Hell Hole

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Yeah. Maybe. They probably hit the trunk too.”

  So Dixon and I move around to the rear of the vehicle while Starky and the trooper stay up front to swap crime-spree statistics.

  Yep. The trunk lid has been jimmied open. You can see scratch marks and dings near the lock. Crowbar. Somebody in a hurry.

  I instinctively reach into my hip pocket and slip on my lint-free gloves.

  “What are those?” asks Dixon.

  “Evidence handling gloves. Don’t want to mess up any latent fingerprints on the trunk lid.”

  Dixon gives me the eye slits again. I must look like a pansy in my Mickey Mouse mittens.

  I try to explain. “My partner always insists that I wear these things.”

  “This Ceepak guy?”

  “Yeah. Otherwise, we might, you know, contaminate evidence.”

  “That crime-scene investigator. Slominsky. He wasn’t wearing gloves.”

  And that, my friends, is why we call him Slobbinsky.

  “Yeah,” I say with a slight shrug. “His call. Anyway, it’s not as important in there. Too many random fingerprints on a public restroom door to do us any good.”

  Dixon nods. “There’d be thousands of them.”

  “Exactly. But back here,” I say, indicating the trunk, “we have a decent shot at lifting something usable. Wouldn’t be too many other prints. Just your guy Shareef. The owner of the vehicle. And the bad guys.”

  “Shareef was the owner of the vehicle,” says Dixon.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Check out the rearview mirror. See those bracelets and feathery gewgaws hanging off it? Women do that. Not guys. Could be his girlfriend’s ride.”

  Dixon nods. “Interesting.”

  I shrug. “You work the job, you pick up little things.”

  Especially if you work the job alongside John Ceepak.

  Fully gloved, I raise the trunk lid.

  “Fuckers,” mutters Dixon.

  Same story. The trunk is empty. Somebody gutted it. Ripped up the carpet, which has a big splotchy oil stain on the right. I lean over, sniff at it. Motor oil. Up near the spare tire, I see more ripped wires. An empty bracket that used to hold something, probably a CD changer.

  “Do you think they knew Smith had the heroin?” asks Dixon.

  “It’s a possibility,” I say because that’s what Ceepak always says when we’re just getting started, dumping the box of jigsaw puzzle pieces out on the card table, so to speak.

  I lower the lid and call up to the trooper.

  “Excuse me?”

  He doesn’t respond. He and Starky are still gabbing.

  “In fact,” I hear him say, “the NICB estimates that each year fifty thousand air bags valued at fifty million dollars—”

  “Officer?” I say. Louder. “We need you back here.”

  He and Starky mosey around to join us.

  “You guys should dust back here for prints,” I say.

  “Where?”

  “Around the lock. Wherever, you know, you’d grab hold to open the trunk.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll call headquarters. Requisition a team with the crime kit.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Officer Boyle?” says Dixon.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to return to my men.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Nice meeting you, Wilson,” Starky says to the trooper.

  “Same here, Samantha.”

  They both smile. The way people do in those Find Your Soul Mate ads on the Internet.

  “You ready to roll?” I say to Starky.

  She snaps to. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  I check my watch. Nearly 2:30 AM. Too late to call Ceepak. Unless, of course, he’s still driving around town in his wife’s Toyota. I’ll catch him tomorrow.

  I need to talk to him about what’s wrong with all these pictures.

  6

  My regular partner, John Ceepak, is now a coach in our local Babe Ruth League.

  He got married a while back and officially adopted his wife’s son. T. J. Lapczynski. Well, he used to be a Lapczynski. Guess he’s T. J. Ceepak now. I would be—just to cut down on the consonants.

  Anyway, T.J. is seventeen and, as it turns out, he’s a pretty awesome ballplayer. Doesn’t look like anybody you’ve ever seen on a baseball card, however. He has thick blond dreadlocks that he usually bundles up in a bandanna so they stick up like a feathered headdress. Not to mention this wild tattoo ringed around his forearm. He actually makes a Babe Ruth baseball uniform look cool.

  Unlike Little League, the Babe Ruth League is for older kids. Sixteen- , seventeen- , eighteen-year-olds. Something for high schoolers to do over the summer besides the usual stuff: beach, beer, and babes. The stuff I used to do. I think Ceepak coaches T.J.’s team for two reasons: one, he likes the kid, wants to help him grow up. Two, the Babe Ruth League has a code, just like he does. Theirs is called the Sportsmanship Code. All about developing a strong, clean, healthy body, mind and soul. Ceepak’s covers lying, cheating, and stealing. He got his from West Point. The Babe Ruth League? I guess a committee wrote it. I’m sure the Bambino didn’t. He liked his beer, booze, and broads too much. I think broads is what Babe called babes.

  Anyway, the older kids hit the field every Saturday at 2:00 PM when the mercury usually races up into the nineties and the humidity stays in sync with it. These guys can handle the potential heatstroke situation better than the younger kids who start playing around eight in the morning.

  I drive my Jeep over to the ball field in the center of Sea Haven. It’s right across from our police station, the courthouse, and the town hall in an island of municipal services situated off Cherry Street at Shore Drive. Behind the center field fence, just beyond the painted signs advertising Pudgy’s Fudgery and Santa’s Sea Shanty, you can see the parking lot for the Sea Haven sanitation department. You hit a homer into the open end of a garbage truck, you win a case of Pepsi. You sure don’t want the ball back as a souvenir.

  I see Ceepak down on the bench. His team, I think they’re the Stingrays, are up to bat. Their uniforms are royal blue. Maybe they’re the Blue Jays. Or the Royals.

  Ceepak is clapping his hands, shouting, “Good eye, good eye” to the batter, who’s just earned a free walk to first base.

  “Hey, Danny!”

  It’s Rita. Mrs. Ceepak and T.J.’s mom. She’s up in the bleachers, waving at me.

  “Hey, Rita.”

  “You’re just in time,” she calls down. “T.J.’s up next!”

  “Cool.”

  I climb up and take the empty seat beside her. There’s a smattering of parents and siblings cheering both teams on.

  “Who’s winning?” I ask Rita.

  “They are.”

  “What’s the score?”

  “Seven to six. Bottom of the ninth. Two out. Runner at first …”

  I smile. “And T.J.’s at the bat?”

  “Yeah.” Rita’s all kinds of excited. As she should be. This is it. The ultimate baseball cliché. Two down. Bottom of the ninth. Does T.J. save the day? Or is he the goat who loses the game with the final strikeout?

  “Come on, honey!” Rita cheers.

  I cringe. Honey? If my mom ever shouted that when I played ball, I would have opted for orphanhood.

  T.J. turns around. Looks up into the stands. Gives his mom a devilish wink. Guess he’s cool with whatever she chooses to call him.

  “Knock it out of the park, honey!” she shouts.

  T.J. takes a practice swing in the batter’s box.

  I think he’s contemplating going for the back end of that garbage truck.

  “Keep your eye on the ball,” urges Ceepak from the dugout because baseball coaches have been saying that same thing since the first cave guys tossed round rocks at other cave guys swinging clubs.

  Ceepak looks like he could’ve played pro ball. He stands six-two, works out every morning, and has Popeye
-sized muscles like that disgraced slugger what’s-his-name. Ceepak, of course, never uses steroids. That would be cheating.

  The runner at first base is taking a pretty healthy lead off the bag. About ten feet. He’s ready to dash to second the instant T.J. makes any kind of contact. With two out, you run on anything.

  Rita reaches over. Grips my knee. Squeezes hard.

  “I can’t take this!” she says.

  Me neither. Mrs. Ceepak has a good grip.

  The pitcher hurls a fastball.

  T.J. swings. Misses. Strike one.

  “That’s okay,” says Ceepak. “You’ll get the next one.”

  T.J. takes a few cuts of the bat to stay limber.

  “Come on, T.J.!” shouts the guy leading off first. “Bring me home.”

  The pitcher goes into his windup.

  T.J. waits at the plate.

  This ball flies faster than the one before it. I hear it thwack into the catcher’s mitt.

  “Stee-rike two.”

  The umpire is good. Dramatic. Got the whole arm-pump thing going, big-time.

  T.J. takes off his cap. Swipes away some sweat. Pushes back his soggy dreads. Finds room for them up under his hat. He knocks some dirt out of his cleats. Spits. Even does a quick sign of the cross.

  Now he bends his knees. Cocks the bat. Takes his stance.

  Rita squeezes my knee a little harder. This is it.

  The pitcher squints. Reads the signal from the catcher squatting behind home plate. Nods. Raises his leg. Goes into his motion. Strains. Lets rip what’s probably the fastest fastball he’s ever thrown in his whole life.

  T.J. swings.

  Smacks it.

  Hard!

  Man, he got all of it!

  The ball sails over the shortstop’s head, flies into left field, and hits the dirt right in front of the home run fence.

  I look back and the guy who had been on first is already rounding second. T.J.—who can totally fly—is not too far behind him.

  The left fielder finally finds the ball underneath a billboard for Pizza My Heart. The first runner is past third, heading for home. The left fielder flings the ball. Now T.J. rounds third. The ball hits the pitcher’s mound, kicks up some dust, and bounces toward home. T.J. slides. The catcher snags the ball. They both disappear behind a cloud of dust.

  “Safe!” screams the umpire.

  T.J. beats the tag! The Stingrays win! The Stingrays win!

  The crowd—all twelve of us—goes wild. So do the guys on the Stingrays bench. They mob T.J. behind home plate. They slap high fives and whoop and holler.

  “An inside-the-park home run!” Rita screams. “Whoo-hoo.”

  “Unbelievable!” I shout back. I’m sort of jumping up and down too. The bleacher boards tremble.

  “Way to go, Tony!” screams this other dad in the bleachers. “Way to hustle.” Guess Tony was the kid who scored in front of T.J.

  Everybody is going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

  Everybody except Ceepak.

  Down on the bench, the Stingrays coach is not celebrating. It’s like that “no joy in Mudville” deal. You’d think the mighty Casey had just struck out.

  Ceepak walks out to the field. Shakes his head. Even from a distance, I can see him heave a huge sigh.

  “Ed?” he says to the umpire. “Ed?”

  He motions for the umpire to meet him halfway up the third base line. Looks like they need to talk.

  Ceepak turns, points toward the bag at third base.

  The umpire takes off his mask. Gives Ceepak a puzzled look.

  Ceepak nods.

  Another look. Quizzical this time.

  Ceepak gives him another grim nod.

  The umpire shrugs. Then he turns back toward home and points at the runner who scored first. Tony.

  “You’re out!” He pumps his arm like a locomotive chugging up a hill and gives the kid the old heave-ho.

  “What?” Tony shouts back. “Out? No way, man!”

  “You’re blind, ump!” The boy’s father up in the bleachers agrees with his son.

  “Tony?” Ceepak says, sounding calm but firm. “You didn’t touch the bag at third base.”

  “Yes, I did, coach.”

  The way he says it? The kid knows he didn’t. He took a short cut.

  “Tony?” says Ceepak. “Don’t make it worse. You broke the rules. Therefore, your run doesn’t count. Neither does T.J.’s. You are out number three. The game is over. The Tigers win.”

  The crowd is, as they say, hushed. Nobody saw it, not even the third baseman who was waving like a lunatic at the left fielder to hurry up and throw in the ball.

  Nobody saw it except Ceepak and that’s really all that matters because, like I said, my partner will not tolerate cheating—even if the cheater is wearing the same color uniform he is.

  7

  “Deal with it, dude,” is the sage advice T.J. offers to his teammate Tony.

  Guess he’s used to the Code, now that he’s been officially adopted into the family Ceepak. Tony? Not so much. He clutches the backstop with both fists and makes like a gorilla.

  “John was right,” Rita says as we watch Tony rattle his steel cage. “If the boy doesn’t play by the rules …”

  But down near the bench, Tony’s father has some less sympathetic words for my partner.

  “Why don’t you just forfeit every game in the first inning? What kind of coach turns in his own players?”

  Ceepak ignores the rant and keeps slipping bats into the team’s canvas equipment bag. Tony’s dad won’t let up—which maybe he should. I mean he’s this totally out-of-shape guy who probably sits in an air conditioned office all day except for when he’s driving to it in his air conditioned car. The only muscles he ever works are the ones in his mouth. Ceepak, on the other hand, is in good enough shape to jump out of airplanes again with the 101 st Airborne. And once he hit the ground, he could probably run ten miles with a sixty-pound knapsack strapped to his back and still not be out of breath. Tony’s dad is already winded—just from being a blowhard.

  “How’d you get this job, anyway?”

  Now Ceepak shrugs. “Same as the Army. I volunteered.”

  “Well, I’m going to have a word with Ron Venable. He runs the whole damn league. Works in my office, you know.”

  Ceepak stops stuffing the bag. Smiles.

  “Please do discuss this with Ron, Mr. DePena. However, until he declares that the Babe Ruth League no longer follows the official rules of baseball as set forth by the commissioner of the Major Leagues, I suspect your son will still be considered out for not touching the bag when he reached third base.”

  “Aaaahh!” Mr. DePena throws up both his hands in disgust. Flips them dismissively. “Tony?” he yells to his son, who’s still shaking the backstop.

  “What?” Tony yells back.

  “Grab your gear. This man is a moron! We’re leaving!”

  “Aaaahh!”

  “Now!”

  “See you’round,” T.J. says to Tony.

  “Aaaahh!” Now Tony throws up both his hands and flicks them at T.J. Like father, like son.

  Ceepak glances up into the stands to share a “can-you-believe-this?” look with Rita. Then he sees me.

  “Hello, Danny.”

  “Hey.”

  He makes his way over to the bleachers as I climb down.

  “Did you catch the game?”

  “Just, you know, the last part of the last inning.”

  “Ah,” says Ceepak with a sly grin. “So you arrived just in time to see us lose?”

  “Yeah.”

  I help Ceepak load the baseball gear into the trunk of the family Toyota—the same car I saw on the road last night well after my partner’s usual bedtime.

  “Want to head over to the Pig with us?” Rita asks. “We’re packing up the party stuff.”

  Rita used to be a waitress and bank teller. Now she’s what they call a small business owner: she runs a gourmet catering company wi
th Grace Porter out of Grace’s restaurant over on Ocean Avenue—the Pig’s Commitment, so-named because of that ancient joke about a plate of eggs and bacon. The chicken is involved. The pig is totally committed.

  “We’re making pigs in a blanket,” says T.J., who helps his mom on party days. “Not the skanky cabbage kind. The kind with hot dogs and crescent rolls.”

  Tempting.

  “I sort of need to talk to Ceepak,” I say.

  Ceepak cocks an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

  “It’s this run we went on last night.” I don’t want to say too much else in front of Rita and T.J. “Starky and me. Around one-thirty AM, we escorted an individual to a crime scene down on the Garden State Parkway.”

  “A wreck?” asks Rita.

  “No. It was—this guy had to go down there and identify a body. One of his Army buddies.”

  Rita closes her eyes. Shakes her head. Probably says a silent prayer.

  “What happened?” asks Ceepak.

  “The janitor found a body in the men’s room at a rest area. The one near exit fifty-two. I know it’s out of our jurisdiction and all … .”

  “Indeed,” says Ceepak.

  “But some of what I saw doesn’t fit with what the crime-scene investigator says happened.”

  Ceepak flicks his wrist. Checks his watch. “I’m scheduled to help Rita at the restaurant from sixteen hundred hours until the party commences at nineteen-thirty.”

  Military time. Man, I’d hate to see the Ceepak family calendar. Probably looks like a battle plan. Maybe he even has miniature tin soldiers, one for each member of his brood, that he slides around the kitchen table with a stick to show everybody their daily troop movements.

  “It’s okay, John,” says Rita. “Stay here and talk to Danny. There’s not much more to do for the party. Grace has all the food ready to go. We just need to pack it up and throw together the pigs in a blanket. Maybe you guys can help us load up the van and schlep everything over to Crazy Janey’s?”

  Crazy Janey is this New York City radio personality. Dirty Larry’s sidekick. He makes the fart jokes, she laughs at them. Then she does the traffic report. Anyway, Crazy Janey has a summer place here in Sea Haven, down on the southern beaches where all the TV stars and music people and other assorted billionaires build their sand castles. Once a summer, she throws a huge party. Sets up a gigantic wedding tent out back. Hires a band. I think she had Puff Diddy last year. Invites everybody who’s anybody, which, I guess, is why I’ve never received an invitation. Celebs show up from New York and Philly—even L.A., because they all need to pay homage if they want to plug whatever they need to plug on Dirty Larry’s nationally syndicated talk show.