There's nothing left of The Palace Hotel now but three hundred ratty rooms nobody's known what to do with since 1942. The last I heard….
“Hart bought The Palace.”
“Come again?” Ceepak says.
“It was in The Sandpaper,” I say. “Couple years back. Front-page story. Reggie Hart was going to turn the old hotel into a luxury condo complex….”
Ceepak casually flips the brochure over and studies a small logo near the bottom of the back panel.
“Hart Enterprises….”
“Yo-them's the former brochures. Old man Hart couldn't cut it, you know what I'm saying? He sold that sucker to me. Ten cents on the dollar. I'm the one be putting in jacuzzis, whirlpools, fitness center, sushi bar….”
“All that's what Hart was going to do,” I say.
Mendez glowers at me.
Ceepak tucks the brochure into his back pocket.
“You know,” he says, “I once toured a time-share unit in North Carolina.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Your project intrigues me.”
“Smart man.”
“So when will your condos be offered for sale?”
“We be working out the final details and all right now. Soon.”
“Good. Ms. Stone certainly knows her way around a real estate deal.”
“Yeah. She's worth the big bucks I'm paying her.”
Ceepak is good. He just linked Mendez to Ms. Stone in two seconds flat.
“Well, we don't mean to delay you any further, but”-Ceepak unfolds his sketch of Squeegee-“can I ask you one more question?” Mendez waits.
“We're asking all the leading businessmen in town the same thing….”
“Yeah,” Mendez nods, happy to be included.
“Do you recognize this man?”
“Nah-uh.”
“You’re certain?”
“Don't know him.”
“Perhaps he's applied for a position with your firm?”
“Nah-uh.”
“Maybe he's done some day labor for you or your associates?”
“Nah-uh.”
“Have you ever seen him around town?” This could take hours.
“Car wash.”
“The car wash?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Off Ocean Avenue there. Cap'n Crunch's?”
“Cap'n Scrubby's?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Thank you,” Ceepak says and folds up the sketch.
Mendez checks his watch. It looks like a huge chrome-rimmed hubcap.
“Damn. Got me a breakfast meeting with my lawyer….”
“Chesterfield's?” I say, employing the ol’ Ceepak “slip it in” move.
“Yeah-you ever eat breakfast there, son?”
“No.”
“Didn't figure you did.” He goes to his clothes pile and reaches for his shirt and his jeans.
That's when we see them.
Buried under everything else.
His Timberland boots.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You saw those boots, right?”
“Affirmative,” Ceepak says. “Remember, Timberland is a very popular brand.”
We're sitting in the Ford out front of The Mussel Beach Motel, sipping coffee Becca was kind enough to pour in go-cups for us when we said our good-byes.
“Do you think?”
“That Virgilio Mendez killed Reginald Hart to get his hands on the Palace Hotel and who knows what other real-estate assets?”
I nod.
“It's a possibility.”
“But Ashley described Squeegee. Maybe Mendez and Squeegee worked together….”
“Another possibility.”
“So how do we dump some of these goddamn possibilities?” I usually don't swear in front of Ceepak, but my brain was hurting trying to make sense of all this stuff.
“We keep working the puzzle. Picking up pieces, fitting them into place.”
“Okay-Ms. Stone. What's she up to? Double-crossing her boss? It sure looked like she and Hart might have been, you know, romantic. So how come she's suddenly got Mendez as a client?”
Ceepak doesn't answer.
“What time does the car wash open?”
“Ten. Maybe eleven.”
“Drat.” Now even Ceepak's swearing-or as close as he ever gets. It's not even nine A.M. yet. The puzzle pieces aren't cooperating. “We need to talk to people at Captain Bubbles. ASAP.”
“Cap'n Scrubby's.”
He nods.
The car wash is where two people place Squeegee. First, Officer Adam Kiger. Now, respected real-estate tycoon Virgilio Mendez.
“Some of the other employees, particularly the other transients, these towel men, they might know where Squeegee lives or where he goes when he means to disappear….”
“We could grab some breakfast or something … kill a half an hour.”
Ceepak looks at me like I'm crazy. Breakfast? What's that? I don't think we'll be eating again until Ashley Hart is safe.
Our radio squelches.
“Ceepak? Goddammit, Ceepak?” It's the chief.
Ceepak picks up the mike.
“Yes, sir?”
“We just heard from the State Ballistics Team.”
“And?”
“They made a match.”
“Nine-millimeter?”
“Yeah.”
Ceepak nods. It's what he figured.
“So now we know what we're looking for?”
“Yeah,” the chief grumbles. “Goddamn Smith amp; Wesson. Semiautomatic. One of ours.”
“Come again?”
“It's one of ours! Goddammit-it's Gus's goddamn gun. Get your asses over here! Now. Move it!” Cap'n Scrubby will have to wait.
“He lost it,” the chief says.
“He lost it?” Ceepak's jaw is halfway down his neck.
We're in the chief's office. Gus is outside in the hall, waiting. When we passed him, he looked whiter than a fish belly, like he'd just seen his own ghost-probably because he knows the chief is about to kill him.
I always thought they took Gus's gun away from him when he went on desk duty. Now it looks like he went on desk duty because he was careless with his sidearm. They demoted him for being a fuckup.
“How does an officer lose his lethal weapon?” Ceepak refuses to believe such things are possible.
“Last winter? Gus was sitting in his squad car and his belt was hanging so loose on his bony butt, the gun kept sliding up, pinching him in the side….”
Ceepak closes his eyes. I don't think he wants to live in a world where cops take off their pistols because they rub them the wrong way.
“Gus?” The chief screams at the door. “Get your ass in here!”
Gus sort of shuffles into the room, afraid to look the chief, Ceepak, or even lowly me in the eye.
“Yes, sir?” I've never heard Gus sound so meek, like a kid in the principal's office. Usually he's ready to bust your chops the minute you waltz through the front doors.
“Tell Ceepak.”
“You mean-about my gun?”
“No-about how good the goddamn stripers are running this morning. Jesus! Give us the fucking fishing report, why don't you?” Gus turns to Ceepak.
“It was back in March. One of those days when it sort of feels like spring even though it's winter, you know?”
Ceepak nods.
“It was freaking hot, too. Muggy. Unseasonably warm, like they say on the radio. And I'm half-Greek, so I always feel kind of hot and sweaty, you know?”
Gus smiles.
Ceepak?
God bless him, he smiles back.
He's ready to move on. I guess he figures he's wasted enough time being disappointed. Now he wants to see if there is something he can do, some positive action he can take.
Gus feels better. I can tell by the way all the air trapped in his chest seeps out when his neck muscles finally relax.
“
Anyhow, the freaking gun kept riding up on me. Every time I'd sit, it'd slide up some and pinch me. It cut into me … right here. And was I having a day? This call, that call. Go here, get out, get back in, go somewheres else. So I put the gun in the glove compartment.”
“The glove compartment?”
“Yeah. I'm not so stupid I'm gonna leave it lying out on the freaking seat there….”
It seems even Gus has his limits.
“You were alone?” Ceepak asks.
“Yeah. It was late winter-we always cut back some on personnel, pull solo patrols. It's mostly basic stuff that time of the year- swinging by the bank when the Brinks truck comes to town, writing up fender-benders, helping out with the school zones. Don't really need two-man patrols in March….”
“So where'd you go? After you put the gun away?”
“I'm not really sure….”
“Focus. Do the best you can.”
“Yeah. Okay. I went by The Pancake Palace. Had an early lunch. Went by the Surf City Shopping Center on account of they were having some trouble with their freaking alarm system. Remember, chief? It was your day off and you were looking in the window of that jewelry place?”
“Yes.”
“Gonna buy your wife a present, remember? I said go with the earrings? The ones shaped like sandals with diamonds in the toes? I said she'd get a kick out of those-”
“Gus?” The chief is impatient, big time.
“Right. After that, I'm back in the car. Make a few more stops. Here and there. Piddling little stuff, but duty calls, you know? I walked up and down Ocean Avenue, wrote up some parking tickets at expired meters … this one had gum jammed in the slot … damn freaking kids, you know?”
“When did you realize your gun was missing?” Ceepak asked.
“Second time I ran into the chief.”
“When was that?”
“I was parked outside Driftwood Floral. Our anniversary was coming so I was thinking about maybe picking up some flowers or something. My wife doesn't need any more earrings. She's got a million of those. Anyhow, the chief is picking up some cold cuts or whatever from the deli next door and he sees me coming out the flower shop….”
“It was a Tuesday,” the chief remembers.
“Yeah.” Gus agrees. “Your regular day off, right?”
“Right.” The way the chief says it I get the feeling he'll never take one again.
“Anyhow, the chief here says, ‘Where the hell's your goddamn weapon?’ He's looking at my holster and it's freaking empty, you know? So I say, ‘Oh, shit’ because, at first, when I put it in the glove compartment, I'd put it back in my holster every time I got out of the car. Only this time I guess I forgot. Might've forgot some other times, too. So I say to the chief, ‘It's in the car.’ The chief says, ‘Where?’ I go to show him, pop open the glove compartment, no gun. It's gone.”
Ceepak turns to the chief.
“Did you report the missing weapon to the proper authorities?” The chief sort of looks from side to side-like it's his turn to tell us what he did wrong.
“No. I did not.”
He rubs his nose with the back of his big hand. Then he pushes both hands back through what little hair he has left on the top of his head.
“Why not?”
“Because I'm a goddamn big-hearted idiot, okay?”
Ceepak's eyebrows do that quizzical puppy dog thing: Hunh?
The chief sniffs in enough air to explain.
“Here's Gus-what? Six, seven months from retirement. I don't have it in me to blow his whole goddamn pension. To write him up. Losing your gun? You don't just get a slap on the wrist for that one. So I yank him off the street, stick him behind the desk where he can't lose anything else. Then I have a quiet word with the guys. Ever since, we've all been nosing around town, keeping an eye and ear out for Gus's goddamn gun….”
“But you never found it?”
“No. We never did.”
Until today, I want to say, because I'm the resident wise-ass. But I don't.
“Why didn't you tell me, chief?” Ceepak says. “I could've helped look for it.”
The chief doesn't answer right away.
I know what he'd say if he were being totally honest: He didn't tell him because Ceepak would have turned them all in. Ceepak won't lie, cheat, or steal, and he won't tolerate those who do. Even the ones who do it to save an old cop's pension. The chief knows all about Ceepak's Code.
“Hey, you were new,” the chief says. “Just back from that other shitbox. The war. I didn't want to drag you into this, load you down with our old crap. You needed a fresh start. I figured me and the other guys … I figured we'd find it sooner or later….”
The chief lets that one hang there. I think even he's thinking: “We sure as Hell found it now, didn't we?”
“Are the ballistics conclusive?”
“Yeah. Smith amp; Wesson semi-automatic nine-millimeter. We know that's what Gus lost four months back. You do the math.”
“Okay. Gus? We need a complete calendaring of everywhere you went that day. Look at your log, check with dispatch, rack your brain. Don't leave anything out.”
“Okay. Sure. I can do that. I remember most of what I did that day….”
“Good.”
“Pretty hard to forget.” Gus lets out another nervous chuckle bubble. “I mean, it's not every day you pull a bone-headed stunt like that, you know?”
“Write it up for us, okay?”
“Sure, Ceepak, sure. No problem. I can write it up. Because, like I say, I remember pretty much everything. March 9th. What a freaking shitty day. Right before my anniversary. And it rained the day before. Poured.”
“Good,” Ceepak says, looking at his watch. I don't think he meant for Gus to give him an oral report right this minute.
“Write it up. Chief?”
“Yeah?”
“New development. Virgilio Mendez?”
“The guy in Hart's calendar?”
“Yes, sir. Ms. Stone was being disingenuous with us last night. She is meeting with Mendez. 0-10 hundred. That same restaurant.”
“Chesterfield's,” I say.
“What for?”
“Apparently,” Ceepak says, taking the folded brochure out of his pocket, “they're planning for a future without Mr. Hart. Real-estate development.”
He hands The Palace condo flyer to the chief.
“Goddammit,” he growls. “How'd you find out?”
“Danny,” Ceepak says. “He was listening carefully and made some right connections.”
“I think Mendez hired Squeegee,” I blurt out, bucked up by Ceepak's praise. “To kill Hart!”
“What?”
“It's one possibility,” Ceepak backs me up. “Greed is always a good motive.”
“Shit,” the chief says, like he's the one riding the Tilt-A-Whirl, not knowing what to expect next. “I want you two there. At the meet.”
“Roger that.”
“Gus?”
“Yes, chief?”
“Go write up your goddamn diary.”
“Sure. I can write it up. No problem. I remember everything. I remember the car was filthy, ’cause of the rain and the mud and all. Remember, chief? At Surf City? You said it looked like a ‘rolling mud pie.’ So I swung by the car wash….”
He's got our attention again.
“Which one?” Ceepak asks.
“What?”
“Which car wash did you use?”
“Cap'n Scrubby's,” Gus says. “They give us a discount.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It's right before ten on Sunday morning.
The chief will meet Mendez and Ms. Stone for brunch at Chesterfield's. We're on our way to the car wash. Sounds like Gus could have lost his gun at the one place everybody who recognizes Squeegee says they've seen him.
The car wash is fast becoming one of Ceepak's more definite possibilities.
Maybe our prime suspect did an extra-good job cleaning o
ut Gus's car. Maybe, while wiping down the dashboard, he even tidied up the glove compartment.
On the way to Cap'n Scrubby's, we drive past a few church parking lots. They're fuller than usual. Most people take a little vacation from the Lord while they're down here taking a vacation from everything else. But this Sunday, people seem to be out in force, undoubtedly praying for the safe return of Ashley Hart.
When we stop at traffic lights, I can see flyers stapled to the telephone poles.
MISSING.
Under that big, scary headline is the face of the pretty blond girl we met yesterday. I look up Ocean Avenue. The flyers are nailed to every single pole, taped to every light post.
Traffic seems kind of heavy for Sunday morning. I notice a lot of cars are taking the turn for the Causeway and heading home. I guess people checked out of their rentals early because they'd rather lose their deposits than their children.
We pass the entrance to Sunnyside Playland.
The ground is blanketed with bouquets. Bunches of tissue-wrapped roses-the kind you can buy in the refrigerator case at the A amp;P. A couple of teddy bears and some stuffed green turtles are stuck into the chain-link gate. The newspapers had told everybody how much young Ashley and her father liked turtles, why they were on the Turtle-Twirl Tilt-A-Whirl before it even opened. They'd worked all the human-interest angles pretty good.
There's a sheet draped over a section of the Playland fence, covering up some of the “Fun In The Sun” slogan. It's the kind of banner we used to paint for high-school homecoming games. Only this one says, “Please Come Home Safe Ashley!” and has a smiley face in the dot under the exclamation point.
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