“Don’t worry, Arnie. I’m very good with my gun. Check out Urban Termination II the next time you’re at Sunnyside Playland. You’ll see my initials in all three top scorer slots.”
“Cool.”
“Stay in your room. Wait for Santucci or Hoffner.”
“Right.”
We hang up.
I’m up and out of the Batmobile in a flash and waving my arms over my head like a lunatic at Ceepak who is still on the porch schooling Shona Oppenheimer on the burden of proof necessary to prove Defiant Trespass in the State of New Jersey.
“Ceepak?” Yes, I am shouting.
He whips around. Sees the frantic look in my eyes.
“Good day, Mrs. Oppenheimer,” he says on the run. “If you have any further complaints or suggestions, please bring them to Police Headquarters on Cherry Street at your earliest convenience.”
He dashes across the lawn, joins me in the street.
“What’s up?”
“Your father. He just sprung David Rosen.”
“Come again?”
“Little Arnie called. Said the old guy who runs the Free Fall snuck into their house and told his father that they needed to make a run for the border.”
“And David fled?”
“Yeah. Ten minutes ago. Guess he admitted he’s guilty with his feet.”
“Roger that.”
“Santucci and Hoffner didn’t see the jailbreak because your dad took David out the back door and cut through the house behind them’s lawn. Took him over to Swordfish Street.”
“Do we know what sort of vehicle my father is currently driving?”
“No,” I say.
Then I remember that night at Neptune’s Nog, the package store.
“Wait. Dinged up Ford F-150. Maybe ten, twelve years old. Ohio license plates.”
Ceepak raises his quizzical eyebrow.
“We bumped into each other at the beer store. Remember?”
Ceepak reaches into the car to grab the radio mic.
And my phone rings again.
Ceepak holds on. Waits to hear who is calling me. Looks like he thinks it might be Arnie with an update.
It is.
“They’re heading toward the pier!”
“Arnie? Take it easy. How can you know that?”
“Dad has an iPhone and I have the ‘Find My iPhone’ app on my computer. I punched in his number. It’s tracking them. They were in the parking lot near Pier Two; now they’re heading out over the ocean. If I switch to satellite, I can tell you what they’re near.”
Arnie goes silent.
“Arnie?”
“Yeah. They’ve stopped. Right in front of the Mad Mouse roller coaster. I think that crazy old guy took Dad back to the Free Fall!”
“Okay. I’m going to call Officer Santucci right now.”
“You won’t hurt my dad, will you? When you catch them?”
“No, Arnie. I promise.”
“Okay.”
Now the radio starts chattering.
“I’ve got to run.”
“Okay.”
I end the call with Arnie.
“All available units.”
It’s not the dispatcher. It’s Chief Rossi. This is not a good sign.
“Pier Two. Reports of a gunshot. Repeat. Reports of a gunshot and potential hostage situation. All available units please respond. Initiate lockdown protocols.”
Guess Little Arnie was right.
Mr. Ceepak has a gun.
64
Fifteen minutes later, when we scream into the municipal parking lot fronting Pier Two, we enter bedlam.
The tail end of a panicked mob is still stampeding down the boardwalk access ramps like cattle through a slaughterhouse chute. I hear screams and shouting. Freaked-out tourists and locals are pushing and shoving whoever’s not running away from the danger fast enough.
Meanwhile, Ceepak and me have to run the other way.
Up into the swirling chaos and confusion.
The Murray brothers are already on the scene, trying to bring some semblance of order to the pandemonium.
“Keep calm,” shouts Dylan through an amplified megaphone while his brother, Jeremy, stands in the middle of the swarm to do hand signals showing people which way to head so they don’t trample each other.
“Evacuate to the far edges of the parking lot,” he says over and over and over.
“Keep calm! Do not panic!” echoes his brother with the battery-powered bullhorn.
“Move them out and lock it down,” Ceepak says to the two Murrays. “Who’s inside?”
“Brooks Perry and Jack Getze,” says Dylan.
Ceepak and I go swimming upstream; make our way to the boardwalk.
Which is almost empty.
Ceepak grabs the radio clipped to his belt.
“This is Detective Ceepak. Detective Boyle and I are on the scene. What’s our situation?”
“This is Officer Perry.”
“What’s your twenty?”
“We have taken up a position in the pizza stand west of the StratosFEAR ride. We have the ride operator, Mr. Shaun McKinnon with us.”
I can see the Free Fall’s tower rising against the early evening sky maybe a hundred feet in front of us.
“Is Mr. McKinnon injured?”
“Negative. The old guy with the gun threw him out of the control booth and told him to run away. He didn’t. He found us instead.”
“Maintain your position. Detective Boyle and I are on our way.”
“Okay. Good. One question-the old guy with the gun. McKinnon tells us he is the day operator of the Free Fall and that his last name is Ceepak.”
“Roger that. He is my father. He should be considered mentally unstable and lethally dangerous. There were reports of a gunshot. Can you clarify?”
“Getze and I were on routine boardwalk patrol, up by Paintball Blasters. Heard the single round fired. Thought it was a kid with an early Fourth of July firecracker. Mr. McKinnon found us. Told us how, uh, your father threatened him with a weapon. Described it as best he could. From our observation post, it looks like it could be a Ruger nine-millimeter pistol. Seven plus one capacity.”
