Mad Mouse js-2

by Chris Grabenstein

  The crowd applauds.

  Buzz Baines is good. He has turned my near-death experience and Katie's critical-condition chest wound into a pep rally against the evils of teen drinking. He does it so well, I almost believe him, even though I know he's lying every time his mustache wiggles up and down. That's the thing about a lie-you make it big enough, say it loud enough, repeat it over and over, it starts sounding like the truth. Hell, by now, Baines probably even believes it. He may really think some freshman with a six-pack also scored M118 special ball cartridges with his fake ID at Fritzie's Package Store and jammed them into his BB gun. Undoubtedly Fritzie's sells the bullets right next to the Slim Jims, or maybe over in the racks with the pork rinds, beer nuts, and rocket-propelled grenades.

  Baines can get away with this because his bosses, the Concerned Citizens who run Sea Haven, are mostly concerned with their bottom lines, about making enough money this summer to make it through to another one next year. The one reporter who knows the truth, our resident journalist, won't tell anybody what she knows because her newspaper sold a ton of ads for its special Labor Day Weekend Edition. Huge ads. Some restaurants even bought two and three full pages to run their entire menus, to lure Labor Day visitors with the promise of Early Bird Specials and two dozen choices starting at $7.99.

  I guess I wouldn't be so upset by all this chicanery and skullduggery-two words I learned from Ceepak-except that I just found the gift Katie planned to surprise me with so we could celebrate my new job.

  It's in a square white box tucked on the shelf right underneath the cash register. I see my name written with pink marker on the outside. Katie's loopy handwriting. She drew a cartoon cop car on one side of the box, a sheriff's star on another.

  I open the box.

  She had somebody in the candy kitchen mold me a chocolate baseball cap and write POLICE on front with curly white icing.

  My cop cap. Wow.

  Katie was so proud I got the job, that I was becoming a cop, that I was willing to put my life on the line to protect people like wheelchair Jimmy from the bullies, that I'd be out there every day trying to do what was right.

  “Danny?”

  Ceepak taps me on the shoulder.

  “What's up?” I ask.

  Ceepak smiles.

  “Denise got him. Smuggler's Cove Motel. Mr. Mook used his MasterCard.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It's a five-block run from Schooner's Landing to Smuggler's Cove.

  I see a sheet rolling out of the little dot-matrix printer we have up front in the patrol car. We now have a hard copy of Mook's driver's license and his plate number. I hear officers radioing in with possible white van sightings. The guys out here on the street? They're working the case. They're not hiding behind plywood walls covering their asses.

  Ceepak is driving real slow because he doesn't want to draw any undue attention to our approach-not because the chief said so but because he doesn't want Mook to hear us coming. So he's doing the posted 25 mph.

  The speed limit signs are new on Bayside Boulevard and say stuff like “25 mph: Yes, Your Car Can Actually Go That Slow.” The new signs were Buzz Baines's idea. Tough but friendly. Like a barroom bouncer who still remembers to smile at kittens and puppies when they pop by for a brewski.

  Mook's motel, Smuggler's Cove, is one of Sea Haven's seedier establishments. It's tucked off Bayside Boulevard on a side street. Typically, they rent out the same bed several times a day, if you catch my drift. Sometimes they even change the sheets. If you like those Girls Gone Wild videos, they sell them in the Smuggler's Cove gift shop. (Everybody has a gift shop in Sea Haven, even our low-rent rendezvous motel.)

  “Do you see his car?” Ceepak asks.

  “No.”

  The motel parking lot is one of those pothole-filled numbers with heaving humps of cracked asphalt creating random speed bumps every two feet.

  “This is twelve,” Ceepak says into the radio microphone. “We're ten-eighty-four.” He means we're on the scene. I climb out of the car, realizing I have at least eighty-three more 10-codes to memorize by Tuesday.

  Ceepak and I step into the filthy lobby and squint because it's so dark, what with the pink scarves draped over all the lamps to help set the mood. The place reeks of incense, the kind they sell on sidewalks. A string of little bells jangles when the door glides shut.

  “Be right with you,” says a woman from somewhere behind the check-in counter. I hear her groan, like she's having a hard time standing up. “Hang on!” Now she grunts.

  The lobby walls are decorated with porn posters. Debbie Does Dallas. The Devil in Miss Jones. Candy Stripers. The classics.

  “Danny!”

  Emerging behind the front desk is Donna Pazzarini, my friend Tony's big sister. By big, I mean older as well as huge. She weighs at least three hundred pounds so, all of a sudden, the grunting and groaning I heard make sense. Donna's the kind of girl who typically needs a forklift to help her up out of her chair.

  “How you doin', Donna?”

  “Good, good. You?”

  “Can't complain.”

  “Good, good.” She's dusting doughnut sugar off her enormous chest and eyeing Ceepak. “Well, hello handsome.” She tugs up on one of her black bra straps and tucks it back under her sleeveless blouse. “What can I do for you boys?”

  “We're looking for someone,” I say.

  “They're usually here-the ones people are lookin’ for. You're with the cops now, right, Danny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's what Tony says. I said, ‘Good for Danny,’ you know what I'm saying?”

  “We need to inquire about one of your guests,” Ceepak says.

  “Short-term or long-term?” Donna lets loose with this rumbling laugh-part belly shaker, part smoker's cough. “We have a lot of ‘guests’ who don't stick around for the free breakfast buffet, you know what I'm saying?” She gestures to a sour-smelling Mr. Coffee machine on the windowsill next to a half-empty box of Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “His name is Harley Mook,” I say.

  “Sure, sure. Mook. He was here. But he checked out.”

  Donna wobbles back around to the other side of the counter, taps the keyboard. I figure she's calling up room records. Instead, I see her slide a King around on a solitaire spread. I guess she was playing with one hand, juggling a doughnut with the other.

  “When?” Ceepak asks. “When did Mr. Mook vacate these premises?”

  “Little while ago,” says Donna. “Around nine thirty. Seemed like he was in a big hurry all of a sudden. Acting all antsy, you know what I mean?”

  “What room was he in?”

  Donna squints at her computer screen. I can tell she doesn't like the idea of closing her card game to open whatever program tells her who was in what room.

  “Usually, we don't mind when our guests check out early,” she says, clicking and sliding more cards around the screen. “But seeing how this is a holiday weekend I told Mook he had to pay for tonight even if he didn't stay. He gave me a little attitude but, like I said, he seemed eager to leave. Had ants in his pants.”

  Ceepak drums his fingers on the counter. “What room?”

  “The maid hasn't cleaned it yet. I've been kind of busy.” She rumbles out another laugh. Her upper arms jiggle.

  “Ma'am?”

  “Give me a second.” She finishes her final pile. Smiles at her tidy row of kings. “Okay. Here we go.” She taps a couple of keys and calls up her room records. “Mook was in two-oh-seven. Upstairs.”

  “You got a passkey?” I ask.

  “Why? You guys want to search his room or something?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “We surely do.”

  “Wait a sec.” Donna crosses her arms over her chest. “Isn't that like against the law? You need a warrant, am I right?”

  “No, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “Since Mr. Harley Mook has checked out, any property, record, or information he may have left behind is considered abandoned and, the
refore, not subject to the Fourth Amendment protections provided by the Constitution.”

  Donna purses out her lower lip. Nods. She's impressed. “Interesting. You go to night school or something?”

  “The key?”

  “Sure, sure.” Donna reaches under her tiny desk and finds a miniature baseball bat with a key dangling off the handle.

  Ceepak takes it. “Upstairs?”

  “Yeah. Two-oh-seven. Second floor. Seventh door down.”

  “Thanks, Donna.”

  “Any time, Danny.”

  We hustle toward the door.

  We pass the ratty Coke machine, reach the staircase, clank up the rusty metal steps, and hurry down the crackled concrete landing to 207.

  Ceepak works the passkey into the lock. The door squeaks open and we're hit with a wall of recirculated air that stinks of cigarettes mixed with mildew. The air conditioner is rattling away underneath a window darkened by thick, plastic-based drapes. The room is a mess. The sheets and flabby pillows are clumped in a tangled bundle in the middle of the bed. Back in the bathroom, I can see a pile of soppy towels lying in a puddle near the shower stall. There's a Domino's pizza box feeding flies on top ot the TV. Judging by the color of what used to be cheese, I'd say the pie's been sitting there since at least Thursday.

  Ceepak spies a pink slip of paper wedged under a half-empty beer bottle on a small table with a wrinkled walnut veneer. The pink beer coaster is actually one of those “While You Were Out” phone message deals.

  “Apparently,” says Ceepak, “someone named Wheezer called Mr. Mook at eight forty-five A.M. The woman downstairs must've given him this message when he returned from Schooner's Landing this morning. Prior to his decision to check out.”

  “Wheezer is Mook's local drug connection,” I say. “The guy with the ‘good ganga.’ ”

  “The front desk did not record the caller's number. However, there is a note: ‘He'll call your cell.’ ”

  Ceepak secures the pink slip in an evidence envelope and moves toward the rumpled bed. He tilts his head to study a notepad near the telephone on the bedside table. Now he reaches into his cargo pants and pulls out a stubby carpenter's pencil. Okay, even I know this one: he's going to rub the pencil on the empty sheet of paper and see if he can pick up whatever was written on the sheet that used to be on top.

  “Wheezer, again,” Ceepak says after he's done dusting the pad with pencil lead. “Noon. Circled. I suspect twelve P.M. is the time Mook and Wheezer agreed to meet in some undisclosed location for the drug buy. Mook will most likely drive there.”

  “In his little red Miata.”

  “Roger that,” Ceepak says. “Red Miatas are much easier to spot than white minivans.” He tucks the small sheet of motel notepad paper into a second evidence envelope. “We'll definitely nab him.”

  “Great.”

  We're going to catch the creep. Just like I promised Katie.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Since we seem to have some time …”

  Ceepak has this look on his face.

  “What's on your mind?” I ask.

  “The lady downstairs. She's a friend, I take it?”

  “Donna Pazzarini? Yeah. Well, I mean I know her on account of her brother. Tony. We worked together at a gas station one summer.”

  “I'd like to offer an observation.”

  “Sure.”

  “Everywhere we go, you know people. In fact, you have more friends than anyone I've ever met.”

  “Maybe. Of course, I grew up here. Plus, I'm just, you know, sociable, I guess. Friendly.”

  “Here then is my question: with all these friends, why is our shooter only singling out certain individuals? Why not Ms. Pazzarini downstairs? Why not her brother or your former colleagues at the Pancake Palace? Why not that girl you know over at the ice cream shop? Why is the sniper only targeting the people you were with Wednesday night?”

  I wonder.

  Why Becca, Katie, Olivia, Jess, and me? Especially if the bad guy is Mook. What'd we ever do to him?

  “Good question,” I say to Ceepak.

  “It's the question, Danny. The only one we really need to answer.”

  “Okay. Let me think about it.”

  “Think hard, Danny. Think fast.”

  I nod. “You want to search the room?”

  “No. We'll ask Kiger and Malloy to swing by.” He checks his watch. “I want us mobile prior to noon. I suspect someone will spot Mook's Miata before he connects with his dealer. In the meantime, let's stop by the house, pick up the Phantom and Avenger cards. Dr. McDaniels will definitely want to see those.”

  I'm about to follow Ceepak out the door when he takes a detour to the window air-conditioner unit. Using the eraser end of his pencil, he pushes down on the button to turn the humming monster off.

  “You should always set the thermostat to seventy-five or higher when out of your residence for an extended period of time. Especially during peak hours of consumption.”

  Right.

  It's suddenly quiet, now that the sour-air recirculator is shut down. I hear a vehicle bump and crunch its bottom across the blacktop humps down in the parking lot. I step out on the crappy veranda to see if it's Mook's Miata.

  It's a white minivan.

  I guess the driver sees us, too-sees we're cops.

  He's peeling wheels in reverse, burning rubber and taking off like maybe he just did something really, really bad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The white van is out of the parking lot before I can spot its bumper sticker display, see if there's an ARMY plastered back there.

  “Male driver,” Ceepak announces as he dashes down the balcony toward the stairs.

  “What else?” I ask, running behind him. “Did it look like an army guy?”

  “Couldn't tell. Sun glare.”

  Ceepak grabs of the railings and slide-flies down the steps. I try to do the same thing. Rust chunks scrape my palms.

  “He's at the corner,” Ceepak says. “Turning onto Sunshine, direction Ocean.”

  “Great. That gives us a chance!” Traffic. You want to stay off Ocean Avenue on any summer Saturday because it's basically bumper-to-bumper from nine A.M. on.

  We leap into the Explorer. Ceepak snatches the radio mic.

  “This is Unit Twelve. Request all available backup. Ten-eighty. White van. We are in pursuit.”

  Those asphalt humps in the Smuggler's Cove parking lot feel more like moguls on a ski slope the way Ceepak blasts over them, slamming pedal to rubber floorpad. When we first started working together, Ceepak didn't drive on account of this horrible thing that happened in his Hummer back in Iraq. Now I see the man has driving skills, like the army sent him to Aggressive Driving School or he studied with the stunt guys who drove the Mini Coopers in that movie The Italian Job. We're barreling down this quiet residential street nobody's ever barreled down before and I see the minivan screech into a right turn. We do the same thing.

  “This is Twelve,” Ceepak says into the mic. “We are southbound on Sunshine, approaching Oak.”

  Make that Pine. We're moving fast and the streets are just clipping along.

  “Unit Twelve, this is Six. We're approaching on Spruce.”

  Ceepak flicks on the lightbar and sirens. No way the white van doesn't see us coming up behind him, no way he doesn't hear us, no way he can't tell we're the Police and he should slow down, pull over, and stop-now.

  But he doesn't, he keeps racing down the road, pushing his soccer-mom van to do 70 mph. If nothing else, he's earning himself a speeding ticket today.

  And one for reckless driving, too, because he just hung an incredible tilting Louie-both his right-side tires lift off the pavement. Ours do the same thing when Ceepak mirrors the move and hangs a hard left.

  “This is Twelve. Suspect vehicle is now east on Quince heading toward Ocean.

  There's a stop sign at Ocean Avenue.

  Mr. White Van doesn't stop, earni
ng him traffic ticket number three.

  Tires squeal. Cars rock. The van shoots across the intersection. At least he gets everybody on Ocean Avenue to stop for us. We reach Ocean and zoom across because nobody's blocking our path.

  Except this one little girl on the other side of the intersection.

  Ceepak slams on the brakes.

  Maybe she's deaf. Didn't hear the police siren. Maybe she's blind. Didn't see the swirling lights. Whatever. Right now, this seven-year-old sweetie-pie in a pink sundress is in the crosswalk standing behind her baby doll stroller.

  Her parents run into the street and grab her. Boy, does the kid give us a dirty look-like we should know that when the sign says “WALK,” she and her dolly have the right-of-way.

  Ceepak nods, smiles, and gestures for the little girl to proceed.

  “She has the light,” he says.

  “He's getting away,” I say while we wait.

  Up ahead, I see the white van making another left turn, this time on Shore Drive, which will take him north, back toward town.

  “Ceepak? He's going to get away!”

  “No he's not, Danny.” Ceepak slams our Ford into reverse. The tires whine and spin and I smell fried rubber. We might need retreads before the morning's over. We whip backwards onto Ocean Avenue.

  “This is Twelve,” he says to the radio. “Suspect has turned north on Shore. We will attempt to cut him off at Ocean and Maple.”

  Okay. Now I get it. Ceepak's been studying his Sea Haven street maps. He knows Shore Drive dead-ends when it hits Maple because that's where Sunnyside Playland is and they're spread out for two blocks from Ocean Avenue down to the Beach. You can't go very far on Shore before you have to head back up to Ocean.

  “We've got Maple blocked on the other side of Ocean,” says a voice I don't recognize over the radio.

  “This is Six. We are continuing down Spruce to Shore and will block his retreat.”

  “Ten-four,” Ceepak says. He's got the radio mic in one hand and the other one is twisting back and forth on the steering wheel as we wiggle our way up Ocean Avenue, snaking around cars, zigzagging past RVs, generally having a grand old time putting the Explorer through its paces like we're in one of those TV commercials talking about rack-and-pinion steering, which, I hope, is something that comes standard on Fords, especially the ones that leave Detroit and grow up to become police cars.