed, it was fun putting the squeeze on a guy like Sullivan, but there was one problem with someone like this. They weren’t exactly stable. And Phil found this out the hard way when Sullivan, handcuffs notwithstanding, leapt up, kicked the table over, and plowed into Phil’s chest.

  “Ho, boy!” Phil fell backward in his chair. Sullivan was all over him, snapping his cuffs as he grabbed for Phil’s throat. Never mess with mad dogs, he remembered his aunt telling him once. ’cos you’ll only make ’em madder, and they’ll git ya. Well, this mad dog was definitely gittin’ him; Phil thrashed under Sullivan’s dense muscled weight. “Guard!” he yelled, but by then Sullivan already had his throat, and the sound that came out was little more than a loud rasp.

  “So ya like fuckin’ with people, huh, bub?” Sullivan inquired, wringing Phil’s neck like a sponge. “Let’s see how ya like this!”

  Through warped vertigo, Phil noticed that his opponent’s face more resembled some sort of a kid’s devil mask. The other night had been different; Sullivan had been half-asleep, and Phil had enjoyed the element of surprise—not to mention the coffee table—but now the guy was so wired-up mad Phil couldn’t even get a punch in.

  Whap! whap! he heard just when he thought his neck would break.

  The weight lifted. Phil squinted up to see two county detention officers dragging Sullivan off. A third officer calmly resheathed his nightstick. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Phil said and clumsily rose to his feet. Meanwhile, the other two guards had Sullivan face-first against the wall and were recuffing his hands behind his back. “Put a collar on that guy,” Phil said. “Don’t let him get out of the yard.”

  “This punk’s been nothing but trouble since the minute he got his ass thrown in here,” the guard remarked. “Say, you’re bleeding a little. You want to go to the infirmary?”

  “Naw,” Phil said, wiping a handkerchief at a small cut on his lip. “Sorry about the hassle. How’d I know he was gonna go berserk?”

  “Happens all the time.”

  Phil walked up to Sullivan, who was now chicken-winged in front of the other two guards. “Think about it, Paulie. You got no one else to play ball with.”

  “Go ahead and take a shot if ya want,” one of the detention officers said. “What’s funny about us prison guards is we got really bad vision.”

  “No, I think I’ve fucked with him enough today. You can take Mr. Sullivan back to his suite now.”

  “You fuckin’ cops are all alike,” Sullivan growled as the guards tugged at him. “One day I’m gonna bust your head.”

  “Paul, by the time you get out of here, you’ll be so old you won’t be able to bus
t an egg. I’ll let you sit a few more days in general pop, then maybe I’ll come back and see if you’re ready to have another chat.”

  ««—»»

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Mullins asked, gawking from behind his desk. “Last night you get in a shootout and wind up killing six Creekers, and today you’re getting your ass kicked by prisoners.”

  “Not kicked,” Phil corrected. “Royally kicked. The guy went bonkers. I was playing with him, sure, and not exactly telling the truth about some things, but he went schizo on me. Took three screws to pull him off.”

  “And the fucker didn’t give you the loke on Natter’s lab?”

  “Nope. He gave me everything but. I already called the county tac team; they’ll be checking out that other lab. But as far as Natter goes, I struck out.”

  “He’ll never spin on Natter,” Mullins said. “If he does, he knows Natter’s people will be waiting for him the second he walks out of the pokey. And he knows what they’ll do. These other guys—they’re lightweights, and guys like Sullivan ain’t afraid of lightweights. But Natter and his Creekers?”

  “Different story,” Phil agreed. “You’re right. I didn’t even think that that could be the reason he squealed on his own outfit but not Natter’s.”

  Mullins scanned Phil’s notes which he’d uncrumpled before he’d left the lockup. “Good work. I can’t wait for the county to bust this new lab.”

  “Natter’ll probably be pretty happy about it, too,” Phil observed. “There goes his competition. But we still gotta get him.” Oh, yes, he thought. It was personal now, or perhaps it had always been. All he had to do was remember what Natter had done to Vicki, not to mention having Eagle killed. And then there’s always me, he reminded himself. Only now was he fully realizing how close he’d come to getting killed last night.