Mind Scrambler (2 page)

“Where's your brother?” Katie asked. Her eyes swept across the lobby to the Kubla Khandy Shoppe, so named, I figured, because, according to some poem an English teacher made me memorize once, Xanadu was where Kubla Khan his stately pleasure dome did decree. “Britney? Where is Richie?”

“I dunno. I'm not the nanny.”

Katie did not whack the mouthy midget like I might've. She had always been good with kids. Probably why she was so good with me. No matter what, Katie Landry stayed sweeter than pancake syrup sucked out of its tub through a straw, something my buddy Jess and I did one morning at Burger King when we both ordered the French toast sticks.

“Britney?” Katie said patiently. “You promised you'd keep an eye on your brother if I let you guys go into the candy store.”

“Whoops. Sorry. Forgot.”

“Danny, I've gotta run.”

“There he is!” the girl screeched, and pointed at a cute kid who had to be her little brother: blond mop top, blue eyes, and a super-sized smile smudged with fudge.

“Hi, Katie!” the boy waved. His hands looked like he'd been soaking them in chocolate fondue pots.

“Richie!” said his sister. “You are a mess!” She stomped over to harass him.

“Hope the Rocks pay well,” I said.

“More than my last teaching job.”

“Cool.”

“I really need to run, Danny. The kids are in the show.”

“Does their father make them disappear?”

“No. They do this quick bit at the beginning.”

The boy scampered across the carpet to tug on Katie's belt loops. I pegged him to be about six and already in love.

“Nanny Katie?”

“Yes, Richie?”

“Can we go for a ride in a chariot again?”

Katie clued me in: “That's what he calls the rolling chairs out on the boardwalk.”

The rolling chairs are these canopied wicker love seats on wheels. Been an Atlantic City fixture since forever. You pay a sweaty person in a polo shirt to push you where you want to go. The boardwalk here is about four miles long. Wheeled chairs are a good thing.

“Please?”

“Not right now, Richie. Maybe later. After you finish your homework.”

“Okay.” He skipped off to join his sister, who was hunkered down near a burbling fountain contemplating a coin dive.

“What time do you guys go on?” I asked.

“Eight.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“We need to talk.”

“Okay.”

Katie and I used to talk all the time, even before we started dating. Now, once a year, she sends me a Christmas card. I send her one of those free e-mail deals with the dogs singing “Feliz Navidad.”

“They're nice people,” Katie said. “The Rocks . . .”

Her words just sort of petered out.

“But?” I said.

“I don't want to say anything bad . . .”

“But?”

Her eyes were locked on Britney and Richie.

“Are you okay, Katie?”

“Yeah. Fine. It's just—families. You never know who's telling the truth. We should talk.”

“Ceepak and I are heading back to Sea Haven tomorrow afternoon.”

“How about breakfast?”

“Do you know a good buffet?”

Katie grinned. “Down the Boardwalk. At Bally's. All you can eat for fifteen dollars. Omelets made to order. Six kinds of sausage.”

“Great. I won't wear a belt.”

“How's nine?” she asked. “I have to take care of the kids' breakfast first.”

“Katie?” the girl screamed. “Richie drank scum water!”

“Did not!”

Katie sighed.

I reached out, touched her arm. “Nine will be fine.”

“Great. Gotta go.” She dashed over to make sure the kids didn't take a bath in the fountain.

If I had known “nine will be fine” would be the last thing I ever said to Katie Landry, I probably wouldn't have rhymed it like that.

 

 

 

 

 

I stood
in the hotel lobby staring at the poster of the cocky cowboy illusionist and all I could think of was this new Springsteen song called “Magic”:

 

I got a shiny saw blade

All I needs' a volunteer

I'll cut you in half

While you're smiling ear to ear

 

Creepy.

Plus, Richard Rock didn't look like any magician I'd ever seen. For one thing, he was blond, even blonder than his kids. Magicians are usually dark and brooding. He was also all “aw, shucks” and “howdy” looking—not mysterious or menacing. His smile was more like a smug cowboy smirk coupled with a wide-open-spaces squint of the eyes. All in all, Richard Rock looked
like a local TV weatherman from Wyoming, maybe Montana—one of the rectangle states—who thought he was the hottest thing in town. Either that or president of the I Felta Thigh fraternity up at Rutgers.

“Danny?” Ceepak had come into the hotel while I was staring at the poster. “I didn't know you were interested in magic.”

“I'm not. Katie's here. Working for this Richard Rock guy.”

“Katie Landry?”

“Yeah.”

“Fascinating.”

Ceepak, of course, knew Katie. He's the one who made sure she made it to the hospital that Labor Day weekend we'd all rather forget.

“Is Katie one of the magician's assistants?”

I shook my head. “Nanny for his kids.”

“Good for her. I'm quite familiar with Richard Rock,” said Ceepak. “Puts on a very wholesome, family-friendly show. His wife is his costar.”

I wasn't surprised Ceepak knew more about Richard Rock than I ever cared to. My partner's interests are many, varied, and—sometimes—decidedly weird.

“You've seen his act?” I asked.

“Roger that. His Vegas TV special came on the Discovery Channel one night after
Forensic Files.
Rita and I enjoyed it immensely. Especially when he moved Mount McKinley from Alaska to the parking lot of the MGM Grand Hotel.”

“How'd he do that?”

“Very convincingly. Do we have our room?”

“Yeah.” I handed him a plastic card key. We were sharing a standard room. Two beds. If I got lucky with a showgirl, I could hang a tie on the doorknob to alert him. Only, I didn't pack a tie.

Ceepak, however, was wearing one. In fact, he was the only
person in the whole lobby not pushing a luggage cart or tapping computer keys who had actually dressed up to come to the Xanadu: natty blue blazer, Brooks Brothers white shirt, sensibly striped tie, and khaki dress pants with a crease so sharp it could thin-slice cheese at a deli. Ceepak thought this Atlantic City casino would be like the ones he'd seen in James Bond movies. Swanky. Sophisticated. Everybody in tuxedos and evening gowns sipping martinis.

Instead, we've got folks decked out in whatever leisure wear has the waistband that currently fits. Most of the people walking across the sea of red-and-gold carpet looked like plus-size models from the Slobs “R” Us catalog. Baggy sweatpants, sleeveless T-shirts, cargo shorts, mismatched plaids, horizontal stripes—nothing tucked in.

I looked like I belonged.

“Katie can get us tickets to the show,” I said.

“Awesome. I wish I had brought Rita along.”

“You want to call her?” Sea Haven was only about an hour north of Atlantic City.

Ceepak shook his head. “Negative. School night.”

Right. His adopted son, T. J. Lapscynski-Ceepak (poor kid, his last name sounded like a disease), is a senior at Sea Haven High this fall. Tomorrow's Tuesday. Mom and Dad can't both be down in Atlantic City gambling away his college fund—not when there's trigonometry homework to be done.

Ceepak checked his wristwatch.

“What time is the next performance?”

“Twenty-hundred hours.” I used the military-clock lingo to make it easier on Ceepak.

He kept staring at his wrist, doing the math. “That'll work. We're scheduled to meet with Mr. Burdick in the Starbucks downstairs at fifteen-thirty.”

I nodded because, finally, after all this time with Ceepak, I could do the military-to-real-world clock conversions in my head: We were meeting Burdick at 3:30
PM.

“The stenographer will arrive at sixteen-hundred hours.”

Four.

“We should have ample time to take his deposition and rendezvous with Miss Landry.”

“I told Katie I'd do breakfast with her tomorrow at nine.”

“That should not pose a problem. I have the court reporter on deck for eleven, should we or the prosecuting attorney have follow-up questions.”

“Burdick's cool with sticking around town till we're all done?”

“Roger that. Apparently, Mr. Burdick is not very fond of my father.”

I could relate. I met the guy once. Joe “Six-pack” Ceepak has that effect on people.

“Perhaps,” said Ceepak, “Mr. Burdick would enjoy seeing the show with us.”

“He might. There's a two-drink minimum.”

“One can always order orange juice or seltzer, Danny.”

Yeah. Seven bucks for bubble water. Viva Las Vegas.

“It's fifteen-ten now. Official check-in time was posted as three
PM
.” Ceepak always knows all the rules. “Shall we take our bags up to the room?” he suggested.

“Sure.”

We both packed pretty light for our overnight trip. I tossed together a gym bag with clean underwear, socks, and a shaving kit. I had planned on buying a fresh T-shirt for the bus ride home. Something like
I Got Lucky in AC.

“What floor are we on?” Ceepak asked.

“Ten,” I said. “The elevators are way over there.”

To get to our elevator bank, we needed to hike five miles across a minefield of slot machines.

By the way—you don't have to yank down on a handle to send the cherries spinning anymore. You just sit on a stool and bop a button. The new-style machines don't pay out coins, either. They issue “credits” on a slip of paper. It's a lot like getting a gift receipt at Wal-Mart. If you miss the sound of tumbling quarters when you hit the jackpot, not to worry—hidden speakers simulate the plink and clink of cascading coins in full stereo surround sound.

“Danny?” Ceepak head-gestured up a lane between two rows of nickel-slot machines sporting a Cleopatra theme. These bad girls had five spinning reels, instead of the more traditional three, and about twenty different lines zigging and zagging across the pictograms of pythons and sphinxes and alligators and Nile river fruit that must've meant something to the cranky Italian grandmothers feeding the machines their debit cards.

“Third machine on the left,” Ceepak muttered. He saw something. Something besides flashing lights and twirling hieroglyphics. He gave me a slight head bob so I'd see it, too.

Young dude. Pretending to pick up something off the floor very close to a stool where a white-haired lady—who looked a lot like George Washington on a day when his wooden teeth were giving him splinters—sat, eyes fixated on her spinning blurs and flashing lines.

“Purse,” Ceepak whispered.

I nodded.

“Accomplice.” He tilted his head slightly to the right.

Across from the guy rummaging around on the floor, another guy was opening up a gym bag. I figured the guy working the “oops, I dropped my nickel” scam on the carpet was supposed to snag the handbag, then toss it off to his accomplice, who'd stash it in his Adidas tote and hightail it out of the casino.

“Cover me,” Ceepak said as he stepped forward.

Unfortunately, we didn't bring our sidearms with us on the bus
so I knew any covering I did would have to involve fisticuffs, wrestling, or martial arts—three things I really should spend some time learning about some day.

Ceepak waited. Until the doofus on the floor made his move and grabbed hold of the shoulder straps to the lady's handbag.

“Freeze!” he shouted—almost loud enough to be heard over Georgette Washington's whoo-hoo-hooing when her lines hit a magical configuration and Cleopatra made with the
clink-plink-clink
sound effects.

“Let it go!” Ceepak demanded. Usually, when he demands like that, people listen: Ceepak's six-two, a mountain of muscle. And the military-issue haircut makes him look even stronger.

The guy on the floor, however, did not listen.

“Yo, Tony!” he yelled.

His buddy with the gym bag went for an empty stool, grabbed hold of two legs, and swung it sideways at Ceepak's head.

“Ceepak!” I shouted—half a second after Ceepak had already sensed the incoming furniture and ducked. Stool man missed by a mile. Looked like one of the Mets chasing after a clever curveball.

Now the guy on the floor popped up, ready to make a run for it.

A run right through me.

“Don't even think about it!” I yelled at him, assuming this kung fu pose I remembered seeing in
The Karate Kid.

He didn't listen.

He thought.

He ran.

I closed my eyes, lunged forward, and crashed headfirst into his rib cage. We hit the deck and rolled around on the rug, which smelled a lot like spilled beer mixed with crushed popcorn and old shoes.

“Hey! Watch it!” yelled one of the blue-haired ladies perched on a stool above us trying to gamble in peace.

“Sorry,” I said right before I flipped my guy off, rolled him over, and pinned him facedown to the floor so he could contemplate the carpet while I slapped on the cuffs—which, I remembered, I also did not pack for this trip.

In one final attempt to arch me off his back, my prisoner grunted, rocked up, and kicked out both legs. One of those legs collided with a cocktail waitress who had picked the absolutely wrong time to swing around the corner with a trayful of cocktails and beers. We got a booze bath. He finally stopped struggling.