Edward Lee - Creekers

In an unbidden instant, part of Phil felt transported back to another time not really that long ago, a time when they were in love with each other and when the current state of their lives was so remote as to be unthinkable. He wanted to argue with her, to shake her around and bellow in her face that she should stop indicting herself and step out of the seamy ditch her life had fallen into. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your shit together! he wanted to rant. All right, you fell down, so get the fuck back up and make a real life for yourself before it’s too late!

But he could say nothing of the sort, and he knew it. He needed her, for the case. He was a cop, and he had a job to do. He had to play along, or else he’d lose his best lead yet.

Yeah, my best lead. A girl I used to love. A girl I almost married…

“Excuse me,” she said and abruptly stood. “I need to use your bathroom.”

“Right in there,” he pointed.

She went in and closed the door. He knew she was crying, which made him feel even more despicable. He was low enough to use her for the profit of the investigation. But beyond that, no matter how hard he rationalized it to Mullins or even to himself, he knew he would always be partly to blame for what had happened to her.

After several minutes, he began to pace his room. Several more and he began to worry.

He knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay, Vicki?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a sec.”

And when she did indeed re-emerge from the bathroom, she seemed back in control, but—

Oddly so.

Again, she looked neat as a pin, her posture perfect, every shining red hair in its place, but her eyes bore a glint now like ice. She seemed stolid, hard, when only a few minutes ago she’d been falling apart.

“Look, I’m sorry about that,” she said.

“We all have bad moments, Vicki.”

“I guess the real reason I came here was because I wanted you to know what happened, that’s all. I didn’t want you to think—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you stopped by.”

Their eyes locked. For a moment the green ice cracked. “Really?”

“Sure. Look, the past is the past, right? We both got bum raps, that’s life. Why don’t we try to put the past behind us, forget about all that and leave it lie? Let’s be friends, okay?”

Something like a repressed despair threatened to collapse her entire face, but she seemed to stave it off. “I’d really like that, Phil. I’d like that a lot, but—”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’ll have to be a secret.”

“A secret? Why?”

She steeled herself. “I’m married now, Phil,” she said very coldly. She raised her left hand, flashed the wedding ring with a diamond on it the size of a pea. Then:

“I’m married to Cody Natter.”

He tried to manage his shock, tried to keep it from getting out and molesting the memory of how he used to feel about her.

“Still want to be friends?” she asked.

“Sure. I don’t care if you’re married to Elvis.”

She let a smile eek out, gave him a final glance, then kissed him very lightly on the lips.

“See you around,” she said and left.

His bewilderment held him in a momentary check. When he looked around the doorway and down the hall, she was already gone.

Cody. Natter’s. Wife. Each word smacked like a piton into stone. How could any man, however irredeemable, let his own wife dance in a strip joint and turn roadside tricks in pickup trucks. When Phil closed the door, he wanted to punch a hole in it. His anger raged like a huge beast trapped in a tiny cage. He thought he would explode.

And the emotion doubled when he went into the bathroom. Perhaps his cop’s sensitivities had tuned him in; anyone else wouldn’t have noticed it in a million years. But—

“Oh, my God, Vicki, no no no—”

At the corner of the old porcelain sink, the faintest sprinkling of diminutive white dust lingered. He knew what it was even before he rubbed a trace across his upper gum and felt the numb, cold tingle.

Cocaine. No wonder Natter got her stripping and turning tricks so fast. He got her hooked on coke…

— | — | —

Fourteen

Phil walked into the station at five of eight, keyed up by an array of emotions: despair, perplexion, and anger…

Mostly anger.

“Hi, Phil,” Susan said from the commo niche, her nose buried in a textbook.

“What?”

She vaguely smirked, looking up. “I said hi. It’s a colloquial Modem English interjection commonly used to denote a greeting.”

“Oh, yeah. Hi. Where’s Mullins?”

Susan obviously sensed his disheveled mood at once. “He’s eating sushi on the Ginza in Tokyo. You know, like he does every night at eight.”

“Huh?”

“He’s in his office! Where else would he be?” She closed her book somewhat testily. “What’s wrong with you? You get out on the wrong side of the bed today?”

“Sorry, Susan. I—” He didn’t know how to properly explain it, not that he would want to anyway, not to her. What? My ex-fiancée stopped by today and enlightened me to the fact that she’s married to Cody Natter. She claims Mullins tried to rape her. Oh, and she’s also a prostitute and a coke addict. No, that wouldn’t wash, and it would certainly put a damper on their date tomorrow.

“Just feeling a little out of it today. Talk to you later.”

Phil’s frown widened when he stepped into the chief’s office; Mullins wasn’t there, but an instinctive glance to the back window showed the chief lumbering out of the disused lockup behind the station, bearing a can of coffee.

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I see,” the big man said when he came in.

Phil didn’t waste time. “That was real cool of you to not tell me Vicki Steele was married to Cody Natter. I guess you just forgot that minor detail, huh?”

“I can tell you’re in a great mood.” Mullins started another pot of coffee, then sat down at the cluttered desk. “I figured it was best you found out on your own. Didn’t want to shake you up before I had to.”

“Oh, I appreciate that, Chief. I’m not a school kid, you know. I don’t let personal stuff get in the way of my job.”

“I can tell.” Mullins’ chair creaked like a keening hinge when he lounged back. “You haven’t even been in the office ten seconds, and you look about as happy as a mad dog. I didn’t think you could handle that information right off the bat.”

“Well, fine. But next time fill me in, all right? How can I do a good job on this case if you withhold pertinent facts?”

“Sorry, dear. It won’t happen again. I take it you ran into her.”

“Yeah, this afternoon before I turned in.”

“Were you in uniform?”

“No, no, my cover’s intact.”

“Good.” Mullins hand-pinched a few choice leaves of tobacco from his bag, then stuffed them into his cheek.

“Takes the cake, don’t it? That ugly scumbag is married to the best-looking woman in town, and he’s got her doing a strip show and turning tricks.”

Yeah, it takes the cake, all right. But now that he’d had time to think about it, it wasn’t terribly surprising. “Actually it’s pretty common in criminal networks. Drug kingpins frequently take a beautiful wife for status, then use them for business. The dust honchos in the city do it all the time. It’s like buying a $500 silk shirt and using it to check your oil. It’s street machismo.”

Mullins chuckled grimly at the simile. “Ugly Creeker slime. I can’t wait to bust his ass.”

“We got a lot of very positive leads real fast, and Vicki’s the best lead yet.”

“You figure you’ll run into her on a regular basis?”