“Is there some problem?” Ceepak is up and focusing fast.
“Yeah.” The dad catches his breath, props his hands on his hips. His heaving chest looks like a curly shag carpet. So do his arms. He could comb the tops of his shoulders. “Thief,” he pants. “Robber. Girl.”
“She tried to steal my wallet!” his son squeaks.
“Tell us what happened,” says Ceepak.
“Tell them, Max.”
“Okay. I was like on my boogie board and all, and when I came out of the water I saw this girl in a bikini and she was like looking inside our beach bags and so I like yelled at her and my dad, that's him, he came running up as fast as he could from the ocean and we both kind of like scared her away and stuff.”
“I almost nabbed her,” says the father. “Had my hand wrapped around her wrist but she slipped away. I'd been down in the surf, putting sunblock on my wife's back … “
Ceepak nods.
“ … so my hand was kind of greasy.”
“Did she take anything?”
“No,” says the boy. “She almost got my new wallet but Dad stopped her.”
“Can you describe this girl?”
“She had orange hair,” says the boy. “And….” He stops. Looks at his dad.
Ceepak sinks down on his haunches so he can look the boy in the eye.
“And what?” he asks gently.
The boy's eyes cut up to his father.
“Go ahead, Max. Tell him.”
Max still hesitates. “She had big boobs,” he finally says.
Ceepak nods. I try not to smile.
“I saw something else,” says the father.
Wow. Wonder how he managed that?
“What was it, sir?” asks Ceepak.
“She had this thing stamped on her hand. You know, like they do at Six Flags so you can get back in after you exit?”
“Yes, sir. What did this stamp look like?”
“It was a sun. An orange, smiling sun.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ceepak reaches for our radio, which had been enjoying the shade underneath my folding chair.
“The Life Under the Son Ministry,” he says.
“The guys who run that booth on the boardwalk?”
“Roger that. They also operate a soup kitchen of sorts in the motel nearby.”
“The motel lets them do that?”
“The ministry owns the building. Has its offices inside. Rita volunteers there some mornings when she isn't busy at the bank. They serve a hot breakfast to anybody who walks in hungry, no questions asked. However, to gain access to the chow line, you need to have your hand stamped.”
“With a bright orange sun.”
Ceepak nods. “I'm going to radio in a request for the chief to relieve us, assign another team to this location.”
“So we can head over to the boardwalk and check it out.”
“10-4.”
• • •
Billy Trumble, the evangelist guy who does the early morning preach-a-thon Sundays on WAVY radio, also runs the Life Under the Son Ministry.
Their booth up on the boardwalk is staffed by born-again Christian kids who sit inside and reach out to all the young sinners happily strutting through life in string bikinis and Speedos. They'll tell you about the hell that awaits those who fornicate outside the sanctity of marriage- and they don't just mean the hell of having to wake up with each other after the beer goggles wear off. They'll even try to convince you not to gamble at the boardwalk arcades, to avoid the Wheel of Chance, which, if we're honest, is just another spin on roulette, and even the humble Whack-A-Mole, this game where you bop furry little critters on the head with a mallet while more moles pop up in the holes you're not whacking.
It's very hard to win at Whack-A-Mole. Even attempting to do so, the Life Under the Son Ministry will advise you, is the first step down a slippery slope that leads directly to losing your shirt and pants and the family farm at Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Next stop after that? Hellfire and damnation.
It's a tough sell.
But they do, apparently, serve a hot breakfast to anybody who walks in hungry.
The chief approves Ceepak's plan, freeing us to head up the island to The Sonny Days Inn, the motel that doubles as worldwide headquarters for Reverend Trumble's ministry and outreach programs. I think it used to be a Days Inn. They only had to paint two extra words on all the signs to make the switch.
A young girl comes out of the office to greet us. She's probably seventeen, with a bright open smile and a gray T-shirt that says CHASTITY IS REAL LOVE. The “o” in Love is a heart.
I see other girls up on the second-floor balcony, leaning against the railing, wondering why a police car just pulled into their seaside sanctuary. Some of them stand next to vacuum cleaners. Others hold armloads of linen. They must be the Lord's handmaidens doing double duty as chambermaids.
“Good afternoon, Officers,” says the official greeter. “How can I help you?”
“We're investigating a minor incident on the beach,” says Ceepak.
“Oh, dear. An incident?”
“Minor, ma'am. We'd like to talk to Reverend Trumble.”
Her face blossoms into a beautiful ball of tranquility. “Of course.” She leads us toward the motel office. “Would you gentlemen care for some lemonade while you wait?”
“Lemonade would be wonderful,” says Ceepak.
“I'll tell Reverend Billy you're here,” she says.
“Thank you, ma'am.”
As she walks away, I check out the sky. It's gone greenish gray. The thunderheads bubbling up over the ocean all day long look like they're finally ready to unload a torrent of rain-or hailstones.
In a few moments, our personal handmaiden comes back. We follow her through the small lobby, past the front desk, and into the Reverend's office. After she leaves, a different girl soon appears with two frosty glasses of lemonade and a plate of sugar cookies. She's a blonde. Maybe seventeen, too. Looks wholesome, like she grew up in Nebraska.
Ceepak takes his lemonade. “Thank you … I'm sorry, I don't know your name.”
“I'm Rachel.”
“I'm John. This is Daniel.”
I can't believe Ceepak just called me that. Daniel's what my mother used to call me-but only when she was real mad.
“Thank you for the refreshments, Rachel.”
She leaves. Ceepak puts down his glass and drifts behind the small desk to study the framed photographs hanging on the paneled walls.
“Interesting,” he says.
The pictures all have that hazy, washed-out look of snapshots that have been sitting in the sun too long.
“These photographs were taken during a baptism on the beach,” says Ceepak. “Out in the ocean.”
“These, too.” I point to a frame holding six pictures: 5-by-7s laid out comic-strip style, telling a story from