Tilt-a-Whirl jc-1 Read online

  “Give Adam my best when you wake him up.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Squeegee,” Adam Kiger says when he looks at the sketch of our suspect.

  We did, indeed, wake him up. But we stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way over and the black coffee was, as advertised, “just the thing.” Especially since we also grabbed Adam a couple of those cakey chocolate doughnuts I know he loves.

  “Yeah. That's Squeegee. I mean it sure looks like him.”

  Adam wolfs down a hunk of doughnut.

  “You've rousted him before?” Ceepak asks, folding up his copy of the sketch.

  “A few times. He likes to crawl under the fence there at the Tilt-A-Whirl. A lot of our local druggies do the same thing. That's why I never took away their trapdoor or filled in the tunnel. Makes it easy to find ’em.”

  “Check,” Ceepak says.

  “One-stop shopping.” Adam chomps off some more doughnut. “Like a big roach motel.”

  Adam Kiger is a little older than me, younger than Ceepak. He's been full time with the Sea Haven police for three or four years. He has the short, shaved-head haircut. The muscles. He and Ceepak look like cops.

  “They the only ones who sneak in there? The users?”

  “In the morning. Late nights, you get your high school and college kids looking for a dark place to make out. They crawl under the fence, too. But that's more a night-shift problem. Some guys catch all the luck. They get lovers’ lane, I get the pharmaceuticals convention.”

  “So why do you call him Squeegee?”

  “He used to work at the car wash sometimes. You know the place-just off Ocean Avenue?”

  “Cap'n Scrubby's?” I say.

  Ceepak rolls his eyes. I don't think he'll ever get used to the cutesy-poo nautical names in Sea Haven.

  “Yeah,” Adam says. “Scrubby's. Squeegee used to be one of the towel guys at the end of the line working for tips. He'd rub down the inside of your vehicle, swipe his towel around your seat cushions, wipe the water off your windows….”

  “Like a squeegee.” Ceepak gets it.

  “Right. And he was so skinny, the name kind of stuck. He looks like a long, skinny pole….”

  “Have you seen him lately?”

  “About a week ago I did a swing by the Tilt-A-Whirl, gave him a wake-up call. It was raining, so he and a few of his buddies were up in the turtles. They use the ride for a shooting gallery because all the cars have those roof deals up top. You know, where the turtle necks stick out? Makes an excellent crash pad. Roof keeps ’em dry.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Up and down the beach. No known address. We don't even know his real name.”

  “Check. So what happened this morning?”

  “Approximately 0630, I get called off the beach. Had to go deal with that stupid tricycle theft up on Rosewood.”

  “Right.”

  “Missed all the fireworks.”

  “Have you ever seen your friend Squeegee carrying a weapon?”

  “What? A gun? Knife?”

  “Perhaps a semi-automatic pistol? Maybe nine-millimeter?”

  “Not that I ever saw. But I wouldn't put it past him. For a longhaired hippie, Squeegee's sort of short on ‘peace, love, and understanding.’ He is one angry old dude. Extremely confrontational. Paranoid. Thinks everything is a Republican plot against him. Always gives me grief when I wake him up.”

  “How so?”

  “He's just a nasty hunk of humanity. Called me a ‘lackey tool of the capitalist pigs.’ Got up in my face real close, made me smell the sour booze on his breath. Liked to hiss stuff at me, like he was some kind of snake.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “‘Stupid slumlord stooge.’ Stuff like that.”

  Slumlord. We're hearing that word a lot today.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Around six, I drop Ceepak off back at the Bell beach house.

  “You want me to stay here with you?” I ask. “In case you need a ride somewhere?”

  “No thanks. I'm staying put tonight, walking the perimeter.”

  “Guard duty?”

  “I gave that young lady my word.” He says it with a grin and looks much happier because I think he feels like we're finally getting somewhere.

  Squeegee's our man.

  “Go home and get some sleep, Danny. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Roger that,” I say, sounding just like Ceepak. “You too.”

  “Right.”

  But I can tell he has other plans. I don't think he ever sleeps much-especially not when he's on guard duty.

  “See you tomorrow,” he says. “0730. Here. Sharp.”

  “Sharp,” I say.

  Ceepak salutes “so long” and marches up to the top of the driveway to check in with the two state police. They point here and there, plot their positions.

  I figure Ashley Hart's going to sleep peacefully tonight. She's got armed guards-and one of them is John Ceepak.

  I'm feeling kind of pumped, like I clutched victory from the jaws of defeat and ended the day on a high note.

  I turn in the cop car, punch out at headquarters, jump into my own wheels, and head home to lose my work clothes and grab a quick shower. Then, I think I'll head down to The Sand Bar, see what I can see, download my day.

  I'm starting to think maybe I could be a cop. A real one, not just this part-time deal for the summer. Ceepak? He'll do that to you- he'll make you start thinking about being all you can be, like they used to sing in those old Army commercials.

  The Sand Bar is buzzing.

  It's 8:30 P.M. and I'm out on the deck with a few of my buds (most of whom are drinking Buds) watching the sun slip down behind the docks and sailboats on the bay side of the island. There's a screened-in porch with picnic tables, and sometimes we like hanging out here better than inside at the bar. You can hear most of the music but not as much of the bull people at the bar start spewing after their third or fourth beer.

  Everybody wants me to tell them about the murder but I say “No comment,”like I've seen lawyers do on cop shows.

  “Who do they think did it?”

  “No comment.”

  “You have some suspects though, right?”

  “No comment.”

  Sounds like I know everything without having to say anything at all.

  Some of my friends wonder if Sunnyside Playland will ever reopen. And if they do, will they tear down the Tilt-A-Whirl? This one girl, my friend Becca, who works at her family's motel on Beach Lane, she thinks they have to.

  “Would you want to ride on a ride where somebody was murdered? How gross….”

  “No comment,”

  ’ I say.

  “Jesus, Danny-is that all you're gonna say all night?” It's Jess. He's right. I sort of sound like a skipping CD somebody needs to whack so I'll move on to the next track.

  “Can't you say anything else?”

  “How about another brewski? I'm buying.”

  “Okay. That's better.”

  “Much better,” Becca adds. “And grab some popcorn.”

  “Roger that,” I say.

  “Who's Roger?”

  I forgot I'm with civilians.

  “Nobody. You guys want to eat?”

  “Sure.”

  “Grab some menus. I'll grab the beers.”

  “10-4, good buddy,” Jess says. He's confused. By adding “good buddy,” he's doing Truck Driver instead of Cop. This stuff is kind of subtle.

  I work my way inside and move through the crowd to the bar. It's noisy. The speakers hanging off the ceiling are thumping something fierce.

  Down at the far end of the bar, I see this Abercrombie-Fitch type kid with a tray of Jell-O shots. He looks to be seventeen. Maybe sixteen.

  He shouldn't be in here buying booze. So I do what I think Ceepak would do.

  “Debbie?” I yell loud enough so my friend the bartender can hear me over the Saturday night racket. Debbie looks parti
cularly fetching in her tattered-neck Sand Bar T-shirt and torn-off short-shorts. Add a parrot, she could be a pirate wench.

  “Hey. What's up, Danny Boy?”

  “That kid down there? I hope that's the Jell-O jiggler sampler you just served him. Something he could share with the whole class when he goes back to kindergarten in the fall….”

  “Hey, man-I checked his driver's license. Says he's twenty-one. Says he's cool.”

  “Is that so? Well, I got a piece of paper back home that says I'm Star Wars TIE-Fighter Commander on account of I drank enough Pepsi at Pizza Hut….”

  “You goin’ all-cop on me, Danny Boy? Taking this summer job seriously all of a sudden?”

  “I just don't want you guys to lose your liquor license. That's all.”

  “Then ease up.”

  “What if that kid gets in a car wreck?”

  “He won't.”

  “How do you know?”

  “His father probably took away his keys. In case you haven't heard, there's this killer on the loose and nobody wants their kids driving anywhere until the cops catch the creep. If they can catch him. If they're not too busy running around town hassling people, checking fake IDs….”

  Debbie can dish it out pretty good.

  “I need three beers,” I say.

  “Buds?”

  “Yeah. Long-necks.”

  Debbie moves back down the bar to the cooler.

  I'm thinking about asking the kid with the fake ID a few questions like Ceepak would do. “So-you’re twenty-one? What year were you born? How many touchdowns did Mickey Mantle score that year? Hah! Gotcha. Mickey Mantle never played football….”

  The kid's cell phone rings. He sticks his finger in his empty ear, looks at his watch, says something like “right now?” (from what I can read on his lips), and snaps his flip phone shut.

  “Gotta bounce.”

  I hear him say good-bye to the high-school buddies clustered behind him.

  “I'm late for a blow job.”

  I hear that one, too. His buddies slap him on the back and the kid slurps down a Dixie pixie cup of (I'm sure) vodka-soaked red Jell-O and walks out the door.

  Debbie brings me the beers in a plastic bucket filled with ice.

  “You got some ID, Danny?”

  She's still busting my chops, but I play along and whip out my wallet.

  “See? We card everybody in here.”

  “Good for you, Debbie.”

  And to think-we used to date. Back in high school, when I was the big man with the fake ID. Maybe Debbie's right. Maybe I'm taking this cop thing too seriously.

  I uncurl five extra bucks and leave them on the bar as a tip so Debbie knows I'm sorry if I was acting like an asshole.

  “You need popcorn?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Popcorn would be great.”

  She scoops me up a bucket and smiles. All is forgiven.

  I hug both buckets and hustle out to the porch where my thirsty friends wait.

  Becca, per usual, regales us with lurid stories of sordid motel guests. She works at the front desk, so she sees and hears everything. This week, she says, it's “Latino Soprano” week at The Mussel Beach Motel.

  “We've got all these tough customers hanging out around the pool. Mendez. Ramirez. Echaverra. And you should see the tattoos-which I, of course, did.” Becca is known to admire the sculpted male physique. Probably why she and I don't date. “This one guy? Virgilio Mendez? His chest and arms look like an art museum. He's pumped to the max and has the Blessed Virgin Mary inked on his right shoulder … Jesus with the crown of thorns on his left pec….”

  Halfway through the beers-my second, their third-we decide it's time to order dinner. So we flag down a waitress and order some fried shrimp and fried clam tenders and a French-fried lobster.

  The fried food always comes to the table fastest.

  I'm just getting started on my clam strips and curly fries when my cell phone rings.

  I figure it's Ceepak, calling to make sure I'm tan, rested, and ready for our big day tomorrow.

  Caller ID confirms my hunch. It's my 9:30 tuck-in call.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Danny-how many beers have you had?”

  “Two.”

  “That'll work. I need you down here at the beach house.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Negative. Ashley Hart is missing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I've never seen so many cop cars.

  Red and white lights are swirling everywhere. The road is clogged with armed troops lugging all kinds of heavy firepower. I even see some guys with black Kevlar helmets and full body armor. I swear-it looks like we're about to invade the next town down the shore.

  I see Adam Kiger. He's got another Dunkin’ Donuts coffee going. This one's iced, one of those slushy Coolatas they sell, because it's still hot and muggy and the wind isn't even blowing.

  “Guess I'm never gonna get any sleep,” Adam jokes when I catch his eye.

  “Yeah. You seen Ceepak?”

  “Out back. That's where the girl snuck out.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  Snuck out? The plot thickens.

  I find Ceepak in the back yard, out near the pool.

  “She snuck out,” he says. “To meet her boyfriend.”

  He points up to a small balcony on the second floor. There's a sliding glass door up there and it's open. The balcony's right near this trellis deal made out of four-by-fours and latticework with grapevines or something growing all over it. It'd be an easy little hop from the balcony to the top of the trellis and then a quick shimmy down to the ground. It's like Ashley has a backyard “Romeo and Juliet Playset” instead of the more traditional jungle gym.

  “Is the boyfriend here?”

  “Negative,” Ceepak says. “We heard his story, then his father hauled him home.”

  “Mayor Sinclair?”

  “Roger that. The boy will be available for further questioning, should we need to talk to him later.”

  “So what's his story?” Ceepak pulls out his little notebook.

  “Ben Sinclair says Ashley Hart called him from her cell phone and stated she needed to see him right away. She was so ’totally freaked by everything that happened today, she asked him-no, he said she ‘begged him’-to meet her back here by the pool. He hopped on his motorcycle, left town around 2045. They waved him through at the guardhouse gate….”

  Figures. Guess being the mayor's son gives you an E-Z Pass through life.

  “Sinclair arrived here at approximately 2100 hours. The state police officer guarding the northern perimeter let him pass when he explained who he was.” He does a two-finger point to the south. “I was patrolling the far perimeter. Wasn't alerted to his arrival. The young man waited approximately fifteen minutes. Sat there.”

  Ceepak points to a chaise longue on the patio surrounding the kidney-shaped pool. I see one empty and one half-empty Heineken sitting on a small round table next to the chair.

  “How old's this boyfriend?” I ask, looking at his beer bottles.

  “Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Apparently, he knows where they stow the alcoholic beverages.”

  Ceepak nods at a refrigerator tucked into the brickwork of a massive backyard barbeque. I'm not talking Weber grill and sack of charcoal here. This is one of those stainless-steel professional jobs built into a garden wall.

  “So the kid sat sipping beer for five, ten minutes,” I say, picking up the narrative.

  “Right,” Ceepak says, piecing it all together for me so it becomes clearer for him. “Then, when Ashley still doesn't show, he starts ‘getting pissed.’ He walks over here … to the pergola-”

  “The what?”

  “The arbor. The trellis.”

  “This thing? With the vines?”

  “Right. He comes over here and tries calling up to Ashley's room … tosses a pea pebble or two at her bedroom window….”

  “And he realizes her balcony doo
r is open.”

  “Exactly,” Ceepak says. “That's when young Mr. Sinclair starts, as he puts it, ‘to shit a brick.’ He runs back up to the road, yells at the state police officer, says, ‘Ashley's gone! Ashley's gone!’ Her mother hears the boy, comes running out the front door. She proceeds to scream as well. At 2125 hours, I call for reinforcements, initiate a hard target search.”

  That would be 9:25 P.M.

  It's almost ten now. Took me fifteen minutes to drive down from The Sand Bar. I drove slow because, well, I'd been drinking.

  “Ceepak?”

  It's the chief.

  “What the hell happened?”

  The chief is wearing a big mesh T-shirt, like a football jersey if they played football in July instead of the fall. He's got on gray sweat-pant shorts and flip-flops and looks like he was home in his comfy chair, ready to kick back, pop the top on a cold one, and watch some ball when this new thing started going down.

  “Nothing definite yet, chief.”

  “Well, find something definite, okay? Find it fast.”

  “I'm all over it, sir.”

  The chief does one of those quick looks around, like he wants to make sure nobody is eavesdropping.

  “This thing? It could … you know … it could get messy. State police. FBI. I need, you know … I need your best, John.”

  “It's all I'll ever give you, sir.”

  “Great. Okay. Great. Thanks.”

  Something about the way Ceepak says stuff, like he truly means it, always puts people at ease.

  “Where's the mother?”

  “Inside. Jane is sitting with her.”

  “Okay. Good. Smart. I'm going up to the road,” the chief says. “Reconnoiter with the troops. Work out a search grid. You coming?”

  “In a minute. I want to nose around down here first.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holler if you find something … anything.”

  “Roger.”

  “I'm putting out an Amber Alert.”

  Ceepak nods. This means the TV and radio will urge anybody who thinks they see Ashley, or has any information about her at all, to call the police.

  The chief lugs his bulk around the side of the house and starts screaming at our guys assembled up at the top of the driveway. When we can't hear him yelling any more, Ceepak motions for me to follow him-away from the pool, down to the beach.