Hell Hole (12 page)

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Authors: Chris Grabenstein

BOOK: Hell Hole
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The senator braces Ceepak's shoulder with his free hand, keeps working the other one up and down. “Well, John Ceepak, thank
you
for all you've done for this country.”
Ceepak nods.
The senator finally lets go of Ceepak's hand. Maybe he heard the shoulder joint squeaking. Anyway, he moves around the table, shakes everybody's outstretched hands. I fling mine out there too.
“Good to meet you. How's it going? Enjoying your vacation? Goodness, have fun.”
He never pauses long enough to give anybody a chance to answer. If he did, I'd let him know that when I go on vacation, it's usually to Arizona where my folks live in this retirement village where children under the age of eighteen are basically considered illegal.
“Good man,” says Ceepak as the senator moves on to other tables and other hands.
“His bodyguards are mostly ex-Marines and stuff,” says Starky. “One used to be with Special Forces. Another was a Navy SEAL.”
“Really?” I'm amazed Starky knows so much about the senator's staff.
“Yeah. I talked to one of them last night at the party. Mr. Parker.”
Starky. With that sweet face, she can ask any guy anything and they'll usually blab their fool heads off just to bask in her smile.
“He also told me that the Department of Defense considers Lieutenant Worthington to be a very valuable recruiting asset. Since he won the Purple Heart and his father is a senator, anywhere he goes, the news cameras follow.
Entertainment Tonight
.
Access Hollywood. Inside Edition
. The guy goes to a lot of amazing parties to help the Army recruit new soldiers.”
Sounds like pretty cool duty.
I might've signed up for it myself if, you know, you didn't have to get wounded first.
We get
up from the table because it's time to head over to King Putt Golf and meet Saul Slominsky.
We hit the sidewalk and see the Mutt and Jeff of the Feenyville Pirates: Nicky Nichols and Mr. Shrimp. They're sitting on one of the benches Grace has out front for people waiting for a table. There's another tough guy with them. The three of them are yukking it up, smoking cigarettes, flashing gang signs, scaring the tourists.
The new guy is jockey-short with mocha-colored skin. His oily hair is sheared off in a bowl cut with bangs. His dark eyes dart all over the place, especially when Ceepak and I come into view. We're not in uniform, but we definitely look like the Law. Well, Ceepak does. I sort of look like a guy who needs more sleep or coffee or both.
“Gentlemen,” says Ceepak when he locks eyes with Nichols and Shrimp, something that's impossible to do with their young friend—his eyes don't stay in one place long enough to lock in a target. “Here for breakfast?”
“Yeah,” says Nichols.
“Enjoy,” says Ceepak.
“You hassling us?” asks Shrimp.
“Hardly,” says Ceepak. “Might I suggest you try the scrapple? It's not to be missed. Have a good one.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Shrimp is up off the bench.
Ceepak gives the little pirate a two-finger salute off the brim of his cap. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
“Who's your new friend?” Before I leave, I have to ask it.
“What?” Shrimp tries to jump in my face, as they say. Except he's too short so he aims his anger up at my chin. “You got a problem?”
“No. No problem. We just like to know who your new recruits are.” I figure the Feenyville Pirates are like the U.S. Army—they always need to replenish the ranks.
“Why don't you mind your own beeswax?”
While I pause to ponder how a would-be pirate-gangsta could actually use the term
beeswax
, Nichols, the lumbering giant, finds the strength to tilt back his medicine ball of a head and speak again: “That's Osvaldo Vargas.”
“Nicky?”
“What?”
Shrimp takes off his glasses. Rubs his weary eyes. Can't believe he's still working with this dum-dum.
“Vargas?” says Ceepak, suddenly interested in more than exchanging Sunday morning pleasantries. “Osvaldo Vargas?”
The young man's eyes flick back and forth like windshield wipers in a summer thunder boomer.
“Are you currently employed as a member of the custodial staff at the rest area off exit fifty-two on the Garden State Parkway? Do you work for the HMM Host Corporation?”
“Maybe” is his mumbled answer. Of course, seated there on the bench, he's fidgeting like crazy with a frayed baseball cap he keeps twirling around between his knees. When the front spins into view, I read it:
HMM Host
.
“You got a warrant?” says Shrimp.
“Excuse me?” asks Ceepak.
“You got a warrant?”
The other people waiting for tables, the ones with kids and very few visible tattoos, are moving away—checking out the big plastic pig sculpture down at the corner, heading into the bookstore up the block to check out the beach reads and sudoku collections.
“Why would we need a warrant?” asks Ceepak.
“You're cops. You can't ask questions without a warrant!”
“Yes, we can,” I say. “We can't
search
without a warrant, but we can ask anybody anything.”
“However,” adds Ceepak, “you are not compelled to answer our questions. Silence remains your prerogative, should you so choose.”
Ceepak? He not only plays by the rules, he makes sure the other side knows them too.
“You heard the man, Osvaldo,” says Shrimp. “You don't have to say shit.”
“It's a pretty good job,” says Nichols. “The janitor gig.”
“Jesus, Nicky!”
“He only has to clean the toilets once an hour. I could do that.”
Shrimp looks boiled. Guess pirating was easier back in the days before your brother buccaneers fried their brains out with recreational drugs.
Osvaldo sits there. Head down now. Not saying a word. Staring at the hat in his hands.
Ceepak and I mentally file Osvaldo Vargas's connection to the Feenyville Pirates under “Interesting Coincidence?” and head over to King Putt.
We keep the cop car angled against the curb and walk because the miniature golf course is basically across the street from the Pig's Commitment, on Ocean Avenue at Oyster Street.
You can see King Putt's tee-shaped pylon sign from half a mile away. At its base, chained to the pole, is a six-foot-tall resin statue of the chubby Boy King himself—a bratty kid with raccoon-style mascara around the eyes and a floppy pharaoh hat. Instead of the classic staff of Ra, he totes a putter.
We follow the hieroglyphics and make our way into the little hut where you pay to play.
It's early, 10:00 AM. Not many golfers out on the links because all the kids are across the street inhaling pancakes.
The guy behind the counter looks none too happy about coming to work every day in a goofy costume. He's about my age but has to wear a fake bronze breastplate, striped skirt, and King Putt pharaoh hat so it looks like he's wearing an inside-out undershirt where the collar got stuck around the ears before he could yank it all the way off his head.
“Pick your balls,” the guy says in a dull monotone. He says it so often, he forgets how funny it sounds.
“We're here to meet someone,” says Ceepak. “Police business.”
The guy looks up from the Sunday funnies.
“Oh. Hey, Danny.”
“Skippy?”
“Yeah.”
“You workin' here?”
“Yeah. For the summer.”
Skip O'Malley was a part-time summer cop back when I was one too. I think his father owns this miniature golf course. Must be why Skipper is manning the early-morning till in his pharaoh kilt: before he can inherit the family business, he has to learn it from the ground up. Either that, or his old man just loves to humiliate the poor guy.
“How's it going?” I ask, trying to keep my eyes off Skippy's skirt and sandals.
“You know.” He gestures with both arms to take in the entirety of his miserable existence. “Same old, same old.”
“Yeah. Well, we gotta run. We're meeting this guy out on the links”
“Yeah. He's already here. Didn't pay either. Have a sunny, funderful day.” He mumbles Sea Haven's official slogan in our general direction. It's meant for the guests—not the poor schlubs who actually live and work here.
We head out to the course.
“The waterfall is the ninth hole.” Ceepak, of course, has been studying the little map printed on the back of the scorecard.
“They call it Victoria Falls,” I say as I point at the concrete chute of blue water coursing beside us, “because that's the mighty Nile.”
“Educational entertainment,” says Ceepak. “Laudable.”
Yeah. This is probably why American kids don't know diddly about world geography. We pick it all up playing Putt-Put or going to the Rainforest Cafe.
In truth, King Putt's is a pretty awesome course. Skip's dad spent about a million bucks landscaping its “Sahara Desert” sand traps, fake palm trees, and oasis putting greens. Kids love it here—especially when they're bored with the beach, something that happens, typically, on day number four of your standard seven-day vacation. You can pretend you're shooting your ball down a real crocodile's throat over on Cleopatra's Loop-the-Loop, do battle with a plastic python named Monty on hole four, and try to shoot through the spokes of the spinning chariot wheel on five.
“Danny?” Ceepak must sense my mind drifting back to that summer I hit my first hole in one by going
underneath
the Mummy instead of around it.
He's pointing at this rope-lined set of steps leading up a hill to the cave underneath the waterfall. Inside the half-circle of light, I can see the shadow of a man with a bloated belly. Saul Slominsky.
“Ceepak. Sure. John Ceepak. I remember you. We worked that Tilt-A-Whirl case together. Remember? Me, you, and Boyle. It was the forensics that cracked that baby wide open, am I right?”
Slobbinsky's doing it again. Acting like we're all old chums and this is our annual CSI High reunion.
“So, you're pals with Art Insana? Great cop, Art. One of New Jersey's finest.”
I'm guessing Art Insana is one of Ceepak's many friends working with the New Jersey state police. I'm also guessing Insana way outranks anybody from the Burlington County prosecutor's office. If he's Ceepak's friend, he's probably superintendent of something and has gold braids on his hat and a forest of medals on his chest.
Slominsky is holding a rolled-up grocery sack.
“So you guys think we missed some stuff, hunh?”
“Maybe” is all Ceepak offers back.
“Sure. It's possible. In the summer, most of my top guys are off on vacation, you know what I mean? I was working with the B team. Hell, the D team! Bunch of morons. Couldn't lift a fingerprint off a fried chicken bucket!”
He's chuckling. We're not.
“But you work with what they give you, not what you wish you had, you know what I'm saying? These days, anybody with an uncle in Trenton can take a civil service exam and call themselves a crime-scene investigator.”
Present company included.
“Anyways, here's how I figure we should work this thing. Since, like I said, I'm more or less short-staffed, I hand this evidence over to you, just like Superintendent Insana suggested, so you can crack that ring of car thieves or whatever you're chasing down. Art has a point. You guys have more free time than I do. You find anything that suggests maybe this thing wasn't a suicide, that maybe this kid Smith got himself murdered, hey, I got no problem. We just tell anybody who's interested how we cracked the case together.”
It's quiet in the cave. Outside, you can hear the roaring thunder of chlorinated water tumbling over a fake cliff. In here, all you've got is the occasional plink of a drip losing its grip on the ceiling and hitting the concrete floor.
“So whataya say, Ceepak? We got a deal here or what?”
“What you're suggesting,” he says, “constitutes a lie.”
“Nah. Not really.”
“Yes. Really.”
“It's just a slight spin on the situation.”
“It's not the truth.”
“It's close enough. Jesus, what're we doing here? Debating semantics?”
“This is not an academic debate, Mr. Slominsky.”
“Then what is your goddamn problem?”
“I will not tolerate those who lie, cheat, or steal.”
“Good for you. I respect that. We should all, you know, obey the Bible, do our duty, and sing ‘Kumbaya.' But my job's on the line, here, okay? Art Insana is not my close, personal fucking friend, okay? So I need for you to tell people that I helped you on this thing or I'm not giving you boys jack shit.
Capice?
”
“We can't do that,” I say.
“Jesus! You too? Why not? I give you this bagful of evidence, I'm
helping
, am I not?”
Ceepak nods.
“So where's the lie? Just tell the people upstairs I helped out is all I'm asking.”
Actually, it sounds more like he's begging.
“What's in the bag?” asks Ceepak.
Slominsky smiles, clutches it to his chest like the guy in the bleachers who just caught the home run ball everybody else wants.
“We got a deal?”
“I will inform anyone who asks that you
helped
us in our investigaton.”
“That's all I'm saying.” Slominsky hands Ceepak the bag.
“Do you have the evidence inventoried?”
“You mean like a list? Nah. List could fall into the wrong hands, you know what I mean.”
“What's on the disc?”
“Digital crime-scene photos. I gotta warn you: some are what we call graphic. Rated
G
for ‘gory' on account of all the blood and brains splattered everywhere.”
Ceepak has already slipped on his evidence gloves. He pulls a sheet of paper out of the rumpled Acme bag.

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