Part 2 (1/2)

”With what? A paper clip and rubber band?” the ”intruder” replied and casually turned away from the vending machine. Then he smiled. ”How's it goin', Phil? It's been a long time since I've seen Crick City's favorite son. I guess you're not too keen on keeping in touch.”

Phil couldn't believe it. The man who faced him stood short and fat. The bald pate glimmered in the automat's buzzing fluorescent light, and his mustache was like a stout caterpillar on his lip. Those features, plus the tidy, starched munic.i.p.al police uniform, were all Phil needed to recognize.

”Lawrence Mullins,” Phil identified, ”Chief of the Crick City Police Department. Would you mind telling me what in the h.e.l.l you're doing here?”

”What's it look like? I'm getting a cup of coffee,” Mullins said and raised the steaming Macke cup.

Phil closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, he commanded himself. Don't blow up.

Then, as was usually the case, he...blew up.

”You broke into my factory just to buy a G.o.dd.a.m.n cup of coffee!”

Mullins chuckled approvingly. ”Still got that temper, I see. Good, good. And, you know, you sure got some cheapie locks on this place. s.h.i.+t, I had that door open in less time than it takes to use the key. Oh, and how about reholstering that 44-magnum can of Mace, huh? What, you get a lot of mean dogs around here?”

Phil sighed. ”Please, Chief. Don't screw with me. I've had a bad day-or I should say, a bad year.”

”So I've heard. Back in town, we all heard about that shooting when you were with Metro. But we can talk about that later. That was a smart move, resigning voluntarily instead of fighting them. You fight with any big city IAD, you lose your a.s.s. Then you really would have been washed up. s.h.i.+t, a former cop with convictions... You wouldn't have been able to get a job cleaning the greasehole at Chuck's Diner.”

One thing Phil didn't need to be reminded of was the Metro frame. And another thing he didn't need was a load of wisecracks. ”Chief, look, it's good to see you and all that, but are you going to tell me why you're here, or are you just trying to p.i.s.s me off while you stand there sipping coffee?”

Mullins sipped more coffee, just barely smiling over the steam. ”Oh, is that what you want to know? You want to know why I'm here?”

”Yeah, Chief, I do.”

”Well, we're friends, right? From way on back? s.h.i.+t, I practically raised you myself. And when I heard about the Metro thing, and you taking this p.i.s.sant security job, well... I was a little concerned, that's all. I mean, it's not like you've seen fit to stop by your old hometown once in a while, you know, just to say h.e.l.lo to some of the folks you grew up with. But of course I guess you been too busy for the last ten years, what with the highfalutin' big city job with Metro. A narc lieutenant, ain't that what you were?”

Were, Phil slowly thought. Not am. Not anymore. ”Chief, are you trying to make me feel guilty? All right, so I haven't kept in touch. Sorry. But you still haven't told me why you busted into my gig.”

Mullins laughed. ”Well, I wanted to see if you were keeping on your toes, now that you're not a cop anymore.” The chubby man grinned at the open service door. ”Pretty slick lock-picking, huh?”

”Chief!”

Mullins was getting a real kick out of this. ”Okay, Phil, I'll level with you. The real reason I came all the way out to this b.u.mf.u.c.k yarn factory is because, well... I want to talk to you.”

Mullins' cat-and-mouse games got old fast; this was the first Phil had seen of him in nearly a decade, and he was already sick of him. Some guys never change, he dully realized. ”Fine, you want to talk to me. About what? Please, Chief, tell me before I have a stroke.”

Mullins finished his coffee and pitched the cup in the trash. Then he got a Milky Way out of the next machine.

Then he said, ”I want to offer you a job on my department.”

And that was about all Mullins had elaborated upon, which was pretty typical; Mullins' hedging sense of humor was part of his overall psychology-he'd always make his point by taking subtle shots. Phil had been born and raised in Crick City. His father had run off a week after he'd been born, and his mother died about a year later when the laundromat she'd been working in caught fire. So Phil was reared by an aunt, who received a subsidy from the state, and about the only thing he ever had that came close to a father-figure was Mullins, the chief of Crick City's police department for as long as anyone could remember. Mullins, now, had to be close to sixty, but to Phil he'd always looked the same, even back when Phil was in junior high and hanging out at the station after school.

Mullins was a decent man, or at least as decent as any shuck-and-jive backwoods police chief. Crick City, with a population of less than two thousand, wasn't exactly Los Angeles in its law-enforcement needs, and since nothing in the way of serious crime ever seemed to occur there, the town council never had any reason to appoint a new chief.

Phil had a confused regard for the man. As a kid, it was Mullins who always had an encouraging, if not gruff, word when Phil was down, and it was Mullins who kept him out of trouble. Mullins looked after Phil when no one else could, and it was Mullins, too, who had inspired Phil's interest in police work.

But on the other hand...

It was the town itself that always rubbed Phil the wrong way, and Chief Mullins was a constant reminder of that. Crick City was a backward, run-down pit of a town-a trap. No one ever seemed to get anywhere, and no one ever seemed to leave. It was the sticks: low-paying jobs, lots of unemployment, and the highest dropout rate in the state. Dilapidated pickup trucks ruled the pothole-ridden roads, at least those trucks that weren't propped up forever on blocks in the front yards of one seedy saltbox house after another. The only crimes that did seem to occur with regularity were drunk and disorderlies, and the hallmark: spouse abuse. In all, Crick City unfolded as an unchanging nexus. A nowhere land inhabited by nowhere people.

Phil didn't want to be one of those people.

But there was one thing he did want to be- A cop.

And now here was Mullins, appearing like a decade-old ghost, and offering Phil the job that had been taken away from him by Dign.a.z.io and his blackball battalion.

Of course, police work in Crick City wouldn't be anything at all like his job on the narc squad. At Metro he had rank, he had respect and credibility, he had goals to pursue, and an important job that utilized every aspect of his education and fort.i.tude. Going from Metro to the Crick City force was the same as going from a Lamborghini to a Yugo.

Quit complaining, he reminded himself. It's better than punching a clock at a yarn factory. At least he'd be engaged in a job he'd been trained at.

At least he'd be a cop again.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, he thought, even when the horse is dressed in a chief's uniform.

Mullins had left the factory shortly after he'd arrived, planting only enough seeds to keep Phil's brain working for the rest of his s.h.i.+ft. ”Stop by the station tomorrow afternoon,” the rotund man had bid, ”and we'll talk some more.”

”I will, Chief. Thanks.”

”Oh, and watch out for them burglars. You never know when the b.u.g.g.e.rs might want to bust in here for some coffee.”

”You're a laugh a minute, Chief. See you tomorrow.”

And now, hours later, after he'd signed out of his guard post at the textile plant, Phil dogged through morning rush-hour in his clay-red '76 Malibu. He'd picked it up for $300 at Melvin Motors; now that he was no longer drawing lieutenant's pay, it was all his purse strings could handle. The early summer sun glared between tall buildings; the air reeked of exhaust. And as he made his way home, he couldn't stop thinking about Mullins' off-the-wall appearance at the plant, and the surprise job offer. What would it be like to go back there now? Crick City, he mused. Christ, even the name sounds redneck. Had the town changed? Was Chuck's Diner still owned by Chuck? Did the rubes still race their pickups on the Route every Sat.u.r.day night after tying one on at Krazy Sallee's, the roadside strip joint? Was the coffee still terrible at the Qwik-Stop? Who's still there that I remember? he wondered. Then, more morosely: Who's died since I've been gone?

Yes, the prospect of going back to his hometown goaded many questions. And...Vicki? What about Vicki? High school sweetheart, his very first girlfriend. She could've gotten out, too, but had chosen to work for Mullins instead, the department's only female cop.

I wonder if she's still around...

But then Phil's stomach turned queasy as he parked the Malibu in his littered apartment lot. Because there was one more question, wasn't there? Remembering the town and the people tricked him into remembering something else...

The voices, and- The House, he thought.

There'd never been a name for it. Just...

The House.

Was the House still there?

Moreover, had it ever been there?

Just hours afterward, he'd gotten so sick. The doctor had said that a fever so severe often caused delirium and hallucinations. His aunt must've thought he was crazy, just a crazy little ten-year-old boy...