Happy Policeman Read Free Page A

onto the damp floor, where he got tangled in Curtis’s feet.
    “Think about it, boy. That dog you seen in the store could have been one.”
    The tile at DeWitt’s back felt clammy and chill. “No blood left in her body, either.” He pinched the dwindling roach from the mayor’s fingers.
    “You just think about it, DeWitt. Do you know what these people around here do when the moon’s full?”
    Upside down, Curtis’s face seemed less comical and more menacing. “You always like to scare me when I’m high.”
    “I want you to think werewolves, DeWitt. I want you to think vampires. See, werewolves you can lock up in jail, but vampires—”
    Tap.
    At the soft knock, both men turned, DeWitt having to roll around on the littered floor.
    Tap.
    DeWitt and Curtis looked at each other. The joint was tweezered between Curtis’s thumb and middle fingernail. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Wittie? Did you order me a delivery?”
    “Shit!”
    Raising the commode lid, Curtis dropped the joint inside the bowl and flushed. DeWitt clambered to his feet and threw open the bathroom window. A fresh breeze and an anthem of sunlight burst through the close, hot room.
    “Just a minute!” Curtis shouted. “I’ll be with you in just a minute!”
    DeWitt waved his arms. Curtis flapped a towel.
    “I’m fucking wasted,” Curtis said in a low, pained voice. “God, I’m so fucking wasted.”
    Tap.
    “Just a sec! Jesus Christ, Wittie. I look okay?”
    DeWitt looked at the blue sheep and bit his lip to curb a laugh. Curtis unlocked the bathroom door and slipped into the hall. There was a muffled conversation.
    “DeWitt.” The voice was Curtis’s. DeWitt stood, shoulders against the peeling wood.
    “DeWitt. They know you’re here, and they want to talk.”
    Opening the door, DeWitt eased around the jamb. Kol Seresen’s bulbous eyes, the hue of shrimp jelly on a blue plate, were trained on DeWitt’s face. The Torku leader’s hands swelled like balloons, then slowly deflated. His skin, a living mood ring, changed from mottled brown to beige.
    DeWitt tried to straighten his uniform. Curtis stood next to him, his bare toes twitching on the hardwood floor.
    The Torku gave silence as good as Billy did. Maybe better.
    “How are you, Seresen?” DeWitt asked when he couldn’t take the tension anymore.
    “There is gas.” The small alien pivoted and walked out the front door, his Banana Republic shirt flapping around him.
    “He knows!” Curtis whispered urgently as the screen door banged shut. “He’s figured it out and he’s going after my stash!”
    Padding hurriedly into the bathroom, slipping a little on the wet tiles, Curtis grabbed the ginger jar. He fled into the bedroom.
    DeWitt trailed after. The mayor’s king-size waterbed was in magnificent disarray. The mayor himself was standing knee-deep in clutter, the jar clutched to his belly. “You’re a cop. What should I do?”
    “Don’t act suspicious.”
    Curtis dropped to the bed and, bobbing on its agitated, vinyl waves, curled himself around the jar. “I won’t let this go extinct the way cigarettes and booze did. I’m telling you right now, DeWitt, they’ll have to kill me.”
    “You think somebody told them about the murder?”
    “Look out the window!” Curtis hissed. “See if they’re in the garden.”
    DeWitt peeked through the dusty blinds. No Torku were roaming the privacy-fenced rows of green plants. “Nope.”
    “Go and talk to them, DeWitt. Make sure they’re not planning nothing. I got these thoughts of them with aerosol cans of Agent Orange.”
    DeWitt walked outside. Four Torku were taking boxes from a brown UPS van and carrying them into the store, giving DeWitt’s grazing bay mare a wide berth.
    Behind the wall of video machines, DeWitt found Seresen. The Kol had turned his normal brown again and was loading six packs of Cokes into the cooler.
    “You may go fill your car now,” the alien said. “There is gas, as I told