Everybody-I mean everybody-busted a gut laughing at that one. Guys, girls, everybody. They were pointing at the purple splotch, thinking Harley Mook was funnier than anything they'd seen or heard all summer. I remember Mook took a little bow. Some of the girls near us dug into their beach bags, found tampons, tossed them at Weese.
I also remember glancing over at Katie.
Okay. Not everybody was busting a gut. She was staring at me the way my mom would whenever I did something that “disappointed” her. You know-when she saw me swipe a miniature chocolate egg out of my kid brother's Easter basket when I still had plenty in mine. Stuff like that.
“Thank you, folks,” Mook said. “I'm here all week.” Mook was bigger that day than Leno.
I remember other things: Weese narrowing his eyes, not saying a word. The sound as he breathed in through his mouth, wheezed out through his nose. The strong gumball grape smell, like dry Kool-Aid powder.
“Now don't go running home to tell your mommy,” Mook said, moving in closer, poking Weese's bony rib cage with his empty Welch's bottle. “You do that, we'll come after you. Capeesh?”
“No retreat! No surrender!” screamed Jess.
“You can run, but you cannot hide,” I added.
I swaggered up to Weese to say it because I knew those bikini babes up the beach were still checking me out and there were a couple I hoped to impress further. Those girls weren't disappointed in me. They weren't like Katie or my mom. No, they were intrigued by my savage masculinity. Or so I thought. I guess I had a pretty vivid imagination back then.
“If I can't get you,” Mook promised Weese, “my friends will!”
Weese looked at Jess. Looked at me. Then, he turned around. I could see his head tilt down as he dared a quick peek at the front of his soiled swim pants.
“Careful girls,” Mook hollered and strutted back to his beach towel. “Wheezer here has a one-eyed Purple People Eater in his pants.”
Katie shook her head. I think she was disappointed in all of us.
We didn't care. We swayed back and forth and sang a quick chorus of that stupid one-hit wonder:
Weese shuffled away. Everybody he passed pointed at his pants and hooted. Some guys shook cans of whatever they had in their mitts and made like they might spray that at Weese, too. Others yelled, “What'd you do? Piss your pants purple?” Girls shook their heads, disgusted by the scrawny doofus with the splotchy crotch who they thought should find some other piece of beach to go geek around on.
The whole deal lasted maybe five minutes. Ten tops.
Even Katie got over it.
We moved on to whatever was next. Chasing each other with squirt guns. Playing paddleball. Meeting some girls from the city who were in town for the week and looking to party. Maybe we plotted that night's beer run. Maybe we ran out of snack food items and argued about whose turn it was to hike up to the Qwick Pick and grab another bag of something to munch on.
The same old same old.
We moved on.
We forgot.
I guess George Weese never did.
• • •
I have to wonder if maybe Mook got hot waiting in his car for Wheezer. Maybe he took a couple of swigs from that twenty-ounce grape soda we found in the cup holder. Maybe Weese saw Mook knock back a few gulps and a certain purple-stained day came rushing back to him in Digital High Def and Surround Sound.
I guess we'll have to ask him.
I unclip my cell phone and punch in Ceepak's number.
He answers on the first ring.
“This is Ceepak.”
“Hey,” I say. “We need to find George Weese.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 75 in Avondale, New Jersey, usually does stuff like teach boating safety to weekend sailors.
But they also have this really fast boat. A forty-four-foot, aluminum-hulled number that can do thirty-five knots. That's like forty mph. I know because Rosie, my skipper, a Coast Guard Reservist, told me so. Actually, she had to scream it because we were flying across the bay so fast-about forty mph.
When I called Ceepak, he called his Coast Guard buddies. Apparently, they were delighted to help him out by seeing how fast their new boat could go. So now I'm wearing a bright orange life jacket over my bulletproof vest, holding on to a handrail with sea spray needling my face and skimming like a flicked stone across the bay back to the island. This sea puppy's fast.
Christine will keep an eye on Katie at the hospital. So, of course, will the doctors. Ceepak said he'd meet me at the marina off Bayside Boulevard, over near Schooner's Landing-back where we think George Weese parked his white minivan, stepped out, and took two shots. One at me, one at Katie.
Rosie pulls back on the throttle. We churn up backwash, lose speed, and drift toward the dock. Ceepak is standing there to salute us on our final approach.
Rosie snaps one back.
“Throw him the line,” she barks. It takes me a second to figure out she's barking at me, that I'm all of a sudden her first mate. “Throw him the dock line!”
I hoist this big coil of rope and heave it toward Ceepak. I almost fling myself onto the dock after it. Ceepak catches the line and wraps it around a cleat.
“Here's your cargo,” Rosie says when I stumble off the boat.
“Thank you, Rosie,” Ceepak says. “I owe you one.”
“So buy me a beer.”
“Will do. But not when you're on duty.”
“Roger that,” she says. “Hurry up. Go catch the bastard.”
“Come on, Danny.” Ceepak motions for me to keep up with him. “We need to join everybody over at the Weese residence.”
“Did the guys find George?”
“Not yet.”
I check my watch. It's 10:52 A.M. We walk faster, heading off the dock into the parking lot.
“Did they, you know, find any evidence?”
“Roger that. They tell me there's a white minivan parked in the garage.”
“Green beach sticker?”
“On the front bumper not far from the lighthouse license plate.”
“I thought George Weese lived out of town.”
“He does.”
“So what's he doing with a resident beach sticker?”
“His father cheated. Bought an extra tag, sent it to his son hoping it might encourage George to …” Ceepak checks his notebook. “‘Bring the grandchildren down more often.’ Mrs. Weese bought George the minivan. Apparently, the Weeses are quite wealthy.”
But they cheat.
To Ceepak, that's all that matters.
• • •
We pull up in front of the Weese house.
Ceepak's right: these people are loaded.
