Creekers Read Free

glint?
    What the hell is that?
    Not a dozen steps into the dark concourse, and Phil realized it wasn’t what but who.
    A small shadow seemed to whisk from one open doorway to another
    A spotter, he thought. A kid.
    Phil slid his Kel-Lite from his belt, then began down the dusty, linoleum corridor. His light roved. Then—
    “Jesus!”
    The kid popped out of one of the storage rooms and sprinted toward the dead EXIT sign, his feet scuffing frantically.
    TSD had already chained that exit from the outside.
    “Come on, kid. You can’t get out that way. Let’s you and me have a talk, all right? I won’t hassle you, I promise.”
    It was sad, the way these dope-gangs indoctrinated kids into their business. Of course they grow up to be criminals—it was the only thing they knew. And how old was this one? Ten? Twelve? Christ, Phil thought drearily. The kid hit the door, found it locked, then turned around, wide-eyed in his terror.
    This kid looked about seven or eight.
    “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” Phil assured. “But you’re gonna have to come out here now so we can get you squared away.”
    The kid’s face looked like a dark skull in Phil’s Kel-Lite beam. Tears glistened on lean, dark cheeks. He’s shit-scared, all right, Phil realized. The worst part was the district court’d just stick them in an orphanage, and nine times out of ten they’d just run back to the streets at the first opportunity.
    “You’re gonna have to come with me now,” Phil said.
    He never saw what was coming—he never even saw the gun. At once, the ever-familiar sound of a small-caliber pistol clapped his ears
    pap! pap! pap!
    The moment was mayhem. Fierce tiny lights blinked in his eyes; Phil only had time to let instinct haul him behind an empty refuse drum. His Kel-Lite rolled across the cement floor when another bullet pinged into the drum. Phil drew his service revolver
    “Goddamn it, kid! Are you nuts?”
    Then he fireda shot high over the kid’s head.
    The kid stopped shooting.
    How could I have been so stupid? Too busy worrying about the goddamn Yankees. A second later, two S.O.D. men were aiming lights down the corridor. “Don’t shoot!” Phil hollered. “It’s just a kid!”
    Now more cops were trotting into the hall. “You all right, Lieutenant?” Eliot was asking, and helping him up.
    “I’m fine,” Phil replied. “But I’m not sure I can say the same for my shorts.”
    “What happened?”
    “Just some shit-scared kid. I popped a cap over his head.”
    But Eliot was giving him a funky look, and then Phil thought he heard some guys down the hall calling for an EMT.
    No, no, Phil thought, and sprinted down the hall himself. “I swear to God I fired over his head!”
    More cops spilled into the hall, flashlights bobbing…
    “Fired over his head, huh?” Dignazio was striding loudly behind. He glared at Phil. “That’s a real piece of work right there, Straker. The deputy comm’s gonna love this.”
    The words groaned in Phil’s mind like an old house in the wind: Good God Almighty…
    The kid lay at the foot of the chained exit doors, blood pumping from the bullet hole in his upper-right chest. He was dead before they could even get him on the stretcher . . .
     
    ««—»»
     
    Phil peered into the memory. Six months ago I was a metropolitan police lieutenant about to make captain, and now I’m a nightwatchman making $7.50 an hour. The death of the kid had been ruled a justifiable homicide by Internal Affairs, even though Phil swore up and down that he’d fired well over the kid’s head. “Not high enough,” the chief investigator had told him. But that wasn’t why he’d resigned…
    Dignazio, he thought.
    It had to have been Dignazio.
    The IAD chief investigator was an anal-retentive stoneface named Noyle. “Lieutenant, what kind of ammunition were you using in your service revolver on the night in question?” he asked.
    “Thirty-eight plus P plus,” Phil answered, taken slightly