Fun House

“Oh. Right.” She taps her heart like she’s a Dominican baseball player. “Respect. Let me try again: I thought I recognized your butt, Officer Boyle.”

I’m about to say something about how I recognized her smart-ass mouth when my inner Ceepak kicks in. “What brings you out to the boardwalk, this afternoon, Ms. Shapiro?” I ask calmly.

She head-nods toward the horizon. “The Fun House. We’re scouting it for the live finale. It’ll be awesome.”

“Totally,” chimes in one of the flunkies, a dark-haired vixen with shiny red lips who’s maybe a year or three younger than Layla and probably already scheming about how she can shove Layla aside and take over her job as Mandrake’s right-hand gal, the way Layla, obviously, bumped out whoever stood in her way. Working in TV is a lot like Roller Derby-only without helmets or shin guards.

“Whoever makes it through to the final round, will have to make it through the Fun House with their charity partner to claim the grand prize,” Layla continues excitedly. “We’ll stagger the contestants. Time them-”

Ceepak, apparently, has heard enough. “Good luck with that,” he says. “Danny?”

“Have fun,” I say.

Layla and her posse head off to the Fun House and its big clown mouth entrance. Ceepak and I, following the scent of sputtering oil, head over to the All American Snack Shack.

There’s a line. I guess mid-afternoon is when everybody hits the candy-bar machine when they’re at work. When they’re on vacation, they just hit the deep-fried candy-bar booth, instead.

I see Gabe, sitting on a thirty-gallon tin canister of cooking oil, back near the double deep-fat fryers. Misty grease fogs his glasses. His wrinkled flag shirt looks like it is flying at half-mast.

“Mr. Hess?” says Ceepak.

The sad-eyed man looks up.

“We need your help.”

Hess nods. Motions for us to come around to the rear of the booth.

We do.

“I’ve made a few calls,” says Hess.

Ceepak nods.

“The Creed did not do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. We don’t lie to a brother, cheat a brother, or steal from a brother. That’s the only way you can trust that your brother is your brother, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir,” says Ceepak, choosing not to use this moment to discuss his own code of honor and ethics, which, of course, is way stricter than “screw the world but don’t lie to, cheat, or steal from your biker buddies.”

“So now this has become an honor issue for The Creed as well,” says Gabe. “We will find out who did this thing.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry. We, like you, have our ways.”

Geeze-o, man.

Why do I think The Creed’s ways don’t involve reading suspects their Miranda Warning or, for that matter, letting them live?

Of course, Gabe Hess and The Creed talk tough, but that doesn’t mean they can deliver.

At least, not for seven long, frustrating days.

33

It’s Thursday.

Nine P.M.

Time, once again, for Fun House. Tonight: The Semi-Finals.

And Ceepak, the New Jersey State Police, the FBI, and I are still no closer to catching Paul Braciole’s or Skeletor’s killers.

All evidence points to a professional hit involving, at the very least, two assassins: a triggerman and a getaway guy on a motorcycle. So everybody is looking at The Creed, the Garden State’s most nefarious motorcycle gang. To hear Christopher Miller talk, the FBI guy who’s heading up the Fed part of the investigation, The Creed are connected to what the Fibbies used to call La Costra Nostra, the Italian mafia, including the Pelagatti’s and a Squarcialupi Family underboss named Bobby “Baby Fat” Marino.

The Creed is, in a way, like a mobile Rite Aid. They only sell the drugs, while other people, the kind who like to whack anybody who gets in their way, import the actual product from overseas manufacturers in places like Afghanistan, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, and anywhere else the War On Drugs should be waving the white flag.

Ceepak thinks that the mob may have been the instigators of the dual hits. “They were, undoubtedly, furious when The Creed pulled that publicity stunt in the parking lot of Morgan’s Surf And Turf.”

Miller, the FBI guy, agreed. “Somebody had to pay for that. Big-time.”

That’s the theory of the day: Paulie Braciole and Thomas Hess were sacrificial lambs.

“Maybe,” speculated Miller, “to keep doing business with the families, The Creed had to perform an act of penance by killing the TV kid and one of their own.”

Geeze-o, man. When I went to confession during my days at Holy Innocents Elementary School, the priests just made us say an Act of Contrition and maybe five Hail Mary’s if, you know, we were having impure thoughts or whatever. They never asked us to bump off one of our buddies on the playground.

Anyway, tonight is a night off from all that.

After six days of dead-ends, FBI and MCU meetings, not to mention repeated runs to the All American Snack Shack (I am officially sick of deep-fried anything, especially Tasty Kake Butterscotch Krimpets), Ceepak and I are, in his words, “recharging our batteries.”

“Sometimes, Danny, the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it and let your subconscious chew on it for a while,” he says.

So, being romantically unattached, I headed over to Casa Ceepak to hang. John and Rita, plus their cat Gizmo (full name Hideous Gizmideus) and ancient dog Barkley (known to fart more than all the soy lovers at Veggin’ On The Beach combined), live in a one-bedroom walk-up apartment over a shop called the Bagel Lagoon. Their place always smells like onions and garlic.

And, of course, dog farts.

Earlier, we charred some burgers on the grill on the tiny patio behind the Bagel store. Rita served her world-famous potato salad. I brought over a couple pints of Cherry Garcia ice cream from the Ben amp; Jerry’s on Ocean Avenue. We pigged out. Then, after dinner, we headed upstairs to watch the second-to-last episode of Fun House.

Hey, if the show is going to ruin our lives, we might as well watch it.

Nursing my second beer of the night (Ceepak always asks that I allow an hour between brewskis so I never drive buzzed), I notice a stack of glossy Discover Ohio magazines with articles about “Everything Walleye,” “Lake Erie Wine Country,” and “Autumn Adventures: 8 Million Acres of Woods Would Like to Say ‘Hello.’”

We don’t have much of an autumn down the shore. Scattered evergreens shed needles. Flowers die of frost or thirst, whichever comes first. Lawns turn browner.

“So, you guys really gonna move?” I say.

Ceepak sips on his non-alcoholic Coors, a beverage he learned to love while serving in Iraq.

Rita sighs. “I don’t know, Danny. Ohio looks nice.”

“Sure does.” I gesture at the magazine on the top of the pile. “They’ve got all those walleye.”

“Indeed,” says Ceepak. “In fact, in Port Clinton, Ohio, the Walleye Capital of the World, they drop a twenty- foot-long, six-hundred-pound fish on New Year’s Eve. It’s much more exciting than that ball in Times Square.”