Free Headhunter by Michael Slade

swallowing up the physical world and disembodying its sounds. For the month of October, the weather was back to normal.
    The railroad hut sat on the edge of the National Harbors' Board property, twenty feet from the Pacific Ocean and several thousand yards from the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was here in a synapse now shrouded with vapor that four thousand miles of rail linked up with the shipping routes of the Pacific Rim. Here was the reflex ganglia of the country's nervous system.
    The man who sat at the single window of the railroad hut was smoking yet another cigarette. It was an Export A, no filter. He was one of those men who are politely described as being corpulent. His beer belly pushed out the front of his suit, permanently stretching the leather of his belt outofshape. The butt of a Smith and Wesson .38 stuck out from the top of his pants.
    He turned at the sound of the door behind him being opened.
    It was the blond from the beer parlor.
    "I think I'm onto something," she said. There was excitement in her voice.
    "Yeah?" the man replied with no emotion in his tone.
    "Problem is I might just blow my cover getting to it."
    As she spoke, the woman removed two No. 5 gelatin capsules from the pocket of her jeans. She walked over toa shelf on one side of the hut and picked up an envelope, then she sealed the caps inside it and marked the exhibit with her name, her Regimental Number, the date and the designation 56 C. In an RCMP undercover drug operation each person the operative scores from is given a number. Their picture then comes down from the target board and goes up as a hit. The letter "C" in this case indicated that this was the blond 's third buy off this particular hit.
    "Outrageous price," the woman said, handing the envelope over to her cover man. He put it in an "E" exhibit pouch. Then the blond sat down by the heater near thedoorand began making notes in a large black court book.
    "You said you were onto something," the man reminded her. Again without emotion.
    She looked up. "Before the buy, 56 made connection with this black dude in the alley. He had that swagger of the nouveau riche, you know what I mean? Flaunted jewelry. Arrogant air. That sort of shit. I think he's one step up and probably a link. I'd like to go after him and forget single cap sales."
    "Well you can't," the man said, bitterly. "Spann, you've been pulled."
    "What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked, frowning.
    The man grunted and lit another cigarette. His fingers were dark orange from nicotine stains.
    "What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked again.
    "Clean up. Fuck off. Report to Heather Street. They just sent word down you made the Headhunter Squad."
    The woman tensed, involuntarily. Now her heart was pounding fast.
    "It should have been me-, lady. It should have been me." Then he turned back to the window to stare out at the fog. "Write out notes on this big connection before you go. Give me something to do."
    "Yeah, sure," the woman said, almost in a daze. Then she added very quietly, "Who do I report to?"
    Snorting, the Corporal turned slowly from the window. On his face there was a faint sardonic smile.
    "The news is big, Spann. About as big as it comes. Chartrand, our bloody Commissioner, is bringing back Robert DeClercq."

Eyes
    New Orleans, Louisiana, 1957
    Jazz was in the streets, and it wafted up on the warm night air, a musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of the Mardi Gras revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingle and jumble of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, up, still up over the surging crowd of people lined eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes. The music rose over the parents who sipped pink liquid from hurricane glasses as they pushed and shoved their children to the front of the line, children munching on peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs