Mad Mouse: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

  The wet cards were in place before 6:02 A.M. Mook must've pulled an all-nighter.

  And all of the Derek Jeter cards are from his first year with the New York Yankees, 1996.

  “This one's worth twenty-five, thirty bucks,” Mazzilli tells us when he sees the card the waiter found at The Chowder Pot. It shows Jeter, his eyes squinting in the Bronx sun, chasing some kind of pop fly. “That's a Select Certified Blue.”

  Bruno knows his “memorabilia.” In his shops up and down the boardwalk he peddles postcards, collectible foam beer Koozies, fake street signs that say stuff like “Parking For Italian Americans Only,” and T-shirts featuring “The Man,” with an arrow pointing up at your face, and “The Legend,” with another arrow pointing down at your pants.

  He also sells this one totally creepy tin sign I just now remembered. It's printed to look bullet-dinged, like a highway sign on some rural road where farmers take target practice. It says: “If you can read this, you're in range.”

  Sort of sums up my whole weekend.

  I'm thinking about this stuff so I'll stop thinking about Katie and the preliminary reports from the hospital.

  They say the bullet tore through her left lung, tumbled, then perforated some kind of pulmonary vein and broke a rib when it exited out the back of her chest. It might've nicked her spinal cord on the way out, too.

  They don't know if she'll make it.

  Katie might die.

  BB guns, my ass.

  We found her bullet buried in the shelf behind where she was standing when we kissed. It was the same kind of bullet as mine, like some kind of “his and her” matching ammo set. An M-118 7.62 millimeter special ball cartridge. The same as all of them. The kind of bullet the army gives its snipers, guys like Mook's pal Rick, guys who drive white minivans with ARMY stickers plastered on their bumpers.

  Ceepak puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Denise thinks she'll have a credit card hit in under five.”

  Denise Diego is our top computer geek back at headquarters. She's awesome. Works in the dimly lit room next to Dispatch, hovers over her keyboard, fries her eyes staring at the flat screen until she finds what she's searching for. She's a super cybersleuth, an excellent indoor detective. She'll find Mook's motel.

  Ceepak goes back to the baseball cards.

  “What do you make of all the Jeters?” I ask.

  “The shooter is playing with us, Danny. Having fun. He knows we now know his M.O., so he placed the baseball cards in every conceivable sniper location prior to actually targeting you at eight twenty-six hours.”

  “Why Jeter? Why a baseball player? What about the Phantom and the Avenger? Why not more comic book stuff?”

  “I'm not certain at this juncture.”

  My sense is he's angry with himself for not knowing the answer.

  “I saw Mook real early this morning at the diner,” I say. “Two or two-thirty A.M.”

  “He could've placed the cards any time before six A.M. Even before you saw him at the diner.”

  “Yeah. And playing with us? Rubbing our noses in how brilliant he is?”

  “Yes?”

  “That's Mook. He's a first-class smart-ass.”

  “Folks?” Chief Baines wants everybody's attention. “I'm heading out front to talk to the tourists.” He exhales, straightens his jacket, and eyeballs the mayor. “You people hang back here. I don't want a big crowd. Don't want them seeing you, Mr. Mayor.”

  “I'm good in here,” Mayor Sinclair says. He's found the Jelly Bellys.

  Chief Baines tugs down on the brim of his dress-white hat. He looks like the skipper on Gilligan's Island. He slides outside to talk to the tourists.

  I walk over to the windows and stare at the grain pattern in the plywood. There's nothing to see, but I have to hear this.

  “Folks? How is everybody doing this morning? Another beautiful day, huh?” I can't see him, but I know Baines is flashing his shark-white teeth, probably blinding someone. “As you might've heard, we had an incident here this morning. Couple college kids with a BB gun thought it might be fun to shoot out some store windows. An employee was injured.”

  Her name is Katie!

  “She's been airlifted to the hospital. She's going to be fine. But say a prayer for her, okay? She'd appreciate it. So would I.”

  The crowd murmurs some. They'll all pray. Right after they finish eating their cinnamon buns and bear claws.

  “Folks, what we have here is a prime example of what can happen when we ignore the rampant problem of underage drinking—which, in my short tenure, I've already identified as Sea Haven's public enemy number one.”

  Unless, of course, you count the sniper.

  “Some intoxicated teens stumbled over here this morning on their way home from an all-night keg party and took a couple pot shots with their pellet pistols. Don't worry, we'll catch them, you have my word. Meanwhile, we're cracking down. I call on all beverage distributors to ID everyone under the age of thirty. If you won't do it, guess what? We will. We'll give any unlawful drinkers we catch a prize: a free ride in a police car!”

  The crowd chuckles.

  “This weekend, we are putting plainclothes officers in package stores up and down the island. We're patrolling the popular bars and nightclubs. We'll be working the beach. We can and must put an end to this problem and keep Sea Haven safe for wholesome family fun!”

  The crowd applauds.

  Buzz Baines is good. He has turned my near-death experience and Katie's critical-condition chest wound into a pep rally against the evils of teen drinking. He does it so well, I almost believe him, even though I know he's lying every time his mustache wiggles up and down. That's the thing about a lie—you make it big enough, say it loud enough, repeat it over and over, it starts sounding like the truth. Hell, by now, Baines probably even believes it. He may really think some freshman with a six-pack also scored M118 special ball cartridges with his fake ID at Fritzie's Package Store and jammed them into his BB gun. Undoubtedly Fritzie's sells the bullets right next to the Slim Jims, or maybe over in the racks with the pork rinds, beer nuts, and rocket-propelled grenades.

  Baines can get away with this because his bosses, the Concerned Citizens who run Sea Haven, are mostly concerned with their bottom lines, about making enough money this summer to make it through to another one next year. The one reporter who knows the truth, our resident journalist, won't tell anybody what she knows because her newspaper sold a ton of ads for its special Labor Day Weekend Edition. Huge ads. Some restaurants even bought two and three full pages to run their entire menus, to lure Labor Day visitors with the promise of Early Bird Specials and two dozen choices starting at $7.99.

  I guess I wouldn't be so upset by all this chicanery and skullduggery—two words I learned from Ceepak—except that I just found the gift Katie planned to surprise me with so we could celebrate my new job.

  It's in a square white box tucked on the shelf right underneath the cash register. I see my name written with pink marker on the outside. Katie's loopy handwriting. She drew a cartoon cop car on one side of the box, a sheriff's star on another.

  I open the box.

  She had somebody in the candy kitchen mold me a chocolate baseball cap and write POLICE on front with curly white icing.

  My cop cap. Wow.

  Katie was so proud I got the job, that I was becoming a cop, that I was willing to put my life on the line to protect people like wheelchair Jimmy from the bullies, that I'd be out there every day trying to do what was right.

  “Danny?”

  Ceepak taps me on the shoulder.

  “What's up?” I ask.

  Ceepak smiles.

  “Denise got him. Smuggler's Cove Motel. Mr. Mook used his MasterCard.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It's a five-block run from Schooner's Landing to Smuggler's Cove.

  I see a sheet rolling out of the little dot-matrix printer we have up front in the patrol car. We now have a hard copy of Mook'
s driver's license and his plate number. I hear officers radioing in with possible white van sightings. The guys out here on the street? They're working the case. They're not hiding behind plywood walls covering their asses.

  Ceepak is driving real slow because he doesn't want to draw any undue attention to our approach—not because the chief said so but because he doesn't want Mook to hear us coming. So he's doing the posted 25 mph.

  The speed limit signs are new on Bayside Boulevard and say stuff like “25 mph: Yes, Your Car Can Actually Go That Slow.” The new signs were Buzz Baines's idea. Tough but friendly. Like a barroom bouncer who still remembers to smile at kittens and puppies when they pop by for a brewski.

  Mook's motel, Smuggler's Cove, is one of Sea Haven's seedier establishments. It's tucked off Bayside Boulevard on a side street. Typically, they rent out the same bed several times a day, if you catch my drift. Sometimes they even change the sheets. If you like those Girls Gone Wild videos, they sell them in the Smuggler's Cove gift shop. (Everybody has a gift shop in Sea Haven, even our low-rent rendezvous motel.)

  “Do you see his car?” Ceepak asks.

  “No.”

  The motel parking lot is one of those pothole-filled numbers with heaving humps of cracked asphalt creating random speed bumps every two feet.

  “This is twelve,” Ceepak says into the radio microphone. “We're ten-eighty-four.” He means we're on the scene. I climb out of the car, realizing I have at least eighty-three more 10-codes to memorize by Tuesday.

  Ceepak and I step into the filthy lobby and squint because it's so dark, what with the pink scarves draped over all the lamps to help set the mood. The place reeks of incense, the kind they sell on sidewalks. A string of little bells jangles when the door glides shut.

  “Be right with you,” says a woman from somewhere behind the check-in counter. I hear her groan, like she's having a hard time standing up. “Hang on!” Now she grunts.

  The lobby walls are decorated with porn posters. Debbie Does Dallas. The Devil in Miss Jones. Candy Stripers. The classics.

  “Danny!”

  Emerging behind the front desk is Donna Pazzarini, my friend Tony's big sister. By big, I mean older as well as huge. She weighs at least three hundred pounds so, all of a sudden, the grunting and groaning I heard make sense. Donna's the kind of girl who typically needs a forklift to help her up out of her chair.

  “How you doin', Donna?”

  “Good, good. You?”

  “Can't complain.”

  “Good, good.” She's dusting doughnut sugar off her enormous chest and eyeing Ceepak. “Well, hello handsome.” She tugs up on one of her black bra straps and tucks it back under her sleeveless blouse. “What can I do for you boys?”

  “We're looking for someone,” I say.

  “They're usually here—the ones people are lookin’ for. You're with the cops now, right, Danny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's what Tony says. I said, ‘Good for Danny,’ you know what I'm saying?”

  “We need to inquire about one of your guests,” Ceepak says.

  “Short-term or long-term?” Donna lets loose with this rumbling laugh—part belly shaker, part smoker's cough. “We have a lot of ‘guests’ who don't stick around for the free breakfast buffet, you know what I'm saying?” She gestures to a sour-smelling Mr. Coffee machine on the windowsill next to a half-empty box of Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “His name is Harley Mook,” I say.

  “Sure, sure. Mook. He was here. But he checked out.”

  Donna wobbles back around to the other side of the counter, taps the keyboard. I figure she's calling up room records. Instead, I see her slide a King around on a solitaire spread. I guess she was playing with one hand, juggling a doughnut with the other.

  “When?” Ceepak asks. “When did Mr. Mook vacate these premises?”

  “Little while ago,” says Donna. “Around nine thirty. Seemed like he was in a big hurry all of a sudden. Acting all antsy, you know what I mean?”

  “What room was he in?”

  Donna squints at her computer screen. I can tell she doesn't like the idea of closing her card game to open whatever program tells her who was in what room.

  “Usually, we don't mind when our guests check out early,” she says, clicking and sliding more cards around the screen. “But seeing how this is a holiday weekend I told Mook he had to pay for tonight even if he didn't stay. He gave me a little attitude but, like I said, he seemed eager to leave. Had ants in his pants.”

  Ceepak drums his fingers on the counter. “What room?”

  “The maid hasn't cleaned it yet. I've been kind of busy.” She rumbles out another laugh. Her upper arms jiggle.

  “Ma'am?”

  “Give me a second.” She finishes her final pile. Smiles at her tidy row of kings. “Okay. Here we go.” She taps a couple of keys and calls up her room records. “Mook was in two-oh-seven. Upstairs.”

  “You got a passkey?” I ask.

  “Why? You guys want to search his room or something?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “We surely do.”

  “Wait a sec.” Donna crosses her arms over her chest. “Isn't that like against the law? You need a warrant, am I right?”

  “No, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “Since Mr. Harley Mook has checked out, any property, record, or information he may have left behind is considered abandoned and, therefore, not subject to the Fourth Amendment protections provided by the Constitution.”

  Donna purses out her lower lip. Nods. She's impressed. “Interesting. You go to night school or something?”

  “The key?”

  “Sure, sure.” Donna reaches under her tiny desk and finds a miniature baseball bat with a key dangling off the handle.

  Ceepak takes it. “Upstairs?”

  “Yeah. Two-oh-seven. Second floor. Seventh door down.”

  “Thanks, Donna.”

  “Any time, Danny.”

  We hustle toward the door.

  We pass the ratty Coke machine, reach the staircase, clank up the rusty metal steps, and hurry down the crackled concrete landing to 207.

  Ceepak works the passkey into the lock. The door squeaks open and we're hit with a wall of recirculated air that stinks of cigarettes mixed with mildew. The air conditioner is rattling away underneath a window darkened by thick, plastic-based drapes. The room is a mess. The sheets and flabby pillows are clumped in a tangled bundle in the middle of the bed. Back in the bathroom, I can see a pile of soppy towels lying in a puddle near the shower stall. There's a Domino's pizza box feeding flies on top ot the TV. Judging by the color of what used to be cheese, I'd say the pie's been sitting there since at least Thursday.

  Ceepak spies a pink slip of paper wedged under a half-empty beer bottle on a small table with a wrinkled walnut veneer. The pink beer coaster is actually one of those “While You Were Out” phone message deals.

  “Apparently,” says Ceepak, “someone named Wheezer called Mr. Mook at eight forty-five A.M. The woman downstairs must've given him this message when he returned from Schooner's Landing this morning. Prior to his decision to check out.”

  “Wheezer is Mook's local drug connection,” I say. “The guy with the ‘good ganga.’ ”

  “The front desk did not record the caller's number. However, there is a note: ‘He'll call your cell.’ ”

  Ceepak secures the pink slip in an evidence envelope and moves toward the rumpled bed. He tilts his head to study a notepad near the telephone on the bedside table. Now he reaches into his cargo pants and pulls out a stubby carpenter's pencil. Okay, even I know this one: he's going to rub the pencil on the empty sheet of paper and see if he can pick up whatever was written on the sheet that used to be on top.

  “Wheezer, again,” Ceepak says after he's done dusting the pad with pencil lead. “Noon. Circled. I suspect twelve P.M. is the time Mook and Wheezer agreed to meet in some undisclosed location for the drug buy. Mook will most likely drive there.”

  “
In his little red Miata.”

  “Roger that,” Ceepak says. “Red Miatas are much easier to spot than white minivans.” He tucks the small sheet of motel notepad paper into a second evidence envelope. “We'll definitely nab him.”

  “Great.”

  We're going to catch the creep. Just like I promised Katie.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Since we seem to have some time …”

  Ceepak has this look on his face.

  “What's on your mind?” I ask.

  “The lady downstairs. She's a friend, I take it?”

  “Donna Pazzarini? Yeah. Well, I mean I know her on account of her brother. Tony. We worked together at a gas station one summer.”

  “I'd like to offer an observation.”

  “Sure.”

  “Everywhere we go, you know people. In fact, you have more friends than anyone I've ever met.”

  “Maybe. Of course, I grew up here. Plus, I'm just, you know, sociable, I guess. Friendly.”

  “Here then is my question: with all these friends, why is our shooter only singling out certain individuals? Why not Ms. Pazzarini downstairs? Why not her brother or your former colleagues at the Pancake Palace? Why not that girl you know over at the ice cream shop? Why is the sniper only targeting the people you were with Wednesday night?”

  I wonder.

  Why Becca, Katie, Olivia, Jess, and me? Especially if the bad guy is Mook. What'd we ever do to him?

  “Good question,” I say to Ceepak.

  “It's the question, Danny. The only one we really need to answer.”

  “Okay. Let me think about it.”

  “Think hard, Danny. Think fast.”

  I nod. “You want to search the room?”

  “No. We'll ask Kiger and Malloy to swing by.” He checks his watch. “I want us mobile prior to noon. I suspect someone will spot Mook's Miata before he connects with his dealer. In the meantime, let's stop by the house, pick up the Phantom and Avenger cards. Dr. McDaniels will definitely want to see those.”

  I'm about to follow Ceepak out the door when he takes a detour to the window air-conditioner unit. Using the eraser end of his pencil, he pushes down on the button to turn the humming monster off.