Chris Grabenstein - Free Fall

“We’re done here.”

We turn to leave.

“Sore losers!” mutters Bob.

We turn back around.

“I beg your pardon?” says Ceepak.

“I know what’s going on here. You two are still upset about the election. First you haul Hugh’s kid off to jail on a trumped-up charge. Now this crap about operator certificates? Face it, boys, you backed the wrong horse. Adkinson lost. Sinclair won. Get over it.”

Ceepak simply smiles.

“Hire a certified operator, Bob.”

“We will.”

“Then it’s all good.”

And this time when we turn to leave, we turn and leave.

All the other rides we inspect during the week pass, even the ones owned by Sinclair Enterprises.

His other operators all know their height requirements and weight limitations. “Two fatties and one dude with a big butt” is never the correct answer.

After work on Friday, Ceepak invites me to join him at his mother’s condo for dinner.

“If you have no other plans this evening.”

I don’t. So I do.

Ceepak’s wife, Rita, is working the Friday night dinner rush at Morgan’s Surf and Turf, so it’ll just be Ceepak, Adele, and me.

Mrs. Ceepak lives in an Active Adult Retirement Community called The Oceanaire. You have to check in at the gatehouse and be announced before the guards will even let you drive along the winding road that snakes around The Oceanaire’s clubhouse and meanders through its manicured landscape of 25 semi-identical cape-style homes.

Mrs. Ceepak is waiting for us on the front porch of her unit. It’s brand-new; neat and tidy.

“You like spaghetti and meatballs, Daniel?” she says when we climb out of my Jeep.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“Good. I know John does. Come on in. Let’s eat. And then you boys need to help me find a good lawyer.”

“Why exactly do you need a lawyer, mother?” Ceepak asks as we pass around the wooden salad bowl that has its own wooden salad-tossing forks.

I wonder if I’ll ever own the kind of stuff Mrs. Ceepak has in her snug and cozy little home. Silverware that actually matches. Serving bowls. Drinking glasses that aren’t movie souvenirs from Burger King. A framed needlepoint sampler and Princess Diana plates hanging on the walls.

Do you get the complete home starter kit when you finally decide to grow up and settle down? Or do you just collect stuff along the way?

“The lawyer’s not for me, John,” says Mrs. Ceepak as she passes the breadbasket, which is actually a basket lined with a checkered cloth to keep the bread warm. “It’s for a friend of mine’s caregiver. A gentleman named Arnold Rosen.”

“The one who lives on Beach Lane?”

“That’s right. Do you know him? He’s ninety-four. Comes with his nurse to our afternoon bingo games at the senior center.”

“Is the nurse named Christine?” I ask.

“Yes! Do you boys know her, too?”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s a friend of a friend.”

“Danny knows just about everybody in Sea Haven,” says Ceepak.

“Well, this Christine is very pretty, Daniel. Has those dark Mediterranean features. Big brown eyes. Nice figure, too. From what I’ve picked up at the bingo games, she’s a single gal. You should ask her out on a date. Nothing too flashy. Maybe just coffee or a light lunch. Definitely not a movie. You don’t really get to chat at the movies …”

Across the table, Ceepak is grinning at me.

I guess now that her son is all settled down, it’s Adele Ceepak’s mission to fix me up so I can start collecting matching salad bowls of my own.

“Something to think about,” I mumble and pop a plum tomato into my mouth so I don’t have to say anything else.

“Why, exactly, does Christine need a lawyer?” asks Ceepak.

“Oh, some nonsense about attacking a former employer.”

Okay. I put down my salad fork. “Mrs. Shona Oppenheimer?”

“That’s right. Do you know her, too, Daniel?”

“Not really. I was on duty last Friday night and caught a call to investigate an altercation at the Oppenheimer home between Mrs. Oppenheimer and Ms. Lemonopolous.”

“Danny and his partner were the first on the scene,” adds Ceepak.

“Then you know this is all a bunch of hooey. No way did a sweet girl like Christine Lemonopolous ‘attack’ this Mrs. Oppenheimer. But Mrs. Oppenheimer, whose late husband I hear was a big Wall Street muckety-muck, has a boatload of money and bamboozled some judge into issuing what they call a TRO against Christine.”

“A TRO is a Temporary Restraining Order,” explains Ceepak.

“Oh. So it’s not permanent?”

“Not until there is a formal hearing, which must take place within ten days of the filing of the TRO.”

Ceepak knows a thing or two about how restraining orders work in the state of New Jersey. He should. He had one issued against his drunken father the first time Joe “Sixpack” Ceepak stumbled into town.

“Well, I want Christine to have the best lawyer in the state of New Jersey,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “Do you boys know any crackerjack criminal defense attorneys? Because that’s what Dr. Rosen says Christine is going to need to beat this thing. He says Mrs. Oppenheimer is probably assuming that Christine won’t have the financial means to defend herself so she can just steamroll right over the poor girl.”

Ceepak leans back from his mountain of spaghetti and erects a two-handed tapping finger tent under his nose. This is what he does sometimes when he thinks.

I use the free time to spear a crouton.

“If I were in a similar predicament,” Ceepak finally says, “I would want Harvey Nussbaum to defend me.”

Ceepak’s right. Nussbaum is a pit bull. I’ve seen his ads on a couple benches up and down Ocean Avenue. “ I Turn Wrongs Into Rights! ” is his slogan. His mascot is a snarling bulldog wearing one of those curly lawyer wigs the barristers wear over in England.

“Good,” says his mother. “Let’s hire this Harvey Nussbaum.”

“Wait a second,” I say. “You want to pay for Christine’s lawyer?”

“Heavens, yes. Somebody has to! I’m sure she’s earning little more than minimum wage working for Dr. Rosen. She can’t afford a lawyer. The girl doesn’t even have a home of her own. She’s living in Arnie’s house in a guest bedroom.”

“Mother,” says Ceepak, “an expert criminal defense attorney such as Harvey Nussbaum can cost upwards of three hundred dollars per billable hour.”

“So? I’m rich, remember?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Besides, this is what Aunt Jennifer would want me to do with all that money she left me. See that sampler on the wall?”

“Yes,” I say. “I was admiring it earlier.”

“Well, it originally belonged to Aunt Jennifer. Did you read what it says, Daniel?”

“No. I couldn’t really make out the words …”

Mrs. Ceepak pushes back her chair.

“I’ll get it, Mother,” says her son.

“Thank you, dear.”

Ceepak goes to the wall and carefully lifts the framed sampler off its hook.

“Read it,” says his mom.

Ceepak’s not much on making speeches (another reason he hated being Chief of Police so much). But he does what his mother tells him to.

He reads the needlepointed words:

“ Do all the good you can ,

By all the means you can ,

In all the ways you can ,

In all the places you can ,

At all the times you can ,

To all the people you can ,

As long as ever you can .”

Okay. I think I finally know how Ceepak became Ceepak. He inherited it from his Great Aunt Jennifer.

“That’s a quote from John Wesley,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “He wasn’t a Catholic but, still, it’s a good prayer.”