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  Jacquie grumbles as she climbs back into her Dodge. “Gonna take us all night to drive home to Baltimore. Gonna be all kinds of bad traffic … .”

  She keeps jabbering but it’s mostly a mumble—a TV set in the living room nobody’s really listening to.

  We lift the trunk lid and see less than nothing. Literally. If you ask me, Nicky Nichols and Mr. Shrimp travel around town with one of those portable Dustbusters you can plug into your cigarette lighter and tidy up after they break in. The carpet still has that greasy splotch on the left, but no way are there any hairs or fibers we could put under the microscope to help us nail Nichols and Shrimp.

  I, once again, see the metal bracket and torn audio wires.

  “They stole my CD changer,” says Tonya.

  “Hopefully,” says Ceepak, “we will be able to recover it for you soon.”

  “Tonya?”

  Jacquie’s back. If our five minutes are already up, her watch must be from a different time zone.

  “We need to leave here. Now.” She turns on Ceepak. “Listen up, popo. Tonya and I are leaving. And don’t you fools be comin’ down to Baltimore, knocking on our door, getting all up in our business. We are through with you, them, and the entire United States Army. Is that clear?”

  “Of course,” says Ceepak.

  “It was new,” says Tonya. “The CD changer. Brand new. I bought it last month.”

  “Little sister, you do not need to be talking to this man!”

  “I may have the receipt. Would that help?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It would help us identify the unit’s serial number.” Ceepak hands her a business card. She stares at it. “If you find the paperwork, please call me.”

  “Tonya?” says Jacquie. “We still need to go talk to that damn funeral home man.”

  Ceepak lowers the trunk lid.

  “Thank you for your time. Again, we’re sorry for your loss.”

  Jacquie turns on her heel and heads back to her car. “We are out of here.”

  Tonya doesn’t move.

  “You were Shareef’s friend, right?” she asks.

  “No. We never met.”

  Now she looks puzzled.

  “Tonya?” Jacquie is hollering out the passenger-side window of her car. “How many damn times have I got to tell you? We need to leave here. Now!”

  Ceepak looks at Tonya. Musters up his considerable stockpile of honesty and integrity and puts it right there in his eyes so she can see it. “Is there something you want to tell me, Ms. Smith?”

  She nods. “Shareef called me.”

  “Last night?”

  Another nod. “We talked some.”

  “Tonya?” Jacquie is furious and yanks open her door again. When she slams it shut behind her, the whole chassis rocks. “Get in the damn car, girl!”

  Tonya keeps talking. “He said he was in a parking lot. At a rest stop. He told me he was fine, feeling strong.”

  “Tonya?”

  “Then he had to run because his friend showed up.”

  “His friend?” says Ceepak.

  “That’s enough,” snaps Jacquie.

  “I thought it might’ve been you,” says Tonya.

  Jacquie grabs Tonya’s elbow. Rough. “But you were wrong weren’t you, baby sister? Shareef was wrong too! Dead wrong! He never had no damn friends. Not this man, not those others, not any of’em!”

  14

  “Danny? Did you get more ice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. Sam? Can you give him a hand? We need it at the poolside bar. Thanks, guys.”

  Rita hustles up the driveway through the wrought iron gates to Crazy Janey’s French chateau beach house. The place is a mansion. Samantha Starky and I have been valet parking cars for a couple hours, ever since the gates swung open at 7:30 PM. We’re both wearing black pants and little red jackets. Kind of look like organ grinder monkeys. Of course, Starky makes a much cuter monkey than I do.

  The red tunic hugs her in a way that shows off a shapely figure. This might be the first time I’ve ever seen her out of uniform. I mean she’s in a valet parking uniform but not the drab dress-blue polo shirt that sort of makes everybody wearing it look like a lumpy airplane pillow. And without the cop cap, her hair is kind of bouncy, not strangled into a ponytail poking out the back of her hat.

  She cleans up good, as they say.

  “I can carry two bags,” she says.

  “Great. I’ll grab the rest.” I go ahead and hoist four bags so I can prove to Starky and the world just how manly I am. Mistake. Each bag weighs thirty pounds and the bottoms are filled with the sloshing water of melted ice, some of which is dribbling out of vent holes and soaking my shoes.

  “We can make another trip,” suggests Starky.

  “That’s okay,” I grunt. “I’m good to go.”

  Of course, it’s all uphill from here. Up the driveway. Through the gates. Up around the fountain. The bags seem heavier with every step.

  “Did you see Paris Hilton?” asks Starky as we hike up the hill. I’m leaking a trail of droplets, my bags barely an inch off the pavement.

  “Nah.” I’m keeping my words to a minimum. Hoarding my oxygen. It’s another hundred yards around the triple garages to the backyard, two hundred feet from there to the kidney-shaped pool. My arms are about six inches longer than they used to be. Carrying 120 pounds of ice will do that to you.

  Starky and I are working our butts off tonight, because Ceepak isn’t here to do all the jobs he was supposed to do. He talked to Rita earlier and, I guess, they both decided it was more important for him to head down to the state police barracks and talk with some of his trooper pals, see if we could gain access to any of the Smith suicide evidence, now that we officially suspect a pair of Sea Haven pirates were the ones who broke into the dead man’s vehicle. Ceepak probably advised his wife that we only have about nineteen hours left to figure out who really killed Shareef Smith or, without a doubt, Sergeant Dale “Stone Cold” Dixon will send out his troops to do the job for us. They’ll probably do the judge and jury’s jobs too. You know—the sentencing and execution parts. I think they’re all firmly in favor of the death penalty.

  I guess when you marry a guy who comes with a rigid moral code, this sort of thing happens now and then. He gives his word to someone, you suffer the consequences.

  But wait—it’s almost 9:30. Ceepak’s been gone for three hours. The state barracks are only like a thirty-minute drive down the Parkway. He should definitely be back by now.

  Maybe he’s allergic to ice.

  We round this bend in the garden path and weave our way through a few hundred of Dirty Larry and Crazy Janey’s close, personal celebrity friends. The girls in the crowd—mostly supermodels and adult movie actresses or both—are all wearing bathing suits. Skimpy bikinis, mostly. But none of them are actually in the pool playing Marco Polo. We pass this one blonde and I swear it looks like she’s wearing three folded napkins. Cocktail napkins. Folded in half. Tiny triangles.

  I hear a wolf whistle. T.J. He’s over in the poolside tent, setting up beverages for the beautiful people. He waves us over.

  “We need to ice down this champagne, pronto,” he says. “The senator’s all set to make a big toast.”

  T.J.’s already lined up three-dozen magnums of Moët & Chandon in foil-lined bins.

  I plop my ice bags on the ground and try to reestablish some semblance of circulation to my limbs. Starky repeatedly smacks and smashes her two bags on the concrete to break up the clumped-together cubes. Gives one bag a good karate kick. Then, she tears open the top with her teeth, gives the whole thing a good shake, and dumps ice into the channels between champagne bottles. She’s not even breathing heavy. Maybe I should sign up for Tae Kwon Do.

  “We have a senator here?” I ask to kill some time so I don’t have to lift anything heavy for another ten seconds or so.

  “Senator Worthington,” says Starky. “The senior senator from Pennsylvania. I parked his Lexus while y
ou ran to the store for ice. It’s a very nice car but he’s a terrible tipper. Gave me seventy-five cents.”

  “Man, you should’ve kept driving,” says T.J. “You could’ve held his Lexus hostage. Hey, Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you meet Springsteen?”

  “No way. He’s here? Springsteen?”

  “Yeah. He played a couple songs. You know—‘Crazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley trading hands.’”

  “Oh, man! He sang ‘Spirit in the Night’?”

  T.J. chuffs a laugh.

  “Gotcha!”

  Kids. You gotta love’em. Can’t shoot’em.

  “I’m yanking your crank,” T.J. says as I dump my first load. I make sure a couple cubes tumble out. I also let the water slosh onto his sneaker.

  There’s some commotion across the pool.

  Eight brawny guys in dark suits and sunglasses who look like linebackers with curly wires trailing out of their ears. One of the guys talks into his sleeve, just like in the movies. I don’t think he’s talking to his buddy Mr. Cuff Link. I think they’re Secret Service agents or some kind of private security guards—either for Dirty Larry, the king of all airwaves, or the senior senator from Pennsylvania. Right now, I’m guessing they work for the senator because they have crew cuts and shaved heads. I’m certain Dirty Larry’s security posse dresses in the latest gangsta rap fashions and none of these guys are wearing necklaces that resemble hubcaps on chains.

  The security team scans the crowd, sweeps it with their hidden eyes. A couple talk to their sleeves some more.

  Rita swings by the booze tent carrying a tray of pigs in a blanket—golden brown pastry shells wrapped around sizzling little wieners. Starving, I reach for a toothpick.

  “Danny? These are for the guests. Hey—have you guys seen John?”

  “Nope!” says Starky, the one off-duty cop not currently drooling like Homer Simpson in a doughnut factory.

  “Darn,” says Rita. “I wanted him to hear Senator Worthington.”

  “Is he the guy in the suit and the Army boots?”

  “Yes, T.J.,” says Rita.

  Okay. I’ve read about Senator Worthington. Only because his fashion statement made the cover of this weekly newspaper I read whenever I’m in the express line at the grocery store with the mathematically challenged. You know—people who can’t count to fifteen. The Star Gazer loves Senator Winslow “the Winner” Worthington because he always wears a pair of his son’s dusty ol’ Army boots. He says he wears the boots “so I never forget the daily sacrifices being made by my son and all our brave troops with boots on the ground over in Iraq.”

  Geeze-o, man.

  Hey, call me cynical, but the wearing-my-son’s-old-Army-boots bit sounds like a slick political PR stunt to me. Something for the TV cameras. This is why, when he speaks, he never stands behind a podium, unless it’s made out of Plexiglas. It’s all about the boots.

  And it’s working. Everybody says Worthington is a shoe-in to be the next Republican candidate for the presidency.

  “Testing, one, two, three …”

  On the other side of the pool, they’ve set up a small raised platform. Dirty Larry, the nationally syndicated potty mouth, is on stage, shaking his shaggy hair and tapping on the microphone.

  “Can you hear me, Janey?”

  “When can I not hear you?” Crazy Janey, our hostess and Larry’s loyal sidekick, screams from over near the diving board.

  “Okay, everybody,” says Larry, “before we fill the pool with Jell-O and really get this party started …”

  The crowd laughs. I might’ve joined them except I’m busy heaving another bag of ice.

  “I want to introduce a truly great American. Not as great as me, of course. He’s not syndicated in one hundred and twenty-seven markets … .”

  The crowd claps. I dump ice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce an American who isn’t afraid to speak up for our brave men and women in uniform, maybe because he walks a mile in his son’s shoes every day. A son, by the way, who was wounded in combat and awarded the Purple Heart. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want my opinion, which, of course everybody does, this man should be and will be the next president of these United States. Why? Because I’m too busy to run myself!”

  A few more chuckles. Enough noise for us to start popping champagne corks into towels.

  “Friends, I give you the senior senator from the great state of Pennsylvania—Winslow W. Worthington!”

  Dirty Larry signals for the senator to clomp up on stage in those Army boots.

  Everybody claps so I flap flippers like an obedient seal.

  “Danny?” says Starky. “Start pouring. It’s almost time for the toast!”

  So, while the esteemed senator rambles on about how happy he is to be here and jabs the air with his thumb like Clinton used to do, we pour bubbly into plastic champagne glasses. Well, I guess they’re not really glasses but you can’t call them champagne “plastics.” Not very classy and, trust me, Crazy Janey is definitely paying the classy rates for this shindig.

  The senator talks some more.

  We pass out the champagne.

  The senator talks even more because that’s what senators do.

  Rita makes her way through the crowd and reaches the stage so she can hand a cup of bubbly up to the senator.

  The eight guys with the sunglasses and earpieces flanking the senator on all sides of the stage won’t be drinking this evening. It’s hard to whip out your Uzi if you’re sipping champagne.

  Finally, the senator stops speechifying long enough to raise his plastic goblet.

  “And so, my friends, I propose a toast!”

  Everybody raises their glasses when the senator raises his.

  “Goodness gracious,” he says. “Words fail me.”

  “Impossible,” cracks Dirty Larry, who, unlike the senator, never runs out of words, especially if there’s any kind of microphone close by.

  “What makes this the grandest summer evening of all?” the senator continues, sounding all choked up. “The answer is quite simple: my only son is here tonight. Oh, yes—he could have come home to his family months ago when he won that Purple Heart Larry mentioned. However, when his wounds healed, my son told me he didn’t want to abandon his other family: the brave men of Echo Company.”

  The crowd applauds. They know a hero when they hear about one.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my son is here on a brief furlough to savor some of the freedoms he has fought so valiantly to defend. And, to make this night even more special, he’s brought along a few friends!”

  A murmur rumbles through the crowd. I notice that Starky is up on the tips of her toes. The senator swings his arm grandly to the right.

  “Son? Come on up here with your buddies and take a bow!”

  Five men in uniform rumble up the steps and line up behind the senator.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Second Lieutenant Winslow G. Worthington and his courageous comrades from the fighting Eighty-second Airborne!”

  The crowd goes wild.

  Well, everybody except me.

  Winslow G. Worthington? He’s the soldier with the limp.

  The one Dixon calls “Lieutenant Worthless.”

  15

  “You from New Jersey, Officer Starky?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You what they call a Jersey girl?”

  “’spose so, sir.”

  “How come you don’t have the big hair?”

  Just our luck. After the toast, Sergeant Dixon is still thirsty. So he and three of his buddies, the ones he calls Handy Andy, Mickey Mex, and Butt Lips, are in the booze tent, helping themselves to champagne. A magnum each. That’s one and a half liters—twice as much as a normal bottle.

  When it comes to alcohol consumption, these guys don’t know from normal. Especially Butt Lips. He’s huge. A real two-fisted drinker. One magnum in each paw.


  Dixon leans in with a leer. “So, what do you do for fun down here, Jersey girl?”

  “Sarge?” It’s Lieutenant Worthington. Two of the senator’s bodyguards flank him. “Dad says we should roll.”

  “So soon?” says Dixon. “What a shame. Officer Starky was about to give me her phone number.”

  “It’s the same as mine,” I say. “Nine-one-one.”

  “Cute, Boyle. Cute.”

  “I try.”

  “Yeah. Well, why don’t you and Ceepak try spending some time figuring out who the fuck killed one of my men instead of valet parking cars at fancy-ass parties?”

  “Sarge?” Worthington shakes his head. “Not here.”

  “You giving the orders now, gimp?”

  Worthington blinks.

  “So, you guys want to hit the boardwalk tomorrow?” Dixon asks nobody in particular.

  “Sure, sarge,” says Butt Lips. I think I know how Rutledge got his nickname: he kisses a lot of heinie.

  “Might give us something to do before we do the job the local constabulary seem unable to do.” He holds up a hand. “But, I gave my word. Gave Officer Ceepak twenty-four hours, of which he only has what? Twenty left?”

  “Nineteen, sir,” says Handy Andy. He is, indeed, handy. Knows his math.

  “So, we’ll head over to the boardwalk and kill some time riding the rides before we head out to kill whoever—”

  He stops.

  Here come two more musclemen in sunglasses and suits. They look like the downfield blockers for a tailback if, you know, offensive linemen were allowed to carry concealed weapons under their uniforms. They halt. Separate.

  Here comes the all-American from Pennsylvania: Senator Winslow W. Worthington. The four other bodyguards from the eight-man crew are tailing him, still scanning the crowd for trouble other than someone popping out of their bikini top.

  “Win?”

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “It might be prudent for you and your friends to call it a night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good seeing you again, Sergeant Dixon,” says the senator. He looks like his face should be chiseled into marble. White swept-back hair—like George Washington with better teeth. If this senator-president thing doesn’t work out, the elder Mr. Worthington could become a male model and pose as the wise-and-loving father of the bride in tuxedo ads.