Tilt-a-Whirl

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Good thing we have Mendez locked up in the back. Unfortunately, the chief never did cook up a good charge against Cynthia Stone, so the lawyer went back to her room at the B amp;B to plot her revenge.

“I will make myself available at 3 P.M.”

Her steel-tipped voice now emanates from the chief's speaker-phone.

“We'd prefer to talk with Mr. Mendez sooner,” Morgan says. “We'd prefer to talk to with him sometime closer to now!”

“I'm sure you would, Mr. Morgan. However, he will not speak to you without his lawyer present. Me.”

Ceepak nods. He knows it's the right way to proceed.

“It is currently 1:15,” Ms. Stone says. “I have a few final matters to attend to, regarding the transfer of Mr. Hart's assets into Ashley's name.”

“Three is fine,” the chief barks. “Not a minute later.”

“I'll be there. You have my word.”

The chief jabs the speaker button to make sure Ms. Stone is gone. I don't think he likes her.

“Gentlemen?” Morgan moves toward the door. “If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go grab a quick bite with my guys. There's something I want them to look into….”

“What?” the chief asks. “Anything we should know?”

“No. Don't think so. But if it turns out to be something, I'll let you know. Probably won't. Just … I don't know. I'll keep you posted. Where's a good place for a sandwich?”

“Just head over to Ocean,” I suggest. “There's sub shops and delis up and down the street.”

“Thanks, Boyle. We circle back up at, say, 1445?”

“Make it 1420,” the chief says.

Morgan leaves.

“Close the door, Boyle.”

“Yes, chief.”

He waits until I do it before he speaks again.

“Ceepak?”

“Sir?”

“I want you up on the north shore tonight.”

“That's my plan.”

“Good. Mendez and his gang might be involved, but I don't think those gangbangers are the kind that get their rocks off with teenaged girls.”

“Check.”

“Squeegee, on the other hand …”

The chief walks over to a locked closet. He slips in the key and opens the door.

There's a long case sitting on the floor. It looks like the kind of hard-sided storage box you'd pack your power tools in if you had some tool that was about three feet long.

The chief props the case up on his desk and snaps open all four latches.

I was right about SWS. It's a rifle.

Inside the case, tucked into specially cut foam slots, are all the pieces of an Army issue M-24. The stock, the barrel, the scope, even a silencer. I see Dymo-pressed label tape: “M-24 Sniper Weapon System.”

SWS.

“Just in case,” the chief says.

Ceepak snaps the latches shut and picks up the case.

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Let's go grab some lunch.”

We almost go out the front door. Then we remember the reporters. Ceepak is sort of a poster boy for this case, talking directly to the kidnapper on TV and all. If the newshounds see him, they'll start screaming questions again and chase after us like twelve-year-old girls on the heels of Justin Timberlake or whoever they're squealing after these days.

We slip out the back.

I take Ceepak to this totally out-of-the-way restaurant.

Actually, to call The Rusty Scupper a restaurant is a stretch. It's really just this four-table grease pit with a grill and a waitress over on the bay side of the island that practically nobody ever goes to except starving people with boats because it's located right off the public dock. In fact, you can smell the salty air and listen to the water slap against the barnacle-crusted pilings while you wait for your burger to be burnt.

I come here to ogle the waitress. Gail.

She's at the “staff table” painting her toenails. She has her bronzed leg up on a chair, her back arched, her long hair hanging forward. She is incredibly tan and likes to wear a skimpy bathing suit on the job so she can stay that way.

Two tables have customers, chewing their burgers over and over and over, nibbling droopy fries out of red plastic baskets with tissue paper dotted with grease blots. The décor is simple: red-and-white vinyl tablecloths with tomato-red rings wherever a dirty-bottomed ketchup bottle sat in the past week. Gail is not a big table wiper.

“Hey, Danny.”

“Hey, Gail.”

Gail shakes her frosted hair out of her eyes and sees Ceepak.

“Ohmygod. You're that guy from TV!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“How totally cool! You were just on TV.”

Gail is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, as they say. She's sort of forgetting why Ceepak made his television debut earlier in the day.

“Ohmygod,” she repeats, unable to believe she's about to serve a greasy hamburger to a television star.

I sort of wish I had taken Ceepak someplace else.

“I'll have a burger,” Ceepak says.

“Hunh?”

“Two burgers, Gail.” I say, trying to snap her out of her adoring daze. “Okay?”

“Oh, right.”

Gail scribbles on her green pad.

“How'd you like that cooked?”

Ceepak does a quick survey of his surroundings. Sees the flies buzzing in and out through the holes in the screen door. The lipstick stains on the tops of our clean water glasses. The grill cook wiping his nose and chewing a toothpick on the other side of the kitchen pass-through.

“Very well done,” he says.

“You want him to like cook the shit out of it?”

“Yes, ma'am. I surely do.”

“Cool.” Gail twirls on her heel and bounces over to tell the cook what kind of meat to massacre next.

“Like I said, nobody much comes here.”

“She a friend?”

“Yeah.”

Ceepak nods. He can see why.

“That Morgan's pretty sharp, hunh?” I say, trying to start some idle conversation that might help us forget about our increased risk of contracting mad cow disease.

Ceepak nods again. He's thinking.

“Wonder what the other thing is he's checking out….”

“Something in the note,” Ceepak says.

“Really?”

“FBI guys read a lot of ransom notes. Something about this one struck him as peculiar.”

“How do you know that?”

“Saw it in his face. Like he smelled bad fish.”

Gail comes bopping back to our table carrying a crumpled newspaper.

“Hey guys-that girl? You know, the one whose father was like shot in Playland? Was she like kidnapped or something?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Oh….”

The fifteen-watt bulb in her brain is now illuminated.

“So that's why you were on TV!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Cool. Funny, we get a lot of TV people in here lately….”

“The reporters?”

“No. Just that weather girl who married Hart. The kid's mom.” She taps her curved fingernail extension on the front-page photo of Betty Bell Hart. “She was all like secretive and like leave me alone-ish and all. I guess on account of what happened to her ex-husband and her daughter. She looked kind of sad, you know?”

“When'd she come in? Earlier today?”

“No. Friday.”

“Friday?” Ceepak says before I do.

“Yunh-hunh.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-yeah. She ordered fish sticks.”

“And?”

“Duh! We only serve fish sticks on Fridays. For the Catholics or whatever. Makes sense she'd want to be left alone after all this. I know I would if my ex got killed or my kid got kidnapped. Not that I'm married or anything….”

Neither Ceepak nor I mention that all “this” took place on Saturday. Not Friday. Not when Ashley's mother was, according to what she'd told us, at her apartment in the city.

“Danny?” Ceepak stands up.

“Yeah.” I push back my chair and smile up at Gail. “We gotta run.”

“Really? Your burgers are almost done.”

I can hear the cook squeezing the sputtering life out of our chopped meat patties on his griddle. I give Gail ten bucks for our uneaten lunch.

“We'll take a rain check.”

It's not that we're afraid of The Rusty Scupper's burgers.

We just need to talk to Ashley's mother about the fish sticks.