Sleeping Policemen by Dale Bailey Read Free Book Online

asked.
    â€œThat’s it?” Nick turned to stare at her. “That’s not what you told him, Sue.”
    â€œClose enough, Nick. I said we were together, didn’t I? So all four of us were together, that’s all, that’s our story.”
    â€œClean and simple,” Finney said.
    â€œYeah,” Nick snapped, “even Tucker ought to be able to remember that one.”
    â€œNick,” Sue said. “Trust me.”
    Nick glared at her for a moment, certainty crumbling under the combined weight of their insistence. The choking anger subsided a little, replaced by something that felt a lot like giving in.
    â€œThe only question now,” Finney said, “is what next?”
    â€œNick and I talked about the locker,” Sue said.
    â€œFuck that,” Tucker said from the doorway. “We leave the locker alone. We should get rid of the key and try to forget the whole thing ever happened.”
    â€œWe should—”
    â€œThis isn’t one of your little games, Sue,” Tucker said. “We could go to jail.”
    â€œYou lay off her. I’m the one found the key. If I want to know what’s in there, then I’ll look.”
    â€œDidn’t you get enough last night, Nick? Do you have to have more?”
    â€œFuck you, Tucker. I need this money!”
    â€œShut up, both of you,” Finney said. “We’re in this together. And if we don’t stay that way we’ll all go down together. Right?”
    Silence.
    â€œRight?”
    â€œWhatever,” Nick said.
    â€œYou just keep him off me, Finney. I’m fed up with Nick’s bullshit.”
    â€œFine. Okay. But this time Nicky’s right. He needs the money. We’ll check out the locker, Nick takes what he can get, but that’s the end of it. Understand?”
    â€œGoddammit, Finney,” Tucker said. “This is stupid—”
    â€œWe’re just going to check the locker, Tuck. That’s the end of it, I promise.”
    Tucker stared at Finney for a moment, his lips white. “Fine, then.” He turned to point at Nick. “But get this, Nick: when the shit comes down, it’s on your fucking head. And that’s not a threat, that’s a promise.”
    Nick didn’t speak. He just stood there, staring into Tucker’s frightened, angry face, struck suddenly with a sense of how out of place he was here, in this place, among such people—Finney in his loafers and Brooks Brothers cords, Tuck in a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt that had cost twice as much as Nick’s second-hand leather jacket and two-year-old Keds. He felt the hot shame of it mount into his face, and he knew suddenly how everything would turn out. If it hadn’t started already, it would soon enough—money and privilege and more than a decade of friendship closing ranks against him.
    Fall guy, he thought. That’s me.
    And then Sue crossed the room to him in that knowing way of hers, like she had some kind of sixth sense. He felt her mouth quick against his own, the pressure of her breasts, and an image from that morning possessed him: Sue, rising over him like a night-blossoming plant, engulfing him in her heat.
    He pulled her close, felt her hand drop away to dig in the pocket of his Levis as she kissed him. Her fingers brushed the shaft of his cock, teasing, and then she turned away, holding something shiny aloft like a trophy.
    The key.
    That was Sue, he thought. In for a penny, in for a pound.
    â€œSo let’s see what’s in the locker,” she said.
    They found the locker just as Nick had imagined, in the Knoxville bus terminal, a dingy, single-story brick building broken by the curve of a glass and plastic-faced snack bar, some late-sixties architect’s idea of futuristic chic: natural light and potted palms, ushering Greyhound proudly into the twenty-first century. Nick laughed softly at the idea as Sue swung the Mercedes to the curb before a