Edward Lee - Creekers

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 the 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.”