“Have you set your recording levels?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind muting Mr. Braciole until our suspect arrives?”
“Officer, it would be my pleasure.”
She flips a switch and cuts The Thing off in mid F-bomb.
Ceepak checks his watch again. Reaches for the walkie-talkie hidden under the tails of his untucked Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, which I think he raced out and bought special for tonight’s undercover drug bust operation. No way he wears green and yellow hibiscus-covered tops on a regular basis.
“Reed? Malloy? This is Ceepak. Radio check.”
“Standing by,” says Reed.
“Locked and loaded,” says Malloy, who watches way too many cop shows on TV.
I’m assuming Reed and Malloy are commanding our two backup vehicles.
“Where are they?” I ask.
Ceepak gestures right, then left. We have the parking-lot exits covered.
Ceepak’s eyes narrow. “Now we just wait.”
I nod. It’s deathly quiet in my Jeep.
“Sorry I was late,” I finally say.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“We both need to focus on the task at hand.”
“Right.”
“Avoid distractions.”
“Gotcha.”
“I know you recently lost a girlfriend.…”
“Katie really wasn’t my girlfriend anymore.”
“You recently broke up with Ms. Starkey.”
“Actually, she kind of broke up with me first.”
Ceepak sighs. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“‘Nothing we can say can change anything now.’”
Oh. Great. He’s quoting Springsteen at me. Lyrics from “Independence Day.” We used to swap Springsteen’s words to fill in the gaps when we didn’t know how to express what we were feeling, which, come to think of it, maybe Ceepak’s doing now, because he feels I’ve been letting down the team because I’ve been a bit distracted by the lovely Layla.
Which would be correct.
“You’re right,” I say.
“What are you two talking about?” This from Ms. Wood in the back seat.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that, maybe, I’ve been blinded by the light.”
“What?” Ms. Wood, it seems, doesn’t know from Springsteen.
So I keep mangling lyrics: “Some fleshpot mascot may have tied me into a lover’s knot with a whatnot in her hand.”
Ceepak grins.
“What?”
“It’s all good, Ms. Wood,” says Ceepak. And then, unexpectedly, he reaches over and gives me a man-sized pat on my knee, the way your dad would when you finally admitted you’d made a huge mistake and promised not to be so stupid in the future.
The police radio crackles again. “Yo? Ceepak?”
It’s Gus Davis from inside the restaurant. When he worked the desk at the SHPD, everybody called him Grumpy Gus. Retirement, it seems, has not mellowed him. With just two words, I can tell: Gus still has his grouch on.
Ceepak brings the radio mic up to his mouth. “This is Ceepak. Go.”
“Yeah, these freaking TV people-they’re putting plastic sheets all over the floor. They’re loosening the tops on all the saltshakers. They’ve got one of those cardboard bins from the supermarket filled with freaking watermelons.”
“Gus?”
“Yeah?”
“Has anyone broken the law?”
“No. Not yet, anyways. But I gotta tell you: something doesn’t smell right about this setup in here.”
“Stand by, Gus,” says Ceepak. “Hold down the fort. We have company.”
He nods his head at a guy cruising into the parking lot on a rumbling Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
A guy wearing an Army-surplus Boonie hat.
His chopper scoots between a couple cars, heads straight for the lamp pole where Paulie Braciole, hands stuffed into his baggy shorts, stands waiting.
“You guys want wedding mints?” Gus suddenly asks over the walkie. “Smitten and me both snagged a pocketful from the bowl up front. They got jelly in the middle. Mint jelly, like with lamb.”
“Sure, Gus,” says Ceepak, distractedly. His eyes are glued on Skeletor as the drug dealer dismounts. “We’ll be inside, ASAP.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Roger, wilco.”
Ceepak buries the radio under his flowered shirttails.
“He is once again wearing the Boonie hat,” Ceepak mumbles, totally focused on his prey. “No helmet.”
And Skeletor definitely needs one. His emaciated head looks as brittle as an empty eggshell. The guy is maybe six-six, all jangling bones and knobby joints. He looks like a cadaver who just slinked out of his tomb.
I stare at his hat-a floppy, stiff-brimmed, camouflaged number that a lot of vets still wore after they came home from the jungles of Vietnam.
Believe it or not, I recognize it.
Two summers ago, we were patrolling the boardwalk, looking for a paintball prankster who had been splotching up billboards and people all over town. This creepy guy came up to us while we were conducting an interview. Super skinny. Dressed in chocolate-chip camo shorts, a matching T-shirt, and a Boonie hat. Challenged Ceepak to a shooting match. Called him an Army asshole when Ceepak refused.
Back then, I called him Bones.
But it was Skeletor.
And he’s been more or less challenging us ever since.
8
“Ms. Wood?” says Ceepak. “audio?”
“Roger that.” She learns quickly.
