"Who's the pimp?"

"That Creeker kid at the door, Druck. He makes the arrangements. All the money, of course, goes to Cody Natter. That f.u.c.ker's something; he's got himself a gold mine here. The girls who work the front stage are hookers too, but I guess you figured that. Anything for a buck. Ain't that the American way? Natter's even got his wife turning tricks. You did know that Vicki's married to him, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Phil said. "I heard all about that." His next question, however morbid, wouldn't let go. "How much you think she costs?"

"Vicki? s.h.i.t, she's the prime beef of the front room, probably a hundred at least. Natter's pretty selective about who he lets buy her."

Buy her. The two words. .h.i.t him like a kick in the chin. Probably uses her to finish off deals with his point men and dope distributors. Typical. "What about those Creeker girls?"

"From what I've heard, they're even more expensive, 'cos this is the only place you can get 'em. Hard to believe guys would want to pay to f.u.c.k a Creeker."

"But where? Where do they turn their tricks?"

"Right in the parking lot, in your car mostly. For a little extra, they'll go home with you." Eagle looked at him. "You're not thinking of-"

"Naw, I'm just curious. This town's changed since I been gone."

"Yeah, man." Eagle laughed. "And so have you."

You got that right. Phil fished in his pocket for his keys. He'd made a lot of headway tonight; Eagle was a veritable tap of information, and he seemed to know a lot about Natter. Phil wanted to hit him up for more info but- Don't push your luck. You ask too much too soon, he'l1 get wise. Taking it real slow was the name of this game. One day at a time, he told himself. "You coming here tomorrow night?"

"I got a late job tomorrow, so probably not," Eagle said. "But I'm sure I'll be in the next night."

"Okay, take care."

They branched off to their separate vehicles. Phil was thinking. Late job? Eagle said he did construction work, but then Phil remembered his rap sheet; he'd done time for dealing PCP. Maybe he's bulls.h.i.tting. Maybe he really runs dust for Natter. These considerations were pertinent, but there was no point jumping the gun. Only time would tell. Phil knew he'd need to work on Eagle with great care, or else his cover was gone. He also knew it would take a lot more than a couple beers in a strip joint to gain complete trust.

Dust rose in billows as the parking lot began to empty. Following Eagle tonight would be a dumb move, but he thought it might be a good idea to tail one of the regulars for a while, just to see which direction he was headed. He set his sights on one of the pickups that frequented the lot, waited a moment, then pulled out. The pickup turned north on the Route, away from town. In fact, most of the vehicles pulling out headed north.

And another thing occurred to him. Natter wasn't at the club tonight. His car wasn't in the lot...

But before Phil could contemplate that any further, a shadow rose up behind him from the back seat.

The dream was a proffering, a blessing...

It was a gift.

In the dream, he was vapor, an unholy ghost. Bodiless. Perfect. Spiralling down perfectly into perfect black.

But it wasn't really a dream, he knew that. They were never really dreams...

They were summonings.

Ona. Oh, blessed flesh of Ona, he thought. I am so unworthy...

He ascended, somehow, downward.

He soared.

Bereft of the flaws of his curse, he was perfect now, the vessel of his being light as air, his wisdom heavier than all the earth.

He knew where his wisdom had come from.

The darkness smeared, soaring past. He felt terror at first-so quick was his flight. He breezed through ma.s.sive stone channels pocked and blackened by the age of all of history. He wisped through crevices no more wide than a fraction of an inch.

On and on. Down and down.

Into the blessed black.

Soon the great ebon wall approached. He soared right into it- -then through it.

Greater blackness bloomed beyond the wall. Blackness that was brighter than the sun. He could smell the sound of screams. He could taste the dense stench of burning human muscle and bone. He could smell pandemonium, a scent sweet as fresh-cut roses.

And with his ethereal eyes, he saw the field.

A field of flesh, of people. Acre upon acre, p.r.o.ne humans lay naked and alive, awaiting the field's noxious attendants, its pious harvesters. And they squirmed in their wait. Screaming. Shrieking. Convulsing in spastic tremors.

Soon the harvesters arrived: squat, rough-skinned figures plodding forward into the screaming field. Above them, a blistering black moon shined, offering light to their sacred tasks. Dutifully, then, and steadfast, they began to farm the field.

With unholy tools, they plowed and tilled; great blades and hewers, twivels and trowels, rose and methodically fell to turn the hearty human soil. Skulls burst under the blows of mallets. b.r.e.a.s.t.s, b.u.t.tocks, and faces threshed raw. Bellies riven open by scythes which swept this way and that like clockworks, baring fresh, fertile entrails, ripe organs, and rich, fecund blood. Some of the harvesters worked barehanded, crawling along the squirming horde to punch out eyes with stub fingers, twist genitalia out of shivering groins, crack bones and unseat limbs. Hands and feet were bitten off by gla.s.sine teeth, then spat out. Talons raked throats. Palms and heels crushed bodies and heads like grapes in a wine vat.

Hard work. Eternal work.

Tending the fields of the father! he thought in utter, rushing joy.

Acres and acres, miles and miles, he continued to soar above the wondrous spectacle. Oh, how he prayed that on some great day he, too, would join the harvesters in their divine and hallowed labors.

But even eternal farmers needed reprieve. They needed sustenance. They needed recess. So at the granted time, they set aside the tools of their industry- Such wonders!

-and began to feast.

Some took their meat raw, others preferred it cooked. Plump organs were plucked from opened abdomens as fruit might be plucked from vines. Eyeb.a.l.l.s were swallowed whole like grapes, lungs eaten like bread loaves, intestines consumed like so much robust salad. The living dirt screamed forth. Whole heads were cooked to perfection over open flames, then prized apart and picked clean of their delectable meat. Testes were roasted on skewers, severed b.r.e.a.s.t.s fried crisp, uteri and placenta, fetuses and kidneys, human bowels and human hearts-all flamebroiled and l.u.s.tily munched.

It was a hearty meal, and a well-earned one.

And once the reverent harvesters had sated themselves of the belly, they next proceeded to sate themselves of the groin. Demonic erections rose, to plunder every conceivable orifice, and some not so conceivable. v.a.g.i.n.as were routed with gusto, r.e.c.t.u.ms were sodomized raw by perverse organs sunk to their hilts. Unwilling jaws were pried wide till their tendons tore-the only way the pitiful human mouths could accommodate the tumescent girth of such netherworldly members. Trowel punctures and scythe rents, too, provided fine pockets of release, and such release poured forth in copious volume, gouts of lumpen s.e.m.e.n flooding bowels and wombs, stomachs and entrails, emptied eye sockets and cracked-open cranial vaults.

A romp indeed.

Slaked now, the field hands took up their tools and finished the dark work they'd started.

The field was tilled red. Rich, fresh blood drenched the chopped soil, the finest of fertilizers. More attendants followed behind, bearing sacks of strange seeds. The seeds were sewn liberally into the verdant, warm soil, and beneath the light of the caliginous moon, they began to spout at once. Soon stalks rose high, heavy with succulent fruit, and the fruit was then expeditiously threshed and taken away to market.

The harvest was over, only to begin again and again and again...

His vapor siphoned back, wisping fast as light through stone cracks and rabbets, back up the charnel earthworks, back from whence he came.

He didn't want to go back; he could soar here forever, and revel in these holy sights and many more.

But I must go now, he realized.

He had his own fields to farm...

Back, back, he sailed. Back out of the hot meat of the earth, back to the lackl.u.s.ter terrain of his forebears, back to his wretched human vessel.

Back- Like blood sucked up by a sponge, his flesh reclaimed his glorious vapor.

Ona. Ona. I give thanks to thee for such sights, such heralds, such righteous and holy gifts.

I live to serve thee...to the ends of the earth.

The Reverend opened his eyes.

And sighed.

"Jesus Christ!" Phil shouted. "You scared the-"

"The s.h.i.t out of you, I know. Sorry."

Phil, in his shock, had weaved across the yellow line, then veered back over to the shoulder. When the shadow had risen from the back seat, he freaked...

But the shadow...was Vicki.

"I just-I just needed someone to talk to," she explained. "I'm sorry if I startled you."

Phil put the car in park on the road's shoulder. "Yeah, fine," he acknowledged. "But did you have to hide in the back of my friggin' car?"

She hesitated. "Well, yeah. I guess so."

"Why?"

She swept shining red hair off her brow. "Let's just say I had a bad day."

Phil gave his heart a moment to slow down-actually, several moments. "I didn't see you in the club tonight. What, day off?"

In the rearview, he saw her glance down. "Something like that. It's best if you don't ask."

All right, Phil instructed himself, Don't ask. But he had to ask something. "I was hanging out with Eagle Peters. Do you know him?"

"I know who he is," Vicki said. "When you're in my line of work, you don't really know anybody. You're not allowed to. It also makes things a lot easier." Then, as if premonitory, she asked, "You made it to the back room yet?"

"Uh, yeah," he admitted. "That's some show. Jesus. Kind of feel sorry for the girls."

"Don't bother. No one else does." She got out of the back and then got into the front. The door chunked closed.

Christ, Phil thought.

She wore cut-off shorts, sandals, and a tight, bright-pink halter top. Coltish, perfect legs inclined. Her hair shined like some kind of rare metal.

"I didn't see your husband at the club either," Phil pointed out.

"He's busy tonight."

"Yeah?" he queried, though a hundred other questions occurred to him. Like, Busy? Busy doing what? Dealing with a dust distributor? Killing cowboys moving on his turf? Buying your next rail of cocaine? But none of these questions could he ask. Not without jeopardizing his cover. He'd have to deal with Vicki the same as he was dealing with Eagle. Slowly, discreetly, for snippets of information.

"I just wanted to talk," she said. "Maybe that sounds pathetic, but you don't know how long it's been since I've actually had a normal conversation with someone. It's not easy, you know. Under the circ.u.mstances."

Phil could imagine what she meant. A good-sized chunk of her humanity was erased now, or turned into something fairly useless. She wasn't a real person anymore as much as she was a pretty painting hanging in a rogue's gallery. Only these paintings you could rent, if the price was right. As a prost.i.tute, and a stripper, how could she ever really relate to anyone anymore? And being married to someone like Cody Natter? It must be h.e.l.l...

"Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?" he said.

She was looking out the window, into the woods and the night's profusion, but he knew what she was really looking at was herself. "Sometimes I feel like I'm falling apart," she said more under her breath than to him. "Sometimes I wake up, and I can't believe what's happened to me. I can't understand how I could ever let this happen to me. It must've been a pretty big shock for you."

"What do you mean?"

She laughed cynically. "Oh, come on, Phil. Stop trying to be such a gentleman all the time. The last time you saw me, I was a police officer. Ten years later, you come back to town to find out that I'm working in a strip joint and turning tricks. Probably not quite what you expected."

"Well, if there's one thing I've taught myself, it's that I should never have expectations about people. Especially about myself."

"Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?"

Now it was Phil's chance to laugh. "You're not the only one who's taken a fall since the old days. I didn't exactly come back to Crick City better off than when I left. I came back because there was no where else to go."

"What happened?" she asked him. "You never really told me. All I remember is hearing bits and pieces. Something about a shooting. Something about a kid."

This was Phil's chance. Here he knew he could mix lies with truth and have it work to his advantage. He could win her confidence, like he did tonight with Eagle, by pretending to have turned into a typical town sc.u.mbag. Working undercover, that was his job. Time to let some bulls.h.i.t fly. "We were taking down a PCP lab one night. It was cut and dry; in fact, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Only problem was there was this p.r.i.c.k named Dign.a.z.io who had it in for me. He shot a kid, a spotter, with illegal ammo and made it look like I did it. It was a sham, a frame-up. But I got s.h.i.tcanned all the same."

She looked at him sympathetically. "Why did this guy have it in for you?"

Here was his cue, the perfect place to start his cover story, his lie. "I was stringing out; Dign.a.z.io was the only guy who knew that, and he wanted me out of the picture. Only problem was he couldn't prove it without turning on his own stools."

Her stare fixed on him in the dark. Sure, she was a prost.i.tute, but she was also an ex-cop, and she knew the language. "You were strung out? You?"

"That's right," Phil lied. "By then, I'd been free-basing crystal for a few years. Then I switched to dust 'cos it was the only way I could get off the ice."

This fabrication, he knew, would build a new bond between them, however phony. By demonstrating a weakness that she could directly relate to. Vicki knew she was on a road to ruin; if she believed Phil was on the same road, he'd have her. And from there-with some luck-he could get a real line on Natter's lab and operation.

"Now," he continued, "I'm trying to get off the dust, but I can't. It's a real b.i.t.c.h."

"Tell me about it," she said. "I've been trying to get off c.o.ke for two years now. Can't do it. I try real hard all the time but..."

"I know," Phil said. "You don't have to tell me. I guess it's all the same in a way. c.o.ke, dust, ice, booze-it's all a kick in the a.s.s, but what can you do? A habit's a habit."

A pause drifted between them, but Phil sensed it was a natural one. She was letting some serious things air out here, another good sign that his pitch was working. They lounged back in the darkness, watching the fireflies, listening to the crickets. Phil thought he'd delivered his lines well, and he knew that she believed him when, a moment later, she snapped open a small wrist purse.