Authors: Chris Grabenstein

Hell Hole (5 page)

BOOK: Hell Hole

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“Deal with
it, dude,” is the sage advice T.J. offers to his teammate Tony.

Guess he's used to the Code, now that he's been officially adopted into the family Ceepak. Tony? Not so much. He clutches the backstop with both fists and makes like a gorilla.

“John was right,” Rita says as we watch Tony rattle his steel cage. “If the boy doesn't play by the rules â¦”

But down near the bench, Tony's father has some less sympathetic words for my partner.

“Why don't you just forfeit every game in the first inning? What kind of coach turns in his own players?”

Ceepak ignores the rant and keeps slipping bats into the team's canvas equipment bag. Tony's dad won't let upâwhich maybe he should. I mean he's this totally out-of-shape guy who probably sits in an air conditioned office all day except for when he's driving to it in his air conditioned car. The only muscles he ever works are the ones in his mouth. Ceepak, on the other hand, is in good enough shape to jump out of airplanes again with the 101 st Airborne. And once he hit the ground,
he could probably run ten miles with a sixty-pound knapsack strapped to his back and still not be out of breath. Tony's dad is already windedâjust from being a blowhard.

“How'd you get this job, anyway?”

Now Ceepak shrugs. “Same as the Army. I volunteered.”

“Well, I'm going to have a word with Ron Venable. He runs the whole damn league. Works in my office, you know.”

Ceepak stops stuffing the bag. Smiles.

“Please do discuss this with Ron, Mr. DePena. However, until he declares that the Babe Ruth League no longer follows the official rules of baseball as set forth by the commissioner of the Major Leagues, I suspect your son will still be considered out for not touching the bag when he reached third base.”

“Aaaahh!” Mr. DePena throws up both his hands in disgust. Flips them dismissively. “Tony?” he yells to his son, who's still shaking the backstop.

“What?” Tony yells back.

“Grab your gear. This man is a moron! We're leaving!”

“Aaaahh!”

“Now!”

“See you'round,” T.J. says to Tony.

“Aaaahh!” Now Tony throws up both
his
hands and flicks them at T.J. Like father, like son.

Ceepak glances up into the stands to share a “can-you-believe-this?” look with Rita. Then he sees me.

“Hello, Danny.”

“Hey.”

He makes his way over to the bleachers as I climb down.

“Did you catch the game?”

“Just, you know, the last part of the last inning.”

“Ah,” says Ceepak with a sly grin. “So you arrived just in time to see us lose?”

“Yeah.”

I help Ceepak load the baseball gear into the trunk of the family Toyotaâthe same car I saw on the road last night well after my partner's usual bedtime.

“Want to head over to the Pig with us?” Rita asks. “We're packing up the party stuff.”

Rita used to be a waitress and bank teller. Now she's what they call a small business owner: she runs a gourmet catering company with Grace Porter out of Grace's restaurant over on Ocean Avenueâthe Pig's Commitment, so-named because of that ancient joke about a plate of eggs and bacon. The chicken is involved. The pig is totally committed.

“We're making pigs in a blanket,” says T.J., who helps his mom on party days. “Not the skanky cabbage kind. The kind with hot dogs and crescent rolls.”

Tempting.

“I sort of need to talk to Ceepak,” I say.

Ceepak cocks an eyebrow. “What's up?”

“It's this run we went on last night.” I don't want to say too much else in front of Rita and T.J. “Starky and me. Around one-thirty AM, we escorted an individual to a crime scene down on the Garden State Parkway.”

“A wreck?” asks Rita.

“No. It wasâthis guy had to go down there and identify a body. One of his Army buddies.”

Rita closes her eyes. Shakes her head. Probably says a silent prayer.

“What happened?” asks Ceepak.

“The janitor found a body in the men's room at a rest area. The one near exit fifty-two. I know it's out of our jurisdiction and all â¦ .”

“Indeed,” says Ceepak.

“But some of what I saw doesn't fit with what the crime-scene investigator says happened.”

Ceepak flicks his wrist. Checks his watch. “I'm scheduled to help Rita at the restaurant from sixteen hundred hours until the party commences at nineteen-thirty.”

Military time. Man, I'd hate to see the Ceepak family calendar. Probably looks like a battle plan. Maybe he even has miniature tin soldiers,
one for each member of his brood, that he slides around the kitchen table with a stick to show everybody their daily troop movements.

“It's okay, John,” says Rita. “Stay here and talk to Danny. There's not much more to do for the party. Grace has all the food ready to go. We just need to pack it up and throw together the pigs in a blanket. Maybe you guys can help us load up the van and schlep everything over to Crazy Janey's?”

Crazy Janey is this New York City radio personality. Dirty Larry's sidekick. He makes the fart jokes, she laughs at them. Then she does the traffic report. Anyway, Crazy Janey has a summer place here in Sea Haven, down on the southern beaches where all the TV stars and music people and other assorted billionaires build their sand castles. Once a summer, she throws a huge party. Sets up a gigantic wedding tent out back. Hires a band. I think she had Puff Diddy last year. Invites everybody who's anybody, which, I guess, is why I've never received an invitation. Celebs show up from New York and Phillyâeven L.A., because they all need to pay homage if they want to plug whatever they need to plug on Dirty Larry's nationally syndicated talk show.

“Do you need help parking cars?” I ask. Sometimes Rita's catering company (which, by the way, they call the Flying Pig) hires off-duty cops to valet park at the big events. We earn a few extra bucks; nobody parks in front of fire hydrants. It's what you call a win-win situation. “I'm totally free tonight.” And my plasma-screen TV fund needs all the help it can get.

“Yes,” says Rita. “It's going to be huge. The guest list is nearly five hundred names long. A senator is coming. And that actress. You know, the one from that movie.”

Sure. Her.

“We'll be there,” says Ceepak.

“Great.” Rita gives her husband a quick kiss.

Ceepak extends his hand to T.J. “Good game today, son. You really nailed that last pitch and Dominick Monetti has the fastest fastball in the league.”

“Thanks,” says T.J. “Too bad Tony had to go and blow it like that.”

“Did you have fun?” asks Ceepak.

T.J. shrugs. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Then you won.”

Now T.J. cringes the way I would've if my mom ever screamed,
“Way to go, honey”
in front of all my buddies. I know T.J. basically digs Ceepak, likes having him in his life, but, every now and then, since he's human and seventeen, I know he can't believe how incredibly corny his newly acquired old man can be. Like an overgrown Boy Scout. Or Dudley Do-Right.

Me?

I'm sort of used to it.

We head over to the house, which is what we call the police station.

“What's up, gentlemen?” says the desk sergeant, Reggie Pender. “You on the clock?”

“Not today,” says Ceepak.

“So what brings you into the office on this fine and glorious Saturday afternoon?”

“The coffee,” I say. “Nobody knows how to make it like we make it here.”

“You mean burned?” replies Pender.

“Roger that,” says Ceepak. “We need to borrow the I.R.”

Pender raises an eyebrow. “You interrogating a witness?”

“Negative,” says Ceepak.

“A suspect?” Pender is a big guy. When he gets excited, he throws his whole body into it. “Is it those Feenyville Pirates? You two finally catch those rascals red-handed? They the ones running the dope?”

“I just need to talk to Ceepak. About that thing last night.”

“The suicide?” asks Pender.

Now Ceepak looks really interested.

“Did you know him?” Pender asks Ceepak.

“Who?”

“The soldier. The one who, you know.” He jabs a finger into his mouth. Cocks his thumb. Bang.

“Danny?” This from Ceepak.

“Yeah. Like I said. We need to talk.”

We're sitting at the long table. We grabbed a couple cold drinks out of the vending machine and the cola buzz helps. I'm downloading everything as fast as I can.

The noise complaint. The soldiers partying in the house on Kipper Street. The phone call from the state police. The drive down the Parkway with Sergeant Dixon. The rest stop. Corporal Shareef Smith in the toilet stall.

I leave out the part where I saw Ceepak's car headed home after 1:00 AM.

“I took a picture,” I say. “With my cell phone.”

I pass the phone to Ceepak. He studies the tiny display window.

It's a head-on shot. Shareef sitting on top of the toilet lid, the top of his skull blown open, the ring of pink-tinged tissue paper around his neck, the gore streaking down the tile above and behind his head.

“He put the sanitary toilet seat things around his neck,” I explain.

Ceepak nods. Doesn't say anything. He's squinting at the screen. Putting himself into the crime scene. Probably seeing things in the pixels I didn't see in person.

“So he wouldn't make a mess, I guess.”

“Unusual behavior for a suicide,” says Ceepak.

“Yeah. That was the first thing that bugged me.”

“Who did the crime-scene investigation?”

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. “Saul Slominsky.”

Ceepak nods. He remembers Slobbinsky, although he'd never call him that. Not out loud.

“He's with the Burlington County prosecutor's office now,” I add.

Another nod. “They would be the lead investigative agency in this instance.”

“They say they found drugs,” I add.

“On the soldier's body?”

“No. I mean, he had needle marks on his arms, but his drug kit was
on the floor of the stall next to his. They figure he dropped his works or kicked them over.”

“They do?”

“Yeah.”

“Busy man in the final moments of his life.”

“I guess.”

“Go on.”

“Some small-time hoods broke into his car.”

“They apprehended suspects?”

“No.”

“Then how can you say the crime was perpetrated by âsmall-time hoodlums'?”

“It's just what, you know, what everybody was saying last night â¦ .”

“You mean what they were speculating.”

“Yeah.”

Ceepak. The guy's a stickler for stuff like that. Doesn't want to deal with speculation and wild guesses. He's Dan Aykroyd in
Dragnet.
Just the facts, ma'am.

“Anyway,” I say, “some â¦ unknown individual â¦”

“Or individuals.”

“Right. They really tore through this guy's car. Ripped out everything. From the air bags up front to the CD changer in the trunk.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“What else?”

“I don't know. There's just something wrong with the picture. I can't put my finger on it but it's been bugging me. All last night. This morning.”

“As it should.”

“What? You see something?”

“Of course. The same thing you saw, Danny.”

“That's just it, I don't
know
what I saw.”

“That something wasn't as it should be.”