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.”
13
Here’s what Ceepak didn’t tell me right away: Gail’s jeans and lower body are stuffed inside a suitcase with her decapitated head.
Her torso and arms are in a second suitcase.
We’re on Tangerine Street, a block and a half from where it dead-ends at the sand dunes.
My buddy Joey Thalken, who works with the Sea Haven Sanitation Department, is leaning against the back of his white garbage truck. Joey’s the one who found the two rolling suitcases. He unzipped one to see why it was so heavy. Then he hurled.
I did the same thing the first time I saw a dead body. And mine hadn’t been taken apart like a mannequin headed to storage.
“It’s horrible, man,” Joey says when Ceepak and I join him at the back of his truck. “I’ve never seen any … who could … what … did you see her, Danny?”
I nod.
“Sick.…” Joey barely spits out the word. “Some seriously sick dude did that, man.”
Two of our guys, Dominic Santucci and Dylan Murray, have already crime-scene-taped the sand-and-pea- pebble parking pad in front of 145 Tangerine Street. The two suitcases-both about three feet tall-are sitting close to where Joe found them: leaning against a pressure-treated lumber enclosure built to corral six thirty-gallon garbage cans.
“You can’t put out household items or bulk trash on Fridays,” says Joey. “Just regular trash. No construction debris, no old furniture, no suitcases …”
No dismembered bodies.
“When did you discover the body?” asks Ceepak.
“An hour ago. Eleven. Hey, Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it Gail? From the Scupper?”
My turn to nod.
“Jeez-o, man,” says Joey.
Joe Thalken, being a male with a pulse, had, no doubt, spent a few lunch hours ogling Gail Baker’s hot bod while wrestling with a leathery hamburger. Now he’s seen it broken apart like a Barbie doll after a temper tantrum.
“Is there anyone we can call for you?” Ceepak asks.
“I’ll be okay. Just need another minute.”
“Should we contact the Sanitation Department, have them send someone over to relieve you?”
“No. I need to finish my route.”
“No you don’t, Joe,” says Ceepak. “Not today.”
“Yeah. I do.”
Ceepak nods. He and I have worked with Joey T. on a couple of things in the past. We know he is a creature of habit, a Virgo who doesn’t like varying his routine. The routine gives him comfort. Maybe today, the same-old same-old will help him cope with the most extraordinarily horrible thing he’s ever seen in his life.
