Fun House (16 page)

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 inform 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

M
ONDAY
,
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.”

“Hello?” he says. If it was the business line, he’d say “This is Ceepak. Go.”

I do that slight head-tilt thing that I always think will make it easier for me to eavesdrop.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he says.

Whoever’s on the other side says something that sounds like a mosquito singing: “Bizz bizz-bizz bizz.”

So much for my head-leaning eavesdropping technique.

“Oh,” says Ceepak. “You saw it?”

The mosquito, I think, says “yes” or some other one-syllable buzz.

“Have my television appearances made you reconsider your job offer?”

Okay. It’s the sheriff from Ohio. The one who wants to steal Ceepak away from me, make him head of a detective bureau when he needs to stay here, chasing down skinny drug dealers and babysitting reality TV stars.

“Really? I see. Well, let me say that I am seriously considering your proposal.”

Geeze-o, man. What will I do without Ceepak? I mean, besides make a fool of myself on a regular basis? The guy’s been my partner since day one on the job.

“Thank you, and in a spirit of full disclosure, you should know that Mrs. Ceepak is not overly enthusiastic about making the move.”

Yay, Rita!

“Correct. She is somewhat reluctant to leave the town that has been her home for close to twenty years.”

A smile creeps across my lips. Rita is a total Jersey girl, the kind Springsteen sings about. And, as Ceepak has obviously learned, nothing else matters in this whole wide world when you’re in love with a Jersey girl. I don’t think there’s a song about Ohio Gals, unless you count “Hang On Sloopy,” the state’s Official Rock Song, which was written by The McCoys about a singer named Dorothy Sloop of Steubenville, Ohio, who sometimes used the stage name Sloopy.

It’s amazing what you can learn at bar trivia contests.

Rita Lapscynski-Ceepak (yes, her married name sounds like it could be a breed of small, fluffy dog) came to the beaches of Sea Haven when she was in high school and in trouble. People here were good to her. She made a life. She raised a son. She found Ceepak. No wonder she never wants to leave.

The Ohio mosquito buzzes in Ceepak’s ear a little longer. He glances at his watch.

“Roger that,” he finally says when the buzzing bloodsucker runs out of gas. “I will. Yes. Before Labor Day. You too.”

He closes the clamshell.

Clips it to his belt.

And squints out the side window at the church.

“Well?” I say.

“That was the sheriff of Lorain County, Ohio.”

“But Rita wants to stay here, right?”

He grins. “Officer Boyle, your evidence-gathering skills continue to impress me.”

“Hey, you taught me everything I know. So they want an answer by Labor Day?”

“That is correct.”

“That mean’s you’ve got, what? Two weeks to change Rita’s mind?”

“Something like that.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“It might.”

“No way. Rita’s a Jersey girl.”

“They’re offering us a very substantial pay raise.”

“Really? What, a twenty-, thirty-percent bump?”

Ceepak shakes his head. “Double what I make here.”

Geeze-o, man. Double?

“Well,” I stammer, “you’ll never get to eat decent seafood again.”

“Perhaps. However, Danny, as you may have heard, they now fly fresh seafood into the heartland of America on a daily basis.”

“What? You mean Red Lobster? Bubba Gump Shrimp?”

“Lake Erie is very close to where we might live.”

“There’s no shrimp or scallops in Lake Erie—”

“Did you know, Danny, that every Friday during Lent, several restaurants and churches in the Cleveland area host a fish fry. It’s a northeastern Ohio tradition.”

“Yeah, but—”

We’ll have to save the second half of our New Jersey–Ohio seafood debate for later. The front doors of the church swing open. So do the back doors on two dozen news trucks.