Mind Scrambler

by Chris Grabenstein

“You know.” He sings a quick snatch. Something about birds suddenly appearing.

  Meanwhile, the sloshed girl on the dance floor is attacking her chorus again: “Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?”

  I’m ready for Karen Carpenter’s birds. And a beer.

  I see from the golf pencils and cards stacked in the rack where the beer coasters and peanut bowls ought to be that it costs $2.50 to destroy a song in public. The bartendress is over at a computer console, reading cards, punching in numbers—apparently programming my upcoming pain.

  “So did you hear?” says one of the Karen Carpenter wannabes to my right.

  “What?”

  “The nanny. They think she and Jake were back there rodeoing sadie-masie style.”

  “Are they mental?”

  “They say it’s why he missed the show! And get this—just yesterday, Jake told me he was ‘in love’ again.”

  “Who was it this time?”

  “An old flame.”

  His buddy clicks his tongue against his teeth. “That cheap child hops into more beds than a sleazy mattress salesman!”

  “Uhm-hmm. This old flame, by the way, is currently married.” He trills the word to underline it. “Their little reunion started with a Hawaiian Tropics bake-and-baste out by the pool.”

  “What can I get you?” shouts the bartendress who snuck up on me while I was eavesdropping. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Bud, if you got it.”

  “Bottle or mug?”

  “Bottle.”

  “You want to sing?”

  No, what I want to do is eavesdrop some more.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Why not?” she says all coy and cuddly. She’s cute. So’s her low-cut top. She flashes me a flirty smile. “You afraid to make a fool of yourself?”

  I tip my head toward the boozy girl clutching the mike and feverishly pumping her free hand over her head every time she chants, “Don’t you! Don’t you! Don’t you!”

  “I think you’ve already met your foolishness quota for the night.”

  My beautiful beer maiden laughs. “You’re right. Hey, Blaine?” she hollers down the bar to the two gossipy guys.

  “Yes, dear?” Blaine shouts back.

  “You gonna sing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on! We need you!”

  Blaine sighs. “Fine. C-fourteen. ‘Close to You.’ The Carpenters.”

  “Comin’ right up!” The bartender fishes a frosty Bud longneck out of the ice chest. “Stick around. Blaine is good. He’s like a professional Broadway singer. Doing a show downstairs.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Hey, Blaine?”

  I’m glad she’s acting as a go-between. Otherwise, Blaine might think I’m hitting on him when he already seems to have a date for the evening.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “What’s your show called again?”

  “ ‘Rock ’n Wow!’ ” He starfishes out his fingers on Wow!

  I’m ready for Blaine and his buddy to leap into that hoedown number and whip out their bolo ties.

  Because they’re Jake Pratt’s castmates.

  In fact, the other guy is Jim Bob—the wiry little Lord of the Dance who escorted Richard Rock out of the theater during the Lucky Numbers bit.

  I’m about to sidle over and ask them both a few questions when a blond bombshell stumbles into the bar looking so blitzed she wouldn’t be able to read song lyrics off the JumboTron screen at Shea Stadium.

  Actually, on closer examination, I see it’s the blond bombshell.

  Mrs. Rock.

  22

  Mrs. Rock stumbles over to the two guys.

  “Blaine?” she slurs the word worse than Daffy Duck. “Have you seen Jake?”

  “No, honey.”

  “I need to find him. The police!”

  “We know.”

  I stand up. Time to make my presence known.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “I’m Officer Boyle. Sea Haven police.”

  Jim Bob curls up his nose. “Really? Here on vacation?”

  “No.” I dig in my pocket. Flash my badge. “I’m actually working for the Atlantic City police department. We’re the ones looking for Jake Pratt. You guys know him, right?”

  “Where’s your badge?” asks Blaine, getting off his stool to shield Mrs. Rock.

  “I just showed it to you.”

  “Funny,” says Blaine, “I don’t remember hearing Atlantic City recently changed its name to Sea Haven.”

  “Detective Flynn deputized me.”

  “Really? That must’ve been so special. Was there cake?”

  “Don’t tell this man anything!” Mrs. Rock blurts out. “Jake’s in trouble!”

  “Mrs. Rock?” I say. “We met earlier.”

  Back when you were sober, I want to add but don’t.

  “Remember? In your room? You talked to me and my partner, John Ceepak. Big guy. Muscles? Remember?”

  She lizards out a dry tongue. “No.” Her eyes loll up in her sockets as she staggers sideways.

  Jim Bob stabilizes her with an elbow clutch. “Come on, honey. Let’s walk you home.”

  “Did my wig slip?”

  Now that she mentions it, her bangs do look a little longer than they did about ten seconds ago.

  Blaine adjusts her hairpiece, slides everything up half an inch. “Good as new. Come on. We’ll take you home, honey.”

  “Wait a second,” I say. “Mrs. Rock?”

  She pulls back her head. Tries to force her eyes into focus. “What?”

  “We need to find Jake Pratt! If you know—”

  “I’m sorry,” says Jim Bob in his new role as Mrs. Rock’s bodyguard. “We are not talking to you or any other members of the Sea Haven police department.”

  “I told you—I’m working with the ACPD.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Call the ACPD. Ask for Detective Flynn.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.” He blows me a kiss. “Buh-bye!”

  Blaine and Jim Bob grab hold of an arm each and ease Mrs. Rock toward the exit. She shin-bops a stump-high cocktail table.

  “Take it easy, Sherry,” Blaine suggests as he steadies her.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” she slushes. “I’ll try.”

  “Put one foot in front of the other. That’s the girl.”

  They leave. I puzzle.

  I thought Mrs. Rock’s first name was Jessica.

  “Fascinating,” says Ceepak when he and I meet up on the boardwalk at 0844 and I fill him in on my undercover bar crawl.

  “Yeah. I don’t think the two guys will talk unless we, you know, force them to.”

  “Come again?”

  “They seem pretty loyal to Mrs. Rock. We might need to work them over a little to find out if they know where Jake Pratt is hiding.”

  “I see. Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Torture, except in television shows featuring Jack Bauer, is seldom an effective interrogation technique.”

  “I wasn’t saying we should torture them. Just, you know.”

  “No. I’m afraid I do not.”

  Yeah. Me, neither.

  “Well, we should at least have decent ACPD badges.”

  “Detective Flynn concurs.” Ceepak snaps open a flap on his cargo pants, which I guess he did pack because, like a true Boy Scout, he is always prepared. “He gave these to me earlier when we met for coffee.”

  Two silver and blue shields. I feel like when I was a kid and my parents took me to Wild West City over near Netcong. Without ever leaving New Jersey, we were able to visit Arapaho Indian Territory and the O.K. Corral, where the sheriff deputized everybody under the age of ten to help him tangle with the train robbers.

  “We are to return these at the conclusion of the case,” says Ceepak as I pin my new badge into the leather flappy thing where I store my Sea Haven tin. “He also gave me this.”

  He opens another leg flap and shows me what looks like a
bloated cell phone with a stubby antenna and twist dial up top.

  “Police radio. If Mr. Pratt is apprehended while we’re at the Taj Mahal questioning Lady Jasmine, Detective Flynn will contact us ASAP.”

  “Cool.”

  Ceepak consults his Casio. “We should also contact Lisa Porter-Burt in a few hours.”

  She’s the prosecuting attorney dealing with Ceepak’s father up in Ohio.

  “We need to make certain my father entered his guilty plea as anticipated and that Ms. Porter-Burt is satisfied with the terms of the deal.”

  “Busy morning.”

  “Roger that. Let’s roll.”

  We head up the boardwalk. Ceepak sets a pretty brisk pace. The diagonal slats clip by. I smell creosote. Popcorn. We pass Andy’s candy apples and overtake a few of those rolling chairs being pushed by Bosnians. It’s early. I smell no BO.

  “So what about Mrs. Rock?” I say. “How come the two dancers called her Sherry instead of Jessica?”

  “Most likely because the blond you encountered in the karaoke bar was not Mrs. Rock.”

  Uh, yes it was. I’d recognize her, you know, distinguishing features, anywhere. Both of them.

  “I recognized her!”

  “I imagine you did.”

  “So why did they call her Sherry?”

  “Remember that illusion where Mrs. Rock was instantly transported from a glass booth on one side of the stage to another booth situated on the opposite side?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That trick typically involves the use of a body double, Danny. I suspect this Sherry was the model hidden in the base of the second cabinet who popped into view as soon as Mrs. Rock exited her box via a trapdoor concealed in its floor and obscured from the audience’s view by a series of mirrors set up underneath the platform.”

  Wow. More mirrors. Rock must need to buy a boatload of Windex.

  We stroll past Bally’s, the Rainforest Cafe, Dunkin’ Donuts, Tattoo Tom’s, more Oriental massage and therapy joints, several psychic-tarot card storefronts, the 88 souvenirs shop—which, by the way, sells hermit crabs and iguanas—a Skee-Ball arcade, a pizza-stromboli stand, and about a billion people inside rope-line switchbacks waiting to attack the sultan’s feast, Donald Trump’s “most spectacular breakfast buffet in the world” served downstairs at the Taj Mahal hotel and casino.

  Nobody in the line is wearing a belt.

  Trump’s casino looks like a bleached white sand castle with gold trim—a glitzier version of that other Taj Mahal over in India. Lots of onion domes up top with tapered spindles that remind me of these very fancy Christmas ornaments my mother won’t let me touch because they’re made out of glass and I’m me.

  “Lady Jasmine requested that we meet in her dressing room,” says Ceepak as sliding doors whoosh open and we’re hit with the first musty blast of air-conditioning mixed with eye-burning carpet chemicals.

  “Does she know we’re coming?” I ask.

  “Indeed. Detective Flynn called ahead. Arranged our interview through her husband who also acts as Ms. Jasmine’s manager and legal advisor. You’ll recognize him, of course.”

  “Another body double?”

  “No. Her husband came to the show with her last night.”

  “The bodyguard?”

  “Slightly shorter,” says Ceepak. “Mighty Mo-Mo.”

  23

  “You Ceepak?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This way.”

  We’re being escorted backstage at the Taj by the four-foot guy we saw last night at Richard Rock’s show. Mighty Mo-Mo. For someone so short, he has a deep, rumbling voice. Sounds like he smoked six stogies for breakfast.

  “You guys need coffee?” Mo-Mo asks.

  “It’s kind of you to offer,” says Ceepak.

  “Hey, it’s no sweat off my balls. We got a pot brewing, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I’d like a cup,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Mo-Mo. “You look like you could use it. Rough night, kid?”

  Not really. Just saw one of my best friends since forever trussed up like a kinky cow in a cattle-roping competition on a X-rated version of RFD-TV.

  “Yeah,” is all I say.

  Mo-Mo nods sympathetically. “The nanny was a friend of yours, hunh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hang in there, kid.” He pats me on the butt. I think he was aiming for my back. “We’ll help you out all we can.”

  “We appreciate that,” says Ceepak.

  “Detective Flynn is good people. Anything we can do, just ask. Here we go.” He leads us through a door into another cinder-block corridor. As glamorous as show business is supposed to be, behind the scenes it’s pretty dull. No tinsel and glitter. Just glossy white bricks. Looks like a junior-high classroom.

  We approach a salmon-colored door with a homemade glitter star Scotch-taped to it. I hear a muffled TV set.

  “I think Nicole’s watching Regis and Kelly.” He raps his knobby knuckles on the door. His fist is about an inch above the doorknob. “Yo, Nicole?”

  “Just a second!” someone brays on the other side of the door. The TV snaps off.

  “I take it Lady Jasmine is a stage name?” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah. Nicole’s a Jersey girl. From Flemington. Nicole Piscopo.”

  “I see.”

  Mo-Mo shrugs. “We figured Lady Jasmine was more, you know, exotic and what have you.”

  “Indeed.”

  The door opens and I don’t recognize Lady Jasmine. Without the jet-black wig, angled eye makeup, or slinky silk kimono, she looks like my cousin Beth from Bound Brook.

  “Hey, Morty.”

  “Hey, bubby. This is Officer Ceepak and his partner. What’s your name, kid?”

  “Boyle. Danny Boyle.”

  “Boyle,” says Mo-Mo—in case his wife didn’t hear me, I guess.

  “Come on in,” says Lady Jasmine who, offstage, does indeed sound and look like a Jersey girl named Nicole Piscopo, not a mysterious Asian sorceress called Lady Jasmine. I suspect the real Nicole has a Got Beer? T-shirt somewhere in her closet behind all the silk pajama suits.

  We enter her dressing room. More cinder-block walls. There’s a pink Formica makeup counter facing a whole row of mirrors ringed by dozens of clear fifty-watt bulbs inside cages. At least that part of her dressing room looks like showbiz is supposed to look. The chairs—the only furniture scattered around the otherwise empty floor—have faded vinyl seats and look like refugees from a banquet hall that got remodeled.

  “You’re sticking around, right Morty?” she asks her husband.

  “You bet, bubby.”

  “Morty’s my lawyer. Went to Rutgers. Up in Newark.”

  “Night school,” says the little guy as he tries to unglue a grungy Mr. Coffee pot stuck to its hot plate. “You want that coffee, Boyle?” He pries the carafe free and I see all sorts of brown splotches on the lid. I don’t think the pot’s been washed since J. Lo played the Taj three Christmases ago.

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  “Take a load off,” says our hostess, pointing at the chairs. I pick one with foam poking up through a gash in the seat cushion and sit down; so do Ceepak and Mo-Mo. Actually, Mo-Mo sort of straddles his chair. His Nikes dangle about six inches off the floor.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about the girl,” says Lady Jasmine. “You guys figure out who did it yet?”

  “No, ma’am,” says Ceepak.

  “It’s why they’re here, bubby,” says Mo-Mo.

  “Oh. Right. Duh. Guess we’re suspects, hunh?”

  Ceepak nods. “You did enter the auditorium rather late last evening.”

  “We were on a winning streak. At the blackjack tables. I love taking money from the competition.” She cracks her gum. “What table were we at, hon?”

  “B-forty-three,” says Mo-Mo.

  “Do you typically note the serial number of the table when you gamble?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yo,” says Jersey-g
irl Jasmine, “when we’re racking up a stack of chips that big we do! Am I right, Morty?”

  “Absolutely!” Mo-Mo leans out, slaps her five, and almost tumbles out of his chair on the rebound. “If a table’s hot, we’re not leaving till it goes cold.”

  “Your entire entourage was with you?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yeah. Me. Morty. Lilani Lee. Ox.”

  “Ox?”

  “My cousin Oscar. He’s from up in Edison. Lost his job at the Ford plant. Used to bolt bumpers onto F-one-fifties.”

  “We hired him,” says Mo-Mo with a shrug. “He’s family, you know what I’m saying?”

  “He’s big,” I say.

  The lady snaps her Dentyne. “You noticed, hunh? We make believe I’m such a big-shot celebrity I need a bodyguard. Had Oscar shave his head. Told him he had to look the part, you know?”

  “And Lilani Lee?” asks Ceepak.

  “She’s an . . . acquaintance.”

  “How so?”

  “You know. Occasionally, we hang out. She likes the slots.”

  “The two of ’em met downstairs, what? Last week?” says Mo-Mo. “Sat side by side at these two incredibly hot machines. They’re like each other’s good luck charms!”

  “Why did you choose last night to catch Mr. Rock’s act?”

  Mo-Mo and Lady Jasmine give each other this look. “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “Why did you cancel your own show to see his?”

  “We didn’t cancel bupkes,” says Mo-Mo. “You think Donald Trump is gonna let us play it that way? We’d be up in that boardroom of his, listenin’ to him say, ‘You’re fired!’ And there wouldn’t be no taxi waiting for us downstairs, neither. We went to the Xanadu last night because we’re always off on Monday nights.”

  “And last night was when his manager said we should catch the show. What’s his name, hon? The manager?”

  “Zuckerman. David Zuckerman.”

  “Yeah. Zuckerman.”

  “He called late afternoon,” says Mo-Mo. “I remember we were upstairs in the room with sandwiches watching some show about penguins or whatever on Animal Planet. Remember, bubby?”

  “Yeah. Good pastrami. Very thinly sliced. Not too fatty.”

  “Anyways,” says Mo-Mo, “Zuckerman calls, says he knows it’s kind of last-minute and all but since we take Mondays off anyways, do we want a VIP table for the eight o’clock show of ‘Rock ’n Wow!’?”