Creekers (41 page)

A tiny diamond on a sheer gold chain.

A Valentine’s Day gift he’d given her over a decade ago.

“Another beer, pal?” asked the odd barkeep.

“Yeah, why not?” Phil replied.

“You look like someone shot your dog.”

“Well,” Phil said, “actually I’m pretty bummed that there’s no wrestling on tonight.”

“Grappling,” the keep corrected. “It was on earlier. Nature Boy Ric Flair knocked Sting’s lights out. It was
glorious.”

“Damn, I miss out on everything,” Phil said.

Then the ever-familiar slap impacted his back; Eagle Peters stood up to the rail, his long blond hair swaying. “What’s up, man?”

“Just hanging out.”

Eagle cast a quick gaze to Vicki onstage. “Yeah,” he replied rather darkly, then wisely saw fit to change subjects. “Hey, you feel like going in the back room?”

Phil looked up with a wince. “I thought you hated the back room?”

“I do, but I gotta talk to someone.” Eagle paused. “Gotta talk a little business.”

A little business, huh?
Phil thought. It seemed another great opportunity had just landed in his lap. “I’m always game for the back room,” he said, remembering his cover. “Let’s go.”

“And another thing.” Eagle lowered his voice. “You interested in a little sideline work? We gotta little run to make tonight, but we need a driver.”

“What are you running?” Phil asked.

“Just don’t worry about that. It ain’t risky. We can lay a couple hundred on you for an hour’s work. You interested or not?”

Was Eagle testing him? Phil didn’t know. But what he did know was that Eagle had an arrest record for running PCP, and he’d just asked Phil to be his driver. This was every undercover cop’s dream…

“Like I said, man, let’s go.”

Just play it cool, Phil,
he told himself.

They got up and wended their way to the entry. Druck, the Creeker doorman, gave them both a hard look, then nodded that they could pass. Inside seemed even darker than last night, and quieter. A deformed dancer moved slowly up on the stage in a veil of blood-red light and droning music. Thank God it was dark in here; Phil didn’t care to see the details. All he could tell was that her head seemed bulbed in three humps…

Eagle whispered something to a cryptic waitress with large breasts and one foreshortened arm. Then she seated them in a back booth.

At once, another figure joined them.

“This here’s Paul Sullivan,” Eagle introduced. “My pal, Phil Straker. Don’t worry, he’s cool. Says he wants to drive for us tonight.”

Alarms were already ringing in Phil’s head at the name. Paul Sullivan.
That’s the guy with the rap sheet for dust, the guy who filed the missing person report.
“Hey, Paul, good to meet ya,” he said and offered to shake the guy’s hand.

The guy didn’t shake.

Paul Sullivan had a face like a beaten anvil, a beady-eyed, unpleasant wedge. Shortish dark hair and a toughened build. “I don’t know, man,” Sullivan complained to Eagle. “I ain’t never seen this guy before.”

“Relax,” Eagle assured. “I told you, he’s cool; I known him for years. You said we needed a new man since Kevin blew town.”

Sullivan shrugged. “Awright, I guess we can try him out. So long as he don’t ask no questions.”

“Hey, man, you want me to drive, I’ll drive.”

Sullivan sort of smirked, then began trading whispers with Eagle. Phil couldn’t make out much of what they were saying, but he figured it best to try to pick things up a step at a time. Instead he pretended to watch the stage. The Creeker girl with the cloven head had lain down on her back, her legs rising in a sleek V. Her bare feet, with but three toes on each, roved slowly in the dark-scarlet light.

Earlier Phil had read a little bit about inbred physiology in the books he’d gotten at the county library. The phenomena proved much more intricate than he’d thought.

The more intensive the inbreeding, the more damage to the reproductive genes, and the higher the rate of defective births. Scarlet eyes and black hair were common traits, and so were enlarged heads, missing or extra fingers and toes, and uneven limbs. But Phil quickly assumed that these Creekers were
extraordinarily
inbred, bad genes passing down not for years but for whole generations, because a lot of the deformities he’d seen were gross extensions of those detailed in the books. One of the books had pictures, and they weren’t nearly as severe as the Creekers here.

Phil looked closer at the dancer’s head. It seemed split by a hard fissure of flesh. But—

What’s she doing now?

The dancer remained flat on her back with her legs raised.

Then her hips seemed to…shake.

In a few seconds it became apparent what she was doing.

She’s dislocating her hips,
Phil thought in grotesque astonishment. It was true. Her buttocks, completely bare save for the tiny g-string, began to flex, sleek muscles churning beneath the white, stretched skin. Phil grit his teeth; the macabre act hurt just to watch.

Eventually her labors alternately worked her femurs out of their hip sockets with a resounding double
pop-pop!
—

Hooooly shit,
Phil thought.

—and then the dislocated legs ranged back all the way to the floor.

She lay the back of her head in her feet as one might do with their hands while lying in bed. Phil couldn’t imagine anything more unnatural—that is—until he saw what she did next.

Her feet rose back up, turning at impossible angles as the trained muscles of her legs twisted expertly this way and that. Soon, then, she was caressing herself with her feet.

Her toes trailed up and down her abdomen. Her heels rubbed her pubis. And then, with the arches of her feet, she began to caress her breasts as deftly as if they were hands…

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.