Hell Hole Page 17

  Ceepak duckwalks forward. “Let’s see if we come across something in plain view that might justify a search wider than our wingspans.”

  We creep forward and come to the entrance: a four-foot square cut into the planks overhead.

  “See it, Danny?” Ceepak points to a sticker affixed to the creosote-soaked pillar closest to the entryway: the cute little comic book devil. Hot Stuff himself.

  Ceepak sinks back on his haunches. Shakes his head.

  “We’ve probably come too far from the public areas of the beach to justify invoking the plain sight doctrine. Besides, the cartoon sticker, in and of itself, means nothing.” He looks bummed. Leans against the piling to think.

  It’s kind of cramped underneath this end of the pier. Makes me wonder why there are so many songs about romancing your girl on a blanket under the boardwalk while smelling hot dogs and French fries. I think you’d get barnacles on your butt and sand in your eyes from everybody walking overhead.

  “Shit!” screams a girl above us. “Shit! Help! Fuck!”

  Ceepak springs up. Sticks his head into the entryway.

  “Smell of gas fuel,” he shouts. “Smoke.”

  “Fire!” screams the girl. “You stupid fuck!”

  Ceepak pops back down.

  “Danny?”

  “Sir?”

  “Call nine-one-one.”

  Damn. Still no cell phone.

  “I’ll run up to the boardwalk!”

  “Roger that. Summon the fire department. I’ll go in. Find the girl. See if anyone else is trapped inside.”

  “Right.”

  “Go!” Ceepak hauls himself up into the hole. Now I smell it too. Not French fries and hot dogs but plywood burning and fifty years of carnival-ride paint melting. Then I’m hit with an acrid whiff of that gas they pump into eighteen-wheelers at truck stops. Diesel.

  All of a sudden I’m running while thinking about arson because my buddy Mike, who’s with the volunteer fire department, told me that sometimes firebugs do this thing where they start a spectacular gasoline fire up high in a structure and a diesel fire down low. The gas fire burns fast, gets everybody’s attention. The diesel starts slower but burns hotter. The fire department goes up to put out the gas fire, the one everybody can see. While they’re up there, the diesel-fueled blaze kicks in and cuts off their exit, traps the guys up high with no way out or back down.

  I fly up that ramp back to the boardwalk.

  “Fire!” I scream. “Call nine-one-one! Fire!”

  A lot of people are staring at me now. They’re licking orange-and-white swirl cones. Nibbling frosted pretzels.

  Nobody’s whipping out their cell phones.

  Except this one guy. He’s with his family, buying the wife and two kids, boy and girl, deep-fried Ring Dings or Ho Hos or Moon Pies. He sports a mustache, mirrored sunglasses, and, God bless him, an FDNY baseball cap!

  He snaps his cell phone shut.

  “Called it in. What’s the situation?”

  I point toward the fence. Now you can see the smoke, billowing black clouds of it.

  “Fire in abandoned ride. Hell Hole.”

  “Paulie? Gerard?” These two other guys come around the corner nibbling deep-fried wads of doughy chocolate and stringy nougat. Milky Ways, I think. One has on a navy-blue T-shirt, says Engine 23 on the chest. The other’s wearing this fire-engine red tank top. More FDNY apparel.

  “What’s up, cap?”

  “Paulie, grab a can.” The captain with the mustache points at a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall inside the food stand, pretty close to the bank of French fryers. Guess grease fires are an occupational hazard in the candy-bar-battering biz.

  “Gerard, you got a flashlight?”

  “Not on me. In the truck.”

  “I do!” I say because I always carry a Maglite in my cargo shorts.

  “Then, let’s roll!” says the captain. We run toward the fence. The firefighter named Gerard grabs a handful of links and shakes it hard. “It’s not coming down.”

  “So we’re going over,” says the captain.

  None of these guys is wearing boots. They’re all in sneakers and docksiders.

  Paulie’s caught up with us. He’s lugging the fire extinguisher.

  “I’ll toss it over!” he yells.

  “Guess that means I’ll catch it!” says Gerard and he proceeds to haul himself up and over the fence in two swift moves.

  “What’s your name?” the captain asks me.

  “Danny Boyle. Sea Haven PD.”

  “Dave Morkal. FDNY.”

  We both start scaling the wall.

  “My partner went in from underneath,” I say between huffs and puffs. “We heard a girl screaming. Smells like arson.”

  “Really? What’s arson smell like?”

  We swing over the top rail.

  “Diesel fuel,” I say when I land on the other side.

  Captain Morkal nods. “You could be right.” He looks around. Reminds me of Ceepak assessing a situation. He gestures toward the dangling seats on the Chair-O-Plane ride. “Tear off some safety bars, Paulie. Gerard—yank down a couple chains. Get us about two, three hundred feet.”

  “On it.”

  Man, these guys know how to rip and tear stuff apart fast.

  I blink twice and Paulie and Captain Morkal come running back from the Chair-O-Plane brandishing these wicked-looking lengths of steel—safety bars they’ve transformed into wrecking bars. They head over to the boarded-up entrance to the Hell Hole while Gerard tugs down hard on a rusty suspension cable.

  “Chain!” he yells and I hear the links clattering into a heap on the boards.

  “Boyle?” This from Captain Morkal. He and Paulie are using their poles to pry off the plywood.

  “Sir?”

  “When we go in, stay low. Air’s best near the floor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Chain!”

  I whip around. Gerard just ripped down another chain. I turn back, look up. There are all sorts of flames shooting up behind the two-story-tall peak of the Hell Hole facade. Smoke is actually shooting out of the nostrils of the humongous demon head looming over the entrance.

  I hear the two firefighters rip the plywood sheet covering the doorway free.

  “Gerard?”

  The third man comes running, dragging a three-hundred-foot steel rope. Looks like he hooked three separate chair strands together to make it.

  “All set, sir.”

  “Boyle? Flashlight.”

  Captain Morkal leads the way. Paulie is second, hauling the can that he squirts at any flames that flare up around us. I’m the third man in. Gerard’s behind me, laying down the chain as we go. I’m not exactly sure why, but I figure he knows what the hell he’s doing even if I don’t.

  “What’s your partner’s name?” Morkal shouts over his shoulder.

  “Ceepak.”

  We inch our way down the tunnel of terror. Past what’s left of the mannequin who used to leap out of the shadows and jab at your butt with a pitchfork. Morkal shines the flashlight up ahead. The tunnel is smoky. Thick with haze. It’s like being inside a chimney. My eyes sting.

  “Ceepak?” Morkal yells. “Ceepak?”

  “Ceepak!” I yell it too.

  We reach the end of the corridor. Another door. The sliding entrance to the revolving chamber.

  “He in there?”

  “I think so.”

  Without a word, the three firefighters attack the door with their makeshift pry bars.

  “Bring the chain in when we enter,” says Captain Morkal.

  “Roger that.”

  I swear it’s like I’m with three Ceepaks on a mission to rescue Ceepak.

  “Come on, you goddamn—” Paulie grunts. Leans into his bar. The door squeaks. He grunts again, it gives.

  “Ceepak!” All three of them are screaming it now.

  “Over here.”

  Morkal swings the light.

  I see Ceepak. Lo
oks like he’s administering first aid to a girl. A skinny blonde. No. The blonde. Jenny. The one in the three-triangle bikini. Looks like some of her gauzy beach wrap got burnt.

  “He started it!” she screams. “Cooking his shit. Fucking stupid smack junkie idiot!”

  The light beam swings where she points.

  Lieutenant Worthington. Sprawled on his back. A goofy grin plastered on his face. We may all be about to be deep-fried to a crackly crunch but he’s floating off to happy land. I see a thin rubber hose tied off around his upper arm. A syringe, candle, and small square of crinkled aluminum foil—his works—scattered on the ground next to him.

  “We need to evacuate!” says Captain Morkal. “Now!”

  “Roger that,” answers Ceepak.

  I see flames shooting up along the curved edges of the circular floor. Licking their way into the room with us.

  “However,” Ceepak reports calmly, “the trap door exit I came in through is currently inaccessible.”

  “Paulie?” yells Morkal. “Grab the girl. Gerard—you and me will haul out the drunk.”

  The three firefighters lumber across the foggy floor. Pick up their charges. Every now and then, Paulie, who has the blonde slung over his shoulder like a laundry bag, shoots a jet of foam at flames attempting to invade his personal space.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Morkal says to Ceepak.

  “Roger that. It’s all good.”

  “Tell you what, I think it’ll all be a whole lot better once we’re outside. G’head. I’ve got your back. Boyle? Lead the way!”

  I turn around. It’s like I’m an airplane one inch below the cloud ceiling, only these clouds are black and boiling mad and full of smoke except where they’re hot with fire. I can’t see six inches in front of my nose.

  “How do we get out? I can’t see anything!”

  “Bend down, feel the chain, follow it. But, Boyle?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You better haul ass or I guarantee we’re gonna be crawling up your butt like a cheap pair of underwear!”

  I proceed to haul ass.

  The Sea Haven volunteer fire department is hosing down the Hell Hole. The fire is, as they say, contained.

  The three guys from FDNY engine 23 shake our hands and head back over the chain-link fence to rejoin their families.

  “I thought you were on vacation,” Mrs. Morkal busts her husband’s chops and hands him a bucket of deep-fried Oreos. Apparently, the firefighters and their families all rented houses pretty close together, over on Oak Street. They invited us to drop by later for a beer if, you know, we aren’t too busy.

  The anorexic blonde is bundled up in a blanket, sitting in the back of a Sea Haven rescue squad ambulance. She keeps asking for a “fucking cigarette.” I would’ve figured she’d inhaled enough smoke for one day.

  Lieutenant Worthington is lying on a rolling gurney. He’s still pretty groggy. Stoned, I guess. Probably doesn’t even realize that his pant legs got singed.

  “We need to cut these off him,” says the paramedic. “Check for burns.” He pulls out a pair of surgical scissors and starts cutting into the waistband.

  “Fucker tried to kill me,” Worthington mumbles as the medic snips through his pants pocket.

  Ceepak leans down. Strains to understand what the man is mumbling.

  “Come again?”

  Worthington’s eyes go wide. “Find the camera.”

  “Camera?”

  “Shareef,” he groans. “He had a camera.”

  Worthington’s eyes flutter shut. He’s okay, I think. Just passed out.

  “Jesus,” says the medic when he cuts through the khakis at the thigh.

  “Is that a burn?” I ask.

  “No, Danny,” says Ceepak. “That appears to be scar tissue from a gunshot wound.”

  30

  Skeletor’s drug operation was so huge he might outrank those other New Jersey pharmaceutical giants: Merck and Pfizer.

  After the Sea Haven fire department doused everything down and the Hell Hole looked more like the soggy remnants of a campfire after a downpour—all charred wood and oily puddles—Chief Baines swung by with every cop he could scrape together and some agents from the DEA field office down in Atlantic City. Within the hour, they uncovered approximately five million dollars worth of cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, and marijuana, which, fortunately, never caught fire or we might’ve all stumbled out of the Hell Hole a little more slowly. Probably would’ve giggled a lot and raced across the boardwalk to wolf down three-dozen fried Snickers bars and stare at the pretty blinking lights.

  After uncovering 675 kilograms of various illegal substances, Chief Baines and the DEA agents posed for pictures and talked to TV cameras. Getting his face in tomorrow morning’s newspapers over a caption proclaiming Operation Crackdown Huge Success will undoubtedly make our boss extremely happy. We’ll probably get to keep our brandnew Crown Vic police cruiser.

  Skeletor, of course, was nowhere to be found. The chief sent a state police composite artist over to Veggin’ on the Beach to work with Gladys and Jerry and try to sketch a likeness of our legendary pharmacist. I hope the artist likes beet juice and falafel balls. Given the burned out hippie couple’s charcoal-broiled memory banks, the drawing project could take a while.

  Once it’s drawn and the picture is shown around town, maybe we’ll finally nab this guy Skeletor. At least we closed down his Hot Stuff distribution center and shooting gallery, what Ceepak tells me the DEA slang brochures, if no one else, calls a get off house. Apparently, you could rent space in the Hell Hole to cook your nickel deck of horse, big Harry, crown crap, dirt, jive-doo-jee, or reindeer dust (the list of slang words for heroin in Ceepak’s brochure is, apparently, quite lengthy), get off and then conk out. The blonde told us Worthington started the fire when his hand trembled too much to hold a candle underneath his spoonful of happy dust. Ceepak and me think the gasoline and diesel fuel helped.

  The blonde, a model who—by the way—will be on the cover of Healthy Living next month, was treated in the back of the ambulance and released. One of her girlfriends, a super-skinny redhead showing off a lot of bony shoulder blade in her tank top, swung by to pick her up and take her back to the city where, I guess, none of the fashionistas ever eat anything besides egg whites and Metamucil.

  Meanwhile, Ceepak and I have spent the last two hours sitting in the visitors’ lounge at Mainland Medical, the hospital over in Avondale. They operate what’s called the regional trauma center. If, while you’re on vacation in Sea Haven, an abandoned amusement park ride happens to burn down and you’re inside it injecting illicit drugs, this is where they’ll bring your sorry, semi-comatose butt.

  “We need to talk with Lieutenant Worthington.” Ceepak restates the obvious to a passing nurse for the fifth time since we were asked to “kindly wait down the hall,” first by this refrigerator-sized orderly armed with an old-fashioned steel bedpan and, then, by the senator’s barrel-chested security detail. Two of the guys, the ex—Navy SEAL named Graves and a former Green Beret called Parker, are standing guard outside Worthington’s door right now looking like Michael Corleone after his dad, the godfather, got popped.

  “The camera Lieutenant Worthington mentioned most likely contains whatever information Shareef Smith intended to show me.” Ceepak’s saying it out loud not so much for my benefit but to help himself think.

  “What do you think was on it?” I figure I might as well ask a dumb question and get in the game.

  “That, Danny, is the question.”

  “Until I saw that bullet hole in his thigh, I would’ve guessed they were pictures that proved Worthington faked his Purple Heart wound, like Dixon said he did.”

  Ceepak nods. “The scarring on Worthington’s thigh was consistent with a bullet entry wound. It seems he legitimately earned his medal, if not an immediate trip home.”

  “So why’d Sergeant Dixon lie to us?”

  “Perhaps he was covering for one of his other
soldiers who did something worse than fake a war wound.”

  “Well, chasing after Worthington almost got us killed.”

  “Twice.”

  “So whoever tore up Smith’s car was searching for his camera.”

  “Such would be my supposition as well.”

  “That means he has pictures of something bad. Something Dixon or one of the other soldiers did—over there in Iraq. You think one of them was at that prison, Abu Ghraib? You think Rutledge or Dixon or Handy Andy or even Hernandez made a bunch of naked prisoners crawl on top of each other with bags over their heads while Smith snapped pictures?”

  “Doubtful. If any of those men had been involved at Abu Ghraib, we would have, most likely, already seen photographic evidence.”

  Yeah. Okay. So maybe one of the soldiers did something even worse?

  “Do you think one of the soldiers killed Smith?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “But how? None of them was at the rest area. Only Worthington. Maybe they all call him Lieutenant Worthless because they know he’s a junkie just like Smith. Maybe the two of them got into a fight in that restroom over their drug stash and one thing led to another. Maybe they were locked inside that toilet stall together, sharing a spoon and a Bic lighter, and one of them had the pistol and got greedy, you know?”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened.”

  “So somebody else sneaked away from the party?”

  “There are other suspects to consider, Danny.”

  “Who?”

  Ceepak makes a subtle head tilt in the direction of the two former special forces soldiers standing guard outside Worthington’s room: Graves and Parker.

  “Geeze-o, man,” I mumble. “The senator’s security detail?”

  “We already suspect they might’ve had something to do with sabotaging our vehicle.”

  The razor blade. We were chasing them when the tire blew.

  “But why?” I ask, since Ceepak’s the one who schooled me about motive.

  “They work for the senator. Perhaps there is something on that camera he doesn’t want us to see.”

  Especially if it might prevent Winslow W. Worthington from becoming the next president of these United States.