Sleeping with Strangers by Eric Jerome Dickey

Author:Eric Jerome Dickey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

I stopped and bought warmer clothes.

Needed heavier jeans, thermals, a turtleneck, boots, and a short leather jacket that zipped. Had to dump what I had on, in case blood had splattered on me from the crime scene we’d just created. Thirty minutes later I came out in Soho looking brand-new from head to toe and in between, dumped my old clothes, then hit the main drag at Oxford Circus, an area as busy as Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, blended with the crowd. I went down into the tube, waited on a Central Line train to take me to the Northern Line, would take that line one stop over to Goodge and get off there. I walked back to the room and grabbed my backpack.

Had to take the tube to the Liverpool station.

It was time to go visit a man on Arizona’s behalf.

Like I had done for her when we connected in New York.

When that delinquent debt had to be settled.

Only this was somebody I knew.

We weren’t the best of friends, but we were a long way from being enemies.

This was a merciless business.

A different kind of coldness came and hugged me.

The kind of iciness that came with my complex occupation.

It was time to bundle up and go to work.

My hands trembled again as I changed from the tube to the Stansted Express and headed toward horse-and-grass country. The place that in the summertime, with all the fertilizer in the air, they called horse-and-smells-like-ass country. My hands trembled the entire forty-six minutes I was on the train, trembled as the airport came in sight. They wouldn’t stop trembling.

As I exited the train, that feeling of death moved through me, tried to cling to me, but I shook it off. In the middle of the terminal, people all around me, I stopped walking. A wave hit me. Coldness. Followed by numbness. Followed by an almost unbearable heat.

I looked down at the three CDs I still had in my hand.

Memories of New York clung to me. I thought about the fun we’d had in Chapel Hill.

I stuffed those CDs in my backpack and found my way to underground parking.

I walked until I found a row of motorcycles, stopped in front of a BMW 1200. Light blue, helmet attached to locking strap. Keys were in my backpack. I took out a black key and a red key. The black key opened the sidesaddles, where I found gloves. Two small bottles were there as well. One was a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The other a special order. The same key also unlocked the helmet and started the engine. The bike was still warm. Hadn’t been here too long.

Minutes after that, I was easing around the roundabout, getting a feel for the machine, then I was speeding down M11 north. Thoughts of Arizona, thoughts of Chapel Hill never left. As I changed from A11 to A14 and back to A11 again, as I zoomed down a two-lane highway by grass and horses and sheep, as I slowed for speed cameras as I entered Suffolk County, Miles, Wes, and Coltrane stayed on my mind.

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