“Yes,” Ceepak says calmly. I can see he's mastering his emotions like he's taught himself to do instead of telling the blowhard to go fuck himself, which is, basically, what I've taught myself to do. “I am given to understand there are numerous chowder options available on the island.”
“Good. Because two fucking Croissan'wiches won't hold me for long.”
Slominsky struts over to the dead body.
“So this is Reginald Hart, hunh? Stayed at one of his casinos down in Ocean Town once. The Fantasia? Place had class. Real class. Marble tile in the toilets. Shit like that.”
Slominsky raises Hart's left arm, and lets it drop.
“Yep,” he says, “I'd say this guy is officially, one-hundred-percent dead. Where's the goddamn Medical Examiner?”
“On his way,” somebody says.
“Guess we better figure out a time of death. I'd say it was sometime this morning. How about you guys?”
None of the CSI team says anything. They're busy, trying to do their jobs fast-before Slominsky screws things up even worse.
“Okay. Good. This morning. That's what I'll say until we come up with something better.”
He sees Ceepak staring at him.
“You still here? Jesus-go home. You did your good deed for the day. You told me about the chowder.”
Ceepak is quiet for a second. Then he starts unsnapping his cargo-pants pockets.
“We found some items earlier,” he says, handing his paper evidence envelopes over to one of the white suits. “Wind started blowing….”
“Recalibrating the crime scene,” the CSI guy says, letting Ceepak know he did the right thing.
“You picked shit up?” Slominsky yells. “Jesus H. Christ! Fucking local yokels….”
“We recorded original conditions and positions,” Ceepak says. He slips the data card out of our digital camera and hands that over, too.
“You might want to check back there,” Ceepak points to the big Sunnyside Clyde sign. “Danny?”
He snaps his head to the side to let me know it's time to go. We walk out, watching where we step, as if it still matters.
Like I said, John Ceepak plays by the rules.
Even when the rules suck.
CHAPTER SIX
I finally get to hit the head when we hike back to The Pancake Palace to pick up the Ford Explorer.
This is a family place, but the bathroom? Whoo. It's all kinds of stinky. Not dirty, just kind of grungy, like it's uncleanable and always damp on account of all the humidity. There's these metal half-walls between urinals (so guys won't look at each other's willies, I guess) and they're splashed with rust.
“Gross,” I say to myself, imagining the worst possible rust-creation scenario. I shudder because I realize: I'm starting to see the world like Ceepak sees it, analyzing splatter patterns while I pee.
Ceepak is in the restaurant, settling up with the cashier.
“Sorry we had to run out like that,” he says as he pays six bucks for the breakfast we skipped out on so we could rescue the bloody kid out in the street.
Next, Ceepak flags down the waitress who brought him his cereal and me my coffee. He hands her a three-buck tip on our six-buck tab. And he apologizes for “any inconvenience we caused by making her wait.”
I'm sure this is all part of The Code.
“We're good to go,” he says when he's paid off all his debts. “Let's roll.”
We head out into the parking lot. It's still only 9 A.M. but the sun's already starting to steam things up. Ceepak is lugging his aluminum crime-scene attaché case. I've got the camera and what's left of the “Police” tape rolls. We head to the rear of the Explorer to pop open the cargo door.
All of a sudden, there's this loud “ka-boom!”
“Get down!”
Ceepak shoves me to the ground.
“Grenade!” he yells. “Down!”
I'm covering my head and thinking: No way! Maybe an M-80 left over from the Fourth of July….
“Stay down!” Ceepak screams.
I look up and Ceepak's running, crouched low, using parked cars for cover like he's expecting incoming rounds from a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. There's this stockade fence behind the restaurant's kitchen and I can see a puff of smoke come out from behind it.
The dumpster.
I see three boys, about ten years old. They look scared shitless and start high-tailing it out of the parking lot, into the trees. They'll probably run all the way across the bay to the mainland.
I was right. Leftover firecrackers. An M-80, which is basically a quarter stick of dynamite, tossed by some kids into an open dumpster. Ka-boom. Ka-bang. Happy 10th of July!
Ceepak stands, watching the boys flee.
All I can see is his back. But I have a funny feeling he might have been momentarily blown back to Bagh-nasty-dad, where his buddies probably got blown up more times than he'd care to remember.
I grab hold of the rear bumper on the Ford and haul my ass off the asphalt, brushing stones and pebbles out of my naked knees. Maybe tomorrow I'll go with the cargo pants instead of the shorts. I see Ceepak's shoulders heave up and down like he's taking in a long, deep breath.
He turns to face me, smiling.
“Kids.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Fourth of July fireworks.”
“Yeah.”
“Let's hit the house.”
“Right.”
The house, the Sea Haven Police Station, is only five blocks up Ocean Avenue, but traffic is all kinds of backed up. We may never make it.
“From the roadblock,” I guess.
“Yeah,” Ceepak says. He's looking out his window like he's still thinking about grenades, still seeing stuff in the rearview mirror of his mind, so to speak. I have a feeling those objects might appear closer than they actually are.
I see a TV satellite truck rumbling down the avenue, heading back to where we came from. Word spreads fast.
We're still not moving. In fact, we're stuck behind an ice-cream truck. Not the cute, ringy-dingy kind that cruises up and down the side streets selling Good Humor bars. This is a Ben and Jerry's delivery truck with black cows painted on the back panel and it's crawling its way up to the supermarket, hoping to get there before all the Chubby Hubby and Cherry Garcia melts. I can't see what's in front of it. Probably a beer truck. Or a Frito-Lay step van. Ice cream, beer, and potato chips. Come summer, these are the three basic food groups in my hometown.
In the lane to the right of us is a convertible with the top down. They want to turn left, crawl in front of me and the trucks, hit the causeway, and leave the island behind. Their vacation is obviously over.
Mom and Pops are up front, fuming, craning their necks, trying to see what the heck the holdup is, looking like their whole week of rest and relaxation evaporated the second they hit this gridlock. Two boys, about six and seven, are sitting in the back seat, all buckled in. They're bored stiff and start waving at us like kids will do when they see cops. One's wearing a diving mask. The other has on some kind of pirate hat. I'm not driving anywhere any time soon, so, when the kids catch my eye, I wave back. The scuba-faced boy gives me a big military salute and I salute back.
Ceepak is still staring out his window. He sees the convertible, too.
“Danny?” he says. “We need to expedite our exit.”
“10-4.”
I hit the lights and siren, pull around the ice-cream truck, and scream up the avenue in the wrong lane.
“That'll work,” Ceepak mumbles.
He never did salute the cute kids.
Guess he's done playing Army for today.
Police headquarters kind of looks like a house. We've got a nice wraparound porch, a white picket fence, and a tidy little lawn. This being the beach, our lawn is made out of marble chips and red pea-pebbles instead of grass, but we keep it raked and weeded.
We're on Cherry Lane, a street that cuts across Ocean Avenue, and heads from the bay on one side of the island to the beach on the other. In this part of town, the east-west streets are named after trees and are arranged in alphabetical order, north to south. Beech Street is north of us. Dogwood is south.