Tilt-a-Whirl (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

  It's about 7:30. The setting sun makes the craggy stucco walls look kind of pinkish, like an Easter egg somebody already tapped and cracked.

  I remember years ago when some local ladies in a club, The Very Rich Daughters of the American Revolution or something, formed a Preservation Society to save The Palace, what they called “The Dowager Queen” of seaside hotels. They made the governor declare this dump a Cherished State Landmark, and that means nobody can tear it down without jumping through all sorts of hoops and red tape.

  There are hundreds of rooms, but only about a dozen look like they still have windows with any glass. I can see water stains and mold on the peeling wallpaper in the lobby. I suspect anything worth money—all the fixtures and oriental rugs and stained glass and carved furniture—was hauled out years ago.

  “Let's take a little walk,” Ceepak says and points to a dilapidated dock out back behind the sagging hotel.

  We march through the lobby. I can hear water dripping somewhere. Must be why the whole place reeks of mildew.

  We reach the doorjambs on the far end of the lobby. No doors. Just some rusty hinges where, I guess, doors used to hang.

  We head toward The Palace's private pier.

  “You see it?” Ceepak whispers.

  Finally I do.

  There's a small aluminum fishing boat tied up to an ancient piling.

  The dock creaks as we walk.

  “Watch where you step.”

  “Right.”

  This time, I don't think Ceepak's worried about me stepping on evidence. I think there's a good chance one or both of us will step right through this rotting wood. I can see jagged holes where others already have.

  We reach the post where the boat is tied up.

  Ceepak lies down on his stomach on the deck.

  “Danny? Grab my ankles.”

  “Sure.”

  I hold his socks, like I'm spotting him for a quick set of upside-down situps.

  Ceepak leans down into the bobbing fishing boat. While he's hanging, he unsnaps a pocket, pulls out the Canon Sure Shot, and somehow snaps a digital photograph.

  “Danny?”

  He reaches back with the camera and I take it, using my knee to hold an ankle and temporarily free up a hand.

  Meanwhile, his hand feels around his cargo flaps, snaps open a different pocket, digs inside, and fishes out the tweezers.

  He lowers himself farther off the edge. If I let go now, he'll be head-banging the boat bottom and flipping into the drink for a dip.

  “Got it!” he says. “Rotating.”

  I have no idea what “rotating” means until I feel his very strong legs move around inside my grip so he's upside down and backwards and able to do this incredible abdominal crunch thing that brings him up to a sitting position on the dock.

  In his tweezers, he's snared another surfer bracelet.

  Another breadcrumb.

  We move along the back of the hotel, under what must have been the grand verandah back when William Howard Taft was here putting on the feedbag.

  We reach the remains of an in-ground pool. The water's all green and slimy and filled with crap. Stinks too, like it's been a bird toilet too long. Poolside, there's nothing but flaky chunks of concrete, bleached dry by the sun that used to shine so bright back here.

  It's like that Springsteen song about Atlantic City:

  “Everything dies

  Baby that's a fact

  But maybe everything that dies

  Some day comes back.”

  Then again, maybe not. Springsteen probably never saw The Palace Hotel's scummy pool.

  Man—I can't wait until I see what even-more-depressing stuff we find inside. I think knowing Ceepak's sniper rifle is in the cargo bay of our cop car has put me in some kind of glum, gloomy mood.

  I'm too young to think about death and dying. But I guess pretty much everybody thinks that way, no matter how old they happen to be.

  “Looks like a restaurant,” Ceepak says. “Or a nightclub.”

  We're standing in a big half-circle room surrounded by three tiered terraces for tables. I imagine this was the dance floor.

  “Hungry?” Ceepak asks.

  “Kind of.”

  Good. He wants to eat, not dance.

  Ceepak pulls two Power Bars out of his left pants leg.

  There are a couple of cocktail tables and rusting café chairs. We sit down to our foil-wrapped suppers.

  Having skipped both breakfast and lunch, I wolf down half my bar in one bite.

  Ceepak laughs.

  “Hungry?”

  “Starving.” When I say it, it sounds more like “snar-vink” because I've crammed so much food in my face.

  “You remind me of my little brother,” Ceepak says.

  My mouth is full of mashed protein powder and nuts, so I just make a “really?” kind of face.

  “Yeah. He was always hungry. Ate fast, too. Afraid somebody would steal his supper.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He would have been about your age now. Twenty-three. Twenty-four.”

  Would have been. Past tense.

  Jesus.

  More death.

  Ceepak puts down his Power Bar and stares out at the ocean framed by tall arched windows behind the dance floor. He balls the wrapper up in his right hand and fidgets with it.

  I think the waves are mesmerizing Ceepak, putting him into some kind of trance. I also think he's waiting for the sun to go completely down so he can do what he thinks needs doing under the cover of darkness.

  “William Philip Ceepak. Billy.”

  “That your brother?”

  “He killed himself. Put a pistol in his mouth …”

  “I'm sorry….”

  “I was already in the Army, so I guess Billy was about eighteen. High school.”

  I can tell Ceepak wants to make certain he gets his facts straight, that it's important he remember the details of his brother's death correctly.

  “My father is a drunk,” Ceepak says matter-of-factly. “I remember how he used to roughhouse with us and all the cousins when we were kids. Down in the basement. You know—after Christmas, Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody thought he was such a great guy—going downstairs to play with the kids while the rest of the dads stayed upstairs and watched the game and smoked. But the basement? That's where he hid his booze. He swore to Mom he had quit. ‘Cross my heart and hope to spit,’ he'd say. He'd wink at her and she'd laugh. But while we were downstairs, the kids all wrestling on these old mattresses on the floor, he'd sneak under the staircase to where he hid his stash. Whiskey. Vodka. He had quite a collection going, little airplane bottles tucked behind all the baby-food jars filled with nails and screws.

  “I was the only kid old enough to know what he was doing. Sometimes he'd catch my eye while he sucked one of those little bottles dry. ‘Don't tell your mother.’ He'd wink at me the way he winked at her. ‘Promise?’ I'd say I promised, because, you know—he was my dad.

  “A drunk can be fun. Funny, too. But then, a couple hours later, he usually gets sad and angry and things turn ugly. The wrestling is a little rougher and maybe somebody's head gets banged against the steel pole in the middle of the cellar and there's crying and somebody comes running down to see what all the commotion is about. Maybe your dad roughs up your mom later that same night for embarrassing him in front of all the aunts and uncles, the whole family, and you hear her in their bedroom sobbing and when you run down the hall to help her your father swats you across your face….”

  Jesus.

  I wonder how long it's been since Ceepak let any of this stuff out.

  “Anyhow,” he says, giving me, I”m sure, the abridged version of his time spent in Hell, “what does Springsteen say?”

  “About him and his dad?”

  “Yeah. Lots of songs on that one. Sons and fathers. Same-old same-old, I guess. ‘Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now….’”

  “So you left?”
br />   “Joined the Army. Went overseas. I wasn't around to protect Billy or Mom any more. I deserted my post….”

  “No, you were….”

  “I wasn't there. Eventually, Billy got out. Sort of. Started hanging out at the church. This new priest came to town and organized a youth group. And the priest? Oh, he was a swell guy, Danny. Young. Cool. Athletic. He had keys to the church school gym, so Billy and his buddies could play basketball any time they wanted. He took the boys on camping trips. Baseball games. Made them into movie stars….”

  “Movie stars?”

  “He had them pose naked. Do things to each other. Do things to him. The priest put it all on tape and sold it on the Internet. One of the boys? He told his folks what was going on. That takes guts, you know? To tell your parents what this holy man, this great guy, what he's really up to? The cops bust the priest, there's a trial, and pretty soon everybody in town sees the tapes.

  “Billy? He toughed it out for three years. Everybody snickering about what that priest did to him. My father? Oh, he was a real champ. Said Billy got what he deserved. Said God, the almighty Father on high, God himself was punishing Billy for trying to run away from his real father.”

  Ceepak tightens his grip on the Power Bar foil in his fist.

  “My father? He's not a real father, Danny. A real father does everything he can to protect his children. He doesn't terrorize his family because he's thirsty for a drink. A real father risks his life to make the world safer for his sons. My father? He called Billy sissy boy. Porno queen. It's like he put the bullets in the gun and all Billy had to do was squeeze the damn trigger.”

  Jesus.

  I think Ceepak just told me why he has to kill Squeegee tonight.

  I don't know what to say.

  So I keep quiet and let him look at the ocean.

  The sun is gone. The stars are starting to come out. The waves keep rolling up on the beach.

  Finally, I feel I should say something.

  “So, where's your dad now?”

  Ceepak looks at me.

  “Don't know, Danny. We sort of lost track of each other.”

  “Yeah. Sure. And your mom?”

  “She's safe.”

  He bites into his Power Bar.

  That's all I'm going to get tonight, probably more than anybody has heard in years. Maybe even more than he told the chief, back when they were hunting down that chaplain in Germany. I see now, of course, why Ceepak was so motivated on that particular military mission.

  “Well,” Ceepak says, standing up, dusting the crumbs off his lap. “Guess we've wasted enough time….”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let's start working the hallways. See if—”

  We hear a dog bark.

  Then this woman's voice.

  “Oh, fuck!” she shouts.

  In the shadows I see a figure with frizzy hair. It's so dark, I can't see much of her, except her feet. She uses brown paper sacks for socks.

  She also has a mangy German shepherd on a leash made out of twine.

  The dog barks again.

  “I know, Henry. It's the motherfucking fuzz!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Ma'am?”

  For an old lady, she's fast.

  She and the dog run out a door and up what I guess is a hall.

  Right now, they have the advantage. They've been here before; we haven't. We're first-time guests and they appear to be long-term residents. So they know where the hell they're running. We don't.

  “Danny?”

  “Right behind you, boss.”

  We both pull out our flashlights and tear up the tiered terraces to the exit she used.

  On the other side of the door, I bang into this rickety old grocery cart loaded down with trash bags, nickel-deposit bottles, an old moving pad, books, and an eyeless stuffed panda bear with dirt on its nose.

  We hear the dog barking somewhere up the corridor.

  “Leave it, Henry! Leave the fucking rat alone!”

  Now that she mentions it, I can hear the scratchy-toed devils scurrying around inside what's left of the plaster walls.

  “Put him down!”

  Wonderful. Henry's a “ratter.” But his assorted barks and snarls act like a homing beacon, helping us figure out which way they're running.

  Ceepak leads us up a long, dark corridor lined with rooms. Like most hotel hallways, there are no windows. That means there's also no light. No moonlight, no nothing. Our tiny flashlights shoot jittery spotlights across the walls as we run. I half expect a rat in a top hat to jump out and tap-dance like that frog on the WB.

  The carpet squishes under our feet as we run. Guess the roof leaks. Or the toilets.

  After about fifty yards, we come to a landing where the grand staircase swoops up from the lobby. Tall casement windows in the stairwell let in just enough light for us to see a few shadows and dim outlines.

  I smell gasoline.

  So does Ceepak. He goes to the staircase. Most of the planks have been ripped out and all that's left are the stringers on the sides and the support joists in between. Guess the floorboards, the treads, were mahogany or oak or something worth stealing.

  “C-4,” Ceepak says, looking at what appears to be a brick wrapped in black plastic and duct-taped to a crossbeam. His finger traces the red and white and green wires snaking from the plastic explosive up and down the steps to, I guess, more wads of C-4. There's a gas can sitting in the windowsill.

  “Arson?” I say.

  “Looks like.”

  “Why? There's not much left to burn.”

  “More like a demolition.”

  The dog barks.

  “Come on,” Ceepak says.

  There's another bark. And another. A whole series.

  “Henry? Shush!”

  Now Henry tosses in a couple of howls, like he's singing opera. All the noise comes from below.

  “Come on! Down the steps!”

  We head down the grand staircase, stepping on the crossbeams and stringers because, like I said, there aren't any actual stairs any more. Once again, I have a really good chance of slipping through a gaping hole and landing on my butt.

  We make it to the second floor and hear a long, slow dog yawn.

  Downstairs.

  I grab hold of the banister and try not to look down where the floorboards used to be. It's like running down a steep railroad track, stepping only on the ties. The boards bang my arches and sting like hell. Before this is over, I know I'm going to make some bone doctor a very rich man.

  “Henry? Come on! Henry!”

  Now she sounds like she's right below us.

  “Henry?”

  Sounds like he isn't cooperating.

  We reach the lobby. She's tugging on that twine leash, but Henry is lying like a lump in the middle of the floor, all flopped out, breathing hard.

  “You need a nap? Now?”

  “Ma’am?” Ceepak moves toward what I'm guessing is a crazy homeless person. His hand never goes anywhere near his gun. “Ma'am?”

  “Shhhh! Henry's napping. Can the noise, would ya?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Jesus,” she huffs. “Some people. Yak, yak, yak. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am.”

  In the lobby, I get a better look at our quarry. She's tiny. Not even five feet tall. She has on Converse basketball shoes with the canvas toes ripped out and, like I saw earlier, brown paper bags for socks. She's wearing about three different skirts, plaid and denim, with a petticoat underneath. There's a tie-dyed shirt up top over what I figure, from all the bumps circling her like spare tires, is a goose-down vest. Her silver hair is wiry and dirty and wild and curls around her head like a worn-out scrubbing pad.

  “You're not going to shoot me, are you, fuzz?”

  “No, ma'am.”

  “Good.”

  “Is that your dog?”

  “No. That's Henry.”

  “Yes, ma'am. That's a pretty shirt,” Ceepak says. It's tie-dyed all kinds of co
lors—just like the one Ashley said Squeegee was wearing when he shot her father.

  “My boyfriend loaned it to me. I was cold.”

  “Does your boyfriend have a name?” he asks. He's made the tie-dye connection, too.

  “Jerry. His name is Jerry.”

  Ceepak nods, the way you nod when you're visiting the mental ward and a patient tells you the ashtrays have been saying mean things about them lately.

  “Jerry Garcia?” Ceepak says, playing along.

  “From the Grateful Dead?” the bag lady says.

  “That's right. He wears a lot of tie-dye shirts.”

  “Jerry Garcia?” she says again.

  “That's right. Did Jerry Garcia loan you his T-shirt?”

  The bag lady stares at Ceepak like he's an idiot.

  “Jesus. Jerry Garcia died like, what? Ten years ago. Don't you read the papers? Watch TV?”

  “I thought, perhaps….”

  “You need to stay better informed. Especially in your line of work….”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Jesus. My friend's name is Jerry Shapiro. You know….”

  She reaches into what I can only imagine is a dirty brassiere rigged up under that T-shirt and down vest and who knows what else she has piled on top of her sagging cleavage.

  “Jerry Shapiro!” She pulls out a folded piece of newspaper. “He's famous.”

  She unfolds the newspaper and of course it's the sketch of Squeegee.

  “You know Squeegee?” I blurt out.

  Now it's my time to get the look.

  “Squeegee? How fucking insulting. Jerry is a man, not a tool one uses for washing windows. What do they teach you kids in school? To demean those who labor with their hands? Nobody calls him Squeegee except the fuzz and the goons and bulls who run the capitalist car wash.”

  “Red calls him Squeegee,” Ceepak says.

  “Red Davidson?”

  “I never actually caught his last name.”

  “Red hair? Like Bozo the clown?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Figures. Red is an a-hole. He's pissed because I won't hop in the sack with him any more. That's over, you know? Red and me? That's history.”

  I'm getting a little queasy imagining this lady hopping in the sack with anybody.

  “He kicked Henry,” she says.

  “Your dog?”