Good God Almighty, was all Phil could think.
“Come on, man,” Eagle said. “Time to go.”
Phil rose, gulping at the final image: the girl slipping her feet beneath the diminutive g-string and fondling her sex. He followed Eagle and Sullivan out the back door.
“Like that Creeker freak-show shit, huh, bub?” Sullivan asked him.
“Yeah, it’s a trip,” Phil lied. They walked across Sallee’s gravel lot. Phil could tell he didn’t like Sullivan right off, the tone of his voice, the mean look in his small eyes, but Phil had to keep that at bay. “Yeah, they’re all a bunch of fucked-up whores in there,” Sullivan continued. “Them chicks up front too, cokeheads, cocksuckers. ’Specially that hot-shit Vicki Steele. You see her, bub?”
“Yeah, I saw her.”
“She’s the only one of them whores who charges more’n a hundred. Fuckin’ stuck-up, ritzy cokehead whore is what she is, thinks her shit don’t stink, thinks that just ’cos she’s Natter’s cooze she’s somethin’ special. Ain’t nothin’ but redneck scum just like all the rest of ’em. Boy, I’ll tell ya, I’d fuck that cokehead whore so hard her brains would slop out her ears.”
Phil swallowed these words like a mouth full of rocks.
“Hey, Paul, give it a rest, will ya?” Eagle kindly suggested without elaborating that the woman he so explicitly referred to had once been engaged to Phil. “You wanna fill our new partner in, or what?”
Sullivan chuckled. He solidly filled out his jeans and light flannel shirt with a body-builder’s physique, and that unpleasant, beat-up face of his only steepened the image. A tough customer. But Phil didn’t let that intimidate him; Sullivan was flesh and bone just like everyone, and just as vulnerable. The guy went on, “Okay, bub, me and my buddy Eagle here, we gotta make a pickup tonight, and we need a dupe to drive us, ya know? A dummy who’ll dummy up and not ask a lot of questions.”
Phil smiled vaguely. Sullivan was testing him, all right, to see just how much shit Phil could tolerate. Fine with me, Phil thought to himself. “Hey look, man, I’m just along for the cash. I could shit care less what you guys are moving.”
“Good, bub, and make sure it stays that way, ’cos there ain’t nothin’ that pisses me off worse’n a nosy chump.”
“You can call me chump and dupe and dummy all ya want, brother,” Phil told him. “Like I said, I’m just lookin’ for the cash, and as long as yours is green, you can call me fuckin’ Captain Kangaroo if you want.”
Sullivan chortled and slapped Phil on the back. “You know somethin’, bub? I’m beginnin’ ta like you already—”
Boy, would I like to kick this guy’s ass all over the parking lot, Phil thought amusedly. Instead he just said, “We gonna gab all night, or should we get moving?”
“Your wheels, bub,” Sullivan instructed. “Cops might be wise to me and Eagle’s wheels.”
“Fine,” Phil said, approaching the Malibu. “I just hope I moved that box of dog shit out of the back seat.”
Sullivan guffawed. “Yeah, Eag, this pal of yours, he’s a friggin’ riot!”
Jesus, Phil thought. This guy’s some mental giant. Bet he’s got an I.Q. smaller than his belt size.
The three of them piled into Phil’s clunker, Sullivan riding shotgun. Phil put the keys in the ignition. “Where to?”
“Nowhere just yet.” Sullivan’s dark angled face turned; he seemed to be reaching for something in his pocket. Is this guy shaking me down? Phil wondered with surprising calm. Does he know I’m a cop? Phil had his Beretta .25 in a Bianchi wallet holster; it would be tough, but he thought he could get it shucked and cocked fast enough to beat Sullivan to the draw if the guy was pulling a fast one. Phil’s hand slid along his own leg, inching toward his pocket.
“Hey, Paul?” Eagle asked from the backseat. “What gives? We gotta get moving.”
Sullivan’s face looked like a mask of baked clay. He’d removed a small plastic bag from his jeans pocket. The bag contained several joints.
Phil sorely doubted that it was marijuana.
“What we got here, bub, is some of the best flake in the county, and just to show you what a class guy I am, I’m gonna let you have a toke.”
“Come on, Paul,” Eagle objected. “Put that shit away. He’s gotta drive for us.”
“Yeah, well, if your buddy boy here can’t drive with a buzz, then he must be a pussy, and we don’t want no pussies drivin’ on our runs.” Sullivan grinned in the dark car. “And besides, I don’t know this chump from a hole in the ground. How do I know he ain’t a narc?”
Then Sullivan handed Phil a lighter and one of the joints. Flake, Phil thought. PCP sprayed on pot or tobacco.
Sullivan’s voice seemed to flutter. “Go ahead, bub, light up and have a toke. And if you don’t, that tells me one thing.”
“Yeah?” Phil replied.
“You ain’t for real.”
Phil rolled the end of the joint in his mouth.
Here goes nothing, he thought.
He lit the joint. An acrid, nasty fetor rose with the thread of smoke off the joint’s end. The smoke coiled in the air, a ghost-snake, spreading, spreading…
Susan had warned him of this, hadn’t she?
He had no choice.
Phil began to take a long drag.
««—»»
Blackjack came to with a smeared glare in his eyes. The moon, he realized dazedly. Cloying, humid darkness becloaked him, but as he squinted up he noticed the moon in the window.
Wait a fuckin’ minute. What window? Where am I?
Memories straggled back, marching through his mind. Sallee’s. The backroom. And—
The trick. The whore.
That Creeker bitch done set me up…
When he tried to get up, a parade of pain rewarded him for his efforts. His left arm felt numbed, throbbing, and so did the lower-right side of the back of his skull. The darkness smothered his right hand when he raised it; he brought it down and touched his chest, his hip, his thigh, and realized he’d been stripped naked.
The bare, splintery wood beneath him felt warm; sweat trickled down his sides like crazed ants.
Good God, I feel like hell…
The darkness throbbed with his arm and leg, and with the roaring pain at the back of his head.
And more memories flitted back.
He’d been about to put a good busting on that Creeker whore. The four-titter, he remembered. The one with the tiny mouth. But what happened next?
He’d been choking her out, and—
Fuck.
That was all he remembered…
He clamped his teeth shut against the pain. Yeah, some son of a bitch fucked me up good, he deduced. It’s a scam Natter’s got going in there. The whore set me up, then I’ll bet that bighead kid snuck up behind me and put a wallop on my head. But what the fuck’s Natter got against me? I ain’t done shit to that ugly Creeker fuck. Don’t make no sense to whack me out.
One thing Blackjack did know:
I gotta get the fuck outta here.
Wherever here was.
The house, he thought. Yes, he must still be at the house. She’d taken him up to a small room on the second floor. But this couldn’t be the same room. It was hotter than embers here, and he remembered old carpet on the floor of the whore’s room, but this floor was bare wood.
Get up. Gotta move, he ordered himself. Gotta get out of this joint before Bighead comes back to finish the job…
It was nearly impossible not to cry out when he lifted himself to his hands and knees. He had to rest, shuddering. His brain throbbed like something fit to bust out of his skull. The only bearing he could make for himself was the shutterless, uncurtained window and the moon glowing in its frame. The smudged panes stood just above him to the right, but the pain made it seem hundreds of feet away. He could hear his sweat dripping onto the wood floor as he crawled forward, toward the flaking sill.