Petco? Some eyeshadow factory that's laying off lab workers? I don't know, but I guess Hart did.
People fled his pigsties. Mostly senior citizens. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Hart was named “Slumlord of the Year,” but he got what he wanted-empty apartment buildings he could gut, gussy, fumigate, and flip. He did it a couple hundred times and made a ton of money. Then he started shopping for casinos and malls and high-end hotels. Hart was playing Monopoly on a really big board.
Mr. Hart is, correction,
And his daughter watched him die.
I did like Ceepak said. I radioed the base and in about thirty seconds every cop car on the island came screaming down Ocean Avenue to back me up.
Chief Cosgrove was first on the scene.
He's a big, burly 300-pound bear and when he starts growling orders, everybody hops to it. I don't even know Cosgrove's first name. I think it might be Bob, or Robert, but everybody calls him “Chief.”
“Lock down the causeway,” he says to Mark Malloy, this muscle-bound cop with a year-round tan.
“Right, chief!”
“Roadblock!”
Malloy jumps into his cruiser, but not fast enough for the chief.
“Move it! Hustle. Go!”
Cosgrove is like a junior-high gym teacher. He's always yelling at you to move it or lose it, haul ass, get the lead out-effective motivational stuff like that.
Malloy does a quick whoop with his siren, swirls his roof lights, and races off to blockade the bridge.
Those people who honked at me when I stopped them on Ocean Avenue? Man, are they going to be bummed with they bump into Malloy. The causeway is the only way on or off the eighteen-mile strip of sand we call Sea Haven Township. Unless, of course, you've got a boat. Lots of boats down here. There's even a pirate ship, but it's mostly a theme restaurant so it really wouldn't make a very good getaway vessel.
As I'm standing on the sidewalk in front of Pudgy's Fudgery watching a half-dozen cops running around, I realize that this is probably the worst crime this town has ever seen. Usually we deal with smaller stuff. Like stolen tricycles.
The chief marches up and sticks his face into mine.
“Where the hell is Ceepak?”
“Securing the crime scene, sir.”
“Good.”
Cosgrove walks away and retrieves a big blanket from the back of his Chief Car-a hulking Ford Expedition. It's way bigger than my Explorer and has the black-tinted privacy glass. There's not much turquoise and pink on the chief's vehicle. His police car is more Darth Vader death star, less friendly flamingo.
The chief galumphs into Pudgy's to get Hart's daughter, who's still inside with a couple cops. Guys with guns.
I look down the street at Sunnyside Playland and wonder what kind of gruesome stuff Ceepak is looking at right now.
All I see is Sunnyside Clyde's big beaming face on a billboard near the entrance. Clyde is Playland's mascot-a baggy-panted surfer dude with a big ray-rimmed sun for a head. He's always wearing dark sunglasses; but I never understood this, because if his head is the sun, how come he needs sunglasses?
“Cover me!” I hear the chief bark.
He has the girl bundled up in the blanket and is hustling her out the front door. Two cops with pistols flank him. When the girl's strapped into the back seat, she sees me and waves goodbye.
I wave back.
I see that Amy Decosimo insisted the girl take home some free fudge. She's clutching the clean white box against her bloody dress.
Cosgrove slams the door shut.
“Kid?” Cosgrove is in my face again. Apparently, he doesn't know my first or last name.
“Yes, sir?”
“What's your 10–38?”
He's using cop code. Something I should have studied more or maybe even memorized.
“What's your destination?”
“I, uh … I….”
“Go help Ceepak,” the chief says, checking his watch. “Tell him I've contacted State. The cavalry's on its way.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Move it!” Cosgrove barks. “Get the lead out, son.”
I do as I'm told.
Just like in junior high gym class.
CHAPTER FOUR
I've never seen a dead body before.
Well, I saw my grandfather's at his funeral, but he was all dressed up in a suit and tie and lying in his coffin. He even had on make-up, something he wouldn't have been caught dead doing when he was alive.
The weirdest part was his hair.
Grandpa always had a crewcut flattop, a holdover from World War II. The funeral director didn't know my grandfather, so he slicked his bristly hair over to the side and grandpa didn't look like grandpa any more.
I'm thinking about this stuff because I don't want to think about what's waiting for me down at the Tilt-A- Whirl.
Reginald Hart's dead body.
One of our guys, Sergeant Dominic Santucci, had snapped off the padlock on Playland's front gate with this humongous wire-cutter tool, so I didn't have to scale the fence. He's stationed at the gate to wait for the state police and the medical examiner and “the meat wagon,” as he called it. Santucci's a hardass and wants everybody to know it.
I walk down the pathway. Past the Sunnyside Clyde garbage cans where you stuff your trash into Mr. Sunbeam's wide-open mouth. Past Pirate Pete's Pretzels. Past the Sea Dragon, past the Water Balloon Pistols, past the Knock ’Em Down.
Down to the Tilt-A-Whirl and my first dead body.
I've heard stories about how cops love to initiate rookies; love to bust a gut laughing while they watch the new guy lose his cookies when he sees his first fresh corpse. Santucci was cracking gum and smirking when he let me in the gate.
“What'd you eat for breakfast, kid?” he asked. “Never mind. Don't tell me. We'll see soon enough.”
Then he laughed his Dominic-the-Donkey laugh and cracked his gum some more.
I come to the entrance to the Tilt-A-Whirl, wishing there was a long line ahead of me.
There isn't. And I'm tall enough to ride this ride.
“Ceepak?”
“In here,” he says. “Careful where you step, Danny.”
I'm sweating. My mouth is dry but sticky.
Ceepak meets me on the pathway.
“Danny?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I know you've never done this before. Never seen a dead body. But you don't have to act brave. Not for me, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
He steps aside.
