Rolling Thunder (John Ceepak Mystery)

  “Indeed we do. Sergeant Dominic Santucci has been threatening citizens with official retribution if they instigate any form of complaint against one of his security firm’s clients.”

  “Santucci? I wanted to talk about this house on Tangerine Street.”

  “Santucci’s involved with that as well.”

  “Well, Mayor Sinclair—”

  “Has been a visitor to what can best be described as a sex den for Sea Haven’s wealthiest citizens.”

  The guys clocking in for the late shift are moving through the lobby a little more slowly than usual. You mention a “sex den,” they’ll do that.

  “Married men consorting with girls young enough to be their daughters—”

  Ceepak, of course, is simply stating what he knows to be the truth, because that’s what Ceepak always does.

  “Not here,” says the chief. “In my office.”

  They disappear behind a door and I head into the locker room to change into my civvies. I’m more or less working undercover tonight. I need to blend in. Might even need to wear a backwards baseball cap.

  First stop is Big Kahuna’s.

  I slip Phil the doorman ten bucks and get my hand stamped.

  It’s about 11:30 on a Friday night. The place is packed with locals blowing off steam, blowing their paychecks. Bud is behind the bar, popping tops off plastic long-neck bottles of beer. My pal Cliff Skeete is seated at the sound controls. There’s no live band tonight, so Cliff is picking up some extra cash spinning tunes on his, believe or not, computer. Turntables are so last millennium.

  I make my way across the dance floor. Cliff has his headphones draped around his neck and is bopping to the prefabricated electronic beat of the Underdog Project’s “Girls Of Summer.” As far as I can tell, the lyrics are all about girls walking in the sand with honey-coated complexions and cinnamon tans. Plus a lot of yeah-uh-yeah-yeahs.

  “Yo, Cliff!”

  “Danny boy!”

  “You got any Springsteen in your iTunes library?”

  “How old-school you gonna get on me, brurva?”

  We knock knuckles. “You seen Marny?” I ask.

  “Minsky?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not tonight, bro. Who you with?”

  “Nobody. I’m kind of on the job.”

  “For real? This is what cops do? Go clubbin’?”

  “Only when we have to. How you been holdin’ up since the remote?” I ask Cliff, who lets his supercool mackdaddy face droop, but only for a second.

  “Hangin’ in.”

  “Cool. Catch you later,” I say, because I see Sean O’Malley at the bar.

  He’s with a girl, not a garden gnome. A different girl, not the Argentine firecracker from last weekend. This girl is short, brunette, and built. I figure she’s a girl of summer—got a honey-coated complexion and a cinnamon tan.

  Wow.

  The disco music and its breakfast cereal lyrics have brainwashed me.

  “Yo, Sean,” I holler. He went to school with my little brother so he has to answer when I “yo” him. It’s an unwritten rule.

  “Danny Boy Boyle.” He’s bouncing in place to the beat. Has his Irish cap turned sideways on his head. “Twice in one night. Wassup, brurva? This music is bumpin’!”

  I lean in so I can whisper without his date hearing me, although she has that obliviously blurry look most hotties get whenever I draw near.

  “Where’s Daisy?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The girl you were with last weekend.”

  “She be history. This is my new dime.” He gestures toward the brunette, who’s still staring off into space. “She is so fly!”

  Meaning she’s a ten and very appealing. She also looks totally smashed.

  “So, Sean, how come you drive around town with Smurfs in your backseat?”

  “Aw, that just be a favor I do fo’ a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Bruno.”

  “Mazzilli?”

  “King of the boardwalk, biatch.”

  “So you work for Mr. Mazzilli?”

  “When he axe me I do.”

  “Sean?”

  “Yo?”

  “You grew up in Sea Haven. Went to Catholic School. How come you talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “An uneducated idiot.”

  Sean’s eyes get all beady. “Don’t you have a bad guy to catch or something, Danny Boy?” He’s totally dropped the gangsta rap.

  “Yeah. I just hope it isn’t you.”

  “What’s the problem here, Boyle?”

  I turn around.

  Dominic Santucci.

  “Who said there was a problem?”

  When I started on the job, Santucci used to scare me. Mostly because he was riding my butt all the time. Now? I think he’s kind of pathetic. Besides, I was there when he shot up the lobster tanks at Mama Shucker’s Raw Bar. He may carry a lethal weapon, but if you’re his target, not to worry. He couldn’t hit a bull’s-eye the size of a manhole cover.

  “Mr. O’Malley here is still in mourning over the loss of his mother,” says Santucci.

  “Yeah,” I say as Sean and his new squeeze, ignoring Santucci and me, suck each other’s faces. “My bad. ’Scuse me.”

  I walk away from the bar.

  Santucci follows me.

  “You on the job?” he asks.

  “Yeah. You on your other job?”

  “Yeah. And guess what? Right now, I’m pulling down more per hour than you’ll make all night.”

  “Who you running security for, now? Bruno Mazzilli?”

  “Confidential.”

  “What’s Mazzilli so worried about?” I ask. “He’s got you running interference and Sean O’Malley cleaning up his front porch. Who picks up his dry cleaning? You?”

  “Word to the wise? Keep your nose out of this thing. People with money—they can rock your world if you mess with theirs. They can reach out and touch anybody they want to. No matter who they are or where they live—even if it’s Paradise Valley in Arizona.”

  “What? Now you’re threatening my parents?”

  “I’m not threatening nobody, Boyle. I’m just sayin’.” He snaps his gum three times hard. Swaggers away.

  I let him.

  Ceepak and the chief will deal with Santucci. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were filling out the Italian Stallion’s walking papers right now. Santucci’s side job is about to become his only job—if he doesn’t go to jail first for helping to hacksaw Gail Baker, something I could see him doing if it paid enough.

  I head back to the dance floor.

  I see Bruno Mazzilli dancing (and I use that term loosely) with a raven-haired hottie who isn’t Marny Minsky in a wig. Guess all the sugar daddies are in the market for new girlfriends.

  And then I see Samantha Starky.

  She looks a little wobbly, which is how she usually looks after sipping one weak drink. Low tolerance for alcohol. She’s kind of hanging on to her law school study buddy Richard for support, hands linked around his neck. It’s not a slow song but Richard’s swiveling his hips like maybe he wishes it were.

  “Danny?”

  She sees me. Unclasps her hands. Stumbles out of her dance sway.

  “What are you doing here?” she slurs. I move in. Steady her by the elbow. “I thought you had to work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh!” Her hand goes up to her mouth. Her eyes bug open wide. “Is this work?”

  “Yeah.”

  I glance over at Richard.

  “Uh, hi,” he says, smiling nervously. Stuffing his hands in his pockets. Maybe he’s heard how good I am with my gun.

  “How many drinks did you buy her?” I ask.

  “Just two. Maybe three.”

  I shake my head. One is Sam’s limit. Doesn’t matter what it is. Beer, wine, rum. One drink and Samantha Starky is plotzed.

  “Can you take me home?” Sam asks, hanging on
to the front of my shirt. “I’m drunk.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks, pal,” says Richard. “I owe you one.”

  I just nod. Dude doesn’t dig taking on responsibility, like watching out for the girl he boozed up so he’d have a shot at her pants.

  “Come on.” I prop a hand under Sam’s arm. Guide her toward the exit. All the while, I’m scanning the crowd. Looking for Marny. Sam is an unexpected delay of game, but she needs to go home and sleep it off. I guide her toward the DJ booth.

  “Hey, Cliff?”

  “Yo?”

  “I’m taking Sam home. If Marny comes in …”

  “I’ll give you a shout. Text you.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

  We’re walking to the door when the damn song about the girls of summer finally quits rhyming “sand” and “tan.”

  “We need to talk,” Sam mumbles when the music dies.

  “Okay.”

  “About us.” It comes out “ush.”

  “Fine.” We make it to the bouncer stand.

  “Richard is very nice guy, Danny. My mom likes him a lot.”

  I’m sure she does—mainly because he isn’t me.

  “And I like you …” Sam is babbling. “I’m just not sure if I like us anymore … I’m so young … you know … don’t know what I want to do … who I even am …”

  Her Oprah moment carries us out the door to the parking lot.

  “My Jeep’s over this way.”

  I walk. Sam stumbles. If I wasn’t holding her up, she’d definitely be falling down.

  I’m wishing I hadn’t parked in the rear. Behind the Dumpster. Near Mr. Ceepak’s pickup truck, which, unfortunately isn’t a Dodge Ram so we can’t lock him up as a suspect in the murder of Gail Baker.

  “Danny, seriously, I don’t think you’re ever gonna be my Mister Right. More like Mister Right Now. I’m twenty-one, you’re twenty-five.”

  We make it to my Jeep.

  And I realize there’s somebody already sitting in the passenger seat.

  She’s wearing really short cutoff jeans and a bulging tube top. Has a springy Brillo pad of curly blonde hair.

  “Hey,” she says with a nervous titter.

  “Danny? Who the hell is this?” Sam is sounding more and more like her mom.

  “Marny,” I say. “Marny Minsky.”

  24

  “SHE A FRIEND OF YOURS?” SAM DEMANDS.

  Inside my Jeep, Marny’s eyes go all Bambi-in-the-headlights on me.

  “You gotta help me, Danny!” she says, her voice soft and shaky. “I need you!”

  That doesn’t help.

  “Who is this person?” says Sam.

  If Sam were still a cop, I’d tell her.

  But she isn’t.

  “A friend,” is all I say.

  Sam’s been sizing Marny up. Checking out her barely legal top and shorts combo. Diapers cover more.

  “When were you going to tell me?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “That you already had a hot new girlfriend even before I drank two Mojitos and one Cosmo just so I could be brave enough to break up with you because I really used to like you and now I think I’m starting to like Richard and, anyway, my mother is right about you—why buy a cow when the horse is free?”

  Yeah. Sam’s drunk. She usually doesn’t mangle her metaphors.

  “Problems over there, officer?”

  Great. Mr. Ceepak just showed up. He’s leaning against his pickup and sneering at me.

  “Came out to catch a smoke. Didn’t know there’d be a floor show.”

  “You’re that horrible man,” says Samantha, trying to point, teetering sideways on her heels. “Mr. Sixpack! Joe Sixpack.”

  Mr. Ceepak’s eyes crawl all over Sam’s body as he sucks down a deep drag on his cigarette. “That’s what my friends call me, sweetheart. You wanna be my friend? I know I’d sure like to be yours.”

  “Gross!” Sam totters backward. I simultaneously break her fall and butt-bounce the passenger side door shut behind me so Mr. Ceepak doesn’t see Marny and start hitting on her, too.

  “Hang on, Sam,” I mumble.

  “Leggo. You’re grosser than him. You got a girlfriend with gigantic boobs that look fake. Are they fake?”

  Mr. Ceepak is laughing a wheezy laugh as wet as the slurped end of a milkshake.

  “Don’t they need you inside?” I say.

  “I’m on my break. Hey, Officer Boyle—has Johnny come to his senses yet?”

  “You mean is he going to tell you where his mother is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why? Has hell frozen over?”

  “Cute, Boyle. I forgot—you’re the funny one.”

  “Hey, Ceepak!” It’s Bud the bartender, yelling out the back door. “College kid just puked all over the dance floor.”

  My turn to smile. “Duty calls.”

  Mr. Ceepak grinds his cigarette butt out under his boot toe.

  “Tell soldier boy he hasn’t heard the last from me.”

  “Right. But if he sees you, you’re going straight to jail. That restraining order stuff—it really works. Especially if the person you’re supposed to stay away from is a cop.”

  “Fuck you, Boyle.” Mr. Ceepak strolls back to the club.

  I grab the cell phone off my belt. I could call the house; organize police protection for Marny while I drive Sam home.

  But then Santucci might find out where she is from one of his friends. He has a few. Well, Officer Mark Malloy. That’s one. There might be another. One of the guys still bitter about John Ceepak cracking so many big cases while they write speeding tickets in school zones.

  So I call a friend of mine’s taxi company to haul Sam home.

  When she’s safely inside the cab, I climb into my Jeep.

  “Is everything okay?” Marny asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was that girl?”

  “That’s Samantha Starky. My ex-girlfriend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “My boobs aren’t fake.”

  “Okay.” Good to know.

  Marny relaxes slightly. I think because my jacket got all bollixed up when I buckled my seat belt and she saw the pistol strapped to my chest.

  “So, how you doin’, Marny?”

  “Terrible. I haven’t slept since they killed Gail.”

  “They?”

  She nods. Her kinky hair bounces like a golden Slinky convention.

  “The guys who rent the house on Tangerine Street?” I ask.

  “You know about that?”

  “Yeah. I’m a cop now, remember?”

  “That’s why I followed you here. I waited in the parking lot at the police station until you came out. I was afraid to go in on account of Dominic.”

  “Officer Santucci?”

  “He runs security for Mr. Mazzilli and Mr. O’Malley at the house.”

  “Did you drive over here?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” She gestures toward the sporty red Miata parked in the space to next to me.

  “Does Santucci know your car?”

  She puts two dainty fingers over her “uh-oh-SpaghettiOs” expression.

  “He might,” she says in a frightened whisper.

  “Okay,” I say. “We need to get you out of here.”

  I crank the ignition.

  “Can we go to your place?” she asks. “I think they’re watching mine.”

  Again with the “they.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “No problem.”

  I pilot my vehicle through the parking lot, head around the side of the building.

  Santucci comes out a side door.

  I reach over, put my hand on top of Marny’s coiled hair, shove her down below the dashboard.

  “Stay down for a second, okay?”

  “Okay. And Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  I don’t say a
nything because Santucci is staring straight at me now.

  I put on a big smile.

  Santucci looks hyped up. Maybe Mr. Ceepak caught a glimpse of Marny and went inside to tell the guy who had offered to buy him a beer if he spotted the curly-haired girl in the photograph he was shoving under everybody’s nose.

  “Boyle?” Santucci shouts. “Pull over!”

  I give Santucci a two-finger salute off the brim of my invisible cop cap and keep on driving. He angrily signals for me to “pull over to the side of the road, sir.” I ignore him. Right now, I’m the cop. Santucci’s just the douche bag making more money than me.

  I don’t think he saw Marny.

  As I pull out of the parking lot, I glance up to my rearview mirror and see him stomping toward the Dumpster and Marny’s red-hot Miata.

  Time for Ms. Minsky to be put in protective custody.

  My apartment building used to be a motel until the owners realized they wouldn’t have to clean the toilets if they turned it into rental units.

  They filled in the swimming pool in the central courtyard, unplugged the vacancy sign, got rid of the ice maker, and sold all their sheets and towels in a yard sale.

  Inside my unit, it still looks like a motel. You open the door, you see the bed. You also see ugly maple paneling. Beyond the bed, I have a tiny kitchenette with a mini fridge and one of those two-cup coffee makers. They sold it to me at that yard sale. I do have a brand-new plasma-screen TV that takes up most of one wall (HBO is no longer free). I set up a lumpy recliner against the wall on the opposite side of the room. It’s where I watch football and where I’ll be sleeping tonight.

  “You need the bathroom or anything?” I say to Marny.

  “Thanks, Danny. Do I look awful?”

  That would be impossible. Marny is built like the proverbial brick house. However, I note goosebumps on her thighs just below her cutoffs and, not that I’m looking, two Purdue pop-up indicators signaling extreme chilliness.

  “You look cold,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I washed it two days ago.” I raise my right arm. “Scout’s honor.”

  She smiles. “Thanks, Danny.”

  “Go grab it. I’m going to call my partner.”

  “Is he a cop?”

  “Yes, but he’s one of the good guys.”

  Actually, he’s the goodiest guy of all.

  “I think you made the right call, Danny,” says Ceepak.