Mind Scrambler (32 page)

The Great Mandini steps into the glow of fluorescent light illuminating the candy stall's steel counter.

“Might I have a word with you, Officers?” he calls out.

“Not right now,” says Ceepak. He's focused on Lucky Lilani's Stress Therapy. A customer comes out the door looking the same way guys do when they try to slink undetected out of an adults only DVD store on Route Nine.

“We're kind of busy,” I holler over to the street magician.

He bows gracefully. “I will wait, gentlemen. Semper Fi.”

We head for Lucky Lilani's. That green neon still sputters in the window:
24 HRS OPEN.

“Danny?”

“Sir?”

“I'm heading for the back rooms. If necessary, counteract any interference up front.”

“Right.”

Usually, Ceepak is in charge of the counteracting interference department. Tonight, he's a man on a mission and needs me to cover his back. This is when you really wish you packed your pistol.

Ceepak uses both hands to shove the front door. It flies open with a bang that nearly rips down the tasseled pagoda bells hanging off the hydraulic hinge.

“Hello!” tweets the woman behind the cash register. She stands underneath the only weak-wattage lightbulb in the place that isn't red or blue. “Welcome to Lucky Lilani!” Tweetie at the counter wears a tight silk minidress that shimmers and ripples like swells on the ocean.

It's dark in here. Smells like yesterday's fish mixed with baby oil and patchouli candles. Ceepak keeps marching toward the velvet curtains in the rear.

“Hey, mister! Where you go?”

She reaches under the counter.

“Don't,” I say.

“He no go back there!”

“Don't!” This time I raise both arms to indicate that she shouldn't do what I know she's thinking about doing. She's definitely got a bat under the counter. Aluminum, no doubt. The kind that makes your skull ring.

“He no go back there!”

Ceepak pushes through the curtains.

Down ducks Tweetie. Up comes the bat.

“We're with the police,” I yell. I reach for my back pocket to find that damn deputy badge. I shove it forward. “We're with the police!”

She swings for the tin star.

I pull back before the bat whacks my hand and sends it over the left field fence.

She whiffs. Misses by a mile.

I make my move, jump in and grab hold of her arm while the momentum of the swing pulls her into a lopsided follow-through.

“Police!” I'm screaming this in her ear. “ACPD!”

“He no go—”

“Police!” I squeeze her left wrist hard. She hisses and cat-paws at me with her right, because I forgot to grab hold of that wrist, too. You know those curved nail extension deals? They're like bear claws when they scrape down your cheek. The pain gets my adrenaline pumping and gives me nearly Ceepakian strength, making it possible for me to do that yank-up-and-twist-down move I saw him execute on Krabitz earlier.

“Fuck you, mister!” the petite Asian princess screams before the pain in her popping arm socket cuts her off. The baseball bat clinks to the floor.

I grab it and cock it up over my shoulder like a caveman.

“Stay back,” I snarl, letting her know I intend to swing at the first pitch she sends my way. “Put your hands on top of your head! Now! Do it!”

She does.

“Danny?” This from Ceepak somewhere behind those curtains. “Bar the door. I'm calling this in.”

Armed with the softball bat, I back toward the entrance. Block the only exit. The guys who had been sprawled out on the rub-down tables before I screamed “Police!” are now sitting up, their
eyes wide. Panic is written all over their faces. I wonder if any of them are governors from New York.

The drapes ruffle open and Ceepak steps out of the back room, his hand gripped tightly to the elbow of a middle-aged man who needs to zip up his fly. The guy—whose hangdog face could be on the cover of
Guilty
magazine next month—is using his free arm to clutch at the gap in his unbuttoned Sansabelt slacks.

The young boy we saw yesterday comes out behind Ceepak.

He looks even more ashamed than the dirty old man.

 

 

An ACPD patrol car, lights flashing, cruises up the boardwalk. Two cops go inside to process everybody.

Ceepak is curling up his copy of the “Rock 'n Wow!” playbill into a tube again. He tucks it back into a side pocket on his cargo khakis.

“I showed the young boy Richard Rock's photograph.”

“And?”

“He started crying. He subsequently lowered his trousers and showed me the welts and bruises on his buttocks.”

I feel another boiled-dumpling-sized lump rise up in my throat. It's not enough that Richard Rock preys on young boys. He has to rough them up, too?

“Officers?” The Great Mandini hurries across the boardwalk.

“Yes?” says Ceepak.

“Tell me, are you gentlemen currently seeking the whereabouts of Mr. Richard Rock or are you otherwise engaged?”

He's got Ceepak's attention. Mine, too.

“Do you know where we might find him?”

“Indeed. You see, I was closing up shop on the boardwalk when I saw Mr. Rock and his son come storming out of the Xanadu. I thought it rather peculiar that the young boy was going out at this
late hour. Therefore, I secured my rabbit in his carrier and followed after them.”

“Where did they go?”

“First stop was that snack bar across the way.” He points to where we saw him ten minutes ago. “Mr. Rock does not know who I am. Therefore, I was able to get quite close to them. He was attempting to bribe the boy with sweets. Snow cone. Caramel corn. Candy apple. Anything little Richie wanted. But the boy kept shaking his head. He didn't want any of it. In fact, he seemed sad. Scared. When the boy continued to refuse his entreaties, Mr. Rock grew angered. Snatched the boy's arm, tugged it hard. ‘Did you bring your swimsuit like I told you, Richie?' I heard him say.”

“And?”

“The boy said the bathing suit was in his backpack. Mr. Rock pulled his son away and they headed up the boardwalk. I was going to follow, but I saw you two gentlemen approaching at a rather rapid clip and, therefore, I decided it might be more prudent to remain here so I might relate what I had observed.”

But we didn't have time to listen. Now Richard Rock and his son have at least a five- or ten-minute head start on us.

“Where did they go?” Ceepak asks, his voice urgent.

Mandini points up the boardwalk. “Toward Trump's Taj Mahal. I heard Mr. Rock say it was time for a midnight swim.”

 

 

 

 

 

“He's going
to slay his son,” says Ceepak matter-of-factly.

“What? Why?”

“I'm assuming little Richie found what his father has been searching for.”

Oh, shit.

“He'll make it look like a drowning.” Ceepak does a three-finger hand chop to the east. “Be on the alert for any indication as to where they left the boardwalk and accessed the beach.”

Ceepak is scanning the horizon. Checking out all the ramps down to the sand, the alleys between buildings, the railings. I'm eyeballing the rolled-out beach fencing down in the sand, looking for breaks in it. We're approaching the Taj on the left, Atlantic City's famous Steel Pier on the right.

“He is hoping to create another illusion, Danny,” says Ceepak while still scrutinizing every inch of the boardwalk to his right.
“Mr. Rock obviously understands that homicidal drowning is almost impossible to prove by an autopsy and, therefore, most drownings are eventually ruled to be accidental—especially those involving a young boy who sneaks out for a swim in the middle of the night in dangerous waters subject to riptides.”

The bathing suit. That's why Mr. Rock made certain his son brought one along when they went out for candy apples. It will be another costume intended to make us jump to another conclusion for yet another death by suffocation. Just like Katie Landry's death scene, with her dressed up in an S and M leather outfit, was intended to make us see “kinky sex gone bad.” Little Richie, found floating facedown in his Speedo somewhere out in the Atlantic, would force us to conclude he was a bad boy who snuck out of his hotel room for a swim when and where he shouldn't have.

“There!” says Ceepak. He points to some bent-over slats and twisted wire in a run of the beach fencing.

We vault over the guardrail, leave the boardwalk for the sand six feet below.

“Footprints,” Ceepak whispers.

I see them. Two pairs of feet leading from the boardwalk down to that gap in the fence.

One set of prints is deeper than the other, which, turns into two long trenches tearing through the sand.

Probably Richie, not wanting to go where his father was trying to take him, literally digging in his heels, plowing double furrows with his shoes. On the other side of the bowed fence, I see a big divot—like a stubborn kid's butt might make if his father had to toss him over the fencing because he refused to climb it.

“Richie is offering resistance,” says Ceepak softly.

This is good. The kid's buying us some time, maybe enough to make up for that head start they got while we ignored the Great Mandini and busted the massage parlor.

The footprints lead toward the darkness underneath the Steel Pier. The rides up top are all shut down for the night. No flashing lights. No screaming maniacs. The amusement park jutting out into the ocean is a skeletal silhouette of Ferris wheel ribs and the rickety scaffolding propping up roller-coaster tracks.

Ceepak taps my shoulder. Indicates that we should move forward, into the darkness and the very symmetrical array of support columns lined up like cement soldiers underneath the pier. There have to be about a hundred pilings, each one the size of a giant oak tree, straddling the width and breadth of the pier. I count five support pillars across each row, which start at the boardwalk, step out onto the beach, then march eleven hundred feet, almost a quarter mile, down the sand and out into the ocean.

We slip into the shadows, crouching low as we go.

Up ahead, I hear waves crashing against the shore, slapping in a relentless rhythm against the concrete pilings.

Now I hear a different kind of slap. And a scream.

Ceepak hears it, too.

We hunker down, move toward the source of the sound.

Ceepak does a series of hand gestures, up and down, sideways.

I'm supposed to head left. He'll swing right. We'll surround Rock. Take him down.

We move out, keeping low.

The enormous pillars provide excellent cover.

“Walk into the water!” I hear Richard Rock shout over the breaking surf.

“No, Daddy. It's too cold.”

Another wet slap.

“Okay!” Richie is crying. “Don't hit me anymore!”

“Where the hell is it?” Rock sounds furious. I still can't see them. I glance to the right. Ceepak is three columns down, parallel to my position. He's hearing this horror show, too. I move faster.

“Where is it? Tell me, Richie.”

“Nanny Katie hid it!”

“And what happened to Nanny Katie?”

“She got killed.”

“That's right. She got killed because she snooped around in other people's business. I knew she would. Goody-goody kindergarten teacher.”

I hear Richie's warbled cries. His father is shaking him.

“Don't make me hurt you, Richie. Where is it?”

“Stop, Daddy!”

“Are you a crybaby?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Then stop crying! You told me you had it. That was good. You're a good boy. Where did you put it? Where is it now? Where the fucking hell did you fucking—”

“It's in my bag! It's in my bag!”

“The tiger?”

“Yes! My backpack! It's in my backpack! Nanny Katie put it there, not me!”

I see them. Shadows. Twenty feet ahead. Near the middle piling.

I also see why Richie is all of a sudden spilling his guts.

His father has a knife. The blade is long, maybe a foot. Its sharp edge glints in the moonlight.

The boy shivers and cringes against one of the posts as Rock drops to his knees and roots through the backpack, tossing out books and toys and stuff he isn't interested in.

He finds what he's looking for.

It was a notebook. One of those marble-covered Mead composition jobs.

Rock stands, marches over to where his son quakes in fear. He taps the hardboard cover against his thigh.

“Did you read any of this, Richie?”

“No, sir.”

“Richie?”

“I didn't read it.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

“A little.”

Waves crash. Richie sniffles. I inch closer.

“A little?” says Rock.

“Yes, sir. About Jake. When he was a boy. How you liked him. How you liked him a whole lot. The other boys, too.”

Rock sniggers. “Of course I liked Jake Pratt and the other boys. They didn't snoop around in my private things, did they?”

“No, sir.”

“Those boys weren't like you and Nanny Katie. We were on to her, see? Me and Jake. We knew she was nosin' around where she shouldn't ought to be because we knew she'd been talking to Jake's momma, listening to
her
lies. We had to get rid of Nanny Katie before she tried to get rid of me. There's no show without me, Richie. No show.”

Richie just sniffles.

“Richie, you disappoint me. You really do. Stealing my special notebook? Shame on you, son.”

“Britney made me. Honest! Your footlocker was open. We were playing pirates and she said it was our treasure chest.”

Rock leans closer. Jabs his son in the ribs with the hard edge of the composition book.

“You went into my room?”