Chris Grabenstein - Fun House

“The State of New Jersey’s Mandatory Helmet Law.”

Oh. Right. That thirty-nine dash-dot-whozeewhatzit.

Ceepak works the listening buds out of both ears and mutters the memorized ordinance: “No person shall operate or ride upon a motorcycle unless he or she wears a securely fitted protective helmet.”

Great. Instead of a drug bust, we’ll slap Skeletor with a twenty-five-dollar fine for wearing a floppy Army surplus hat.

Earphones out, Ceepak yanks up on his door handle. I’m a split second behind him. Go for my weapon.

“Keep it holstered,” says Ceepak through a tight smile without even looking over to see what I’m doing. “Too many innocent civilians.”

Yeah. The prospect for collateral damage is extremely high right now. Folks are piling out of cars. Moms, dads. Couple kids. Granny with her walker.

We stroll casually across the parking lot. Ceepak even whistles a little. “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.” More Springsteen.

Paulie Braciole looks over. Sees us.

Skeletor’s bony head bobs sideways. He sees Paulie seeing something. Twirls around.

He sneers. His teeth are spiky. The guy has no gums.

“Hello, Army asshole.”

That’s what he called Ceepak that day at Paintball Blasters. I was right. It’s the same walking bone bag.

“Sir?” Ceepak flashes his badge. “We’re with the Sea Haven Police Department.”

Skeletor retreats a step. “So?”

“Is that your motorcycle?”

“Yeah. So?” Cocky as hell, Skeletor straddles his motorbike. Plops his bony butt down on the seat.

“Where is your helmet, sir?”

Skeletor kick-starts the bike. The engine varoom-pop-pops to life. He puts a hand to his ear. “What?”

“Where is your helmet?” Ceepak shouts as we move closer. Paulie, The Thing, moves backward, his hands trembling.

Skeletor tugs down on the Boonie hat’s leather straps.

“I don’t need a fucking helmet.”

“Yes, sir. You do. In New Jersey, all motorcyclists are required to wear DOT-approved headgear.”

“Not me. I got other protection.”

“Sir, you need the full gear,” says Ceepak. He gestures at Skeletor’s hat. “Not the fool’s gear.”

I think Ceepak’s cribbing that corny line off a motorcycle safety poster he hung up in the SHPD locker room a few months ago.

Skeletor responds by flicking his wrist on the twist grip throttle to rev his engine, make it go chug-pop-pop.

“Sir? Kindly shut down your engine and dismount.”

Skeletor snaps his bony teeth shark style at Ceepak. “Bite me.”

Ceepak doesn’t flinch. “Dismount, sir. Now!”

“Shit,” gasps Paulie. “I’m out of here!”

I hear glass shatter. Reflexively, Ceepak and I both glance behind us. We see Paulie turning tail to run, crunching across the shattered steroid bottles he just dropped on the blacktop.

That’s when Skeletor gooses his throttle to the max, lets go of the clutch lever, and pops a wheelie that sends the front tire spinning like a studded chainsaw at Ceepak’s head.

And Ceepak isn’t wearing a helmet either.

Ceepak ducks left.

The whirring motorcycle tire grazes the shoulder of his shirt on the downswing, chews into the Tommy Bahama gardenias like a hedge trimmer. Ceepak rolls right. I go for my gun.

“No weapons!” shouts Ceepak, gritting through the pain that comes when your collarbone gets clipped.

Skeletor lands hard and rips up a lane between parked cars.

Okay. Now he gets more than a twenty-five-dollar fine; he goes to jail for resisting arrest.

Ceepak grabs his radio mic. “All units,” he shouts, “suspect is fleeing the scene on motor-”

Before he finishes, the throaty roar of rolling thunder shatters the air around us. Not the roller coaster-fifteen more choppers or hogs or whatever the hell Hell’s Angels geezers call their rides these days. Only these aren’t fat old guys with black leather vests, David Crosby hair, and too much facial hair.

This looks like The Creed. Tattoo sleeves. Wallets on silver chains. I see pirate skulls with devil horns, the Creed logo. They’re a gang of outlaw bikers that runs drugs in South Jersey. These guys are the mafia on motorcycles.

The Creed, like Ceepak, live their life in strict accordance to a code. Theirs includes stuff about brotherhood and loyalty, like “If a citizen hits your brother, you will be on that citizen without asking why. There is no why.”

I’m figuring Skeletor is a brother. The gang has probably been protecting him for years.

Ceepak and me? We’re lousy stinking citizens.

Up near the Spruce Street exit, Skeletor slams into a swerving fishtail turn, falls in behind three other Creed riders. They do this Shriner Circus move, cutting tire-smokin’ doughnuts around a terrified couple who had been toothpicking their way to their Volvo when the wild bunch rolled into the parking lot. The four thrumming motorbikes circle the trembling tourists and then split off in different directions.

When they make their big finish and peel apart, I can’t tell which one is Skeletor any more.

Ceepak, however, can.

“Reed? Malloy?” he barks into his radio mic, which he holds with one hand while the other one massages that tire gash on his shoulder. “Suspect is headed west on Tangerine.”

“Which one?” shouts Malloy. “There’s a whole pack of ’em!” I can tell by Malloy’s choppy voice that he is in hot pursuit of something or somebody.

That’s when I hear another blast of gear-ripping engines scream into a turn off Tangerine Street to tear up Ocean Avenue. Meanwhile, the first battalion of bikes is still zipping around the restaurant parking lot, hard-cranking through gearshifts, stuttering up the musical scale, straining to hit the high notes.

“Boonie hat!” says Ceepak. “Look for the rider without a helmet. He’s wearing a green tiger-stripe camouflage hat.”

“They all are!” says Malloy. “All of them are wearing the same stupid hat.”

Ceepak brings down the mic. “Damn,” he mutters-a word he very rarely uses.

That’s when I know we’re toast.

One of the parking-lot invaders screams up the lane where we’re standing. Bops me on the head as he passes. He’s laughing so hard as he speeds away, I can hear him over the whine of his tweaked-out engine.

Now the first wave of motorcycles swarms into a pack and streams out of the parking lot, heading north after their brothers in the Boonie hats.

“Lock down the causeway!” Ceepak shouts into the mic. “Lock it down!”

Malloy and Reed both start calling in the disaster to the dispatcher. The causeway, about thirty blocks north of where we are, is the only bridge connecting our island with the mainland; it’s their only escape route. I don’t hear much more of the radio transmission; just the dispatcher frantically searching for any available units-enough to throw up a roadblock.

But motorcycles? Unless we can immediately pull together enough cop cars to line them up bumper to bumper across both sides of the span, they’ll slip through. On the shoulder. Between vehicles.

Ceepak and I stand stranded in the parking lot.

The last of the motorcycles squirts out of view.

We can hear the throaty roar as the motorcycle gang, all two dozen of them, flees the scene.

They’ll be at the causeway in no time.

They’ll get away. Maybe the highway patrol will grab them. Or maybe they’ll hide their bikes in the back of a tractor-trailer when they hit the mainland. Ride up a ramp, roll down the door.

Hey, they planned this thing.

They knew the drug buy might be a setup.

Because, to tell the truth, I don’t think The Creed rolls around in Boonie hats on a regular basis.