Free Fall

by Chris Grabenstein

  Sunnyside Clyde, the small-time amusement park’s mascot, greets me. Clyde is this big, baggy-panted surfer dude with a huge ray-rimmed sun for a head who always wears dark sunglasses. I never understood why. If you’re supposed to be the sun, do you really need sunglasses? Why? In case you see yourself in a mirror?

  Anyway, Sunnyside Clyde waves when he sees me because the guy sweating inside the giant foam rubber ball is another pal of mine, Josh Grabo.

  “Hey, Danny,” his voice is muffled by his bright orange padding.

  “Hey, Josh.”

  “Clyde, dude. I’m on duty.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “You doing anything tonight?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Not really.”

  “Bunch of us are having a kegger over at Mike Malenock’s place. Wanna come?”

  “Sounds like fun,” I say, vaguely remembering when it really would’ve sounded that way. “But, well, I promised somebody I’d help them move their stuff tonight.”

  “Well, if you guys get thirsty when you’re done with the move, come to the kegger. You goin’ in to check out ‘Urban Termination II?’”

  “Thought I might.”

  “Don’t worry, dude. I cruised by earlier. You’re still the high score. All three top spots.”

  Josh and I knock knuckles. He’s wearing these big Hamburger Helper-sized white gloves. It’s like I’m hanging out with Mickey Mouse’s slightly seedier New Jersey cousin.

  The video arcade game Urban Termination II is one of the many ways I hone the cop skill that, not to brag, has made me somewhat legendary amongst the boys in blue up and down the Jersey Shore. I have, shall we say, a special talent.

  I can shoot stuff real good.

  Sometimes, when we’re out at the firing range, Ceepak even calls me “Deadeye Danny.” Says I could’ve qualified as a Sharpshooter or Marksman if, you know, I had joined the Army first.

  Inside Sunnyside Playland, I nail a bunch of bad guys with a purple plastic pistol and listen to the whoops and ba-ba-dings and the voice growling, “die sucker die” every time I blast a thug mugging a granny.

  A crowd of kids gathers around me.

  It’s fun.

  For a full fifteen minutes.

  I collect the winning tickets that spool out of the machine when I top my top score and hand them off to one of my fans, who only needs “two hundred thousand more points” before he wins a Walkman. Yes, a Walkman. The prizes at Sunnyside Playland aren’t what you might call contemporary.

  Fun with a gun done, I grab an early dinner at The Dinky Dinghy, the seafood shack famous for its “Oo-La-La Lobster.” I go with a Crispy Cape Codwich because you don’t need to wear a bib when you eat it.

  Then I head for home.

  Christine Lemonopolous does not call. Guess she didn’t need my help moving her belongings out of Mrs. Oppenheimer’s McMansion.

  I don’t go to Josh and Mike’s kegger, either. If I did, I might have to arrest myself for a D and D. That’s drunk and disorderly.

  And Ceepak would hear about it. Probably on his police scanner two seconds after it happened.

  Instead, I just go to bed.

  Sunday morning, I resist the urge to swing by Dr. Arnold Rosen’s beach bungalow to check in with Christine again. Instead, I actually go to church, something I’ve started doing a little more often lately—even though my mom and dad aren’t in town to make me. They moved to Arizona a few years ago. It’s “a dry heat.”

  I guess I go to church because of The Job.

  The deaths I have witnessed.

  The deaths I have caused.

  After church, I head home, have a couple beers, watch baseball, order a pizza.

  I spend a couple more minutes thinking about Christine. Wondering why I never noticed how hot she was before. But then I remember I only ever saw Christine when she was with Katie and gawking at your girlfriend’s girlfriends, saying stuff like, “Wow, check out Christine’s hooters,” would, basically, be stupid, not to mention rude.

  I call my mom and dad in Arizona. My brother, Jeffrey, has moved out there, too. He’s at their house, smoking Turkey Jalapeno Sausages over pecan logs. I’m told they do this sort of thing in Arizona.

  “When are you moving out this way, Danny?” he asks.

  “How about never?” I want to reply.

  But I don’t.

  Instead, I give the answer I give every time we talk: “We’ll see.”

  Eventually, after my brother tells me how awesome Arizona is and how I could make a ton of money managing his Berrylicious Frozen Yogurt franchise, we say good-bye.

  I head to the fridge. Pound down my last beer.

  Around nine, I fall asleep on my lumpy excuse for a sofa watching a movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe Bruce Willis.

  Sometimes Sundays can do this to a guy.

  Make you wonder what the heck you’re doing with your life when you could be pumping Berrylicious Frozen Yogurt into swirl cones and starting a family.

  So I’m very happy when the clock radio goes off at 6 A.M. and Cliff Skeete’s DJ voice booms, “Rise and shine, people. It’s Monday morning. Time to put your nose back to the grindstone.”

  And then, of course, he plays “Manic Monday” by the Bangles.

  Me? I’m glad it’s Monday.

  That means it’s Ceepak time.

  6

  I HEAD DOWN TO THE PANCAKE PALACE A LITTLE AFTER NINE.

  When I was a teenager, I used to break dishes and glasses there on a regular basis.

  I was a bus boy.

  The restaurant is pretty crowded, especially for the first week of June. I see mostly locals and a few scattered families. Kids, whose school years ended earlier than everybody else’s, are chowing down on stacks of chocolate chip flapjacks, which are, more or less, ginormous chocolate chip cookies swimming in mapley syrup. (By the way, mapley means it’s not real maple syrup; if you want that, it costs extra.)

  Some grownups go for the “eggs-traordinary omelets,” but most of them seem to be gobbling up Belgian waffles topped with Whipped Cream and strawberries, the New York Cheese Cake Pancake, or the Heart Attack Stack: six pancakes with butter, bacon bits, and sausage crumbles sandwiched in between every layer. It’s like the T-shirt says, “My Diet Gets Two Weeks Off Every Summer, Too.”

  Ceepak is seated in his favorite sunny booth near the front windows. He’ll probably order Bran Flakes topped with whatever fruit is in season this week. I’ll have black coffee and a toasted bran muffin. Yes, Ceepak has even influenced my morning food choices. No more Hostess Sno-Balls or Honey Buns for me.

  There’s a father and son in the booth behind Ceepak. The dad is diddling with his Droid phone. The boy is fiddling with the paper from his milk straw. They look like they haven’t made much eye contact since maybe Christmas morning.

  “I need to go outside to make a very important call, Christopher,” the dad says to the boy. “Stay here.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  And the father abandons his son.

  Man, the kid looks bored. And sad. Some vacation he’s having.

  Fortunately, Diana Santossio, who’s been waitressing at the Pancake Palace since forever (she used to lead the applause, high-school cafeteria style, whenever I dropped my bus tray), comes over to the table and gives Christopher a small box of crayons.

  “Here you go, hon,” she says. “You can draw right on the table cloth.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. It’s paper. You can even take it home when you’re done eating.”

  “Cool.”

  “Have fun, hon.”

  Donna sashays away while Christopher happily scribbles on the white paper table topper. I slide into the booth across from Ceepak.

  “Good morning, Danny. I ordered your coffee. Black, per usual.”

  “Thanks,” I say, noticing that Ceepak has already organized the sweetener packets in their little filing rack: White, Brown, Blue, Pink, Yello
w. I’m also pretty certain the salt and pepper shakers have been inspected, their screw tops found to be properly secured.

  “You have a good weekend?” I ask.

  “Roger that. We took my mother over to the mainland. She needed a new toilet bowl brush. Target has an interesting and wide selection.”

  I nod. I’m used to Ceepak’s wild and crazy weekend adventures, especially since his mom moved to town. Of all the good sons in the world, John Ceepak might just be the best. Probably because he has to be. His father, Mr. Joseph Ceepak, is the worst excuse for a dad I have ever met. Mr. and Mrs. Ceepak are divorced even though Mr. Ceepak refuses to believe it. Especially after Mrs. Ceepak unexpectedly inherited two point three million dollars from her spinster aunt. When Joe “Sixpack” Ceepak heard about that, he came sniffing around Sea Haven looking for his ex-wife, who, at the time, was living in a “secure location” somewhere in Ohio.

  You might wonder why Ceepak still lives in his dumpy one-bedroom apartment since his mom has all that money. I did. Until Ceepak told me, “I have not received financial assistance from either of my parents since I was sixteen, Danny. I do not intend to start now. It is her money. She should spend it as she sees fit.”

  Ceepak’s dad, who never met a pile of money he didn’t want to mooch, has, so far, kept the promise he made to us when I saved his sorry life at the same roller coaster where Dominic Santucci lost his. He has stayed out of Sea Haven. But his son tells me we need to be “extra vigilant” and “stand guard” since neither of us would be surprised if Joe Sixpack returned to Sea Haven to harass his ex-wife.

  “We hope for the best, Danny,” Ceepak likes to say. “But we prepare for the worst.”

  Like making sure his mom lives in a condo complex with 24-hour security guards and has an armed escort (her son) whenever she goes toilet brush shopping at Target.

  “So, how many rides do we need to check out?” I ask.

  “All of them,” says Ceepak with a grin. “Might take all week.”

  “Roger that,” I say, because, okay, I’ve been hanging around Ceepak for way too long. Plus, I’m happy to hear we’re going to be working together for a solid chunk of time.

  My partner is dressed in his standard detective uniform. Khaki cargo pants, L.L. Bean Oxford cloth shirt, striped tie, and lightweight navy blue sport coat. He keeps his gold shield clipped to the front of his belt, his Glock in a small-of-the-back crossdraw holster hidden under the vent flaps of his jacket. His shoes? Sturdy black cop shoes except on the rainy days when he slips on his waterproof Army boots.

  I don’t get to play detective every day, so I wear my shield on a lanyard around my neck. I keep my Glock at my hip, cowboy style. But since I don’t tuck in my blousy Hawaiian shirt, nobody sees it.

  “What are you doing, Christopher?”

  Phone call finished, Daddy Droid has returned to the booth next to ours. He looks furious.

  “Drawing,” mumbles his son.

  “On the tablecloth?”

  “It’s paper.”

  “I don’t care. You’re making a mess.”

  “She said I could.”

  “Who?”

  “The lady.”

  “What lady?” fumes the dad, grabbing up the kid’s crayons as quickly as he can. “I don’t see any ‘lady.’”

  The boy looks around the room. Can’t find Donna. I’m guessing she’s in the kitchen, loading up another tray with twenty plates of food.

  “She’s not here …”

  “Because you made her up.”

  “No, she …”

  “Don’t lie to me, Christopher!”

  Ceepak has heard enough. He slides out of the booth. Stands. He towers over Mr. Droid by at least a foot.

  This should be fun.

  7

  “YOUR SON IS TELLING YOU THE TRUTH, SIR.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “John Ceepak. Chief of Detectives. Sea Haven Police Department.”

  “Excuse me,” says the dad, “but this is a private, family matter.”

  I’m standing now, too. “Donna gave him the crayons.”

  The dad shakes his head like he’s clearing out his ears. “What?”

  “The waitress,” says Ceepak. “Her name is Donna. She told your son that it would be perfectly fine for him to draw on the paper tablecloth. All the children do it.”

  “Some adults, too,” I toss in because I know one who does. Me.

  The boy is looking at Ceepak like Superman just dropped in to the Pancake Palace to protect him from the evil fiend known as Dad, The Crayon Snatcher.

  “Well, who exactly gave some minimum wage waitress permission to tell my son what he can and cannot do in my absence?”

  “You raise an interesting if somewhat moot point,” says Ceepak. “Be that as it may, it does not mitigate the fact that you accused your son of a very serious offense: Lying.”

  “Is this what you cops do down here? Butt into private, family affairs?”

  “We try not to,” I say. “But sometimes, well, we just can’t seem to avoid it.”

  See, I know something Poppa Bear doesn’t: John Ceepak lives his life in strict compliance with the West Point honor code. He will not lie, cheat, or steal nor tolerate those who do. So, to accuse someone of lying, especially your own son, well, geeze-o, man, that is an accusation that should never be made lightly.

  “Come on Christopher.” The dad grabs the kid’s wrist.

  “But …”

  “We’ll pick up frozen waffles at the store.”

  “I wanted pancakes …”

  “There’s no need for you two to leave, sir,” says Ceepak, picking up a napkin to dab at his lips.

  “Well, I sure don’t want to sit here eating breakfast with Big Brother’s nose up my butt.”

  He means Ceepak and me. We are the police state. The big, bad butt-sniffers.

  “Then you are in luck,” says Ceepak. “My partner and I were just leaving. Danny?”

  “I’ve got this one.” I lay some bills on the table, enough to pay for everything we would’ve eaten if, you know, we had ever ordered anything besides coffee.

  “Have a good day.” Ceepak gives the father and son a crisp two-finger salute off his right brow.

  Little Christopher salutes right back.

  Super Man and I leave the building.

  Yes. When you work with John Ceepak, sometimes you miss a meal.

  8

  “SORRY ABOUT THAT,” SAYS CEEPAK AS WE HEAD TOWARD THE Boardwalk.

  “No biggee. That poor kid needed somebody to stand up for him.”

  “Indeed he did.”

  It’s not even noon yet, but I can already smell the Italian sausages, green peppers, and onions sizzling on a greasy grill somewhere up ahead. My stomach gurgles so loudly, it sounds like I swallowed a demonic alien.

  “Perhaps we can grab a quick bite at one of the boardwalk eateries,” suggests Ceepak.

  “That’ll work,” I say. Curly fries, cheesesteaks, and funnel cakes—all part of a complete, nutritional breakfast.

  We climb up the steep steps to Pier Two.

  “There’s a Jumbo Jimmy’s cheesesteak place on the other side of Ye Olde Mill,” I say.

  Ye Olde Mill is probably the oldest ride in all of Sea Haven. Not even a hurricane could knock it out business. A water wheel churns up turquoise blue water to make a gently flowing current that sends small boats drifting slooooowly down a lazy stream that’s maybe six inches deep.

  Since the scenery is pretty lame—like department-store window displays done by lazy gnomes—and the lighting is extremely dim, guys and girls in their tiny two-seater boats don’t really have much choice but to start cuddling and canoodling in what has been unofficially called The Tunnel Of Love since 1949.

  “Does Jumbo Jimmy’s serve fruit?” asks Ceepak when we pass the water wheel.

  “I think so. They have those bananas dipped in chocolate. And candy apples.”

  “John? Daniel?” />
  It’s Ceepak’s mother. She’s with a group of about a dozen other senior citizens, all of them dressed in plaids and sherbet colors. Some are wearing those visors with the see-through green windowpane in the brim. Each of them holds a string of three tickets, enough to ride Ye Olde Mill.

  Looking at Adele Ceepak, you’d never know she’s a multimillionaire. She’s extremely short, maybe five feet tall, and likes to dress in polyester red, white, and blue outfits with big, brassy belt buckles. Her hair is cut pixie short and is dyed the same golden color as her glasses frames. Mrs. Ceepak also has the brightest, happiest smile of any sixty-something senior citizen I’ve ever met, especially considering all the dark crap she had to live through before she threw her bum of a husband out the back door with the rest of the trash.

  That last bit? That’s how Mrs. Ceepak describes her divorce after she’s had a glass or two of Chianti, her favorite.

  “Hello, Mom,” says Ceepak. He leans way down and gives her a kiss on her cheek. The tall genes? Ceepak definitely didn’t get them from his mom.

  “What are you two boys doing on the boardwalk? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  “We are,” I say.

  “Those are your work clothes? Daniel, you look like a beach bum.”

  “We’re undercover,” I whisper.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Ceepak does that locking your lips with a key thing my grandmother used to do.

  “We’re here to inspect a few of the rides up and down the boardwalk,” explains her son.

  “Are they unsafe?”

  “We hope not. But if they are, rest assured, we will pull their papers.”

  “Good for you. How about this Ye Olde Mill? Hank says that’s the ride we should all ride first. He even asked me to share a boat with him.”

  Ceepak arches an eyebrow. “Hank?”

  Mrs. Ceepak gestures toward a tall guy with thick white hair and skinny, sinewy legs. He looks healthy, like he plays tennis or rides a bike.

  “Hank’s a very good dancer,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “He calls the Bingo numbers at the Senior Center on Tuesday nights, too. He’s something of a celebrity in certain circles.”

  Ceepak looks like he wants to go over to Hank and say, “What are your intentions, young man?” but he doesn’t get the chance.