Rolling Thunder (7 page)

I show the girl behind the front desk my I.D. card.

“Are you interested in Chi Gung Yoga or the Total Body Sculpt class that just started?”

“Nah,” I say. “I just thought I'd lift a few weights. Grunt a little.”

She hands me a towel. “Enjoy your workout.”

Yeah. Right. Like that's going to happen. I enjoy a cold beer. A hot slice of pizza. I do not enjoy voluntary artificial exertion.

I head over to the dumbbells and grab a pair of ten-pound weights to do a few bicep curls in front of the mirrored wall. I figure I could save my gym fees by going back to the Acme and lifting a few ten-pound sacks of sugar. Work my way up to the pet food aisle and those fifty-pound bags of kibble.

Behind me, in the mirror, I see Gail Baker over on a blue rubber mat where some people do stretches and stuff. She's wearing what looks like black Spandex underwear: a sports bra and sporty short shorts.

One of the Beach Bods trainers, a guy with a chin dimple goatee and Tibetan tattoo sleeves on both arms, has one hand on the small of Gail's back, the other on her extremely taut stomach, to coach her through a series of deep knee bends.

I stroll across the gym floor and pretend like I'm interested in the Smith machine, this piece of equipment that has a barbell fixed inside steel rails so you can slide the weights up and down to do your squats or bench presses without dropping everything on your head. I load it up with two twenty-pound disks so I can be closer to Gail.

You gaze at her incredible body, you want to look better naked.

While I'm slipping the weights onto the bar, I hear Gail tell her trainer, “Anyway, I can't slack off. Need to keep looking good.”

“Then we'll work extra hard today.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

She does a few forward lunges.

Mike steps back, admires her form.

“Hey,” he says, as Gail switches lunge legs, “if you're free this week, we should hang out.”

“Maybe,” says Gail. “Sounds like fun.”

She stands up. Mike moves in and massages the top of her shoulders.

“I'd stretch you out afterwards. Give you a deep-tissue massage.”

Gail laughs.

“So, when can we, you know, hook up?”

Gail does a flirty sideways twist so her breasts brush against muscle man's biceps.

“Like I said, I'm free any night or day this week. After that, I'm fully committed till July.”

“Let me check my book. See if I can fit you in. Okay, on your back. Time for crunches.”

I can just imagine these two having sex. Probably do three sets of ten reps. Probably have mirrors on the ceiling and all the walls. Probably wouldn't sell me a video of it.

I put in a good half hour. Okay, twenty minutes.

I do some lat pull-downs, seated rows, hamstring curls, and assisted chin-ups on this machine where you can set a counterweight so you're only pulling up about twenty pounds of body weight but it looks like you're doing a manly-man chin-up, something I could never do in P.E. class, something Ceepak does whenever he has some spare time and sees a convenient horizontal bar.

Then, to work on my abs, I sit on one of those Swedish balls and try not to roll off it.

I'm toweling off some sweat when I see the dentist from the bar at Big Kahuna's swing open the front doors. He marches to the desk. Flashes the check-in girl his card.

She scans it. Scans it again.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “It's being rejected.”

“What?” The dentist strains to look over the desk and see what bad things the computer monitor is saying about him. “Look up Hausler. Dr. Marvin Hausler.”

Computer keys clack.

“You haven't paid your dues in two months.”

“What?” Now he reaches over, grabs the monitor and tries to swivel it around, only it's not on a lazy Susan type deal so it only budges an inch or two. “Let me see that.”

I toss my towel in the wicker laundry basket and amble toward the counter.

My cop sense tells me we're about to have an incident.

“I really can't let you see the computer screen—”

“This is fucking unbelievable,” fumes Hausler. “I come here every weekend.”

“They updated the membership rolls late last night, told us to double-check everybody's cards today—”

“This is total fucking bullshit. I paid my fucking dues.”

“If you'd like to put the charge on a credit card—”

“What? So you can double-bill me? Fucking forget it!”

I'm about to butt in when Gail comes out of the women's locker room in her street clothes, which, by the way, are just about as skimpy as her gym clothes. Up top she has on this tight little yellow-and-red Sugar Babies tee—looks like the vintage logo from a bag of Sugar Babies. I swear she bought it at a store for newborns, it's that small.

“Hey, Marvin,” she says.

The dentist backs away from the counter. Stops acting like a spoiled brat.

“Hey,” he says, his voice all silky and deep. Maybe he studies Luther Vandross CDs. “How's it going?”

“Great.”

“Missed you last night.”

“What?”

“The date we didn't have. How's your grandmother?”

“Huh? Oh—better. Thanks!”

“Good. Glad to hear it. Hey, I got Leno tickets for down in AC. Interested?” Dr. Marv is leaning one cocked arm against the counter now, putting on his suave ‘n smooth moves.

“I don't know.”

“We could take your grandmother with us. If she gets sick again, I could write her a prescription.”

“That's sweet.”

“Hey—I just want to be close to you.”

I can't believe this. Dr. Marvin Hausler, DDS—whose face reminds me of the glasses-wearing chimp you'd see on a monkey calendar—is using recycled Carpenters' lyrics from 1971 to hit on Gail Baker? What do they teach these guys at dental school?

“I told you, Marv—I can't. Not anymore. Not right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because, okay?”

“Because why?”

The dude sounds like he's two years old.

“Anyway,” says Gail, flashing her dazzling white smile, which, I guess, Dr. Hausler had something to do with, “thanks for the invite. Have a great workout!”

Gail bounces out the door like a jiggling pack of Sugar Babies with only two candies left in the bag.

“Whoa. Wait up, Gail …”

Dr. Hausler storms off after her. Maybe he wants to give her a few flossing tips.

I turn toward the floor-to-ceiling windows and watch their sidewalk scene play out.

Gail, of course, keeps her cool. Keeps on smiling and looking hot as hell.

Dr. Hausler, on the other hand, is fuming. Waving his arms up and down like a sixth grader throwing a temper tantrum when he finds out his gorgeous teacher won't even consider dating him because, well, he's a kid and she isn't.

Rabid spittle is flying out of his mouth now.

I wonder why guys do this.

Do they really think girls will hop in the sack with them if they act like screaming meemies? That they'll suddenly say,
“You know, I find your loud threats and obnoxious antics strangely attractive. Let's go have sex.”

Ain't gonna happen.

Gail leans in and gives the dentist a quick peck on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she says, I think. I need to take a class in lip-reading.

“Fuck you,” says Marvin—his lips are much easier to read. Especially because he keeps repeating himself: “Fuck you!” This time he adds “Bitch!”

Then he storms off to his sports car.

Gail bops up the sidewalk. I figure she has an appointment at that nail spa. Probably needs to get the white tips repainted so they keep looking good against her golden-brown tan.

Me?

I need to hit Chunky's Cheese Steaks.

I earned it.

“So long,” I say to the girl behind the front desk, who's on her cell phone.

She waves so she doesn't have to interrupt her phone call.

“I know,” she says to whoever she's chatting with, “the guy is, like, such a total jerk. No way would I ever let him drill me.”

I smile.

A dirty mind is an eternal picnic.

A little before three, having taken Samantha a Chunky's Cheese Steak to help her plow through her law books, I head up Ocean Avenue to King Putt Mini Golf.

You can see the T-shaped pylon sign topped with a bright orange ball from half a mile away. At the base of the pole stands the Bob's Big Boy of Ancient Egyptian Golf: a six-foot-tall resin cartoon of the chubby Boy King himself. Instead of the classic staff of Ra, Tut totes a putting iron.

The miniature golf course itself is actually pretty awesome. Mr. O'Malley spent about a million bucks landscaping its curving hills, water hazards, “Sahara Desert” sand traps, fake palm trees, and carpeted putting greens. You can arc your ball over a sleeping camel's humps, try to shoot it through the Sphinx's legs, or see if you can jump it all the way across the bright blue (like Sno-Cone syrup) River Nile, which, in some spots, is two feet wide.

I pull into the parking lot. It's decorated with hieroglyphics on lampposts to help you remember where you parked. I see Ceepak's silver Toyota over in the Owl section, so I look for a spot close by.

There are none.

They're all taken.

Including the slot right next to ol' dinged-up Silverado.

That's where Mr. Joseph “Sixpack” Ceepak has parked his red pickup truck.

11

I
RACE ACROSS THE ASPHALT TO THE
K
ING
P
UTT OFFICE
—this pink stucco building shaped like one of the pyramids: you get your balls and putters in the base; the O'Malleys keep the books and computers up in the peak.

A couple of kids, tears streaking down their cheeks, come running out of the office, screaming, “Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy!”

I see parents near a minivan.

“Sea Haven Police,” I say, even though I'm wearing baggy shorts, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt. “Please stay in the parking lot. We have a situation inside.”

Hey, if Mr. Ceepak is in there, we probably do.

When I enter the office, the first thing I see is Skippy O'Malley behind the counter, panic in his pie-wide eyes, a terrified cat in his arms. Skippy's in his official King Putt costume: a fake bronze breastplate, striped skirt, and a Pharaoh hat.

The cat he's clutching to his chest—a tabby with pointy ears very similar to those on the carved Pharaoh cats propping up the brochure racks—is hissing angrily at Ceepak's dad, who is standing in front of the cash register, swinging a putter back and forth like he might shatter a display case on his next shot.

Ceepak and Rita have putters, too. They're standing to the right, in front of a Coke machine.

“You want me to call for backup?” I shout.

Ceepak—the good one—shakes his head. “No need, Danny.”

Mr. Ceepak swivels around. Stares at me with glassy eyes. I have a feeling that this morning he swilled what he could out of all of Big Kahuna's empty beer bottles before he tossed them in the Dumpster.

“Boyle,” he slurs. “Good name for you, kid, because you're a goddamn boil on my butt I can't get rid of no matter how much puss I squeeze out of it!”

Great. Not exactly the kind of description you want to hear so soon after wolfing down a Chunky's Cheese Steak with extra cheese.

Mr. Ceepak staggers back around and lurches toward his son, gripping his putter under the head so he can hold it like a ball-peen hammer.

Rita retreats half a step.

Ceepak does not. In fact, he nonchalantly hands Rita his putter. He doesn't need a weapon to face his sorry excuse for a father.

“Where is she, you sanctimonious sack of shit?”

“I'll ask you once more to refrain from using foul language.”

“Fine. But first—you tell me where the hell your mother is hiding.”

“As I stated previously,” says Ceepak, striding forward, not at all afraid of the golf club quivering in his old man's hand, “she is where you will never find her.”

“She has my fucking money! Three million dollars!”

“You are mistaken. Aunt Jennifer willed that money, in no uncertain terms, to Mom, and Mom alone.”

“What's hers is mine.”

“So you keep saying. However, according to the divorce papers—”

“We're Catholic, Johnny.”

“While you were in prison, she had your marriage annulled by a church tribunal.”

“She can't do that.”

“She did.” He hands his father a piece of paper.

Mr. Ceepak takes it. “What the fuck is this?”

“A restraining order.”

“Huh?”

“It's a civil order that provides protection from harm by a family member or a psycho stalker,” I chime in, because Sam chirped it to me the other night while she was cramming for her LSATs.

“You,” Ceepak says to his father, “are not to have any further contact with me or my family, in person, by phone, at home, work or anywhere I or my wife and stepson happen to be.”

“Fuck that—”

“Trust me, sir—if you violate this order, you will be incarcerated.”

“Hey, he's violating it now!” This from Skippy. “You want me to cuff him? I have handcuffs.”

He does? Did he save a pair as a souvenir when he was an auxiliary cop?

“My guns are at home but I have a wood back here.” Skippy lets go of the cat, who jumps into a fuzzy doughnut-shaped bed as Skippy bends down to grab a driver with a humongous head, which, I guess is what Putt-Putt owners use for self-defense instead of the more traditional mom-and-pop grocery store baseball bat.

“Stand down, Mr. O'Malley,” says Ceepak.

“Ten–four,” says Skippy who seems to be enjoying playing cop-for-a-day.

Mr. Ceepak is staring at the sheet of paper his son just handed him. Trying to focus his bleary eyes. Moving his lips as he reads what is written there.