I pull into the driveway at 136 Red Snapper.
Up at the house, the front door swings open.
Officer Kenneth McAlister of the SHPD comes out, shaking his head.
Ceepak is up and out of our vehicle.
“What’s the situation, Ken?”
“This Mandy?” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder. “Now she says the dead guy stole her car.”
17
“He stole my fucking mustang!”
This from Mandy Keenan, who, it turns out, is a real charmer-if, you know, you’re charmed by women who wear T-shirts that say “Feel Safe At Night: Sleep With A Jersey Girl.”
We’re inside Mandy’s living room. Or maybe it’s her trash compactor. Empty rum jugs litter the floor, mingling with assorted thongs, beach wraps, flip-flops, boogie boards, skirts, shorts, and socks, not to mention all sorts of magazines promising “20 Top Sex Secrets,” Cheetos bags, pizza boxes, Pringles cans, Tastykake wrappers, and maybe six dozen empty Starbucks Frappuccino cups with petrified foam bubbles caking their innards. When you walk across the green-gold-orange shag carpet, hidden crumbs crunch beneath your feet.
Mandy, whose parents must’ve really loved that old Barry Manilow song, sits in a cabana-striped chair. I think it’s supposed to be a piece of outdoor patio furniture. She’s blonde and built. If she’s ever a murder victim, she’ll be easy to I.D. Breast implants have serial numbers. I can tell she has slapped on her white lip-gloss and matching white eye shadow (with glitter) in anticipation of our arrival.
Ms. Keenan’s car, we learn, had been parked around the block, up on Prawn Street, because “My fucking roommates and the assholes that rent upstairs took all the fucking parking spaces on the fucking lawn.”
Yes, reality TV has infected real reality. Everybody thinks they need to sound like the hard-partying smut- mouths on prime time TV.
“I told Paulie he could borrow it, but he had to bring it back by noon on account of that’s when I wake up. Plus, they’re having this big sale at the Target on the mainland and I wanted to buy one of those George Foreman grills, because if Paulie and I are gonna have like paparazzi taking our pictures all over the place, I gotta keep off the poundage.”
Ceepak turns to Officer Kenneth McAlister.
“Have you advised Ms. Keenan as to why we are here?”
McAlister shakes his head.
Great. Ceepak gets to do the honors.
“Ms. Keenan?”
She bats her eyes. Girls do that a lot when John Ceepak and his muscles are in the room.
“Please-call me Mandy.”
Ceepak nods. He’ll try. “Mandy, I take it you have not heard the news?”
“Not really. I mostly listen to W-A-V-Y. It’s classic rock.”
“Paul Braciole is dead.”
“What?”
“He was murdered last night.”
“Get! Out!”
“It’s true,” I pipe up.
“When?”
“After he left here.”
“No fucking way! Some asshole killed him?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Shit.”
“Mandy?” says Ceepak, as best he can.
“Yeah?”
“We need you to tell us what happened last night.”
“You mean with me and Paulie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We, you know, got busy. You want to see the video?”
“Not right now,” says Ceepak. “Tell us how you met Mr. Braciole.”
“Who?”
“Paulie,” I say. “The Thing.”
“Oh. Okay. I had heard the
Ceepak holds up a hand. “Let’s jump ahead a little.”
“Oh. Okay. To when? Like the second time we did it? Because that time, things got a little kinky-”
“How about when he left?” I say.
“Oh. Okay. Paulie had to be back at the Fun House by three, ’cause they have this bullshit curfew. And he couldn’t walk all the way back to Halibut Street, and there are no cabs in this fucking town, not at two or three in the morning, so I told him he could borrow my Mustang. That asshole with the ponytail, the one lugging the camera, he was still out front after tailing us all the way from Big Kahuna’s.” Mandy shakes her kinky hair, lets it tickle the top of her fake gazongas. “Paulie had to slip out the back door and cut across the yards to get over to my car on Prawn Street.”
“What time was this?”
“I dunno. Maybe two, two thirty, two forty-five.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Ha. I wish. My fucking watch broke. It was supposed to be waterproof, but I went into the ocean, just this one fucking time because of all the jellies, that was on Tuesday, I think, yeah, Tuesday, ’cause me and Kristen- she’s one of my roommates-we went to the Pancake Palace on Tuesday before hitting the beach because you can get like two stacks of chocolate-chip pancakes for the price of one, so we like split it ’cause we figured we’d swim off the calories. You ever been to the Pancake Palace?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Service sucks, am I right? Syrup bottles are always sticky and shit.”
Ceepak jots a note in his pad. I see what he writes. It isn’t about sticky syrup bottles: “2:00-2:45.”
“Were any of your roommates here last night?” Ceepak asks.
“Kristen and Coco? No way. Only one of us at a time can hook up with a guy here, that’s the rule. Since I left the club first, I got first dibs, which was cool with Kristen, because she was totally into this guy Brandon, who I think goes to college part-time and has his parents’ place down here for like three weeks and Coco, well, she was so blitzed, she probably stayed at the club until it closed or they started serving breakfast or maybe she hooked up with the bartender because she just found out that this guy she’d been seeing, this very hot local stud named Eric Hunley, well, Eric’s been hooking up with that skank Soozy K. And Coco used to be a belly dancer. Coco Ihle, you ever heard of her?”
“No,” I say because I canceled my subscription to
“Yeah. That bitch has Eric wrapped around her pretty little finger.”
She shows me her pinky to make her point. The nail has a sparkly butterfly painted on it.
“Anyway, Coco was looking for a revenge fuck. Told me she was going to take whatever she could get.”
“Fascinating,” says Ceepak-just to shut her up, I think. He’s really not that interested in the modern mating
