Rolling Thunder

12

That “momma’s boy” stuff Crazy Mary kept yabbering about on the roller coaster yesterday doesn’t seem so crazy today.

I mean, I love my mom, but I wouldn’t clip her toenails for her. I suspect Skippy might.

The Ceepaks and I postpone our golf date.

They need to go buy a litter box. And cat chow. And fur mice. Maybe a little catnip, too.

In the parking lot, I ask Ceepak what he thinks Skippy meant by that crack about his dad breaking his mother’s heart.

“Not knowing, can’t say,” says Ceepak.

“It could be anything,” says Rita, who never studied psychology but did work as a waitress for a dozen years, which makes her a pretty good judge of human nature. “He might have been mean to her about the cat. He may have helped estrange their sons. He may not have given her the time and attention she thought she deserved as his life partner.”

Ceepak and I are both nodding. Like I said, Rita’s good.

“And,” she says with a heavy sigh, “he may have been cheating on her with another, most likely younger, woman.”

Yeah. That’d break your heart after you had five kids together.

Ceepak sneezes again.

Rita is letting him hold the cat. She’ll drive. I’m thinking they better stop off at the drug store and pick up a couple cartons of Claritin.

“See you tomorrow, partner,” Ceepak says in between a set of double nose blows.

I’m definitely bringing a box of Kleenex to work tomorrow and doing all the driving.

Ceepak closes his eyes when he sneezes.

The week rolls on.

Ceepak and I both work Memorial Day Monday. Big crowds on the boardwalk. The ocean’s too cold to go swimming, except for a few assorted Polar Bears, who always seem to be burly guys with forests of curly black hair on their backs. Sea Haven is running its annual Kite Festival on Oak Beach. Ken Erb is there in all his glory, showing off his new hand-painted silk Indonesian bird kite. It’s twelve feet tall and sort of reminds me of one of the scary winged creatures from Harry Potter.

Tuesday, we write a couple speeding tickets. Help a kid with a flat tire on his bike.

Wednesday, Ceepak and I are off the duty roster, so Sam takes a day off from studying. We do the beach. I skimboard on the slick sand, she reads Silent Counsel, a legal thriller. Later, we head to the Sand Bar and scarf down clams on the half shell, clams casino, some shrimp jammers (shrimp stuffed with cheddar and deep fried), mozzarella sticks, and a bucket of beers. Then we go to my place and, well, do nothing because we’re both too stuffed.

Thursday, Ceepak and I work the night shift.

We’re cruising Shore Drive near Spruce Street. We’re almost to the end of tree-named streets, about to enter the stretch of the island where the Sea Haven Street Naming Commission basically gave up and started using numbers instead of fish (further north) or picking up with second-tier trees, maybe Althorn, Bladdernut, and Chinaberry, for starters.

Ceepak and I are discussing the relative merits of the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets and their chances of breaking our hearts again this summer, when, all of a sudden, this hot little sports car comes zipping around the corner of Tangerine Street and, tires squealing, roars down Shore Drive at fifty miles per hour.

The speed limit is fifteen.

“Lights and siren,” I say, since I’m behind the wheel.

“Roger that,” says Ceepak in the passenger seat. He flips the switches.

I stomp on the gas, take the shuddering Crown Vic straight up to eighty to close the gap between us and the little speed demon.

The sports car doesn’t give us much of a run for our money. It pulls over to the curb. Our high-speed chase lasted two blocks, sucked down a quarter tank of SHPD gas.

Ceepak and I both get out of the cruiser.

The sports car window powers down.

“Hey, Danny.”

It’s Gail Baker. The hot waitress from The Rusty Scupper.

“Gail,” I say, “I need you to step out of the vehicle.”

“Sure.” The door opens. She climbs out in her skinny jeans and snug Sugar Babies tee. “I was speeding, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I had a glass of champagne, but that was, like, two or three hours ago.”

“Why the big rush?” asks Ceepak, who has come around the front of Gail’s car.

She shrugs. “Just need to get home. You want me to take a Breathalyzer test or something?”

Actually, we use an Alco Tester, but everybody still calls it a Breathalyzer. Now I notice something on her neck. An oval bruise.

A hickey?

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. Thanks, Danny.”

“Is that dentist still giving you grief?”

“Dr. Hausler?”

“I heard him at the gym Sunday morning.”

“Don’t worry. I can handle Marvin Hausler.”

I turn to Ceepak. “You want to run an SFST?”

That’s a Standardized Field Sobriety Test.

Ceepak nods and runs her through the three tests. He makes her follow a pen as he moves it back and forth to check her horizontal-gaze nystagmus-that being a weird word to describe the involuntary jerking of the eyeballs as they gaze side to side. When you’re drunk, the nystagmus is more pronounced. So are a lot of things, come to think of it. Like how funny you think you are.

Next comes the walk and turn, followed by the one-leg stand with its accompanying balancing and counting routine.

Gail passes all three tests with flying colors.

So we write up a warning, citing her doing fifty in a fifteen zone. If she gets pulled over again for the same reason, then she’ll get a ticket and a pretty hefty fine.

Gail says, “Thanks, guys.” She folds up the warning and slides it down into the back pocket of her extremely tight jeans.

On Friday morning, Ceepak and I head over to Our Lady of the Seas Roman Catholic church for Mrs. O’Malley’s funeral.

I’m inside because I knew the family.

Ceepak is out in the intersection directing traffic because, it seems, almost everybody on the island knew somebody in the family. I think Ceepak used to direct tank traffic rolling into Baghdad. I think this is worse.

I’m wearing my khaki pants and blue sports coat because I don’t own a suit. Like I said, I’m twenty-five. Sam has a black dress that buttons up to her neck and covers her knees. The nuns I had in elementary school would be pleased. I keep expecting her to whip out a lacy veil to cover her head.

I, myself, haven’t been to mass in a couple of years. My Saturday night activities seemed to impair my ability to wake up before noon on Sunday. Back in the day, I was an altar boy here. Some of the other guys in the altar boy corps were always daring me to swipe a few swigs from the communion wine when we filled the carafes before services.

No way. I had smelled that stuff. Franzia Sunset Blush. It came out of a box with a plastic tap. It stank like the sickly sweet juice at the bottom of a can of peaches. I think Franzia Sunset Blush is why I’m still a beer man and will forever pass on dipping my wafer into the wine chalice.

Sam and I take seats about six rows back. I remember to genuflect in the center aisle when we reach our pew. Hey, you can take the boy out of the Catholic church, but you can’t take the Catholic out of the boy.

Mrs. O’Malley’s coffin, draped in white, is sitting in front of the altar. Candles flicker. Soft organ music plays in the background. People are sniffling.

The front pews of the church resemble the front cars of the Rolling Thunder last Saturday, only Peter O’Malley was invited to this event. His boyfriend in the black leather vest and nipple rings, however, was not.

I see the nurse, dressed in a crisp white uniform, dabbing at the corners of Mary’s mouth with a tissue she licks with her tongue, moistening it to wipe the dry white flecks off Mary’s face. I almost hurl. My mom used to do that. Getting your face cleaned with a saliva-soaked Kleenex is worse than clipping curled toenails.

The O’Malleys are on the left-hand side of the church. In the front row on the right, I see another Irish clan. The red-headed woman with the aisle seat-who looks to be fifty-ish and angry-swirls around to address the white-haired lady sitting in the pew behind her.

“She was our sister before she was his goddamn wife!” The white-haired lady makes a quick sign of the cross, probably asking God to forgive the redneck for cursing inside his house.

Funerals are a little like weddings, only with sadder music and no kissing at the end. I’m guessing Sam and I are seated on the deceased’s side of the church and that the folks in the front pews are Mrs. O’Malley’s family.

Over on the widower’s side, I see Mayor Sinclair, Bruno Mazzilli (with his wife and kids, not his girlfriend), Chief Baines, and most of the merchants on the island. Over here on the right, we’ve got Mrs. O’Malley’s family, the neutral observers like me and Sam, and, sitting next to us, some folks in windbreakers with dog-and-cat patches on their sleeves from the South Shore Animal Shelter where Mrs. O’Malley must’ve been one of their top volunteers.

Bells jingle and Father Ed Steiner comes in. The altar boys carry a golden pot of holy water with a palm branch sprinkler sticking out. Father Steiner takes it and starts blessing the casket.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit …”

I don’t get to hear much else.

Ceepak is tapping me on the shoulder.

He head-gestures for me to exit with him.

I turn to Sam. “I gotta go.”

“Danny?” she whispers, in a way that lets me know I’m being extremely rude, ducking out early. Then she sees Ceepak. “Oh.”

I step into the aisle. Remember to genuflect again. Follow Ceepak out into the blazingly bright sun.

“We have a situation,” he says when we hit the sidewalk.

“What’s up?”

“Someone dumped a dismembered body outside a home on Tangerine Street.”

“Jeez.”

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Gail Baker. They found our warning ticket tucked inside the back pocket of her jeans.”