Ceepak strides across the pebble lawn. I’m right behind him. Ceepak gives Sean the universal kindly-roll- down-your-window-sir signal. O’Malley complies. Now the throbbing bass line has lyrics. Bad ones about ho’s and niggaz.
“Evening, officers.”
“Turn it down.”
“Yo-is cranking tunes against the law?”
“Yes. In fact, two of them: The hours between ten P.M. and seven A.M. are designated as quiet hours throughout the residential areas of Sea Haven Township. Also, it is against local noise ordinances for a car stereo to be heard from a distance of fifty feet away. I heard you over at the shower stall, which is sixty feet away.”
Ceepak counted his lawn strides. Awesome.
Sean turns down the crunk junk.
“May I ask what you’re doing here, Mr. O’Malley?”
“Just chillin’.”
“May I suggest you do it somewhere else?”
Sean leans across the passenger seat, tries to look around Ceepak’s bulky body, which is blocking his view. “What’s with all the po-po’s?”
“Kindly move along.”
“Whas goin’ down?”
I step forward because I speak white-boy rap: “Roll out. Bail.”
That means beat it.
“Aw-ite. Aw-ite.” Sean rolls up his window. I glance into his back seat.
“Ceepak?” I say as I give him a sideways head bob.
Sean O’Malley’s transporting a pair of porno gnomes. The copulating Smurfs we saw on the porch last night are bouncing around on his back seat. Sean pulls a U-turn at the dead end where the street butts up against the dunes, crunches across some seashells.
“Should we stop him?” I ask.
“We can’t,” says Ceepak. “There’s no law against transporting lawn ornaments.”
“Maybe he stole them.”
“No theft has been reported.”
“So, what’s he doing with them in his car?”
“Perhaps he is in charge of tidying up for his father or his father’s friends.”
“Bill?” It’s Carolyn Miller-the CSI genius who pegged the tire treads. She’s coming out of the state team’s mobile lab.
“What’ve you got?” says Botzong.
“I don’t think that white gunk is paint,” she says.
“Come again?”
“It’s shoe polish. White shoe polish.”
When I hear that, all I can think of is Big Paddy O’Malley’s seersucker suit.
And, of course, his white buck shoes.
23
“You know, mr. O’Malley wears white shoes all the time,” I say. “It’s like his official costume. The way Springsteen and the E Street Band always wear black.”
Behind the wheel, Ceepak nods.
“So he probably has gallons of white shoe polish to paint over blood stains.”
“But why would Mr. O’Malley want to kill Ms. Baker?” Ceepak asks. “They seemed to have had an understanding in regards to their sexual liaisons.”
“I dunno. Maybe, once Mrs. O’Malley had her heart attack, Gail started pressuring him to get married, like Charzuk said.”
“You need to find Ms. Minsky, Danny. She might know if Gail Baker was, indeed, pressuring Mr. O’Malley. It might give him sufficient motive.”
We hit the house.
Chief Baines is there.
“John? We need to talk.”
“Indeed we do. Sergeant Dominic Santucci has been threatening citizens with official retribution if they instigate any form of complaint against one of his security firm’s clients.”
“Santucci? I wanted to talk about this house on Tangerine Street.”
“Santucci’s involved with that as well.”
“Well, Mayor Sinclair-”
“Has been a visitor to what can best be described as a sex den for Sea Haven’s wealthiest citizens.”
The guys clocking in for the late shift are moving through the lobby a little more slowly than usual. You mention a “sex den,” they’ll do that.
“Married men consorting with girls young enough to be their daughters-”
Ceepak, of course, is simply stating what he knows to be the truth, because that’s what Ceepak always does.
“Not here,” says the chief. “In my office.”
They disappear behind a door and I head into the locker room to change into my civvies. I’m more or less working undercover tonight. I need to blend in. Might even need to wear a backwards baseball cap.
First stop is Big Kahuna’s.
I slip Phil the doorman ten bucks and get my hand stamped.
It’s about 11:30 on a Friday night. The place is packed with locals blowing off steam, blowing their paychecks. Bud is behind the bar, popping tops off plastic long-neck bottles of beer. My pal Cliff Skeete is seated at the sound controls. There’s no live band tonight, so Cliff is picking up some extra cash spinning tunes on his, believe or not, computer. Turntables are so last millennium.
I make my way across the dance floor. Cliff has his headphones draped around his neck and is bopping to the prefabricated electronic beat of the Underdog Project’s “Girls Of Summer.” As far as I can tell, the lyrics are all about girls walking in the sand with honey-coated complexions and cinnamon tans. Plus a lot of yeah-uh-yeah- yeahs.
“Yo, Cliff!”
“Danny boy!”
“You got any Springsteen in your iTunes library?”
“How old-school you gonna get on me, brurva?”
We knock knuckles. “You seen Marny?” I ask.
“Minsky?”
“Yeah.”
“Not tonight, bro. Who you with?”
“Nobody. I’m kind of on the job.”
“For real? This is what cops do? Go clubbin’?”
“Only when we have to. How you been holdin’ up since the remote?” I ask Cliff, who lets his supercool mackdaddy face droop, but only for a second.
“Hangin’ in.”
“Cool. Catch you later,” I say, because I see Sean O’Malley at the bar.
He’s with a girl, not a garden gnome. A different girl, not the Argentine firecracker from last weekend. This girl is short, brunette, and built. I figure she’s a girl of summer-got a honey-coated complexion and a cinnamon tan.
Wow.
