Whack A Mole: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Up ahead, I see Water Blast, Lord of the Rings Toss, Peach Bucket Ball, and Crabby's Race Track, where you squirt a water pistol at a target to make your crab race up this track against everybody else's crab—and if you win, you get a stuffed Nemo.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?” I huff. He runs every day. Five miles. The only exercise I get is playing beer pong.

  “Swing right,” he says. “I'll swing left.”

  We're in a stretch of the boardwalk that's like a mall—booths and shops lined up on both sides.

  “If we run behind the stalls, she may think she lost us.”

  “Got it.”

  “Reconnoiter at the Whack-A-Mole.” He does one of his three-finger hand chops toward the horizon. About a block ahead, I see a gap in the booths—an open square at the next street entrance to the boardwalk. I also see the blinking chaser lights screaming WHACK-AMOLE in yellow, green, and red.

  “We'll surround her.”

  “Got it.”

  “Go!”

  We split up.

  He scoots through an alley alongside a zeppole kiosk. I dash down this narrow strip between Splash Down and Looney Ladders.

  Behind me I hear a grunt and thud.

  I stop, check over my shoulder.

  Ceepak's on his butt.

  “You okay?”

  “Slipped,” he says, hoisting himself back up.

  Guess that's where the zeppole folks change their fry grease once a month.

  “Go, Danny!”

  I don't answer. I just run.

  I turn right and I'm behind all the booths, zooming along this tight little path as fast as I can. I have to leap over a tall stack of cardboard boxes. Then I almost trip on a tangle of air hoses and electrical cords behind the Balloon Pop. But the clearing, the opening onto Whack-A-Mole Square, the rendezvous point, is just up ahead. I can hear bells ringing. Kids squealing. Fuzzy hammers hitting furry heads.

  I make the right. Race into the square. Ceepak is already standing there.

  He's looking left, looking right. Looking like we lost her.

  I meet him in the middle. Kids licking lollipops the size of steering wheels surround us. I see tattooed slackers lugging gigantic plush toys they wish they hadn't just won for their girlfriends because now they have to haul them up and down the boardwalk all night long. The sun is sinking lower so half the booths, the ones to my west, are in deep shadows. The kind of shadows that make good hiding places.

  “Do you see her, Danny?”

  “No.”

  I crane my neck. I see this other girl, about nine. She is whacking the bejesus out of the moles that keep popping up in the five holes in front of her. The digital counter clicks over every time she whacks a mole back into its hole. She grips her hammer with both fists. The hammer head is huge, resembling a forty-eight-ounce can of stewed tomatoes wrapped with grey foam. Lights flash. Whistles whoop. Little Miss Mallet is very close to going home with a stuffed gopher.

  But she isn't our girl.

  “We've lost her,” says Ceepak, his eyes sweeping the scene.

  “Yeah. But she couldn't have gone far.”

  “Roger that. Where are we, Danny?”

  Ceepak knows of my misspent youth. He knows I know this boardwalk better than Bruno Mazzilli, the guy who owns most of it.

  “About a quarter mile down,” I say and point at the ramp to our west, sweeping down to Beach Lane. “This is the Dolphin Street entrance.”

  Ceepak nods, works his handy-talkie.

  “This is Ceepak. The target has fled. She was last seen in the vicinity of the Dolphin Street entrance to the boardwalk.”

  While Ceepak calls it in, I check out the game booth directly in front of us.

  There's an Asian-looking dude behind the counter, a clothesline of yellow Tweety Birds strung up over his head. The booth is called Machine Gun Fun. Behind the guy is a row of targets. Sort of like the ones they have at the police academy shooting range, only the targets here look more like the mobsters on The Sopranos.

  I aced the firing range when I did my nineteen weeks at the academy. Mostly because I spent my formative years playing Halo on my Xbox, blasting Grunts, Jackals, and Drones. In Jersey, you need an 80 on the standard shooting test to become firearm-certified. I scored a 96. And my mother used to tell me I was wasting my time pointing my plastic pistol at the TV set!

  Now I notice the Asian guy is wearing a head mike but he's not saying anything to hustle up a fresh crowd of suckers. All the barkers manning the other games of chance are into their raps, telling everybody how they can be a winner and take home a Tweety for their Sweetie. But this guy directly across from us is, for some reason, keeping mum about his clothesline full of Tweeties.

  I also notice he's standing extremely close to his front shelf. His belt buckle is pressed up tight against the plywood.

  There are no shooters. No customers.

  But the guy is wearing a goofy, dreamy grin.

  He slumps down some. Maybe an inch. Now the counter cuts him off above the waist. He wobbles a little. Closes his eyes.

  Okay. I know where Stacey is.

  “Ceepak?”

  “What've you got, Danny?”

  I nod toward the booth.

  “I think our suspect is over there … under the counter. I think she's, you know, giving that guy a….”

  Ceepak nods. I need say no more.

  We walk slowly, so as not to draw the guy's attention. Not to worry. His attention is currently fixated somewhere near his zipper.

  “Oh, shit!” cries this angry voice behind us.

  It's the little cutie on the Whack-A-Mole game. She's smashing her mallet against the glass panel that shows her score.

  “Shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit!”

  She has a 95. Guess you need a 100 to win. Guess you learn those words when you're nine years old these days.

  “Fucking piece of fucking shit!”

  The glass pane isn't shattering. Her mallet is mostly sponge.

  Her colorful choice of words, however, has snapped the guy at Machine Gun Fun out of his trance.

  He sees us.

  Two cops strolling over to tell him his fly is open.

  His hands drop from his hips and fumble under the counter.

  His row of toy machine-guns shakes. One pops off its pedestal. The countertop is being bumped from below.

  Ceepak starts to trot. So do I.

  The Asian guy falls backward like a tight end just chop-blocked his shins. I see a flash of green hair as Stacey bobs up and heads for the rear wall. She pushes and shoves against the stuffed purple bears hanging there. Only it's not a wall. It's a door—a swinging panel. She knocks it open and, once again, flees.

  We dart up the boardwalk. Now she's the one working the narrow alley behind the booths.

  I see flashes of green hair every time we cross a crack where one booth stops and another starts. Past Splash Down. Skee Ball Bob's. Rat-A-Tat Tattoo. Past this place that sells really good water ices.

  “There she is,” yells Ceepak as we near the blinking lights of another zeppole stand. We race to the end of what is basically a parked food trailer and come upon a cluster of picnic tables, where people sit stuffing clumps of sugar-powdered, deep-fried dough into their faces. I wish I could join them.

  We stop. Wait. No girl pops out from behind the food cart.

  “She must've doubled back!” I yell. “We should….”

  Ceepak holds up his left hand. Gives me the halt sign.

  He sees something.

  “Is your sidearm loaded?” he whispers.

  I swallow hard. “Yes, sir.”

  “Cover me.”

  My hand is shaking, but it finds my holster and unfastens the strap that cradles the Glock in place. My thumb finds the trigger. Caresses it.

  Ceepak makes an almost imperceptible tilt of his head to the right.

  To one of the picnic tables.

  To where Dr. Theodore Winston sits biti
ng into the butt end of his hot dog.

  “I'm on point.” Ceepak moves toward the table.

  My hand hovers over my Glock.

  Ceepak is the one who suggested I go with the .40 caliber Glock 27 instead of the 23; he said with the 23 my hand would be bigger than the gun. All I know is, right now my hand is sweaty. The pistol might be the right size, but it could slip out of my wet grip.

  Teddy Winston is alone. He crumples up the tissue paper from his hot dog, wads it into a ball, and tosses it toward an overflowing trash barrel. He misses by a mile.

  “Dr. Theodore Winston?” Ceepak says in his most heart-stopping cop voice.

  “Yes?” He squints. He has to. The sun's behind Ceepak's head. I'm certain my partner planned it that way. Gives him the tactical advantage.

  “Sir, please stand up and place your hands behind your back.”

  Ceepak finds a pair of plastic FlexiCuffs on his utility belt. He does so without breaking eye contact with Dr. Winston.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That's preposterous. What, pray tell, is the charge?”

  Ceepak nods toward the crumpled hot dog wrapper lying on the boardwalk.

  “First-degree littering.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Dr. Teddy Winston doesn't like it when his fingers get rolled across the inkpad back in the booking room.

  The surgeon doesn't seem to think the big man in charge, Sergeant Pender, is treating his delicate digits with the proper respect.

  “These hands are insured, you know,” he says.

  “Who you with?” asks Pender. “Chubb? I signed up with Chubb to insure my feet. I'm on my feet all day so I figured, you know, I better make sure they're covered. They gave me a bunion rider.”

  “I want to call my wife.”

  Pender cocks a sly smile. “You sure about that, Doc? From what I hear, Mrs. Winston isn't all that thrilled with your recent choice of recreational activities.”

  “She'll call my lawyer.”

  “She'll call her divorce lawyer is my guess.”

  Ceepak tilts his head to suggest that he and I leave Winston and Pender alone in the tiny fingerprinting room. That way, we can pull the ol’ bad cop, good cop routine. We'll let Pender continue to piss the doctor off. Later, Ceepak and I can waltz into the interrogation room, offer Teddy a cup of coffee, maybe a nice cold Coke, and become his best buddies in the whole wide world.

  We close the door and head up the hall leading to the bullpen. We pass the framed pictures of former chiefs and retired cops lining the walls. Years ago, a couple of these guys busted me and my buddies for drinking beer on the beach.

  When we reach the lobby, our most recent retiree is waiting for us. Gus Davis. He's out in front of the short railing that separates Us from Them: the public servants from the public.

  Gus looks upset.

  “Good evening, Gus,” says Ceepak.

  “Can it, Ceepak.”

  His face is red. Retirement doesn't seem to be agreeing with him at the moment. Any second now, he could go postal on us.

  “Why the hell did you send Santucci over to bust my chops?”

  “Come again?”

  “Don't play dumb with me, smart ass. He says you gave a list of names to Jane Bright. Wanted to see if I went to some kind of freaking whale museum.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Gus?” Ceepak asks. “It's still as bad as….”

  “No, I don't want a goddamn cup of coffee!”

  Several night-shift guys are strolling in the front door, ready to do the seven-thirty P.M. roll call and pass-on. They take their time heading to the locker room. Seems they prefer to hang out here and catch the floor show.

  “Let's step into an office,” says Ceepak.

  “Forget it, you prick. Santucci said you're trying to make me for a string of murders that went down in the 1980s.”

  Ceepak doesn't reply.

  Gus moves a step forward, braces the bar, and gets in Ceepak's face.

  “Just because I didn't track down that tramp when her mother called. Screw that noise. We were busy! I didn't have time to go search under every bed in town for some two-bit slut!”

  Ceepak holds up his hand.

  “You don't want to say these things to me, Gus. Not now. Not without your lawyer present.”

  Gus backpedals a step or two.

  “My lawyer? I don't have a freaking lawyer. Never needed one until you sent Santucci over to bust my hump.”

  “Perhaps you should retain one now.”

  “What? You think you can arrest me? I still got friends in this town. More friends than you, that's for damn sure. You know why? Because you annoy people, Ceepak. You act all superior and sanctimonious. Like you're some kind of freaking Boy Scout altar boy. Well, who the hell died and made you pope?”

  “No one.”

  “You got that right. No one! And don't you ever forget it!”

  “Go home, Gus. We'll talk about this tomorrow.”

  By tossing in the “tomorrow,” I'm pretty sure Ceepak just handed our old friend a huge hint: he is not really a prime suspect. If he were, we'd be talking to him tonight. We'd be talking to him right now.

  “Fuck you,” says Gus, flipping Ceepak the finger. Way mature. In fact, the bird never looks all that menacing when extended upward on a sixty-five-year-old hand. Too many liver spots. Wrinkles. Bony knuckles.

  “Fuck you, too, Boyle!”

  Guess he read my mind.

  “Go home to Fran, Gus.” Helen, the dispatcher has come out of her cubicle to join the audience.

  “Fuck you, Helen!” Now Gus sees the crowd of cops staring at him. Knows he's made a fool of himself. “Fuck you all,” he mutters. “Every blue bastard one of you!”

  His hands tremble into his pockets and his shoulders sag.

  No one says a word. Heads drop all around the room. Nobody wants to watch the show anymore. This thing stopped being funny a while ago.

  Gus turns, the crowd parts, and he makes his way out the door.

  “I only spent one night with the girl.”

  All of a sudden, Dr. Teddy Winston doesn't want to wait for his lawyer. He wants to talk. It's almost seven-thirty P.M. I figure he must have another hot date lined up for later tonight.

  “You were there,” he says, fluttering his fingers in my general direction. “Remember? You were at The Sand Bar and told me where I might procure a six-pack to go.”

  I sink down in my chair an inch or two.

  We're in the interrogation room. Like most such spaces, it's got one of those one-way-mirror window deals. Chief Baines is currently on the other side watching us, and now the suspect is describing how I aided and abetted his bedding of the underage girl we've all been hunting for by pointing him toward Fritzie's Package Store.

  I figure I could crawl under the table but that might make me look even worse.

  “She's the one you ought to arrest,” says Winston. “The girl.”

  “Why's that?” asks Ceepak.

  “For prostitution.”

  “Did you pay her?”

  “No. She robbed me.”

  “When?”

  “You know. After. She took one hundred dollars. Cash.”

  “Did she take the key to your room at Chesterfield's as well?”

  “No. I simply lost it.”

  “When?”

  “Which time are you talking about? I've lost it a few times this week.”

  “Tell me about them all.”

  “Heavens—I don't know. I don't really pay much attention to such things. Fine. I confess to being absentminded, but the folks at the front desk don't seem to care. In fact, they have been quite accommodating. Surely it's no crime to lose one's room key. And this ridiculous littering charge….”

  Ceepak flashes open the wallet we retrieved from the B&B.

  “Is this your driver's license?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is 08540 your curr
ent ZIP code?”

  “Yes.”

  Ceepak's watching his eyeballs. Now he knows which way Teddy's eyes will swing when he flings us a fib.

  “Do you come to Sea Haven often?”

  “Not recently. Not in ten, maybe fifteen years.”

  “What about in the past—specifically the 1980s?”

  “Yes. When I was in college. I came down here quite a bit. So did a lot of people. The beaches, as I recall, were always quite crowded.”

  I think he's trying to be sarcastic.

  Ceepak keeps going. “During these visits, did you ever attend religious services at Life Under the Son?”

  “Church services?” The doctor is indignant. “Do you seriously imagine attending worship services was ever my idea of a fun weekend?”

  Ceepak arches an eyebrow. I think Teddy just looked the wrong way.

  “Are you certain?”

  Teddy leans back in his chair. Ruminates.

  “Life Under the Son?” He's acting up a storm. Scrunching up his face. Thinking. He'll probably rub his chin pretty soon. Yup, there he goes. “Is that down by the boardwalk?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “They used to put on some sort of show out in the surf. Baptisms, I believe.”

  Ceepak gives him another nod.

  “Okay. Yes. Now that you mention it … once or twice I may have stopped by. This was decades ago….”

  “I know.”

  “I remember the girls involved were always quite attractive. College girls. Sexy. All lined up along the shore in their bathing suits. Several of the young ladies weren't quite ready for heaven, as I recall. They were still eager to raise a little hell.”

  “Did you spend time with any of these girls?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It's a simple question. I'm looking for just a yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “One or two. Maybe more. After all, they'd already displayed their willingness to … uh … sin.”

  “Did you hurt any of them?”

  “The girls?”

  “The girls you picked up at the church.”

  Teddy smiles. “Not that I recall. However, I am rather, how shall I put this, rather well endowed.”

  Left. That's the liar side. That's where he just looked.

  “Did you kill any of them?”