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

Crafty f.u.c.ker. 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 s.h.i.t 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 c.o.c.kiness 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 f.u.c.kin" 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-a.s.s 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."

"s.h.i.t, 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 n.o.body 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, s.h.i.t. 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 f.u.c.k you talkin" about? I just handed you the works, ya motherf.u.c.ker! "

Phil idly shook his notepaper. "This is penny-ante, Paul. What I want more than any of this nickel-dime s.h.i.t is the location of Natter"s lab."

"I don"t know nothin" about Natter," Sullivan said. "Just that the ugly Creeker runs wh.o.r.es out of Sallee"s."

"You"re pulling my d.i.c.k, Paul. Here I am giving you the best present of your life, and you"re bulls.h.i.tting me again. That"s no way to show grat.i.tude, is it?"

Sullivan slammed his handcuffed wrists on the interview table. "You"re the one bulls.h.i.tting, ya f.u.c.k!" 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 s.h.i.t!"

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 s.h.i.t 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 p.i.s.sant 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? "s.h.i.t, 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 ma.s.sive chest threatened to tear open the orange prison shirt. "You can"t treat me like this, ya motherf.u.c.kin" 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 f.u.c.kin" 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 a.s.s 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 ha.s.sle. 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 f.u.c.ked with him enough today. You can take Mr. Sullivan back to his suite now."

"You f.u.c.kin" 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 bust 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.s 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 f.u.c.ker 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 compet.i.tion. 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.

"Sullivan said something weird," he pointed out next. "I asked him if he knew what those words meant-"

"What words?" Mullins asked, replenishing his bloated jowl with chewing tobacco.

"Those weird words the Creeker kid said just before I blew him away. Sullivan didn"t know what they meant, but he did know they were Creeker words. "Creeker talk" he called it."

"Just proves Sullivan knows more about Natter"s people than he"s letting on."

"Yeah, I know. But he said something else, too. He said that the Creekers were cannibals."

"Wives" tales," Mullins suggested. "I been hearin" s.h.i.t like that since I was a kid. It"s stuff our daddies dreamed up to keep us in line. "You don"t shut up and go to sleep, the Creekers"ll come and get ya.""

"Yeah, sure, local legends and all that. I remember some of those stories, too. But Sullivan said one more thing that was pretty specific. He said the Creekers have their own religion."

Mullins expectorated into his cup. "Oh, you mean they ain"t Catholic?" he attempted to joke.

Phil gazed blankly out the window. It was getting dark now, the smudged panes filling up with twilight. Their own religion, he recited. In the black sky, stars shone like swirls of crushed gemstones.

I wonder what it is they worship.

"Ona," the Reverend voiced to himself.

His voice was a black chasm, incalculable, endless like the night. The Reverend wore raiments just as black. Just as incalculable...

The shadow stirred in the corner. The Reverend could feel the miraculous heat, could smell the exalted stench.

Oh, how long we"ve waited, his thoughts wept in joy.

Ages.

No, a hundred ages.

He thought of things then, beautiful things. He thought of the recompense of all the truth of history. Of a time when the slaves would be freed of their fetters, when they would be praised instead of reviled, glorified instead of cursed. He thought of a time when he too would walk with his brethren through the holiest dark channelworks, amid the savory smoke of burning human fat and steaming blood, to gladly pay homage, and to eat, a time when he too, and all of them, would pull the flesh off the bones of the faithless, sink deft fingers into their wide open eyes, and strip their skulls of their pitiable faces. Their screams would ring out like the sweetest madrigals. They would inhale their blood and scarf their unchaste flesh forever and ever.

Yes, the Reverend thought of the most wondrous things.

Ona...

The Reverend bowed, then fell to his knees, his arms red with blood to the elbows.

Soon, your time will be upon us.

And from the stygian dark, his G.o.d looked back at him and smiled.

Twenty-Seven.

"Hi," Phil said.

The station door slammed. Susan trudged in, a knapsack full of her school books tugging at her arm.

"Need some help with those books?"

"No." She dropped the sack at the foot of her desk, then sat down at her commo console and prepared for work.

"How was school tonight?"

Susan frowned at him. She wasn"t biting on the cursory small talk, but then Phil never really guessed that she would.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Talking to the chief." He shuffled his feet, looking down. He felt like a little kid sent to the princ.i.p.al"s office. "Then I thought I"d hang around awhile, wait till you got in."

"Why?" Susan sniped, checking the hot sheet and county blotter.