And, it turns out, to make things even more interesting, the producers of Fun House are offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of “this man.”
When Botzong says that, the screen fills with a very scary sketch of our gaunt-faced friend in his floppy-billed Boonie hat.
“Did Thomas serve in Vietnam?” I ask his half-brother, who’s swigging from his beer bottle, not even glancing at any of the dozen TV screens surrounding us. “Is that why he likes the hat?”
“No. The Army wouldn’t take him.” He taps the side of his head. “He has issues, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” I push my beer bottle away. “Look, I need to talk to my partner. Organize things.”
“Sure.” Mr. America stands up. Extends his hand. “I’ll bring Thomas to the police station first thing Saturday morning. How’s eight? Too early?”
“No. Eight is cool.”
I guess we’re making a deal here, so I go ahead and take his hand. Shake it. “You want us to arrange for a lawyer?” I ask.
“You know a good one?”
“Couple. Yeah.”
“He can’t afford to pay much.”
“I know somebody good in the public defender’s office.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it. I’m Gabe.”
“Danny.” Then I remember my official position and how this isn’t just some dude I’m meeting over a cold one. “Officer Boyle.”
“Okay. Officer Boyle.”
We break out of the handshake.
“You know where to find me if your partner has a problem,” he says.
“Yeah. We’ll probably swing by your stand tomorrow. Iron out any logistics.”
Gabe nods. “Thanks. Enjoy the rest of the show.”
He slips out of the bar as Chip Dale strides onto the sundeck of the house on Halibut Street.
“And so we say farewell to Paulie. The Thing. The young man who lived his life with such joy, such gusto, such … liveliness. Sad to think that, only a few short weeks ago, Paulie was right here, on this sundeck, doing what he liked best: playing beer pong with his buddies, making them smile.” Chip gives a sincere shuck of his head. “Let’s hope they have a pong table for him up in heaven. Next week?” Man, this guy can shift gears faster than a drag racer stoked on methamphetamines. “It’s double elimination time! The four remaining contestants all had immunity tonight. But next week? Two contestants will be seven days closer to a quarter-million dollars while two of their housemates will be packing their bags and heading home. We hope you’ll be watching. We know Paulie will. Until then, this is Chip Dale for Fun House. Be safe, be who you are, and be sure to have some fun at your house! Good night, America.”
As they roll the credits, they put up Skeletor’s image again and superimpose a title done up in Wild West type: “WANTED. REWARD: $50,000.”
I don’t call Ceepak right away to tell him about Skeletor’s brother. Hey, they gave the show two full hours tonight, pushed back the local news. It’s eleven o’clock. The Ceepaks have lights-out at twenty-two hundred hours. I don’t think he actually blows Taps on a bugle, but they’re pretty rigid about it.
On the drive home, I start wondering about the $50,000 reward. Maybe Gabe will get it for turning in his brother. He could do a lot of good with the money. Donate it to a Clogged Artery Charity.
I stop thinking about the reward money when my phone rings at 6 A.M. Friday morning.
It’s Ceepak.
The TV show worked.
Somebody found Skeletor.
There’s only one problem: he’s dead.
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.”