farewell to the sausage-andpepper sandwich I know I won't be eating any time soon.
Suddenly, I see her. Strolling up the boardwalk near The Frog Bog.
The redheaded girl.
The one with the green hair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Stacey still looks as sexy as I remember.
She has on a new bikini top. I can see the red-and-white sunburn lines from the other bathing suit, the one she was wearing Sunday. Today's is even skimpier.
Now she turns and bends. Her tiny Catholic schoolgirl miniskirt rides up high on her thighs and reveals a bikini bottom that looks more like a pair of white panties.
I watch her fingers dip into the back pocket of the guy in front of her at The Frog Bog, who's paying no attention to what's happening behind him. He's too busy smacking his mallet down on a tiny seesaw to send a rubber frog flopping up into the air, aiming to land it on a floating lily pad too small to actually hold the fake amphibian.
“Ceepak!” I yell. “Girl.” I point. “Girl!”
Ceepak's momentarily confused, trying to figure out what the hell I'm yelling about.
“Redhead! Boardwalk. Green hair!”
He pivots. Sees her. Makes the connection. He rips the Motorola mike off his shoulder.
“This is Ceepak. Request all available backup. Boardwalk area near Sonny Days Inn.”
“The Frog Bog!” I try to help out.
“Frog Bog. We have made visual contact with target. Repeat. We have spotted the girl from the photograph.”
Ceepak has good breath support. He's able to say all that stuff while we run across Reverend Billy's parking lot. A chest-high chain-link fence is fast approaching. It separates the motel property from the boardwalk. I figure we'll be scaling it soon.
“Girl is approximately 5'5',” Ceepak continues. “She is wearing a white bikini top, short plaid skirt, yellow sandals. Her hair is green. Repeat. Hair is currently dyed green.”
We reach the fence.
Ceepak braces the top bar, swings his legs sideways, does an Olympic-style vault, and flies over. I need to jam my toes into the chain gaps and climb it like a ladder. When I reach the top, I sort of haul myself up and over in stages. The fence shakes, rattles, and pings.
The girl hears the metallic racket. She turns. Sees us.
She kicks off her flip-flops and runs.
Man, she's fast. Like one of those Olympic sprinters who train up in the mountains of Kenya. Her bare feet barely touch the boardwalk. At least she won't have to worry about splinters.
We take off after her.
She has a head start and a better idea of where she might be going.
Up ahead, I see Water Blast, Lord of the Rings Toss, Peach Bucket Ball, and Crabby's Race Track, where you squirt a water pistol at a target to make your crab race up this track against everybody else's crab-and if you win, you get a stuffed Nemo.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?” I huff. He runs every day. Five miles. The only exercise I get is playing beer pong.
“Swing right,” he says. “I'll swing left.”
We're in a stretch of the boardwalk that's like a mall-booths and shops lined up on both sides.
“If we run behind the stalls, she may think she lost us.”
“Got it.”
“Reconnoiter at the Whack-A-Mole.” He does one of his three-finger hand chops toward the horizon. About a block ahead, I see a gap in the booths-an open square at the next street entrance to the boardwalk. I also see the blinking chaser lights screaming WHACK-AMOLE in yellow, green, and red.
“We'll surround her.”
“Got it.”
“Go!”
We split up.
He scoots through an alley alongside a zeppole kiosk. I dash down this narrow strip between Splash Down and Looney Ladders.
Behind me I hear a grunt and thud.
I stop, check over my shoulder.
Ceepak's on his butt.
“You okay?”
“Slipped,” he says, hoisting himself back up.
Guess that's where the zeppole folks change their fry grease once a month.
“Go, Danny!”
I don't answer. I just run.
I turn right and I'm behind all the booths, zooming along this tight little path as fast as I can. I have to leap over a tall stack of cardboard boxes. Then I almost trip on a tangle of air hoses and electrical cords behind the Balloon Pop. But the clearing, the opening onto Whack-A-Mole Square, the rendezvous point, is just up ahead. I can hear bells ringing. Kids squealing. Fuzzy hammers hitting furry heads.
I make the right. Race into the square. Ceepak is already standing there.
He's looking left, looking right. Looking like we lost her.
I meet him in the middle. Kids licking lollipops the size of steering wheels surround us. I see tattooed slackers lugging gigantic plush toys they wish they hadn't just won for their girlfriends because now they have to haul them up and down the boardwalk all night long. The sun is sinking lower so half the booths, the ones to my west, are in deep shadows. The kind of shadows that make good hiding places.
“Do you see her, Danny?”
“No.”
I crane my neck. I see this other girl, about nine. She is whacking the bejesus out of the moles that keep popping up in the five holes in front of her. The digital counter clicks over every time she whacks a mole back into its hole. She grips her hammer with both fists. The hammer head is huge, resembling a forty-eight-ounce can of stewed tomatoes wrapped with grey foam. Lights flash. Whistles whoop. Little Miss Mallet is very close to going home with a stuffed gopher.
But she isn't our girl.
“We've lost her,” says Ceepak, his eyes sweeping the scene.
“Yeah. But she couldn't have gone far.”
“Roger that. Where are we, Danny?”
Ceepak knows of my misspent youth. He knows I know this boardwalk better than Bruno Mazzilli, the guy who owns most of it.
“About a quarter mile down,” I say and point at the ramp to our west, sweeping down to Beach Lane. “This is the Dolphin Street entrance.”
Ceepak nods, works his handy-talkie.
“This is Ceepak. The target has fled. She was last seen in the vicinity of the Dolphin Street entrance to the boardwalk.”
While Ceepak calls it in, I check out the game booth directly in front of us.
There's an Asian-looking dude behind the counter, a clothesline of yellow Tweety Birds strung up over his head. The booth is called Machine Gun Fun. Behind the guy is a row of targets. Sort of like the ones they have at the police academy shooting range, only the targets here look more like the mobsters on
