Fun House (John Ceepak Mystery) Page 16

  Finally, Ceepak speaks. “Such is our conundrum, Danny. The riddle we must answer.”

  “Well,” I say, “what if the murder took place back here but before Becca went swimming, and all she heard was the motorcycle and the killer opening and closing car doors while he cleaned up any evidence and hauled Paulie’s body out of the car?”

  “That is definitely one answer,” says Ceepak.

  The way he says it? I know he doesn’t think it’s the right answer.

  28

  CEEPAK’S STILL RACKING HIS BRAINS WHEN, ONCE AGAIN, WE are called to the set of Fun House.

  “Ceepak?” It’s Gus Davis on the radio, sounding grumpier than the dwarf in the Disney movie after Sneezy blows boogers in his beard. Guess he’s back on the unarmed-security detail. “Get your butt over here. There’s this jerk harassing the girl what got the death threat. Soozy K.”

  “Where are Reed and Malloy?”

  I’m guessing those were the two full-time cops on security duty today.

  “Mayor Sinclair yanked them away for some kind of press conference down at Borough Hall. Mandrake went too.”

  I’m betting Gus can hear Ceepak crushing the radio microphone in his hand. He’s that ticked off.

  The mayor thinks he and Mandrake need the armed security guards more than Soozy? I don’t care what Ceepak says, the next time Mr. Adkinson pulls out that petition, I’m signing it.

  “Settle down, son,” we hear Gus say to somebody, probably the jerk. “Ceepak?”

  “10-4,” says Ceepak. “We’re on our way.”

  “He might be the nincompoop you’re looking for.”

  “Come again?”

  “The idiot drove here on his freaking motor scooter.”

  Sirens wailing, we fly up Shore Drive, even though there are these cute signs that say stuff like “IF YOU’RE IN A HURRY, YOU’RE ON THE WRONG ROAD” and “DRIVE SLOW, SEE OUR SIGHTS—DRIVE FAST, SEE OUR JUDGE.”

  The signs were Chief Baines’s idea. Good Public Relations, which seems to be why we do all sorts of stupid stuff in Sea Haven these days, like let a bunch of drunks puke all over us on national TV and haul security details to Borough Hall when the primary threat is on Halibut Street.

  We whip around the corner to the TV house. I see Gus and his partner, another retired cop named Andrew Stout. They’re double-teaming this big dude in a fringed leather vest that shows off his arm muscles. Behind the guy is, of course, his motorcycle: a Harley-Davidson with high handlebars and a banana seat.

  Gus and Stout are unarmed. However, Gus Davis is scrappy and, like he always says, he won’t take “no guff from nobody.” He stands his ground with both fists up and his feet firmly set, aping the Fighting Irish boxer pose from Notre Dame. Stout, who looks like he still runs three miles every morning, has both hands up, the way blocking linemen do in football. The two of them may be retired, but they still know how to keep a bad guy at bay.

  I slam on the brakes. Tires squeal. Our rear end fishtails a little to the left.

  This gets the lumbering lunatic’s attention.

  He turns his thick neck around, looks in our direction.

  Ceepak’s up and out of his door before the car stops sliding sideways.

  “Come on kid,” I hear Gus shout. “Give me a reason to knock your block off!”

  “I just want to talk to Soozy!” the guy pleads.

  “So buy a baby doll and name it Susan!” counters Gus, moving his fists around in a circle under his chin.

  Ceepak pulls his Glock up from his hip. Locks it into a two-handed grip. “We’ve got this, Gus,” he shouts, aiming his weapon at the big bruiser’s left thigh. “On the ground!” he shouts.

  Motorcycle man hesitates. You can see the “Huh?” etched on his face.

  So Ceepak repeats himself: “On the ground! Now!”

  I think the guy is slow—as in stupid. He puts his hands over his head.

  This is not what Simon said.

  “On! The! Ground!” I’m shouting it too, as I come around the nose of the car, my hands going for the plastic FlexiCuffs hooked to my belt.

  “Kiss the dirt, douchebag!” shouts Gus. The guy finally comprehends. He drops to his knees.

  “Down!” shouts Ceepak.

  The lunkhead lies on his stomach. It takes him a while. Finally, he puts his face in the pea-pebble lawn.

  “Hands behind your back!” barks Ceepak.

  The horizontal dude obeys.

  “Danny?”

  Ceepak keeps his weapon trained on the ox while I work my way behind him, slip the plastic loops over his hands, and tug up on the zip straps like I’m bundling monster cables behind my high-def TV.

  “I just need to talk to Soozy,” the guy grunts into the gravel, so it comes out kind of mumbled.

  “You ever hear of a telephone?” says Gus. “Next time, drop a dime!”

  The guy isn’t struggling as I fasten his hands behind his back, so I glance up. Ceepak is actually chuckling. Gus will do that to you.

  Up on the sundeck, over Ceepak’s shoulder, I can see Layla with Soozy K. The other three contestants are behind them: Mike Tomasino, Vinnie Martin, and Jenny Mortadella.

  I hear feet crunching across gravel. Someone coming up behind Ceepak.

  He hears it too.

  Quick as a cat hunting Coke caps, he spins to his right, bringing his weapon around with him.

  It’s the freaking camera crew.

  Geeze-o, man. Looks like we’re going to be on TV again.

  About ten, fifteen minutes later, Eric Hunley is so accommodating and apologetic that Ceepak tells me to cut him out of the plastic restraints.

  Yep, the guy who tooled over to the Fun House on his Harley is the “very hot local stud” that Mandy Keenan told us about, the one who dumped her roommate Coco so he could hook up with a reality TV star, Soozy K.

  “She broke my heart, man,” Hunley says to Ceepak as he rubs his wrists. Guess I tugged a little too hard on those plastic zip strips. “I thought we could take our relationship to the next level.”

  I roll my eyes. Ceepak closes his.

  Does everybody in town have to talk like they’re being interviewed for this week’s episode of Fun House?

  “She got what she wanted,” Hunley goes on. “She used me.”

  “How so?” says Ceepak.

  “It’s all a game to her,” he head gestures up toward the house. Soozy K and the cameras have gone inside. I believe Gus Davis saying “get that freaking camera lens out of my freaking face or I’ll jam it where the freaking sun don’t shine” prompted Layla and Rutger Reinhertz, the director, to “wrap” filming in the front yard, move the shoot to a new location. Indoors.

  Gus and Andrew Stout went inside with the cast and crew. “I need to hit the head anyways,” Gus said as he galumphed away.

  “Me too,” said Stout.

  From what I hear on TV, if you’re a guy, when you get old, you spend a lot of time in the bathroom.

  “Mr. Hunley,” says Ceepak, “what exactly did Ms. Kemppainen want from you?”

  “Who?”

  “Soozy K,” I translate for Eric.

  “Oh. Sex, mostly. She’s half nympho.” He says it like it’s an ethnic group on the census form. “And she wanted me to help her get rid of her competition.”

  Ceepak arches an eyebrow. “Paul Braciole?”

  “Nah. She was using her new TV boyfriend, Tomasino, to take care of Braciole. They had an alliance or a strategy or something. She needed me to deal with the last girl standing in her way, the Mortadella chick. Wanted me to Tonya Harding her.”

  “Come again?”

  “You know—the ice-skating chick whose ex kneecapped that other ice-skating chick with a nightstick.”

  “Nancy Kerrigan,” I say, since obscure sports trivia is another one of my pop culture specialties.

  “Yeah,” says Hunley. “So, anyways, Soozy says I should do something like that on the only other hot chick left in the house, because she fi
gures the producers have got this show rigged so it ends up being one hot guy and one hot girl in the big finale; they make it two hot guys, it comes off a little too homo, you know what I’m saying?”

  Now Ceepak and I both close our eyes, just to give ourselves a half-second to cringe in privacy.

  “She suggested I use my aluminum softball bat.”

  “On Ms. Morgan?” says Ceepak.

  “Who?” says Hunley.

  Time to translate again. “Jenny Mortadella. Her real name is Morgan.”

  “Really? Like the pirate captain? The one with the rum?”

  “Yeah,” I say, just so we can move on. It’s 95 degrees out today. No shade. No trees. Just a lawn full of hot pea pebbles.

  “But despite Ms. Kemppainen’s suggestion, you two did nothing?” says Ceepak.

  Eric tugs up on his belt. “I wouldn’t say we didn’t do nothing. But once Paulie got whacked, she didn’t seem so interested in me busting up Jenny.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No. But then again, she didn’t seem too interested in me anymore neither, so we didn’t actually, you know, discuss matters much.”

  “And why did you come over here today?” asks Ceepak.

  “Because for like a week, Soozy wouldn’t answer my calls, my texts, nothing. Then, today, she sends me this text. Two letters. ‘GL.’”

  “What does that mean?” asks Ceepak.

  “Either ‘good luck’ or ‘get lost,’” I say.

  “Exactly,” says Eric. “Or maybe God I Love You, Eric.”

  Yes, the man is a dreamer who doesn’t really understand how abbreviations work.

  “The correct answer was ‘Get Lost?’” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah. So I take a ride up here, we have a face-to-face, then Soozy calls for the two rent-a-cops and they call for you.”

  “What did Ms. Kemppainen say during your talk?”

  “That she don’t need or want me no more. That if I show up again, it’ll piss off Tomasino and she needs him to think they have something going on. That’s her strategy or whatever, at least up to the finals. Then she’ll screw the guy over because, trust me, that girl will do whatever it takes to win the big bucks. Quarter million dollars can make a person do some crazy shit, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Did she tell you anything else?”

  “Yeah. That I should ‘climb back on my fucking tricycle and get the fuck out of her life.’ That kind of made me mad.” He drops his eyes and fiddles with a fringe flap on his vest. “Sorry if I gave those two security guards a heart attack or whatever.”

  “They will be fine,” says Ceepak. “They are both retired police officers and, even unarmed, know how to handle themselves in crisis situations.”

  Ceepak doesn’t say it, but what he means is: “Gus Davis and Andrew Stout would have whipped your leather-fringed ass, biker boy.”

  Instead, Ceepak turns to stare at Hunley’s bike.

  He walks over to it.

  Touches the seat. Runs his hand along the long leather cushion.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Let’s head back to the Mussel Beach Motel. I want to run an experiment.”

  “Am I free to go?” asks Hunley.

  Ceepak snaps out of his temporary trance. “Do we have your word that you will stop harassing Ms. Kemppainen?”

  “Who?”

  Geeze-o, man, this guy is thick. “Soozy K,” I say.

  “Oh. Yeah. I’m pulling for Jenny Mortadella now. She’s way hotter. I dig tattoos on chicks.”

  “Do not come within one hundred yards of any of the show’s contestants,” says Ceepak.

  Hunley puts up his hands. “Don’t worry, dudes. I’m out of it. Fucking reality chicks are too phony for me.”

  Ceepak nods. “Mr. Hunley, are you free for the next hour?”

  “Huh?”

  “You could be of great service to us and Sea Haven.”

  Hunley shrugs. “Sure. I’m free. Besides, I figure I owe you guys one.”

  “Then kindly follow us on your motorcycle down to the Mussel Beach Motel.”

  “Cool.”

  “Danny?” Ceepak gives me a head-bob toward our police cruiser.

  Guess we’re escorting Eric Hunley back to Becca’s motel to run some kind of experiment.

  I just hope it’s not that one about the pool water changing color when you pee in it.

  29

  WE’RE CRUISING SOUTH ON BEACH LANE.

  I glance up into the rearview mirror.

  Eric Hunley is right behind us, tooling along on his Harley, leather fringe flapping in the breeze. He looks like one of the old hippies in that movie Easy Rider.

  Over in the passenger seat, Ceepak is cogitating, a form of heavy thinking that, in his case, involves a knuckle pressed to his lips and a partial shuttering of his eyelids.

  “So,” I say, “you think, maybe, Soozy killed Paulie?”

  The knuckle stays up, but the half-open eyes peer over at me. “Pardon?”

  “Eric says Soozy will do anything to win the quarter-million dollars. You think she bumped off Paulie?”

  “Firing one perfectly aimed bullet to the head, then hauling his body on the back of a motorcycle to the Knock ’Em Down booth, where she hung him up on the wall in the middle of the stuffed animal prizes?”

  Okay. When you say it like that.…

  “Well,” I say, refusing to quit while I’m behind, “maybe she borrowed Eric’s motorcycle. Maybe Eric did the shooting. Maybe they did it together.”

  “Interesting. Apparently, Danny, you and I are hypothesizing along parallel paths.”

  We are? I thought I was just saying stupid stuff to get him to tell me why the heck he’s over there chewing his knuckles.

  But he just turns back to his window, stares at the buildings blurring by.

  I pull into the parking space out front you’re supposed to use when registering at the Mussel Beach Motel. We’re right outside the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window of the office. I can see Becca inside, aiming a remote at the television set mounted in the corner, right above the window air-conditioner Mr. Adkinson decided to hang through the wall because the only window that slides open was too far away from an electrical outlet.

  Ceepak’s already out of the car and looking through the window at the TV set.

  “I wonder if that’s the press conference,” he mutters.

  On cue, Marty Mandrake and Mayor Sinclair appear on the screen. They’re outdoors, standing behind a Plexiglas-topped podium in front of an ugly white wall where blocky letters spell out “Borough Hall, Sea Haven, N.J.”

  Eric Hunley putters into the space next to our cop car, takes off his helmet, shakes out his shaggy hair. In his bare chest and vest, he looks a little like a bloated version of one of those beefcake cover boys on the romance novels my mother likes to read and then store in her bathroom on top of the toilet tank near the dish of pink soaps shaped like seahorses.

  “Mr. Hunley?” says Ceepak. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to catch a little of the news conference before we get started with our experiment.”

  “No problem. I’ll hang here. Need to give my tan a booster shot.” He closes his eyes, flaps open the vest, leans back to soak in the rays.

  “Danny?” says Ceepak.

  “I’m with you,” I say and we head into the motel office.

  “That’s not him,” says Becca when we whoosh open the glass door.

  Ceepak and I must look confused, because she clarifies:

  “That guy on the motorcycle. That’s not the guy I saw out back that night. He’s too big. The guy I saw was more, you know, average. Five-seven, five-nine. Slender waist.”

  “Thank you, Becca,” says Ceepak. “That’s very helpful.” Now he gestures up to the TV. “Have they started?”

  “Yuh-huh. Mayor Sinclair said he hopes everybody is having a sunny, funderful day, and that, to let the terrorists know they can’t scare us, the show
must go on.”

  On screen, Marty Mandrake steps to the podium. He has to adjust the two gooseneck microphones on the podium because he’s taller than Mayor Sinclair. Then again, so are many Chihuahuas.

  “Thank you, Mayor Sinclair. Ladies and gentlemen, as my esteemed colleague just said, Soozy K has received a death threat.…”

  “I can’t believe they’re announcing it like this,” grumbles Ceepak.

  Me? I believe anything. TV people have no shame. You ever watch that show where people who weigh five hundred pounds dance? Or that one where parents send in video clips of their kids slipping on ice?

  “But,” Mandrake continues, “the show must go on. With the help of the Sea Haven Police Department, who have beefed up security around our Fun House, we will complete our exciting summer season, despite the heinous death threat leveled against Soozy with a special, two-night season finale spectacular next Thursday and Friday.”

  Somebody applauds. My guess? Mandrake brought along his script girl Grace, the lady with all the stopwatches around her neck.

  “You know,” Mandrake continues, giving the cameras an awshucks shuck of his head, “it was Soozy K, herself, who, just this morning, came to me and said ‘Marty, we can’t quit now. If we do, the bad guys win. And then what was all our sacrifice for?’”

  Ceepak is shaking his head slowly. I think he’s heard this argument one too many times. He has also seen its consequences. My partner spends a lot of his vacation days and holidays visiting Army buddies in VA hospitals or, worse, cemeteries.

  “And it isn’t just about winning the quarter-million dollars for Soozy,” says Mandrake, “because, in the finale, our two remaining contestants will also be playing for their favorite charities. Whoever wins, their charity wins too! Ten thousand dollars!”

  The assembled crowd of reporters and assorted Borough Hall hangers-on applauds, even though it sounds like the charities are kind of getting stiffed.

  “Soozy has already picked her charity: SPF!”

  “Yes!” says Becca, pumping her fist in the air. “Whoo-hoo!”

  Okay. I have no idea what an SPF is or why it makes Becca so happy.

  Then Marty Mandrake explains: