Michael Slade - Headhunter

Once they were gone from sight, the blond climbed down, took out a pen and a matchbook, and began to make some notes.

5:40 p.m.

From somewhere out there came the squeal of wheels on rails and the smash of train cars being shunted. From somewhere else came the sound of a foghorn lost on the edge of the harbor. For now the fog had come rolling in from the sea, swallowing up the physical world and disembodying its sounds. For the month of October, the weather was back to normal.

The railroad hut sat on the edge of the National Harbors' Board property, twenty feet from the Pacific Ocean and several thousand yards from the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was here in a synapse now shrouded with vapor that four thousand miles of rail linked up with the shipping routes of the Pacific Rim. Here was the reflex ganglia of the country's nervous system.

The man who sat at the single window of the railroad hut was smoking yet another cigarette. It was an Export A, no filter. He was one of those men who are politely described as being corpulent. His beer belly pushed out the front of his suit, permanently stretching the leather of his belt out of shape. The butt of a Smith and Wesson.38 stuck out from the top of his pants.

He turned at the sound of the door behind him being opened.

It was the blond from the beer parlor.

"I think I'm onto something," she said. There was excitement in her voice.

"Yeah?" the man replied with no emotion in his tone.

"Problem is I might just blow my cover getting to it."

As she spoke, the woman removed two No. 5 gelatin capsules from the pocket of her jeans. She walked over to a shelf on one side of the hut and picked up an envelope, then she sealed the caps inside it and marked the exhibit with her name, her Regimental Number, the date and the designation 56 C. In an RCMP undercover drug operation each person the operative scores from is given a number. Their picture then comes down from the target board and goes up as a hit. The letter "C" in this case indicated that this was the blond's third buy off this particular hit.

"Outrageous price," the woman said, handing the envelope over to her cover man. He put it in an "E" exhibit pouch. Then the blond sat down by the heater near the door and began making notes in a large black court book.

"You said you were onto something," the man reminded her. Again without emotion.

She looked up. "Before the buy, 56 made connection with this black dude in the alley. He had that swagger of the nouveau riche, you know what I mean? Flaunted jewelry. Arrogant air. That sort of shit. I think he's one step up and probably a link. I'd like to go after him and forget single cap sales."

"Well you can't," the man said, bitterly. "Spann, you've been pulled."

"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked, frowning.

The man grunted and lit another cigarette. His fingers were dark orange from nicotine stains.

"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked again.

"Clean up. Fuck off. Report to Heather Street. They just sent word down you made the Headhunter Squad."

The woman tensed, involuntarily. Now her heart was pounding fast.

"It should have been me-, lady. It should have been me." Then he turned back to the window to stare out at the fog. "Write out notes on this big connection before you go. Give me something to do."

"Yeah, sure," the woman said, almost in a daze. Then she added very quietly, "Who do I report to?"

Snorting, the Corporal turned slowly from the window. On his face there was a faint sardonic smile.

"The news is big, Spann. About as big as it comes. Chartrand, our bloody Commissioner, is bringing back Robert DeClercq."

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1957

Jazz was in the streets, and it wafted up on the warm night air, a musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of the Mardi Gras revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingle and jumble of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, up, still up over the surging crowd of people lined eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes. The music rose over the parents who sipped pink liquid from hurricane glasses as they pushed and shoved their children to the front of the line, children munching on peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs and apples-on-a-stick, everyone shuffling through a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. The jazz rose up over the sea of costumed masked revelers infiltrating the crowd, the "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, a King Kong here, a Zigaboo there, the Queen of Hearts and a fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Away from "the Big Shot of Africa" and the Zulu King's retinue, away from a one-eyed cyclops, away from the white leather cowboy garbed in front and bare-ass naked behind, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and its streamers, up until the jazz slid softly through the wrought-iron balcony where the black girl stood at the window.

The black girl was naked.

Crystal stood with her back to the room, swaying, her breath quietly hissing through white, even teeth. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades toward the small of her back. As her body was still tingling with the aftershock of orgasm, the fireworks that exploded over the city seemed to explode in her head. She felt good. Secure. For just a moment she wondered if her father would turn his sexual advances on her younger sister now that she was gone. Then she managed to push the thought aside since it spoiled her mood. From fifteen feet away, Elvis begged her, "Don't be cruel." Crystal smiled and slowly rocking, began to sing along.

"You want some of this?" a voice asked, louder than the radio. "It'll ice the top of your head."

Crystal turned from the window and walked over to where Suzannah sat at a glass table chopping up cocaine. The razor blade cut through the powder and tapped on the glass to the music. Finished, the white woman put the blade down and picked up a crisp $100 bill, rolling it into a tube and handing it to the girl.

Crystal plugged one nostril and put the tube to the other. Leaning over the table, she inhaled the drug. Then she switched hands and sniffed cocaine into her other nostril. During the process, she felt a hand cup one of her breasts. The nipple puckered.

"That ought to cool you, honey," Suzannah huskily whispered into her ear. The woman's other hand slipped up between the girl's thighs.

Crystal shuddered, uncertain whether it was Suzannah's touch or the spreading effect of the snow. But she didn't care, for all that mattered was the warm shiver tingling through her body. After a while she closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the woman.

Suzannah laughed and said, "Better watch that. Crystal dear. Pussy is addicting."

Then the woman turned her back on the girl and herself bent over the table. She ran the bill around the glass and sucked up most of the powder. Finished, she wet her index finger and washed it across the surface, completing the ritual by rubbing its tip around her gums.

Suzannah was a woman who dripped sexuality. Twenty-eight years old, she stood five-foot-ten in her bare feet and had a luscious figure. Her head was shaved bald, and she too was naked. As Suzannah bent over the table, from behind her Crystal could see six small gold rings piercing the labia and glittering among the hairs of the woman's crotch.

Suzannah straightened up. Pinching her nostrils several times as she sniffed in deep breaths of air, she glanced up at the. Gustav Becker clock ticking on the wall. The time was 11:33. She turned to Crystal and said: "We haven't much time, dear, until our guest arrives. He'll be here in an hour."