Mad Mouse

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Remember how I said the Mad Mouse roller coaster on the boardwalk is so much fun because it makes you feel like you're gonna die every time the little car zips around one of those tight curves?

I take that back.

Thinking you're going to die, thinking it could happen any second, having your life become an out-of-control Mad Mouse isn't that much fun, especially when some of your best friends are crammed into the roller-coaster car with you and you don't know who's manning the controls.

The shooter wants me. Or my friends. Or both.

Why?

You tell me.

“We need to discern motive,” Ceepak says as we trudge through the sand and make our way back to Tangerine Street.

“We sure as hell do,” I say, not sounding nearly as professional as maybe I should.

“You know, Danny …” Ceepak stops walking and looks at me with sincere concern. “I'd understand if you asked to be relieved of this duty. To be temporarily reassigned. Even if you went out on disability with PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder.”

“You mean it?”

“Certainly.”

“You wouldn't think I was a coward if I went home and hid under my bed?”

“Of course not.”

“Would you do it?”

He doesn't need to answer. I know he wouldn't run away from danger because he didn't, especially not when his buddies needed him most.

I've heard stories about some of the stuff Ceepak did over in Iraq. How he risked his own life to run up an alley under heavy fire and drag a guy to safety-some artillery gunner he didn't even know. That was back in Sadr City, the slummy section of Baghdad where they still liked Saddam. Ceepak saved that soldier's life because to him his duty is about doing more than his duty, if you catch my drift. The army gave Ceepak one of its biggest medals for that one. The Bronze Star, awarded for “heroic service” in combat.

Ceepak never wears any of his medals, of course. He never even talks about them. When he first joined the force here back in the spring, the guys all thought he was kind of a joke on account of his Code. I heard Sergeant Santucci even called Ceepak a special kind of MP-not Military Police, but a “Missy Prissy.”

Then some of the guys called their buddies in the army and National Guard. Asked around. They heard the stories. About that rescue in the alley. And the time Ceepak single-handedly held off this ambush outside Fallujah. Or the one about the unconscious, dehydrated Iraqi kid on a stretcher Ceepak saved with IV fluids because he was the only one who could tell the boy was suffering from heat stroke.

When the guys at the house heard all this stuff, they quit calling Ceepak “Dudley Do-Right” and “Goody Two-Shoes,” which is one of those expressions I never understood, since everybody I know, good or bad, usually wears two shoes.

Anyhow, I know what Ceepak does when his buddies are in danger. He does not run away. He does not hide under his bed.

“What I might do in your situation is irrelevant, Danny,” Ceepak now says, offering me some wiggle room.

As you may have already guessed, I've never won any medals. Not even at camp. Not even for Popsicle-stick hot-plate making-and I was pretty good at it. I don't have much practice being heroic, acting brave. Bravery for me used to mean chugging a yard of beer on a stomach full of chicken wings while my buddies chanted, “Go, go, go!”

I have to admit, the thought of someone out there who has my pals and me in his sights makes me think maybe I was too quick to dismiss that telemarketing gig with the mortgage broker. But then I'd have to call people during dinnertime, and I guess you have to be pretty brave to do that, too.

I look at Ceepak.

“I might know something that'll help us catch this guy,” I say. “And I might be the only one who could possibly know it.”

“You might also get yourself killed.” He says it grimly. “You're putting yourself in harm's way.”

“Hey, that kind of comes with the job, right?”

Ceepak nods.

“Do I get a little sermon about my life being on the line Tuesday during orientation?”

Ceepak smiles.

“Probably not,” he says. “Mostly, it's W-2s and medical forms.”

“Does our insurance cover bullet wounds?”

“Definitely.”

“Then, I'm good to go. Besides, I can't hide under my bed. It's a mess down there. Dust bunnies. Dirty underwear. Dirty magazines.”

Ceepak doesn't blink. So I do.

“Come on,” I say, leading the way. “We need to get busy.”

I figure there's no better way to start my new career. Someone wants to hurt my friends, they have to answer to me.