Tilt-a-Whirl

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Gus locks the chief in one of the two windowless holding pens we have in the house.

Mendez is in the other one.

“Yo!” he yells at Ceepak. “You burn down my condo complex? I thought you wanted a time-share….”

“I didn't burn it down,” Ceepak says. “I just couldn't reach the alarm clock you rigged for the trigger.”

The chief interrupts.

“I want to call a lawyer! Now! Move! Get me a phone!”

“Maybe later, chief.” Ceepak says. “After we visit your girlfriend.”

“Trust me, Ceepak-you don't want to do that.”

I don't think Ceepak's trusted the chief ever since he “lied a little” to nail Mendez. He motions for me to follow him out of the cellblock.

“The truth can really ruin your fucking day, Ceepak. You'll see! You fucking Mary Poppins!”

Ceepak doesn't stop to listen, so neither do I.

We walk out the door.

Like Springsteen says:

I'll walk like a man

And I'll keep on walkin’.

Ceepak is stalling on letting the chief make his one phone call because he knows Cosgrove wouldn't call his lawyer.

He'd call his girlfriend.

So we need to drive up to the city before she figures out we're coming.

We climb into the Explorer.

“The FBI has her apartment under surveillance,” Ceepak says, handing me a map of the city with the block circled with wax pencil. “You know the way?”

“Yes, sir.”

We pull out of the parking lot and the radio starts squawking.

“All units, 10–34, Playland Arcade. Repeat. 10–34. Playland Video Arcade. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous….”

Ceepak snatches the radio mike.

“This is Ceepak. We're on it. Roll, Danny. Playland.”

“Sirens?”

“And lights. Come on. Roll!”

I flip the switches. The light bar spins, the siren wails. We squeal tires.

“You know what a 10–34 is, Danny?”

Great. A drive-by pop quiz.

Fortunately, while I race through a red light and cut the tires hard to the left, Ceepak answers his own question.

“It's a 10–24 still in progress. An assault with a deadly weapon.”

Got it.

There's a guy with a deadly weapon inside the Arcade at Playland and the assault is still going on.

I step on the gas, push the pedal all the way to the floor and make my engine roar.

Springsteen would be proud.

* * *

We're the first unit on the scene.

Poor Playland. They were closed all weekend on account of the Tilt-A-Whirl murder. Now they've got somebody with a weapon terrorizing people who'd rather be dropping quarters into coin slots. If this kind of action keeps up, the Family Fun Park may have to change its name to Slayland.

The video arcade building is a vast, open space-like a giant warehouse with Astro-turf green carpet and enough evenly spaced red poles to hold up the roof. Usually, there are all sorts of bells and whistles and ray guns going off the second you step inside the front doors. Today, all I hear is about a hundred kids screaming.

“What's the situation?” Ceepak asks a guy in a red tunic with huge pockets up front sagging with quarters.

He points to the far side of the arcade.

“Some guy's got a pistol!”

“Where?” Ceepak asks, his eyes surveying the situation.

“Dodge City!”

“Where?”

He is obviously a first-time visitor to The Playland Arcade. I, however, know where everything is because this is where much of my youth was misspent. Most of my quarters, too.

“This way,” I say.

Dodge City is this corny shooting gallery that's been in the far corner of the building ever since sometime in 1962. It's this life-size barroom where you shoot a six-gun at a piano player, Black Bart and his gang at the poker table, whiskey bottles-that sort of stuff. When you hit the targets, the mannequins move and say stuff like, “Dang! You shot me, sheriff.” You ring enough bells, shoot enough bad guys, you win a tin star you can pin on your girlfriend's chest.

I wish it were still that easy.

People are panicking, hiding under pool tables, clustered behind Skee Ball targets.

Once again, Ceepak shows no fear.

His gun is out in front, sweeping left, searching right.

“Over there!” a girl screeches from beneath the Alpine Racer. “It's Ben!”

Guess she knows the guy with the gun.

“Follow me.” Ceepak uses pinball machines and giant gumball dispensers for cover. When we get to the Crab Claw, this crane you move around to snag stuffed animals, we see the kid with the gun.

He looks like he's drunk.

“She's a hoochie-mama!”

Sounds like he's drunk too-not making much sense, jabbering gobbledegook.

“Chicken head, hoochie-mama!”

Guess he and his girlfriend had a spat this morning. Or, he caught her cheating and has decided to take it out on the world, including me. He points his gun in my general direction and I hit the deck, crawling to safety under a fake Formula One Racecar.

The kid looks to be sixteen or seventeen. Preppy clothes with brown, blotchy stains down the front of his shirt. Preppy puke. Something about him looks familiar, like I should know who he is, like he's one of my buds’ kid brothers or something. He twirls, almost topples, then spins around to point his pistol at Ceepak who is standing right in front of him, holstering his own gun.

The spinning makes the kid even dizzier. He waves his pistol in circles over his head like he wants to be a Dallas Cowgirl cheerleader when he grows up.

“Put that down, son,” Ceepak says.

The kid tries to stand still.

“Snap. You smell bacon? Here come 5.0.”

He is what we call a wigga: a rich white boy who wants you to think he's ghetto. He must've bought a Gangsta Slangsta dictionary last time he was at the mall. Bacon and 5.0? They both mean the same thing: cops.

“Wassup, braw?”

Ceepak doesn't understand a word.

“Hand me your weapon, son.”

“Ease up, braw!”

“Put it down. On the floor. Now.”

The gun hand rushes up to cover his mouth. Up chucks some more puke. Beer and whisky? Mighty risky.

“Son?” Ceepak towers over the boy who's looking down and wiping vomit all over his shirt. The kid is also what we call a sloppy drunk. Maybe he should stick to doing Jell-O shots.

That's why I recognize him.

Saturday night. The Sand Bar. He's the underage asshole I wanted to bust.

“Mr. Sinclair?” Ceepak knows the kid, too. “We met Saturday night, remember?”

“Wassup, braw?”

The kid's eyeballs swim around, trying to find something in the room that isn't gyrating.

“I'm Officer John Ceepak. We talked when your girlfriend Ashley was kidnapped?”

“Hoochie-mama!”

“Hand me the pistol, Ben.”

Ben waves the pistol like a wet flag.

“Man, if you don't stop buggin’, I'm going to open a can on you!”

“Which machine did you tear it off?”

“I'll pop a cap, braw …”

“Not with that gun. It's plastic. A toy.”

The kid looks down at his weapon. People peek out. Some laugh-the ones close enough to see Ceepak is right: The kid's deadly weapon was ripped off a video game. I see a cable curling out of the pistol grip.

“You'll find that most lethal weapons are made of metal,” Ceepak says. “Plastic has a tendency to melt in high temperature situations such as that created when bullets exit a gun barrel. Friction.”

The kid looks dumbfounded. Or maybe just dumb.

“Oh. Yeah,” he says, flashing back to his prep school physics class. “Friction.”

He drops his gun on the floor and, now that I hear it clatter, I know for certain it's a toy.

Ceepak figured it out earlier.

Back when it was dangerous to be wrong.

Ben Sinclair is our honorable mayor's son. This makes the Playland manager nervous. Not Ceepak.

Thirty minutes later, we're in the Arcade office with the six other cops who responded to the 10–34.

“We see no need to press charges,” the manager says. He's about thirty years old and wears a tie tucked under the floppy collar of a short-sleeve polo shirt, which, if you ask me, never really looks all that classy. A metal change dispenser is clipped to the front of his belt.

“No harm done.” The guy is studying the plastic pistol with the wire pigtailing out its butt. “We can repair the machine.”

Somebody brings Ben a Sprite to help settle his stomach. It'll probably be another day before the smell of food, especially curly fries or funnel cakes, doesn't make him sick.

“When was the last time you talked with Ashley?” Ceepak asks Ben.

“This morning. After she bounced out of town.”

“Where is she going?”

“I dunno. Someplace with her mom.”

“And that upset you?”

“Naw. Take notes, fellas-I'm the pimp-daddy playa.”

“Danny?”

I translate: “He has lots of girlfriends.”

“So why the scene with the gun?” Ceepak asks. “You're the mayor's son. Surely you know better than to scare all these innocent people….”

The way Ben Sinclair smirks? I think what he knows is that the best part of being the mayor’s son is you get to roll around town doing whatever the hell you damn well feel like doing.

“That Ashley is wacked, dogg. Got all up in my face and punked me when I was representin’ what be in my heart.”

Ceepak just looks at me this time.

“She made fun of him when he tried being romantic. I think.”

“She laughed, braw! Dat's cold. So I went out and got housed. Totally licked.”

“After your telephone conversation with Ashley, you started drinking?” Ceepak says, now getting the hang of it.

“Yeah. I drank me some. I'll tell you true, braw. I'm gonna miss Ashley. Hottie like that don't come along every day.”

“Like what?”

“You know. A hoochie.”

Ceepak just stares. The kid can do his own damn translation.

“A sexy shawty.”

Ceepak's still staring.

“A loose chick. You know-a girl who'll do anything you want. She'll let you get all up in it with her.”

“You're saying Ashley Hart is promiscuous?”

“Fo’ real, dogg. Girl is one hoochie-mama. That night she got kidnapped? She was all ready to get busy with me….”

“Saturday? After her father was murdered, Ashley wanted to have sexual relations with you?”

“Fo’ real, dogg. And she know how the deed be done, because she already stickin’ it with some old dude. Told me so herself this one time….”

Ceepak looks at the manager.

“You should leave.”

“I can hang around. In case you guys need anything else. Maybe some more soft drinks?” The manager wants to hear the good stuff, the teenage girl having sex with older men stuff.

“Thank you for your assistance, but your customers need you more than we do.”

“Not really. We have change-making machines on the floor….”

“Adam?”

“On it. Sir?”

Adam Kiger, who's pretty big, gestures for the manager to get off his butt and head out the door. The doofus finally takes the hint.

“You want we should leave, too?” another one of our guys asks.

“Yeah. Thanks for the backup, guys. We're all good here.”

“You two need anything, holler.”

The Sea Haven cops? They dig Ceepak. I think they're hip to The Code. I think it's why they signed on to do what they do every day instead of becoming, oh, I don't know, video arcade managers.

Now it's just me and Ceepak and Ben.

Ceepak sits down.

“Who?”

“What?”

“You say Ashley admitted to having sexual relations with an older man?”

“Fo’ real. She might just been jawsin’, selling me woof tickets-”

“Lying,” I translate before being asked.

“Fourth of July? Me and my peeps was kicking it on the beach and Ashley got all heavy, like she wanted to confide some down low secret. She axed me what I think if she be getting it on with somebody even older than my old man. Whoa, I say. I don't need to be hearin’ that kind of nasty-ass detail. I mean, Ashley got a nice booty and all, but I don't need to get all up in her Kool-Aid, you know what I'm saying?”

I do. Ben liked making out with Ashley, feeling her up on the beach, getting his rocks off. But getting to know her? Listening to her problems? That required far too much effort.

“I told Ashley to ease up, dogg. W.T.M.I. Way too much information.”

“So you don't know who the older man is?”

“Naw. But I know who the newer man was gonna be.”

“Who?”

“Me, braw. She invited me on over to her crib for some, y'know, oral action. Saturday night. But then-she got kidnapped and all like that….”

“I find it hard to believe that a girl like Ashley-.”

“Ceepak?” I say.

“Yes?”

“Saturday night? I was at The Sand Bar. This guy was in there too. Doing Jell-O shots.”

“Go on.”

“He received a call on his cell phone.”

“That's right….” The kid finally has enough brain cells functioning to remember stuff.

“I heard him tell his friends he was, and I quote, ‘late for a blow job.’”

Ceepak winces.

“That was Ashley! Why do you think I left my boys at the bar and raced all the way down to her place? I thought I was finally gonna get me a little somethin'-somethin’. She's a real chicken-head, braw.”

Ceepak looks to me to translate one more time.

I wish I didn't know what the kid was saying.

“He's suggesting that Ashley enjoys performing oral sex acts.”

The chief was right.

Sometimes the truth really can ruin your day.