“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-ass 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.”
“Shit, 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 nobody 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, shit. 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 fuck you talkin’ about? I just handed you the works, ya motherfucker! “
Phil idly shook his notepaper. “This is penny-ante, Paul. What I want more than any of this nickel-dime shit is the location of Natter’s lab.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about Natter,” Sullivan said. “Just that the ugly Creeker runs whores out of Sallee’s.”
“You’re pulling my dick, Paul. Here I am giving you the best present of your life, and you’re bullshitting me again. That’s no way to show gratitude, is it?”
Sullivan slammed his handcuffed wrists on the interview table. “You’re the one bullshitting, ya fuck!” 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 shit!”
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 shit 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 pissant 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? “Shit, 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 massive chest threatened to tear open the orange prison shirt. “You can’t treat me like this, ya motherfuckin’ 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 fuckin’ 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 ass 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 hassle. 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 fucked with him enough today. You can take Mr. Sullivan back to his suite now.”