"Okay. I'll surprise you."

Phil actually didn't have a clue as to where to take her, but he knew he couldn't take her anyplace in town, now that he was effectively undercover.

"So are the folks at Sallee's buying your cover story?" Susan asked.

"Yeah, I think so." If they thought I was a cop, they never would've let me into the backroom. Then a darker voice, the voice of his own guilt, perhaps, added: That's right, Phil. And if Vicki thought you were still a cop, she sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't have been snorting c.o.ke in front of you last night, would she? And she wouldn't have f.u.c.ked you, either. You've got your little stoolie trained real well, buddy boy. The best of both worlds, huh? You're using her for information, and you're using her as a s.e.x object. Give yourself a pat on the back.

The thoughts soured him. He didn't want to confront them, so he got back to answering her question. "I'd be able to tell if they were wise to me. And hanging out with Eagle Peters gives me more credibility since he's a regular. As long as I keep up a good front, I'm in."

"That might be harder than you think," Susan said.

"Why?"

"What if you have to prove yourself? Say you get deeper into Sallee's crowd. Someone starts smoking dust one night, and they offer you a hit?"

It was something any undercover cop had to consider. "That's a good question, and I guess the answer is I don't know. In the right situation, I could probably fake it. I'll worry about that when I have to."

"Aren't you scared? What about Natter and his people? If they ever got wind that you were a cop..."

"I know, and, yeah, it is a little scary. I'm gonna keep my distance from Natter. You never get the kingpin deadon, you get to him through his flunkies. I'm used to being real careful."

He took her just out of town, to an old family-owned crabhouse with the absolutely ridiculous name, Captain Salty's. "Oh, this is beautiful," Susan commented when he took her out onto the back deck. Their table offered a vast view of the bay. "I never knew about this place. What a find."

"We lucked out," he admitted. "I wasn't sure if they were even still in business. Great steamed crabs, though, if I remember correctly. I-"

What had he been about to say? Was he out of his mind? I used to bring Vicki here a lot. "I used to come here a lot back in the old days," he quickly caught himself. "Sometimes the watermen will bring their boats right up to the dock and unload fresh bushels of crabs and oysters."

Susan seemed taken by the view. A slight breeze played with her pure-blond hair. Phil couldn't help but steal a glance; he, too, was taken by the view-but not of the bay.

Of her.

It a.s.sailed him-her plain and simple beauty. Her casual grace. Her unadorned demeanor. Again, it occurred to him that her attractiveness was the opposite of Vicki's. It seemed more honest, more genuine. It seemed to reflect all of her at once with no veneers. No makeup, no designer clothes, no fronts; she didn't need any of that. Phil felt lured to her.

And guilty as all h.e.l.l.

How much of a chance would he stand with Susan if she knew about what had happened last night with Vicki?

He ordered a pitcher of iced tea, a dozen oysters, and a dozen steamed crabs. "I'll pa.s.s on the oysters," Susan said, leering at the plate. "I don't quite have it in me to eat things that are still alive."

"It's all a matter of conception, my dear," Phil said, and then sucked one down whole right out of its sh.e.l.l. "I guarantee you, that oyster didn't feel a thing." When the crabs arrived, Phil gave her a quick lesson in technique. "There's only one way to eat crabs," he cited. "Like a barbarian." He tore one open in his hands, then methodically began removing the meat. Throughout their meal, Phil avoided work-related topics. Instead, they talked more about her cla.s.ses, her upcoming degree, her plans for the future. In a sense, he envied her; she had things to do and places to go. Just like I did, about ten years ago, he thought dryly. I hope she has better luck...

But she seemed to enjoy the restaurant, and the messy frolic of crab-eating. She also seemed to enjoy his company. Phil knew he needed to take this easy. He wanted her to be comfortable with him, and he wanted her to like him. He wasn't quite sure what he foresaw-he just hoped it would be something good.

But something remote bothered him throughout their meal; he was too distracted by Susan to acknowledge it. He kept pushing it back-whatever it was-shoving it away. But when Susan excused herself to use the ladies' room, the awareness socked Phil in the face- Vicki.

And the things Mullins had implied...

Was he exaggerating, or did the chief know more about Vicki than he did? Mullins had solidly stated that it was Vicki who'd given them the phony tip the night they'd been set-up. But...

Could that be true? he wondered.

Phil slid his last crab away, reflecting. He hoped Mullins' implications were an overstatement, but one thing that couldn't be overstated were the goings-on last night. Christ, Phil thought. Right there on the front seat of my Malibu... Images felt charred into his head like emblems from a branding iron.

Vicki had been voracious.

He'd been surprised, even shocked. Her seduction was an avalanche; she'd a.s.saulted him with her s.e.xuality, baked him with it, smothered him. One minute they'd been sitting there talking, the next they were a naked tumult entwined in the front of the car. Each second seemed to proceed in a breathless succession of images-the shimmering sweep of her hair, the curve of her hips, the lines of her face-like cutaways in manic film. Her bare, hot b.r.e.a.s.t.s squashed hot against his chest; her skin sliding over his as if oiled. The darkness coc.o.o.ned them there, the drenching heat glued them together. Her hands plied at him, desperate, quick, but knowingly precise. Her tongue churned in his mouth, her teeth nipped at him, her arms and legs tied him up securely as a mistress's bedropes. Each touch and each caress, each moan and kiss and lick, made Phil feel another step closer to a precipice. At any second he might fall...

Vicki did things to him she'd never done in the past-things, in fact, that no other woman in his life had done.

She was wild, but- Too wild...

She was like a predatory beast; Phil's desires, and her own, were things she hunted down and devoured...

And when it was over, he lay exhausted, debauched, wrung out and used up. He doubted that he'd ever felt so primal in his life. As intense as the experience had been, it scarcely even felt real. There'd been no meaning in any of it, no pa.s.sion. They were just two phantoms run amok in the moonlight.

And now, sitting here amongst a pile of crabsh.e.l.ls, watching the late-afternoon sun sparkle on the bay, he regretted it all even more. The last ten years had trained Vicki well. Her life had a new master now-a cold and very dark master, an alchemist of spirits. It had turned her dreams to fodder, and her heart into a desperate, pleading little thing that had nothing to rise to, nowhere to go.

And then the black voice returned, a voice he'd been hearing a lot lately, sniping the truth he'd been aware of all along but never wanted to face: She's nothing now but a c.o.ked-up wh.o.r.e...

Phil winced into the sunlight.

And it's your fault, isn't it, Phil? You left her cold. You threw her to the wolves. You tossed her love back in her face and let Natter turn her into a junkie roadside hooker. Good job, Phil. You're a first-cla.s.s guy.

"Get off my back," he whispered to the voice.

Yeah, you're a piece of work, all right. Not only did you f.u.c.k her, you lied to her, you're pumping her for information, you're using her, Phil. You don't care about her, all you care about is your G.o.dd.a.m.n case.

"Eat s.h.i.t, voice."

And look what you're doing now. You're on a date with a real woman, not some busted wh.o.r.e. What would she do, Phil? What would Susan do if she knew you f.u.c.ked a wh.o.r.e last night, a junkie?

"Shut up..."

Are you gonna f.u.c.k her, too? Are you gonna f.u.c.k Susan like you f.u.c.ked that wh.o.r.e last night?

"Go to h.e.l.l!"

I'm already there, the voice replied. So where does that leave you?

Then it drained away.

The voice, of course, was his own, the part of his psyche that couldn't stand himself for what he'd done and was doing. Was he really using her? Were the ruins of Vicki's life really his fault? And was he really using those ruins, taking advantage of them for the benefit of the case?

He didn't want to know.

His guilt stuck to him, like an incessant gnat buzzing round his ear. He felt dried up, as mentally ragged as he'd been physically last night, after his venture with Vicki.

"That was fun," Susan said as they walked back to the car. "We should come here again sometime."

"Yeah, it's a great place," Phil replied, slightly stunned. Maybe her comment was just a casual one, but if she didn't plan on seeing him again, why would she be making such a suggestion? At the very least, he could take this as a good sign that their first date had gone well.

But it was still early, and now that Phil could pretty much set his own hours, he didn't need to be going into work by eight p.m.

Where do I take her now?

"Hey, Phil," she said, "I know this is going to sound really lame, but-"

"Let me guess," he said, and opened the car door for her. "You have to go home early tonight."

"No, I have to go to the library."

"The library?" Phil's face crinkled. "What for?"

"I left some of my school books there last night. I want to pick them up before somebody rips them off. Do you mind?"

Phil almost laughed. At least now he didn't have to think of a place to go next. "No problem. Next stop, the library."

He started the car, was about to pull out, when she added, "And thanks for dinner."

Then she leaned over and kissed him very lightly on the lips.

Eighteen

The trip to the county library, in Millersville, had taken them back down the Route, across town. "Look, more Creekers," Susan pointed out when they cruised past the intersection of the Old Governor's Bridge Road.

Phil spotted them.

Two figures trudged along, a boy in his late teens and a much younger girl, probably his sister. They dragged old burlap sacks behind them, no doubt full of discarded bottles and cans which they'd scrounged from beneath the bridge. Lots of the local punks parked just off the bridge at night, swilling beer and chucking the empties over the side into the water. The litter eventually washed up onto the creekbed, where hillfolk, mostly Creeker kids, would pick it up and sell it for pennies per pound to the recyclers. Picking up junk was all the employment most of these kids would ever have.

Susan, in remorse, turned her face away as they pa.s.sed. "Christ, that's sad. Those poor kids."

"Yeah," Phil agreed. "I see them all the time now, collecting garbage, or fishing off the streams with strings in the water."

He'd caught only a glimpse of the pair, filthy, disheveled, in threadbare clothes going to rot. The little girl had no right arm, while the boy possessed arms that were overly long, his hands swinging down past his knees. Their misshapen heads turned, two pairs of tiny scarlet eyes glancing up hopelessly as Phil's car drove past.

"Some Creekers seem a lot worse off than others," he observed. "Like those two there-Christ."

"The way I understand it is it's kind of like a genetic potluck," Susan said. "The more these little societies inbreed among themselves, the more deformed they are. Some of the reproductive genes are more defective than others."

Last night's excursion into Sallee's backroom was good proof of that. The Creeker girls Phil had seen dancing were obviously birth defected, yet they also had inherited plenty of normal, and even beautiful, physical traits. Some of them, in fact, couldn't even be distinguished as Creekers at all, until he'd looked hard.

"And the strangest thing is Natter himself," Phil went on, following the Route down to the turnoff onto the county expressway. "He's so big and deformed, but I also remember him being very smart."

"I don't know that much about it," Susan said, "but I did take a sociology cla.s.s a few years ago on dissociated cultures. Inbred societies aren't that uncommon, even in this day and age. It's typical for certain members to have extraordinarily high I.Q.'s while being physically deformed at the same time. And it's these people who are always the leaders."

"That fits Natter to a tee."

"Well, if you want to know more about it, we're going to the right place."

Yeah, he realized. The library. Natter was a Creeker, and his PCP operation was run by Creekers. It would be a good idea for Phil to find out as much about them as possible. Then he could deal with them more effectively and with more cognizance.

The library was antiquated: a file card index system instead of a computer, which he was used to from his college days. Susan helped him find his way around after she retrieved her books. They located several t.i.tles on the subject, from the very basic-Inbred Life in Appalachia to the very clinical-Genetic Reproductive Defectivity and the Human Genetic Transfection Process.

Phil appraised the stack of books in his arms as they walked back out to the Malibu.

"No Doonesbury for me tonight," he said.

The end of their date had been cut a bit short; Susan, after all, had to work tonight, too, but her hours weren't as lenient as Phil's. A goodnight kiss was all he'd gotten at her door, but it was all he'd expected. To push for anything more would've been a bad move-even a fatal one, if he hoped to continue seeing her.

Which he did.

And, anyway, it was a good kiss.

Yeah, I really like her, he told himself, walking back to his own room. She's...cool. It came hard to believe that they were hitting it off this well, considering her original concept of him. She probably still had some doubts, though; who wouldn't? His Metro record would be a blot on his life forever, despite the fact that the whole thing was a lie. But at least it seemed to him that Susan truly believed him.

Give it some time, he thought.

There was no need to change for work; jeans and T-shirt would do for undercover at Sallee's. But he still had some time to kill, so he sat down in his busted chair and began to read.

Just a little bustin'up, Blackjack thought. That's all he had time for tonight; he had to make a major pick-up at Rip's lab out in Tylersville by midnight. But I still got me an hour, he reminded himself, looking at his watch. I'll make it quick.

It never took Blackjack long to put a good busting on a girl.

He followed the f.u.c.ked-up kid's truck up through an old logging road off the Route. The price was right, and Blackjack had heard that you could buy a Creeker girl once you got to be known at Sallee's. And that chick he'd seen in the backroom?

Yeah, Blackjack thought.

Once he'd gotten a look at her up on that stage, he knew he had to put a busting on her. He'd heard that the kid with the big head was the one you dealt with; Blackjack figured he must be Natter's pimp; that's why he watched the door. "Fifty fer a half hour," the kid quoted. "Sev-tee-five fer a full hour. More fer special."

Blackjack read the scene right. "Special, huh?" He laid two c-notes on the kid. "How's about a little bustin' up?"

"Sh.o.r.e, just don't'cha cut her none, or kill her. Cody'd be p.i.s.sed."

Cody, Blackjack thought. As in Cody Natter. That big ugly f.u.c.kin' Creeker was one dude even Blackjack didn't want to f.u.c.k with. These Creekers gave him the creeps, and everybody knew they looked after their own.