Fun House (John Ceepak Mystery) Page 12

  “Hello?” he says. If it was the business line, he’d say “This is Ceepak. Go.”

  I do that slight head-tilt thing that I always think will make it easier for me to eavesdrop.

  “I’ll have to call you back,” he says.

  Whoever’s on the other side says something that sounds like a mosquito singing: “Bizz bizz-bizz bizz.”

  So much for my head-leaning eavesdropping technique.

  “Oh,” says Ceepak. “You saw it?”

  The mosquito, I think, says “yes” or some other one-syllable buzz.

  “Have my television appearances made you reconsider your job offer?”

  Okay. It’s the sheriff from Ohio. The one who wants to steal Ceepak away from me, make him head of a detective bureau when he needs to stay here, chasing down skinny drug dealers and babysitting reality TV stars.

  “Really? I see. Well, let me say that I am seriously considering your proposal.”

  Geeze-o, man. What will I do without Ceepak? I mean, besides make a fool of myself on a regular basis? The guy’s been my partner since day one on the job.

  “Thank you, and in a spirit of full disclosure, you should know that Mrs. Ceepak is not overly enthusiastic about making the move.”

  Yay, Rita!

  “Correct. She is somewhat reluctant to leave the town that has been her home for close to twenty years.”

  A smile creeps across my lips. Rita is a total Jersey girl, the kind Springsteen sings about. And, as Ceepak has obviously learned, nothing else matters in this whole wide world when you’re in love with a Jersey girl. I don’t think there’s a song about Ohio Gals, unless you count “Hang On Sloopy,” the state’s Official Rock Song, which was written by The McCoys about a singer named Dorothy Sloop of Steubenville, Ohio, who sometimes used the stage name Sloopy.

  It’s amazing what you can learn at bar trivia contests.

  Rita Lapscynski-Ceepak (yes, her married name sounds like it could be a breed of small, fluffy dog) came to the beaches of Sea Haven when she was in high school and in trouble. People here were good to her. She made a life. She raised a son. She found Ceepak. No wonder she never wants to leave.

  The Ohio mosquito buzzes in Ceepak’s ear a little longer. He glances at his watch.

  “Roger that,” he finally says when the buzzing bloodsucker runs out of gas. “I will. Yes. Before Labor Day. You too.”

  He closes the clamshell.

  Clips it to his belt.

  And squints out the side window at the church.

  “Well?” I say.

  “That was the sheriff of Lorain County, Ohio.”

  “But Rita wants to stay here, right?”

  He grins. “Officer Boyle, your evidence-gathering skills continue to impress me.”

  “Hey, you taught me everything I know. So they want an answer by Labor Day?”

  “That is correct.”

  “That mean’s you’ve got, what? Two weeks to change Rita’s mind?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “It might.”

  “No way. Rita’s a Jersey girl.”

  “They’re offering us a very substantial pay raise.”

  “Really? What, a twenty-, thirty-percent bump?”

  Ceepak shakes his head. “Double what I make here.”

  Geeze-o, man. Double?

  “Well,” I stammer, “you’ll never get to eat decent seafood again.”

  “Perhaps. However, Danny, as you may have heard, they now fly fresh seafood into the heartland of America on a daily basis.”

  “What? You mean Red Lobster? Bubba Gump Shrimp?”

  “Lake Erie is very close to where we might live.”

  “There’s no shrimp or scallops in Lake Erie—”

  “Did you know, Danny, that every Friday during Lent, several restaurants and churches in the Cleveland area host a fish fry. It’s a northeastern Ohio tradition.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  We’ll have to save the second half of our New Jersey–Ohio seafood debate for later. The front doors of the church swing open. So do the back doors on two dozen news trucks.

  “Let’s split up,” says Ceepak. “You take the front. Lend a hand to the security detail, should they require official intervention.”

  I nod. Check my official intervention device, also known as my sidearm.

  Ceepak makes a hand chop to the side of the building. “I’ll swing around back and make certain that the funeral home personnel are allowed to perform their somber tasks with a modicum of dignity.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say as I yank open my door and head up the steps, letting my hand brush the stock of my Glock. I always like to make sure it’s still where I put it.

  As I make my way up the steps, I notice that some of the fans behind the barriers are decked out in those “Put Down The Corn Cob” T-shirts. Nice. Everybody’s getting rich off of my catchphrase except me, the guy who created it.

  As the celebrities start streaming out the door, I can hear organ music. Yep. It’s Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend”—the sad riff at the top, not the “love lies bleeding in my hand” bit near the end.

  Fans start shrieking. Here comes this year’s Bachelorette from that other reality show, the original cast members from Jersey Shore plus the lady who sprained her ankle on Dancing with the Stars and that fashion critic who makes snarky on-camera comments about what everybody else is wearing but never looks in the mirror long enough to check out how weird he looks.

  Yes, I feel like I’m working the red carpet at the Oscars or the Emmys or The Reallys, an award I just made up for reality TV shows. I see Soozy K and Jenny Mortadella in their outfits from the Starfish Boutique. Good thing Our Lady of the Seas Catholic Church doesn’t have any nuns left on its staff. They’d be blushing. Jenny and Soozy look like they’re on their way to Satan’s own cleavage convention.

  In front of them is Ponytail, walking backward so he can keep his camera trained on the two girls as they sob and shimmy down the church’s marble steps.

  Off to the side, out of the camera lens’s field of vision, I see Layla Shapiro. She’s wearing tight black slacks, a black silk blouse, and a wireless headset.

  “Smooth out the move,” she whispers at Ponytail, her voice cutting through the squeals and screams from the mob lining the steps, who have apparently forgotten this is a funeral, not a Justin Bieber concert, even though I think he was here to sing “Amazing Grace,” the Elvis version.

  “Come on, Soozy,” Layla coaches. “You just lost the man of your dreams. Let America see how that makes you feel.”

  Soozy starts sobbing louder. She even blubbers a high-pitched “Boo-hoo” like a caption in a cartoon.

  I catch Layla’s eye.

  She smiles. Shoots me a wink. I’m guessing Paulie’s funeral is one of the happiest days of young Ms. Shapiro’s life.

  Me?

  I just want Layla to leave me and my hometown alone.

  If she doesn’t, maybe I can move to Ohio too.

  Maybe Chief of Detectives Ceepak will need somebody to fetch his coffee and seafood.

  I see Layla again around 6 P.M.

  We’d set up a six o’clock meeting with Marty Mandrake at the Prickly Pear production trailer to discuss the details for Bill Botzong’s pre-taped appearance on the show Thursday night.

  Of course Mandrake can’t see us when he said he would, because some big honchos from network headquarters up in New York have dropped by “unexpectedly” for a “major confab.”

  Layla tells me all this when I am sent forth as the emissary from the cop car to the trailer steps, where she sits thumbing her BlackBerry. Detective Botzong and Ceepak hang back.

  “Why aren’t you in the meeting?” I ask.

  Layla shrugs. “Marty asked me to leave when they started firing up the cigars.”

  “I thought you were his right-hand man.”

  Okay, the “man” thing is my little dig. La
yla lets it fly on by.

  “He doesn’t want me stealing his thunder.”

  “I see.”

  “Besides, he has Grace Twittering all the details already.” She shows me her smartphone screen, but I don’t want to lean in to read it.

  “What’s it say?”

  “Basically, that he hit the numbers for his trigger clause.”

  “Huh?”

  “The network promised Prickly Pear a bonus if he delivered a certain ratings target. He’s off the charts, thanks to you and me and Ceepak.”

  “Really? What’d me and Ceepak do?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer: we made for must-see TV.

  “Ever since that Skee-Ball scene,” says Layla, “working the police into the plotlines—hauling Paulie off to jail, that bit with the biker boys in the restaurant parking lot—Fun House has become the surprise smash hit of the summer.”

  “And that was your idea? Having the kids do stuff that would get them arrested?”

  “I put a bug in Marty’s ear. No one had ever done a reality romance-slash-cop show. It’s a can’t-miss hybrid.”

  “What about the steroids? Did you plant those?”

  “No comment.”

  “Did you tell Skeletor to bump off Paulie? Was that another plot twist?”

  “Jesus, Danny! That was just a lucky fucking break. Who knew Skeletor would get that pissed off about his fifteen minutes of fame?”

  A lucky break?

  Geeze-o, man. Ms. Shapiro is twisted. She’s spent too much time inside TV, what my father calls the idiot box. It’s turned her into an idiot too.

  She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at the trailer. “You know what’s going on in there?”

  “What?”

  “Marty The Old Farty’s career is about to rise from the ashes.”

  “Well, have fun rising with him.”

  “Me? No way. Prickly Pear was just a foot in the door. I have feelers out. When people hear how I turned this turkey around, they’ll be begging me to work for them.”

  I’ve heard enough. Hollywood, especially the New Jersey branch office, makes me sick.

  “Let us know when Mr. Mandrake’s ready to talk about Detective Botzong’s bit,” I say. “I’m sure it’ll help boost your ratings even higher.”

  “Will do,” says Layla, not even looking up at me, diddling with her BlackBerry keys some more.

  Shoulders slumped, I head back to the Crown Vic, my mind swimming in its deep end of dark thoughts.

  Marty Mandrake gets a big bonus plus a couple new TV shows.

  The TV network gets to charge advertisers more for airtime on Marty Mandrake’s hit show.

  Layla probably gets her pick of production jobs.

  Even Ceepak’s salary gets doubled when he flies to Ohio following his guest appearances on the reality TV show.

  Yep, everybody’s cashing in on this thing except me.

  And, of course, Paulie Braciole.

  21

  THURSDAY NIGHT, THERE’S A BIG FUN HOUSE WATCHING PARTY at the Sand Bar, this nightclub with about fifteen giant plasma screen TVs downstairs and a dozen more up on the canopied deck, all of which are usually tuned to whatever sport is currently in season.

  This is where me and my friends used to hang. Jess, Olivia, Mook, Katie, Becca. We’d sit around a bucket or two of beers and toss back crabcake sliders and fried zucchini strips so we could tell our mothers we were eating our vegetables. Now Jess and Olivia are married and have moved up to New Brunswick, where she’s finishing med school. Becca is still in town, helping her folks run the Mussel Beach Motel. Mook and Katie are both dead. Murdered.

  I’ve been to too many real funerals for a guy my age.

  So, tonight, off duty, downstairs at the Sand Bar, it’s just me and my old friend Bud. Not the bartender from Big Kahuna’s; the long-neck bottle of beer.

  It’s been a lousy week. We still have no clues. Skeletor has not returned to the red, white, and blue grease pit. We’re not closer to catching Paul Braciole’s killer.

  Yeah. I’m in what they call a maudlin mood. That’ll happen when you’re surrounded by mammoth speakers pouring out sappy music and everybody around you is sniffling back tears. Death. It’s a real buzz-killer.

  “Tonight,” croons Chip Dale, the Fun House host, in his best “let’s-do-this-for-the-children” telethon voice, “we mourn the passing of a friend. Peter Paul Braciole. A young man so full of life, no one ever thought it could be snatched away from him so quickly.”

  The screen fills with a slow-motion video montage of Paulie when he was alive. Tugging up his T-shirt. Flashing his pecs. Repeatedly. The wiggling chest muscles look even weirder at half speed, like some kind of underwater balloon ballet.

  “I am The Thing you want,” we hear him say over a syrupy orchestra of strings. “The Thing you wish you could be!”

  Here’s Paulie smooching Soozy K in the hot tub. Paulie and Soozy laughing as they pluck live crabs out of a tank at Mama Shucker’s Seafood Shop and, then, Paulie aiming the crab’s snipping pincers at Soozy’s boobs. Paulie flexing his biceps, Soozy pretending to do chin-ups off his bulging arm. The back of Ceepak’s head is in the next shot, one of Paulie stuffing Skee-Balls down the fifty hole.

  I look around. People are simultaneously smiling and sniffing. One guy is dabbing at his eyes with a paper napkin. Then he blows his nose into it.

  Nobody is nibbling their free popcorn.

  Fried clams are going cold. Sliders are going unslid. The Sand Bar resembles a funeral home with bad lighting.

  “But the end of one man’s life,” croons Chip Dale, shifting into ominous announcer mode, like the guy who does all the movie trailers, “marks the beginning of the hunt for another man: Paulie’s killer!”

  Cue the dramatic music.

  And the explosion sound effects.

  Boom. Here come those animated graphics. And a very scary shot of Bill Botzong, arms crossed in front of his chest, glaring at the camera from under the brim of his New Jersey State Police hat, a hat I’ve never seen him wear before. Guess the Prickly Pear Productions people didn’t like his black-turtleneck-and-leather-jacket look.

  “This is Fun House!” says Chip, strolling down Halibut Street until he’s right in front of the Italian-flag garage door. “Tonight? A special double feature edition: Funeral for a Friend.”

  Another boom as that type crumbles to dust.

  “To Catch a Criminal!”

  He really hits the “K” sounds in both words, just like Marty Mandrake wanted.

  Geeze-o, man. I wish Ceepak were here. But he and Rita are watching the program at home. Probably so they can talk about what furniture they should take with them when they move to Ohio. If Rita’s feeling the way I am right now, she might be ready to split, because she doesn’t recognize Sea Haven anymore. The TV has taken everything we love and flattened it out or glossed it up.

  And still I can’t stop watching this drek.

  We see Paulie and the gang having fun at Big Kahuna’s. “What should have been the most amazing dance competition ever,” says Chip, “waltzed off the floor and out the door when Paulie left the club with an adoring fan.”

  We see Mandy Keenan flirting with Paulie, who, in the edit, looks like he only tugged up his T-shirt to flash her his pecs because Mandy kept begging for him to do it.

  In one angle they cut to, in the background I can see Ponytail and his whole three-man crew. Now we go tight on Mandy’s face. I’m thinking Ponytail’s team got that shot.

  “Meet Mandy Keenan,” the announcer continues. “A young woman who had a little too much to drink last Friday night. An eager admirer Paulie had hoped to let down gently, gracefully.”

  “WTF?” I think so I don’t have to bleep my brain. Paulie had hoped to bang her, pardon my French, not “let her down gently.”

  “Paulie Braciole was the sweetest man I ever met,” says Mandy, all dolled up for the cameras, a squiggle of black mascara trickling down her cheek. Somebod
y must have brought in a bulldozer and cleaned all the crap out of her living room. Instead of crusty Frappuccino cups and crinkled Cheetos bags, I see fresh-cut flowers and one of those Kinkade cottage paintings.

  As I’m shaking my head in disbelief, I see Mr. America, the white-haired white supremacist from the French-fried version of Candyland. He’s at the bar, signaling for the bartender. She gestures back. Wants the guy to cool his jets, probably till the next commercial break. She’s glued to the TV screen.

  Me, too, mostly because I can’t believe how unreal this week’s version of reality has turned out.

  “He, like, walked me home,” says Mandy.

  Yes, in the background, they are playing a slow, piano-only instrumental version of the Barry Manilow number. “Mandy.” Pure dentist-office music.

  We see grainy, handheld camera footage of Paulie and Mandy stumbling up the walkway to her front door. They cut out before Paulie flips Ponytail the finger.

  “I made us both some coffee,” says Mandy with a slight giggle. “Believe me, we needed it. Well, I did. I drank more than I usually do, because I was so excited about meeting a celebrity. Anyways, Paulie, was a total gentleman. He looked at me with those big brown Bambi eyes and told me his heart was already spoken for. He said he didn’t come to the Fun House to find love but, at the Fun House, love found him.”

  Soft dissolve to Soozy K and Paulie all tangled up together when they played Twister on the beach during Episode Four. Cross-dissolve to gauzy footage of the two them splashing each other in the hot tub. Another dissolve, and they’re playing Frisbee with a puppy—but that footage is shot so you can’t see “Paulie’s” face, because I think they shot it after Paulie died with a body double and a rented dog.

  “Soozy K and he were hoping to take their relationship to the next level,” says Mandy. “I respected that. Sure, I wanted him all to myself; what woman wouldn’t? But his heart could never be mine. I could see that. I felt it. Here.” She taps her own chest, I guess to give the camera a reason to go in tighter on her bazoombas. “So, seeing how Paulie was sober and I was still kind of blitzed, I lent him the keys to my car so he could run home and be with Soozy. His soulmate.”

  Geeze-o, man.

  At least the next thing the hidden manipulators of reality cut to is a snapshot of the car we’re really looking for: Mandy’s silver Mustang coupe, the car she calls Butch. We’re treated to several cheesecake shots. Seems Mandy liked to pose next to her car in several different bikinis in several different seasons, so this segment about the missing Mustang resembles a video version of one of those pinup calendars hanging in the oil-change bay at a skuzzy gas station.