Sleeping Policemen (2 page)

“Are you crazy? What are you doing?” Tuck said.

“Trying to find out who he is,” Finney said.

Nick withdrew a silk handkerchief to match the shirt, a comb for the straight, shoulder-length hair, nothing else. He shook out the handkerchief, folded it carefully, tucked it back into the rear pocket. The same with the comb.

“Where's his wallet?”

“We have to get out of here,” Tucker said. “Somebody could come a—”

“Easy,” Nick said, and Finney pushed the body back. It slipped through Nick's grasp, and this time both sides of the leather coat flipped open. A gun lay snug under the guy's left arm in a shoulder holster made of soft leather. Tucker gasped, and Finney looked up to meet Nick's gaze, those gray eyes gone cold, considering. Nick reached for the gun.

“What is it?”

Nick worked the action, careful to point the thing into the dark woods. “Smith and Wesson. .45 semi-automatic. Loaded.” He wiped it carefully with the tail of his shirt and slid it back into the holster.

“He a cop?”

“You see a badge?”

“Oh my God,” Tucker said. “I can't believe you guys. Maybe he's an undercover cop or something. Who cares? Let's just get the fuck out—”

“You watch too much TV, Tuck,” Finney said. “We're in Ransom, North Carolina. Only cops around here are rangers and the local yokels in Ransom. This guy, he's working for the other team. Wouldn't you say, Nick?”

Nick had been digging through the leather overcoat and now he held out something else. A roll of bills the size of his fist, folded in half and bound by a rubber band. “Looks that way.”

He riffled the bills with his thumb, his heart suddenly pounding. Hundred dollar bills. A roll of hundred dollar bills. He felt the weight of Finney's gaze and stood abruptly, dropping the money onto the dead man's chest like it had burned his fingers.

Finney just stood there, staring at him.

“What are you guys doing? We have to get the fuck out of here
now!
Somebody could come!”

“He's right,” Finney said. “We have to think this thing through.”

“Easy,” Nick said. “Get on the car phone, call the Senator. The guy's dead. Someone's bound to be looking for him. You'll walk with manslaughter. Probation, community service. Nobody hurts.”

“Fuck that,” Tucker said. “Let's just leave the guy and get out of here.”

“I'm afraid I'm going to have to vote with Tucker here, Nick. Dad can save me prison time, maybe, but I figure law schools tend to frown on felony convictions.”

“You walk away from this, it'll come back to haunt you and your dad, too.”

“Nick—”

“They'll catch us!”

“How?”

“The skid marks, the damage to your car. They'll track us down.”

“I don't think so, Nick. I think you're letting a few moral qualms get in the way of your better sense.”

“Jesus, you guys,” Tucker said. “What the hell are—”

“He's right, Nick. We have to make some decisions here and we don't have the luxury of time.”

They locked eyes. Nick saw the sweat standing out on Finney's face, and he realized that despite the icy air, he too had started to perspire. A stark sense of before and after possessed him, life bifurcated by a single stroke of the blade. He longed to return to the moment just prior to the accident; he'd been reaching for a beer, trying to decide whether to tell Sue about the strip joint. She might love it and she might hate it, he couldn't know for sure. She reminded him of a kid at an amusement park—attracted to the wildest rides, afraid to buy the ticket. Sometimes she did. Other times …

None of that mattered anymore.

Those were the thoughts of another life, a life innocent of light and impact, innocent of consequence.

“Nick?”

“What do you got in mind?”

“Easy. We drag the body back in the woods a hundred yards or so, clean up the worst of the glass, and get the hell out of here. It's December in the Smokies, Nick. It's gonna snow like all hell in the next few weeks, and they'll close this sucker down. People'll be cruising down the interstate at seventy-five miles an hour. Nobody will find this guy till next spring, maybe not even then. Meanwhile, me, you, Tuck—we're gone, graduated. Law school, baby, grad school. Tuck here, he's taking Wall Street by storm, and nobody will ever know the difference.”

“I will.”

“Goddamnit, Nick! The guy is
dead
. We've got our whole lives ahead of us.”

“No, I can't do it.” He started to the car. “You're not going to do it, I'll make the call myself.”

“Nicky!”

Nick paused, aware now of the cold, of the perspiration chilling on his flesh, turning him to ice.

“One more thing. The money, Nick. Nice little nest egg for you, something to help you meet those nasty first year expenses.”

“You guys are fucking maniacs,” Tucker said. “I can't believe we're even talking about this. Just leave the guy in the road and let's haul ass out of here.”

“Nick, listen to me. It only makes sense.”

“Jesus, Finney, you're telling him to steal the money?”

“Shut up, Tuck. It's not like the guy's going to need it anymore.”

Nick stood with his back to them, memories burning in his brain: the peeling clapboard house in Louisiana, his dad broken at fifty-five from working on the rigs, the two brothers who had come before him, Jake and Sam, following in the old man's footsteps. He couldn't go back there, could he?

“Christ,” Tucker said. “Take the coat, take the fucking boots. He won't be needing those either.”

“Don't be a child,” Finney said. “Nick needs the money. Nobody ever has to know.”

“It's mine? All mine?”

“That's right.”

Nick gazed blindly into the headlights of the Acura. A thousand motes swam there. He could almost feel the money, heavy in his hand. He and Sue had talked about what would happen after graduation, but those were pipe dreams, he knew that now. He would go back to Louisiana, and work for a year or two on the rigs. Maybe then he could afford a couple years of graduate school. Maybe. If he didn't get crippled offshore. If he didn't get trapped in the lifestyle, three weeks on and a week of shore leave, blowing his earnings on ice-cold Delta beer and Cajun honeys who would be fat by the time they hit thirty. Just like Dad, he thought. Just like Jake and Sam.

And Sue? She said she would wait, but they both knew better. Sue ate strictly flavor of the month—Finney could attest to that—and just now she had a taste for Nick, but unless something changed he didn't have a shot at permanence. She would be gone before the ink on her diploma dried, back home to Savannah for the summer and straight into the arms of some moon-faced rich guy with a gold Visa and a Jag. Some asshole a lot like Reed Tucker.

He could feel the money, heavy in his hand.

“Nicky?”

“Don't call me Nicky.”

“Whatever you say, man, but you got to make the call. A car could blow through here any second.”

“Let's do it.”

He turned to face them, and Finney nodded. “That's my man.”

“I'm not touching the dead guy,” Tucker said.

“Fine,” Nick said. “Start picking up glass.”

Nick hunkered down and picked up the roll of hundreds, pausing to meet and hold their eyes, first Finney, then Tucker. Then he zipped the money into an inner pocket of his own jacket. Together, he and Finney wrestled the body erect. It was harder than he had expected. Every time Nick had dragged a drunk off to bed, the drunk had woken up enough to stumble along beside him, helping a little, blowing beery breath into his face. Never had he struggled with truly dead weight—and now the full meaning of the term bore in upon him. Lifting the dead guy was like lifting a sodden carpet. His muscles ached in spite of the high school years and college summers loading and unloading crates of fresh fish in Glory, Louisiana, in spite of the two hours he spent lifting weights in the gym three days a week.

They dragged the guy between them, his boots scraping the pavement. Tucker knelt to begin gathering fragments of the parking light's smashed reflector panel, strewn shards of glass and rubber. Their progress slowed at the verge of the road. The dead guy's legs kept tangling in the undergrowth. Once Finney stumbled and fell, cursing, and the entire weight of the dead man collapsed onto Nick, so heavy he did not think he could bear it.

After that, they decided to carry him between them. They argued in frenzied whispers over who would get the feet, who the bloody head, then Nick relented, aware of the money in his jacket, knowing that he had surrendered control of the situation somehow in taking it, but powerless to give it up. Fleeting images of Sue kept passing through his head—of Sue, of his father twisted in his wheelchair, of the enormous stinking gantries of the oil rigs, the sea in flux about their enormous support columns, bearing away a freight of sewage and cast-off food and garbage, black gouts of raw, spilled fuel.

He knelt, and got the guy under the armpits and lifted on Finney's count of three. The dead man's head flopped back against his stomach, and Nick suddenly wished he had thought to close his jacket. His heart raced. His breath formed enigmatic patterns in the air as they stumbled farther into the underbrush. The hum of the Acura's engine grew distant, the lights receded beyond a screen of brush and trees. His muscles burned like he had been in the gym for hours.

They moved through the trees silently, panting with exertion. Once Nick thought he heard something. He thought about that crashing sound in the underbrush, something big moving through the woods. But Finney didn't say anything and besides the woods were full of noise. The only people who ever talked about the silence in the woods had never been there. So he held his peace, trying not to think about the dead guy's bloody head, all that blond hair smearing black blood across the belly of his T-shirt. He could feel it, warm against his stomach, and a tight, hard kernel of hatred formed in his chest, displacing the fear. Finney. Fucking Phineas Durant and his big-shot dad. The Senator, that's what Finney called him. Not Dad, just the Senator, another asshole rich guy in a hand-tailored suit. But Finney always cashed the checks the Senator sent, didn't he?

Nick forced the bitterness down. He always shared the wealth, too. Nick had tucked more than a dollar or two of Finney's money between the garter and the slick flesh of one dark-haired honey that night, and he had left Ransom broke, drinking Finney's beer.

A few minutes later, the sound of the water began to grow louder. The smell of it rose to meet them, the algae-grown, faintly metallic odor of a mountain stream. They emerged from the undergrowth and it was right there in front of them, fifteen or twenty feet wide, black and fast moving, barely visible in the thick darkness under the trees.

“We're going to get lost in h—” Finney started to say, and then Nick slipped, losing his purchase in the wet soil. Nick let go of the dead guy and caught a glimpse of that blond head bouncing off the ground, and then he went in the water.

“Jesus, cold!” he gasped.

Finney laughed as Nick clambered out of the stream, wet to the knees, his jeans clinging about his calves like a second skin.

“Fuck it,” Nick said. “Far enough.”

“Have to be. I'm not going into that water.”

Together they maneuvered the body into a mass of pine saplings, working it under the low-growing fronds. Finney waited while Nick scooped pine needles here and there, trying to hide the dead guy, though it was too dark to tell if he was doing any good. Then he stood, tucking his hands into his pockets, aware of the roll of money poking at him through the lining of the jacket.

“Enough,” he said. “I'm going to freeze.”

They stumbled off into the woods. For a few moments, Nick imagined getting lost back there, freezing to death—situational irony, Dr. Gillespie would have called it—and then he could see the lights of the Acura through the trees. They both heard Tucker yelling at the same time.

“Fuck,” Finney said, and then they were running.

Branches lashed at them, the underbrush seemed to cling about their ankles. A moment later they fought their way free and emerged onto the edge of the road. Tucker stood by the Acura waving at them.

A car blurred past—an enormous, black, seventies-vintage caddy moving fast, fifty or sixty miles an hour, Nick guessed—and braked into the curve, rear lights winking like knowing eyes.

“Too fast,” Nick said. “No way he could ID the car.”

They stood there for a moment, catching their breath in the silent woods, and then they heard it: the sound of the car carrying through the stillness as it slowed, stopped, and returned, gaining speed, growing louder. They broke for the Acura as the caddy slipped past for the second time, brake lights flaring. Nick's heart lurched, but a moment later the caddy accelerated, tail-lights winking around the next curve. That's when Nick saw it: a glittering shard of metal, bright against the graveled shoulder. He scooped it up in stride and only paused to examine it when he was safe in the back seat, trees and ridges blurring beyond the window as Finney gunned the car hard toward Ransom.

A key.

A shiny silver key, embossed

KNOX

409

Nick had ridden too many Greyhounds from Glory to Ransom and from Ransom back not to know that it would fit a bus station locker. He leaned back and rested his head against the seat, trying not to think about the money, but powerless to prevent it. When he opened his eyes, Tucker had turned around to look at him, and Nick realized that he had seen the key there in his open palm.

“What is it?” Tucker said.

“A key,” Nick told him. “What's the matter, you blind?”

“Hey, Nicky,” Finney said. “Whyn't you reach me a fresh brew?”