Tilt-a-Whirl jc-1

by Chris Grabenstein

“Excuse me?”

  “Becca liked Mendez's tattoos best. I think they, you know, talked about them. Anyhow, she mentioned his name….”

  Ceepak stops walking.

  “Good work,” he says, sounding proud.

  “Thanks. So why would Ms. Stone insist Hart's calendar was wrong? That all meetings with Mendez had been cancelled? We know he's in town….”

  “Perhaps Mr. Mendez knows some things Ms. Stone would rather we did not.”

  “You think?”

  “It's a possibility.” He winks, letting me know he's saying it for the ten millionth time on purpose. “Excellent work, Danny. Awesome intelligence.”

  “So-what do we do? Go back in and bust Ms. Stone?”

  “This motel? The Mussel Beach? Do you know where it is?”

  “Sure.”

  “I'd like to head over there right now. However, the chief ordered us to stand down for the evening.”

  “So?”

  “We'll contact your friend.”

  “Becca.”

  “Ask her to ascertain whether Mr. Mendez is still a registered guest.”

  “Then what? She can't bust him or anything. Not unless he pulls a tag off a mattress or something….”

  “We'll ask Officer Kiger to keep an eye on the motel during his overnight shift. Tomorrow morning, first thing, we'll swing by the motel ourselves, have an early-morning chat with Mr. Mendez.”

  We reach my car. It's a hand-me-down I bought “pre-owned” from my mom. A minivan. That's the bad news. The good news? Ceepak has plenty of legroom.

  We both climb in. I make the call. Becca tells me Mendez is still there. Went to bed early. I don't ask her how she knows this, she just does. I tell her Adam Kiger will be cruising through her parking lot a bunch tonight. She giggles. Becca digs Adam Kiger. I think they used to date. Maybe they still do.

  “So,” Ceepak says when I finish with the phone, “where does one grab a beer at this hour?”

  I check my watch. It's almost midnight.

  “You want a beer?” I'm in shock.

  “Might help me sleep.”

  “Yeah. Okay. We could hit The Frosty Mug. It's on the way into town. They're open ’til two or three….”

  “That'll work. Let's roll.”

  The Frosty Mug isn't very popular with tourists.

  It's a dimly lit tavern that smells like spilled beer and fried fish. There's dark maple paneling on the walls made even darker by fifty years of tar and nicotine. Most of the booths have patches of duct tape where the imitation red leather is ripped or torn. No “beachy” decorations to be seen except this one Budweiser neon in the window, which has a glowing green palm tree bent into its glass. If you're hungry, The Mug serves fried fish fillets and French fries and these greasy wads they call Shark Knuckles. If you want vegetables, order the fried cauliflower and dip it in the imitation cheese sauce. It's what I do.

  Most tourists think The Frosty Mug is a dump.

  That, of course, is why we locals love it.

  My buddy Mike Sullivan is behind the bar where two old dudes, wearing flannel shirts in the middle of July, are nursing shots with beers back. They look and smell like fishermen.

  We order two bottles of Bud and grab a booth near the window, right under the rotating Clydesdale clock.

  I order fries because I see Mike pulling a fresh basket out of the oil vat and shaking on salt.

  Ceepak doesn't order food but he unwraps a Power Bar he had stowed inside his cargo pants. I swear, one of these days he's going to pull a meatball sub or an accordion out of one of those pockets.

  “MRE,” he says, chomping on the waxy bar. “Meal, Ready to Eat.”

  “Like in the army?”

  “Roger that. Chief Cosgrove and I choked down some awfully bad food in the service of our country….”

  “You guys were together in Germany?”

  “Right. MPs. In joint training exercises with our European counterparts … NATO troops….”

  And chasing child-molesting chaplains, I could add, but I don't.

  “Why'd you quit?”

  “Quit?”

  From the frown on his face, I can tell Ceepak doesn't like the word “quit.” Quitters never win, winners never quit-that whole deal.

  “I mean, why didn't you re-enlist?”

  “My time was up.” He shrugs and sloughs it off. “I rotated home.”

  “But you were in the Army for … what? Ten, twelve years?”

  “Something like that.”

  Ceepak pretends like he doesn't know the precise number of days, hours and minutes he served in the military, that he's forgotten about the ton of medals he earned and never talks about. If I was Ceepak? I'd have those medals pinned to my chest even when I wasn't wearing a shirt.

  “I would've figured you for a career guy,” I say after we've both had a few swigs of Beechwood-Aged goodness.

  “Yeah.”

  It gets quiet at the table.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to find Ashley.” He takes a long pull on his bottle and empties it. Then, he starts peeling off the label, scratching at it with his thumbnail.

  “Sure.”

  “We must not lose another child….”

  I wasn't aware we'd lost any children, that Ashley would somehow be “another.”

  “Sure.”

  I don't say much because I'm getting this feeling that Ceepak wants to do all the talking tonight.

  “We do this to protect children, right?”

  “Sure. I mean partly. Yeah.”

  “We defend those who cannot defend themselves….”

  I hold up two fingers to let Mike know we're going to need two more beers.

  “We went over there to help … to make a difference….”

  Ceepak's back in Iraq. I can see it. He looks like he did after the grenade attack this morning at the dumpster.

  “Sure….”

  “This morning … that explosion … the M-80 in the dumpster … I feel I owe you an explanation for my behavior.”

  “Nah, that's okay.”

  “We're partners, Danny. You need to be able to trust me. I apologize for reacting as I did….”

  “The ‘grenade!’ deal? That did spook me a little. ‘Grenade!’ Maybe if you just don't yell it in my ear like that any more….”

  I'm trying to make it a joke. He isn't smiling.

  “The children of Iraq. I still see their faces. The first day we rolled in? Children were lining the road, cheering us, asking for food, money, water-anything. This one boy had cut his foot. I hopped off our Humvee and rendered first aid. He kissed me on the cheek and said something. I don't know what, but I'm pretty sure it was all good….”

  Ceepak smiles remembering, but then his face gets somber again.

  “Some of the locals didn't want us there. We knew that. We knew it was a bad place where bad things happen….”

  “Of course.”

  “These three MPs? Friends of mine? They were on routine patrol and the hajis, that's what we called the bad guys, the hajis were up on the rooftops with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. It's why I still check out the tops of buildings when we drive by….”

  “Yeah….” I say, like I even have a clue.

  “My three friends came home in body bags.”

  He sips from the fresh beer Mike just brought over. I can tell Mike's eavesdropping. So are the two old guys at the bar. It's impossible not to, but you have to listen hard because Ceepak's kind of whispering.

  “Two weeks later, we're heading up ambush alley. I'm driving. We're in this convoy. Everybody's on edge. Over there, the hajis can take some C-4 and turn a doorbell into your death sentence.”

  “Remote-controlled bombs?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “They daisy-chain explosives and hitch them up to a trigger … maybe an old doorbell … they push the button and you're done for. Anyhow, we're in this convoy. I'm driving. Looking left, looki
ng right, looking not to get blown up. A guy named Wallace is riding shotgun on the M249.”

  “Machine gun?”

  “Roger that. He's locked and loaded….”

  Ceepak squints again. He's seeing whatever he saw back then.

  “We're the lead vehicle. Left-hand lane. Convoy of Deuce-n-Half diesels coming up behind us. We see any locals on the road in front of us, Wallace starts thumping the side of the vehicle and yelling: ‘Move it or we'll run you down and shoot what's left!’ He means it, too. He'd shoot them all. We're five minutes outside the wire, almost home free. There's this explosion….”

  “Jesus….”

  “IED. Roadside bomb. The truck behind us takes the initial impact, blows sideways. I glance back and see red spraying all over the inside of the truck's windshield, blacking it out like someone let loose with a can of paint. A taxi tries to pass us on our right. It's racing away from the blast site. Wallace sees the cab, sees it speeding up like it's trying to escape, and he starts to unload. He starts screaming: ‘You sons of bitches! You fucking Fedayeen motherfuckers!’”

  The two old guys on the barstools are frozen. Mike's in mid-mug-wipe. You could hear a peanut shell snap in here right now.

  “He's discharging his weapon, smoking them, running through his ammo belt. The taxi swerves right and rolls off the road. Wallace keeps firing. I bring us to a stop and Wallace is still on the gun. I yell at him to cease fire but he sees movement in the back of the taxi and lets loose with another burst. Cease fire! I give him a shove! Goddammit, cease fire! He empties what he has left into a sand bank.”

  Ceepak stares at his torn beer label.

  There are beads of sweat on his forehead, even though Mike keeps the thermostat set at 65 and The Mug feels like a frosty icebox.

  “Were the bombers in the taxi?”

  “No, Danny. It was a family. The father was a taxicab driver. His wife was up front in the passenger seat. The two in the back moving around were their children. A ten-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister. They were coming home from the hospital where the boy went for his asthma treatments. The others went with him … so the boy wouldn't be afraid. The two children were dead on the scene. The parents died about an hour later. We wiped out the whole family.”

  The old guys at the bar pick up their beer bottles and take long, slow drinks and wish they had another shot of whiskey to chase. Mike folds his towel and shakes his head. Ceepak stares at his hands.

  He's quiet but I'm still listening.

  “If I hadn't been driving … if I had been the one manning the weapon … maybe I could've seen it sooner … seen it was kids … maybe….”

  I nod.

  I understand.

  It won't happen again.

  He won't be the one driving and we will not let another kid get hurt.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I crawl out of bed at 7 A.M. on Sunday. I've had about five hours of sleep.

  I wonder if Ceepak's had any.

  I go to the station house and sign out the Explorer. There's this newspaper vending machine on the sidewalk near our parking lot.

  “HART BROKEN!”

  The Sunday papers have found a clever way to link the two tragedies-run a big four-color photo of Betty Bell Hart's anguished face under a bold banner headline. On one side of the photo is a story about her ex-husband's murder. On the other side, a two-column spread about the disappearance of her daughter. In the big photo, you can see the former weather girl's mascara running in black globs down her cheeks. They're going to sell some papers this Sunday.

  I read as much of the Ashley story as I can without actually depositing four quarters in the tin box and buying the thing.

  They suspect the young “heiress” was kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Sounds like the reporter got his scoop from Chief Cosgrove.

  “It's one possibility,” I mumble out loud.

  Ceepak and I will probably look into a few others.

  The Mussel Beach Motel is a family-owned and operated establishment on the sandy side of Beach Lane. It's a clean, two-story, horseshoe-shaped stucco box with a sign out front advertising a “newly furnished pool.” Becca's dad, Mr. Adkinson, decorated the place, so that's why there's this three-foot-long stuffed fish in the lobby. It's hanging right next to the window air conditioner Mr. Adkinson decided to mount through the wall because the window was too far from an electrical outlet.

  If your motel room is on the first floor, you can park two feet from your front door. If you're upstairs, you have to lug your suitcases and beer coolers up a flight of metal steps but the room rates are cheaper. Every room comes with its own air conditioner and coffee-maker, and another one of Mr. Adkinson's trophy fish. They hang between factory-made oil paintings of seascapes and lighthouses bolted to the walls.

  Like the Web site says, there's plenty of parking on the premises, so we pull into an empty spot out front.

  It's 8:15 and Becca's in the lobby behind the bright blue counter sipping coffee out of a styrofoam cup. Her dad must've gotten a good deal on that countertop because I have never actually seen that particular shade of royal blue marble. It kind of looks like bowling ball blue.

  “Hey, Becca.”

  “Hey. He's still here. Mendez.”

  “Cool. This is John Ceepak.”

  Becca likes what she sees.

  “It's awesome to finally meet you. Danny talks about you all the time….”

  “It's good to meet you too.”

  Ceepak does a cheek-dimpling smile, shakes Becca's hand, and she falls in love. Big John doesn't notice.

  “Is Mr. Mendez awake?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively. This is a motel, after all.

  “Because, you skeeve, I just took some towels out to the pool and Mendez is up on the sundeck doing these freaky exercises.” She demonstrates in slow motion.

  “Tai-Chi,” Ceepak says.

  “Could be. Or maybe Tae-Bo? Like that guy on TV?”

  “Sure. That'll work.”

  “We'd like to talk to him,” I say.

  “Fine by me. You guys want some coffee? Pastry? I'm putting out the breakfast buffet.”

  She's also putting out the Sunday papers. Ceepak sees the screaming headlines and knows he has no time to waste on danish.

  “No, thanks,” he says. “Danny?”

  We head for the sundeck.

  “Nice to meet you, Officer Ceepak.”

  He smiles back, and Becca almost drops her Raspberry Crumble Cake.

  The deck is out back, overlooking the beach. You have to go around the pool and climb up some stairs to reach it. On one side of the deck, there's a row of Wal-Mart white vinyl chairs. The other side faces the ocean.

  Mendez is wearing boxer shorts and a white nylon doo-rag that makes the top of his head look like a nurse's kneecap. His eyes are closed as he stretches and toasts his brown body in the early morning sunshine.

  I can see the Blessed Virgin's face stretching up on his shoulder every time he flexes those particular muscles. The guy is a regular tattoo gallery, but there's no dragon up on his neck. I looked. He has a flaming heart with a knife jabbed through it.

  Ceepak clears his throat to let the guy know we're here.

  “Mr. Mendez?”

  Mendez stops in mid-leg-lift and opens his eyes just enough to see we're cops. He doesn't care.

  “Yo. Wazzup?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir. We need to ask a few questions.”

  “Now? Damn, son-I'm in the middle of my moves. Tryin’ to start the day right, you know what I'm sayin’?”

  “Yes, sir. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience. If this is a bad time….”

  “What if I said it was?”

  “We could arrange to meet at a more convenient hour.”

  “Nah-uh, nah-uh. What you need to know?”

  “We'd like to talk to you about Mr. Reginald Hart.”

 
“Now deceased?”

  “That's correct. Have you ever done business with Mr. Hart?”

  “Shit, son. You got that ass-backwards, you know what I'm sayin’? Mr. Hart? He do business with me. See what I'm sayin’?”

  “Yes. Thank you for the clarification. You're an independent contractor?”

  “That's right.”

  Ceepak rubs his eraser around in his notebook, like he's correcting some faulty information someone gave him.

  “What type of business activities did Mr. Hart hire you to perform?”

  “He, you know, he hired my firm to perform what you might call real-estate consultation-type activities.”

  “Your firm?”

  “That's what I said, isn't it?”

  “Very well,” Ceepak says. “So … your firm? What sort of real-estate services do you provide?”

  “You know-little this, little that.”

  “Groundskeeping? Sprinkler maintenance?”

  Mendez looks hurt.

  “Nah-uh, man. Tenant relations.”

  “I see. In his new buildings?”

  Mendez smiles, and I can see the glint of bling-bling: he has a small gold cross implanted in his upper left incisor. This guy is seriously Catholic.

  “Nah-uh-we worked mainly in the old buildings. The ones Hart was fixing up but, you know, he couldn't get started without a little spring cleaning. That was back in the day. Now we be, you know, branching out.”

  “Diversifying?”

  “Yeah. Diversifying. I'll show you something you might be interested in….”

  He goes to a pile of clothes in front of one of the vinyl chairs and pulls a slick brochure out his jeans.

  “Project we be working on.”

  He hands Ceepak the brochure.

  “The Sea Palace?”

  “Yeah. Old hotel up on the North Shore we be renovating. Gonna turn the rooms into condos, vacation-type time-share units and all.”

  Ceepak flips the brochure over and studies its back.

  “Awesome location. Nice beach.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Check it out.”

  I can't believe this guy. He's talking about a disaster zone. There's nothing up at the north end of the island except an abandoned lighthouse and a rundown resort hotel no one (except rodents and sea gulls) has stayed in for sixty years.

  Now, once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and railroads hauled bathing beauties in wool swim trunks over from the mainland, The Palace was a hot spot because the North Shore was where the train tracks terminated. The Palace was one of those huge hotels built around 1912, when people spent a month or two at the shore because the cities were sweltering and air conditioning hadn't been invented. William Howard Taft was president. I only remember this stuff because Taft was the fattest president ever elected, weighing in at 350 pounds, and he stayed at The Palace when it first opened. In fact, you can still buy black-and-white post cards of Taft squeezed into his bathing suit, one of those numbers with a top and a bottom and lots of horizontal stripes. The guy might've been president, but he sure looked like a fully inflated beach ball.