Hell Hole Read online

  The senator extends his hand. Dixon puts down his champagne jug so he can shake it.

  “Thank you for watching out for my son, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I note that Dixon is standing more stiffly now, like someone just shoved a ramrod up his butt.

  The senator snaps Dixon a crisp salute, which Dixon returns just as sharply. The man sobers up quicker than anybody I’ve ever met.

  The noble statesman and his bodyguards breeze up the garden pathway to shake a few more hands on their way out of the party.

  Dixon picks up his super-sized bottle and drains the last drops. “I’ll drive.”

  “We have the Denali, sir.” This from one of the security guys guarding the senator’s son. “We’ll transport you and your men back to Kipper Street.”

  Dixon gives the guy a wobbly salute off the brim of his khaki hat. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  Guess he was faking that sobriety for the senator.

  And so the war heroes depart. They shuffle into this huge SUV that somebody parked on the patio next to the pool. I guess when you have Pennsylvania plates reading US SEN 1 you can park anywhere you want. The two bodyguards climb in up front. The one riding shotgun probably actually has a shotgun.

  “Thanks, Danny,” says Starky when the soldiers are safe and secure behind locked doors and tinted glass.

  “No problem,” I say.

  She seems sort of embarrassed. “I know they’re war heroes …”

  “Doesn’t mean they get to be assholes too.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. But you know—you could’ve taken them out with some kind of karate kick or one of those Tae Kwon Do moves … .”

  “Not all five. Only two or three.”

  “Hey, I’d help. And don’t forget—we have Ceepak on our team.”

  “Not really. He’s not here.”

  Oh, yeah. In any altercation, no matter the martial art, your kicks and karate chops are much more effective against your adversaries when you’re actually there.

  Ceepak finally shows up around 11:30.

  “Sorry I wasn’t available to help this evening,” he says to Starky and me when he finds us out front. The toasts are all over, so we’re back on active valet parking duty. We can hear the music and laughter drifting up over the wrought iron fence. Occasionally, we pick up the splash of a cannonball as somebody either jumps or gets pushed into the pool. Probably the latter. The splashes are always followed by hysterical laughter and “boo-yeahs” and “whoo-hoos” and whatever else drunks can come up with after they toss somebody into chlorinated water. I don’t think any of our revelers will be claiming their cars any time soon. The night, as they say, is young.

  “John?” Rita comes down the driveway. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “You took care of it?”

  “It’s all squared away.”

  Starky and I shoot each other a glance. We have absolutely no idea what Ceepak and his wife are talking about.

  So I ask.

  “What’s up?”

  “Personal matter,” says Ceepak.

  Wow. How un-Ceepakian. Taking care of personal business when we only have like seventeen hours left to figure out who killed Shareef Smith before Dixon and his crew do it for us? Totally off task.

  “Anything we can help with?” I ask and gesture to include Starky. Might as well drag her into this since we’re both kind of counting on Ceepak to help us out the next time Sergeant Dixon leches after Starky.

  “I’d rather not discuss it,” says Ceepak.

  “Same here,” says Rita.

  Guess if they don’t say anything, they can’t lie about whatever it is they’re trying to hide from us.

  “Glad you’re back,” Rita says to Ceepak and gives him a quick peck on the cheek. “I need to be up at the pool. Time to serve ice cream. Want me to fix you a cone or a sundae or something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “We have water ices too.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay. If you change your mind … .”

  “Actually, Rita—if it won’t create too much of an imposition, Danny and I need to take off. The same janitor who was on duty at the rest area last night is there tonight. We should talk to him ASAP.”

  “Your friends at the state police set up an interview?”

  He nods. “They’re also working on access to the physical evidence. They understand our sense of urgency.”

  “Great. Okay. You guys go on. I’ll ask some of the waiters to help Samantha with the cars when the party breaks up.”

  “Appreciate it,” says Ceepak.

  We hear another splash and a wild squeal of whoo-hoo delight. Now, they’re applauding. Cheering. Why do I think Dirty Larry just got dunked?

  “I gotta go …”

  Rita dashes up the driveway.

  “Danny? Where’s your Jeep?” Ceepak asks.

  “Way down the road. I had to save the good spots for the guests.”

  “As you should. The walk will do us good. Help us clear our minds. Formulate questions for our interrogation of the janitor.”

  Yeah.

  Maybe I’ll ask him what’s better: Lysol toilet bowl cleanser or Scrubbing Bubbles.

  Then maybe I’ll ask him if he knows what the hell Ceepak and his wife are trying to hide from me and Starky.

  16

  “Who do you think his friend was?” I ask.

  “Come again?”

  “Smith’s sister. She said that when she talked to Shareef last night, he had to hang up when his ‘friend’ pulled into the parking lot.”

  I see the sign indicating that the exit 52 rest area is two miles down the Parkway. The sign also advises passing traffic that the next rest area is thirty-six miles away. It’s giving fair warning: if you gotta go, you better go now or forever hold your peace.

  “So why’d she think that friend was you?”

  “Not knowing, can’t say.”

  “Did you know Shareef? Over in Iraq?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you busted him or something when you were an MP.”

  “I suppose that’s a possibility. However, few of the soldiers we wrote up considered us ‘friends.’”

  “So who could this ‘friend’ be?”

  “The possibilities are endless. Maybe Shareef had friends from Baltimore who moved to New Jersey. Maybe another soldier from his regiment lives in the area. Or, perhaps, it was simply his way of politely getting rid of his sister in order to make contact with a drug dealer.”

  “So how do we narrow down the field?”

  “I’ve asked the state police for access to any and all security camera footage from the parking lot. We may soon have visual evidence regarding who broke into Smith’s vehicle as well as who visited him right before he went into the building to use the bathroom.”

  Yeah. Smith used it to shoot up drugs. Somebody else used it to shoot Smith.

  We pull into the parking lot of the rest stop.

  The sea of asphalt is nearly empty. Pools of soft light are lined up in tidy rows underneath towering lampposts. High-flying bugs, some the size of winged bricks, flutter up where the mercury vapor glows. Not too many cars in the slanted spaces at this hour but more than I’d expect to see at midnight on a Saturday.

  I see a bunch of buses too. The kind with cushy seats, carpeted walls, aluminum toilets, and chair-back TVs. The kind loaded up with senior citizens heading home after transferring their bank balances to the casinos down in A-C.

  “Mr. Delgado will meet us in the food court,” says Ceepak. According to what the state police told him, Filberto Delgado was the janitor who flipped up the latch on the locked stall and found Shareef Smith’s body. The one who threw up in the sink.

  “I’m surprised he’s working tonight,” I say. “I mean, after what he saw last night. What he found.”

  “He may not have a choice, Danny.”
r />   True. The guys with the crappy jobs, the ones who clean up other people’s messes all day every day, seldom get what they call a benefits package beyond a steady paycheck. Forty hours at minimum wage.

  “I always work the eleven-to-seven shift,” Mr. Delgado says. “I like nights. Not as messy.”

  We’re sitting at one of the small tables near the atrium on the east side of the food court. The atrium was designed for folks who like to wolf down their pizza in sunshine magnified to hothouse levels by an arching ceiling of glass. At midnight, however, the sun’s not so intense, but the daytime heat is still trapped under the curved dome. The chairs sort of look like hard plastic versions of the wooden ones you might have around your kitchen table, except these are welded to the table’s crossbeams, something most people don’t do at home, even though I know my mom thought about it whenever my brother and I leaned back in our chairs and made the spindles pop out of their sockets.

  “I clean the men’s room every hour on the hour.”

  Delgado is probably forty. He’s bald up top, keeps both side panels so neatly trimmed they could be putting greens. It looks like he irons his uniform polo shirt and black pants. His HMM Host baseball cap too. He’s obviously Hispanic, but his English isn’t nearly as deficient as CSI linguist Slominsky suggested it was.

  “So you went into the men’s room for the first time when?” asks Ceepak.

  “Usually, it’s the first thing I do—right after I clock in. Say, eleven-oh-five. Eleven-oh-six. I always clean the men’s room first. It’s a high traffic area. Men are messier than women. They stand. They miss. They do not flush.”

  True. Hence the dreaded “floaters.”

  Delgado rests his arms on the small square table. Feels something sticky. Looks annoyed.

  He reaches for a spray bottle on his rolling Rubbermaid cart. It’s parked next to our table and loaded up with all sorts of jugs and brushes and enough toilet paper rolls to last most guys an entire year, unless, of course, his girlfriend is staying over.

  Delgado spritzes the laminated particleboard and wipes it clean with a paper towel he rips off the roll he has cleverly rigged to the front of his janitorial trolley. Gives the aluminum edging near his elbows a quick swipe with the towel too.

  Ceepak smiles approvingly. He likes a man who takes pride in his work.

  Delgado shakes his head while he balls up the soiled towel. “As you can see, Osvaldo worked the second shift again tonight. Osvaldo is twenty-five and lazy.”

  Sure. I can relate.

  “He only does enough work to keep the boss from firing him.”

  The tabletop sufficiently de-sticky-fied, Delgado now expertly centers the plastic salt and pepper shakers.

  “Sometimes, Osvaldo even cheats.”

  Uh-oh. That’s a Ceepak code violation if ever I heard one.

  “How so?”

  “Last night, he made me late on my rounds.”

  Ceepak looks confused. “You initialed the clipboard at eleven-oh-five PM …”

  “Yes. But this was before I saw that the tape had been pulled across the right side, closing it down for maintenance.”

  Interesting. This is the first time we’re hearing this: the side of the men’s room where Smith’s body was found was roped off to the public.

  “Sometimes, instead of cleaning, Osvaldo just pulls the tape across.”

  “The Retracta-Belt?”

  Delgado nods. “The clipboard is in the entranceway, so I signed in at eleven-oh-five. But, when I walked down the hallway and saw that the right side was closed for maintenance, I went looking for my boss.”

  “And did you find him?”

  “No. I think he took the night off. I could not find him after … you know … after I …”

  Now it’s Ceepak’s turn to nod. “So,” he says, “you came back into the restroom at what time?”

  “Eleven-twenty. Maybe eleven-thirty.”

  “And, according to the clipboard, the last time the men’s room had been cleaned was ten-oh-five PM?”

  “Yes.”

  Okay, figuring this Osvaldo slacker finished mopping up sometime around 10:10 because he probably spent like two minutes cleaning up the “open” side, our killer had over an hour to get in, do the job, then head down—or up—the Parkway.

  “Did you take down the tape?” Ceepak asks.

  “Yes. So I could roll in my cart.”

  “Tell us what you saw when you first entered the right side of the restroom.”

  “Okay. First I see the portable floor blower. The big fan was still running, wasting electricity, because the floor was completely dry. They call this machine the tornado. It is very powerful. Very loud.”

  “Anything else strike you as unusual?”

  “Yes. To my left, I see a mop bucket tucked into a corner where I could not see it from out in the hallway. The bucket was empty.”

  Now I nod. “Osvaldo,” I say. “The lazy bum just left it there.”

  Ceepak shakes his head. “Danny—somebody else may have left it there.”

  Duh. Right. The guy who swabbed the floor underneath Smith’s toilet to clean up all the evidence. The guy who knocked the drug gear into the neighboring stall.

  “Was there a mop in that bucket?” Ceepak asks.

  “No. It was empty.”

  “Where is that bucket typically kept between cleanups?” asks Ceepak.

  “In the supplies closet. Over by the food court.”

  “Is there only one bucket?”

  “No. We have several.”

  “I see.”

  “They roll on casters.”

  “Was one missing from the closet?”

  “Yes.”

  Ceepak jots a note in his pad. “This is very helpful,” he says. “Tell us what you did next.”

  “I saw the shoes in the stall. I thought it was unusual—somebody using the facilities even though that half of the restroom had been closed off. Also, his pants weren’t, you know, pulled down.”

  Yeah. It always works out better if you drop your drawers before you sit on the throne.

  “But, I said nothing. I cleaned the sinks. The urinals. Put fresh water in the flower vases. Restocked the paper goods. Finally, I started mopping the floor. I even hummed and whistled some, thinking the man in the stall would hear me and maybe, you know, hurry up.”

  But, as we all know, that didn’t happen. Smith was already dead.

  “I accidentally splashed some mop water on the man’s shoes so I said, ‘I am sorry.’ He said nothing. So, I said, ‘Sir?’ Again, he said nothing. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ I asked. Still nothing. So, I go right up to the stall. Tap on the door. Nothing.”

  “That’s when you went out again to look for the manager?”

  “Yes. And again, I can’t find him.”

  “The state police have informed us that Anthony Bosco, your manager, phoned in sick last night.”

  “I see,” says the maintenance man. I’m guessing Mr. Delgado has never taken a sick day in his life.

  “So you came back into the men’s room …”

  “Yes. I have a small knife, which I carry in my pocket. I opened it up. Used the long blade to slide through the crack and raised the latch. I pushed open the door. I …”

  Delgado swallows hard. Remembers what he did next. Hopes he doesn’t have to do it again.

  Me too. We’re a long way from the nearest sink.

  Ceepak closes up his notebook.

  “Thank you, Mr. Delgado. You’ve been very helpful. We may want to speak to Osvaldo. Do you know his last name?”

  “Vargas. Osvaldo Vargas. He has family in Tulcingo. He should work harder, send them money. Instead, he likes to party with his wild friends.”

  Hey, come on—the guy’s twenty-five. It’s what we do.

  “I’m sorry to have made you go through all this again,” says Ceepak.

  “Again?”

  “I’m assuming you told this same story to the investigators las
t night?”

  Delgado shakes his head. “No.”

  “No?” says Ceepak.

  “The man with the mustache? The man in charge? He didn’t seem interested. He only asked if I had a key to the snack shop. He was hungry.”

  We let Mr. Delgado go back to work. Those folks headed home from Atlantic City? While we were chatting, they were dropping limp French fries on the floor. Ketchup packs and napkins too. That’s why there’s white paper stuck to the heel of my shoe when Ceepak and I head out the front doors.

  “Let’s meet for breakfast first thing tomorrow at Grace’s place. She’s from Baltimore …”

  Yep. That’s why the Chesapeake crabmeat omelet is the only thing on the menu at the Pig’s Commitment that doesn’t include some kind of pork.

  “She might be able to help us reach out to Smith’s sisters.”

  Grace Porter is also black.

  “Then, at ten AM,” says Ceepak, “we need to be on the ninth hole at King Putt Golf. I believe they call it ‘Victoria Falls.’”

  Tomorrow is Sunday, a national day of golfing for many, I’m sure, but I figured we might be busy tracking down leads, not hitting the loop-dee-loop on Ocean Avenue.

  Ceepak reads my puzzled expression.

  “The choice of location was made by Saul Slominsky. I suspect he feels confident no one will recognize him there. Apparently there is a cave underneath the waterfall.”

  What do you know?

  Slobbinsky wants to talk to us.

  17

  There’s nothing like the smell of bacon grease in the morning.

  It smells like somebody else fixed breakfast.

  It used to mean my mom woke up early to plunk flabby strips into her skillet so they could shrink into crisp ribbons of deliciousness. Now it means Ceepak and I are already back on the job. Eight AM Sunday, we’re at the Pig’s Commitment, Grace Porter’s place on Ocean Avenue. The whole building smells like a can of congealed bacon drippings with the consistency of Crisco.

  Ms. Porter, the proprietress, is elderly and elegant and swears she improvises her secret rib sauce recipe every time she whips up a batch. Her restaurant doubles as a mini-museum for porker paraphernalia. The walls are covered, the shelves crammed. Ceramic pigs, plastic pigs, piggy banks of all kinds, pig-shaped cutting boards. Each table is set with a pair of mismatched shakers where the salt and pepper come tumbling out of pig snouts. The decor is enough to make a vegetarian weep.