Whack A Mole

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Stacey still looks as sexy as I remember.

She has on a new bikini top. I can see the red-and-white sunburn lines from the other bathing suit, the one she was wearing Sunday. Today's is even skimpier.

Now she turns and bends. Her tiny Catholic schoolgirl miniskirt rides up high on her thighs and reveals a bikini bottom that looks more like a pair of white panties.

I watch her fingers dip into the back pocket of the guy in front of her at The Frog Bog, who's paying no attention to what's happening behind him. He's too busy smacking his mallet down on a tiny seesaw to send a rubber frog flopping up into the air, aiming to land it on a floating lily pad too small to actually hold the fake amphibian.

“Ceepak!” I yell. “Girl.” I point. “Girl!”

Ceepak's momentarily confused, trying to figure out what the hell I'm yelling about.

“Redhead! Boardwalk. Green hair!”

He pivots. Sees her. Makes the connection. He rips the Motorola mike off his shoulder.

“This is Ceepak. Request all available backup. Boardwalk area near Sonny Days Inn.”

“The Frog Bog!” I try to help out.

“Frog Bog. We have made visual contact with target. Repeat. We have spotted the girl from the photograph.”

Ceepak has good breath support. He's able to say all that stuff while we run across Reverend Billy's parking lot. A chest-high chain-link fence is fast approaching. It separates the motel property from the boardwalk. I figure we'll be scaling it soon.

“Girl is approximately 5'5",” Ceepak continues. “She is wearing a white bikini top, short plaid skirt, yellow sandals. Her hair is green. Repeat. Hair is currently dyed green.”

We reach the fence.

Ceepak braces the top bar, swings his legs sideways, does an Olympic-style vault, and flies over. I need to jam my toes into the chain gaps and climb it like a ladder. When I reach the top, I sort of haul myself up and over in stages. The fence shakes, rattles, and pings.

The girl hears the metallic racket. She turns. Sees us.

She kicks off her flip-flops and runs.

Man, she's fast. Like one of those Olympic sprinters who train up in the mountains of Kenya. Her bare feet barely touch the boardwalk. At least she won't have to worry about splinters.

We take off after her.

She has a head start and a better idea of where she might be going.

Up ahead, I see Water Blast, Lord of the Rings Toss, Peach Bucket Ball, and Crabby's Race Track, where you squirt a water pistol at a target to make your crab race up this track against everybody else's crab-and if you win, you get a stuffed Nemo.

“Danny?”

“Yeah?” I huff. He runs every day. Five miles. The only exercise I get is playing beer pong.

“Swing right,” he says. “I'll swing left.”

We're in a stretch of the boardwalk that's like a mall-booths and shops lined up on both sides.

“If we run behind the stalls, she may think she lost us.”

“Got it.”

“Reconnoiter at the Whack-A-Mole.” He does one of his three-finger hand chops toward the horizon. About a block ahead, I see a gap in the booths-an open square at the next street entrance to the boardwalk. I also see the blinking chaser lights screaming WHACK-AMOLE in yellow, green, and red.

“We'll surround her.”

“Got it.”

“Go!”

We split up.

He scoots through an alley alongside a zeppole kiosk. I dash down this narrow strip between Splash Down and Looney Ladders.

Behind me I hear a grunt and thud.

I stop, check over my shoulder.

Ceepak's on his butt.

“You okay?”

“Slipped,” he says, hoisting himself back up.

Guess that's where the zeppole folks change their fry grease once a month.

“Go, Danny!”

I don't answer. I just run.

I turn right and I'm behind all the booths, zooming along this tight little path as fast as I can. I have to leap over a tall stack of cardboard boxes. Then I almost trip on a tangle of air hoses and electrical cords behind the Balloon Pop. But the clearing, the opening onto Whack-A-Mole Square, the rendezvous point, is just up ahead. I can hear bells ringing. Kids squealing. Fuzzy hammers hitting furry heads.

I make the right. Race into the square. Ceepak is already standing there.

He's looking left, looking right. Looking like we lost her.

I meet him in the middle. Kids licking lollipops the size of steering wheels surround us. I see tattooed slackers lugging gigantic plush toys they wish they hadn't just won for their girlfriends because now they have to haul them up and down the boardwalk all night long. The sun is sinking lower so half the booths, the ones to my west, are in deep shadows. The kind of shadows that make good hiding places.

“Do you see her, Danny?”

“No.”

I crane my neck. I see this other girl, about nine. She is whacking the bejesus out of the moles that keep popping up in the five holes in front of her. The digital counter clicks over every time she whacks a mole back into its hole. She grips her hammer with both fists. The hammer head is huge, resembling a forty-eight-ounce can of stewed tomatoes wrapped with grey foam. Lights flash. Whistles whoop. Little Miss Mallet is very close to going home with a stuffed gopher.

But she isn't our girl.

“We've lost her,” says Ceepak, his eyes sweeping the scene.

“Yeah. But she couldn't have gone far.”

“Roger that. Where are we, Danny?”

Ceepak knows of my misspent youth. He knows I know this boardwalk better than Bruno Mazzilli, the guy who owns most of it.

“About a quarter mile down,” I say and point at the ramp to our west, sweeping down to Beach Lane. “This is the Dolphin Street entrance.”

Ceepak nods, works his handy-talkie.

“This is Ceepak. The target has fled. She was last seen in the vicinity of the Dolphin Street entrance to the boardwalk.”

While Ceepak calls it in, I check out the game booth directly in front of us.

There's an Asian-looking dude behind the counter, a clothesline of yellow Tweety Birds strung up over his head. The booth is called Machine Gun Fun. Behind the guy is a row of targets. Sort of like the ones they have at the police academy shooting range, only the targets here look more like the mobsters on The Sopranos.

I aced the firing range when I did my nineteen weeks at the academy. Mostly because I spent my formative years playing Halo on my Xbox, blasting Grunts, Jackals, and Drones. In Jersey, you need an 80 on the standard shooting test to become firearm-certified. I scored a 96. And my mother used to tell me I was wasting my time pointing my plastic pistol at the TV set!

Now I notice the Asian guy is wearing a head mike but he's not saying anything to hustle up a fresh crowd of suckers. All the barkers manning the other games of chance are into their raps, telling everybody how they can be a winner and take home a Tweety for their Sweetie. But this guy directly across from us is, for some reason, keeping mum about his clothesline full of Tweeties.

I also notice he's standing extremely close to his front shelf. His belt buckle is pressed up tight against the plywood.

There are no shooters. No customers.

But the guy is wearing a goofy, dreamy grin.

He slumps down some. Maybe an inch. Now the counter cuts him off above the waist. He wobbles a little. Closes his eyes.

Okay. I know where Stacey is.

“Ceepak?”

“What've you got, Danny?”

I nod toward the booth.

“I think our suspect is over there … under the counter. I think she's, you know, giving that guy a….”

Ceepak nods. I need say no more.

We walk slowly, so as not to draw the guy's attention. Not to worry. His attention is currently fixated somewhere near his zipper.

“Oh, shit!” cries this angry voice behind us.

It's the little cutie on the Whack-A-Mole game. She's smashing her mallet against the glass panel that shows her score.

“Shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit!”

She has a 95. Guess you need a 100 to win. Guess you learn those words when you're nine years old these days.

“Fucking piece of fucking shit!”

The glass pane isn't shattering. Her mallet is mostly sponge.

Her colorful choice of words, however, has snapped the guy at Machine Gun Fun out of his trance.

He sees us.

Two cops strolling over to tell him his fly is open.

His hands drop from his hips and fumble under the counter.

His row of toy machine-guns shakes. One pops off its pedestal. The countertop is being bumped from below.

Ceepak starts to trot. So do I.

The Asian guy falls backward like a tight end just chop-blocked his shins. I see a flash of green hair as Stacey bobs up and heads for the rear wall. She pushes and shoves against the stuffed purple bears hanging there. Only it's not a wall. It's a door-a swinging panel. She knocks it open and, once again, flees.

We dart up the boardwalk. Now she's the one working the narrow alley behind the booths.

I see flashes of green hair every time we cross a crack where one booth stops and another starts. Past Splash Down. Skee Ball Bob's. Rat-A-Tat Tattoo. Past this place that sells really good water ices.

“There she is,” yells Ceepak as we near the blinking lights of another zeppole stand. We race to the end of what is basically a parked food trailer and come upon a cluster of picnic tables, where people sit stuffing clumps of sugar-powdered, deep-fried dough into their faces. I wish I could join them.

We stop. Wait. No girl pops out from behind the food cart.

“She must've doubled back!” I yell. “We should….”

Ceepak holds up his left hand. Gives me the halt sign.

He sees something.

“Is your sidearm loaded?” he whispers.

I swallow hard. “Yes, sir.”

“Cover me.”

My hand is shaking, but it finds my holster and unfastens the strap that cradles the Glock in place. My thumb finds the trigger. Caresses it.

Ceepak makes an almost imperceptible tilt of his head to the right.

To one of the picnic tables.

To where Dr. Theodore Winston sits biting into the butt end of his hot dog.

“I'm on point.” Ceepak moves toward the table.

My hand hovers over my Glock.

Ceepak is the one who suggested I go with the.40 caliber Glock 27 instead of the 23; he said with the 23 my hand would be bigger than the gun. All I know is, right now my hand is sweaty. The pistol might be the right size, but it could slip out of my wet grip.

Teddy Winston is alone. He crumples up the tissue paper from his hot dog, wads it into a ball, and tosses it toward an overflowing trash barrel. He misses by a mile.

“Dr. Theodore Winston?” Ceepak says in his most heart-stopping cop voice.

“Yes?” He squints. He has to. The sun's behind Ceepak's head. I'm certain my partner planned it that way. Gives him the tactical advantage.

“Sir, please stand up and place your hands behind your back.”

Ceepak finds a pair of plastic FlexiCuffs on his utility belt. He does so without breaking eye contact with Dr. Winston.

“Am I under arrest?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That's preposterous. What, pray tell, is the charge?”

Ceepak nods toward the crumpled hot dog wrapper lying on the boardwalk.

“First-degree littering.”