Rolling Thunder

  “Why the late night call on Thursday?”

  “She was in a jam, didn’t know what to do. I guess this drunk jerk at the house grabbed her and sucked on her neck so hard he gave her a hickey, like they were in high school.”

  I remember seeing the neck hickey.

  “She booked, hopped in her car, went speeding out of there, like fifty in a fifteen zone.”

  Remember that, too.

  “A couple of cops pulled her over. Gave her a warning.”

  Ceepak and I are both nodding now.

  “She thought the guy who’d been groping her might cause trouble. Kick her out of the club. And that would mean losing everything!”

  He pauses. Realizes that, in the end, Gail lost a whole lot more.

  “Anyway, I told her she should call her guy. Tell him what this other guy had tried to do. I figured her sugar daddy would protect his …”

  He wants to say property.

  “… investment. Gail thought that was a great idea. Said she was going to text him right away. I reminded her it was nearly midnight. She told me she didn’t care.”

  It all lines up with what we already know.

  Big Paddy O’Malley had to be Gail Baker’s sugar daddy.

  That’s who she texted after she called Charzuk.

  “She’d gone to that house to celebrate,” he adds, shaking his head.

  “Celebrate what?”

  “I think this is why she didn’t want to fool around with me anymore. She had convinced herself she had a shot at actually marrying her guy. ‘Becoming the next Mrs. Moneybags,’ is what she said when we went out dancing Tuesday night. I guess her guy had just dumped his wife—something they all say but never really do.”

  “How well do you know Peter O’Malley?” says Ceepak.

  “He’s my boss. He designs the landscapes, hires me and a couple other guys to do the installations. The heavy lifting.”

  “And how does Peter O’Malley feel about his father?” asks Ceepak.

  “Big Paddy?”

  “Right.”

  “They’re not very close.”

  “Would Peter be happy to see his father go to jail?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

  “I’m interested in your opinion.”

  “Well, I know he doesn’t like his old man, but he doesn’t hate him like he hated his mother. I think she tried to send him to a camp in Texas to cure him of being gay or something.”

  “Did Peter O’Malley in any way coach you on what to tell us tonight?”

  “Peter? Why would he do that?”

  “Did he?”

  “No. I just didn’t want to come down here alone. I called a couple people. Peter was the only one willing to come with me.”

  “Commendable,” says Ceepak. “He must be a very good boss.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ceepak stands up. “You’ll be in town for the foreseeable future?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We may need to talk to you again.”

  Now I stand, and Mike Charzuk takes the hint. We’re done. He’s free to go. He can stand, too.

  “I hope you guys catch whoever killed Gail,” he says, sliding his chair under the table.

  “Rest assured, Mr. Charzuk,” says Ceepak. “We will.”

  Yeah, even if it was one of the town’s big dogs.

  Like Big Paddy or—even bigger—our mayor.

  22

  “I WISH PETER O’MALLEY WASN’T CONNECTED TO MIKE Charzuk,” says Ceepak as we roll south, heading back to number One Tangerine.

  “You think O’Malley is pushing Charzuk to say bad stuff about Big Paddy?”

  “Mr. Charzuk insists that such is not the case. So, I will take him at his word.”

  I’m driving. Ceepak’s thinking.

  I can always tell. He gets this faraway look in his squinty eyes, like he’s back in the turret up top on an armored personnel carrier over in Iraq, hunting unseen enemies.

  “Let’s stop at Three Tangerine first, Danny,” he says after a long moment of tire-humming silence.

  “Mrs. D’Ambrosio and Puck?”

  Ceepak nods. “According to Mr. Charzuk, very powerful men, including Mayor Sinclair, were occasional guests at the so-called Sugar Shack.”

  “Mayor Sinclair’s married,” I say. “Three kids.”

  “I suspect most of the men fit that same profile.”

  Yeah. They’re all cheaters—putting them in direct violation of Ceepak’s honor code.

  “Danny, do you remember what Mayor Sinclair said to us on the steps of the stationhouse?”

  I’m ready to answer, “Have a sunny, funderful day,” because that’s what the doofus says every time he gets half a chance. But Ceepak fills in the blanks for me:

  “‘Let’s not bother the neighbors too much up and down Tangerine Street.’”

  “Right! Probably because they’d seen him hanging out where maybe he shouldn’t have been hanging out.”

  And I mean that last bit literally.

  “Let’s go bother the next-door neighbor,” says Ceepak, a glint in his eye. I think it’s the glint he got when he scoped out a sniper nobody else had seen up in a Baghdad bell tower.

  Mrs. D’Ambrosio greets us at her front door in the same bathrobe she was wearing earlier, even though it’s almost ten o’clock at night. She’s cradling Puck in her arms.

  “What’s with all the police next door?” she asks.

  “The State Police Office of Forensics Sciences is investigating what we believe to be a crime scene.”

  “At the frat house?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Sorry. That’s what I call it. Some nights, it’s like that movie Gorilla House over there.”

  I think she means Animal House.

  “Loud parties?” says Ceepak.

  “Let’s say boisterous. A lot of high-pitched squeals and giggles from the girls. Very young girls.”

  “Have you ever filed a complaint?”

  “No. Officer Santa Lucci told me it would be a bad idea.”

  “You mean Sergeant Santucci of the Sea Haven Police Department?”

  “Is he really a cop?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Huh. He told me he was. Wasn’t in uniform, though. Didn’t have a badge except this thing that said ‘Security.’ My kid has one just like it, only his says ‘Deputy.’”

  “When did you talk to Officer Santucci?”

  “Two weeks ago. When I first moved in. He told me I was early, that the season didn’t really start till the fourth of July. He was dressed all in black so I didn’t argue.”

  He must’ve been working his side job—Italian Stallion Security.

  “Anyway, he told me the ‘festivities’ next door at number one would die down at the end of the month, that the house would be rented out to tenants on a week-to-week basis. But, until such time, the police weren’t interested in hearing from me about anything going on next door because some very important people with even more important friends owned the property. So, if I did complain, well … I’m not sure … but it sounded like I might be the one who’d end up getting arrested because, as Mr. Santa Lucci pointed out, this house has several code violations.”

  “Did he mention what those might be?”

  “No. He didn’t have to. I understood what he meant: If I made trouble for the boys next door, they’d make worse trouble for me. I know they know the mayor.”

  “You’ve seen him next door?”

  “Once. Came in a SUV with tinted windows. Puck and I peeked through the curtains. Saw him go inside. Probably up to the third-floor deck. That’s where they have the hot tub. And you should see the girls running around over there in their skimpy bikinis. It’s like an invasion of Playboy Bunnies—only Playboy Bunnies wear more clothes.”

  “What about last night?” says Ceepak. “Did Officer Santucci come over here again?”

  “He didn’t have to. I got the message the
first time.”

  “Ms. D’Ambrosio?”

  “Yes?”

  “You are free to call the Sea Haven Police Department any time you have a complaint or problem of any sort.”

  “Really? What about Officer Santa Lucci?”

  “I would not worry about him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’d be surprised if he’s on the force much longer.”

  We hike next door and join the cluster of State CSI guys outside the shower stall.

  “You guys nailed it,” says Detective Botzong. “This is definitely our crime scene.”

  “Danny played a hunch,” says Ceepak, giving me all the credit like he does every time I stumble into doing something smart.

  “Good hunch, Boyle.” Botzong shows us a bar of Irish Spring in a Baggie. “See the fingernail marks?”

  “They’re rather deep,” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah. She really gouged it. I figure she tightened her grip on the bar when our doer burst in and surprised her. That’s why we found the soap residue so far up under her nails.”

  “And the shampoo?”

  “It’s a match.”

  “So if she was taking a shower out here—”

  “It would explain why we didn’t find blood splattered on her clothing.”

  “She was naked when she was assaulted.”

  “Exactly. The perp folds up her clothes, stuffs them in the suitcases on top of her severed limbs, maybe keeps the T-shirt for a trophy.”

  Ceepak gestures toward the walls. “Did you find blood in here?”

  “Yeah. Carolyn Miller scraped off one of those white globs. The guy tried to paint over the evidence. Stupid idea. Carolyn’s in the van, running a preliminary scan with our portable spectrometer. See if we can ID the paint. Run it through the database. Excuse me. You guys ready with the video?”

  “All set,” says a CSI guy toting a Sony digital camera.

  “We’re about to do the Luminol,” says Botzong.

  Luminol is used to detect trace amounts of blood left at crime scenes because it reacts with the iron found in hemoglobin (the oxygen-toting compound in the blood) in a process called chemiluminescence, which sounds like something they’d say in a TV commercial for cosmetics when it’s actually the same thing that makes firefly butts and light sticks glow. The glow show won’t last forever, so the MCU guys will roll video to record the splotches that will show up with a bluish-green luminescence.

  “Spray that wall where Carolyn scraped the sample,” Botzong says to another tech.

  The guy does.

  The wall is splattered with glowing blue-green dots.

  “Do the other wall.”

  The guy sprays again. More dots glow. It’s almost like somebody flicked a wet paintbrush drenched in blood against the wall.

  The Luminol goes on all four walls. All four walls put on a polka-dot lightning bug show.

  Ceepak hunkers down. Strokes his chin. Stares into the shower stall.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he mumbles.

  “Agreed,” says Botzong, who hunkers down beside Ceepak. They look like two guys playing touch football about to scratch out a play in the dirt.

  “Typically,” says Ceepak, “the blood would splatter in a pattern dictated by the movement of the weapon.”

  I nod because I studied this in cop school. A guy whacks somebody in the head, pulls the hammer back, swings for the head again, pulls it back. Every time he pulls it back, he sends up a stream of blood droplets off the hammer head that splatter on the ceiling or wall or whatever.

  But these splatter patterns are on all four walls.

  “Maybe he worked his way around her?” suggests Botzong.

  “Or maybe she was thrashing,” says Ceepak.

  Botzong nods. “The blood gets in her hair. We get this paintbrush-type pattern.”

  “Was there much blood in her hair?”

  “Nope. This does not compute.”

  “Was there any other evidence in the shower?”

  “A couple of hairs. Long ones. We think they belong to the girl. We dusted for prints. The door. The spigots. Nothing.”

  Ceepak cocks up an eyebrow. “Not even from the victim?”

  Botzong shakes his head. “The doer might have wiped things down when he was done.”

  “Doing so would have smeared the blood splatter patterns. We’d be seeing streaks and smudges, not droplets.”

  “Yeah. We need to get into the house. Look around. How goes the warrant?”

  “Slow,” says Ceepak. “Unfortunately, some high-level locals were involved in the activities that took place in this home.”

  “How high up are we talking here?”

  “We’ve got the mayor and a couple of state senators,” I toss in. “Plus the guy who owns most of the boardwalk amusements. And the head of the chamber of commerce.”

  “What exactly were they all doing here?” asks Botzong.

  “Having sex with young women who were not their wives,” says Ceepak, so matter-of-factly, it sounds like they came here to have their teeth cleaned.

  He flicks up his wrist. Checks his watch.

  “Danny, I think we need to split up. Transport me back to the house. I will contact Chief Baines. Stress the urgency of obtaining the warrant to search the house. Work the phones if need be. Call Judge Rasmussen.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask.

  “See if you can locate your friend Marny Minsky. She was most likely here last night. Perhaps she can fill in some gaps for us.”

  “I’ll check out Big Kahuna’s. Some of the other hot spots.”

  “Warrant or not,” says Detective Botzong, “we’re locking this house down. No one’s going in until we do.”

  “Can we do that?” I ask.

  “One of the perks of the job,” says Botzong. “We can restrict entry while waiting for a warrant.”

  I turn to Ceepak, my Legal Eagle. He nods. It’s all good.

  A pimped-out ride with one of those subwoofers the size of a washing machine crawls up Tangerine Street. It also has a muffler that’s been monkeyed with so it’ll sound like a bass guitar with a bad case of gas. The combination makes the ground shake enough to put us on the Richter scale.

  The rolling boom box comes to the end of the street.

  Sean O’Malley is behind the wheel. Even in silhouette, I recognize his dorky cab–driver hat. He sees us seeing him. Gives us a wiggly finger wave.

  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 l
ast 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.”