“Yeah. He likes to roll three cameras at all times, catch the action from three different angles. And since we can’t use the steadicam rig on this setup without blowing the shot.…” Now she holds up two small boxes with earbuds attached. “You guys want headsets?”
“Come again?” says Ceepak, taking the audio unit and staring at it confusedly.
“They’re wireless. You can hear what I hear.”
Ceepak nods. We both jam foam buds into our ears.
“You gentlemen are good to go. You better climb in. Here comes Paulie.”
Ceepak takes the passenger seat. I slip in behind the wheel. Layla escorts The Thing out of the restaurant, into the parking lot.
Back in the cargo hold, Tory Wood flips a switch and we hear Paul Braciole saying,
“I need more fucking money. Juice is expensive.”
“Here.” Layla’s voice. “But return whatever’s left to the prop department when we wrap the drug dealer scene.”
Ceepak’s eyebrow inches up.
I try to explain: “I think, you know, everything’s a scene from a TV show to Layla.”
“I get to fucking eat later, right?” Paulie whines. “I want some of that fucking crab pie.…”
“Ms. Wood?” says Ceepak.
“Yeah?”
“Have you set your recording levels?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind muting Mr. Braciole until our suspect arrives?”
“Officer, it would be my pleasure.”
She flips a switch and cuts The Thing off in mid F-bomb.
Ceepak checks his watch again. Reaches for the walkie-talkie hidden under the tails of his untucked Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, which I think he raced out and bought special for tonight’s undercover drug bust operation. No way he wears green and yellow hibiscus-covered tops on a regular basis.
“Reed? Malloy? This is Ceepak. Radio check.”
“Standing by,” says Reed.
“Locked and loaded,” says Malloy, who watches way too many cop shows on TV.
I’m assuming Reed and Malloy are commanding our two backup vehicles.
“Where are they?” I ask.
Ceepak gestures right, then left. We have the parking-lot exits covered.
Ceepak’s eyes narrow. “Now we just wait.”
I nod. It’s deathly quiet in my Jeep.
“Sorry I was late,” I finally say.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“We both need to focus on the task at hand.”
“Right.”
“Avoid distractions.”
“Gotcha.”
“I know you recently lost a girlfriend.…”
“Katie really wasn’t my girlfriend anymore.”
“You recently broke up with Ms. Starkey.”
“Actually, she kind of broke up with me first.”
Ceepak sighs. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“‘Nothing we can say can change anything now.’”
Oh. Great. He’s quoting Springsteen at me. Lyrics from “Independence Day.” We used to swap Springsteen’s words to fill in the gaps when we didn’t know how to express what we were feeling, which, come to think of it, maybe Ceepak’s doing now, because he feels I’ve been letting down the team because I’ve been a bit distracted by the lovely Layla.
Which would be correct.
“You’re right,” I say.
“What are you two talking about?” This from Ms. Wood in the back seat.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that, maybe, I’ve been blinded by the light.”
“What?” Ms. Wood, it seems, doesn’t know from Springsteen.
So I keep mangling lyrics: “Some fleshpot mascot may have tied me into a lover’s knot with a whatnot in her hand.”
Ceepak grins.
“What?”
“It’s all good, Ms. Wood,” says Ceepak. And then, unexpectedly, he reaches over and gives me a man-sized pat on my knee, the way your dad would when you finally admitted you’d made a huge mistake and promised not to be so stupid in the future.
The police radio crackles again. “Yo? Ceepak?”
It’s Gus Davis from inside the restaurant. When he worked the desk at the SHPD, everybody called him Grumpy Gus. Retirement, it seems, has not mellowed him. With just two words, I can tell: Gus still has his grouch on.
Ceepak brings the radio mic up to his mouth. “This is Ceepak. Go.”
“Yeah, these freaking TV people—they’re putting plastic sheets all over the floor. They’re loosening the tops on all the saltshakers. They’ve got one of those cardboard bins from the supermarket filled with freaking watermelons.”
“Gus?”
“Yeah?”
“Has anyone broken the law?”
“No. Not yet, anyways. But I gotta tell you: something doesn’t smell right about this setup in here.”
“Stand by, Gus,” says Ceepak. “Hold down the fort. We have company.”
He nods his head at a guy cruising into the parking lot on a rumbling Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
A guy wearing an Army-surplus Boonie hat.
His chopper scoots between a couple cars, heads straight for the lamp pole where Paulie Braciole, hands stuffed into his baggy shorts, stands waiting.
“You guys want wedding mints?” Gus suddenly asks over the walkie. “Smitten and me both snagged a pocketful from the bowl up front. They got jelly in the middle. Mint jelly, like with lamb.”
“Sure, Gus,” says Ceepak, distractedly. His eyes are glued on Skeletor as the drug dealer dismounts. “We’ll be inside, ASAP.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Roger, wilco.”
Ceepak buries the radio under his flowered shirttails.
“He is once again wearing the Boonie hat,” Ceepak mumbles, totally focused on his prey. “No helmet.”
And Skeletor definitely needs one. His emaciated head looks as brittle as an empty eggshell. The guy is maybe six-six, all jangling bones and knobby joints. He looks like a cadaver who just slinked out of his tomb.
I stare at his hat—a floppy, stiff-brimmed, camouflaged number that a lot of vets still wore after they came home from the jungles of Vietnam.
Believe it or not, I recognize it.
The hat!
Two summers ago, we were patrolling the boardwalk, looking for a paintball prankster who had been splotching up billboards and people all over town. This creepy guy came up to us while we were conducting an interview. Super skinny. Dressed in chocolate-chip camo shorts, a matching T-shirt, and a Boonie hat. Challenged Ceepak to a shooting match. Called him an Army asshole when Ceepak refused.
Back then, I called him Bones.
But it was Skeletor.
And he’s been more or less challenging us ever since.
8
“M
S
. W
OOD
?”
SAYS
C
EEPAK
. “A
UDIO
?”
“Roger that.” She learns quickly.
“You lookin’ good, man.”
This from Skeletor. His voice wispy and thin, like even his voice box is bony.
“Thanks, bro,”
says Paulie, sounding nervous.
“Where’s Soozy K?”
I see Skeletor go up on tippy-toe, peer over Paulie’s shoulder.
“Inside.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool, cool. You tap that stuff?”
“Soozy?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe.”
Skeletor makes basketball palms over his chest.
“Those tig ol’ bitties. Those real, man?”
“Nah,”
says Paulie.
“For real? They’re fake?”
“Inflatable airbags, man.”
Paulie. Such a gentlemen. He touches and tells.
“What about the skanky one?Jenny?”
“She’s the real deal.”
“Yeah?”
“You see the hula hoop dealio?”
“Sure. Episode Three.”
“They bounce and swing like that, bro, those biznoobies be real.”
“All right,”
says Skeletor, wiping a bony elbow under his bony nose.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“So, you bring the juice?”
Skeletor twitches some. Adjusts his hat.
“Am I on TV?”
“No, man.”
“Why you wearing that microphone?”
“This?”
We hear a “fwump” as Paulie taps his chest.
“I always got to wear this fucking thing.”
“Even when you take a dump?”
“Yeah. But there’s a switch to, you know, turn it off.”
“Which he never uses,” mumbles Ms. Wood in the back.
“So,”
says Paulie, sounding antsy,
“I need to get back to work.”
“Work? Shit, man, all you people do is get drunk, play Skee-Ball, and bang each other. You call that fuckin’ work, bro?”
Paulie laughs.
“Not really, man. But you know, I want to make the finals; win the fuckin’ money.”
“I’m pulling for you, bro. Big fan of The Thing. Want The Thing to take the whole thing, know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Now Paulie pulls a crumpled wad of cash out of his baggy shorts.
Skeletor doesn’t take it. He has this crackbrained gleam in his eye. In a flash, his hand reaches for his belt.
Mine goes to my Glock.
Has Skeletor figured out this is a buy-and-bust?
No.
He yanks up his T-shirt. Flashes Paulie his bony ribcage.
“Check it out. This is The Thing you wish you had. The Thing you wish you could be.”
He starts cackling like a crazy person.
I start breathing again.
“Cute,”
says Paulie.
“Cute.”
Now Skeletor drops his shirt. Turns around and pops open the hardcase trunk on the back of his motorbike. Palms something we can’t see, but maybe the cameras do. He swivels in a blur back to Paulie. Looks left, right, left again. Shakes Paulie’s hand.
“No charge, bro,”
he says.
“Huh?”
says Paulie.
“You’re a celeb, man. People see you on TV, looking all chiseled, I tell them how they can look the same way.”
He turns his thumb and pinky finger into a jiggling telephone.
“One call scores it all!”
“I’d rather pay,”
says Paulie.
“I got the money.”
“Sorry, bro. Your green is no good. That Red Power Ranger Go-Go Juice is on the house. Compliments of me and my crew.”
I glance over at Ceepak.
Technically, there’s been no buy; so can there be a bust?
And, so far, we have no proof Skeletor was ever actually in possession of steroids, so we can’t bust him on that.
I raise my eyebrows to ask Ceepak,
“What now?”
“Thirty-nine, three dash seventy-six dot seven,” mumbles Ceepak.
My eyebrows go higher.
“The State of New Jersey’s Mandatory Helmet Law.”
Oh. Right.
That
thirty-nine dash-dot-whozeewhatzit.
Ceepak works the listening buds out of both ears and mutters the memorized ordinance: “No person shall operate or ride upon a motorcycle unless he or she wears a securely fitted protective helmet.”
Great. Instead of a drug bust, we’ll slap Skeletor with a twenty-five-dollar fine for wearing a floppy Army surplus hat.
Earphones out, Ceepak yanks up on his door handle. I’m a split second behind him. Go for my weapon.
“Keep it holstered,” says Ceepak through a tight smile without even looking over to see what I’m doing. “Too many innocent civilians.”
Yeah. The prospect for collateral damage is extremely high right now. Folks are piling out of cars. Moms, dads. Couple kids. Granny with her walker.
We stroll casually across the parking lot. Ceepak even whistles a little. “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.” More Springsteen.
Paulie Braciole looks over. Sees us.
Skeletor’s bony head bobs sideways. He sees Paulie seeing something. Twirls around.
He sneers. His teeth are spiky. The guy has no gums.
“Hello, Army asshole.”
That’s what he called Ceepak that day at Paintball Blasters. I was right. It’s the same walking bone bag.
“Sir?” Ceepak flashes his badge. “We’re with the Sea Haven Police Department.”
Skeletor retreats a step. “So?”
“Is that your motorcycle?”
“Yeah. So?” Cocky as hell, Skeletor straddles his motorbike. Plops his bony butt down on the seat.