Fun House (John Ceepak Mystery)

by Chris Grabenstein

  “It’s a burger chain, meathead! They sell hamburgers with two thirds of a pound of chopped beef squatting on the bun! They make milkshakes—in one of those machines where the steel blades scrape against the steel canister, which should fucking remind people of the pain inflicted when we steal milk from the udders of exploited mothers.”

  “The cows?” I say, just so I’m clear.

  “That’s right, Boyle. How would you like some asshole dairy farmer sticking a fucking vacuum cleaner to your man boobs every morning, sucking them clean?”

  Okay, just for the record, I don’t have moobs. Gladys is being extremely hypothetical here.

  “Jerry is no longer vegan?” asks Ceepak.

  Gladys flaps up both hands and I wish her T-shirt didn’t have such giant armholes. The Casabas are flopping up and down and around.

  “He’s cheating on me, John. Every now and then, he gets an uncontrollable craving and comes home with cooked cow on his breath.” Now she gives a dismissive flick of the wrist. “Guess he couldn’t kick all his addictions at once.”

  “Speaking of Jerry’s former addictions,” Ceepak says, quite smoothly, I might add, “we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “What? About that skeeve Skeletor? I saw you and him on TV last week. You two cowboys hot on his trail?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Jesus, don’t start in with that ma’am shit again, John. It’s not polite, it’s patronizing.”

  “Sorry. I suppose using that term is my bad habit.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Eat some fucking apple crisp.” She lifts the lid off the pie plate. Ceepak, brave soldier that he is, takes the oozing wedge she slides onto a paper plate, nibbles at the edges.

  Gladys wipes her hands on her stained prairie skirt, finding the one spot she hasn’t already used as a dishrag.

  “Skeletor,” Gladys huffs. “I can’t stand that skinny son of a bitch. Bastard’s got a mean streak. Used to rip Jerry off like crazy back in the day, back when he liked to dip and dab Mexican Mud.”

  That means Jerry used to mess around with heroin.

  “And when Jerry couldn’t pay what he owed?” Gladys waves at the blank TV screen. “Skeletor would unleash those douchebag bikers who chased you two around that fucking parking lot on TV. Those Creed assholes would roar into town on their Harleys, find Jerry, rough him up. This one time, I thought he was gonna die, they messed up his face so bad. Kicked in a couple ribs, too.”

  Ceepak nods grimly.

  “I remember one February, Jerry was sleeping off a high up in one of those Tilt A Whirl cars at Sunnyside Playland, they marked him, man. Marked him bad. He still carries the scars.”

  “How so?”

  “Next time you see Jerry, ask him to roll up his sleeve and show you the ‘88’ they carved in his arm with a knife.” She taps her shoulder.

  “Why 88?” I ask. “Is that how much he owed them?”

  Ceepak shakes his head. “The eighth letter of the alphabet is H. 88 becomes HH, which represents the phrase ‘Heil Hitler.’”

  “The Creed?” says Gladys. “Bunch of white supremacist assholes. You need to bust these dudes, John. If you don’t, I will.” She clutches a melon-chopping butcher knife to make her point.

  “Gladys,” says Ceepak, “do you know where Skeletor has been operating of late?”

  “You mean ever since you two burned down his Hell Hole hideout?”

  Actually, we weren’t the ones who burned it down, but Ceepak lets it slide. Gladys is not lying, she’s just operating with faulty intelligence, something, Ceepak says, the Army has to do all the time.

  “We know he is still in operation,” says Ceepak. “He has been supplying steroids to members of the Fun House cast.”

  “Figures. You don’t get meat like that the natural way. Did you know that two thirds of America’s beef comes from cows pumped up with steroids? All those hormones in hamburgers, that’s why girls are going into puberty at age ten these days.”

  Somehow, Ceepak stays on point. “What about Skeletor?”

  “From what I hear, ever since the fire, he’s a floater. Moves around. But Jerry said he saw the skinny turdpole hanging out behind that fried candy stand on Pier Two. Right across from the Fun House. The All American Snack Shack, the guy calls it. Jerry says Skeletor was up to his old tricks, dealing dope out of the back of the stall.”

  “When was this?” asks Ceepak, probably wondering why we didn’t know about it.

  “Couple weeks ago. But like I said, Skeletor’s a floater. Only his regular customers know when he’ll come back to any particular spot.”

  Ceepak puts down the apple crisp. Wipes his hands on a brown napkin.

  “The candy stand, you say.”

  “Yeah. Pier Two. That red, white, and blue booth where they fry Oreos and Snickers and all sorts of shit filled with polyhydrogenated chemicals people can’t even pronounce.”

  “Danny?”

  We’re off to Pier Two.

  At least fried Oreos smell better than boiled beets.

  19

  CRUISING NORTH ON BEACH LANE TOWARD THE BOARDWALK we get a call from Dr. Rebecca Kurth, the county medical examiner.

  She tells us what we already know, what Ceepak and MCU Detective Botzong figured out staring at the hole in Paul Braciole’s head: He died instantaneously from a single bullet that pierced both hemispheres of his brain. He was then hauled from that crime scene to the boardwalk on the back of a motorcycle. The collar of dry blood ringing his neck and the droplets smearing up toward his cheeks were a result of a helmet being forced down over his head and then, later, pulled off.

  Of course the killer didn’t give Paulie his spare helmet for protection; it was to hide The Thing’s famous face—even though it was bloody and lifeless—from anybody else driving around town at three in the morning.

  That’s when Dr. Kurth says Paulie died.

  Not too long after leaving Mandy’s place.

  “We need to find that Mustang,” says Ceepak when we’re done checking in with the ME.

  “You think that’s where Skeletor killed him? In Mandy Keenan’s car?”

  “I think that when we find the car Mr. Braciole borrowed to drive home, we should also find clues pointing us to where he was murdered.”

  Right. One step at a time. That’s the Ceepakian way. Me? I like landing on squares with a chute or ladder so you can skip a few of the boring back-and-forth moves in between.

  We take a quick detour over to Big Kahuna’s Dance Club. Bud is behind the bar, slicing limes, prepping for what he tells us “might be the busiest Saturday night in shore bar history.” News of Paulie’s death is all over the TV, radio, Facebook, and Twitter. The island is jammed with Fun House fans, all of whom want to say they hit the last club Paulie Braciole ever busted a move in.

  Ceepak reminds him that, per state and local fire regulations, occupancy by more than 855 persons is considered dangerous and unlawful.

  “We’ll keep it to 854, tops,” says Bud, trying to make a joke.

  Ceepak nods. “Be sure you include yourself and the rest of the staff in the head count.”

  Bud nods very slowly. “Right.”

  “So what can you tell us about the big Fun House shoot last night?” I say.

  “Not much. They had like three camera crews crawling all over the place. Ton of guys lugging lights and microphones around behind other guys lugging cameras.” He shrugs. “Other than that, it was the usual crowd. Guys in muscle shirts and hair gel. Girls in whatever shows off their tan best.”

  “Did you notice anybody unusually tall?” asks Ceepak.

  “You mean like a basketball player?”

  “How about anyone super skinny?” I ask.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember Lindsey? From high school?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “Dude, I think she’s gone all anorexic on us. Total gristly chicken.”

  Bud’s
got nothing we can use.

  We leave Big Kahuna’s, head up to the boardwalk. When we pull into the municipal parking lot bumping up against the entrance to Pier Two, Bill Botzong calls Ceepak on his business cell.

  “I’m putting you on speaker,” he announces. “Danny’s here with me.”

  “Well, great to have an audience,” says Botzong, his smooth voice sounding tinny coming out of the tiny telephone. “But I don’t have much to report. We’ve been studying the duct tape.”

  I guess I laugh.

  And Botzong hears it.

  Ceepak too.

  “Danny,” he says, “as you might recall, duct tape analysis helped lead to the arrest of two-year-old Caylee Anthony’s killer.”

  “And the sticky side’s great at picking up dead skin cells and fingerprint residue,” adds Botzong. “Of course, you have to dip the sample in liquid nitrogen, freeze it to three hundred and sixty degrees below zero so you can slop on the liquids.”

  Ceepak’s nodding.

  Man. I really need to spend less time watching TMZ, more with CSI.

  “Were you able to I.D. the type of duct tape utilized?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yep. It’s the same stuff they sell in every Ace Hardware up and down the East Coast. We’ve got nothing.”

  Ceepak sighs.

  Because we’re basically in the same boat with Botzong.

  “Bill, it looks like we’re going to need you to go on TV Thursday night,” Ceepak says.

  “Yeah. I just wish I was playing a different role for my network debut.”

  “Roger that. We’ll arrange a meeting with Prickly Pear Productions.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The folks responsible for Fun House.”

  The way Ceepak says “responsible,” it’s like they were the rats that carried the bubonic plague to Paris or wherever.

  The oily odor of French-frying pancake batter hits us at fifty paces.

  Across the boardwalk from the clown-mouth Fun House, I see a red-white-and-blue booth, with red-white-and-blue striped banners, red-white-and-blue blinking light bulbs, and side panels cluttered with hand-lettered red-white-and-blue menu items: Deep Fried Oreo Cookies, Deep Fried Twinkies, Deep Fried Snickers, Milky Way, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Ho-Ho’s.

  America’s two favorites. Junk Food and Deep Fat Frying.

  One menu item catches Ceepak’s attention.

  “Deep Fried Pepsi Balls?” he mumbles.

  Being a junk-food junkie, I explain: “You make the batter with Pepsi syrup, flour, eggs, and butter. Roll the dough into balls and drop ’em into the French fryer. Then you top them with powdered sugar and more Pepsi syrup.”

  “Fascinating,” he says.

  We approach the booth.

  I see an older guy with white bristle-brush hair and wraparound sunglasses bossing two acne-riddled kids rigging up a sheet of cardboard behind one of the gurgling oil vats so the grease won’t splatter into the tub of powdered sugar.

  They’re attaching the cardboard to the back of the fryer with duct tape.

  I glance at Ceepak.

  He sees it too.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Danny,” he whispers.

  The boss turns around and looks like he has Pepsi Balls for lunch every day. He’s wearing an American flag golf shirt that shows off his sagging laundry-sack abs. I’m pretty positive Skeletor wasn’t feeding him free steroid samples.

  Mr. America smirks when he sees us.

  “Ha! Give me the fool gear!” he says with a belly laugh. The two young kids working the fry baskets turn around to see what’s so funny.

  “Dude!” says one, whose American flag polo shirt is splattered with what looks like baby poop shot out of a blender without a lid. “Put down the corn cob!” He jabs a basket full of sizzling Oreos at me. It splashes a few droplets of hot grease on his co-worker’s canvas All-Stars.

  “Shit!” says the co-worker, hopscotching in place. Scalding hot oil seeps through canvas every time.

  “What do you need, boys?” asks the boss. “A pair of fresh Balls?”

  He chuckles again.

  Ceepak doesn’t chuckle back. In fact, he is in glare mode.

  “I meant Pepsi Balls,” says the fry guy. He jerks a thumb to the sign offering “Two Giant Balls” for two bucks.

  “Are you the proprietor of this establishment?” asks Ceepak.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Officer Ceepak. This is my partner, Officer Boyle.”

  “I know who you two are.” Mr. America isn’t smiling any more. “I seen you on TV.” He holds up two fingers. “Twice. The Skee-Ball thing, and the thing with the brothers on the bikes.”

  “Then, I take it, you remember the slender man we were pursuing as well?”

  “Skeletor. Yeah. Sure. I remember him. Catchy name. Skel-e-tor!”

  “Do you remember him working here?” asks Ceepak.

  “Who?”

  “Skel-e-tor,” I say, because Ceepak wouldn’t mock the guy as much as I do.

  “What the fuck you talking about?”

  “Perhaps we should step around to the rear of your booth,” suggests Ceepak. “Away from public view.”

  “What? So you two can jackboot me into saying something I don’t want to say?”

  “Pardon?”

  The guy in the booth knuckles both fists on the counter so he can lean forward and get in Ceepak’s face.

  “This is America,” he says. “I have my rights.”

  “Indeed you do, sir. And it is our sworn duty to protect your rights. It is also our duty to apprehend those who would break the law.”

  “What? Selling dope to jigaboos and mud people? You ask me, maybe these so-called drug dealers are doing America a favor. Thinning out the herd of jackals and illegal immigrants infesting the ghettos. Reclaiming this country for the people who founded it.”

  “Seriously?” I say. “Allowing Skeletor to sell smack and steroids out of the back of your stall here is going to help fix America?”

  “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and.…” He whips off his sunglasses dramatically so he can glower at us. “Tyrants! Thomas Jefferson said it first, not me. Now get outta here, boys. You’re scaring away my customers.”

  “We will leave. As soon as you tell us about Skeletor.”

  “What about him?”

  “When will he back?”

  “Who said he was ever here?”

  “We have our informants.”

  “Of course you do. Who? Some junkie from up in Newark you pay to tell you what you want to hear?”

  “When will Skeletor be back?” Ceepak asks again.

  “He was never here.”

  “Sir.…”

  “I only know him from TV.” He gets this manure-eating grin on his face and jams his hands into the front pockets of his jeans so he can rock back on his heels and gloat at us a little. “You two shouldn’t mess with a hornets’ nest, or we’ll swarm out to sting you.”

  “We?” says Ceepak.

  “Go away. I’m busy here. Got Ho-Ho’s to fry.”

  “So you admit that you are a member of The Creed?”

  “I don’t admit shit.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “What?”

  “Earlier, when you were leaning on your fists, I noticed the eights tattooed above your knuckles, two on each hand.”

  “That’s when I graduated high school. ’88. 1988.”

  “If true, your school spirit is commendable. However, I suspect you are lying to us about this, as well as your knowledge of Skeletor’s whereabouts.”

  “Prove it.”

  “We will. And when we do, trust me, sir, you will answer our questions or you will be incarcerated. Danny? Let’s go. We’ve learned what we needed to know. Be advised, sir, your booth will be under constant police surveillance.”

  “What? What for?”

  “Drug trafficking. Kindly infor
m Skeletor that, when he returns, he will be arrested.”

  “Hah! He’s not coming back here. He’s not stupid.”

  No, but some of his friends sure are. The guy just basically told us that, yes, Skeletor has been selling drugs out of his candy stand.

  Of course, he’s also right.

  We won’t catch Skeletor hiding behind the Pepsi Balls. The guy has slipped out of our grip more times than an oily Snickers bar.

  We really only have one shot.

  Playing the America’s Most Wanted card. Putting his bony face and Mandy’s Mustang on TV.

  20

  MONDAY, WE GO TO CHURCH.

  For Paul Braciole’s funeral.

  We’re working crowd control and traffic outside Our Lady of the Seas Catholic Church, which more or less resembles a brick school building with a steeple and stained-glass windows. Don’t worry. Judging from the television satellite trucks lined up around the block, you’ll be able to watch highlights on all the major entertainment news shows, not to mention this week’s “Funeral for a Friend/To Catch a Killer” edition of Fun House.

  We’re on a bit of a break. The TV anchor types are all in their satellite vans, waiting for the funeral to end so they can mob folks streaming out of the church, including several celebrities who dropped by to remember Paulie, a “young man of enormous talent who was taken from us too, too soon,” according to the church-lawn eulogy delivered by Marty Mandrake for the gaggle of reporters jabbing microphones in his face before the services started.

  Prickly Pear Productions has hired about a dozen beefy guys in EVENT STAFF windbreakers to keep the crowd of mourning fans behind a hastily erected barricade of interlocking fences running up the sides of the church steps. Since it’s a somber occasion, all the looky-loos are behaving. Holding candles and sobbing. Making memorials out of stuffed animals, flowers, and, yes, tubs of bodybuilding protein powder.

  We’re in our police cruiser, parked right at the curb in front of the entrance steps. Even our radio is quiet. Perhaps Dorian Rence is observing a moment of silence in Paulie’s honor.

  Ceepak’s cell rings. The personal phone. He always wears two so he doesn’t “blur the line between my private life and my professional responsibilities.”