Shadow Prey

In the Beginning . . .
    They were in a service alley, tucked between two dumpsters. Carl Reed, a beer can in his hand, kept watch. Larry Clay peeled the drunk Indian girl, tossing her clothes on the floor of the backseat, wedging himself between her legs.
    The Indian started to howl. “Christ, she sounds like a fuckin’ coon-dog,” said Reed, a Kentucky boy.
    “She’s tight,” Clay grunted. Reed laughed and said, “Hurry up,” and lobbed his empty beer can toward one of the dumpsters. It clattered off the side and fell into the alley.
    Clay was in full gallop when the girl’s howl pitched up, reaching toward a scream. He put one big hand over her face and said, “Shut up, bitch,” but he liked it. A minute later he finished and crawled off.
    Reed slipped off his gunbelt and dumped it on top of the car behind the light bar. Clay was in the alley, staring down at himself. “Look at the fuckin’ blood,” he said.
    “God damn,” Reed said, “you got yourself a virgin.” He ducked into the backseat and said, “Here comes Daddy . . . .”
    The squad car’s only radios were police-band, so Clay and Reed carried a transistor job that Reed had bought in a PX in Vietnam. Clay took it out, turned it on and hunted for something decent. An all-news station was babbling about Robert Kennedy’s challenging Lyndon Johnson. Clay kept turning and finally found a country station playing “Ode to Billy Joe.”
    “You about done?” he asked, as the Bobbie Gentry song trickled out into the alley.
    “Just . . . fuckin’ . . . hold on . . .” Reed said.
    The Indian girl wasn’t saying anything.
    When Reed finished, Clay was back in uniform. They took a few seconds to get some clothes on the girl.
    “Take her, or leave her?” Reed asked.
    The girl was sitting in the alley, dazed, surrounded by discarded advertising leaflets that had blown out of the dumpster.
    “Fuck it,” Clay said. “Leave her.”
     
    They were nothing but drunk Indian chicks. That’s what everybody said. It wasn’t like you were wearing it out. It’s not like they had less than they started with. Hell, they liked it.
    And that’s why, when a call went out, squad cars responded from all over Phoenix. Drunk Indian chick. Needs a ride home. Anybody?
    Say “drunk Indian,” meaning a male, and you’d think every squad in town had driven off a cliff. Not a peep. But a drunk Indian chick? There was a traffic jam. A lot of them were fat, a lot of them were old. But some of them weren’t.
     
    Lawrence Duberville Clay was the last son of a rich man. The other Clay boys went into the family business: chemicals, plastics, aluminum. Larry came out of college and joined the Phoenix police force. His family, except for the old man, who made all the money, was shocked. The old man said, “Let him go. Let’s see what he does.”
    Larry Clay started by growing his hair out, down on his shoulders, and dragging around town in a ’56 Ford. In two months, he had friends all over the hippie community. Fifty long-haired flower children went down on drugs, before the word got out about the fresh-faced narc.
    After that it was patrol, working the bars, the nightclubs, the after-hours joints; picking up the drunk Indian chicks. You could have a good time as a cop. Larry Clay did.
    Until he got hurt.
    He was beaten so badly that the first cops on the scene thought he was dead. They got him to a trauma center and the docs bailed him out. Who did it? Dope dealers, he said. Hippies. Revenge. Larry Clay was a hero, and they made him a sergeant.
    When he got out of the hospital, Clay stayed on the force long enough to prove that he wasn’t chicken, and then he quit. Working summers, he finished law school in two years. He spent two more years in the prosecutor’s office, then went into private practice. In 1972, he ran for the state senate and won.
    His career really took off when a gambler got in trouble with the IRS. In exchange for a little sympathy, the gambler gave the tax men a list of senior cops he’d paid off over the years. The stink wouldn’t go away. The city fathers, getting nervous, looked around and found a boy with a head on his shoulders. A boy from a good family. A former cop, a lawyer, a politician.
    Clean up the force, they told Lawrence Duberville Clay. But don’t try too hard . . . .
    He did precisely what they wanted. They were properly grateful.
    In 1976, Lawrence Duberville Clay became the youngest chief in