“Me! Me! Me!” echoed a chorus of young voices.
“Okay, Elizabeth, tell the class.”
“It comes before the Jurassic period. It’s when the first dinosaurs were born.”
“Very good,” said Miss Robbins. She led the pack inside the enormous exhibit hall.
The children, with wide-open eyes, approached a pair of teratosaurus skeletons.
“Our first meat eaters,” Miss Robbins said.
Matthew, the know-it-all, strayed from the group, hoping to find a critter he had not yet encountered on his dinosaur CD-ROM. He drew near a towering assemblage of bones he knew to be the plateosaurus, but what he saw between its legs didn’t fit. Maybe Miss Robbins could explain. He rejoined his classmates and tugged on the teacher’s skirt.
“Matthew, do you need to go to the boys’ room?”
“No, Miss Robbins.”
“Then what is it?”
“Isn’t the plateosaurus a plant eater?”
“Of course it is.”
The boy pointed his finger at the assemblage of bones.
“Then how come that one’s got a dead lady coming out of its butt?”
Chapter 4
For Marian Dougherty, Wednesday, June 4, was a special day. Not only was it her fifteenth birthday but also it was the day she had promised she would try the hot new street drug with her main squeeze, Manuel Ortiz, the leader of a gang known as the Tiburones.
It was ten o’clock in the morning. Marian and her two friends, Donna and Carmelita, were standing on Coney Island’s boardwalk, clustered outside the Wonder Wheel’s ticket booth waiting for the ride to open. It appeared that Manny was a no-show. Could it be he was all talk and no go?
“Marian, you got dissed,” said Carmelita, hands on hips.
“Dissed…dissed…dissed,” Donna echoed.
“No, I didn’t,” the birthday girl gloated as she watched her young Romeo in Nike T-shirt and Hilfiger jeans climb the steps of the boardwalk and strut toward them.
Marian shuddered in anticipation, having looked forward to this monumental step just as much as she feared it. But all her friends had already done the drug and she didn’t want to feel like a wimp.
“Yo! I’m a walkin’ birthday present,” Manuel boasted, sidling up next to the girls.
“Your little honey’s afraida heights, Manuel. You gonna cure her?”
“She’s in for a double dose of magic, Carmelita. She’s with the head of the Tiburones.”
The teens watched as the machinist opened the gates, allowing entrance to the giant Ferris wheel.
“We’re in the red one!” Marian hollered, rushing toward the empty cage, hoping her excitement didn’t make her look like a kid.
“Yo, man! Today she learns how to fly,” said Manuel to the ride’s engineer. “This here’s a twenty. That should cover us all. And here’s an extra ten-spot, just for you. Make sure that red cage stays on top for a while.”
“You got it,” the handler said, sliding the cash into his jeans.
“Marian, we’ll be right behind you. If you freeze and you wanna spit it out, don’t let him see ya do it.” Carmelita smiled and mouthed a “Happy Birthday” before joining Donna inside their own painted cage.
“Yo! Let’s get this thing off the ground!” hollered Manuel, climbing in next to his darling.
Gears engaged and metal whined as the giant Ferris wheel lifted the fun-seekers into the air.
“So? You ready or what?” asked Manuel.
Marian looked around. Her friends were in the cage behind them. “Ready!” she said.
“Here it comes with a gift,” said Manuel.
“Wow!” she said, putting on the earrings.
“They ain’t no real diamonds. But they’re real crystal. Just like this.” He produced the packet of meth capsules.
“Bein’ way up top’s gonna add to the rush.”
Marian clenched the mini-ziplock in her fist.
“Being on top with you is rush enough.”
Howling like a wolf, Manuel wrapped his arm around his birthday girl and stared skyward.
“Ready or not, here we come!” Marian hollered, then wished she hadn’t. I’m not a kid! Not no more! I’m gonna fly! I’m gonna fly! she heard an unconvincing internal voice cry out.
The cage stopped, having reached its zenith. No one had come for the view.
Marian turned her head. Panic seized her. “Let’s go back down,” she whimpered
“Why? We just got here!”
“There’s someone looking at us in the next cage!”
“Whaddya-take somethin’ before we got on? That’s Carmelita and Donna!” pointing to the two wide-eyed teens in the cage behind them.
“No!” Marian shouted. “The next car!”
In the cage behind their friends a man sat like a propped-up marionette. There was a large gash on the side of his ashen face and red stains on his T-shirt.
“Hey, you! Get us down!” screamed Manuel.
“What’s he doing?” stammered Marian, her eyes fixed on the unexpected visitor.
“He ain’t doin’ nothin’. I think he’s dead.”
Chapter 5
The weatherman on CNN had predicted a late spring shower the afternoon of June 4, 2006. But his prediction had not intimidated New York City Police Lieutenant John W. Driscoll, Detective Cedric Thomlinson, Sergeant Margaret Aligante, and the brass of One Police Plaza. They had gathered under threatening skies and were listening to Monsignor Norris’s final oration at the burial site of Driscoll’s wife, Colette, at Pinelawn Cemetery in New York’s Nassau County.
The late Mrs. Driscoll had been comatose for six years, but the Lieutenant, nevertheless, had dreaded the reality that one day the electronic monitors would signal her death. The end came at 6:07 A.M. on Saturday, May 31, when for the first time in a long time, Colette experienced tranquility. She expired without fear or rattle, surrendering the spirit that had governed her body for the past forty-four years.
Her parting brought a sense of finality to Driscoll, who had stayed married and loyal to his wife throughout the six long years of her unconsciousness. But her passing left an enormous void. And the unsought freedom riddled him with guilt and shame.
A hand grabbed hold of Driscoll’s arm as the coffin was lowered into its freshly dug grave, where it would find its resting place alongside the couple’s predeceased daughter, Nicole. The hand was that of Detective Thomlinson, Driscoll’s long-term friend and confidant.
“She’s finally at peace,” he said.
As Colette’s coffin settled on moist clay, a gust of wind ravaged the funerary wreaths, scattering lilies and gentians across the finely trimmed lawn of the cemetery. Above the burial site, angry clouds continued their threat. A second gust accosted Monsignor Norris’s cassock, shuffling the pages of his leather-bound Bible. Within seconds, the sky ruptured, pelting the graveyard with wind-driven rain.
“John…it’s time to go,” Thomlinson urged, nudging the Lieutenant.
“Gimme a minute,” said Driscoll.
Thomlinson nodded and hurried for the cover of his waiting automobile, leaving Driscoll behind.
Alone, before the flooding grave, Driscoll stared down at the mahogany coffin that sealed his past.
“Au revoir, ma cherie,” he whispered, his tears mixing with the rain. “I will miss you dearly.”
As he turned and headed toward the line of gleaming automobiles, he thought he heard a whisper amid the clatter of rain pelting the monumental maples that surrounded the grave site:
“Adieu.”
Chapter 6
Outside Porgie’s Place, a New Orleans-style jazz band welcomed the caravan of mourners with a fanfare of brass and conga drums.
Inside, a sumptuous buffet offered specialties of the islands, while an adjoining table flaunted a variety of rums from the four corners of the Caribbean Sea.
It was Trinidadian-born Thomlinson’s idea of a funerary feast. The only thing missing was a bevy of dancers in straw skirts. John Driscoll, an Irishman, was more accustomed to the somber reflection that followed the grim and mournful wakes he had attended during time spent as an altar server at Saint Saviour’s Roman Catholic Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He felt the gathering was irreverent but didn’t wish to offend his benefactor.