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Authors: Chris Grabenstein

BOOK: Hell Hole
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“Negative. Never heard of a Ceepak. Then again—it's a big war.”
“Yeah.”
“We were with the three-one-three out of the Eighty-second. Echo Company.”
I nod like I know what the numbers mean, which I don't.
“Sergeant Dixon?” It's one of the other partiers—a tall, lanky guy in baggy shorts and flip-flops. He's on the patio waving a cell phone.
“What?”
“It's Smith.”
“Really?” Dixon takes a step toward the house. Pea pebbles crunch under his boots. “Kindly inform Corporal Smith that he is seriously late. This party began at nineteen hundred hours.”
The guy with the phone shakes his head. Looks upset.
“Corporal Smith is dead. Suicide.”
Show's over.
The strippers climb back into their van. Dixon pulls out a thick wad of bills, peels off several, and hands them to Ms. Rubber Bands behind the wheel.
“Thank you for being punctual,” he says.
The stripper shakes her head. “No—thank
you.”
The curls in her hair bounce like coils in a rusty bed frame. “Thank you for everything you guys, you know, did for America. You sure you don't want us to hang out? No charge.”
“Thank you, ma'am. But we have pressing company business to attend to.”
“Okay,” she says. “If you change your mind, you know how to reach us.”
Dixon chops her a salute. “Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.”
She giggles and salutes back. I'm reminded of Mariah Carey and a USO show. The van pulls away.
“Lieutenant Worthless?” Dixon calls to the lanky guy, the one who came out to the porch with the Nextel phone and the bad news.
“Yes?” Lanky limps across the patio. I'm thinking Lieutenant Worthless came home from Iraq with some souvenirs in his shin. Shrapnel.
“I need to go ID Smith's body.”
“I'll go, sir,” says this other guy who just came into the backyard. He's enormous—heftier than Dixon.
“Send me, chief!” Another one stumbles out the door. Italian nose. Hawaiian shirt.
“I'll go!” This one's a short, tough-looking dude, maybe Mexican. He has a khaki bandanna wrapped around his noggin.
There are now four juiced-up guys packed on the patio. All of them look like soldiers. All of them also look tanked.
Dixon addresses the one who volunteered first.
“Are you the squad leader of this unit, Mr. Rutledge?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Then stand down. Toss me your car keys.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Butt Lips?”
“Sir?”
“Go inside and grab me a couple cold beers for the ride.”
“Whoa,” I say. “Hold up.” I raise my hand. The guy Rutledge, the one with the extremely unfortunate nickname of Butt Lips, freezes.
Dixon doesn't like that. He eyeballs me like I'm an insect that just crawled out of his sleeping bag.
“Is there some problem, Officer Boyle?”
“Yeah. You're drunk. No way am I allowing you behind the wheel of any one of these vehicles. You'll kill somebody.”
“Duty calls,” he says. “The state police insist that one of us come down to their location and identify Corporal Smith's remains. His family, apparently, cannot perform that unwelcome task because they live in Baltimore.”
“I understand all that, okay? But you are not driving. Not tonight.”
Dixon inches closer. We're nearly nose to nose. Actually, it's more nose to sternum. I feel hot air seep through the vent holes in my cop cap as it steams out of the taller man's snout.
“Shall I call for backup, sir?”
Starky. Ms. One-Track-Mind. I believe she doubts my ability to defuse our current situation without heavily armed assistance. Maybe a full SWAT team.
I shake my head.
“Look, Sergeant Dixon,” I say, “you're drunk. Okay? You can not and will not drive a vehicle this evening.”
“One of my men needs me! I can't leave him like that. Jesus—dead in a stinking shithouse?”
“I understand. You need to be there. Fine. I'll radio in and get permission to drive you wherever you need to go.” I gesture toward our cop car. “We'll give you an official police escort. Flashing lights, siren, the works.”
Dixon gives me the slit eyes again.
“You ever see a dead body, son?”
“Yeah,” I answer.
One on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Number two came courtesy of the mad mouse. Then there was the guy I personally made dead. Yeah. I've seen a dead body or three. However, I see no need to rehash any of that with Sergeant Dixon.
But my “yeah” doesn't seem to suffice. He keeps at it.
“You ever see a man after he's jammed a pistol inside his mouth and blown the roof off his brain?”
I shake my head. No. That one I have not seen.
This seems to make Dixon ease up. Soften.
“Me, neither,” he says. “Fortunately, I've never had one of my men take the coward's way out before. Fucking Smith. Fucking chickenshit. This was supposed to be a party … .”
He reaches into a hip pocket on his cargo pants. Pulls out a leather cigar case. Pops it open, finds a plump stogie. Fires it up with the snapclick of his Zippo.
“Let's roll,” he says.
Starky and I follow him to our car. Hoo-ah. We're all off to see another dead body.
The desk sergeant gives me and Starky permission to escort Sergeant Dale Dixon down to the rest stop off exit 52 of the Garden State Parkway.
According to the state police, a janitor working the late shift discovered Corporal Shareef Smith's dead body locked inside a toilet stall in the men's room a little after 11:30 PM. The police also found a MapQuest map tucked inside Smith's shirt pocket. It indicated that he was on his way to 22 Kipper Street in Sea Haven, New Jersey. A cell phone number was scrawled in the margins of the map. So the state troopers called; Lieutenant “Worthless” answered.
The state police reported that Mr. Smith had jammed a pistol inside his mouth and blown a hole through the back of his skull. One shot. It's all you usually get when you take the do-it-yourself route.
Exit 52 on the GSP is ten miles south of the Sea Haven exit. But first you have to take the causeway off the island and head west on Route 22 to the entrance ramp. All told, we'll be chauffeuring Sergeant Dixon about fifteen miles.
Now we're crossing the bridge to the mainland, leaving behind the happy tourist world of miniature golf and soft serve ice cream and clam chowder and never-ending surf and fudge. Heading into the other New Jersey. The one where it isn't vacation every day all summer long.
I smell burning leaves.
Or fried dog poop.
“Sergeant?” Samantha Starky is sitting up front with me. I'm driving. Dixon is in the back, flicking his Zippo, firing up his cigar again. Frying the dog poop.
“What?”
“You can not smoke in this vehicle.”
Dixon makes like the refineries up near Newark and exhales an acrid cloud of stench. “Says who?”
Starky taps on a little
no smoking
sticker taped to our dashboard.
“Municipal ordinance fourteen fifty-two.”
I grin. I think she just made that up.
“Fucking civilian pussies …”
Reluctantly, Dixon raises his leg to grind the glowing tip of his relit
cigar into the heel of his boot. It's hard for him to maneuver in the backseat. The guy's so immense he had to fold himself up to sit sidesaddle across the transmission hump.
“You ever serve, miss?” Dixon asks.
“In what capacity?” replies Starky.
“Military. Army? Navy? Air Force? Marines?”
“Negative. I felt I could best serve my country by assisting in homeland security.”
“What? Back there in Sea Haven? Tough duty, ma'am. Patrolling the beach. Hell, come low tide, you could cut your foot on a fucking seashell.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That'll hurt. Seashell. Or a crab bite. Crabs always go for the toes.”
Hey, I don't mind sounding stupid. Especially if it means Dixon will lay off my partner-for-the-night and redirect his nicotine-deprived wrath at me.
“I did three tours in three years,” he says to me.
“Really? They kept rotating you back?”
“Negative. I volunteered. Wanted to earn a few more oak leaves.”
Oak leaves are what the Army gives you for being heroic in combat. I know because Ceepak has all sorts of medals and decorations. A whole forest of oak leaves. The difference? He never talks about his.
Dixon keeps going: “The silver oak leaf is the same as receiving the Distinguished Service Cross five different times,” he says proudly. “‘Given for extraordinary heroism in connection with a military operation against an opposing armed force.' You have to fight somebody to get it. Can't pick it up patrolling a beach in Jersey.”
Ceepak has the DSC too. Plus the Silver Star. That one they give for gallantry in a military operation. I asked him if I could look at it once. He said he'd shipped it home to Ohio. Gave it to his mom. Guess she keeps a scrapbook.
Dixon squirms around in the backseat some more. “Over there, you're presented with opportunities to be heroic on a daily basis because every-fucking-body who's not in your unit is your fucking enemy. Hell, the fucking Hajis blew up half of my men with chickenshit roadside
bombs. They even got Sully. John Sullivan. One of my best. So now, I tell my guys, ‘you see some Ali Baba with a cell phone, put a bullet in his skull because, chances are, he's using that phone to trigger another fucking bomb.'”
Now I wish Sergeant Dixon was smoking that cigar. Might not be able to talk so much with a tobacco stump corking his piehole.
“Sheriff Smith was a good man. Tough as they come. Definitely brought some noise to the sandbox.”
“I thought his name was Shareef. Shareef Smith.”
“I called him ‘Sheriff.'”
Sheriff Smith. Butt Lips. Worthless.
“You give all your guys a nickname, Sergeant Dixon?”
“Roger that.”
“So, what do they call you?” I ask, figuring “Dixon” is prime material for a humiliating handle.
“Stone.”
“How come?”
“Short for Stone Cold Killer.”
Oh-kay.
The tires hum. We glide west on Route 22. Pass the Home Depot. It's closed. A Pathmark grocery store. Closed too. A gigantic Beer Depot where I'm guessing “Stone Cold” Dixon and his squad filled up a couple shopping carts with crates of liquid refreshment. Up ahead, I can see the green-and-yellow sign pointing the way to the entrance ramp for the Garden State Parkway South.
“You ever see a dead body, ma'am?”
Here we go again.
“We'll be there soon,” I say, hoping to avoid another grisly lecture. I hear Dixon clicking open and shut the lid on his Zippo.
“Death never smells pretty,” he says. “Not like that perfume you're wearing. Jesus. You always wear perfume while helping to secure the fucking homeland?”
Starky keeps her back ramrod stiff, eyes tightly focused on the road ahead.
“Cigar helps cuts the stench of death,” says Dixon. “If you'd ever smelled it, you'd know. Hell, you'd be lighting up with me.”
“Gum works too,” I say.
“Come again?”
“Chewing gum. Or Vicks VapoRub. Smear it under you nose. Or, you can just breathe through your mouth.”
I sound stupid enough to shut Dixon up.
He sighs. Disgusted to be riding in the same car with two pukes such as Starky and myself. Good. Maybe he'll remain silent for the short haul down the Parkway.
I ease into the left-hand lane as we near the overpass. My entrance is on the other side. We wait at the traffic light.
I glance up into my rearview mirror. Dixon is staring out the window. Probably looking for someone with a cell phone he can kill.
Then I see something else. To my left.
A junky white Toyota heading home to Sea Haven.
I know he's heading home because I recognize the car.
It's my regular partner. John Ceepak. A man who never stays up past 10:00 PM because he wakes up every morning at five.
I check out the dashboard digital.
One thirty-two AM.

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