Mad Mouse: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Blood?

  I look up. One panel of the truck is riddled with bullet holes. Brown foam gushes out like a hot Pepsi can somebody shook then pricked with pins.

  I look at the white van.

  The front of the Thule cargo carrier is glowing neon green.

  From inside the tube, I hear muffled curses followed by a flurry of angry kicks.

  Natalia Shevlyakova Weese must be inside, temporarily blinded by the paintballs Ceepak just fired down her peephole.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Monday night, I'm at the hospital with what's left of the Marshmallow Crew.

  Jess, Olivia, Becca, and, of course, Katie.

  Nobody's talking much. We're just sort of being there for each other, like they say. I guess everybody's thinking about the Mad Mouse. George Weese. What we did to him, back when we called him Wheezer. What he did to Katie and, of course, Mook. What he almost did to a bunch of total strangers.

  It could have been worse.

  Katie's feeling better. She sits up in her bed, pillows propped behind her back. I brought along a take-out box of Labor Day barbecue for her. Ribs. Baked beans. Cole slaw. Corn bread. But she doesn't eat any of it. I don't blame her. I can't eat tonight, either.

  The doctors aren't sure yet if the sniper bullet did any permanent damage to Katie's spinal cord. They do know she'll be in a wheelchair for a while. That's cool with me. I can handle wheelchairs. Just ask Jimmy.

  Katie tells us how she listened to some of the concert on a radio her nurse friend smuggled into the room.

  “And then the power went out on the bandstand. That was weird.”

  “Totally.” Jess agrees.

  So does Becca. “Extremely random.”

  “You'd think they would have made proper arrangements prior to the event,” adds Olivia.

  Power outages. This is the kind of stuff you talk about when the important stuff you should be talking about is still too raw. It's like the weather. You can talk about it without thinking about what you did ten years back when you were a kid learning how to be cool. August 28, 1996. Oak Beach. The end of summer. The Marshmallow Crew. We have our memories. The mad mouse has his.

  “You ready?” Katie asks, looking at me with her sweet green eyes, still a little fuzzy from all the drugs being pumped into her veins. “Tomorrow's the big day.”

  I feel like saying, Today was big enough. Instead, I say, “Yeah.”

  Katie smiles.

  “That's right!” Becca tries to perk up the room. “Tomorrow, you can officially fix all my parking tickets!”

  “Nah, he'll be too busy,” says Jess. “Officially eating doughnuts. Hanging out at the Qwick Pick.”

  I snuffle a laugh. So does Olivia. But the mood in the room? It's not exactly elevated. A week ago? We would have immediately launched into a round-robin debate, riffing on the relative merits of Krispy Kreme versus Dunkin’ Donuts, glazed versus cake. Today, we all just get real quiet again. We listen to the air conditioner humming under the window and think.

  Mook. Wheezer. Weese.

  Natalia Shevlyakova Weese quit firing her machine gun when those paintballs splattered in her eyes. She couldn't see so she kicked and screamed, but she didn't squeeze her trigger anymore. Her hands were busy, pounding the sides of the cargo carrier while she yelled something about “fucking American assholes.”

  That's when Ceepak put down the paintball rifle, pulled out his pistol, and steadied his firing stance in the open door of the Pepsi truck. I moved to the passenger side of the minivan, near the latch for the cargo carrier.

  “On me,” he said. Army talk. Meant to wait for his command.

  He held his pistol with both hands in front of him. Aimed it down at the Thule luggage tube.

  “Go,” he said.

  I popped open the snap, flung up the lid like I was flipping open a coffin.

  “Freeze!” Ceepak yelled, jutting his pistol forward and down, ready to fire if Natalia made one wrong move.

  She didn't.

  She put her hands behind her head. It was over. Guess Russians are realists. Fatalistic. Must be those long, cold winters.

  The first thing I noticed when I raised that lid was the stench. The trapped heat had made quite a stew in there. Gunpowder, B.O., hot urine. Seems Natalia had been locked inside her secret sauna for quite some time.

  I also noticed that she had a machine gun instead of an M-24 sniper rifle. It was one of those long-muzzled jobs with a belt of pointy-tipped bullets feeding into its side. The belt was very long. If Natalia had opened fire, if Ceepak hadn't blocked her with the Pepsi truck, Saltwater Tammy's son wouldn't have been the only one mowed down. Natalia would have sprayed the whole boardwalk, might've broken that other Russian lady's record for outdoor sniping casualties.

  We cuffed her and hauled her to the house. After we locked her up, we went up front to report in with the desk sergeant. He had a radio playing. WAVY. Their news update featured a short interview with Chief Baines.

  The reporter asked the chief about the “slight commotion” he had heard in the parking lot earlier.

  “Teenagers playing with firecrackers,” Baines replied, his voice strong and confident again. “Another unfortunate consequence of—”

  Ceepak and I finished for him: “underage drinking!”

  Then, Ceepak laughed. A bigger laugh than I've ever heard him laugh before, like he was letting loose all the pressure that had built up over the past few days, letting it out in one incredible, rib-splitting rumble.

  When he was done, he took a deep breath and turned to me. Shook my hand.

  “You did good out there today, Danny.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Real good.”

  EPILOGUE

  Tuesday morning. The day after Labor Day. My first day as a full-time cop.

  I head to the house, figuring there are official papers to sign, W-2s to fill out, orientation videos to watch.

  Instead, Chief Baines sees me, calls me into his office.

  “Officer Boyle?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You did a fantastic job yesterday.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Take today off. You earned it.”

  He salutes. I salute. That's that. My first day on the job? It's a day off.

  I leave the chief's office, head up to the front desk.

  “Have you seen Ceepak?” I ask Gus.

  “He's off. Make-good for working the holiday.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  I check my watch. 8:15 A.M. I guess I could head home, take a nap. Katie's still at the hospital, so I could …

  “I hear he has a date,” Gus says.

  “Ceepak?”

  “Meeting a young lady friend for breakfast.”

  “Really?”

  This could be fun.

  “Where?”

  “The Pig's Commitment. Best scrapple in town.”

  Now that Gus mentions everybody's favorite breakfast meat, I realize I'm kind of hungry.

  I head out the door.

  Rita Lapczynski, the pretty thirtysomething waitress from Morgan's Surf and Turf, is sitting by herself in a booth sipping coffee from a curve-handled mug.

  Great. Their first date and Ceepak stands her up. My man has much to learn. Perhaps I can teach him. I have more experience in modern dating etiquette. Might be the one area where I'm the Zen master and he can be Grasshopper.

  “Hello, Danny,” Rita says when I walk to her table. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “No.”

  “Sit down then.”

  “You all alone?”

  “I sure am.” She sounds chipper. Happy about it. “Sit down.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever had the blueberry pancakes here?” she asks.

  “Sure. You ought to try them. The blueberries are baked into the batter, not just, you know, clumped on top.”

  This is kind of awkward. It's like I'm on a date with Ceepak's date.
/>   “I know,” Rita says. “That's what I had.”

  “Oh. You already ate?”

  “We finished a while ago.”

  “You and T. J.?”

  “And John.”

  “Ceepak?”

  She laughs. “Does everybody call him by his last name?”

  “Most everybody.”

  “Ceepak,” she says it out loud, trying it on for size. “I just hope he doesn't start calling me Lapczynski. Doesn't have the same ring. Lapczynski.”

  “No,” I laugh. “Guess not.”

  Rita looks rested this morning. Her eyes don't seem so sad or weary.

  “Is Ceepak still here?” I ask.

  “Mmm-hmm.” She gestures over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “Out back. You should go say hey.”

  “Yeah.”

  I stand up.

  “You want me to order those pancakes for you when the waitress comes by?”

  “That'd be great. But please—no scrapple.”

  “You don't know what you're missing,” she jokes.

  “Yes, I do.”

  She smiles and I walk past tables crowded with happy tourists talking about how much fun they had on the boardwalk yesterday. I see Mayor Sinclair over in a corner table. A mob of local merchants drops by to congratulate him on the Labor Day celebration's success.

  I head into the kitchen, pass the sputtering griddles, smell the sizzling bacon. My empty stomach urges me to stop and devour a skillet or two. Instead, I head out the door.

  I see Grace Porter, hands on hips, staring at the back wall of her building.

  “You gentlemen do excellent work,” she says.

  “Thank you, ma'am.” It's Ceepak.

  “Thanks.” And T. J.

  They both have paint rollers on poles and are working pink paint over the pig cartoon, covering up the blue paintball splotches T. J. put there earlier.

  “Good morning, Officer Boyle,” Grace says to me. “Why aren't you on duty?”

  “The chief gave me the day off.”

  “Excellent. Did you eat breakfast?”

  “No ma'am.”

  “I'll bring out a basket of muffins.”

  She heads inside.

  “We're almost finished with the second coat of pink,” Ceepak says.

  “You need a hand?”

  “No thanks. T. J. and I have the situation pretty well under control.”

  “We're cool,” says T. J.

  “Hey, thanks for looking out for Jimmy yesterday,” I say to T. J.

  “No problem. Jimmy's cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know T. J. designed his own arm tattoo?” Ceepak says. “He's quite talented.”

  “I just, you know, like to draw and stuff.”

  “He's awesome. Going to redraw the cartoon lines on the pig for us. I'm afraid I'd make a mess were I to attempt such intricate work.”

  “It's easy,” T. J. says. “All in the wrist.” He picks up a can of black paint and starts working in the lines, carefully restoring the big pig to its former glory. “See?”

  “It's all good. Real good.”

  Watching the two of them, I am, of course, reminded of another Springsteen song. I guess Bruce wrote it about his dad. He could've written it about Ceepak though if, you know, the two of them had ever met:

  Well so much has happened to me

  That I don't understand

  All I can think of is being five years old

  Following behind you at the beach

  Tracing your footprints in the sand

  Trying to walk like a man

  Like I've said before, John Ceepak has a code he tries to live by. He will not lie, cheat, or steal. He will, however, leave some damn decent footprints for you to try and trace in the sand.

  Even if you're a young kid like T. J.

  Or an older one like me.

  * * *

  BONUS CHAPTERS

  Don't miss Whack–a–Mole, the third book in the

  John Ceepak series.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  I've never been what you might call an “over-achiever” but at age twenty-five I've already done the worst thing any human being can possibly do.

  John Ceepak, my partner, tells me I should let it all out. Get it off my chest. Make what the priests used to call a full and complete confession.

  Fine.

  I'll do like Ceepak suggests.

  It all starts with this stupid ring he found.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Last Sunday. Six fifty-five A.M.

  Bruce Springsteen is on the radio reciting my most recent résumé: “I had a job, I had a girl, I had something going, mister, in this world… .”

  I'm sitting in The Bagel Lagoon waiting for Ceepak. He lives here. Not in the restaurant with the bagels—upstairs in the apartment on the second floor.

  “She said Joe, I gotta go, we had it once, we ain't got it any more. She packed her bags, left me behind… .”

  The Boss is laying it on thicker than a slab of walnut cream cheese. Says he feels like he's “a rider on a down-bound train.”

  I can relate.

  Katie's gone.

  She said, “Danny, I gotta go.” Okay, it doesn't rhyme as good as it might've if my name was Joe like the guy in Bruce's song. Katie, my ex-girlfriend, moved to California. Grad school. Left town in March.

  I hope California is as nice as Sea Haven—this eighteen-mile-long strip of sand-in-your-shoes paradise down the Jersey Shore. I hope it has boardwalks and miniature golf and fresh-cut fries and a fudge forecast that's always smooth and creamy like it has been at Pudgy's Fudgery for the past seventy-five years, at least according to the sign flapping out on their sidewalk near the Quick Pick Fudge Cart.

  On the radio, Bruce is done singing the blues.

  Me, too.

  At exactly seven A.M. every Sunday, the Reverend Billy Trumble shoves all rock ‘n’ roll off the air. He's been doing seven A.M. Sundays on WAVY for nearly thirty years.

  “Friends, do you think it is early?” his smooth voice purrs. “Trust me—it is later than you think. Judgment Day is nigh … .”

  “Turn it off,” hollers Joe Coglianese from the back of the shop. He and his brother Jim run The Bagel Lagoon. Joe's in charge of stirring the pot where the bagels bob in boiling water. Jim mans the counter. It's the middle of July and already 80 degrees outside. It feels hotter if you factor in the humidity, plus the steam rising up from that humongous bagel vat. No wonder Joe is the grouchier of the two Coglianese brothers.

  Jim snaps off the radio.

  I tear another bite out of my bagel.

  Ceepak should be joining me any minute. We're both cops with the Sea Haven P.D. and, even though it's our day off, today we are men on a mission.

  Ceepak, who's like this 6'2", thirty-six-year-old Eagle-Scout-slash-Jarhead, found something he thinks is valuable buried on the beach while he was sweeping the sand with his metal detector.

  This is what Ceepak does for fun when there are no Forensic Files or CSI reruns on TV. He's even in this club: The Sea Haven Treasure Hunter Society. It's mostly geeks and geezers, guys who strap on headphones and walk the beach like the minesweeper soldier in every bag of green plastic Army men—who, come to think of it, are now chocolate-chip-camo-brown because they've been to Iraq and back, just like Ceepak. They hunt for Spanish doubloons, abandoned Rolexes, rusty subway tokens, discarded paper clips—anything that makes their detectors go beepity-beep.

  Anyway, a week ago, Ceepak dug up a ring from P. J. Johnson High School up in Edison. Class of 1983. Inside the ring he found an inscription: B. Kladko. Ceepak being Ceepak, he investigated further and came up with a Brian Kladko who, indeed, graduated from PJJHS in 1983 and still lives somewhere nearby. We're going up there today to take his class ring back to him.

  After Katie split, I fill my weekends as best I can.

  While I wait, I check out the early-morning crowd. It's mostly tourists from New
York and Philadelphia, making them experts on both bagels and cream cheese. They swarm into The Lagoon ordering their favorite combos, forgetting they came down here to try new stuff, like Jersey blueberries or Taylor Pork Roll.

  The door opens and all of a sudden it's like somebody walked in with a load of last week's lox in their shorts. A lot of noses suddenly crinkle, mine included. Phew.

  “Something's fishy around here,” says the big guy who's just come in. “Look no further. It's me!”

  “Me” being Cap'n Pete Mullen. He runs one of the deep-sea fishing boats over by the public marina, and he's been taking tourists out after tuna and fluke for so long his clothes all smell like they've been washed with Low Tide-Scented Tide.

  “Whataya need, Pete?” asks Jim, the bagel brother behind the counter.

  “Baker's dozen. Got a charter going out this morning.”

  Cap'n Pete has a walrus mustache that wiggles like a worm on a hook. He grins at a kid who's staring at him, watching the lip hair twitch. “I'm Cap'n Pete, laddie. But you can call me Stinky. Stinky Pete.”

  The boy laughs. So do his folks.

  “You run a fishing boat?” asks the dad.

  “Sure do.”

  Pete is good. He comes in to buy breakfast and ends up hooking and booking more clients. I'm sure before their week in Sea Haven is over this fine family of four will be strapping on life vests and heading out to sea on the Reel Fun—Cap'n Pete's forty-seven-foot Sportfish.

  Jim scoops up an assortment of bagels from the bins and hands the bag to Cap'n Pete.

  “Well, I best be shoving off.” He chops a salute off the brim of his admiral's cap to the little kid. He sort of looks like the Skipper from Gilligan's Island.

  Now he shoots me a wave.

  Grins.

  “Hey, Danny—have Johnny give me a holler. I missed the last meeting.”

  I'm in mid-chew so I nod and wave. To hear Ceepak tell it, Pete is the unluckiest of all his treasure-hunting buddies. The guy's never found anything under the sand, although occasionally he manages to reel in an interesting boot or tire on his fishing lines.