Fun House

23

Ceepak tells me to meet him at Oak Beach.

In Sea Haven, we name our beaches after the streets they dead-end into. I have a lot of history on this particular plot of sand: it’s where my friends and I used to hang out when we were teenagers, born to run, like Springsteen says, from everything we knew in New Jersey.

Of course, I never did run. I’m still here.

But Oak Beach was where we plotted our escape and talked big about what we’d do and who we’d become. I think I was going to become a rock star. More specifically, I was going to play trombone with the E Street Band, even though, as my late girlfriend Katie pointed out, “they only have a saxophone player.”

“That’s why they need me!” I told her.

But I quit blowing the bone before the end of my freshman year in high school. There was an unfortunate marching band incident. My slide took out the tuba player. Spit valve to the neck.

We laughed about that all summer long.

Every day in June, July, and August, after working our various crummy jobs catering to tourists, we’d all march down to Oak Beach and hang out together. We’d plant our umbrella in whatever patch of bare sand we could find, hide the cooler of beer we were too young to legally drink under a beach towel, and spend the end of the day shooting the breeze, smelling the salt air, dashing up to the dunes every time the guy with the ice cream truck tinkled his bell, honestly thinking we would live that Dylan song Springsteen sings sometimes and stay “forever young.” Our glory days would be like the waves crashing against the shore. Endless.

Oak Beach is also where I fell in love. Several times each summer.

If I want to re-connect with my first girlfriend from seventh grade, I don’t have to do it on Facebook. She’s just up Shore Drive, at the Mussel Beach Motel, fluffing pillows and wrapping crinkly sanitary paper on top of bathroom glasses. Becca Adkinson is kind of like me: we swore we’d get out when we were young and, instead, ended up hanging around town forever.

I guess I’m clinging to my memories because I’m about to march into another crime scene that, I’m pretty sure, will make me hate Oak Beach for the rest of my life.

Thomas, a.k.a. Skeletor.

Dead. In a lifeguard chair.

It’s still early. Too early for much beach traffic. In time, the scrubby sand alongside the boardwalk path cutting through the dunes will be cluttered with kicked-off sandals and flip-flops. People just leave them here when they first hit the beach, pick them up on their way back to their rental houses for lunch-probably a sandwich made with cold cuts from the supermarket deli on a nice soggy roll.

Surprisingly, nobody ever steals the footgear. It’s the shore’s unwritten code. This is a place to escape all that, all the pushing and shoving and stealing and lying.

Well, in my memory it is.

I can see Ceepak standing on the other side of a corral of fluttering yellow police tape stretched out between flagpoles, the ones the lifeguards stake in the sand to mark how much beach they’re keeping an eye on. My partner is staring up at the lifeguard chair, a bright yellow perch about six feet off the ground. A lanky body is flopped sideways in the wooden seat, its legs and arms dangling down like a rag doll a kid has tossed on the edge of a couch. The head droops sideways.

Whoever put Skeletor in his high chair must’ve cinched up the chinstrap on his Boonie hat: it’s buffeted by the sea breeze, but it’s not blowing off his dead head.

I duck under the police tape, check out the pattern of footprints in the sand, and find the path most likely left by Ceepak’s shoes so I can use his trail like stepping stones. I’m sure Bill Botzong and his MCU crew will be plaster-casting all these dimples and divots, hoping the killer left us some kind of footwear impression we can use to track him down.

“MCU is on the way,” says Ceepak.

I nod. “Who found the body?”

“Early-morning joggers.” He points to a waffle-wedge impression in the sand. “They like the Nike LunarGlide running shoes.”

“How’d he die?” I ask.

Ceepak taps his left temple. “Single bullet, shot from a distance of two to three feet. Exit wound slightly lower on the right side, suggesting a downward firing angle.”

“Just like Paulie Braciole.”

“Roger that.” Ceepak has shifted into his more robotic mode. He usually does this when confronted with the horrors of death. I think it’s how he made it through Iraq without totally losing his mind.

“Was this where he was killed?” I ask.

“Doubtful. The beach, although officially closed at midnight, still attracts quite a few night visitors.”

True. I’d say fifty percent of my Oak Beach memories took place after dark.

“Also, Danny, as you can see, there are no bloodstains on the lifeguard stand itself.” Right. If they shot Skeletor while he was sitting up in the elevated chair, there’d be blood splatter stains and dribble marks all over the bright yellow paint.

“Most likely,” Ceepak continues, “Skeletor’s body was dumped here sometime shortly before dawn. The joggers called 9-1-1 at 5:30 A.M. When the first responders realized who the victim was, they immediately notified Chief Baines at home. The chief called me.”

And Ceepak called me.

Before I could call him. Geeze-o, man. I almost forgot.

“His name is Thomas,” I say.

“Come again?”

“Skeletor. His first name is Thomas. He’s Gabe’s brother.”

“And who is Gabe?”

This happens sometimes. My mouth races ahead of my brain.

“The guy with the Heil Hitler knuckles from the candy stand.”

Okay. The brain still hasn’t quite caught up.

“You mean the gentleman we spoke with yesterday at the All American Snack Shack booth?”

“Yeah. I bumped into him at the Sand Bar last night. I went there to watch Fun House. He came over with a peace offering of a couple beers. Said he wanted to arrange his brother’s surrender.”

“May I ask why you didn’t notify me immediately?” Ceepak asks, more puzzlement in his voice than criticism.

“I would have, but Gabe said Thomas couldn’t turn himself in until tomorrow morning, Saturday. Lady-friend problems.”

“I see.”

“This all happened around eleven o’clock,” I say, without adding, “after your bedtime.”

“Did Gabe suggest that his brother, Thomas, a.k.a. Skeletor, had reason to fear for his life?”

“No. Not really. He said the Creed had ostracized Skeletor. But if they had wanted him dead, he’d be dead already.”

“Indeed,” Ceepak says thoughtfully. “Do you know his last name?”

Damn.

“No,” I say. “Sorry. Should’ve got that. Sorry.”

“Don’t ‘should’ on yourself, Danny.”

Ceepak slips a digital camera out of the thigh pocket on his cargo shorts, puts the viewfinder to his eye, and activates the zoom.

“Fascinating,” he says.

“What?”

“There is a square of folded paper pinned to the Boonie hat with a beach badge.”

Beach badges are what people pin to their swimming suits or beach bags to prove they’ve paid their way onto the sand. They cost like five bucks a day or thirty-five for the whole season. The money collected pays for stuff like lifeguards, cleanup crews, and the salaries of the beach patrol kids who come around to see if you have your beach badges.

“You want me to climb up and see what it says?” I offer.

“Negative. We shouldn’t disturb the body until MCU’s had a chance to examine it.”

And so we wait.

For Botzong and his crime-scene investigators to literally comb the sand for clues. Yes, they find some footprints-but, in truth, there are far too many to be of any use to us.

They dust the lifeguard chair and Skeletor’s clothes for fingerprints. They find none. Just like with Paulie’s body in the Knock ’Em Down booth.

They drag all sorts of high-tech gizmos out of the back of their van. Hanging on to the high chair, they vacuum the dead man’s clothes, hoping to pick up a stray hair or fiber. They take their own photographs. They check under his fingernails.

But mostly, Bill Botzong, dressed in a Windbreaker and baseball cap instead of the dress blues he wore on TV last night, shakes his head.

“Whoever did this is good,” he says grudgingly.

“Do you suspect, as I do, that we are looking for the same person who killed Paul Braciole?” asks Ceepak.

“Yeah. The gunshot wounds are almost identical.”

Ceepak nods. “And both bodies were ‘dumped’ in very visible, extremely public places.”

“What about the piece of paper pinned to his hat?” I ask because I’m hoping it’s some kind of super clue, like the killer’s business card or something.

“Yeah,” says Botzong. “We should definitely look at that.” He calls over to two of his team. “Weitzel? St. Claire? We need to, very carefully, take the body down from the chair, get him on a gurney.”

“We can help,” say two guys in lab coats who, I think, work for the county medical examiner.

All four guys work their way up the side beams of the lifeguard chair like they’re climbing a jungle gym and try to figure out how to best extract Skeletor’s body from its elevated perch. Watching them work with Skeletor’s floppy but stiffening body, I’m reminded, first, of Ceepak wrestling with that sack of sweet potatoes at Gladys’s restaurant, and then that old movie Weekend at Bernie’s, the one about two young dudes who prop up their dead boss and cart him around a swanky beach resort. Hilarity ensues.

This morning? Not so much. Nobody’s laughing.

The whole scene is extremely grim. Like the stations of the cross, the second to the last one, the thirteenth, I think. The one where Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross. I’m reminded of a prayer the nuns taught us for Good Friday: “May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”

Hey, somebody has to pray for the Skeletors of this world.

The dead body is laid on a black vinyl body bag supplied by the team from the morgue.

Botzong puts on sterile gloves; works open the beach-badge safety pin.

“There appears to be something bulky stuffed inside his shirt pocket,” says Ceepak.

“Yeah,” says Botzong. “We’ll extract that next.”

“What’s on the paper?” I ask.

“Writing. A note.” Botzong fumbles in his shirt pocket for a pair of reading glasses. He studies the tiny slip of paper like it’s the fortune cracked out his cookie at a Chinese restaurant.

“‘I killed Paulie,’” Botzong reads without emotion. “‘I killed Skeletor.”’ He hesitates.

“And?” says Ceepak.

Botzong finishes: “‘Next, I will kill Soozy K.’”