“You can totally see his pecker,” Becca said while she pointed. “Totally!”
Olivia slapped Becca's hand down.
“Stop!” But Olivia was laughing.
“It's a teeny-weeny jelly-beanie.” Becca sang it. Olivia lost it.
Katie shocked us all. She had no brothers, and I think this was, you know, an eye-opening experience for her, so to speak. She kept staring at the nubby lump located between Weese's legs.
“It sort of looks like a mouse,” she said in this small, astonished voice.
“Yeah,” Mook snorted. “Like Minnie Mouse!”
Katie didn't laugh.
Everybody else, however, hooted. Katie, I remember now, sort of covered her mouth, like she was horrified by what she had just let slip out and wished she could take it back.
The other girls wouldn't let her.
“Minnie Mouse!” Becca hollered. She and Olivia rolled backwards, kicking their feet, squealing and howling.
Katie flung some sand at them. “Come on you guys,” she said. “Knock it off. Don't tease Weese.”
“Knock it off?” said Mook. “Never!” Then he raised his hand like he was some kind of king making a speech to his soldiers. “No retreat! No surrender!”
Jess raised his arm, I raised mine. We were the Three Goofeteers. All for one, one for all.
“No retreat! No surrender!”
Weese just stood there taking it. I remember his face went pink like the sunburned patches on the tops of his shoulders.
“Like Minnie Mouse!” Becca gasped again when she finally caught her breath.
Weese backed up. Looked around. Saw that all the kids on Oak Beach were staring at him. Guys stopped tossing Nerf balls and leered like ringside drunks at a boxing match waiting for the knockout punch and wishing they could be the ones to land it.
The girls up and down the sand? Most were sitting up on their towels, leaning forward, arching their backs, laughing into cupped hands. I noticed some were looking my way. Sizing me up. Liking what they saw. I remember feeling extremely manly that day.
The adults? I don't think there were any adults on that stretch of sand. No little kids, either. I guess that's why we hung out there. Oak Beach was Teen Town. We had our own rules, our own laws, our own music-the same station, WAVY, blasting out of every boom box.
“Hey, Wheezer?” Mook said, shaking the grape soda bottle in his fist. “Think fast!”
Mook released his thumb, let the foam fly, sprayed Weese right in the crotch.
“Uh-oh!” Mook screamed. “Looks like Wheezer just got his period! Anybody have a Kotex he can borrow?”
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: “It was a one-eyed, onehorned, flyin purple people eater…”
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.
They have a humongous house, two in from the ocean at the corner of Beach Lane and Walnut Street. It's three stories tall, with all sorts of angles and extensions and different-shaped windows and jutting decks and this big sweeping staircase up to double front doors with gold-trimmed glass windows like something Tony Soprano might buy at Home Depot. I'm surprised the Weeses don't just hang a sign off one of their roofs: “Got money? We sure as shit do.”
I see Kiger and Malloy's patrol car parked out front near the two-car garage at the left side of the house. I see the CSI team's Taurus, too.
Ceepak pulls in but doesn't park very well. He just sort of angles our Ford against the concrete curb with the butt sticking out into the street. Kiger is in the driveway looking like he's eager to tell him something, so Ceepak yanks up the emergency brake and basically jumps out of the Explorer. I follow along.
“What've you got, Adam?”
“Weapon and ammunition in the minivan. Rear cargo hold.”
“The M-24?” Ceepak asks.
Kiger shakes his head. “Negative. Looks like a paintball shooter. You know-a big toy gun. Black plastic. Molded to look like an army rifle.”
“Most likely a Tripman A-5 with reactive trigger,” Ceepak says. Then he turns to me because he knows I'm totally confused. “Same as rifle number three at Paintball Blasters on the boardwalk. I checked last night. Weese wanted to practice on the same type of gun, see if he could manipulate the trigger action while gloved.”
While I was passed out on that sofa outside the ICU, Ceepak was back here working the case.
A Ford Expedition crunches up the street. Chief Baines.
“What've we got, Ceepak?”
“Potential suspect, sir.”
“Weese? From the Chamber?”
“His son. George.”
“Do we know where this George Weese is presently located?” The chief reaches for the shoulder microphone to his radio, ready to call in strike coordinates on our sniper.
“No, sir. We've posted an APB based on witness descriptions.”
“And,” Kiger says, “we have his father and mother inside. Also the suspect's wife and children. Malloy's in there with them, making sure nobody tells Georgie Porgie the cavalry's coming.”
“What's the prevailing mood?” Baines is curious. “Inside?”
Kiger smiles. “Pissed off, sir.”
The chief nods, turns to Ceepak.
“John?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You sure about this? You sure George Weese is your guy?”
“It's where all the evidence leads, sir.”
The chief checks his watch, nods his head.
“Let's go nail the bastard.”
Looks like we might beat that noon deadline after all.
“This is preposterous. George would never do such a thing.” This is his mother talking, naturally. She's short and chubby and chain smokes.
Two little kids bawl and screech in a playpen in the middle of the living room. One, a boy, looks to be almost two years old. The other? I don't know. I'm no good at guessing how old babies are supposed to be. I wish they had rings I could count like with trees. Maybe the little one's nine or ten months. The way it screams? Got the lungs of a twelve-year-old. Both kids have tears streaming down their cheeks and snot dripping out their noses, and it all ends up as crusty green stuff on top of their lips. There's reason to suspect the small one has a load in its pants, too. Either that, or Mrs. Weese is cooking something foul for brunch.
“Bad move, Baines,” Mr. Weese says. “A one-month job never looks good on a résumé.” He is peacocking around the living room in bright-yellow shorts and a sky blue polo shirt. He's also got on golf shoes so I think we more than likely interrupted his Sunday plans. His socks match his shirt and pants. Vibrant. I guess so the other golfers can see you coming from two tees away.
“George would never do such a thing.” Mrs. Weese is indignant. “Never. I know my boy.”
The two kids in the playpen break some kind of indoor world record and scream even louder.
“Natalia? Jesus!” Mrs. Weese turns to their mother, who's sitting slumped in an armchair. “Take them upstairs, please. Now!”
“All right,” her daughter-in-law says with some kind of thick, grumbling accent that makes her sound like one of the bad guys in a billion spy movies. She could be Russian. She has dark hair and a sour face.
Natalia Weese marches across the living and scoops up her two squealers.
“Malloy?” Ceepak now says.
Mark Malloy nods. “On it.” He follows the younger Mrs. Weese and the screaming kids out of the room. No one is being left alone where they can whip out a cell phone to let George know people are looking for him.
“Perhaps you should arrange for someone to help out with your grandchildren,” Ceepak says to Mr. Weese. “We'll want to interview all of you, including George's wife.”
“Good luck,” Mr. Weese says with a curl of his lip. “She's Russian. None too bright, either. Still having a tough time with English, even after she's been here, what? Three years?”
“Lies!” Mrs. Weese now screams at Ceepak, as if shouting might make it true. “This is all a pack of lies! You don't have any evidence!”
“Yes, ma'am, we do,” Ceepak says. “Your son fits the description of a young man who recently purchased seven Derek Jeter baseball cards at Aquaman's Comix and Collectibles.”
“Wrong. George never played baseball.”
“He never played any sports,” Mr. Weese adds.
“He played those computer games.”
“Those are not sports!”
“He had that soccer one!”
Mr. and Mrs. Weese scowl at each other. Then they swivel so they can scowl at us, too.
“What's with the baseball cards?” Mr. Weese asks Chief Baines.
“The sniper placed the same cards your son bought at Schooner's Landing,” Baines says.
“So? Maybe he stole them from George!” Mrs. Weese says. “You ever think of that?”
“Aquaman's Comix?” Mr. Weese says. “That's Dan Bloomfield's shop. He's with the Chamber. If he's spreading lies about George …”
“He's leasing that space.” Mrs. Weese sucks down some hot smoke. “We can raise his rent …”
“We sure as shit can!”
“Mr. and Mrs. Weese?” Chief Baines interrupts. “Please. Where is your son?”
There is no answer. Mr. Weese shakes his head in disgust. I'm not certain, but I get the feeling he's been disappointed with his son for some time.
I say this because my dad used to give me the same kind of headshake-usually right after I did something totally stupid.
Ceepak turns to Kiger. “What about the tires? On the minivan?”
“They match.” Dr. McDaniels walks into the room.
“Who's this?” Mr. Weese demands. “This is my house … all these people … traipsing in and out …”
“Dr. Sandra McDaniels.” She extends her hand. He doesn't take it. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“What's this about tires?”
“The tread pattern on the minivan in your garage matches those we found over on Oak Street.”
“So? What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means your son is the primary suspect in the killing of Harley Mook.”
“Who did you say you were?” Mrs. Weese sounds even angrier than her husband.
“Dr. Sandra McDaniels. New Jersey State Police Major Crime Unit. I'm not really here.” She holds up a big plastic baggie. “But I did find these in the back of your son's minivan, right next to the paintball rifle. Do either of you folks surf?”
Inside the baggie? Two neoprene surfer gloves.
“No,” Mr. Weese answers, not quite getting that McDaniels's question was basically what they call rhetorical. “I golf. Helen gardens.”
“Where's your son's toothbrush?” McDaniels asks.
“His toothbrush?”
“I need to collect some DNA. Lift his prints off the handle. Maybe his bathroom cup. Pretty fertile forensic fields, bathrooms. Find all sorts of human detritus. Unless, of course, your son wore gloves while he brushed his teeth, too.”
Somehow, Dr. McDaniels entrance has made Mr. and Mrs. Weese realize we mean business.
“His bathroom's on the second floor.” Mr. Weese suddenly sounds defeated.
“Go get what you need,” Chief Baines says to McDaniels.
She winks at Ceepak and ambles up the staircase.
“Franklin?” Mrs. Weese put her hand on her chest and sighs. “I feel faint.”
“Then sit down.” Which he promptly does himself. She follows suit.
“We need a recent photograph,” Ceepak says.
“Of George?” Mrs. Weese looks ready to cry. Instead, she lights another cigarette.
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