Rolling Thunder Read online

  “Yo, po-po. What up?” says Sean.

  “My name is Ceepak. Officer John Ceepak.”

  “I remember you, dude. From up on the roller coaster of death!”

  “I’d like to have a word with you and your lady friend.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “Disrespecting the dead.”

  “Huh?”

  I jump in and help out: “Ding dong, the witch is dead?”

  “Whoa. You dudes have us under surveillance or sumptin’?

  “Mr. O’Malley,” says Ceepak, “your mother just died.”

  He shrugs. Stuffs a cigarette in his mug. “So?”

  His girlfriend shifts her weight to her left hip. “Yo—I’m the one who said it. You got some kind of issue with it, talk to me. Fo real. I’m serious.”

  Now she pouts. She has the lips for it: glossy, puffy ones.

  Meanwhile, Ceepak’s jaw joint is popping in and out under his ear. It does this from time to time, usually whenever he’d like to rip someone’s head off. You see people die like Ceepak did over in Iraq, or like I’ve seen on the job, it does something to you. They aren’t just bonus points on a game screen anymore.

  “Ma’am,” says Ceepak, “it might be best for all concerned if you were to refrain from making any more derogatory comments regarding Mrs. O’Malley in public.”

  Sean blows cigarette smoke out his nose holes like a cartoon bull.

  “Why? Why can’t she say that? Hell, I’ll say it too. Ding dong, the witch is dead. How’s that?”

  “Great,” I say. “Makes you sound like a total a-hole, Sean.”

  Ceepak cocks an eyebrow.

  He does not, however, chastise me for my poor word choice while in uniform. If the a-hole fits …

  “Aw-ite, Danny Boy, ease up, foo. Is it against the law for us to speak true?”

  “Of course not,” says Ceepak. “You are both well within your First Amendment rights to say anything, no matter how offensive I and others might find it. I am simply suggesting that, as a matter of respect, you both should exert some semblance of self-control.”

  “Then, let me school ya, Officer John Ceepak: My moms was one fat, cold-hearted witch. Hell, I’m surprised she could even have a heart attack because that would mean she had a heart instead of a chunk of black ice rattlin’ around underneath all that whale blubber.”

  Sean, thinking he was just pretty damn clever, gives his cigarette a self-satisfied smack.

  “She never did like me,” says the girl with a head toss. “Didn’t think I was the right kind of people for her boy, you know?”

  “It’s true,” says Sean. “My mom did not dig Daisy—because she’s from Puerto Rico and smokin’ hot.”

  “Mrs. O’Malley?” says Daisy. “She was a racist. A bigot.”

  “Homophobic, too,” adds Sean. Just ask my brother Peter, who was officially disinvited from this morning’s festivities. How twisted is that?”

  Daisy zips her manicured hand back and forth in a flying Z formation. “You think about that, officers, aw-ite? We done here. I’m hungry, Sean. You said you were gonna buy me a Snickers bar, baby.”

  “Yeah.” Sean winks at us. “Laters, po-po. Laters.”

  They saunter up to the food stand.

  I can hear a rush of bubbles popping around a candy bar recently dunked into a vat of boiling oil.

  Or maybe that’s Ceepak.

  I know he tries to keep a lid on his rage at all times but sometimes he’s a lot like that Springsteen song “The Promised Land”: He just wants to explode.

  We head back to the house, which is what we call police headquarters over in the municipal complex on Cherry Street.

  All the east-west streets in Sea Haven are named after trees, even though, with all the sun and sand and salt water, we don’t really have that many trees—just a few scrubby evergreens and rows of telephone poles that used to be trees in their youth.

  “You think Sean had anything to do with his mother’s death?” I ask Ceepak as our Crown Vic Police Interceptor cruises south on Ocean Avenue.

  We just passed Pizza My Heart, one of at least three dozen Italian restaurants in Sea Haven. The parmigiana, manicotti, and fried calamari on their menus probably cause more heart attacks than all our boardwalk rides combined, but the menus don’t come with any warning signs and there’s no minimum height requirement; they’ll even give the kids a booster seat.

  “Is there some way Sean could’ve killed her and made her death look like a heart attack?”

  “It’s a possibility,” says Ceepak. “However, we’ll soon know if foul play is indicated. By New Jersey state law, the medical examiner is required to investigate all cases of human death that occur under suspicious or unusual circumstances.”

  I guess death by roller coaster is pretty unusual.

  “If memory serves,” Ceepak continues, “only four Americans die each year in roller coaster–related incidents.”

  “Heart attacks?”

  “Often. The rides are designed to send heart rates soaring. In a recent study …”

  Did I mention that Ceepak reads recent studies on just about everything? Last week, it was oysters and water pollution.

  “… German researchers noted that the heart rates of test participants climbed from ninety-one to one-fifty-three while riding a coaster with a maximum speed of seventy-five mph.”

  I nod and hope none of this is on the final.

  “However, it wasn’t the speed that caused irregular heart beats; it was the fear and stress of the ride.”

  “So Mrs. O’Malley scared herself to death?”

  “She may have had a preexisting, undiagnosed heart condition. Perhaps high blood pressure. Or she may have been under some form of stress brought on by a life-altering event.”

  “Huh,” I say. I guess Mrs. O’Malley could’ve been stressed about her daughter, Mary (who almost gave me a heart attack this morning), and her sons Sean and Peter. I think sons Kevin and Skip are pretty stress-free: hard-working, level-headed boys who don’t drink Bacardi for breakfast, date San Juan hotties or, you know, other boys.

  “Interestingly,” says Professor Ceepak, “the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles resulted in a four-fold increase in sudden deaths due to heart attacks. In 1991, when Iraq launched scud missiles at Israel, heart attacks doubled. A widow grieving the loss of her husband will see a fifty percent increase in her chances of sudden death due to a heart attack.”

  Stress. It’s why I still surf, boogie board, and drink beer on a regular basis. It’s all part of my heart-healthy lifestyle.

  But I remember what Skippy said: His mother didn’t want to ride the Rolling Thunder. She was afraid of roller coasters.

  But Kevin probably convinced her she needed to be there for PR purposes, the same way political wives have to be there when their husbands call a press conference to confess that they’ve just had an affair with a hooker they met on the Appalachian Trail.

  But what if Kevin O’Malley, for whatever reason, wanted to scare his mother to death?

  Pretty easy way to get away with murder.

  You don’t need a gun or knife or poison or any kind of weapon at all.

  You just need to build a big, honking roller coaster.

  6

  WE PULL INTO THE PARKING LOT BEHIND THE HOUSE.

  There are about a dozen white cruisers (detailed in beachy turquoise and flamingo pink) angled into slots on the hot asphalt. The cop cars are flanked by assorted civilian cars, including my Jeep. Ceepak, on the other hand, rides his trail bike to work, lets his wife Rita have their one car, a dinged-up old Toyota.

  The Sea Haven PD building looks like a sprawling split-level suburban home where the world’s biggest ham radio operator lives. We have this huge antenna tower with all sorts of booms and masts angling off it—and still, our TV reception in the break room stinks.

  When we hit the lobby, Chief Buzz Baines, who looks like a handsome TV anchorman back when they all used to have mus
taches, is escorting a lumbering Italian bear through the gate in the wooden railing that separates the police from the public.

  Bruno Mazzilli. The baron of the boardwalks. He now owns all four of the amusement piers jutting out into the ocean, including Pier Four, which he purchased at a steal according to what Samantha Starky’s mom told me. Mrs. Starky works in real estate. She knows who owns everything and how much they paid for it. Makes me nervous sometimes. Then again, I don’t own anything except my Jeep, and I sort of share that with PNC Bank.

  “Ceepak! Boyle!” The chief sees us. “Awesome work out there this morning, guys. Awesome.”

  “I only wish we had reached the roller coaster car sooner,” says Ceepak.

  “Hey,” says Bruno Mazzilli, “your number’s up, it’s up, am I right?”

  Ceepak does not answer.

  Mazzilli turns to the chief. “So, you’ll lean on the M.E.?”

  The chief’s mustache twitches. “I will ask Dr. Kurth to make her findings public ASAP.”

  “Good, good. That’s all I’m askin’. Sooner people hear my partner’s wife had a heart attack because, you know, she had a bum ticker or whatever, the sooner they know it wasn’t our fault. We spent a fortune making sure Rolling Thunder is one hundred percent safe.” He turns to us. “Thanks again, boys. You made the whole town look good, runnin’ up the roller coaster like that and all. Makes tourists feel comfortable coming down here knowin’ we got a world-class police operation. The roller coaster reopens next weekend. Let me know if you guys need free tickets. I’ll fix you up with a stromboli, too.”

  Mmm. Stromboli. A rolled-dough sandwich stuffed with salami, provolone, pepperoni, peppers, garlic, and onions, then baked so the grease soaks into the crust. If you don’t puke it up on the first hill of your roller coaster ride, you’ll fart it out on the second.

  “See you ’round, Buzz.”

  Mazzilli leaves.

  “You guys hungry?” asks the chief, maybe picking up on that whole stromboli thread.

  Truth be told, I’m starving. I skipped breakfast, figuring I might snag some fried chicken fingers rolled in Cap’n Crunch on the boardwalk. But then we had to run up a few scaffolded hills, instead.

  Ceepak? The man could live on bran flakes, fruit, and power bars.

  “Sam Starky brought in doughnuts,” the chief adds.

  Ceepak must see the starved-puppy look in my eyes.

  “Doughnuts sound good,” he says.

  I shrug. Try to not drool.

  Ceepak smiles. “After you, Danny.”

  I lead the way to the break room and I hear this playful little chuckle behind me.

  Ceepak. I think me and my stomach amuse him.

  “You guys were incredible! I heard the whole thing on the radio, and then Cliff dedicated that Springsteen song, ‘Local Hero,’ to you two, and I said to my friend Kim, ‘I know those two guys, in fact, one’s my boyfriend.’ Here, Danny. This one is the Vanilla Kreme, the kind with the wedding cake white frosting you like in the middle, not the custardy yellow gunk you don’t like because it reminds you of …”

  She almost says snot because I think I said it on one of our Sunday-morning-after-Saturday-night Dunkin’ Donuts runs. The Bavarian Kremes. Who wants to see that much mucus in the morning?

  Sam bubbles on. “You want some coffee, Ceepak? This box is regular, this box is French vanilla.”

  Why do I think there was a third box of hazelnut that Starky has already guzzled? Then again, maybe not. Samantha Starky is a lot like a Colombian coffee bean: naturally caffeinated. She was a part-time summer cop last year, took a bunch of criminology classes at the nearby community college, then decided she’d rather be a district attorney than a police officer, so now she’s cramming for her LSATs.

  Her naturally percolated state? Very conducive to good grades.

  “So, Danny, how’s Skippy holding up?” she asks.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “He looked rather shaken,” adds Ceepak. “I think he blames his brother Kevin for insisting their mother ride the roller coaster this morning. Apparently, she was somewhat reluctant to do so.”

  “Wow,” says Sam. “The whole family must feel horrible.”

  No, I want to say, not the youngest son. He’s all kinds of happy. And Peter. We haven’t heard from him yet because he’s gay and they wouldn’t let him ride the ride.

  “My mom heard that the funeral will probably be this Friday at Our Lady of the Seas. Poor Skippy.” Sam has met Skip. On one of our dates, we played miniature golf at King Putt, the course he works at for his father. “I bet this is tearing him up.”

  “Yeah.” I say. “He always gets kind of emotional.”

  Actually, Skippy cries a lot. Has ever since elementary school when he was the kid you’d see bawling his eyes out when he missed the ball in kickball.

  I don’t hang out with Skip O’Malley too much anymore, not since this one time at the Sand Bar when we were all sharing a couple of pitchers of draft and, as a joke, my buddy Jess played that Garth Brooks song on the jukebox, the one about lives left to chance and how he didn’t want to miss the dance, and Skippy couldn’t take it. The guy sobbed through a whole stack of paper napkins.

  “He really wanted to be a cop,” says Starky.

  “Indeed,” says Ceepak. “Unfortunately, if I’m honest, he did not display a genuine aptitude for the job.”

  He must be remembering busting Skippy’s chops for yammering on his cell phone in the middle of Ocean Avenue a couple of summers ago when he was supposed to be directing traffic around a sewer excavation.

  “Yeah,” says Sam. “And then, of course, last fall he cheated.”

  “Come again?”

  Okay. Sam’s got Ceepak’s interest. Mine, too.

  “Oh, jeez. I thought you guys knew. And here I am, blabbing my big mouth. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Come on, Sam,” I say. “What happened?”

  “You promise you won’t tell a soul?”

  “Scout’s honor,” I say.

  “You have my word,” adds Ceepak.

  “Well, you know he was in the Alternate Route Program, paid his own way to the Cape May County Police Academy. Anyway, they have this weekly exam every Friday, and I guess the teacher left the answer key on his lectern on Thursday, and Skippy copied it and even tried to sell the cheat sheet to this other guy who turned him in because, well, it’s really not right to cheat on a test about important stuff like how to deal with death notices and what’s the legal alcohol limit. I sure wouldn’t want a brain surgeon who cheated on his anatomy exam and thought my brain was, I don’t know, in my elbow or something.”

  Ceepak and I just sip our coffees and nod.

  “Hey—you guys want to go out and celebrate your heroics tonight? You’re not working tomorrow—I checked the duty roster. You both have the day off. We don’t have to stay out too late.”

  “I can’t,” says Ceepak. “I promised T.J. I would watch some DVDs with him tonight. In Harm’s Way, The Caine Mutiny.”

  I nod.

  Navy movies.

  Ceepak’s adopted son T.J. Lapczynski-Ceepak (yes, his name sounds like something you need an ointment to cure) is shipping off to Annapolis soon, made it into the United States Naval Academy. He’s already cut off all his dreadlocks and is working on having a few tattoo sleeves erased from his arms.

  “Well, we’re not doing anything else tonight, are we, Danny? We could hit Big Kahuna’s Dance Club. They have this awesome band tonight. Steamed Broccoli.”

  We.

  Over the winter and spring, without even realizing it, I gradually became part of a We, which is much more complicated than a Wii, the cool video game where you get to sprain your wrist playing tennis in your underwear.

  Samantha Starky and I are a couple. I guess. We don’t live together or anything, but we have passed the sixth-date mark and I now know that she stows her toothbrush in a souvenir Pocahontas glass from Burger King.

&n
bsp; “Big Kahuna’s sounds like fun,” I say.

  One of Ceepak’s cell phones chirps on his utility belt.

  He wears two: one for business, one for family.

  “Hello?”

  It’s the family phone. When it’s business, he answers, “This is Ceepak. Go.”

  He puts down his coffee cup.

  “Are you injured? Okay. No. Stay there. We’re on our way.”

  He snaps the clamshell shut.

  “What’s up?”

  “Rita. Somebody crashed into her car in the parking lot of the Acme grocery store.”

  “She need us to write up the accident report?”

  “Apparently, it wasn’t an accident. Rita suspects the other driver rammed into her car on purpose.”

  7

  “I WAS OVER THERE, PUTTING AWAY MY GROCERY CART.”

  Mrs. Ceepak points to the cart corral structure about twenty yards away from her Toyota. While she was off doing what any Ceepak would do (stowing an empty grocery cart in its proper parking spot as opposed to, say watching it roll downhill toward Ocean Avenue where it almost causes a wicked motorcycle wipeout), somebody else was banging into the rear end of her 1995 Toyota Corolla hatchback.

  We’re in the parking lot of the Acme, the biggest grocery store on the island. In the summer months, it’s basically a giant Cookout Depot stocked with hamburgers, hot dogs, matching buns, marshmallows, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. You can buy potato chips in bags the size of pillows. Salsa or pickles in five-gallon drums.

  Ceepak crouches down to inspect the damage.

  The right rear bumper is kind of crumpled. The plastic red-and-yellow brake light casing is cracked. There’s a streak of red paint slashing across the fender.

  “It was a red vehicle?” says Ceepak.

  “Yes,” says Rita. “A red pickup truck. An older Ford. It had Ohio license plates.”

  “And you say this wasn’t an accident?”

  “He rammed into our car on purpose, John. I saw him. He aimed his wheels at the bumper, then stepped on the gas and—boom! I’m just glad I wasn’t in the car.”

  Rita rubs the back of her neck. Sympathetic whiplash.

  “You saw that the driver was a man?” Even though Rita is his wife, Ceepak is giving her the same “just the facts, ma’am” treatment Joe Friday from Dragnet probably gave Mrs. Friday when he was off-camera.