Free Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn Page A

street. Claims he even brought out his Bell and Howell Zoomatic and filmed them making a collection. Claims it’s damning evidence, what he has on film. Claims he can get ’em kicked off the force, maybe even put ’em in jail.
    ‘And you know what happens to cops in jail,’ he says.
    But he says he’ll sell it to them, the film he’s got. Sure. He knows the salary of a cop isn’t great. He understands the need to make a little extra cash. Hell, he says, he’s a reasonable man, and he’d like to make a little extra cash himself.
    Charlie says all right, they’ll make a deal and collect the film and that’ll be that. What’s his price? The guy hesitates, then says he’ll call back once he’s had time to think about it, he’ll call back tonight – which is what Charlie’s been sitting around at home waiting for – and now he has called back, and he’s named his price. And that’s where the real problem is. Now Alan has to reason with the guy, and based on his price, he’s not the reasonable man he claims to be.
    Alan runs his fingers through his hair again, glances at his coffee, which is now splashed across the brick front of Al’s Coffee Shop, and he heads back inside.
    After Duke has poured Alan another cup, he decides he’ll have a donut after all.
    ‘Maple-glazed Long John,’ he says, and Duke grabs it for him.
    ‘I really hope you washed your fucking hands.’
    He’s halfway to his car, mouth full of donut, when the sound of a scream pierces the air. He stops a moment, takes another bite, listens, hears another scream. He considers it for only a moment.
    ‘Let someone else deal with it,’ he says. ‘I got shit to do.’

12
    Peter is on top of Bettie, his hands holding her arms down against the mattress, pushing fingertip bruises into her soft flesh. He can feel the jack-in-the-box buildup of orgasm almost ready to explode from within him. His hair is sweaty and hangs down in his face, dripping saltwater onto Bettie’s breasts. And then the orgasm arrives and he thrusts hard into Bettie, forcing all of himself into her one, two, three, four times, hearing her groan, holding himself in her with the last thrust, and then he’s done, and he’s breathing hard, his heart pounding against the wall of his chest like something trying to escape, like a trapped hummingbird.
    He wipes his hair away from his face and looks down at Bettie, smiling, but she is not looking back. It’s as if he’s not here at all. She is looking out the window.
    ‘Did you hear that?’
    Peter pulls himself out of her, going flaccid quickly.
    ‘Hear what?’ he says.
    ‘That scream.’
    ‘I didn’t hear any scream,’ Peter says, ‘except from you.’
    But her mind doesn’t seem to be on sex anymore.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I’m sure.’
    ‘I heard a scream,’ she says. ‘Two screams. I’m sure of it. I’m positive.’
    She stands, wraps a sheet around her naked body, and walks to the window to see if she can see the source of the screams she says she heard. Then she glances down at herself and uses the sheet to wipe the inside of her thighs which are, apparently, dripping.
    Peter wants to ask her not to do that – to please use a wash cloth; those are high quality silk sheets and she may be ruining them – but he bites his tongue.
    Now isn’t the time.
     
     
    Patrick is simply sitting on the couch and looking at the static dance across the television’s gray surface when he hears the screams. One second he’s trying to imagine himself in a camouflage battle-dress uniform and jungle-boots, a rifle in his arms as he wades through a rice paddy looking for gooks, the next second he’s snapped out of his thoughts and back into reality by what sounds like a dying animal.
    He stands and walks to the living-room window.
    He sees several apartment lights turning on, he sees several human shapes moving to their windows, some of the shapes alone, some of them standing in twos. In one