Headhunter Read Online Free Page B

Sentence.
    Known prostitute. Pimp: John Lincoln Hardy aka "The Weasel."
    No Record. Pictures to follow.

    5:30 p.m.
    It hit you as soon as you came through the door. Nothing definite, nothing concrete, just a vague amorphous atmosphere that hung in the air like opium smoke. You knew at once without being told that this place was junk city. That Hink time ruled here, with reality suspended. There were fifty patrons in the Moonlight Arms making the noise of twenty. Most of them just sat around, nursing a beer, hanging out, watching each other furtively through tombstone eyes. The only animation in the pub came from a fat, slovenly woman who leaned on the jukebox and drunkenly pounded its top. Loverboy was playing. You knew also that likely as not, upstairs in the rooms, a dozen hypes were sprawled on beds, nodding in and out of life, outfits clinging to their arms like a dozen glassy leeches.
    Then perhaps, having sensed this, you backed out through the door.
    The woman slouched against the wall off to the left of the bar. In looks she would have been striking if she had taken care of herself. She was just short of six feet tall with a full and muscular figure. Her features hinted at Ursula Andress in' the movie  Doctor No — same high cheekbones, same honey-colored hair, same almond eyes. But there the likeness ended. For this woman was dressed in a set of filthy clothes. Her fingernails were cheap and fake and painted with chipped red lacquer. It had been a full two weeks since her hair had felt a brush. Her makeup was sloppy. And there were circles under her eyes.
    Today, this woman was nervous and jumpy.
    Her blue-gray eyes were piercing as they jerked about the room, telling all and sundry what she was looking for. I need junk, they pleaded.
    "Are you lookin', baby?" It was a whispered voice to her left.
    "You got?" she asked, flicking a glance at the man.
    The Indian rolled his own eyes toward the pub's back door. He was a short, stout man with thick biceps circled by copper armbands. His arms were naked from the shoulder to the fingertips. The frayed jean jacket was open at his chest exposing a leather thong with a whale's tooth at its end. His soiled jeans were suspended from a thick black belt with a Harley-Davidson buckle. His face was pockmarked and his eyes, which peered out from under the brim of a Stetson, were cold with the meanness of the streets. When he smiled, as he was doing now, his lips opened over stained and rotting teeth.
    "What's it for?" the woman croaked, leaning toward his table.
    "Sixty for one," the Indian said. "Meet me in five out back."
    Then the man stood up abruptly and quickly walked away.

    5:45 p.m.
    The little girl was laughing and no more than five years old. She was dressed in a waterproof snowsuit that covered her from head to toe. Her face was flushed and rosy-cheeked and here and there a red curl poked out from her hood. Squealing and chuckling with delight, she came tumbling down the wooded hillside, part running, part sliding, part rolling toward the harbor water. Every inch of her clothing was caked with thick, wet mud.
    "Wait up, Cindy!" her sister yelled from behind. She was going on seven, so a little more reserved. Age does that to you.
    They had seen the tent all ripped to tatters from the top of the hill. The hill was in North Vancouver, a quarter mile from their home. Already it was nearing dark and the fir trees cast deep shadows across the slope to the water. Dianne didn't like the shadows: to Cindy it didn't matter. She had plunged on ahead.
    "Wait up, I said!" Dianne shouted, sliding down beside her sister, it took her a full five feet to stop. "Who do you think lives here?" the older girl asked.
    "Oscar the Grouch, you nose-honker," Cindy replied.
    As she approached the tent, crouching, Cindy whispered softly: "Oscar. Hey, Oscar. You hiding from me in there?" Then suddenly her foot sank into the ground with mud up to the ankle.
    "You're such a gumby, Cinders. That's