“Becca suggested I might find you here,” Ceepak says. “She told me to wait until fifteen forty-five.”
That's army talk for three forty-five P.M. I guess Becca wanted to give Katie and me fifteen minutes alone.
“What's up?” I ask.
“Not much. Just wanted to report in on my conversation with the chief.”
“And?”
“Are you free tomorrow evening? He'd like to take us out to dinner. I suspect he wants to discuss something with you.”
“The job?”
Ceepak refuses to rise to the bait. I never actually thought he would.
“Not knowing, can't say,” he says.
It doesn't matter.
It's The Job.
It's mine.
CHAPTER NINE
Friday morning. September first. I feel like a full-time cop already. I'm working sewer duty. Or maybe it's water main duty. Basically, I'm acting like a human traffic light-signaling cars to slow down and move into the center lane of Ocean Avenue so these backhoes can dig up the street and pull out eight-foot-wide sections of concrete pipe.
I hope it's a water main. I don't want to think about an eight-foot-wide tube of sewage, even if it is buried underneath a ton of asphalt.
You've got a lot of time to think about stupid stuff when you're a human traffic light and it's 92 degrees in the shade-of which there is absolutely none in the middle of Ocean Avenue. The heat makes me loopy. If I weren't wearing my cop cap, I think my head would melt.
Ceepak isn't directing traffic this morning. He's working with the bosses on the battle plan for Monday and the World's Biggest Beach Party and Boogaloo BBQ. I guess they want to make sure security is tight but loose-in other words, that we're all over the place but nobody notices. Every cop on the force, me included, will be on the clock Labor Day. The full-time guys probably score double overtime. I hope that's me next year. Double overtime sounds nice, especially when you think your head is about to melt.
I'd gone by the house this morning for roll call. Dominic Santucci was in the lobby standing next to the gumball machine. Why the police station has a gumball machine, I don't know. It's not like people on the street say: “I need some gum. Let's go see if the cops have any.” Maybe the gumballs are just for Santucci. He sure chews a lot of them. He likes to chomp while he sizes you up.
“I hear you're going on a date tonight,” Santucci said smugly. “You and the new chief.” He likes to think he's in the know on departmental scuttlebutt.
“Yeah. Sorry your boy won't be joining us.”
“My boy?”
“I figured, you know, you recommended someone else for the job. One of the other guys. One of the losers?”
“It ain't over till the fat bastard sings. Capeesh?”
Santucci tends to mangle his clichés like that, but I let it go, set my snicker on its silent mode.
Anyway, what he probably doesn't know is that dinner is scheduled for seven P.M. at Morgan's Surf and Turf. That's a swanky restaurant up Ocean Avenue, across the street from the big green water tower.
I'm working this dusty sewer-pipe detail with Skip O'Malley, another summertime cop. I know Skip applied for the full-time job like I did, but he's only twenty-one and hasn't helped solve any major crimes this summer.
I don't mean to gloat. I guess Ceepak somehow just managed to make me feel like I've got the job in the bag.
I turn around and see O'Malley at the other end of our detour-directing traffic with one hand, yakking on the cell phone he holds in the other. I know he's got this serious girlfriend so his phone is constantly glued to his ear. They talk so much I don't know what they talk about since they never seem to do anything except talk to each other.
A black Ford Expedition comes up Ocean. It's the chief's car. I see him behind the wheel.
I pivot and watch it cut this amazingly dangerous U-turn right in front of me. I would definitely write it up for a tire-squealing stunt like that but, like I said, it's the chief's car. He pulls off to the shoulder on the far side of the intersection.
I stand up a little straighter and flick my traffic-signaling wrist like a pro, like one of those white-gloved guys you always see on
I watch Ceepak climb out of the passenger side and stomp across the intersection-after waiting, of course, for the WALK signal to give him permission.
“Danny.” He acknowledges me as he marches past.
I just nod gravely and keep signaling my traffic. From the totally serious look on my face you'd think I'm trying to move motorists around a nuclear power plant meltdown, not a water-pipe installation. I do, however, crane my neck enough to see where Ceepak is going.
To jump in O'Malley's face.
Ceepak has his hands on his hips and leans in to give Skipper an earful. I see O'Malley close up his cell phone and clip it to his belt. He's fifty feet away, but I can see him go so bright red I wouldn't be surprised if all the cars down there slam on their brakes. With his big Irish head, he's starting to look like a stoplight.
Yeah. I gotta figure Skip O'Malley won't be offered the full-time job even if his father is on the town council, which, of course, he is.
I don't mean to gloat.
I'm just looking forward to dinner.
Thankfully, I was able to head home and grab a quick shower after work. Protecting bulldozers all day left me looking like some kind of rusty sand man, dusted with whatever red crap the backhoe scraped off the pipes down in that ditch.
After my shower, I made a couple of quick phone calls. Reached my folks out in Scottsdale. Told them what was up. Mom was proud. Dad was busy in the garage, tinkering with his golf cart. It's what they drive instead of cars at their condo complex. Knowing my dad, he's souping up the battery-powered engine so he can race guys to the 7-Eleven.
Next, I called Katie. She wished me luck and said to say “hey” to Olivia. Our friend is a waitress at Morgan's. Katie also recommended I stay away from the crab pie that Morgan's is famous for. “Too much butter. It'll clog your arteries.”
Wow. She's already worried about my arteries. Wow.
I told her I'd swing by tomorrow morning with a full report on my big night. She'll be at the taffy shop early because Tammy has to take Jimmy to his Saturday morning physical therapy appointment on the mainland. She also said she had something special she wanted to give me. A surprise.
I put on my blue button-down shirt.
It's the only one I own. Soon I'll probably have to buy a tie. Growing up can be expensive.
Morgan's Surf and Turf is crowded. This is one of those places the adults visiting the island go on that one night of their vacation when they hire a babysitter or get Grandma and Grandpa to look after the kids.
Morgan's is classy. The napkins here aren't paper and the place-mats don't come with crayons. The waiters and waitresses, even the busboys, all wear black pants and white shirts. Of course, everybody has on a different kind of black pants and a different kind of white shirt, so the uniform is sort of catch-as-catch-can. One dude may have on black Dockers, another black cargo pants, and nobody seems to iron their white shirts, because ironing usually involves steam, and very few folks want to be pumping steam in August. But all in all, the staff at Morgan's
