Fun House (John Ceepak Mystery) Page 2

  “Your offer is very generous,” says Ceepak, “but, Mr. Mandrake, I am most concerned about making certain that Mr. Braciole and Ms. Kemppainen appear in court to face the charges pending against them.”

  Soozy K? Her real name is Susan Kemppainen. Figures she’d take the rapper route and go with the initial-for-a-last-name.

  “Assault with a deadly weapon is a very serious offense,” Ceepak continues.

  “It wasn’t a weapon, John,” says Mayor Sinclair sarcastically. “It was a Skee-Ball.”

  “Made out of solid wood,” I toss in.

  “And,” adds Chief Baines, “it was thrown at an off-duty police officer who had clearly identified himself.”

  The chief tugs a few more hairs out of his lip caterpillar. The man is conflicted. His boss, the mayor, wants the SHPD to roll over and play nice with the TV people. But people can’t chuck projectiles at police officers and not suffer the consequences, which, in New Jersey, would be a maximum sentence of five years. And our state prisons don’t have tanning beds. I think the new governor cut them out of the budget, along with everything else.

  “Look,” says Layla, calming the whole room with her sparkling brown eyes.

  Okay. Maybe I’m exaggerating. We’ve dated a couple times. I’m biased. Let’s just say she’s a refreshing change of pace from Mandrake and his Italian leather briefcase.

  “Everyone at Prickly Pear Productions wants to see justice done,” she continues. When Layla speaks, you can tell she went to college—the real deal with ivy on the walls, not Junior College, like me. “Paul and Susan must answer for their actions.”

  Heads start nodding around the room.

  “We only ask that you hold off a few weeks; delay their indictments until after Labor Day.”

  Which would be after Fun House finishes filming in Sea Haven.

  “This show is very good for us,” says Mayor Sinclair, using his public-servant-looking-out-for-the-little-people voice. “I don’t have to remind anyone in this room that these are tough economic times. Our local merchants are suffering—especially after you two scared away so many potential tourists with your shootout at the O.K. Corral.”

  He flips a hand toward Ceepak and me. I think the honorable Hugh Sinclair is referring to us saving a bunch of lives when things turned ugly at the grand opening of the Rolling Thunder.

  “Heck,” he continues, shifting into his Ronald Reagan aw-shucks mode, “five point three million Americans seeing these fun-loving college kids having a sunny, funderful day every Thursday night?” Now the mayor is biting his lip like he’s choking himself up. “Chief, it’s summer in America again.”

  “Ceepak?” Chief Baines peers at my partner.

  Ceepak sighs. “If the county prosecutor agrees to delay processing formal charges until—”

  “Excellent!” says Mandrake. “And I agree with Officer Ceepak. We need to keep our cast on a shorter leash.”

  Um, Ceepak never mentioned leashes, long, short, or in-between.

  “Chief Baines, I want to work closer with you guys moving forward. These two officers, Ceepak and Boyle, are already linked to the show.…”

  Layla shoots me a wink. I think she’s the only thing linking me to Fun House, even though, for the record, we have not actually “linked up.” Not yet, anyway. Our third date is slated for later tonight. After she wraps. That’s a movie term. Has nothing to do with sandwiches or flour tortillas.

  “How about they head up an SHPD Fun House security detail? You have people with us 24/7.”

  “That’s a major manpower commitment,” says Chief Baines.

  “It’s in our budget,” says Layla. “We’ll pay overtime rates. Officers Ceepak and Boyle set up the security team. Assign officers. The LAPD does this all the time. In fact, they even have a special Film Unit.”

  “Interesting idea,” says Chief Baines, smoothing what’s left of his mustache back into place. “We could reach out to some of our retirees. Guys like Gus Davis and Alex Smitten who could use a little extra income.”

  Mandrake claps his hands. “Bingo. I like it. What size T-shirt do Davis and Smitten wear?”

  “I’d, of course, work closely with you guys,” says Layla, sweetening the deal for me, if not the happily married Ceepak.

  “The show needs you, men,” says Mandrake, pacing around the room with his hands clasped behind his back. He’d look like a general in his tent the night before a big battle if he weren’t wearing the goofy baseball cap and neon-colored shoestrings on his Nikes. “We’re on an extremely tight, almost live, production schedule. Most reality shows shoot for months, edit for months, go on air half a year after they finish filming. Us? We shoot Friday through Tuesday, edit all day Wednesday into Thursday morning, satellite the finished show up to the network on Thursday afternoon, go on air Thursday night at nine. Keeps us fresh. If we can keep the cast out of trouble.…”

  “And out of jail,” jokes Mayor Sinclair, even though, as always, nobody’s paying attention to him.

  “If we can avoid any future speed bumps, it’ll help me guarantee an on-time product.”

  “I’m not sure,” says Ceepak. “As you stated, Chief, this ‘security detail’ would put quite a strain on the department. It might adversely impact our ability to provide police services during the peak of the township’s summer season.”

  “Not if we deal with it on an overtime-only basis with everybody but you two,” suggests the chief.

  “But we’d still pay you two the overtime rates,” adds Mandrake. “That’s part of the deal. Definitely.”

  “This isn’t about the money,” says Ceepak.

  Mandrake laughs—derisively, I think they call it. “Officer? It’s always about the money. Am I right?”

  The mayor laughs. Layla chuckles. Hey, the guy’s her boss. She has to.

  Me, the chief, and Ceepak? Statues on Easter Island smile more.

  Ceepak repeats himself. “It is not about the money, Mr. Mandrake.”

  “Okay. Forget the money,” says Mandrake, reaching into his briefcase yet again. “You guys should do it to protect my kids.”

  Ceepak arches an eyebrow. “Protect them? From what?”

  “Drug dealers.”

  He holds up a tiny glass vial, the kind doctors use when giving you a shot. There’s a small sticker glued on the front. Instead of the usual medical mumbo-jumbo, I see a comic-book illustration of a purple muscleman in a hood and loincloth. His head is a skull.

  “Might I see that ampule, Mr. Mandrake?” says Ceepak.

  Mandrake hands him the small glass container. “The crew found a bunch just like it when they had to move a couple mattresses in the house to set up a shot.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Anabolic steroids,” says Mandrake, striking a bodybuilder pose, pumping his chicken wings, pretending he has muscles.

  “From Skeletor,” adds Ceepak.

  3

  LAST SUMMER, CEEPAK AND I ALMOST DIED WHEN THIS boarded-up ride called the Hell Hole started burning down around us.

  Despite the dilapidated old ride’s name, the blaze, or, to quote the newspapers, the “roiling inferno,” was caused by an arsonist, not Beelzebub pitchforking up brimstone from the basement.

  We had crawled into the shuttered ride to rescue a couple of junkies shooting up something called “Hot Stuff Heroin,” which was being sold by a homegrown Sea Haven drug dealer who calls himself Skeletor, because, according to our sources, he has a thing for the villain from the 1980s “He-Man: Masters Of The Universe” cartoons.

  Skeletor, in the animated episodes—and action figure aisle at Toys “R” Us—was a purple muscleman in a hood and loincloth who had a skull for a head.

  The cartoon on the steroid bottle? It’s him.

  And branding his drugs with cartoons? That’s him, too. “Hot Stuff,” the little red devil from the old Harvey comic books, was plastered all over Skeletor’s white paper heroin bags, the evidence that led us to the Hell Hole ride.r />
  Ceepak and the SHPD, plus a joint federal/state government task force, have been trying to locate and apprehend Skeletor for nearly two years. He and his gang are responsible for most of the drug traffic up and down our eighteen-mile-long barrier island, not to mention the rest of the Jersey Shore.

  Needless to say, we haven’t caught him.

  As soon as we figure out where he’s set up shop, he disappears. He’s like a ghost or one of those Al Qaeda dudes hiding in their Pakistani caves: always one step ahead of the law and/or the drones.

  “Mr. Mandrake, Ms. Shapiro, Mayor Sinclair?” says Ceepak. “Can you please give us the room? Danny and I need to discuss your security detail proposition with Chief Baines.”

  “Sure, sure,” says Mandrake, snapping shut his briefcase.

  The mayor sidles over to schmooze the producer. “By the way, Marty, my son, who looks great on video, wanted me to ask you—”

  “We can discuss that outside,” says Layla, ushering everybody to the door. “You have our phone numbers?”

  “Yeah,” I say because I do. Well, I have hers, not Mandrake’s or the Mayor’s. I’m not really into sixty-year-old guys with Billy Goat Gruff beards or anybody who says “Have a sunny, funderful day” on a regular basis.

  “Come on,” Mandrake says to Layla, fiddling with his iPhone. “We’re behind schedule. We need to be shooting the beer pong competition.”

  Layla smiles at us. “Thank you gentlemen for your time.”

  “My son is quite good at beer pong,” I hear the mayor say as their voices fade away.

  “How old is he?” asks Layla.

  “Sixteen.…”

  I close the door and turn around to face Ceepak and the chief.

  “What do you think, John?” says Baines.

  “I am, of course, conflicted.”

  “Yeah,” I say because I haven’t had breakfast and I know there are doughnuts in the break room but an egg, pork roll, and cheese sandwich would stay with me longer.

  “Skeletor,” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah,” says the chief.

  Ceepak tosses the little steroid vial up and down in his hand like a glass peanut. Normally, he’d be whipping out his stainless steel forceps and tweezering the tiny bottle into an evidence bag so he could have it dusted for prints and scanned for whatever he could scan it for. But since the Fun House production crew found this particular piece of evidence under a seedy mattress in a skeevy party house, it’s probably way beyond compromised as far as offering us any useable clues.

  “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for,” says the chief.

  “Indeed,” says Ceepak. “However, we may be forced into an ethical compromise.”

  Oh, boy. Ceepak’s not too keen on those.

  “We could offer Mr. Braciole and Ms. Kemppainen a deal,” suggests the chief. “They help us nab Skeletor, we drop the charges.”

  Ceepak nods. “It’s a possibility.”

  Wow. He’s actually considering it.

  “The county prosecutor cuts deals all the time, John,” says the chief. “Sometimes, to catch the big fish, you have to let the little ones off the hook.”

  Ceepak nods some more. Yes, he lives his life in strict compliance with a rigid moral code and people call him an overgrown Eagle Scout. But hey, this isn’t his first rodeo, as they say, even though I’m not sure why they say it. Ceepak knows how the game is played: we don’t indict Paulie and Soozy on the drunk and disorderly, they give up Skeletor. We let two shrimps skate free to land the big tuna. I’m trying to work with the chief’s fish metaphor here.

  “I’m not asking you to lie, cheat, or steal, John. Just to take advantage of the first lead we’ve had on this guy in ages.”

  Ceepak thinks. Nods. “Talk to the county prosecutor. See how she wants to play it.”

  “You on board if she says cut the deal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You sure?”

  “Roger that.”

  “What about the other thing?”

  “Babysitting Fun House?”

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  “The more time we spend with the reality show cast and crew, the more information we stand to pick up on Skeletor.”

  “And,” says the chief, “maybe we can stop another one of those yahoos from passing out on top of some poor kid’s sand castle.”

  Chief Baines. Always the dreamer.

  “We’ll head over to the TV house,” Ceepak tells the chief. “Start interviewing the residents.”

  “I’ll contact the county prosecutor. And John?”

  “Sir?”

  “Try to stay off camera.”

  Ceepak grins a little. “That’ll work.”

  As we head out the door, I remember what Dylan Murray said about Paulie Braciole when they processed him here at the house. His screaming, his face going bright orange, his neck tendons tightening up like thick cables.

  “Roid rage,” I mumble.

  “Come again?” says Ceepak.

  “Paul Braciole. Dylan Murray and his brother were the ones who hauled the guy out of the Coin Castle. Said ‘The Thing’ was more like ‘The Hulk.’”

  Ceepak stops in his tracks. Ruminates. “Roid rage. Acting in an overly aggressive, hostile manner after taking large doses of anabolic steroids. Manifesting symptoms of schizophrenia, mania.…”

  “Tossing Skee-Balls at cops’ heads.”

  “An interesting hypothesis, Danny. As you know, many bodybuilders often turn to the synthetic version of the male hormone testosterone as a shortcut to boost their muscle mass.”

  Yeah, steroids may make your muscles swell but, from what I hear, they also make other things, such as the family jewels, shrivel down to the size of wrinkled peas. They pump you up, but let you (and your lady friend) down.

  “We’ll talk to Paul Braciole first,” says Ceepak. “Good work, Danny.”

  “Thanks.”

  When we hit the lobby, Dorian Rence, our dispatcher, waves Ceepak over to her cubicle.

  “Your mother called. From Ohio.” Mrs. Rence hands him a pink message slip. “She saw you on TV last night.”

  “Really? I did not know that she was a fan of the show.”

  “Her church friends told her you were going to be on.”

  Ceepak grins. Tucks the message slip into his pocket.

  “Oh, and an Officer Vic Daniels from the Elyria Police Department called.” She hands Ceepak another piece of pink paper.

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s up there in Ohio?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Officer Daniels, he’s the same one who called last week. He need help on a case?”

  “Something like that. Anything else?”

  “No, you’re all clear.”

  “Anything for me, Mrs. Rence?” I ask. We all call her Mrs. Rence because she looks like your best friend’s mom.

  “No, Danny, sorry. Oh, that Layla Shapiro who signed in earlier, that’s the girl who helped you at the Rolling Thunder, am I right?”

  “Yeah. She’s with the TV show. Fun House.”

  “She’s cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Rence gives me a quizzical look.

  “Danny and Ms. Shapiro have been dating,” says Ceepak to clear up any confusion as to why I would say thank you for a compliment directed at someone else.

  “Oh!” says Mrs. Rence. “You’re not with Samantha Starky anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what about that other one?”

  “No,” I say, even though I have no idea what “other one” she’s talking about. To be honest, there’ve been a few.

  “Oh,” she says. “Well, be careful out there.”

  “Will do,” says Ceepak. “Danny?” He bobs his head toward the door.

  We head out the exit, go down the porch steps, and swing around back to the parking lot to pick up our Crown Vic police cruiser.

  “You want to drive?” I ask,
fishing the keys out of my pocket.

  “Negative.”

  I can tell: Ceepak wants to use the ride over to the rental house on Halibut Street to ruminate some more. Formulate his line of questioning for Paul Braciole.

  “So,” I say after we slide into the car. “That Officer Daniels up in Ohio—he offering you a job or something?”

  I add a “heh-heh-heh” to let him know I’m joking.

  Ceepak turns. Looks at me.

  “Yes, Danny. Officer Daniels, a high school classmate of mine, is reaching out on behalf of the Lorain County Sheriff’s Department. They’re interested in me becoming their new chief of detectives.”

  I nod. Swallow. “Good salary?”

  “Yes. With an excellent benefits package. Plus, my mother, as you might recall, lives in Lorain County, Ohio. I’d be moving home.”

  Ceepak.

  The guy will not tell a lie—even when you wish he just would.

  4

  WE’RE CRUISING NORTH ON OCEAN AVENUE.

  I’m behind the wheel; Ceepak’s working the radio. By the time we hit Cap’n Scrubby’s Car Wash at Swordfish Street, Ceepak and the desk sergeant have just about worked out a duty roster for Fun House’s enhanced security detail.

  “We offer shifts to off-duty personnel only,” Ceepak reiterates.

  “And retirees,” Sergeant Pettus crackles back through the radio.

  “Roger that. Reach out to Gus Davis. He can help you put together a list of names.”

  “On it.”

  “Tell everybody it’s an eyes-and-ears assignment only. They see something, sense trouble, they radio it in. On-duty SHPD personnel respond in an appropriate manner.”

  “It’ll take me about an hour to make the calls.”

  “Appreciate it, Reggie.”

  “No problem. Hey, this gig will sure beat my side job unloading ice cream pallets at the Acme.”

  “10-4,” says Ceepak.

  It’s true. Most cops have to work a second job—carpenter, plumber, supermarket loading dock schlub—on their days off to make ends meet. At least half of the SHPD’s eighty-some cops will jump at the chance for a ton of easy overtime pay babysitting the TV show. And Prickly Pear Productions is picking up the tab. It’s what they call a win-win situation. Unless, of course, The Thing starts chucking Skee-Balls at you or, worse, wiggling his nips in your face.