Fun House jc-7

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Might we see this threatening message?” says Ceepak, sounding like he doesn’t believe it’s any more real than Paulie’s humble-pie act under the stormy summer skies.

  “Of course,” says Ms. Shapiro, flipping open the folder.

  Ceepak and I move to the table. Read what’s printed on the paper.

  “U ratted me out? U R The Dead Thing.”

  And, as it turns out, that death threat is the one thing from this reality TV show that’s really real.

  11

  The next morning, I get a call from Ceepak.

  “It’s Paul Braciole,” he says, sounding grim.

  “What’s up?”

  “He has been murdered.”

  I have the phone tucked under my chin so I can pull on my shorts. I glance at the clock. It’s eleven thirty. Saturday is my day off. Guess I slept in. I also guess I won’t be doing that again until Ceepak and I figure out who murdered Paulie Braciole.

  “How?” I ask.

  “Single gunshot to the brain. Powder burn on the left temple, exit wound on the right-slightly lower, suggesting that the bullet traversed straight through both hemispheres of the brain, making death instantaneous. We’ll know more after Dr. Kurth runs her post-mortem.”

  Dr. Rebecca Kurth is the county medical examiner. We’ve been keeping her kind of busy this summer.

  I tug on my sneakers.

  “Where are you?” I ask, sniffing my uniform polo shirts to find the cleanest one.

  “Boardwalk. Pier Four. A booth called the Knock ’Em Down.”

  Ceepak can’t see me, but I’m nodding.

  The Knock ’Em Down is one of several “games of chance” tucked into a side alley off the main path to the Giant Ferris Wheel at the end of Pier Four. If I remember correctly, the Knock ’Em Down is done up with a Farmer-In-The-Dell look: a mural with a cartoon horse and cow making goofy faces at you; three wooden barrels with a pyramid of six white milk bottles stacked on top.

  You pay a buck and hurl a baseball at the bottles, half of which, I swear, are filled with lead. The only guys knocking them down are friends of the booth operator, who probably has a button he pushes to make the stack topple every once in a while so he can keep reeling in suckers like me.

  But I digress.

  “Was Paulie shot inside the booth?” I ask.

  “Highly doubtful,” says Ceepak. “The game operator, a young man named Hugh Williams, discovered Mr. Braciole’s body when he rolled up the security gate at eleven hundred hours.”

  In Sea Haven, our boardwalk amusements don’t open till noon, because everybody spends the morning on the beach. Opening at noon also gives the vendors time to fill the bottom of those milk bottles with wet cement.

  “Danny?”

  I have one arm inside my shirt, but I freeze: I can tell from Ceepak’s voice that whatever he’s going to say next isn’t going to be pretty.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Williams discovered the body on a side wall of the booth. It was hanging in the middle of the stuffed animals they award as prizes.”

  I hop in my Jeep and race up to the boardwalk, a good thirty minutes north of my apartment.

  Ceepak and the other first responders have sealed off the crime scene with rolled-out POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS tape. The taut yellow plastic snaps in the gusts blowing up from the ocean. It looks like we’ve locked down the whole block of games, even though blinking bulbs are still throbbing in signs outside the unmanned booths: Water Gun Fun, Whack A Mole, Duck Pond, Frog Bog, Clown Bop, Balloon Pop, and Bucket Drop.

  Most of the brightly colored booths have their fronts open, and I can see all sorts of stuffed animals hanging off hooks. Giant Teddy Bears wearing New York Mets, Yankees, Jets, and Giants uniforms. SpongeBob SquarePants flashing his two-toothed smile. Giant yellow banana people with pudgy cheeks. Long-limbed fleecy things that look like an octopus crossed with a rhesus monkey.

  One or two booths are even offering “Official Fun House” prizes. I see a towering display of boxed-up bobblehead dolls. Paulie “The Thing” molded in mid T-shirt tug, his incredibly ripped chest immortalized in tan plastic.

  “Danny?”

  It’s Ceepak, waving at me from up at the Knock ’Em Down booth. One of our SHPD cruisers is parked thirty feet beyond the booth, its roofbar lights swirling, blocking off the mob of onlookers licking their orange-and-white swirl cones, trying to see what the heck is going on.

  Officers Nikki Bonanni and Jen Forbus are working crowd control at the far end. The two Murray brothers have caught the duty at the end where I entered.

  “Put down the corn cob,” yells some young wiseass in the crowd.

  “Give me the full gear!” shouts another.

  I shake my head. Six years ago? Both those guys would’ve been me.

  “Detective Botzong is on his way,” says Ceepak when I reach the Knock ’Em Down.

  William Botzong heads up the State Police Major Crimes Unit. They always get called in to do all the stuff they do on those CSI TV shows when a murder takes place in, oh, say a Jersey Shore resort town where the police department isn’t geared up to handle all the forensic work needed to mount a modern-day murder investigation, even though Ceepak has his own mini-crime lab on the second floor of police headquarters and watches every episode of Forensic Files. I think he has them on DVD too.

  We had worked with Botzong back in June. He’s good people. In his spare time, he likes to sing in community theatre productions. Ceepak and I caught him in Jesus Christ Superstar. He’d had to wear a wig to hide his cop crew cut.

  “We can assume that the killer placed the body in this very public location to send some sort of message,” says Ceepak.

  “A mob hit? From Skeletor and his biker buddies?”

  “It’s a possibility, Danny.”

  I look up and see Paulie Braciole hanging on the wall between a giant pink gorilla and a flock of floppy green ducks. His head is slumped forward, so, fortunately, I don’t have to stare at his dead eyes. Whoever pinioned him to the wall had twisted the straps of his muscleman tee shirt into a knot that they then tied around a hook, leaving Paulie’s neck limp, his head sagging. Dry blood streams down from a temple-high hole in his fade haircut, just in front of his left ear, and trickles across his shoulder and down both sides of his tight white tee.

  I note a ring of brown circling his neck. Also-some of the blood smears upward, instead of dribbling down.

  “What’s going on around his neck?”

  “Unclear,” says Ceepak. “The circle, to some extent, resembles a ligature mark. But it is not a bruise. It is blood.”

  “What about those smears?”

  “Perhaps the killer originally tried hanging Mr. Braciole with a noose. Discovering that he did not need the rope, he slipped it up and off his head.”

  “Streaking the blood upward.”

  Ceepak nods. “But all of this is pure conjecture on my part. I found no rope fibers. No noose. However, I did note dried blood on the floor.”

  Meaning Paulie was still dripping when the killer hung him out to dry.

  Ceepak makes a hand chop toward the rear wall of the booth. “There is a trail of blood out back. I also noticed a set of footprints and a single tire tread.”

  “Like from a unicycle or something?”

  Ceepak shakes his head. “Motorcycle, Danny. Two tires, one directly behind the other, leaving behind a single furrow.”

  Right. Duh.

  “Botzong’s team will want to plaster-cast both the footprint and the tire track.” Ceepak pulls a miniature digital camera out of the calf pocket of his cargo pants. He always wears long pants when we’re working a murder case. More pockets to stow stuff in. “Hopefully, they can also shed some light on the blood ringing the neck.”

  I look up at Paul Braciole, his limp arms dangling at his sides like one of those bright pink fuzzy orangutan things. Something silver and frayed is wrapped around both of his wrists.

  “Is that duct ta
pe?” I ask.

  “Roger that,” says Ceepak. “There is also evidence of it on both of his shoes. Mostly gummy residue with some filament webbing.”

  “So they tied him up with duct tape so they could execute him?”

  “Uncertain at this juncture. Also, there is no sign of duct tape around either of his ankles, or his calves.”

  I nod. If you were tying up your victim, you wouldn’t just bind up his hands and shoes, you’d secure his legs and feet too.

  On the rear wall, in that farm-scene mural, I notice a seam cutting through horsey’s snout and a doorknob poking up in the center of a flower.

  “Was the back door locked?”

  “Yes. But it was a simple hardware-store lock attached to a flimsy hasp. Judging from the splintering plywood where the screws ripped free, the killer was able to kick it open quite easily.”

  “Any security cameras?”

  “Negative. The major investment in booth security was out here.” He indicates the rolling steel gate, now stowed inside its overhead housing.

  “What about the guy who discovered the body? Hugh Williams.”

  “Junior at the local high school. Became quite ill when he smelled all the bodily fluids that had seeped out of Mr. Braciole during the period of time he hung on the wall.”

  Okay. When Ceepak calmly downloads information like that, I know his big brain is off doing something else.

  “Cameras,” he mumbles.

  “You said there weren’t any.”

  He shakes his head. “At the house.”

  He doesn’t mean police headquarters, even though we always call it “the house.”

  He means the Fun House.

  They video everything, 24/7. That’s how I know Soozy K and Mike Tomasino are now whoo-hooing with each other. I saw him crawl into her bed right under this creepy night-vision security cam at the end of the “stalker in the parking lot” episode.

  “Dylan? Jeremy?” Ceepak calls to the Murray brothers. “Hold down the fort.”

  “You got it,” says Dylan.

  “Come on, Danny. We need to go visit our friends at Prickly Pear Productions.”

  Great. We’re going to get a sneak preview of coming attractions. See if, last night, all those Fun House cameras had shot anything that might help us catch a killer.

  12

  We race down the island toward Halibut street.

  I’m thinking Skeletor or one of his Creed biker brethren killed Paulie as payback for splashing them all over prime time TV Thursday night. That would explain the very public execution and the motorcycle tire tracks Ceepak had discovered out back behind the Knock ’Em Down booth.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” says Ceepak when I mention my suspicions. “Remember-a mind is like a parachute. It works best when it is open.”

  I would groan, but I’m trying to keep an open mind here.

  We climb out of our cop car and clamber up those steps to the production trailer.

  Inside, when our eyes adjust to the darkness (these guys could grow mushrooms in here), we see Marty Mandrake planted in his director’s chair in a front of a TV monitor. He’s munching grapes again. Organic, I’m guessing.

  Grace, the woman with all the stopwatches draped around her neck, is the only other person in the room.

  On the small screen they’re both glued to, I can see Soozy K. She’s wearing a black bikini under some kind of black knit wrap. She is also sniffling. Black mascara streaks down her cheeks, making her look like a wet newspaper.

  “Paulie and I had something special,” she says to that off-camera interviewer who’s probably not even there. “Sure, it hurt when he hooked up with Jenny, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t still have feelings for him. I didn’t expect it to happen, but we made a connection, you know?” Big sniff. “I’ve never met anyone like Paulie. Never. I’d give anything for us to continue our journey, to have him flash me again.”

  Marty Mandrake nearly chokes on a grape, spits it out like a little green cannonball.

  “No, no, no!” he hollers into his walkie-talkie. I can hear his voice, a half-second delayed, echoing out of the TV screen. Soozy K pouts like an upset puppy.

  “What the fuck?” she snaps, smearing the phony tears off her schnozzle. “What’s your fucking problem now, Marty?”

  “You’re killing me here, babe,” Marty screams into his walkie-talkie. “Jesus, kid-you’re supposed to be in fucking mourning.”

  “So?” Soozy chomps her gum hard. Yep, she’d had a cud of Dentyne tucked up inside her cheek the whole time she was getting all choked up for the camera. “Paulie screwed me over, Marty! We had an alliance! What’s he doing bumping ugly with that skank Jenny Mortadella?”

  Ceepak steps forward. I can tell: he has heard enough.

  “Sir?”

  Mandrake glances over his left shoulder. Snorts. Then ignores us because, judging from his bright bulging eyes and fast finger snap, he just had a Big Idea. “I got it. This is brilliant, babe. Say ‘I guess we weren’t meant to be.’”

  “At least not in this lifetime,” adds Grace who, I’m guessing, reads a lot of those books about teenaged vampires.

  “Beautiful!” Mandrake reaches over with both hands. Kisses Miss Stopwatches on her forehead. “I love it.”

  “Mr. Mandrake?” Ceepak again. Louder this time.

  “What? I’m working here.”

  “So are we.”

  Mandrake sighs. Picks up his walkie-talkie. “Rutger? Take five. We have visitors.”

  They way he says “visitors,” it sounds like we’re the swine flu or something.

  “How can I help you two today?” says Mandrake, sounding all sorts of snotty.

  Ceepak gestures toward the monitor where Soozy K’s blank-eyed face fills the frame. Her lips flap silently. She must be memorizing her new lines.

  “Surely,” says Ceepak, “you have canceled any future Fun House episodes.”

  “We thought about it,” says Mandrake. “But then we realized that that would be the selfish reaction. The coward’s way out.”

  “Come again?”

  Mandrake gives us his I’m-so-earnest-it-hurts face again. “Officer Ceepak, this is a time of great sorrow for me and everyone connected to this show.” Stopwatch Woman nods. Her timekeeping necklaces clack into each other. “Paul Braciole wasn’t just a television star and cultural icon. He was a friend. He was family.”

  Why do I get the feeling Mr. Mandrake is trying out the official statement some network PR guy has just written up for him?

  “However,” he continues, “Paulie loved this show. Fun House was his home. To quit now, to disappoint millions and millions of Paulie’s loyal fans, well, that wouldn’t be the kind of legacy the Paul Braciole I knew would want to leave behind. No, sir. The show must go on.”

  “Mr. Braciole was murdered,” says Ceepak. “His killer is still at large.”

  “Which is why, next Thursday night, we will be dedicating a full hour of prime time TV to honor Paul’s memory and to help you guys track that killer down.”

  My turn to stammer. “What?”

  “It’s Survivor meets Jersey Shore meets America’s Most Wanted,” says Layla Shapiro, who must’ve slipped into the room behind us. She’s carrying a foam-core poster board. “The network art department just e-mailed me a JPG of the graphic they want to go with.”

  She flips it around to flash a scary Post Office wanted-poster portrait of Skeletor.

  “We pulled his facial features off last week’s episode,” Layla bubbles on. “Had an artist enhance it. I love what she did with the cross-hatching and shadows. Not crazy about the typeface. You still want to call it ‘To Catch a Killer’?”

  “You bet,” says Mandrake. “It pops. Got all those K sounds going on. Catch a Killer.”

  “Fine,” says Layla. “We’ll open with the ‘Funeral for a Friend’ graphic, slam it out with this.”

  Mandrake is up and out of his chair, admiring the gruesome graphic
.

  “And tell those idiots I want smoke when this image blows the other one away. We’re all tinkle-tinkle piano music over the funeral logo and, then-boom. In comes ‘To Catch a Killer!’ The funeral logo needs to crumble like a wall of bricks. I want an avalanche!”

  “Awesome,” says Layla. “Oh-I’m talking to Elton’s people. They might let us use his song for the open. He’s a huge fan.”

  I’m guessing “Elton” is Sir Elton John. I think he wrote a song called “Funeral for a Friend.” I know Springsteen sure didn’t.

  “I want Elton to perform it!” says Mandrake. “Live! I see candles everywhere. Blowing in the wind. Buffeted by the sea breeze.…”

  “The cast joins him on the chorus!” adds Layla.

  “Yes! They hold hands and sing!”

  “It’s Must-See TV!”

  Once again, Ceepak has heard enough.

  “You cannot be serious,” he says.

  “About what?” asks Mandrake.

  “Putting all this on television.”

  “Grow up, Bubeleh. It’s already on television. The newsboys are running with it big-time. And not just our network. Fox, CNN, MSNBC. They’re all over it like mayonnaise on bologna.”

  Okay, judging by the jaw pops, my partner is now furious. “You should never have run that footage of Skeletor and the motorcycle gang. You may have provoked this attack on your ‘family.’”

  “Whoa. Ease up, cowboy.”

  “You gave us your word you would not utilize any of that footage until after the arrest of our suspect.”

  “When? I don’t remember making any such promise.”

  I nod toward Layla. “Your associate did.”

  “You have it in writing?” says Mandrake.

  “No.”

  “So you learned a valuable lesson. Always make people put their promises on paper. That’s why God invented lawyers.”

  “We need the footage,” says Ceepak.

  Mandrake and Layla both cock their heads sideways.

  “What footage?” she says it first.

  “From your cameras inside the house and out on the deck.”

  “We need to piece together everything we can about the hours before Mr. Braciole’s death,” I add.