It was pure chance that I happened to be in the car that night - both my brothers were at a sleepover and my mother and grandmother on their way to a lodge meeting - when my daddy got the call, it was either leave me at home alone or take me along to the crime scene, a Cambridge golf course where a body had been found at sunset, an execution style murder, one bullet through the eye and one through the back of the head. Reluctantly, he strapped me into the front seat of the old Mercury station wagon - it sometimes doubled as a makeshift hearse - and gave me strict instructions that I was to STAY PUT, BE QUIET, AND NOT ASK QUESTIONS. The scene of a murder was NO PLACE FOR A CHILD, he had GRAVE MISGIVINGS about taking me, there would be EIGHT KINDS OF HELL TO PAY if my mother were to find out and he hoped that FOR ALL OUR SAKES, I was old enough to understand - I wasn't, except for the eight kinds of hell part - my mother's potential for wrath was something I'd understood for years.
The golf course/crime scene was lit like a movie set - spotlights, search lights, police cruiser lights, and the constant popping of flash bulbs - there were reporters and detectives and uniformed police, the medical examiner was there with an entire forensic team - and in the center of it all sat a polished and flashy Cadillac, complete with tail fins and a convertible top, carefully surrounded with bright yellow tape. A body was slumped over the steering wheel and Dr. Davis - the very same Dr. Davis I had seen for every childhood ailment and broken bone - was bent over the body, dictating to a very young looking assistant in a white labcoat and plastic gloves. My daddy repeated his instructions with heavy emphasis on the STAY PUT and BE QUIET, slipped on a pair of his own plastic gloves, and left the car, walking carefully toward the Cadillac and the ducking under the crime scene tape with one handed ease. Dr. Davis hailed him and I remember thinking He's done this before, realizing with mild surprise that my handsome, ever gentle and soft spoken father was no stranger to violent death.
It was, predictably enough, deemed a gangland killing and the body, still flexible enough for the coroner to pronounce recently deceased, was loaded into a body bag and onto a stretcher. There followed a somewhat heated discussion over transport, my daddy and the lead detective clearly at odds and while I could only hear snatches -
my daughter....not possible ....then wait for the damn ambulance .....I realized that they wanted to put the body in the station wagon. The idea of traveling with a corpse gave me a wicked thrill, What a tale this would be! for show and tell, then I remembered I was sworn to secrecy. In the end, it was academic - the body was indeed put into the station wagon but I was to follow in a police cruiser - no small thrill, that, and it was almost as exciting.
Compromise, my daddy was to tell me in later years, was the axle that turned the wheels of a civilized society, keeping secrets was the grease.
I don't remember the outcome of the homicide, mafia killings happened with a surprising frequency back then and whether there was a trial or even if the case was solved held no interest for me. I do remember the warm summer air, the sirens and the lights, Dr. Davis's wide bodied form as he examined the body, the ride in the police car. I remember the coroner shaking hands all around, lastly with my daddy and then quite formally with me - he was a most proper and usually serious physician but his parting words were said with a smile, Well, Guy, dead is dead. See you at the morgue.
It was a hard secret for a curious and imaginative child to keep but keep it I did. As grown up as it made me feel, it still took a few more years before I understood that dead really is dead and that the dead can't harm you except in bad dreams.
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